Podcast Episode 54 Transcript

Episode 54: Get Your Mind Right: How To Construct Your Life To Achieve The Best Results

Participant #1:
We've created this society where scale is how you have to go instead of just living your life. One of my favorite taglines the entire podcast is everybody builds a business and then builds a lifestyle around it instead of building a lifestyle and building a business around it. Because at the end of the the day, if you're making $6,000 a month and you're okay with it and you get to own your time and you get to own your freedom, the only reason you would scale away from that is your own ego. At the end of the day, nobody wants to take the steps necessary anymore. Nobody wants to work on their life, especially high performers, guys that are making money. They only seek me when they have a nine car pilot when they're like, oh, wait. My wife says I'm a horrible husband, and my kids hate my guts. What happened? I thought I was doing everything I should be doing. No, they don't care. You're the only one that cares because you're trying to prove to Frank that you're better than him when the people that are closest to you get the shrapnel.

Participant #1:
Welcome, everyone to the Prendamano Real Estate "PreReal" podcast. We're joined today by Austin Linney. This is going to be a pretty honest, raw discussion. I've been looking forward to this one for a number of reasons. We have Rebecca joining us also, as many of you know, Rebecca is in the process of becoming a certified coach for the agents here at the office, and Austin has a pretty amazing story. Mindset, coach, business coach, serial entrepreneur. All the things that you kind of hear over and over on this show, we all seem to be cut from the same cloth in one way or another. But we wanted to really take a dive into Austin's past and how he got where he is, I think to just kind of soften the audience up and get them in the mindset of understanding that we're all kind of in the same boat. We all kind of got here in our own path, but they're very similar. And then, quite honestly, dive into what's the most important thing in the world is just the eight inches between your ears and in business, how we're all running around trying new systems and new softwares and new ways of doing things. And if you don't get your mindset right, none of it matters. So, Austin, thank you so much for joining us today. Really looking forward to the chat. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, guys. Yeah. Absolutely. Beck, do you want to kick things off today? Sure. Yeah. So, Austin, tell us a little bit about yourself. I believe you said you live in Texas now, but have you always lived there? Yeah. Nashville, Denver, Texas. I just found out two days ago. I'm moving to Tahoe in five weeks. So that happened. So, yeah, we travel a bunch. So really Homebase is secondary to me. It doesn't really exist. It's just a place. This will be a little more Homebase than normal. But yeah, I'm in Georgetown, Texas, which is north of Boston. We've been here for about a year, so I was in Arizona briefly last summer. Maybe you could share with the audience a little bit about your journey. Sure. I listened to your podcast. I think it's awesome. I love your rants, but I want to share with the audience a little bit about your background, if that's cool. Just so that, of course, you get a sense of talking to a real guy who's traveled a real path. Yeah. I mean, it's really summed up pretty quickly. It's the same way I meet most people when I'm at networking event, meth addict, cocaine addict, homeless and alcoholic. And I kind of just get it out of the way right there. And they kind of understand that I've lived it and recently divorced, too, and laid off from private equity. So I've covered the gamut. I've blown up my life about seven times, but in my early 20s, I worked in the hospitality business for about 20 years, most of my life. And back in the day, the hospitality business was what it was. I mean, it was very laden with alcohol and drug addiction. And when I was 17, my parents got divorced and it was kind of threw me for a loop. I somehow through miscommunication, through my own doing, kind of blame myself for my parents divorce and kind of carry that cross for about 20 years until I finally started getting some help. But kind of went down some rough paths. The thing about drugs is that the Friday turns into Saturday, and then it's just Friday, Saturday. And then it's Monday, Tuesday. And then it's Wednesday. And then it just kind of, like spirals out of control. And then you dive into what I proceeded to be victimhood for the better part of 20 years. And blaming it's the world's problem. It's my mom's problem. It's my dad's problem. And one of the worst times for me was I stayed up for, like, eight days straight, and I lost, like, £25, and I was just not in a good place anymore and didn't really eat. And I had an ex girlfriend who saw me, and she was just like, this isn't you. I don't really know what's going on, but you need to get it together. And so I drove home and I packed up all my stuff and I moved to Austin the first time. And the weird thing about me is that regardless of how bad it's going when I make a decision, it's done like I have a really military mind. So I was done with the hard drugs. Now alcohol is very accepted in society. Plus, I was a high end bartender. Plus, I sold wine. So it's kind of like you kind of get. And so you drink and I drank, and it was never not all the time. It was out of control. But I definitely drank what I would consider a functioning alcoholic for the better part of 20 years. I've been sober for two years and five months. Thank you. I've lost £70. So it's been a 180. And I have a lot of people to thank for that, mainly when I decided to stop feeding my own BS to myself and took extreme ownership. But I joined a mastermind, and I know this is like, the most odd statement I ever say on a podcast, but it's the truth. I started a business with two gentlemen that were 37 and 38, and they were nine months and a year and a half sober. And it was the first time I've ever been around successful men that were sober. And I know that sounds so crazy to say, but it was the first time I saw that it was possible. And they said to me a simple thing, if you've ever thought of stopping for a little bit, try it. And that was kind of the Genesis behind trying to get sober. And I stopped for 27 days and started up again and got upset. And then I waited 30 days and then went forward again and got to 60 days and got to six months. And it was feeling so good. I was like, what if I did this for a year and then the year turned into two years? And now here we are. So it's really crazy. Look, if you're not going to be honest and open up, man, we're not going to do this. I kept it pretty light there, dude.

