Gavin:   Hey, guys, how are you doing? Welcome back to the REI Network podcast with me, Gavin Timms. I have a special guest. Today is a good friend of mine. We’re in masterminds together. He’s just an all around good dude. A wealth of knowledge has tons of businesses, all of them successful. And we are going to learn a ton of information gold nuggets from him to date. Let me bring him over. Is Mr. Erik Hatch. Erik, how are you?  

Erik:   Gavin listening to you is like the most delightful thing my ears have ever experienced. And you get this really unbelievable European accent. I’m from Fargo, North Dakota, and so I sound like I’m from Fargo, North Dakota. And so people are going to have to deal with like a sweet, sweet sound and a salty, salty sound all of a sudden. Congrats. Congrats to the listeners for the perfect, salty, sweet match.  

Gavin:   That’s awesome. Erik, look, I appreciate you coming on. We’ve been friends now for a few years. Like I said, we’re masterminds together and I always joke and you can go back and listen to my episodes and I say this to everybody. But you all one of my favorite people because are super genuine. You’re a good laugh. Obviously, you’re good fun. We have a good time. And you know, I thought it was at your perfect person to get on for a number of reasons, really. And we’re going to touch on some of them today. Well, just bring us back, Erik. My audience might not be familiar, obviously, with you. So give us a bit of backstory on Erik Hatch. Like how you got into real estate? Kind of take us back, and let’s bring this to where we are today.  

Erik:   Yeah, we’re going to we’re going to go lightning around here, Gavin. So I’ve been a full time realtor for 10 years, got licensed in two thousand six, but did a part time while I was in a full time ministry job. I was a youth minister and a worship leader, and so I did that side by side for about five years. And then finally, I made the switch in full time to real estate in 2011. I found some really quick success because I had a four or five years of ramp up. But in addition to that and residential real estate and real estate sales, it’s really about who you know. And I’ve lived in Fargo my entire life, and I had invested in a large amount of people’s lives. Not that I was the most visible person, although I do live a big life with a big voice and I’m not a guy that blends into a crowd very easily. I was always intentional on trying to shine a light on other people and always trying to pour into other forces as a foundation of who I am and the way in which I to take care of people that bred me so much success for capturing mindshare. And in fact, I think Gavin mind share leads to market share, especially in a sales job, a job where relationships are at the core and the foundation. So we took all that 2011 I sold 52 homes, and then from there I started a team because realistically, this has been a leadership journey for me. I kind of like houses, but it wasn’t until three years ago that somebody told me that sheetrock and drywall were the same thing. I had no clue. And like, I didn’t grow up with a dad. And if you asked me, Hey man, how can you get your toolbox in? Like, I only got my checkbook in my toolbox, it’s all I have like I can not make. I am not a guy that understands a lot about houses, but I wanted to understand a lot about people. And so that is crescendoed every year, and my business has grown every year to the tune that now in Fargo, North Dakota, we’re going to sell over 1000 homes this year with our real estate team. We’re one of the top 40 real estate teams in the country in 10 days. From recording this, I’ll be opening up our sixth markets and that’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota real estate and my residential real estate game that we’re talking about. Now I I spend an hour or excuse me, I spent a day and a half a week. And so I’m at the point where the business pretty much runs without me. It’s a business where we’re a seven and a half million dollar business or so my team is fifty seven people. Fifty two of those full time. I’m not a full time right now. I’m a day and a half a week and I get to reap the benefits of really being diligent with leadership, but understanding where the opportunities are and I would jump on quickly. So that’s that’s I think what I’m known for in Fargo is my real estate business and my ministerial background. What I’m starting to get, I think not for a recognized national is becoming hopefully an influential teacher, leader and coach in this industry because so many people can sell houses and then they say, Well, what’s next? And everybody, Gavin wants to do two things. They want to work less and make more. The American dream is that is that the British dream too?  

Gavin:   No, that’s the American dream. That’s why I use I came here to live the American Dream, OK?  

