Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: You're listening to Selling the Dream. This isn't an interview and we're not journalists. But each week we'll ask our guests to open up and share their secrets to business success.
Let's have a conversation and have some fun.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Hey, everybody.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: Welcome to Selling the Dream. My name is Ken Jordan for those of you that don't know. And normally I'm joined by my co host, Joe Iredell, who happens to be in a jiu jitsu training event. And he couldn't join us today, but Joe said, can we reschedule? And I said, absolutely not. I got, I got one of the best guests I could possibly find lined up for, for our call today. And I'm not canceling. So it's just going to be me today, Noah. I hope that's okay.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: You probably say that to all your guests.
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Well, you're the first time I'm doing this without Joe, so that, that's got to tell you something.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: No pressure, no pressure, no pressure.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: For those of you who are watching or listening, we're joined today by Noah Ostroff. Noah is a titan in the real estate industry in the Philadelphia, New Jersey area. Global he owns Philly Living, Global Living, Jersey Living Brands.
Noah has, has accomplished some amazing, amazing feats.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in a year.
Over 4,000, I'll tell you. Actually, it was the last number I found, Noah, was 4,000 transactions closed in as of 19. So we start, we add another six years to that, but just an overall juggernaut. And I'm super excited to have you here to pick your brain for the real estate agents especially that are listening. I know that we're, we talk to real estate agents, we talk to salespeople, entrepreneurs and leaders. And you're all three.
But, but I'm super excited to kind of come from my own personal curiosity and ask you questions that I think are going to hopefully help the real estate agents in our audience. So thank you so much for joining us, man.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: So we're going to start with my favorite game, two truths and a lie. I didn't forget this time. Normally I do. We're going to start out with the two truths and a lie A little bit later. See if I can trip you up and maybe you'll show your hand and I'll find out which one's the lot. So what's number one?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Number one is I have three sets of twins in my family.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Okay. And what's number two?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Number two is my junior Year of college, I was at Penn State and I was the, the mascot for the entire football season.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Okay, and what's number three?
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Number three is I've built over 500 homes.
[00:02:59] Speaker C: All right, fantastic. I, I, I think that no matter what the, the lie is, the other two things being true is pretty crazy. So I'm looking forward to that.
So that, let's jump right into it. Noah. I, I, I want to talk. You said you went to Penn State for, in Penn State. Grab myself.
Tell me about your, tell me about your journey from Penn State to real estate. How did you end up, or was this a destiny thing? Did you know you were always going to do real estate?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: No, I didn't, I didn't always know that I wanted to do real estate. I always knew that I was a business person and entrepreneur and you know, they say, what's your superpower? My superpower is recognizing opportunity.
Actually a new book that I'm writing right now is called Recognizing Opportunity. It's going to come out in 2026.
But that's one of the things I always recognize was opportunity. And when I got out of college, real estate was the hot industry to be in. The market was just on fire. And this was back in 2003.
And so I knew I wanted to get into real estate because that's where it was at. So I started working for a company, a large national home builder who put me on a project down in Florida where I was a project manager for them building new construction communities down and down in Florida. So I did that for a few years.
Once I started having kids, I came back to Philadelphia, which is where I'm from, started one other business, non real estate related, for a couple years and then decided to get into real estate as a real estate agent in 2008.
And you know the other business, the other business was a driver leasing company. We used to lease truck drivers to companies that had their own tractor trailers. So again, knew nothing about it, but it was an opportunity and I figured it out. Just like everything else in life, you just figure it out, you know.
[00:04:53] Speaker C: So 2008 hits and you're like, I want to get into real estate.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Worst possible time to get in according to what everybody says. But, but yeah, that was the time I wanted to get in.
So I found a real estate course. They, they, they, they don't have this anymore. But Friday night I decided that I wanted to be a real estate agent. I found a class that started on Monday. It was an eight day class, seven and a half hours or something. Like that every day.
And within about a little over a week I had my real estate license every day. I studied after, after, after class and I just worked my butt off to like make sure I knew the information.
And I got my real estate license very quickly and I just hit the ground running right from there when.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: So. So you mentioned a book you got coming out, recognizing opportunity in 2026 Night in the intro. I did not mention that you currently have a book out. No one's coming. For those of you who are. I'm gonna put the link in. There you go. I'm gonna put the link in upside down.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yours looks right side up. Mine looks upside down.
[00:05:58] Speaker C: So I'm gonna put the link in the show for anybody that wants to read it. This is a phenomenal book. It was the book of the book of the quarter that we chose at Princeton Mortgage for the blueprint. And, and you really did a fantastic job with it.
And, and you know, I know that you didn't know all this stuff when you first got started. Right? Like there's, there's a ton of culmination of knowledge and wisdom and experience in this book.
1 in 08. And first of all, do you see parallels in the real estate industry between 08 and today?
[00:06:31] Speaker B: There's definitely a lot of similarities between, let's say 08 and maybe 2010 and maybe the last couple years we were in. And then you compare that to the years that we just came out of and the years that I came out of in like 04,05,06.
The market back right before I got started was an amazing market. Everybody got into real estate. Everybody and their mother and their aunt and the brother.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Mortgages too.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Right. They were all real estate, same as we just experienced the last few years or you know, like right after Covid, I guess. And, and because it was an easy business to get in, it was a seller's market, stuff was moving very quickly.
