Do Bigger Deals

Mike Hambright (00:00.718)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with Jon Barbera and we’re gonna be talking about how to build a more profitable business. More deals does not necessarily equal more profit. It might always mean more headaches, but we’ll talk about that a little bit today. So hey Jon, welcome to the show. Yeah, excited to talk about this today. I know you’re doing some unique, you find some deals that you’re going after, you know, hitting home runs and not necessarily just trying to do volume.

Jon Barbera (00:15.846)
Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Mike Hambright (00:27.198)
And excited to talk about that a little bit today, because it is easy to get caught up in the hamster wheel of volume and units and things like that. we’ll talk about that a bit. mean, it’s easy to get caught up in that. But before we jump in, tell us a little bit about you and your background.

Jon Barbera (00:43.058)
Sure. I was born in Argentina at seven years old. We came to the US. I grew up in New York. I went to school in New York, dropped out of high school in New York. I did construction there. Then in 2012, 2013, went down to Texas because I was trying to start my real estate business. New York wasn’t business friendly. So I did some research, found Texas. Yes, still isn’t. It keeps getting worse. So.

Mike Hambright (01:06.144)
Still isn’t.

Jon Barbera (01:12.018)
My research in 2012 was like what state was affected the least during the financial crisis. And I saw Texas was like still doing great. So we just packed up everything, drove down to San Antonio, because it was between San Antonio and Houston and I wasn’t going to live near the ocean. It was way too humid. And I just decided to go to San Antonio. And in there, I built my whole business, started wholesaling.

went into fix and flips, renovated over a hundred houses, acquired rental portfolio, build houses. We build about five new builds. hated that space real quick and got back to single family and just doing what I did. And then about a year ago, my business is at a point where I can kind of run it from everywhere. So I decided, you know, I felt like I overcorrected going from New York to Texas is way too hot in Texas as, as you know, and you know, I went up.

halfway so I came to Tennessee which is where I’m at now in Chattanooga and I’ve been here for a year you know I love the business I love the the city I love the nature everything that’s available here and that’s why I try to tell people when they try to guess where my accent is from I’m like good luck I’ve all over the place I don’t know I don’t even know where it’s from so good luck with that

Mike Hambright (02:26.562)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (02:31.116)
Yeah, that, yeah, it’s not Tennessee. Yep. Cool. So.

Jon Barbera (02:34.585)
No.

Mike Hambright (02:38.702)
So just talk about maybe some of your major learnings, because I know it’s easy when you first get started, you just want to do deals. And you do honestly think that you can solve anything with volume. Like I need more deals, I need more deals, I more deals. And sometimes people start to make bad decisions. Like, well, you overlook.

the level of a rehab maybe and you get stuck with it, you can’t wholesale it, you get stuck with it or whatever. There’s a lot of things that could happen but people are falling in love with volume typically or they think they’re gonna make up more profit with volume or things like that. When did you have an epiphany that there is a different way I guess?

Jon Barbera (03:20.913)
So I’ve been at this for 13 years now, but I wasn’t good at it for 13 years, right? So I spent more time doing this wrong than doing this right. I would say the last four years is where I’ve really been dealing it. And up until that point, the issue was that in order to do more volume, you have to do, you need more people, you need more lists, you need more services, you need more marketing. It’s always more money.

Right. It’s always more time. I found myself at a point that I was working about 14, 16 hours a day just to keep my team busy. You know, because like they weren’t very productive. Like we were not moving the needle. We had probably about 12 people on my team at one point. And this is including VA’s and everything. And we were barely some months crossing over 40 grand. And it was stressful.

to run a business like that. Most months we were negative, some months we would come up ahead, but we were just making up for the negative months. So it was just, were doing up to nine renovations at the same time. were like chickens with our head cut off, right? And the only answer I kept getting was just spend more, just spend more. And I’m like, my goodness, I don’t know how much more to spend. Like, you know, it just got to a point where I couldn’t see a clear path.

to profitability and not even profitability, I’ll be honest. Like it was, I didn’t see a clear path to a business I wanted to operate. You know, it was getting to, for myself, I spent way too many years at high stress that I actually started developing a lot of health issues, panic attacks. Like I will be driving on the highway. I will either pick the fast lane or the slow lane. Cause I felt like if I will pass out, I can maybe throw the car into the median and not harm somebody.

