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Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes 

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Guest Bio: Rich Fettke is Co-CEO of RealWealth®, a 3-time Inc. 5000 ranked real estate investor network with 27 employees and over 50,000 members.

Rich is passionate about developing the company’s team and systems, and is always looking for new ways to bring good people to the network.

A licensed real estate broker and investor, Rich is also a Master Certified Business Coach and author of the book, Extreme Success.

With a love for adventure sports, Rich has competed in the ESPN X-Games and is a record-holding bungee jumper, a skydiver, rock climber, skier and surfer.

He lives and plays in Malibu, CA with his wife and co-CEO, Kathy, and their two daughters.

More about him – www.TonyJavier.com/richfettke

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Show Transcription:

Tony (00:01):
All right. Welcome. We have Mr. Rich Fettke with us today. Rich is a real estate veteran. He’s got one of the top podcasts out there. He is an X gamer, which I’d love to hear more about, just a phenomenal guy, met him a few years ago, and I’m really excited to have him on the show cause he’s got a lot of experience and a lot of followers and a lot of traction in this space. So welcome rich. How you doing today, buddy?

Rich (00:35):
Good. Really good to be here.

Tony (00:37):
Yeah, man. Thanks for coming on. So tell me what’s going on in your world. So you’re, I was reading your bio. I’ve known you for, I think a couple years now, but I didn’t realize you were an X gamer, you know, and anybody who does extreme sports, I have so much respect for because there’s so much training and so much you put on the line for that. So I guess we’ll start there. Just tell me a little bit about your background on the X games and we’ll get into real estate. So I’d like to hear a little bit about how you got into that.

Rich (01:06):
Yeah, I mean, I got into adventure sports when I was in my teens in snow skiing with my younger brother. He’s four years younger than I am and we just started to, um, there was the blizzard of 1978 when you grew up in Boston and we started to find these roofs, like three stories, some buildings, and we’d jump off the roofs into snowbanks and realize that we could go bigger and bigger and bigger so that we carried over to skiing and we started to go bigger and bigger on ski jumps and that kinda got the adrenaline addiction started. And then, so after that, then we, um, then we moved into bungee jumping and skydiving, slacklining, Highline, things like that. So it was just kind of like that, that passion of like feeling the rush, taking something on, it’s a big challenge, learning how to manage and deal with fear, how to stay focused in the moment. The X games was the first X games ever in Providence, Rhode Island in 1995 and um, we had done a lot of pretty insane bungee jumps and they had seen some video of that. ESPN did, and they came part of one of the events. There was bungee jumping. So it’s like a high diving competition, 160 foot crane in the sky over Providence, over a little reflecting pool. And it was all judged on just like a high diving competition. How many flips can you do? What the type of technique, the form, how many flips can you do on the rebound and all that?

Rich (02:30):
So it was cool just, you know, competing with people from all around the world, all these different countries and meeting different people and just a really cool experience. So that was my X games. They had a bunch of jumping the first two years of the X games.

Tony (02:43):
Oh, that’s cool. That’s awesome. So you seem like one of those that, you know, you said an adrenaline junkie and anybody who does high level stuff in real estate, like you do as typically pretty competitive. So it seems like you’ve taken your, like what you did in the X games and kept competitiveness and making things bigger and better and that type of thing and took it into business. So let’s transition into that. So you run a podcast, you run a, a network of real estate investors. Um, tell us a little bit about that, how you got into that and how you help people in that, that side of the business.