Participant #1:
Congratulations. I mean, it's amazing. You're right. Many times high performing individuals have this other side, and it's very difficult to turn off the other side, right? You're going, you're working. You're hammering 8100, 120 hours a week. And when you call for the day, the switch doesn't flip. I talked a lot about this with the former President not defending, not defending just the statement people didn't understand. Why does he have to go so far? And what you see is what you get that's all day, every day it's go kill. And it's really hard to get to a place where you find that balance. And it's something that being candid. We've talked about this a little bit on the show. I've been pedaling the bike and fixing the bike for so long that you kind of fall into these habits at work where you don't even recognize it in another way, right? It's just this is what you do and whatever it is it is. And you're kind of going through the path. And one of the younger agents here really rock star Agent Rob Nixon. We were having a tough time communicating, like, two years ago and millennial, I'm 46. I kind of did things one way. He wanted to do things a completely different way. And I just kind of had the mindset of, like, look, it's working. Come on, get on board. Let's go. And he had the mindset of, yeah, but could be working a little bit better. And that's tough to hear, right? You have some measure of success and you're hustling and you're working hard. And here comes a young guy along. And then it started to happen with another younger agent. And I started to say, you know what? Maybe there is a different way to do this. So they convinced me to go to this communication boot camp with a business coach. And I was like, you know what? I'll go it's a Saturday, whatever. And I didn't think I would take a single thing from it. And, like, ten minutes in my mind just started to get blown like, oh, my God. I have screwed everything up. There is another way. And we started down this path of coaching and trying to get much better, much more efficient. And it's been really productive. But I think someplace where I could use a lot of help. And I think a lot of the listeners out there that are in a similar place where you blink in 20 years comes off the calendar, and you're just hustling yourself to death is the life coaching thing. So could you talk a little bit about the difference between the coach and life coach? Sure. One thing in the communication sector, my favorite quote, it's one of the most powerful sentences I've ever heard in my life. George Bernard Shaw says the problem with communication is the illusion that has taken place. So what's interesting is I actually can't stand the label Life coach, because it makes me sound like I smoke weed and wear flip flops all day. But I digress. So I try to stick in the mindset coach area. But either way, it doesn't matter, because typically what that is, because you know, what's interesting about people, right? Is that people two things are happening, something we talked about on my podcast about somebody they're walking around living injected values of other people. They don't even know what their values are. And the second thing is they're being triggered by emotions that drive their goals, right? Because I'll be 100% honest. I think goals are BS. I think they're stupid. If you have 20 people in front of me, your agent, if you have 20 people in front of me, I would look through their goals. And I would tell you that 90% of those goals would be for somebody else. They don't really want that because we've created this society where scale is how you have to go instead of just living your life. One of my favorite taglines, the entire podcast is everybody builds a business and then builds a lifestyle around it instead of building a lifestyle and building a business around it. Because at the end of the day, if you're making $6,000 a month and you're okay with it, and you get to own your time, and you get to own your freedom. The only reason you would scale away from that is your own ego. And so at the end of the day, nobody wants to take the steps necessary anymore. Nobody wants to work on their life, especially high performers, guys that are making money. They only seek me when they have a nine car pile up when they're like, oh, wait. My wife says I'm a horrible husband, and my kids hate my guts. What happened? I thought I was doing everything I should be doing. No, they don't care. You're the only one that cares because you're trying to prove to Frank that you're better than him when the people that are closest to you get the shrapnel right. And so we have to make sure that we are taking the time necessary. What I call it is putting an armor on in the morning. That's for you, like, are you taking the time necessary? And for me, last year, in October, I was doing good. But I wasn't like where I wanted to be. And I was like, you know what I was like? I'm just going to take it up a notch. I'm just going to see if I can. I always like to press my mind. And I started doing 75 hard, which is the Andy for seller thing, where you work out twice a day, you drink a gallon of water, no alcohol, no cheat meals, ten pages a day. Well, I did it for 150 days straight. I was only supposed to do it for 75 because I was like, you know what I feel so good. Like, why would I