Erik:   And so I think I think most people, at least in the US, wants that they want to make more and work less. And so now I get to teach people how to have unbelievable lives by empowering other people, not delegated, but empowering. Lifting up, I provide an opportunity in which to do so because I think that the structures that have come before me have done a fine job in teaching people how to build really wide organizations. And for me, why is the wrong move? I want to build a deep organization creating problems that most people don’t deal with because I’m now getting pushed instead of having to pull people. And I’m inspired by the folks that are my ecosystem and they force me to get better every day instead of me trying to force them to figure out how to salvage a couple of houses. And so I’m coaching people on this throughout the country. I’m writing my second book. My first book is called Play for the Person Next to You. It’s a book about servant leadership and that has been out for a couple of years now. But in quarter one twenty twenty two, I’m hoping that my blueprint book launch is called The Perfect Real Estate Agent Blueprint, and it is specific for the real estate industry. But the core fundamentals will bleed over into every ecosystem, including your listeners. Yeah, no, absolutely.  

Gavin:   I mean, we we have obviously, you know, most of our listeners on the real estate side on the invest inside. Sorry, but we have a lot of agents and I think we have two types of agents from the listeners. Don’t take this the wrong way, but we have the ones that can’t do real estate as agents and the try and do the investing side all. They’re trying to obviously do more deals by getting on the investing side or sometimes the investors are going hold on. We’re doing all these deals, we’re creating all these leads from the marketing efforts that we teach. Why don’t we get licensed and actually have our own brokerage and leverage the extra money because we’re doing the work. So I think we have a good mixture. I think most super cool, though, is and again, we’ve got to hang out now for several years. And I think one of my biggest takeaways from being in a mastermind with you is the leadership thing, right? That you pull. You said something. I use a few your terms, actually when it was a Navy SEALs, right? You want Navy SEALs, you want six Navy SEALs rather than what’s the actual rock?  

Erik:   You know, what I’ll say is, man, if you if you are going to battle, you can choose one or the other. You can choose six Navy SEALs or 100 Army reservists. And please, I have a great amount of respect for everybody in the reserves. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But I’m going to bet on six specialists six people who have not just gotten good at their craft, but they are the best of the best of the best for me. There’s another adage, and that is if you have a stable and you have a stable filled with race horses and you put it in two donkeys into that stable, well, you’re going to have the fastest donkeys you’ve ever seen. Inversely, if you have a stable full of donkeys and you put a couple of racehorses in there, those are those two race horses look like asses. Pretty quick. Yeah. And so your culture that you have and the energy that people bring matters. There’s the bannister effect, right? The bannister effect was the guy to break four minutes in a mile. For the first time ever, nobody had ever gotten. Nobody thought it was possible on the bannister years ago goes and finally breaks the four minute mile. And now fast forward a couple of dozen years later, and like everybody except for you and me, can run a four minute mile now. You know, it’s like because because you have to break through these glass ceilings and who you have around that. If I go back to when I was building my real estate team originally and I, I built it in 2011 and early 2012 and 13, I got kicked out and where I was at, I was such a mess that such a dumpster fire because I had a bunch of people who were picking up my table scraps and they were they were my rock acts to me, being the lead dancer and I was like, my job as a leader is I’m going to make a ton of money and hopefully everybody else around me makes money, right? Hope is a great thing to have Gavin, but a terrible business strategy. Yeah. And so I have all these people picking up scraps and then I get kicked out. Two people come with me right and admin and a sales person. My team went from 13 to three overnight and I was like, Oh, I’m the I’m the best because I’m the bad leader. So we go and I start over and I have one agent with me. His name is Jamie and Jamie. Jamie’s like a middle of the road producer. The average realtor in the United States sells eight homes a year. Somebody on a real estate team will sell more. And Jamie was selling about twenty four a year. For me, that was like, OK, that’s that’s like boring middle of the road. Like, that’s not anything to write home about. Then we hired a guy named Brandon, and Brandon was our bannister. He changed everything, and in Brandon’s first year, he sold forty nine houses. Wow. He changed the perspective. My my first year I sold 52, so I don’t need to one up. But whatever, you just keep him in his place. That’s right. That’s right. I was able to have a brandon or a banister in my world that actually showed the gym is responsible. The next year. Jamie sold forty houses, twenty four before Brandon came along, and they’re like 30 the year that branded it 50. For forty nine, excuse me, but then all of a sudden, Jamie, so I could do a lot more. And you see, a lot of us are looking into our ecosystems right now, and we just keep on trying to add more mediocrity. And we think we’re going to build the Taj Mahal with a bunch of mediocre players and with a bunch of non Navy SEALs. Yeah. And I think it is one of the biggest leadership mistakes that any of us are making is that we’re trying to add more average and more average is not equal. Exceptional?  

