Episode 161 – Michael Morawski

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Michael Morawski  0:00 

Sometimes those have the greatest impact on our business and our return on that investment. I believe that all those techniques are investments. It’s not just a capital investment of money, but it’s a time and it’s the personal capital of our stretch because that’s how we grow. The only way that you can grow is to get outside your box. So remember earlier I said, when I coach people, I coach inside that box. But what I tell people is I say, look, we might not always be in that box. I say that there are things outside that box because it’s a matter of who you become personally, in order to grow professionally. And you can have a goal to make a million dollars, but who you become along the way. And what do you do when you get there? So I think there are things that people need to look at conceptually and say, when I do this, this is going to happen.

 

Richard Matthews  1:02  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people, I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success, and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

Richard Matthews  1:54  

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And I have the pleasure of having Mike Morawski on the line today. Is that correct Mike?

 

Michael Morawski  1:59  

It is, yep, you got it right, Richard.

 

Richard Matthews  2:09  

Awesome. So glad to have you here. So for those of you who have been following along, my wife and I’s journey. We are now in upstate New York as we travel and continue to do this podcast. Where are you calling in from today Mike?

 

Michael Morawski  2:20  

I’m from Chicago.

 

Richard Matthews  2:22  

Chicago, the Windy City. We haven’t made it there yet. That’s on our next summer’s list, all the northern states up there.

 

Michael Morawski  2:29  

Okay, nice.

 

Richard Matthews  2:31  

Yeah. So what I want to do real quick is do an introduction for our audience who may not know who you are, and then we’ll get into start talking about your story. So Mike is a 30 plus year real estate investment veteran, you controlled over 285 million in real estate transactions, which is a lot. Mike’s an entrepreneur, author, real estate trainer, public speaker, and personal coach with strong personal resilience and a deep desire to help others live an extraordinary life. He’s coached hundreds of real estate investors to fulfill their dreams. You’re also the author of Exit Plan, the founder and CEO of My Core Intentions, host of the Insider Secrets Podcast, and several other cool things. What I want to start off with Mike is what is it you’re known for? What’s your business Like? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

 

Michael Morawski  3:16  

That’s a great question. And I think you asked four or five questions there. So what am I known for? You know what I’d like to be known for is, giving back for offering valuable wisdom. I think that we can all come up with ideas and education, but I think wisdom is something that happens as a result of the experiences that we have. And not just so much the experiences we have, as much as it is what we do with those experiences. We fall, how do we recover from them? If they’re great experiences? How do we capitalize them? So I want to be known for a story of hope and inspiration that people can look at and say, wow, there’s things going on in my life that I don’t want that to happen as a result.

 

Richard Matthews  4:10  

Absolutely. Back up a little bit. So right now you do coaching, and real estate investing, is that correct?

 

Michael Morawski  4:24  

Right. I coach and train multifamily real estate investors, and then support people around that. So property managers and agents and anybody who helps support that investor. I think that people today in the real estate business just get so busy and so inundated with what they’re doing that they have a tendency to not live a really well-balanced lifestyle and my goal is to help people with more of a balanced lifestyle. 

 

Richard Matthews  4:55  

Awesome. So do you have a portfolio of real estate yourself that you manage as well?

 

Michael Morawski  4:59  

I do not anymore. I owned upwards of 4000 units and managed 7500 units, I raised $18 million in private equity and bought $60 million worth of real estate in a 30 month period. And I do not have that anymore, no.

 

Richard Matthews  5:18  

Okay. So what I want to talk about then is your origin story, what got you into real estate? And then what got you into the coaching? We talked on the show, every good comic book hero has an origin story. So the thing that made them into the hero they are today, were you born a hero bit by a radioactive spider or something that made you get into real estate? Or did you start in a job and eventually become an entrepreneur, basically, we want to know where you came from? What brought you to where you are now?

