REI Success Secrets: Learn How to Minimize Your Mistakes Fast

Brett McCollum (00:00.548)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Brett McCollum, and I’m here today with Eddie Austin. And today we’re going to be talking about making less mistakes, guys. We could all make less mistakes. Before we do, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 2 to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Eddie, how are you, man?

Eddie Austin (00:27.074)
I’m doing fantastic. Absolutely great, man. It’s a good day to do a podcast and just share knowledge and just help people make less mistakes because man, lessons cost money and good lessons cost lots.

Brett McCollum (00:42.614)
And that’s, we’re gonna deep, we’re gonna definitely deep dive this. I’m excited. It was really good catching up with you, man, and get to know you a little bit pre-show. Before we kind of get into it, because I want to talk, you know, into depth about this, let’s give some history, some background, that sort of thing. Like, catch us up to speed, man. Who is Eddie Austin?

Eddie Austin (00:48.258)
Yeah.

Eddie Austin (00:59.116)
Yeah, man. So, I’m originally a West Palm Beach, Florida boy. was born there and my family was pretty well from there and, I was raised in a household entrepreneurs. so I seen, you know, a lot of lessons throughout my life, growing up and then, man, I decided to, be homes. Well, I didn’t decide my family had decided that would be best if I was homeschooled because I just thought much differently. So I had some trouble in school.

And from that, you know, I just was always an out of the box thinker. So my dad’s like, you know what? My son would accelerate if he was in skilled trade. So I was about 12 years old, went to Tennessee. My brother-in-law had a little welding shop and I learned my first skilled trade at 12 years old. And that was how I was going to retire it, you know, 40 years old. Cause I don’t know why when I was running around, I was telling everybody like I wanted to retire by 40. And of course they’re like,

Brett McCollum (01:55.716)
Mmm.

Eddie Austin (01:57.11)
Everybody thinks I was nuts, but, actually retired from corporate America at 36. And, it wasn’t without a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning lessons along the way. But, yeah, I’ve always been, tied to a real estate guy. My dad was a home builder. I started building homes with him at a young age and then progressed into fixing and flipping homes. then.

Brett McCollum (02:02.862)
Wow.

Eddie Austin (02:23.15)
throughout business, you know, I started several businesses at one time, my wife and I ran eight companies and I learned a lot. tell you that, not the brag. I tell you that because we learned a lot of lessons, hard lessons throughout that. We made a lot of mistakes. It wasn’t seven streams of income that did it for us. It wasn’t real estate that made us extremely wealthy. It was focusing on one stream of income and tell you could invest in the other things that made you income. And that was your second stream.

Brett McCollum (02:28.929)
wow.

Brett McCollum (02:37.977)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (02:52.834)
third stream of income. It wasn’t the seven streams make you rich. It’s not true.

Brett McCollum (02:58.68)
Yeah, man, there’s a lot to unpack, right? Let’s rewind back if we can, all right? So, 12 years old. So, my wife and we homeschool our children. yeah, you’re 12 at this point. I think probably based on kind of context of how it was more of a…

Eddie Austin (03:03.223)
Yes, sir.

Yeah.

Yep.

Eddie Austin (03:14.283)
Awesome.

Brett McCollum (03:24.554)
something in school was just missing for you, it sounded like in the traditional sense of school. Can you talk a little bit more maybe, because I’m selfishly, I’m very curious. What does that mean?

Eddie Austin (03:35.19)
Yeah. So, you know, you have the traditional curriculum and the way that, you know, you’re supposed to be taught. So, you know, the school system has a way that they teach you math. They teach you things. For me, I just, I always thought much differently and I had a very traumatic experience when I was a very young age and probably some things got rewired a little bit maybe, but

Brett McCollum (03:44.878)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (04:03.498)
I always thought with the end in mind, so say you had a math problem and there was a curriculum that we were supposed to follow to figure out what that math, what the answer to that problem was. I would just come up with a different way. I would still get the answer, but I came up with it a faster way. And I was, I would look at the chalkboard and I would think, why are we taking all these steps? I could put this together and this together and I can come up with the same answer.

Brett McCollum (04:33.667)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (04:33.975)
And, you know, the teachers would, you know, not recommend that. What’s that?

