SOTM 49: Pat Hiban’s 6 Steps to 7 Figures and Coronavirus’ Impact on Commercial Real Estate

May 25, 2020
In 6 Steps to 7 Figures, Pat Hiban outlines the steps he took to secure financial freedom via real estate. On today’s State of the Market podcast, we discuss how agents can apply these same steps in today’s markets to bring in more business. Pat also describes how real estate investing helped him escape the 9-to-5 grind and what’s included in his new Rebus University course. Plus, we offer predictions on coronavirus’ long-term effects on office and retail spaces, talk about REO listings, and more.
SOTM Listen to today’s show and learn:
  • South Carolina starts opening back up [1:50]
  • How coronavirus could affect commercial real estate [9:34]
  • What the future may hold for retail spaces [13:29]
  • Pat’s experience with REO listings [19:21]
  • A simple trick for building sellers’ confidence in you [28:34]
  • Pat Hiban’s 6 Steps to 7 Figures [32:45]
  • What Pat’s up to now [36:46]
  • How to break through your goals.
  • Plus so much more.
Pat Hiban Labeled as learning disabled at age 8, Patrick Hiban’s journey to success as a semi-retired New York Times International Best Selling Author of 6 Steps to 7 Figures, Radio show host, entrepreneur and billion-dollar real estate agent was driven by his desire to make a difference in the lives of others. Pat started at the bottom learning every aspect of real estate and in 2011, earned the #1 agent in the world ranking from 2 major real estate companies. He says that not to brag but to tell you that anything is possible when your drive is strong enough & your hunger for learning is present. Pat is the founder and Chairman of Rebus University and is the host and founder of real estate podcast Real Estate Rockstars with Pat Hiban, which has featured guests including Robert Kiyosaki and Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran. Pat is a former real estate agent out of the Baltimore MD area, and is the owner of the Pat Hiban Group with Keller Williams. As a billion-dollar agent, Hiban was awarded #1 REMAX Agent by gross commissions in the world in 2004 and #1 Keller Williams Realty Agent in units sold nationwide 2006. He was named a New York Times and USA Today best selling author, and has been quoted in Time Magazine, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and various other real estate publications. Pat is also one of the founders of GoBundance, an adventure company for “healthy, wealthy, generous individuals who choose to lead epic lives”. Notable members of GoBundance include fellow founders David Osborn and Tim Rhode. Related Links and Resources: Thanks for Rocking Out Thank you for tuning in to Pat Hiban Interviews Real Estate Rockstars, we appreciate you! To get more Rockstar content sent directly to your device as it becomes available, subscribe on iTunes or StitcherReviews on iTunes are extremely helpful and appreciated! We read each and every one of them, please feel free to leave your email so that we can personally reach out and say thanks! Have any questions? Tweet meFacebook me and ask Pat anything. Don’t forget to head on over to Bare Naked Agent for Pat’s answers, and advice. Thank you Rockstar Nation, and keep rockin!

Aaron Amuchastegui: Real Estate Rockstars, this is Aaron Amuchastegui, coming back to you for another fun interview. I have been listening to all you guys out there saying, “Hey, bring Pat back. I want to talk to Pat.” Today, I was able to get Pat Hiban to come in and come in, grab the mic, and dust it off a little bit, and come talk to us again. Pat, how’s it going, man?

Pat: Good, man. Good to dust this mic off. Thanks for welcoming me back, A, appreciate it.

Aaron: You have been doing so much stuff online. Even though you haven’t been doing the Real Estate Rockstars Podcasts, you’ve been doing stuff with GoBundance and all these other interviews. You’re out in North Carolina?

Pat: South Carolina, yes. Same thing.

Aaron: South Carolina? To me, I’m a West Coast

Pat: To most people. It’s like North Dakota and South Dakota, it’s like, what’s the difference?

Aaron: All mixed in. What’s it been like in quarantine out there? That’s the first thing we’re going to ask you about really.

