Episode 165 – Max Keller

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Max Keller  0:00  

I’ve been told it’s teaching. And I mean, kind of would make sense. When I became a teacher, out of like 300 new teachers, I was rookie teacher of the year. I came in a little late. I did corporate finance and stuff, I didn’t like it, I got into teaching because my wife was a teacher. And I loved it. And it was like an instant thing, you just do something that’s just a natural fit. Teaching to me is really just mapping out the clear steps. Like really paying attention to that person you’re across from to see if they’re getting it or not. It’s not like a one way thing. It’s a loop. And just taking really complicated things and breaking them down into really, really simple, easy to understand parts. I do that in the books, I do it with my students. I did it when I was teaching algebra done that pretty much my whole life and like I said, I just never thought it would turn into much financially because teaching traditionally has been a little bit on the lower paying side, but now that I’m teaching, real estate investors, marketing that’s a whole different type of teaching. So it’s all good.

 

Richard Matthews  1:08  

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  2:04  

Hello and welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews and today I have live on the line Max Keller. Max, are you there? 

 

Max Keller  2:09  

I am glad to be here. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:11  

Awesome. So glad to have you here Max. So for those of you who have been following  along with our travels, my wife and I are back down from Maine in Acadia, we are in Pennsylvania and your Stroudsburg area on our way down to the east coast for the summer because it was all closed on our way up in the springtime. Now let’s open up again. That should be pretty cool. Where are you calling in from Max? 

 

Max Keller  2:28  

Fort Worth Texas. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:30  

Did it warm up there yet or are you still getting all the rain?

 

Max Keller  2:34  

No, it’s good to go. It’s gonna get really warm here pretty soon. But that’s why we live in Texas. It’s all good.

 

Richard Matthews  2:40  

Yeah, Texas was on our whole travels around the country. It is one of my favorite places that we’ve ever been to, really, really liked the Conroe area north of Houston. Have you ever been down over there?

 

Max Keller  2:50  

Oh, yeah, our family who lives down there. It’s a great area, with a lot of trees and not too far from the coast. It’s a big state, you have to drive. But there’s a reason people are moving here.

 

Richard Matthews  3:02  

Yeah, and I have to say, as Californian, we went into Texas and I always thought that the whole Texans are polite thing was just a stereotype. But I got there, and I’m pretty sure, we lived there for like four or five months. I got called sir more in those four or five months, and I haven’t the entire rest of my life combined.

 

Max Keller  3:20  

Yeah, I call my business partner, Sir. It’s just weird, I don’t know any other way to do that.

 

Richard Matthews  3:25  

It’s just how Texans do it. 

 

Max Keller  3:27  

It is a thing down here.

 

Richard Matthews  3:29  

Yeah. So anyways, I really love Texas. So what I want to do real quick is a quick introduction for our audience who may not know you, and will just dive into the conversation. So Max Keller is a best-selling author, real estate investor, entrepreneur, and a national speaker. He teaches on how to close more deals and raise more money with a book that positions you as the trusted expert. And I know you invest all over the country, and also you teach agents and some other things. So what I want to just get into real quick is what your business is like? Who do you serve? And what do you do for them?

 

Max Keller  3:59  

Yeah, so kind of have a couple of different ones. So we have our house buying an agent business. So the agents under my license, and then my house buying businesses, savior homebuyers. So that’s where we buy properties that help people locally, with their real estate challenges. So we do that. And then we also have a publishing business. And that’s where we have some different books and different licensed content. We use them in our business. And then we have people from California to Connecticut that license it and use it in their business. And just grow their business that way, and really kind of like to lead with more value and more education. And then I have a coaching business with my partner, Mike Hambright for new people, so yeah I stay pretty busy.

 

Richard Matthews  4:46  

Yeah. So you are in the investor space and in the education space and in the real estate agency space.

 

Max Keller  4:53  

That’s right. 

 

Richard Matthews  4:54  

Wow, that’s a lot of places to have spinning.

 

Max Keller  4:57  

I have a great team, they helped me. I never start another one until I already have one going and what’s interesting is especially the publishing one, I never expected to do anything like that, sometimes we have challenges in our market. If you’re in real estate or even other businesses that are getting disrupted by technology, you’re feeling those challenges sometimes. But what I found is I don’t really like challenges, I don’t like it anymore like anybody else. But some of the best things that I was able to create came out of those because when your back is against the wall, you don’t have a choice. I used to wish for less challenges. And now I’m like, bring them on because it’s tough for 12 months or 18 months, but then it just really turns into something great.

 

Richard Matthews  5:48  

Most people shy away from them. So being able to create new solutions in the midst of those challenges is how good businesses are created. So speaking of challenges, and you’re in the real estate market, I know right now, because I got several clients and friends that are in the real estate space, like almost every market is experiencing this really, a really odd thing where there is a very limited supply, and the houses that come on the market are getting more offers, and they have deal with coming in immediately. Are you seeing that in Dallas as well? Or is that just in like pockets?

