Transform Your Life: Daily Inspiration That Creates Real Impact Every Day

Brett McCollum (00:00.92)
Welcome back to the show everybody. I’m your host Brett McCollum and I’m here today with Dennis Henson. And today we are going to talk about real impact and daily inspiration. Before we get to it guys at Investor Fuel, we help a real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs to 5X their businesses to allow them to build a business that they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Dennis, how are you?

Dennis J Henson (00:26.445)
I’m great, Brad, thank you for having me today.

Brett McCollum (00:28.916)
Absolutely, man. I’m excited. We talked a little pre-show a little bit. You’ve got, man, I’m just genuinely excited. You’ve been in the industry for a long time and I know you have a lot of wisdom and insight to offer the audience today and I just couldn’t be more honored to talk with you, Dennis.

Dennis J Henson (00:46.787)
I’m Alan Boldt, thank you very much.

Brett McCollum (00:48.878)
Yeah, so to be a favorite, so catch people up to speed a little bit. Tell us like who’s Dennis, like give us some background a little bit. Who’s Dennis Henson?

Dennis J Henson (00:59.427)
Mostly I’m a real estate investor. Lately I’ve been writing a lot of books. I’m in the winter of my life and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve struggled a lot, failed a lot, succeeded some and I wanted to leave.

leave some breadcrumbs along the way for people coming along behind so that they don’t have to go through, they don’t have to learn it by making the mistakes they can learn by listening to someone who’s already made them.

Brett McCollum (01:34.786)
Love that. Yeah, I mean, definitely can raise my hand and attest to the mistakes thing. I’ve definitely made my fair share.

Yeah, you said before you were primarily in the real estate space, buying holds, flips, the whole thing. What’s your history been like?

Dennis J Henson (01:55.075)
Well, if it’s dealing with single family, I’ve pretty much done it, know, substitute, short sale, notes, probate, mean, private money. If it has to do with single family, then that’s been what I’ve been doing for number of years. When I graduated from college in 1970, I had a degree in music and I started out as a band director.

Brett McCollum (02:12.29)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis J Henson (02:25.571)
And the school that hired me said, well, we’ll let you live in our house. So that’s really why I went there. They were going to give me a house. I wouldn’t have any rent to pay or mortgage or whatever. So I signed the contract and then I went there and they said, well, the board met, they changed their mind.

Brett McCollum (02:44.227)
no.

Dennis J Henson (02:45.155)
I was already the band director there then didn’t have a place to stay and they said, well, we do have a vacant lot on the campus. And if you’d like to put a mobile home there, we’ll let you do that. So I went and purchased a mobile home and placed it on a little lot right next to railroad street in the Darisburg, Georgia.

I had been living with some band parents preparing for band camp and I had to get up really early. They lived out 15 miles from the school. So I had to get up at like 430 to be there at 7 to get ready for band camp.

was really excited about moving into the mobile home so I could get some sleep. So the first night, I thought, this is great. I can sleep till six o’clock. Well, at three o’clock, I found out why it was named Railroad Street.

Brett McCollum (03:38.2)
No way.

Dennis J Henson (03:38.991)
The locomotive came within 10 feet of the mobile home and it shook me right out of the bed. And so I thought, this is not going to work. So that’s when I purchased my first home and rented out the mobile home. So a family came by and gave me $300. And I oh, this is great. They moved in and I never saw them again. The check bounced. I didn’t know how to get them out. So it took me

Brett McCollum (03:44.578)
Check you out, yeah.

Dennis J Henson (04:08.955)
year to get them out because I didn’t know what I was doing and I thought, boy, I’m not much of a landlord. I don’t think I’ll ever do this again, which is funny because most of my life that’s really what I have done. So that was my rough beginning.

Brett McCollum (04:22.583)
Right.

Brett McCollum (04:27.18)
man. So that was back in, you said 1970 ish? Wow.

Dennis J Henson (04:30.479)
55 years ago, so I’ve been in and out of real estate. You know, I’ve done a lot of other things, but I always had real estate. I always had some properties, single family homes and apartments. I’ve done some commercial real estate and some others, but…

The single family just fits. There’s plenty of them. There’s always people with problems. If you learn how to talk to them, what to say and so forth, you can always go find a deal. mean, they’re always out there. And if you have a network of people, and I do, who want to purchase, it doesn’t take very long to either get a partner or sell the deal or whatever, however you want to turn it into.

to cash. It’s pretty easy to do once you know what you’re doing.