Pat: It’s an aggressive state next to Georgia, it’s the second most aggressive. They’re aggressive in government wise, meaning it’s opened back up. You can go eat at restaurants, you can pretty much do everything, everything’s open.

Aaron: Are you going out to eat at restaurants or are you staying at home?

Pat: I haven’t, no. We’ve been getting a lot to carry out, but I haven’t. I think I would but my wife and kids don’t want to, you know what I mean? They’re still conservative about it. I’m like, “That’s probably a smart thing.” I’m in walking distance to our little town and I walk through it every day and there’s tons of people out and about, man. None of them have masks on, they’re all just rocking and rolling.

Aaron: People are happy to be back out there. I’m kind of the same way. I’m in almost the take it or leave it mentality. If the wife and kids want to go to a restaurant, I’m going to go, if they want to stay home, I can do this for as long as I need to. I’ll let them decide.

Pat: I think this is kind of like prison. At first, if I went to prison, I would be so aware of how uncomfortable the bed was and how much it sucked, but as time goes on it would become just normal and easy. I feel like that about this in that in the beginning for me, it was very hard, it was very– I noticed myself just like, “Oh, I’m going stir crazy. I can’t wait. I just need something to look forward to. I want to go out.”

Now I don’t feel like that at all. I’m just like, “Meh, it is another day,” you know what I mean? I’m so used to it. I’ve almost lost my enthusiasm to go out. I’m like, “I don’t need to go out.” Before I had angst wanting to go out, going out to dinner or whatever, and get out of the house or do shit. I just have lost that angst. I’m just like, “This is the life and we’ll let the chips fall when they fall.”

Aaron: I think a lot of people, that’s almost what the economists are worried about, it takes like 30 days to form a habit. At the beginning, everybody’s really antsy and wanting to get back out there, and now it’s easier. Being on quarantine is way easier now than it was when it got– at the beginning, everyone was like “Two weeks? How are we going to do this for two weeks?” Now every time they add another week, everyone’s like, “Of course, they added another week.”

Aaron: It’s easy to add it on.

Pat: I think you’re right. I think you’re right, it’s funny. I don’t know what that means. I think it means everyone’s going to be, and I don’t want to use the word lazy, everyone’s going to be more Zen or more laid back or more relaxed I think. My kids are living with me now, they’re 23 and 25, they’ve been here almost three months now. Luckily, they both have full-time jobs that require a lot of their time.

When they lived in DC, they used to wake up at 7:00 and 6:30 and take the dog to the daycare and jump on the Metro and go through the traffic and get their Starbucks or whatever, and get to work by 9:00. Literally, now, they’ll walk down the steps at 10 of nine, scratching their head, and grab coffee, that we’ve already made for them, and turn on the computer.

They’re logging on the computer at the exact same time where they may have walked in the door at their office, and the same amount of work is coming out of them. They’re sleeping an extra two hours or you now what I mean? They’re starting their day, there’s so much less stress, at least, in the morning I think. It’s fascinating what’s happening.

Aaron: It is fascinating. Like I was telling my wife, “When you can not think about all the worries of it and just realize like this is a historical moment–” I’m a history buff, I love looking back to like, “Oh, I wonder what it was like back then.” Remembering to just pay attention right now and look around in awe and wonder and be like, “This is wild. The way that this person is reacting is strange. This person’s reacting totally differently.” It’ll be some lifestyle changes for sure but–

Pat: People are starting to really believe, and I do think it’s true that working out of the house is better for your mental health and for your physical– it’s just less stress basically. I don’t know, it’s interesting.

Aaron: There used to be a worry that if people worked from home, they weren’t going to get as much work done so you need to have an office to hold everybody accountable. Now people have proven they can do it, and it’s almost like, “Maybe we’re getting more productivity.” Because instead of spending two or three hours a day going back and forth and all this, they just knock their stuff out and everybody’s happier. I asked my worker, I’m in Texas, and they said, hey, we can go back to the offices. I asked my employees like, “Hey, do you guys want to go back to the office?” All of them said, “No. We would much rather–” They all said they’d rather stay home right now.

