Welcome to the Real Estate Masters podcast, where we interview the top names in the Real Estate game. If you want to grow your Real Estate business, see more podcasts or give free resources – Go to  www.REMmastermind.com. The only podcast that allows you to directly connect with the guests and many of the highest level names in the real estate game.

You are in for a treat with our next guest. Do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast, leave us a review, and don’t forget to go to www.REMmastermind.com  to connect with some of the highest level Real Estate professionals in the United States through our community and through our high-level masterminds. Let’s go.

Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes 

===============================================

Guest Bio: Dean Rogers is a former NFL San Diego Charger turned Real Estate Investor. He is married to his High school Sweetheart and Dad of Two Boys.
He has Scaled his Real Estate Business to Doing 100 Flips a Year.
Now Wholesaling Machine and Continuing to Build Rental Portfolio.

More about him – www.TonyJavier.com/deanrogers

===================================================

Show Transcription:

Tony (00:27):
Welcome. We are here with Mr. Dean Rogers. Dean is an ex NFL football player turned real estate investor. He played for the San Diego Chargers, which is now obviously the LA chargers. He’s very passionate about creating financial freedom. He’s scaled his business to do an hundred flips a year, something that a lot of real estate investors haven’t been able to do. He is a wholesale machine and continues to build his real estate rental portfolio, married his high school sweetheart, which is cool. And is a dad of two boys. I’m a dad of one. So I’ll probably catch up with you soon, Dean, maybe, maybe not. Welcome Dean. So, what’s going on, buddy? How are you doing, man?

Dean Rogers (01:07):
Thanks for having me, man. Just doing the grind as you said on the pursuit of financial freedom, you know, that’s where my passion is just wanting to create a lifestyle, you know, spend time with my family, do the things that I enjoy and love to do. So that’s a kind of why I started down this path.

Tony (01:30):
Yeah, that’s interesting because a lot of real estate people get into real estate because they want financial freedom and time freedom, but it sucks their energy. It sucks their time. And I’ve been there. Trust me, I’ve been down that rabbit hole a few times in my 20 year career but you, I noticed have a very balanced life, at least from what I can perceive, you’ve got two kids, you know, you’re home a lot. You actually have something, not a lot of other people have also, which is a business that runs in a different state. So when I tell people that I run my business from a different state, they’re pretty surprised. And then when I heard you do that as well or not, I’m sorry, different city for you.

Dean Rogers (02:10):
It’s like a different state as California is so big.

Tony (02:12):
Yeah. It’s pretty much a different state. Right. So, tell us about that. So I guess kind of give us your backstory, how you got into flipping, how you got into the market that you’re in now and, and I guess your, goals and why you do what you do.

Dean Rogers (02:26):
Yeah, so a little bit about my story so I grew up in central California, a bunch of small farm and dairy towns really not a lot of, I guess, opportunity, you know, opportunity is everywhere. So, don’t tell yourself that if you’re in a small city, but you know, growing up sports or my passion and that’s all I knew, didn’t really focus on anything else. I knew I wanted to be a business like person and be an entrepreneur because my parents were both entrepreneurs growing up in the technology space. So coming out of there They’re going to college. You know, it was all American and football, as you mentioned, you know, got signed by the chargers. And, that was it, man. I had made it. That was going to be my life and I was there. It was everything I dreamed of and more, my career was cut short though, just due to, due to injuries. You know, the year I went into the league, they just started talking about concussions. I had two in college, nothing, they weren’t major ones, they were minor, but in the grand scheme of things, I did start to feel it. From playing tight in and college, running back in high school and now a full back and a little tight end for the chargers, you know, now, instead of lining up one or two yards away from someone and running full speed into them as a tight end, now I’m wanting to up 10 yards away from the guy I’m going to go crush heads with.

