Rich Fettke 00:00
The only way to grow as an adventure sport athlete is to push it a little bit more and get a little bit better. Same thing in business. So I think that was natural. The Go for it. Entrepreneur like I’m just going to go for it. It’s going to work out. Belief, I already had that, but I needed to rein it in and manage it with discipline and structure. The more things you do that take discipline, the more discipline you become you physiologically change your brain. So keep becoming a more disciplined person, and it will transform your business. It’s an addiction, but everything’s an addiction, so it’s more of managing the addiction, being aware of it in all areas of life. I don’t want to retire. I want to be doing the same thing when I’m 80.
Brad Weimert 00:43
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad weimert, and as the founder of easy pay direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million rich vet key, it is amazing to see you. It has been entirely too long.
Rich Fettke 01:28
It has been too long. Great to see looking good. Brother, likewise.
Brad Weimert 01:32
Man, likewise. So you have competed at X Games. You have broken records for bungee jumping, which is weird as shit. Do all sorts of other extreme sports. You’ve been investing in real estate for decades. You’ve done a bunch of coaching, you’ve written some books. I have a million questions about all these things. But as a starting point, what is more exciting to you jumping off a bridge or entrepreneurship?
Rich Fettke 02:00
The bridge. I love entrepreneurship and stuff. It’s like, sometimes it’s really exciting, sometimes exciting because you don’t want it to be exciting. But I don’t know. I love the adrenaline, that feeling of adrenaline coursing through my veins. So I have to go with the bridge. What’s,
Brad Weimert 02:18
what are the parallels between jumping off a bridge and or rock climbing and investing in real estate or entrepreneurship.
Rich Fettke 02:25
I mean, so many you know, my first book that I wrote 22 years ago, published by Simon and Schuster, which was a pretty big win back then in my early 30s, was called extreme success. And extreme success was all about relating the principles of adventure sports, extreme sports, to business and life. And so there are so many carryovers between how to stay focused, how to be present in the moment, how to go into something that’s big and challenging, a big, important meeting, a big interview, and be able to fear management, adrenaline management there is, getting out of your comfort zone is a huge part of it. I think the only way to grow as an adventure sport athlete is to push yourself and push it a little bit more and get a little bit better. Same thing in business. So, so many parallels.
Brad Weimert 03:15
I mean, I’ve done, you know, a fair amount of adventure stuff. I’ve done some skydiving and a bunch of snowboarding and surfing and a bunch of rock climbing, etc, but I leaned into endurance over the years, over adventure, which was a really strange thing to me, because growing up, adventure seemed exciting, adrenaline seemed exciting, and endurance seemed boring as fuck. But the consistency behind endurance has tons of parallels in business as well. Where do you see misalignment between being an adrenaline junkie, if you would call yourself that, in business in general?
Rich Fettke 03:55
Yeah, it’s a great it’s a great question. It’s there’s something around it’s the do hard things, the so the the endurance things, I know that they bring this level of dopamine and this release of endorphins that lasts, you know, and it’s a healthy high. It’s a healthy addiction. And so it’s whatever it is, if it’s climbing a mountain or, you know, mountain biking up to the top of mountain, as opposed to taking the lift, right? It’s like you get a different it’s a different feeling. You get that from that. And what happens on a physiological level, that I think is amazing, is that you actually change your brain. You change your physiology of your brain. Whenever you do something that takes discipline and grit and you keep pushing, you’re physiologically changing your neural connections inside your brain, in that area of your brain that’s all around self discipline and willpower, and this has been researched. Kelly McGonigal does a lot of work on this, on her book willpower. She’s a Stanford professor, and it’s really you can change your brain and become a more discipline. And more willpower person by doing those hard things. So I think from the endurance, there’s a real healthy addiction to it, and it makes you better for the long run, for for the grit factor, for the discipline, for the which I think is one of the most important success factors, is being a more disciplined person, having more willpower. So I think it’s there. And then on the flip side of that, on more of the adrenaline, the quick rush and everything that’s a more you like, a more euphoria thing. It’s a overcoming something that’s scary. And then you’re like, Whoo, yeah, you know. So that’s like, going up and giving a keynote speech, or saying yes to something that’s really big and scary, that’s out of your comfort zone, and then you do it, and then on the other side of that, then, you know, I think Self confidence is confidence that you build for yourself, right? So when you do something like that, you’re like, Yeah, okay, cool. That’s That’s like me, that’s like me to do that, to push myself and to and I did it, and I came through on the other side. So they’re both awesome, just for different reasons.
Brad Weimert 06:02
So the, I like the, you know, the identity component of that. I think that establishing beliefs is one of the most difficult things to do in life. For me. Anyway, I have a very hard time with, well, you know, it’s interesting because the majority of the world, and it’s interesting to see this change also, but the majority of the world has some religious conviction, and the fundamental of religion is faith. And faith is having a belief without concrete evidence or concrete proof, I should say. And so people seem to have an easier time establishing beliefs than I do. But for me, it’s, it’s the it’s having enough data to suggest that this thing is going to be able to be duplicated. And that creates identity for me. And so endurance is like, Okay, I did it I did it again. I did it again. I can keep, keep doing this shit, you know, like, I’ve got a whole bunch of data points telling me I can do it. The the extreme stuff, the the adrenaline rich stuff, it’s like a, it seems more like a drug, which, you know, I’m not not a fan,
Rich Fettke 07:22
right? Yeah, exactly.
Brad Weimert 07:24
But I also find it to be sort of a liability in some capacity, in terms of conditioning my behaviors, where I Okay. I want, I want to, I want to. I want to find that next thing and chase that next high. Do you find that? Do you find that too? First of all, do you find that to be challenging in your life at all? This idea of chasing the next guy?