Mike Hambright (05:12.814)
Holy cow.

Jon Barbera (05:14.105)
Yeah, I got really, really sick. And it was because of the same stress of the business. It was just like years and years. And every year we would start the year like, well, hopefully we’re still in business by next year, right? And that level of stress, even though people are like, yeah, that’s the grind, it catches up to you after years of operating that way. And the epiphany, I guess, came for me when…

Mike Hambright (05:35.81)
Yeah.

Jon Barbera (05:39.857)
2021, know, 2020 changed our whole business. We had to get back into marketing. Up until then, we were buying from wholesalers, our network, you know, all that stuff. went to a lot of networking events and we had to get back into marketing after 2020 because people were outbidding us on every deal, you know, from every wholesaler. We were losing out on everything. So we went straight to the source and it got back into that business that I hated, which was wholesaling.

and generating leads and everything. And I was about to quit. You know, I got to a point where I sat down, spoke to my business partner and I was like, I’m done. I’m like, I’m so done with this. And he’s like, well, what are you going to do? like, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just buy a few houses a year, renovate them myself. I grew up in construction. You know, I can make, I don’t know, 150, 200 grand, maybe a year, you know, and by myself, I’ll be fine. You know, I’ll just get by. And I saw his eyes get red.

Cause like I was the one kind of driving the business and he found himself like, what am I going to do? And it broke my heart. Like, I’ll be honest. Cause he was the only one that was stood by me since the beginning. So I was like, all right, let me figure this out again. And that’s when we started realizing like, if you can’t make money with, let’s say 500 bucks, you’re not going to do it 5,000 or 10,000 more money. If you don’t know how to make money, more money isn’t going to just magically help you.

Mike Hambright (06:41.486)
So what?

Jon Barbera (07:04.453)
You know, a lot of people always say money makes money, but not if you don’t spend it correctly. Not if you don’t know how to deploy it. You know, you and I were talking before the show about an event I went to that there’s people bragging about 50, 60, 70 doors they own, yet they’re negative every single month. And I’m like, that’s, that’s not the point of real estate in my perspective. Like you should be making money, not having so many doors and losing money. So it was just more of.

Mike Hambright (07:09.806)
Sure.

Jon Barbera (07:31.889)
how can we actually make money with lusts? So at that point, we just kind of fired everybody. And we went right back to my partner and I, and we rebuilt from there. And we were like, just pick one list, one focus, and we’ll become better than everybody else in the market on that. So for us at the time, it was pre-foreclosures in Texas, in San Antonio. And yeah, I mean, we started focusing on the really messy ones, understanding, you know,

partial interest purchases, understanding how to get rid of judgments, how to close outside of title, like the really messy stuff, the really funky deals that other people can close. And we started making a lot more money per deal. So now we went from needing 30, 60 deals a year to now with 18 that we did last year, we did a little north of 2 million, and it’s like now it’s not about volume, it’s quality.

You

Mike Hambright (08:31.736)
How do you differentiate when you’re looking at pre-foreclosure? So historically, I would say there’s a lot of foreclosure activity. This is a different market now because people…

people just have more equity because of all the appreciation over the last few years. But if you go back, you know, even five years ago, a lot of the foreclosure activity was from people that, you know, didn’t have a lot of equity necessarily. So how do you differentiate? Because I know you’re going after messy titles and stuff that people just can’t sell or they’re just maybe inherited it or they don’t even know what they have or whatever. How do you decipher like the deep deals versus those that are in foreclosure are close and don’t have a lot of equity?