Dean Rogers (04:06):
So, you know, I was going back after even practices. I saw the back of my head just thinking, wow, I need to try to control the swelling. Cause I was just beating my head in that much. So I knew email was playing great. My body from the neck down felt better than it ever had in my life. North Turner would stop me in the halls saying, Hey, you’re going to have a long career. I mean, I literally felt like I’m here. I made it. And I just, I had to hang up the cleats. it was the hardest decision ever for sure. but the experience was one I’ll never forget us. I still have dreams sometimes that I’m still there. I’m still playing. U cause it was that special, but you know, coming out of that I saw that lifestyle. I’ve always desired for more. Fortunately, I didn’t waste any time. As soon as I was done playing college buddy of mine, I played football with UC Davis. He called me up and said, Hey, you need to check out this company I’m working at. They’re going to go public in a year. Just an amazing place to be. So, he got me an interview and didn’t waste any time. And that really set me off into my career. My professional career. I’m thinking, man, this stuff is easy. I just show up. I’m not working out for four hours a day plus practice. I mean, physically, it was so easy, but at the same time it was limiting. I busted my ass for a whole year, which obviously, you know, was nothing in the grand scheme of the professional world, but coming from a sports background, Hey, if you prove yourself for a year, you know, they’re going to try to get you to Baltimore or whatever the end result is. Right? You prove yourself. Well, they just gave me a Pat on the back and said, that’s great. You’re going to keep making the amount that you were making which was a big decline from where, you know, how much I signed for, with the chargers naturally.

Dean Rogers (06:05):
So that really bothered me and I was living in San Francisco, super expensive there. And so I just went online, typed in how to get started in real estate. I was thinking, what, what am I passionate about? What else could I focus my energy on? And I stumbled upon Sean Terry, who’s a wholesaler out of Arizona and he’s, he’s just got a super charismatic personality. I still give him shout outs as the guy who got me started in this business, I just found it. I connected with it. And he would just go into the nitty gritty detail, not just like, Hey, you can buy and sell houses. You can wholesale houses, flip them. He gave really specific actions and I followed it to a T and I just, from listening to his free podcasts within the first three months, I did my first deal after committing to moving forward. So I became obsessed with it. Ever since I’ve been obsessed since you were passionate as you said, we’ve scaled it over the years. I’ve been doing it for seven, eight years now, seven years. and over those seven years have just scaled it. And for a handful of years there, we were doing, you know, up to a hundred flips a year.

Dean Rogers (07:18):
And then at the beginning of 2019, just had a gut feeling that, Hey, we’re really good at finding deals. The market at that time was getting a little tighter. People are overbidding things, let’s just pass on our good findings to other people who want to flip. So we got more into wholesaling and building our rental portfolio. So, you know, beginning of 2018, the light bulb went off like, Hey, I’m flipping, I’m making good money. Like this is great. But as soon as the money comes in, it goes right back out as we’re doing, you know, 20 flips at a time. So, I started holding on to properties and then focusing heavily on it. We’re up to 35 physical properties, which some of those are multi-units. So we have 52 doors. My goal is not necessarily a number, it’s more so passive net cash flow that I want to hit a month. Just so I know I don’t have to worry about money again, like I can wake up and go to sleep without doing any work and, and what I want is there. So that’s, that’s really what the end goal is. And we can get into the specifics on that if you want. But yeah, man, that’s, that’s kind of where my story is and where I’m at right now today.

Tony (08:38):
Yeah. I love growing and scaling and automating that’s one of the things that I love. Cause again, most entrepreneurs, not just real estate, but entrepreneurs in general, overwork themselves and wear too many hats. Um, you know, not a lot of work life balance. So tell us a little bit about that. Let’s dive into that a little bit. What are some things that you feel like have helped you to create? I guess that balance to be able to systemize things, to be able to, you know, spend time with your kids and to be able to trust what’s going on in Visalia because you’re in San Diego. Right. So you’re what, a seven, eight hour drive, right?

Dean Rogers (09:16):
Yeah. Depending on traffic and how many times the kids make you stop. It’s it’s either five hours or eight hours,

Tony (09:23):
Right? Yeah. So tell us, tell us about the systems and the processes and all that stuff that help you to grow to a hundred flips a year. But even what you’re doing now is still still high volume, tell us a little bit about that.

