David: Alright guys, welcome back to the Discount Property Investor podcast. This is your host, David Dodge, my partner Mike is out in the field today. Just got off the phone with him, so he's helping us get some permits for just a couple of our rehab projects. However today, I'm joined by a very special guest, a guy that I got the the privilege of meeting just recently at a Mastermind in Mexico that I am a part of and he was actually king-- 'kinged'-- crowned-- I can't talk this morning-- he was crowned 'King of Providing Value' at the Mastermind that we were at so, very, very awesome guy. I'm honored and privilege to have him on the show today, Erik Hatch. Welcome Erik, how the hell are you, my friend?

Erik: Oh double D, David Dodge, I feel like I'm in the presence of greatness right now. I love what you're doing, stealing what you're doing, making it our own and bearing so much fruit from it, so it's just so--.

David: Great--.

Erik: – fun to be on with you. Thanks for having me.

David: Yeah, thanks for hopping on man. Thank you for hopping on. So, when I met Erik, again this is, you know, just a couple months ago I guess and he was, he had some interesting wholesaling. So, I was able to get with him and a couple of the guys on his team and get them set up with REIBlackbook, which if you guys know and listen to the show, we promote REIBlackbook heavily, been using it since 20-- and I think 14-- so I've been a customer of theirs for six years, but that essentially allowed him to put the systems and some of the processes in place to kinda, streamline the wholesaling business, so Erik, by all means though is not a rookie and he’s not new to the business, he was just kinda new to the wholesaling aspect of it right?

Erik: Yeah, man

David: And you have a very, very successful brokerage business and coaching business already right?

Erik: Yeah-- so I started real estate I got into real estate full-time as  a residential realtor in 2011-- was full time. Fast forward to now ten years later and my team and I have helped to sell over 4000 properties to families which has been pretty awesome and we're one of the top 50 real-estate teams in the country and I do that out of Fargo, North Dakota, so if you can do it in Fargo, you can do it anywhere. We have just, ourselves, about and 8% market share for what we have in our own back yard for traditional, residential sales. I started a coaching company as well about four years ago and have been coaching people both on, how to be a better realtor, but how to be better leaders and lead converters also, kind of all those bundled up into one. And I've been seen as one of the top 25 real-estate coaches in the country so I'm not new to real-estate by any means David, but wholesaling I was. About a year and a half ago-- in fact almost two years ago now-- I started dabbling in buying houses myself. I had a real estate portfolio in terms of investments things that I had purchased and was carrying about 55 doors when I started. But I had a buddy who's also in our Mastermind group named Nick Shivers and Nick said "Hatch, you gotta, you gotta start offering clients the chance to sell their houses to you" and I'm like 'What are you talking about? Why would anybody do that? Why would somebody take a 70 or 80 cents on the dollar offer?' It just, it didn't compute for me in my head. So I sat on it for a year. And Nick told me what he made and he told me the opportunities that were afforded to him and then I thought 'well wait a minute, if somebody like Nick can figure this out, I sure can figure this out' and so I got after we named it the Snap Offer Program and our marketing looks this David-- we say to people "listen, you can come to us and we're gonna give you two numbers-- " and this is what's unique in this whole system, is "come to us, we're gonna give you two numbers, one is your traditional list number. If you go to market today, with us as the top real estate team in the area, here's what your house should list for and what it'll sell for, your days on market, your fees, all your closing costs, all these things bundled up and so here's roughly what we think we can do for you" I mean that's what it is right? Is a traditional realtor says 'here's what I think I can do for you based on my interpretation'--.

David: Yeah, it’s a guesstimate, but its, ya know, as you get better at it and have more experience, those numbers get, ya know, more and more accurate--.

Nick: Yeah.

David: – but yeah at the end of the day, it's a-- it is a guess essentially though--.

Nick: Yeah, still a--.

David: – so I get that, okay.

Nick: – still a gamble, still a dice roll. And then what we started adding was our 'Snap Offer' and we said "we have investors lined up ready to purchase your property and here is your offer"-- and I'm the investor, so I've been the one buying the properties and I do the same as what I think you and your clients are doing and that is, you know, you'll - you'll buy and hold; you'll keep some as rentals; you'll just wholetail it, put it right back on the market; or you will fix and flip and then put it back out there. And I've had, I've had big wins and big losses and learned a lot of lessons along the way but it was just a few months ago, literally four months ago, that we recognized that we had all these people in purgatory. I, we had gone on 200 or so appointments, I bought about forty houses, I listed about 40 houses and so I still had 120 people that hadn't taken any action from that marketing that we were doing. And we said 'I wonder if there's an opportunity there?' - So what we did is we learned from you, we bought your Wholesale Class, you mentored us with it and, sure enough, we'd gone to those people and they've already said no to my offer and we're now saying 'Well, what is your price?' - And they're naming the price and we then are taking that and bringing it to a bunch of other investors, to see if they want to buy it, with our wholesale fee attached to it. So, I kinda get my best of all worlds. I get traditional real-estate, I get the fix and flip and I get the wholesale now.