 

Michael Morawski  5:41  

It’s pretty interesting. And I can probably put my story in some of that context because I was not born a hero. I came from a family, Richard, that was not entrepreneurial, that didn’t know anything about real estate, for the most part, and I remember being eight years old, sitting on the side of a swimming pool with my dad, we were on a family vacation. And I was asking my dad about all the rooms at this resort. And he said, he tried to explain to me in his own infinite wisdom, that people came there, they stayed there, they vacationed there, and they paid the owner money. And from that moment on, I knew I wanted to be the owner being paid that money. So I wanted to own a building, I wanted to operate those buildings, and eight years old, I knew that I think I got bit by the bug, as you so put it, at that point. And over the years, I was always intrigued with being in the shelter, my dad always said, hey, go into business for yourself, but do food, shelter, or clothing. And I always was intrigued with the shelter area. So I was in construction. And then I went into the real estate business. And I entered the real estate business as an agent. And my first nine months in the business, I sold 78 houses all for sale by owners. When you look at the average agent in the marketplace, they sell about 12 or 15 homes a year. So it’s a little bit more productive than average. I went on, I built a team selling 125 homes a year, and did that for about seven or eight years very consistently. 2005, I saw the market starting to shift and soften and knew that I would need to go do something else. So I went and raised $18 million, did that in 30 months. During that time, I bought $60 million worth of real estate, which was about 4000 apartments in five different states, and built a property management division where we were managing 7500 units. So I scaled pretty big scale way too fast, and was kind of unstable as a company. I was over-leveraged, didn’t raise enough money, and certainly didn’t pay attention to some of the red flags that came up along the way.

 

Richard Matthews  8:06  

Awesome. So how did that get you to where you are now?

 

Michael Morawski  8:12  

Yeah, that’s a great question. So in 2008, if you can picture this was like a freight train hitting a brick wall at 200 miles an hour. The market just imploded. And as a result of the market imploding, my company imploded about 18 months later, so the beginning of 2010. And I had occupancies dropped out, I couldn’t pay my bills, cash flow was bad. And we couldn’t increase that occupancy and we had no money to do renovations and repairs anymore because all that cash flow went away. As a result, I had 38 different companies and some were running really well. And some were not running as well. So I started to move money between companies. I’d take money from my profitable operations, move them to my less profitable operations, hoping that I could keep the ship afloat until the recession was over. My experience, Richard had always been that there was a correction in the marketplace, it was maybe 10%. It lasted maybe 17 or 18 months. But this thing lasted seven or eight years. It had a 40% correction, it was a hard storm to withstand. So I moved money back and forth. And as a result of that, I got charged with wire fraud and mail fraud charges and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. It wasn’t for the movement of money, but it was for the non-disclosure, it was for not telling my investors because my attorney and my accountant said you can move the money just leave notes between its companies and when the markets come back, go ahead and put it back. And that was the full intention. But I didn’t tell my investors and for non-disclosure, I got in trouble

 

Richard Matthews  10:11  

Interesting so you actually ended up having to serve in federal prison for that. If you could go back and look at that, again, would you have done that differently?

 

Michael Morawski  10:21  

I would have, yeah, if I was going to do it differently, I would have done a lot of things differently. First of all, I was over-leveraged. So I bought properties that were 15% down and they should have been 25 to 30% down. I should have had a loan with values of 65 to 70%. And I was as much as 85%. The big problem, I overpaid for properties because we kept buying properties as that market was heading up thinking that it was heading up. And then I didn’t raise enough money. Today I will raise more money. And I put some money in escrow to weather a storm. There’s a Delta when you evaluate a deal that says hey, you know if my occupancy is 15, or 20%. If my vacancies are 15, or 20%, and my occupancy is 80 to 85%. I can weather the storm because I bake those numbers in. But if I drop below that, typically I don’t have the money set aside. And today, I would make sure that I set that money aside in order to weather that storm.

 

Richard Matthews  11:38  

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. So with all of that. So you go through and you serve a prison sentence, and you come back out on the other side. And now you are doing coaching and training in the real estate space. What does that business look like now?