Pat: What are you going to do with the office space?

Aaron: I got rid of it.

Pat: You got rid of it already?

Aaron: Yes. Right when this started I was set up to where– they put shelter in place in Texas. The end of the month to month on three different offices and I just had our guys go grab a U-Haul that day, move everything out to a storage unit. Because I was like a Chicken Little. It was like, “Hey, this could end up really bad. Let’s just move everything out of our offices so we don’t have to pay rent for the next two months.

Now I could go get those spots back, and I said, “Hey, do you guys want your spots back?” They said no. We’ll everybody work from home for a while, they’re doing a fine job, and if they are happier way, it’s less expensive for us than having an office space and they’re happier.

Pat: I agree. I’m glad I’m not a real estate investor that focuses on office space. I just think that’s going to be a crazy world in the next decade.

Aaron: They’re going to have to repurpose that. I think there’s going to be a lot of office space that’s going to be repurposed to something else. Maybe I will repurpose it to old folks housing or something.

Pat: How do you repurpose an office though? It’s so sterile? I guess you could make it to something else that’s sterile, like a hospital, like you said, like an old folk’s home, whatever. If you want to stay in there as companies, what they’re going to have to do is they’re going to have to make all the hallways, one-way hallways. Because people are going to be like, “It’s too germ-y. If we pass each other in the hallway it’s too close.”

Aaron: One-way hallways, you’re right.

Pat: They’re going to have to repurpose the hallways, one-way hallways. Then these huge bullpens with all these desks, they’re either going to have to like do massive sneeze guards around the whole thing or give people their own little mini cube offices. Which means a lot of tenant improvement being spent by the person that owns the office.

Aaron: They might as well give everybody their own office. They’re going to have so much empty space it’s like, “Hey, just move to your own office.”

Pat: I was thinking back. It’s funny, I was having this conversation with someone, and I was thinking back to when I went into the office, let’s say, with our story, 15 years ago or more. When I was an office rat, probably seven days a week, I stepped into the REMAX office that I worked at, dressed up in a tie and suit. I was that guy. I never stayed home sick, I always wanted to work. I don’t care I have a cold, I have to go stop off at the drugstore and get some cold medicine, and stuff myself up or whatever. You know what I mean?

Aaron: That’s really common. Before this we weren’t caring as much about it, but there’ll always be the sick person in the office over there sneezing and coughing.

Pat: Imagine what that’s going to be like now. Someone’s going to come to work and they’re going to be like, “”Get out.” You can’t work because you’re going to be freaking people out.

Aaron: Just a cough. You accidentally sneeze because of the allergies and you’re near anybody, their heads just jump like, what the hell?

Pat: One of the things I have been doing is I’ve been going to a chiropractor because I threw my back out. So he coughs, I’m like, “Dude, he’s coughing.” I’m laying on his table, he’s cracking my back, he’s coughing, and I’m thinking it’s probably allergies. It’s probably allergies or I don’t know, just cough, he’s not sick, right?

Aaron: But he’s coughing on you.

Pat: I don’t know if he was coughing on me but I noticed a cough or something. I think it’s just an awareness. I think that if it were a year ago, I wouldn’t even know that he had coughed. You talk to people and you don’t know that they cough or they sneeze or they– You know what I mean? Like there was no awareness at all, very little awareness.

Aaron: You’re right. We’re also self-centered people, humans in general. If somebody was sick or coughing, we didn’t notice but now it’s actually like a fear when somebody hears a cough.

Pat: Unless cough and snot was coming out of their nose and they were coughing then you were like, “Oh, I don’t want to catch your cold.” You just didn’t notice.

