Mike Hambright Shares His Success through Running Multiple Businesses & Scaling As a Seasoned Real Estate Investor

Kevin Harrington
Hi, I’m Kevin Harrington, an original Shark from the hit television show Shark Tank and you’re listening to the underdog podcast.

Pamela Bardhi
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of underdog. Today I have an amazing guest here with me Mike, how are you my friend?

Mike Hambright
I’m great. How are you doing excited to be here?

Pamela Bardhi
Oh my god, I’m doing awesome and even more awesome now that you’re here. Because you’re such a rockstar in so many realms in real estate. I’m just like, I can’t wait to hear my story in detail.

Mike Hambright
Thanks for letting me share it. Yeah,

Pamela Bardhi
It’s truly an honor to have you here today. Truly, you’ve built literally a real estate empire. And I’m just honored to have you here and hear your story and before we get to the Empire. We got to know where it started. So what inspired you on your journey to where you are today? My friend?

Mike Hambright
You know, I think that’s a good question. My wife always asked me, were you adopted? Or do you keep pushing forward on these things? And you know, I grew up in probably a lower-middle-class family. I’d say in the Midwest, very much hard-working class, blue-collar family, and probably got a lot of my work ethic from there. But I just kind of saw, like, struggle everywhere. I feel like it was just around me everywhere when I was growing up. And it’s not like I don’t remember consciously thinking about it. Because we had a happy childhood, like a loving family. Like all that stuff. It wasn’t like we were living under a bridge or anything like that. But I didn’t really know what I didn’t know at the time.

In hindsight now, it’s like, there’s just a big world out there that I didn’t know about at the time. So I think there was just a seed planted somewhere deep inside of me that knew that I wanted more. And that just kind of evolved over time and having the type of personality where when you get faced with something that seems overwhelming. Like being able to push through, and it just forces you to step up to the next stair. Their next stair all along the way.

And just kind of never being comfortable where you’re at. I guess I probably do struggle on some levels with like, enjoying the now. Because my wife’s like you live in the future like all people are living in the past. It’s not that I can’t be happy now, It’s that I know that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. And next year will be better than last year and I just keep pushing forward. Because that’s what inspires me is to grow, I guess.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. So many similarities and parallels between our the way we grew up, as well as like. You know, when my parents came to US, they had absolutely nothing. Did not speak English, didn’t know how to do it. And I watched everything go ground up and I think there’s something to be said. When you see the hustle around you, it changes you at a young age. Absolutely does and I mean, it was the same thing for me. It’s like everyone’s like, where do you get your work ethic? I look at my parents. That’s it, they dropped everything to come here to this country. Of course, I’m gonna work my tail off, no question about it, that’s what you do, I love that. So question for you, what did you want to be when you grew up? What was your dream?

Mike Hambright
I really didn’t know. Truthfully, that was one of the I think there was a turning point for me. So I was the first person in my family to go to college, undergrad. And I think that changed a lot of things for me and I don’t really know what drove me, I mean, not that my parents were on supportive. But they weren’t able to help with that, because they hadn’t really been through that. So I think my mom was super supportive and doing that. Because she knew that was probably a path to something better. But you know, I really don’t know. And I can tell you this at a really young age for some reason. I was watching like CNBC, and he’s like investing shows. It was like stock market investing.

And I thought that’s what I was interested in and I actually got a degree in finance and investments in my undergrad. Then when I got out, I worked for a very large bank in Chicago. I grew up in Illinois, by the way, I kind of got in and I was like. Is this all it is like, I wasn’t really in investments. It was kind of around me, but I was more like an auditor and it’s like, this wasn’t sexy. You know, what happened is somebody told me that this huge bank that I worked for, like all these. Like fund managers and stuff that were working there. And a bunch of my friends like built their way up to be managing funds and accounts and stuff like that. Their target was to try to beat the s&p 500.

