I SURVIVED REAL ESTATE 2024
The Norris Groups 7th annual award-winning event, I Survived Real Estate, is Friday, October 25 at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. Our 17th annual black-tie gala will benefit Make-A-Wish. Since 2008, together we’ve raised well over $1,000,000 for charity!
In a year of lingering inflation, housing shortage, sticky high interest rates, national affordability challenges, a dangerous war and an uncertain upcoming election are just some of the headwinds we face as an industry and a nation. What will the FED do as year year finishes out? How big will the FED decision loom on this year and the expectation of a better 2025? Oh yeah, there is that little decision the country is going to make as this year looks like a big presidential election in terms of what the economy will look like for the next four years. Our panels are always some of the brightest minds to help us tackle topics we never thought we’d have to consider and how they might impact real estate.
In this episode:
- Biggest Failures in Real Estate
- Essential Leadership Qualities in Real Estate Investing and Business
- Investor Panel: Key Takeaways and Final Discussions
Episode:
Narrator  Welcome to The Norris Group real estate podcast, a show committed to bringing you insights from thought leaders shaping the real estate industry. In each episode, we’ll dive into conversations with industry experts and local insiders, all aimed at helping you thrive in an ever-changing real estate market. continuing the legacy that Bruce Norris created, sharing valuable knowledge, and empowering you on your real estate journey. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a newcomer, this is your go-to source for insider tips, market trends and success strategies. Here’s your host, Craig Evans.The Norris Group, proudly presents, I Survived Real Estate. industry experts discuss evolving industry trends, real estate bubbles, inflation, and opportunities emerging for real estate professionals. We want to thank our Platinum partners. uDirect IRA Services, San Diego Creative Investors Association, White Feather Investments, MVT Productions, Inland Empire Real Estate Investment Club,DBL Capital, Douglas BrookeHomes and Realty 411Magazine. See, isurvivedrealestate.com for event details, information on all our generous sponsors and to connect with our speakers.
Craig Evans  In today’s social media. Everything is, Mark and I were talking about this a little bit last night. Everything is the best of everything, right? We only see how pretty you are when you wake up in the morning. We only see how great your kids are, not the fact that they spit up and threw up and everything that happened in real life, right? I want to ask a hard question. Each and every one of us sitting on this stage, and I can guarantee each and every one is room has had it happen, but nobody wants to admit it, because it’s the shame of what’s what we think is only happening to us. What’s your biggest failure in investing and in real estate? But the reality is, you guys are all here because you’ve succeeded, so more importantly, what was it? But then, how did you overcome that?
Bill Allen  I’ll go first. You guys didn’t want to take that one, apparently. I’d say, you know, you asked for my biggest failure in real estate, but like, I’ve lost money, I’ve made money. I’ve had good deals. I’ve had bad deals. I’ve I’ve made the wrong decision. I made the right decision. I’d say my the worst thing that I ever did was when I started this business. This might be a little tough, but when I started this business, I looked at my wife. My wife’s over here, Lucy. Hey, Lucy. And I said, I was a full time Navy pilot, and I heard this podcast to this guy who’s flipping 100 houses. His name was Justin Williams. A lot of you guys probably know who he is in the room. And he said he’s making, like, a million dollars a year, and he’s selling this program for 25,000 and I was like, You know what? I need to make a million dollars a year. That sounds awesome. And I looked at my wife, and I said, Hey, I want to do this thing. It’s a much longer story than that. And I said, I’m not going to be around a lot. I was flying 10 or 12 hours a day, every day from the military, strapped to a G suit, a G suit on a strap to an ejection seat, wearing oxygen mask, doing aerobatics, students trying to kill me every day. Kill me every day, and one weekend a month. And I looked at her and I said, I’m not gonna be around that much this first year, but I’m gonna build a business that will take care of us for the rest of our lives, and I’m confident I’ll do that. We had a baby. He’s about six months old at the time. His name’s Will, our first born and and I did that. In a year, I did that. We built a business. We did 67 houses in the first year, made about 700,000 I netted about 450, $500,000 that year, just in real estate. And then what I did was I didn’t renew the contract with my wife. I thought that contract, like auto renewed every year, like your lease, it doesn’t. And so for the next few years, I just continued to build and build and build. And then in 2019 I bought 7 Figure Flipping from Justin Williams, and I asked her if it was okay, and she kind of said yes, but she didn’t really say yes, I think. And this just kept happening, and I just kept building and building and building. And in 2020 our relationship really fell apart, you know, to the point where there was a lot of other stuff going on, but we really distance ourselves from each other to where we’re almost like roommates. And she asked me for a divorce, and we fought through that. We got to the lowest of the low and came back stronger than ever. But the biggest mistake that I made in my life was not like talking about that contract you. And sitting down with her and saying, “Are you still with me? Is it still okay if I do this?” I became addicted to the business. I became, that was the thing that fueled me, Tony Robbins’s human needs. It was the business. It was this. It was being on stage. It was that kind of stuff. And I would say the biggest mistake that I made is not, she’s not involved in the business, but she’s got a lot of say in what I do. And I would say, I challenge all of you to talk about that contract on a regular basis, whether it’s every 90 days, every six months, but I thought it auto renewed for a long time. So now when I, you know, I just took a, like, a big high profile job with somebody, and I sat her down, and, like, really wanted to talk to her and see how she felt about it, because I told her all the things that I want to do, and that’s my biggest failure was just thinking that contract auto renewed.