And it was easy to become a real estate agent. I said that you're kind of like an order taker. You don't have to do much lead generation or business development. You just, people are calling you, just taking orders and selling houses. Well, then 2008 rolls around, which is when I got into it, I didn't know any better.
And apparently all the people that were in the market as real estate agents, you know, three, four years prior to that, who were used to like just crushing it without having to do anything, well now all of a sudden they got a wake up call and they realized that all the Things that they were neglecting over the last couple years in their business for business development and lead generation and marketing and all the things you're really supposed to be doing in a business, managing expenses.
They were doing those things. And then when the market turned, they were not prepared, they didn't have enough leads, they didn't know how to lead generate, they didn't know what to do
[00:08:09] Speaker C: and had office space they shouldn't have had and all kinds of other stuff. Right.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: All of those things. Which again is parallel to what we just kind of came out of now, where we're at now.
And you know, they. What's the quote? It says when the, when the tide goes out, you know who's swimming naked. Yes, something like that. You know, that's perfect example of, of kind of what's happening right now.
You know, bad market reveals the weaknesses in a good market can hide all the, the weaknesses in your business. But anyway, so I get in. In 2008, I, I had a great training program, I had a great mentor at the time and I was taught the right things to do. I was taught that the business is all about lead generation, business development, marketing, prospecting, picking up the phone, making calls to people, calling for sale by owners, calling expired, promoting yourself, doing open houses, working your sphere of influence, which I didn't really have a big one at the time, really just lead generating. And that's, that was my focus every day. I came to work every day trying to sell a house. My goal was to sell a house every single day. And that's what I did. And that. Oh that. Not that that's not what I did, but that's what my goal was every day. And I just assumed that's what everybody in the business was doing. I assumed everybody was calling for sale by owners and expires and open houses and like literally spending their entire day doing lead generation and business development. Well, that wasn't really obviously the case, but the people that I was surrounded with at the time were doing that and they were the most successful people in the business. And they were, they, they just, they did fine. When the market was bad. They did fine. Actually, they, they probably did better than, than they did previously because all the people that weren't doing the things they were supposed to do sort of got out of the business.
Sellers wanted to work with real estate agents who were giving them the best chance of selling their homes, that did the best job of marketing and prospecting. And we're kind of like the more aggressive agents. Same thing. That's happening now. Right. You know, it was pretty easy being in this business the last few years, not withstanding the last couple years like prior, you know, right after Covid, basically. And the last couple years have been very challenging for real estate agents. It's been, been hard. It's been a hard real estate market. Even for the people that have been in the business a long time, it's been hard. And not as many people are buying, there's not as much inventory. It's like a weird market right now because with interest rates and people that are stuck in these low interest rate mortgages that don't want to get out of those now. So not a lot of inventories coming to the market.
And so it's just been pretty tough. So it's very hard. It was very hard for a lot of new agents getting into the market the last couple years.
And but I will say that people that have been doing the right things, the people that focus their business on lead generation, on prospecting, on business development, on managing their expenses, are doing very well. They're actually taking more market share now than they were in the past. And the people that are not doing those things or haven't been doing those things, they're the ones that are struggling the most.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: And it's almost like coming into the market, coming in as a new agent in this market can be a little bit of a benefit, right? Like ignorance to the, the easy order taking days, kind of like you don't know any better. You're just out here doing what you're supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, like you said, there's guys out there and, and agents out there that have had, had it come a little too easy to them and then they, they don't really understand what it takes to actually generate and, and, and bring business in the door.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: What I think a lot of real estate agents do not recognize is that they own their own businesses.
Whether they are on a team, whether they have a team, or whether they're just individual agents working by themselves. You, you have a business and in any business you have, you can't give customer service without customers. You know, you have to generate the business first in order to service that business. And a lot of people don't have a schedule. They sort of wake up whenever they want, or they're not coming to the office or they're not like spending every morning working on business development. They're spending more time in their business than on their business. And they're really neglecting the things that they're, they're supposed to be doing in their business. I'm not telling people that they have to go out and spend a lot of money, but sometimes you do have to invest in your business in order to do certain things. Not a lot of people are willing to invest in their business. They're not investing in their. In themselves.
You'd be surprised at how many people don't even have profit and loss statements in their business. They don't really know how much money they're making.
So I see a lot of, A lot of people that are not treating this business like business. They see what's going on on TV with these real estate shows and they think it's easy. And the reality is it's not an easy business. Maybe it's easy once you're working with the clients. Or I'll say easier. The hard part is getting the clients right. And that's the part that a lot of people don't do, don't like to do, don't want to do, don't do well. And if you're not doing those things or not doing them well, it doesn't matter how good you are at working with clients. You're not going to have clients to work with if you're not doing all those things to build up your business.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: And it doesn't matter how well you work with clients if you're not responsible around, like you said, your P and L, your expenses, what it's costing you to bring that business in the door from a time and resource. Like, I always look at time and money as the same thing. Like, are you spending your time with. Are you investing your time on the right things or are you spending time on the wrong things?
And real estate agents, they a lot of times. And this is. Goes for more loan officers too. Like, I want any of the, anybody else that's listening that's in the lending side. Like, you know, we, we have an. We have, we, we have a. We have to make a decision every minute of every day. How are we investing this time? Are we spending it? Are we investing it? Spending it. Scrolling through Facebook, the whole like. So I think social media, if you're not intentional about how you're managing your social media from a networking or a marketing or branding persp, you're spending your time, you're not investing and you're tricking yourself. You're lying to yourself. You think, oh, I got to spend two hours on social media because I'm trying to promote myself. If you're not intentional about it, it's, it's a humongous waste of time.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Agreed.