 

Michael Morawski  11:55  

The coaching and training space is an interesting place, I think people are starved for information for data. And what I do is I provide a lot of knowledge, and that I like to say I work in the box that everybody works in. So we talk about goal setting, and we talk about team building and networking, and how do you locate and source off market deals? And how do you do the contracts and negotiation? What about the early evaluations when you need to look at things like population growth, job growth, and those other factors that come into play when you’re going to acquire a deal. All the due diligence goes into contract and operation. But the big thing, Richard, is that exit planning. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. And coaching and training and books and tapes for myself. That everybody teaches you how to get into a deal. Everybody teaches you how to buy and operate a deal. But nobody teaches you how to get out, nobody teaches you when they get out. And I just thought it was a great concept to teach people how to get out.

 

Richard Matthews  13:08  

And so that’s what you teach now is how to get out of deals?

 

Michael Morawski  13:12  

Well, one of my platforms is exit planning, I actually wrote a book. So while I was in prison, I went away Richard thinking that my life was over and that it was the worst that could possibly get. And we were done. And what happened was I was probably in prison for about 17 days or so and my wife decided to divorce me and leave me and that’s when my life got worse it possibly could get. So, there’s a saying in prison. That is, you can either do the time or let the time do you. And there were a couple of guys around me that really inspired me to do something different to not just sit around, depress, eat food and watch TV all day. So what I did was I went to college, I got a bachelor’s degree in theology. I wrote two books, one on property management, one on multifamily investing. I wrote an ethics study course. I taught real estate, property management, and ethics, and bible studies for five years, I was out of an outreach program, I went into the community about 40 times and told my story. And during that time, I had gone to a class at the University of Minnesota to teach three or four times and befriended the professor there. And he and I co-authored a paper that we just had published in the Business Journal of ethics. That is an ethics case study that actually gets taught at the collegiate level for forensic accounting for accounting classes for sales and marketing classes. So I really feel like I did a lot while I was gone, and I have this platform now. It’s full of knowledge full of information full of wisdom, to give back, to empower real estate investors to scale their business and live that quality, more balanced lifestyle.

 

Richard Matthews  15:16  

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s an amazing thing to take something like having to go to prison for making a mistake in your business. And coming back out of that. And having built a platform on that it’s really a powerful story. So I want to talk a little bit about your superpowers that maybe you have acquired along the way here, and we talk on this show, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fantasy flying suit made by genius intellect, or the ability to call down thunder from the sky, or super strength. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius. And that’s either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with, or you developed over time that really energizes all your skills. And that superpower is what sets you apart and allows you to help your people slay their villains and come out on top in their journey. So if you think about it, all the skills that you put together over life, you probably have one that’s the common thread that ties everything all together, the common denominator between all of your skills. With that sort of framing. What do you think your superpower is in your business?

 

Michael Morawski  16:17  

Yeah, when you first asked that question, the first thought that went through my mind is tenacity. I was probably in the real estate business for about three years, and I had a client say to me, hey, Morawski, you are so tenacious. And I was very gracious about less than thank you. I walked away, didn’t have an idea what the word meant, went home, grabbed the dictionary, and looked it up. And I said, man, that is me. Because I’m committed. And I don’t take no for an answer very lightly. And I continue to ask and follow up and ask and follow up and ask and follow up. And I think that’s what helped me sell all those houses and raise them the money that I raised in the period of time I did it, because I am a worker, and tenacity is that ability to not take rejection to not let somebody else’s opinion or thought throw you off course. And that’s what we need as individuals today because there’s so much bullying that goes on, there’s so much that could knock you off your platform. And being tenacious about who you are, what you do, and how you do it will keep you centered and on that platform.

 

Richard Matthews  17:37  

Yeah, absolutely. And tenacity is such an important skill to develop, even if it’s not a superpower like yours, where that ability to just never give up to keep going. Because most people, myself included, tend to want to give up on things before it’s done. And there’s that famous story about the guy who was digging for oil, and he dug for years and never found it. They sold the property and the next guy dug six inches deeper and found the oil. And that’s just had the tenacity to keep digging to keep going. And obviously, your story proves that you can raise $18 million in 30 months, and things like that, because of just that ability to keep going to push forward regardless of rejection or regardless of not actually hitting your goals. And I think that I have to constantly remind myself, like, we’re in the process of building our business, and it’s going slower than I want. And it takes longer, more time than I want. And it’s more difficult than you think it should be. But you keep going. Because eventually, it’s one of those snowball things. It grows slowly until it grows fast.