Jon Barbera (09:13.187)
So that’s a great question because it’s a lot of people they think I’m just going to pull the foreclosure list and market to it. I’m like 90 percent of that is just trash. Like it’s not worth going after. So our criteria is minimum of a deed of trust date of 10 years or more. Right. So if they bought the house at least 10 years ago or more, then there’s a really good chance they’re going to have a decent amount of equity in the property. Right. Unless they did some crazy stuff in between there. But my my.

Mike Hambright (09:21.388)
Right. Right.

Mike Hambright (09:28.93)
Okay.

Mike Hambright (09:36.706)
Yeah.

Jon Barbera (09:41.859)
My experience has shown that very few have done crazy stuff in the middle. So 10 years or more, we look for institutional lenders. So what we won’t chase is anybody that has a lender that’s like an LLC, you know, that potentially they did like an owner finance or something of the sort. So we’ll look for institutional lenders. And then how to get the really messy ones. What we look for is the owner to be deceased.

Mike Hambright (09:58.99)
Okay.

Mike Hambright (10:08.215)
Okay.

Jon Barbera (10:09.027)
So now the house is in foreclosure and the person that’s getting foreclosed on is dead. So.

Mike Hambright (10:13.56)
How do you know the owner is deceased? How do you find that information? Tell me all your trade secrets. Tell me all your trade secrets.

Jon Barbera (10:16.709)
So there are two services we use. Yeah, I got you. So there are two services we use. One is TLO. The other one is Skip Genie. They’re both the same. I would say TLO stands much higher. It’s just not everybody can get access to TLO. So we recommend Skip Genie as well. But when you Skip Trace an owner, it’ll tell you if they’re deceased. So let’s say, for example, on Thursdays in San Antonio,

Mike Hambright (10:41.206)
I see.

Jon Barbera (10:45.893)
big list is released every Thursday of properties are being posted of foreclosure. Out of 60 properties for us, maybe three qualify. So we’ll bring him at a 60, we’ll bring it down to about 18 with the parameters I told you. Out of those 18, we’ll search each one to find just the deceased one. Now the deceased one, what we do is we go and we skip trace the relatives, right? And we tell them pretty much like, hey, listen, this person’s property.

It’s getting foreclosed on and you guys have an equitable interest in the property Are you guys interested in that money or do you want the bank to just take it? Like no, I would love that money. Great. Let’s talk, you know

Mike Hambright (11:25.742)
Is it pretty common that they don’t even know what’s going on?

Jon Barbera (11:29.123)
Sometimes yeah right now. We’re actually working with a lady that She didn’t know she had even a sister That’s the other person that has the claim to the house and she didn’t even know her mom ever owned a house So, mean like it’s just completely, you know, this associated from the whole family but she owns 50 % so, you know, we we let her know and everything and and Beak why we like doing this is these people

They don’t even know that this money belongs to them or it’s coming to them at all. So like to them is just extra money. You know, it’s just cherry on the cake, right? So it’s one of those things that you don’t have to go and do market research or anything on the property. It’s pretty much like, look, if I give you five grand for your interest on this property is that yeah, I’ll love to get five grand. If I don’t have to do anything, yeah, they sign over their interests. We take it from there and we start cleaning up whatever the title issues are.

Mike Hambright (12:05.357)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (12:23.736)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (12:28.93)
I have so much experience with the alternative to that, is the house is not worth much. There’s not a lot of equity in it, but there’s like 10 descendants that all think they have a pot of gold and none of them agree with each other, you know.

Jon Barbera (12:42.373)
Yeah, and that happens too. That’s why like a lot of the stuff that I spend the time on is the sales, right? So it’s not where I think a lot of people mess up on sales is they try to tack it from a logical perspective of, well, you’re gonna lose it and none of you are gonna get anything. You don’t get very far with that, right? Instead, we wanna start painting a scenario of like, you know.

