Applying Airline Efficiency to Property Management

Mike Hambright (00:00.736)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with the one and only Steve Rosenberg. We have not, you were on my podcast a long time ago. We’ve talked a couple times recently, cause I know you’re gonna be speaking at a couple of my events. And you’re one of those guys that I think very highly of. And I always wish we talked more frequently than we do. And it’s been a little while. I know we talked fairly recently, but great to have you here.

Steve (00:22.392)
Thanks, man. It’s great to see you, Mike, as always, brother.

Mike Hambright (00:24.628)
Yeah, and we’re gonna be talking, by the way, obviously Steve is, he’s in Houston, I’m in Dallas. So if you’re not from Texas, that’s actually pretty far apart. But just down the road, as they say in Texas at least. But we’re gonna be talking about kind of mindset for success today and really kind of how to build a more profitable business with more recurring revenues and how you can become a better leader in your business today. So Steve, before we jump into this.

Steve (00:32.952)
Yeah, Texas is big.

Mike Hambright (00:49.622)
When I first had you on my Flip Nerd podcast, I should have looked up when that was, but it’s a long time ago. You guys had just started building, I think you had just relatively started building your property management business, and then you built it up and sold it off and changed a whole bunch of stuff since then. Am I saying that right?

Steve (00:55.822)
been a while.

Steve (01:08.258)
Yeah, we had a, geez, we built it to over a thousand single family properties. We were in Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, and we were starting the franchise model. We were gonna franchise it, not only in the United States, but in Australia as well. And, you know, 60 % of our company was in Mexico with virtual assistants. We were growing, at one point we were the fastest single family property management company in Texas.

best marketing in North America. won a bunch of awards and we were just kind of on that March. You know, we were just, we were just, we’re in seventh gear, man. We were humming. and then a venture capital firm came along and, they had 10,000 properties. They were very heavily funded. long story short, we ended up selling to them. We exited. I became a VP for them, with 10,000 properties, started learning a little bit about venture capital and kind of how that realm works.

The main way that we grew it was my background of being an international airline pilot. So I fly a Boeing 777 for United Airlines. And so we took the ideology and the mindset of how airlines run. And we basically, for lack of a better term, injected that into our company and made our company run like an airline. And that’s how we were able to have so many virtual assistants running smooth, efficient. And we just kind of kept that concept of using it like an airline.

and always stayed top of the funnel thinking about how to grow it globally, not just locally.

Mike Hambright (02:38.346)
Yeah, maybe could you share a couple of how, what are the comparisons to an airline? It’s like a couple of processes or a couple of high level things to just kind of make that connection.

Steve (02:46.092)
Yeah, mean, look, yeah, I mean, if you, if the, the epiphany or the light bulb moment I had was one day I was sitting at the gate, right? And I was waiting, I was waiting to take a flight out. was a, it was a triple seven going to Tokyo and you know, our business was, was for lack of a better term, a shit show, right? We were a dumpster fire. And I was trying to figure out how to solve these problems because we were growing so fast. We are growing ourselves into bankruptcy. So like it, which to me made no sense, but we just had so many problems.

And as I’m watching this plane, you gotta imagine a triple seven, it’s a, holds 350 passengers. Gross takeoff weight is about 750,000 pounds. And it’s the length of a football field. So this thing, so basically it’s like an apartment complex with wings, right? So this thing comes to the gate and I’m just sitting there and I’m just watching, like not really paying attention. Cause I’ve seen it a thousand times, but I, for whatever reason, I was looking at it through a different lens that day. And as I’m watching, I see 300 passengers get off.

Mike Hambright (03:31.062)
you

Steve (03:45.804)
I see all of their bags getting offloaded and dispersed to cargo bins and other flights that they’re going to maintenance starts walking around. They’re checking safety of flight items. Cleaners come in. They clean out all the trash and catering comes the other direction. They clean. They they’re restocking water, food consumables, the fuelers. They hook up these fuel valve lines and they push 250,000 pounds of fuel into this aircraft. And it takes an hour for this to happen. While that’s happening.