Gavin:   Yeah, no, you’re a hundred percent right. And I can only speak for myself. I’m I’m big on. You’re only as good as your team. My model works especially special. My real estate side that I am literally only as good as my team right now. When my team is means how good I am vs. on my coaching side, the coaching is me so I can perform because I’m the one controlling it right where my real estate is, is doing without me. And I think one of the problems that I have sometimes you can say is lazy, which is fine is I hire way too quick. Right? And again, I’m going to take you again to another conversation that we’ve had where you’ve literally said that you will hire people over three months, like you will start off in the room of date and you will wind down and you’ll take them through the trends trenches to even get that one position where there’s two people left standing in a six eight, nine 10, 12 week program. And I’m just thinking, Wow, that is how you take people that are going to make it on commission only when there’s no checks and sometimes my fault. I’m like, Oh yeah, let’s give them a go. And the problem is, is that we burn through so much time giving people chances that don’t they shouldn’t be in that seat, right? And that’s just me just being completely honest. It’s my personality. I’m more of just a go, go, go, make decisions. Let’s make it happen. And that’s definitely something that I’m trying to work on to talk about that talk about as an example, that hiring process that you literally go through to get these Navy SEALs in these positions.  

Erik:   Can I call it a process instead of a process? I want to make sure that that’s fine by your rules. I’m very close to Canada, and that’s a process type of place, too. So I figure I love you. I love I love traveling. OK, so so with this hiring process is so important. Let’s put it this way. Gavin, you and I are fortunately married to women who are prettier and smarter and more often than us. Like I see her hairline. I’ve seen my hair and I’ve seen your waistline. I’ve seen my waistline. Thank goodness women are not as shallow, but as we go, imagine we go on a date, right? We’re single, we’re single. We go on a date with somebody and we talk with them for 30 minutes about surface level stuff. And then as you’re at Applebee’s, about to dove in, say you’re half off mozzarella sticks because you want after nine p.m. and you want to save some money and you say over the marinara, Jeff, hey, would you marry me after 30 minutes? Yeah, you see how stupid that is? And yet what are we? I spent more time with my coworkers than I do my wife. Sometimes right now I’m 40 hours a week with the people that are side by side with me. I’m trusting them with everything, with my name, my reputation, my business, my energy and holy cow. Hiring somebody after 30 minutes is like proposing marriage and getting married after 30 minutes at Applebee’s, it is not the way to do so. So we call a nine step process. This is one of my favorite things that we do, and I don’t mean to promote what I’m at least going to promote. All this stuff is that has coaching incom. We have a lots of stuff for free, a few things for sale, but we give away almost everything for free. And if you want to follow along some of this stuff at Hatch Fortune.com, that’s where you’ll find it. Step number one is you place the at. Nothing difficult about that. We use a company called Wise hired WIC and they said they serve as like a CRM and they will blast out to indeed. And LinkedIn and Craigslist and all these places where you’re going to get their resumes. 

Gavin:   We use the same site, 200 bucks a month.  