Marck de Lautour  Testing. Does anyone here know predictive index? Familiar? so Captains and Mavericks are these hard charging CEO entrepreneurial types that are just going to run through brick walls and literally work 100 hours a week so that they don’t have to go work 40 hours for somebody else. So, yeah, I sense from the giggling that there’s some in the room, right? So we call those visionaries, and there’s a book called Rocket Fuel, and Rocket Fuel that one of the first lines is, if you’re reading this and you’re a visionary, that’s the problem. So the biggest failure I think I’ve had in my business is letting my ego get the better of me and trying to scale. Okay, you meet people that are doing big more deals than you. You want to scale and do more deals. Scale. Scale. Scale. It’s a really terrible word if you don’t have systems and accountability and process all those icky things that I don’t do well at all. But you can’t scale a business without operational excellence. And so the big revelation I had my low point in 2017 luckily, was surrounding myself with a Mastermind community that kind of put their arms around me and said, Dude, you can’t do this on your own. You need an integrator, which I hadn’t heard that term before, but a visionary and integrator create rocket fuel and take you to the next level. And I was thankful where I was able to onboard a COO who has come in and transformed our business into a highly efficient and operational business that now can relieve the burden off of my shoulders. We scaled into different markets. We failed because we didn’t have good systems and processes in place. So slowing down and thinking a little bit more about how you can do it, and looking internally, I think any business rises and falls to the level of the leadership at the top, and probably similar to Bill’s story, you have to look in the mirror and say, the business is failing. You know, it’s on me and so understanding my strengths and weaknesses, you then go higher for the weaknesses. You don’t have to change who you are as a person. In fact, if you try and do that, that’s what causes stress. You know amongst your relationships, you know so you know when you know thyself, you find knowledge when you accept yourself, you find wisdom and the acceptance of who you are, the acknowledgement of your weaknesses, and finding someone that can compliment you is where you can find true Rocket Fuel and take your business to the next level. So I think that was it. For me.
Bruce Norris  You want me to go?
Craig Evans  Have you had any mistakes in your career?
Bruce Norris  I’ll tell what this is. This is a true story. It’s very short. I was going to tell the one you probably think about, but okay. We’re building houses. I’m barely 30 building houses in Palm Springs, and builder calls me up and said, there’s another lot next door. You want to buy it? So I said, Sure. So send in whatever it was, nine grand and start building that. And about three months later, I got a call talking the building. He said, we just had an inspection. It was kind of kind of weird. The guy, the Inspector said he could find four of the houses, but not the fifth one. I said, shouldn’t we be concerned about that? He said, Well, I hadn’t really thought about that. So I’m out there, and guess what? The sign of the realtor was on the wrong lot. We were being on a lot we didn’t own. So we were halfway done with the home, and we owned the lot next door, which is a bummer, right? So I’m pretty direct. I go straight to the owner of the lot, knock on the door, and I said, Hi, I’m Bruce Norris, and I barley got that in mouth, and the guy inside was the man of the house. He said, Thanks for the house. And I was, you know, I was there to be honorable and stuff. But now, you know, I also have this other side, is, you’re welcome to tick me off. I can handle that too. So I got a little ticked off. I said, Okay, we’ll handle a different way. So walk back to my car, and his kid came out, and his kid was like, 22 I thought he wanted to fight, and I was ready to accommodate that. So he said, No, no, no. He said, My dad is there? Scared to death. I said, Well, why did he talk to me? He says, got a lawyer. I said, okay, so give me the lawyer’s card. So I called the lawyer, and I went into his office in Palm Springs, and I was there for like an hour waiting the guy came in. He said, Have a seat. I said, I don’t need to sit down. There’s going to be a very brief meeting. I said, your guy has two choices. I will buy the lot that he has left that we’re building on, or exchange the loss that I have for 10 grand. And that’s the two choices. I said, I don’t need to sit down. Call me at eight o’clock in the morning. Tell me what you’re going to do. So he calls me up. He says, We’ll take 20 grand. I said that wasn’t one of the two choices. And so he puts me on hold. He says, Okay, we’ll take 10 grand. So that was the quick exit of a problem where you build half a house on a lot you don’t own. That was that was much shorter than some of the other ones I have, by the way, but.