 

Max Keller  6:19  

Yeah, it’s everywhere, for us with the way that we market, it’s a little bit different, like totally different. So we don’t have as much exposure to it, because we’re not using the same traditional methods. But yeah, the root cause it’s interesting nobody is talking about it. For some reason people are talking about the symptoms, they’re saying there are low days on market. It’s a seller’s market, there are no deals, folks are talking about when the foreclosure wave is going to get here, when the next reset is going to be here. Renters aren’t paying their rent, those aren’t the real stories, the real story is that real estate is the single largest undisrupted market in the United States of America $1.6 trillion a year of annual transactional one-time real estate deals happen $1.6 trillion. So what’s happening is these technology companies are coming in and they’re using advantages and leverage, you’ve seen companies like Zillow, iBuyers, Hedge Fund, Wall Street, that’s what’s really going on, what’s really happening is that Wall Street and everything below is taken a lot of interest since the last downturn, they’ve taken a lot of interest in single-family homes, not just to fix them up, flip them and make a profit that way, but also to hold on for cash flow, real estate, because these companies are investing in firms that never even turn a profit. And you know, and I know people who are in real estate know that single-family homes can make good cash flow and good yields, astronomical yields compared to what Wall Street is used to. So they’ve gone all in, they’ve gotten a lot of help from the federal government. The stories really gotten brushed under the rug, but folks who don’t know what’s happening and their full-time real estate, they’re on a path to totally getting washed out. Because Wall Street is all in, they’re not slowing. And so that’s what’s really going on and we’ve figured it out a few years before, I think it’s going to be common knowledge, and we’re doing some different things because of it. And that’s why I was saying earlier, I’m glad I’m in Dallas because it’s just so competitive here that all of that stuff and that wave hit here a little bit sooner. And so we got the opportunity to try to figure out, just a different sandbox to plan.

 

Richard Matthews  8:47  

Absolutely. So I want to talk a little about how you got into all these different businesses. We talk all the time about your origin story on this show. So every good comic book hero has an origin story, It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. Were you born a hero or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into real estate and invest in education? Or do you start a job and eventually become an entrepreneur later? Basically, we want to know, where did you come from? How’d you get here?

 

Max Keller  9:13  

Yeah, before I got into real estate, I was an algebra teacher and a coach football and basketball track at a title one school, and I love my job. I had no plans on leaving. The problem was my kid’s a picture up here, I got six of them. They were starting to get older. I had five at the time, and I wanted to just make more income, but I really just want to have a little bigger nest egg. I got my master’s degree in teaching. But unless I wanted to be a principal or something, it was pretty much my pay was capped. And so I was looking for just kind of side hustles in the summertime. My friend bought a rental. He works for the government and he told me about it and I was like, Huh, and I just kind of kept researching it. And then I found a local mentor then started getting houses under contract while I was teaching math and Then you made about 16k on my first wholesale deal, which was about four months of teacher pay. I was like, Huh. And I did another deal. And then another one. And then I just said, Okay, this is passive, but I can do a lot with being active too. So I quit. And that was like five years ago this week. So I’ve never looked back.

 

Richard Matthews  10:23  

So how long did it take to go from I’m interested in real estate to holding a $16,000 check in your hand?

 

Max Keller  10:28  

I got in, I found out the idea. July 4, weekend 2015. And then I got that house under contract in December 2015. I started because I didn’t know what I was doing at first. I mean, nobody does, if you wait to know everything and wait a while. So December 1st was when I said go. And then within three weeks, I got two houses under contract, one I had to hide because I just didn’t know any better. But the other one I had just right. And I sold it to a cash buyer. That was like February, so probably about whatever that is eight months or so.

 

Richard Matthews  10:59  

That’s a way to go from idea to revenue that quickly. And getting a deal under contract. 16,000 which is almost half the average income for the US population.

 