Aaron: What about retail businesses? Your solution of one-way hallways or something like that, I was like, “Realistically, it would be a pain in the butt but these offices can reopen, and they could probably spread people out.” Then there’s retail. You and I have some friends that own some retail centers and they’ve talked about no rent for a year. Restaurants are getting shut down. What do you think about the future of retail, do you think those places will come back?

Pat: The existing places may not, but they’ll be replaced. Where it’s going, and again it’s like pushing us into the future, but you know how the Amazon Go has stores work with the facial recognition where you just– Do you know how that works?

Aaron: No. I haven’t seen that.

Pat: Amazon Go has a store in Seattle, and basically, you go in and it recognizes your face. Or you swipe a card, or you– I don’t know how it works, you sign into your Amazon account or whatever. It gets a picture of you, so it has facial recognition, just like Global Entry or whatever when you’re traveling. They take a picture of you, and then whenever you pick something up off the store, it adds it to your app or to your Amazon. You pick something up off the shelf and it recognizes your face. Literally, you can put it back on the shelf and it will recognize your face.

There’s so many cameras, it’s not even funny. There’s like a thousand cameras in the store, but then there’s no cashiers. Then you just walk out, when you’re done, you just walk out and it shows up on your Amazon account. That already exists. There’s one store like that. I talked to a guy the other day, the technology is out there for that to be implemented in 7-Eleven and Sheetz and stores like that, basically gas station type stores.

What will happen is you’ll see some of these companies that have these stores that you go to, these stores you go to buy Gatorade or water or gasoline or chips while you’re driving your car, go out of business. They’ll be like, “Oh, we can’t handle it.” We’re going to shut down 50 7-Eleven’s let’s say, but instead of 7-Eleven going back in, someone will go back to that landlord and say, “7-Eleven was paying you $20,000 a month, we’re going to pay you $8,000,” and the landlord’s going to be like, “Okay, that’s the market.”

Then we’re going to take our savings and we’re going to retrofit this store with 1,000 cameras and set up this technology and we’re not going to have any employees, and it’s going to make their profit margin so much better. You know what I mean? Because the money that they’re saving on the rent and for the building, they’re just spending it on technology, and the entire cost of staff and employees is zero.

Aaron: I think that’s a really cool concept to think about. It’s a way that the stores could actually, the retail place could save money by doing it that way. They could also say, “Hey, this is for your health. We actually have a way you come in, there’s no waiting in line, you grab your stuff, you walk out, it automatically charges you because it knows what you’re grabbing off and on the line.” There has been so much stuff that really advanced technology, let’s say like 10 years over these last few weeks.” LIke Zoom is worth more than all the airlines combined right now.

Pat: This is crazy. Is it really worth more?

Aaron: This week, as far as the stocks will tell you, is the company Zoom is worth more than all the airlines. They’ve actually got planes and things like that. So many meetings on Zoom and technology forced everybody to learn them.

Aaron: Let’s talk real estate back to– Right now, there could be more real estate foreclosures coming, there could be more real estate trading. There could be a market where there’s a lot more hustling, where it’s not just pure real estate sales anymore, that there’s REO, short sales, things like that. I heard some stories of back when you were at different times as an agent, that that was some of the business that you were able to go out and hustle, tell me about that? Was that part of your business plan ever? Was it?

Pat: It was never part of my business plan but I made it part of me. What happened was, in let’s say 2007, the market crashed. Our sweet spot was move-up buyers and basically, move-up sellers, let’s call it. Basically, that means they had a $300,000 townhouse or a $200,000 townhouse. They had equity in it, and then they sold it and they bought something for $556,000, $700,000, whatever. It was their second purchase, that was our sweet spot.

We got the listing and then we got the sale on the next house, and there was tonnes of that, man. There was tonnes of it. Everybody had equity in their house, everybody was spending money, and it was a good time. When all that stopped, we had so many units that we were set up to do. We were set up to do 41 I think, units a month. Meaning I had a staff heavy operation. I paid my agents very little percentage-wise but they did very little work, they did the sales work.