What would it look like if you were to put two grand in your pocket right now, three grand right now, you don’t have to do anything. but the house is potentially worth this. It could be. How are you going to get that equity out? Are you going to take care of the mortgage? Are you going to take care of the liens? Are you going to post? Are you going to delay the foreclosure? How are you going to get that? Because at this point, that doesn’t look like it’s feasible. Right?

Mike Hambright (13:29.838)
Yeah, because these are often things, are you doing tax sales too, or is it just for closure? Because a lot of these things have a lot of back taxes, lot of deferred payments, stuff like that that you have to catch up,

Jon Barbera (13:33.744)
Yeah.

Jon Barbera (13:42.159)
Right, right. So we’ll do the back taxes as well, especially when they’ve been filed, they filed the suit on the property because the county is getting ready to come in and actually take the property back. So we’ll approach those. A lot of those from my experience is like if they’re behind that much in taxes, typically they don’t have a mortgage because usually the mortgage company will take care of the taxes in some cases. So, you know, when we find those properties, you know, usually like the one, another one we’re dealing with right now, they owe about

Mike Hambright (14:04.536)
Sure.

Jon Barbera (14:11.889)
27,000 in taxes and that’s all they owe and the house as it sits is worth around like 180 So, you know the lady again, she’s like I don’t care, know for all I care the house can burn down It doesn’t affect me at all. It’s like cool. Here’s a couple grand and you don’t have to care anymore Nobody ever has to call you again So they like those, you know, they like that side of it, right? Like just being completely done and getting some money

Mike Hambright (14:29.549)
Right.

Mike Hambright (14:40.61)
Yeah, and so this is how you’re doing more profitable deals. It’s not necessarily you moved up to million dollar plus houses or commercial properties or anything. You’re just finding the stuff that’s really distressed is truthfully, you you know what you’re doing, but for the average investor more risky if they don’t know what they’re doing and you’re just, you know, finding, you’re just looking for home runs, right?

Jon Barbera (15:04.315)
Well, yeah, and this is why I tell people to focus because the reason why somebody new can’t do this is because they’re spread way too thin. They’re trying to do so much. And a lot of people have the misconception that the only way to make real money in this business is to flip houses. And I can make more money wholesaling a house than most people can flipping. Now, I will make more flipping because the margins are there, but

The point is like I speak to people all the time that their average profits 30, 40 grand on a flip. I’m like, I don’t, I wouldn’t touch it for that much money. You know, like to me, my average wholesale is 65 grand and my average flip is six figures. And this is in San Antonio, right? Where most of the deals we’re doing are ARV of 300, 350 or less. So, you know, it’s not like people always assume that it has to be a six, seven, $800,000 home. And I’m like,

No, when you buy it right, the margins are there.

Mike Hambright (16:02.798)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, you kind of used this phrase when we started production over performance, and a lot of people get hung up on volume. But at the end of the day, there’s no badge of honor in having a low profit business. Just, and doing a lot of volume. That might look good on social media for a little while, but we all know people that looked good on social media for a little while, and you don’t even know where they are today.

So that that’s not the goal. So let’s talk about just that thought of High profit who cares about volume because I don’t think that’s that’s not normal. Unfortunately

Jon Barbera (16:42.885)
Well, I mean, you run a massive mastermind, right? I’m sure you’ve heard of people coming in and saying, you know, out of every 10 contracts, we close five or we close six. And I’m like, for me, I don’t see how that’s acceptable. Right. So the other 50, 40 percent. Good luck. You know what? Like, what happens with that? And it’s because they’re just playing this game. They’re not actually trying to understand what the heck is going on.

And to me, that’s not right for the seller because they’re putting their trust in you. You’re saying you’re going to help them. They’re saying you’re going to deliver on this. And then all of sudden it’s like, sorry, couldn’t make my money. So, you know, good luck. Our close rate is 100%, right? Because we don’t contract things we can’t close. So what we focus on is actually moving the needle rather than just being busy. And I see this a lot with people. It’s like, yeah, I was thinking of adding a new list.