[00:14:22] Speaker C: You. One of the key principles that you. That I pulled out of your book was, was full ownership. And you had said, you know, stop outsourcing responsibility to circumstances, the market and other people.
Tell me a little bit more about that and not only in your experience personally, but also what you've seen in other agents that have succeeded and agents that have failed.
Do you remember a time where that kind of really, that really comes home?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the book, as you mentioned, the book's called no One's Coming. And really it's about taking full responsibility for your life. It's really an idea that no one's going to save you, right? No one's going to fix things for you. No one's going to come to your house and make your dreams come true. No one's going to hand you that life that you want. Really. It's up to you to build that. And, you know, the book is, it's a mindset book. It takes real stories, it takes practical strategies. It takes, you know, just takes lessons that I've learned through business, whether it's real estate or even personal development stuff in life, and kind of puts it all into. Into one. And it's really just like a simple message. And when you stop waiting for someone else and start owning everything, you really just become unstoppable. And you could just really do. Do whatever you want to do. And, you know, I wrote the book because I really wanted to give people the message that I wish I had heard earlier in my life. You know, once you stop waiting for things to change on their own and really start acting like no one's coming to save you, like everything in your life is going to shift. So I wanted to share that with, you know, as many people as. As I possibly can. So it's really about, like, taking ownership of everything that you do and not waiting around for other people to come do it for you. No, you know, not waiting for somebody to hand you something. A lot of, A lot of things I see with real estate agents, especially with agents on teams, to be honest with you, is they always have their hand out, like waiting for something, whether it's a lead, whether it's, you know, knowledge or whether it's training, you know, whatever it is, you know, you have to go out and seek the things that you want. You have to surround yourself with the people that are going to give you the things that you need, whether they're going to elevate your, your life or your career or Listen to podcasts or have mentors or read books. And you. The things that you really can do to enhance your, your education, enhance your life, and be a better version of yourself, no one's going to come do that for you. You have to take ownership of all that stuff. Health, eating, you know, all the things. Right. Everything.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I agree. I think that, you know, too often we don't have to do any of this stuff.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: You don't have.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: You have to do it. If you want to succeed, if you want to achieve the things that, that, that, you know, that you think are possible, then you're right. You, you know, there's too many loan officers waiting for rates to drop. There's too many real estate agents waiting for rates to come down or waiting for the market to improve before they figure they'll start doing more production. And I think that that ties in really to what we were talking about before, which is like the, I think that the tendency of the people who were in it in the easy times, they're the ones who probably do a little too much waiting. They're the ones who are not, you know, they're not going out and being proactive about the important but not urgent activities that are going to generate business. Right. These are things I say it's easy to say yes, yes to. It's just as easy to say no to. You know, am I gonna. We're gonna make this next call? It's just as easy to say no as it is to say yes to making the next call. And I think that's it. That's one of the things that trips people up.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: There's only so many things that we can control. Right. And a lot of things are out of our control. You know, we control what time we wake up in the morning. We control how many calls we make. We control, you know, the clients we want to work with. There's things that we can control, but there's things we can't control. We can't control interest rates. We can't control the market. We can't control what other agents are going to do. We can't control really what our buyers and sellers are going to do in their life situations. But there's certain things that we can control that are going to help us outpace the market or help us get past the things that kind of balance the things we can't control.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: You mentioned morning routine. What's your morning routine? What's morning routine? When he's, when he's on his A game.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's that's actually a good distinction. You say when I'm on my aame because we're all human.
Yeah, but, but really my morning routine, whether I'm on my A game or whether I'm in a funk is always the same because I don't want to get off of my morning routine to get more in a funk or more off of my A game. Right. If that makes any sense. So every, every morning I wake up around 6:15 give or take, and I work out, I work out six days a week. So you know, get up right away. I don't even, I don't mix.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: You mix it up. A little bit of cardio, a little bit of weights, a little bit of, of stretching.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it depends on if I'm training for a race. Like the past couple years I've done a lot of races like Hyrox races and Spartan races and other like other types of, of races, obstacle course type, functional fitness races.
So I have like specific training routines with that.
But, but really what I do is, is I six days a week I usually do classes. So I'll go to like Barry's a couple times a week. Barry's boot camp. Some people know it as that. I go to a place called arena, which is like a Hyrox training gym. And I go to Equinox which is like just like a traditional gym and I just do workouts there or I run, I run outside. Even when it's cold outside, like 20, like 20 degrees. I'll throw on sweatshirt and a hat and gloves and I'll run outside. So I try to get a couple days a week running outside and then some, some lifting and then some like high intensity stuff. And I kind of, that's, that's kind of what I rotate through throughout the week.
[00:20:06] Speaker C: So you come back from the gym, what's next?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Come back from the gym, I have, have coffee, I watch the Today show for 10 minutes just to see like kind of like the headlines of the day. Just so I have something to talk about with people throughout the day. And I'm not really paying attention that much. You know, I'm checking my email. I'm just kind of going through email stuff in the morning, take a shower and then I'm usually like off to work around 9:30.