Max Keller  11:14  

Yeah, it’s amazing. When you know how to do high-income skills, it’s unbelievable, you just get so much free time. So I just started doing that and built up my team full time, obviously, you go full time, can’t just collect a couple of rentals here and there, which was my original goal. So I raised up my goals, but probably around 2017, fast forward a couple of years, although I was on track to do about 30 deals for the year, I had a small office, somebody helping me buy houses and admin, and all that. I just honestly felt like every house I was going to, I was interviewing for the deal. And there were just so many people on the market doing the same thing. And I was using every list, every cold calling thing, every text message, just pretty much every strategy I could get my hands on, and sometimes, it worked, but sometimes it didn’t. I just saw the ROI go down every year and every month really on my marketing. So I was like, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Like instead of trying to take down all the houses in DFW, which is an 8 million people metro area that’s really spread out, I’m like, maybe I need to just focus on certain areas or certain deals. So what I did was I just went back and made a list of like, I’ll probably have to maybe deal 50 by then I just made a list of all my existing deals that I had done. And then I was like, okay, what’s important to me, because this is my business at the end of the day, I need to be happy with what I’m doing. I was super happy with teaching, I just wasn’t making as much money. And so for me what was important? I mean, this isn’t the list for everybody. But for me, I wanted to make a good profit on a deal. Number one, because it takes about the same amount of time to do a bigger margin house than it would just a skinny one. So I wanted to do that. I wanted to work with people that weren’t arguing with me about the values of their house like they saw me as the expert, and the trusted guide, so there wasn’t resistance. And then number three, I just want to work with people that I had fun working with, that weren’t needing me to bail him out of jail, or just yelling at me and just doing crazy off the wall stuff. There’s kind of two epiphanies with this, one was I found out that most of the people on my list didn’t meet all three of the criteria. But what I did see was sort of the first eye-opening deal in my marketing, which was that everybody who met that criteria was a senior citizen. And so I just dug a little deeper, I was like, Okay, I like working with seniors, my grandma helped take care of me. So growing up I took care of her. So, I mean, it’s not a big stretch for that to be the result. So I was like, Okay, how do I work with more people like my grandma, grandpa died in 87. She lived in the house till 2011. There’s a lot of ladies like that, she just got a little pension from General Motors and Social Security. She owned her house, but not a lot of other assets. So they don’t have, like, lamb folks I was buying houses from. They don’t have CPAs on speed dial, they don’t have tax planning attorneys and things like that. But they’ve been in their house a long time. And they don’t know who to trust. Everybody’s trying to sell them stuff. Everybody was trying to sell my grandma stuff, reverse mortgages, on and on and on. And so I wanted to find more of them. And I went back and I noticed most of them actually weren’t coming from all the expensive marketing I was doing. I was like, Huh, they were coming by accident. People would see me rehabbing a house in the neighborhood, and they would drop by referrals. And then sometimes I was buying these houses. This was a trip and I’d make an offer. They’d accept it. But I wasn’t the highest offer. And I could not figure out why that was happening. So I just called up one of the sellers and I asked him I just said hey, remember me? Max, save your homebuyers like, Oh, yeah, I remember you. Like, did you have a higher offer? I thought you told me that. And they’re like, yeah, it’s like 10 grand more which in Dallas. I mean, that’s a high percentage. So I said, why do you go with me? Like, I can’t go back? I can’t go back and six months later, but why? What they basically said is because they trusted me, I explained what was going on. I wasn’t pressuring them. I wasn’t saying, your house is so gross and all this stuff like the other people, and I’d give them options that didn’t even point to me, because people, I think just being a teacher, you just need to let people know what their options are, and let them decide, that’s how I sleep at night. It’s really easy. I sleep great. And, yes, I just did that. And they just said, the feeling that I genuinely cared about what happened with them was more important than the $10,000. And I was like, okay, and I kind of just kept learning about seniors and working with that niche more and more. As I said, I mean, it’s not for everybody but works great for me. It’s the fastest-growing group of people.

 

Richard Matthews  16:08  

So I guess 4000 people a day are reaching 85.

 

Max Keller  16:16  

Yeah, maybe. So it’s 10,000 a day reaching 65. 85 and up are the fastest-growing age category. So I’m like, okay, I’m in the right spot. I’m working with people that I like to help. The problem is that I was in these living rooms on these floral print couches for four hours, answering the same questions over and over again, because these folks have been in their house for 30 years. They don’t want to rush. They got a lot of questions. And so I was like, I love helping them. But it’s not scalable. And I was buying houses in another state, too. And so what happened, this was like the big aha moment that can help any business owner, even if you’re not in real estate . Of course, I get my best ideas from other people. And usually women, they’re super smart. And I’m outnumbered. I got five girls and a boy. So I gotta stay inline 

 

Richard Matthews  17:06  

Three girls and a boy here. 

 

Max Keller  17:07  

Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. So I was at a seller’s house. And I talked to the daughter, she was in her 50s. And she said, I appreciate you helping our family. I bought the house, I helped the dad find another place to live. And she said you should write a book about this stuff. And I was like, no, I don’t think so. Like I was an algebra teacher, not an English teacher, I’m dyslexic, I would probably get voted least likely to read a book, from my graduating class, definitely not write a book. But things change. And I thought about it. And I was like, I’ve seen other businesses where they lead with a book, and it has some real advantages. And so I didn’t know how to write a book. I’ve got a gift for your audience at the end if they’re a business owner, and they’re trying to figure that out. It’s basically the framework that I wish I had when I started, but I’m just real unscientific. I just wrote down all the questions, people were asking me all the questions that people should ask, kind of pros and cons. I was noticing a lot of my competition, they were just telling people, the pros about their choice, but not the cons. And there are pros and cons to everything in life. pros and cons to going on your RV trip. I mean, it’s everything, you know what I mean? So I just wrote that out. And it was just a how-to guide and I just printed it out. That was my first book, this one Home to Home the Step by Step Senior Housing Guide, and I just started giving it out to prospects. And I’ll tell you what, I never expected to get an award with Robert Kiyosaki for the books at a big conference. I didn’t expect all the things that would come out of it. I just did it. Because people were throwing away my business card. They were losing my $10 credibility kits. And I just thought that people would hang on to them more. We just got a deal on Thursday, a lady. I spoke at a church workshop. And that was over two years ago. And the lady called us and was like, hey I heard you speak two years ago. I need help selling my parent’s house. So I went over there on Friday. Guess how many other investors were there? No, I mean who’s following up two years later? Nobody. So it’s been really cool. And then my friends in different real estate groups, you know a lot of real estate people too. In real estate, people are smart, and they’re good at copying what works. And so they saw what I was doing was working. And they just said, Hey, like, can we use your book in Florida? Can we use it in California? I was like, I don’t know, maybe.