run away from this? Right? And then what it does when you push yourself like that, you set a new standard that you can't go back from. And so when you set a new standard, you've already reached another level, right. But the people that are out there performing, the agents that are performing, let's be honest, guys, the market is playing. I coach a lot of agents. The market is making them better than they seem when typically the market. Right. And so you know who the hardest people to coach in the world right now are agents because they think they're hot to try right now. And then when this thing goes south, they're going to be like, what it does. They're going to be like, oh, well, wait, Where's my sales? Because here's the deal. I got an agent right now in Dallas who closed 130 transactions by herself last year. Who are you? She's crushing it. My favorite quotes ever is. Edmunds spoke to my mentors group, which is Gobundance. And he was on a stage full of 50 millionaires, and he looked him dead in the face. And he said, yeah, all you are doing great compared to who not compared to me. And so there's always another level. And so we get in this comfort zone, what I call stuck neutral. We get in that stuck neutral with our relationships, with our spouse, with our kids, with all these things because we're so worried about what we're getting out of it instead of opening our ears and asking them what they need out of it instead of just moving forward what I call being a bulldozer. So many of us, like you said, you don't hear from us until we're in the nine car pile up. Right. So those of us that have taken some steps. And I think self awareness is the number one thing, at least for me, self awareness was so far the most difficult part of it, just really being honest with myself about who am I? What do I want? Where do I want to go? And that starts to open, like, a lot of doors, and it starts to open up a lot of thoughts from the past. That's a rough patch, right. And it's a rough patch that I'm still going through. I'm exploring a lot of different things, trying to figure out how exactly did I get here? Literally 20 years went boom, and it's like, wow. Like I said, we've had some success, but not nearly the success I think we're capable of. I know we're capable of. And you just fall into these patterns. So before you get to the nine car pile up, right? How do you Peel the onion back enough to get to the point where you recognize the issue or that there even is an issue, right? How do you get there? It's an accident to me. Yeah. I think the most important thing that people don't ask themselves is, how are you speaking to yourself? Like, how are you speaking to yourself, right? You know, what's interesting is when I started to change, I didn't believe that I was capable of what I was. But I had people around me that believed there was more in me. And I hung onto their belief until my belief caught up with it. And so I would imagine that. Like you said, that eight inches between your head is probably having that negative cycle of coaching. And, you know, your gut is telling you like, hey, man, something doesn't feel right. And more importantly, what I always suggest. And my friends have no problem doing this is go up to somebody that you really respect and be like, hey, have I been what's really odd, right? Is when I stopped drinking, I had, like, three buddies come up to me and they're like, hey, man, thank you. It was getting a little out of control. And you're like, Whoa, shit. One of my favorite things is this guy was talking on Tom Bells, and he said, if you didn't brush your teeth for three days, you personally wouldn't know. But everybody around you would know it. And so that's kind of like life we're walking around. We're doing what we think is right and more importantly, here's the issue because I see where you're coming from. The bigger issue is the business owner, right? Who has the vision, who's pushing forward, who thinks he's doing right by his troops. But what he's doing is he's stifling growth and creativity within his group, not on purpose, but with his actions. And what that does is the only currency that matters to anybody in this world. Moving forward is are they growing? If you do not allow them the space necessary to grow, they will leave because you make them feel like they don't have a chance. And so when you're just sitting there and let's say you made 100K, let's just say you made 100K as an agent and you made 100K again and you made it again and you're like, that's a good life. But are you happy? Right? And so you have to really get in there and get people that are going to give you some proper feedback. You can't have any attachment to it because they're just being concerned for you. And then you have to look at it with the lens. Right? The number one thing that I work on is having attachment and expectations to anything, because you're right. The only thing that really matters is self awareness. Nobody's perfect. But if you're always fixing one of the hard things on the podcast is 1% a day. Are you getting 1% better a day? That's all you can do. And if you combine those things over and over again, it's going to get you to where you want to go. But it's the people that are trying to force the growth. They're trying to force all this stuff instead of actually putting in the work.

