How Jeff Cichocki Built an A-Player Team and Cut His Workweek to 12 Hours

Jeff Cichocki (00:00)
What is Financial Freedom? This is one of the

pet peeves I have about the whole industry, well actually really every single industry that tries to get everybody to join to make a buck.

The big pet peeve revolves around the fact that can buy you out of damn near any problem that you have, except love.

I can go speed down the highway, get thrown in jail for going a hundred over the speed limit. I just gotta hire the right attorney and I’m out. Right? Money can solve a lot of problems, but it can’t fix your family. Financial Freedom, if you ask yourself, but what does Financial Freedom give me? It’s time.

Issa Hanna (02:05)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have Jeff Cichocki with us. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Cichocki (02:12)
Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Issa Hanna (02:14)
I am super excited to have bring a wealth of real estate knowledge onto our show and I’m super thankful that for that. So to our viewers at home, can you kind of give us what you’re focused on nowadays? And we’re gonna get into all the history and all the other knowledge that you have in our space too.

Jeff Cichocki (02:29)
Yeah, so right now I run and manage five different brands, but most of my energy is going into one at the moment. the other four are overall self sustaining because of my team. but the one that I pour the most into is capital raising because of what I think I see coming in the future.

Issa Hanna (02:46)
I’m gonna let you take the floor and explain what you see the market looking like in the next six to twelve months, because in total agreement, but you break it down a lot more eloquently and better than I would.

Jeff Cichocki (02:56)
Well, so right now there’s, tons and tons of investors who are hurting at the moment. And it’s a lot to do with the interest rates and the market shifts that have happened over the last six months, especially. And projects that people got into, especially anything that needed renovations, right? Whether it was a flip or even a burr, the exit right now, because of the higher interest rates, is what’s got everybody in up in arms. Now, the markets have not responded appropriately.

And what by that is historically when interest rates go up, pricing goes down. But because we’re having a shortage of houses in the market and places for people to live, prices aren’t holding for the most part. Yeah, there’s pockets where things are already going down, which is an indication of what’s coming. But for the most part, we’ve been struggling because prices stayed up, interest went up, right? And demand is still there. So what I see coming though is

I think there’s a transition that’s already started, like I kind of hinted that prices are starting to come down. And as those prices come down, that creates additional opportunity for us. So yeah, we’ve got some stuff out there that a few of us still have to kind of work through and get out of to get to the next stage. But if people are willing to be a little bit patient and a little bit strategic, especially I think once we hit Christmas.

I think the market’s gonna take another turn, but for the better for all of us. And I think that’s gonna open the doors to a ton of new buying opportunities that because the prices will be fixed, the interest rate won’t matter again. it’ll feel like we’re still back at three percent rates because the cash flow will be back to what it was.

Issa Hanna (04:28)
Definitely. And the reason I’m in total agreement with that is you guys have been on all the real estate websites, Price drops of twenty, thirty thousand over this last year. So the market has corrected itself, right? This is why the interest rates haven’t really changed much. They did go up a little bit, but they’re holding solid because that’s where the market is. The market is solid. We’re just waiting for that price correction and

Like you said, I think December, January, it gets cold, especially up north, that’s you’re really gonna see it. Unbelievable opportunity. Guys, if you didn’t catch that, rewind back, take some notes, because that’s your first piece of golden knowledge that Jeff’s gonna drop on you today. You’ve also been in to the real estate space. So not only are you a hard money lender right now, running five different brands.

two big companies, one in Boise and one in Wisconsin. but you had a partner and for a long time you guys were rocking it in the real estate world. So I’m gonna let you take the floor again. Yeah give us the history of the partnership, how you guys started, and then how beautifully it ended, because you don’t get a lot of good partnership stories. So I want to bring that to light.

Jeff Cichocki (05:33)
Yeah. No, I started real estate twenty-one, twenty-two years ago-ish. And when I got in the space, I started out like everybody else. I was a scared to death flipper, right? I didn’t understand rentals, I didn’t understand anything. And somehow I ended up meeting a few

good people that gave me some good advice at the RIAs. And they helped me kind of get my feet on the ground. Well, about four maybe five years after I started in the real estate space, my business as a flipper and landlord had already grown so insane that it really became a problem. because I still had a full-time job. I had a fairly new wife, got kids,

Right. So you’re trying to balance it all. And I was doing 10 houses at a time at least. And I recognized that was just too much if I wanted to actually stay married. So I made the smart move and decided to scale back. When I scaled back, I was at one of the RIAs and a friend of mine ran that club. And I was talking, his name was Nate. And so I’m talking to Nate that night about, how

Exhausted I am and burnt out, and how I got to pull my business back and scale back to no more than three houses at a time. And he’s telling me the exact opposite story. He’s like, dude, my business is going gangbusters. He’s got I got so many houses crawling out my tailpipe. I don’t know what to do with them all. But all of my private lenders are just tapped. Like, there’s no more money for me to close on the properties I got under contract. And so

My private lending business was sort of born in that moment by accident. I just said, Well, maybe I can talk to my private lenders because I’m not using their capital anymore. maybe I can help transition them over. And so when I approached them all, every single one of them said no. They would not work with Nate because their relationship was with me. And I said, Well, what if I’m in the deal? And they said, Well, if you’re in the deal, we’re in. And so I started partnering with Nate.