Erik:   So you could turn it off when you’re not using it. Yeah, it’s it’s super inexpensive and really well worth it. Once you’re in, why is hiring, you keep it on for a couple of months. It gives you it collects all the information on people. So step number one is you place a great ad and step number two is you now review the ads and you creep on. The people now resumes are bull crap, but they also are a way for you to decipher out the crap OK. Her resume is bull crap because somebody can lie on there or they can. They can falsify information. But it’s also bull crap for that reason. But it can be full of crap because now people are saying, you know, I’m not even going to take this seriously. I’m going to just take whatever indeed says, and I’m going to put in four lines of information. I’m not interested in somebody who’s not super interested in this job. In fact, Gavin, there’s three ways that people will come to you. Three ways in three ways only number one is by is by reputation. They know who you are. They may be referred to. And I think you would love working with Gavin or they’ve seen your business. That’s what I’m drawn to. Yeah. Number two is relationship. This person knows you. They want to be in your energy and in your world. Those two really great hires. Number three is real estate. Somebody says, I really want to get involved in the real estate. Now there’s other people who are just looking for a job. Don’t even consider those people. Yeah, somebody who is just looking for a job is not drawn to the weird way in which I work, and they’re looking for the most money with the least amount of work. And that’s not who I want in my world. If somebody comes looking for a real estate, I’d even put an asterisk on that and caution that saying this is not HGTV. All this is not weird. I say you all like, I’m not from Fargo. Let’s establish balance where I’m from Fargo, OK? But I didn’t. I will tell you, Gavin, that if somebody comes say, I want a real estate life out of this, that’s not going to be great either, because it’s a lot harder, a lot more exhausting than what people believe it to be. And getting your rhythm takes some serious grinding, so that’s how people are going to come to you, and I’d stay away from anybody who’s just looking for a job. So you see all that in step number two. In the end, the reviewing of the applicants step number three and this is a must do, I believe as a career night, not a virtual career and in-person career night. If you don’t have an office, rent a room at a coffee shop, find a restaurant, go to a hotel and rent a conference room for a couple of hours. Because what you’re doing now is you’re looking to decipher between who are the people that are willing to go the extra step versus the people who are looking for a job. Yeah, those that are looking for a job or at least looking to make it look like they’re looking for a job. We’re in a weird time right now where a bunch of people are unemployed and gaming the system, and so they’re applying because they have to, but not because they want to. And you need to the site to decipher very early on of who are the hand raisers and who are the warm, mouth breathing weirdos, right that you want to get out of there because the moment you do a career night, somebody will show up and you’re going to know before you even talk to them if you want to work with that person. It’s our nonverbals and how we carry yourself from the clothes we wear to the energy we bring to the facial expressions we make. They tell more than our words on a resume ever will. And so you can take 50 applicants and let’s say you invite everybody to career night. 15 of them will respond and say yes and 10 will show up. You’ve immediately gone for 50 applicants, down to 10 by just doing this. And then of those 10, you’re going to be like, there’s only three of us that don’t seem like serial killers, right? There’s three of them that I’m going to actually want to talk to after that. Yeah. Now in our career and I admire it takes an hour and a half because I’m a chatty Cathy. But most people do it probably 60 Minutes. My job is not to try to woo them and say, like, Hey, real estate’s really awesome, but you’re going to love and you’re going to make so much money instead. I say, you’re probably not going to want to do this job. This interview process is exhaustive, and most you’re going to get fed up with it because it takes a long time. But I’m not interested in people who don’t want to really, really work here. And then number two, real estate is hard as hell. You’re going to hate the people you work with. Sometimes you’re going to hate the hours that you work. You’re going to deal with massive hair loss and weight gain and all these other things that like, I had a flowing mane before all this. But you know what I mean? Like guys like you when I had gorgeous curly locks until real estate came around, you know? And so I’m trying to scare these people away because the people I want to continue with the quarterly and September three got three of nine. I’m going to move faster because I know we’re limited on those people.  

Gavin:   No, no, this is good because this is to my point, when you told me when we went through these steps like I’ve already hired by now, I’ve not even gotten down into a room. I mean, like if you see him again, obviously we interview I was I was doing. But if you seemed like a good person, I woke up anyway. Carry on.  