Participant #1:
It sounds easier than it is because in the moment, you don't recognize these things, right? So Austin, does it require that pile up? Did you have to hit rock bottom to recognize that you wanted to make the change? Do you have to go down that tragic path that some of us don't come back from to be perfectly candid, how do you get to that place where at least you know enough to say, I've got to take a step back and go find a mindset coach and work on some things to try and change where I'm going and what I'm doing because you are performing high. You are making good money. You think living the life you think your family loves you, you think everything is great, and it's just not right. You know, those rants that you said you like, yeah, you know who those are, too? They're to my younger self. That's where those rents come from, because I'm trying to get the message out there that you don't have to go through the divorce like I did. You don't have to get laid off. You don't have to lose $26,000 in a business because your ego is fucking up. You don't have to be a drunk for 20 years because I'm trying to talk and speak wisdom, because at our core, we do know that we can be better. And so it takes you what I call the spoke in the wheel, the wheels rolling. Somebody's got to stick the stick in it, whether it's your wife saying she's going to leave you, whether it's your kids saying, dad, you're not present all these things, they got to stick. Something's got to happen. Something's got to shake you loose. Because Anthony, my other podcast and other things said we shouldn't have to get to Defcon Ten for us to make a change. But that's how we do it. And so I would hope that something, some word, some sense, some book would hit the switch and let you know that maybe it's time because that's not what we're taught. We're taught that we got to push, push, push, push. And I'm just as guilty of it. Right? I've got multiple businesses going on multiple podcasts coaching business. But what I'm realizing is what I've done is I front load my week. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday is kind of it. But Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are super busy. And then Friday, nothing is scheduled. Like if I go golfing with an investor or have some phone calls with some friends and I just leave it because you might need to do something, but I'm teaching myself that there's a time to be super intense. There's a time to work and do all these things. But there's also a time and don't get me wrong. It's so hard because I want to just keep slamming the throttle. But then you're not showing up when it's game time. You're not showing up, rested, refreshed and ready, right? Because a lot of people equate time in the saddle as work instead of intentional time in the saddle. Is your hours really potent, or are you just working to make yourself feel better on the back end like you were working? Yeah. I think that's something we talk about all the time, James, you and I about are we being effective with our time and intentional with it. And it's really hard when you get down to it to figure it out and to kind of map out your schedule in a way that it makes sense. And you do carve out that time for yourself to refresh, because you're right. Everybody needs that downtime. Otherwise you're exhausted and you can't think straight. I don't mean to turn it around on you, Rebecca, but what do you think is the hardest thing about that out about taking the time, about taking the time? I think that for us, a lot of it is we don't want to miss a good opportunity. So when it comes up, it's like, well, this looks so good. We got to take it. We got to jump on it instead of sitting back and saying this might be a good opportunity, but it might not be the one we should get involved in right now. So there's a guy named Aaron Wagner. He's a big commercial duty, owns a bunch of private funds. He was very intrigued by the Rockefellers and all the rich families of America. And the only family that was still making money in the fourth generation was the Rockefellers. So he interviewed all the families. He said, what did your grandfather do that taught you how to continue to make money in the fourth generation. And he said, My grandfather taught me to sell early. And he was like, what? And he said, because my grandfather taught me that the best deal of my life came every week. And if I hold on too long and lose money, it's going to push me back two years. But if I sold before I was ready, I collected the cash, and I kept buying more deals. Then I would continue to make money. And so every week is the best deal of his life. Abundant mentality. And that's a hard business when the real estate market is compressed as it is right now. But you might make as much money on the deal that you don't buy than the one you do buy. Yeah. So it's a challenge, because it's hard to quantify this, but you go out, you hustle your bushes, and then you kind of just arrive. Nobody says you've arrived. There's no, like, hey, this is it. You just kind of get there. And when you get there, doors open, right? And the doors start opening, and it's like, wow, this is it. This is what I've been working for. And it's tough to decide which doors to go through, if at all, because you can really quickly get burned out and diluted. And if those doors open, which is what happened to me. The doors opened for me before I recognized that I had to start re evaluating things. So as the doors were opening, I was still in just go mode. And as you were saying, the moment I had that moment for me. And at that point, when I had the moment I went, oh, fuck. And now I'm like, okay, I've got a lot of commitments, and I'm involved in a lot of things, and I'll see them through to a point and make sure that the situation is better when I exit than it was when I got there. But I can't possibly carry all of these things forward, right? It just became way too much when I got more into the coaching and one of the exercises. And I may have shared this at one point or another. I'm not sure. My wife, they asked us to kind of fill out these questionnaires about time off. And when is the last full day off where no phone like, it was just you're off. And I can laugh about it now. But I wasn't laughing then. And she wrote, he has never had a day off, including our wedding day when he had meetings. Now, I've been married for 13 years, 14 years. And it was like, I swear to God, I didn't see it that just didn't register for me. If I would have read that somewhere, I would have been like, Who's that asshole, right? That can't be possible. But that's what it was, that for me. And that wasn't too long ago. Was the all right, we got to clean things