 

Richard Matthews  19:40  

And then you just started publishing and a licensing company.

 

Max Keller  19:43  

It was so crazy. I never would have imagined in a million years. And now we have people all over the nation that license it. Brent Phillips down in Houston was doing the same thing as me but not for motivated sellers. He had a how-to book for private money lenders. So he was giving to local people, and it’s all the same thing, all the questions that people ask. And he called me after I got the award with Robert. And he said, hey I like what you’re doing with the licensing. I’m using it in Houston, I’m not using it all over, can we do the same thing with this. And so we changed it up and then started licensing it for people who are trying to reach out to private money lenders. And then now we do them for coaching companies, we did one for Gene Guarino company, and then we’re doing another one for a big company 

 

Richard Matthews  20:29  

To sell through this program? 

 

Max Keller  20:31  

Yeah, it’s just kind of a cool thing, books are powerful that’s what I can say.

 

Richard Matthews  20:37  

Gene runs the residential assisted living company, right?

 

Max Keller  20:41  

Yeah, yeah, he does that. And so he wanted a book that his students can license and give out when they’re talking about their homes. And they own the senior homes. And then we have another coaching company that teaches a real specific niche. But how to books don’t work for every business, there’s a lot of confusion out there. The main reason it worked for us is that 99% of the book is about what our ideal prospect cares about 1% is about us. That’s why it’s so easy to customize them because it’s mostly just universal stuff.

 

Richard Matthews  21:18  

Yeah, I found that books tend to work best with high-ticket transactions. If you’re talking about which restaurant you’re gonna go to, you don’t need a book. But if you’re talking about selling a house, or the podcasting service that we offer, those are high ticket services or high ticket transactions. And they take some effort and some thought on the person who’s going to be separating themselves from their money. So the books really helped with that.

 

Max Keller  21:50  

Yeah, and then what was really cool was like, I knew friends who had paid five grand, they got a chapter in a book with 20 other people, I’m sure you’ve seen those before, nothing wrong with those, but unmotivated sellers, people thinking about selling their house. I mean, they don’t really care about us, they want their problem solved, and they don’t care about the time we fell down and overcame challenges. So for me, that kind of book, as I said, I know it has its purpose, but it didn’t make sense. Another thing I was noticing, I had some friends who had done some of these books before. And after they gave them out to everybody at Christmas, they pretty much just stacked up at their office. And so I really wanted a book that real estate professionals, agents, brokers, investors could use and teach them how to actually use it. So we already had probably 18 months before we started licensing it. So we just copied the things that we discovered along the way that our students have discovered that work. And then built it into our program. Somebody can write their own book as I said, this book I’m going to give you at the end, that’s a great thing to do. But then there are also licensed books, and there are pros and cons. But it’s pretty easy for busy people who already understand the value of a deal exactly what you said if it’s a high-margin industry. I’m a big Dan Kennedy fan. And I read his book, The Business, which pretty much started this whole publishing company. I’m so glad my coach told me to read that book. And he said, if there are like 100 ways to make money with a book, selling it, which is what everybody thinks is the way to make money is dead last, the only people who make money selling books are a few fiction writers and people who are already famous. The best way is to get a new customer client resident in a high-margin industry and real estate’s one of them. And like I said, that’s what we do. And it’s really fun.

 

Richard Matthews  23:44  

Yeah, and especially when a new client is worth, in my business, they’re worth anywhere from 12 to $25,000 a year recurring. With the amount of money you put into the book and the marketing to go for it, it’s way more profitable to get a client or to use a book than it is to try and sell the book. So like I mentioned before we got on the call, I used one of my books to land a contract with a company that lasted a few years. That’s the only thing I ever used the book for. I wrote the book to get that job. got the job, and I’ve never done anything else with it. But it was absolutely worth every cent of effort that went into it because of what came on the other side, I don’t think people look at books that way. But it’s definitely a fascinating way to do marketing.

 

Max Keller  24:34  

Yeah, it’s a real superpower. If you look at people who are really on big stages and doing big things, a lot of them have books, and it’s for a reason. And like I said, I wouldn’t have guessed how it would all go down in a million years. But it’s been really great. And it’s funny that, like, that award I got for innovation of the year is something,  books have been around for 1000s of years. Most innovations are some app or some piece of technology. So just kind of taking something that’s been around, that’s proven for a long time. And give it to people, I’ve never found a faster way to build trust and credibility than giving somebody my book. I kind of call him my perfect salesman. So when I give my books, like literally, they always get the message, right, I don’t have to pay him a commission. This Lady Diana, who we got, helping her family with her house, we got that lead last week. I mean, my book literally sat on our coffee table with all the other autograph books from the author, which is zero, for over two years, until the day when she needed help. And she went right to the book and called me and all the info is in there. So my sales people literally wait in people’s houses, we used to put up like a lot of bandit signs. And if people don’t know what that is, it’s like battle signs on the side of the road, we’ll buy your house cash. Well, those are kind of shady. And you know, they don’t really even work anymore. And people don’t like them. But we have bandit signs. They’re just in people’s living rooms, and they are on their nightstands. And there are books, so it’s pretty cool and it works good.