Brett McCollum (04:39.512)
Cause that’s how we do it. Cause they would say that, cause that’s how we do it, J W that’s how you’re supposed to do it.

Eddie Austin (04:45.614)
Exactly. So, you know, they wouldn’t really condole that activity. They didn’t exactly necessarily like that. So I was in a lot of like counseling and stuff like that. And essentially at the end of the day, they’re like, Hey, my son can do the test and he comes up with it. And is he special? Maybe, but he’s doing the same work. He’s doing it quicker. He comes up with the answer. We’re not seeing the problem here.

And they’re like, look, your son’s just not teachable. He’s just not able to be taught. He gets upset whenever he’s challenged. And, you know, that resonates into fighting and stuff like that. So, you know, your son’s just, you know, even special education is not working. So I went into homeschool and I love to be challenged. So I took two grades a year, during high school and I graduated two years early because I just wanted more. just, you just give me.

the biggest problem you got and let me solve it. And that’s what I wanted to do. So I operate best when just everything’s on top of me and I just sort my way through it.

Brett McCollum (05:54.212)
Yeah, I think if we like rewind it back to that time, obviously adult version of Eddie is, know, looking at kid version of Eddie, right? I think we can look at it and go, probably what the issue was is it’s not that I’m not being like I’m not teachable. I’m not challenged. You know, and not being challenged felt frustrating. and I’ll be I don’t know you or anything, but I’m probably.

Eddie Austin (06:13.474)
Yes, exactly.

It was.

Brett McCollum (06:23.989)
I have a, my daughter is very much in that space of like, she’s not like traditional schools would be rough for her because she’s, I mean, she’s eight in high school reading stuff. It’s like, it’s just not challenged traditionally. And so I look at it I’m like, man, when she’s frustrated, it’s because of, she’s a kid, she’s immature still. She hasn’t developed those processing emotions of how to navigate that. And I’m frustrated because this is,

and you’re telling me how to do something that I get it already. Why are you trying to do that? I don’t need you. That’s something that we’re seeing, you know, and raising our children today even, you know, and I imagine that’s probably what was going on back then.

Eddie Austin (07:06.478)
Well, I think a lot of it too was, not. So I was by no means a bully, but I took care of business and you know, so I was the quiet one. I always, I was always raised in a Christian household and I was always taught, you know, you’re given two years, two ears and one mouth. So listen twice as much more than you speak. So I just listened and I was just quiet and I was the quiet one. And they, you know, they always say, don’t mess with the quiet one. Right? So of course they do.

You know, they’re like, ah, you know, Eddie’s always, you know, being talked to and, being taught different ways and are always having to work with him. Uh, but it really come down to, you know, when I was graded on a test, was fine. But at end of the day is like, if you had to do it exactly step by step by step, I was always a process improvement type person. Like, and I just couldn’t comprehend waste. Like, why would we take all the steps that we have to take?

Why couldn’t we just do this and this and think about the end in mind of that answer and come up with it that way? And that’s just not accepted.

Brett McCollum (08:08.771)
Yeah. And I think that’s, and it isn’t right. Cause yeah, I think that’s probably shaped a lot of, uh, into business, right? Of probably how you’re able to do the things that you’ve done, go through the things that you’ve done is, um, I mean, I think about different business, you know, thought leaders, you know, the ones that are the most successful more than not are being challenged today because they look and operate differently. Um,

because they’re thinking about waste and they’re thinking about why would we do this? Why would we do it this way? Let’s challenge the norm. You know, well, this is how it’s always done, Eddie. This is how we, this is how business works, Eddie. You just don’t get it.

Eddie Austin (08:48.622)
Right. Well, the thing is, is, is when I got into the business world, I was accepted and actually I was, I guess you might say award winning when it come to the school of business, the game of business, because I thought outside the box. I thought untraditionally, I challenged myself beyond belief. And as I got older and I’m, I love reading books, especially podcasts and

audio books. And when you start reading about John D Rockefeller and a lot of these guys that built America, they didn’t even have a high school education. So it’s okay because they may have sucked at the math and the arithmetic and all the different things that they’re supposed to do to run the, be a part of this world and contribute, but they were much better at business because they remind things like

Brett McCollum (09:40.845)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (09:44.685)
Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s, it’s important to differentiate, you know, those two things, you know, and, and that’s not to say for whatever it’s worth, that’s not to say all schooling is bad or anything like that. That’s not what I’m not promoting that whatsoever. Our conviction for our children is, you know, my wife was a teacher in the school system for 10 years, you know, before we brought the kids home, you know, so for us, it’s more of a, we want to be able to

Eddie Austin (09:56.566)
No! No.

