It takes a special type of person to become a co-host in a podcast like this. For many years, Dan Zitofsky certainly took his time to make sure that it’s somebody that he aligns with. In this episode, he introduces one of his top students, note investor Logan Hassinger as that new co-host we have all been waiting for. Logan was mentored by Dan in raising private money and passive wealth living. He truly embodies a lifestyle by design in a way that few people ever get to do. The ease of communication between Dan and Logan is so apparent in this conversation that we can only expect greater things to come from them both on and off the mic!
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Listen to the podcast here:
Introducing Logan Hassinger, The New Co-host For The Passive To Prosperity Podcast
Meet My Special Co-Host And Past Student Logan Hassinger
When you get a show like this, you’ve got to align with somebody. I fought long and hard about it. It’s not often, I do anything with people in the industry that I’ve mentored and coached but there are a few that you can see what they’re doing and they do everything right. When I say they do everything right, it’s not just in business. You watch them, see how they are, and they have to align with you. I look at this as a partnership on a deal. They have to align with you with their mindset and vision. Not that they don’t align with my mindset and vision, they could have different goals in life than I have.
Why would you with your mindset and your vision? That’s why the show is called Passive to Prosperous. I’m looking to live that prosperous life by passive wealth. That’s my vision and my mindset. You look at them, I sit back and I watch them for a while. I always watch how they are on social media, with their family, wives, kids, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, and whatever it might be. You watch how they interact with their investors and the community if they’re of the mindset of giving.
I’m blessed and honored that I have one of the top students that I’ve ever had, and someone I consider a friend now, other than him not liking the same football team as me. He’s not a guest but a show cohost. Not only that, but coming out of this pandemic to do some business together. I’m in a position in my career and my life where I don’t want to take on too many partners. It’s not worth the stress, headache, worrying about what they do, and how they act. There’s no doubt in my mind that the person I’m bringing on is going to be my partner on the show and deals in the future. I want to bring him on from Texas. You’ve seen him on webinars before and training. You’ve seen all the positive content he’s given out. He’s becoming an industry leader in the note business and the passive income, starting in the short-term rental game. With no further ado, I’m bringing on Logan Hassinger. Thanks for being on.
I appreciate the introduction. Hopefully, everybody is seeing that and I can live up to such an awesome high praise from you. I’m glad to be on. I’m glad to be a part of the show. I look forward to letting people see what it is behind the scenes because it’s easy to get wrapped up in what everybody sees. This is what we’re putting out there, which is great, free content, try to help people along whatever phase they ran or journey that they’re headed on, and get them to that ultimate goal of passive to prosperous.
Some of the things I look for and I always talk to people about it is I say, “You’ve got to trust and verify.” It’s not just to trust and verify the deal, it’s also trust and verify the person. That’s why I’ve known you for several years. We met at a mastermind that you were new in the industry. We went to a mastermind and I didn’t say anything that day but you took me back. There were you and one other person. I go to some of those events because I feel like it’s my time to give back. I love it and enjoy this. Even if you’re new in the industry and show on mastermind, you value yourself. When you value yourself with time and money, I love to help out.
We sat a couple of times. It was a 2 or 3-day event. You kept coming up to me and asking questions. You were humble about what you were asking and it meant a lot to me. I didn’t know a lot about you then. Afterwards, I went home and I started watching you. I started watching other people and I felt completely off. They haven’t done anything that they said they were going to do. I watched you on social media.
I watched how you were with your family and how you talk to other people. You didn’t come off as a cocky person who’s new. You asked questions and you shared unwillingly. Still to this day, we haven’t done a deal. We will do deals for sure because of where we are in the industry and where I’m at. It’s important that people know this because everybody talks a great game on social media. Everybody wants to be a millionaire. You got to take a step back, watch people, see how they are, and see the true person. It’s like dating.
It’s like the honeymoon period that you’ve got to get past to better understand somebody. I think we have passed the honeymoon phase.
New Co-Host: There is another way. You don’t have to climb the corporate ladder.
We’re blessed with that. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I’m shocked that people don’t know who you are. A lot of people might not know who you are. This is going to get out on iTunes and Stitcher. I always start off the show with this and I’m going to get into who’s Logan. We don’t charge you for this show. This is a complete organic movement. If you’ve heard of Andy Frisella’s saying, I say the same thing. I’ve been offered on my channel already people to sponsor for our show. I’m not going to say we’ll never have sponsors, but right now my view is that I don’t want any sponsors.