And then next thing somebody else in the RIA finds out I’m helping Nate. And right. And then same thing goes with private money. As soon as people find out what’s going on. And next thing me just helping a friend turned into a side hustle, which then eventually just turned into a full-fledged lending company out of necessity because the market was demanding it. but the whole time we were growing the lending company, we were still flipping houses and buying rentals and vacation rentals and everything everybody else is doing.

Plus, I was managing my full-time job as this thing grew. I didn’t quit corporate America as soon as I should have. I rode it honestly way too long. Now, I don’t mean everybody should run out and quit their jobs as soon as humanly possible. Make sure you’re stable. It’s just sometimes even when you don’t have golden handcuffs, because you’ve got some high paying career job, every job really is a set of handcuffs because there’s comfort and complacency and insurance and

certainty that comes with those jobs and So that’s what by I stayed too long. when I did finally tell my wife that I was ready to get out of corporate America, she smiled at me and just said, I’ve been waiting for two years for you to come to that conclusion. And so I left. my last day of work

The very next day, my business partner did not call me. Not he didn’t call me at all. He didn’t text me. He didn’t do anything. He just let me sit for a day. And the next day he calls me like cr really early. And he’s like, dude, it’s time to get off your butt. you’ve had your time off. I hope you’re ready. It’s time to get to work. and so the business exploded once I had full actual

attention going to the thing. And then we probably grew 5x over the next handful of years. And then when COVID hit, that was another massive moment because we were able to kind of spot what was going on in the marketplace. I’m a pretty fast thinker, but a little bit of a slow mover. So I’m good at analyzing and kind of watching what’s in front of me. And I will tell you we made a mistake that turned into the biggest blessing ever in the middle of COVID.

And the mistake that I made was I asked for referrals. And I know on the surface everybody’s going, How in the world is that a mistake? Well, when we made the request in the middle of COVID, almost all of the finance industry had shut down. all the big institutional hedge funds had disappeared, all the big national hard money guys had turned off their funding, everybody disappeared. Well, I really wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing.

Bad timing, I asked for referrals at the moment that they were shutting down. So we grew 250% in 60 days. And I literally had to tell everybody to stop sending me referrals.

Because we the staff we just couldn’t keep up anymore. and it just got kind of crazy. and of course these are all growing pains and they sound like, my god, you’re just so lucky. There’s a lot of growing pains that come with this stuff when you do get lucky. And since then we’ve had to take multiple steps backwards on purpose and slow things down to fix processes and procedures and systems and software and

marketing and the message that we’re trying to do things so that we could do what we promised, which was to get people funded for their deals. all while still trying to run our masterminds and the national conference we were doing and the lending company and raise capital and you’re just running like a chicken with your head cut off. So it’s not all

roses all the time when you hear about success stories, right? Because we know nobody hears about all the hard stuff that we do behind the scenes. But yet everybody on the show, I’m sure, knows what I’m talking about. Everybody out there goes through pains every single time. So that’s kind of the journey at a 30,000 foot view of just how we kind of went through and did everything. but opportunity is everywhere in every market. it’s just

How do I take advantage of it properly? Like just thinking it through and making the best decision you can. And if you’re wrong, it’s okay, just step back, fix it, make a different decision, and then step back forward again. And if you keep doing that, you can’t help but find the path that gets you around the wall. So

Issa Hanna (11:03)
Jeff. amazing. So much knowledge in that story. And then I love how you guys just fit like a glove. you had the financing, he had the properties, he had everything booming. And then yeah, I wanted to pull out the points you made about growing too fast, right? You want to have the right systems, the right infrastructure, the right foundation in place before you do grow 250 times, right?

Jeff wasn’t expecting that type of growth, or else I’m sure you would have put those systems in place. But what he did instead of taking it on for his intro integrity, for the credibility of his business, so that people kept taking the business seriously, not they’re taking forever to fund a loan. They’ve bitten off more that they can chew. They scaled back, they stopped taking the referrals, they started building systems in place, and then you told me, you said you’re a great problem solver, you’re a visionary.