Marck de Lautour  …with shots.
Craig Evans  Oh my god.
Bruce Norris  Did you even know that?
Craig Evans  And as a builder, that scares the hell out of me. Oh, my God.
Bruce Norris  One other part of it, we also, while because it was the realtors fault that had the sign on the wrong lot as a preemptive, I listed the property with her, having her state on on camera, that was the lot that she sold us. Okay, just wanted a backup plan.
Craig Evans  So, we’re starting to wind this up. So I want to, I want to ask one more question to each everybody on the panel here. And I think a lot of times, you know, when I’m talking to investors, they look at one thing. They look at the house, right? They look at the money. They look at the house. They look at the money. They look at the house. They look at the money. They look at the house. You know, I want to turn $25,000 and make a million, right? That’s the golden spoon, so to speak, right? That everybody sees it out there the golden egg. How important do you believe leadership qualities are in real estate investing?
Marck de Lautour  Well, I don’t think real estate investing is any different than any other business, and it is everything how you treat your staff.
Craig Evans  Let me interrupt you there, regardless of scale, because remember, we’ve got people here that are like I talked with a gentleman tonight, so excited. He started in January, right? He’s done just a few deals. So I want us to think back, and I want us to look at this from the perspective of, regardless of where you’re at in your career of real estate, how important is understanding leadership principles, even within yourself?
Marck de Lautour  Yeah, so even as a solopreneur, I think it starts with integrity and a set of core values that still ingrains with our big team. But that started with when I started on my own. I mean, I was a guy, you know, knocking on people’s doors and helping out of difficult home ownership situations. But the people that I have seen fail in this industry are those that don’t stand on firm ground and try and truly help people. You can’t, you know, those that brag about making $25,000 because they didn’t know the value of their asset, or they make 100 grand wholesaling a house and took advantage of a grandma. I mean, that is an untenable business model. So you have to have integrity. You have to have core values of what you stand for, and then make sure you hire and fire based on those core values, principles, and I think that is the core of leadership, is trying to grow people up with integrity that can serve communities. I mean, you know, as investors, we can sometimes get a bad name, right, especially with the wholesalers that are showing themselves flipping off hundies on the top of a Porsche or something. It’s like, it’s just not who we want to be but wholesaling, it’s why it’s under attack, you know? I mean, it could well be illegal to wholesale without a license here coming in through all these states. So I welcome that, because, you know, that doesn’t we have no fear of that. Being licensed, doing the right thing, truly trying to solve difficult home ownership situations is at the core of what all of us can do. And yeah, it starts at the top, for sure.