Rich Fettke 07:48
I learned a big lesson back in, I think it was 1994 where I was in this I’m invincible. I was the, you know, young guy. I was in my late 20s, and I just kept pushing it and pushing it. We were doing some crazy shit with, like, bungee jumping, where we’d like, hold on to the other person and they’re not strapped in, and you jump together and stretch down to the water and then let the person go into the water, you know, like, we just kept pushing it. And then we were filming something for ESPN, and we did this stupid stunt, and I ended up falling from 170 foot bridge, landed on my ass in the water. Had to get air lifted. I had to be rescued. Someone had to dive in and swim me to shore because I couldn’t swim. Had to get airlifted to a hospital. And lost a lot of blood from internal bleeding. And it was a close one. I really was coughing up blood and stuff, and it was a really close one where I could have died and that so that for me, was like, I was in that high of just like, I can do anything, I’m just going to be pushing it. What else can I do? What else can I do? And then when I almost lost my life, that’s when I was like, Okay, I gotta, I gotta rein it in. I gotta pay attention to this feeling when I have a little voice in my head saying, You shouldn’t do this, you got to listen to that voice a little bit, whereas before I just be like, ah, you know, Don’t be a wimp and just go for it. So I feel like I’ve got more management of that, that addiction,
Brad Weimert 09:16
but you still see it as an addiction.
Rich Fettke 09:19
Yeah, you know, it’s an it’s an addiction. But everything’s an addiction, right? It’s like, if you’re a committed entrepreneur, there’s an addiction in there. There’s an addiction about seeing your profits increase, seeing your revenue increase growing. If you’re a real estate investor, it’s how many more doors you can have, how much you can manage. It’s like, it’s, there’s an addiction there. So it’s more of managing the addiction, being aware of it in all areas of life. For me, you know, it’s just like, Okay, I know, I know that I like to have more than one glass of wine each night, but I’m not going to do it. I’m going to commit to it. I’m going to be like, Okay, I’m sticking I can have one glass of wine. And then, you know, except when I don’t, yeah, right, yeah. Around,
Brad Weimert 10:05
do you have any rules around those exceptions?
Rich Fettke 10:11
Um, yeah. I mean, like the, like, a glass of wine, I one of my rules is, like, if I’m having friends over, or I’m out or celebrating or something like that. I don’t have to manage if I’m going to a conference, I’m going to be hanging out with friends, people like you and stuff. I’m not going to say, Oh, nuts at one drink, you know? And that’s, that’s fine and so. And the reason I do that, and I have those rules, is because it keeps me in check from going too deep somewhere where, like, if I didn’t say, okay, my my cut off is one glass of wine. All of a sudden I find myself doing two or three. Then I was like, Okay, this is an addiction that’s starting to take over, starting to run me. And so I kind of have my measurements of everything. I guess
Brad Weimert 10:54
I find a tremendous amount of freedom and structure. So having a framework for me gives me this opportunity to let go of my neuroses and say, no, no, I’ve made a system for this already. I’ve got this framework and structure. I don’t need to think about it right now. It’s not a new decision I have to make. It’s already been made love it my mother. My mother likes to say, listen to your body and you know, if you’re doing intense physical stuff, that is usually the last thing that you want to do. You know, you want to fucking zone out and not think about it at all in those situations, the flip side of that back to kind of your acute I almost lost my life parallel. At some point, you have to listen to your body, right? You can say, hey, I’m invincible, or hey, it doesn’t matter if my body hurts. I’m pushing through anyway. And at some point, there’s got to be something in there that says, until now, right? This is the limit. This is the end. It’s it’s time to turn it off
Rich Fettke 12:03
personally, as I haven’t talked about this before, but I call it my 80% rule. And my 80% rule means, am I pushing myself beyond 80% and what I used to do is be like all out, 100% 110% so now it’s like the risk I’m standing on a cornice, on my skis, and I’m looking over. I’m like, is this beyond 80% of my ability? Is this beyond 80% of my limits? And if it’s like, under 80% I’m like, Yeah, I’ll Huck myself. But if not, then not now, I have that, that inner voice and that structure of, like, No, this feels like more than 80% really, like checking in with myself. I’ll turn around and I’ll go down a different slope so that that’s how I handle it.
Brad Weimert 12:47
I like, I like that. 80 seems far enough way from the edge that you’re not going to risk death,
Rich Fettke 12:54
mostly, right? But it’s enough to get some adrenaline. Yeah, yep, it’s funny. I was just talking to my wife yesterday about it. I’m like, Yeah, I need, I need to go to my 80% you know, I’ve been missing that, and I need a little fix.
Brad Weimert 13:08
Yeah, I feel, yeah, okay. So I want to get into business stuff. I really just want to talk about adventure stuff all day. But I do want to draw parallels to business. And I think, you know, I can’t remember. I think before we had started, yeah, you were telling me about a book that you wrote extreme success that was about the parallels between adventure and business. I think it’s one of the most interesting things in my life, is to draw those parallels, because people that aren’t involved in the adventure stuff or endurance find it fascinating, and it seems so logical to me. Why don’t we walk into kind of the bridge between this life where you were competing in the X Games, jumping off bridges while holding a friend who was not attached to anything, and then dropping them in the river while you bounce back up. And how that led into business? Because usually people that are doing that shit in their 20s are little bit crazy and don’t have much else going on from a business perspective.
Rich Fettke 14:23
Yeah, that’s so interesting. I’ll go back a little bit before that, I was diagnosed with hyperkinetic disorder when I was eight years old, and this is before they had term ADHD. So I was put on Ritalin, basically. So I had ADHD tested at Massachusetts General Hospital, put on Ritalin. Was a lousy student, always getting D’s and F’s, getting in trouble at school. Didn’t even graduate with my high school class. Had to go back to summer school, so I and I used to get all these reports, sent home, disciplinary reports, and my mom saved. Them so and she sent them to me a few years ago. And they say, lacks what it takes to succeed with a check next to it. It’s amazing what they would do back there in the early 80s, you know, lacks what it takes to succeed. So, yeah, it’s like, you know, putting classes for the learning disabled. So my my inner talk was, I’m stupid. I can’t focus. I’m never gonna amount to anything. I lack what it takes to succeed. But it was I was bullied in my senior year of high school, so I started to lift weights. I started to do martial arts to defend myself. This guy used to pound on me every day in gym class, and then that was in junior and then a senior year, I came back after that summer of training, this guy comes up to me, and he’s all nice, Hey, what’s up? Fetch, you’re looking good. It’s all nice to me, but it the reason I share that is because it was the weight lifting that completely transformed my life. It took this unfocused, undisciplined guy and taught him discipline and focus and goal setting and progress and all that shifted. And I was like, Whoa, this is like, I’m a new person identity. Thing you talked about earlier. It shifted my identity as I can do what I say, I will do, I’ll focus. I can focus and follow through and look at the results of it. And I was transforming my body and my strength. And so I started to apply those same lessons to my educational goals. I went into I went to community college, did really well there, went on to business school, and all this started to add up. So it was this instant, instant, like discipline, not instant, but this discipline, that really transformed me. And I became very structured, like you were saying, everything became structured. I came I started to set goals. I started to do personal development, listening to audio cassettes back then, and became obsessed with it. So that was what transformed me, business wise. Then I opened the health club when I was 23 years old, and that transformed me as a business person, as an entrepreneur, running a team going from, you know, three business partners or two other business partners, and then eventually having 23 employees, expanding our facility, all these things changed my identity. So the adventure sports and the adrenaline, I think, I mean, I’ve always had that. Honestly, I’ve always had that since a little kid climbing a tree as high as I could, dangling from one hand just to feel that rush and, you know, all these different things. So I’ve always had that. So this is more of a I think it’s discipline that has helped me, business wise, more than than the rush. I think that was natural. The Go for it. Entrepreneur like, I’m just going to go for it. It’s going to work out. Belief, I already had that, but I needed to rein it in and manage it with discipline and structure. And that’s what I got from from the weight training.