I wanted to show that comes at you complete with knowledge and content. Not just myself but someone like Logan. I have many years of experience and he’ll tell you a little bit about his life. You’ll relate a lot more to Logan than you might even relate to me. A lot of people look at me and they say, “I don’t have 30 years’ experience. I don’t have as many deals as you have. How do I get there?” That’s why I love Logan’s journey, where he started, and where he’s going. I wanted him to share that with you. My only fee for this show is that you tell five of your friends and share it out if you get anything out of this.
We’re paying the money and putting the time in to produce the show. There’s no benefit to us at all with us waking up early and doing this to help you guys out. The reason we do it is we see what’s going on in the industry. There are people that are brand new and have done a couple of deals. They’re teaching the wrong way. There are people taking advantage of people to raise money. There are people that are not who they say they are behind the scenes. With that being said, if you do that, this becomes an organic movement. This will become the top show out there. By becoming a top show out there, we’ll be able to bring more content and benefits to you.
We’re going to do that without asking for money. We have some cool events planned where we’ll invite people from the show to the events. We’ll have cool deals that we’ll be able to bring exclusively to people on the show. There’s a lot that we’re looking to do. To do that, we need to have a movement here. We’re asking for your help in sharing this out with at least five friends every episode. We’ll keep bringing great content here. We’re going to bring the real deal. We’re not worried about how perfect the show is and how it looks. We’re going to bring you content from our lives. Somebody who’s got many years of experience, and someone that’s killing it and starting out as Logan has.
That’s my fee for being here. I hope you accept that, you don’t have a scarcity mindset, and you want to share it. A lot of people don’t like to share things because they’re worried about competition. Somebody might hear something that we say and they want to use it, not to show other people. That’s a scarcity mindset. We’ll talk about that later. Logan, I’m going to let you run with this a little bit. Don’t hold back and tell everybody where you came from, who you are, what you do now, and where you’re looking to go to.
I am here in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, South of the airport in the mid-cities area. I got started traditionally, going to college, grabbing a degree in finance, and seeing where that was going to take me. I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to end up, what industry within finance. I feel like school pushes two different areas for you when you’re in business school, especially when it’s in finance. Are you going to go investment management or corporate finance? I ended up getting placed within a wealth management role for about two years. It’s funny because it’s come full circle now. I wouldn’t say that I’m in wealth management now, but I enjoy the aspect of providing financial advice or be that sounding board for others, friends and family for the most part. I transitioned out of that role and went into some other corporate roles in the Dallas area, and I got burnt out.
I was studying for a CFA exam, Chartered Financial Analyst. That was the route I was going to be, become a fund manager and worked my way up through there. I’d been on that train for six months, studying and I took the test. I had about a month-long of downtime. I had to face down a book for six months. It’s all I knew so I dove back into another book. Many have started out on this path being the Rich Dad Poor Dad book and understanding what else is out there. You only know what you know, and that book opened my eyes to be like, “There is another way. You don’t have to climb this corporate ladder.” I told myself, “If I fail that test, I’m jumping into real estate.” It was the greatest failure of my life. I failed the test. It was the best failure.
If anyone says, “If I do this, then I’ll do that,” they already know. That’s such a great point you brought that out. I appreciate it because you already knew at that point that you didn’t want to do that. You just couldn’t admit it to yourself. I would love later on to dig deeper into why you chose that path. The reason I’m saying that is because it probably didn’t align with your vision and vision. We’ll get deeper into that. This whole show is about your vision and your mindset.
If you don't have your vision right, nothing else goes right. Click To TweetOne of my mentors, Shaun McCloskey talks about vision and mindset. He’s like, “If you don’t have your vision right, nothing else goes right.” It’s almost like the neurons in your body. That’s what makes your whole body work. You were going for this test. There’s a reason you were doing it. It might have been money, job security or a title. There was something there but it didn’t align with your vision. Your vision is here but you were diverging inside.