All great people in our spaces are visionaries. You can see things coming, which is a big testament to your success. but the problem solver, you’ve been able to put some crazy systems in place. And I asked you earlier, I said, okay, give me a day-to-day in your world. You said, I’m at the point now where I work 12 hours a week because my systems are so good and my team is so good. I’m gonna let you shed it, shine some light on that. And then

Also the split with the partner. I wanna get into that as well. So can you kind of give us a little bit more about the partner too?

Jeff Cichocki (13:10)
Yeah, actually I’m gonna start with the split from the partner because it actually leads to how I got to the team that I have today. so my ex-business partner and I, we’d been partners 10, 11 years. And one of the things that we did that really set us off on the right footing when we got going was the fact that we got to know each other over time, almost like dating, right? It’s almost like you’re dating your spouse.

We got to know each other. We asked each other really hard questions. And, when we were getting to know each other, ironically, we weren’t looking to become business partners. We were just two guys that were showing up at a RIA every single month. And we were actually going to multiple RIAs, so we just kept bumping into each other. And because we shared strong character and integrity, we were essentially doing our own little masterminding.

We were swapping notes because we lived about a hundred miles apart from each other. And so by not being in each other’s back pocket, it made it so easy to compare notes and never feel threatened by what the other was doing. Now, when I got started in real estate, I ended up with some really good coaches and mentors that just turned into friends that kind of taught me the abundant type mindset.

And so I’ve always been super happy to share, even with people who are in my backyard, because after I also used to run one of the RIAs for like nine years. And unfortunately, one of the things that I learned by running the RIA is that the vast majority of people don’t do what they’re told to do. And it’s really unfortunate and sad because everybody that shows up has so much potential and the business has so much opportunity. there’s so much room for all of us.

In the twenty years, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually competed with someone else locally that was a friend of mine to buy a house. Like y it you think it happens all the time and it really it doesn’t that anywhere near as much as we all think it does. So after 10 years of the two of us just clicking like water and oil together in a good way,

when it comes to partnerships, that’s really what you want. Because if you’re both the exact same and all you do is overlap each other, then what value does the other really bring to the mix? And so when you’ve got a glass and it’s half full of water and half full of oil, in the middle there is some of it that’s mixing. That’s your overlap. That’s the places you complement each other and you help explode the weaknesses of each other.

Right. As it turns out, he hated, I loved, and everything I hated, he loved. All right. And so it worked really, really well because we just could communicate and could share. We had the same values. We were both going in the same direction. We cared about each other’s families, not just a dollar. because we also learned that if you don’t care about the actually shows up faster. and so we

spent all of our energy on each other and our families and people instead of the money. And then everything just grew. And so, you fast forward the 10 years. And my wife and I were empty nesters. And, he and his family were not. And so at the time, I think youngest was like eight or nine years old. And so there’s an age difference between us and our personal lives were just starting to go in different directions. And so

We decided that while we still essentially loved each other, not just liked each other, we had so much respect for each other that the best time to take the break and walk away was while we did, in fact, still like and care about each other. instead of waiting until one of us was resenting the other and, all the horror stories that you hear about. so we left it we left it all go on a high.

And because we also did that, the separation became super easy because again, because we liked each other and we weren’t focused on, well, I gotta get exactly 50 cents out of every dollar, because our partnership didn’t run on a 50-50 basis either. We each owned it 50%, but we left money in the company all the time so that as each family needed something, that there was capital there to help support the other family.

Now, my partner and his wife had a really, really hard time having kids naturally. And so he adopted two kids, one of them while we were partners. And because we had the cash reserves, that’s what enabled him to go do the adoption. And because at the time he’s like we were still pretty new in our partnership.

And he was like, it’s just not fair that if I take any money from the company, we got to go make a bunch of money so I can go get this kid. And I’m like, dude, just don’t worry about it. Take the money. Like, we’ll make it up after the fact. Like, I know you’re good for it. It’s no big deal. Right? Like, family’s more important than the couple dollars in our bank account. So when we separated, we just traded assets straight up instead of trading cash. I took the lending company.

which was really where my heart had kind of gone to because I’m a bit of a deal junkie and I can’t get enough deals on my own every month to feed and scratch the itch. So I love lending because I get to live through everybody else’s deals now. and he took the mastermind that we were running, he took the annual conference we were running, he took all of the flips that were going on, he took all the rentals, like he took all those assets.

And I took the lending company, which, as you can tell, the lending company was obviously very profitable to trade three companies for one, right? but it worked out financially pretty balanced overall. not 50-50, but close enough that we were both happy. And so now you separate. So what happens? Well, the first thing that happened was is I was standing on my own. I didn’t have somebody to lean on anymore.