Almost nobody can beat the s&p 500 over a long period of time and I’m like. Well, why doesn’t everybody just get rid of all these fund managers and put their money in s&p 500. And for me, it was just like this, like, okay. So this is all just a bunch of bullshit and people could just put their money into a mutual fund. Which I hate the stock market now. Like, I don’t really want to think I don’t understand it. I feel like it’s a game. You know, real estate is something tangible that I could really understand now. So yeah, so I wanted to be in investments and I’d always been kind of entrepreneurial. You know, yadda yadda yadda that’s where I ended up.

But in the middle I think I just wanted. I think maybe the some of that’s what pushed me forward is watching some of those shows and like looking at stocks and stuff like that. Which didn’t have any money. So I don’t know why I was even looking at that stuff. But I think I started to get a taste for what it would feel like to have the good life a little bit. Just because of commercials I saw or whatever. I think that planted a seed somewhere that there’s something bigger out there for me I guess

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. And so who was a big inspiration for you, Mike, like growing up, or any in business or some of your biggest inspiration?

Mike Hambright
No, I guess I followed like Warren Buffett and people like that just because they were kind of unavoidable. But there were books out but there weren’t podcast. There weren’t really like documentaries on investing and stuff like that. It was just more of like, who are the famous investors that do stuff. So again, I think that married in with the work ethic of for my family has just made me want to push harder for something. And now, somewhere along the lines, I learned that kind of along the lines of if you work good. If you work hard good things will happen.

But you don’t necessarily know what they’re going to be. So sometimes I just like dive into something knowing that. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I feel like something good is gonna happen. It’s you and you know, I’ll say this, like you and I would never have met if I hadn’t worked as hard in you as well, right? Like, we just know, if I work hard, I create value. I do these things over a long period of time. Doors will open for me that I don’t even know exist right now.

Pamela Bardhi
Yes, amen. Mike, amen. And so really back to kind of like high school. Going into college and like your career path and all that. Because I mean, you’ve been an entrepreneur, since you were young. I mean, the fact that you were drawn to investing shows at a young age. That was like me and Shark Tank, I would sit there and I would just sit there. Just watching and I’m like, learning everything about business from like a young age. But even still, at that point in time.

Like, when I went off to college, I still was like. Okay, I’m gonna do four years, I’m gonna do get a business degree and go in for marketing. I’m going to work for somebody when I graduate, and then maybe when I’m 40, started a business and then like, everything shifted. So how was your career trajectory, kind of after high school. You mentioned that you went to college for finance.

Mike Hambright
Yeah, I got a degree in undergrad degree in finance. I ultimately eventually went to my kind of the short version of the story is I got a degree in Finance got a job in Chicago. They mentioned for a large bank, and just wasn’t real. It was just like an okay job and I was kind of wanting more, I kind of got tired of the weather. And I was like a day that we got like 26 inches of snow in one day and I was just made this decision. I’m leaving Illinois for the first time in my life and so within a few months, had moved down to Dallas. And got another job that ultimately ended up being like the same. It was a different industry, it was for a large retailer.

But it was the same type of function was this like. Low level auditing like financial analysis type stuff and then I did have a relative. An aunt that had gone to get her MBA and that probably inspired me a little bit. She was working on Wall Street and doing some sexier things. And I actually went back to grad school to get an MBA at University of Texas in Austin. That’s where my wife and I actually met using the same programme. But it was a chance to reposition myself as something other than like a finance guy. And there were some like hardcore finance guys in this programme, like. That’s where they wanted to go. I wanted to pivot and go more towards like Marketing and Entrepreneurship and things like that.

So use that opportunity to reposition myself when I got out of grad school. I ended up getting this really crazy job. Like highly unusual, where I was effectively like the apprentice for a CEO of a company running a $5 billion company. And so it was pretty amazing to like. See all these things from it was just highly unusual. Flying around in private jets for meetings and doing all sorts of like amazing things and seeing it from a very different level. And I think even though it was inside of corporate America. Because I was kind of working for a guy at the top, it was very entrepreneurial. There’s like lots of ideas on where we’re gonna take the company. What are we gonna do with this?