I want you guys to understand that because if you’ve read my book, Passive to Prosperous, you’ll see in the first chapter, it talked about my vision and how I went sideways on my vision. I almost lost everything from my wife, my kids, my friends, and nobody there for me because my actions and my vision were different. I want to jump in and highlight that, not just get over that because that’s a huge component of the whole show and the business model that we have. You and I are aligned with now because of that one piece. You went for this test knowing that you didn’t want to pass this test because it’s not going to bring you to the life you wanted.
It’s all I knew. It was the next step for me, even though it wasn’t something that I had my heart into. I studied and did everything that I thought I was ready to go and take it. I had never read this Rich Dad Poor Dad book before that but still, if it were something I was passionate about and where my vision is aligned, I would have passed. I’m taking a step back and have 6 or 7 years removed from that. I’m sitting here saying, “That’s all I needed. A kick in the pants to take that path and get you back on track.”
From there, it was self-taught in the beginning. I stumbled across a real estate forum. I’m familiar with a lot of people in the industry being new or looking for self-help stuff. BiggerPockets.com is a popular site out there. I was out there searching on, how do you find a deal? What do you do with a tenant? I found a couple of books to read. I jumped into those books and having a finance background, the numbers piece was the easy side. It was the intangibles that I wanted to better understand. I ended up finding a mentor on that site who I’m great friends with now. He lives out in Arizona. We invest in deals together on the side, mostly passive apartment syndication type of stuff. He helped me set a foundation for what rental property investing was.
I ran with that for a couple of years. I picked up some duplexes and fourplexes, fix and flip a couple of properties in the area, and thought I was going to manage 100 doors. I realized that doing that didn’t align with my vision so I pivoted. In 2018, I came across note investing. I dove into note investing to figure out what there was all entailed. That’s something I can scale and allow me to be more passive. It aligns perfectly with if I’m trying to put more time into family, travel or other things, that I’m giving back, and all those items, then that’s what helped me connect. I went down to some training. It was in mid-2018 is when you and I met. I knew from the minute you started talking that you are an expert. I feel like I have a good bullcrap radar.
I still deal with some guys that have a ton of crap that they throw at me and I’m like, “Do we need that?” When we did a deal and we got a modification, I get offers that state that was easy, but I’m not aware of that. I got to get it against my desk here. I used to have that when I had my office, and now I’m working from the house and it was great. I want that. That is the bullcrap bot because there was so much crap out there. You want to talk about somebody not taking action. It happens to me too.
I’ve paid for, set up, and had this show ready to go for over three years before I even met Logan. I have not recorded an episode until about months ago. I sat here and we’ll talk about why I didn’t do it but you want to talk about the bullcrap meter out there. Many people come up to me and said, “Let’s do a podcast together. Let’s do an event together. Let’s do a mastermind together. Let’s do a school together. Let’s do training together.” You have to be careful because in the past, I used to look at all the money I could make on this, and I chased the money. Now I look at how do I want Dan Zitofsky to be seen in the future. How do I want my legacy to be? How do I want people and my family to look at me? How do I want to feel? Is there anything in my vision where I want to become a millionaire?
If it does, you’ll stumble a lot. You’ll chase it. It’s easy to be a millionaire. I say that humbly and I don’t say that to impress you. I say it to impress upon you. That’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s hard for some people to stay true to themselves, true to the vision, and true to their family. Everybody looks great out there. The one thing about social media that’s cool is you can be whoever the hell you want to be on social media. You want to say, “You’re great.” You want to act horribly, you’re horrible. Whatever you want to be, you are on social media.
New Co-Host: It’s unfortunate that in this business, the barrier to entry has been so easy to get into. The teachings in this business have been so off that people are learning the wrong way.
Logan is somebody I want to align with. Not that I want you to align with anybody. I could sit home and enjoy my life. In the summertime, this is what I do. I don’t work but I’ve worked to get to the point I’m at now because you have to align. It has to fit your vision. We’ll talk more about your vision because people need to understand that. That’s something that I work with students first before I even mentor them as I talk about their vision and why they doing it. If they’re doing it for reasons, not that it’s for the wrong reasons but it doesn’t align with my vision. I don’t work with them not because it’s bad. I can’t help them because I don’t understand it. I want to understand it. If they tell me, “I’m coming here to make millions,” why do you need to make millions? What is it about? I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying it’s got to align.
