okay

Episode two. We made it guys! The Epique Edge

we have a lot to cover today

we just got back from GROW 2025

which was a summit down in the Biloxi

Mississippi where we

got together with about 75 people

great minds. there was a lot of collaboration

so we've got some key takeaways

we thought

we would share that with you today on the podcast

so stay tuned you're not gonna wanna miss that

first I wanted to go through

I think it's important that people know your story

not everybody knows your story Hayden

so I want you to talk to the audience about

how you got into real estate

and what you've been able to do

in the time that you've been in real estate

well guys my story is a lot different than most

June 2nd 2016 me and my wife

finally committed to buying a couple of rental homes

literally

took every dollar we had just to buy two homes

for the first year or two

all I did was invest in real estate while

working a full time job at the power company

done that for a couple years

realized really fast

that I needed to

gain access to houses that were on the market

after hours when most agents didn't want to work

so my first

initial goal was just to gain my realtor license

just to buy rental homes you know

cause I was buying so many

I was trying to get in the doors at 8

9 o'clock at night and of course

nobody wants to go show a 20,000 dollar house

at 9 o'clock at night in a not so good area

wait a minute I'm gonna stop you right there

so you were working a full time job

a demanding a physically demanding full time job

so would it be fair to say that

you didn't exactly have a lot of extra energy left over

to go look at these 20,000 dollar houses

at night I did not

um lots of 60 hour weeks and um

I proud of myself for being the hardest working person

there pulling the most overtime

and but again

driven by caffeine and dedication and resilient grip

we are now where we are today

you guys had a goal we had a goal of like

what you wanted life to look like in a few years

that's right so it has changed a lot

you know my goals are always ever moving

I have goals every day from every day on

what I want to eat in a day

to compare to what I want to look like at the end of

the year to

you know weight goals

to weight loss goals

would depend on where we're at life

so you started selling real estate

so you bought rentals yep

and you continue to work your full time job

yep so we worked our full time job at the power company

my wife works a job as well

bought rentals rehab them at 11 o'clock at night

was going to bed at 12 o'clock at night

and getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning

to go to the gym every day

and we ended up during that time frame getting to

before I got my real estate license

roughly around 25 in three years

we ended up getting our

I ended up getting my real estate license

and first official day was July 2nd of 2020

and I'll never in my life

forget going to my first brokerage

and my managing broker told me

he's like look man

you know with you working a full time job

working as much as you do

like you'll be doing good

to sell six houses in the first year

and I laughed at him I said

I will be your highest producing

agent by the end of the year

Because six in a year sounded

I mean thats a lot when you've never done one

yeah it's not what I wanted to do

so my first two months or my first month

we done two deals and then after that

I think I averaged about

three or four a month

first four months we end up I ended up selling 26 homes

first full year of real estate

side hustling in 2021 range

we sold 56 homes 56 homes in the year 2021

part time part time

and as if there's really any part time

it's all all dual career

especially if you're hustling that hard

that's not too bad no

you had no like no no backing

no you weren't on a team

in fact you grew a team during that time

yeah so we started out just myself only

and then I realized that doing 60 deals a year

is a wonderful feat

but I realized I was starting to age faster than most

so we decided to start a team

great adventure ended up getting up to close to

I think we got up to the third largest team

one time in West Tennessee

I think we're at our most

we've done 125 deals

in one calendar year on a down economy

so pretty good sized team that's doing over 100 deals

not bad and then you

you became more as time went on

you sold you sold less residential real estate

and you started purchasing more investments correct

that's correct so now we're

we're gonna be approaching the 200 door mark

at the end of this year um

which was a great goal of mine

um and it's a fantastic goal

it is um

knowing that you get paid on the first day of the month

is a pretty good feat

yeah so

but got out of daily production

started building great systems

delegation

and hiring the right people at the right time

and hiring them and giving them such a good job

hopefully that they'll never leave

is probably the most important part

I think

one of the things that I admire about you the most

and why I just thought when I first met

you god this guy is smart

you take a situation and you look at it and go

how many jobs can I create out of out of the situation

like how can we grow a business around this

and then you just go to work and make that happen

and the minute you can step out of something

you leverage it to somebody else

you step out of it and you're on to the next

onto the next venture I've seen you do that with

just a handful of businesses

just in a very short time

so I mean you can't do everything

every every

business has multiple positions that need to be filled

uh you might temporarily have to do something uh

you know

just to get your feet wet or understand the process

but once you get to a point that

you understand the process

and you're overloaded and you need help

there's a time for delegation

some of the biggest empires and business