Brett McCollum (10:13.923)
prioritize their education to grow them without limitation. For us, that’s a conviction. I also recognize that for some families, you’ve got mommy and dad both have to work and you both have to do the things and that’s totally okay. But I mean, if your kids are in that place over there, like kind of struggling, I would say take a page out of Eddie’s book here and just go.

Eddie Austin (10:19.118)
Absolutely.

Eddie Austin (10:33.261)
Of

Brett McCollum (10:43.435)
Okay, maybe it’s not that they’re struggling with school and it’s traditional, so maybe it’s a, they’re trying to process how to, their mind’s working a little differently, you know?

Eddie Austin (10:54.412)
Another thing I would add is today, it’s a much different environment. You’ve got Facebook, Instagram, you’ve got people being compared to, you know, this fake model online. And you have to think about the environment of the public school system today and the pressures that are silently put on children and others even playing in sports. I played sports growing up.

And today it is so much different from growing up as an eighties kid to, you know, a 2015 kid now, 2013, 2011, you you live in this world of social media where everybody’s comparing theirself and then people are scrolling and, know, you can look at a kid today.

that just is engulfed by their phone of just scrolling and stuff like that. You can almost see anxiety on their face when they pick up and look at you and smile, if they do. And that’s what’s in school now today. you know, so all the pressures of things going on, you know, people videoing fights and all kinds of things, it’s, you have to question the environment. I think not only the kid, I think you have to question the environment.

Brett McCollum (12:09.517)
Yeah, that, honestly, that’s part of our, one of our reasons too for bringing the kids home is we can control our home environment. That’s another reason. But man, I didn’t wanna get off on a huge tangent with that, but I’m glad we did, because I think that’s important for people listening that may resonate with, and if it doesn’t, the principles of just knowing like,

Eddie Austin (12:24.856)
Sure, sure.

Brett McCollum (12:36.663)
how people walk through, there’s different paths that people take, But let’s catch up a little bit to, you you’ve kind of been in the 20 plus years of doing business and entrepreneurship and like you mentioned, serial entrepreneur to me when we were talking earlier, eight different businesses, know, that sort of thing. When did you kind of really start, like you said, you grew up in an entrepreneurial family anyway, but when was your first dip in the water from an entrepreneurial standpoint?

Eddie Austin (13:08.034)
Hmm. So, know, I was also kind of the entrepreneur. So there was a couple smaller businesses that I worked at that, that I got to have kind of my own role. And, and then I always quickly worked my way up to management and any company I went to, it was kind of funny. One of the places I went while I was being interviewed, he said, Eddie,

Brett McCollum (13:21.485)
Okay?

Eddie Austin (13:34.222)
Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years in the company? And, you know, that’s a question that as I would interview people, I oftenly want to ask, you know, does this person want to be an employer or contributor? Do they want to contribute to the company? Do they want to be a part of the management and stuff like that, be a part of the change? And I said, well, I want to be where you’re sitting. He said, so I’m the manager of this company. And I said, oh, that’s good. And I said, that’s where I want to go.

And I said, I’ll prove it to you. And, you know, from that, I continued to realize that I wasn’t a good employee because I wasn’t always the one that could be a part of the decision-making. Not that my decisions were always right. It’s I seen things differently. I seen things from an employee standpoint, a revenue standpoint. And I’m like, we could do so much things better because I always look at removing the waste and, how to treat people, how they should be treated.

So, you know, I learned very quickly that if you want to change the world, if you want to row a different direction, you need a better, you need a different boat than the one you’re in. So maybe it’s build your own boat and row your own direction, but you can’t be inside of a company trying to run the show when they’re trying to row their direction and you’re trying to go your own. So it just doesn’t work that way. So it was probably 2000.

2003 or four, we started Austin Home Improvements and we were building homes, we were fixing, flipping. from that standpoint, we really found the, my parents had always made good money in real estate and I started to catch on with that. And I’m like, hey, mom and dad buy this piece of property, they get the utilities onto it, they build a house and then a couple of years later we sell it.