Dean Rogers (09:35):
Yeah. So when I first started out, I was just a solopreneur, you know, like basically, almost everybody starts out just doing it on your own, figuring it out on your own which is generally a slower path, right. If you find others that either elevate you or you can partner with which partnerships, you know, tread lightly, you gotta find someone who just happens to be the perfect match. I feel like I found that person, um, a little after a year of being in the business, I was finding great deals and selling them to this person and then he just asked me one day, Hey, you know, I love what you’re doing. Do you want to start flipping? I’m sad, sure. I mean, I don’t have enough money myself to fund these deals. Like, don’t worry about it. Just keep bringing good deals. So that’s how we started, um, how I started getting into the flip game. Now my story is riddled full of mistakes. I made plenty….

Tony (10:32):
All of us are man

Dean Rogers (10:35):
I’ve got several hundred thousands of dollars of mistakes that, that I’ll be happy to share with you and try to save you from, but, you know, if you’re not trying hard, you’re probably, if you don’t make a mistake, you’re probably not trying hard enough is the way I put it. So, um, that being said, made all the mistakes, but to scale it, you know, it was really important about the relationships. First was finding private lenders for, for us to scale to that size of flips. We didn’t have enough capital to do it ourselves. So, you know just, just by, I think the law of attraction fell into some amazing private lenders, some of my early marketing campaigns with direct mail stumbled upon one guy who had about $5 million in the bank and say, I don’t want to sell my house, but you know, what kind of interests would you give me that lend you money? So that turned into one of our best lenders , my first true private lender that I found personally happened to be one of our best of all time. And it’s still a good friend to us. He brought some more friends with him and then from there just our reputation built and built more private lenders from there and then additionally, um, you know, building relationships with people who would bring us deals, you know, wholesalers realtors that was important. My niche has always been marketing, so just paid marketing and relationships have always been my niche, just finding deals. So really leaning heavy on that. And then when we really scaled up, it was a gut feeling to say, Hey, our system’s working right now. We’re doing about 40, 50 flips. Let’s just double our marketing, triple our marketing. That’s what we did. And it equally scaled up. That’s when we really started seeing results, you know, and getting as much as 12 plus deals in a given month.

New Speaker (12:50):
So that’s when things were really smoking and, and fun and exciting and, you know, hearts beating all the time just cause you’re like, Ooh, we’re running fast. You know? So those were some fun times and then as we scaled, I was the acquisitions person in the relationship, my partner being the boots on the ground in Visalia, managing the projects, going on appointments when we needed to close them. I personally, uh, just felt like I was taking on too much and wearing too many hats. Right. I’m the CFO, if you want to try to put a title on it and do all the financials and the accounting, you know, I was the acquisitions, the marketing, all those things. So that’s when we, we, we, before we hired an acquisitions manager, we actually hired an office manager to help with all the paperwork and the logistics. So that was our first hire. And that was just like so much weight off the shoulders to be able to hand some of those things over. Trust is definitely hard, right? This is your baby, it’s your livelihood and for, for someone else, in most cases, that’s just a job, right. I made a mistake here and there. I missed this here or there, that can cost you thousands of dollars. Right. So for us as the owner, we’re more sensitive to those things. But yeah, the office manager really helped. We had her for that one person for about a year. Then we had our acquisitions manager come in sometime within that year. And that, that for the first, probably four or five months, I didn’t give everything to him. I wanted him to, it was kind of feast or famine, go, go kill your own food. And, um, and it wasn’t working out too great for that particular personality type and relationships. So I handed over all the inbound marketing and, kind of set that off and, and he’s done a great job with it and has become a key team member. Then we, then we got a new office manager, uh, our original one had moved and we’ve got another one that she’s just dynamite. She’s a total bulldog. She gets into acquisitions too and helps find deals and close deals. So right now I’m really happy and excited where we’re at and we’ve got a pretty good system. That’s running. We have a virtual bookkeeper as well, that helps run all of our backend books. So, and that’s super helpful as well. So that’s, that’s what we look like today.