I wouldn’t say that you and I came together simultaneously and said, “We need to do a podcast together.” It was mutual. We’ve got some good ideas. I like how we’re aligning without having to say we’re aligning. Eventually, it came together that it would benefit others and us to put something together, share it, take it from there, and see where it goes.”
I haven’t been excited about a business in a long time. I’ve got the show right now. I’m excited about doing business with you because you bring a lot to the table. What’s cool about this partnership is you’re the yin to my yang. You can do stuff I can’t stand doing. That’s a good partnership and you’re good at it. There’s a sign of relief when we talked about it and I said, “Let’s do a fund together in the future. Let’s help investors out.” There’s one other person that I do business with that I feel the same way about. I can let everything roll off my shoulders and not worry. I can do what I have to do and not even second guess what you’re doing. It’s whatever. I know you’ll never do anything wrong. That’s the hardest feeling. When you have a partner and you have to worry even 1% that they might do something unethical, especially if you do a fund together because that’s an SEC issue.
We both said we’re in this time of a pandemic. We got together and we could raise a lot of money. We both came to the conclusion like, “Why take people’s money now? If we buy nonperforming notes, we don’t even know if we can foreclose on them.” We can’t pay people back right away. Maybe we could, maybe we can’t, and there are no guarantees on anything. There’s this big maybe. Maybe we can’t pay them right away, or the courts will be closed, or the closure will be extended because of the Coronavirus. Most people would say, “We’ll be okay. We’ll take that money and worry about ourselves.” You and I both have concluded that we want to worry about our investors before we worried about ourselves, and I don’t see that.
I see a lot of people doing syndications. If you look at their syndications, they pay themselves first. That’s the first thing I look at. I get 3 or 4 syndications a week from multifamilies, note funds, residential assisted livings, mobile home parks, and new builds in the community. Almost every single one of them I get. The first thing I look at is how to break down this. I get these huge management fees upfront from people before they make $1. I don’t understand how people can make their own money first before their investors get their principal back. That it’s beyond belief from me. The industry average used to be you get 2% of the money raised and 20% management fee.
I’ve been part of free syndications. I’ve been in joint venture deals on note funds. I’ve funded other people’s deals. I was in deals where they got paid and money came in. Let’s say it was $100,000 that we gave them and $200,000 started coming in. They started splitting the first $100,000 like it was theirs. How do you not pay your investor back first and then split the nut? With the partnership, I knew that you and I were on the same page right away. That’s huge because I know a lot of people on here have funded other people’s deals before.
Unfortunately, I’m sure a lot of you guys have been disheartened over the partnership because if somebody funds a deal from me, they’re a partner in my deal. That’s how I treat them. I don’t ever treat them like you’re the money. You’re a partner. You’re like family to me. You come first before any money goes in my pocket. That’s how it is. It’s unfortunate that in this business, the barrier to entry has been easy to get into. The teachings in this business have been so off that people are learning the wrong way, and then they’re teaching the wrong way.
That’s why I’ve been careful with all these new investors and Logan being one of them, but he does things the right way. I’m careful because if they don’t align and if I have to think, “Money is coming in, are they going to look out for an investor the way I do?” It’s not somebody I need and want to do business with. I built a business up and Logan is building his business up the same way. He doesn’t need anyone’s money or partnership. He doesn’t need anyone to do anything. He could keep coming along with his life the way he is and be fun. Give me your take on it.
Big opportunities are coming ahead. Just wait and see. Click To TweetThat’s a great point. I had a phone call with somebody who has been seeing me online. I don’t know them and they don’t know me. I always start a conversation with individuals like this is a mutual beneficial relationship. This is not I win or you win. We both have to have to come out feeling like we won. I’ll then dive into what we do and how we’d like to partner with our partners. Whether they’re lending partners or JV funders, it doesn’t matter. They’re still a partner. It was about an hour phone call. At the end of it, he was like, “I’m ready. What are my next steps?” I was like, “Sit tight because I’m not taking money right now.”
He goes, “Isn’t that the whole point of this call?” I said, “It was and it is but I’m not taking money right now, and here’s why.” I go into fifteen minutes of what I’m seeing in the market and why I don’t think it’s beneficial for myself. Others can take money. Now, I don’t need it. That’s a luxury that I have but even if I did need it, it’s not a good steward of someone else’s capital. That’s where I fall back into the wealth management side, and the principles that the boss or individual that I learned from was a huge proponent of that. At the end of the day, you are a steward of somebody’s capital and treat it like it’s your own.