have fallen apart because lack of delegation

that's true I mean

most people cap out on what they're able to do

because they can't delegate or just don't know how

that's right

and nobody can do it as good as you can in most cases

but finding that person that can do it better than you

is probably the most important parts of business

so managing your expectations

and even when like a positions filled

or whenever you've got things running smoothly

you're always looking for that next hire

because if if you don't have the next hire

you are the next hire if you own a business

um yeah

that's kind of cool story

so baby No. 1 is on the way due this next month

that's great and Holly is working on the title business

so she's working in business with you now

which is awesome now it's a family of a family affair

it is side note one of

the most important things that I've come to realize is

everybody has an excuse to not succeed

and two things that people always use against me is a

you're only able to work as hard as you do

because you don't have a kid

and or b you're only able to do what you're doing

because you're 32 years old

so my biggest argument I'm really good at arguing

maybe shoulda been a lawyer

that's right that's what my mom says so anyways

the two biggest things that have been used against me

are should be fuel for your fire

compared to most if you're in your 40s and you don't

you haven't acquired the mass wealth

you have a better opportunity than I do because you

you are more established in business

you should be you know

you have the better opportunities than I do

cause my age has been used against me

just as much as it's been used for me

you heard you're too young

that's right I'm too young

that's right and lack of experience you know

even down the oh 8 no 9

you know

when the market went crazy and housing markets crashed

you know people

banks realize they don't like managing properties

so the Chicken Little mindset of hey

that happened one time

I'm gonna be scared to do that again

for the next 20 years

kind of like our conversations with the NAR

settlement

any opportunity in life can be used as a

opportunity for success or an opportunity for failure

is absolutely 100% your choice

that's true so many so much wealth is created

when the bad things happen

whether it's the the 2008

crash of the real estate market

or just the way things are changing

opportunities are through every challenge

you know I like the NAR settlement

that's the most current and most recent thing

we kind of went through uh

yes there were changes

a lot of people used it as a scarcity tactic

to move people in or out of the business

or move them to different firms

some of that's done naturally by the way

man it just the way it is

that's what happens in the real estate market

but you look at it

you say that the business is gonna be the same I mean

there might be a small adjustment but all right

so they change one thing

that's making adaptation to the rules

and follow the rules of course

and yeah of course um

I heard Tom Ferry say the other day like

it doesn't really matter what we think about

how they've changed the rules

like

what they've changed it doesn't matter what we think about it

um they could be 100% wrong

but they are what they are and we just have to adapt um

sharpen our sword get better at what we're doing

we'll talk more about that in a minute and

and keep moving on like

the time and energy spent complaining about it

and going against the grain is just

it's just wasted that's right I mean

it's nothing that we can control

so when you can't control it

you can either let it decapitate your business

and be the limiting factor of what you believe

and or when it does happen

be aware of what you're supposed to be doing

make adaptations and keep going with your business

you have two options so I'll put you on the spot okay

he loves it when I do that um

I'll put you on the spot and ask you

if somebody was gonna get started with investing

what's what's one key piece of advice you would get

somebody

who's never done an investment property before

never like taking that kind of a leap or risk

but what advice would you give first

I'll give you a handful of advice

so the very first thing that I would suggest is

understanding your numbers

I can't tell you how many times

I've talked to somebody

and I hang out with a buying real estate

that's fine great

I encourage you to do it but stick

find your numbers that you're comfortable with

mine are different from some

that's okay no no

there is no wrong way to buy real estate

but you just got to find the numbers in

the method that you're comfortable with

so that would be my first suggestion

second suggestion would be to probably

and I call it playing the small guy

for the first five years of me investing

I would go to the big fish the guy that had 30

40 rentals and I would say hey look

I don't know anything about real estate

I don't know how you buy real estate

but teach me anything you can

and playing that card

and being the person that's not scared to learn right

that's right

be the person that's not scared to learn something

and then all of a sudden

you're gonna look up and they go like

hey man you know

like I got two or three properties I really don't want

would you be interested in buying them

Well I will

you know just let me make sure they check my boxes

make sense that's good advice

thats solid advice

anything else about your story that you didn't cover

I don't think so look

it's a cool story it's

it's inspiring because it doesn't matter

whether somebody's brand new in real estate

and doesn't have the experience

that they think they need to be successful

um I think

you know a lot of times we compare our

our insides to other people's outsides

so we look at somebody like

like you and I can never do what he did

I mean look how

how what a grand scale he's doing business

