Take Action and Thrive: Essential Guides to Nationwide Land Deals

Brett McCollum (00:01.122)
Alright guys, welcome back to the show. I am your host Brett McCollum. I’m here today with Mike Balcom. Today we’re gonna be talking about nationwide land deals. But before we do guys, at Investor Fuel we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Mike, how are you?

Mike Balcom (00:24.194)
I’m doing great Brett, thanks so much for having me.

Brett McCollum (00:26.64)
Man, it’s exciting to be here with you, get to know you a little bit. We’re both Floridians, proud and from the Sunshine State, man. So happy to have you here. And I know we got a lot to talk about before we do get into all the things. Can you do us a favor? Back up, rewind. Who is Mike Balcom?

Mike Balcom (00:43.214)
Who is Mike? Wow. How much time you got? All right. Oh yeah. I am Mike. All right. Let’s go way back in time. One of the earliest memories Mike has is I was in about third grade. came home from school and I said, dad, I want to raise a pig. He said, what? I said, yeah, I want to raise a pig. Like for four H he’s like, you’re kidding me. I’m like, no, seriously. And we went down that path and it was probably one of the best things I ever did in my life.

Brett McCollum (00:45.724)
Deep, deep question. Out of the gate.

Brett McCollum (01:01.351)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (01:05.96)
Thank you.

Mike Balcom (01:12.536)
Learned about four H line to take care of animals, but more importantly, learned how to kind of run a business. There was a lot of fun. I was the only kid at the fair passing out business cars to everyone to see if they’d give me an add on, if they’d bid on my pig, anything else. People like public show up for those people who are not in Florida. think they’ve expanded to Georgia now, but that is like the go-to grocery store. They do a great job. We’re not sponsored by them, but publics, if you’re listening, please do.

Brett McCollum (01:19.228)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (01:30.768)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (01:37.596)
We are not. The club subs are my life, okay? So yeah.

Mike Balcom (01:42.742)
Started out with that. My father abused me so much as a child. He would always take me to garage sales and see things for sale. And if something was for sale for like 30 bucks, he’d say, Mikey, go up and offer him 10 bucks for that. I’d say, okay. And I learned how to negotiate at a very young age. It was a lot of fun. When I turned 16, started going to garage sales, buying and selling stuff. had a lot of fun in school. My parents did a great job saying, Mike, you can do pretty much anything you want to as long as you get straight A’s.

Brett McCollum (01:59.538)
Yeah.

Mike Balcom (02:12.386)
And I said, okay. And I got straight A’s, graduated when I was 18. I thought this is great. I’m free. Nothing at all good. You can really do it at 18. I could go to war. Didn’t really want to sign up for the army, but thank you for everyone who has. I could sign contracts, be held legally liable. I could go to prison and meet Bubba. Nothing good going on. And then I thought, you can gamble. Can’t gamble till you’re 21. But in the state of Florida, you can play poker at the age of 18 because they don’t view it as gambling. Yeah. So.

Brett McCollum (02:12.828)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (02:39.516)
Yeah.

Mike Balcom (02:42.502)
I became a card shark. started playing poker for a living. started getting really good at it, learned about pot odds, implied odds, positioning, everything you really need to know to be great at being a poker player. And I did that. I got a four eight to college for academics would go to the poker room, go to class, back to the poker room. it was great. Raised enough money to buy my first house in cash. During that time, everybody I sit with at the table, I were always talking about investments, different things, and they say you should really get into real estate.

That’s how you build long-term wealth. knew nothing about real estate. You know, I’m a 20 year old kid at the time and I ended up getting my real estate license, bought my first house and business kind of took off from there. then along the way I got really fat playing poker and getting some rental properties that I started playing pickleball, which then led into me coaching pickleball for about four to five years of my life. And having some of the best times ever. Like I’m a long time pickleball player, man, like nine years, which is insane.

Brett McCollum (03:17.468)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (03:34.832)
wow.

Brett McCollum (03:40.188)
That’s like, that’s a long time because Pickleball is only recently kind of taken off.