It was more like any type of sales organization rather than a real estate office. They would run out, get the listing, bring it back, then everything would be done for them by salaried people. Then they’d have to just go out and get another listing, go out get another listing, go out get another listing. It worked really well. When the transaction stopped, when the transactions went from 41 to 12, I said, “Man, I got to figure out a way to get more listings.”

I got some advice that was, go where the money is flowing. There was no money flowing in the move-up buyer. The equity that someone had in their house that they were going to use to buy the next house was wiped out, they couldn’t move. The money wasn’t flowing where our sweet spot was anymore but I saw the money was flowing in short sales and in foreclosure.

I decided to go where that was flowing or starting to flow and because it would be a lot easier? It’d be a lot easier. I had never had any foreclosures. That’s a lie, I had– In chapter five in my book, 6 steps to 7 Figures, I talk about building and how you’re always smarter to build from a success up than from the ground up. The challenge that I had was I didn’t have many successes or any at all with foreclosures. Luckily, what happened was about 12 years before this even happened, maybe 10 years, a guy, the mortgage officer gave me two foreclosures and I did sell them for this bank. Since then the bank went out of business, like long before 2007.

Aaron: That was before foreclosures were a thing.

Pat: Yes, before foreclosures were a thing. I still remember the name of the bank even though it wasn’t in existence anymore and I used it to build from. I started reaching out to other banks and saying, “Hey, I have experience because I sold foreclosures for American Home Funding.” They didn’t really look that up to see if it was still in business anymore. Then I just started asking around, “Who do you know that’s in charge of foreclosures?”

I asked appraisers and I asked just everybody that I met. I don’t even know how I got this lead, it’s probably in the book, but I can’t even remember now. Somehow I met somebody and I was like, “Do you know anybody that works at any banks or any mortgage companies?” “I know, this guy,” and he gave me a lead. Long story short, I followed up like heck with this guy and I eventually got a listing for $30,000 on the Washington DC border in Maryland.

It was in a really bad neighborhood, I would never, ever have considered even listing it back in a day because our average sale price was like 50 or something. So I wouldn’t even have taken that, but I took it, and we sold it. It took forever, it took like seven months. We sold it and then I was able to use that to build up. Then whatever the name of that bank was, I was able to say, “All y’all specialists, clients, American Home Funding, and South Street bank, whatever it was.”

Then I took that and a guy gave me a– I met somebody with Bank of America and I said, “You got to set me up with this guy. You got to set me up with someone in charge.” Finally, through persistence, I got a lunch with the guy and I made it crystal clear that the only reason that I was meeting him was because I wanted the Bank of America foreclosures, and he gave me a couple.

Then I was able to put that on my business card, then I had three, and I eventually built the business card so it was like 20 names on there. Then every time I would reach out to someone I’d send them a business card and say, “Look, these are all my clients, this, this, this.” We eventually got Fetty, Franny, Fannie. At one point at the peak, which was maybe 2011, we had 300 active and whatever the status was, the status of they gave it to you, it’s your listing, we got to get the paperwork ready and whatever. We had 300 listings in various statuses as a team.

Aaron: Active and in your pipeline. You had like, “Hey, we got 300 that we either have or we’re going to have.” How big was your team when you were doing that?

Pat: The foreclosure team was probably four people, maybe three? Not much.

Aaron: That was really just you repurposed your existing business. You had this business that was ready to do stuff and you were like, I can meet up with you–

Pat: I needed to find stuff for them to do. I didn’t want to fire everybody. We’d laid off 22 people in one year, but it got to the point where it was going to zero fast. You know what I mean? There were some pretty lean years there. It was going to zero fast and people were just– agents were listing houses but they weren’t selling because all the sellers were in denial.