Who can we partner with on that, and it wasn’t so much like in the down on the sun. The ground level of the drudgery of just a cog in the machine, like do the job, you know. And so I think I’d always been kind of entrepreneurial, and that kind of inspired me for that there’s kind of more out there than a regular type job. But it was such a unique job that I couldn’t replace that so effectively long story is he ended up getting fired. And I was his like, outspoken right hand man. So I was kind of like next in line and just collateral damage. Basically, that was my first slap in the face of. Because I’ve always worked really hard no matter if it’s like. Mowing lawns when I was a kid shovelling driveways in the winter.

All the way up through all the jobs that I had had at that point. And it was just this like, significant slap in the face. For me that’s like, wow, I don’t have control over what happens here. Like there are people that are making decisions that impact me in a major way. And no matter how hard I work, or what I created are what I do, those things don’t matter. They might not matter or at least despite that, I might not have any control and then I went to another company had a really exciting job made more money than I had ever made in my life at that time and after 18 months of being there, they filed for bankruptcy at that time.

So my wife and I got married a few years earlier. My son was like two months old, we had moved to Washington DC by the way. Like kind of far off land where DC is crazy. We didn’t really want to be there anyway, you know. It was just this realisation of I need to take control of the situation. I can’t just put all my eggs in somebody else’s basket. And that’s really when the real estate stuff started.

Pamela Bardhi
Ooh, now we must go next into the real estate career. Oh my goodness. That’s awesome, I’m loving it. I’m here for it all, Mike, then how did the real estate empire begin?

Mike Hambright
Yeah, I mean, it started with one house. Just like anything, it just started with doing one deal. And then it turned into do and you know, 60 70 deals a year, for a lot of years. Then just you know how it is like stuff bolts on, you’re like, Okay, well, let’s keep some as rentals and next thing you know. I have a rental company and then it’s like, I started coaching people. And now I have a coaching business and you start to like bolt things on. Sometimes it’s property management, it wasn’t for me. I hate property management, or being an agent or a broker or whatever. Like, there’s just things that you start to kind of bolt on that seem like logical tangents to get into.

And that’s really how it’s been ever since then. For me, the coaching, I’ve coached, like, a tonne of people over the years. Either directly or certainly indirectly, through all the stuff we’ve done online. And that evolved into me realising that. Hey, what I really love are the coaching students that are successful. Like my star students or people that are become more of my peers. I really liked being around other people like me, that we can talk shop. Because when you’re a coach for newbies, let’s say, or when you’re the leader of a company you appreciate everybody and you want to help everybody that you want on that. But you can’t ever show weakness. Like you would never show your signs of weakness with people that you’re supposed to be coaching.

Because that would be a chink in the armour. But when you started to get around people that are like that. And kind of had been down the same path, as you are, you know. At least in the real estate space, for example, and they’re like, is this working for you? And I was like, you know, it’s not really working as well as you can start to kind of open up and share. Like, I’ve got some weaknesses here. I’m not perfect, and none of us are, by the way, but it started you know. I just kind of, I guess I got the most value and the most joy out of working around professional real estate investors. Then that’s really when I started my mastermind, I said. Look, I’m gonna go all in on people that are operating at a high level.

Because it’s easier to help somebody in my experience. Get from 20 3040 deals a year to 30 40 50 60 deals a year to kind of double their business, triple their business. If they’re already an operator than it is to get somebody to go from zero to one. Zero to one is so hard, because it’s even not even about real estate. It’s about the mental game that they have in their mind about does this even work? Or should I do about my job? My family thinks I’m crazy. Should I really invest in myself, like all these things that are a big hurdle.

