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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Leo Wehdeking interviews Tevan Millette, a licensed real estate broker in Florida, who shares his insights on integrating AI into real estate, his journey from military service to entrepreneurship, and the importance of authenticity in networking. Tevan discusses the challenges he faced in his career, the keys to managing multiple businesses, and the significance of building genuine relationships. He emphasizes the need for a strong support system and the value of learning from failures to achieve success in the real estate industry.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Tevan Millette (00:00)
I’ve had so many moments where it’s like one step four, five back, one, four, 10 back. And you’re like, entrepreneurship, I don’t know about this. That nine to five sounds pretty good. So one of the biggest things that I have endured, and this was actually semi recently wasLeo Wehdeking (00:00)
youTevan Millette (00:25)
I was growing so quickly with the individuals that work with me. Well, one thing that happened was I got a little too confident for my britches. And what I failed to do was ensure that I had a very strong foundation. And if you have a shaky foundation, whether that is with finances,or if that is the overall setup of your business itself. So kind of talking about the, could be the ecosystem of it. Maybe you have too many flaws or potentially the architecture of it. ⁓ or my personal favorite is if I don’t have a backup plan, if something goes wrong, well, I, take advantage of what they call a PACE plan.
Leo Wehdeking (01:00)
huh.Hahaha
Hey everyone, welcome to Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host Leo Wehdeking and today I am joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Tevan, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate industry. Tevan, glad to have you here,
Tevan Millette (03:11)
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much for the invitation, Leo. Happy to be here.Leo Wehdeking (03:16)
I’m very happy, excited to have this chat. ⁓ Tevan, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’ve been ⁓ approaching the real estate business nowadays. ⁓ let’s dive in. Okay, so first of all, for people that are not familiar with your world, all right, can you give us a short version on what’s your main focus these days?Tevan Millette (03:47)
Of course, so in the real estate sector, my primary focus right now is I’m actually a licensed real estate broker here in the state of Florida. And so I had been working heavily on the whole development of different kinds of brokerage concepts with a lot of AI integration to just kind of further enhance the overall effectiveness of real estate and how it all is transacted.Leo Wehdeking (04:12)
Alright, alright. And in what markets are you operating in?Tevan Millette (04:18)
Great question. So I’m actually, I love working the whole state of Florida. It’s really cool. But my primary bread and butter is right between Pensacola, Florida and Panama City Beach, Florida. So right up in the Panhandle area. I love it by the way. It’s gorgeous out here.Leo Wehdeking (04:20)
YouOkay.
Yeah, yeah, tell me about it. ⁓ Now, Tevan, something that really caught my attention is how you’ve been able ⁓ to grow, to keep your company growing, okay? And how you’ve been incorporating new tools such as ⁓ AI, you know, automation into your company. Can you… ⁓
Tevan Millette (04:40)
Yeah. ⁓Leo Wehdeking (05:02)
Tell us how you’ve been able to handle everything ⁓ and keep growing at the same time. ⁓Tevan Millette (05:58)
Absolutely. So we all know about AI. We’ve all heard of chat GPT and all these other different kinds of concepts out there where you can go ahead and put in data and it ingests it. And then it goes ahead and pretty much formulates an answer. It thinks for you. Well, the biggest thing that I was kind of questioning at one point was, okay, so if everybody’s using AI,And they’re coming up and producing so many different answers for all of their real world problems, regardless of what they may be. I thought, okay, well, how can I go ahead and use that, but in real estate? And so what I figured out is there’s a lot of tools out there that can go ahead and cut down on a lot of your time. And for me, and I imagine this is like this for a lot of other people too, but we do a lot of things. We’re all busy.
We’ve got jobs, we’ve got family, we’ve got friends, we’ve got bosses that we have to go ahead and make sure we perform for. And so I think to myself, and yes, entrepreneurs as well, we work for ourselves, but at the same time, we’re also working for the people that we are working with, which are, you know, some of our employees. But yeah, and so with that being said, I started integrating different kinds of tools. So for example, GHL, go high level.
