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Real Estate Investing and Entrepreneurial Freedom with Guest Mike Wolf: MakingBank S3E10

with Mike Wolf

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MAKING BANK is a weekly YouTube TV show and iTunes Podcast full of #Success and #Business with Josh.

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Summary

As an entrepreneur, you know that working hard isn’t always the best way to generate more income.

Today on #MakingBank, host Josh Felber invites Mike Wolf to share how he got into passive real estate investing and how he is teaching other entrepreneurs to do the same.

Mike is a self-made freedom lifestyle entrepreneur, seasoned investor, and an international speaker. He has been investing in real estate for almost 30 years and is a regular contributor in the media with his extensive background in business, entrepreneurship, and real estate.

His passion is giving back to the entrepreneurial community to help people make informed, educated business decisions to build long term passive income and wealth for themselves and their families.

He also believes that you should love what you do every day, and really enjoy life and we couldn’t agree more!

So, tune in to hear Josh talk to Mike about how, before becoming a real estate investor, he started off going to university to become a lawyer and how he discovered his calling by mistake. As well as…

✔ How working at a phone company started his 27 year journey in real estate.

✔ What Mike thinks the three phases of being an entrepreneur are.

✔ Why Mike likes to invest in single family homes.

✔ How losing everything made him a smarter and more strategic entrepreneur.

And more…

SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses: bit.ly/JoshFSubscribe

Real Estate Investing and Entrepreneurial Freedom with Guest Mike Wolf: MakingBank S3E10

Josh Felber:                          Welcome to Making Bank. I am Josh Felber, where we uncover the success strategies and the mindsets of the top 1%, so you can amplify your life and your business today. I’m really excited and honored for today’s guest. I got to know him off and on for the last several years, and just really love his story, what he’s doing, and just the success that he’s had as an entrepreneur.

And I’m excited to bring Mike Wolf on today. He is a self-made freedom lifestyle entrepreneur, seasoned investor, and international speaker. He has been investing in real estate for over 25 years, and Mike has a passion for entrepreneurship and giving back, as well as traveling the world, because I know he’s filming with me today from Vienna, right Mike?

Mike Wolf:                             Yes, I’m in Vienna. I’m so glad we have this technology where we can do this.

Josh Felber:                          I know it’s amazing. On the other side of the world I get to hang out with you today. Mike is a regular contributor in the media with an extensive background in business, entrepreneurship, and real estate, and is experienced in investing in the US as well as Canada has given him a unique perspective about taxation and other cross border investing challenges.

Mike not only love investing in real estate, but he loves teaching his students about it as well, and has helped thousands of people successfully invest and turn key properties and taught thousands how to do it themselves throughout his various courses that he offers. Mike is so passionate about helping people how to successfully invest and grow thriving businesses, and a passion for entrepreneurship and sharing that wisdom with his students.

As a heart centered entrepreneur, his passion is giving back in the entrepreneurial community to help other people make informed decisions, educational business decisions to building long term passive income and wealth building for themselves and their families. Mike helps people realize their dreams in creating both time and location, financial freedom, by teaching strategies to achieve passive income.

He also believes that you should love what you do every day, and really enjoy life. I know Mike does that. He lives what he preaches and he teaches. So, Mike, I’m going to welcome you to Making Bank today.

Mike Wolf:                             Hey, thanks so much for having me. Good to be here. Good to see you, buddy.

Josh Felber:                          I know, you too, man, we always see each other normally every few months, it seems like, but definitely really cool and awesome to connect with you on the other side of the world, like I mentioned, and excited to the really cool, awesome nuggets of wisdom that we can share with the audience today and hopefully get them started on passive income path in their life.

Mike Wolf:                             Love it. Love it. Can’t wait.

Josh Felber:                          So, I guess tell me a bit about what got you started in your entrepreneurial journey?

Mike Wolf:                             The interesting thing is I actually started off trying to live my parents’ life, because my parents wanted me to be a lawyer, so I started off going to university, wracking up a whole bunch of student loans. I got my first degree, and as I mentioned, my parents wanted me to become a lawyer and after the first degree, I had so many student loans, I decided before I go back and get the second degree, I’m going to try to pay these things off.