Mike Balcom (03:46.26)
Yes. Yeah. When I started playing, you know, when I was telling the hotties that I played pickleball, they’re like, that’s cute. My, my great grandma plays pickleball. Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, this stinks. Now it’s like the hottest rage, but yeah, got into that. it was a lot of fun. And then I finally left my pickleball job down in the keys and I wanted to become a syndicator, you know, large multifamily deal, studying to underwrite that, listen to all the podcasts, reading so many books on it.

Brett McCollum (03:52.85)
My great girl,

Brett McCollum (03:58.012)
Yeah.

Mike Balcom (04:15.222)
Man, underwriting those deals is a pain. is so hard. so during that time too, always talking about real estate, playing pickleball with a guy and the guy comes up to me he says, Mike, you’re always talking about real estate. I got these six properties. I’m about to lose a tax auction. Would you be interested? I said, sure. They were quarter acre lot info lots. And I said, what do you want for it? He said, I don’t know, make me an offer. You think it’s fair. I did a ton of research. I said, I’ll give you one 10 pick up the back taxes, which was like 20 K. He said, okay.

I said, Whoa, I can’t believe that worked. and then I ended up sending them the contract. And the next day I called a developer in that area who owned a ton of those lots. I said, would you be interested in these? He said, yeah, I’ll call you the next day. Next day called me said, I’ll give you two 44. I said, what, what? yes. Yeah. it was more like, hello. Hello. Are are you still there? Mike? I I’m like, no, no, no, no, I’m here. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I just too busy doing my happy dance, but we got that under contract, sold that to him.

Brett McCollum (05:01.062)
Yes, please.

Mike Balcom (05:14.606)
That was the first land deal I did. And then one of my VA said, Mike, you, could just do land deals. Like we don’t have to get into large multifamily. This might be a better path. And I said, let’s do it. And now about four years later, here we are, man.

Brett McCollum (05:23.005)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (05:28.904)
Wow dude, that’s awesome. All right, so let’s do the backup here. Let’s go back to 4H, Mike, okay? I do believe that a lot of our upbringing shapes a lot of who we are, right? 4H, mean, and I don’t know how much of the, because they don’t really have 4H anymore, you know, how old are you, Mike? 31. So I’m 38 this weekend.

Mike Balcom (05:52.076)
I am now 31.

Brett McCollum (06:00.928)
And yeah, I think they got away from that. I mean, geez, dude, it’s like, least here in Florida, know that we got like it wasn’t even in the school when I was graduating high school. So that was 2005. So yeah, I feel like if people don’t know what it is, can you give them like a 50,000 foot view of what 4-H was?

Mike Balcom (06:25.294)
Absolutely. So 4-H at the 50,000 foot few is really like future farmers of America teaching people how to be responsible, how to take care of animals. and then slowly but surely a little bit like the economics around that, you know, how to write down how much did it cost for the feed you bought for the animal? How much time did you spend with them? Things like that. So just really teaching you how to take care of your animals and your economics a bit.

Brett McCollum (06:50.756)
Yeah, that’s business, isn’t it? Your animals are your product and your business. it’s that’s business.

Mike Balcom (06:56.566)
Yes. Yeah. It’s business that doesn’t feel like business, especially when you’re a kid. Like it’s such a fun thing to do to sit down with your parents, you know, and then they’re working with it. It’s like, okay, so how much did that shovel costs that we bought? You know, and you’re writing it down and we’re like, this is so interesting. And then at the end, when you sell the pig writing down, just like, you know, this is called net profit. I’m like, what’s that mean? Like, I thought this was like how much I made. They’re like, no, then you have to take away your expenses and that gives you your net, you know, that gross doesn’t matter. I’m

Brett McCollum (07:16.722)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (07:25.672)
Doesn’t matter.

Mike Balcom (07:26.03)
so it’s like, I think it’s a great thing to do with your kids.