And that’s true for I think for most entrepreneurs. I think there’s a lot of people that are entrepreneurial. But they have they haven’t burned the boats yet. So they have this safety net that holds them back, and I’ve seen it with a bunch of friends that have spouses that have great jobs like that. You think my wife is going to leave and she’s going to start this new business. Then like the next week, she got a promotion. Like, now she can’t leave right now. And it just that never ends that goes on for 30 years, and they retire.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. Oh, my goodness, Mike, I love your journey. First off, and I love that you dove into the real estate space. And like you mentioned, you went from one flip to 6070.

Mike Hambright
Yeah, we do. About five or 70 deals in our first year. Actually it is crazy It is crazy. But if you think of the situate, there were a couple of things. One was that I’d had like been sitting on back to back failures of in terms of losing a job. Right jobs like two jobs. My son was just born and so all of a sudden, I’ve been married for a couple of years. And so all of a sudden, I’m like, my wife and I actually a great paying job. Actually, my wife made way more money than me as a consultant and but she hated it right? And so but she left her job to have our son and so all you know, pardon my French. But as I say, shit got real, real fast.

I went from like, two people making a good living to like, no income and a baby. It’s like, okay, what are we gonna do now? And I think it was just that realisation of kind of being backed into a corner. Just living on savings and burning through savings is like. We’ve got to do something and it has to be massive, right? Like it has to, we have to move the needle here. And so I had known enough, I mean some of the benefit of the corporate background was like. I think what appealed to me about real estate was the ability someday have a business and not a job.

Everybody wants that passive income or that residual income. And even though I feel like I have a lot more wisdom now than I did. Then I knew at the time that I couldn’t dabble. Like we had to kind of go big and so it was, you know. We had two strikes at that point through my jobs. I was like, I’m not gonna strike out. So let’s go and it’s clearly not that we haven’t failed a bunch along the way. But we just went big that it worked out.

Pamela Bardhi
Like, thank you so much for sharing that well. Because you know, a lot of entrepreneurs. It’s hard to talk about those failure moments. Like I used to say, like, at one point in time. When I first started flipping my middle name was non sufficient funds because I was so bad at budgeting. And like, I didn’t even know like, you know, and then people will take checks out like two weeks later than. After I give them the check and I’m like, Oh, shit, I forgot about that check. Like, just so much mismanagement and so many things that happen in the beginning that you just don’t think about like. I remember being backed into a wall. So many times in the beginning of my career, the first one to three years was like moments are truly defining.

Mike Hambright
Yeah, it’s funny as I’ve always been like the face of our businesses or businesses for the most part. My wife is like a rock star, like my wife would be probably a fortune 100. CFO right now, she was still in corporate America. I mean, she’s just was an investment banker on Wall Street has an undergrad and finance and double undergrad in finance and accounting. So she is very financially savvy. In fact, she’s the CFO on all of our companies now, so we always have this yin and yang. Like, she’s the brakes, and I’m the gas, right, and it’s caused friction. If anybody were to the spouse, you know that there’s could be some friction there.

There can be friction either way, if you have the same skill set, and you’re so much alike. Then that causes problems and if you’re totally different than that causes problems. And so we’ve kind of we used to say, when we were, you know. Doing all these deals for years like that, is that if it was up to her. We never would have bought a single house. Because she’s risk averse. If it was up to me, the finances would be so mismanaged that we would have been on a business a long time ago. We just kind of had that yin and yang, that just worked out. And it’s, you know, it’s not without air. It’s not without friction, for sure. But it’s worth.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Mike, thank you so much for sharing that. Because you mentioned that you do coaching. You have your mastermind, and you started operating and working with people at a very high level. And you saw it with your own businesses as you built them. Like what are some of the biggest challenges in scaling a business and what would be some advice that you would give anyone who’s listening.