up. We need to kind of step back a bit and pick a path and pick the place we want to go. What stuck with me a lot that you said earlier was goals that so many of the goals you right, are not your goals. They're things that one way or another have been imprinted on you. And you believe that this is something you have to do for someone else. And as you go through that process, that's just wicked hard as you start to look at that stuff and go, I don't even want to be doing some of the stuff that I'm doing, and I don't have to because I'm recognizing what my gift is now. And when I'm in my gift, I absolutely love it. And when I'm not, now that I'm aware of it, I'm miserable. I don't want to do so many other things that I was doing. Entrepreneurship is basically walking out on the edge of a tree limb, getting to the end and going, what the fuck am I doing here? That's what entrepreneurship is. And the issue is that we're out on the edge of that tree limb, and we're acting like we don't have a choice. That's the rub. Look, Aubrey Markus said it on Edmiles podcast. You could not eat for five days and you would die. But it's still a choice. He said. The problem with everybody is we're walking around like, we don't have a choice in the matter like we have to, because those goals that you have written down are for your dad, for your mom, for your brother, for your ex wife, for your spouse, for your friends. And here it is. And this is the route. That's the scariest. As an owner of a company, you have people that look up to you, and that's the true thing that hit in your heart. But that's also on you to determine how many people you need in your thing. Right? Look, the most interesting game to me in the entire real estate space is the wholesaler game, right? I coach some. I know the insides of business. I've seen it all. My friends are the best role wholesalers in Arizona. And you've got guys that are saying, yeah, I'm bringing in 400K a month, and their overhead is 350, right. Okay. Great. You're bringing in. Well, then you have my buddy who's going to do a million net this year, and their overhead is three K a month. But people are telling them he needs to do more because it doesn't look right that way on the surface, right? Yeah. Whatever. Dude, screw you. But that's not what society tells them, right? They got to push, push, push. Yeah, you got to push. But the problem is if the machine turns off, you're left holding the bag, right? No doubt in perfect example. And I didn't even know this. Okay. I didn't even know it's a friend of mine. I'm not going to say names, but he's a big apartment guy. He was deep into Arbitrage Airbnb when Coba hit. They had 30 leases. He had to write a check for $80,000 to get out of them all. That's what they don't talk about. And not that he wasn't making money before, but that happens. And it happens so quick. And when you're overhead or you're stretching, you have to be really careful because I do Airbnb. That's my thing, along with construction and development. But what people don't understand is when you go from three Airbnbs to, let's say, like seven or eight, it's like going from ten units to 90 units. The question is, yes, you might make an extra $2,000. But what does it do to your lifestyle? Right on the back of that, I interviewed a guy the other day who's 26 years old. He and his wife left both of their corporate jobs. They have three Airbnb's, and they net cash flow 26K. Last month, they're in a van traveling around the country. Does he need overhead? Does he need the other stuff? Should he grow his business? These are the conversations that are being had. The conversation is, no. What does it look like on paper? What does your brokerage do? Well, no. What is your brokerage? Net. That's what matters. Yeah. As you come through the ranks and we're just in a place and time where it's amazing that we have access to these tools, right. Without a podcast world and without the ability to Elon Musk taught himself how to launch Rockets up to Mars, like literally through YouTube. Right. So we have those tools available to us now, whereas in the past we didn't. And it's very, very, very easy. And I mean, folks very easy to look to the past that people have had success in an industry and just emulate what they did, right? Because, well, they had 100 agents or they had 200 agents. They had 300 agents. It must work. Not necessarily the case. The game has changed so fast, and there are so many different tools available now that I think it's imperative to kind of break those chains and look for a different way to do things. But with that also comes that pressure of there's always a new tool available, right? There's always something in real estate. There's always a new tech, there's always a new site, there's always a new gimmick, there's always a new something that you're tempted to invest in because you care, right? You want to do the best job for your clients. You want to do the best job for your people. But then you wake up and you've got a machine that costs $700,000 a year to run, and it's heavy. It's a lot of weight. It's very challenging to pull back from that stuff and start saying, yeah, no, I used to say this, and I stopped saying it because people took it the wrong way. You could put me on a milk crate in a closet in the middle of Utah. You give me a phone, I'm going to make money, like, I know how to make deals. I'll go, I don't need any of this mess that we have around us today. But you fall into that pattern, and everybody's got access to something. Everyone's got a suggestion. And like you said, your goals all of a sudden are not your goals. And you're building companies that you really don't want to build. And even if profit is one thing, and that's great. But that doesn't translate to happiness, right? You could be making a lot of money and not be the happiest person going. So it's really tough to find that balance and get that level of awareness. And then to start to selectively pull things back and get where you want to be. And when I get any younger, every day is another day off the calendar. And it's like, shit. I'm 46 years old, and I said this when I was 25. I didn't know anything when I was 20, and at 30, I didn't know anything. And you keep doing that, right. And I'm kind of at a point now where I'm like, I want to know, I don't want to know anymore. I want to arrive there. And now I've got my knowledge, and I want to go forward because it does get exhausting, man. It's constantly evolving. It's constantly adapting, pivoting. It's a lot of energy. The two segments of people I worry about the most are teachers and real estate agents. There's the two segments of society that take care of themselves, the least. It scares me to