Rich (03:17):
Yeah. You got it. Yeah. It’s interesting. Um, you know, before that, I’ll roll back a little bit. We kind of created our whole business out of desperation. And the reason I say that is, I had, when I moved, uh, in 95, I moved from Boston to California and I became a certified business coach. A master certified business coach went through that training, uh, had already had a business degree, had sold my health club that I ran in Boston area. Um, I had sold that moved to California. And so for years I was, working with clients as a professional coach and a business coach. And then I landed a book deal with Simon Schuster and read a book, wrote a book called Extreme Success. So it was taking those extreme sports, um, lessons and carrying over into business in life. Like I was saying how to deal with fear, how to stay focused, how to be in the moment, um, some of these how to be more effective, how to struggle less. And so that was great. Everything I was like on top of the world, I was giving keynote speeches. I was traveling all over the world. I was on all these major media outlets. And then I noticed this, um, freckle, I mean freckles, but this was a weird freckle that on my leg that was getting bigger. And I went in and was diagnosed with melanoma, which is the most threatening form of skin cancer, which, you know, it’s not that bad if you can get removed and everything, but they, they remove the melanoma. But then they had me do some scans to make sure that hadn’t spread. And they saw, they saw four masses on my liver. And so after multiple tests over several weeks our oncologist said, it looks like it’s spread to your liver. And, um, you’re probably gonna have about six months to live.

Tony (05:02):
Oh, wow.

Rich (05:03):
It really rocked my world. We had a seven year old daughter, a three year old daughter. It just, yeah. And being told that you have six months to live with little kids like that. And, Oh man, I remember I was bouncing on the trampoline with our, with our little three-year-old one day and giggling and laughing and falling on top of each other. And I just broke down in tears when I realized that I wasn’t going to see her get married or grow up or see my grandkids and all. And so in that desperation, Kathy, my wife, who is a stay at home mom at the time, um, she’s like, what am I going to do for income? And she had this small radio show in the Bay area where she interviewed people on different areas of, um, personal growth and everything from relationships to health and fitness to finance and so she’s like I gotta do something here for an income source. And she actually had someone on her show that was a real estate investor. And as she spoke to him, she just got all fired up and she came home and she said, this is what. This is what we can do in case you don’t make it. And so she dove in head first and started to have guests on her radio show on a regular am station on a regular basis and started to learn everything she could about real estate. And so we started to invest in real estate, bought a bunch of properties in Dallas, Texas North of Dallas, and started to learn how that worked and how we could create cashflow. And that’s kinda what got us into real estate. And luckily after several more tests, I got scheduled for a pet scan, which is the most advanced scan for seeing if someone has cancer. And it came back that I was cancer free. So it was, it was just, it was such a trippy time. What it was, was a clusters of blood vessels that were in my liver, that they, they told me that like 20% of the population has these hemangiomas, they’re called they’re clusters of blood vessels, that group up and, on a CT scan or even on ultra ultrasound, like they had me do, it shows up as masses just like cancer. Um, so anyway, here I am. It’s, you know,

Tony (07:15):
So the false positive, basically.

Rich (07:17):
A false positive. Yeah.

Tony (07:18):
Okay. Just making that clear. Cause I got goosebumps when you said that. Cause my sister let’s see, it’s been 13 years ago, she was only 30 years old and she was diagnosed with cancer and ended up spreading to her liver and she passed away.

Rich (07:30):
Oh I’m sorry,

Tony (07:31):
When you said that it was like, man, I just got the chills, just thinking about what I’m imagining, just like what’s going through your head and everything that, you know, you had to process. Right. And I’m sure it’s something that looking back was probably a blessing over rocks. It probably made you like understand how precious life is and, and not to take things for granted. Right?

Rich (07:51):
Yeah, absolutely. Those are some of the lessons. It was so many lessons, you know, as a coach, I’d always been around helping people, you know, live life on their own terms to live a more balanced life and all that. And so I, I tried to take my own advice as best I could. I had my own coach. So I was constantly not spending too much time at the office as they say, we shouldn’t do. I was constantly giving attention to my family and taking care of myself and all that. So the cool thing, when I thought I might be dying, I was like, wow, well, at least I’ve made the most, I’ve taken all the time I could with my family and my kids. I didn’t have regrets basically. Um, but now on the other side of it, some of the lessons are nothing matters, you know? And when we lose money in real estate or there’s a challenge with an employee or anything, it’s like, whatever, I’m, I’m alive, you know?