Leo Wehdeking (07:12)
Exactly correct.Tevan Millette (07:21)
An amazing product. my goodness. is twice down my time, tenfold. I swear to you, Leo, like this is absolutely incredible. Just by the level of automations that you can get with that tool is just crazy. And no, I’m not an affiliate with them, but I’m just saying like they got some good things going on. ⁓ But also there are different kinds of AI bots and other tools that I have gone ahead and started to use, but alsoLeo Wehdeking (07:39)
Okay.Tevan Millette (07:48)
made that as a part of my SOPs for all new agents that are onboarding into the program to help them out as well. But overall, I’d say that’s really how it’s kind of affected me in a positive way.Leo Wehdeking (07:58)
Okay, okayand besides something that also caught my attention it’s how you’ve been able to well your license real estate ⁓ broker in the state of Florida right but you told me also that you like to do coaching practices ⁓ your speecher and you also do consultations am I right?
Tevan Millette (08:25)
I do. Yes, you’re absolutely right.Leo Wehdeking (08:26)
So whydon’t you tell the audience what Devon does besides being a licensed real estate broker? Your other faces where actually you integrate everything that you do with being a licensed real estate.
Tevan Millette (08:53)
Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of want to bring it back a little bit and tell you a little bit more about me. So that way, you know, there’s not too much shrouded mystery. And I hope I kind of answered some questions along the way, but I come from the state of New Hampshire. That’s actually where I was born and I grew up. And so what I ended up doing over time was when I was a young teenager, probably about 13 years old, I ended up making the decision for myself that I.Leo Wehdeking (09:03)
Amen.Okay.
Tevan Millette (09:22)
was here on earth to go ahead and serve people. To go ahead and just make life better for not just myself, but for others that are around me. And something just really struck a chord with me when I was younger. And so growing up, I eventually joined the military. I’ve actually been active duty military for well over 10 years now at this point. And along the way I picked up real estate. And so…Leo Wehdeking (09:49)
youTevan Millette (09:50)
When I got into real estate, I was just doing it kind of for myself. I started off with like investing. So I purchased a house to go ahead and just simply purchase because I ain’t gonna lie. I had no idea how to buy a I Googled it, I YouTubeed it, I looked up everything. I was like, so how does one buy a house? know, like that was me on a keyboard. And so once I had it for a little while, I was like, how do I sell it?Leo Wehdeking (10:03)
HahahaTevan Millette (10:53)
So then I went back to that agent. was like, Hey, can you go ahead and help me sell this? And then along the way, what I was doing in the background was taking notes on absolutely everything that that agent was doing. I was just an absolute sponge. I was like, I want to know every single process of this so that way I can go ahead and replicate it. So after that, I got into a little bit of a taste and the kick of a flip, a property flip. So then.Leo Wehdeking (11:07)
Okay.Okay,
fix and flip.
Tevan Millette (11:23)
I did thatand I liked it. I was like, I liked that. That was cool. And so when I did the property flip, I realized just how much can truly be made from it. And I was like, well, how cool would it be if I had my friends go ahead and do this? And then I recall that time back when I was an early teenager, I was like, huh, I could definitely serve other people by teaching them how to go ahead and feed their family.
I was like, this is cool. So then I went and did that. I showed a friend how to do it. I walked them through everything, the buying process, then I taught them how to flip it, what they needed to do, speak to the contractors, work out the permits. And then there were just so many other pieces of the puzzle that they were lost in, but I had the knowledge of. And then they sold it and they made money. And I was like, ⁓ that was cool. Exactly. And I was like, I got to do this for more people. How do I do that? So
Leo Wehdeking (12:15)
How cool is that?Tevan Millette (12:22)
I eventually got stationed down here in Florida. And when I got stationed down here, I ended up finally getting my real estate license. So everything I was doing prior to having my actual license, it was all very legal because I was still using all the licensed individuals, you know, that were necessary during different facets of the transaction. And so when I got over to here, I did that and then I was like, I kind of want to own my own brokerage, but I wasn’t a broker yet.Leo Wehdeking (12:43)
Mm-hmm.Tevan Millette (12:52)
So then I go, I went back to the good old Google. was like, how does one own a brokerage if they’re not a broker? And so I learned all the process. Yeah.Leo Wehdeking (13:00)
Yeah, wasa time when we used to Google for everything. Now everything is chat GPT. Everything.
Tevan Millette (13:05)
Right?Exactly. Yeah, a hundred percent. And so I ended up opening up my own brokerage and I had a broker of record that was, you know, in the background administratively. So I was still running the day-to-day operations. Everything was really how I wanted to run it. It’s just anything that needed the legal push or the final verification of everything to track all of those things would go by him. So that way he approves it.
you know, final stamp of approval. Well, I eventually tested for the broker license. So that was the real estate side. And all the while, when I was doing that, I was getting into very, very creative real estate transactions too. But before we dive too far into like the real estate stuff too, I ended up opening a practice for coaching. And the coaching isn’t just real estate specific.