I got a job at the phone company, because my friends’ mother was a manager there, and it was a government job, so it was paid really well, it was union, paid really well. While I was there, I actually bought some real estate, not thinking that was going to be a career. I just got some real estate because I was starting to make enough money to qualify for the mortgage.

A couple years after I bought my first property, the market took off, and I realized I made more money off that piece of real estate that I bought than I did going to my job that I didn’t really like, so it was a really good mistake. I looked back and I thought, “Hey, I made more money on this piece of real estate over the last two years than going to this job 40 hours a week that I wasn’t really passionate about.” I thought, if I could do this by mistake, what would happen if I did this on purpose?

It led me on this 27 year journey, which leads me to today, which I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, by the way, it wasn’t all just smooth sailing, but it led me on this path where I basically told my parents I’m not going back to law school, and I just got this entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to real estate, I’ve invested a lot of different things along the way.

[inaudible 00:04:53]

Property, so I’m grateful for that, but I didn’t fit into the corporate world. If I was a lawyer right now, I’d probably be miserable, so no offense to any lawyers watching, but that’s just not me. So, yeah, I got in totally by mistake and I wish I made mistakes like that every day. It was a really good one.

Josh Felber:                          Right. Yeah, definitely. And so, I know you said there was lot of ups and downs, and especially when you’re going into the real estate market and you have that one property that really took off, but how’d you teach yourself this? How’d you navigate through a lot of those landmines and challenges?

Mike Wolf:                             Well, here’s the thing. When I bought that first property, my reasoning was, it was kind of a long term approach. If I buy this property, 25 years from now, the mortgage will be paid off, it’ll be [inaudible 00:05:49], it will be part of my retirement. I had a really good long term approach, and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

But the good thing about real estate that I’ll say, it’s very forgiving. If you have a long enough, I mean, there’s a saying, “Don’t wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait.” Meaning, if you can buy real estate and can afford hold around a bit, eventually it’s going to pay off, and I got really fortunate because the market took off not long after I bought it, I mean a couple years.

It was a double edge sword. On the one hand, I was siting on a lot more money than I every thought I’d have, and I managed to pay off all my student loans a lot quicker than I thought, but you do things by mistake as opposed to strategically, one of the challenges you get is now, say I went from being a very humble person to being a know-it-all.

So, then you try to duplicate it, and of course, I made my money because I got lucky because a market took off, but you start to take credit for it in your mind, it says, “That’s because I’m an expert at this. It all just comes natural to me, so obviously, I’m going to be able to do it again,” and now that greed starts to kick in.

So, here I am, I quit my job at the phone company, I also tell my parents I’m not going back to law school, so I burnt all my bridges because I sat on what seemed like a lot of money at the time, but what I didn’t know is that trying to duplicate it, and also trying to duplicate it faster, I said to myself, “I don’t want to wait two years. I’m going to start flipping properties. I’m going to make this money every three months to six months.”

So, I didn’t really know how, but I thought I did, and so I went from being a know-it-all and [inaudible 00:07:28] of cash on that first deal to managing to lose it over the next couple deals. That was very humbling for me, because I already quit the job, I told my parents I’m not going back to school, so I had no choice but to try to figure it out.

So, I went from being a know-it-all to what I tell people now is a learn-it-all, and that’s why we keep running into each other, because I still, to this day, I love to do a lot of seminars and do personal development work on myself, I’m always studying marketing and how can I do things getter, and I never, ever stop learning. I’m a life long learner, now.

So, I went from thinking I knew everything to actually having to go find other people and see how they did what they were doing, and at the end of the day, humble and a better person, I think, having some of those losses, and made me much smarter and more strategic, but the interesting thing is, when I went into this long term approach to this get rich quick approach, I lost everything. When I went back to having more of a long-term approach again, and thinking strategically, I started to get better results, so that’s the kind of stuff that I teach people, is that you have to have the right foundation, the right knowledge, the right people on your teams, the right mentors. You need to have all those things in place, you’re going to get the results.

When you think you know everything, and your gets the best of you and your emotion jumps in, you’re in trouble. I learned that the hard way a few times over the years.