David: I love it, very, very cool. So you guys-- wow 4,000 transactions over the last 10 years with your group. That’s a ton.

Erik: Yeah, we'll do about 750 deals this year. It's been a-- it's been a fun run.

David: That is a lot of deals, man. That’s two or three a day sometimes, very cool.

Erik: Yeah.

David: So you guys got the traditional side down. So you-- let's take a step back though, so when you were making these snap offers, isn't that-- wasn't that wholesaling or no?

Erik: Yeah, I'm just the first buyer.

David: You're just the first buyer, got it

Erik: Well, well we had those-- we-- If they didn't like my price, let's say it's a $200,000 house, I'm gonna give them 77 cents of the dollar, so I'm gonna give them 140 for it. If they didn't like that number, we'd say 'well okay, you can list traditionally'. Well that wasn't a win for them either. They wanted to sell it off-market, they wanted to have no interruptions, no showings, no fixes, they didn't wanna get beat up, they just chose not -- you know, three our of five people for us would say "not yet". And we didn't have a strategy for that 'not yet', so what we did is, we went and we built our buyer list and we started working with other investors and now we've done, I think in the last four months, I think we've done seven or eight wholesale deals, with a couple more that should drop this week.

David: Sweet.

Erik: And that's just all stuff that we-- like, we're still catering to the traditional listings and I'm still buying a lot and fixing and flipping. But this wholesale piece man, I, I have a house that I should close on next month - I just got messaged that it's gonna be delayed a couple more months and I'm gonna lose 55,000 bucks on my fix and flip. Because it's just a gamble right? You bet on making the dime or the quarter and wholesale for me was like, man it's a guaranteed nickle and no money comes outta my pocket. And I tell ya, if I knew what I knew when I started this I would have-- I would have shifted it quite a bit. So now we find ourselves loving the wholesale more than the fix and flip.

David: Yeah, isn't that amazing man? The cool thing about wholesale is you don't need any money necessarily, to do these deals. Now, the biggest thing that I wanna not skip over, and highlight, because I'm a guy that is a strong believer in transparency. I want everyone to know my intentions, even when I'm on wholesale calls Erik and, you know, like I-- let's say a lead comes in and you know, my virtual assistants, they handle all the inbound calls and they say "hey, this person has motivation look, we're gonna get one of the owners of the company or one of the buyers to reach out to you", that's really their job right? So whenever I, or somebody on my team, reaches out we kinda lead with 'hey, we're investors. We don't pay retail'. Like, I say that first and foremost-- I get it out there right? I think everybody should take that approach--.

Erik: That's right--.

David:  – because it eliminates them, you know, trying to get number-- say it from the get go, but on that same transparency approach, when it comes to doing deals with little-to-no money--  yes, you can do deals with little-to-no money but you have to generate those leads--.

Erik: Yes--.  

David: – and often times, that costs money.

Erik: Yeah, that's right.

David: So you have to have money to put into marketing and that's a while different thing right? Putting money into marketing to generate leads could be as small as, you know, 500 a month, 300 a month, right, depending on the campaign you're doing. I don't know what you guys are spending on your marketing now for its-- right now my business is probably somewhere between five and seven grand a month on our marketing efforts. So, don't listen to what Erik and I are saying and think 'No, you know, I can do deals with no money'. Yes, you can however, it's gonna be difficult, because you're gonna have to find those deals and THAT is what costs money. Now, once you find those people though, right, and they have a house that's 200 grand and its worth-- or its worth-- let's say you can get it for 200 and it's worth 300 with some minimal repairs, and you can find somebody to buy that agreement off of you for 10 grand, you can put that house under contract. For 200 grand with none of your-- with no money and get through those, that process. So Erik, you get this and know this, but a lot of the listeners, they're new to this business so I always like taking these little breaks sometimes and explaining these things. Transparency is very, very important to me - so.

Erik: Buddy, you have to understand that the reputation that we have as a residential real-estate brokerage is at risk if we're going in and "duping" somebody, you know? And that is not ever the right business strategy, ever. Just full transparency is like, this is gonna be a discount because there's a lot of risk that the buyer is going to be assuming.

David: Right.

Erik: I wanted to-- go ahead man.

David: And I -- go ahead please, please, please, please--.