Brett McCollum (05:22.574)
Yeah, man, that’s 50, 55 years in the making to lead us to today. That’s really incredible. I mean, I thought, you know, it’s almost like if you’ve been in real estate for 10 years, you’re a veteran almost at this point with a lot of the real estate community that you see now. And so talking with you, like I said, I’m really excited to like, you know, learn more from you, you know, and get some insights because you’ve just.

You’ve done things that a lot of us haven’t seen or done yet even. You’ve been through the 80s. I’ve studied it in the, I was born in the 80s. So you were in the 80s when the markets were, people are complaining about interest rates being high today. And what were rates in the 80s?

Dennis J Henson (06:11.343)
Yeah, yeah, I can remember when they were 19 and a half percent. So people are complaining about six or seven or eight. Well, I would have been happy with 13 or 14. Back then you couldn’t get a loan for those interest rates. Things have changed a lot, Exactly.

Brett McCollum (06:16.225)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (06:28.11)
Right, so it’s just the perspective, right? And you having gone through that can lend a lot of knowledge to the audience of like, hey, yeah, I know that it’s different than it was a couple of years ago. But also I’ve been through it when it was 18, 19 % and we got through it then. And then you go through, you know,

the dot com bubble, the weight crash, and all that stuff. Let me ask you this, I would be remiss if I didn’t least ask you from an experience level, did you ever have any low points during those times of uncertainty as a real estate investor? And if so, maybe one or two things that you, how did you kind of pull through it? Because you’re still here today, which is incredible to think about, to me.

Dennis J Henson (07:23.343)
course they were I mean if you’re in business you know a definition of business should be solving one problem after the next because if you don’t have problems and you’re in business well you’re going to have one and it’s going to be soon and the longer it’s been since you’ve had the last one the bigger this one’s going to be because that’s that’s just what business is solving problems and yeah I’ve had some tough times

Brett McCollum (07:48.408)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis J Henson (07:54.031)
Some of the things that have helped me through the hard times are the books that I’ve read and the poems and the quotes that I’ve kept. I met Jim Rolland back in 1975. He went into, I was working for a large company in Tennessee and he came to do a training. And he was an unknown in 75. He was just a guy, just like you and me. And so we got to,

Brett McCollum (08:09.272)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (08:18.946)
Right.

Dennis J Henson (08:23.897)
talk and get to know each other and so forth. And one of the things that he taught us while he was there was keep everything in the journal. You don’t ever know when you’re going to need it. Maybe you’re going to have to speak or maybe you’ll have to write a newsletter or a book or something. So when, when something moves you make a note of it. So from 75 until today, I’ve been keeping a list of

Brett McCollum (08:42.114)
Mmm.

Dennis J Henson (08:48.463)
motivational poems, quotes, books, and short stories and long stories that moved me because I thought, well, you I started the real estate investor group here in Arlington back in 2005. so every week I got to speak in front of people and I would have the tip of the month and so forth. And I used a lot of that stuff to motivate and encourage the real

Brett McCollum (09:04.782)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis J Henson (09:18.417)
state investors to do to do well. in 2007 or a one of the members of the AREA came up to me his name was Mike Chase and he said Dennis I’m retiring at about three weeks and I want you to teach me personally how to do what you’re doing.

And I turned him down and I said, no, Mike, I don’t have time. I’m doing my real estate. I have these meetings. I’m not interested in one-on-one training. So you’ll have to find someone else. And he looked funny. He looked at me and he said, Dennis, you didn’t understand what I said. I said in three weeks, I’m going to retire and you’re going to train me. And I thought, goodness. He said, well, let’s go out to eat. I’ll buy you lunch and we’ll talk about it.

Brett McCollum (10:01.144)
Wow.

Dennis J Henson (10:07.919)
Right before I left, told my wife Norma, said, Norma, I’m gonna meet with Mike Chase, but I’m not gonna train him. She said, okay. So we went out and he bought me a Whited Burger. So after we ate, he entered a coat like this, he reached in his pocket and he pulled out a checkbook and handed it to me and he said, here, fill this out.

Brett McCollum (10:16.749)
Okay.

Dennis J Henson (10:29.879)
And I said, you mean the amount? And he said, yeah. So I thought, OK, I’ll fix him. This will be the end of this. I wrote down a number on there that I knew no one in their right mind would pay me to teach them. So I handed it back to him. He tore the check out, signed it, never looked at the amount, and handed it back to me. It wouldn’t have mattered what I put.

Brett McCollum (10:43.629)
Right.

Dennis J Henson (10:55.535)
it wouldn’t have made any difference. So that’s when I started teaching. I thought, well, if somebody is willing to pay that kind of money, you know, I can take away from my real estate business and teach. So that was in 2007 or six or seven. So for the next 15 years,

Brett McCollum (11:06.338)
Right. This was when? What year was this? What year was that?