Erik:  And you can find good hires like that, but you don’t know enough about them for you to be a good leader so you can find good hires in a fast sort of way. You can get married through Tinder. You can find ways to connect with people. But I’m going to take my time because it’s that big of a deal to me. And this is always and forever about me and proving myself as a leader. And so I have to take the time. So we go through this step number four, as we said, essay questions we give them, like five days to answer the essay questions. Of the 10 people that showed up, five of them will answer the questions right? And two of the three people that I like to actually answer. So really, I’m down to two candidates at this point, and I’ve only given them maybe an hour of my time in person and then reviewing some essays for like forty five minutes. OK, so less than two hours in and I’m down to two candidates. So even though we think hiring quickly makes sense, this is a process or process that’s going to move much smoother. Step number five is a 30 minute Zoom in person or phone and or you choose. But this is not asking the traditional hiring questions like Gavin told me a time in which you are managed exceedingly well. And what are your top three strengths? Instead, we’re diving in, and my goal in any interview is to get to the layers behind the top. I don’t want the outer layers of the onion. I want that inner core, and I want to figure out what is that person made of that they don’t give everybody else. I want to know how they fight or how they fight. I want to know, are they a negative person or a positive person? I want to figure out when life has chewed up and spit on them and how they reacted. OK, so the questions I first ask you really like, why do you want to work here? Are you running from something? Are you running towards something? That’s a very good indicator of how that person’s better fare in your job? What do you love to do with your life? What’s really important to you and your life? What are you right? You’re asking questions just to see, like, do I vibe with this person? Is this person going to fit into our culture? Because Gavin, you can have a hundred gallons of crystal clear, pure spring fed drinking water and you put one turn in there and you just have shitty water? Yeah, and nobody wants to drink it. You need to protect your team and your culture and your environment with a fortress. And so these interviews are so imperative. So you’re going to interview the two people that have gotten to this point now. And maybe it’s so impossible to step number six. And this is the most important step, Gavin, and it’s reference checks. You’re going to ask for three references, three references that you’re going to ask 15 to 20 minutes worth of questions. OK? But guess what, Gavin, if I’m interviewing you? The reference you give me is your best friend from college and your cousin and your former coworker who is going to claim to be your old boss. Yeah, because I would do the same. I wouldn’t rule on the one who loves me the most that I can put on my reference.  

Gavin:   Yeah, he’s never going to say a bad word.  

