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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Micah Johnson welcomes Mario Brown, a seasoned investor in the multifamily real estate sector, particularly focusing on naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAA) in the Carolinas. Mario shares his journey into real estate, which began with a sales role at a home builder and evolved into a passion for community-focused housing solutions. He emphasizes the importance of aligning professional skills with community needs, leading to innovative approaches in property management and resident engagement. Mario discusses the operational challenges he faced and how they inspired him to create businesses that not only manage properties but also enhance the living experiences of residents.
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Mario (00:00)
Isn’tthat put more of a value on that heart you have? Right? So can we be strong enough to not to be too cliche or cheesy, but to love through hard things? And I think the other side of the paradigm for maybe some of your listeners ⁓ is, I love to tell people this, just because my heart bleeds doesn’t mean my mind’s not sharp.
Micah Johnson (00:03)
Exactly.Mario (00:23)
Just, I mean, just because I have a heart for a resident, just because I have a heart to have impact doesn’t mean that, you know, we are executing at a very high operational level. In fact, we have to, to have more impact,Micah Johnson (00:23)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Mario Brown, who’s been making some serious moves in the multifamily real estate industry for about a decade now. Mario, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.Mario (02:21)
Micah, thanks for having me. It’s great to spend a Friday with you.Micah Johnson (02:25)
Absolutely, I’m excited for our conversation, man. I think our listeners are really gonna take something away from how you approach real estate in general in the area that you’re in. I really appreciated some of the things you spoke about pre-recording. So let’s dig in right there. For people who may not know you yet, what’s your main focus right now and what markets are you operating in?Mario (02:43)
Yeah, thank you. We focus on what we call NOAH properties or naturally occurring affordable housing. ⁓ Really quick for your listeners that are unaware, know, 1970s and 1990s garden style apartments, I say, you know, they have the right things wrong with them. You know, we’re recovering value-add investors in the multifamily space here in the upstate of South Carolina between, you know, Charlotte and Atlanta. ⁓ But our kind of footprint operationally kind of travels through both North and South Carolina.Micah Johnson (03:13)
Gotcha. And what got you into real estate, man? What was that 10 years ago that led you into the industry?Mario (03:19)
youLike most,
think, you know, when podcasts were emerging on the scene, when bigger pockets was, you all I could listen to, know, graduating from college, was a, you know, an onsite sales agent for a home builder. So each day learning. ⁓ then once kind of started to get pretty good at sales, started to invest in single family homes, understand, you know, what I was good at, what I wasn’t good at. Ultimately, I ended up going through, you know, I did a lot of that and ultimately went through
a
program called Leadership Greenville that our chamber hosted that exposed young leaders and obviously me being one of them to the issues of the day, right, in the community. was a one-year program and I got totally lit up over the housing day. ⁓ And I think that, you know, what I was kind of challenged with, Micah, was this idea that I should connect my professional skill with a community need. Not only would I find, you know, kind of heart and mind alignment with that, but there was
Micah Johnson (04:00)
Thanks.Mario (04:20)
elastic demand. There was a if we could if we built it or delivered it, it would rent and the books would come so to speak. So that was really turn it really turned me on to what I call a really community housing approach to multifamily, though the skills needed are very much market rate skills, you know, putting hard money, hard money, artist money down over the years executing, you know, capex and value add, you know, underwriting all the all the things that it would take to raise $50 million and buy 1500 apartments.Micah Johnson (04:28)
Right.Mario (04:50)
But for us, the operational pieces and leaning into the resident have become really, I think, the hallmarks of our value-added strategy and the genesis of lot of businesses that we’ve launched.Micah Johnson (05:51)
And going there, you’ve launched quite a few, and it’s not just one that you’re into right now, and they all touch each other. expand on there, what it is that y’all really do, natural occurring, affordable housing. I love that term. And then what other opportunities have you connected around it to help you keep growing?Mario (06:09)
Yeah, so I’m going to take this from really the through the kind of the observations, the operational observations that I think investor, a value add investor has as he’s going through a deal or the horizon of a deal. First, man, these managers suck. Boy.Man, this, I don’t even know where to get an incentive for, I I think I’m delivering affordable rents, but I don’t, they tell me it’s affordable. How do I get that layer into my deal? ⁓ You know, ⁓ to man compliance. mean, I got to hire who? So I think those are all the, the, the, operational insights that, you solve your problem. You, and you solve, solve the markets problem. I think, I think you eat your own dog food. This is what some say, but I think what my kind of, I’ve always had an affinity
Hey, if I’m going to invest the time in fixing something operationally with our investment, I’m going to do it in a way that’s not internalized or organization, but I’m going to containerize it. And when I containerize it,
I hope to get paid on that in the future. And it’s also easier to partner with outside folks. think it’s more easy to give a great property manager equity in that property management company than the underlying investment. And so I think, you know, from the property management, we launched NOAH property management and that, and we obviously manage our 1,500 units and about, you know, 1,800 other units here in Greenville, South Carolina to our affiliate nonprofit
Micah Johnson (07:24)
Right.Mario (07:41)
It really leads the charge in terms of layering incentives into for-profit owners deals. Not in the slow, benign,bored, riddled, nonprofit way, but at the cadence of business like we want, right? Like we want to actually operate a very sure way. Something that if I can’t understand it from an attorney, I can’t underwrite it. So that’s where our legal team sits. ⁓ And they have almost 20,000 units on the tax abatement program there and are able to really help restrict rents, but also educate for-profit investors on how they can do the exact same thing.