What a young age you really didn’t, I was paying attention, but I really didn’t understand what we were doing, but I knew we always had money or at least we did by the time we sold that piece of property and we just continued to do that. So I moved a lot when I was younger and then I started to catch on the business model. I was like, okay, so we can do this as business. We can actually take these properties, buy them, know, clear the trees, do whatever we got to do, build a home, put the utilities on it, keep a little while and sell it.

Brett McCollum (15:45.496)
Right.

Eddie Austin (16:01.826)
Well, we usually kept a little while because of capital gains, you know, that two year hole. Well, what I did is I got older. I’m like, okay, well, how do I, how do I accelerate that? So there’s a problem. How do I accelerate that and accelerating that was by buying them in an LLC. And, know, you have to do 10 31s when you get into bigger stuff, but you can also do it by flipping through an LLC and removing those taxes, you know, just moving money through the LLC and buying more properties.

Brett McCollum (16:01.933)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (16:26.391)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (16:31.681)
Yeah, that’s it. You’re looking for the, there’s the problem, what’s the solution and there’s always one, right? Even if you don’t know it, like often there is still a solution. It’s just, you haven’t figured that yet.

Eddie Austin (16:43.704)
Yeah. And to come back to the lesson of that really was by not knowing and doing two or three in one year. And then you sell one and then you sell the second one and boom, you’re smashed with taxes. And it’s like, Whoa, you know what happened? Well, you had already a capital gains event. So therefore your second one was 100 % taxed as income because you probably took your profit, paid all cash and, financed it.

You know, it was all on the books. So that was a lesson learned. okay, well, how do I fix this?

Brett McCollum (17:19.809)
Yeah. So we talked obviously at the top of the show of like making less mistakes, right? And I want to really kind of deep dive into that a little bit. Obviously, you know, your journey through entrepreneurship and doing, you know, part of multiple businesses. Let’s maybe talk about it. Like maybe the couple, I don’t know if you have any off the top of your head, like top two or three lessons that, you know, all right, because there’s some, here’s what I know about business, right? There’s still people involved.

Eddie Austin (17:48.846)
There is. There is.

Brett McCollum (17:50.351)
no matter what it is. So I think there’s some overreaching principles that we must follow regardless of the industry that we’re in. Obviously, this is a real estate heavy podcast. But let’s talk about some lessons that we’ve learned over the years.

Eddie Austin (18:06.254)
You know, I think number one is this is a tough business, especially today. And you’re going to go through a lot. You’re going to change as a person. you know, one time my dad asked me a question. goes, son, I just wish you’d have, you wouldn’t have to work so hard. Maybe you could win the lottery. And I said, no, no, I don’t want, I don’t want to do that. And he goes, why not? I mean, I said, well, the reason being is I’m not a millionaire.

And I don’t know how to be a millionaire. I don’t know how to protect that money. I don’t know what to do with it. I think it’d bring me more problems than it would good. And I wouldn’t know how to deal with them because I want to make a million dollars with my hands. That way I know how to create that money. I know how to protect that money, grow that money. And ultimately I have learned a lot of lessons along the way. So if I lose it, I know how to make it back and I probably know how to make it faster. So in everything we do.

You have to ask yourself first, like what lessons has other people learned that I can apply to this? Everything in real estate, in my opinion, is risk mitigation. You’re trying to remove the risk from it. By removing the risk takes education. When you first start, you don’t have the amount of education you need. So you got to go out and learn it less than the hard knocks. So that’s why I say lessons cost money. Good lessons cost lots.

Because throughout those eight different companies, those eight different companies was because of a fictitious mountain I was trying to climb. I had no idea the amount of damage I was doing when I turned around and looked at the path of destruction to get there. And all the lessons that I was taking that were costing a lot of money. And I could have went so much faster if I could have said, okay, I want to climb this hill.

I want to get this eight different companies, but what does that look like? And then start, you know, whiteboarding that out and start figuring it out. Study. You know, there’s other people that’s done this. So if there’s other people that’s done this, who do I need to talk to? Who can I ask? How can I make less mistakes? Instead of just being bullish and being, I’m just going to figure it out. Cause that was always me. I’m just going to figure it out. Well, that’s a life of hard lessons.

Brett McCollum (20:17.804)
Right.

