“I’m always trying to course-correct and you have to be following the right map and sometimes need other people to help you navigate.” Max Keller is not only a real estate investor, best selling author, a highly sought out consultant speaker and expert panelist on the topic of lead generation and marketing for real estate investors. In just a few short years, Max went from being a full-time high school math teacher to flipping over 100 houses. Max’s unique, unique marketing approach landed him out on stage with Robert Kiyosaki being presented with the 2019 edition Innovator of the Year Award.
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How To Attract More Motivated Sellers With Max Keller
Brett:
I am excited about our next guest. He is the best-selling author, real estate investor, entrepreneur, and national speaker. And you know when it comes to residential real estate most successful investors will tell you that 80% of their time is focused on two things, finding deals and funding deals. It’s no secret motivated seller leads are the lifeblood for real estate investors. If you are investing highly in a highly competitive market, Packwood flippers and wholesalers can compete for those leads that are fierce. That means generating motivated seller leads as the only is only part of the equation. You also have to convince those leads to choose you over your competitors. You don’t want to be chasing sellers, you want sellers to be chasing you. And so when it comes to raising private money, a lot of lenders especially newer lenders admit they are more concerned about picking the right investor over the right deal. So how do you stand out in a crowded marketplace? Well, Max Keller is here today to share exactly how to do that. He not only is a real estate investor, best selling author, a highly sought out consultant speaker, and expert panelist on the topic of lead generation and marketing for real estate investors. In just a few short years, Max went from being a full-time high school math teacher to flipping over 100 houses. Max’s unique, unique marketing approach landed him out on stage with Robert Kiyosaki being presented with the 2019 edition Innovator of the Year Award, please welcome to the show, Max. Killer Max, how are you doing?
Max:
Right. Great. Welcome. I’m excited.
Brett:
Excellent. And so you’re from the great state of Texas and love that state. tell our listeners a little bit about where you’re from and your background, your current focus.
Max:
Yeah, sure. So yeah, Max Keller, full-time real estate investor, I have a publishing company and do some consulting work. And I’ve been in real estate full time for the last five years. And it’s, you know, great, great, you know, wealth builder from, you know, just from my seat, and I focus on aggregating deal flow. And, I focus on one particular type of niche where I found the best properties that discount with the least amount of competition. So, that’s, you know, what I’m going to go into a little bit today and then how I approach the niche is, you know, unique, and so I’m going to share, you know, with your audience some of the ways that we do that, but you know, real estate’s good It’s always a good time to You know, get involved in real estate and, you know, I plan on being here for a long time.
Brett:
Love that. And so before we dive into some of the top secrets here for how to get deals to chase you versus you chasing, you know, sellers or folks to bring you those deals. I’m curious who was max growing up and I want you to, you know, kind of go back to the, maybe the college days or the high school days, right? Not so much. Not just who but more so like, what gifts were you given? I believe we’d all be given certain gifts in this life. I think their God-given gifts and they’re given to us to be able to bless others. Okay, and so what was that gift? Or maybe that one or two gifts that you were given? And how does that help? How do you help bless others today?
How To Attract More Motivated Sellers “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” -Thomas Edison
Max:
Oh, great question. So well, I love helping people. And that showed, you know, I have a real close relationship with my grandma and she helped take care of me and raised me and then I took care of her for about 15 years and helped her so that served me well when I was everywhere. You know, like people want to be around folks that are, you know, helping them and not just thinking about themselves. And so that that helped a lot. And I’ve just sort of always been like that. And that’s why I think maybe a successful teacher because, you know, you don’t get into teaching for the money. You know, I enjoyed being there. I liked helping the kids and so that and then probably grit. I was talking about this with my wife yesterday. We have a good size army of kids, it’s a real blessing. And they’re all a little different. And we noticed that some of them are more entrepreneurial, and need a little less direction to get started. And some of them need more, and I was that kid who never needed very much direction to get started. I started mowing yards when I was 11. I had a job year-round, you know when I was 14, and so I was always working, I was always making money. And so I think and I’ve heard that story at mastermind And colleagues that I have in real estate that had a similar background so I think if you help people and you’re you’re good with working hard and hustling and doing stuff when nobody else you know is looking over your shoulder those are those have served me well.