I didn’t have somebody to bounce ideas off of. Now we’re still friends today and we still talk periodically, but it’s different when you’re not partners because you don’t want to be a burden to them anymore. And so you keep thinking I got to solve all the problems of my own. And so, in a way, separating from him put me back mentally years. Right. And I had to kind of work through that. Well, that’s how you get to the team. So I struggled for a whole bunch of months just trying to.

I guess make my own mark in my own company now because it was just me and not us. And I got to a point where I said, I think there are things that I need that I actually just don’t know how to do or build or whatever, but I could see what I wanted to build and I could see where I wanted to go, but I’d never built this particular bridge. And so the crazy thing is, I made one single post on Facebook to fix this problem.

And honestly, I had no idea it was going to work out as well as it did because you never know or who your friends really know and who they can connect you with. So my post was is I think my company’s to the point where I might need a CEO, a CFO, or something to help me bridge to the next goal that I have in mind because I’ve never been there before.

I said, so who do you know that I might be able to spend 10 or 15 minutes on the phone and just pick their brain, act, ask them like, what’s it like to be that person? What do you need in a role? kind of expectations do you put on a company if that compensation benefits, leadership, autonomy, like exactly is it? So a bunch of people reached out.

And so I ended up with all these people that wanted to help me figure out that role. Now, some of them actually wanted the role. Like they thought would have been the coolest thing in the world to actually build their own position in the company. And several of the people that applied were people I knew. And I had no idea that they were so interested in what I was doing. In the end, I didn’t know what I really wanted to do. And one of the guys on that I ended up getting introduced to said, Well, listen,

I’ve grown and scaled seven companies and exited all seven. And he was wicked smart because he retained 10% in equity in every company that he sold, but gave himself essentially zero per zero voting rights. Just send me my love check and life is grand. So this he did all this before he was 40. And he said, Listen, for a couple grand, which I was blown away by because it was such a cheap price that he gave me. I couldn’t like

my God, how fast can I send you the money for this? Cause it’s so cheap. But he said, I tell you what, I’ll spend a month investigating your company. I’ll interview all your current employees. We’ll review all your processes and procedures. We’ll review everything. And I’ll tell you what you I think you need. And he came back and said, Yeah, you don’t need a CFO, you don’t need a CEO. What you really need is a really strong project manager who has the potential to become like a CEO, COO type person for you down the

And I’m like, that would be amazing. So he was only supposed to help me out. And I agreed that he would stay for a couple more months. He ended up staying for 18 months, helping on the side build the team. And through that whole process, there’s one giant lesson that I learned that if

you anybody thought that story was interesting, forget the whole story because the only thing that matters is actually what I’m gonna tell you that I learned from that story.

The guy that came along and started helping me was an A player. And I thought I knew what an A player was. And I really didn’t. Now, in my career, I was an A player, but I was playing inside of someone else’s rules. And when I got out of a structure that just happened to fit me really well, and I stood in my own structure, which I hadn’t built properly, I became a B player accidentally. So

When he was telling me what I needed, I looked at him and just said, Well, who do you know? And that’s the magic lesson. Because do you know what A players won’t do? They won’t recommend a B player to you. They will only recommend A players. And so when an A player recommends an A player, you end up with a hell of a leader. And then now I have two A players. And then I said, Okay, well, we need to start working on everybody else in the company. And this is

A little harsh, but through this whole thing I realized that every single person that worked for me needed to go bye. And, we wrote them severance checks and we treated them very well on all of their exits. But I rolled the entire company. I rolled every single person except for one. But every single person that we brought in came in as a referral. We didn’t hire anybody off of ads. It was who do you know? And we made

A few posts on Facebook and tapped into our friends, but everything became referrals. Who do you know that’s an A player that wants something like this that can bring value and can help me build this? I’m not looking for just an employee. And so the lending company became almost a work of art. I can sit here and say it’s really amazing. And everybody can go, my God, Jeff, it’s so insane what you built.

But the reality is my team built the business. I didn’t actually do it because I didn’t know how. All I did was just start asking questions. So to me, that’s like the biggest lesson anybody can learn is we all can’t do it all. And I got one of those compulsive personalities that says, man, I can build anything, do anything, be anything. Like, man, I like I’m a really smart guy and I’m pretty talented, but no, like not even close to what it takes to do it all.

Like there’s only so much time in a day. this is something we didn’t talk about, and but my wife passed away eleven months ago. And when she passed away, because it was completely unexpected, Brittany is who really is my right-hand person. She’s the one that really runs all the day-to-day stuff. I found out that I had built the company of my dreams when my wife passed, because

All I got was a message from Britney that said, obviously I’m sorry, but it’s don’t worry, I got this. Take whatever time you need. I was probably working 60 hours a week, when my wife passed. And since then, realizing that I really had found all the A players I ever needed and they were capable of actually running most things from me, all they needed was the vision and the guidance to build what it is that I wanted to build.

