How to Leverage Landscaping Expertise for Real Estate Investing Successs

Brett McCollum (00:00.725)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Brett McCullum. I’m here today with Darin Brockelbank. Today we’re gonna be talking about how he went from landscaping to REI. Before we do, at Investor Field, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed up. Without further ado, Darin, how are you?

Darin Brockelbank (00:24.716)
I’m good Brett, I appreciate you reaching out and wanting to hear a little bit about my story and seeing how we can help some of your listeners maybe be inspired to do some of the same thing.

Brett McCollum (00:33.251)
Dude, super cool. Yeah, and it’s good getting to know you pre-show, man. Learning a little bit more, like you just said, about kind how you kind of evolved where you’re at now, that sort of thing. And definitely a great one for all you guys listening. But before we get too far into everything, Darin, can you do us a favor? Can you give some history, some context for us, and catch us up to speed a little bit? Who is Darin Brockelbank?

Darin Brockelbank (00:54.668)
Man, it just depends on how far you want me to go back. So I can go all the way back to being a kid and how it inspired me today, or we can start with my professional career. What do you want here? All right, man. Well, I grew up in kind of a lower middle class family. My mom and dad kind of met at a party, hooked up, and they had me. My dad was no way ready to settle down.

Brett McCollum (01:05.091)
Far back with your comfortable going, man. Let’s rock and roll.

Darin Brockelbank (01:23.916)
He just was like…

I had making a choice and whether to do the right thing and kind of get married and go down that route or kind of being absentee dad So my grandfather played a big part in my life Just kind of being there for me and my dad made the right decision got married to my mom They had five kids in six years and they were living a little wild life then they found Jesus and That really set him off to a totally different path. So I’ve got kind of a pre Jesus life, you know, and then a post Jesus life where I was like who?

are these people that raised me. But my dad was one that didn’t want to take a handout from anyone, worked two jobs, really showed me work ethic. I’d see him like at a baseball game here or there or maybe at church service. But if I wanted to see my dad, I was going to work with him. That’s how I got to know my dad and it’s still that work ethic at a real young age. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (01:58.264)
Right?

Brett McCollum (02:19.255)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (02:21.875)
So with that being said, I was born in Western Massachusetts, kind of a dairy town, real country. And then my parents were like, I think God’s calling us down to Charlotte, North Carolina.

I’m like, you know anybody in Charlotte? Why are you going there? And they were just kind of on that path of going, hey, we’re gonna be led by something bigger than us. We’re gonna be obedient to that. So they left, tried to their house. We had like a broke down U-Haul that didn’t even make it. And they were just going on faith. And after that, I watched the Lord bless them for that decision. I went from like a town of…

I don’t know, 5,000 people, class of 40 people, to West Charlotte where I was one of like 3,000 kids in my class. And although that was just different for me, I decided like, man, I need to make some money. And I got a push mower, started to cut some grass, knocked on doors, put flyers out at that time, and built a little lawn maintenance business.

Brett McCollum (03:07.193)
Wow.

Darin Brockelbank (03:25.505)
The time I was 18, met my current wife, Heather, married her young, and we went into business together. So we don’t have any college education, but we kind of feel like learning is something that is a mindset.

Brett McCollum (03:44.889)
Hmm.

Darin Brockelbank (03:44.926)
I can learn from Brett today, can learn from some of your viewers, you know, I can learn from books, can learn from YouTube and if you keep that mindset and you get good mentors in your life, you ask the right questions like there’s nothing holding somebody back from doing greater than what you know, maybe college would be able to give them and we went down that road. So my wife and I have always worked together since we met, we’ve been together 22 years, got three kids.

and one’s 19, one’s 18, and one’s 16. The 19 and 18 are out of the house. They’re killing it. And the 16-year-old wants to move out the day she’s 18. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but I told all my kids, like, if you’re not moved out by 18, I did something wrong. Because…

Brett McCollum (04:19.597)
Hmm.

Brett McCollum (04:35.449)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (04:36.351)
My job is to make you ready for this world. that’s, that’s, that’s, that I took that serious and trying to blend that while running businesses is the chore, right? So, so yeah, so fast forward, I guess, built a landscape camp company, turned it into the largest one in Charlotte for residential, sold it right at the pandemic and already had some Airbnb’s kind of going on and

Brett McCollum (04:45.465)
Sure.