Tony (15:34):
So many people on your team, acquisitions manager, office manager, virtual bookkeeper, I missed on some of their to…

Dean Rogers (15:40):
And then me and my business partner. So a total of five people working on the business full time.

Tony (15:46):
Okay, awesome. And what, what runs all that? So, you know, some people use Podio, some people use, like we just switched to Trello, which is a very simple system. We’ve invested in Podio, automated it and all that kind of stuff we had invested in complicated softwares. you know, we’ve gone all over the place and we come back to just being simple with spreadsheets and Trello and that kind of thing. What runs your operation? What, what, uh, systems would you recommend other people to look into?

Dean Rogers (16:19):
Yeah, so most people would just laugh me out of the room if they knew what we were doing at the scale that we’re doing. I mean, I’m staring at it right now. It’s just, it’s just a Google sheet that is our lead system which is good and bad. I could pick it to pieces and say, why it’s terrible. I could also lift it up and say, why it’s the best thing we could ever do. We’re gonna be moving to investor fusion. They’re coming with their three version three they’re in beta right now, but they’re going to use us as one of their first high volume customers that they onboard. So, I mean, that could literally be in 30 days from now is what, I just got a message today from one of their key people on the team. So, um, all the followup is manual. Everything that’s in the Google sheet is color coordinated from, from what priority level they’re in. It’s super easy. It’s just, it’s, it’s simple. It’s really, you know, agile and flexible to just dive in and now throw on filters for things. So in terms of the ease ability, it’s so simple for us in terms of the followup it’s very manual. So Investor Fuse is going to automate followup for text messages, for emails. They’re going to be integrating for direct mail as well. So they’re going to have like the silver bullet that we’ve been wanting. Obviously they have all of the scheduling things, Hey, call this person back in three days and it pops up in your feed, Hey, today you need to call this person to keep track of all the notes. That’s not what we have today. It’s all manual, but what we’re doing is working, you know?

Tony (18:16):
Yeah. I always tell people to keep it simple. Once you get super complicated. I mean, even if you have a great system that has all this automation sometimes, uh, you know, if there’s something disconnected or something doesn’t work, right. Just like we had with Podio. I mean, it can all just kind of go by the wayside. Um, but at the same time, you’ve gotta be able to automate in some respects. So for us, we have a lot of automations, but when it comes down to it, we use Trello. We use boards, we take properties from step to step and put our notes in there and put our due dates and that kind of thing. And it works well. So, ya it do what works for you, right? I mean, it’s not one size fits all

Dean Rogers (18:57):
I’ve tried Podio, I’ve done it twice. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to, um, how long ago was it? Maybe two years ago I tried getting into it. I was like, well, everybody’s using it. Like, there’s something wrong with me. Obviously I need to be using it. So I try to get into it. And I was like, wow, this is like I could spend the rest of my life tinkering with this thing. Cause I’m, I’m super analytical, I’m into the weeds and the details and so I would just drive myself nuts, what Podio, just cause of how overly customizable it is. And my understanding from hearing people like it can also break pretty easily too. So…

Tony (19:37):
Yeah, we had that happened way too many times.
Dean Rogers (19:40):
Yeah. So I’m not too excited about getting into Podio.

Tony (19:44):
Yeah. So tell us what are some keys to your success or any kind of success if you had to narrow it down to a couple things, what are some things you’d want listeners to know?

Dean Rogers (20:00):
I think the key thing for most people that I see are successful, are first and foremost, just the energy that they give off, um, and the way, like the way they conduct business. you know, if you, if you do things right and you’re not trying to cheat people out of things, I mean, in any business there’s a lot of crooks, right? Well, maybe not a lot, but there there’s bad apples. Um, and I’ve run across some, some that have cost me some serious money. but that’s a whole nother story. So, you know, I think if you’re going to do right by people, treat them right. Ethically do the right thing and you’re going to put out a really positive energy and you’re going to work hard at it. I think just that as simple and maybe as lame as it sounds, you’re going to attract other people. If you’re walking around with a smile, you’re excited about what you’re doing, you’re going to attract other people and they’re going to want to work with you. just by having a good personality and showing up, providing some sort of value, even if it’s just hustle work, like things are going to materialize around you. Deals are going to come to you, even if you don’t have the money to do it or the experience to do it, things are going to naturally kind of gravitate to you. So I’d say that’s the first and foremost thing that anybody can do. And then I think the people that are very successful are typically really focused. you know, that’s probably the second thing is they’re really focused. There’s a lot of shiny objects. I know the first, probably year or two, I was in the business the first year I did deals. I had, you know, immediate success by actually having proof of concept and making money. But man, I was chasing like, Ooh, that looks fun. You know? Oh, that someone said I could make a ton of money doing this. I’m going to go chase that. So I did plenty of that. `