That’s how I got down to 12 hours. And because I really went to zero, because I needed some time to kind of recover. And I’ve only come back to 12 hours. And, full transparency, only three of it is spent actually managing and running all five brands. The other nine are, I have some coaching students and some other things that I do for fun that I just love to do. That’s what my other nine hours is spent doing.

now that doesn’t mean truly that I only put in 12 hours because I’m bored. you can’t work 12 hours and not be bored. So I spent a lot of time in chat GPT. I love doing research. I love building and exploring things because of my IT career. I love coming up with ideas and concepts that I can then give to the team that are now fully formed instead of just half-baked, half half-cocked, ideas that can come out of this.

crazy head of mine and that’s how I got to twelve is just I just started asking for referrals of who could help me build what I wanted to build for my dream. And then they built it.

Issa Hanna (25:03)
Man, so much knowledge to unpack in what you just told us. So asking for help, right? Jeff’s sitting in front of us, one of the premier guys in the country, right? With the knowledge in the real estate game, especially in the lending space. He said, Hey, I thought I was a na player until I saw what an A player was, and I realized I had to build this company.

We don’t always know everything, and we do have to ask for help. whether you’re just starting off or you’re way at the top there. Another thing, A players. A players bring a type of work ethic, a type of knowledge, a type of grit and drive that you’ve never seen. If you’ve never seen an A player, you’ll be flabbergasted at what they can do for you. So these A players also

Don’t get to be A players and don’t get to be where they’re at if they refer B players to you, right? Just like Jeff was touching on. So they’re giving you who? giving you their A players. Why? Because they’re putting their name, their brand on every referral they’re giving to Jeff. So you’ve been able to build basically a dream team. and like you said, your dream company, because when that time did come and tragedy hit, you were able to take that time off.

You had Britney, shout out to Britney, who literally just told you, Don’t worry about it. I got this. took over and now, here you are, twelve hours, you’re doing what you love, you’re doing what’s important in life. And that is what we need to be doing. that is the whole goal, that is why we work, that is why we get into any business, whether it be real estate, whether it be the nine to five, the ultimate goal is do what you love and spend your time doing it. So

Man, just knowledge, Jeff. so much, so much life knowledge you just gave us from that. and I wanna kinda lean into something else that you touched on with your partnership. You guys cared about each other. It wasn’t about the money. We were talking earlier and we kind of were exchanging stories, and I said I’d never spent a dollar on advertising. It was all through integrity. You said exactly the same thing. I just spent my first dollar.

a year ago, after all these years. So networking, growing your network, business relationships, doing that with integrity. It’s very important. So I’m gonna let you take the floor and just talk to our young guys now, just starting out. If you could give them some more advice, what would it be?

Jeff Cichocki (27:53)
I was actually just at a conference this past weekend and I had the luxury of being one of the speakers because it was a conference a friend of mine was running and putting on.

Figuring out the real priorities because it’s so easy to chase the money. And the problem is that once the greed button is pressed, what really happens is blinders get put on. And these blinders that get put on, because we don’t put them on ourselves, it’s like an automatic magic machine that slaps them on us.

And the first pair of blinders they give you cause you to trip over dollars to pick up pennies. And so figuring out the real priorities. if all you do is run around and chase a buck, you’re gonna spend your entire life running around chasing a buck. And miss out on all the things that are truly valuable. can I sit here and say that I didn’t make the same mistakes at different points and

Periods along the way? No, I absolutely did. there are definitely points in time where I gave money a higher priority than it deserved. And I can also tell you, looking back from experience, that every time I put money in front of everything else, everything else fell apart. Not collapsed, it didn’t devastate anything, but it sure stopped working. Like it just didn’t work the way that we wanted to. We never got to where we were trying to get to.

we were constantly self sabotaging because we didn’t pay attention to what we were doing and where we were going. We were just focused on making a buck. So to the young guys, figuring out what like is really important. and I told the crowd this. A lesson I learned, it just kind of came to me at one of the masterminds that Derek and I were running.

Was that for every single thing that we do for someone else, we also do something to them. And most people don’t have any clue what that means at all. And so it always needs an explanation. And what it means is, especially for men, but women this happens too as well. We think that we have to go out and do all these things for our families.

We have to go make all this money. We have to provide the security. We like, we have to do these things, right? and I know women that feel the exact same way, that they are providers and nurturers. The problem is, though, is that as you chase all those things that you’re trying to do for the family, you’re sacrificing something. That’s what you’re doing to the family. And what is it that we sacrifice first and foremost? It’s time. What is Financial Freedom? This is one of the

pet peeves I have about the whole industry, well actually really every single industry that tries to get everybody to join to make a buck.