Flight attendants are checking back of the aircraft, safety of flight items, seat belts, emergency exits, and the pilots were upfront. We’re checking routing, weather, circuit breakers, emergency routes, alternates, all that stuff. During that time, 350 people get back on this aircraft. All of their bags are loaded. And within one hour, this plane buttons up, pushes back, and not one person had to talk to anyone else to make that happen.

And I’m sitting there watching this going, that is a perfect fricking system because I could be in London, England, Sydney, Australia, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, every second of the day, somewhere in the world. This is happening multiple times a second. And I thought to myself, if I could run, if an airline can do this, because the guy in Rio de Janeiro pumping the fuel is not the smartest guy in the world, but planes don’t run out of fuel. So why?

Mike Hambright (04:45.001)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (05:02.271)
Right.

Steve (05:14.72)
it’s because of the systems catch the mistakes. So I thought, okay, we need to make our business system centric, not people centered. Businesses run off of systems, not people. People make the, they can enhance the business, but they don’t make it better. So I probably a little bit more than you want it, but that’s, that’s how we started running it. Cause we’re like, everything has a system, everything has a checklist and, and, and the way the airlines, you know, I mean, Boeing,

Mike Hambright (05:17.408)
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Mike Hambright (05:31.956)
No, that’s great. That’s great.

Steve (05:41.582)
in the last 27 years of being an airline pilot, they probably spent millions of dollars teaching me the ideology of how to get a $250 million airplane from Houston, Texas to Tokyo, Japan, which is a business safe, secure sound on time without any issues. And how do you do it at scale? And so that was really the thing. was like, how do we do this globally? Like, how do we operate in Australia? How do we operate in other countries with our business model?

Mike Hambright (06:01.098)
Yeah, that’s amazing.

Steve (06:11.554)
The answer is you can. We’re normally the ones that are the limiting factor, the Peter principles as we talked about earlier.

Mike Hambright (06:17.302)
Yeah, yeah, we’re gonna talk about that again, I think. you said something, we’ve got a number of things we’re gonna talk about today, but one of the things that you said a few minutes ago was that 2025 was a new year.

no matter who you voted for, there’s a new sheriff in town, there’s new stuff going on. think a lot of entrepreneurs generally are excited about the possibilities of, there appears to be a better business environment going on, or it will be for entrepreneurs, and there’s a lot of focus on.

hopefully decreasing inflation, maybe getting interest rates down, all those things that should benefit us as entrepreneurs and small businesses. But one of things that you said is like, hey, it’s a new year, but is it a new you, right? Have you changed? And I think that’s when I brought up the Peter principle. There’s a lot of people that have maxed out on their ability to move their business forward because they’re still the same person they were in the past. So maybe share your thoughts on it, because you brought it up, so maybe share your thoughts on that.

Steve (07:14.254)
Yeah, you know, I listen, as you know, I get, I’m fortunate enough that I’m asked to speak on many stages at events and masterminds. Um, and I ask people like who, who, who is just like once is excited about 2025. It’s a new year. It’s a new environment. It’s a new presidency, new politics, new economic era, we hope. And everyone’s like, yeah, I’m excited. I’m like, so what have you done to change? Like what, what, what have you done to change? And everyone’s kind of quiet. I’m like,

So if you’ve had five years of pain, right, whether it’s, whether it’s a mental pain, physical pain, whatever pain, if you don’t change, you’re going to have another five years of pain. Like your input equals your output. The actions that you’ve taken over the last two, three, four years, five years are going to be the results of what happened over the next two, three, four years. And what I’ve learned is, you know, there’s, there’s a tactic. Tactics are things that change with time.

So let’s say, for example, if I said, Mike, let’s go skiing in Minnesota. Well, the first question is, is, it summertime or is it winter time? Because we would use snow skis in the winter, but we would use water skis in the summer. It’s a different tactic. And so I ask people, is it possible that you are still running your real estate business with a tactic that doesn’t work anymore with the COVID tactic and you’re expecting a different result, but you are doing the same thing. And I was

Mike Hambright (08:30.794)
Yeah.