Dean Rogers (22:10):
I remember at one point I looked at myself in the mirror and said, and you just wasted like three months. Like you completely just threw away three months chasing, you know, these multi million dollar houses in LA when I knew nothing about LA, cause they look sexy and spreads were going to be good. So, yeah, I would say give focus started in an area that you feel like you would be successful compliments what you’re good at. You’re not going to truly know what you’re good at until you start doing it. So just because you think you want to be a multifamily you know, building owner or you want to flip a ton of houses, you might not be good at flipping houses. You might be good at something else. Right? So don’t, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but, give focus and, and see it through that what you’re good at. And the third is just overall grit and persistence, unwillingness to give up and I have shared stories about just getting our asses kicked. Right. And some of those stories are so painful. It’s like, wow out, you know, most people would probably just give up if that happened to them. I mean that’s serious pain. but it kind of comes with a territory that’s in most people’s stories, the life of an entrepreneur, there’s a lot out there. I’m sure that I don’t have any major hiccups or maybe not a lot. I think almost every story I’ve heard of someone being successful is like hitting rock bottom at one point, being bankrupt, whatever it is, and then, you know, risen to glory. But you know, those are probably the three main areas I’d say are what at least sets me apart and what I see others, others do as well.

Tony (23:59):
Yeah. Well you just said it was kind of cool and, and, and, uh, about hitting rock bottom, I’ve hit rock bottom many times. I know a lot of other entrepreneurs have, and if you look at some of the most successful businesses out there, Starbucks, Zappos, I think maybe even Amazon, I don’t know. I don’t know if they were or not, but a lot of those companies almost didn’t happen. They almost went under, I mean, they were that close If you read some of the books about those companies, it was, you know, one little thing that happened that, um, you know, took them from where they were rock bottom to getting them to that, you know, that trajectory to finally where they took off. And so a lot of people think they have to have all the success that it needs to be easier that I mean, gosh, for the first 10 years of my business, I got so stressed out about all the little things, thinking that I was the one, having the problems that everybody else in business was just floating along. So that’s, that’s a big lesson I had to learn was that people go through stuff. I still go through stuff, it makes you stronger. I mean, from 20 years ago, if some of the things happened 20 years ago that were happening now, you know, just with stuff falling through or people stealing it or whatever it is, it’s like man, 20 years ago, I would’ve been devastated with a lot of these things. But now since like you got to brush it off and you got to move on. But another thing I want to share and you can, you probably can, can attest to this, but a lot of people don’t do what they’re good at. They do a lot of things that they’re not good at and that they don’t like. So, you know, I think part of successful businesses, knowing what you do very well and, you know, part of that is not chasing those shiny objects of something you know nothing about that doesn’t mean you can’t explore them. That doesn’t mean you can’t look into them, but if it’s way outside of what you do and it damages what you’re doing now, then obviously that could hurt you. But also just from a day to day standpoint, you know, like I think you mentioned something earlier about some things that you were doing and you ended up having other people jump into those roles. Would you agree that that was kind of a turning point for you was having some of those people do those things you didn’t like, so you could concentrate on some of the bigger, more important stuff, right?