Brett McCollum (07:28.36)
Yeah, well, mean, yeah, at that young age, you know, your mind is still being obviously it’s so malleable being shaped and formed and you’re learning all these things. And I mean, you have to and I love the fact that you’re like, you know what, one of the earliest memories I have of was this. guess who’s a entrepreneur today? You know,

It’s really great and I end so much responsibility, proper, the right way to have responsibility, the proper responsibility, let me back up, healthy responsibility is taught in that world. I know, I mean, so many of my friends growing up, I grew up in, I actually grew up in South Georgia.

a lot of, mean farming was a big part of our local society there. So it was a big deal and learning healthy responsibility at a young age and ultimately like you said the economic aspect of it.

It’s just not taught in school. Really, you have economics as a subject, but we’re not taught how to not personal economics, not business economics, you’re macro economics from a global scale and little bit of micro stuff, you know. Yeah, man, that’s super cool. I’m really like, I love that. That’s where you kind of the start there. I want it. Okay, so

Before pickleball, what were you telling me? Like it was something else you were doing. What was that? Poker, thank you. Okay, sorry, my brain just got sidetracked. So something that we have in common. Albia, I probably was not on the level that you were. I thought I was pretty good though, okay? Because we were very poor growing up and I got to college and I played baseball and I had a scholarship and I’m on scholarship playing, but guess what? When you’re playing high level,

Mike Balcom (08:59.022)
poker.

Brett McCollum (09:25.418)
sports, that is your full-time job. You don’t get, so for me to have any money, I got, this is how, this is how poor my brother actually, this is kind of, it’s always a little tough to talk about my brother, literally, he’s my older brother, sacrificed all of his future, went to work full-time so that he could fund me to be in college. And the little bit that he could save, so he had $50 a month that he sent me.

And I took that $50, and I wasn’t gambling it for funsies. I was gambling it till it survived. And so I would take that money. And it was nothing to turn that money, $50, into $500 to $1,000. And I had a pretty OK college life because I took that $50 and I made something with it.

Did you, is that kinda how it worked out in the beginning for you with poker or was it always something that you were just like, no, I’ve always just been really good with cards? Like, what was that like?

Mike Balcom (10:22.792)
I was definitely starting out playing like two, four limit. So super low stakes games, read a poker book, how to start bluffing people and everything. I’m like, let me try to bluff these old guys. You know, guy bets $4. I’ll raise you to $8. Nobody folds when you do that. just for anybody listening, if you’re playing a limit game, really hard to get people to fold cards, but then just started reading more and more about it. And a friend of mine who I’d see at the tables all the time, we would just always talk while we’re waiting to get a table.

Is he said, should start playing no limit. And I did. And that’s when things really started to take off. So I was always good at math and then really studying the game. think if you start to study poker, you’re going to be better than about 70 to 80 % of the people out there. Cause they just don’t study it. And I appreciate you being so kind saying I was probably really good at poker is not that I was really good. It’s that everybody was playing with it was really bad. I was playing with I’d get there early in the morning. The waitress knows everybody’s coffee orders and

Brett McCollum (10:55.431)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (11:07.176)
Mm-mm.

Brett McCollum (11:14.64)
Thank

Mike Balcom (11:19.694)
almost it’s just a bunch of old mints in around, you know, the, they’re every day and they’re really just killing time. You know, they’re there just for a good time. They’re not there to actually like make money or play for a living. So I was very fortunate just to be in a poke room like that and be able to extract wisdom from them, but also just make some good money and have fun.

Brett McCollum (11:39.014)
Yeah, my strategy was less the knowledge of the game and much more the psychology.

Mike Balcom (11:47.308)
Yeah, mental warfare.

Brett McCollum (11:49.39)
reading people, learning how quickly can I read the room. I was always like, all right, I need about three hands, and I think I’ll be okay. That’s kind of how I would play it, and I would do a couple different things in the beginning, a lot of just different kind of strategies, just to see reactions, and then go from there and play the game. But that was how I survived college, man. It was poker, and I

Mike Balcom (12:14.006)
It’s huge.