 

Michael Morawski  18:49  

Until it grows fast, for sure. Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  18:52  

Yeah. So the flip side, then of your superpower, would be your fatal flaw. So just like every Superman has his kryptonite, or wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business, something that you’ve struggled with, for me, it was a couple of things. As a young entrepreneur, I struggled with perfectionism, which was wanting to get something exactly right and use it as an excuse to keep from shipping products, or lack of self-care. I didn’t have good boundaries with my clients, I let them walk all over me. And I’ve learned to overcome those things. But I think more important than what the flaw is, how have you learned to rectify it so that you can continue to go on and grow your business? And hopefully, our audience can learn a little bit from your experience?

 

Michael Morawski  19:38  

Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting way to look at things. And I think that my fatal flaw is that I overlooked the details sometimes. I don’t pay attention and think things through. Now, I’m 100% better at it today. And today, like when I do due diligence on a deal, or I underwrite a deal, I make sure I think through different scenarios today. Before, I think I allowed myself to fall in love with deals, and I would buy something because I thought it was a good deal. And I had not a disregard, but I disregarded the numbers somewhat, and I disregarded what I thought other people could do. So I think today, I look at things differently. My perspective is different, I think things through what if this happened? And some of that goes to trust, too. You have to trust your own judgment. And I overtrusted in the past people around me thinking they have my back when they really didn’t. And so I think you have to have your own back. And then you have to delegate and trust in the delegation process.

 

Richard Matthews  21:14  

So hearing you talk a little bit about the superpower versus the fatal flaw, do you see that maybe they might be two sides of the same coin, where the tenacity and the willingness to just fight through it and get the deal done. Also sort of leads to overlooking some of the small details, because the tenacity is pushing you forward. And letting you mow over the small details, so to speak, that they’re like two sides of the same power.

 

Michael Morawski  21:40  

Yeah, for sure. There’s no doubt about that. I definitely see that.

 

Richard Matthews  21:46  

Yeah, it’s an interesting connection. And I see that a lot. Most of the things that we talked about on this show are that the thing that makes you what you are and gives you your special abilities also is the thing that causes your struggles. So it’s an interesting sort of discussion to have, and learning how to shore up your own flaws. So you can continue to grow and continue to make your business what you want it to be.

 

Michael Morawski  22:09  

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

 

Richard Matthews  22:11  

So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about your common enemy. And so your common enemy, we put in the context of your clients, just like every superhero has an arch-nemesis, it’s a thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. And in business, it takes on a lot of forms. But in the context of your clients, the people that come to you to have you help them grow their real estate business and learn from you. It’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that you’re constantly having to fight to overcome. So you can actually get them the results they come to you for. If you had a magic wand, and every time someone hired you or wanted to work with you if you just bop them on the head of that magic wand and automatically fix that mindset. What is that arch-nemesis that you’re constantly fighting against?

 

Michael Morawski  22:54  

When you talk about arch-nemesis, do you mean myself personally?

 

Richard Matthews  22:59  

With your clients.  

 

Michael Morawski  22:59  

That’s interesting. On their part it’s self-doubt. Well, coaching really makes sense. So if I make the effort. And Richard, I’ll never forget the first time I signed up for coaching. 25 years ago I paid a thousand dollars to do one-on-one coaching for a month. Back then all you’ve got is one 30 minute call per week with your coach, now you get all kinds of things. You get books, tapes, seminars, group coaching, Facebook exchanges, and all kinds of stuff, back then you didn’t get all that and it was a thousand dollars a month. I remember writing a check walking away going, how am I gonna pay for this? Well, it cost me to have to go to work. I think a lot of times, the arch-nemesis is that coaching client might say, If I do this, I’m gonna have to work. But I don’t know if I really want to put the work in. But here’s what I know, if you put the work in, you are gonna grow your business. I’ve grown my business 20% a year for the last 20 years having a coach in my life. 