and like you just started

you just went to work and you just started grinding

and you told me sometimes you would sleep 2

3 hours a night I mean

it took nights like that for you to get through

and like honestly

there's still nights like that

yeah I mean

in guys I know that

what I've done in a very short period of time is

you know it's a great feat

and like I'm extremely proud of myself

but every person has the same opportunity I had

I come from nothing

we just risked it and we risked it all

and we worked our butts off

and we are where we are today

I've only been in full time

real estate for two years yesterday

so yeah but you know

a lot more than the average bear of real estate

done a lot of transactions in those

those two years counting

rentals were probably close to 1,000 in six years

not bad it's not bad

well done bet your mama is proud of you some days

well thanks for sharing your story

let's talk about this event we just went to

to in Biloxi we went to a grow 25 summit

and this was an EPIQUE event

and there were 7 coaches in the room

there's a handful maybe more than that

um and national coaches on top of that

and we both had some takeaways

we both had some some key takeaways that

that we that we brought home with us

and that we definitely wanted to share with you

um I'll let you go first with your

your first one

so for me more than not it was very impressive

I mean

it's always a wonderful thing when you can get seven

like minded individuals into a room of great knowledge

it's it's truly amazing

when people sit down at the end of the table

and everybody automatically

just organically just shuts up and listens

like the amount of

it's kind of like a sensei moment where when he speaks

or somebody speaks you

you automatically listen and you take value from it

uh for me more than not

it was getting that many high producing

agents from across the nation together

and having a huge mindset of collaboration

and friendly competition of course

but adapting that into your business and you know

understanding of what they're coming from

but from a goal standpoint

I think the two biggest things that I saw

across the board is

out of all your 7 to 10 high producers

however many there was

consistency

and dependability has always been the biggest thing um

and it's hard guys

like I'll be the first person to say that like

you're not gonna walk in every day and have the energy

at 10 out of 10 right

caffeine thank God picks that up

what if you're just having a bad day all around

and you do you have bad days

that's right that's real deal

well learning how to respond to that

probably your most important thing

you can let it again

you can let it decapitate you or you can let you

you know use that to fire you up for the next day

your choice it like you have to have that

that mindset and that determination to go

nobody really cares how I feel

that's right nobody cares that I don't have energy

nobody cares that the baby didn't sleep last night

or that I've got family drama going on

nobody cares your business doesn't care

doesn't get up and do it consistently every day anyway

and that's right

when if you struggle or you do something wrong okay

don't do it again

we'll start off the next day and do it right

if you fail again do it again well

shout out to uh

Lee Garland who who was really the host of this event

um Lee's been a coach and

runs a huge team in Southern Mississippi

so if you have um

Hattiesburg Jackson

Mississippi Brandon

Mississippi referrals give give Lee Garland a call

The Garland group will take good care of you

but he he put on this event

he was the

the mastermind behind this whole thing and it

it was a great event um

I know like when he asked us to

to speak on different things

the first initial thought at the thought was why

like I feel like I fail every day

like you never see yourself as being somebody that

that should or could command a room or do something

but that's when you know

you're doing things at the right cadence

is when you you fail

when you look at what you did that day and you're like

okay I messed that up tomorrow I'm gonna do it better

and yeah sure enough the next day you you get better

one of the most important things

I think are

hardly say the entire thing is

the only way you fail is when you quit

that's right so if you quit

you have 100% success of failing

just stop like you're just done

as long as you just don't quit you're good yeah

for sure just don't stop

it would be awful to go through all of that and to do

do all of the trial

experience the failure and then never see it through

like that's that's truly that's sad

so yeah don't do that so collaboration over competition

you think that's that's really the

the big take home there like

if your surroundings are not supportive of your goals

or they're not pushing you to think differently

or sometimes just to be honest

quite out and just hurt your feelings sometimes like

Hayden will say something

I'm like God that hurt my feelings and under my breath

I think he's so right and what he's saying

so if you're not in a room where you're

constantly being challenged

and pushed and um

inspired like god change your surroundings

whether that be a company

whether that be your friend network

whether that be the the family

sometimes it's family

sometimes you have to draw a boundary with

with family members and it's sad

but it just is what it is

you can't afford to have your business suffer

because of it

so get in the right room to support growth

and uncomfortably maybe a good a good word for that

I think one of my favorite questions to ask is

when somebody gives me a huge goal

of what they've accomplished

or a goal that they've hit

from a production goal standpoint

weight loss

whatever it is the question I'm always on high five

congrats like you've done it

like I'm proud of you bute what's next?