Brett McCollum (12:19.284)
Obviously I owe my brother a debt of gratitude on that, you know, because he, eventually he was able to like, it didn’t take real long once I figured that out. was like, that can’t happen. You need to stop and get, you know, you need a future too. Because I didn’t know he was doing that, by the way. I found out later. I just thought my parents were sending me money. So that was like a massive like punch in the gut when I found out my brother did that for me. But.

you he was trying to fund the dream of his baby brother, you know, making it to play pro baseball. And it was such a, know, it’s still like, you know, all these years later, it’s still like, huh, you know, it’s heavy. But I owe him so much. But anyway, fast forward, you’re into pickleball before everybody else in the world. Did I hear you say correctly you were in the Keys doing that or?

Mike Balcom (13:09.026)
Yeah. So I, I got pretty good at pickleball pretty quickly and about six months into it, somebody asked me to coach them. Thought how hard could it be? I did a little bit of gymnastics coaching when I was growing up and quickly one person became three people and about a month into it, I was coaching 40 people a week. Had a blast with it. Pickleball global asked me to work for them. US open Pickball Academy asked me to work for him. I was having a lot of fun coaching, got a small thing of rentals at the time and life was just good. And then.

Brett McCollum (13:26.022)
Wow.

Mike Balcom (13:37.95)
ocean reef club in North Key Largo asked me if I would actually be there had pickleball pro and really helped launch their pickleball program. And I said, sure thing. So I ended up down there in the keys for about three years having best time ever.

Brett McCollum (13:52.112)
Yeah, yeah, dude, that’s super cool. It’s just funny, because now it’s all the rage, and it’s not 80-year-old men out there every day.

will say this, I gotta be completely transparent. I, like I said, I collegiate level baseball. I consider myself a good athlete. I think I’m pretty good at most sports, pick them up fairly easily. At least I compete. And I’ll step out there and I can compete. I may not be the best, but least I will. We’ll have fun.

The first time I stepped out to play pickleball, I’m like, and I’ve played tennis a bit, you know, and again, compete, I’m not great, but like it’s eye-hand coordination, you know, basic, you know, athletic movement, right? You know, do you know how much, I did not know how much technique was involved.

and pick a ball, I just thought it’s eye hand, hit the paddle to the ball and get it over the net and you’ll be fine. Dude, I will be fine. We’re good. It was humbling. It was humbling. Because I get out there and I’m like, it isn’t that simple. There is a lot of technique. There’s a lot. And when you’re used to playing sports at a high level, you want to be good at it. So when you come in there and you’re like, I’m not good at it, I was mad. I’m not going to lie. The first time I played, I walked off the court like, this is

the stupidest game I’ve ever done. But then I was in my head and I was like, Mike, I’m not kidding. I was like, I’m going to freaking dominate this thing and I’m going to get good at it. You know, and I never did commit myself like I should, but no, again, today I will compete. You know, I wouldn’t to a pro like I would not come up and be like, yeah, I want to play you. No, I don’t. I don’t want to play you. Actually, I would rather still be friends with you. So so yeah, that’s super cool, man. Thanks for sharing that.

Brett McCollum (15:42.602)
After, so when, you said you had a couple of rental properties at the time during that, is that correct? So were you already dabbling in real? Obviously you were, but how were you doing that back then?

Mike Balcom (15:47.511)
Yes.

Mike Balcom (15:54.252)
Yeah. So bought my first house in cash thinking this is great. You know, I, my father grew up as like a Dave Ramsey guy. It’s like, debt is bad. He want no debt. Let me buy this in cash. what a stupid decision. definitely should have financed that in like four other properties. Those all rentals, but you don’t know anything at that age. lived in the master rented the other two rooms out to three of my college friends. Horrible mistake. We’re not great friends anymore. Naturally typically how it goes.

Then at the time, another house went up for sale on my street. And then about two weeks later, it went up for rent. And I’m like, this is so odd. So I knocked on their door and I just said, hey, what’s going on? And at the time, I’m just a real estate agent. I’m like 22 years old now. And I’m calling like FISBOs and expired listings every day to try to just get listings. I go up there and they explain the situation. Grandma passed away, grandpa lives here. They want to move grandpa up to Alabama with the rest of the family.