Tony (08:42):
Yeah. I try and teach it as much as possible too. I mean, so I’ve been in business 20 years now and for the first, between 10 and 15 years, everything stress and not everything, but you know, you know what I’m saying? Like deals fall through contractors, don’t show up. I mean, you can get so stressed in this business, but when you step back and realize that, first of all, like, like you said, like that stuff really doesn’t matter that much. And what I’ve found is every time, if I look back at every tough moment in my life and things that happen, there was always something good that came out of it. You know, whether it was, you know, getting divorced and finding a new wife or contractor screws you over, and then you hire another contractor that if that contractor wouldn’t have screwed you over, you wouldn’t have found cause it wasn’t the right. I mean, there’s so many different things that come out of bad situations, you just have to look out and find those, you know, silver linings. So

Rich (09:34):
Absolutely. Yeah. So that was, so that was basically that, that was that desperation. It was like, that’s what got us into real estate investing. And then, um, as Kathy and I continued in real estate investing, we, uh, started to have friends saying like, how do you do that? And could you help us out? And we started to help them out. And then one day we were sitting at this little cafe up in Sacramento and Kathy’s saying, you know, wouldn’t it be great to kind of form a little group of investors where we can help each other. We can support them. All our friends are asking us how we’re doing this. We should form something, put something together. And she’s saying these things. And she goes, but you know, because of a radio show and that she was starting to interview more people. And then when we launched a podcast on iTunes, all of a sudden more people started to come to us, you know, get more awareness. And so she’s like, you know, I’m getting invited to speak at these local RIAs and they’re so cheesy. They have these people coming in, they do the back of the room sales thing and it’s like, they’re selling these outdated course. I wish we could just form a group of investors that were just real people, giving them real information, help them get them into real investment properties and all that. And so I was jotting down on a little napkin and I wrote down real wealth network and I turned it around and showed it to her. And she said, that’s it. And so that’s, that’s when we formed Real Wealth Network, um, back in 2003 long time ago, when we thought we were going to have maybe a hundred, 200 investors and now, uh, just found out yesterday that we just passed 50,000 members in our network.

Tony (11:02):
That’s fantastic.

Rich (11:03):
Really good.

Tony (11:04):
So tell us your model there. I know a little bit about it, but I’ll let you kind of explain what you do for other investors.

Rich (11:10):
Sure. Yeah. So, um, three main things that we do at Real Wealth, one is, um, we provide a ton of free education. So we’ve produced over 800 free educational webinars, over 5 million downloads of the podcast, a lot, a lot of education. Um, that’s real that we don’t charge a penny for to join the network. We don’t charge anything for, uh, our business model. The way it’s monetized is we have property teams around the country with these real, what we call a real income property. It goes beyond turnkey it’s standards that there’s a certain amount of time left on the roof and the appliances and how their rehab and everything. Um, so the, there are these cashflowing turnkey properties with tenants in. So we refer our investors to these different property teams around the country, so they can acquire cash flowing single-family like one to four unit properties. That’s a big part of our business. And then the other side of the businesses, we also syndicate and work with developers on doing syndication deals for group investments. So people can come in and invest in the group investment and we’ll acquire mostly residential development is our main focus. And so that’s been, that’s been really cool too.

Tony (12:23):
Yeah, that’s cool. So you told me a story. I’m not going to tell too much of the story, cause I don’t know if you want me to disclose this, but you told me a story. A year, year and a half ago when we were where were we for the strategic coach event? And you had something with investors that didn’t go quite right. And then later down the road, there’s something happened where you ended up taking care of those investors. And that story really resonated with me because that’s something you didn’t have to do and you felt inclined to do that. And when I, when you told me that story, I’m like, this is the real deal. This guy like really takes care of its people, because there are a lot of people, as you know, in this industry that just want to make a dollar and they don’t really, um, I don’t want to say don’t care about their investors, but would rather benefit themselves over investors. So when you told me that story, I’m like, man, Rich is the real deal. Like he takes care of his people. So I just wanted to kind of share that and tell you that I totally respect you because I mean, what you did was a big deal. I mean, again, I’m not going to disclose the details, but you did, like, you put a lot of your own money out there to take care of people. And so I really respect you for that.