Brad Weimert 17:52
That’s awesome. I think that’s, I mean, that’s also unusual. My most people that I know that are chasing adrenaline, and I think this is different than the endurance folks out there, but the adrenaline folks out there, I know a whole bunch of people that are sort of like they were going down your path, but didn’t find weight lifting, and school rejected them, and they went somewhere else to find the thrill, entertainment, excitement, and in some of them fucking destroyed, you know, like high high performing snowboarders, skiers, you know, pick an extreme bikers, whatever. And that’s where they found their discipline and focus. But they, but that was it, right? And that was like they found this one vehicle.
Rich Fettke 18:43
Yeah, my friends like that who are dead now,
Brad Weimert 18:47
sad, not funny, but yes, I mean that that is the, yeah, right, that’s, that’s the risk, right? Crazy, so on the side, while you were building the health club and the gym, you were really, like, really pushing it with the bungee jumping and X Games. How did you balance that?
Rich Fettke 19:11
There’s something about that adrenaline rush and looking forward to something and pushing the limits that reduces the drama in your life. And it sounds weird, but it’s like when people are not getting that type of fix, when they’re not getting out of their comfort zone and not feeling some adrenaline, I believe now I’ve seen this in my coaching clients, is they start to create drama in their life. Other ways, they start to get in relationship challenges. They start to find ways to create drama and over exaggerate some things, and it makes them less focused and less present and overwhelmed. So for me, that the balance of it was there was this discipline part of me that like helped me really keep moving and improving the business. And at the same time, I. Was getting my fix for the adrenaline, which kept my life fairly drama free. And it’s like, it’s like the old stoic mindset, you know, whatever happened on the outside, I didn’t let let affect my inside, in my thinking. So I think that was the benefit, looking back on it. I think that was the big benefit of the adventures and pushing it. You know, I
Brad Weimert 20:23
hear that a lot. I hear this idea of Joe Rogan likes to say that getting in the cold plunge in the morning and getting a fucking really hard workout in in the morning makes everything else easier in the day. I don’t identify with that. And I think in looking back on things, it’s easier to put the dots together right in your 20s. Did you feel like that was the escape that made the normal entrepreneurial life more easy to manage? Or is this a reflective proposition at this point,
Rich Fettke 20:57
retrospect 100% No, back then, it was just like, it’s like, looking forward to anything, you know? It’s like, Oh, I’ve got that great movie I’m going to this weekend or something. And so you get excited about you do it, just because it feels good and because you want to do it. So for me, back then, it was just like, oh, yeah, let’s go mountain biking this Saturday, you know, or let’s go out climbing. Or I, that’s when I started skydiving back then too. Yeah. So it was always just kind of like chasing the chasing the rush
Brad Weimert 21:27
wild, and now you are 60. How has your approach to adventure and endurance changed? If at all? Well, hmm, I
Rich Fettke 21:46
mean, I got the 80% rule. So that’s that’s changed since I was in, you know, back then, and I stick to that most of the time. I would say the only thing was, you know, a couple years ago, I was hitting the moguls too hard, and herniated my l4 and l5 vertebrae and discs, and so that really messed me up. It wiped me out for two ski seasons so many things, it couldn’t surf. It was, it was really it was really hard. It was really hard, definitely challenging emotionally and all that. I tried to not let it get to me, but it really, it was tough. So now I’m on the other side of that. I’m healing. I’ve been doing spinal decompression, but I think that’s that would be the only thing as far as the age, it’s just like, oh, okay, it isn’t. My mind hasn’t changed, but I have to accept the fact that my body has changed a little bit. I don’t want to, but, you know, two torn rotator cuffs and the herniated discs and all this stuff. It’s like, I can’t just like, I Kathy got me a one wheel for my 60th birthday, one of those electronic kind of, like skateboards with the one wheel on it. They go fast, and they’re they’re crazy, they’re wild. And it’s like I noticed that when I’m on it, whereas before, when I used to skateboard, I could, I could eat it and just roll and, you know, and take some skin off my elbows and all that stuff, and hop up and be like, Oh, that was cool. Now, it’s like I realized when I’m riding on the wind wheel. It’s like I actually feel this hesitation in this holding back is as I don’t want to, I don’t want to fall and roll. So, yeah, that’s the biggest limitation, which sucks. That’s the one thing I don’t like about getting old. Everything else is fine
Brad Weimert 23:33
in business and in lots of areas of life, if a mistake hurts enough, a lot of people just stop doing that shit. That’s true. Is there a, you know, two herniated discs that knocks you out for two years from doing a whole bunch of stuff you love? What’s the point of making enough mistakes or having enough injuries where you say it isn’t worth it to do the adventure and endurance stuff,
Rich Fettke 24:03
nothing. I mean, I do it in a wheelchair. You know, I’d be one of those. You know, I forget what they call them when the athletes sit, what’s that call when you’re I forget sometime, until, like, a modified athlete, or something like that, I do that. But I’ve always thought that way, you know, if I lost my legs, I had a friend who lost his leg in a car accident, and like, he was still doing rad stuff. So I don’t know, just it’s mellowed me out a little bit. It’s, you know, forced me to mellow out of us. So I’m not gonna stop it, but I’m not gonna mogul ski anymore. I’m not gonna pound the moguls like I used to growing up in the Boston area. You know, it’s like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna either do groomers or powder, hopefully more powder. So just kind of modify,
Brad Weimert 24:48
well, moguls are stupid anyway, specifically in Boston, Rich, I don’t know what you’re doing.