Darin Brockelbank (05:03.565)
Moved and said, okay, well, let’s let’s get into real estate That brought me back to my grandfather that was an example as an immigrant. He kind of he was an immigrant against his family was an immigrant, but just kind of swung a hammer and Built a realistic portfolio that by the time he died had lots of money lots of houses was still living on it and I’m like, do you live from 60 to 94 95

on something you built before because my landscape company was great. It gave me a big check at the end of the day. If I didn’t put that money to work or I didn’t do something to create residual income, I wasn’t going to be living from even 35 to 60, let alone 35 to 95. So that’s what inspired me to get into real estate was him watching that and then knowing the value of appreciation on houses, the value of residual income.

Brett McCollum (05:46.893)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (06:01.929)
So now I’m kind of buying houses, turning them into little mini apartment complexes, three to seven units in each place, and I rent them out as studio apartments. So that’s what I do now.

Brett McCollum (06:16.407)
Dude, that’s incredible. Man, let’s do, I wanna back up to like early age stuff and kind of, cause you got some cool things I wrote down. So you were in Massachusetts, Western Mass. This would have been based on, I just got, just was trying to do some math. We’re pretty close in age. We’re about two years apart, and I. So we kind of grew up in the same 90s era, so to speak.

Darin Brockelbank (06:28.545)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (06:41.953)
Right.

Brett McCollum (06:44.505)
and your family. So we had kind of an same but opposite story. I post, know, pre Jesus post Jesus kind of things. Where my parents were, was, how old were you when that happened? So I was about nine, eight or nine.

Darin Brockelbank (07:00.215)
Yeah, same age group. Like my mom gave her heart to the Lord before and then like eventually drugged the rest of us to church and my dad to church and that’s just kind of, it was an evolution thing. wasn’t like, but yeah, I remember a lot of my life before and a lot of like…

Brett McCollum (07:13.486)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (07:19.467)
and you remember them before probably too, right? So, yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (07:21.749)
I remember them before. it was lot of what they call today trauma, what they call today abuse, what they call today like whatever they want to call it. I just call it like when you don’t know the Lord, you’re just living for yourself.

Brett McCollum (07:32.259)
Sure, no doubt. Yeah, I mean, there’s, could.

probably swap some stories. We went from Jacksonville, Florida, you know, which is, albeit not as big a shot, but still a bigger, you pretty large area. And it went to this little tiny podunk town in South Georgia. So we had the opposite. You know, it went from big city to small, you know, where in my class, we had 45 people in our graduating class. That’s how big the school, right? So, you know, there’s two different extremes, right? But the same thing in that same 90s era,

Darin Brockelbank (07:50.231)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (07:57.708)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (08:05.307)
I was when you said that I was have you seen do you are do know of the comedian Nate Barghatzi Nate Barghatzi Also a little bit maybe older than us but like still in that same night he’s like my parents were 90s Christian where people were the most Christian, you know, like That was the joke Yeah

Darin Brockelbank (08:11.776)
No, I don’t.

Darin Brockelbank (08:23.329)
Yeah, they were really like extreme. And that was kind of what was confusing to me as a kid, because they were pretty extreme for the world too. And then it was like, here’s your new set of rules and you got to do this and you got to do that. And I’m like.

Brett McCollum (08:30.168)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (08:35.305)
All right, and then fast forward, you know, like who are you guys? Because this isn’t how you raised me kind of thing, you know, the way he I’m telling you need to go watch it because the way he Articulates that it’s like yes. He’s exactly how I grow. It was pretty funny

Darin Brockelbank (08:40.94)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (08:44.333)
Okay.

Darin Brockelbank (08:50.125)
Yeah, and like growing up the opposite from the small town to the big city, like I wasn’t exposed to a lot of races. I wasn’t exposed to a lot of culture before. I wasn’t exposed to big thinking. So like when we moved from 14, I remember going to a barbershop for the first time and I was so ignorant. Like I was like trying to get my hair done. I was like, man, I want it done like Steve Urkel. And I didn’t even know like they couldn’t cut my hair that way.

Brett McCollum (08:54.04)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (08:57.635)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (09:02.083)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (09:15.501)
You can’t do that, yeah. No.