we’ve done. you know, I think, you know, each of those businesses do touch, but I think it’s, it’s because we didn’t see any solutions in the market. I think that’s that I think that that’s, that’s really why, you know, I think if we would have been in a market rich with property managers, we would have never lost a property management company. We don’t, we don’t have space, you know, but we but we love the impact that allows us to have on our resident, that it allows the our thesis as investors to fully be realized at the property level. So, you know, doing things like reporting all positive payments,
to
the credit bureau. 3 % of landlords do that, Micah. So why would they? Well, guess why don’t they? The question is, why would they? And so NOAH does that and so many other programs that we can point to that are just structurally fixed issues that we’ve just observed over the years.
Micah Johnson (08:57)
Wow.Y’all are very resident focused, right? It’s very much into serving your community, building successful businesses, obviously, but like you’re just talking about, making sure that at the ground level, the person that’s experiencing it is still having a good life experience. Cause y’all do some things that other folks don’t do in terms of even how they make their payments and stuff. What led to those ideas? And if you want to share them with the audience about how exactly that y’all do that.
Mario (09:45)
Yeah, no thank you for highlighting that. I think that the biggest opportunity we saw to improve our residents ability to pay and theiroutcomes. So let’s zoom out for a moment and let’s just say, you know, if what I said before, the inelastic demand
I can’t operate with a scarcity mindset, right? I gotta believe that my resident, I’m not the final destination. I want them to buy a house. If I want to hoard them and keep them in there and like not do what’s good for them, then that’s a different, that’s a whole different approach. And I think that’s common approach. But, but, but for us,
We wanted to have economically mobilizing property management. We believe that, you know, as our residents flourish.
you know, economically as they have, as their credit score goes up, as they can, as they have the option to split their payment in half so that they can really live this paycheck, the paycheck life so many people are experiencing today or hey, that coming up with first and last month’s rent, hey, that’s a lot. If rent’s 1100 bucks, that’s $2,200. How can we positive alternative, right? That they pay a fee versus having to come up with that $2,200, you know, it’s not without
Micah Johnson (11:27)
Right?Mario (11:36)
⁓ you know, ⁓ good business practice, you know, we actually go into our applicants accounts when they, through Plaid, when they apply. So because we have more information, we can actually ⁓ have more creativity with them so that they can have positive outcomes. And I’ll say this, this isn’t all ⁓ sunshine and rainbows either. I we have some, we have evictions. You know, we have things, we’re operating at, you know, at…at 60 to 80 % area median income, there are things that happen that we hate, right? But some of our residents do opt into all these great programs and they do amazingly. So you gotta keep loving even though it’s hard.