 

Richard Matthews  26:13  

So you’ve got a pretty storied story for the last five years building a business and all sorts of different categories and just solving problems. I want to talk a little about your superpowers. So every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that is a fancy flying suit made by your genius, intellect, or super strength, or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky, in the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that we’re born with, or you developed over time. And this superpower, the way that I frame it for people, if you look at all the skills that you’ve developed, it’s the one that is sort of connected to everything, it’s the common thread between all the things that you do in your life. And that is where you find your superpower. So in growing your business, what do you think your superpower is?

 

Max Keller  26:56  

I’ve been told it’s teaching. And I mean, kind of would make sense. When I became a teacher, out of 300 new teachers, I was rookie Teacher of the Year. I came in a little late. I did corporate finance and stuff, I didn’t like it, I got into teaching because my wife was a teacher. And I loved it. And it was an instant thing, you just do something that’s just a natural fit. Teaching to me is mapping out the clear steps. Like really paying attention to that person you’re across from to see if they’re getting it or not. It’s not a one-way thing. It’s a loop. And just taking really complicated things and breaking them down into really simple, easy to understand parts. So I do that in the books, I do it with my students, I did it when I was teaching algebra, I’ve done that pretty much my whole life. And like I said, I just never thought it would turn into much financially because teaching traditionally has been a little bit on the lower-paying side. But now that I’m teaching real estate investors, marketing, that’s a whole different type of teaching. So it’s all good.

 

Richard Matthews  28:04  

Yeah, I do a lot of teaching in my space as well. And because we do marketing, essentially, for heroic brands, so people who want to have a book or who want to run a podcast, or have their courses and education stuff done, so I help people do instructional design, like how to take what they know and turn it into a training course. How to take what they know and turn it into a book. So we do that a lot. And so a lot of what I do is teaching people how to teach. So yeah, teaching is probably as far as I’m concerned. It’s probably one of the most lucrative things you can do as a skill set. Right? If you’re outside of building a massive systemized business like building iPhones or something.

 

Max Keller  28:45  

Sure, yes it’s definitely scalable. I have the same kind of background, I was one of those instructors at the new teacher Academy. So teaching the teachers and now with our students in our new certification in our movement, that’s what we’re doing now. I’m giving our students the tools where they can go out into the marketplace, whether it’s their own license book, or whether it’s one that our whole community shares and uses that actually go to somebody’s house and give a different level of value and teach those people at the dinner table something valuable that will help them and then through communicating that you’re just adding a lot more value to the deals before you even get an agreement sign. So that’s our strategy.

 

Richard Matthews  29:33  

I have a sales strategy that I’ve got a few of my colleagues to tell me I’m crazy for but my sales strategies I get on phone calls like this one with someone else, and I just teach them everything they want to know. Like, I’ll teach you my entire process beginning to end everything that there is to know about building a heroic brand. I’ll give you my templates, my checklist, and everything you need to go out and do it yourself. And most people are like, well, you’re obviously the expert. Why don’t you do it for me?

 

Max Keller  29:57  

Yeah, that’s why we talk about the pros and the cons, I have people all the time. And we’re investors, when they’re just getting started to what we’re doing in our movement, it’s brand new, they’ve never thought this way before. And they’re, well, they’re an investor and they’re not an agent, the first thing we do is just say, Hey, it’s a seller’s market, your house is really fixed up, why don’t you just put it on the MLS and sell it, you can probably get a lot more than what I can give you for and folks are like, no, don’t say that. It’s like, No, you don’t understand. Like, they’re gonna figure that out anyways, just like be upfront, let them know what all the options are. Because like you said, nine times out of 10 they come to you. Marketing is not about having the most ninja ad copy, or all the algorithm hacks and all this crap that people say that’s bullshit that just to sell. It’s not about that. It’s about trust and communication, marketing is a conversation. And trust, that’s it. That’s what marketing is.

 

Richard Matthews  30:57  

Yeah, if they got to know they can trust you, trust being the most important. So if your superpower is teaching, and using the teaching to sell, the flip side of that coin, of course, is your fatal flaw. So just like Superman, has his kryptonite or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that tells you back in growing your business, something you struggled with, for me, it was a couple of things I struggled early in my entrepreneur career with a perfectionism where I was like, I just couldn’t get something done because I wanted to tweak a little bit more, I brought it to market. And that leads you to never bringing things to ship. And another one that I struggled with was a lack of self-care, which means I didn’t have good boundaries. And I let my clients walk over me and didn’t have good hours set up for myself. And so my business ran my life. So early things I struggled with in my career, but I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to rectify those things? So people who are listening might learn a little from your experience.

 

Max Keller  31:54  

Yeah, for me, I was always super competitive growing up, sort of just my natural inclination. So I was always comparing myself to other people. And that was competitive. I wanted to beat everybody, in everything that I did, but there’s no peace with that, and there’s always somebody who’s got more experience or got more money. And so I got into real estate and I’m like, two years in and my income is 10 times higher than it was when I was teaching. But I was happier when I was teaching. And so for me,  when I elevated the mission up, and the books helped that a lot to help a lot of people who I never even met. That’s when the real happiness, the fulfillment, and the success came in. And then when I just stopped comparing myself to other people, I just compared myself to me yesterday, just kept trying to improve each day. And just be happy with the results. That’s been the big game.