Darin Brockelbank (09:17.133)
I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So landing in the school I landed in, I was an instantaneous minority, but it is so great. that’s since we’ve got a ministry now in Tanzania, Africa with orphanages. It’s called waves of freedom. like, just, I’m so grateful to have the small town kind of values that I learned and neighbors looking out for each other, but the big city opportunity with many different ways of thinking, um, both of those things coming together, I think it’s really helped me in my business.

Brett McCollum (09:30.222)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (09:42.584)
Love it.

Darin Brockelbank (09:47.05)
and really help like my even what I do for a living have compassion for people understand that they have a story understand that nobody signed up that one day they wanted to have a room like they’re there for some reason they’re either going through a separation they’re going through some type of a problem so our upbringing is due to find us if we allow it to to I guess manifest in a way to do good with it

Brett McCollum (10:01.261)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (10:11.467)
So biblically speaking, mean, I, you know, it.

things happen for your good, right? We know that. So another way of saying it, didn’t happen to you, it happened for you. So a lot of the things that we go through, man, it’s a, you know, because I’ll be honest with you, my upbringing was, if you just write it down on paper, you could call it not good. It was a rough, rough situation. But today, like, I mean, I’ll just tell you, I went to 27 different schools growing up.

Darin Brockelbank (10:24.663)
Right.

Darin Brockelbank (10:46.903)
Holy crap, and they weren’t in the military.

Brett McCollum (10:49.113)
No. And it was lot. It was was a lot. But guess what? I have never met a stranger in the business that we’re in where you’re constantly meeting new people every day. And then once my parents did, kind of…

Darin Brockelbank (10:59.819)
Right.

Brett McCollum (11:11.255)
finally surrender their hearts, you know, and things like that. You know, even after they became Christians and got saved and they still had a season of like…

Darin Brockelbank (11:19.457)
Well, it takes a while, right? Where you’re working out your salvation, right? Like, my kids don’t understand the blessing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (11:23.457)
and while they were really working it out, but it was during my adolescence, right? So it’s like, it’s like, this is confusion. It’s like, I thought I thought Jesus was supposed to make life better. And I’ll say this to you, he does, absolutely. And this is by the way, my podcast, I can say what I want. And I loved it. This is something I’m very passionate about, obviously. That being said, I think a lot of people in the Christian faith.

Darin Brockelbank (11:34.69)
Right.

Brett McCollum (11:50.955)
expect like hey, you you get saved things get better immediately and In some ways they do right like as far as the eternal outcome, you know, which is what matters changes But there’s still Seed time and harvest those principles you planted bad seed for you know, 30 years, you know

It just changes. Let’s start planting some new seed now. And then eventually over time that’s what happened with us. It’s just with so many years of just negative, negative, negative, negative, it took a long time for things to shift. And unfortunately, my brother and I were in the middle of that. So at any rate, yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (12:26.977)
Yeah. Yeah, no, I can relate and I can even go one step further that my understanding of God in Christ was modeled from somebody learning that from the first time and having to walk out there old. So I was a bit confused in my 20s and that really led to me not being the best husband that I could be or father because I wasn’t mimicking everything, but I was definitely mimicking some things until I kind of

Brett McCollum (12:41.767)
huh.

No doubt.

Darin Brockelbank (12:56.679)
had to have some trials and tribulation in my life and find the Lord for myself and what that meant and understanding that maybe my earthly father didn’t show me a great example of that he’s such a great man now and is amazing of what he’s been able to overcome and I look up to him and but at the end of the day like he’s human he was learning so now having that

direct connection with the Father the way I think it should be pure allows me to then understand that and it flow out of me to my kids, to my friends, to my wife at a better rate than that. So first generation Christianity is rough.

Brett McCollum (13:35.641)
And you did it when I did it in the early, in the 90s like that when, it was a time, man. I’ll say one more thing and then we’ll, like, I do want to get into the real estate, promise you I do.

with my parents, and I think I heard you say it a little bit too, is, think we saw, like you said, first generation Christianity kind of thing, and them figuring it out, and it is a confusing thing, but you mentioned something going through your own struggle, and by the way, this is probably really good for entrepreneurship in general. Things can be great, but once you really start figuring out when you hit a struggle season of.

Our pastor says, really know who you are once you get squeezed. What comes out of you? You know, kind of thing. But I think for me, looking back at my parents today, I have a lot more compassion than I did growing up. Because I, you know, I don’t know about you man, like I had some bitterness for a while.