Rich (13:30):
It’s awesome that you remember that. Yeah. Yeah. It would just, you know, not in real estate, not everything goes the way you think it’s going to go, you know, need as you do your due diligence and all that. And you come at it the right way. And usually it works and it’s very profitable and it can be amazing. And sometimes things shift and change and the market changes. I mean, even what, you know, what’s gone on in this year, you know, it’s crazy. So there’s something there around when things don’t go right. Looking at how can we take, I think that’s what we do. So it’s like, how can we take responsibility here instead of pointing fingers and saying, well, it’s because of the, market’s kind of adapt, but it’s like, what can we do for our investors? And yeah, it’s just an integrity piece for us. And you know, it’s not just me, it’s my wife, Kathy, where co CEOs of Real Wealth. So it’s just the core values that we hold. So we just want to take care of our investors and it always works out. You know, it’s a karma thing too. It always works out.

Tony (14:25):
No doubt if it hasn’t already come back to you, I’m sure that absolutely will. So that’s good stuff. Yeah.

Rich (14:29):
I think it has a tenfold, you know

Tony (14:32):
Good. Yeah. I mean just feeling good too, right? I mean just the feeling that you have taken care of them and that helps you to run the business better. And I’m sure if your staff knew what you did, which I don’t know if they did or not, I’m sure that instills more values of them, of like, man, we need to do right as well. So looking at the leader of the organization, you know, you are the person that they look up to. So if they see stuff like that, that’s going to resignate with the whole organization and come back many times.

Rich (14:59):
Yeah. We’re very transparent with our team. We have 27 employees and we’re very transparent. We share everything with them. yeah. I mean, we even have a profit sharing plan with everyone on our team. It’s like the better the company does, the better everyone does. you know, we just try to operate through that conscious capitalism principles, you know,

Tony (15:18):
Super cool. So you’ve mentioned a couple of times, and I saw on your bio talking about focus and you talked about focused and investor. So tell me a little about that. So obviously with the X games, you have to be focused with business. You have to be focused, like tell us where that came from and how you, uh, how you stay focused with, you know, 27 employees and 50,000 members and podcasts and all this stuff that you’ve got built.

Rich (15:44):
Yeah. So when I mentioned then when we’re talking about that with the focused investor is a program that I put together. And like I was saying, I was a keynote speaker and a business coach. So I carried that over to real wealth. And after running the business for a few years, we were doing live events to do live events every month and we were in the Bay area. And so Kathy said, Hey, to kick off the year, it would be really cool if you could come in and speak to our, the network around, uh, how to be more focused, how to be, uh, uh, you know, grow yourself and improve how to be a better investor, really kind of carrying these same tools over. Um, so I did this program called the Focus Investor back then, and now every year I’ve done it. So this last year was I think the 15th, 14th or 15th year in a row of delivering this program that I super get into. So I research it all year. And I look at what are the latest things, as far as what were developed and learned about the human brain about human effectiveness and about focus, where when I was growing up, I was diagnosed hyperkinetic, uh, when I was eight years old, which today there’d be ADHD. And I did the lousy in school. I didn’t even graduate with my high school class. I had to go back and go to summer school. And so I had this belief that I was stupid. Um, but what I really didn’t realize was I just had a hard time focusing. So I’ve really made it part of my life’s work is to learn how to be more effective and how to focus and that’s what I’ve been sharing with the members of real wealth. And, you know, when I would deliver keynote speeches and everything. So the focus investors, just things that we can do as investors, how we can be more effective, how we can become the best version of ourselves, uh, everything from how to structure our days to our months, to our quarters, to our years, uh, actually a lot of things, you know, you and I met in strategic coach since a lot of the things that we learned in the strategic coach program about how to be more effective as an entrepreneur. It’s a very similar type of thing is how to be more effective as an investor.