Brett McCollum (20:30.551)
Yeah, I’ll be honest with you, man. That kind of rings home, right, for me personally. I’ve always been the same way. Like, there’s a chance, I’m just gonna figure it out. I’m not gonna ask, I was taught, work hard, put your head down, and you’ll work through it. Just work hard, put your head down. Just work hard, put your head down.

Eddie Austin (20:46.936)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (20:51.947)
and on its face that might sound good, but the better lesson that I’ve walked through is work hard, but ask if you need help, ask for it. Not do it for me, it’s Eddie, I’m doing this, have you been through this before? Any lessons you think I should apply? Versus, I’m not gonna ask anybody, I’m gonna figure it out.

Eddie Austin (21:14.05)
Your net worth is in your network and no more true words have ever been spoke because if you really lean in on that, you can go out and meet people, network with people that have done it or done it a little bit different and they can tell you. And that’s the best way is to ask questions. If you want better answers, ask better questions. And

If you want to remove the risk, ask a lot more questions and just lean in on that. Who in the network has been there? Who has done it? And learn from that, learn from their mistakes. And it’s okay to fail. I always tell people fail fast. You know, that’s why I went out and bumped my way through a lot of things because I wanted to go out and fail a bunch. So I knew it didn’t work.

It’s not that you failed, you found a thousand things that didn’t work because you did it this way. So you know why it didn’t work.

Brett McCollum (22:15.043)
Right. Yeah, I think that for me, anyway I’ll say, is it’s pride at the end of the day. And that’s a lesson. For me, I’m like, I didn’t think I was prideful, Eddie. I didn’t think I’m ever better than you or anything else, but when I’m not willing to raise my hand and ask for help, that’s pride.

Eddie Austin (22:25.166)
Eddie Austin (22:41.71)
So let’s pause for a second right there. And I want to give you probably the best lesson, the best teaching somebody could ever give to you is you have to understand emotional attachment. You have to understand pride and ego. One of my absolute favorite quotes is by Rick Rizby, anesthesia is, I’m sorry.

Eddie Austin (23:10.582)
Anesthesia, pride is anesthesia that deadens the pain. We’re gonna come back to that.

Mostly pride is a burden of a foolish man and ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. And that in itself, when you think about that is exactly what will get you in tons of trouble in real estate and business and partnerships. Because if you are doing things off of pride and ego, they will

not work out well. There’s a certain amount of pride, there’s a certain amount of confidence you have to move forward with, but at the end of the day, you have to make fact-based decisions and not decisions based off of pride and ego. And I’m going to do this because you have to do this because of facts and not pride and ego and not emotional attachment.

Brett McCollum (23:49.569)
It will buy you.

Brett McCollum (24:12.653)
Yeah, I think, mean, and that’s the lesson, right? Because I know for me personally, walking through that was it wasn’t pride in the sense of like, I’m this great person and I have these things and I’m always right. But what I, the lesson that was learned was pride is still in place when there’s a struggle that’s happening and this is gonna work out because it will. It’s just gonna work out.

You know, it has to work. It’s going to work. This is going to work. I’m going to keep going the way I’ve been doing it because this is it’s going to always has worked out. It’s going to keep working out. Instead of saying, you know what? I haven’t faced this before. Let me go ask Eddie for, hey, have you been through this? What do you think? And so and it’s hard. Well, yeah, it’s hard and it’s getting harder, but I’m going to keep working hard. I’m going to put my head down. I’m to work through this in your head. You don’t think this is pride. You don’t think this is ego. You don’t think that’s it because

Eddie Austin (24:49.006)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (25:10.207)
the albeit it might come from a good place of, and I put that in quotations for if you’re listening only, a good place of, know, I’m working hard and I’m doing the right things. But guys, if you’re not asking for help, and I’m not asking for people for handouts, that’s not what we mean, but we’re talking for help to navigate into challenges that you’re facing. If you don’t ask for it at the end of the day, that is pride. And like you said, that will come back and bite you.

Eddie Austin (25:38.488)
Yep. I’m telling you, pride is the burden of a foolish man. It, it really reigns supreme because I, I say that because I watched my kingdom crumble because it was built on a very shaky foundation of pride and ego and a lot of emotional attachment to a lot of things. And I wasn’t willing to let go or operate differently because of the pride. This was mine. I built it and

It’s not yours at the end of the day. It’s not about ownership, it’s about stewardship.