Erik: Oh, just to your second point about "you have to have a marketing budget".I would match that with some hustle because if you wanna make a dollar go a long way, I would advise you to go and knock on the doors of your local nursing homes, or assisted living facilities-- I mean not now in the midst of Covid, but any other time go and knock on their doors and say--.

David: You can call 'em right now--.

Erik: Uh-huh?

David: – you don't have to go there. Yeah.

Erik: And, and, and if you understand Medicare and Medic-Aid, the average age of somebody in assisted living is 81 years old. The boomers are 77 and 78 at the oldest, so we're about to see an influx of people in these assisted living facilities, like we've never seen before.

David: Yeah that's about to start isn't it? That's like a couple year--.

Erik: Uh-huh, yeah. We're at the cusp right now. And so what's going to happen is, a lot of times if you can qualify for Medicare and Medic-Aid, you have to have like all of these assets off your books. And I'm not an expert in it, but I do know that there's massive opportunity. I went-- I have a friend who owns an assisted living facility. It is small 35 bed assisted living facility. I just talked with her and in the last sic months, I've bought two houses from her people.

David: Wow

Erik: Just, because it's about hustle right? It's about going out and having those relationships and I don't go in to say "who's willing to sell their house?" And instead I say "I understand that there may be complications for people looking to use your facilities, what's standing in their way and how can I help?"

David: Love it.

Erik: A talk from contributions--.

David: You're solving problems. Solving problems, I love it man. So as wholesalers, you know, and this is another thing that I kinda wanna bounce back to you real quick with the whole transparency approach. I tell my motivated sellers that I'm an investor; I tell them that I don't pay retail for properties and I have no intentions of doing that and I tell them that I buy - that I'm buying their property, in the event that I can buy it, to fix it up and sell it for a profit or to fix it up and rent it for a profit. I love that approach. I'm coming in, you know, with the transparency there and, you know, when you're approaching these, these old folk’s homes, you know, yes you are solving a problem but, in order for it to work you're still trading convenience for a discount. That's really what a wholesaler does, they trade convenience to somebody for a discounted rate. Another way to look at it, is they provide liquidity to the market place, right? If I got to Erik or Erik's-- one of Erik's team members and I say 'hey I need to sell my house and I need to sell it and I need the money next Thursday', you know, the odds of them saying "cool, let's list it and see if we can get that done" is gonna be really low. Real-estate agents are great, they help a ton of people, but what they are doing is they are taking a property and they are putting it ON the market place and helping from THERE. Whereas the wholesaler IS the market. Right? We come in and we say 'we can solve this problem, we don't need to list it' and try to co-ordinate right? So there's a lot of advantages being the, ya know, being the investor tool in your belt. So I encourage everybody to get their real-estate license even though I don't have my own-- I'm a hypocrite. However, my assistant and all of my business partners have it and are brokers, so to me it's not necessarily needed but I think most people should go out and they should get that. It's gonna help. And then having the ability to buy those properties to wholesale is just another tool in their belt. I think that is phenomenal. Erik, I'm glad to hear that you guys are having success with it. It is interesting to me that you sat on the idea for about a year, but I think that that's very common. I think most people, whenever they learn to be an investor, they kinda stick to that and most people when they learn to be an agent, they stick to that and crossing over, because sometimes can be complicated and confusing and have a lot of push back. So you're glad you made the leap, right?

Erik: Oh, well 100%. If I do this right, this year, I'll make as much money, if not more flipping and wholesaling then I will, running my entire brokerage of doing 750 transactions in a year.

David: Isn't that amazing? Wow!

Erik: It's bizarre how much money and opportunity is out there for those that have the courage to take the leap. And right now is the biggest opportunity I've seen because, the general public-- not in every market - but the general public is familiar with wholesalers and i-Buyers. Now that's a gross generalization and I understand we can make an argument that not everybody is, however, Zillow, Opendoor, Offerpad-- at least on the i-Buyer stance - they put a whole lot of money and Wall Street cash into this to both advertise and to buy. Now, where we found ourselves is that a lot of realtors, like myself, were doing these i-Buyer movements, or at least trying to do the traditional listings, found themselves competing. Just like they find themselves competing against those that are flying yellow signs on street corners and that sort. Well now, we're in this pause. This interesting pause of people waiting for the dust to settle, to see where the opportunity is. But I'm willing to wager a bet saying that these large iBuyers, aren't gonna be coming in and overpaying for properties, like they were previously. Because of the hit that they took, because of how the market has shifted its energy and if I'm an investor in that--  if I put $100 million into this saying it's going to work, and it was showing a net loss in the first place and then the market crashed, that's like a double whammy so they're gonna say 'no, go back and start buying like a wholesaler'. And, and because they've suspended their activities, right now it makes so much sense for other wholesalers to flood the market, to go in and we, as realtors, and you as wholesalers, we can do both. Because most people are begging for a menu of services, they just don't know the options they have.