Mike Hambright
One of our main companies now is a lead generation service for professionals, single family. Which is called the investment machine and through all my coaching and everything that I’ve done. Is that’s the biggest struggle is to get people to invest in themselves. And it could be in people and processes. It could be in coaching and it often is in marketing lead generation. Part of it is I think, for a lot of real estate investors is they started. They had to by being scrappy. Like everything was a skin off your back, right, you’re like you’re running around to Home Depot to check on stuff. You’re trying to find contractors that are investor friendly. Because you’re cheap, you’re trying to stay in a budget or you overpaid for a house.

Everything we’re looking for is kind of value based. I want to buy a cheap property, I want cheap contractors, I want to find a discount on materials. Like we’re all just like cheap, cheap, cheap, right. And the problem is like if you lean into that direction too far. You don’t value your time, because a lot of times we do it because it takes up our time. But our time is a high value, right? And two is you trap yourself because of your time in the situation where it’s a job like you you’re not willing to invest in somebody else. Like an admin or an acquisitions person, or somebody could be a, you’re gonna GC it yourself.

Instead of hiring a contractor that knows what they’re doing, you know. What I found is a lot of real estate investors are they tend to be one of two things. Either very good at sales, like they have a lot of great salesmanship. Or they’re very good at be detail oriented managing projects. But often they’re never good at generating leads and marketing. And it used to be when I was coming out that you could do almost anything. You know, in terms of direct mail or whatever. Just like throw spaghetti at the wall, the margins are so high. Maybe it cost me a little more, and I make $5,000 less on this deal. But it still worked out.

And that’s not how marketing works anymore. It’s become way more efficient and so we use a very unique approach to data for how we identify people. That should be marketed to things it just got way more efficient. But through all my coaching and all of this time. The single biggest question is always like, how do I generate more leads. What’s the best list of mail to like all these things. And eventually, I was like, Screw this, I’m just going to start a company that does it for people. It’s turned out great for us and them.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s amazing. And that’s that’s also what I’ve learned to some of the biggest companies. It’s the lead generation and the marketing that gets them to scale it ridiculously high levels. Because then at that point, you can have the revenue to support a whole organisation to build that all up. Which is 100%.

Mike Hambright
And markets are different. The margins in Boston, where you’re at are way higher than they are in Des Moines. Lowa are some of their markets are their margins are different. So you have to think of all that. But a lot of people operate their business at a level where it’s a job, if you’re doing in our business. Typically, if you’re doing a deal or two here and there, then you can’t afford overhead, not as much of it. So you can’t afford to have a team. You can’t afford maybe to have an office and you’re probably not reinvesting back into marketing. And so if you think of like your business, and this is not just real estate. This is all small businesses, in my experience.

They operated enough to where they can be an owner operator. But they couldn’t afford themselves if they had to pay themselves a salary. If there’s anything left they keep it in a lot of entrepreneurs do well. Better than they did in their kind of two job, but it’s because they’re running it. So there might be somebody that runs a subway, and the owner is actually making sandwiches. And that’s the only way that business makes money or survives. But if they had to pay a manager on the store, and it doesn’t work and part of it. Is they just aren’t scaled up to a point to where they can recover the expense of the person running it so or the marketing.

So in our business said another way and every market is different your market. Would be would be different than Dallas for sure where I’m at. But in Dallas, let’s say if you do a deal or two a month, you’re not doing enough volume to support a salesperson. Because they’re not going to be happy making a commission on one or two deals a month. So therefore, you’re kind of stuck in this job situation. Where if you did four deals a month, let’s say. Now you can afford the overhead it takes to run your business. You’ve kind of scaled up beyond that expense that needs to support the business. If that makes sense.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that, I was listening to was a Gary Keller’s Millionaire Real Estate Agent and like the red light. We might method where it’s like, try this one thing out first. Like, make sure you have enough capital to bring in this person and then stop. And then say so it avoid like overspending. I’m like, Well, that’s nice, because for me I’m just like, let’s just invest in all these things. So it’s like the right tools to invest to scale is really lies in the lead generation and the marketing, if you will, right. Which is amazing.