Tony (17:41):
Yeah. And that’s, that’s the thing about business is people think that it’s about mechanics, right? It’s not necessarily what marketing strategies, the best. It’s not like all those things are great, but what it comes down to in my opinion is you need to work on yourself first. And when you work on yourself, first in your focus, you can make better decisions, get in front of the right people, implement the strategies better. So, I mean, it sounds like you are doing a lot of what I like to talk about and what the high performers that I’ve studied talk about is really just working on yourself, making sure you’re focused, planning, planning your days out, making sure that your cause, you know, inthis game you can get super unfocused. You can chase so many shiny objects. I’m sure you’ve seen that, you know, dealing with all kinds of people. So what keeps you from chasing the shiny objects? I mean, or have you done that? Like tell us a little bit about that

Rich (18:39):
I do it in less than my wife, Kathy, Kathy is very much a visionary. I’m very much just kind of an integrator at the company. I helped create the systems and the structures. And I’m more of the, the coach for our leadership team. We have five directors at real well. So I work with them. Kathy is very much the visionary who’s always coming up with, you know, 20 new ideas a week, you know? And so I’m there to meet with her. We just met before this, you know, and just, you know, went over and we had, our weekly, what we call our same page meeting, uh, just to find out like, what, what’s your vision, Kathy? Where, where do you see us going? What’s next? And then it’s my job to kind of sort through that and be like, okay, so of these 20 ideas, let’s narrow it down. It seems like these might be the two most important for us to take action on as you know, as I ask her questions. So I think that’s part of it. It’s having someone that your question was how to say focus and avoid this shiny objects. I think it’s, uh, whether it it’s you or whether it’s someone in your life that you have to help support and draw out from you, what is most important to focus on? Cause yeah, you’re right. We’ll just, we’ll jump around and bounce around. Uh, for me, I use what I call an in that focused investor program. One of the things I share, I call the rule of three and it’s having three main, no more than three major goals for your year. No more than three major goals for that. You wrap into your quarter, your month, your week and your day.

Rich (20:05):
So I start every day with what are those three most important things to focus on that are going to bring me the results for this week? The three most important things for the week, this month, this quarter, and then the year. And so that that’s what helps me stay focused. And we do the same thing with our leadership team. We get together every quarter and say, okay, what are your three big, most important goals for your department for this quarter and is based on what are the big three for your year? So that way, like when things come up during the quarter, it’s so easy to be like, Oh, this is a new thing. I could go after a new goal. And people drop that old goal and go after the new one. So by really clarifying it and, you know, kind of carving it in stone and putting it in writing saying these are my big three for the quarter. It, it helps us focus. And then if someone’s like, they come to a meeting, a weekly meeting and say, you know what? I know this was the goal I set for this quarter and the year, but I think I want to change that. Then there’s a discussion around it. And we really take a look at, is it, is it warranted? Should that be changed? Or it’s like, no, let’s carry that, that new goal over to next quarter because what we decided on was best for this quarter.

Tony (21:16):
Yeah. That’s interesting that top three, I implemented that about a year ago and I do that, um, mostly for every day, cause I can get super like off into the weeds and other places. So the idea is be for the day and I’ll concentrate for the first two hours of everyday getting those accomplished, you know, whether it’s raising money for a deal or, implementing a marketing strategy, like something that I know is high level that will produce results. Cause it really, if you look at your list of things, you have to do, you have 20, 30, 40 things to do sometimes, but usually there’s three top things on your list that if you did those and hyperfocused on them, the others really don’t matter that much. And you know, I’m actually the opposite. So I’m actually the visionary and my wife is more of a, she’s not necessarily an integrator, but she’s more of like, okay, Tony, you’re taking on too much. You need to like put it down a little bit. So to have you have, you have to have them for sure. And that’s one thing it took me a long time to do is to find an integrator. So for the first 10 years of my business, I was the visionary. I was the integrator. And then I just had a bunch of people running around doing stuff. And then 10 years ago I hired my sister and she is my integrator. Like when I’ve got something, I just send it to her. She gets it done. I don’t have to worry about it. So if you are a visionary, which a lot of entrepreneurs are, you need to have that integrator balanced, where they can take the ideas that you have and either implement them or tell you that they’re not great ideas right now need to focus on….