Brett:
That’s fantastic. Yeah serving others and grit and I love the story of your grandma. She took care of you and then he took care of her running of the show if you haven’t seen it a Friday Night Lights and there’s his name is Matt Serra and I believe in the show and he has a similar story where his grandmother take care of him and then he’d take care of his grandma. A cool story. I appreciate you sharing that. So when did you become fascinated, Max with helping others succeed and or even just succeeding in real estate for yourself? Walk us through kind of that journey from math teacher to full-time real estate investor, best selling author? Give us that story.
Max:
Sure. So, essentially I wanted to better myself and my family. I was really happy being a man. Teacher.I loved it. But the income is kind of kept. And most people don’t become wealthy doing that, and I wanted to become wealthy. It’s just something I’m interested in. I wanted to get into real estate part-time. I started going on that quest to start picking up rentals at a discount. What I was noticing in my marketplace was if you didn’t know somebody, or you weren’t doing some of the work yourself, sometimes the deals are skinning. And so I started taking a little bit more active approach with the time that I had learned, figuring out how to vet out the borrowers and how to vet out what the deal makers and identify what was the deal what wasn’t a deal. And on that quest, I just got more and more involved in it. I decided to switch over full time because it’s a great way to make passive income and grow your net worth, but it’s also good to be active if you have those talents and skills. I started doing that and that was amazing. I flipped about 100 houses in a short amount within a couple of years.
Brett:
Pause there a bit though. That’s just I don’t want to go over that too fast because that is incredibly moving from math teacher to flipping houses and then not just flipping houses but so many. So how did you scale so fast? And was it like burning the ships? Like I’m quitting my full-time job like walk us through or did you go you know, do a couple of houses have been like, oh my gosh, now quitting my full-time job. Walk us through that transition?
Max:
So yeah, it was both. Yes. I am just the other one. The former came first. I started with just my first deal, and I was going to keep it as a rental. I decided to wholesale it, made a really good profit on that first deal. What happened to me was the big game-changer was the first deal that I did. I have some friends and colleagues that were way ahead of me on the experience level, they invited me to meet with some of their colleagues. I got involved in their mastermind. And I started seeing what was possible in real estate from a full-time perspective, even though I was still a teacher. One of the things that helped me with my real estate business at the beginning was because I couldn’t answer the phone during the day when motivated sellers would call me. I was forced to build out a team, I was forced to build-out and have a VA answer my calls. And I think just system and process-oriented. So creating a lot of checklists and spreadsheets and constantly course-correcting was just sort of like a natural thing. I have high awareness, some paying attention, and of course, correcting often. So I think just those little mini-course corrections, like with all the great people that were around me, just really accelerated the learning curve. And the other thing that I did from the active standpoint, but it applies to the passive too, is that anytime that I made some sort of financial gain. I just put it back into to be able to get more knowledge or get more access to it. sources are building a team. And so I didn’t, I didn’t flip all those houses by myself, I had a great team, your team can make you look better than you are worse than you are. And my team, I’ve been blessed to attract people to my team that wants to work with me. That kind of goes back to helping people and people pick up on that. So, yeah, having a good team has allowed me to scale faster. And, I mean, it still has its challenges, even with the team, even with the mastermind, even with the grit and all the things I talked about, things were going well for the first two years, and then probably around 2017. I was still having success, but I felt like I was only as good as my next deal. And leads and discounts, whether it was. I’m trying to do an exchange into another property or it’s just an active flip or something like that. They were getting harder and harder to get and I was noticing that I was trying everything. I was trying all the different sources, websites, bandit signs, every single list I could get my hands on, too. Cold calling and everything that I was doing were working to a certain extent, I was getting enough of an ROI to keep doing it. But it was, it was unpredictable. And I want to do predictable things. And I don’t want to waste a lot of time. And I don’t want to, just like, feel like I’m chasing people. So what I did was I just sat down, I just said, okay, I gotta figure this out. And what I figured out was a couple of things. One, I was chasing the same people that everybody else in my market was chasing, I had the same message. But what I didn’t notice was all my deals weren’t all the same amount of profit or enjoyment. So I was like, okay, maybe there’s an answer here. So, I think as business owners, it’s crucial just doing more stuff that isn’t working as well doesn’t make a lot of sense. But that’s what I was doing once when my marketing wasn’t, you know, wasn’t doing as well, I would