To me, if any single list should be able to make you at least by yourself or maybe with a VA, at least a million dollars a year. If you can’t make that with a list, you don’t know the list well enough. Because when you understand a list thoroughly, the profits are there. You understand? Now, if you’re in a market, of course, of like, you know, 80,000 people, 50,000 people, then it’s going to be harder to get to those numbers, right? But you can at least do half a million.

So when you’re adding another list, my first question is like, how much do you make on the first list you’re doing? And usually the answer is like, barely 100 grand. I’m like, so you don’t even fully understand this one, yet you’re moving on to the next one. So what’s gonna happen is you’re going a mile wide and an inch deep. And what happens with that is you’re always gonna compete with literally everybody else in the market. But when you go a mile deep,

We’re at a point in our market we don’t have competition. We’re in St. Louis, we don’t have competition. And we’re about to branch off now into Nashville and we don’t have competition because people don’t go as deep as we go. Once they see the judgments, once they see the owners’ disease, the airship issues, they’re like, just move on. So while everybody’s competing to make five, 10 grand, 15 grand, which blows my mind that it’s still acceptable on a deal, go chase those.

Jon Barbera (19:07.025)
I’m going after this one that nobody else is going after and I’m making 90, 120, 130. You understand? So it’s more about how much more expertise can I get in this one list and every list I have, you know, people that are doing absentees, just absentees, but they narrowed that list down. ProBase just narrowed that list down. I don’t care what the list is, just dominate the list. And then we pick one source.

Mike Hambright (19:31.342)
the key to like a more profitable I mean some of it is like difficulty in finding the decision maker right because otherwise I mean everybody’s working probates everybody’s working a lot of these lists that you talk about but it’s not just the list it’s it’s like probably people can’t find the ultimate decision maker ultimately right or they’re not willing to do the the research is that is that mainly what it is

Jon Barbera (19:38.417)
Mm-hmm.

Jon Barbera (19:53.445)
That’s what it is. That’s what it is. And it’s funny because like I have a few students myself and like I had a conversation with one of them yesterday. He’s telling me about a lead and he’s like, yeah, I think I’m thinking I’m just moving on on this. I was like, I’m sorry. This is when it just starts to get exciting for me. Like now we got to actually map out the family tree. Who’s next in line? Do they have any kids? You know, do they have any siblings? Like all of these things, like start mapping out the family tree and see who’s up next because

Mike Hambright (20:09.335)
Hahaha.

Jon Barbera (20:23.031)
everybody stops at the first name. If the first name didn’t produce any phone numbers or they didn’t connect with anybody, they’re like, I guess that’s it. You know, maybe send them a postcard. And to me, I’m like, no, this is when we put everything down and we go heavy. You know, now we go to ancestry.com, we’re mapping out the family tree, we’re finding who’s the next possible relative in line.

Mike Hambright (20:31.288)
everyone.

Jon Barbera (20:49.155)
start calling those people, start digging through information. Maybe we start buying some partial interest of them, you know, and we start just digging through the whole mess of those deals.

Mike Hambright (20:59.437)
Yeah.

There’s a good friend of mine, actually one of my business partners that has kind of, coin this term, but he’s kind of said this phrase like, basically do hard things. Because most real estate investors, most entrepreneurs, most humans, aren’t willing to do hard things. Like they stop as soon as stuff gets a little bit tough and they just move on to the next thing. Very few of our competitors are willing to do hard things. They just move on to the next easy thing, right? And so talk a little bit about the mindset.

for that because I think that there’s some people like that just move on because I mean they could be honestly let’s be honest they’re a little lazy but two is they don’t really understand the

like that the opportunity exists there to continue to focus on this thing and go deeper. Like they’re willing, they’re willing, they’re not willing to go as deep as what it takes. And so I guess, how did you, it took some trial and error, assume, but how did you learn that was possible and how do others, you what can they apply to themselves to realize that they don’t have to go wider. They need to go deeper.