Dean Rogers (26:16):
Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, I would say in terms of balance and being able to scale without burning out a hundred percent you know, I’m a, I’m a detailed analytic person that could sit here and, you know, create a, a thousand formulas in one spreadsheet. I was up last night till 1 coincidentally working on a KPI spreadsheet in my Google, just like reorganizing it and making changes. So I’ll, I’ll be the guy that will do stuff like that. Um, but at the same time I could be, you know, the face talking with a private lender, I can jump in and out of like any type of conversation, but, you can’t do it all and have balance at the same time. Um, I won’t try to say that I have perfect balance and that I do nothing, but sit on a beach all day. But at the same time, you know, every day of this week I have been at the beach, you know, till 10:00 AM with the family, doing a workout, we’ll get breakfast, you know, do that and you know, have a good time. So we, I’ve definitely been able to create much more balanced life, spend a lot more time with the family. Having two boys that are just total, you know, animals and partially because of me just throwing them around and getting them all, getting them all excited. I throw them into pillows, not into the walls. So yeah I think that is a big part is just like you said, understanding what you’re good at and what you’re not. And then also, if you do want to scale, you have to bring in other people into it. You gotta structure it to where it makes sense financially for everybody, people are incentivized correctly. Um, you know, when I was actually hiring some of my first people when I was at your mass mastermind and we were talking about pay structures and, you, you and others in the room helped me determine what was a fair structure and how to do that. So, you know, that’s, that’s a really important piece of it.

Tony (28:29):
Yeah. Having other people around you to help you make decisions. Again, the first 10 years of my career, if I could go back and look at what I was and what I did. I mean, some of the things that you said were the opposite. I was the opposite. I had bad energy. I was, I was always serious. Cause I thought that’s what a business owner needed to do. Right. You go to a job site, you’re the authoritarian, you know, I didn’t ask for a lot of help. Um, but there’s so much help out there, right? I mean, there’s masterminds, there’s, there’s people that have been there and done that. And that’s, that’s another thing that I wish someone would have taught me in the very beginning was that you don’t have to go through all the mistakes. Right. That’s why there’s podcasts. That’s why there’s education. That’s why there’s masterminds. That’s why there’s coaching. That’s why there’s, you know, all of these tools that you need to plug into. I mean, those are some of the greatest investments that you can make are in yourself and getting in front of great people that have been there, done that, or at the very least have the resources for you, or maybe just have a great idea for you. Maybe they haven’t done it, but they’re like, Hey Dean, have you tried that? And then it’s like all of a sudden it changes the game. So speaking of investment, what is the thing that you would invest in the most? So if you had $10,000 or if someone else had $10,000 is sitting there and you could say, you need to invest it in this, what would that be? Do you think?

Dean Rogers (29:55):
Whew, that’s a tough one. I think it certainly depends on what that person’s skill set is and what experience they have to date. So are we saying someone who’s just starting out?

Tony (30:11):
Ah..anybody? You know, I would say probably someone that’s more in business, whether they’re a beginner or they’re super experienced. If there’s something they can invest in with their business that they’re in now.

Dean Rogers (30:24):
Yeah. I mean the first two things that always come to mind are either in some form of knowledge that you’re going to gain through, it’s a person or it’s a course or whatever it may be. I think education is good, but the right education, cause you can go get free, free, free, and there’s some really good free stuff too. You know, I had a student that I was coaching just recently . He saw a ton of free stuff on YouTube and it was all great information, but it wasn’t focused. It was, it wasn’t giving him the clarity and the direct answers he needed. He wanted absolute clarity on what, how do I use this contract? Like the contract’s been explained to me on this, this YouTube, or, Hey, just use this contract. It’s easy to fill this out. But like I want every word explained to me, right? Some of those details are really hard when you’re just getting started out. Or even if you’re new or experienced getting into something new, you need to have those details like put in plain language for you.

Dean Rogers (31:37):
So I’d say some sort of education or coaching or sometimes paying to join something for relationships like masterminds. Right. I think going to an event where you’re going to meet and start new relationships is good. And then, um, second I would always say is marketing whether it’s someone that you need to go to, that’s gonna really show you how the, what the right way to do marketing is, or if you’ve educated yourself, you know, spending that on marketing because, I think that’s a quick way to get leads and get deals going.