David: Man, I think that's awesome! I love it. Very, very cool. Erik, let’s talk a little bit about your business, your coaching program, what it is that you do to help people succeed.

Erik: So there's always two kinds of clients that tend to find their way to me and I coach realtors but I've also coached chiropractors and financial advisors and, I mean, you name it. If they've been a business professional I'd have had the privilege of coaching them. I also wrote a book on leadership, it's called "Play For The Person Next To You" and it's really, it has nothing to do with real-estate and everything to do with leadership. And so I say that because, as I had mentioned, there's two types of people that look for coaching. One is people look to rip-off and duplicate. They wanna take every idea that I have because they want a team like we have and so they're going to say "well, give me your listing presentation", "give me your - give me your playbook and essence" and I don't find any value giving that away. Now I don't have an issue saying 'yeah, like, take it' because I know if you don't have the right heart and if you're not of the right mind set, that won't go anywhere. You can take my toolbox but you can't learn how to swing a hammer like I can. And that's where on the second stage of those that I have the privilege of coaching really do well. is people who are interested in them getting better as leaders and business professionals. Changing the lens that they see things with so that everything becomes more abundantly clear. The first method is giving a man a fish; the second method is teaching a man to fish and so, David, if you were my coaching client, we would spend all the time-- and the rhythm goes like this; is we spend our time in pleasantries and relationship, because if we don't have a foundation of relationship, it doesn't go anywhere. Right, we have to trust each other with it. We then go to homework assignments that I've given you, because consistently week in a week out, you should have challenges of books to read, people to talk to, activities to do, so that you're moving the needle forward. We then jump to triage-- and triage is one of the most overlooked things in coaching, because if a coach is operating out of a playbook saying 'okay, this week we're supposed to talk about this', it doesn't pay attention to the pain that that person's feeling for it today and so sometimes, we don't even leave triage. But triage, if you were to tell me of one of your team members that's making you crazy, I would listen, I would repeat back to you in a different way what I just heard and then I'd figure out how you're to blame for all of this, David. Not your team member, but you-- because--  you're the one that hired him, you're the one that enabled their behavior, you're the one that created a culture for them to be able to get away with whatever it is that you're struggling with and if you can figure out how to be a better you in this, all of a sudden, the tide rises for everything in your world. The playbook doesn't matter if you're still a crappy leader. The playbook doesn't matter if you're irresponsible with your spending. And so we work on those habits and then the final piece in all of our coaching is we, establish in the very beginning goals that we are working on, the lighthouse that we're swimming towards to we can continue to move towards that, but if you're under water, that lighthouse doesn't matter. Your goals don't matter. Which is why we spend our time in triage before we talk about where we're going to make sure that you're not drowning. And that's what a coaching relationship, that I think is really healthy, looks like.

David: So what do the students look like, that come to you?

Erik: So my a--

David: Are those people more--

Erik & David: Go ahead man sorry --

David: No, please.

Erik: My average coaching client is probably doing about 2-3 million dollars in GCI, as a real-estate professional so, they're selling, anywhere from 150 to 500 houses. So, these are teams, these usually aren't people who are solopreneurs, who are doing it out on their own. They're teams ranged in size from 7 to 20 people and that’s usually where I'm helping them to get to that next level. And there's a rule, it's one of my favorite rules, if you Google it, it's powerful-- it's called 'The Rules of Threes and Tens'. And it talks about how we reach these benchmarks in our business, that are glass ceilings and we have to reinvent ourselves. So when you go from 1 people - 1 person, excuse me - to 3 people, you have to reinvent yourself, you have to be investing more into leadership, you have to spend more time training-- you can't be who you were before that. Then when you grow to about 10 people--  and that's not a hard number. It might be 9, might be 11, but when it grows to 10 people - you again, have to re-shift because if you think that you have 9 people in your care and you're doing a good job of that, I'm sorry, it's an irresponsible way to lead, because Jesus had 12 and none of us are Jesus. You know? And so, five or six is the most number of people you have in your care, so at 10, it becomes about leadership developments in your own ecosystem, right? Great leaders don't have followers; they create other leaders. And then that number hits true again when you hit 30, and 100 and 300 and 1000 and so on. And so most people that I'm coaching, are stuck at that 10 to 30 number that they're trying to get for number of people on their team, because it means that you're re-creating your infrastructure and for us, as a team, most, most times people won't want a coach that's been where they want to go, right? The unique pieces like, Bill Belichick never played in the NFL, but nobody has more championships than him. But most of us want Michael Jordan to be our coach.