just do more of it. So instead, I sat down and I said, okay, what you know, I feel like right now I’m just another investor in the stack of mail. And it was just a total grind. I got into real estate full time to get out of the grind. I don’t want to just be on a hamster wheel my whole life. And so I went back through my list of deals that I already completed. And I said, I want to find out which of my deals had a really good profit because we need to make money when we’re doing real estate. Which one, when I work with the seller, there was minimal resistance to my offer. It was just they were fun and easy to work with. And I figured if I could get more deals like that, then I would have more time to focus on the other parts of my business that I enjoyed. And so I just went through the analysis, and I found that most of my deals did not meet all three of those, which was the bad news. The good news was the few that did, all have the same thing in common and it was that they weren’t SR homeowners, it sounds like okay, I’m onto something here. And then I went and then I was like, this is what it is that I want. So like, I was really crystal clear on who was the ideal person for me. I have a close relationship with my grandma. I felt like when I was meeting with these motivated sellers, it was like I was meeting with my grandma. And these folks had a lot of needs, but it’s like, okay, well, that’s all great. How do I get more of them? So I went back and looked at how they found out about me what lists they were on, and what I found was that most of these sellers weren’t the typical motivated seller profile. They weren’t, you know, in pre-foreclosure, they weren’t, they didn’t have you know, tax problems. The house that wasn’t necessarily even falling apart. A lot of times, Brett, we would go out and buy these houses and they were just it was more of a cosmetic update, which is great. If you want to turn it into a rental most of my rentals came from the senior homeowners and I couldn’t figure out why and then it hit me it’s like, think about it. I’m in Dallas Fort Worth, I know every market is different. But we’re in Dallas Fort Worth, I’m in a blue-collar neighborhood, who’s taking the best care of their houses or cares the most about their house. And it’s the seniors who have the smallest footprint. There’s a lot of the seniors’ homes there’s not 100 you know, people living in there breaking all the walls and stuff. And so it was almost like a time capsule house. And another thing I was noticing was I didn’t keep every house because I’m doing this actively. But every house that I wholesale that was from a senior became a rental, it wasn’t a flip. Why is that? Well, because houses used to be built smaller because these were little time capsule houses and the structure was good. But there’s a little cosmetic update but as well as I’m probably most of the people listening when you’re doing a rental, you don’t have to take it up to retail. You can keep it more just clean and fresh. And that’s what I wanted more of, I want to have more rentals. I was like, this is like a home run deal. So I couldn’t figure out, I figured out what list they weren’t on. And then I’m like, what list are they on? Because I have to get more of these. And so what I did was, I just went back to my old deals, and I was like, okay, how did they find out about me? And the bad news was, is most of them found out about me by accident. The good news was, I found out what it was, and I could reverse engineer it. So like some of the people like one time I bought a house in Haltom City, Texas, and I was trying to buy this vacant house, and the senior lives next door. You know what sometimes we were doing rehabs in the area and is either the senior sauce or the adult children. So it was things like that, and I was like, okay, I didn’t get these houses intentionally. But can I get these houses intentionally, can I focus on it. And another thing I was noticing Brett, was that my close rate on these deals was a lot higher. The properties, especially the rentals that I can keep. I noticed that they just stayed together better. So there’s just so many things that we’re working in my favor and I was like, okay, I just I want more of these. So I called. Another thing I was noticing was the discount, which is super important. I was getting a good discount. And sometimes I was picking up these houses. And there was another competitor that would have an offer in a competitive market that was like 10 grand higher. And these people still went with me. And I was like, why is this so I called up one of my sellers. It wasn’t the seniors because they were an assisted living center. At that point. It was the son when he was in his 50s. And I called him up and I said, hey, I’m Max, save your homebuyers. Do you remember me? And he’s like, yeah. I go, hey, weird question. But remember, I bought your mom’s house about a year ago? And he’s like, yeah, I remember you get very well. I said, well, I think you had said at the time that you had a higher offer with somebody else. And I think it was like quite a bit more than maybe five or 10 grand. He’s like, oh yeah, that was like 10,000 more, and the houses where I live are not very expensive. So, 10 grand a lot of money, right? It’s not like a million-dollar house. 10 grand, percentage-wise, it’s not a lot. And so he’s like, I go, yeah, why did you choose me? Like, I’m really glad you did, like, no backseats but like, why did you choose me? And he’s like, I would choose you because we trusted you. And when you came over it seemed like you genuinely cared about us. There wasn’t a lot of pressure, the other company. See, why buy houses? I don’t know what the other company is saying and what they’re doing. I don’t perceive it the same way. And so it was really helpful to get that info straight from them. And they were just saying, the other company was pressuring us, they just wanted us to sign the contract. They just want to know when we were going to get out of the house and, and for you, the care and everything that you had come across and that was more important than just the money. When I heard that I was like, I just really opened my eyes. And I’ve mentioned it here before when I was a teacher. So teaching people is just kind of natural, and you have a close connection with my grandma. So I could kind of see all the pieces coming together. And I remember when I was taking care of my grandma, people would cold call her trying to sell reverse mortgages and they would knock on the door and say, hey, if you ever want to sell your house, I can be your realtor. It frightened her. And she saw right through it. Sometimes people think seniors are stupid, because they’re slower, like mobility wise, but their sharpest attack, as they’ve they have the experience, she saw that these folks were self-serving, and all they cared about was themselves. They didn’t care about her. And these folks picked up on the fact that I did care about them. That part of me isn’t changing. If I just continue to help people and focus on getting more of these seniors and educating them, that’s going to build the trust and that’s going to give me more deals. And so, how the book came into it was just like totally by accident. What happened was I was learning more about senior housing and the options, like where they go afterward you know, independent care, assisted living all these things. And I was noticing when senior homeowners are trying to sell their house a lot is going on, there’s like a health situation and there’s, you know, family drama sometimes. And then they need to move somewhere else, and it’s really expensive compared to where they’ve been living with a paid-off mortgage. And they’re having trouble getting all these answers. So I was going on a quest to get all these answers and I was noticing that just by giving them this info, I separated myself like 95% from my competition now. Brett, there was a downside. The downside was I was in these folks living rooms on the floral print, a couch from 1960 for like two to four hours. Sometimes explaining all this because these folks don’t they’re starting at Ground Zero, they lived at the house 30, 40 years. They don’t know who to trust, they don’t know how much their house is worth, they don’t know where they’re going to move to, they don’t know if their son who’s a CPA in Nebraska really has their best interests or even has time to take care of them. And so I was like, Man, this is like, I want to help these people, but I can’t, it’s not scalable. I had another guy helping me buy houses. And so I was actually out of a seller’s appointment. And the doctor was there. And we were getting the contract signed, and she said, you’ve helped us out of time. I appreciate the way you answer all our questions. She called other people, they didn’t know anything. She said, what is your thought about writing a book about this? And I think she kind of worked like in that industry. And that wasn’t even like, on my radar. So I just kind of laughed it off. And I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, write a book. And then I went back to the car and thought about it. I was like, You know what, that’s a pretty good idea. So what I did was I made the pivot from being the person who knows about senior housing to the person who wrote the book on senior housing. And I felt like if I can do that it would open up more opportunities. And so that’s what I did. I just wrote down all the questions that you know why motivated sellers had and their families, I put what the options and the pros and cons are, and that was my first book home, the step by step senior housing guide, and I printed out 100 copies and started giving it away. And that’s been an incredible business card for me, and it’s built the trust factor fast. And now when people call us, kind of end on this. When people call us to go out and see their house, we send them a courier copy of our book ahead of time, and say, hey, we want you to read chapter three before we come over. We phrase it differently. It’s sort of like we’re not coming over unless you’re willing to do this. And so it reverses the whole paradigm. That’s why are companies called deals chasing you? In my market, it’s still a very, very much seller market, but people call to see if they qualify to work with me. And if they don’t know who I am when they call when I call and say, well, have you gotten a copy of our book yet? Like, oh, your book? No. And it just kind of changes everything. And later, I’ll kind of go into why that is how that works psychologically. But I just say, you know, can you read chapter three before we come over? Because it’s like, that’s a requirement, and it tells you the ways to sell your house, and if he still wants to come over then we’ll come over and if not keep the book, it’s our gift to you. And they’re like, oh, okay, so they get the book. And then they read it. Well, of course, they don’t read just chapter three, they read the whole thing. And so then when we come in, you know, we’re already pre-sold, you know, they’ve already invested four to six hours reading my story reading, you know, what, all the education and so it’s been a lot of fun marketing that way, and it’s been, economically very good too.