Steve (08:37.016)
was telling you, we’re at one of my friends, we all know his mastermind. I was talking to a guy and he said to me, we were talking at lunch and we’re having conversations. He goes, know, man, goes, I have to say, said, listening to you talk, he goes, I’ve been working on my business for the last couple of years. He goes, I don’t think I’ve been working on myself as diligently as my business has been growing. I’m like, well, that’s the law of the lid. Like you hit a glass ceiling. And the challenge, Mike, is,

We go to school as employees, right? That’s what we’re taught in school. Be an employee, get a good job, get in debt. That’s what we’re taught. All of us entrepreneurs, what we’re doing is not natural. What we’re doing is completely off the grid. But the thing is, is we play, many of us play by the rules of being an employee still. Perfect example. I ask people when I’m speaking on events, do you want to make an extra 29 % more per year? Everyone’s like, yeah. I’m like, work, weekends, and holidays.

Mike Hambright (09:10.688)
Mm-hmm.

Steve (09:36.078)
Whoa, I don’t want to do that. Well, you’re missing out on 104 days of productivity because you are playing the employee mentality of saying, I deserve weekends off. Weekends are made for employees, not for business owners. I’m not saying you have to do it, but that’s where leverage comes in and you have team members. You systemize it, you automate it, outsource it, but it still has to keep running. Your business should be running 24 seven. And so a lot of times like, Oh, I deserve the weekends. No, no.

That’s where it changes when you’re in a business owner, you don’t get to play by the same rules. Many of us are employees faking like we’re running a business. And at some point it finds out who the frauds are, you know? And I’m sure you and I have been doing this a long time. We see it.

Mike Hambright (10:18.005)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:21.354)
Yeah, we talked a little bit upfront about the Kiyosaki cashflow quadrant, which the lower left is you move from employee to self-employed. Some number of people move to the business owner box where they have employees and they have teams and they have systems and processes and things like that. And a lot of people that are self-employed have processes and systems and maybe a few employees, but the business is still dependent upon them. they, if they go on vacation or they get sick or whatever, the business is punched in the gut, right? And so there’s a lot of entrepreneurs, I think that kind of get stuck in that lower

that quadrant, the self-employed box. So they can put CEO or president or owner on their business card, but the truth is, is the business owns them. unfortunately, some people get stuck there because either their mindset’s not big enough, they petered out, or they’re just playing too small and not thinking big enough, I guess.

Steve (11:09.826)
Yeah, listen, I think, and I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m sure if we go back and ask ourselves, what would we have done differently? as you know, you and I have come up same timeframe. The only thing that I could think of when people like, Steve, if you go to your younger self, what would you say? I’m like, I would have failed faster and bigger. I would have had bigger failures because I would have learned from those and I would be further along in my life. I don’t think anyone ever says, Hey,

man, I really have excelled from wherever thought I was gonna be. Most people are like, yeah, I wish I was further along in life. for me, and we all know that comes from failing. It doesn’t come from winning. Winning, we don’t learn anything from the wins. We all remember our losses. I still remember bad deals I bought and accepted emotionally. And the only thing I would say is I would have lost bigger. Like I would have swung for the fences early on, but it was that imposter syndrome. when you think of the word imposter syndrome,

Mike Hambright (11:48.0)
Right. Right.

Mike Hambright (11:54.39)
Yeah.

Steve (12:06.968)
The imposter syndrome is because I was an employee mentality. My identity is that I was an employee faking like I was a business owner. I didn’t have the identity of a business owner. I didn’t walk like it. I didn’t talk like it. I didn’t act like it. wasn’t around them. So I had imposter syndrome. So when people talk about imposter syndrome, like, just push through. It’s like, really ask yourself, why do you have that? It’s because your belief pattern is that you do not believe.

that your identity is a business owner. So it’s a reset that we have to have. And listen, I had to do that when I got furloughed during 9-11. My belief is that I was a pilot. was like, that’s like people having those lives of all this money. Like that’s not for me. That’s not what I do because I am a pilot. And I had to change my identity to say, why not? Like, why can’t I have that life? Like everyone else has. I see these real estate investors with all this money living this life like,

Why can’t I? And the only way I could change that is I had to break that identity. I had to go, you know what? Enough is enough. I’m stepping in. And I tell people all the time, like whether it’s at an event or whatever they do, when you leave, you are killing off one of your identities. You’re either killing off your future self of who you want to be, or you are killing off the future of who you don’t want to be. Your choice. But when you walk out, you’re not taking both of them with you.