Rich (22:46):
Absolutely great book called Rocket Fuel. I highly recommended that rocket fuel and it’s all about that visionary integrator relationship. And it really helped me understand the visionary role and where Kathy’s coming from and how it can be super helpful and how it can be super dangerous that you know, that approach. And it helped her understand my integrator role a lot more. Cause she read it too because a lot of times visionaries look at integrators, as you’re slowing me down, I have this idea and you, you want to just, you want to analyze it. You want to slow it down. You want to put some structures in place and everything. I don’t want it. I just want to get it done. So it’s like she better understands now all I see the need for that.

Tony (23:25):
Yeah, for sure. Well, cool. So a question I asked to everybody, if you had, um, actually I’ll ask it a little bit differently this time. If someone had $10,000 sitting on the side and they had to invest it in something, what would you recommend them investing that $10,000 in?

Rich (23:47):
$10,000 I would kinda invest it in spread it a cost across a couple of things. Not like, I mean it’s $10,000. Not that much, as far as it can’t do much with real estate and or anything. So I would invest it into becoming the best version of myself. And what I mean by that is I would invest it in my education. So I would get I wouldn’t sign up for a $10,000 expensive program with one company, you know, and it would be just, you know, making all the promises and everything. I would probably use part of that to hire a coach, to hold me accountable and help draw the answers out of me. A really good coach not a consultant. Who’s going to tell me what to do. Uh, and not a, um, not more of a, not a mentor, but a coach who could really draw out from me what action I need to take on a regular basis. So I’d meet with that coach every week. So I’d invested into that. I would invest it into several great books or programs. Um, and so that’d be the main thing I would invest it into me and to getting clarity around a real great business plan and working that out and flushing it out and maybe bringing in a consultant or two who it does have expertise and that’s Kathy and I have invested a couple hundred thousand dollars in ourselves, uh, just in everything from courses to masterminds, to personal development and all that we actually met in a personal development program. Short answer is I would invest that 10,000 into making myself better in education.

Tony (25:21):
So that’s interesting. You met, you said you met her at a personal development program. I met my wife at Tony Robbins. I don’t remember if I told you that.

Rich (25:27):
Oh you did tell me! That’s awesome.

Tony (25:28):
Yeah. Where did you meet your wife. What Program?

Rich (25:30):
I met her in a program Called Cyworld It’s like a personal success Institute up in the Bay area. That’s been around since like 1974. And yeah, it was a three month program where you set three professional goals and three personal goals. And you go through this 90 days and you have a coach you talk to every day, but they team you up with a buddy. And my buddy didn’t show up for that opening thing, the person that I was supposed to be assigned to. So they’re like Rich, we’re going to put you with someone else. So I’m going to put you with this woman, Kathy. And one of my goals is going to be for the next three months.

Tony (26:04):
That’s good stuff. I like that. I like that. But cool. So what else, what other success principles can you share? Like what, you know, you’ve been around 17 years, most businesses don’t last for more than a few years or so. Um, so what’s kept you on the top. I mean, you’re, you’re one of the top podcasters. You’re, you’re one of the go to people in real estate. A lot of people know who you and your wife are. You guys are, you know, have a great team, like what what’s kept you on top. What’s kept you there and kept you, kept you going all these years.

Rich (26:31):
That’s, that’s a good one. I mean, there’s kind of an obvious answer in a way as our core values have been, you know, very important at real wealth. You know, we hire to our core values. We fire to our core values, do reviews to our core values about, uh, everything from accountability. We have a culture of accountability. The integrity of course, uh, connection, transparency. So those have helped a ton. Um, I think one of the biggest things is being an early adopter. So we’re always looking at what’s next and not just sitting and just sitting around and saying, well, we’ve come up with a model that works and we’re just going to keep doing this or always looking at where’s the market headed, which shifting, um, you know, things have changed in the last 17 years, we’ve run this business. So even in the beginning, when Kathy’s would come home from a radio show with, uh, a CD of the show, and all of a sudden I had an iPod back then, you know, in 2005 and they just came out with this thing. I got an email from Apple saying new new thing called podcasts, Apple podcasts, and on iTunes. And so I looked into it and I took her CD from the radio station, converted into an MP 3 file, uploaded it to iTunes. And it was one of the first, if not the first real estate podcast on iTunes. Um, and because of being an early adopter that, that just took our, our group of investors from a couple hundred people to thousands and thousands all over the world. So Just that type of thing, always looking at how can we respond and what’s next?