Jon Barbera (22:05.009)
Well, I have a desire to be better, right? So I’m very competitive. I used to play sports my whole life. I like to win. And my way of looking at it is a lot of people get into real estate to chase the money, you know, because it’s going to be supposedly profitable if they just do this or this and, and, man, if I could just make 10 grand a month, that would be tremendous.

thinking that when your phone rings, you’re gonna be able to see the caller ID and it says, hey, this is a $10,000 deal right here, right? It’s like, no, you don’t understand how much work, how many nos, how much research, how many bad negotiations you’re gonna have to go through in order to get to that position, right? And they’re not willing to learn that trade. They’re not willing to learn those skills. So what happens is like, I’m sure you’ve been hearing this too, is like everybody now is trying to go to AI everything.

AI callers, AI analyzers, they like automate the whole business. I’m like, I’m sorry, does your business make money? No, what are you automating? How not to make more money? Like, I don’t understand. Like to me, when you throw fuel on the fire, you gotta have a fire, right? These people do not even have a fire and they’re just throwing more fuel, right? And they spend thousands of dollars on these AI companies and all these services and all these things. And I’m like, you don’t even know why it doesn’t work though. You understand? You call the foreclosure list.

And like for me, like we work on our scripts a lot. Why? Because I’m calling them. So when I realized I’m calling, I’m getting hung up on in the first 60 seconds, I know my intro’s not working. I got to change that up because even if they’re not interested, I could still get through five minutes of a conversation with somebody, right? So I started gauging every metric on our calls. How long are they lasting? How are they converting? How many owners are we speaking to? But

If you automate or outsource or try to skip over as many of these things as possible, you’re never going to know anything. You know, and I know people that have been at this for the other day, I met a guy that he’s, he’s a five year vet in real estate. I was like, you could call yourself a vet after five years. I like, I must be ancient then. mean, Mike, I mean, you must be like an elder at this point, right? Like a five year vet. Are you kidding me? I’m like, you’re just getting started.

Mike Hambright (24:20.334)
you

Mike Hambright (24:25.004)
Yeah.

Jon Barbera (24:25.061)
Like you haven’t even been through market cycles to even understand what the hell the market has, right? And you hear him talk and it’s like surface level stuff. It’s all surface level, you know? And I’m like, yeah, as soon as the market shifts, you’re out of business. You have no idea how to adapt to a market that shifted because you’re so surface level. So my thing is like, if you can’t develop the desire to be the best in this business, you know, as best as you can be in this business, then

Mike Hambright (24:28.748)
Right.

Jon Barbera (24:54.213)
I don’t know what the point is of getting into it because being mediocre is gonna get you those types of results.

Mike Hambright (25:00.566)
Yep, there’s not a about it, yeah.

One thing I want talk about too is kind of partnering for success. So I used to do everything myself and now I don’t really get into anything new unless I can find somebody to run it or a partnership or JV of some sort of collaborations. I think you’ve had some tendencies to kind of go that direction too of like, can I do what I’m good at and partner with others that can, I can teach or they’re just good at those things. So talk about, I guess the evolution of you and your business

of realizing that I’m not going to get good at everything, I’m going to get good at a few things, and I’m going to partner with people that can do the other parts of that. Talk about that a bit.

Jon Barbera (25:40.603)
So the partners I have right now have all gone through essentially my coaching program just because I partner with people beforehand and I got to coach them anyway. But what I’ve realized is I can’t gauge their desire until it’s too late. And then I’m like, man, you’re just not willing to do the work, you know. And when I can see you through my coaching program that you’re showing up, you’re doing the work, you’re getting some success. Now I see your level of dedication.