death. Yeah. There's so many teachers out there that have no boundaries. They're so worried about their students. Real estate agents the same way. You know how many young real estate agents I coach who are run through the mill by their clients that can't have a life. They're working on Saturdays, Sundays. They're just trying to make a deal, and they're not working out. They're eating bad. It's such a hard because you're so at the whim of your client, it's just this, like, constant. And I worry about them because if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not doing something for yourself every day. And one of the things I teach my clients, I had new coaching clients day because networking is my jam. We're writing a book about it right now. That's my superpower. It's like super connecting. And what I tell everybody is networking is like a baseball team. You got to have your people, but you don't need to get them all at once. Right. And so I tell my clients, if your goal for the week, like your habit or your goal is to meet five people, if you meet those five people on Monday afternoon, you're done for the week. We think that we have to have this constant wanting to meet everybody. I need to event. No, if you're going to an event, maybe you need to meet three people, or, you know, the three people you want to meet beat them, walk out. That's it. But we don't put anything written down. And so we just keep bringing more. It's like if you never felt full, you're just like eating and eating and eating. And so what I try to do is I adopted this thing called winning the day. What are the five things I can do every day? That once I do that, I win the day. Those aren't goals. They're habits. And if I do those five things, then I can know that my day is done. And if you do that at eleven, you do it at eleven. If you do it at one or six at night, you're just creating this stop gap where you're like, okay, this whole game is just hacking your mind. Okay. I got a coaching client building a huge business right now. He hates busy work. I mean, like, hates it. It's really affecting their company. And I said, Dude, you're making it too hard on yourself. I said, what do you like? You like football. I love football. I used to be a coach. Also turn on football or the office and do your busy work. Really? That's it. Yeah, well, he turned it on. He's happy because the football game is on, and he got all his work done. You have to figure out little ways to trick your mind to do stuff. And for me, I'm a morning guy. If I don't get my workouts in the morning, if I don't do my stuff in the morning, my day gets away from me. I'm not as put together mentally after 04:00. So I don't schedule any meetings past 04:00 because I know that I don't want to do that. And so I'd rather start my day early because it's a proven fact that you have more beta waves and more focused energy in the morning. So I get all the hard stuff done in the morning in the afternoons, more for conversations, real estate transaction stuff. It's just mindless work. But you have to know that about yourself. And then on the back of that, you have to outsource what you're not good at. And that's one of the things that I like my podcast. I don't know what's going on. I do this thing. I record it. It drops in a Dropbox file. Everybody else handles it. If I had to do that, there would be no podcast produced. You have to understand what you're doing, and it takes a little time. And then when those things are left, then you feel lighter. You feel like you can operate in the aspects that are true to you. So, Becca, I think it's become pretty clear what the problem is it's you. I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming. Shit, constantly waiting for it. You have a problem. What did I do? I took a goose and we're done now. That's fantastic. So you are involved in transactional real estate, also, correct? Yeah. I ran an Airbnb management company for the last five years. We ran it at scale for a long time. When Kobe hit, we kind of pulled it back and decided we're only going to do luxury properties. But what I've had my eye on and what we're working on currently. And God, I couldn't be any more excited because it works for my brain. Me and a couple of guys I met through the podcast got to love podcasts. We started a construction and development company, and so we've got our first couple of projects. We're working on ten acres here, five acres there and a couple of homes we're building. And I love this because I never have been a fan of wholesales or flips. I don't want to buy the property that 30 other people are trying to buy, and I don't like to be rushed. So for me, this is huge for me because working on 100 and it's either going to be 50 homes or 150 townhomes. Yeah, that's going to take a while. But I love it because we get to bring something to life like it works for my mind. The eventual plan is to go into large scale apartments and stuff like that. One of the guys on the team has been doing this for a long time. They're all structural engineers. I'm the sales and marketing arm, so I just talk to investors and then we're looking to build rent. So we have a property management company. So we build to rent models and then sell them to portfolios to investors because my philosophy is this there's just not enough out there for everybody right now. So if I can build and I can sell direct to my network and the property never has to hit the market, then we just had a really smooth transaction and everybody's happy. My question to you is how many doctors and lawyers are out there that would love to pick up three or four houses and they don't have the time. But if I'm selling directly to them, we're good. And so that's what we're working on right now. And then some stuff on the Airbnb side. But eventually I've toyed around with running a fund. In a couple of years, I've never been the guy to physically, even though I can lay the tile and I've done all that and lay brick. I'd rather invest in operators like, I have really good friends that are syndicators apartment guys, and I'd rather give them money and let them go do their thing. And I always realized I had an epiphany two years ago that you don't invest in the property, you invest in the jockey. And so if you have a guy like yourself who can make the deal, who can get things done, there are people in this business that are deal makers, and you want to feed those guys money so they can continue to do deals. And so that's what I love to do. So it's interesting talking about the build to rent model as real estate decentralized. We've been talking about this for years that this was coming long before Covet. It does offer an opportunity for those of us that are not at that Uber elite level developer to make investments in the secondary markets where the barrier to entry is not crazy. James, don't be get out of our business model. No, you're 100%. Correct. Dude, you see what I see, right. Okay. I'm here in Texas. You got 15 to 20 builders in Austin, right? Alone. It's crazy. My friends live in Tyler, Texas. Are you ready for this? She did 29 million by herself last year as an agent. And they can't keep the homes in there. And it's a market that they have one good builder in. So what we're going to do is we're going to find the second and third tier markets and we're going to become number two, and it's going to be less risk. The price per lot is going to be less, and we're going to fill the gaps. I always like to look at businesses finding the gaps in the market and then season them. Yeah. So without a doubt, there are these opportunities now that are becoming apparent that have been presenting themselves. And what we're finding as you decentralize from center city, you get to these kind of outer markets and the legislative burdens are far less. The bureaucratic burdens are far less. The legal risks are far less. We have in New York Holdings where if you could have the worst tenant, the most awful human being on the planet, just a bad actor. You're every bit. No exaggeration get coveted because that's a whole nother world of pain. You're every bit of twelve months. If you're lucky for an eviction more like 18, we have stuff up in Pennsylvania, right? Becks where we had a bad actor. Ten days later, the Sheriff showed up. You were out ten days. James, see what's interesting about this? And I always find this funny. What you're talking about in real estate is what nobody talks about. They talk about the sex, the high profit margins on wholesale, the flipping, the Airbnb. And I love to get granular in human psychology and development stuff. I think it's hilarious. Like how these people think. And if you talk to huge developers, they will only develop in municipalities that will green light projects. And I'm like, Well, what about this great land over here? No, not going to do it. And so when you hear that, you're like, oh, okay. It's a whole different game, right? Well, we've got this ten acres up here. That's not zoned the city's, like, we just want density, do whatever you want. They're like, we'll give you the keys to the Kingdom. Boom. Done. Green light. Yes. They literally are, like, you know what's crazy? This guy is working on this other project outside of Austin. They were going to go build, like, 80 homes in the city. Said this in the meeting. Would you all consider building 250 townhomes instead? And he goes, what? And they go, Well, we just want to double the tax rate in the community. And he goes, all right, sounds good. We're going to make about $16 million.

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They're so quick to move, which I get it. But one of the things why I always have on agents from small cities, because I think it's hilarious because they're crushing it. And I love to piss off the agents that are in Austin or Dallas is, like, my favorite thing to do. Oh, he's beating your butt. It's like, we think that you have to be there or you have to be anywhere. Not in the world we live in anymore. My friend right now is in Spain. He's got 57 Airbnbs in Boca Raton and, like, 150 properties, and he's running it from his Apple. Watch. It don't matter. We've removed it. So the question is, really do your homework. If any real estate investors out there go talk to the cities, go see who wants development. Read the tea leaves, read where everybody is at talk to people. Perfect example. There's a town up here north of Austin, and they don't even have a Walmart. The grocery store is a tractor supply right now. But there's nine neighborhoods going in, and I went and talked to some of the residents. And I'm like, Where are you all from? And they're like, downtown Austin. They're like, We're so happy. I'm like, there you go. Let's start looking for land. But that's not what people want to do because they want to show up. I've never had the large capital that a developer. So I always have to try to think, like, what's, five years from now, where are we going to go and what's not being talked about, right? Because I have friends that are in Indiana, Louisville, Kansas City, Indianapolis. It's blowing up in those markets right now. And so if it's blowing up there, I can only imagine what it's like in Wisconsin, Chicago, Philly, Virginia. North Carolina is a huge market for us moving in next year. Like, North Carolina is a big market. And so you really have to study more of the metrics of the economic investment than just the actual investment itself. And you can really get ahead of the game. Yes. There's no doubt about it. I mean, Becks, we've literally been talking about this for three, four years now, right? And Austin, you end up, though again, back in that spot where I see it clear as day. My gift is vision and deal making. I see all of it. Right. And I see how to get there. And I'm a deal maker at heart. What's holding you back? You know what's holding me back. Honestly, goals that have been set on me by everybody else around me that I've taken on as my own. Completely my fault. Obviously, I called my own path, but you end up sitting there going, I got a lot here. I've done a lot of work in this space, right? Do I really want to kind of pick up and go try something in a different space? Here's the thing about this. Don't hang around me too much, James, because there's a couple of things that are going to happen. Either you move to Europe or you disappear for three months. You leave your job, you move. If you meet me, I like to shake it up. I actually think that new energy, that new challenge will change your entire life. I get it where you are in your life. And you're like, man, I really don't want to start over, but you're not starting over. You're elevating to the next level. There are two different ways to look at it, and that new figure, that new challenge is going to drive you, and then you're going to feel like you're 32 again. Yeah. I'm not short on energy, even kind of in this comfort zone, if you will, that we're in. And we like to think of ourselves as pioneers and all the wonderful things we like to call ourselves in our market and in our industry. But there's no shortage of energy for me. At least I've got a really well rounded retail background. I've done a ton of ground lease thing. I've done a ton of infill leasing. I used to build homes when you were talking about earlier earlier in my career. And you know why I stopped doing it? Because the local market felt I was competing with them. And as a broker, I couldn't