Tony (28:02):
Yeah. You said something. I was actually doing a training yesterday and we were talking about core values. Um, you know, for the, I always say first 10 years, first, 10 years of my business was, was a lot of learning curves that, you know, uh, a lot of, I guess, struggles if you tell, until I started figuring things out and asking for help and that type of thing. So for the first 10 years, I didn’t have core values in my business. I didn’t have a culture. Um, so that, that to me, you know, finally adopting that about 10 years ago was super important. So, you know, you kind of touched on a little bit core values, like core values are, what do you stand for? Right? It’s like honesty, integrity. You mentioned accountability, for us it’s teamwork. You know, if someone needs help, you know, step up and help them don’t need it, know don’t act like it’s just, you know, you in your step that needs to get done. If someone needs help, you need to pick them up. We need to lift each other up instead of what happens in a lot of organizations where they compete with each other and kind of knock each other down. So I just wanted to mention that because you mentioned core values. So for anybody who’s building an organization, that’s super important. You gotta have a list of things in your organization that you want from somebody. And typically when you hire someone you’re going to hire them, like you said, on core values. And when they come into your organization, you’re going to realize pretty quickly, if you have those core values set, whether they’re going to meet those or not. And once we implemented those core values, it’s like our level of people just completely changed, know we attracted better people. And then the people that came in, if they didn’t adhere to those core values, they stuck out, stuck out like a sore thumb. And they got out of our organization pretty quickly.

Rich (29:37):
It’s amazing. Yeah. And it creates that culture. And like I said, we have one, one of our core values is accountability. You know, like I do what I say, I will do. You, people can count on me and all that, and I’m willing to be held accountable. Um, that’s just one of the core values, but what we’ve seen, we’ve been a remote company for over 10 years now. We don’t have a core office. We did for seven years up in the Bay area. We had a office with seven different offices in the main conference room and all that. And over time we just decided, you know, let’s, let’s move to remote again, being early adopters. And it’s been phenomenal, you know, with all the technology and everything. And now after, you know, going through that whole thing, going through the whole lock down in COVID and everything, that was wild, how many companies learn to become remote companies and it was kind of cool because they were like, Oh, you know, we don’t have to learn this. We got it really good. And that was because of our culture. We have inspired leaders, each person’s a leader in their own. Right. And they take responsibility for their jobs. So we don’t have to be looking over their shoulder enough to be checking in on them. They have their, their big, most important goals that they’re focusing on. And they’re checking in on the results every week and every month and every quarter. So, yeah, it’s been great.

Tony (30:50):
Cool. So tell me, you said early adopter. So there are a lot of changes in real estate. The last couple of years, you know, technology and education and all this stuff is way more accessible. There’s a lot more competition in the market for those that are investing full time. Those that are passive, obviously that’s, that’s a little bit of a different story, but, um, you know, I don’t know how much you want to disclose, but what are some things you guys are working on that, um, could be like an early adopter thing that other people could potentially look at as the next thing to kind of look at?