You know, but they can not get a mortgage to get a bigger house there unless they sell this or able to rent it out. And I said, all right. I might be able to help here. Went back to the drawing board, went back to him. said, Hey, would you entertain a lease with an option to buy? And what I actually ended up doing was a subject to on that property without having any idea what a subject to was. I thought I was a genius and sure enough, like three, four years later, pace comes out of nowhere and just everybody knows about subject to now. but yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:09.126)
Yep, Yeah, no doubt.

Mike Balcom (17:17.366)
Structured that way, that was good. Ended up getting into another rental property as a mortgage. And then I just had a small little portfolio going. And what I would do is the two that I were not living in, I would rent those out on your leases. And then the other one that I wasn’t, I would live in the master and Airbnb at the other two rooms and meet strangers from all over the world every day. And just absolutely loved it. Having the time of my life.

Brett McCollum (17:37.978)
Yeah, that’s so cool. No. All right. That’s really great. Man, you just were taking action on every step of the way and doing things that like, I think it’s really, really commendable. You do this land deal. It’s a massive deal, you know, and there’s something about doing big deals that changes the chemistry in your brain to go. I want to do more big deals.

Mike Balcom (18:05.389)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (18:07.144)
I know for me, in my wholesale business, were for, man, it probably was, I’m not exaggerating, maybe three full years, where our average assignment fee was probably $7,000. And if you do 10 $7,000 deals, that’s 70 grand, that’s still a lot of money. It is, and not taking anything away from that. But the first time I did a deal that was a bigger deal,

was I think it was like $35,000 deal. And I had this shift in my brain. was like, we can do bigger deals. know, this is actually, you know, like, I don’t know. So let me back up. Sorry, I want to.

I think people when they’re first starting out in the wholesale world, until they get that first check in, it’s still just theory. Like I hear Mike doing it, I heard that Brett can do it, I listen to these podcasts, they can do it, but I haven’t crossed the finish line yet. And then you do your first deal. Mine was a smaller deal, my first one was a $10,000 deal, but we split, it was 50-50s of JD. And that was what I thought my reality was, is 5K, 7K, 5K, that was it. I didn’t think there was more until I did a big one.

You know, and I was like, oh, man. Like, there’s more, you know? Did you, was that kind of what happened with the land thing for you was that it’s like, oh crap, this is, there’s more. Or what was the, what was the brain shift there?

Mike Balcom (19:36.152)
Yeah, it was, was interesting because it was a little double edged sword. part of it was like, holy cow, like it’s the biggest spread I ever got on anything I’ve ever done in my life. the other part of it though was, this is just luck, you know, like this, this isn’t an actual thing. Like it, wasn’t proof of concept to me, but it’s also too, because this one kind of fell into my lap. Like this wasn’t even a business I was running at the time.

Brett McCollum (19:44.636)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (20:00.424)
Sure, yeah.

Mike Balcom (20:02.4)
So, and then I was very fortunate. one of the VAs who I had at that time, we’re always looking for different side hustles, things like that. And he did some research. He’s like, you know, there’s, there’s some guru programs that can teach you how to do this. And I’m like, really? Like you can actually do this as a business. And I knew about household sale in, I had no idea land was even a market. The only thing I knew about land was land banking, like buy something, wait 10, 20 years. Hopefully Amazon and Google comes in nearby, you know, where the area develops. It’ll be worth way more.

Brett McCollum (20:14.652)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mike Balcom (20:30.808)
I didn’t realize you could just flip this all day long, like you do houses. And the nice thing about it too is no tenants, no trash, no toilet. And a lot of times you’re able to find people in great situations because they’re able to actually make 10 X on their money from what they bought the land for. And you’re still able to get it at a good price and dispo it and double your money. A lot of times.

Brett McCollum (20:50.984)
Yeah, there’s no emotional attachment to it either for most people. Whereas a home has sentimental value and all the other things that come along with it. there’s just, again, back to the psychology thing we were just talking about. The psychology of sales and land is just different. People are not, yeah, I’ll just take it off my hands. I don’t want it. What am I doing with it? Yeah, that’s cool, man. So what does business today look like for you?

Mike Balcom (21:11.938)
Yes.