 

Richard Matthews  32:54  

Yeah. That’s like learning how to define success for yourself, right? Because until you’ve done that, the only way to do it is to look at what other people are saying success is for them. And you’re comparing your insides to their outsides, and never really works. And, that’s how you end up being placed if you’re not happy. So it’s definitely a cool place to get to when you finally realize, okay, this is what success and joy and happiness means in my life. And then knowing that your business is a tool to help you achieve those things.

 

Max Keller  33:23  

Totally. I agree 100%.

 

Richard Matthews  33:25  

Yeah. So I think that ties really nicely into the next question, which is about your driving force, 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, you have a mission in your business, something that you fight for, but what would you say that is?

 

Max Keller  33:43  

Yeah, so my mindset is, I want our community to be the advocates for not just seniors, but just homeowners in general, I would go to a lot of meetings, and there’ll be real estate investors there like I said, I’m not judging them, but I just don’t agree with this philosophy. And they would talk about hunting the seller’s down, not really giving them all the info, having an advantage, having leverage, and I just thought that was kind of crappy like if you’re going to be in any kind of a fight or a goal or mission, make it fair. As I said, for the first 15 years of my life, my grandma helped take care of me, and then I took care of her, I go get her groceries, doctor’s appointments, take her to church. And I was always because I had a business degree. She was just getting calls all the time. And people acted like they were trying to help her, but they’re really just trying to help themselves. But my grandma had me, but a lot of these folks don’t have anybody to help them and they can just get kind of bamboozled. And so what’s the driving force for us that makes me jump out of bed and hit my head on the ceiling. Is getting this education out to a million homeowners so that they can make, a well informed decision. So it’s a level playing ground, they know what questions to ask people to see if they’re working with the right person. And I just realized that I couldn’t come up with, a distribution model to do it all on my own. So that’s really where the licensing and all the certification and stuff that we’re doing now comes out of is because I know, I can’t do it alone. And people asked me about my publishing business, and I have dual purposes, like one sure I want it to be profitable, like any business, of course, if there’s no margin, there’s no mission. So I mean, you gotta make a profit. But my other mission, and it’s just as important is, like I said, to get this stuff in front of a million homeowners, or just a couple years away from actually reaching that distribution goal. And so that’s what gets me really pumped up.

 

Richard Matthews  35:59  

That’s exciting. And there’s definitely a lot to be said for having a purpose behind what you’re doing. And you mentioned, a minute ago, with no margin, there’s no mission and it goes the other way around too with no mission, it’s really hard to actually build a business. And if you don’t have something that you’re actually building for. So I think it’s a good thing that you’re doing. I like it. So what I want to talk about then is some practical things for people, and I call this your hero’s tool belt. So just like Batman has his Batarangs, or Spider Man has web slingers, or Thor’s got his big magical hammer, we want to know about the top one or two tools you use every day in your business that you couldn’t live without, it could be anything from your notepad that you jot your thought your thoughts down onto the calendar to your marketing tools, or something you use to actually do your product delivery, something you think is essential to getting your job done every day to actually drive revenue in your business.

 

Max Keller  37:00  

One is just having a really detailed plan, I have ADHD, along with probably a million other things. So for me, I need to know a good plan that tells you what the next step is, not just what the big goal is. So, I’ve been just using a planner every day for about four years now which helped a lot. My accountability coach, I think if you’re a business owner, and you’re not accountable to somebody else, that’s like a third party. I follow Keith Cunningham and I love his books about owning a business. And that’s really what he advocated for my whole game, everything changed when I got a coach that I could share what we’re doing, share the scorecard for the company with and they just see things differently. So that’s huge. And then my assistant, when I brought Cade on two years ago, changed the whole game because it just allowed me to take 90% of the stuff off my plate that I wasn’t even very good at, a lot of organization stuff, and really detailed oriented stuff. And she loves it. And then I can spend more time on the things that I’m better at and more passionate about. So those are the three things. My plan, accountability coach, and an assistant.

 

Richard Matthews  38:15  

Yeah, absolutely, those are good things to have. I know when I brought on my first staff member,  it was a mind shift for me because I was like, I was used to doing everything myself. And when I hire someone, I don’t know how I’m gonna afford this. And it was amazing. Immediately after bringing them on your work output doubles or triples, you’re like, Oh, that’s how you afford it.

 

Max Keller  38:39  

One of my mentors, Glen, told me a long time ago, he said, got to think about hiring, six months before you need that person. So it’s kind of always gonna be like a catch 22. But I agree. And I’m not into a lot of status signaling like some people, my team has this many people and all this stuff. There’s a lot of stuff on social media that is total garbage. And these people are just wasting time, I just focus on getting results for my students. Because if I pour into them, and they’re getting results, everything else takes care of itself. I don’t need to worry about all that silly noise, but I will tell you to add good people. It’s definitely a superpower. And I don’t know all these movies that you’re talking about. So I need to brush up a little bit on my comic book game. But I was having a lot of kids when all these movies were coming out so I’ve missed Iron Man and Thor and Avengers. I’ve never seen any of these so I need to get up on this game.