Aaron: I remember that. There was like 20 months of inventory because everybody was still pricing it at what they owed or what they bought it for or the one sale that happened six months prior.

Pat: There’s a whole denial time that we tend to forget about. I was talking to someone about this the other day. I wonder if this time around if you’re going to have that. I would have to imagine it’s a human nature to have that denial. If your estimate says your house is worth 700 and an agent comes and tells you it’s not, it’s worth 600, I think it’s natural to–

Aaron: That’s 10 years later too. It’s natural to want to get more for sure, and it’s 10 years since the last one. Maybe a lot of the people that own houses now didn’t own any houses back in 2007 when this happened before and they don’t remember the same level of pain and changes. I liked some of that advice you just gave. At the beginning, it was like, hey, this shift was happening.

Back in 2007, everything shifted, it was going to zero quick. You tightened up what your expenses were and said, “I don’t want to lay everybody off. I’m going to do some layoffs and pay attention to this and then go where the money flows.” We don’t really know what’s going to happen over the next 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, or 12 months but there’s big changes.

We just talked about retail and office space will be changing and there’ll be some trades and who knows how it’s really going to affect the real estate market right now, anyone with a crystal ball? Some people are saying, “Hey, no impact because of government intervention.” Some people are saying 25% foreclosure corrections but agents should just be paying attention to their local market and start to see what is happening.

Where the market goes, make a pivot to the business plan, maybe before you used to focus on the real high-end stuff and this sort of client, I remember doing that with my Airbnb. My Airbnb focus in California used to be businesses, weddings, really, really high-end, $1,500 a night, crazy, at the house out there. Now it’s transitioned the marketing to be families that are looking to get away out of the city and just have a nice place to relax.

The quality is different, the marketing is different, and it’s saying, “Hey, I’m taking this asset but changing the marketing.” Agents, look where the money is and then not be afraid to– the thing that you said, it was like, “Don’t build from ground zero. Get a little bit of a success and then build from that success.”

Pat: Build up, build up, build up. It doesn’t matter if you’re– For a real estate agent, it could be like if you sell a house to a teacher, that should be a success and then you build from there. You’re like, “Hey, can you post a brochure of the listing in your lunchroom, your teacher’s room? Or can I bring doughnuts to the teachers or how can I volunteer at the school? Then when you meet another teacher say, “I sold Sally a house.” “Oh, really? You sold Sally a house?” Then as soon as you sell that second teacher then you’d be like, “I sold Sally and I sold Margaret a house.” “Oh, really? You did?”

I did that with cops. I probably sold 30 cops houses and stuff over the years and I always remembered their names. I would forget people’s names so easily. I sold so many houses but I would always remember the cops because I’d be like, “I sold to officer Thompson, officer Ladausky, and officer Schmidt, houses. Do you know them?” They all know each other. They’re all like, “Yes.” They’ll at least say, yes. It just made it so much easier for them to use me.

Aaron: You’d probably drop names they don’t even know and they’re like, “Yes.”

Pat: It was instant credibility for me. You got to think like that.

Aaron: Being a specialist in whatever you are. You became an REO specialist by doing one after another, but you could have been a– I’ve got a guy that does, is it military relocation specialist? For this one community. That was what he did, a couple of them, and then he did another, and another.

Pat: If he doesn’t utilize that, and do it in neighborhoods too. They’re like, “Do you know the Simpsons? I sold their house.” Even if you didn’t sell their house, if you’re like, “Hey, do you know the Rutherford’s down the street? He plays soccer with my son. Their son plays soccer with my son.” You should always be pointing out the commonality of people like them that you work with, absolutely.