Leo Wehdeking (14:02)
Okay.Tevan Millette (14:05)
It’s actually more generalized. So I ended up getting internationally certified as a coach. And so if you have different kinds of things that you’re just working through, if that’s, you know, just a personal thing or you’re working through a business or you have a leadership summit or you need a workshop produced, those are all things that I can go ahead and provide. I’m actually recently, I have been certified via the John Maxwell team. so I am a certified member.And I’m working on different kinds of consultation practice additives as far as my services go. And so, yeah, it just kind of started all really piecing together and it was, it’s just been amazing. So I offered coaching, real estate consulting. ⁓ And so, yeah, I hope that, I know that was a long way to go ahead and respond, but I want to make sure you have the whole picture.
Leo Wehdeking (14:35)
Okay.Nice.
Nice. No, no, no. Yeah.
And that was actually perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Now, Tevan, what’s been the key to keeping all of that business running smoothly? Because I know that’s not an easy task to do. So can you tell us how you’ve been able to manage yourself, you know, and your time to do all those type of things, you know, and
Tevan Millette (15:57)
Right.Yes.
Leo Wehdeking (16:08)
and at the same time keep on growing. So what’s the key to your success?Tevan Millette (16:15)
⁓ I would say that there is a couple of things. One, God. There is no way that I could do everything that I do without him. I’m telling you right now. I tried it, been there, done that, didn’t go well without him kind of thing. So there is definitely that aspect to it. And then secondarily is people.Leo Wehdeking (16:24)
Okay.Tevan Millette (16:42)
I used to try to live by the philosophy of being a one-man army, a one-man show. I thought that I could handle all of it. You can call it ego. You could call it overconfidence. You could call it arrogance. There are so many different words that you could use, whatever it was, I thought I could do it. Well, when I realized that I just had so much going on, I needed to go ahead and incorporate other people into it. So…I found other individuals that were like-minded. And then I really thought about it and I was like, well, you know what? If I want to go ahead and get to a certain goal, whether that be physically, spiritually, monetarily, then I need to go ahead and align myself with other people of like-minded. So I started entering into different kinds of groups. So there were men’s groups that I was partaking in.
There were different kinds of nonprofit organizations, a lot of different kinds of volunteerism. Uh, there were, I actually founded a nonprofit organization. There were so many other things that I started doing. started partaking in local chambers of commerce meetings, and then I started traveling around to partake in, uh, conferences and all these other things. So by doing that though, it sounds cool. You’re like, okay, it’s heavenly. That’s, that’s great that you’re doing all that, but why?
The why is because that’s where all the other people that think like me are looking.
And if I’m not around those people, I’m not getting challenged. I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. And I’m not always the smartest person in the room. Like by no means. But by doing this and positioning myself in such a way, I’ve been able to really lean on other people to challenge me. And then not just that right there, working on my circle and my inner, my inner people, if you will, but
The other thing that I’ve been doing is finding other individuals who not work for me, but they honestly work with me. And by these amazing, amazing people working with me, ⁓ my goodness, there is so much talent out there. You may think at some point that you know it all or you’ve got, you know, the answer for everything. Again, I’ve been there. I thought those things at one point, but
Leo Wehdeking (18:53)
Exactly.Tevan Millette (19:14)
There are other people that are sometimes better than us and they want to work with us. And so that’s honestly the, some of the biggest keys to my success and how I’ve been growing so exponentially lately. And even though there’s been a considerable role in a lot of parts of the economy, I would say that there is still a lot of opportunities out there for a lot of people. And so if you can get around.these amplifiers of life than I highly recommend.