 

Richard Matthews  39:31  

It’s probably because you only had one boy, my son was born when all these were coming out. 

 

Max Keller  39:37  

Right, okay. 

 

Richard Matthews  39:38  

And he was obsessed with all of them. And because he’s the oldest, his younger sisters got the bug. So my second daughter. She was Iron Man every year for Halloween for like four years. She went through a whole phase where Iron Man sat at the dinner table with us and we didn’t set a plate for him. We got in trouble. And she didn’t have Barbie dolls in her doll house. She put Iron Man dolls.

 

Max Keller  40:07  

James got here. We have five girls in a row. And then we had a boy so I don’t give up. What’s that?

 

Richard Matthews  40:14  

He’s your youngest?

 

Max Keller  40:15  

Yeah, he’s my youngest. Our games are like Newsies, Les Mis, Piano. My wife is a singer, so we’re over here. I’m a girl, dad, but I love it. It’s all good.

 

Richard Matthews  40:26  

Yeah, I just discovered recently because I was doing the math on it, my son’s gonna move out. And I’m going to have native doctors in the house. And I was like, you’re going to have to move close by, because about once a month, I’m gonna have to come over and hang out. 

 

Max Keller  40:40  

That’s right, very cool. 

 

Richard Matthews  40:43  

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Richard Matthews  42:14  

Yeah, so I want to talk a little about your own personal heroes. So every hero has their own mentors like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi-Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad, Spiderman had his Uncle Ben. So who were some of your heroes? Were they real-life mentors, maybe speakers or authors or peers who were a couple of years ahead of you? And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Max Keller  42:35  

Yeah, I mean, number one is my grandma. Because what was cool about her is so many things. But one is she was such a giver, she’d be in pain in her knees, she had arthritis, she never complained. She just kept going. I think that’s why she made it to almost 91 when all of her friends passed away, she just kept going. So I learned a lot of determination from her. She was just always thinking about other people. She would make all the food and she was president of the senior citizens club. So she would make all the food and stuff for the luncheons and I would go with her to the bingo. And it was really cool. She was just always helping people. She just never raised her voice at all. She was just basically the most perfect person in the world. So I’m out on a lot of my game. After her, one funny thing that she did was that the reason I don’t have long hair or facial hair is that we would watch Wheel of Fortune. If some guy had a ponytail, she was like, not feeling that and she could close one eye, and have some visible scissors and cut their ponytail off. And then every time somebody had facial hair, she’s like, Oh my gosh, look at that. I can’t believe that. I don’t even know why I guess back in her time, that was the thing. I’m glad she wasn’t a bad influence. Because I did everything that, it’s not even so much she said anything specific. You just kind of lead by example. So we don’t need a million people on this list. Grandma is by far my parents who did a great job with me too. But grandma kind of kept me in church when I was doing the college thing. And I was like, I don’t need church. You know, she’s like, encouraging me to go, I met my wife at church taking her there. So that changed my whole life. So I’m glad I did that. So if you haven’t met anybody, go to church. They’re out there. But wherever you want. 

 

Richard Matthews  44:23  

My grandma was that way too. She is still to this day a hero of mine. She passed away a number of years ago. But I swear, if Jesus needed a door greeter, she’s probably it. And it was one of the things like she was really important to me. And I had a really close relationship with her. But to me, she was always just grandma. And it was just me and her. And it was like when she passed away, I did the eulogy at her funeral. And like 750 people showed up. And there was standing room only in this megachurch and I was like, oh, wow, she was just important to me.

 

Max Keller  45:01  

 Absolutely. 

 

Richard Matthews  45:02  

So, yeah, grandmas for the win.

 

Max Keller  45:06  

And there’s always somebody along the way. The first 18 years of school are kind of a blur, but I had a marketing teacher, Miss Watkins, I wasn’t good at school, I didn’t know I had dyslexia, they weren’t testing forward as much back then. And I always struggled in school, I just didn’t like it. I didn’t want to pay attention. Teachers couldn’t figure out if I was dumb, or I just didn’t care. I just had trouble concentrating. But when I got into her class, senior year, they had business stuff. And I did a presentation and made it to Nationals. And we got a free trip to Disney World. So she kind of showed me that I could go out and achieve stuff. That was the first time I ever did anything. And then that kind of got me on the business track. And here we are running businesses so that definitely paid off.

 

Richard Matthews  45:52  

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s always amazing. The people that our heroes don’t always know like, if you ask them, who consider you here, you probably wouldn’t know. And always just reminds me to act in a way that is worthy of being someone’s hero. For me, for my kids, a mentor of mine said, Hey, one day you’re gonna grow up, your kids are gonna have a hero, if you’re not worthy, it’s not going to be you. And so I’ve always just kept that in the back of my mind. So I asked people the question, because I’m curious who they consider and it’s very rarely the famous people you hear about. It’s Grandma, or it’s the teacher or it’s the guy who comes by and picks up their trash every week. It’s the normal everyday people that have a huge impact on your lives. 

 

Max Keller  46:34  

That’s right. 

 

Richard Matthews  46:35  

Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about your guiding principles then. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. So 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 or two principles you use in your life regularly, maybe something you wish you’d known when you started out on your own hero’s journey.