Josh Felber:                          So, tell me, too, right now you guys, I think the last time we were talking, you usually have about 600 properties on average?

Mike Wolf:                             I don’t have that many. These days we help other, our company helps other investors around the world by real estate, real estate in the US. So, we sell properties to people in new Zealand, South Africa, Canada, all over the planet people are buying our turnkey property. A turnkey properties are ones we’ve already fixed them, they’re in the right city, the right neighborhood, with the right tenants with the right key in place. We do everything for our clients. It’s like making the best safety for wherever on the planet they live.

My team’s already done thousands of transactions over the years. I don’t own, personally, 600 properties. I’ve got a couple of hundred properties and live off the passive income, so [inaudible 00:09:49] is that it’s not just about making bank, as you say.

Having money is great, but it’s about how do we create something that is sustainable, and how do we create something that, if the market were to go down, still gives you money every single month and it’s effortless. And it also comes in, not by your efforts, not by you having to go do the work. If you do something once and get paid for it over and over and over again, and so that’s what we call truly passive income, where you’re not having to go collect rent, you’re not getting phone calls at two in the morning to go fix toilets. The money comes in effortlessly, so that’s what we have other people to do. That’s one of the sides of my business.

Josh Felber:                          So, it sounds like, then, you guys will actually go in, acquire the properties, fix them up, get them ready and rent them, and the manage of them after. So, let’s say, myself as an investor, in what you guys are doing, you guys make that money kind of probably on what you’re selling off to the investor, myself, at under? Is that how it works?

Mike Wolf:                             Right, so typically, we’re buying properties in bulk from the banks. We’re buying 20, 30, 40 at a time. When you buy those packages, at least half the homes are crap, which, if I don’t want them in my portfolio, I’m not going to sell them to another investor.

So, there’s different hedge funds, there’s other friends that will buy our leftovers that we don’t want, so you get those out of the package right away. We only fix the ones that make sense. We’re only buying mostly newer homes, because they give much better results than old homes, and it’s all about having the right neighborhoods. If you’re in the right neighborhoods, you’re going to attract the right tenants, and then you have to have the great team, because if you don’t have the right people representing you, and collecting that rent, it’s only as good as the team that you’ve got, and so that’s the stuff that we do for our clients, and then they get tied with the properties, and then I help them get into the market.

Then, one of the things that I’ve done over the years is I’m very strategic. I get into a market when it makes sense, we ride up that market, and at the same time, while we’re holding it, these properties produce cash flow, so you get paid every single month, which makes it sustainable, and then, when the time is right, we’ll sell those properties and go to the next market.

Then I tell my clients, “Hey, now’s a really good time to sell.” Before we got into Atlanta, which is my favorite market now, we were in Phoenix, and most of my clients had moved [inaudible 00:12:19] from Phoenix to Atlanta. When they sold their Phoenix properties they were able to buy two for every one they sold in Phoenix.

Josh Felber:                          Wow.

Mike Wolf:                             So, now you’ve doubled your portfolio just like that. So, that’s a thing I do for my clients.

Josh Felber:                          That’s awesome.

Mike Wolf:                             Basically, tell them when to get in, when to get out, and help them build a portfolio, so I’m not really into helping people do a transaction. I’m here to help them build a portfolio, so they can taste that lifestyle freedom for themselves, where they have a bunch of properties, and it takes time. I never preach this as get rich quick, but it’s all planting seeds in the right markets.

You look at what I’ve got today, 27 years later, is the direct result of that very first one that I bought. Had I not bought that one, I wouldn’t have what I’ve got today, so there’s no being patient. You’re buying strategically and not just making money because you got lucky because the market went up. There’s a lot of [inaudible 00:13:08]

And the homes within those markets and the neighborhoods.

Josh Felber:                          Cool. Then as an investor, with, say I’m invested in the properties with you, and everything else, and then when you say, “Hey, it’s time to sell,” do you guys help sell the properties, or is that like, “Hey, me, the investor, I got to go out and put up a for sale sign and try to hire somebody and do all that?”