Leo Wehdeking (19:47)
All right, cool, cool. Now, Tevan, I know that every operator has a moment where things got real, okay? Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that they had to pivot really fast. Do you mind sharing one of those moments?Tevan Millette (20:08)
I’m happy to, absolutely. my goodness. I’ve had so many moments where it’s like one step four, five back, one, four, 10 back. And you’re like, entrepreneurship, I don’t know about this. That nine to five sounds pretty good. So one of the biggest things that I have endured, and this was actually semi recently wasLeo Wehdeking (20:11)
youTevan Millette (20:36)
I was growing so quickly with the individuals that work with me. Well, one thing that happened was I got a little too confident for my britches. And what I failed to do was ensure that I had a very strong foundation. And if you have a shaky foundation, whether that is with finances,or if that is the overall setup of your business itself. So kind of talking about the, could be the ecosystem of it. Maybe you have too many flaws or potentially the architecture of it. ⁓ or my personal favorite is if I don’t have a backup plan, if something goes wrong, well, I, take advantage of what they call a PACE plan. And for those of you who don’t know what a PACE plan is,
Leo Wehdeking (21:11)
huh.Hahaha
Tevan Millette (21:32)
PACE plan is a derivative of an idea from the military, at least that’s just how that I ended up getting this knowledge, but it stands for primary, alternate, contingency and emergency. So when I go and do things, I try to do them very deliberately. I think of second and third order of effects before I make a decision. And I also keep in mind my PACE plan. So if my goal is say,I want to go ahead and make $250,000. That’s my primary plan. It’s a financial plan. So I need to think about ways to get there. And so I know my goal. have $250,000 that I wish to go ahead and make. Well, I need to set up my primary plan. So if my primary plan states that I’m going to work 150 transactions before year’s end, calendar year, then
Leo Wehdeking (22:06)
Okay.Tevan Millette (22:30)
I’m going to be able to meet my goal if I can go ahead and close those transactions. Well, it’s like, okay, well, what if I can’t close 150 transactions? What’s my alternate plan? And then I work through sequentially, of course, and I have my secondary and then my third, which is the C and then the fourth, which is the E. Well, what I failed to do was I let go of my philosophy of the PACE plan and I only had a primary plan. My primary plan was to lean on my best.And unfortunately, bless his soul and his spirit, he ended up passing away. And so when that happened, now I definitely appreciate that. was, it was a tough time for his family as well as our family over here. ⁓ and unfortunately I had all of my eggs in one basket. He was my go-to. He was so important to absolutely everything.
Leo Wehdeking (22:59)
room.Sorry to hear that.
Tevan Millette (23:28)
that when he was gone, I didn’t know what to do. I fell behind. I started realizing that a lot of transactions and a lot of different things that were going on were all due to him and I having really awesome deals together and us just working the heck out of them. And so when that piece, when that key player right there was no longer here, I…Leo Wehdeking (23:48)
Exactly.Tevan Millette (23:58)
Again, didn’t have my ultimate plan. So how’d I had my ultimate plan and I could have prepared better. So instead what I ended up having to do was dip into other reserves, which I shouldn’t have had to have done. But it’s a failure on my part as a leader. And that’s the biggest thing as a leader is that people, even though you work with them, they’re still going to look up.Leo Wehdeking (24:23)
Exactly, yes.Tevan Millette (24:24)
Andif you don’t have a lot of the framework in place to go ahead and deal with things, then you’re setting everyone up for failure. And so luckily I had an actual SOP for in standard operating procedure of what I would do in the event of certain things happening. And so.
I didn’t plan it thoroughly. I didn’t plan if that person was gone. I planned if, you know, or what I would do for their family. So it was a very bizarre situation and you know, I was trying to swiftly recover from it. And then I experienced growth somewhere else. And then I fell off, you know, the whole path of, I think all of my phase plans, all set up and all my SOPs. Cause I got flustered.
And so what I realized was, you know, a couple other things. you know, I looked internally, I was like, wow, you need to calm down. It’s okay. Things happen. Life happens. What are we going to do with that? And so then I got very, very particular with how I started making my approach to the other things that I was doing. I took out a journal and I would start journaling. I would talk about the failures.
Leo Wehdeking (25:44)
Okay.Tevan Millette (25:46)
but also the successes that I would have. And I did that on a weekly basis. And so I also incorporated doing AARs into everything that I do. And AAR is an after action report. So say for example, I was working a really big project and it was maybe a deliverable for a client. And which I did have one. There was a very, very large one that I had going on as far as this.the whole idea of projects go. And after that was delivered, I went through and I wrote down three sustains in three improvements. I was like, okay, execution sustained the execution of this was exact, you know, and I just went on about it. And then so for some of the other ones on the other list, I was like, okay, so improves. need to work on the, ⁓
Leo Wehdeking (26:15)
ThankOkay.