 

Richard Matthews  24:26  

Yeah, absolutely. And I know, having hired coaches myself, and have been a coach for people. One of the hardest things, for me, at least. A coach, at one point, they tell you to do something and you’re like, I don’t know if I can do that. Or I can’t do that or like you look at it from whatever the advice you’re getting from your perspective. And you don’t always realize they’re giving you this advice from their perspective. They’ve been there. They’ve crossed that river before. So they’re giving you this advice, and you’re looking going, that doesn’t make any damn sense. I can’t do that, or I can’t afford that, or it’s not going to work out that way. And sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and realize, I just need to do what they’re telling me. And then you do it, you realize you then you end up on the other side, you’re like, oh, now I see their perspective, I see why they made that recommendation. That’s a hard thing to get over. And I’ve dealt with that myself. I’ve seen my clients deal with that. So I assume you see the same thing? That whole self-doubt thing.

 

Michael Morawski  25:25  

Yeah, I see it a lot. And it’s funny, it’s like that double-headed coin too just like we were talking about with my own thing, but on one side, they want to have more time freedom, they want to be more financially sound, they want more quality time with their family, they want to scale their business. But yet the other side of it is, there’s that fear and doubt of maybe I really don’t need to accomplish that. And maybe I can’t accomplish it. And it’s a fallacy. So I think people have that internal fight. Here’s the thing about coaching, coaching isn’t telling somebody what to do. It’s helping people self discover what they already know, inside helping them pull it out and engage it. That’s what coaching is.

 

Richard Matthews  26:13  

Absolutely. So the flip side of your common enemy is what you fight against, your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider-Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it you fight for as a real estate coach? What is your mission, so to speak?

 

Michael Morawski  26:35  

Yeah, my mission is to help people live a more balanced lifestyle. I think as I said earlier, that we tend to live outside of our bodies, we let other people control our time and what we do. And we tend to forget what’s really important in life. And in most cases, you find that what’s really important in life is your spouse, your family, your children. And those things around you and we tend to let those go to the side.

 

Richard Matthews  27:11  

Yeah, one of the things that I’ve always struggled with is the metaphor of the work-life balance is that legal scale, and you’re always trying to get your work and your life balance to equate and I’ve sort of decided it’s a false metaphor because it doesn’t really work. And it doesn’t actually work in the real world. And my replacement metaphor for work-life balance, and I kinda want to get your opinion on this is more akin to a rubber band. So rubber bands have a couple of states, they have, when it’s not being touched, or anything, it’s relaxing, it’s sitting there, and then you have the stretch state. And a lot of times in our work, we’ll have periods where we’re putting in a lot of effort when you’re either growing a business or putting a deal together, or doing something to take your business to the next level, it’s a period of work where it stretches, and you’re going to put a lot of time and effort into it. But when you release, when that’s done, when you get to the end stage, you can rock your business forward, right, just like shooting the rubber band. But the end state of that has to be that relaxed state. Because if you just continue to stretch and continue to pull and continue to work, eventually you’ll snap the rubber band. Right. And that’s where you end up with burnout, or you end up with other problems. And I don’t know, what are your thoughts on that metaphor for work-life balance?

 

Michael Morawski  28:24  

Yeah, I agree. You know, I have to just make this comment. Because here’s the other thing about the rubber band, is I believe our mind is like a rubber band, every time you stretch that rubber band, it never goes back to its original elasticity. So it loses its density, our minds are the same way its education, the more we put into our minds, the more we stretch it, the more that capacity we have to act on. And so I think that the rubber band is a great analogy for both of those sides of it.

 

Richard Matthews  29:02  

Awesome. So, I want to talk a little bit about some practical things. So things that actually let you run your business right, I call this your heroes tool belt. Just like every superhero has awesome gadgets like batarangs or web slingers, or laser eyes, a big magical hammer. Talk about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without in your business, it could be anything from your notepad that you keep your thoughts into your calendar that you keep all your appointments in, marketing tools, or something you use to actually deliver your services with your clients. Anything you think is essential today to getting your job done.