So you know, I don't get into the office till like probably 9:30 to 10:00 clock usually. But it's not because I'm waking up late. It's just because I like take care of myself first in the mornings sometimes I Take my kids to school if they don't have a ride. But yeah, I get in the office about 10 o' clock and then, you know, I kind of rotate between the different companies that I oversee, whether it's my development company or whether it's my real estate sales team or whether it's. In the past it's been real estate brokerages that I've owned that I, you know, I've sold a bunch of my real estate brokerages over the last few years. So I don't really do much with that anymore. But you know, any of the other businesses I have are looking at new opportunities that come my way.
That's really kind of how I spend my, my days.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: I'm going to ask you a question and this is something I've been kind of working on, you know, recently and that is like everybody talks about a morning routine and I think that I'm a thousand percent in agreement. I have my morning routine and you know, I'm up at, you know, 5:30, I'm at the gym by 6:30. That gives me time to kind of wake up and do my thing before I leave.
You know, I try and read every day, meditate some days.
But what about an evening routine? Do you have a purposeful evening routine? Which I think would be awesome if you did, but you know, if you, if you don't, like, have you given that thought? How important do you think an evening routine is as much as a morning routine?
[00:21:59] Speaker B: I think an evening, the evening routine is probably more important than the, the morning routine.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Like you, have you heard anybody really talk about the evening routines?
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Let's talk about it, let's talk about it right now. So I, you know, the, what you do at night leads you to stuff in the morning. Like I sort of booby trap my success in the morning to make sure that I get up. Like I set my alarm right. I'm going to tell you the full routine, but I'm just sort of like fast forwarding a little bit. But I, I set my alarm, I put out my gym clothes for the next day. You know, I sort of get that stuff ready so I don't even have to think about like once my gym clothes are out and once my alarm is set, then there's no turning back. Like I'm, I'm not, you know, like I'm not canceling my alarm. I'm like, I put the clothes out already. I can't not go to the gym, you know. So like you're setting yourself up for the success, the Night before I go to bed at a reasonable hour, you know, like, I'll have dinner with my kids, 6:30, 7 o', clock, something like that. After I clean up for dinner, you know, I'm like, I'm not doing work at night pretty much. I mean, I'm checking emails and stuff, but I'm really trying not to do work at night. I'm watching tv. I watch a lot of TV at night. I just binging through shows at night and I try to stop, you know, doing that around like 9 o', clock, something like that. I go up, go up to my bedroom, you know, kind of get, get ready, brush my teeth, get ready for bed, set out all my clothes for the next day, set my alarm, check my schedule for the next day to kind of see if there's anything specific I need to like, prepare for at the last minute.
And then like, I'm asleep by like around 10:30 every night, give or give or take. And so this way I'm getting, you know, around eight hours of sleep every single night. Sleep is really important. I think a lot of people neglect sleep and they, they sort of, like, they stay up late, they wake up early, and they just kind of push through and say, hey, I'm. I don't need a lot of sleep. I can, I can function on four hours of sleep or five hours of sleep. And like, maybe you can, but that's not really good. You really need seven or eight hours of sleep every night. If I get, if I get seven or eight hours, I'm good. If I get six to seven, like, I'm okay, but I feel the difference. If I get under six hours of sleep, like, I'm not the same person.
Like, I really need sleep.
[00:24:10] Speaker C: It's cognitive, it's, it's motivational, it's, it's executional. Like, you're just not. And it's so funny. And I, the reason I bring it up is because, you know, the consistency around your morning routine, it depends on how, what time you went to bed. Like, were you up, you know, like you said, binge watching. Some people are going till 1 in the morning, right? Or, or, you know, four or five glasses of wine and then they're going to bed. And then, you know, that's not gonna, that's not gonna help you sleep. It's not gonna help you wake up. It's not gonna put you in the best place at the gym. So it's like, some people, they're like, they just. Pure habit people. Like, they have a great morning routine. But they're sabotaging how great that routine really could be without an evening routine.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I try not to stay up too late, even on, like, the weekends when, you know, people want to go out and like, hang out and stay out late. Like, I really don't love doing that too often because I just know my body, even if I don't set an alarm, my body's gonna wake up at 6 o' clock in the morning.
And if I'm staying out till 2 in the morning, I'm still up at 6 o'.
[00:25:10] Speaker C: Clock.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: And then I'm just, you know, I'm a waste of a person. That, that next day, it's not worth it.
[00:25:14] Speaker C: So Noah said it, get eight hours of sleep and you'll be, you'll be successful like him.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: That's it. That's all it is. That's the secret.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: One of the other. And I want you to, I want you to put yourself in Noah circa 2013.
You know, you're, you're in the early stages of your career, but you're starting to recognize leverage as a, as an important part of your ability to accomplish and succeed.
But, but you, you had in here, one of the other takeaways was urgency over perfection.
And you had said, don't wait for the perfect time listing or plan. Start now, refine as you go.
What if you're talking to someone who's in that stage of their career, what are you trying to teach them in with, with that concept?
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I sort of have a motto how I live my life by. And it's imperfect action beats a perfect plan every time.
And that just said, like, don't be that person that overthinks everything.
Don't be that person that has analysis paralysis. Just take action. And by taking action, you're going to outpace or beat probably 90% of the people that are not taking action. And that action won't be perfect and you'll sort of refine as you go. It's sort of the analogy of like, like building the plane while you're already up in the air.