Dennis J Henson (11:19.053)
through the AREA, I had student after student. I had a line of people waiting to be students. And they became so successful.

It shocked me how successful they were. They were a lot more successful than I was. Some of those students, and they still are, some of the most successful business people in Texas. I mean, you’re talking about having some serious, serious money in the front of my new book.

Real Impact Day to Inspiration. I didn’t have anything to say in testimonials about the book So I contacted my students and said can you just tell me something about what you thought about the training? And so that’s the first part of the book. It’s just I think probably 20 students that came back and said you should listen to this guy because he changed my life or things like that So after I finished the book someone came in and said Dennis I read

Brett McCollum (12:15.01)
Love that. Yeah.

Dennis J Henson (12:19.633)
book I said oh great was there a story in there you like the best and he said oh yeah I love the story about the little girl that came from Brazil that could just barely speak English you know and she became a really super success and I laughed and I said well that’s really not a story in the book that’s a testimonial that one of my students gave

Brett McCollum (12:41.855)
no, that’s awesome. Yeah.

Dennis J Henson (12:43.447)
I called her, she was in Brazil when I called her. I called her and said, you you had the best story in the book. She thought that was great.

Brett McCollum (12:50.958)
That’s awesome. Well, look, I want to talk about that here in a second. You mentioned something, you said it was from Jim Rohn, I believe it was, were talking about, you were taking notes about tracking things that motivated you or things like that. And we were talking a little bit pre-show as well about kind of motivation and what it means to you. Like I’d love kind of to hear your take a little bit on motivation, because I’ve heard so many things over the years, you you’re a different.

quips here and a quip there. And to me, you’re clearly, as I’ve gotten to know you, you’re clearly somebody that’s, it’s not just motivation, but like, I think your book is the right word for impact, you know, you know, what’s your take on motivation? Like, I’m curious to hear your perspective.

Dennis J Henson (13:39.245)
Early in my life, I wanted to become a college band director. I had taught in high school and I had done some work in college where they gave me fellowships. would pay my tuition to get me to come and help with their band and so forth. And I found out that college band is much easier than high school band. The kids are smarter. They want to have good grades. They want to be there. Their parents are not there.

So I thought being a college band director, that’s a pretty good goal. So I got a master’s degree and then my high school band had just finished marching in the Rose Bowl Parade. So I had a pretty good reputation as band director. And Georgia Tech contacted me and said, we want to hire you as our band director. That’s great. man, that’s great. So I went to Atlanta and was with a friend. I was supposed to sign the contract the next day when his phone rang.

And he said, it’s for you.

Well, back then there wasn’t a cell phone. You know, it was a phone on the wall and everybody didn’t have everybody’s phone number. thought, wow. So this guy from Tennessee said, we want to bring you up here and interview you for a job. I I’ve got the best job in the world. I’m going to be the band director at Georgia Tech. And he says, well, we will give you a round trip ticket. We’ll pick you up in the limousine. We’ll buy you a steak and we’ll give you a $25 cigar. Well, today that’d be

Brett McCollum (14:45.72)
Right.

Dennis J Henson (15:11.409)
$300 cigar that was in 1975 well I didn’t smoke and I could got a stake in Atlanta But getting a free round-trip ticket back in 75, you know, you didn’t get to fly much So I said I told my friend I said well I’m gonna go up there and tell them that I’m not interested so they They brought me up there. They offered me 20 times the money that Georgia Tech So I took it and when I took it they gave me three books. They gave me six

Brett McCollum (15:35.426)
Sorry.

Dennis J Henson (15:41.329)
the Glenn-Bland method, Think and Grow Rich, Greatest Salesman in the World by Aguamandino. Brett, when I finished reading those books, you talk about someone who was motivated. I was on fire. I was a different person when I finished reading those books. So for that reason,

Brett McCollum (15:48.962)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis J Henson (16:04.725)
I wanted more. I wanted more. Well, there wasn’t an internet, there wasn’t Google, there wasn’t YouTube. If you wanted to find something, you had to literally talk to people. So I had to go find successful people and say, what books are you reading? What books really give you this euphoria that makes you just super motivated? So I got a lot of suggestions and I read a lot of books, but only a few of them really had the impact.

of Think and Grow Rich, or the greatest salesman in the world. So I thought, I’m just gonna keep a list of the very best books.

So you asked what motivated me over the years. I was always on the lookout for more and better inspirational books. And here’s the great part. I kept a list of them and you can have it for free. I’m going to give them the list to everybody today on the podcast. And if you want to get motivated, you go buy those books and read them and I’ll guarantee you they will set you on fire.