Mike Wolf:                             Yeah, we take care of all that. I’ve got people on my team that do everything from start to finish, and then, when you’re waiting to go to that next market, I’ve already to the team set up, because I’m investing in that market myself, so I build up these teams to make it very scalable, so it can handle the demand for all our investors, and we make it so it’s basically one stop shopping, you don’t need anybody else on the team, we have everybody from your accountants, and even if you’re investing from a different country, we have cross over specialists that help foreign investors navigate the US market, because obviously you’re going to have some tax things to deal with.

I mean, the IRS obviously wants a piece of it, so we help you minimize your taxes legally, and how to deal as a foreign investor so that you’re not getting double taxation. We have people from start to finish for everything from that to selling the properties to acquiring the properties, you name it, we take care of everything.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. And so, as an investor, what’s the average return after you net everything all out? Do you usually see, per property or how do you usually look at it, or what’s the best way to look at it?

Mike Wolf:                             It varies a little, but there’s a couple different ways we measure how you monetize something. So, right now, if somebody were to buy a place for cash in Atlanta, you’re going to net about 8% per year, so if you spent 100000, our homes start at around 100000, let’s say, so you’re gonna get around 8% after all the expenses, after you pay the property manager, after you pay property taxes after you pay insurance, all that stuff, you should net around 8%.

If you’re able to get financing, get in house financing. Obviously, the better your credit is, the cheaper that financing will be. That might push into the double digits, and then we have, actually, an exit strategy where we try to get the tenants to purchase the property from you. We have a program where we do what’s called a lease option, where we help the tenants. Most of our tenants are people that want that. Before the recession, used to own their own home, they lost it during the recession and they want to get back into home ownership, so we work with them to help them achieve that, and if these people exercise their options, they’ve got three years, investors are netting around 20% per year, which is pretty hard to duplicate.

You’re not going to get that in the stock market, you’re certainly not going to get it leaving it in your savings account, so that’s what we try to do, is we try to net 20%, and some markets you actually exceeded that, because sometimes we’re buying in markets where I’m either way under valued… it’s kind of like a rubber band. When market’s too far under valued, you stretch that rubber band, but it bounces back and it bounces back very quick.

Same with if you buy too high. When things are way too high, as we saw during the Recession, they come tumbling down very, very quick also. So, it’s a matter of knowing when to get in, when to get out, and that’s something over 27 years, I figured out, because back in the old days, I just happened to get lucky that I got in and I got out at the right time, but I couldn’t duplicate it.

So, now I’ve learned how do we do this, time, after time, after time, how do we invest safely, so if it takes longer to go up, all your investments are still sustainable, and how do you make money even if the market goes down? How do you make it so that money still keeps coming in?

When you’re able to make money in the down market, that’s really a sign of a sophisticated investor. Most people don’t know how to do that, but I’ve learned how to do that.

Josh Felber:                          And so, say I would just go do this myself. What are some strategies or key success points that would set me up for success to do this?

Mike Wolf:                             Yeah, the most important thing is one, a lot of people think that they have to invest close to home. Any business, I’ve done a lot of stuff besides real estate businesses, with any business, if you had a choice, I’ve got people that say, “It’s so much more convenient to invest in my own city.”

If you invest in your own city, the only advantage to that is if you’re trying to create a job for yourself. You’re planning on going collecting rent, you’re planning on dealing with fixing the homes, and that makes your business automatically not scalable because there’s only one of you. Once you get past a certain number of properties, your whole life is going to be surrounded around collecting rent at the end of the month and dealing with bad tenants.

The main thing is, one, don’t invest in your own backyard, just because to do it with any business, any entrepreneurial venture, never do things out of convenience, do things out of business sense. That’s number one.

So, imagine you lived in Antarctica, and McDonald’s approached you and said, “Hey, we have two potential McDonald’s. They’re both the same price. You can have one in Antarctica next door to your igloo, or you could have one in the middle of Times Square in New York,” which one are you going to pick?

If you had business sense, you’d pick the one in Times Square. If you have personal attachment to location, you’re going to pick the one next door to you, and you’re probably going to fail, so it’s all about picking. You want to pick the right market where it makes the most sense from a business standpoint, but then, assuming you’re not going to do it yourself, which you should not, because you’re not getting into entrepreneurship to be a slave to our business, we want the business to support us, then you have to have the right team.