Mike Balcom (21:17.486)
Oh, chaos. No, um, yeah, no business and growing pains, but great growing pains. Um, business today is sending out about 200,000 text messages a month, doing a good amount of RVMs, um, getting deals into our pipeline. have about 16 people, 17 people now that work in our land business and they’re able to run about 95 % of it. I’m very fortunate that I can just kind of take a back seat and

Brett McCollum (21:19.996)
Don’t say that.

Brett McCollum (21:42.352)
Nice.

Mike Balcom (21:45.58)
Really kind of just be a visionary and help them lead a little bit here and there, which is a lot of fun, but deals come into the pipeline. Our team calls them up, starts pre-qualifying them, see if we can come to terms on anything, have a lot of creative ways that we can purchase the land, whether it’s just cash or innovation or wholesale, or even do a seller financing, sell it on seller financing and wrap the whole thing. We’ve just gotten into a lot of different strategies, whether we’re chopping up the land and doing a subdivide, whether it has some title issues, somebody’s only a third owner.

Can we go about taking it through probate or doing a partition sale, cleaning that up? So we just, we’ve been growing it over the last four years. We, guess it’s something I never really thought of before, but you said you really like how I just take action on things. And I guess really just in the land space, just a massive action on it. Like life is short, take action, go after it and make things happen. And I mean, you being a high level baseball player, you know, you understand how important it is to also just keep a level head when things go wrong.

Brett McCollum (22:18.417)
Yeah.

Mike Balcom (22:44.478)
And it’s going to happen all the time in business. It’s just the nature of the beast, you know? And I think a lot of the experience I’ve had to just helps me keep a level head. So if that lawsuit does come in, if that deal you thought was great, but the seller ended up being a scammer, they don’t even own the land or anything else goes wrong. And it’s just how do you keep your head on straight and move forward and keep moving forward with setbacks.

Brett McCollum (23:03.57)
That’s Yeah. Well, I tell people when we’re in any kind of like mentor coaching spaces and things like that is use exercise some wisdom first, get yourself set up properly, make sure that, know, obviously don’t let that be the thing from getting you to start. Starting is most important thing I will say, but quickly making sure your, your entities set up properly, make sure your paperwork is done the right way, making sure you have an attorney.

at a high level making sure you’re protected. And that way if something goes sideways, legally you’ve got more, you’re 99 % of the way there. You’re protected. Because things will go sideways. You do this long enough, you do enough deals, things are gonna happen that you’re just like, whoa. Because the very nature, because here’s a…

I mean, we’re talking transactionally. I don’t know what your dollars per deal is that you’re doing, but like transactionally, it’s a lot of money that we’re working through. And the very nature of that cannot come without some degree of risk association. So obviously, integrity being a cornerstone of our business, making sure that we’re actually trying to serve people at the highest level.

but then behind that, hey, and we’re protected. Because like you said, for me that gives me the peace of mind, hey, things are gonna happen. And then like you said, you know what, I’ve got myself protected. I know we did things the right way. This was an unfortunate situation.

How do we make it right as a company, as a business, as a, you know, whatever that looks like, and just move forward and take the next step? It’s hard though. You know, and to your point with the baseball and baseball, you know what Hall of Fame stats are for, like, the hitters of the world? You know what the Hall of Fame stats are is 70 % of the time they’re getting out. And those are Hall of Fame stats.

Mike Balcom (24:59.18)
Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, I’m constantly talking to the team too. It’s like, just go after it, like fail. You know, if you’re not failing, you’re not trying. Like I expect you to fail almost daily, because that’s how we grow. That’s how we learn. But I think…

Brett McCollum (25:10.824)
Bro. Yeah. People don’t get that though, because they’re like, if you’re failing though, you’re not really making anything if you’re failing all the time. That is, like, no. And to your point, with how many, you 200,000 texts a month, is that about right?

Mike Balcom (25:27.373)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (25:29.416)
Here’s the base, it’s even worse for your stats to the baseball metric. How many of those 200,000 techs actually land? How many of those that land actually turn into a conversation? How many of those conversations actually turn into a qualified lead? And how many of those qualified leads actually turn into a contract? How many of those contracts actually turn into a deal?

Mike Balcom (25:46.846)
Absolutely. it’s pathetic. If you start looking at the funnel that way, it’s like, why even bother then?

Brett McCollum (25:51.975)
But that’s the failure progression, right? Because you’re going to lose that many more times. Yeah.

Mike Balcom (25:58.732)
Yes. Yeah, every no is that one step closer to that. Yes.

Brett McCollum (26:03.58)
Yeah, and people have probably heard that on these shows, these podcasts and books and stuff, but the fact of the matter is, Mike, how many deals a month are you guys doing on average?

Mike Balcom (26:12.302)
We do somewhere between three to five a month. Our average spread is 37 K per deal

Brett McCollum (26:19.155)
Y’all do the math, I’m not gonna do the math, I suck at math. Y’all do the math, you know, and would you send 200,000 texts out to do 37,000 times three?

Yes you would, wouldn’t you? Yes you would. So it’s just the mindset that you’ve brought to the table from these lessons that you’ve had. Poker was a big one too for you, I’m sure. Statistically speaking, you’re not winning. You can’t win every hand, statistically speaking. So how do you win the game?

Mike Balcom (26:52.302)
Absolutely. And where I think a lot of people make mistakes. One of the best things that poker ever taught me is poker is not about winning or losing. Poker is about making the right decision. And you want to keep the same thing in mind in business. You might shoot out 200,000 texts this month and get zero deals. You might shoot out 200,000 texts next month and get 40 deals out of it. You know, it just is, did you pick a good market? Did you make the right decision? Keep moving forward, knowing you’re doing things correctly.

Brett McCollum (27:00.552)
Hmm.

Brett McCollum (27:13.832)
That’s right.

Mike Balcom (27:21.43)
And when you don’t go back to the drawing board and see where can you improve those, always improve every day.

Brett McCollum (27:25.746)
Consistency, yeah, just stay consistent, show up. Man, I love, and that’s what I keep hearing from you, it’s like you just show up, you’re consistent, you’re doing the business, you’re running the business, you’re doing it. Man, I’ve enjoyed this a lot. Mike, I wanna give people an opportunity to connect with you in some way. What would that look like, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Mike Balcom (27:47.534)
Yeah, best way, my website, all my socials, all the handles and everything, it’s Mike T. Balkham, B-A-L-C-O-M on everything. So at Mike T. Balkham, find me, you can email me, do anything. I have my phone number too, a Google number I have, 813-773-5631. So anyone wants to shoot me a text or something, connect, I’m happy to talk to him. I will tell you right now, man, I’ve given out that number a lot.

Nobody ever reaches out, you know, as we talk about taking action. Yeah. Like people just don’t, know, and it’s, coach some people in the space. I was very fortunate to coach a who’s now become a great friend. I’m Brian and Katie. They started last year, ended up making over half a million in the business and everybody else looks at them, you know, who started coaching around the same time as them from me. they said, I’m not as successful as them. I’m like, you’re not taking action. Like they do. Like you just massive action cures everything. Like take action.

Brett McCollum (28:15.706)
Nobody does, you are silly, do it.

Mike Balcom (28:43.576)
Get after it, make it happen, and you will. It’s impossible to fail after you try 100,000 times.

Brett McCollum (28:50.044)
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Man, that’s good. And guys, if you didn’t catch that, rewind it back another two minutes, listen to Mike again and say that, and it’s not wrong.

Please take advantage of the fact, Mike we’re gonna put that in the show notes, and guys take advantage of the fact that he’s offering that out. There’s a lot of wisdom, especially if you’re considering land in any way, shape, form. Guys, I mean sincerely, like reach out, okay? But Mike, man, you’re the best. I appreciate you doing this, being here with me today, and thanks for your time hanging out with me.

Mike Balcom (29:19.694)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Happy early birthday and I look forward to us doing it again sometime.

Brett McCollum (29:24.486)
Yeah man, thanks so much. Alright guys, see you as well. Thank you for hanging out and spending your time. We’ll see each of you guys on the next episode. Take care everybody.