Rich Fettke 24:53
Yes, they are. No, I know that’s kind of all we had sometimes. So learn to, learn to do it and act about it. It, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. That hurt even back then,
Brad Weimert 25:04
yes. Are there any mistakes that you made in business that had made you correct course entirely?
Rich Fettke 25:12
Oh, yeah, 100% one of the big ones is not getting agreements in writing. I’ve done that several times where I’ve been partnered up with someone, or you do a deal with someone in real estate, and you just like, because you’re friends, you just like, oh, it’s gonna work out, and then we’re gonna do this, and you talk about it, but you don’t get into writing. And I had my old girlfriend’s dad was an attorney, and he helped me draft up a partnership agreement once, and he said written agreements prevent disagreements. And that stuck with me ever since I put it in my new book, scaling smart and written just a whole section on that written agreements prevent disagreements, because I’ve seen so many people do that in business, so many friends and my even our daughter. You know, it’s just like get a written agreement, because then a few months from now, or a few years from now, when things are done, you’re like, you’re selling this investment, or you’re wanting to exit the business, you can pull this document out and say, hey, look, we both agreed on this in writing. We signed it, and that prevents a disagreement. It just it is what it is. So that that was a huge lesson for me, that’s stuck. And then, honestly, just like, especially with real estate and business, is just due diligence. So it’s so easy to be I’m a natural optimist. I look for the good in everything, which can sometimes be detrimental, because it’s like, oh, this is going to work out. I only look at the best case scenario. So that has kind of burned me in business sometimes where I’m just like, over trust someone. Just trust them on what they’re saying without doing a lot of due diligence. So that’s been a big lesson. I’ve lost hundreds of 1000s of dollars because I’m not following that lesson.
Brad Weimert 26:55
Yeah, I am more of a pessimist by nature. I think
Rich Fettke 27:02
it could be helpful.
Brad Weimert 27:03
I don’t know if I’m a pessimist. I’m a skeptic, like I’m always kind of looking at the I’m a I like to say I’m a verify then trust person. Show me evidence, show me that you can do it. Show me that it works. And once I have validated that, once I can verify it, then I’ll trust it to the contract point. I really think that most of life is driven by appropriate expectation setting, and even if the expectations are low, aligned, expectations produce happiness in good relationships.
Rich Fettke 27:41
I love that love.
Brad Weimert 27:44
I don’t think there’s any debate or dispute that McDonald’s is shitty food, but everybody is incredibly clear on what they’re getting when they go there. That’s true. Result is that that aligned expectation produces raving fans because they know exactly what they’re getting wherever in the world. You know, at whatever time of day, expectations are met. 100%
Rich Fettke 28:08
Yep, they are meeting the standard American diet. They’re great at that and the taste and the size and then, yeah, consistency, yep.
Brad Weimert 28:19
So, all right, I want to talk some overarching stuff here. You do a bunch of real estate investing. You have a business that teaches people how to invest in real estate independently. You do some coaching. You’ve written a bunch of books. Give me an idea today, in 2024 what the distribution of time is for you. How do you manage those things? How do they work together? What is sort of your portfolio of business activity look like?
Rich Fettke 28:46
I am finally at a place where I have created a self managing business. So our company real wealth. The main thing we do, and have been doing since 2003 is we help people acquire single family properties for their rental portfolios. So we have teams around the country with vetted properties, either rehabbed or brand new builds, with property management in place. So we work with busy professionals who want to add real estate to their portfolio. They want to diversify. They want hard assets. They want the cash flow, the appreciation, all that good stuff. So that’s what our business does. I’m the broker in the business, so I kind of oversee the whole thing. But I have an amazing team. We have an amazing team at real wealth that small company, like 25 employees, maybe about 1010, to 12 independent contractors who work for us. But our team is so good that they now, and thanks to, you know, years of empowerment and giving them autonomy and all that, and we’re 100% remote company, they run the business. So my involvement there is, I do an annual meeting with our leadership team, with the five of us get together. We usually get together at my house here and now. Abu, we spend two days together. We have a business coach leading us through it. We set our priorities and our goals for the year. Set everything in, you know, in that, in our meeting for the year. And then we do weekly leadership meetings. So I’m on those. So my week looks like me doing a meeting with my executive assistant a couple times a week, just checking in on what’s going on people who’ve reached out to me. Then I do a 90 minute meeting with my leadership team. We’re looking at how we doing on our goals that we set for the year and the quarter. And then every quarter we get together and we do a full day with our coach on how are we doing toward our annual goals, and then we follow that the next day with a kind of like setting our rocks and our goals for that next quarter. So that’s my main involvement in the business. There, mostly it is. It’s those meetings, and it’s a 90 minute meeting each week with the leadership team.
Brad Weimert 30:59
All right, so that one that sounds like you’re roughly following EOS as a framework.
Rich Fettke 31:04
100, yeah, yeah. We started with EOS back in 2015, 2016 I read traction, and was blown away. We implemented EOS. It works so well for us. We hired an EOS implementer. That’s our business coach now and then over time, he he left EOS and went off on his own with a group called pinnacle. And they bring in other modalities and other business experts like Jim Collins work and Vern Harnish and Patrick Lencioni, brings all this stuff in. So then what we’ve created, instead of Eos, now we have our W, O, S, the real wealth operating system. So we’ve kind of customized our approach to everything. But I would say it’s, it’s a solid 80% Eos, which EOS is a solid 80% Jim Collins, Vern Harnish, right,
Brad Weimert 31:54
sure. Yeah. I think, I think with most things, it’s more important to have a system than to worry about what system it is that
Rich Fettke 32:02
you’re running. Yeah, yeah, you need a business operating system.
Brad Weimert 32:05
You really do, and I don’t, I mean, you need a framework to do almost all things in life, or at least that’s the way that you’re really going to be able to hone them and get some reliability. For all the entrepreneurs that I know that run off EOS roughly zero do it exactly as EOS describes, right? Everybody has some permutation, some additive, some subtractive element. That’s like, hey, this doesn’t work for me. Or I think I can do it differently or better, or whatever.
Rich Fettke 32:34
I think the important thing is to honestly, I think to do it to the T, you know, decide to to use EOS exactly as it’s prescribed. And do that for a year. We did it for probably three years, and then you can start to come back and just say, Oh, I’m gonna, we’re gonna modify this. But just the reason I say this because I’ve seen people kind of take EOS and kind of do EOS light, and they’ll kind of like, well, we don’t really like the level 10 meeting structure, so we just kind of do our own meetings and and their meetings are not as effective. So I think it’s honestly, I think it’s important to whatever operating system you use, use that operating system as designed and then modify it over time. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 33:18
I think that that’s a a good approach to most things. When we bring on new salespeople, we force them to use our scripts. And the narrative that I give them is look six months from now, if you want to modify the script that we have to have something that you think works better and you want to test it. I’m all for it, but right now, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what the words are. You are not capable. You don’t have enough context to make a choice as to whether or not this element is actually the right thing to be doing. So until you have enough context, you don’t get to make those choices.
Rich Fettke 33:56
That’s awesome. Yeah, 100% that’s great. So
Brad Weimert 34:00
I really like that. That frame from EOS, give me an idea of, first off, how do you make money with that business? Because the, you know, we work with easy pay direct works with a ton of real estate education companies, but the way that you just framed it, I think that you have some education component. But it sounds like you it’s a lot of moving actual property as well.
Rich Fettke 34:21
It is, that is exactly where we make money. We from day one in 2003 we put a flag in the ground and said, We are the anti guru. We are not going to do this. You know, go to this RIA clubs. It’s my wife, Kathy. Used to go to these RIA clubs. And they would have a speaker come in, and they’d do the big pitch, and they like today, only 50% off, run to the back of the room, and it was this outdated system that didn’t even work in those those times, those years, and she would come home being like, oh my god, it disgust me. What? What’s happening at these things? So we decided, as partly why we called it real wealth, which is about, let’s keep it real. So from the beginning, we gave everything away for free. We’ve produced a. For 1000 free webinars, educational webinars, our investment counselors meet with our clients for free. The way we monetize it is we are a regular real estate brokerage, so as a broker, I can refer clients to other brokers in different states and get a broker to broker referral fee so it doesn’t cost our clients, our members anything more for a property. It’s not like they’re going to go and find this property from a different broker at a lower cost. The broker pays us a referral fee, you know, typical, you know, three, 4% of the purchase price, like any other broker, and that’s how we do it. And we’ve helped investors acquire over 7000 properties so to date. So that adds up, and we also syndicate. So we also do ground up residential development syndications. We partner up with a with a developer, and we’ll do a group investment where people will, you know, be limited partners, and invest in that syndication and share the profits.
Brad Weimert 35:59
And that came later, I would assume
Rich Fettke 36:00
now that came in 2009 Yeah, okay.
Brad Weimert 36:03
And so for anybody that’s, I talk about real estate quite a bit on beyond a million, but the I do that because it’s a great vehicle and and there’s so much to know. But syndications as a reminder from it doesn’t know, you know you are partnering with a developer that either has their own deal or you founded the deal, and then you’re raising money, and you have a captive audience of real estate investors who are your clients already. So you can say, hey, I’ve got this big deal, and here are the terms if you want to invest in it, and you can put in a portion of the money, and then we will run the investment project for you, and you just get to benefit. And obviously you don’t make as much as if you’re a general partner, but you get some return on it. That is, you know, pre structured
Rich Fettke 36:50
can be really good, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it’s comes in a 30% and you can get these really good returns and and it’s 100% passive, you know, that’s right, that’s a huge thing. That
Brad Weimert 36:59
would be the big difference between being a limited partner like that and doing it yourself. So okay, love that. What’s the, what’s the size and scope of the business? Now, you said 3025, people with plus 10 contractors. What? How many properties are you working with on an annual basis? What’s revenue like we
Rich Fettke 37:21
have, we have, I think, 18 different property teams in 18 different markets around the country. Now, God, let’s see revenue right around. I mean, it depends. If we look at just that, let’s just look at the single family side of things, and that’s one to four units and everything, so that that’s right around 4 million annually in revenue and not a lot of overhead, which is nice. We don’t have to buy the properties. And so it’s a, it’s definitely a profitable business venture, the profitable way to do it. But, you know, we never, our goal has always been to kind of be the small giant, you know, not to be the 100 million dollar company and 500 employees, everything like that. And lifestyle is more important to us. And that’s the way Kathy and I invest too, like our real estate portfolio is not focused on you go to these real estate conferences, and the main question people come up and say, you know, how many doors do you have? And what Kathy will respond to is like, does that really matter? Why do you ask? Because I think what’s more important, what I want to know is, how much free time do you have, how much help can you live the lifestyle you want? And how is that working out? So that’s kind of been our focus as real estate investors, is where we’re not in the grind where we have the time to live life on our own terms, to spend time with our kids and our grandkids, to get out and do some adventure sports so that that’s that’s more important to us.
Brad Weimert 38:52
Yeah, I feel you. I think that I love asking people about this stuff. For a very long time, I would kind of refuse to tell people what I did. People, you know, you go to a place, and people like, Oh, what do you do? And I just hated that. And I think part of it was that I feel like I do a lot of shit, and so I would respond with, I do a lot of rock climbing, or I do a lot of running, and I would go down that path. But I think a much more interesting question is, how do you spend your time and to you well, how do you spend your time? Rich?
Rich Fettke 39:36
Sometimes it’s creative projects, you know, which I love. You know, having our team being running the business. It allows me to do interviews like this, to be a brand ambassador, to write books, to speak at conferences, you know. So that’s professionally, that’s my main focus. Personally, it is working out every day, staying healthy. It’s spending time. I’m with my wife, doing fun things, going on ski trips, and we recently just built a house in Park City, so going up there and spending time there and skiing and mountain biking and hiking. So, you know, getting outside is really, really important to me, so I try to do that as much as possible with the people I love.
Brad Weimert 40:18
Are you in one of those stupid neighborhoods, or can I snowboard there too?
Rich Fettke 40:25
No, it’s a smart neighborhood. It’s right next door to Woodward. Have you heard of Woodward? No, adventure sport a Woodward. They have, I think, like six facilities around the country. That’s where the US Ski and Snowboard Freestyle team trains. So literally, you can, you can just, you can just clip into your board, drop down our hill and drop into Woodward. And they have a lift. They have a massive half pipe and jumps and everything in the winter, which is awesome. And it’s, they’re agnostic, so you can be a skier or snowboarder, yeah, and and then in the summer, it’s mountain biking, downhill Lift service, mountain biking. So it’s pretty awesome. It’s freaking love it up there.
Brad Weimert 41:03
That’s amazing. I’ve got a got some buddies that have places in Deer Valley, and I hate them because I go hang out there, and it’s like, it’s awesome to esthetically, and it’s a total waste of time because I can’t do anything there. Yeah, it’s
Rich Fettke 41:17
so racist. Yeah. You know it’s funny is I go hell to skiing with my friends, and we always have, like, a 5050, split. Half of us are skiers, half of us are snowboarders. You know? Yep, I grew up a skier, so I’m always on the sticks.
Brad Weimert 41:34
Yeah, there’s a there’s a divide there for sure. Okay, so tell me about the real estate investing side today. So you built this business helping people invest in real estate. How much time do you spend actually investing versus building the business itself? Obviously, those are two different businesses, right? You’ve got a real estate investment portfolio, and then you have the business of real wealth. But where’s the time distribution there? And how do you think about sort of allocating funds towards your own real estate projects?
Rich Fettke 42:06
I would say, honestly, it’s, it’s probably about 10 hours a week on each and not so much in the meetings and everything, but with the real wealth and the team and everything, one thing I do every day in the morning is, I call it my CEO review. So I’m looking at the dashboard, I’m looking at our numbers, I’m looking how things are working. I’m kind of like, just click and go into our website and pretending I’m a brand new visitor to give input and feedback to the team. It’s like, this seems confusing or whatever, so I’m still obsessed in that. So that’s, you know, a few hours a week. Or, you know, every day I’m putting some time in just to kind of review things and see where I keep my finger on the on the heartbeat of the pulse of the business, if you will. And then our own personal real estate is about the same thing. It’s probably about 10 hours a week, and that is mostly in the tracking the management getting back to property managers right now, my big goal for this quarter is getting everything structured and just completely dialed in with our whole kind of trifecta, as our tax attorney calls it, but all of our different entities all structured in the right way, feeding it to the trust, you know, going into an S corp, going, you know, making sure that every property has got its own LLC, and just a whole bunch of things like that, which, you know, it’s a, it’s a pain in the ass. It takes a lot of work and a lot of focus, but it, you know, and it takes a lot of time, but at the same time, it’s like, it’s the only way to do it, you know, or else you’re going to be paying so much in taxes, and also, if I was to, you know, push it over 80% and leave this worth, leave this earth, I wouldn’t want my daughters to have to deal with a whole, you know, shit show of stuff after I’m gone. So it’s getting everything dialed in to make sure that everything is all an easy transition. I want
Brad Weimert 43:57
to ask you about the trust, but before I do you said you spend an hour a day in CEO land reviewing things?
Rich Fettke 44:04
Yeah, I time block it on my calendar in the morning, and it’s that’s literally what says CEO review. And I have it a recurring event, and that is just pulling out, just a hanging folder of some of our numbers, our recent things. It’s also like reviewing what were those big goals for the year that we set? How we doing with those I’ll log into we use something called 90, which is basically, it’s a kind of an Eos software that I’d highly recommend if someone’s running on EOS. To check out ninety.io it’s spelled out, n, i, n, e, t, y. So in there we have a dashboard, a scorecard of all of our numbers and what’s tracking, what’s working, what’s not. So that might be part of my morning CEO review. Sometimes it might be just be doing a brainstorm, thinking, you know, Keith Cunningham type thing, where it’s like just thinking time, where I just sit there and like you. What would take our business to the next level? And just that’s the question, you know, or another warning might be, how can we better serve our customers? What do they need? What do they want? How can we be better to them? And I’ll just spend an hour just journaling that, thinking of ideas, doing some research. So it varies, but you know, usually something like that. One of those sessions happens every, every weekday.
Brad Weimert 45:25
I have a I have a friend in Austin, Tucker Max, and he told me that he’s a terrible manager. And I was like, Oh, why is that? He was like, Well, I do see all management. And I was like, What do you mean? So? Well, I just fly in and I shit all over people, and then I leave.
Rich Fettke 45:39
Oh, man, wow. And
Brad Weimert 45:42
I thought that’s interesting, and I could totally relate to that. When I think about your CEO review, I think about the time that I spend doing stuff like that, and I I am a quick action taker, right? So I see a problem, I want to action something to try to resolve it. Those CEO reviews could quickly spin into Siegel management, where you’re just like, hey, all this shits all fucked up, and then you just start dropping it on people. How do you not do that? Or do you do that? And what are your actions after your CEO time, your CEO review? That’s
Rich Fettke 46:19
great. I mean, I have my own coach. I’ve had my own coach since 1996 when I started to get into coaching and got certified. Not the same coach, but different coaches over the years. And this coach I’ve been with as long as I’ve known you. It’s like 15 years. It’s wild. I have him ask me a question whenever we talk, and it’s like on a scale of zero to 10, how much are you being a worker or a manager versus being a leader. And so a leader would be like, I’m a 10. I’ve been a leader. So if I start to slip down, I’m like, I’m like, a five means that I’m starting to micromanage. I’m starting to get in and do work myself. So my goal, my constant goal, is to be a leader. And so that means is a great book called multipliers. I think the subtitle is how the best leaders make everyone smarter. And that book was very impactful for me and my mindset around empowering people. And instead of looking over their shoulder, instead of trying to manage them and tell them what to do or anything. It’s give them the challenge, give them the goal, and say, here’s the goal, you know. Do you need anything from me? And they’re usually it’s like, Nope, we don’t want any help, you know. And we’re going to make this happen. And then it’s just a check in I do every quarter. I do a hour to 90 minute call with each leader on our team and get feedback from them. How did it go this quarter? What worked? What didn’t work? Let’s look at your numbers and all that. So I really try to focus on being a leader of leaders, rather than being a manager or a CEO, who’s, you know, a true CEO. I think the most important thing you can do as a CEO is having effective conversations. That’s it just boils down to that effective conversations, it’s like, if you’re if you’re in there working, doing tasks and, you know, trying to get things done, you’re not being effective CEO. If you’re having effective conversations with the leaders in your company, with other people like you and me right here having an effective conversation. I think that’s your that’s what we’re paid for.