That helps you have a better perspective on whether you’re going to take those funds or go into a deal where you’re sitting on the funds. It comes full circle. It doesn’t make sense yet. We’re going to sit in tight and he said, “Give me some action steps.” I said, “Check out a couple of books. Here’s something that helped me get started years ago. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay up-to-date with this. I’ll provide some market insights on what I think, what I see going on, and then stay posted.” He’s like, “I was ready to write you a check.” I was like, “I’m not ready to take the check so it doesn’t matter.”
I teach people how to raise private money. You were part of the course on how to raise private money and you’re crushing it. You’ve raised $3 million-plus. That’s on the one-on-one training we do with raising private money and I’m careful who I take on. I only take on two people every three months. It’s the same thing with my private lenders. We have raised over $30 million in new money and use it in over $200 million in velocity. People think I have a ton of private lenders. I have 42 on my list that I’m in constant contact with. I’ll hit them up now and then. I’ll talk to them.
They’re friends and only two are family. They hit me up constantly and they’re like, “We’ve got this money sitting in our IRA funds.” It’s almost pressure and stress from private lenders. They want me to put their money to work. It is hard for me to say, “I don’t need the money now.” It’s not that I don’t want it. I’m not ready because there’s so much going on right now in this world that I’m not willing to take the risk, even though every dollar is a risk. There’s no guarantee when you take anybody’s money. I like to move with the risk as best as I possibly can.
If I can’t tell right now, I don’t care who is out there telling you that it’s a good market to buy. You don’t know what’s going on. If the court is shut down and they turn around and they say, “No rent.” You might not get rent. If you can’t foreclose, why would I buy nonperforming mortgages if the courts are closed and I cannot foreclose? I’m going to sit there and hold paper for a year before I could do anything with it. During the pandemic, bank money might be 0.01%. It’s still more than 0% that I’m able to give them. I fund deals to investors. I sell them turnkey rental properties on a note. If they don’t get rent, can they pay me the mortgage? If they don’t pay me the mortgage, can I foreclose? If I’m buying properties to fix and flip, are we not at risk?
We’re not in an economic downturn. We’re in a pandemic. We still have not seen an economic downturn. I love when I get on a podcast, an interview, or on stage. One of the questions they always ask me, “Where do you see the economy?” I love that question because I could give such an educated answer and I can sound like a guru, an expert, or a financial wizard. Nobody really knows. Do we think this pandemic was going to hit us in December or January? We were flying along. I’m still seeing people overbid on assets, notes, on properties because they haven’t hit yet. It’s because of the PPP loans, the stimulus checks, and there are 600 extra unemployment coming every month. People are making more money sitting at home than they are going to work. We haven’t seen that hit yet.
We also haven’t had the election yet. The election is coming in November 2020. We don’t know which way that’s going to go either way, whether President Trump wins again or he loses. We don’t know what that’s going to do to the economy. For some crazy reason, stocks are at an all-time high. I don’t understand that. Do you think if the jobs report are coming out, would they be low? I have someone who’s like a father to me. He raised me as my father’s best friend. He was a VP in Wall Street and he told me, “Sell everything. Second-quarter job earnings are coming out. It’s going to tank.”
New Co-Host: You don’t need the service of people to tell what’s going to happen in the market. There is going to be a lot of inventory for 2021 and 2022.
He calls me up and I’m like, “What’s going on?” He goes, “I have no idea. I’m shaking my head. I don’t know what in the world is going on. I don’t even understand anymore.” A VP from Wall Street is shaking his head and he doesn’t understand. You don’t need the service of people to tell what’s going to happen in the market. Logan, you’ve done the same thing. I still stay in touch with my asset managers. The asset managers I have are all telling me that they see 30% of note deferment. 2021 to 2022, there is going to be a lot of inventory. There’s a timeline of how long it will go deferred.
That’s the piece that people need to better understand and hopefully, we can provide.
Logan and I are going to take our bow and arrow, and we are going to crush it in 2021 and 2022. I know that. That’s why I’m proud about doing this with you.