[00:26:33] Speaker C: When I read a quote the other day, entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: That. Pretty much, something like that, you know. And I'm not saying that works for everybody, and I'm not saying that's always the great strategy, but I would say all of my life experiences have led me to the point where I can make what appears to be impulsive decisions.
They're not actually impulsive, but they appear to be Impulsive because of all my life experience that I, that I've had so far. And I can make these quick decisions and do those things. And, and I just say, take action. Figure it out along the way. You don't have to have everything figured out before you go. You know, I see a lot of new real estate agents spending so much of their time perfecting their, their, their buyer package or their listing presentation.
And I'm like, guys, you don't even have any appointments yet. Like, you don't even go out and get appointments. That's where you should be spending your time. Don't, don't be wasting your time on the things that are unimportant, like spend your time spending. You don't have to be ready. Just go out and fake it till you make it for a little while.
[00:27:36] Speaker C: I see guys, lenders, teammates spend two hours on a Facebook video that they're getting ready to put out in. The video might be 45 seconds long. And that's not investing in your time. That's.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Yeah, just record the video.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: Just record it, put it out. There's.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Nobody cares if it sucks, if it sucks that people are going to be talking about how much it sucks, and either way, they're going to be talking about it. Right.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: That's kind of my goal with this podcast. I try and make it as shitty as possible. And that way you're like, dude, have you heard the latest?
But no, it's, it's very true. Action is, is, is the antidote to almost anything in life. And, you know, one of my favorite sayings is action is the antidote to anxiety. Most people, or whatever, whatever it is, that's that you're anxious about whatever it is that, you know, has you frozen or, or, or, or blocked. You know, action changes all of it.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:33] Speaker C: Almost immediately.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Important, too.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: So, so another, another takeaway. And, and I'm sure that this was probably something that you exhibited throughout your entire life.
But, but talk to me about, consider, he says here, you know, consistency is the multiplier. Big pushes create burnout, where daily disciplined effort compounds into results.
Why is consistency so hard for so many people?
[00:29:11] Speaker B: It's a good topic, especially as we're coming up to the new year, believe it or not. And I don't know when you're gonna launch this podcast, but soon, right? January 1st, the new year comes. And, you know, that's where you see the most amount of people at the gym. That's where you see the most amount of people back at the Office. I tell my, you know, my kids, like at the starting line of the race, that's where you see the most amount of people. It's not, you know, at. I like that when it's 70 degrees outside, that's where you see the most amount of people running outside.
When it's 30 degrees outside, you don't see many people outside. At the end of the race, you don't see that many people. By the time you get to February, you don't see as many people in the gym or March, you don't see as many people in the office. Once February rolls around, so everybody comes out strong and, you know, you see a lot of people just like, with these ideas of things they want to do, and they're just not consistent with it. The. They have this drive and they just, you know, want to go out and do something cool, but they can't. They can't sustain it. And the people that are sustaining it, the people that can outlast everybody else and just, you know, keep chipping away, they're the ones that are going to do well with things. Whether it's a fitness routine, whether it's a business opportunity, whether it's lead generation, you know, it's. Whether it's the calls that you're making to people. You know, if you, if you're making calls and you're talking to 10, 15, 20 people a day, you're not having success. And you stop after a month. Like, what would happen if you kept doing that for another second month or a third month or a fourth month? Like, that's where things start to really snowball and you start to do well with your fitness. Same thing. Like, you're not going to see results after the first 30 days, but maybe after 60 days or 90 days or whatever, you keep doing it, you're going to start seeing those incremental improvements.
And that's why it's so important, is you really just have to keep your foot on the gas and keep going and keep chipping away every single day. And then eventually you're going to see those results.
I think a lot. Sorry to interrupt, but I think a lot of people, especially in today's society, people want to see instant gratification.
And with business and with life, it's not really about instant gratification and everything. I think a lot of, especially younger people, they. They want to see the. The results right away. And we don't always see those results right away. We don't get that instant gratification right away. It takes time to see that. And that's a lesson that you have to teach yourself through consistency.
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Do you think that's a function of our time or do you think that going back 200 years, young people tend to want instant gratification versus, you know, the wiser, you know, 40 year olds know that it doesn't come out right away. Do you think that's, that's more like human nature or do you think it's a sign of the times?
[00:32:01] Speaker B: That's actually a very good question. I don't know what it was like back in history, but I do know that a lot of things today, more so than I can remember when I was younger, you know, 20 years ago, like there's a lot more instant results that happen right now with everything that we do. So I think that's just how our minds are trained through everything that we do is like, to have things.
Yeah.
[00:32:22] Speaker C: Right away, you know, like you want a milkshake, you just uber eats it. Right. Like it's, it's right there. We, we didn't have that option, you know.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah, you have it on Friday nights when you wanted to go get a movie, you had to go to Blockbuster. You had to go look through the movie and they probably sold out of the one you wanted to go see. You know, like we had to do stuff. And now it's every. I'm not complaining. I love it, trust me. I like the instant everything in your life as well. But it's just how our minds are trained. But it doesn't work for everything.
[00:32:52] Speaker C: How many people out there under the age of, let's say 25, if you said be kind rewind, they would have any idea what you're talking about.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Why don't you, why don't you, when you start this podcast, like put a little poll out there and see if people know what it means.