The next step would be to build a really good team. If you’re just buying one or two properties, to go build your own team that’s going to be solid and good, it’s probably going to be really, really difficult. That’s where we come in, and that’s one of the big advantages is that we’ve already done all the heavy lifting for you, we’ve already built the team.

I’ll actually stand behind. We put a one year guarantee on the property, because we’ve fixed it up to a higher standard than when it was brand new, so there’s a lot of moving parts to try and do this yourself, and that’s one of the things I learned over the years, is that there was a time in my career where I was working literally 15 hour days, working on real estate all day long.

For a while, it was my passion and I actually love it, and then one day, I woke up, and it just seemed like everything was starting to go wrong. It just got too big, and all of a sudden, there’s one day where it just seemed like every single thing, every property, there was a tenant who owed me money, or this needed to be fixed, but the passion suddenly disappeared on day.

I said, “Okay, I can’t do this anymore.” And I was so focused on the business and being a workaholic, I didn’t have time to spend with my daughter, and I wasn’t paying attention to my health, I was just spiraling out of control. It became all encompassing. It took up every moment of my day.

And then I got smart and I started to put teams in place and systems in place, and I started to pull myself more and more out of the business, and as you know, nowadays, I spend most of my time doing things that are important to me. I love traveling, [inaudible 00:20:21], and also spending time with my grandson.

I’m gonna create as many memories as possible with my grandson. I got some time with my daughter, but there were lots of days where I would leave the home before the sun came up and I’d come home after the sun went down, and I’d go the whole day without seeing my daughter. And I made a commitment that’s not going to happen with my grandson.

So, I changed my business and instead of me having to support the business, it’s started to support me, and my money, now, makes me more money so it’s not about creating a job for myself. That’s one of the things I really encourage is [inaudible 00:21:01] whether it real estate or whatever your entrepreneurial venture is, don’t let it take up all your life. Start to [inaudible 00:21:07] and get other people in place.

Josh Felber:                          And so, I know, just for me and I’ve been through that experience. It was a whole thing. We were trying to sell one property, and I was like, “God, well let’s just rent it out.” Dealing with the headaches, you get somebody in there good and then all of a sudden they stop paying you. And it’s time consuming. Then you have to try to be able to get them out.

So, I’ve been those, I totally know. I like the turnkey solution.

Mike Wolf:                             Yeah, it’s a challenge. Even one property, even if it’s right next door to you, don’t-

Josh Felber:                          It was. Pretty much.

Mike Wolf:                             Yeah, to me, I think every single person should own real estate. I think everybody has to own it, but not everybody has to be a full time real estate investor to do it, and I think people should focus on what they’re passionate about, and for a small percentage of the population, yes, that could be your passion, and I love real estate, I love what it’s done for me. You’ve got the passion back now that I’m not spending 24/7 dealing with it.

So, everybody should own it, but not everybody should become an expert and going pound the payment trying to find deals, turning it into your job. Do the stuff that you love. One of the things I love to teach my students now is don’t focus on the money, focus on what makes you happy and what lights you up and what’s fulfilling to you, and do that stuff every day.

I’m not saying don’t focus on money. Make sure you can support your lifestyle and put systems in place and build something that feeds you while you’re doing these things, but that’s why I like volunteering, because it makes me happy. My currency went from money to, I measure things in terms of happiness. What makes me happy? And giving back makes me really happy, and spending time with my grandson makes me happy.

Chasing all those material things like I used to when I was younger, that doesn’t light me up at all anymore. I learned that the hard way.

Josh Felber:                          Definitely. And I know one thing from what we talked about previously, do you focus mostly on the single family homes, instead of multi-unit properties and things?

Mike Wolf:                             I do and I’ve done both. I’ve had apartments in the past, and there’s nothing wrong with apartments. You can do quite well with them, but everybody I know who does apartments, that’s become their job, their career. So, I don’t recommend that for most people unless you’re starting off with a pretty large sum of cash.