You are killing off one. You decide when you walk out this room. And it’s the identity that we have to change. So sorry, I went on a tirade. I’ll stop.

Mike Hambright (13:41.128)
Yeah. No, that’s good. I thought that’s good stuff. I think a lot of people struggle with, guess, the beliefs.

as well on the sales side, right? they, sometimes people are, they don’t really, they feel like they have to convince everybody to buy their thing. They’re like, you gotta, you know, you gotta quote, kind of close somebody and you appreciate, you know, you and yourself, the approach of how you convince somebody to buy. Let’s talk about kind of the techniques that people use or the beliefs they have that are limiting them on the sales side.

Steve (14:11.726)
I could talk all day on this. love sales. I love the psychology of why people buy. I think fundamentally it’s like, it cringes me when someone’s like, I took down a deal. like, what is it? What are you like a hostage terrorist? Like, what do you you took it down? Like I just, for some reason, it’s just, it’s like you’re going to battle. And I don’t think that’s not sales. Sales is a dance, right? First question is, do you have a solution to someone’s problem?

Mike Hambright (14:25.462)
I

Steve (14:39.682)
Very simple. Like if I, if I was selling hamburgers and I created a hamburger stand and I put it outside of a buffet restaurant, I’m probably not going to sell any. However, if I took that same hamburger stand and I put it outside of a, Texas A football game, when it let out, I’d sell all the hamburgers. So the question is, is did the hamburger change or did the crowd change? The crowd changed because I found a hungry crowd. So the first question is, is am I putting my product in front of a hungry crowd?

that starts going to brand domination. For example, when we think of Jacuzzi, we think of spas. When I think of a tissue, I think of Kleenex. When I think of blank industry, do I think of your company? Because if you don’t, then you don’t have brand domination because you are sharing the market. So the first question is, is are you even putting your product and your name in front of the right target? That’s that’s that and that’s more of a marketing, but

You know, there’s a, there’s a, if you were to, if you were to look at your target, like when you’re hunting, right? If we go, if we go to your land and we go hunting, we’re not just taking rocks and throwing it at shit on the side of the road. Like there’s a certain time of year, certain weapon, certain caliber bullet, certain geographic area, certain animal, certain age. Like we’re getting very, very focused to sniper effect. We’re not just throwing shit at things. So why is that not the same for when you’re hunting your target client? There’s an age.

There’s a demographic, there’s a gender, there’s an income level. And most importantly, there’s the physiographics, meaning what problem did you solve for them? Because once you know what problem you’re solving and you go, let’s say I was a contractor and like, well, you know, if I found my target client, I would ask my target client, just curious, what are the top three reasons you used me? Well, you showed up on time, you were transparent with your contract and you did what you said you’re gonna do.

If Mike Hambrite is my target client, what are the odds there’s other mics out there that have the same exact problem? That bait caught Mike. Why wouldn’t I do that again? So the first question is, is are you even fishing in the right pond to catch the mics? Or are you catching someone that you don’t even know? Right? Cause as we know, there’s costs associated with that. Now, once you know the problem, are you solving their problem with a solution based? Because if you can solve a problem, you’re solving it on value.

Steve (17:05.922)
you don’t put a price on value. Nobody buys on price. They buy on solving their problem. It’s kind like when I buy a shovel, I’m not buying a shovel. I’m buying a hole in the ground so I could plant a tree so I can have shade. I’m buying shade, but people are so focused on the shovel. It’s like, no, no, focus on the future pacing of where that’s going. So the challenge is, is we, or not we, many salespeople, they sell on data. People don’t buy on data.

Mike Hambright (17:20.309)
Right.

Steve (17:34.338)
We buy on emotions. Look, you were talking about buying this cool mower, right? I’m sure you paid a shitload of money for it, right? In the last 12 months, we have all probably bought something that was overpriced and we bought it anyways. The next 12 months, we will probably buy something that’s overpriced, right? Both times. Why? It doesn’t make logical sense. because it’s an emotional pull. But most people that sell, they sell on numbers and data and that’s nobody buys on that. And that’s the problem.