Brett:
Wow, so much there. Max, it’s amazing and you can write I’m sure it may be your second or third book on just that in and of itself. Let me try to recap for some of our listeners. It all starts with, how much you care, right? Nobody cares how much you’re gonna pay for their house, or maybe that could be part of your going away overpay but right, no one really cares until they show until you show how much you care and how much you know, and then build trust and add value, right? And so when you were going to meet with potential sellers, you were spending a lot of time and energy which was great, you’re adding value, and that’s how you won the houses. And that’s that made sense. But to scale that you had to say how do I duplicate what’s in my brain and what’s in my heart will let me write a book. And then let’s let them know, read that book at their own time at their own pace. And once they’ve done that, then it’s almost like they pre-qualify themselves like okay, I do want to meet with Max, right? And oh my gosh, like this, he’s adding value to me right now. So I know that’s just a summary of a lot of what you just said but is that a fair summary.
Max:
Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.
Brett:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Wow. Okay, so let’s talk about the book. What was the book called?
Max:
Home To Home: The Step By Step Senior Housing Guide. And so we wrote that one, and that’s the book that we use in our business. And then we have some ways that investors can plug into it if they, you know, want to, you know, duplicate what we’re doing. And then what was interesting about that was and how, you know, you can apply this to on the money side, too is, is that’s what happened is, while I was doing this in Dallas Fort Worth, unbeknownst to me, there was a gentleman, Brant Philips, now my business partner in Houston, who is doing the same thing, educating people, but in the private lending space. And so he wrote a book and was doing the same thing. He was having two to four-hour conversations with folks. It was hard to scale. He wanted to attract the right people. And so then he reached out to me and, and now we have the licensing rights and we that some of our licensed copy that investors plug into who want to educate people in their local market. So whether it’s educating people to get more dollars or educating people to get more deals, the same overall premise applies, which is when you’re an author and you become an author there’s a lot of benefits from it, there’s it becomes an ultimate referral tool, because it’s valuable, so people pass it around to other folks. That’s key. Another benefit I’ve gotten from it is I get asked to speak at different events locally, and a lot of times either there’s my motivated sellers there and I’m booking appointments that night. So that’s beneficial, and you kind of get seen as a celebrity without really trying to be one. And it establishes like who you are in the community and your brand and it gets so it’s been a just been a real benefit from a marketing standpoint to secure more deals and secure more dollars.
Brett:
Love that. Fantastic. And so for the listeners who are listening right now Let’s talk about how your service can help them out. So if I’m hearing you, right? If you’re a business professional listening right now, and you haven’t written a book yet, and you’re an expert in your field, and you’re running the hamster wheel of just, you have to be present to do that. How would your service, Max help them right now?
Max:
Yeah, so we have two ways that we serve people and I’m going to give you the links that we can put down below on where they can get this info. There’s kind of just like, there’s kind of two types of people who write books, it’s the same with sort of two types of real estate investors are business owners. There’s what I call it the DIY and ROI, the DIY real estate investor will speak to them right now. They roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and the deals and there are some trial and error obviously with that and it takes a little longer to get your ROI but if people enjoy the process and it’s a high level of satisfaction, then there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s another type of real estate investor called the ROI. And they’re focused on just the highest and best use of their time. They’re used to working with a team and leveraging other people to do the parts of the business they don’t like to do so that they can focus on just getting more deals and getting more dollars. So for the DIY real estate investor, we created the first of its kind that I know of, it’s called the real estate investor, book writing checklist. And this book, I’m going to offer it to your members as a gift. You can get that at deals, chasingyou.com//brett, and this book maps out you know how to identify who it is that you’re trying to write a book for. Break down what questions you know they have, and it just structures and teaches you how to write your book if you’ve never done that before. So that’s what we have for the DIY for the folks that are just like time is money, we have some licensed content that they can just plug into. And with a very small amount of effort from them. They can get up and up and go quickly and start, you know, leveraging this tool.
Brett:
I love it. That’s fantastic. I can’t wait to check that out deal chasing you for slash Brett. That’s neat for you, try to create that for me, my audience, and that gift. Fantastic. So now let’s shift a little bit here. Curious, what’s the biggest mistake you, a friend or family member or client or someone you know, has ever made when it comes to capital gains tax deferral?
Max:
You know, I think the number one that jumps out immediately is that it goes back to what we were saying with timing. There’s a narrow window there that is the 45 days 180 day and so I’ve been okay with that so far because I’m active, deal flow and I have the marketing. I always kind of seem to have a property available when I need it to do an exchange, but not everybody’s in the same boat, especially in a seller’s market. The biggest thing is just like I said, the timing and overpaying for a property because you’re trying to fit it into that timing window.