Erik:   Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100 percent. Now what we do is we do, we do those three references, but then we ask those three references, each for a reference to who else knows Gavin that we could talk to? And so now we ask these next three the same questions. We’re starting to figure out a little more about of Gavin is full of it or not. OK, then we ask those three people each for allows for three more. And so when we do it right and we don’t always do it right because sometimes you just hit a brick wall where the person is fresh out of college and they don’t have a huge past experience. Or maybe they never have a job where somebody actually has a cell phone. I mean, all of these things are there, but our goal is to do nine reference checks, and this does not eliminate people if somebody says ill about them. But our goal is we want to find the truth behind the outer layer and most people are giving us think of think of the honeymoon stage. Remember the first six months you were married like you pooped with the door closed and you you wouldn’t fart around your wife? And everything was like, Oh, I better shower before I go to bed, like all these things. And now it’s like all the rules are gone, and that’s where the honeymoon stage is as you put on your lap. And that’s exactly what people are doing with these interviews is they’re putting on their best and you got to get past that layer. I didn’t expect to make a poop with the door open comment, but we got there. We did. Step number seven is a three hour interview. Given this three hour interview is two part and you should never interview somebody alone in this kind of ecosystem. If you are a solopreneur and you are on your own bringing your best friend, bring in, bring it in your spouse, bring in somebody that will gauge this with you because you need somebody else to have a sounding board. And the first half is the life story you were asking this person, Gavin, from the time of birth. Until now, I want to know your high highs and your low, though, and I’m going to ask you a ton of questions as we go. And so I my goal is just to figure out more about you and I want you to get off the script. That’s super important because most people, if you ask me, Erik, tell me where you were born and raised. I have a script for that because I’ve answered that a number of times. I want to. Yeah, and if I say, tell where you’re born and raised, you’re like, Wow, I was born in London, right? Like, OK, awesome. What was that like? It was fine. I was great. Well, tell me about who you were really close to as a kid. Oh man, I ever talked about Jonny for a long time. I had to figure out the layers of that relationship, and I’m going to find out when you were homecoming king and I’m going to find out when you got dumped on from right. I’m going to find the high highs and the lows because I want to see how you react. I want to see if you’re coming in with a ton of baggage. And I want to see it. Here’s the core fundamental is I want to see if you’re a victim because as much as I love Jesus and as much as I love ministry, my workplace need not be a place just to heal people. I will heal the people that are here and I will choose the is when they come in. But sometimes they’re so broken that it will only breed complication for everybody. Right, and we’ve made those hires before, haven’t we given where somebody comes in and they have thermostat in the room and they suck the energy and the warmth out of it because they’re in chaos right now? And I will support somebody skills all day long, but I will hire on culture and train on skill all day, every day. Yeah. The second half of the seven hour interview is finally the second half of the three hour interview, and step number seven is finally when we’re going to ask typical interview questions. Gavin, what is great leadership look like? My favorite interview question to ask, Is this Gavin? What does this place need to be? So it’s the last place you ever choose to work, and what you’re doing is you’re your future casting and you’re saying to that person, like, I want to do something big with you. Who do I need to be in order to keep you around? Yeah. And most of the time you have robots saying, like, who? They’re say, who do I need to be in order to fit in the school? So I want to know, who do I need to be as the owner, as the leader so that they feel so unbelievably happy because my job is to build them a runway? I don’t need them to build me a runway. I don’t need them to pick up my table scraps. I work for them. They don’t work for me. Step number of. Thank you. Thank you. Step number eight is we go off site. We go to happy hour or coffee or lunch, whatever it may be, and we bring their spouse and we bring the coworkers that they’re going to work with and we just get to know each other. But we scare the hell out of that spouse because I promise you, the person that interviewed has not told their spouse, Hey, this is a lifestyle and get it into, and it’s going to be super emotional. It’s a lot of nights and weekends and early mornings and interrupting phone calls. We’re out to dinner and everything else. Are you prepared for this? And if that all goes well, step nine is you from the job? So Gavin, can you hear aforementioned points? You can have Navy SEALs or you can have a bunch of people. The army reserves and everything I just talked about doesn’t hire Navy SEALs, but now it creates the ecosystem to say we demand greatness from moment one and the only people that can work here are the exceptional. And then we have an ecosystem that will train and develop them to be their best selves.  

Gavin:   Absolutely. But with you having them six people, you then have then on the then leaders right that have leaders on the land. And it’s a knock on effect because then the reason that I went down this route is that people are going to be saying, Well, hold on, have you have forty seven people working for you? How are you move in a thousand homes, which is ridiculous a thousand pounds a year? How are you doing this? And I believe the question why I ask you that is it comes down to the recruitment side, the leadership side that allows you to actually build a business of that size. Now people that know me and I’ve told you this when we get together, like I couldn’t think of anything worse doing a thousand homes a year because I know what needs to go in from a business size from having that many employees. And I don’t have that vision. 

Erik:   Remember I work. I work 12 hours a week in this business, but I also spend two hundred and thirty thousand dollars a month to get this business right. Yeah, which is that’s not what you’re talking about is like, that’s what I’m talking about.  