 

Michael Morawski  29:36  

Yeah, interesting. I think that the iPhone today, your smartphone is your life because you can do everything with them. So whether it’s a CRM, whether it’s email, whether it’s texting, social media, whether it’s shooting a video like this, or podcast, you can do everything with the iPhone. So from a tool standpoint, I think I’d be lost without that. And that’s really funny. Because when I was in prison, and Richard, I’ve only been home for a little over a year. But when I was in prison, I didn’t have a phone for eight years. So to come home, and readjust, and learn how to use it, and now be at a point where it’s like, oh, my goodness, what would life be like without it? And then the other one is the video conferencing. So Zoom, from a standpoint, I’m a networker, I’m a relationship builder. And for me to do that, I connect with people, you know Richard, I wish you and I could have coffee, but we can’t. But what’s even cooler is you’re on the other side of the country from where I am, and we’re able to see each other, sit with each other, have a conversation, and learn about each other. So those are the two things.

 

Richard Matthews  31:06  

It’s been amazing to me, I refer to this period in time as the golden age of business. Because this stuff that you used to have to pay hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year for to run your business is all accessible on this stupid little device, we fit in our pocket that everyone has. And if you just use the tools that you have available, you can do things now and have a level playing field with pretty much everyone, which is super cool. And tools like Zoom and FaceTime and Skype and whatnot, have all sort of shrunk the world to where you can work with anyone at any time. And allows me to do things like travel the country with my kids while running my business, which is super cool, to the point of having the whole work-life balance, I can take the afternoon and go hiking with the kids when we’re done. And a lot of it is made possible by the technology we have today. So it’s very cool.

 

Michael Morawski  32:01  

Yeah, for sure.

 

Richard Matthews  32:02  

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Richard Matthews  33:38  

So I want to talk a little bit about your own personal heroes then. Every hero has their mentors. Just like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich dad or even Spider Man had his Uncle Ben, Who were some of your heroes in business? Were they real life mentors? Were they speakers or authors? Maybe peers who were a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in both your real estate career and now your coaching career?

 

Michael Morawski  34:04  

Yeah, I talk a lot about a guy who when I first went in the real estate business, I went to get information. So I had a general contracting company, which I sold. And when I sold that I took a year off and didn’t know what I was going to go do with my life. But over that year, I did a couple of fixin flips. And I met a real estate agent who was very successful. And 30 years ago being successful his commission’s were over half a million dollars a year, which is pretty unheard of back then. And as a result, I decided I was going to go into real estate business. So I went to him and I said, hey, I’m thinking about going into the real estate business. He said, I think you’d be great, you have some good skills. I think you’re a great sales guy. And I think yet you just need to apply yourself. Great, would you teach me what to do? He said, no, he goes, what I’m going to do is I’m going to make you because I wanted to shadow him, I wanted to spend time with him and his team and understand he goes, I’m gonna make you a cassette tape. That way, you can listen to it over and over and over again. I equate that to a podcast today. You can listen to this over again. Because every time you listen and you and I speak on this podcast, somebody is going to go man, I didn’t hear that before, where did that piece of information come from? But anyhow, he made me this cassette tape, and the basic fundamentals that he taught me on that tape, were what I apply to my business, and helped me go out and sell all the houses I sold, and raise the money that I raised, because of their basic fundamentals. So he’s one of my heroes, he’s one of the people that in my life really helped me transform who I am today as a result of those simple fundamentals. And I always tell people, hey, you have to master the repetitious boredom, master the fundamentals?

 

Richard Matthews  36:07  

Yeah, absolutely. I know, you mentioned a second ago, you could listen to it over and over again. I know, there’s research that shows for audio, stuff that you listen to, it takes your brain upwards of 18 times of listening through something to actually hear all of it, to actually retain what the information is. So listening, again, is not just beneficial, it’s incredibly like it’s required if you actually want to pick up all the information that is in content like this, or content, like the tape that he gave you.

 

Michael Morawski  36:37  

Right, exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  36:40  

And also helps drive in the fundamentals, especially you’re learning the fundamental things. And I’ve decided the same kind of thing with the fundamentals, that in our business the reason our business is growing is that we got really, really good at a couple of basic things and doing those basic things really, really well. And systemizing those things, and then selling those, because most people don’t do the basics well. And if you can master the basics, then you can grow where other people fail.