And so I love that you saw that opportunity. So it’s amazing to hear your journeys, but like. You started with flipping houses, and then from there, you started the mastermind. And then from there, you basically created all things you’re like, Okay, what are the problems in this market, and then create all that, and all the shirt unity to do.

Mike Hambright
In real estate investing, we’re problem solvers, right? Like, we’re trying to help sell homes out of difficult situations. Or whatever the situation might be. So that’s really is what all businesses is, it’s solving somebody else’s problem. And so we’ve just tried to identify where the biggest problems are and attack them. Now, there’s some problems that I don’t want to take on. But, I’ve also kind of tried to gravitate towards the things that I also enjoy doing. Which is one of the benefits of being a business for a long time as you can kind of pivot your way around. And find something that not only is a problem that people will pay you to solve. But hopefully, it’s something you enjoy doing as well.

Pamela Bardhi
I love it. And it makes a what has been one of your favourite moments in business. Like one of your most memorable moments, and then we can parallel it to one of the worst.

Mike Hambright
Okay, I think favourite is I’ll go back aways when I realised and this said, go back to our first couple years. When I realised that I’m never going back to work for somebody else, like I’m, and now I’m like completely unemployable. Like, nobody would want me, I’m too opinionated. And they couldn’t afford me, right. So that’s a cool place to be. But early on, I think I realised in our first couple years. Because we were doing so much volume that we were making more money than we ever would have made, you know, I remember. So this is gonna sound like I’m bragging. I don’t say this, I’m not trying to be like, you know, cheeseball.

But I remember thinking that I had worked for the CEO of a $5 billion company. And I knew what he made, it was public information and I was like. I’m making more than those guys and I was just a couple of years on my own. It was like this realisation of how much opportunity there is for entrepreneurs to make a great living without this traditional corporate path. So just this realisation, there’s a lot of ways to make money that don’t involve having to necessarily put on a suit and tie. Or having to get up and work a nine to five, there’s a different way. So that was probably I’ll say, one of my high points. I’ve had plenty of high points since then. But that was an early one.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Well, what’s awesome about that is just like, you own your time, your time on you. And I think that’s the most valuable thing that a lot of entrepreneurs early on. They don’t understand the value of their time. So like, when my parents growing up, and like, you know. We’re in the restaurant industry, our standard was. If you’re not working 16 to 18 hours a day, you know, sometimes, it’s 12 hours. But if you’re not doing that, then you’re not successful, but then, like, you look at it. And it’s like, what about all that opportunity cost in that time that you just wasted? You don’t own your time, your time on the you know. Your business own owns you basically and that’s not, you know. That’s the owner operator mindset.

So I love that you mentioned that, that it’s like. Hey, I got past this level, and I basically can do what I want. And that’s the beauty and entrepreneurship, you know. You sacrifice in the beginning, don’t get me wrong, it’s a grind in the beginning, right. But once you have it nailed down, and you can rock and roll, it’s like. That’s the greatest thing in the world period. Oh, man, I love that. And Mike, now we’re gonna parallel it to what were some of like. So you can be like a flip that you did that just went completely sideways or like anything like that?

Mike Hambright
Yeah, I’ll say there was a point where I really started doing a lot of coaching for new investors and our businesses were doing well. But I think back to this, I was stuck in this place where I was relying too much on myself and my wife. Who was putting pressure on our relationship, to really kind of grow our business. And that was at a point where I was still hung up on so I’ll say a couple parallels. When I start a business, or I’m going to start a new venture. I start writing out like, who could run this for me? Who could I bring in to help with this? Because I know I can’t do it all. And there was a time when I tried to do it.

All right, I was trying to do everything and living in my truck. Like visiting rehabs like non stop taking calls, like all day long, you know. Just those the days that were just like grind. And I remember this realisation and I was with my wife and I were in the car. I had just left this coaching event that I had. This somebody had said something like someday, I want to be as successful as you. So I remember we were sitting at this red light. And I just was sitting there, I was like thinking about all this and I said out loud to my wife. I said, Is this was successful, like, because I wasn’t feeling it, right.