Late fees. That's funny. It's a, there's a, you know, part one in the, in the book that I'm writing a new book, I'm doing a case study and it's on opportunity and it's the opportunity that Blockbuster had to basically buy Netflix. Netflix wanted to be bought, Blockbuster wouldn't want to buy them. And they basically doubled down on their late fees and they doubled down on their online physical presence and all that stuff and you know, just kind of put them out of business because they're focusing on the wrong things.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: Yeah, that's it. That's an awesome, that is a tremendous case study.
I want to talk about, you know, you, you, you you accomplish building a tremendous empire. You got brands, author, speaker, you're doing podcasts pretty regularly. You have, you're the brand ambassador for your company's. To the point where like, you're not even really involved in necessarily. And in a lot of the day to day, you've reached a level of success that a lot of people dream about. And I know you're modest. I'm saying it because you won't.
What, when you, when you accomplish all these things like, and life becomes a scoreboard game, how do you keep score?
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Now there's a quote says getting to the top is not the same as making it at the top.
And that's a very big distinction. Like, getting there is not the same as staying there. Like, what got you there is not the same as what's going to get you to the next place.
I'm not a big scorekeeper type person. I'm not doing what I do to compete with anybody else, to compete with myself. I guess you'd say I don't really care what other people are doing. I'm probably not even playing the same game that other people are playing.
You know, I see a lot of people talking about how much, you know, real estate they're selling and all this stuff like, that's not the game that I am playing and never really have.
The awards that we've gotten over the years don't really mean that much to me. It's a, it's a testament to the agents on my team or the team that has surrounded me or support staff to, you know, to be able to do that type of stuff. But I don't really care that much about it. The game that I play is wealth building. It's about building passive income. It's about, you know, having investment properties, having more passive income than I have in personal expenses so that I have the freedom to do what I want to do when I want to do it. The game I'm trying to play is about freedom.
And so all the other things are sort of the, the pieces that I'm moving around to get me to the ultimate game. So I'm not really keeping score the same way that other people are keeping score. The score that I'm keeping is about how much, what, what more do I need to do as far as my wealth building journey goes to get to the point that I want to get to as far as freedom goes. And now, you know, then when you get to that point of freedom, then it's about happiness, right? The things that are, you know, what what's going to make you happy? What makes you feel content? And I think like most other entrepreneurs or successful people, being content is a very hard thing to do because you set your goals, whether it's your first year in real estate and you set a goal to sell a certain amount of houses or whatever the goal is, then you hit that. Well, are you content with that? Probably not. Now you're like, all right, well, I did this. Now I want to get to the next level. And then there's always levels, right? There's always new levels that you're trying to get to. No matter how successful you are, there's always going to be somebody more successful. There's always going to be somebody that makes more money or has more of something or does things to the next level of what you're trying to do. So, you know, if you're competing with other people, it's a game you're never going to win. It's really about competing with yourself and trying to be content and happy with the things that you have. And that's a very hard thing to do. Right. I'm giving that advice and saying that. But it's also something I struggle with too, is like, when is enough enough? And when do you actually feel content with all the things you've done or all the things you have or, you know, those types of things? And it's, you know, it's like a. It's something that. That. It's. It's a. It's a. It's a daily thing that I work on to try to, like, feel like I'm good, but also that I know that I could do more. And that's. That's always the battle.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: Well, Tony Robbins interviewed Michael Jordan, and I think that's exactly what he said to almost verbatim, but. But to paraphrase, it was. He's not competing against anyone else. He's competing against his potential. He's competing against what, you know, what. What would. What could he accomplish today at his best? And then. And then competing against himself. And it's such a. It's such an awesome transformation to be able to say that to. To. To be able to. To have gotten a certain number of steps in this. This hierarchy of accomplishment, to be in that place. And I think it's. I think it's super cool. How do you. How do you convey that to your kids?
[00:38:07] Speaker B: I've been talking to my kids about this type of stuff probably since they were really young, but really, like, to the point where they understand probably around Eight years old. Seven. Eight years old. I used to lay in bed with them at night and sort of talk about business concepts with them.
And you'd be surprised. Kids understand that stuff if you explain it in a way that, that they can understand. Like I would talk about scaling a business with my son and profit and loss. And I would do it in the way of talking about lemonade stands. Say, hey, you have a lemonade stand and you sell, you know, 10 lemonades for a dollar a piece. How much money do you make? And he said, of course, every kid's going to say $10. That can do that math. I'm like, no, you didn't make $10. You, you, you. $10 was your top line revenue. But how much did it cost you for the lemonade mix and the cups and the signs that you made and all that stuff? Well, it cost $5. Okay, so you had $5 of expenses. So your net profit was 5. 5.
Right. So I'm trying to explain to them and they're like, oh, I understand that. And then, then trying to say how, how do you scale a business?
[00:39:06] Speaker C: Wait, hold on, hold on. You stop there. You don't go, now you got to give three to the government for tax.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Well, you know, I keep it simple there. And I don't. You're right, you're right. I should do that.
Well, I'm your partner. You got to give me 50%.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Yeah, right. Royalties, I mean, royalty.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. And, but they said, listen, well, if you want to make more, there's only a limit to how many lemonades you could sell. Right. So what if you opened up another stand somewhere else and now you have two lemonade stands. Each one was making $10.
Well, now you have not only your $5 of expenses for your, your materials, but now you have your employee. You have to hire another employee to do that because there's always, you know, it's sort of explaining it into a concept so that they understand.