Tevan Millette (26:45)
We could say expeditious nature of my delivery. Maybe it took two months. So those were things that I started to relook at and reincorporate into everything that I was doing so as to just remain more effective in my approach.Leo Wehdeking (27:00)
Alright man, that’s actually the kind of stuff that people, you know, don’t talk about enough. And honestly, for myself, I think that’s what separates the folks who just dabble from the ones who stay in the game long term. So Tevan, let me ask you this real quick. What are you most focused on solving or scaling ⁓ next?Tevan Millette (27:16)
Yes.Hmm, that’s a really good question.
I’ll be honest and say scaling, scaling at this point, because after all those hits that I’ve been taking over the years, I’ve been quietly in the background accumulating a book of SOPs. And these SOPs, if I have a problem, I flip, I literally look at the binder and I flip over to the page. I’m like, ⁓ if this is an issue with finances, let’s go over to finances. What did I have for SOPs in regards to finances?
⁓ here we’re operating procedure over here. So if I’m running low on funds, what is my procedure? Like, what do I go ahead and do? Do I look at a different kind of bank account over here? One that I pre-designated that I would withdraw emergency funds from, you know, so on and so forth. So I don’t think that at this point I need to continue solving because a lot of the common issues that I already face, as well as the services I provide are now in existence. You know, the…
Leo Wehdeking (28:29)
youOkay.
Tevan Millette (28:33)
The problems are already, you know, solvable at this point. So it’s not, you know, trying to figure out like, okay, what do I need to do in order to actually go about ⁓ repairing this issue or so on and so forth, but it’s failing.Leo Wehdeking (28:46)
Okay, good, good. That’s big. Now, I know that a lot of people are either earlier in their journey or looking to level up, okay? And I think they will benefit from hearing this. When it comes about building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?Tevan Millette (29:09)
Hmm. I love that question. And I think that this one is sometimes missed by a lot of people, but be genuine and authentic.Leo Wehdeking (29:23)
You can fake that. ⁓Tevan Millette (29:25)
Be yourself. Yeah,you can’t you can’t fake it. People will see that from a mile away. And you know, it’s like, when I meet somebody, I really am being genuine. I people say I smile a lot, but it’s because I’m literally happy. I’m happy to see you. Hey, my name is Tevan. I’m your friend. You know, like this stuff is so real. And so when building these relationships,
Leo Wehdeking (29:30)
Yeah. Correct. Correct.Thank
Correct.
Tevan Millette (29:54)
I found in the past, building a relationship isn’t, you know, just trying to get something out of somebody. That’s, that’s not it. That’s not the answer. How can you go ahead and provide value to this person? How can you make their life better? Because I’ll tell you what, if you can go ahead and make someone else’s life a lot better. Yeah, you might have the one off where it’s like, they’ll just take whatever you give.But the majority of the time I would say that it will find its way to be reciprocated. Some people call it karma. And so my biggest thing, you know, building relationships is really being genuine, getting to know the person, not trying to get to know their bank account. That’s, that’s just not it. A lot of people do that, unfortunately, these days. And so you do have to stay guarded in a way, but I hope that that kind of
Leo Wehdeking (30:28)
Correct.Tevan Millette (30:51)
answers that question.Leo Wehdeking (30:53)
Yeah, yeah, it does. Actually, I think the same. For me, relationships are everything. Not only in this space, but in every aspect of life.⁓ being authentic, being real. People won’t take you seriously if they find out that you’re faking it. So yeah, for me that’s very important. All right, Tevan, look, before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?
Tevan Millette (31:16)
Yeah.I love that. So if you want to go ahead and reach out to me, I am so available. I am here for you. Let’s go ahead and have a conversation. You can reach me on DMs, my Facebook, which is just simply Tevan Millette, or you can go over to my website, which is Tevan Millette.com. And that’s T-E-V-A-N-M-I-L-L-E-T-E.com. And you can go ahead and book a call through there.
You can see the different kinds of services that I offer, coaching, speaking, collaborations. Love those. Those are fun. Just like while we’re here, Leo, I love this kind of stuff. And if you’re interested in any real estate aspect of things, I’m also very proficient with subject to acquisitions, hybrid creative financing models, odor finance deals, Airbnb arbitrage, lease options, you name it. If you want to talk residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, I’m here for it. I love that stuff.
Leo Wehdeking (32:10)
youAll all right. Well, perfect. ⁓ Tevan, I really appreciate your time, all right, your story and your perspective. We need more people in this space who are actually doing it the right way like you do. All right. So thanks again for being here, my friend. And for those of you who are just tuning in, all right, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We got more conversations coming up with operators just like Tevan who are out there building
real businesses. Until then, we’ll see you on the next episode.