Brett McCollum (26:13.155)
stewardship. I love that. That’s exactly right. Well, Eddie, you mentioned this too earlier is, know, it’s the average millionaire, seven streams of income, da da da da da da. And, you know, we’ve heard that before, right? I, yes and no, right? Like, yeah, they might have it. I’m not saying they don’t have that. But the path to that is not just get seven businesses. So talk more about that for a minute. Yeah.

Eddie Austin (26:23.342)
Yeah.

Eddie Austin (26:36.684)
No, not a bit.

This is what everybody teaches. It’s the millionaires have seven streams of income. What they don’t talk about. And you start to see more podcasts about talking through the grind. Like when you started out, like Microsoft, like Amazon, how cool would it be if these people would have done a podcast, done an autobiography, a documentary of the entire business.

Brett McCollum (27:00.642)
Right.

Eddie Austin (27:07.714)
I mean, how many businesses do you think that Jeff Bezos owns today? And you think about Elon Musk, he owns how many businesses today? What everybody sees Elon Musk for is Tesla and SpaceX and stuff like that. Nobody knows the original company that he founded with his friends and sold. So that’s what everybody either refuses not to listen to, or they simply

Brett McCollum (27:11.991)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (27:37.678)
miss that part or people don’t talk about it. All they talk about is the seven streams of income. Let’s be honest, when it comes to mentorship and stuff like that, unfortunately, the truth don’t sell. So they sell what is fancy and bright lights and keyed with music and everything else. So most of the time you tell people the truth is, if you want to be in business, you’re going to have to really fight through it. You’re going to have to

Brett McCollum (27:42.691)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (28:05.998)
create one solid stream of income from a drip to a trickle to a stream of water into a fire hose of income and then invest that fire hose of income for tax reasons into real estate, passive investments and investing in other companies, invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds. That is your second and third and fourth stream of income. But first it was building that business.

Brett McCollum (28:31.288)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (28:36.174)
to where it is profitable or selling that business and doing the second business very, very well into a solid income stream. I mean, I see so many people, and I coach a lot of people that they got three or four businesses running at the same time. My first question, do they compliment each other? What does that mean? If you’re running this real estate business, is your HVAC company working directly for your apartment building?

Brett McCollum (28:54.615)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (29:04.854)
Is your plumbing company, is this part of the veritable? If you’re doing construction management as a general contractor, does it compliment the business you’re in? That’s a different story. But get really good at the thing you’re doing and then find other subsidiary businesses, symbiotic companies that can run underneath yours that compliment the first business.

Brett McCollum (29:27.575)
Yeah, I love that. And that’s a huge value, guys, if you rewind and listen to that, because there’s experience talking, right? So, you know, it’s not as simple as, me just start seven businesses. You know, it’s from the…

Eddie Austin (29:42.742)
No, I you know, I see people, make, you know, two or $300,000 in this business. This one’s breaking even. This one’s a tax shelter. This one’s making $3 million. How much money could you make if you just focused on the one that was making $3 million and figure out how to scale it at $20 million and then sell it and build you another one?

Brett McCollum (30:05.891)
Yeah, we teach that in the investor world from a marketing standpoint. You see all these people throwing, they’ll do direct mail and PPC and Facebook ads and cold calling and, and, and, and, and, and, just trying to hopefully something will work. And it’s the same principle of like pick one channel, dominate it, get your SOPs in place, make it profitable.

then add the second channel. So it’s the same principle. I was saying this on another show that we were talking about. It’s the same thing of business is easy, people are difficult. We’re making this thing over complicated. We’re doing these things. And there’s a book that speaks to it too from Gary Keller, The One Thing, right? Do the one thing. There’s a lot of symmetry in business principle. But listening to somebody like you, Eddie, that’s

Eddie Austin (30:36.812)
Exactly.

Brett McCollum (31:03.799)
You’ve been there, you’ve walked there, you’ve it, you’re coaching it, you’re living it. guys, talking about pride again, going back to that, like, you’ve got people that are our industry leaders telling you like, hey, don’t do that. know, rewind this back and listen to that again, because there’s a lot of a lot of us walking through stuff that you don’t think you’re walking with that. And we are so like, back to what we talked about the top of the show, making less mistakes.

