On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. It looked really bad because a lot of people would be like, you know, you're floating. You're you're not actually successful. That's what they said. Because if you just looked at it like a business, I was technically negative. I was bringing in $400, 500,000 into the company. But a $100,000 or $200,000 of that was actually going back into the company to pay for staffing and leads and all this other stuff. Right.
What they didn't see was that a mission was gonna drive me further than the moment. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe, featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel. On what it takes to build a successful business today. Assess and how you too can get there.
Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. Alright, everybody. I'm Chaz Wolfe. Gathering the Kings this week. We got David Brooke at the King stage. How are you, brother? What's up, man? Good to be here and on your podcast. Superbumped. Yeah, man.
Dude, we were just talking off air a little bit about this beautiful scenery behind you before we jump into, like, your business, all that fun stuff, Dude, where are you? Like, that scene looks like, oh, a peaceful serene movie. I'm grateful to be at my house. This is my my fireplace, and I'm actually sitting at my outdoor kitchen bar. But, yeah, it's a it's my house, so I'm grateful to be here. Yep. That's awesome, dude.
I just I love the outdoor space, and we were just talking about that with kiddos and stuff like that. David, what kind of business are you in, man? Tell the audience here what what brings you to the King stage. Yeah. So I am in the real estate brokering business. Also, the real estate development business, and I started in the real estate appraising business. So a lot of real estate. My team and I sold 650 houses last year.
I run a real estate development up in Portland, Maine with a couple of other developers for selling 54 condos up there. It's in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and now also Florida. That's incredible. If you didn't think that we were bringing guests on here that knew what they were doing. Just rewind the little intro there of David's history. So I'm so jacked to be able to get into your story here a little bit. Funny.
I was just talking to another guy earlier today, actually, and he said he was just doing some travel, and he was in Newport. No. Is that right? Newport Rhode Island. Is that a place nearby? He's he's the most beautiful place in his trip. He'd been gone for 3 weeks, and Newport, Rhode Island was, like, the place. What do you say? I would agree because just a couple of weekends ago, I got engaged in Newport Rhode Island. Pretty pumped about that.
I had this awesome opportunity to get engaged to this amazing Wolfe. And they have road Newport, Rhode Island is one of the most beautiful spots around. Yeah. That's incredible, man. Yeah. Congratulations on that. I can only imagine what you did. Just the brief energy that you gave to me and information for the show here, but dude. I'm a be able to report it. I I I'm still glowing. So But I can hear it in your tone. I wasn't gonna say anything.
I don't wanna be, like, all bromancing with you and everything, but I can totally tell your Smith. It's fantastic, actually. Love is in the air, man. It's good stuff. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So tell us, before we get started into the history and, like, how you got started with this massive, all these projects you got going on.
At this stage in the game, with all that you got going on, your incredible backyard, clearly, you've attained a level of success that most would envy, but why do you still push? Or are you still doing this thing? Yep. So I set out not a number goal for myself. It's not like, oh, I wanna sell 50 units every single month or whatever that is. For myself, it was I wanted to change the way that the real estate industry was done.
When I got started into this, I was actually a real estate appraiser, and I remember just like showing up places. And I was like, man, these guys don't know what to do as another real estate appraiser or another real estate agent, and it was just really just encouraging. And I looked at their education process that we have, whether that's in our state or nationally, and it's incredible. You can spend 10 weeks in a real estate course and get a license to be able to sell any limit of real estate.
Isn't that crazy? Like, that you could sell a $100,000 house, and you could also sell a $100,000,000 place with this exact license, and there's no requirement. It's not like you get out and they're like, okay. Cool. You just got your license. You could sell up to $250,000 houses or up to $400,000 houses. And then maybe after a year, you're allowed to sell. It doesn't work like that.
Day 1, you could sell the most expensive, and there's literally no training program other than what brokers put out and brokers send out to put out something that is one size fits all. And it is a quantity based model. And I was like, we've gotta change that. Interesting. I love obviously, from a industry change perspective. I find that motivator, that purpose is in a lot of there's a kind of a key couple of key big motivators, but industry changing is one of them for sure.
And, like, in that moment, I'm curious because I wanna dig into the pureness of this and, like, where this came from. You obviously saw a problem, and you said, this is this is silly. We should change this. But then there's, like, a huge, like, energy push that goes into literally changing an energy or an industry. So, like, why did you feel in that moment? Like, I'm the one to change this, or we're gonna go after this thing rather than just going, this is dumb. Somebody's gotta change this.
You know what I mean? Because that's what most people do. Yeah. So I think a lot of times, like, you you you either have a choice in leadership, and that's either to you can lead by following in the ways of, like, others because others will follow after you. And you're like, hey, this is just the way that it is. I'm gonna keep going with this.