And I struggled with a lot of the unforgiveness that came from that and it affected both my parenting and my relationship with my wife and things because of bitterness because I thought like, dang it dad, these things are, these are traits that are not good and I inherited them from you and you start blaming them. At the end of the day, we’re both grown men making our own decisions.

Darin Brockelbank (15:00.919)
Yeah, yeah, I went through that and I’ll take it even one step further. I actually became a little self-righteous internally in this sense. I was comparing my progress from my grandfather that was never saved until the very end of life to my dad, to myself. And there were areas that I maybe improved 70 or 80%. And I started self-righteously being like,

Brett McCollum (15:24.163)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (15:25.127)
I have done this better than them. So I stopped working on the last 20 % thinking that I’ve given myself a pass like, hey, I’m already done it. Shouldn’t my wife understand what I came from? Didn’t my wife understand what I was? Like, and that last 20 % led me to a separation for six months. It led me to being humble. But that, from that, what you said led me to forgiving my mom, talking to her, being vulnerable, being proud of what she came out of versus like…

Brett McCollum (15:29.977)
Yeah.

I’m on it way better than anywhere. Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (15:52.366)
being a victim of it and feeling like I was formed because she did this. I had to change that. Like, no, that’s not how God sees us. That’s how God sees me. So it’s not how he sees her. She did her best. And man, I’m really proud that she did that. And because of those choices, I’ve been able to live a different life and my kids are able to live even a much better life as a result of this.

Brett McCollum (16:14.361)
Do you want to tell my parents the thing that they did, and I do want, we’ll have to transition after we do this, the one thing that, we can have all the negativity that we want to look back on and dwell on, that’s what I did forever, just looking. But you know the one thing they did for you and I both, I can say they exposed this to the Lord, and if they did nothing else.

Darin Brockelbank (16:36.831)
Everything.

Brett McCollum (16:37.835)
I mean, that’s it, right? Like, that’s it. You know, I’m like, okay, mom, dad, that’s, I mean, that’s it. You know, I gotta have anything else. like, that was, if they had one thing, that matters more than anything else, right? Which is, you know, now guess what? My kids, from before they were born, you know, even, you know? And that’s the best testimony in the world.

Darin Brockelbank (16:57.547)
Right, they don’t know any different.

Brett McCollum (17:02.743)
You know, so anyway, I’ll digress, but let’s, all right. So you ran a, I do want to transition. So you ran a long business for how many years roughly? 12? 20 years, wow. All right, so I don’t know if you know this, that you have a virtual background going on, but do you know what the sign reads behind you? If you guys aren’t watching, it says, behind Darin, there’s a, it’s a virtual backdrop. how cool is this? It says, every cut makes the cut.

Darin Brockelbank (17:12.557)
Yeah, like 20 years, yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (17:21.41)
No.

Darin Brockelbank (17:31.531)
just picked out of your library today, so.

Brett McCollum (17:33.645)
Well, that’s pretty funny, man. So no pun intended, right? That’s pretty good. But so you ran that for 20 years, and you built it to be one of biggest or one of the biggest in the Charlotte area. mean, here’s the thing. This is pretty cool. Everybody has a law in business, blah, blah. Not everybody has a business they can sell. That’s two different things completely. You had a real business.

Darin Brockelbank (17:57.441)
Yeah, right.

Darin Brockelbank (18:01.217)
Yeah. Yeah. I had to build it in a way that I kept replacing myself. So I just became the visionary and didn’t have a day’s role. And then before you know it, I was able to do a of mission work and never really only be at the company and, and a month to look at finances and to just make sure the general manager was on track. So 105 people we were supporting every, every single week.

Brett McCollum (18:02.529)
not a side job.

Brett McCollum (18:09.955)
to you.

Brett McCollum (18:17.87)
Yeah.

How many points did you have by the end?

Brett McCollum (18:27.257)
It’s massive, There’s some, so what I’ve found real estate, not real, and anything else, business is business. You know, and I’ve been.

Darin Brockelbank (18:36.012)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (18:36.889)
I have a coach that said business is easy, people are difficult. And you built a real business. What are some of the, and I know you saw it right at pandemic era and stuff like that, but what are some of the top one or two things as a business owner that you built to sell something, you sold a business, which is not many of us listening to this can say that. What are some of the one or maybe couple, two or three things that you learned and how to build a business that can sell?