Mike Hambright (18:02.132)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and some do, some are always gonna go with the cheapest thing, right? But if you’re a business owner, like price is a race to the bottom. So that shouldn’t probably be.

Steve (18:05.198)
Tell you, yeah.

Mike Hambright (18:12.874)
your customer. think that’s the unfortunate thing. A lot of entrepreneurs are, they’ll take any business they can get at any time. And, you know, I actually just had another show here recently talking about something totally different, but this guy does land deals and he was like, you know, I just realized like the bigger the land deals, they’re no, the work is no harder. And I make like eight to 10 times more. So we just started going after bigger land deals because he’s like, they, you know, I’m going to have some drama, but there’s room in there to pay for things that pop up or the other deals you’re

trying to force them to work and you come out the other end and there’s nothing left. And so same type of thing as a lot of business owners, you you want to be able to differentiate yourself probably based on service or something else. You want to be able to pay for your brand and afford a team and all those things. And if you have to be so scrappy that you have, you can’t afford a team and you have to do all the work, then you’re right back in that self-employed box and you’re fighting over scraps because you’re all your focus on is price and it’s nobody’s going to win there.

Steve (19:11.384)
Well, and you know, here’s the here’s the yeah, because you become a commodity. And so you’re no one wins for being the cheapest, right? You win by being the most expensive or in the highest price value. But if you look at a business, right, everyone’s business stands on three legs. It’s monetization, systemization and duplication. So monetization is marketing and sales. It’s making money in your business. Money monetization is like oxygen for us is what money is for a business.

Systemization is what I told you about the airlines making your business run without you. And the third phase is duplication, meaning duplicating yourself, duplicating your team, duplicating your systems, duplicating your cities that you’re operating in. So I ask people, which one do you think is more important? Like which one can you do without? The answer is you’re not going to see a two legged stool stand. So you need all three, but which one do you focus on first? I think for any business, if they’re doing under

It’s really under 50 million in revenue, but let’s just say 10 million in revenue a year. They need more money. Like money will solve short-term problems, right? You add a zero to your yearly revenue, you’ve probably solved some problems because it’s giving you some breathing room to hire staff, to hire technology, to systemize and automate because you can have the best systems in the world. You can have the best properties in the world, but if you’re not making money, does it matter?

No, because it’s a race to the bottom. So if you ask me like, what’s the most important, you have to learn how to monetize your business. And that’s one thing I ask people like, who’s good in sales. And they’re like, yeah, I’m not good in sales. I’m like, no, you are good. You convinced yourself that you suck at sales. So you actually sold yourself on the fact that you’re no good. So congratulations. You’re just selling yourself on the wrong thing. And so my point is, is we don’t focus on what’s immediate. The dumpster fire in front of us

is lack of monetization, lack of revenue coming in, recurring revenue, reoccurring revenue, all the ancillary fees that we can make from different things. We’re just so focused on building this great system, great product, but we don’t even know if the market wants it. And we’re not even focused on selling it, you know? And I, I go on and on about scripts and all that, but I,

Mike Hambright (21:27.06)
Yeah. Let’s talk about reoccurring revenue a little bit because so if you’re flipping houses or you’re selling real estate, that’s a little bit tougher because you you’re probably, I have bought multiple houses from people over the years, but that’s rare. But a lot of other service businesses, it blows my mind.

how much and I’m a different consumer now than I was in the past. I used to go in and say, show me the cheapest stuff. Quite frankly, now when I search, usually am like, show me what’s the most expensive because I just value my time and I appreciate higher quality work or whatever it is. But I can’t tell you how many, I I throw too much money around at things, people, things, services, whatever. And, but.

I can’t tell you the last time that somebody that I’ve spent sometimes a lot of money with has reached back out to me and said, do you want fries with that? Or reach back out and said like, hey, it’s been 90 days. It’s time for an update or we need to do this again. Like I feel like I’m chasing everybody. And I’m, I’m very confident that most businesses, I say this all the time. If they just did a better job at follow up and they focus on following up with even customers they have that might spend more money with them, they could double triple Forex their business like that, but almost no,

businesses do it. It’s crazy.