Brad Weimert 48:26
What’s the delineation between a good manager and a good leader?
Rich Fettke 48:33
Off top of my head, a good leader empowers other people. They inspire them, they lift them up, they share the vision, and they let them have autonomy, I think a good manager, which is also needed. We have managers at real wealth. They are the people who are tracking projects, holding people accountable, making sure that shit gets done, the follow through. It’s and it’s a it’s a daily thing, so they’re constantly checking in. They’re having their team meeting as their team huddles. So I see that as a manager, which really hands on where as a leader, is more about sharing the vision, sharing the goals, inspiring the team and holding them accountable on a less regular basis. Maybe that’s weekly, in their in their meeting. Maybe it’s each quarter looking at the results.
Brad Weimert 49:23
Did you with your team? Did you progress out to quarterly check ins with your leaders after you’d established their capability? Or did you say, Hey, we’re bringing you in as a leader? I’ll talk to you in three months.
Rich Fettke 49:39
The first, the first, absolutely, yeah. So I did Strategic Coach back, and I think it was 2014 Dan Sullivan, 14. 2015 Yeah. Dan Sullivan, Strategic Coach. I did two years there, and that is where the concept of a self managing company, he calls it, was like mind blowing for me. I’m like, Whoa. You could actually, I love his line. He says, I never want to retire. I only want to retire from the things I don’t like doing. And to me, that was like, Oh, I love this. So that’s when I set out to create a self management it’s been, what, nine years now, it’s wild. That’s when I want a self managing company. So it was a progressive thing. It was prying things out of my hands, of like, Stop doing this work rich. So, you know, one of the things he has you do, they have you doing strategic coaches. You create an activity inventory. You write all the things down that you do, and you do that for a week or two, and then you look at that list and say, what are the things that are my unique ability? What am I great at? What do I love doing, and what is the highest impact of my time in this business that’s going to be good for the company? And then you start to eliminate all the other things. You focus only on, the things that you love doing, that you love learning, that you’re really good at, and under the biggest impact for the company. And so that took me, probably, honestly, that’s probably took me four or five years to get to a place where I was really using my unique ability more than being a worker,
Brad Weimert 51:10
where is your level of enjoyment in the business today versus when you were first learning that stuff?
Rich Fettke 51:20
It’s like, 10x as far as enjoyment. Yeah, it’s like I back then I always felt behind. I felt like there was so many things that I couldn’t get to that the to do list I would handle one thing and two things would land on a to do list. So I was always feeling overwhelmed, like there wasn’t enough time. And now I feel like I’ve really learned delegation, proper delegation, and I have the right team to delegate to which you know that I think that’s an art in itself, is rather putting putting together the right team with the right people, which means firing people when when needed, letting people go, putting people in the right seats. So, yeah, my enjoyments way more. I love it. I love my work. And it’s like, now I don’t want to retire. I want to be doing the same thing when I’m 80. You know, 90,
Brad Weimert 52:15
yeah, well as as Dan Sullivan is, yeah, exactly, can’t remember how old is he? I think he’s like 83 though. Is
Rich Fettke 52:24
he up there? Yeah, yeah, he’s getting up there, yeah. Works, works out like a madman, and super positive. And has tons of free days, as he calls him, or he gets to, you know, just do whatever he wants. And, yeah, you know. And it’s like Richard Branson is similar, you know, look how many companies he’s runs, and he’s having a great time doing it, and he’s an older dude, but gets out and snowboards and, yeah, those are the inspiring people to me. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 52:51
yeah, that’s wild, awesome, man. Well, tell me about scaling smart. Tell me about the new book, and actually tell me about all of them, because I know you’ve written a few, and the first one was a long time ago that I want to go read, because it’s in my wheelhouse, which is extreme success, the lessons from extreme sports and business and how they intersect. What are the other ones? Yeah, so,
Rich Fettke 53:17
and then I went for a long time. It’s funny, because my coach, I had sent him that book when we first started coaching, and so almost every coaching session, he’s like, when are you gonna write your next book? You know, I’d come up with an idea, and he’d be like, you gotta put that in your next book. And I’m like, No, I wrote my book. That’s good. And but then it was we started using story branding at real wealth several years ago from Don Miller, and kind of like the whole hero’s journey. How can you tell the story of your company and have your customers be the hero in the story? You’re just simply their guide? And that turned me on to storytelling and the hero’s journey and Joseph Campbell’s work. And once my coach said that, when you’re going to write your next book, and I’m like, you know, I’ve been thinking about that, if I was going to write a book, I think I’d want to write a story, a parable. So the wise investor, which is on the shelf behind me, came out two years ago through Rich Dad advisors. I was my good friend. Kenny McElroy connected me with them. He’s a rich dad advisor. And so that book is a parable. It has the protagonist and a mentor, and it’s about this kind of a 40 something family man who is trying to climb the corporate ladder, but he has no time for his life or his wife or his kids or to be in shape or to do anything. And then he meets this wise mentor who shows him how to create financial freedom, and he learns so much more from him about how to be wealthy in so many ways. So that’s the wise investor. Really fun parable. It was just, I loved writing the story. It was super cool. And loved narrating it honestly too. It was like 10 different character voices that I had to narrate and learn how to do that. So really fun one. Yeah, I didn’t know how it was gonna land, but the views on. Yeah, it’s got 4.9 for the for the delivery on on Audible, as far as stars. So pretty stoked on that. That’s grateful.