Brett McCollum (16:55.683)
Mmm.

Brett McCollum (17:12.972)
Love it.

Dennis J Henson (17:15.409)
because they’re, you know, they’re the wisdom of the ages all set in just a small group of books.

Brett McCollum (17:24.206)
Yeah. Do you think that may be like a path that led you to writing books yourself or like, did that happen?

Dennis J Henson (17:34.307)
Mmm.

When I started teaching individually, the word got out that I was a super teacher because my students were just burning it up. I’d literally had a line of people waiting to pay me an awful lot of money to teach them. So for that reason, I got invited to expos. I mean, I’ve done the expos all over the United States and I’d speak at other real estate investor groups. So one day on a podcast, podcasts were just getting started.

And there was a real estate podcast and the host said, Dennis, why are your students so successful? You know, there’s all kinds of teachers out here and everything, but your students are just amazing. I said, well, I haven’t changed their habits. You know, if they can form success habits, they will become successful. And then he said, what’s the most important success habit? I thought for a second, I said,

They need to form the habit of reading something positive every day that leads them closer to their goal. If they’ll form that habit, that’s the shortest distance from where they are to where they want to be. So after the podcast, I thought, you know, that was the right answer. Wouldn’t it be great if there were some kind of a tool to help people form that habit? You know, an app or a book. And then it hit me.

Brett McCollum (18:36.11)
Hmm.

Brett McCollum (18:40.92)
of that.

Dennis J Henson (19:00.419)
Dennis, you’ve been collecting these books and poems and short stories and quotes. You can put together a book that people can form a habit regardless of how busy they are. You know, if they have five minutes, they read a poem. If they have 10 seconds, they come home, they’re exhausted and they forgot to read that day, they can read a quote. It takes five seconds, 10 seconds. Or if they’re at the airport, they have 30 minutes, they can read a short story. Or if they have a day off and they have three or four hours they want to read,

can read one of the books listed in the back. So there’s no excuse. Now Brett, may seem simple when I’ve just said it may seem simple.

Brett McCollum (19:40.94)
Right. No, I’m, I love it.

Dennis J Henson (19:42.447)
It’s a 50 year collection. You couldn’t pay somebody to read for 50 years and save the best poems, quotes, and stories. It would cost a fortune. And it’s all here for you in the book. And if you go to Amazon and read the reviews, there’s people there that said, this came just at the right time. I was having trouble with my business. I was down and this just hit the spot.

And it will. I mean, this is one of the most powerful books you could possibly get. And here’s the great part.

If you’re already my age, you can leave it for your grandson or give it to a niece or a nephew. And the deluxe copy is so nice that it’d be a quality gift that they would probably keep for the rest of their life. My aunt gave me a book in 1973 when I graduated from college, and it’s still on my bookshelf. And I can still read her words from 52 years ago or 53. So it’s

Brett McCollum (20:37.198)
Mmm.

Dennis J Henson (20:52.609)
It’s a very powerful thing and just knowing about it solves one of your problems. What do you give someone that’s graduating from high school? What do you give a boy or someone in a wedding party? What do you give the groomsman? Or what do you give someone in a nursing home? You know, people in nursing homes are probably bored to death and they would really enjoy reading about people that they know. And this book is full of people that everybody knows. I mean, everybody knows the name Lincoln, Desi,

or it list goes on and on but did you know what they went through problems that they that they encountered and still got past it and became super super successful people so I think it you know as far as motivation goes

That’s that’s a key. Whether you use this book or not, if you form a habit of reading something positive every day, leads you towards your goal. Brett, Brett, first of all, you have to have a goal. That’s that’s that’s the key right there. People kind of have they got to know what they want. If you know what you want, you’re 95 percent of the way there. Yeah, the other percent.

Brett McCollum (22:07.17)
Yeah, so that’s why I kind of asked you about prior to getting into that because like I knew we’re leading up to this point in the conversation like in our you know audience of real estate investors, know, you having been in this since the 70s, you know and 50 years plus of doing this, you know, like and having you’ve overcome quote-unquote failure or you know, you’ve overcome those things like I imagine that

the mindset that you must have authored that book and probably drew from some of your own personal experience as well and saying, hey, I know that these are the things that got me through this as somebody that went through my own struggles. I anywhere close to that?