Steve (22:39.95)
Dude, I’ll tell you this. I talk about referral programs. If you can target, I teach people how to grade their clients A through D. We all know a D client is like D in school. The Bs are the solid majority. The A’s are solid majority, but they’re raving fans. So they’re referring people to you. And I’ll ask people, does anybody know, do you guys all realize that referrals are your highest margin, easiest conversion? And it was like, yeah, I know that. I’m like, great.

Raise your hand if you have a referral program written down, documented and implemented and no one raises his hand. like, so do you know how many people, if Mike was my client, how many statistically, how many people are Mike worth? It’s 5.7. So Mike is worth 5.7 referrals of people just like Mike. So I’m like, you’re sitting here going into a cold red choppy ocean that’s full of blood of everyone else fighting.

that you are trying to beat people to the dollar because you’re a commodity. They don’t know you. They don’t like you. They don’t trust you. So no transaction is going to happen. You got to fight tooth and nail when you’ve got someone who might go and, man, I got some friends, dude. They would love to talk to you. Mike, get out of my way. I’m busy. I got to go get these cold Facebook leads. Like, dude, I got to scrape data. Like Mike, like you’re, you’re in my way. Mike’s like, I got someone for you. And so we don’t even do this with our current clients. And so I’ve, you know, obviously I show people how to do this.

And what I, once they see it, they’re like, holy crap, like, I can’t believe this. I’m not marketing. I’m like, you are marketing. This is a marketing strategy. You’re just using your inner circle. You’re inside the bullseye. You’re inside the gates. Stay inside the gates with your note. They already know you like you and trust you. Like you had said, a wallet open stays open. Why is it that we assume that when a client does one transaction with us, whether they buy a house, whether you flip them a property, whether they’re a tenant,

We just assume they’re done, but we never ever actually asked them, Hey, you ever think of like, we actually used to have tenants that became investors and bought rental properties from us, or we sold them properties because they eventually they don’t turn into sugar and melt away. They actually want to buy a house. So we started creating affiliates with, you know, credit repair people, and we got rev shares from all these different things. So we were making ancillary fees and helping these people get their credit repaired and other stuff. And all of a sudden now they’re prime candidates.

Mike Hambright (24:46.581)
Wow.

Mike Hambright (24:53.6)
Yeah.

Steve (25:05.838)
to buy a property from us. So now we are ringing the cash register multiple times. A lot of times when people have rental properties, they go, I’ve got recurring revenue. No, no, it’s reoccurring revenue. The difference Netflix is recurring. Reoccurring is I have a 12, I have a contract that is good for 12 months. I’m just not getting paid all at once. I’m getting paid in 12 month increments on one contract.

That is not reoccurring. That is reoccurring. there’s a people need to there’s subtleties to what you’re doing. It’s like, it’s not, it’s you, only have one contract with that person. Now if they keep signing up, yes, but there’s so many ways to use ancillary fees and make money. People just think it’s a one-time transaction. The one thing about property management, just like in the airline, it’s a nickel and dime industry. Like it, love it, or leave it, hate it. doesn’t matter. That’s the industry.

Mike Hambright (25:58.774)
Mm-hmm.

Steve (26:03.5)
It’s like saying, I don’t like the, I don’t like the ocean cause it’s wet. Well, don’t fucking go in the ocean then. Cause that’s the world we play in when it comes to managing and running properties. The problem is, is they’re looking at it from a tenant perspective or they’re looking at it from somebody as opposed to going, Hey, how can we make more MRU more monthly revenue per unit on this dwelling? It was at 2000, you got up to 2500 Steve. Wow. That is pretty good. How do we get it to 3000? We don’t think that way. And boy.

Does this investor want to buy any more properties? You know, I mean, I don’t know if you do this, but I’ve invested with people in deals, right? Very rarely do they ever ask me, hey, would you like to invest in another deal with me? Or they cash me out, hey, we’re doing another. It’s so rare, Mike. I’m like, and I don’t offer. I’m like, okay, obviously they’re not interested. And because they’re like, Steve, get out of the way. I got to go find more cold leads. I’m like, you don’t understand.

Mike Hambright (26:48.256)
Right.