The big pet peeve revolves around the fact that can buy you out of damn near any problem that you have, except love.

I can go speed down the highway, get thrown in jail for going a hundred over the speed limit. I just gotta hire the right attorney and I’m out. Right? Money can solve a lot of problems, but it can’t fix your family. Financial Freedom, if you ask yourself, but what does Financial Freedom give me? It’s time. Financial Freedom is sexy. It sells.

If I tried to sell you time, you don’t understand it because no one can put their finger on time. It just happens and it goes by. That’s why nobody sells time. But we want Financial Freedom to get the time to spend with our families. Now don’t get me wrong, I get it. There’s sacrifices. There’s no way to not do something to your family. You’re going to have to make some sacrifices along the way, as does your family. But we need to find a right way to do it.

like I personally really hate this whole concept of work life balance. And the reason I really hate that concept is because if you think about it, every time we talk about balance, it’s some form of like a scale or a teeter-totter or something along those lines. There’s an infinite number of possibilities on the left and the right, but there’s only one possibility of actually being in balance. There’s only one single point in time. And anything can happen.

a breeze, a feather, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be anything big. It knocks it out of balance. So I personally prefer the word harmony instead. if you work on things from a life work, a work life balance perspective, that means if I want my work life to be better, my family life has to go down. If I want my family life to go up, business goes down because you only can put attention on one side or the other, but you can’t do it at the same time.

When you look at things from a harmony perspective, you look at things and say, okay, what can I do in my business that will better my family? What can I do in my business, processes, procedures, automations? Can I hire somebody, whatever it is, that frees up my time to go and spend with my family? So shifting that thought on the priorities over to what it is that you’re really trying to get to, because it’s not

isn’t what we’re really trying to get to. We’re trying to get to the concept of Financial Freedom, but then everybody stops telling you that the step beyond Financial Freedom is so that you have enough money to buy the time. So just focus on time from the beginning. And you’ll find out it takes way less money to do it because you built it right. You don’t have to buy it. You created it. it’s a monstrous mental shift. But it’s so much easier once you actually realize that’s how the game should be played.

And your founder would be more for it.

Issa Hanna (32:48)
One hundred percent. I say this on almost all my shows. this industry, why we get into it, all this stuff is to buy time, the one thing you can’t buy. getting that residual income, putting those right systems in places, frees up your time to be around your family, which at the end of the day, very important. And like Jeff said, you don’t need much money to live the type of life you want to live, So chasing that buck.

Getting to that status symbol. There’s always another level to reach. if you keep climbing that ladder, you’re never gonna stop climbing. Sometimes it’s okay to sit back and say, Hey, I’ve got enough. I like where I’m at right now. This is my family, this is my time. Jeff. this is business mixed with life knowledge today. This is why, guys, if you notice we’ve gone

over time and we’re not done yet because jeff’s somebody I want to really spotlight. I want to spotlight his knowledge because he’s bringing so much to us right now. And now I want to kind of look into your future a little bit. I look you up, Jeff, right? it’s all about harmony. It’s all about peace life getting the most out of your time. So I look you up in five years. Where am I going to see you at?

Jeff Cichocki (33:51)
so about a year ago, well, probably almost two years ago now, I had a small epiphany about the future and really where I wanted to land with things. Part of it’s a math problem, part of it is a time problem. none of it is a money problem, but yet the truth is it’s hard to do anything without money being a part of it because we do all need money.

Right. Money is not my number one motivator. But if you look on my list of priorities, it’s up at number two and three. Like it fluctuates a little bit because we need money as a tool. Like we have to have it in order to accomplish the other things. It just isn’t what makes me tick every day. I learned about business acquisitions.

be honest, like I got sucked into it the same as everybody else, right? It’s the next best thing, right? And even with all the knowledge and skills and even knowing better to a certain extent. but the thing is, that I actively started to pursue businesses. Now I did something that nobody in the group I joined told me to do, but I didn’t want to waste leads.

So I started calling businesses that I knew were for sale, that I knew there wasn’t a chance in the world I wanted to buy it. Wasn’t in my wheelhouse, wasn’t in my skill set, I knew there was no passion and interest for me in it. So why did I call all these people that I have no interest in to talk to? Because I just wanted to talk to them. I wanted to learn and practice how to actually communicate with business sellers.

So that I could come across as being intelligent when I got to my industry that I wanted to buy. Except I had a massive life lesson during all those phone calls. What I learned is that business is business. It really doesn’t matter if it’s real estate, lending, it doesn’t matter if it’s an HVAC shop. Like it doesn’t matter. Business is business. The widget is really what changes.