 

Michael Morawski  37:11  

Yeah, for sure. And that’s so true, right?

 

Richard Matthews  37:17  

Yeah especially when you marry that with tenacity. So if you will use the tenacity to approach the basics in your business. Nobody can compete with you. Because nobody does that. No one’s willing to put in the work, no one’s willing to do the boring, easy stuff over and over and over again, until you become a master at it. And the people who are that’s why they’re masters.

 

Michael Morawski  37:44  

And that even the boring easy stuff, though, how about the hard difficult stuff, the picking up the phone and making the calls that are uncomfortable, doing the things that make you uncomfortable. Sometimes those have the greatest impact on our business and our return on that investment. Because I believe that all those techniques are investments. It’s not just a capital investment of money. But it’s that time and it’s the personal capital of our stretch. Because that’s how we grow. The only way that you can grow is to get outside your box. So remember, earlier, I said when I coach people, I coach inside that box. But what I tell people is I say, look, we might not always be in that box, I say that there are things outside that box because it’s a matter of who you become personally, in order to grow professionally. That you can have a goal to make a million dollars, but who do you become along the way? And what do you do when you get there? So I think there are things that people need to look at conceptually and say, when I do this, this is going to happen.

 

Richard Matthews  39:00  

Yeah, and deciding the type of person that you are and a type of person you want to be. One of the things that I struggled with for a long time is not thinking that it was important to put time into stuff outside of the business. It was like if I had time to put into a skill or other things that all had to be related to my business. I was just sort of having that opinion that like if I wasn’t putting it towards growth in my business, I was wasting that time. And I’ve realized that over the years that what I call, you have to give yourself permission to play. And my old sort of mentality was that, and I know a lot of people struggle with this. Recreation is the reward you give yourself for a job well done. Instead of recreation being a foundational requirement to do a good job and so I’ve realized over the years that, taking the time to learn the piano or learn to draw or read with the kids or go for a hike, or any of those things, whatever skill or other things you’re looking to grow in your personal life, those things help you to grow in your business. They don’t detract from it. Which took a long time for me to realize.

 

Michael Morawski  40:22  

Yeah, I like what you said about learning to play the piano. That was something that I always wanted to do. And when I went to prison, that was one of those things that I learned to do. I taught myself how to play the piano. I would have never done that. If it hadn’t been for that time.

 

Richard Matthews  40:43  

For me, it was one of the first things that I put on my list when I was like, I need to start doing things that are not related to my business, but still are growing me like growing me as a person. And I was like, let me sit down and learn to play the piano. And then I would take time during the day to do that. And you realize it helps you recharge your brain when you have something that’s not work-related, that’s still helping you, like you said, expand and grow. It lets you come to your work more refreshed and be able to actually come and be creative when you need to be. That’s super cool. So I got one more question for you. And that’s about your guiding principles. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you use regularly in your life, something you wish you knew when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

 

Michael Morawski  41:42  

I think the two things that come to mind are, first of all, how you start your day. What do you do to kick your day off? So I think there are some principles that I manage in the morning that I have to manage every day. I take that quiet time, I take that time in prayer, I think about my gratitude, I write my goals, I become very intentional about what I want to accomplish this day. That’s one thing. The other piece of that is that I work out, I go to the gym, I stay healthy. I came home that was in the best shape of my life physically and mentally, emotionally, and spiritually I’ve ever been. And I want to continue that and continue to be that man. So I think that’s how you begin your day and your intentionality about the day. And then the other thing is relationships, this is a relationship business. So a number of years ago, and I’ve read it and listened to it on audio a couple of times over the years is by Dale Carnegie a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. I think it’s critical that we treat people with love and respect. And we honor them where they are, and for who they are. Because everybody brings a different capacity to the world. Everybody has a different journey. Everybody has a different story. We can all learn from those stories and from each other. So I think that my super strength around that stuff is the ability to listen, be empathetic and build that relationship.