Right. And when I see that you’re showing up and you’re always asking questions and you’re always sharing your wins or your feedbacks or your problems, and you’re always trying to work through things and you’re being creative, I get excited. Right. And then I look at somebody like that, like we’re doing this with one of my students in Nashville. And so far this year, he’s already made a little over half a mil just wholesale in Nashville. Right. So he’s, he’s pretty successful on his own, but I can throw fuel on his fire. Right. So I approached him. I’m like, Hey,

Here’s what we’re looking to do in Nashville. Is this something you’re interested in? Because I know his character. I know his work ethic. I know that he understands how to manage his money. You know, he knows how to save his money. So he’s not going to get into money crunches that’s going to affect the business. So there’s a lot on the person that I look at, you know, because with desire and focus, I can train the rest, right? I can teach you how to close. I can teach you how to market. I have my back end systems. I can take you all the way.

But if you don’t have that desire, if you have a lot of limiting beliefs or a lot of things that you’re just not willing to work through, you’re not willing to face, then it’s a big red flag, right? And every partner that I have, we’re very transparent with, they’re very transparent with us, we know their families, you know, it gets very involved because to me, my first business partner, Jon, we’ve been partners now for over 10 years.

I told them to me, partnership is like a marriage and I don’t believe in divorce. Like if we got an issue, we will hash this shit out. You know, you and me, we’re going to sit down. Let’s figure it out. And because of that transparency, we’re great partners, you know, and that’s the same premise I have with everybody else. So I look for that, essentially that, like, can I throw fuel on their fire and make it that much bigger?

Mike Hambright (27:43.628)
Yeah.

Jon Barbera (28:03.227)
But if I see that I can’t bring any value to them or vice versa for you, right? If you’re looking for somebody partner that you can throw fuel on, if you see that it’s like, man, this guy is gonna be more of a headache than anything else. Like it’s not worth it for you. Like, you know, you’re not gonna get excited to even talk to the person. So those are the things that I kind of look at. And that’s why the requirement now has been, if you want to partner with me, you got to go through my coaching, right? Because it’s not because of my coaching, but like, because I need to see, you know.

Mike Hambright (28:20.237)
Yep.

Mike Hambright (28:32.11)
It’s like an apprenticeship, right? You can’t move to be a journeyman unless you’ve been an apprentice.

Jon Barbera (28:38.063)
Yeah, yeah, if I see your, because everybody, and I’m sure you’ve had it, but like, I get people to reach out to me all the time for free coaching. And they’re like, you don’t understand, Jon, I’m gonna grind and I’m gonna work and I’m gonna blah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I’m like, all right, do this and call me back. Never hear back from them. And that happens so many times. And I do give them a difficult challenge, right? Because I wanna see, like, I want you to even call me back or like, hey, man.

Mike Hambright (28:56.13)
Yeah, exactly.

Jon Barbera (29:04.795)
I’ve been trying, I don’t know how you get past this piece or like show me that you’re trying, you know? And I would even coach you. I’ve coached people for free all the time. I don’t mind doing that when I see that there’s hunger. The thing is like there isn’t hunger. There’s that appeal that real estate is gonna make me a millionaire and I can work from any beach anywhere and look how much money I can make. And it’s like, no, you gotta earn that. You know, it doesn’t come from your one.

Mike Hambright (29:32.472)
No doubt, no doubt, awesome. Well, Jon, thanks for sharing your story with us today and some lessons on building a more profitable business, doing less deals, quite frankly, just going deeper instead of wider. Yeah, folks wanna connect with you, like where can they go to learn more?

Jon Barbera (29:42.821)
Yes, sir. Appreciate you for having me.

Jon Barbera (29:47.761)
The best way is Instagram, just Jon Barbera on Instagram. And I have a YouTube channel where everything I do, I put out trainings for. So if you want to learn all the techniques I teach, they’re all there for free. And it’s coach Jon Barbera on YouTube. And yeah, pretty much reach out, DM me and I’ll connect with anybody.

Mike Hambright (30:08.142)
We’ll add some links down below. Thanks for joining me today. Guys, hope you enjoyed today’s show. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of ways to do deals. You just want to make sure you’re building a profitable business on a solid foundation. So hope you got some good value from today. We’ll see you on the next show.

Jon Barbera (30:10.949)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me.