And I think those were some of the early lessons of learning that you have to run this like a business otherwise. It’s a job and the truth is, is I say that and I, we have some businesses now one of our business. We have 100 employees like we we’ve kind of scaled up. But the truth is, I still work almost as hard as I ever have. And when I go on, we travel a lot, but I’m always working, I’m always thinking about things. It’s a little different now because I can focus more on what I like to do.

But I’m not the type of guy that’s ever going to retire and sit on the beach and do nothing like that. That’s just not in my blood, but the point of that is. The low was like realising that I’m in my own way. And in order to build something special. You have to find a way to build a team to have people help you with what you use your vision, and help execute what it is that you want. Because that’s what a business is. Otherwise, it’s just a job.

Pamela Bardhi
100%. Mike, thank you so much for sharing that, that was one of the hardest things that I had. That I had realisations on with to like, is to kind of surrender because in my head, it was like, nobody can do it as good as me. And I’m sure we had parallel, similar mindsets with that, like nobody got as good as I can. You find yourself working those, you know. As this what success feels like, and you’re just kind of like, okay, no. I need a team here that can execute.

But it took me so long to break that mindset too. And it’s like, I remember you just like that and I’m like, was there not too long ago, not too long ago. It’s the entrepreneurs biggest hurdle, I feel like to like. Allow somebody to come into your business and like. Be part of that and take over a certain role. You know, that’s amazing, amazing.

Mike Hambright
It’s hard. Because, again, we got there by being scrappy, and, keeping the overhead low. And all those things right, and putting our head down and working hard. But you know, what got you to where you are isn’t gonna get you to the next level, for sure.

Pamela Bardhi
Thank you so much for sharing. I’m like, thank you so much for sharing that. And earlier, when we were speaking, you were mentioning that you have this like restlessness about you. That like it’s just constant like you’re living in the future. And and when you were saying that I was like, he is me, I am him. That’s what it is, and so what’s going on in your world in the next like 12 months, what’s happening?

Mike Hambright
You know, I’m really I’m at a point now, where I’m just really focused on we have some things that are working really well. I have my mastermind called investor fuel. That is for professional investors we actually bolted on, it was private. For the past four and a half years, it’s primarily been single family, investors, and we have about 150 members. But in the past six months, we launched multifamily groups, which is mostly what I invest in myself now. And so just focused on I mean, honestly, it’s all the things I do professionally. That I get the most joy out of just being around 100 Plus amazing other kind of entrepreneurs and givers and people that are open up to. What’s going well, and what’s not and sharing with each other.

So they can take help each other kind of was almost like a board of advisors for each other, right. And so I’m not really trying to do anything new. I’m just trying to do what I do now better, if that makes sense. So there was a time where I’m constantly creating all this new stuff. And I’m trying to innovate inside of what I already do. Instead of trying to take on something completely different at this point. But between that and our agency, the investor machine really just kind of focus on growing that and serving our members and clients and stuff like that, as best we can.

Mike Biggest Piece of Advice

Pamela Bardhi
Like I love that. And so to anyone who’s listening, who’s maybe in the real estate space real estate investor. Or an entrepreneur or listening in general, what is your biggest piece of advice that you would give.

Mike Hambright
You know, back to what we’ve already talked about is just treat it like a real business. Like if you feel like you’re in a position where it’s a job. And the truth is, is like social media, like people on social media, and I use a lot. I’m probably an addict to Facebook as well. But it’s not the real world, you’re you’re seeing the best part of everybody. And so when you see people posting checks or fancy cars, or whatever I mean, for them, most likely. That’s marketing to try to attract people into something else, right. There’s nothing wrong with fancy cars are big checks, for sure. But just know that that’s not like everyday in somebody’s life, typically. So this is hard work. Anything you want to do is hard.