Or you can say you can get daunted and you could say it's too big of a problem for me to loan to handle, or I can just say, look, in my little corner of the earth, I'm gonna do something that I think is gonna be impactful to whoever god puts around in my life. And so that's all I've chosen to do. Like, I don't think I'm, like, the guy to change all of the real I'm not. Right? And I also don't want to just go along with things just because it's like, you know what?
I can thrive in my environment sorry for the rest of you too. So don't get it. And the there's a select few of us who are gonna do well and can certainly get into that about the disparities in between those who are making it in the real estate industry and those who just look like they're making it in the real estate industry. And then the last is just, look, I I don't know how to do a whole ton of things well.
But these few things that I do know how to do well, I'm gonna share with you my successes. I'm gonna share with you my disgusting failures. I'll share with you all the stuff in between. Learn for me in this process. And hopefully we can grow together. That's really what I've gone after in the real estate business, and it's ruffled a ton of feathers Chaz. I'll be honest with you.
Like, I'm the guy that ruffles a lot of feathers, and it's simply because I'm not afraid to tell you, like, I don't think that's really helpful for the consumer, or I really don't think that's helpful. For, the real estate agent. And the problem is Chaz any person or any government agency or the who we've discussed with or brokerage I'm gonna wrestle some feathers for the people who are making money off of that inefficiency that's happening. That's right. That's right.
And the ruffling comes because real estate, along with many industries, is a good old boy. It's been around forever, especially real estate. And it's like the we, as people, as humans, we get caught in the we've always done it this way. And I think even just that principle in itself, even though it's maybe backwards, is what keeps entrepreneurs across lots of industries stuck is, well, I've always done it this way. Yeah. So I love that you're doing that.
Let's look at so what is it that, like, real estate? What are real estate schools teaching? Real estate schools are teaching terms. They're teaching an ethics course. They're teaching state laws. They're teaching some details on real estate math. Some mortgage math, and that's pretty much it, man. And they're packing that through in between somewhere between 10 weeks 13 weeks. They actually used to offer it in my neighboring state of Massachusetts over 2 weekends. So you could go up for it.
Yeah. You could go up for a Saturday, Sunday. Follow Chaz the next week Saturday, Sunday, take a test within a couple of weeks after a day. And you'd have a real estate. You are now a professional. And the reality was is, like, you don't know how to tell industry trends You might know how to and, like, the training courses offered by the brokerages are, here's our state form on a purchase contract. Let me show you how to fill in the blanks. Right.
And the realities around even how a home works was never taught. It was like, I don't know the differences in Wolfe, and I don't know the differences in types of materials of when it comes to plumbing and how, like, actual site work Chaz done to develop property and what civil engineering is and No one teaches that. And so you get real estate agents who a lot of times do not I don't wanna say like they're victims of this, but they're just not equipped or supplied.
With the education on how to really truly educate the consumer. And that's who fails at the end of the day. It's actually both who are failing. Yep. Yep. And so I had to ask myself this question as to why this was happening, Chaz. And did you know this is just a stat that was published just a few years ago that around $88,000 is driven into the economy for every house that sells? About $88,000 because you have to think about it.
Yeah. Real estate agents and real and the home sale is really it's like a rainmaking milestone. You have obviously realtors and lenders and insurance people who are involved in the process. You need an escrow company or, attorneys paralegals and then all of the subsidiaries. You need a guy to do the title search. You need assistance for that. You start adding all of these together beyond the buyer and the seller. There's $88,000 of exchange that occurs into the actual economy. Wolfe.
And so my position is this. It's just a theory. That the government wants as many of those people who can make that happen as possible, which is why to this day as of last week, there are It realtors in in in the country. 1,800,000 of us. Like, you can't swing a dick if I'm hitting a realtor. And so you have ask the question when there's only a 1,000,001,002 houses on the market, every school month that it happens, somebody's not eating. And it's Somebody.
And that shows that a lot are not doing Chaz. And there's a reason for it. Yeah. No. You're so right. I love that you know your number. So, Tyler, too, you're a detail, an accurate individual, and I think that you've pulled that, you know, from your appraisal days even and now putting it to the training piece, which I love. I've had experience with a real estate agent before I was even in real estate myself with a person that had no idea what they were talking about.
They were completely not helpful at all. And then I've had the complete opposite where This guy knew exactly what he was doing. It was like, wow. This was extremely helpful. So I'm with you. I have a thought on that because obviously I have a huge background in sales. And I actually Chaz the same the same conversation with salespeople. I would ask people at a new training center that was doing some training in and there'd be 50 or a 100 new salespeople.
And, you know, who's here to make 6 figures? And, obviously, every hand goes up. And then I would ask who's read a sales book or done any sort of training outside of a company training in the last year, 6 months, 1 month, and just all the way down. And, of course, there's no hands raised by the time I'm done. So it's the same thing. Right? It's like, you have this low barrier to entry, which is to the agency. Wolfe, I'm a real estate agent or a salesperson. I'm likening it the same.