Mike Hambright (26:56.117)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (26:59.861)
Right.

Steve (27:02.774)
And they never say, Steve, who do you know? You’re an airline pilot. There’s 17,000 pilots that work for United Airlines. Chances are there’s a few of us that would be willing to put money into deals. No one ever asks me. I’m like, well, if you never asked, you’re never going to get.

Mike Hambright (27:12.512)
Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Hambright (27:17.268)
Yeah, yeah. Hey, I wanted to see if you could share some thoughts on…

I know you’ve done a little work with Hermosy and not that this is his concept necessarily, but this idea of the irresistible offer, because we talked a little bit about different trades. there’s a lot of real estate investors that watch this show. How do you stand out from something that, know, real estate investors very much feel like they’re a commodity, I think, or they act like they’re a commodity. A lot of service businesses act like a commodity. And so how do you stand out? mean, obviously there’s some ways, coming from a branding standpoint, you could stand out.

How do you stand out to make an irresistible offer that would really separate you in your industry? Any thoughts on that? You’re like me, you’ve got opinions on everything. Yeah, that’s right.

Steve (27:57.322)
I’ve got tons of them. mean, from, from, just ask me, I’ll tell you. Yeah. So, you know, what, what it comes down to Mike is first of all, like what problem are you solving for them? And are you, know, this is my opinion. When you want an irresistible offer, you’ve got to take them through pain before you can show someone pleasure because people, right. They may not even know they have a problem.

you’re providing a solution and they’re going to go, not my problem, because you did not verbalize it. You didn’t clarify that. So you have to give them so much free value. It’s kind of like you got to take them through hell so they can get heaven, right? So the question is, is if you’re just like, you should buy my house. It’s so amazing. It’s so great. As opposed to you could say like, you know, this property has gone up in value 10 % year over year. And they’re estimating with the increase in population in the next three years, it could be a 20 % increase.

The, what that means to you is the property would have been worth this. Then it was worth this. Now it’s worth this. And in three years from now, it could be worth this. So you could be losing out potentially on $400,000 by waiting. it’s people operate out of fear of loss, not for opportunity of gain. You know, if I said, Mike, you know, you should stop smoking. Yeah, I know. Mike, you should stop smoking. Yeah. I know. If all of a sudden you’re like, dude, I got lung cancer. I need to stop smoking. Yeah.

And you have 30 days to live. until it becomes your should becomes a must. And so the question is, is what do we normally sell on? We sell on data. People don’t buy on data. So the, I’ve got an acronym, you know, when, I’m, when I’m negotiating, and one of the, one of the, the, terms in the acronym, obviously it’s, it’s, establishing rapport, established report, a subconscious level. We do business with who we like. If I don’t like you,

I am not going to do business with you. Next thing I do do is I’ve got to come up with an upfront agreement. Hey, do we both agree? We’re not going to waste each other’s time, right? I don’t want to waste your time, Mike. Listen, you’re a busy guy. I, know what? And you’re going to say, yeah, I, and I’m going say, look, out of respect for me. Is it okay if we don’t waste my time either? Because you know, this is what I do for a living. I want to make sure that we’re fit. Yeah. But if we do both agree, um, we’re going to make the next steps to move forward. Since we just said, we’re not going to waste each other’s time. What’d I say? We’re going to sign an agreement.

Steve (30:23.086)
Now, Mike, tell me again what’s going on. me, give me an understanding. And I’m just asking question after question. See when you and, and her Mosi says this a lot, you know, be smoke when you’re closing, meaning never make a statement because if you make a statement, they can hang onto that and they can have, no, that’s not true, Steve. That’s, but if I ask a question, there’s nothing to hang onto. So it’s like smoke. can’t hang onto it. So

There’s a whole conversation here that the challenge here’s, here’s the basic challenge from a fundamental level. If you look at a professional golfer like Tiger Woods, what is one thing, you know, he probably does every single day. He probably practices Michael Jordan. He would practice eight hours a day for a two hour game. Any professional football team. do they do Monday through Saturday practice? I talked to professional salespeople. They make their money off of closing deals.