 

Richard Matthews  43:36  

Absolutely. And I love that book. My son’s actually listened to it a couple of times now on audiobooks. He listens to lots of books on audiobook now because it’s the one way I’ve gotten him into some of these things. But he reads Robert Kiyosaki, and he reads Dale Carnegie. And I think I’m gonna get him. One of my favorite books is It’s all about relationships, but it’s how I raised myself from failure to success and selling. And a lot of that it’s about learning how to build relationships. So it’s a key aspect to growing any business, not just real estate. I’ve noticed all the biggest moves that I’ve ever had in my business have been because of the people that I know and the relationships you’ve developed. For us, whether it’s like an agency partnership, or you know, an introduction, or something that helps you grow your business to the next level, it’s always about the people.

 

Michael Morawski  44:28  

For sure, absolutely. Yeah, cuz none of this happens unless there are people involved with you. Right?

 

Richard Matthews  44:35  

Yes. Yeah, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Right. You said it could be food or clothing or shelter or in our case marketing. If there are no people, there’s no business.

 

Michael Morawski  44:47  

Well, marketing, that’s a huge thing. I believe that every business needs to be a marketing business wrapped in whatever you do. So I’m a marketing company, but I’m wrapped in a real estate coaching business.

 

Richard Matthews  45:03  

What I tell people is that it doesn’t matter what business you’re in. The first business you’re in is the attention business. If you don’t know how to get attention, it doesn’t matter what you do. On the other side, you have to get attention first. So everyone’s in the attention business, and everyone’s competing for attention. And if you understand that, then your next step is, what do you do with that attention? And that’s your actual business.

 

Michael Morawski  45:26  

Yes, that’s true.

 

Richard Matthews  45:30  

Awesome. Well, Mike, that is a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge that I call the hero’s challenge. And I do this as a sort of selfish little thing to help me get access to stories I might not find on my own. Because not everyone is out looking to be on podcasts. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? first names are fine, and why do you think they should come to share their story on our show? First person that comes to mind for you?

 

Michael Morawski  45:56  

Yeah, a woman named Jennifer Grimson. Jennifer has a company called Micro Empires, and she’s lost everything in her life a couple of times and rebuilt. And she had a very interesting story in business today. So definitely somebody that I will connect you with, do a virtual introduction, and connect you with.

 

Richard Matthews  46:20  

Absolutely we’ll reach out afterward and see if we can get an introduction and maybe get her on the show. Sometimes they’re willing, sometimes they’re not. But it’s always cool to get fresh stories on the show. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are clapping and cheering for the hero in their acts of heroism, our analogous to that as we finish is where can people find you if they want your help? Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, you know what, Mike, I’d really love your help in real estate. And I think more important than where is who are the right types of people to raise their hands and ask for help?

 

Michael Morawski  46:51  

Sure. So one thing I’d like to do is offer up my book, and all your listeners can go and download an ebook if they would like. My book is called Exit Plan. It’s your complete guide to multifamily investing, and why you need an exit plan before you buy. And like I said, I’ve spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars over the years and coaching and training and books and tapes to kind of always be left empty, where people taught me how to find a deal, buy a deal, operate a deal, but nobody told me how to get out or when to get out. And as I discovered that, that was something I could return back to my listeners and return back to my investors. You can reach me at MyCoreIntentions.com send me a direct email. And I like I said, I’m about building relationships. So anybody who thinks that they’d like to get in the multifamily investing space, the real estate investing space, or an agent or somebody who’s looking for scripts and sales help, give me a call. And you can download that book at mycoreintentions.com forward slash exit plan.

 

Richard Matthews  48:10  

Awesome. So we’ll make sure we get those links and the email address in the show notes for people who are listening and if you’re in that mental space where you want to get into a multifamily real estate and personally I’ve worked with a lot of real estate people in my business, because of growing their business has been a big portion of my business. Real estate is the number one wealth creation vehicle for pretty much all of history. And nothing really competes with it. So if you’re in that space and you want to learn a little bit more or maybe get into it definitely takes time to reach out to Mike obviously you’ve got a lifetime of experience in the space. And Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story with our audience. Do you have any final words of wisdom for them before hitting this stop record button?

 

Michael Morawski  48:51  

I do not other than make the commitment move forward and stay focused on what you’re doing.

 

Richard Matthews  49:01  

Absolutely. Thank you for coming on the show today, Mike