Micah Johnson (12:17)
Man, there’s hard everywhere. That’s one thing, especially in real estate, like hard equals good. If you can solve the hard, everything you want’s on the other side of it, every time. It’s what I’m trying to teach my 10 and 12 year old right now. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s okay that it’s hard. Don’t make it harder than it is. It’s already hard enough, but it’s easy to get surprised by how hard hard can be. And that switches into that victim mode really quick. But when you know it’s like, this is okay. It’s just part of it. And that’s where…If you’re going to spend any kind of duration in real estate, especially as a landlord, you’re going to evict somebody. Somebody is going to do something to one of your products. Like it’s going to happen to hope it doesn’t happen is like hoping the sun ain’t going to come up. Like it’s, it’s, you’re wasting a bunch of time. ⁓ and what I really love man is that viewpoint towards that, that the person, it’s a real human that’s renting the property and they’re, they got life dreams too. They got goals too. And we all start at different places.
Mario (13:02)
That’s it.Micah Johnson (13:14)
someone meeting them along the way to say, hey, here’s what we can do. Here’s how you can keep helping. Here’s how we’re gonna help you to make sure that you’re actually getting where you wanna go. It’s literally what I experienced in my real estate business, someone doing for me to help build it, right? It’s literally just passing down what others are already doing, but making sure it gets to a point where even the consumer can experience it. That’s life changing stuff, man.Mario (13:38)
Dude, no, and once you see it and once you accomplish it, in small ways, it’s an energy that can’t be explained. The heart and mind alignment, when you say, regardless of how hard it is, and I love that phrase, there’s heart everywhere. I think most folks allow that fact to convince them that they don’t need to bring love. They don’t need to bring grace. They don’t need to bring good things because heart’s everywhere.Isn’t
that put more of a value on that heart you have? Right? So can we be strong enough to not to be too cliche or cheesy, but to love through hard things? And I think the other side of the paradigm for maybe some of your listeners ⁓ is, I love to tell people this, just because my heart bleeds doesn’t mean my mind’s not sharp.
Micah Johnson (14:12)
Exactly.Mario (14:32)
Just, I mean, just because I have a heart for a resident, just because I have a heart to have impact doesn’t mean that, you know, we are executing at a very high operational level. In fact, we have to, to have more impact,Micah Johnson (14:32)
Right.Mario (14:45)
but they get like, but we just decide to focus on impact and not on the, you know, all the, all the, you know, the entrepreneurial operating system we use here or the systems that we use here or the platform messaging here. We, but we focus on the people. Right. And I think that I’ve never seen someone go broke focusing on people and having popand them having positive outcomes.
Micah Johnson (15:45)
No, me neither, man. And you said it, you don’t sacrifice one for the other. The most human thing you can do is get really good at whatever it is and then be a really good human. to actually, cause it is default is our monkey brain state, in my opinion, where you’re reverting back when you just want to get angry and mean and lash out. That’s what animals do. To be human is to choose the opposite. choose to be, don’t say it if it’s not right. Choose a better tone. Actually,take 10 minutes and empathize with somebody going through something. It doesn’t mean you gotta make a bad choice after it, but just recognize that humanity first. And I love how you keep saying the heart and the heart alignment. And what was the other one? Heart and mind alignment, is that what it is? I’m very big on, I learned through life, you can make a lot of money doing a lot of things and still be very unhappy. If it doesn’t pay that emotional paycheck,
Mario (16:30)
That’s right.Micah Johnson (16:41)
It don’t matter how much money it pays in the end. You’re going to be miserable. You’re not going to enjoy your life. You’re going to adopt victim mindset. And I’ve met people way more wealthier than me who are terrible to be around. I don’t want to hang out with you. Why do you think this way? Why do you believe like that? What is it that’s doing it for you? And typically deep down, you just don’t like what it is that you do and you feel trapped by it. You can’t get out because it makes so much money. You created some golden handcuffs for yourself whereman, the deep down to really show up for people, even when it’s hard, that’s when it matters the most. That’s when it, like you said, it has its biggest impact is when it seems like you shouldn’t do it then where no, this is the time to do it. That’s where you lead there. Cause you, you don’t have to sacrifice profit for people. You just don’t have to do it.