Darin Brockelbank (18:59.489)
Yeah, I think the first thing was our strategy was get all the leads in the marketplace. Like if you get all the leads in the marketplace, then you can determine out of those leads who your target market is. And then you can shift those leads to your competitors and let them waste their time with maybe unqualified customers or people that weren’t you. So we felt like if we could get every lead that existed and you can’t get everyone.

then we could pick who was our demographic. And then at that point, we could just stay niched into what we really did well. So I think building an elite engine, we have a lot of opportunity and then being disciplined to not take all that comes at you, but take exactly what is who you’ve defined yourself to be and really own that is what we did for sure. Cause you’re right, there’s tens of thousands of lawn guys and hundreds

Brett McCollum (19:32.217)
Bro, that’s all good.

Brett McCollum (19:47.383)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (19:54.552)
and landscape outdoor living guys. So that’s one thing we did. And then the second thing we did was we used the EOS kind of traction book as a model for really getting some structure. As a visionary, I oftentimes lived in the future, had a hard time staying in the present, and my words were really jumbled to my team. And I’d get excited and they’d follow my passion, but they were really confused.

Brett McCollum (20:05.197)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (20:22.297)
how to execute. Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (20:23.807)
Implementing that was a big thing and being able to make it sellable because at that point there was structure We were all working up a mission. We were all making sure that we were moving in the same direction the goals were very simple and It took out a lot of like wasted time in meetings a lot of time with me just having an idea and running with it and confusing people and then lastly You know we

We really like went from saying with our words that it was God’s company to like saying, no, this is God’s company. Like, so we’re going to submit to him when we don’t understand things. We’re going to take opportunities and pray about it before we do them. So we stopped making a lot of errors that I would just make out of my emotion or flesh or just running after the next big thing.

Brett McCollum (21:11.127)
Yeah. What led you to, I mean, 20 years, you know, and you were not in the weeds of the business, I’ll let you another pun, not in the weed. What led you to sell that?

Darin Brockelbank (21:24.299)
You know, I went to Tanzania and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, a company or a nonprofit called Samaritan’s Feet. They sent me there on a trip. They were just kind and we were big sponsors of them over the years and they just said, hey, we want to send you here. So the climb is what made me go and support that organization. But when I was there, I didn’t have my phone.

I didn’t have anybody. I didn’t have my wife. I decided to stay for as long as it took for me to kind of get grounded again. And it’s a big story. But basically like I started to understand what was important and what wasn’t important was coming from the next biggest company from from Charlotte to all of Southeast. What was important was making sure that

people in my life mattered and I wasn’t just using them to accomplish my goals. So I think in my mind I did a lot of like my wife’s roles, the kids in this and I’m using her for that to be a family man and this person in my life’s role over here I’m using them for this and when I felt that conviction about that I started to say if I bring this company to the next level

I’m going to be using a lot of people to get there. And for me, I wasn’t willing to do that. My kids were just becoming teenagers. I missed a lot of their life making the business first. I’d said God was first, but business really was. So I had to say, okay, let’s, let’s get into a business that might have some residual income attached to it. So I some freedom of time and not have to feel like I’m having to use somebody to get to my next goals. And you know that, that

Brett McCollum (22:55.875)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (23:11.819)
That doesn’t mean everybody uses people, but it was a thing I felt convicted about for my life. So I sold it when it was at the best. the pandemic really made it go better because people had outside offices, like, but at the end of the day, I had to be obedient to that. And that led to, you know, really a better marriage, a better, being a better father led to a business. And I’m in now with real estate that I’m helping a lot of people.

Brett McCollum (23:17.207)
head out.

Brett McCollum (23:35.831)
Yeah, you’re five years into this now. And that’s wild to say, because I think for me, COVID kind of wrecked my way of timeline. It’s like that was five years ago already, you know, kind of thing. Man, you’re five years into this. What’s been the progression like, you you’ve done one thing for 20 years, shifted to this brand new thing. What’s been that progression?

Darin Brockelbank (23:39.564)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (23:47.564)
Right.

Darin Brockelbank (24:00.973)
So the first year was like trying to figure out who I was. It was a very weird place. It wasn’t a good, it wasn’t good. Like I figured I sold, I have this money, it’s great. But it’s like, man, my identity was tied into that company way too far than what it should have been. So I had to break that down, determine kind of who I was, what did I want, what was purpose. although I, so I started just networking for about a year, year and a half in the real estate business, maybe lending out some money that I had.