Dennis J Henson (22:53.027)
Well, if you read the introduction, that’s exactly what it says. It says, you know, it says, I’ve had my share of successes and I’ve still got a lot of scars from the failures, but I wanted to.

leave some some ideas for people so that they could skip over some of the failures which is really what the book’s about it’s a legacy you know i didn’t write it to make a million dollars although that’d be nice yeah but 50 years from now when somebody reads my book it’ll still be helping people and i will have been gone for a long long time that’s a pretty good feeling you know really

Brett McCollum (23:23.406)
That’d be nice.

Brett McCollum (23:37.004)
Well, that’s the name of the title, right? Real Impact. Yeah.

Dennis J Henson (23:40.207)
That’s right. And it’s well thought out. It’s true. It will make a real impact on your life or someone that you choose to help and give to.

Brett McCollum (23:53.912)
Yeah, so I want to make sure we’re clear on the name of its real impact and daily inspiration. Is that correct?

Dennis J Henson (23:59.437)
It’s Real Impact Daily Inspiration and the website is realimpactbook.com and if you want a free ebook go to realimpactbook.com and scroll to the bottom, click on the link that says podcast guest and there’s no strings attached. You put in your name and email address, you get the download then. It’s not in a couple of days or in a couple of hours, it’s instant.

It’s automatic. And there are no strings. I won’t put you on a mailing list. If you’re a real estate investor, I probably already have your email.

Brett McCollum (24:39.318)
Yeah.

Dennis J Henson (24:40.003)
got 800,000, so I don’t really need your email. if there’s a link there that says when you write more books, I want to be informed. If you click that, then the only time you’ll ever hear from me is when I finish my next book, which will be like Real Impact 2 and 3 and I’m writing.

The Seven Secrets of Success and The Laws of Nature and a couple of others. I’ve got five real estate books that I’ve completed. One of them is in print already and I’ll be releasing the other four every month. I’ll be doing one in March, one in April, one in May and one in June. So you may want to look into those too.

Brett McCollum (25:02.275)
Mmm.

Brett McCollum (25:24.698)
that’s amazing. Yeah. I mean, I just know for, you know, selfishly, you know, as I’m talking to you, like I guys, I encourage you to take, take a look at that. Cause that’s a huge, huge value. I know, especially today, a lot of the real estate investors I talked to might be struggling more than they were yesterday. You know what I mean? Like it’s a, the world’s changing, the market’s changing. This last year and a half has been hard in the real estate world and having a tool.

Because that’s what I look at this as, is it’s a tool to keep that faith, to keep the motivation, keep the inspiration to continue. Because that’s, think, my personal opinion is the definition of success. It’s not just making a lot of money. It’s picking yourself up every day and continuing. So that’s huge, I’m personally looking very forward to reading this.

Dennis J Henson (26:21.486)
Wonderful!

Brett McCollum (26:23.052)
Yeah, well before we head out here for today, Dennis, do you have any, like, I know you’ve got probably so much that you could, you know, get, but if there was one, one or two, one thing that you could leave our audience with as far as maybe a quote or something that you’re like, this has been something that’s really left a lot of impact in your life personally, what would you say to that person?

Dennis J Henson (26:46.895)
Zing Zingler is one of my favorite people. He was an author and a speaker. He started out selling pots and pans. We’re both from Alabama and I visited his hometown in Yazoo City. But his secretary helped me write the chapter about him in the book. He has a quote that’s in actually real impact too. And the quote says, little by little, a little becomes a lot.

Brett McCollum (26:54.723)
Mm-hmm.

Dennis J Henson (27:13.751)
If you just read for 20 minutes a day on a 200 page book, at the end of the year you will have read 20 books. That’s 19 more than the average person. Just think how that will set you apart.

I think that’s a pretty strong thing and he’s another person that you want to follow in his footsteps because I mean I’ve spoken in many cities throughout the United States and in other countries and every time I spoke I always said has anyone here ever heard of Zig Ziglar and all of the hands went up. It was very rare that no one had heard of Zig Ziglar. So Jim Rohn said look

Find out what successful people do and do that.

Well, Zig read for three hours every day, every single day, three hours. Well, maybe that’s a clue. I don’t know. I’m saying just read something every day. It could be a quote. Zig said read 20 minutes every day. So we’re both saying the same thing, just in a little bit of different way. I think that’s very impactful. If you want to become a successful real estate investor, read something every day about short sales, subject to private money.

Probe something every day and soon you’ll be teaching people who are coming to you.

Brett McCollum (28:37.55)
There you go. Yeah, man, that’s really amazing. Well, Dennis, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. We’re gonna make sure we have everything in the show notes for everybody to reach out to you and grab a copy of your book there. But man, it’s been a pleasure having you guys. Thanks so much for listening today and we’ll catch you guys on the next one. Take care everybody.