Aaron: That’s a perfect summary. Because you could be like eight different– You could be a specialist in this neighborhood, you could be a specialist for this sort of people, for teachers, for whatever else, but always being able to– When you have a potential client pointing out that commonality and then starting with that success you had before, “Hey, you’re a teacher? I helped this teacher. Hey, you live in this neighborhood”

Pat: Price ranges too. That’s exactly what I did when I built our luxury home division. Is I didn’t have any experience in it, but I just kind of– I tell that story in that chapter in 6 Steps to 7 Figures too, how we went from zero settlement to over a million dollars. I set my goal, we were going to do 10 settlements over a million, whatever year it was, and uncannily, if that’s a word, the next year we settled 10 houses over a million dollars. 100% as a result of me building, like I talk about, through that system.

I listed a house that I knew I was never going to sell. It was an expired for $1.4 million, and I pulled the tax record and it was said it was worth 650. I’m like, “This guy.” It was one of those contemporaries and it had 70’s decor. I was like, “This guy is never going to sell this house.”

I wanted the listing because I wanted to build on a success in people’s minds so I could go to the next appointment and be like, “I got a listing over a million dollars, and here’s the brochure on it, and here’s the da, da, da.” Then they’re not going to say, “That’s overpriced, it’s never going to sell.” They didn’t care, they just wanted to know that I do million-dollar houses. Because my competition was going out saying that they sell all the high end and I sell the low end.

Aaron: You talked about that 6 steps book, I know we only have a couple more minutes, but when we look at that we actually have a whole course inside Rebus, you can find it on Hiban Digital. It’s about your six steps book. You took your book and then you built this whole course out over it. Your steps, it was kind of like saying like, “You’re the guy to show them how to get to a million.”

Your step one was setting goals and affirmations, you step two was track it, that which is measured will grow. Step three, find mentors and masterminds, learn from the best and copy your way to success. Step four, act. Step five, build on it like you just talked about. First, it’s getting there, then building on it. Step six, invest and put your money to work for you.

How long have you been doing that in your life? When you look at those steps, is there one that is– When you go into your course, do people follow them in order? Do you need them to do it one to six in order? Is there one that you have a favorite and how did you come up with that?

Pat: Yes. You got to do them in order. Yes and no, you got to do them in order, but you can certainly do them all at once too. [chuckles] I certainly like– [crosstalk] It’s certainly like where we talked about build. I certainly liked the last chapter, invest, because I think that’s what enabled me to manifest the lifestyle that I have. To manifest makes me a little bit different than a lot of real estate agents who– lot agents set goals and things like that and track and stuff like that, but very few actually get out of the rat race like Robert Kiyosaki talks about.

Very few quit or retire with any money. Most of them retire with state and federal tax liens on their house or just not much money in the bank, not much investments, things like that. I think that that kind of makes me a little unique. I would hope that I was able to do real estate, I was able to succeed at real estate, but I was also able to take those commissions.

The reality is I would have never been able to buy any houses or any forms of real estate if I didn’t use real estate commissions from sales to do it. I didn’t have another job. It was the selling of the real estate that enabled me to buy investments. Then it was the investments that enabled me to stop working and to not have to chase fisbos at an older age and to be beholden to sellers and buyers who complain about the same stuff you’ve heard a thousand times over. [chuckles]

I used to hang around agents a lot who would be like, “Oh my God, like that same old thing, house under appraised by $500. Now I got to take it out of my commission.” I’m like, that would drive me crazy nowadays. Anyways, it’s interesting.

Aaron: That’s the biggest reason for people to look at your book, to read your book, and take the course. Because it talks about how you built this business during times somewhat similar to what we might see over the next few years. You hustled and you work and invest, and what that really did was put you in a place where right now a lot of our listeners out there are stressed because they have less listings than they did or they’re going to have to make some pivots and things like that.

The biggest reason that right now you’re not doing the podcast anymore, you’re not doing all this other stuff is because you were able to invest your way to a place where now you’re just stable and okay and you can kind of do whatever you want. Like that invest part is the critical part about saying you don’t have to worry about how to do it. As we finish in our last minute or two, so what is Pat Hiban doing now?