Brett McCollum (24:16.729)
Sure.

Darin Brockelbank (24:30.477)
Maybe, you know, learning wholesaling from a standpoint of like how do leads come in, not necessarily doing it, but hanging out with wholesalers, understanding that, maybe supporting them, funding them for their leads, partnering with them. And then about three and a half years ago, I started to build more Airbnbs. I’m like, and then out, and then this one of the cities that we had a lot of Airbnbs and outlawed Airbnbs just about.

So I’m like, dang, like that sucks. Like they don’t want this in the city. And I’ve got six months and I’ve got $300,000 of furniture and all these houses set up and I over improved them in neighborhoods. So I shifted from to room rental because I already had a nice product. And I knew that all the statistics around us basically show that there’s not enough housing.

for the people and as inflation is going up that continues to be more and more of a problem. In our pre-show you talk about pad split. I saw them when I was doing research but really they kind of work for the…

Brett McCollum (25:22.819)
Yeah.

Darin Brockelbank (25:39.758)
professional person that doesn’t want to have like a long-term lease, I’m kind of doing the same model but for the person that might be struggling in an in-between that wants a long-term lease but they’re in a circumstance where maybe they’re going through a divorce, they’ve just had a health crisis, their job just changed and their incomes changed with it or really maybe they were like middle class and they’re kind of sliding down to lower middle class just because inflation is eating their lunch.

Brett McCollum (26:08.983)
Yeah, that’s great. And I think there’s something very special and at the end of the day, you went from a service-based industry, but I would make an argument, Darin, that it’s also service-based to what you’re doing.

Darin Brockelbank (26:21.293)
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, the lead flows the same. Like you got to get a lead. You got to understand that if your product can meet their need, you got to sell them that your product’s different or better than the competition. And we don’t have a lot of competition, but I have a lot of competition categories. Why live in an apartment complex versus live this way? Why live this way versus live at your parents’ couch in between? that’s what we’re selling. And then yeah, we service them in the sense of like…

Brett McCollum (26:33.657)
Let me.

Brett McCollum (26:42.114)
Right.

Darin Brockelbank (26:50.283)
giving them community resources, helping them really get out of their funk that they’re in. And we’ve got to make sure that they’re not still sliding down. We’ve got to make sure they’ve hit their bottom, they’re stable at least for their income, and then we can kind of help build them back up.

Brett McCollum (26:52.313)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (27:04.387)
Yeah. Well, and I think for us, you know, in my business, I had once I, this is how I undertook lead gen to the next level mentally, is realizing that like you can produce all these leads all you want until you understand the person on the other side of that phone or, you know, if you’re in person, until you really get that person, how do we properly serve them at the highest level, right? Until you really understand your demographic. And what we came to realize after doing

however many hundreds of deals, you realize that the person that’s calling you from a, let’s say, I was doing direct mail postcards forever. That’s kind of how I cut my teeth in the business. It started in 2015. And if somebody would spend out the time, by the way, this will date how long I’ve been doing this, they were 39 cents postcard. First class. And yep, produced first class in their mailbox within three days. Great, bam.

Darin Brockelbank (27:52.011)
Right.

produced.

Brett McCollum (28:02.521)
was understanding who would call me on a 39 cent postcard saying I need to sell my house right now. Once I kinda hit that like aha moment of who this is, it changed everything because then I started realizing, know, they’re in a season of life that I’m not in or you’re not in or whatever. And…

Most people trying to sell or buy a house, you know, aren’t in that same season, you know, who is that person? And then that kind of shifted our marketing strategy. But here’s where I took it to, I believe, where I think God blessed us is taking it to the next level of, it was a requirement in my business, be it me or anybody that worked with me. And for me was, if I met with Darin in his home and we had an appointment, it was a KPI that you had to pray with the person that was there.

And when I started doing that, I know literally, I’m not kidding you, like let’s say I have my employees out there, I would call the homeowner, hey Darin, how did the appointment go today? It went great, dah, dah, dah. How did Brett treat you? He was great. Hey question, did he pray with you? No. Hey, you didn’t pray with Darin, why not? I don’t know, I got scared, you know, like.