I love having single family homes. Warren Buffett as a matter of fact, he went on CNBC not too many years ago, and said if he had the man power, he’d buy several hundred thousand single family homes. And there’s good reason for that. That’s where that got hit the hardest in the recession in the United States. Some of the markets have come back, but if you look at some of the markets that haven’t come back yet, that’s where the big profits are going to be.

The other thing is, if you had a 100 unit apartment building, let’s say you have to go and put on a wedding for your daughter or something. Well, now you have to sell the entire thing to get money. If you have 100 single family homes, you can sell one and keep the other 99 and have them still working for you.

So, I think the big thing is that’s where the big appreciation is going to be in the next number of years. That’s where the biggest money is, and two, it’s easiest to delegate. It’s easiest to get other people to do all the work for you and when things go wrong, if you have 100 properties and you need a new roof on one, you’re going to be fine. If your 100 unit apartment building needs a roof, you better have a lot of money in reserve.

So, it’s a much different animal where you kind of have all your eggs in one basket. There are ways, absolutely, to do well with it, but unless you’re a professional at doing them, I wouldn’t start with that, I’ll put it that way.

Josh Felber:                          Okay. And along your journey, what was probably one of the biggest challenges you ran into? I know you lost the passion you were talking about earlier and everything, but what was one of those largest challenges that you didn’t know if you were going to be able to continue with this, whether it was financially, emotionally, mentally, whatever it may be, and then how’d you kind of overcome all that?

Mike Wolf:                             Right, yeah, I think the biggest challenge for me, like I said, I think entrepreneurs are visionaries and we get these little downloads into our brain, and it’s also off running and it’s our baby. One of the challenges is, we tend to be control freaks and we have a very hard time, if this is your baby, you can’t just hand off your baby to anybody, and so one of the challenges, is I just felt like I needed to do everything myself, because I thought if I hire somebody, they’re can’t possibly do it as well as I can.

I think there’s three phases of being an entrepreneur. The first phase is the solopreneur, where you do absolutely everything in your business, and we don’t delegate a single thing. The second phase is where you get to the point where I did, where all of a sudden, you just can’t handle anymore. You can’t go anymore unless you start to get other people in the business.

So, for me, I went from [inaudible 00:26:16] only in my own backyard, which was up in Canada at the time, and then I started to find some opportunities in Las Vegas. That was my second market, and I couldn’t collect rent in two cities at the same time, so I was forced to hire somebody to manage my properties in Vegas, and the main reason I want them to manage my properties, is you pay a property manager typically 10%, and I thought, “Why am I giving them 10%? I can just do this myself.”

So, what I started to realize is my property manager in Las Vegas, he was collecting a lot more rent at the end of the month than I was, because I’m a very heart centered type of entrepreneur. So, if a tenant says, “Hey, Mike, I don’t get paid until Friday, could you hold off?”

No problem. Whatever. We’ll wait until Friday. Well, they’re testing the waters. The first month, they might be a few days late, then the next month, they’re going to be a few weeks late. Before you know it, they’re a month or two behind, and then you have to evict them. By time you actually get your rent, it’s five or six months later.

So, anyway, the second phase is where you reluctantly hire somebody because you have to but micro-manage them to death. My property manager in Las Vegas, I told him I need to know everything that’s going on with my properties. And so he would call me, saying, “The fridge is broken at 123 Main Street. What should I do?” He knew what to do, but I forced him to call me. So, I was micromanaging him to death, and not once did I ever say, “Oh, don’t [inaudible 00:27:38] the fridge.” It’s hard to say an answer.

“See what it costs to replace it, if it’s more than a certain amount, then just put a new on in there.” I started to realize I’m giving him this, he’s calling me for these things, he knows exactly what he needs to do, yet I’m trying to tell him how to do his job.

That’s when you hit the third phase, where you realize, “If I have the right people in place and they’re experts in what they do, there’s no point in me trying to teach somebody how to do something they’re better at than I really am.” So, you go from micro-managing, then you get to that third phase where you actually get your freedom back.

I think most entrepreneurs go through these stages before they get successful. We all go through them, and I think the sooner that… now whenever I run a business, right off the bat [inaudible 00:28:26] real estate realm, I’ve owned a lot of different businesses, but by the way, before I ever get involved, I’m already thinking, right from the beginning, “How can I delegate this? How can I get other people, experts, in this business to run it?” I’m making my money work for me, but I’m not adding my time, I’m not trading my time for the dollars, I’m getting other people to do it.