David: Right.

Erik: Turns out Michael Jordan wasn't a great coach, but he was more of an owner than a coach. But on the court he was unbelievable. So, as you take those examples and you think about who's going to be the best kind of coaching client, the sexiest thing in the World, whether I'm making a hire, or working with a coaching client in one of my companies, is if they're coachable. If they come as clay saying "Please help mold me" because, I'm not gonna do the molding, I'm gonna challenge and show them how to do it, so that they can have the best output.

David: Love that. Man that's, that's awesome. Where would somebody that has a team, that would be ready to, you know, talk to you more about that program-- where would they go? How would they connect with you? Let's talk about connecting with Erik Hatch.

Erik: Yeah dude, I put up my name on everything so, it's pretty easy. HatchCoaching.com is where you wanna go to see about our coaching. And, listen we're doing - we're doing webinars bi-weekly right now. We're just putting out so much content that we think is valuable.

David: Sweet

Erik: I have a webinar that I'm hosting this week, that talks about transitioning from a realtor to a business owner. Taking that shift, or transitioning from a solopreneur wholesaler into somebody who has a team - it's that same concept right? How do we start looking at this differently? So, at HatchCoaching.com you can sign up for all our free webinars. We built a whole bunch of training products as well, we have a marketplace of goods where you can practice with your team, instead of practicing on your clients. And then we of course offer group coaching and 1-on-1 coaching and that sort, so we really have a full gambit.

David: So HatchCoaching.com?

Erik: Yes, sir.

David: So guys, check it out if you are interested in connecting with Erik. This guy is the real deal. He's been in the business for 10+ years. They're doing 700+ transactions in a year, so the brokerage business-- he has systematized it and put processes in place and built out an amazing team. He coaches on how you can do the same. Check him out, HatchCoaching.com. How about your socials Erik? Where would we - How do we connect with you online?

Erik: I, I--

David: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that good stuff?

Erik: Yeah, Erik with a 'k'. I mean they're at, so Erik Hatch - E-R-I-K, 'Hatch' like an egg - you can find me all over Facebook, that's where I spend most of my time. I'm trying to get hip and trendy with the TikToks, I'm not there yet, but it's coming. And then --

David: I don't know if I wanna do TikTok, I've been debating on it man. And I-- just-- one more thing that I don't think that, I don't think the value's there for me to be honest but --

Erik: I think; I think it's coming though. I listen to a lot of Gary V and he's like "man you can, you can really make some waves". I think they're approaching 1 billion users already and it's, it's like the new --so they've overtaken Twitter, they've overtaken everything except for Instagram and Facebook at this point.

David: So crazy though but, it's just like, it's just stupid videos. I don't get it.

Erik: Uh-huh. Uh-huh, but I've seen some people - I'm following a guy right now who's doing wholesaling deals and flip-- fix and flips and he's talking about the metrics and you know, quick little 60 second videos so you have to be precise with your message but, it's captivating, because it's like little snippets of HDTV meets little snippets of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and it's great.

David: Yeah that's true. That's cool. I'll have to check that out. Well guys, check out Erik - Erik, thank you for coming on the show today. You always are providing a ton a value, not only in Mexico at the Mastermind but here today on this show. I'm really happy to hear that you are crushing it and that you've added the wholesale piece-- tool, let's call it -

Erik: It's a no brainer man,

David: - to your belt. It's a no brainer, I totally agree. Guys --

Erik: And your coaching is superb David by the way. Your, your bundle that you created that people can purchase, like it has been, it has been our guidebook on what to do and we're seeing more deals come from it so--.

David: Cool , well thank you for that. I appreciate you.

Erik: Yeah man

David: Absolutely. I'm glad that I was able to help YOU guys a little bit. I know that, you know, like you said, this is one of the things where you can show somebody the door, but they have to walk through it. So hopefully the door that I painted for you guys was a good looking door. Absolutely.

Erik: Yeah, bro.

David: I appreciate you, having you on the show today. Guys if you are interested in taking your real-estate brokerage to the next level, if you are interested in learning more about Erik - or all the things that he does, in terms of leadership or real-estate - go check out Hatch--Coaching, is that right? HatchCoaching?

Erik: HatchCoaching.com, Yes sir!

David: HatchCoaching.com. And again, Erik, I appreciate having you today, I'm grateful for your time. Any departing words for the audience?

Erik: No man, just go and do good.

David: "Go and do good” I love it! Guys, until next time, thanks for listening.