Mario (17:30)
No, man, no, you don’t. I can just tell, but you just some of your…ethos and philosophy. You know, and I think particularly having children, my boys are six and four. They’ve been a great blessing to me because it kind of exposes the gaps. You know, if I the law is this, if I I want them to have integrity, they have to see a man live with integrity. And that’s me. I can’t pass on what I have. Right. I think that’s the same for organizational change and organizational impact as well as the impact we hope to have with our, you know, our resident is that we have to possess the things
that
we want to see in them. And damn it, we don’t have to be perfect. But we do have to be faithful to that fact, right? And keeping that, even though it’s hard, right? And so I know we’re getting a little onto the philosophy side, but I do think it’s so important to remember that you’re never going to…
Real estate’s never going to do what you want it to do unless you can actually sit and be with yourself and actually have an approach that’s unique to you and authentic to you. It doesn’t matter what you, the little things you do until you get there. And I think, and I’ve seen our business grow and I’ve seen all types of things grow and flourish around me. But the most exciting thing is the people, my team members and my teammates and my partners grow. It’s not.
Micah Johnson (18:37)
Right? Right.Mario (18:50)
The money is a byproduct of good business and good business decisions and taking care of people. It’s not what we, that’s not a KPI for me, you know?Micah Johnson (19:00)
Right. And honestly, man, I think that’s, I just turned 40 recently. My kids are 10 and 12. What you’re describing is something I am noticing way more and more in our generation of business owners with a mindset towards people. Like we’ve watched people make a lot of money for a long time and folks get treated poorly. And then a lot of us got into it, started that version of the experience, realized, I just don’t want this. This isn’t what I want to do. And then to see, wait a second, I don’t have to do it this way. I can.I’ve made way more money the opposite way now, like by living this way and becoming someone like you said, worth being. got to, I got, my kids are going to watch me every day and they learn way more by watching than by what I tell them to do way more. And I got to go home and go to sleep at night. I get stressed if I’m not doing stuff right. I don’t want to lay there freaking out worrying about stuff. I want to go home and be home, you know, actually. Yeah, we are on the philosophy side, but I think this is really important stuff for
Mario (19:52)
Amen.Micah Johnson (19:58)
for business owners in general to remember, personal development isn’t just ⁓ optional at this level. The higher you go, the more developed as a human being you need to be. That’s one thing I love about being involved in high level masterminds of real estate. You get around guys and girls that they’re doing the part that nobody else can do.Right. They’re taking care of themselves. They’re solving themselves. I tell everybody this, we all come with the ingredients, but nobody comes with the same recipe and I can’t solve yours and you can’t solve mine. But the best thing we can do for each other is solve it for ourselves. I can help you. I can point stuff out, but I can’t do it for you. But the moment you do it for yourself, now you and I can work together and we can work together in a way where there’s trust actually built, where we can get alignment on our vision. And once you get that, that’s where humans one plus one is exponential.
Mario (20:33)
That’s right.That’s right.
Micah Johnson (20:50)
That’s where things can really take off because you’re doing that part for yourself that nobody else can do. And it’s 100 % required without it. You’re going to live a life that you’re not going to enjoy. You’re going to get a bad reputation. You’re going to go through things that are because you’re not being someone that’s worth being around. That’s how I think about it. Who do I want to be someone worth being around? What’s that look like? Man, be honest, be a good person. Admit when you’re wrong. Ask questions, be a lifelong learner.Mario (20:50)
Mm-hmm.Micah Johnson (21:19)
Be humble, right? Don’t be the coolest person you know. That’s my main thing. If I’m the coolest guy I know, I’m messing up. Like there are way cooler people out there than me. I need to go find them.Mario (21:29)
Mike, so tell me this, and I agree totally with your observation of, know, and if you kind of follow Neil Strauss or the fourth turning and have seen like, hey, we are as ⁓ as millennials, we’re seeing things change, we’re seeing that the old system, my trust in the old system isn’t really working anymore. Like it’s like there things need to And you can tell you are and I think visibility is a big part of that shift for at least that’s in my heart. ⁓ Butwhat’s the gap between your listeners that are looking up at success and wanting to get there and the ones that have actually realized it? Is it this interpersonal development or do they think, how do they think about business relative to the successful listeners that you have? If you don’t mind, I’m really enjoying your philosophy.