Gavin:   Oh yeah, and it’s a real business, right? Not that. And people said to me, mine is not a real business, right? Because I’m more of a lifestyle, right? And I do good numbers. I have good profit margins, right? And I know my profit margins. I would what will be bigger than yours? But your volume obviously out does it. So you gave it back? I would think so, and it just depends on what people want. But if people listening that want the empire, right, if they want the empire and they want to be spending to three hundred thousand a month on marketing and overhead to build this thing, they need to know what’s what. How to actually do it right because they’re not going to come to me. I am not going to teach someone to go and get 40 people in an office. I’m just not going to do it. It’s just because I don’t have that vision. Does that make sense? Not that I don’t. I wouldn’t stop myself from doing it. It’s just not what I want to do. Well, there is people out there that want that, and I think you just demonstrate in them nine steps. For me, that’s the way you’re going to do it, because you have to have that level of leadership when you’re upon poor, poor and in the business of not much money to create these deals. You can’t have donkeys in the place because all of a sudden, you know.  

Erik:   Here’s the crazy thing is you and I had a conversation off camera off the podcast and I’m like, Dude, how are things going like, wow, man. Hiring people and working with them is hard, right? There’s the core of what you said are your pains. Everybody’s pains are people pains, right? And if you have profit pains because you’re not the right person to get you having you develop the skills or the numbers or the savvy to get there. But you either have people pains of yourself or the pains of the folks you don’t have or do have in your ecosystem. But all our pains are people now. So if you want the big ecosystem like I. However, the small ecosystem that government has, there’s different strokes for different folks. But either way, the WHO matters the most, and if you need leverage in any sort of way, not hiring out of mediocrity is the greatest thing that you can do and instead hire out of state. This is the most important person, like my spouse, that I’m going to bring to my side, and I’m going to treat it with that level of respect.  

Gavin:   Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s great. That’s good. So really, really good. I know we’re coming up to time here, so we’ve just touched on one one part of kind of what you do in depth. And I think again, what we’ve kind of pulled out is important because when people see this and go in thousand homes, the mind goes to places that that’s what they want an idea to identify. Is this what you want or is it not what you want? And if you want it, this is how you need to do it, because I don’t think there’s anyone. I don’t think there’s any other way than than doing it the way that you’re doing it right? And then you’ve branched off. Obviously, now you have, you know, hatch coaching, which is more on the business side. You know, we just we had we’ve had conversations before when you said, I’m not I’m not here to teach people how to move a house right is to build an empire. So you have that going on and I’m really excited. I want you to talk about it here a little bit about the new book coming out the real estate blueprint book. Because from what I’ve heard about it and what you’ve spoke about it, it could be a game changer for people.  