When people are like, “What’s Pat doing next,” now that you’ve taken yourself out of having to do the day-to-day rat race and just enjoy life and maybe hang out with family. What’s next for Pat? What are you focusing on?

Pat: That’s the thing. Like I said, my daughter’s moved back in so I am spending a lot of family time. GoBundance has taken a shift, we used to be an event-focused company where we would have events, and then in the meantime, we’d have a little Facebook group or whatever, where people [crosstalk] got ideas, and now it’s become a Zoom company. We were having meetings every night.

I’m moderating a lot of meetings. I moderated a meeting last night with Dave Asprey, from Bulletproof Coffee, I’m moderating a meeting today with Cody Sanchez from Entourage Effect Capital who’s talking about how to fire people in this crucial time, what cuts you need to make, how to make them. It’s created a life, a different model altogether. We’re not really an events company anymore. We’re kind of like an online learning company. Our Facebook group has exploded with like 20 times as much conversation.

I think that actually, I’m spending a lot more time on that than I was six months ago, for sure, but I enjoy that. I’m one of the owners of the company, I started it. I guess that that would answer my question. I’m doing everything I can not to be an investor. For a while, I was an investor. I invested in stuff, I moved stuff around, I sold stuff, I bought stuff, and you can’t do that now. It’s taking everything out of me to just sit still and not spend my money on investments. It’s been a couple of years, at least, probably five years since I’ve been like this, but I guess it’s a good time for us all to be like this because–

Aaron: This is the toughest part for hard-charging entrepreneurs right now, is to just stay patient as we get to figure this out and figure out what’s next. Just know that like right now is not the time to jump into any big things like that. Step three of your book is find mentors and masterminds. When I joined GoBundance years ago, it was absolutely life-changing for me. That’s how you and I got to start hanging out and go to Africa and Japan and all sorts of fun places that we got to go do stuff in.

You’re right, right now the online experience for that is we’re getting so much value and interaction on a daily basis with everybody of like, “Hey, this is a problem I’m having, how can we work together?” I feel bad for the people that aren’t in a mastermind because I feel so much more prepared getting to talk to so many guys every night about like, “What are you going through? What am I going through?” Right now we even have, sometimes we have guests that are getting on some of the calls and people– it’s not all members right now. I think there’s different times when people are getting on there.

If any of you guys want to know more about GoBundance, you can go to the website. You can go message Pat on online, or find me online on Instagram or Facebook, or any of those places. It is a great time to be looking at mastermind options when you’re trying to think about what is next in life, and just finding people like you that are trying to focus on solutions because it’s the true answer.

You talk to 20 people and you take the average of those answers you’re going to find what your answer should be. If you only talk to one or two people and get some advice, you might be getting the wrong advice. Opening that up. Pat, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, what’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Pat: Well, I’m lucky there’s not a lot of Hiban’s. It’s kind of like Amuchastegui. H-I-B-A-N, you could just find me online, just type my name. I’m easy to find. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, everything pretty much.

Just go to GoBundance.com, you can go to Amazon and get 6 Steps to 7 Figures or Tribe of Millionaires, which is a book I just wrote for GoBundance with David Osborne and Tim Rhode and Mike McCarthy.

It’s called Tribe of Millionaires, and we actually have a website called tribeofmillionaires.com. You can get that book for free, you just pay the shipping, it’s only $7 and it’s $20 on Amazon. Go to tribeofmillionaires.com.

Aaron: It’s a great book. There’s even a page about me near the back.

Pat:There is. There is.

Aaron: My picture in the page about my life story of joining GoBundance there. Pat, thanks for coming back on Real Estate Rockstars. I hope you enjoyed us chatting today. I promise Pat will be back on for Future State of the Markets and checking in. Hope you guys had fun today on our catching up.

Pat: Thanks for the invite, Aaron. I’m happy to come back anytime you want.

Aaron: Thanks, buddy.

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