Micah Johnson (22:24)
Absolutely, man. Well, let me speak to it from what I do behind the scenes with the investor fuel mastermind, which is being very intentional about spreading that philosophy that, hey, there’s a lot of ways to do business, but there’s some ways that you can do it that are better. And you mentioned the fourth turning. It’s funny you mentioned that. I don’t hear a lot of people talk about that very much, especially with our generation where we’re in. If you’re not sure what that is, look up the YouTube video. It’s really good, especially if you’re a millennial, because what you’re going to notice isWe are part of a cycle. It’s not the first time it’s happened. It’s happened many times and each one, it’s not exactly the same, but what comes from it are new ideas, new mentalities, new ways of, it sets a whole new standard of a way of being. And that’s what I’m noticing folks do is it’s way more about long-term thinking. It’s way more about not just taking. There’s a lot of give involved. There’s a lot of
community mindset involved. There’s more empathy than I’ve ever seen, honestly, in our age ranges, like people that actually have this ability to care. And that’s what I noticed in my career early was that’s the secret sauce, actually care, actually care. And if you can’t care, don’t do it. If you can’t do it, don’t do it because you’re not gonna help anybody.
But if you can care, that kind of is where your mind, your heart and mind alignment start to line up. Cause that’s what I’m big about. If it don’t pay my emotional paycheck, not that interested in it because that I don’t like just doing stuff one-off. I want to do something for a long time. So upfront, making sure am I aligned here? Does this line up with what I want to do? We always reserve the right to change our mind. But the more that you can get those things up front in terms of solving yourself, the more work that you can do there.
And that stuff didn’t hit me until I read my first personal development book. I was 28 or 29, right? When I got into real estate and I’ve coached with folks on that reality is you’re not a fully developed human until you’re 25. So science has a part to do with it. Your frontal lobes got to develop. But after that point, you go through these cycles and there’s a coach that I work with who helps me see it. He’s in his seventies. And that’s what I like is you’ve been around the corner, man. You’ve seen stuff I can’t see.
Mario (24:28)
youMicah Johnson (24:42)
And what he points out is, you know, in each different decade, there’s different stuff you’re learning. Your thirties, you’re really about conquering stuff. You’re expanding yourself, you’re growing, and there’s certain things you need to learn in that space so you don’t burn out. So you actually get to your forties and your fifties and then your forties. I’m experiencing a little transition right now where the most thing I care about stability. I want a stable environment because for me, clarity comes from stability. Way more comes to me and I see things I actuallyMario (25:07)
YeahMicah Johnson (25:12)
want to do and can pull off way more clear when I’m not freaking out running around and doing 100 different things. I’m creating that space for me to just be. And so that’s where I’m at right now is kind of drawing things back in. What is it that you really want to do? Now move out from there with all the experience you’ve brought with you. So I hope that answered your question, but that’s what I’m seeing is more and more people shift toMario (25:32)
No.Micah Johnson (25:35)
Old belief systems that we were given aren’t working for us anymore. They don’t make sense. Old government systems aren’t working anymore for us. They’re not making sense. Just society rules aren’t making any sense. And we’re, we’re now get to the age and maturing enough, or we’re going to be able to have a huge effect on that. Where governments are going to be full of more of people like us than anything else. And we’re going to, we’re going to change this. That’s what ultimately gives me hope is knowing behind the scenes.Mario (25:53)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (26:04)
how many people are evolving this way, where they’re thinking in a whole new level where so much of the stupid stuff that’s bogged the last 50 years down, we don’t even care about. It’s not even a problem to solve. Y’all invented that shit. We’re just gonna move on, okay? There’s real stuff to deal with.Mario (26:22)
Right. No, I mean, I’m not surprised to hear the deep water from you because it makes it makes total sense. And I think that the thread, though, for your listeners is, you know, once you become self aware that you’re not perfect, you can then zoom out and see yourself as a part as a part of a generation, as a part of a society, as a part of, you know, something bigger than you. If you’re the if you’re the coolest guy, you know, or the biggest thing in your life, you are small.Micah Johnson (26:51)
Right, exactly.Mario (26:52)
It’s the oppositeof all the things you see. It’s a fight to be small, be calm, to be cadenced so that you can be sustainable. All the things I aspired to in my 20s, all that stuff was fleeting.
It was all, it was all heady. It was all worthless. It was all, it was nothing, right? It really was nothing, right? But today, and I turned 39 last month, so I’m tracking you. You know, it’s like, maybe it’s an age thing, but I think it’s, it’s surely can be summed up with like the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And you’re not going to experience this, that you can’t experience in your personal life. You’re not going to, you’re not, you know, you can’t, you know, yeah.
Micah Johnson (27:15)
Right? Right.love that.