Brad Weimert 55:09
And now doing that,
Rich Fettke 55:11
yeah, oh yeah, it was super fun, right? That’s what I’m saying. It’s like, these type of passion projects. You get to do that and going into the recording studio and doing voiceover. It’s kind of been always a kind of a secret fantasy. It’s like, I’d love to do voice over work for like, kids movies or something, you know. So I was able to do it. And then most recent book is scaling smart just came out September of this year. I co wrote that with my wife, Kathy, who’s also my the co founder of Real wealth, our business. We’ve run it together. And bigger pockets came to us as bigger pockets, a big real estate investing platform, and they actually, you know, Kathy’s, one of their CO hosts on the on the market podcast. And so they came to us and said, you know, we’d love for you to write a book. And they had heard about real wealth and how we run it, and how we’ve designed a self managing business. And they said, Would you be willing to write a book on scaling a business, and so we call it scaling smart, because it’s not just about growing a business, it’s about scaling it in a way that you can have a self managing business. So learn so much from Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach. I’m creating a self managing company more the concept, which is mind blowing, but they don’t go as deep into how to do that, how to actually design a self managing business. So that’s what scaling smart is about. Is how to take the business that you already have and to scale it, to grow it, to grow your revenue, but also, more than anything, to have a team that runs your business for you so you can really focus on what you’re best at.
Brad Weimert 56:39
I love that. That’s awesome. We’ll put all that in the show notes. Yeah, man. And actually, I had Henry Washington on the show.
Rich Fettke 56:51
He’s such a good man, such a good man.
Brad Weimert 56:54
I had not met him before, and huge fan. I mean, he was just fun to talk to, smart. Yeah, it’s great. You
Rich Fettke 57:03
know, one thing that a lot of people don’t know about Henry, it’s like, hanging out with him. I’ve hung out with him a lot, and he always carries $100 bills on him. And, like, we went to a smoothie shop and we got some smoothies, and he’s like, he just starts talking to, you know, to the guy. He’s like, is just your shop? And the guy’s like, yeah, how long you been have it? And he goes, Oh, it’s almost a year and stuff. And he just drops $100 tip before we leave. And he’s like, Hey, good luck. And the guy’s like, blown away, you know, I’ve seen Henry do that a bunch of times. He’ll go to a lemonade stand and pull up and say, Hey, can I get some lemonade from you little girls, you know? And then he just drops him a C note and then leaves. That’s awesome. I love that’s Henry.
Brad Weimert 57:39
I love that man. I used to have this. I’ve let go of it quite a bit. There’s still parts of me that think Is this a waste of money, like that language gets used in my head, and I think that it comes from an intense place of scarcity in my youth and mismanagement of money and a fear that I’m going to not invest wisely or blow everything or whatever. And over time, I have sort of adjusted my relationship with money, where my definition of the use of money, or a good use of money, is very different now, and now it’s more of a utility to allow me experience or allow me more time.
Rich Fettke 58:34
So I think, what is your definition of money now, what would you Well,
Brad Weimert 58:39
I would say, if it, you know, a good use of money would be to provide a good experience for myself or somebody I care about. So that would be a good use of money for me, or to allow me more time. And so I consistently get in this I know, like, I’ll order food or something, and the delivery cost will be the same cost is the food, and all the different platforms do it differently. And, you know, maybe there’s the food’s inflated, or it’s like, I’m ordering from a nice place, and I’m like, am I spending, you know, $40 to get this delivered? And, you know, $60 on my lunch. And the the at the where my mind goes eventually is quality food is good fuel for my body. And if this saves me a half hour from going somewhere or an hour, holy shit, is that worth it?
Rich Fettke 59:29
That is so cool. I love that. Yeah, and it’s funny in the wise investor, the I came up with this on a hike and but the investor, the mentor, the wise mentor, says to Ryan, who’s the protagonist, he was talking about assets, and he said, I believe a true asset is anything that brings you more income, more health, more happiness or more time. So it’s like exactly in alignment with what you just said, something that brings you more health, happiness, time. Am income, you know. So you can look at anything and say, Should I, should I buy this? Should I invest in this? It’s like, is it going to be bring me one of those four things? Yeah.
Brad Weimert 1:00:08
Well, I think happiness is an interesting, interesting word, and so I would argue certainly with some somebody like Henry leaving $100 tip for a smoothie, certainly that would bring him more happiness and probably more fulfillment in general.
Rich Fettke 1:00:22
Yeah, totally. He’s inspired me. I do it now, not always, not always 100 sometimes. So we did it. We did it Mexico, and it was just great to see two guys gave us a ride to the airport and gave him a game 100 and it’s just to see their eyes open up like that. And it just like it was. It was really cool.
Brad Weimert 1:00:41
Yeah, I love that. What advice do you have for a 25 year old starting a business today?
Rich Fettke 1:00:50
I’m going to go back to my 25 year old self, self, and wish that I met him and said, focus on discipline. It’s like, it seems weird, but like I was talking about earlier, like the more things you do that take discipline, the more discipline you become. You physiologically change your brain. So I used to be the least disciplined person in the world, messy handwriting, messy room, late for things and everything. And then now I feel like I’m a really disciplined person, so I do what I say. I’m gonna do. I can count on myself I follow through. And all that has just created a better business and a better life. So focus on discipline. Do hard things and keep becoming a more disciplined person, and it will transform your business. I
Brad Weimert 1:01:41
love that have some fucking integrity. People do what you say you’re gonna do. Yeah, that’s it. It’s huge. I love it. Man, rich, it’s been awesome. I would love to, you know, go be the snowboarder in your ski house at some point.
Rich Fettke 1:01:56
Absolutely. Yeah, let’s do it. Look forward to the
Brad Weimert 1:01:59
next conversation. Man, thanks so much for carving out time. Thank
Rich Fettke 1:02:02
you. That’s fun.
Brad Weimert 1:02:03
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Please subscribe, and most importantly, leave us a review. It takes like 30 seconds, and it makes such a big impact, it helps other people find us also. You might not know this, you can watch over 100 episodes of beyond a million with guests like Grant Cardone, Wes Watson and Neil Patel at beyond a million.com. You.