I talked to a lender. They put me on a conference call with a VP of a bank down in San Antonio. I always try to network. I tell them a little about who I am. I want to learn more about who the bank is, where they’re lending, what they’re doing, and how we can be able to work together. I throw the question like, “What happens when loans go bad? Do you sell them?” They’re like, “We sell them sometimes. It’s been a while.” I was like, “I agree. We’re in a different market. Give us some time.” They’re like, “No, we see it.” I said, “Okay.” That’s as far as the conversation went. It takes time for loans to go through the phases of becoming a sellable loan or a defaulted loan that needs to be foreclosed on.
I don’t want to even get into how the bank works now because we both have some good stories and I love to share with people. Guys, come on back because we’re going to talk about how to find asset managers, how to talk to them, and what to look for. I’ve had some good luck talking to some asset managers. I’ve been bounced around and referred. They’ve been calling me. That’s cool. They call me like, “We’re seeing this. Are you going to be able to help us out?” That’s a different call than me calling them and saying, “How do you have notes to sell?” I had a credit union called me up. I met with four people and we’re socially distant.
We get into the conference room and I met with four people. They make the decisions on the loans that they give them in-house. They don’t deal with anything. They’re not selling these off in the secondary market. They need to get them off their books. They’ve already talked to me. They’ve already EMR some properties that they have to go through to the systems. As soon as they’re done, they don’t put them out for open sell. I’ve met with four people, their loan decision committee. I had a meeting with them, and they’re excited. How did I get in with them? They’ve done some funding on some deals for me. They see what we do.
They’re excited about working with me because they know they can get their stuff off the books. It’s notes or properties. They are both. That’s a credit union. We’ll do a show on notes in the future, how to deal with asset managers. We’ll give you insights into how Logan and I both deal with asset managers. We both deal with them a little differently. That’s why it’s cool having a partnership and join forces together. I’m excited about 2021 and 2022. I don’t know what’s going from there with us. There’s a nice pipeline for our investors. They’ll be loving it.
There are some big opportunities for sure coming ahead. It’s a whole pattern, so wait and see. That doesn’t mean there’s not stuff that’s going to pop up now that’ll make sense, but it doesn’t resonate with me to take on investor funds yet on a deal that made sense in 2019. The last thing I finished with that lender was, “I’m not trying to force a deal here.” He stopped and was like, “We don’t need to force anything.” It clicked in his head too like, “I don’t need to give you the funds.” He’s like, “I’m looking to you for advice but I’m also looking to you from a steward of somebody’s capital to somebody who’s looking to place capital with a manager.” That’s effectively what we are. He was glad to hear the conversation that we were having. He was like, “Nobody’s talking to me like this before.”
Being a guru is all about being able to educate without having to ask for anything. Click To TweetEveryone is looking for themselves, “How do we get the money? It’s no risk to me if I take somebody’s money and put it on a deal. If the deal falls apart, I’ll give them all my disclosures, and I don’t do anything. If we lost our money, we have to wait.” I can’t tell you what their names are. There are gurus out there or people that speak at events that have not been paying people back. You need to do due diligence on people who you give your money to. Ask around because that’s a scary issue. I’m excited there. What’s cool about you is you’re taking your steps and you’re on your path. You’re still on your journey and what your goals are. What are your ultimate goal in life and this business?
In life, it’s to get time back. It’s either money or time that they want. I want both but I’ve seen the value of time raise significantly over the money side. I used to think I needed $1 million to live on a year, and it’s probably closer to $100,000. I can do fine with a modest income and do the things that I want to do. About a month or two, I’ve had more close friends here within 10 or 15 miles of me, and then also a baseball coach that I went to high school with that’s up and I wouldn’t know. They all call me like, “Here’s my financial plan. What do you think?”
That has hit home for me and said, “If money didn’t matter, this is what I’d like to do, give some free advice and allow people to have somebody to talk to about their finances.” It’s a topic that many don’t want to either come to grips with, how much they’re spending, how much they’re not saving, what does their retirement look like? I always start with, “I don’t know everything but I’ll at least give you how I’ve gone about it, how I’ve seen others do that, and then let’s try to put a plan together.” That’s what I enjoy if money didn’t matter. It is being able to help others. The gift is within finances. That’s where I try to focus a lot of my efforts and letting people know like, “Give me a call. I love to talk to you about what you’ve got going on and where you want to be.