Mario (27:37)
I think it’s summarized in that. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.Micah Johnson (27:42)
And I couldn’t agree more. And we’ll, tie it up there because that’s a powerful point. And if you’re listening to this, reflect on that. And it’s not to say that you’re bad or anything. It’s not a comparison game in that way. What it does is show you, here’s where you can do some work. Here’s where there’s an opportunity that exists that only you can do. And when again, you’re becoming self-aware and feel that you want to, you want to feel different in your life and wake up each day with.Mario (27:51)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (28:12)
It’s hard to explain, a whole different freedom, real freedom, agency is how I like to explain it now. I don’t need anybody to believe me. I don’t care. I’m not here to convert you. I’m not here to make you do anything. This is just how I do it what I’ve noticed. And I’ll share what I’ve noticed with you. And the older I’m getting, the more I’m hearing people tell me it’s the same thing they’ve noticed. And it’s typically the opposite of what you were doing beforehand of what’s that initial reaction. If you haven’t trained your instincts, don’t trust them.Mario (28:12)
Freedom.Yeah,
Micah Johnson (28:41)
because they could be leading you in a really poor direction. Pay attention to what it is. That’s why my own life, if something bothers me, I do really deep introspection first. Why is it bothering me? That’s something my kids showed me doing that. You know, they were doing something that bothers me and I’d get upset with them, tell them to stop. But one day I was like, why did that bother me? Why do I even care that they were doing that? And I reflected back, well, I got yelled at for doing that. I got in trouble for doing that. So I thought, well,Why did my parents yell at me and find out, well, their parents yelled at them for it. I’m like, okay, so now I’m yelling at my kids just because four generations of people got yelled at for doing this. That’s stupid. That’s not what I want to do. I’m going to do the opposite.
Mario (29:20)
Andyet, that’s how so many people live. It’s like, if you don’t do your work, your kids will have their work and your work to do. That’s just another fact. Kids don’t have. These are just facts.
Micah Johnson (29:29)
Right. Right.I’m, I
am living that man. am literally the one in my family that, that changed it. Like I was raised in a Y2K doomsday coal in the middle of the woods of Northern Florida with two parents who believed some wild stuff, man. And as I got older and into my, that’s what my thirties was really about was like unwinding a lot of things that I did not understand that I just absorbed for years and years and years.
Mario (29:58)
Mm.Micah Johnson (30:00)
And then to be able to go back and look at, and this is every human being’s job, you need to objectively look at your parents. And it’s not a good thing or bad thing. It’s not any of that. It’s just to understand where they come from. Who are they? They’re humans too, just like you. They were here before you. What was their experience? That’s where I went and studied. Why’d y’all end up there? How do people end up in extreme belief systems like that in the middle of the woods? You don’t just jump there. Two or more hard things happen really close by and you have a predisposition to extreme belief already.They were raised in a weird environment. Then my grandfather died. My parents lost their house to an adjustable rate mortgage. And that’s how you end up in the middle of the woods, man, is hard and you react to it. And it’s something that showed me in my life. If I am just trying, how do I say this? If I’m just seeking relief, I stand longer. If I’m seeking release, that’s something completely different because sometimes you got to stand up under hard things and relief looks like running.
And it’s what my parents did. They, they moved hours away and joined this crazy thing to avoid their problems where release has to do with, okay, what I do wrong. What do I need to do to fix it? How do I take the next steps? Freedom returns, man. Like we were talking about, you’re actually back in control of your life and you can make clear choices. The next thing you do. And that’s the thing I’m happiest for with my kids. And we’re really off subject now. They will not have to solve any of the stuff I saw.
Mario (31:09)
youMicah Johnson (31:29)
None of it. You.Mario (31:29)
that’s rightthey’ll have their own work to do not to say right but it won’t be all that that baggage that you brought because you did the work right and
Micah Johnson (31:33)
Right.Exactly.