And if I can’t immediately pull myself out of the business, they’re going on, but I’m not interested because I don’t measure it. I’m not going to measure it by the money, I measure it by is this going to make me happier? Is this going to enhance my life or is it going to add stress to my life? Is it going to make me happier or is it going to make me more miserable?

And if it’s going to make me money but it’s going to add stress, I don’t need that. So, I think the biggest challenge was learning that one, doing the work yourself means that you’re going to be very small, if you’re going to micromanage, you’re still trading your time for money, except that you’ve stopped doing the job and now you’re a babysitter, and now you’ve got the people on your team aren’t going to be happy, because you’re telling them how to do something they know how to do better than you.

So, it’s just getting to the mindset where it’s like, “Hey, there’s people way smarter than me,” and 99% of people are better at almost everything. I suck at almost everything. I’m good at a few things that [inaudible 00:29:45] way better than me at these things, and the sooner you realize that, that there’s other people that can help you and let them do their genius, and you step aside and do the things you’re good at and be the visionary in the business, but let other people do the things that they’re good at? That will let you get to the next level.

That one, I would say, is my biggest take away over these last 27 years. And then the other one is also getting out of your own way, and a lot of top entrepreneurs, we have these ideas but we don’t know how. We get so stuck in the how, and then all these negative things come into our mind.

“I can’t do this because, I can’t do this because, I can’t do this because.” There’s people who know how to get people to the moon, so all these things you don’t know how to do, somebody else knows how to do. So, step out of your own way and find the right people to get you from A to B, and dream really, really big, and then get other people to figure out the how’s for you.

Josh Felber:                          Nice. That’s awesome. And I think, as entrepreneurs, we all go through that. How do I give up that control, but that’s what you have to do to move it to the next level and to really put yourself in a better position for sure.

Mike Wolf:                             Absolutely so sure.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. Well, we only got a few minutes left. So, someone’s like, “Mike, I really love what you’re talking about. I want to find out what I can do to be a student with you and stuff,” where can they go find out more about you, Mike?

Mike Wolf:                             Their best bet is to just send me an email. Mike@mikewolfmastery.com, that’s wolf just like the animal, and I’m happy to give people free strategy session where we can, if they need help with real estate investing, I’m happy to help them with that, if they need help with anything entrepreneurial, like I said, I’ve had a number of very diverse businesses, and the thing that all these businesses have in common is when I got into them, they were all failing.

I don’t do startups, not even real estate. Never done a startup. I bought people’s failing businesses, brought in teams, people successful in those industries, to make them successful, and I just put my money to work for me, so I’m really good at fixing broken business, so if anybody’s stuck somewhere, I’m happy to give them some help and inspiration, and I love helping people and I love the entrepreneurial spirit and I love working with entrepreneurs, so they can email me and I’d be happy to get on a call with them for free.

Josh Felber:                          Cool, man, well, that’s awesome. That’s awesome, and I know you’re just so giving and sharing of information. It’s really always cool we get together and talk and just sit there and hang out.

Mike Wolf:                             I love it.

Josh Felber:                          Any last words you want to share with our audience before we go?

Mike Wolf:                             Yeah, just, I think the big thing is no matter what you’re doing, one, dream really big. Like I said, don’t worry about the how. You don’t have to know how you’re going to get there. Just think really big, imagine that you have no limits, and you really do, because there’s other people, like I said, that know all those things that you don’t know how to do it. You’re stuck on, so don’t let a website be holding you back, don’t try to figure out the stuff yourself. Just figure out what you want to do, be the visionary, and just think really, really big and then find the right people to help you get there.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. Well, Mike it was an honor to have you on Making Bank to be able to spend some time with you, share some information. I know it’s packed full of awesome content today, so thank you again for coming on Making Bank.

Mike Wolf:                             Thank you for having me. It’s great, as always, to see you buddy, and I’m sure we’ll be bumping into each other very soon.

Josh Felber:                          Definitely for sure.

I am Josh Felber. You are watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.