And yeah, when the widget changes, I know always some extra nuances and things that are unique about every single type of business out there. But at the core, they’re kind of all the same. And so I just started asking people, like, well, tell me about your business. tell me why I want to buy your business. Like you almost have to kind of sell me on why I want to buy it. And through that process, that’s how I came to the point of realizing.

I needed somebody to help me figure out what I was doing with my own business because I realized I had built all of this stuff essentially despite myself. I was learning from other businesses owners that were successful, not in my industry, but so much applied that’s what caused me to recognize, like, what? I’m not even running my own business, right? Yeah, we’re making money. Yeah, we’re very profitable. Yeah, everybody’s got a good attitude and stuff, but

we don’t have a vision for the future. Like we just don’t have our ducks in a row. We’re just making money and growing despite ourselves because, well, we just happen to be in a unique industry that everybody needs our service. But there really was no value for myself or the staff that I was working with. so I shifted that direction and started looking at things that way. so what is the

is to buy more lending companies. The future is to potentially buy other businesses that are related to the industry. I came up with this idea and concept and I have no problem sharing it. And to anybody out there that wants to do this, all the power to you.

But I when I looked at businesses to buy, I thought, okay, I’m just gonna go buy hard money companies. And don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely doing that. But then I thought, hard money is generally very localized. It’s not national, right? The hedge funds, yes, they’re all the n national lenders, that’s all hedge fund driven. All right. It’s totally impersonal. Even if you get a great salesperson, they really don’t give two whips about anybody.

Because it’s all about them making a buck and that’s it. They’re just chasing money and trying to hook you into their machine. But then I thought, okay, so if I buy a lending company or even here in my own city that I’m already at, what services does every one of my customers need? And the reality is every single person that I’m funding at some level needs HVAC, electrical, plumbing, lawn care, right? Title Companies.

real estate brokerages, like anything and everything that’s in the real estate space ties to what I do because they’re the same services that I need as a lender. And I thought to myself, well, but imagine the competitive advantage I would have as a lender if I owned all the trades that my customers needed. Because number one, I could offer discounts because I’m controlling the process. Number two, do I know that the work

That gets done at their projects is going to be of better quality and better cost controls. Of course, because I’m the one actually providing the service to them, which means the likelihood of the borrower’s project being done on time, on budget, and maximizing their profit goes through the roof. I’m like, how much bigger of a win-win could I possibly do? Right. So that’s kind of the vision for the future to me, is like.

What else can we just do? And most of it I think will be done through acquisitions, because I will tell you, building from the ground up sucks. And it is way easier buying and just taking what someone else built and growing it than it is from scratch. so we’ll likely do most of it through acquisitions. will we still buy real estate and the other stuff that we do? Yeah, it’s just the new vision is like what can I build that’s a value that ultimately can be sold?

Right. I had to have a long conversation with my daughter one day. she was working for us, and then she decided she wanted to do homeschooling and kind of be a stay-at-home mom for a few years, which I’m like, absolutely have at it. But she thought she was going to inherit the company. And then I had to tell her, like, unfortunately, there’s not a chance in the world that you’ll ever inherit the company because I’m going to sell it at some point. And she’s like, but

right, you can just imagine the sadness and she took it. And I’m like, well, no, wait a minute though. let me just ask you a question. Since separating from my business partner, and if you ever have him on the show, you can ask him about me and he will tell you my vision was very, very small. And he had the bigger of the visions between the two of us. And he was always the growth-minded guy and looking out for things. My vision for the future is now a hundred decks to what his is.

and so I asked my daughter one simple question. And I said, would you rather inherit? Do you want to inherit an empire or do you want to inherit a job? And she’s like, Well, I’d rather have an empire. And I said, Well, then everything we do in the acquisition space is going to be all about processes, procedures, acquisitions, leveraging the skills and talents we have to grow things, to increase value, the same thing we do with all of our syndications and

It’s the exact same concepts. There’s nothing I’m working on that isn’t being done in the real estate space. I’m just sidestepping in into a different space. And the reason I said before that this is part a math problem, the math is way better on this side. And I’m not trying to sway people against real estate because real estate is a fantastic place to hold our wealth. But there are other ways to generate wealth faster and in bigger chunks than you can with real estate.

Takes a little bit longer, a little bit longer play, but when you come out the other side, it’s usually a much bigger number. And for me, I have some generational things that are really important to me regarding charities and my faith and all that kind of stuff that goes into things. And so money is becoming more and more important for that vision. it’s not about changing my lifestyle. I personally live a very simple lifestyle.