Erik:   Yeah, we hope so. And Gavin, I know that you have a lot of investors here. I’ve been an investor for nine years now. I have 60 doors and probably six or seven million in just real estate that I own, not kind of my own personal stuff. And then I’m doing the Airbnb model as well as a whole. Another conversation for another day. But twenty five percent of my rentals are not Airbnb, and I’m making two to three weeks on those what I would make with traditional rentals. So I am so excited about your world and to learn more about this too, because it just gets my my weak in the knees shaken out of my desk. So the book I’m writing right now with my partner, Robby Trefethren is called the perfect real estate agent blueprints. And the core fundamental of it is that so many models are teaching people to go wide and to add a bunch of people to their ecosystems in order to get what they want. And here’s the greatest demonstration I can get over this. Gavin, let’s say you are an unbelievable realtor or you’re an unbelievable flipper wholesaler, whatever it may be. And so you and your wholesaling business, you decide I have five quality at bats and these five quality at bats. You can crush all of each ones with ten thousand bucks now in residential real estate. What happens is you hire an agent usually and you hire that agent and you expect that agent to take a portion of the commission. Let’s say they get half for a third river. Maybe they get, let’s say, half the commissions. So if each one is worth 10 grand, you think, Man, I’m going to make twenty five grand, they’re going to make twenty five grand. We’re going to have this unbelievable world where everybody’s making a ton more money. How great is this love real estate? And then I’m going to hire 20 agents and each room is going to make me twenty five grand. And now look at all this money that I have. This is this is this is the bee’s knees. Well, yeah, what happens is Gavin, the person that you’ve hired to convert these deals, you hire to quickly and then you didn’t train them exceedingly well, and then they’re surrounded by a bunch of other donkeys. And so they don’t close five out of five like you could. And then, of course, four to five or three out of five. They close two out of five bags. So you made $10000 gross where you could have made 50 if you did it yourself. They make ten thousand dollars gross, but they didn’t get paid for six months. The failure rate in real estate and your first two years is eighty six percent because it’s harder than you think because it’s a relationship game and because people are jumping in with a mediocre education and trying to do big things in the world, and it is disrespectful to our industry and our clients and our community deserves better. And so what I propose is this and this is the fundamental move and our book is that we instead of going wide and adding a bunch of realtors, you go deep, meaning Gavin, if you’re their realtor, that that can close five out of five or that wholesale, that includes five out of five. You don’t rush to get out of production and you don’t bring somebody else to sit at the same table that you do. And instead, you subscribe to the philosophy that everything is earned and nothing is given. And so what this means is that the person that you hire does not come equally alongside you. They come under you as an apprentice, as somebody getting their MBA. And this is somebody who is salaried, not commission based, which forces you as that leader to start thinking more like a businessman or businesswoman. And it forces you to have your numbers button up and to stop riding the roller coaster of commission that we all ride. And so what you do now is you bring in somebody and they are the nurse to you. Being a doctor, they are that instant leverage so that they are hand-holding the clients, they’re showing the majority of the homes they’re going on, the inspections, they’re doing all that busy work and I can spend my time in my highest dollar income producing activities and that’s converting deals and negotiating deals. I am a surgeon and I need to have more nurses with me. This nurse can graduate to a nurse practitioner that can graduate to a doctor, but everything is earned and nothing is given. And we need to stop giving ten thousand dollar opportunities to somebody who’s newly hired, poorly hired and poorly trained. Yeah. And so that is the core fundamental of this. We have 10 tiers of people’s businesses that they’re going to go through, and at each place we are giving you a blueprint, a little blueprint of who you need to be in order to get to the next spot. And you most people, given most people shouldn’t grow a big business. Most people shouldn’t do what I do. Most people should do what you’re doing, Gavin, and that is finding something small, finding a niche and crushing it and maximizing your profit margin because your profit margins crazy might profit margins slim. But I’m just I’m getting 10 percent of a watermelon instead of 80 percent of a grape. And so I’m pretty OK with that and I’m getting more than 10 percent, but I just use that facetiously. Yeah, like the opportunity is so grand for you to go deep instead of wide, and that’s what we’re doing with the perfect real estate agent blueprint.  

Gavin:   Yeah. And what’s crazy is you explain that though you can as investors watching, it’s the same thing as us, as a business owner, been in the acquisition role, right? Doing the five out of five, bringing in a junior acquisition underneath to take some of the legwork of the prescreening right, running in loan boxes, getting pictures so I can focus on a high level of close in and then build them up to come a lateral move and then someone under them and so on, you know, to be able to toto build that and as you said, earn the right to be having the better quality of lead, maybe the direct male lead vs. the techs lead or a PPC lead, as we would do. So now that’s really, really, really good. Well, Erik, I appreciate you, brother. Thank you for coming on. Is there anything else you want to share with the guys? Check out the book. Make sure you like and subscribe. If you’re listening on on the podcast or you’re watching us on YouTube, make sure you drop a comment like and subscribe. I will personally answer any questions. If you have anything for Erik, I’ll make sure he sees it. Well, before we’re done here, anything else you want to kind of share.  

Erik:   Again, I know we’re gathering together in like a month to go golfing and I’m claiming you as my partner. I’m claiming dibs and I just want to make sure everybody has heard that on this podcast. I claim dibs together.  

Gavin:   Me and you, we’re taking it on. Awesome, I appreciate it. Again, I have a good one. Thank you for joining us and I will look forward to seeing you in Phoenix for a few days of golf. All right, thank you.  

Erik:   It’s my joy.