It’ll get harder before it gets easier for most people. Because you’ve got to build it up. So it’s like a real business so you can step out. I mean, I don’t think there’s any entrepreneur that said, I want to start a business that I can never leave if my kids get sick. And I want to miss out on a middle of the sporting events, and I don’t ever want to go on vacation again. Yeah, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that find themselves in that situation of they can’t afford to. Or they can’t pull away for one reason or another and that’s not what anybody started for. So you got to kind of get back to why you’re doing this in the first place

Pamela Bardhi
Thank you so much for sharing that. And now my favourite question which is what would your yourself tell your younger self based on what you know now?

Mike Hambright
I would say to be open into sharing more. So my first couple years in real estate. Again, we had just kind of come out of a depression for us. If you will, losing a couple of jobs and having to kind of support my family and things like that. And I think part of it was from the corporate background that I came. Where it’s like a, it was really kind of a dog eat dog world. Like everybody’s jockeying to get that next promotion and who’s going to somebody just left who’s going to take over that person’s role or whatever. And so there wasn’t, you know, a lot of sharing. I’d say it was just very much like people angling for themselves.

So my first couple years as a real estate investor, when I started to think I had some secret sauce. I just didn’t really want to share it. Like I don’t really want to talk about what’s working for me. Because I felt like somebody’s gonna take something from me if I opened my mouth, right. And so the reality is, it got to a point to where I started talking openly about what I’m doing, bringing people. I started doing some I called a rehab live. It was basically just come watch me rehab a house like we’d have, like 3040 50 people show up. And just kind of watch us rehabbing the house. We would meet there at the beginning in the middle of the end and talk about it partly.

Because I just gotten we went from big corporate jobs with lots of birthday parties and happy hours and stuff to like. My wife and I in some dumpy little office with nobody around us to talk to you. So some of them, it was just the social side of like, I need to get around people a little bit. But when I started sharing what I was doing amazing things started to happen. Like, people are asking if I need money we like to lend to you, or can you coach me on how to do this? Or I have a deal? Would you buy it from your partner on and all of these opportunities started to come from me actually just sharing what it is that I do. Which was second nature to me.

So I think there’s a lot of people that feel like they have some knowledge. And maybe they don’t share it for some reason, so if that’s you. I would say just share what you know, you’d be surprised at how many people don’t know even what even if you feel like. We get this impostor syndrome. We’re like, Well, who am I to share what I know and it’s like, you know. So much more than a lot of other people and there’s so many things that can come from that. If you just open your mouth.

Pamela Bardhi
I love it. Mike, thank you so much for sharing that. And now you gotta let everyone know where to find you and your awesomeness. All your company’s revenue.

Mike Hambright
Okay. Yeah, so you can find me on Facebook, Mike Hambright hanging out there, for sure. Investor fuel we talked about as our mastermind, we actually have some links, we want to know if your friend Pam. So if you go to investorfuel.com/underdog, we’d love to schedule a call with you. If you’re a professional investor. We don’t generally work with new investors, so those are more seasoned investors, we have people that are doing 10 deals a year and with people that are doing six 700 deals a year. So kind of anywhere in that range, we work with experienced investors in the mastermind. Our data company and lead gen agency is called the investor machine and it’s the investor machine.com/underdog.

Same thing if you’re a professional investor and you’re looking to get help with your lead generation. There’s a short video out there you can watch to see if it makes sense for us to jump on a call and talk and then everything else I have. I have 1000s of hours of kind of free content on my original podcast site, which is flipnerd.com. So you can go out there and get access to 1000s of hours of past shows like similar to this and lots of other free information@flickr.com.

Pamela Bardhi
I love it. Mike, thank you so much for being here. Today. You are total rock star my friend. Thank you. So that’s it for today’s episode of underdogs. Catch us next week, always dropping on Thursdays. And remember, if you’re interested in real estate. Or want to learn how to create more money and magic in your life. Check out meetwithpamela.com and let’s chat sending you so so much love.