And then you Chaz just get keys to the Lamborghini and say, here you go. Figure it out. And most people just don't, which then, to your point, leaves the consumer on the other end feeling like icky because I got a bad of sales experience from a cold call or in your case, a terrible experience buying a home. That's exactly right. I could not forget the first time buying a home. I was a real estate appraiser, and what I knew was valuation.
I didn't actually understand that sales process as well because Right. In real estate appraising, it's just all terms and understanding valuation, etcetera. And so when I went through the process, I remember going to the home, like, you know, going to my real estate agents and said, oh, there's a home inspection that happens Now I'm I think I was 22 at the time, and I really didn't know a whole lot about this. And she was like, here's the home inspection. A lot of buyers just don't show up.
And I was like, Okay. Like, I guess a lot of buyers just don't show up. Right? And she was like, no. It's a beat up house. I was buying a house. It was, like, 3000 square feet for a $100 at the time. So I knew it was beat up, but at the time, I was like, oh, okay. I guess that's the case. And my lender was even confused about the numbers. And it was like, you didn't know what you were bringing to the closing table until you you got with a an attorney. It was like, right.
This is, like, every detailed thing that you're paying at this, but it's too late at that point. You're either buying the house or not. And it was like, the worst experience, and I just vowed to myself that I would never go through that and ex and in fact, I just provide the complete opposite sort of experience for people in the real estate industry. I love it. I love what you're doing, man. The energy that you've got behind it.
I love what you said just a a little bit ago about changing your little corner of the world and basically just being a good steward of what god's given you. And so I just appreciate that in you. Along the way, obviously, you've made good and bad decisions, and I wanna get into those. Let's start with a good one. Like, what have you done in the process of building this Montracy that you have?
But, like, maybe early in the days, like, when you're just grinding out, like, was a good decision that you made that one one of us can take away and go implement our business? Yeah. I made a lot more bad decisions. So I like it. It sounds like I figured that would be easier to get to you. That's why I went with a hard one for first. Like, maybe a lot of times, like, guys are like, oh, I'll tell you, I did all of this was great. And then this worked out.
I'm like, Man, I just got a lot of, like, lists of bads, and then we'd be, like, made it good on the And then they're like, bing. You got that lucky one. I don't know. What was one of the good things? So I did not shy away from units. That was a big for me. So there's a lot of guys who will get assessed with real estate because of this whole, like, selling sunset. And the idea behind it is I'm gonna sell these higher priced homes because it's a smart move, which it is.
I'm going to do less work by selling the same amount of units for higher volume. Therefore, I make more commission, and that's good. However, in my market in Hartford County, at the time when I started real estate in 2009, right, like, it just wasn't ranking with luxury sales. And so that wasn't a big thing. I ended up at the beginning doing Chaz, joining, like, a luxury brokerage shop.
And then I realized, wait a second, just because you have a luxury sign out front, doesn't exactly mean that you're going to sell luxury. You're gonna sell to a friend, family, and everything else. Right? Yep. And I focused on doing units and I was never shying away from the amount of rentals. I wasn't showing it was shying away from, like, the small things. There's, like, this like, good, I would call it, like, a proverb verse.
It was like, don't despise those days of small things because, like, if you're if you know how to do the little stuff ends up being way bigger later on. And a couple of buddies of mine, even in the mortgage industry, one of my friends, James, we just hit our wagons. The guys were just doing a ton of units so that we could see all of these different scenarios start to show up.
Words you're not making as much money, but what you are doing is you're actually seeing all of these different scenarios and, like, how to navigate through it. And we know how to navigate through it, like, it's way better. Yeah. And I'll say two things here.
When you have experienced so many different things quickly in a short period of time, you've got this, like, the history with yourself, this trajectory of not only seeing things happening, but also potentially making decisions and then seeing the outcome And so then Chaz what that does is it propels you forward in in good decision making.
And so even though they were maybe smaller, like you said, maybe margins per unit or maybe just maybe something that you wouldn't choose to do today or something, but early on, it's, hey. Yes. And figure out the rest later is, like, the term there. And so I think that applies to every single business. Whoever's listening right now, I think the should take what David just said and say, you're probably not doing enough.
Is that, in essence, what he was saying is he's rather than niching down and I'm not opposed to niching down, but rather than just saying I'm only gonna deal with the 1,000,000 plus homes. He was like, no. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do them as they come. She's gonna do as many as I can. I try to learn as much as I can Yeah. And I think that's, like, really important, like, in the beginning, at least. So it's, like, knitching knitching down really works one you know what you're doing. Right?
I'm the I met a realtor last year. I was in a coffee shop and, like, I I cannot help but meet people when I'm, like, place is. Like, anyone who knows me is like, oh, god. Here we go. Gotta meet somebody. Someone's gonna say, so I'm in this coffee shop. I'm I'm sitting down and I'm having a cup of coffee. With my girlfriend at the time. And and then all of a sudden, like, some guy some girl in the, like, at the back was like, oh, yeah.