So I talk to them a lot about that.
My kids are telling me that they are. They started reading my book.
We'll see how far along they got. My daughter, she's one of my oldest daughter's in college and she did a, she, one of her classes. She actually did a report on my book, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, that was nice. And the professors wanted, wanted me to come in and, and talk about it,
[00:40:12] Speaker C: which I had to go Penn State.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: She was a Penn State? Yeah, yeah, she was a Penn State.
So, you know, you have to talk to kids about stuff like they understand this stuff. They understand these concepts. And, you know, for anybody out there having kids, like we always talk about, we're not trying to raise kids, we're trying to raise adults.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: And.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: And the things that we teach them is so they be. They can become good adults later in life. And so that when we do finally send them off and they're free, like, we feel like we did a good enough job with them and we, you know, made them independent. We trusted the decisions that they're going to make, that they're going to treat other people nice and fair and kind, and they're going to, you know, do the good things in their lives that we taught them. The morning routines. Like, my kids see me every.
Every morning. They see me going to the gym. I go in their room, they're getting. They're kind of sort of waking up, or maybe I wake them up, then I give them a kiss, I say goodbye, I'm going to the gym. They see me going to the gym. You know, it's like a routine. They see the health as an important thing. We cook dinners at night, and I'm trying to cook healthy, so they eat healthy. Like, they see the value of eating healthy and all that stuff, and they see the businesses and I talk to them about that type of stuff.
I started writing another book as well, which I haven't gotten, like super far along in yet. I'm sort of paralleling the other book, but it's a kids book about business concepts explained in a way that I just kind of explained to you, but the way the kids understand. Because not every parent understands business or life things, especially not in a way that they can verbalize it to their kids and teach it to their kids. So I created this as like a bedtime story that parents can read to their kids and kids can understand in, like, a way. So I'm working my way through that to hopefully launch that at some point. Once it's. Once it's ready.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: And there's probably a lot of parents that need it written in that fashion for them to understand it too, probably.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: Right?
[00:42:00] Speaker C: No, it's just that we. We as a society, as an education system, just don't teach this stuff.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: Well, business is so important. You know, my. My. My oldest daughter is in college now, and she's a freshman at Penn State. And she doesn't know what she wants to study. She doesn't know what she wants to do.
And she in some ways looks at business as a negative thing. Like, I don't want to do business, and I Said, well, whatever it is you want to do, you should own the business. If you want to. If you want to be a hairdresser, not that she does, but if you want to be a hairdresser, like, that's cool, but, like, still go to business, still, like, do business because you should own the shop. If you want to do this type of, you know, thing that has nothing to do with what you think is business, well, you should still do business because you should own that. That business and, and understand those concepts. So I think that it's. Business is a really important part of life. There's so many aspects of it, whether it's marketing, whether it's finance and accounting. Like, it's just life. And there's not a lot of things.
Not enough, I'd say not enough classes that, that teach kids about that stuff in life. I see some of the classes that these kids take, and I'm like, why is that, why is that going to be important later in your life? Like, why do you need to know this type of stuff? And they spend so, like, I think classes that are not relevant, like, why is medieval studies more important than talking about, like, financial stuff?
I just don't understand some of the stuff that they, they focus on.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: I think that history is important. I think that memorization is a skill. It's a mind. I think that memorization is something that, like, you know, it sounds silly, but memorizing dates, memorizing names is something that helps cognitively later in life. Like, I think there's value in all that. But I agree. I think that it's under just this kind of stuff. Just the stuff that's in this book is, is just. There's nowhere in the curriculum that, that, that teaches this, in fact, controversial statement. I think some teachers are counterproductive to this kind of stuff. I mean, some teachers, they say the wrong things, they teach the wrong philosophies. I mean, yeah, they might know the topic of arithmetic, but from a mindset standpoint, who knows what they're bringing, what energy they're bringing into the classroom, what energy they're, you know, their, their wisdom that they're imparting on their, their kids. And it's, it's scary, you know, but it's, it's, it's. It's. It's why you're important. It's why, you know, the shows like this are important. Because I think that this is the, the platform where this type of stuff gets talked about, you know, Definitely.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: And listen, I hear what you're saying. And I agree just to an extent. And there's, of course, as I'm sure you agree with this, there's a lot of amazing teachers out there that are doing great things for our kids. And thank goodness we have those teachers, you know, take care of our kids every single day. But you know, this book, it's not just a business book, by the way. It's a lifebook. And it's, there's concepts in there. Everything from mostly mindset things and things that people deal with in their, in their everyday lives. Anxiety, stress, depression, going through divorces, new friendships, entering new aspects of life.
Just like so many different topics that people deal with in their lives and that I've spoken to people about. Not all of them are things that I've personally dealt with, but like, I've talked to friends about or other people about that I've maybe helped them through or listen to them when they're going through stuff. And I'm like, man, you know what? I bet you other people could really benefit from the stuff that we're talking about and then putting those concepts in a way that people can relate to and understand. And you know, it's written in a way. You don't have to read it in order, you can read it out of order. And once you sort of get familiar with with the book, you can come back to certain topics later on as you're dealing with things in your life that you're like, man, I need a, I need a refresher on that.
And I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on it so far. I think a lot of people bought it. Not a lot. Not as many people read it as bought it, but.