build. And as a builder, I couldn't broker. So I stepped away from something I really did enjoy. And I was good at because I didn't want to have that conflict. We just did a building up in PA. The buildings got electric, the buildings got plumbing, buildings got new foundation and footings. Built 2000 sqft, 2100 sqft. Literally walked into the DOB. Becca sent me the application, right. And I kind of like, what is this? Like, Where's the rest of the paperwork? I got to get this in, and she's like, no, that's the paperwork. It was one page, one page. We walked in Friday, $357 approved. Walked out with just drawings from online that the builder sent over. No crazy CAD drawings. None of that messed. The billing starts going up. Oh, we need a controlled inspection. Hey, can we get a controlled? I swear to you, we put the phone away, grab the sandwich and the inspectors there. Yeah, everything looks good, right? Approved. There's a whole nother world out there, and it is so difficult to move things forward here that if you have had some success here and you can kind of get through the grind, we have one project. We've been in a local office for three years, and we know everybody, and it's the right project. But three years we can't get out of the local office. Yeah, we can go do projects that are five times the size of that in other locations and meet new people and play a part of shaping the landscape and developing a town. And there are some cool things out there that I definitely want to explore. And I've got to come sit on your couch for a little bit. Let's do it. The name of the company is two in construction, and I asked the civil engineer why he named it that. And he said that the problem is all the builders are focused on high end custom or government affordability. And what's missing is Middle America. Yeah. Long story. I try not to confuse everybody, but we have two separate products where we do regular stick builds. But we're bringing to market pods and panels, and we can build in 30 days a single family house. And so what we're trying to get back to is we're trying to get back to Middle America, being able to afford a starter home in a nice community that's safe and giving them a product that they can be proud of. And it's really something where I think we've lost sight of because what's interesting is when I weighed out here in the development, I used to work private equity for lending money to these guys. So I've been around it for a couple of years. But it's amazing how many criminals there are. And I'll say the word criminals. They are pure on greedy criminals. And I told my guys, my owners of my company. I said, you know what be a revolutionary business model. And I think that you'll probably operate the same way if I had to guess what if we were nice people? Yeah. I mean, what if we actually did what we say we are going to do what an amazing business model. And they're like, right? Oh, my God. That would be so crazy. I know it sounds so ridiculous for me to say it, but it's the truth. It's so true. It's so true. And it's wild to me. And somebody was making a joke the other day. The market is so hot that pilots are coming out of retirement and building houses. And it's the truth. Everybody and their mother is a builder right now, and you have to be really careful who you're contracting. Make sure they know what they're doing, make sure they have your best interest at heart. So you don't get caught because it can happen. Man, I've been hearing some stories, so you really need to be careful. So a little advice for folks out there no disrespect to your local dentist or your local pediatrician. But when your local dentist and your local pediatrician is building your home, get out of the market. That's a telltale sign, man. I'm telling you, it sounds simple. Yeah, that's one of the things that when we see this, every time we see this cycle, come and go, we go time to pick up sticks because it's a cycle, right? Yeah, that's what happened. I do want to give everybody this so book that changed my life. I probably bought it 60 times for everybody I meet that can really change the way that you mindset. Everything is what you say when you talk to yourself. $13 on Amazon, it talks about 80% of your thoughts and your actions are controlled by your subconscious mind. And if you have bad programming, then you have bad actions. So actually, the way to change is to change your programming. So, Austin, you do one on one coaching. You also do some online stuff. Can you talk a little bit about the differences there and what's the best way for folks to get a hold of you? You can go to austinlinny. Com L-I-N-N-E-Y is a great place to have the podcast and everything. Instagram. You can hit me up on Instagram. I'll respond to everybody's, DMs, but yeah, I do one on one. Coaching is my main business, and we meet once a week, and then I'm getting into the group coaching a little bit because some people ask me, it's my first group. We're testing it out and we're going to see how that goes. But I love my one on one coaching. I found that a lot of people just don't have people in their corner, and it's really nice to be in somebody's corner. And when I'm in, like, I'm all in and it's a delicate dance with the coaching and being in somebody's life. But, man, it's so great to see them succeed. And you know what's the greatest thing is. And I tell this, I don't think I've ever shared this on a podcast. I tell all my clients I'm not coaching you. I'm coaching your kids and your spouse, because if I make you better, it's going to make you a better husband, and your kids are going to know and your wife's going to be happier. And when the coaching clients wife DMs me and is like, thank. Thank you. You. Thank you. That's when I know I did a good job. That's awesome. This was a great chat. I'll be there at about 445. Dude. Hey, let's do it, man. It's a little warm here right now. I might have to come up to you, but. Yeah, good stuff, man. Congratulations on all the success. You've got a remarkable story. We were looking forward to this one, and maybe we'll cross paths in some of these municipalities in the future. I got to come up. I've been meaning so I put on events from time to time. I owe New York a visit so bad. I'm so in trouble with so many investors, so I'm going to get up there this fall, and we're going to throw an event in New York, and we're going to turn it up. Make sure you let me know because I'd love to come out and support and catch up with you. Perfect. Thanks, guys. All right, man. Austin, Lenny everybody, as always, we appreciate the support, the comments. It's been a crazy ride, and we're having a hell of a time with it. So as always, everyone out there. Please stay safe.