Bill Allen  I spent 20 years as a, in the military, and leadership in the military doesn’t just start with the commanding officer or the top. It starts everywhere. It’s all we do. It’s all we talk about. And what I’ve noticed, I coached a lot of people in real estate, but it really is just business and life like what most people don’t understand is they’re a leader somewhere in their life, whether it’s in their community, it’s in their family, it’s in their upbringing, on their sports team when they were younger. And it’s 100% a skill that you can learn. It’s not something that you’re born with. It’s not, it’s something that was taught to you, that you emulate, that you it’s a mirror. So Mark mentioned core values, minor Extreme Ownership, stewardship, hard work, integrity and personal professional development. I know my core values. My team knows my core values, because we talk about them all the time. But that first one, Extreme Ownership had to be added after I read the book Extreme Ownership, by Jocko and Leif, and it has some of the best leadership principles I’ve ever heard inside that book. But there’s one part that I really love. They talk about leading up the chain of command, which nobody talks about. Most of it is lead from the top. They talk about leading up the chain of command when the people that are on the battlefield have to leave back, and if you’re a brand new person, there’s title companies, there’s realtors, there’s sellers, there’s money lenders, there’s so many, there’s hundreds of people that are involved in what we do in one house. Hundreds of people are affected by one house scale that to hundreds of houses and 1000s of houses that a lot of us have done, like, there’s this leadership principles have to be there. Nobody’s gonna follow you if you’re not a leader, nobody’s gonna jump on your train that you wanna that first hire, my first hire, I got an ad on Craigslist in 2015 we met in Denny’s on my way to work, and she was a podorothist. I’m not pronouncing that wrong. She wasn’t a podiatrist. She sold insoles and shoes, and she had a full time job. Her husband made $45,000 she had a new baby at home, and she worked full time. I had never done a deal, and I was having trouble. I’d been spending money for three and a half months, and I wasn’t doing deals. I needed a salesperson. She said she’s the best salesperson on the planet, and the only reason she quit her job to come with me is because I cast a vision so big that she could see herself inning under it. And I can tell you right now, if you can’t cast that vision, nobody’s gonna get on your train. Leadership is the X Factor. It’s the only thing if you could study one thing to be a great business person make money. It’s leadership that’s all that matters.
Bruce Norris  Okay, I’m going to tell a story. This experience early on in my career changed how I looked at the customer across the table, and it was a really big gift. I worked for a company for, three months that I didn’t enjoy. He treated people awful. I was only there for three months. I was the number one buyer at the company. That was the first three months I was in the business. But I couldn’t stand how he treated people, so I left and went on my own. So about a month into it, I’m sitting across the table from somebody that’s going to sell me a property, Zen Garden Grove, California. And I said this one I pay for your property, a very monotone statement comes back. That’s fine, and I need to have a 30 day escrow. That’s fine. I need you to do a little bit of work on the property. That’s fine. And there was, it was something about the tone into his voice that bothered me, that like the hair on your neck actually just told you something’s really wrong here. I said, You know what? I don’t want to talk to you about your house anymore. Are you okay? And he looked at me really surprised. He says, No, I’m not. And it just so happened I had 10 books in my car. Went to a seminar by Og Mandino, and he wrote a book, The greatest miracle in the world. I bought the book. I bought 10 of them. Give them away. So this is the first one I gave away. I said, I want to talk to you about your house anymore. By the way, that’s not a technique, obviously. I decided, you know, something was seriously wrong here. I want you to read this book, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. If you don’t read the book, read this one chance. Chapter, The God memorandum. And in that chapter, God talks to you and says, you might have forgot this, but you’re the greatest thing since life spread. Let me, let me tell you. And so I left him come back the next morning, knocked on the door, and he opened the door and he said, I want you to know that the book that you gave me saved my life. I was going to sell you my house and kill myself. And he said something else that was a gift for the rest of my career. He said, I decided that I do want to sell my house, because what I need is a fresh start. And it was, it was a great gift, because. I went from I got to steal somebody’s house, or I could get to give them a new start. That was a great gift. So for the rest of my career, I look across the table and see is a fresh start in order here. And sometimes they don’t want that, but you know it’s the best, and you can sell that because you have their best interest in heart. So that was the best experience in my career, and it happened in 30 days on my own.
Craig Evans  It’s hard to replace and, it’s hard to replace a man like Bruce Norris. I hope I can be half the man that he is. So listen, we’ve had a good time talking with investors. We’re going to take a little bit of a break. You guys don’t need to listen to us all night. We’re going to take a break. Have some dessert. Feel free to walk around, talk. Spend you know, 25 minutes or so, and then we’re going to get started back with the economic panel. Thanks guys. Appreciate you. Thanks, my friend.
Narrator  We’d also like to thank our Gold Sponsors, Inland Valley Association of Realtors, Keystone CPA, NorCal REIA, NSDREI, Pasadena FIBI, PropertyRadar, The Collective Genius. Thompson Group, Aloia Roland, Coldwell Banker Town and Country. See, isurvivedrealestate.com for event details.For more information on hard money loans, trust deed investing, and upcoming events with The Norris group. Check out thenorrisgroup.com. For more information on passive investing through the DBL Capital Real Estate Investment Fund, please visit dblapital.com.
Joey Romero  The Norris group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab.