In episode 37 of Wake Up to Wealth, Brandon Brittingham interviews Mark Evans, a real estate investor and business consultant, as he discusses the importance of relationship capital, the transition from being a boss to a leader, and the critical lessons learned from near bankruptcy. Tune in for insights on wealth-building and the power of community in achieving financial goals.SOCIAL MEDIA LINKSBrandon BrittinghamInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mailboxmoneyb/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandon.brittingham.1/ Mark EvansInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/markevansdmFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/markevansdmWEBSITESBrandon Brittingham: https://www.brandonsbrain.org/homeMark Evans: https://www.markevansdm.com/
Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the 'Wake Up to Wealth' podcast?
This is Wake Up To Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brittingham.
Hey, this next segment is brought to you by Paramount Property Tax Appeal. And these are guys that I trust, my good friend Wes over there. If you're overpaying for your property taxes, Paramount Property Tax Appeal specializes in helping commercial property owners and homeowners reduce their tax bills, ensuring that you only pay your fair share. These guys are gonna fight for you.
And these are the guys that I trust. You can reach my good friend Wes. Their contact information is 310-897-5056 or Wes at pptaxappeal.com. That's Wes at pptaxappeal.com. Hey, what's up everybody? We are back again with another episode of Wake Up To Wealth. And I cannot thank you guys enough because you guys have continually made us in the top five in investing in Apple.
Multiple times we've leapfrogged Dave Ramsey and got the number one spot. We're averaging 65, 70,000 downloads per episode. So thank you all for listening and supporting. We greatly appreciate you being part of the Wake Up To Wealth crew. Today, I'm super excited. Got a gentleman by the name of Mark Evans here.
It's kind of funny how small the world is because we get talking, have some mutual friends, and we met from Bobby Castro, who's a guy that helps both of us do some cool stuff. It's just funny, you know, when you get to the top of the mountain, a lot of times it's the same people. And it's just pretty funny that we get talking and we have the same circle of friends, same people that we know.
And that's always really cool. And it's always why I stress to everybody, relationship capital is the best capital you can ever make. And so, Mark, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate you being here with us.
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Chapter 2: How can relationship capital influence your success?
Definitely, Brandon. Thanks for having me. I mean, dude, it's a prime example of getting in the room. You know, amazing things can happen. We wouldn't be doing this right now if we weren't in that same room.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So if someone's listening to this and they don't know who you are, you know, give us the elevator pitch, who you are and kind of what you do.
Well, small town Ohio kid, hillbilly. I know it doesn't look like it today, but I am. June 2nd, I'll be in business 29 years. I've never had a job my entire adult life. If I don't kill it, I don't eat. I'm definitely eating over here. I started off in a seamless gutter company. I bought it two days after high school for $1,000 down, creative financing.
I didn't even know what I was doing back then. I just knew I didn't want to work for anybody. Turned that in and was doing a lot of work for investors, became a pretty big real estate investor. Was really bad at it for a long time, but became really good at it.
And then through that process, you know, started creating a lot of vertical integration through acquisition of companies from siding windows, garage doors, everything. I mean, pretty much everything inside of around a house because that's what we did. We rehabbed and sold houses all day. And now if you fast forward, December 31st to 2000,
So excuse me, 2005, I took off for a month and I thought I had a business. I realized I had a job. So from 96 to 2005, I had a, you know, you know, I work 16 hours a day like we all do here. We all love work and that's what we get to do.
And but I was sitting on the beach, South Beach with my girlfriend, now my wife, Dina, on a flip phone, closing deals and putting out lots and lots of fires and realized I got to figure this out. So that one month turned into seven years travel around the country and around the world. We went everywhere. We went all kinds of places. And while I was doing that, I was working on the business.
It forced me to work on the business because guys like you and I, we'll just jump in. We'll solve it. Solve, solve, solve. Next, next, next. Problem is, that's cool at the beginning. It's not cool as it gets bigger. It's everything. We are the bottleneck to everything. We are the problem and the solution as well. Did that. Finally built some real businesses. And I've been virtual ever since 05.
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Chapter 3: What are the key lessons from Mark Evans' business journey?
I have offices all over the place. I never go to them. I have team members all over the world. And still do real estate investing, have a lending business, have the media side of things, have a fintech company. I'm involved in many blue collar businesses through acquisition, equity, a little bit of both. And I'm actually going to take a 60 day trip tomorrow. Actually, I leave tomorrow, Brandon.
So me and my wife and kiddos are going to head out to Hawaii, Tokyo, Australia, New Zealand for 60 days and kind of just explore. Obviously, I still do business. The truth is no one would know this is going on, Brandon, in our world unless we told them. Right. Because we have this beautiful thing called the interweb. Teams are still running. Businesses are growing and cranking, hiring, firing.
Problems still exist. You know, wins are still happening. So it's I'm sure we'll get in some of that today, though. But I appreciate you having me, Brandon.
Yeah. So, man. So a lot of people say kind of what you just said of I've got a business, but they don't. They've got a job. I know it's probably a lot of things, but like, what do you think is one or two things you could pinpoint of that? I was actually able to transition to here to basically sit in the owner's box, right?
Like where you could have businesses running where you're not, you know, basically tied to doing that. Like a lot of people say they want to do that. And a lot of people say they're going to do that. But as you know, there's, there's a few, there's a small percentage of people who actually get to do it at the level that you've done it at and be successful.
There's a lot of people that try to do it and they fail. Yeah.
Well, I mean, listen, I think it's a discovery process. You know, what kind of what kind of business owner are you? You know, I think a lot of people are trying to be something they're not. And, you know, the truth is we're all delusional, man. You know, our delusional actually serves us and hurts us at the same time.
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Chapter 4: How to transition from being a boss to a leader?
That's why you got to be in the right rooms where people can counterbalance this delusional behavior and thought process. I always tell people I'm not here to train you how to do it. My biggest job is how to untrain you. You know, it's kind of like a new program on a computer. You got to take out the old disk and put a new system hardware. We've been taught a lot of bad stuff, man.
We've been taught a lot of limited beliefs. For me, it's like, you know, real estate investing specifically. When I left in 05, like I'm a chest to chest business guy.
right real estate you're in the house the seller selling motivated you know we're running ads we're doing all these things the office is cranking i actually love that i love back then i loved like i wanted to be the boss you know what i mean i was like i'm the boss here you come to me for the problem you know solutions and then through the discovery though
I realized I'm not as important in the business. Problems will happen. I am good at everything, but I'm not good at everything all the time. And no one's going to do it as good as us, right? We always say, all of us have the same exact track. No one will do it as good of us.
Okay, but if they're only doing this 100% of the day, and that's all they had to focus on, and they only did it 50% as good as me, but I have five guys doing it, they're way better than I ever could be as one person.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And there's problems in that. There's problems in that, right? You're going to have slippage. You're going to have over budgets. You're going to have these things that are going on, but now, now I can focus on the business. Like Walmart, they have a 10%, you know, people, 10% of their profits get stolen out of the front door every day. You know, so they figure out a solution.
It's not like Sam Walton in there back in the day. I'm going to sit in the front door and I'm going to protect everything. I'm going to run everything. Like, No, Jeff Bezos is not boxing everything and shipping labels today. It's a business. And again, that's not right or wrong. Some people just don't want to do it or can't do it. Honestly, Brandon, it's a control freak thing for sure.
Yeah. One of the things you just said that if you guys are listening, I don't, I don't want you to miss this because it is gold. You said, you know, I can't be good at everything all the time. You know what I mean? And I think that's the mistake that we make as entrepreneurs is we, We want to be good at everything all the time. We wear a bunch of hats.
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Chapter 5: What is the 'torch method' for evaluating business opportunities?
By the way, I bought my seamless gutter company for twenty five thousand dollars. And the thing was making six figures. Well, it was making grossing six fifty ish the first year kind of thing. So you could never do it now. And it came with equipment, came with a truck, it came with all these things and a thousand dollars down.
Like it was literally a handshake, two page contract, you know, good old boy thing, you know? And then, you know, I'm a cashflow investor. So when I ask myself, does this, how much cashflow does this have? Or is this a cash suck? You know, some of you guys listening to me are really good. And my mind breaks with this by the way, but like when you do startups, right.
Hey, my burn rate is $100,000 and I go six years burn rate because you're going to constantly be raising money, raising money, raise money. I don't do that. I can't do it. My brain doesn't work like that. I'm not that smart. Genuinely, I'm not that smart. However, I know if 100 comes in, 80 goes out, net 20, I like that model. I understand basic cash flow structures. And then...
What am I building this for? Because a lot of you guys are creating fragmented opportunities, meaning you're in the gutter company and then I'm going to go do software and then I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. There's no connection. So what happens on part of the torch method, the E is enterprise value.
If I buy this company today, does it add to my enterprise value of what I'm really trying to accomplish?
Oh, that's that's that's money. I've never heard some I've never heard somebody relate it that way. That's that's that's a good one.
Well, again, I discovered this the hard way because I was buying everything all over the place and my resources got so limited. Again, it's kind of like real estate, right? If you do single family investments, that's good. But if you do apartment buildings, that's a different team, different lawyers, different commercial broker, everything's different.
But you're like, I'm still a real estate investor, so it's the same. Well, no, if you're doing rehabs now, if you're a rental portfolio, these are all different businesses disguised as the same business. However, if I did single family, this is exactly how I progressed. I did single family rentals and then I moved over to single family rehabs. I call it the one step over method.
As long as it's one step over and I can actually use some of my resources, the same bookkeeping, some of those, and then expand resources with relationship capital, that's different. That's a lot easier to make these moves. Reason most people won't do it though, Brandon, it's boring. You know, it's like almost something new and it's exciting. It's, well...
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Chapter 6: What are the risks of buying a business compared to real estate?
shit ton of money, especially to me at that time. And, but he sat me down and he said, that's going to cost you three. Yep. And I said, you're fucking old and crazy. And he said, okay, so walk me through what it's going to take you to make that million. And then he said, okay, now see how much that takes away from everything else that you're doing. That's making way more than that, by the way.
And then I was like, holy shit, like a light bulb went off. And I was like, that's real opportunity cost, you know? And that's, I wanted to highlight that because you said it.
Um, you know, you, you eloquently said it very easy and I just don't want people to miss that because entrepreneurs, all of us, um, we chase the shit and we chase the shiny object and we forget it takes away from the main thing. I love the enterprise value and the one step over that, that is genius.
Another thing that you said that I want to highlight is, you know, you said you don't want to do startups. And I think to your point, um, Buying businesses or whatever you do needs to be tied to your identity. Another thing that the when we were together in Florida, the founder of Netflix said is he was good at startups, but he was bad after they were startup. Right.
And he knew that and he knew when to get out. So that's really cool information. So, so you, you went through the torch method and I really appreciate that. Cause that's gold to break down for our audience. So like, what do you look at? Like, what is it? If you were to pick one, what is the ideal business? Like today you want to buy, like what kind of revenue are they doing?
What do you think you bring to the table? And then ultimately, do you look to exit? Do you look to roll that business into something else? Like, how do you look at it?
Yeah, again, just to be clear, I have construction background, right? I grew up in construction my whole life. So I understand construction. Very. It's simple to me.
Yeah.
So, you know, I just got to say that because I do. That's why I like the blue collar space. My family's blue collar. I'm I'm blue collar. Like, it's just it's through my blood. And I believe I saw my uncles. I saw my mom, my dad, my parents, all these guys and gals work really hard and never get to the end of the finish line and get a payday.