now what? what's next?

and then you literally see people's mind shift of

oh Dang I haven't thought about that yet

you know that's

that's that's really cool part of it

you always got to be pushing

and that is one thing I've noticed about you

you're never satisfied right

you're always chasing that next thing

looking toward that next goal

like your metric you know exactly what you're going for

and you know

two or three steps ahead what you're going for

so I think it's a critical factor in your success

um a couple of my takeaways from the summit

we were lucky enough to have coach John A Black um

bounce into a 30 minute session in one of our

days there and he said that business is 80% mindset

and 20% tactics and I thought

oh my gosh that's so true

um especially real estate agents

we think we have to know it all before we go and do

and really like the tactics

I mean that's some of it like

but it's really in your head

like I don't remember who it was

it maybe it was Zig Zigler

I'm probably quoting that wrong

but he said business is neither bad or good

it's like bad or good in your head

business is just it's in your head

so um

he was he talked about having a good

a good mindset

and why that's such a big driver of your business

versus the tactics now don't get me wrong

we focused on the tactics

we talked a lot about the NAR settlement

we talked about how to be better buyers representatives

um we realtors have come out we've

we've done damage to ourselves unfortunately

um by showing you know our social media posts are

you know just sold one day on the market

we show how easy and fun and how HGTV

um our businesses

and we don't show the seven times that

that transaction fell apart and had

we had to put it back together

we don't show the ugly the

the hard days and I think we've got to get a better

job of telling that narrative to buyers and sellers of

hey this may not be a smooth road

but I'm gonna get you to the finish line

selling sunset is not always the key

it's really it's hurt our business um

so we focused a lot on like how to craft that message

how to get better at explaining our value to the

the buyer or the seller so that they know who they're

who they're in business with

and what the outcome is gonna be um

you know showing our work

we don't show our work we only show the pretty work

and we really kind of done some damage to ourselves

as an industry with that

so we talked a lot about crafting that unique

selling proposition what that looks like and um

you know this market going forward

which by the way

we should have been doing the whole time

it's just a market

an adapting market that we just have to make some

some pivots to Rebecca Jeff

like you want to talk about some energy

oh my goodness he brought so much value

very in your face and very energetic

at 8 o'clock in the morning

I don't know how many cups of coffee he had

but he definitely had a few which I was on game with

so he said he had been going since like 4 am

and he and I mean

my energy at lunch time is not what his was

no it was amazing

it was one of the few times I've heard him speak

I could definitely sit in the room with him

for a couple days yeah

I could learn a thing or two from him

so he said

one of the big things that he said is have 10

two minute conversations with your sphere of influence

every single day and he said consistency

talking to your point consistency is currency

so like if we never did anything else

I think real estate agents are really good about

chasing the shiny object we're

we're really good at buying those leads

because we don't wanna call our friends

family and past clients it makes no sense to me

but if we get purposeful about just the basics

having 10 two minute conversations about real estate

with people that you already know

you do that consistently

and no one can stop you in this business

it's true but more importantly too

like it doesn't even have to be real estate related

you can call and check in on a friend for two minutes

um I think more importantly

the thing that he's trying to get across

the line was was you have to stay top of mind

top of mind like it

it might not be something you've

somebody you've talked to in five years

just call reach out to him

cause you never know what they're about to do

you never know what they're going through

um I think

I mean

I think that was truly what he was trying to get across

well there used to be it

you know used to everybody could name one or two agents

probably everybody that you're talking to now

they can name like five or six agents

and two of them maybe family members

so it's more important than ever be top of mind

because there are a lot of agents

and I think the market will kind of

shake some of that out

some people go out of the business

a lot of people have already gone out of the business

and you'll watch other businesses grow

because of the change

and just there attitude and adapt

adaptation toward change um

well it was a cool two days it was

we managed to have a little fun

lots of fun lots of knowledge and lots of collaboration

work hard play hard

that's right we did that

so hopefully you took some

some good AHAs from this if you want more of our notes

reach out to one of us

follow us on your favorite social media channels

message us we're happy to give you more information

and help you anyway we can

I'm Angie Davis I'm Hayden Edmondson

have a great week see you guys

I need you to like sit up and not spin your chair