She's talking about a property, and I could tell she was, like, getting out scripted like, on Zillow. Zillow is Zillow at center, something like that. And, like, from across the place, I'm like, you got a Zillow call there? And she was like, what the heck is this? I mean, we started talking about this. And she starts telling me about her career. And what she tells me is David, I I've been doing this for a little Wolfe. Cool cool. I'm like Chaz we were able to joke around about a Zillow lead.
But she sells within 8 streets in Boston. It's just 8 streets. And it like, she knows every neighbor and every door and every house, like, the floor point of every Yep. Was very cool. That's niche down. Sale prices average are, like, 2a half 1000000. Great. But the start was all let's see how many units we can get. Exactly. Doesn't matter the price point, so I just know how to navigate because then when someone's, hey. How many houses have you sold?
It's very easy for you to be like, sold 15 houses, sold 20 houses, and partnering on every single one of those deals, even if it's, like, for free with some people. Hey, dude. I'll kill the house. I'll open the doors. I'll come to your home inspections. I'll do anything just so I could say I was a part of that transaction. There's value in the transaction. But then also the learning piece, yeah, inside of it. So, yeah, you're 100% right. I think that's golden. What about a bad decision?
What'd you do? I know you got a lot of them. But I don't know. Lot of them. Sherry, Sherry, do you see one with us, man? Here's a good one. I screwed myself over really bad. In the start, and I ended up floating my company for about 2 years and taking way less of a paycheck than I ever could have because of a business model that I believed in. So it was like it was good and bad at the same time. K. It was part of a company that basically said, hey.
This is what you should charge real estate agents. But I saw that model as broken. I was like, okay. You cannot, like, have a guy join your team. Here's my limiting belief and only charge 50% every single time in the deal. You're taking 50% of the transaction. You're providing solutions like large scale tech and training opportunity port leads all this stuff.
But if a guy's got a $5000 commission and he needs that, like, 1 every single month or 2 every single month, Chaz to base taxes, expense, etcetera. And you're taking 50% of that. Like, he's only gonna hang around for so long before he's like, well, I've done the units with you. I know what I'm doing now. I'm gonna go on my own. Yep. And so I believed that there's needed to be some sort of scale within my business.
And so while most people are myopic about it, they're like, it's either 50% or 60 or 70 or whatever it is, Mine was a scale. I was like 5050 to this point and then it scales upwards to 8020. That's my business model. However, Chaz I did that, that model worked for me from, like, like, I never thought my business would grow beyond a certain realm Yeah. Out the necessary. And here's what I thought. I needed more infrastructure than I thought I would.
Yep. Okay. So what I ended up doing was I ended up doing a great amount of transaction with, like, ten agents and, like, all of a sudden, I was like, I need more staff. And once I staffed up and all of those individuals began from their 50 fifties. Now we're doing eightytwenties a lot of times. I made the money on the 50. There's no more money in the pot. There's no more money. And so it's funny at, like, it looked really bad because a lot of people would be like, you know, you're floating.
You're you're not actually successful. That's what they said. You're not actually because I was if you just looked at it like a business, I was technically negative. I was bringing in $400,000 $500,000 into the company. A $100,000 or $200,000 of that was actually going back into the company to pay for staffing and leads and all this other stuff. Right.
What they didn't see was that a mission was gonna drive me further than the moment that I knew that what I was gonna do was, okay, I had to look at myself and either say, hey. We're gonna scale back on this and just keep this at 5, 6, 10 agents or whatever it is. We're gonna do 50. Yeah. That's really literally what we did. And we were like, okay. We're gonna go with that. But once you hit those numbers, now it's economies of scale Exactly. In writing. Yeah. I love it.
Yeah. And, I'm so glad that you identified that specific moment because that's what you had in mind the whole time. The economies of scale Whether you were thinking 50 or not, you were thinking the more I get, the more they'll be, and it'll work itself out. And you just hadn't gotten far enough, and so it's so critical. I think that there's a lot of entrepreneurs in that moment where it's like they know they need to press in. They know they need to grow the top line.
Need to build the infrastructure on the inside, and it looks scary and a little bit daunting and a little bit, like, a lot of money that they might have to invest in the infrastructure and the people and the leadership and even maybe buying leads and all the stuff that you gotta really go to the next level.
But once you get through that, then, like, what you're stating at now, I'm sure you would be able to say that only was it worth it, but now with the infrastructure, with the investments that you made, it's a whole lot easier now. Yeah. For sure. One of the other, like, horrible mistake that I made along the way that ties right into that was, like, my first assistance that I hired, I didn't have a full laid out plan for exactly what they do every single day. Like, I just literally was like, cool.
So my hair's on fire. I do a lot of real estate deals. Like, I guess just watch how I do these real estate deals and help me along the way. But I hadn't itemized every single step in the process. And where I was at, it was encouraged to say, well, I'm the sales guy, and I know how to do sales. And you're the admin person. You know how to do admin. He didn't list that out, and I actually burned probably, like, probably 2 to 3 assistance right out the gate.
What do you want me to do every And I was like, yeah. Go get me a coffee. And I realized what I was paying for that coffee was like a half an hour back and forth at $27 an hour plus the coffee, plus it's it makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah. I love the nugget there for the listener is there's roles inside your company right now, and you need a job description. You need specific tasks. And then you need good expectations around when that person steps in. Like, here's what to do.
Here's how to do it, and here's what winning looks like. And if you don't have those things, it's super difficult, especially guys or gals that work for people like us, we're crazy. We're our hair's always on fire. You're we're this conversation's on fire. Like, we're moving at a fast pace always and for them to be able to jump in, especially when the rope's already going, makes it very difficult if those things aren't in place, for sure. That's for sure.
And and I think the expectations don't just go, like, for your yourself. It also goes through your family too. So if you wanna round it out for 3 to 1, bad decisions as Wolfe, not having clear expectations with your partner as to what works looks like every single day. Time on, time off because undoubtedly, unless that is clearly laid out, like, a business, just like money, is like fire. It is irrespective. It is like cancer. Irrespective.
Blessing can be the same way at times, which is a great thing. But the problem is that if we allow something just to be like fire, it will take over everything because there's always Listen, man, there's always another podcast to do. There's always another real estate deal to be Chaz, and there's always another call to make to another team member. But the reality is, like, you only have one family and for myself, I've been on both sides of both blessing and having screwed it up big time.
Yeah. Yeah. I would say set those x expectations really clear. Yeah. That's good, man. I I think that you're not only spot on, but, man, you're you're speaking from experience and you're speaking from the heart. You could even tell it in your tone a change. That's What kind of decision making process do you have now, David? Obviously, you've got a huge team, not only agents, but infrastructure on the inside. What kind of decision making process do you go through? Does your team?
Disciplines involved, give us some of that insight. Yeah. So we decided, okay, last year, I had a massive admin shift. I had one of my main individuals who's part of my team, just the roles were not working out. Like, strengths and weakness alignment did not happen. We attempted to reallocate roles etcetera. It just didn't work, and we had to part ways. Really frustrating.
And what I realized through that process was and what I had to learn along with my coach was just personality leadership Wolfe only get you so far. That natural talent will only get you so far, especially people are like, and you have a big person. Let's say you have a big personality. It's hope he's gonna be great today and hope he's gonna be and he's on fire most of the time, but sometimes you catch him, like, and it's just not, like, sustainable. That's probably the work.
It's not even just helping, like, sustainable. And so we've moved towards this more what's called an EOS model of running our businesses. Which is entrepreneurial operating system, and it's just been really helpful. There's a lot of great resources there. I would encourage somebody to check that stuff out.
It allows you kinda line up your business in a way that's beyond just personality, focuses you back to core principles, core values, and beliefs, the big 1, 1 year vision, 3 year vision, 5 year or 10 year vision, excuse me, for your company, and your meetings are always set the same. We have these level 10 meetings that my my admin staff At least leadership has been running.
And so my decision making process really flows through that through setting a vision and then breaking that down into smaller rocks and then going through my core people who are really just my office manager, my director of operations. And then on the secondary level, what I've realized is that there's a lot of, like, corporatism that can start to happen as soon as you, like, start growing something a little bit larger.
You wanna set an initiative and then have that, like, disseminated and throughout your company. But the reality is that there needs to be a lot of partnership that happens. And so what I run is I run a mentorship model at my company, where every single person who comes into the company has a mentor that's associated. Well, all of those guys together are my leadership team and I have those guys as part of my decision making as I, like, start to roll out new initiatives. Yeah. Huge, man.
I love that model. I've actually been part of when I was much, much younger part company that was like that. And there was a lot of benefit in that, so I I love that perspective. What do you think that it is on the mentorship piece there? Because that's the first time it's been mentioned here on the pod. Yeah. What do you think or where where did you get Chaz, or what do you think that's been if you could attribute one thing to implementing that's it's the result of that has been this.
What would that be? Yeah. So for myself okay. So this is just I went to school actually to be a youth pass I did not wanna get into real estate. I was like, my dad owned a real estate appraising shop. And, like, every day, you would think that most dads would be, like, one day, it'll all be your Right? Like, all of it. It's like the Simba Mufasa thing that says people liked it. And he was like, look. Get never get into this business. Don't do it. The world. Don't do this.
And I was like, I think I wanna follow God, and I wanna do this. He's due to any literally anything. Like, just go and do that. So I go into the, a youth pastor And and I'm at college, and I'm like, man, I'm blanking this kind of not. And mom had married this guy. It was her second husband, and he ended up going on drugs and remember the call. She, like, calls me back. She said, hey, this stuff is really going bad. So I drop out. I drop out of Chaz, and I go back.
I go back home to start, like, waiting and doing this stuff. I got some crazy cool god stories of how I ended up, like, taking a trip and going to South Africa, and I felt god speak to me to say, hey. I want you to wanting to get, you know, your relationship with your dad, go back to church, and I also want you to get into construction. Construction, long story short, led me to working for a builder, Sure. And without getting too much into the story, why not? For 2 seconds.
By one day, I get into I wake up and and I remember I start getting my relationship back together with my dad and go back to church. And so one day I wake up and you believe whatever you want about this stuff, but god, but not audibly, but like, in my heart was like, hey. Today's today. And I'm like, okay. What do you mean? And he's getting your car. So I, like, get in my car and I start driving around, and he's right here in the left here and right now. I'm like, I don't even know where I am.
So I grew up in a town called Windsor Locks. I was living there, and I ended up in a town called Bloomfield, and he was like, oh, it's right over here. And I remember driving over, and there's like a construction thing. I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay. So I, like, pulled over and I pulled the side of the road, and he's like, it's right here. Get out of your car. So I got out of my car, and there's an old guy. He's walking down the hill. And he looked gruff and mean, and I was like, oh, boy.
I I don't know who this is. Right? And I went up and I was like, hey. My name is David Brooke, and I'm here for a job as a laborer. And he was like, Are you kidding me? And I was like, what's up? And he was like, I just fired a guy at the top of the hill, and I needed a laborer to start right away because we're starting another house next. I was like, okay. So we started this whole process where he was like, what do you want an hour? I told him. And that he was like, no. I'm not paying you that.
And I was like, it's either that or I jumped in the car and I asked god for where the next You said that exactly right there. Chaz exact line to him, and he laughed. He was like, alright, man. Like, it I just made him laugh. It turns out he owned the whole company. Okay? So he gave me the job. I ended up working there. I remember at one point, it was just before the crash. And so it was, like, 2007, 2008. And I was laying brick, making a patio walkway up, into his new office.
And this was just before the crash. And I just remember one day I was just so discouraged because all my friends were back at college doing what they wanted to do, and I was back at home, like, laying brick. Like, the worst thing that you could do. And and so I just remember, god, I just feel like I'm completely lost in this. I swear I'm not preaching here. There is a point to all this. And anyways, I eventually get into real estate. And and after that, I was so focused on the units.
I was like, oh, I'm gonna reach out to this guy again. I ended up reaching out to him. He's, nope. I'm gonna go with someone else who has more experience. I got more experience. Then I finally went back. And he was like, hey. You're so to like, you have so much tenacity over your business. Why don't you come again and just try again? Dude, this was, like, failure. Like, still not doing what I wanna do.
I remember walking up those same exact freaking patio steps, the brick patio steps that I walked in that door, signed $10,000,000 worth of listings, and walked out. And that was like a huge major kick. Into my real estate career because now I had an entire subdivision at 2 years into the business. Yeah. Which awesome. Wow. Yeah. So to get back to that, it's just like for your original question, like, how did you develop the mentoring system?
Well, it came actually from those times where I reading the Bible, like, at college, and there's this guy called Moses, and he's he has an uncle who's, this is getting way too much for you, man. You can't have everyone come into you all the time because gonna get too much for you. His name is Jethroy, I I think. And so all of a sudden, he goes, you guys need to have some people, like, leaders over this stuff. And I was like, man, my company's really young for this.
But it wasn't about the size of the company. It was about the idea of the mentorship that you could have where no one's gonna learn it unless it's like a one on one sort of thing. So I did that for my first seven eight people. It was all one on 1. And then I was like, as I started to grow to Wolfe, it got too much for me. And I was like, we should probably get some leaders in place. And then my whole model age from how do I get new agents? It was how do I get new leaders?
And so now I'm in the pursuit all the time of growing leaders, which helps you grow exponentially. I love it. I love it. Long long answer. Sorry. Oh, dude. Thank first off, thank you for sharing. Incredible story. I'll have to one day share a little pieces of my story because it's scaryly similar. But, dude, thank you so much for being obedient in those moments.
I think that, not only have you seen the reward of it, but also just for you to be able to implement leadership tactics like that into a real existing business and then be able to change people's lives due to real mentorship that's happening inside your company. I think it's just absolutely phenomenal. Okay. So I wanna transition over to the speed round. I wanna ask you the first question here, which is we'll take you out of story time into maybe more analytical thinking.
Yep. And I wanna know if you had to dwindle everything down to one metric in your business, and you can only pick the one to track forever and ever. What would that one metric would be for my sales agents or for my, like, my company as a Wolfe? For your company as a whole. It's a really good question, dude. Speed around, though. So I have to come up with something quick. Metric for myself would be recruits 100%. So my business my personal business does not exist.
The amount of houses doesn't it changes based upon the number of recruits that I have. Sure. So the more people who are a part and attracted to my company sell more houses, Like, we I'm going to be limited by the amount that I can provide for infrastructure, completely limited by the amount of recruits that I have. It is not buyers. It is not sellers. It's not advertising. It's not even number of calls Chaz made.
It is 100% related to the number of recruits who decide to partner with 100% headcount. Love it. K? 2nd question is if you actually, let me let me switch it up on you a little bit. I wanna know if you only had 1 hour 1 hour a week to operate your business successfully, like you do now, What would you do in that 1 hour if you only Chaz the 1 hour? Recruit an agent. Okay. Recruit an agent. This is 100% for that because because I'm looking to get that next leader. Yeah. 100%. Okay. Chaz later.
What book would you recommend for a 6 figure owner trying to scale to 7 figures and above? Emith revisited. The takeaway on that was a lot of people shouldn't businesses because they're not entrepreneurs. They're really technicians who have a desire to own something. Put my stock in another company and let someone who's should do that. I've seen so many business owners out there who are, like, literally scraping by. I went to a restaurant the other day and the guy was like, yeah.
Hoping to buy an island one day. I was That's awesome, man. How's this job going? He's we've been open for 2 years and haven't turned a dollar yet. I was like, cool, man. Any but his story is I love Cajun food. Great. Agilecajun food. Don't open up a Cajun food restaurant. Yeah. Those things aren't necessarily connected, although sometimes we think that they are. Very good. They are because we are really good at the thing that we do. The technician does it well. The manager manages well.
The entrepreneur starts the business but does not do the managing or the technician. 100%. Love it. Yeah. Or in your US language, you have the visionary and integrator. Yeah. Look at you. No, I'm not. What are the next question is, do you intentionally network or mastermind with other entrepreneurs? I've a 100%. I spend a ton of money every year. Just getting into rooms of people way smarter than I am. Yeah. Way What's the value in that for you? What why for you particularly?
Okay. So in my businesses, just as tied to, like, when there used to be some ads for, financial planning company. I don't know whether it was like Edward Jones or something like that. And they're like, why does the cost of wheat in Ohio affect real estate prices in my like, we know. Right? And so they would say things like that. For myself, my I make money off of transition periods. In time. Sure. So as stuff begins to rise and as stuff begins to fall.
So, like, you make the most in stocks just before if you know when to buy, It's almost like insider trading if you know that it's going to because you just see the signs. You can either get inside information, which is illegal, or you can just see the signs and then play to So for myself, what I do is I pay to be in the top 1% of all real estate agents nationwide for these groups. Just because you do it mean, it's, oh, yeah, it's all during the club. There's coaches who run all this stuff.
Right? So I pay to be a part of these things so I can hear what's happening in Miami. What's happening in Seattle at the same time. And I'm like, oh, those markets actually move before my market does. So I'm gonna shift just before And then I'm gonna make the money in those, like, 3 months of transition period, and then the rest of the market catches on. Yeah. So when people are like, oh, it's really costly. I'm like, your education is always costly.
It's either way smaller up front or it's way bigger on the back end. Yeah. Wow. Such a great perspective. And, yeah, I think you should say it louder for the people in the back. I think that they haven't figured it out yet. What would you say to the person just because we're on this topic here? I'm gonna I wanna dive into it. Just a smidge. The listener, what I've what I have found, is that the person who hasn't gotten 7 figures yet, there's usually a reason.
There's a piece that they haven't figured out yet or a couple pieces. And I remember being at that stage. I was pretty young. I was in my early twenties, but it was difficult. I knew I needed to invest in myself. I knew I needed to go to conferences or masterminds or whatever it was. And I heard people like you say that I should, but to spend the $200 or the 20,000 or the 200,000 was just like it was so difficult at that time. What would you say to that person who knows they need to?
They just heard you say all the benefits, but they're just scared. Yeah. You're tired of being burned. That's really it. And, like, a lot of times, let me just speaks, like, super bluntly. You've just eaten a lot of McDonald's, and you're trying to get sold on why I should pay $18 for a burger. You'd like I've had a burger before. Yep. Exactly. You did with the worst leftover meat possible. On a bun that was designed to last for years. I'm like, Chaz, that's not cheese.
All burgers are not the same. But that burger funny enough, they'll charge you eight bucks for it. Like, eventually, once you, like, add on everything, right, you'll pay 8 bucks for this, or you pay 18 or $20, but, like, the experience is way different. Actually getting somebody that's better. It's the same reason as to why it's funny. There's a scene in, like, the Devil wears Prada where one of the girls, like, make fun of, like, fashion week there.
I forget what her name is in the movie, but she's they were like the devil. Right? And she says, So it's funny that's that shirt that you just bought from Old Navy, that color was featured 2 years ago in this fashion week that happened in this city by this designer, but it's now taken so long that it's flowed down to you and now it's put on some, like, junky material and you find it, like, helpful, but it was actually art 2 years ago.
At some point in time, there's cutting edge that's constantly happening. And what most guys have done is they've accepted competency as their bar. They're like, I will be competent. And that is if you're looking to get to 7 figures, I'm sorry. No customer everywhere, ever raved about a competent business. They raved about an excellent business. They rave it about excellence.
And so if you wanna get to excellence, you need to be around excellence because that's gonna inspire you and every and the crazy thing is that for whatever reason, god goes like this, here's a little bit of excellence. And this guy's mind and a little bit in this woman's mind and a little bit is over and they all come together, and they all bring this little piece.
And sometimes we get these conferences together where all these get a little bit of time on stage and you're gleaning that excellence. And I'll tell you, I've been in the rooms where it's cost me $3000 just to walk in the door for an hour or whatever it is. And you get there and you're like, wow. I know there's something that I can change and make 100 of 1000 of dollars off of because I got into this room. Yeah. So I know you're tired of being sold.
But you're not getting the same product, typically. Yeah. I love it. I think that just the realness, the vulnerability of where you just came from, we've all been there. We've all been. We've all paid the money and thought, dang. That was the burger. And, yeah, you're right. It makes us look unshy. Okay. I this it keeps getting better and better, but I wanna keep going here. The last question for you, David, maybe one that you won't have to think about very much. I don't know.
I'm curious about your If you lost it all, what would you do? I know you're planning. You'd change directions altogether. I would. If I lost it all, sometimes I think about it I'm like, oh my gosh. I make so many ruffles, like, in in my state and industry. Like, somebody's trying to come after me at all all the time. I don't care. But, yeah, I'd probably go into, like, financial planning a lot of times just because we've built so much trust with people over the years.
We're doing a really good job for them Chaz Wolfe focused more in our real estate company today. It was my team meeting, and I was giving guys strategies on how to teach your customers at the start. You're not, like, convincing them to work with you. You're showing them that I want you to be I wanna increase your net worth over the next 10 years. Would you allow me to help you increase your networks when it comes to real estate over the next 10 years? I'll tell you, dude.
You interview 5 real estate agents one sells you on, like, how fast he is to the phone, one sells you on his car, one sells you on his cool company. I'll tell you on how to like, dude, I wanna just make you worth a lot more money in 10 years. Like, I'm going with that person. Yeah. And and so I'd probably focus on financial planning. Yeah. Love. I love the the example that you gave there of sharing that from the beginning.
I think that it goes back to what you were just talking about as far as being excellent and how that type of client who is gonna respond to wait. This guy wants to help me build my net worth. Chaz person that even that type of buyer is who you're looking for, and so that person's gonna respond. Number 1, but it goes back to they're looking for the excellence. They're not looking for complacency or average.
They're looking for something excellent, which then even goes back to your faith because isn't isn't being excellent, what it means to be like Christ. So to to me at least, and so when you have that reflection, especially if you have that faith, you can build your business of integrity, not so much out of it. This is something that I know I need to do, but it just flows naturally because you desire excellence in in everything that you touch. Yeah, man. I just posted today.
Just trying to give a little shout out to some of the guys who work with me, but I say this often. Excellence is not a destination. Excellence is a journey. And if you're going to be on that journey of, like, constantly pursuing our highest self so that we can give our highest to others, you're going to need to get around people who operate at that level so that they can build you up.
The other way from that is this idea that, like, I am a selfish island, and that is the complete opposite of excellence. Excellence happens within community most often because we need others in order to work on ourselves. I love it. Just freaking mic drop right at the end, dude. I appreciate that. How can the listener today connect with you? Did they just think you're a great person? They wanna reach out. They wanna be an agent on your team?
Like, how can they Yeah. Let me be, like, super explicit. I am looking to partner with real estate agents all across the country. I don't care what brokerage you're a part of. I offer for some amazing opportunities to partner with us and our company because we're constantly expanding. Like I said, we're in four markets right now. My goal, by the end of 2023, is to be in 20 states across the country. So I'm definitely interested in that. I do development deals as well.
So if you got a cool development opportunity, definitely reach out to me with that. But you can reach me. You can find me on Instagram, David, n as in Nicholas, Brooke. So David N Brooke. You can find me there. That's Brooke with an e. You also find me on Facebook. You can reach out to me, David at brookgrouprealestate.comorwwww.brickgrouprealestate.com. So here's all my contact info. There you go, dude. Your your value here today is invaluable.
You've dropped at nuggets on us one after the other. Thank you for your time. It doesn't go unnoticed. I appreciate it. I look forward to getting to know you better and running hard with guys like you. So Thank you so much for your time. We wish you absolutely nothing but success. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much, man. See you. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple industries and now interviewing literally over 2 or 300. Other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is Chaz It's tough to do it alone.
And so gathering the Kings literally exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together one 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities. And here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
So if that relates in and resonates with business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.