I go, how often do you practice? Like, don’t practice, Steve. I’m good. Really? So you’re telling me that like all the professional athletes that make their money off of their success and they practice nonstop, but you miraculously don’t need to. And you’re wondering why your paycheck is not the same as Tiger Woods. Interesting. But you call yourself a professional. So I just, so it’s the, know I’m kind of going off screen here for what you were asked. The challenges is

Mike Hambright (31:24.054)
All

Steve (31:49.558)
It’s not one thing, you know, it’s not a silver bullet. It’s hundreds of BBs that need to throw at someone to make sure you’re really solving your problem. Cause I believe, you know, we talked about this earlier. If you, like I tell people, like if you ethically and morally believe that you are helping someone and without a doubt, you’re like, man, this person needs what I have. Why would you ever take no for an answer? Right? The average time someone says no in a transactions is 8.1 times.

My question is this, how many times do you ask for the close in your sales step process? Because if you’re not at least asking on average 8.1, you’re probably missing out on a lot of money. 80 % of all closes happen between the fifth and 12th contact. So I tell people, I’m like, how many steps in your process? They’re like, three. I’m like, congratulations. You are fucking pissing out money out the back because you are losing. You’re you’re not even in the game till you get to five. And they’re like, oh. They’re like, well, it’s up here. I’m like, no, that doesn’t because it’s not systemized. You can’t duplicate.

Mike Hambright (32:31.232)
Wow.

Steve (32:48.854)
If you go to Cancun and get hit by a chicken bus tomorrow, your business stops. It’s got to be systemized. It’s got to be on target, on paper, documented and systemized. And it’s got to be practiced over. It’s got to, like I tell people like, you know, your birthday, your last name, the city you were born in, you can repeat those like that. You don’t have to think about it because it’s in your subconscious. That is how good you have to be at knowing your scripts and your objection handlers. It’s got to be something where you don’t even think about.

I need to think about it. Hey. And then you go into your objection. But that’s the professional that practices. And that’s the difference between a professional salesperson that’s solving a problem and someone who’s just trying to make money and make a paycheck.

Mike Hambright (33:32.82)
Yeah, that’s good stuff. Steve, I know we could talk all day, but we unfortunately don’t have time to do that. hey, I appreciate you sharing some insights with us today. I think we both have a passion for helping small businesses and appreciate you sharing your insights with us. Yeah.

Steve (33:37.556)
Yeah.

Steve (33:46.018)
My pleasure, man. Listen, hopefully someone gets something out of this and they can take it away and do something on their own.

Mike Hambright (33:49.866)
Yeah.

Well, sometimes if it takes eight follow-ups, maybe this is the first one. We’re kind of breaking the ice here and they can come learn more about you. If they wanted to learn more about what you’ve got going on, Steve, where do they go?

Steve (34:04.782)
Yeah, they can go to, uh, they can go to my website, Steve Rosenberg.com. it’s R O Z E N B E R G.com. And also, uh, you know, they can find me on any social media channel. Um, Instagram is Rosenberg, Steve, Facebook, all the, all the, all the standard ones. Um, if you Google me, you’ll find me it’s, it’s pretty simple, but, um, yeah, any, any way I can help a lot of times it’s sometimes they just need a perspective of, know, Hey, I’m doing this. What do you think? Is this a good idea or a bad idea? And will tell you.

Mike Hambright (34:21.056)
Awesome.

Steve (34:33.386)
one thing I can be nice or honest and normally it’s, it’s, it’s honest.

Mike Hambright (34:36.662)
Yeah, there you go. Awesome. Good stuff. Well, thanks again, Steve. Thank you. Yeah. And guys, if you’re listening to this today, guys and gals, I say guys universally, right? Is, you know, if you have a small business, it’s an amazing, it can be an amazing vehicle for the freedom you want in your life. But the reality is, is you have to be a different person to kind of run it than you have.

Steve (34:42.328)
Thank you.

Mike Hambright (34:58.3)
and you have to find ways to continuously grow as a leader and thinking bigger and things like that. So hope you guys got some good value from today. Go check out Steve and learn more. He’s a mover and a shaker and he’s got all sorts of stuff going on. Great content online, so make sure you follow him. We’ll see you all in the next show. Have a good day.