I sent you a text about somebody random in a Facebook group in the DFW area who was like, “You don’t come off as a guru. You share a lot.” That’s what a guru should be doing. It is providing content, information, and enough to either prompt more questions from the reader or allow a phone call to come up, and then you share a little bit more about what’s going on. You then hang the phone up. You don’t ask for anything. You’re simply educating. I’d like to be able to educate for free at the end of the day.
I’d love to talk more about that too, whether free or paid education makes sense. I had put out an event and what I’m noticing a lot in the industry is people live in a scarcity mindset. I talk about limited and scarcity beliefs. Scarcity is I’m scared to share because if I share, there’s competition. I’m going to tell somebody how to do something, and I’m not going to able to do any more business. That’s living in scarcity. I read a lot and unfortunately, I do spend time on Facebook. I read business posts. I’m on some pages I enjoy. A lot of newer people are asking questions who don’t even know the industry. They’re just looking for a different way to invest.
Whatever they’re doing, they want to do something different. People are scared to share information. I paid for information but I have a lot of free information. That’s my give back. I have a YouTube page, I have my free Facebook group. I have my paid group too, but I have my free groups that everyone could join in, and I have my personal page. I said, “I’m going to do this.” On my personal page, I keep 5,000 people, which is the limit. I notice it and sometimes I have too much time at the beach and thinking. I love the beach. I sit there and think. I’m like, “How can we help these people that nobody helps?” I have a ton of stuff on YouTube already. It’s not a tremendous amount that I want. I don’t make money on my YouTube page. I’m not selling ads on it either. I like YouTube because the information stays there. It doesn’t get buried like in Facebook or any of these other social media sites. If there’s any page, people would look at it.
People are willing to share it out with their friends, screenshot it, send it back to me, and I’ll put it into a contest. We did that. You figure at that point, I have 5,000 friends on Facebook. I know they don’t see it. We have people at Become a Real Estate Investor with Dan Zitofsky. We even put it on Webtalk and LinkedIn. We got 70 or 80 people who did it. We picked somebody out and it was a free coaching call. My coaching calls are $400 an hour. It was free up to one-hour coaching call. I didn’t even pick it. My marketing team put all the names in a random program. I don’t want to pick it because I don’t want anyone saying I didn’t pick you.
I picked one gentleman, we made the call, get on the line to do the call, right before the call he says, “I’ve got to cancel. I have something else to do. I’ll pay you for your call next time.” That was free. “I had somebody hit me up for a couple of months already. We had a meeting planned about a month ago. In advance, I had to cancel it because of a doctor’s appointment.” I said, “Let’s reschedule.” They show up at a launch event which I don’t do those. I was like, “He’s good, he needs help, and I’m going to help him.” I send him the address. He tells me he’s at the wrong address. I said, “I sent you the address. Come to the right address.” He goes through it and says, “I’ll be there in 20 to 30 minutes.” I wait for him. He goes to another wrong address. Now he’s an hour away. It’s two times. I’m like, “Mistakes happen, but maybe if he pays for it, he would take it seriously.” Maybe it’s me. I used to mentor people for years for free.
New Co-Host: When you’re not charging people, you’re doing them a disservice by not having them invest in themselves.
I can tell you one success story, a minute I had people invest in themselves like Logan Hassinger. You invest in yourself. You started raising some serious money. You understand the game and how it works. People don’t play and don’t show up. I’ll tell you what it does with mentorship. You have to give a ton of content out there. I hope that anybody who’s a mentor that charges for it didn’t get into mentorship because they want to make money. That’s not what it’s about.
That’s what I meant to say. I’m not in it to profit and live a better life money-wise so that I can share information. Money talks and it forces you to be like, “I spent money on that. I’ve got to implement whatever it is that we’ve talked about or creating some content. I paid for this so let me get my money’s worth.” Those should go hand-in-hand as well.
Another story about that is I do one-on-one coaching, not for private money. I do one-on-one real estate investing coaching, but I don’t do it anymore. I take eight students for six months and it’s $26,000, which is not the most. People charge a lot more than that. This is like a marriage for six months. I do up to eight people. That’s sixteen people a year for $26,000. That’s about $416,000 income from one-on-one coaching. I finished my last contract up in June 2020. I have not taken anyone. I have people on the waiting list. I did not take anyone on. This goes more into my vision too of why I’m not taking anyone else on in that.