Tony (32:20):
Yeah. I, you know, I’ve spent so much money on trial and error. And I was, you know, I’m getting ready to launch some YouTube ads and, you know, YouTube some stuff, right. Getting to listen to YouTube, you know, how to do YouTube ads and all that kind of stuff. And I actually came across a guy and he had a program and I ended up investing 5 grand in this guy’s course yesterday. And I did it because he has done it. He’s got proven results. The guy does $30 million a year in YouTube ads. And I’ve got all of his processes and systems. I’ve got his click funnels that he gave me, I’ve got his scripts, I’ve got his slide decks. I mean, I’ve got everything that you need to basically start YouTube ads. And I’m glad I came across him because I was getting ready to just throw money at TV, commercial type things. Because I, you know, I do TV commercials. So I was starting to put my TV commercials online and he’s like, dude, that’s not how you do it. You’ve got to start with this, lead them through this and get them to the, to the finish line and build that relationship. And so absolutely investing in something that’s going to educate you or get you the right system process and you know what, sometimes it’s not, uh, you don’t have to invest in it. Sometimes you can get a mentor that’s willing to mentor you for free, you know? Um, I mentor people every once in a while. I get a lot of requests for it. But for some reason, you know, when I get a message I can tell if I can resonate with that person. And sometimes I’ll take someone on and have some conversations with them and guidance through the process. So if you don’t have the money to invest in a mastermind education course, get a mentor, get a mentor that will guide you in the right direction, show you the ropes and kind of help you get started. So….

Dean Rogers (34:01):
Yeah, I love what you said there. Your, your two examples are perfect. The first is buying the course for 5,000 bucks, a guy who’s proven he’s done it. You could have spent some money on that and experienced it yourself and made all the mistakes, but you’re going to accelerate your growth and get better results faster with someone who’s actually like a professional. It seems like at that point, right? Um, I think that’s a much better way to approach it than paying someone who’s an expert in that area. If you’re going to do Facebook ads or you’re going to do something of that type of an ad category, you want to pay an expert rather than just try to figure it out yourself. Cause you’re going to waste a lot of money going it on your own. I think. Um, and then the other example, a hundred percent, I think if you’re just starting out or not starting out and don’t have the money for it, put the positive energy out there. I got a young guy here in San Diego who just called me out of the blue, said he was interested in learning more about real estate, someone who I played pickup basketball with. And, um, you know, he’s just got a really good energy. I gave him a couple of books and in a day he’s already read the first book I gave him and halfway through this, the second book I gave him and just 24 hours. So he’s proving that he’s super hungry. And if you’re gonna, the person with the information is seeing that the person who’s asking for it is hungry and, and really pushing for it, you know, you with the information are going to want to give more of that. So you know, there’s, there’s plenty of people that will do that out there as well.

Tony (35:49):
Yeah, for sure, man, for sure. Well, cool buddy. Anything else you want to share with our listeners?

Dean Rogers (35:57):
Boy! So many things that we could talk about, but I love what we’ve driven into today. yeah, I would say for anybody, whether you’re experienced or just getting started. I don’t know many overnight success stories. Have I had tremendous success? Do I quote unquote, have a great lifestyle? I’d say yes, but at the same time does not mean it, it doesn’t come with, you know, trials and tribulations on the regular, you know, and sometimes on the daily, sometimes you could be on a high and a low and the same day.

Tony (36:35):
Same minute, man.

Dean Rogers (36:38):
Same minute. Yeah, no kidding dude. That’s, that’s, that’s real talk right there. So you know, have, have long term vision and goals, have short term persistence and grit and you know, combine them together and, and you should, you should make it and be successful.