[00:46:01] Speaker C: Well, I do. I look at this book the same way as a couple of other books. One of them I remember, think and Grow Rich is also, you know, one of my favorites. And it's because you can pick it up, flip to a page, read it, and it, you don't, it's. It's not a novel, right? You don't need to know what happened to the protagonist in the, in the chapter before, you know, So I think it's really, really cool. It's funny you brought up the teaching your kids the disciplines.
The day after Thanksgiving, it's Friday, Black Friday, and of course, up late, eating, drinking, blah, blah, blah. And my dog has to go to the bathroom at 6:30 in the morning. I'm like, oh my God, guess this is my job, right? So I get up, you know, go downstairs, still dark out, let them out, let them Back in. And I hear someone coming down the steps and I'm like, it's my daughter. She's junior in college.
What are you doing? She's like, oh, I'm going to the gym. It's 6:30 on the day after Thanksgiving.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:46:56] Speaker C: She's going to the gym. I'm like, you did.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: You taught her well.
[00:46:59] Speaker C: Congratulations.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: You taught her well. You patted her back to bed. Exactly. Good.
[00:47:04] Speaker C: I was, I was proud, I was really proud of her that she was, that she was doing that. And, and I know it's because, you know, we set the example. We're the leaders of our families and we're leaders of our employees. We're the leaders of our customers. We're leaders in our world of our real estate agents and of our borrowers and stuff. So all that stuff's real important. So everything we talked about today, no, it really aligns with, with, with, with the things that, that we talk about here and we teach and I, I can't thank you enough for, for, for sharing and hopefully before we get into two traditional lie, I'll extend the invitation for you to come back. Hopefully come back. We'll talk about all kinds of other fun stuff.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. Happy to do it.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: All right. Two truths and a lie. Let's go back to it.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: Okay,
[00:47:48] Speaker C: so you're, Let me see where I wrote these down.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Let me say them again.
[00:47:57] Speaker C: My notes. You have three sets of twins in your family.
You were the Penn State mascot. I might have to ask a qualifier question.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: One handed push ups and then you are over.
[00:48:16] Speaker C: Over 500 houses built. Okay.
My brothers are twins and each one of them has twins.
So I know three sets of twins is, is not as uncommon as you might think.
I, I know being a developer in Philadelphia in what would consider to be the golden age of development In Philadelphia, you 500 houses does not seem to be too many.
And I know a former mascot, former Penn State mascot. I'm not going to name any names, but he still, he never returned the costume.
He still owns it and brings it out of parties sometimes. So I'm going to say it's the mascot. But I'll be happy if I'm wrong.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: You are right. I was never the mascot. I was never the mascot. I could, I was never able to do enough one handed push ups when I was at Penn State. Back then they were very good and they used to score a lot of points per game. I don't think I could do that many one handed push ups. So.
[00:49:19] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe this year you could.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: Maybe at the Beginning of the year. Yeah. This year. Yeah, this year for sure. Yeah, I could.
[00:49:26] Speaker C: Yeah, it was funny. He a buddy. Friend of my. Friend of my brother's. Yeah. He never. Never returned the. The uniform. He's. And he's not allowed to put. No one's allowed to put it on social media. Like, when he puts it on and people get all wild at parties. No pictures.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: I hope nobody's watching this podcast.
[00:49:44] Speaker C: I didn't name any names. He went to Penn state back in 1964.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: There you go.
I have twins. My brother has twins, and my sister has twins. All three of them. Yeah.
[00:49:55] Speaker C: Now, are they all identical?
[00:49:58] Speaker B: My sister has identical twin girls, and me and my brother have fraternal twins. Boy, girl twins.
[00:50:05] Speaker C: Wow. So. So six cousins, and they're all twins.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: My parents are grandparents to three sets of twins.
[00:50:13] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:14] Speaker C: So we had. We have twins everywhere. My. My. So my brothers are twins. I told you that.
My. My uncle on my dad's side, he had twins.
My brothers both have twins. My brother Pat married into a family that has a set of twins.
And what's crazy is. And. And if you. I. You could probably find it on. On social media, pictures on my Facebook or my Instagram, but my uncle Marty has two girls that are the same age as Caitlin, and when you put them three in a room, they could all be twins. They're cousins, but they look like they could all be, you know, be twins, which. Same age. Same. Same. You know, everything. But.
But that's pretty crazy, though.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: We like to say we're. We're efficient.
[00:51:00] Speaker C: There you go.
My brother has Irish triplets. He had his twins, and then 11 months later, he had the third. So that was. That was challenging.
And 500 houses. It's probably more than that.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's more than that. We built over 500 houses. And, yeah, it's. It's been. Been a nice journey.
[00:51:19] Speaker C: That's awesome, man. Well, congratulations on that. Congratulations on the Twitter. I was kind of hoping I was wrong. I wish you were the mask.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: That would have been cool. That would have been cool.
[00:51:28] Speaker C: Well, Noah, thank you very much for. For joining us today. And like I said, I'm gonna put the. The link to the book in the. In the show notes. Yeah, it's upside. Right. And if you haven't gotten this quarter blueprint, give me a call, because we talk a lot about this book in this quarter.
In this quarter blueprint and.
And among. Among many other things. So I appreciate your time, my man, and we will catch up soon.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Thank you. Appreciate it.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Selling the Dream. We know you don't want to miss a single episode, so go. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts, and then make sure to share the show with your friends and leave us a review.