All you needed to say, something simple, in one, two sentences, the end, amen. But what I realized too is two things happened is one, the customer felt loved in a way that they haven’t experienced, because they’re going through things that you and I aren’t, like, can you imagine? No, we can’t. So they need, in my heart, they needed Jesus more than they needed me to buy their house. Two, from a sales perspective, no like and trust just went straight through the roof. They were in all the way. And then three,

my employees, their connection and relationship to God also had to shift.

Darin Brockelbank (29:55.756)
Yeah, mean, caring, caring matters, particularly in this business. Like everybody’s, everybody’s story matters. That’s why I took the opportunity to be on this podcast where you kind of have modeled it by people’s stories. so I knew a lot about you just from watching that in the past, but at the end of the day, like that’s what we’re building is a place where people care and then referrals start coming in. They know that we’ll work with them and your marketing costs goes down. And at the end of the day, like.

Brett McCollum (30:19.417)
That’s it, man.

Darin Brockelbank (30:26.135)
There are people that we work with on a regular basis that their lives have changed for the better just by us helping them get stable, but not just that, like caring and giving them resources or hearing their story or letting them know, breaking down those barriers from landlords to tenants that are often there.

Brett McCollum (30:33.625)
100 %

Brett McCollum (30:39.149)
You’re really serving people now.

Yeah, you’re genuinely serving people. That’s what I, sorry to bring that full circle. It’s like you really are still serving people. And I think that’s the, and not to keep beating it biblically, but that’s the model that Jesus represented in the Bible, servant leadership. And.

I think if like if that’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me kind of thing. So like I should probably with servitude. And I see that in your business what you’re doing, you’re helping people that need it the most and actually like genuinely doing that’s probably not probably it is what’s made has gotten you here in a short amount of time in the real estate because it’s only been five years, man.

Darin Brockelbank (31:23.361)
Yeah, and I’d say half of that was just kind of figuring it out and sitting on the sidelines. So we bought like 25 houses that we had to remodel, we had to go through planning, we had to make them what they were. So we’ve only really had like the last year and a half clients that are living there, because it was a year and a half of buying, remodeling, getting ready for the city. And then there was a year and a half of learning the real estate business before I jumped in.

Brett McCollum (31:40.568)
No way.

Brett McCollum (31:45.635)
Hey, even better,

even better. That’s incredible. And what you’ve been able to accomplish in a short amount. I know that, you know, a lot of it, you know, obviously we attribute to the Lord, but secondly is you had 20 years of business acumen that you’ve developed and you can take a lot of the parallels, businesses, business parallels into your, you know, thing now and just what you’re doing, man, I encourage you, you know, keep going. Don’t quit, you know, you know, good for you, man. I’m really, this is really cool.

Darin Brockelbank (32:16.813)
Yeah. And like I, you know, for people that might be getting into real estate and they don’t have that 20 year business like outside of the free resources like this podcast and bigger pockets and resources that are out there for people.

go get a mentor, like take them to lunch. I know it’s old school, but I always found somebody that was doing what I wanted to do at a greater level than I thought I could ever do. And I just really asked questions and took care of them. And then I’d always want to do that for somebody that was below me at the same time. But you, as powerful these things are, a face to face relationship and having that opportunity, almost anybody will go to lunch with you if you ask them.

Brett McCollum (32:58.211)
Yeah, a thousand percent, right. Well, man, Darin, if people want to reach out to you though and connect with you in some way, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Darin Brockelbank (33:05.805)
Yeah, I mean my phone number is 704-488-2704. Send me little text, say, saw you on Brett’s podcast. Here’s what I need. Here’s how you can help me. Here’s a question I have that’s fine. Or you can just do old fashioned email. And it’s D-A-R-I-N, my first name, at MetroRealEstatePros.com, which is a little bit more like the parent company over the room rental, the short term rental, and the different real estate commercial that we have.

Brett McCollum (33:35.587)
Dude, incredible. I mean, actually, in just a couple, you know, even to develop where you’ve gotten to, it’s really cool, man. So keep up the good work. I appreciate you being on the show with us today,

Darin Brockelbank (33:45.729)
Yeah, thanks for having me on and I appreciate the opportunity to get to know you a little bit more.

Brett McCollum (33:49.579)
of course. And guys, same to you as well. Thanks so much for spending your time with us and we will see each of you on the next episode. Take care everybody.