Tony (36:59):
Cool. I appreciate your time Dean. And by the way, I played high school football. I hurt my knee, my senior year of high school, but I didn’t play in college for a year and hurt my knee again so I stopped, but that was my dream to play in the NFL. So I do envy you a little bit because you made it to that level, but I’d tell you what, even going from high school to college was a whole nother level. I mean, I went from being the best person in the league to everybody was the best person in the league and just getting crushed. And I think I got my, I didn’t know it was a concussion at the time. Looking back after hearing the stories, I realized it had to have been a concussion, but I did not feel good for 24 hours after I got hit. But man, that’s, you know, it congrats on getting there, cause that is a lot of hard work. And when you said full, but I didn’t realize you played fullback, that’s gotta be probably one of the toughest positions cause you’re going full speed at those linebackers that are big and fast. Man. Tell me a little bit about that. Was that just, I mean, tell me, just tell me…

Dean Rogers (38:03):
So let me address the first part, to be honest, I think the biggest shock was the transition from high school to college, even, even going into the NFL. The biggest transition even for myself, was going from high school to college because you’re, you’re a 17 or 18 year old kid just coming out of high school. And now you’re playing with men who are 21, 22, sometimes in college when I show up day one and it’s like, Whoa, you know, you you’re hitting, you’re still going through maturity during those years and, and having some explosive changes. So yeah, the speed difference between high school and college was dramatic. Now still there was a transition to the NFL. People are, everybody is fast. And when I say everybody the alignment, the 350 pound lineman are in stride with you. When you look over, you’re like, Oh shit, this huge human being is running as fast as I am. That’s terrifying. so the first day that I showed up, um, people were rolling in for the chargers. I remember my eyes were so wide open cause I went to UC Davis and in the grand scheme of things, it’s a small college for football compared to, you know, teams we played, we played at Cal, Cal, Berkeley and college. We played Fresno state. We played Boise state, but even still, you know, you’ve got Alabama and Clemson and Ohio state. I mean, there’s just massive lineman out there that are in college and then obviously in the league and almost every lineman is just enormous across the board. Most of them probably average six, five and you know, 300 plus. And, and of course there’s a variable in there, but I remember the first day I showed up was like, Holy crap. You know, and going from high school to college, it was the speed from college to NFL is the size of the alignment. Cause everyone else was the same size as me, but the lineman were so huge. I remember just like my God can I truly play in the NFL after seeing these guys and how huge they were. But after I went to bed that night and woke up the next day, the shock wore off. I was fine. The first hit I had in practice was against a hall of Famer, Bob Sanders, who has strong safety. If you don’t know who he is and he was with the chargers at the time, I remember running a counter play coming around and hitting him just full speed and just, I guess I made a good block North Turner, like through his clipboard. And I was like, yeah, he’s like super stuck. But I just remember, how fast, you know, in the NFL, what’s crazy is most people are there cause they’re really good. And it’s almost like it was like a computer game. Everybody went into their perfect spots. Everyone went in this little perfect slot. This guy went in this perfect slot and everything was just a hundred miles an hour. And so if you did your job right, without a misstep, it’s almost like you would just nail it perfectly. So that’s what I was fortunately doing at the time And I just remember, you know, crushing with the linebackers. And um, so man, dude, it was just like such big collisions cause they were the exact same size of me, 6.2, 6.3 Some 6.4, 250 pounds. And you know, that’s how, that’s how
big I was. And just the collisions were so big and the lineman, you don’t want to hit the lineman cause they’re just huge walls. I remember hitting Corey, the first round draft pick that year on one of the plays he slept through. And I remember hitting him and doing that. That hurt so bad. He was just so physically huge. And his thighs were about as big as my waist. He was just in massive human bands. You want to try to avoid those guys for sure.

Tony (42:14):
Well, cool man. Cool story. I look forward to hearing more, man. I need to catch up. I knew about the chargers, but we haven’t gone into the story. So I look forward to those men.

Dean Rogers (42:22):
Lots of stories.

Tony (42:23):
Yeah. I appreciate your time man. Good stuff. And hopefully our listeners got some great stuff and look forward to catching up soon.

Dean Rogers (42:31):
Thanks for having me, man

Thanks for listening. Now go to www.REMmastermind.com to connect with today’s guest. See our high-level masterminds, and to get free resources. Don’t forget to share this with a friend and leave us a five-star review. We’ll see you on the next episode.