I will do a one-on-one type of deal, but I’m going to a group coaching program in the fall. I love group coaching. The last time we did it, we got together as a group. We all took down a large Fannie pool. It was a $5.1 million Fannie pool, but we all had the same mindset. I’m going to make a lot less money doing that. It’s not about the money, it’s about what you stand for and who you want to be around. I was going to give up coaching completely. The mentor that I work with says, “It’s not that you hate coaching. It’s you hate coaching certain people.” It’s true. There were times when I would hop on our weekly calls where we learn how to raise private money, I loved it. I was looking forward to it. I was like, “What do I have going on now?” I had you on a call. At that time, it was you and two other people. I enjoyed every minute of that.
When I would get on the coaching calls with other people who would pay me $26,000 for six months, it should be more for my time and me helping them. I would sometimes get knots in my stomach. It was like I would hate going to work. I didn’t like it and I was dreading it. I was like, “That’s why I’m going to stop doing it,” because it’s not about $400,000. I’m living my life on my business. That’s how it should be for a mentor. Who do you want to mentor? Eventually, mentors will be on here. For many years, people would ask me to speak at events, coach them, mentor them one-on-one, and I wouldn’t do it. I told them I have a mentor. I have two mentors. I pay six figures a year to mentorships and events. My mentor said to me, “Why won’t you do it?” I didn’t feel that I was worthy enough to be a guru. I didn’t feel I had anything to share with people. Unfortunately, you only have a few years in the industry. You have a lot to show people. You’d probably be one of the best mentors out there, Logan.
It might not be in your vision to do it, but you only have to go a little bit more than somebody else. Sometimes you have to hold them accountable. I learned this myself because it was the hardest thing in the world for me to charge people. You’re doing a disservice by not having them invest in themselves. You are hurting them more if they don’t invest in themselves. There are times you probably might not have got on the call because you had something else to do. In your head you’re like, “I paid this. I’m getting on hold and everything happens.” I have a 0% success history with anyone I mentored for free. I’ve not had this success story. It could be me through my groups, my conversations that I’ve helped people. I’ve had people who I mentored one-on-one and they give up. The minute there’s a roadblock, they give up. Let me ask you this one question, has this been easy for you? Most people quit, right?
I’ve got a partner out in Atlanta, Georgia, and that email went out around 2:00 in the morning and send us some documents. We’re working on a loan together and we’ve been working together for several months. He was like, “Do you ever sleep?” He didn’t say it in a bad way but still, I wouldn’t say it’s easy. I work late and early often, all because there’s a vision down the road that I’m constantly working towards. The overall goal is what I’m trying to get to. To answer your question, it has not been easy. Outside looking in, I’ve had a lot of friends that I’ll talk to occasionally. They’re like, “It’s so great. You came out of nowhere with this overnight success.” I stop and I’m like, “Overnight success? Sure.” I still don’t see myself as a success yet and it hasn’t been overnight. I worked overnight but it doesn’t mean that it may happen. I know that’ll come but for now, in family, we all have different circumstances. It’s easier to work at night when the girls are going down to sleep. I can come into the office, tuck away, and knock some stuff out. No way do I mean that I’m killing myself but I make my time work for what I’ve got.
This has been awesome. This is better than I even thought the first episode was going to be. When Logan and I get together, we could sit here and we didn’t even talk about sports at all. We could sit together for a full day and not stop talking. I’m hoping you guys all get to the event that we do. We’ll have a good time and we’ll talk to you about tons of content. Just so you understand what we’re talking about if you read this thing several months from now. We’re talking about the Summer of 2020. We’re in this pandemic of Coronavirus. Some of the things we say now might not be the same in the future when the industry changes a little bit. We will always give you the real deal. We’ll come at you with a ton of episodes. We’ll take feedback, questions, and info but we have a ton of ideas that we want to speak with you about. Do you have any parting words, Logan?
I look forward to what we have to learn from each other, to share, and learn from others. In my mind, I never stopped learning. I look forward to it.
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Thank you, guys.