Rich (31:22):
Oh man, there’s so many, they’re just going through my head right now. I mean, one of the big ones, um, I mean, one of the things we did was setting our real standards to our EAL. It’s like renovated, examined, appraised, and licensed for, you know, for how things go with these properties. So we were seeing in the whole turnkey business that a lot of companies were calling their properties turn key and their standards were a lot different than someone else who would be calling their property turnkey. So investors were getting screwed cause they’re like, Oh, it’s a turnkey property. And they buy it. And it was like, you had to do a lot more than turn a key to make it work. And it’s like, it was crazy. So getting ahead of that, we brought all of our 15 different property teams from around the country together in one room and we offered them a free mastermind. And now we do this every six months with them. So we all get together. It’s usually about 35, 40 people in the room and we talk about best practices. So it was about getting ahead of that and saying, Hey, in this industry, we’re seeing companies calling their properties, turn key. What is a true turnkey property? And with all these experts from all over the country and their different markets sharing, and we all boil it all down and said, okay, these, this is what really is a true turnkey or a real, we didn’t even want to call it turnkey. It was such an abused word that we call it real income properties and real, it’s getting out of our certification. And now all of our property teams offer very similar type, you know, under the same standards. And that’s been huge. It’s been, you know, that’s why we’re at 50,000 members at real wealth network over that. And I think that’s why so many investors go through us for multiple properties. So I think that was a big one about getting ahead of it and making change before we were hit with the change or being too slow to it. Right.

Tony (33:15):
Cool So we’re going to wrap this up any, uh, any other great insight you want to share with our listeners?

Rich (33:20):
Great insight. That’s the pressure there. you know, I, what I’ve seen more than anything it’s um, about with your team, whether that’s just you and your integrator or your visionary or your partner, or you have a large team, could be, you know, 27 employees like us, or it could be, you know, a couple hundred employees. Uh, I think the most important thing is clarity of vision, uh, where everyone is rowing their boat in the same direction. And that’s what we’ve found at real wealth. It’s like when we got really, really clear on where are we going, where do we see this business in one year, three years, five years in 10 years, and talk that out with everyone, not just, it’s not just Kathy and me, he’s coming in and saying, Hey, this is the vision it’s getting all in the same room. I actually take our whole team on a visualization into the future where we get to see the business 10 years in the future. And then we come out of that visualization and we talk about it, we get it all up on the whiteboard and we boil it down and we create this crystal clear vision. So everyone is aligned and everyone’s moving in the same direction instead of people trying to do it on their own or thinking that they’re, they’re moving towards something. But so, I mean, that’s the big one. I think getting clarity of vision and not just doing it on your own, but doing it with the people you work with.

Tony (34:41):
Yeah. I always say there, things usually happen twice. Things happen in your head and then they happen in real life. So you have to kind of take that time to, like you said, get clarity and visualize what you want in the future. In fact, a real quick story about my wife. I don’t know if I told you the full story, but Tony Robbins has you do this visualization exercise. So it’s a four day event. There’s I think there were 8,000 people in the room. So Day 2 the day 2 no, day 3 of the seminar, we did a visualization exercise and he’s like, what do you want in your life? And what has been holding you back and all that stuff. And so I’m thinking, okay, I’ve given up on women. So like, I really want a woman in my life. Right. And so he’s like, you need to describe exactly how, you know, if you want a sports car, what does it smell? Like, how does it feel like you have to put you like immerse yourself in that? So I just kept envisioning like this woman, she’s got dark hair, she’s athletic. She eats healthy. Like I do. She loves to travel. Sure. As heck, next morning, she sits right next to me out of 8,000 people. And bam, there it is. Right. So I like what you just shared visible visualization is awesome. It helps you to understand what you want and even understand what you don’t want. Right. It’s tough.

Rich (35:53):
It’s huge. I mean, yeah. People can say it, you know, it sounds hokey or whatever and stuff, but it’s like until you do it or until you go into the future in your own mind. Yeah. It’s really, really powerful.

Tony (36:06):
Yeah. Well, cool. Well, like I said, Rich, one of the guys that I respect the most in this industry, I mean, you have 50,000 members been doing this 17 years, obviously, you’re doing stuff right. Treat people. Right. So I appreciate you coming on. I look forward to catching up with you again and good luck to you and everything you’ve got going on.

Rich (36:22):
Awesome. Same to you. Thank you.

Tony (36:24):
Alright, talk soon.

Rich (36:25):
See you, man

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