 

Max Keller  46:55  

Yeah, I’ve read a lot. So reading is an absolute superpower. I only read seven books for the first 35 years of my life. And then when I found out that I was dyslexic, I got with a coach, she helped me figure out how to read a lot better. And so now I read a lot. So that’s been the number one key to success. It’s been reading and then I just use the phrase leveling up. But I always want to improve when I was a teacher, we call it to keep, change, delete, but every time I do a presentation, or a training or anything, I’m just always looking for feedback from people who can actually give you feedback, not everybody can or should, but from folks who have been more you want to go and get feedback and just level up and it’s weird, it’s like, I thought success would be like, one thing or one magic bullet, or all of the sudden, and it’s really just daily gradual improvement over time, and then you just kind of lookup and it’s that light edge.

 

Richard Matthews  48:00  

Yeah, you make a little bit of improvement every day.

 

Max Keller  48:01  

Now, look what happens. So that’s been what I’ve been doing, it’s been working really well and just taking care of my health too. Because if you don’t have your health, as I mean, if you don’t take care of your body, you don’t have anywhere else to live. So I’ve been doing a really good job lately, taking care of my body and just turning work off and making sure that I’m focused on my family too, because you said, if you’re not worthy, then they’ll find somebody else to follow.

 

Richard Matthews  48:30  

It’s one of those things that’s super important that I think we forget a lot as entrepreneurs is to take care of your body. We want to be wealthy, but you forget about the healthy, so like Healthy, Wealthy and Wise, those are the three things. Over the last couple of years, I started working with a health coach. And I put on 20 pounds of muscle and dropped like 10 pounds of body fat and I was used to being scrawny. Now, I’m not scrawny, I actually looked like an adult male now, which is fun. And it’s amazing how much that’s impacted my ability to get worked on and to do good work. So yeah, your health is a huge thing. Helps everything from your ideation abilities to having fun with your kids when you’re taking the day off. 

 

Max Keller  49:16  

Exactly. 

 

Richard Matthews  49:18  

Awesome. So that’s a wrap on our interview. And I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. I call it the hero’s challenge. And hero’s challenge is simply a selfish way for me to find stories that I might not find, otherwise on my own, coz not everyone because not everyone is out looking to get on podcasts as you might be. 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 should they come to share their story on our show? First person that comes to mind for you. 

 

Max Keller  49:45  

Has Robert been on your show yet? 

 

Richard Matthews  49:48  

Robert Kiyosaki? He has not. 

 

Max Keller  49:50  

I think he’s got a good story. I’ll book him. 

 

Richard Matthews  49:53  

If you can introduce him, I will totally bring him to the show. Alright, cool. Let’s make it happen. 

 

Richard Matthews  49:58  

That’d be awesome. I think everyone knows Robert Kiyosaki, right?

 

Max Keller  50:01  

I mean, he’s good. And I love his stuff. And he’s always coming up with new stuff. He’s constantly learning. But I have to get back down. I don’t know about one, just one person. I’ve met a lot of really amazing people. They’re out there. But like I said, the most amazing people I’ve met, they’re doing ordinary things extremely consistent, like being really successful really is like I found it’s just more about consistency and showing up. And so the people that I kind of look at and have those best stories. They’re not like the most exciting story, but it just works. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain.

 

Richard Matthews  50:38  

Yeah, those are the types of people we try to get on the show, right? Because just to show all the different, you know, the ones every everyone sees all the time are your Gary V’s and your Tony Robbins, and the big names that are in the marketing game, but you don’t realize like, one of my favorite people that I’ve had on was, someone who was doing underwater tile work, that’s all they do. They do it all over the country. Yeah, l and nobody ever knows that guy. But they exist, and they do really cool stuff. Awesome. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end, who are cheering and clapping for acts of heroism. So our analogous to that, in this show is where can people find you if they want to learn about real estate and the publishing stuff that you do? Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, you know what, Max, I’d love to have your help. And I think more importantly, than where is who are the right types of people to reach out and ask for your help?

 

Max Keller  51:30  

Yeah, so if somebody’s listening in, they’re a real estate investor or an agent or a broker. We help those folks figure out what’s the best route for them. I have a copy of my newest book, it’s the real estate investors book writing checklist. But I mean, it works not just for real estate investors, but all business owners, essentially. And it’s the framework that we use the questions that we asked before we write a new book, writing a new one right now. These are basically the questions I wish I had when I wrote my first book because then I wouldn’t have had to go halfway in and rewrite it because it wasn’t structured correctly. So if folks want to get a copy of that, while the link is still up, you can go to DealsChasingYou.com forward slash Matthews, so deals chasing you.com forward slash Matthews

 

Richard Matthews  52:25  

Bring him to this landing page, I’ll make sure that gets in the show notes for people if they want to get into that. So thank you so much for coming on the show today, Max, it has been a pleasure having you and getting to hear your story and hear what you do for people. And so I really appreciate that. Do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Max Keller  52:46  

Yeah, just read. I mean, reading is a superpower. We talked about superheroes and superpowers. For me, it all centers around starts and stops with books and just, I just want to commend everybody for investing their time and trying to level up and try to get to know you better. And just looking forward to our next visit.

 

Richard Matthews  53:07  

Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on today, Max.