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Chapter 7: How does opportunity cost affect entrepreneurial decisions?
Actually, we actually already have two other companies that will fold into that and we'll sell them probably in about 18 months. Right. Yeah. You know, they want three years. They want to be on three years or less. I think it's going to happen way sooner because, again, that's our power.
Like we'll come in and like, hey, you're bringing us in at three X. We're going to sell this at eight to 10 X when we go on the X. Right. So, you know, but again, those are the type of companies I really like.
Yeah. One of the things you said, too, is this is not to be understated. It's most people's books are not right. If you're an entrepreneur out there, one of the things that he just said, you know, data, not drama. Your decisions are math and they're all based on data. The struggle that I see so many people have is they don't even have the data.
They don't even have the right data to make a decision. And they don't have their back office tight enough to even have the right data to make a decision. One of the things you should really be concerned with as an entrepreneur is investing and having that side of your business correct. Because if not, you're going to have problems.
Well, problems are coming for sure. And out of that, you'll sleep a lot better at night. The thing is that what you said, Brandy, is very important. It's an investment, not a cost. A lot of people, and I did this for years, so I'm talking out of experience. For the first nine years, I thought an accountant, bookkeepers, tax advisors were a cost, not an investment.
And really, I realized that when I almost went bankrupt twice, by the way, how much of an investment they really are back in the day. I never did go bankrupt, but I was close. I mean, I had the paperwork filled out. I was ready to file. And I just ended up one more day, one more day, one more day. And then I figured it out. But I can tell you, these are great investments.
And again, you don't have to go spend $20,000 a month with these individuals out of the gate. It all depends on your size. Once you get clarity on one data, and don't get too complex with data. That's another thing I see too, Brandon. A lot of people get complexity inside of their data. They know data about everything, but they don't know what to do with the data. They're clueless.
It's like you have overconsumption. Ideally, you're finding six, seven KPI points that really can move the needle. I mean, let me give you some basic sales calls, right? How many calls are you making? And what's the conversion? Real simple, right? I don't need, I don't need to know cold leads, warm leads, hot leads, follow-up leads, blah, blah.
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Chapter 8: Why is enterprise value important in business investments?
Like I just need to understand the main important ones. Obviously, if I need to deep dive into them, we can, but I see a lot of people. So they're deep diving on this stuff and why they're deep diving. They're not actually doing the work. And there is that other side of the category where I have people in companies I've had to let go.
They know everything about the data, but they don't know what to do with it in the companies.
That's a good point. That's a really good point. Hey, let me tell you about my good friend Jeff Hyatt over at MSC Consultants and check out his episode if you've missed it. With today's volatile interest rate environment, real estate investors are looking for every advantage legally available.
More and more are realizing that accelerating depreciation allows them to free up cash flow, enabling them to acquire their next property sooner. MSC's approach to cost segs is the answer. If you've got properties out there you haven't done cost segs on, you're paying too much in taxes. MSC's approach to cost segs is the answer. Visit them at www.costsegs.com.
That's www.costsegs.com and ask for my good friend Jeff Hyatt. So you just mentioned it. You're on the brink of bankruptcy. And obviously you turn that around. I'm always interested more in I for me personally, I think that success is a bad teacher sometimes. I've learned way more when I got my ass ass absolutely handed to me than when I when I hit the walk off home run.
So, you know, what do you think was a lesson you could share in that? Obviously, you didn't give up, but what do you think you learned? What clarity did you gain through going through that?
Well, man, again, we just saw it happen real time with Kansas City Chiefs. They let their foot off the gas a little bit.
I was there, by the way.
Yeah, I saw that. When you're winning, you kind of think you keep winning. I promise you they come out next year fucking hungrier than they've ever been. Getting embarrassed like that on national TV at that stage is a whole nother level. And that's what happened to me. I was very young, naive. I was spending lots of money at the club, being silly. I thought I had everything figured out. Having fun.
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