Other than a few bad habits that I we all get that we spend a little too much money on. I really live a pretty simple life. But I realize I can have a bigger impact in the world if I can create more wealth. I realized this when I was volunteering for some charity things that I was doing. there’s rarely a shortage of volunteers for charity. There’s always a shortage of money.

And I’m like, what? I happen to be pretty good at making money. And I now have a team that I literally can take anywhere. I’m like, let’s focus on making more money so that we can just give it away and just do something different with it. So my vision’s grown, it’s huge, the numbers are big. I won’t even get into them here because like it’ll skew people’s opinions like and they’ll stop doing real estate and get off on a different dream and they shouldn’t.

‘Cause everything needs to be built one step at a time. you can’t jump to the top of the mountain. You gotta climb it one step at a time.

Issa Hanna (41:43)
One hundred percent.

Jeff Cichocki (41:45)
But the vision has just gotten bigger and bigger as we’ve been able to do more things. So

Issa Hanna (41:50)
Vertical integration. it’s beautiful. And being able to jump in just parallel move into the same world at the same speed, finding companies that fit your avatar and what you could expand to. Amazing. literally true knowledge. This is a how-to book on how to live your life, how to leverage your wealth generational legacy. because at the end of the day, you want to be remembered, you’re gonna be you’re gonna have your name remembered.

You need that wealth to build it up to have your name remembered. And they’re definitely going to remember you, Jeff. truly guy. so much integrity, so much honesty on screen. unbelievable with the knowledge that you gave us. But you do have five companies, five brands right now. You still a business guy, and you’re still doing more. So I’m gonna give you the floor again. People wanted to get a hold of you, if they wanted to use your services, where could they reach you at?

Jeff Cichocki (42:39)
if you call the main lending company, it’ll take you anywhere because all of our systems are integrated even from one brand to the next. So I’ll just give you one phone number so everybody doesn’t have to figure out who they want to talk about. but the best phone number to call is 9 2 0 3 4 1 8 5 8 0.

I really hate auto attendance. So ninety-five percent of the time you’re gonna get a live person that answers the phone. I learned that from the billionaire that I used to work for before. He hated him too. So it’s not that anybody will never get an auto attendant, but we it you’re only gonna get one if we are slammed and swamped. Otherwise you get real people to talk to and come up with real solutions for stuff.

I think that’s one of the things that’s lacking, especially in my industry and pretty much every industry, is like it’s getting harder and harder to talk to real people. And look at all the AI tools that are coming out to, replace people on the phone. I think social media, not to get off on crazy tangents, but I think social media has helped deteriorate the connection that we have with each other. But yet every single person who gets into real estate, one of the very first things that we’re all told and taught to do is build a team.

A team requires real people, not an AI agent, not some auto attendant on a phone system. it’s connections with real people. it’s conversations like this, and you can’t have it with a machine. So fighting hard to make sure that we can hang on to real people, as much as we can. Yeah, we’re automating things behind the scenes where we can, but I don’t want to take people out of the process. So if they call that number.

You can ask about anything we’re working on. You can talk about capital. You can talk about borrowing. You can talk about the coaching stuff. You can talk about whatever you want. get you connected either directly to me or someone on the team will it if it fits what they’re doing.

Issa Hanna (44:19)
Amazing. So 9203-418-580.

Jeff Cichocki (44:23)
Yep. Eight five eight zero.

Issa Hanna (44:24)
8580, guys, make sure. like I said, one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve brought on the Real Estate Pros show in history, Jeff is. So make sure you guys call that number. If it fits, you will be taken care of. Like I said, this guy is somebody who has the most honesty, most integrity, and most knowledge out of a lot of guests that I’ve talked to on this show. So Jeff, thank you so much for coming on.

I’d like to invite you back on the show at a later date and even your business partner I’d like to extend an invitation to.

Jeff Cichocki (44:54)
Well, I may have a new one I by the time I come back. although I wouldn’t be opposed to being on a talk show with Derek himself. so it just depends on where you guys are at the time and what you want to chat about. I know Derek and I have done events where we’ve talked about our partnership and what made it work. it’s a very interesting talk for people to see how good partnerships really can be.

like I’m a huge proponent of partnerships. I know there’s a gazillion horror stories out there, but I’m still a huge proponent in partnerships. I just don’t tell everybody to jump in bed with a permanent partnership on the very first go. Like just start with something small, like just go flip a house together, flip another together and try it before you buy it. Like you don’t have to commit a lifetime to it. It’s not really a marriage until you guys commit.

Issa Hanna (45:36)
Exactly. It just has to fit. It’s a partnership and you dip your toe in and you do it little by little. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show. I enjoyed our conversation very much. And to our viewers at home, if you enjoyed our conversation with Jeff and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge about not just real estate but life. Until next time. The Real Estate Pros

Are out.