Eddie Austin (31:18.424)
Right.

Brett McCollum (31:33.911)
You know, I think that if we could put a new almost title on it is let’s get our pride in order.

Eddie Austin (31:42.2)
That’s it. mean, that’s it. I mean, you think about it. The people you look up to, they did one thing extremely well. Michael Jordan. had tons and tons of affiliate things that he did. But what was Michael Jordan good at? Playing basketball. And he honed that skill until he was the Hall of Fame. He still remembered to this day and still, I don’t think that name will ever disappear. Michael Jordan. I mean, you think a hundred other names.

Brett McCollum (31:58.264)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (32:10.658)
You think about those people, they were really good at one thing. That’s another thing I always tell people is, is what is the everybody, if you think about dominoes, think about the biggest domino in the room. see everybody in life and in this world, they go around knocking down all the little dominoes. Stop doing that. Figure out how to knock down the biggest domino in the shock of the biggest domino fall and knocks down all the rest.

Brett McCollum (32:12.417)
Yep.

Brett McCollum (32:31.395)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (32:39.404)
Or use the little dominoes as a building block to knock down the big one. The momentum to get what it takes to knock down the big domino. Quit running around flipping 100 houses when you could just flip one big apartment building on a professional scale.

Brett McCollum (32:45.091)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (32:55.341)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Well, I always like to, you know, ask people out towards the end of our shows here, you because this has been, and we could keep doing this. I love talking to it’s like, but if people want to reach out, connect with you, things that you’re working on that sort of thing, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Eddie Austin (33:05.994)
Of course.

Eddie Austin (33:14.67)
Hashtag Eddie Austin, VEX. Type that in Google. Don’t pay attention to the picture, pixel that comes up. I don’t know what that’s about, but I’ll come up on every single platform if you type in hashtag Eddie Austin, VEX. Every single platform has the exact same profile picture and it’s Eddie Austin, VEX on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, all of them, LinkedIn.

Brett McCollum (33:41.059)
Yeah, we’ll make sure that’s in the show notes and guys Eddie’s a leader worth following so do not hesitate to do that and that’ll be in the show notes for us, but Man, what are you excited about today? Like that you’re working on anything cool that you’re

Eddie Austin (33:54.316)
Yeah, man, we, you know, we think about mentorship much differently today and I’m a philanthropist, so I love giving back. love helping other people throughout this journey. You know, the B E X at the back of my name stands for be extraordinary. And that was kind of when I kind of crushed the old pride and egotistic self and become the most extraordinary version of me. And I still strive to do that every single day. So everything I do is a reminder of that.

to be extraordinary and how do I be more extraordinary? And it’s a measurement of my mood. It’s a measurement of the amount of people I’m helping. And I’ve noticed when I’m low on energy is because when I think about how many people I helped this week, I haven’t helped a lot of people. I’ve been probably in the weeds of business and meeting after meeting and I’m not helping a lot of people. So that really drags the energy down. So the exciting part now is, you we’ve created a game changer community.

to where we have a very low ticket at this very moment. It’s like $30 a month to join. And then we have mid, low and high ticket. And even our highest ticket is like 25,000 bucks. Nothing like these bigger coaching programs. And we teach real operations. Like I want to physically teach somebody step-by-step the framework from start to finish. And then that’s maybe the acquisition of the building. Then the real work starts.

Brett McCollum (35:03.245)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Austin (35:19.522)
You know, taking that due diligence plan and actually bringing it to fruition, taking that underwriting and turning it into the real business model. And there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do and you have to do it well. So you have to know operations, have to know construction management or you’ll lose a lot of money in this game.

Brett McCollum (35:37.739)
Agreed. Well, man, Eddie, this has been really good. And I’m glad you shared that. Guys, seriously, go in the show notes if you can’t remember. Follow Eddie. Do that. Connect with him. And I promise you won’t be sorry you did. That’s a no brainer. $25, come on, guys. Whatever. Yeah, do it. But Eddie, man, this has been super cool getting to know you, man. I’m glad you shared your time and experience with us. And I really appreciate you being here.

Eddie Austin (36:02.454)
Absolutely, anytime.

Brett McCollum (36:04.504)
Well guys, this has been a great episode and we’ll see you guys on the next one. Take care everybody.