Mario (31:39)
And that’s the greatest gift we can give them the freedom to have their own life experience, right? It’s gonna be full of ups downs, you sideways. But I love that relief release piece. I think, all this, you know, for you guys that don’t kind of get the connection, I mean, as you go through traumatic things in business, as you go through partner separations, as you go through anything that happens as you grow, right? That’s just part of it. You know, the larger you grow, the more surface space and opportunities.Micah Johnson (31:43)
Right.Mario (32:09)
there is for litigation and things. can’t outperform that. No one can. So you got to be able to release things. And if this is your first time doing it, it’s going to be tough and it’s going to be expensive. So go ahead and you can get some practice in today in your life. You’re the person. It doesn’t matter what the proxy is.Micah Johnson (32:28)
Right?You can use the little moments to practice for the big ones. I do it every day. I live life to me. Today’s practice for tomorrow. That’s all. There’s zero pressure. Whatever I experienced today, let me go through it, handle it. I’m really big into journaling. So each morning I journal about the previous day. I got almost four years in a row of every day written down, which gives me this tremendous zoomed out view of who I am and what I’m doing and why I’m even doing what I’m doing. And then it showed me.
Very little happens each day. Very little. There’s a couple, maybe one beginning, sometimes maybe an end, but it’s mostly just in the middle stuff. It’s these things you’re never going to remember. You won’t remember. Your brain won’t even log it as important, but if you will stay present for it, it is practice. It’s that email you get that pisses you off. It’s practice. Take a deep breath. Learn how to respond later professionally. That partner that’s bugging you.
Mario (33:22)
Mm.Micah Johnson (33:31)
Practice. Do you want to keep the relationship or not? Everything is practice for something. And when I see it that way, again, I wanted to be a professional golfer. I like performing. like the feeling, man. at the same time, you make Brooks Koepka’s good about talking about this, if you’re sitting there playing in a major and all you’re thinking about is playing in a major, you’re going to lose. It’s just a golf swing. It’s a drive like you’ve hit every other time. It’s an iron. It’s a putt.Mario (33:36)
them.Micah Johnson (34:00)
apply it to business. You don’t get to the high levels by not doing a bunch of little stuff over and over and over again. And you start to see the fundamentals are the fundamentals. They’re just at different scales. And they’re all practice leading to there. I could go forever, man. I get hyped. ⁓Mario (34:10)
That’s right.No, no, no,
and so do I. And no, and I appreciate what you’re transferring, if you guys are picking up. like.
the conviction, there’s a reason why you’re so you have such conviction around this. These aren’t things that are you’re not guessing you like you’re you these are observations from the field, right? And it’s taking more, taking more leaving guys like they’ll have to be right. Just you know, just this is the life experience, right? And I think and yeah, and I love that journaling habit. For me, it’s, you know, it’s very much you know,
Micah Johnson (34:33)
Right, right, it’s just data.Mario (34:49)
not isolating. That’s my tendency is to isolate. So I need to stay in community. I got to stay around folks. got to stay. I got to invite others into my problems because I will isolate and get very jaded and very disconnected from the thing, the stressor. So I think, you know, over the years, you know, if it’s journaling or for me, it’s like, it’s very much just be making sure I’m actively in community with a couple of guys that keep me accountable to that, you know, like themyself to the group, Even, you know, care what my job title is or what my employees think. It’s actually, success has actually gotten in the way of that. know? So anyway.
Micah Johnson (35:30)
Exactly.It’s so true, man. Again, we all have different, we all got the same ingredients, but different recipes. If you’re listening to this, you got to solve that for yourself. What is it that keeps you accountable to you? What is it that helps you wake up each day and keep doing the hard things, keep doing the things that are going to create that life that you want at the same time, having a tremendous impact on those around you. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.
Well, Mario man, we can keep going on for a long time. I really appreciate your time today, your story, your perspective. For those that are listening in that, you know, identify what you’re talking about. What’s the best way for them to find you, follow along with what you got going on.
Mario (36:09)
Yeah, absolutely. LinkedIn is probably the most appropriate channel. So Mario, E Brown. Mario liked the video game, E, and Brown liked the color. So send me a connection and let’s connect.Micah Johnson (36:23)
Absolutely, man. Thanks for sharing that. you’re listening or watching in, check the show notes. We’ll have Mario’s links right there for you to follow along. And I highly recommend it. When you meet somebody true and cool and that’s doing it real in the business, follow along. You’ll learn more than you could ever imagine by just seeing what the reality of things look like. So Mario, again, thanks for being here. Thanks everybody who joined us along for this episode. If you got value out of today, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think get value out of it too.As always, don’t forget to subscribe. We appreciate everybody that follows along with us. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Mario who are out there building a real business, making a real difference in the world. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you on the next episode.