Brett:
Have you ever had a 1031 client or a buyer buy one of your properties and you and you’re the seller? You’re like, oh, you want to buy my property and you’re in 1031? Have you had one of those?
Max:
Oh, absolutely.
Brett:
How does that make you feel as a seller? Like what do you feel empowered? Do you feel like you have the leverage? Give me the thought when you go Oh, he’s a 1031 buyer?
Max:
I’m trying to build like a long term game here. I find that if you take from people too much, I don’t want to ever win too hard because then it’s not winning. But I do have a lot of leverage. I don’t, sometimes I’m aware of my leverage. I just choose not to use it all at that moment. But yeah, it is the people who are, they only have so much time to do their transaction, they are in a pickle, and I’ve sold to a lot of those folks. And a lot of them are turned into repeat buyers. But not everybody has the same philosophy as me and not one’s right or wrong. But yeah, they are at a big disadvantage of the longer that you wait. And so it’s a tough spot to be in. And I’ve been in that spot before with motivated sellers. And before I had the book, it was like that, it was sort of like they were the mouse with the cheese and they’re getting all these postcards and they’re, you must, I have something you must want and the positioning was way off and the leverage was all wrong. With the book, we were able to switch around the paradigm with 1031. It’s just about starting earlier and investing in your network. Investing in deal flow networks because a great life is about having lots of great options.
Brett:
Well said. Thanks so much. That’s fantastic. And you’re right, you always want to eat some meat on the bone to make it fair and equitable. And I’m kind of speaking with my broker hat on, right? If I’m a broker, and I’m representing my seller, I don’t want to give $1 away more than then we have to. And so there are so many 1031 exchange buyers that come and you’re like, well, yeah, if you’re willing to hit the list price, and I’m also in California, by the way, which is just crazy with low inventory prices through the roof. We just sold a property for $270,000 per unit for a client of ours. And it was a 1031 buyer that another broker had brought and he wanted to negotiate down, I’m going if you’re going to compete, you got to be at less pressure, but he’s like, but it’s only like a 4.3 cap and it’s 270,000 and I’m like, how’s it kind of what the comps are at like so and then and then during due diligence, he wanted to get a discount for some stuff, but it wasn’t a lot like the property was really clean in great. Hands-on improved. And I’m going, I’m going, I don’t know how you’re justifying those numbers. And I said if it was legitimate stuff that wasn’t disclosed And sure, but he was like, well, we’re already paying for this. I’m like, he already knew that in the beginning. But anyway, that’s there are so many little pieces to every single deal. But yeah, you’re right. It always is best to make it a win-win for everybody and to be as equitable as possible. That being said, Are you ready for the lightning round, Max?
Max:
I’m ready. born ready. Ask me some long (question).
Brett:
Yeah. So here we go. So knowing what you know now if you could go back to your 25-year-old self, what’s the one Golden Nugget you would make sure you would do?
Max:
I would say read more. I’m dyslexic. And I didn’t know that I was dyslexic till I was 35. But I struggled in school, but sometimes I would do amazing. The teachers thought they could figure it out. When I found out I had dyslexia I got with a coach and I didn’t make excuses. She helped me read a lot better. And because I read like seven books the first 35 years of my life, and because it was really hard to read and I got with a coach, and she helped me out a ton. And I started reading because I was noticing all the people in my masterminds and my colleagues, they were the people real successful, were reading a lot, and they were making time for their being real, purposeful. And I wanted to do that too. I want to be successful. I got with the coach, and I started reading a lot more and then I started reading like a book a week. And I’ve been on that iteration for five years now. So you can read a lot in that amount of time. And then now I write books and I used to make fun of people who would read a book. And it was there if there was a movie out, I’d be like, why would you read the book when you could just watch the movie, but I was just, it was hard getting made fun of for not reading well. So that’s really what it was all about. But I would never imagine a million years from now. Or today writing all these books and having a publishing company. So number one is read. And then number two is, I successfully did this, which is just never give up because your life can change pretty fast. And so regardless of where you’re at now, and you know what’s going on right now, there’s a lot of challenges and struggles, but you can turn it around pretty quick. And so that’s what I would tell 25-year-old Max.
Brett:
I love that Max. What a great segway to our next question, which is, what is the one book you’d recommend or get the most in the past year?
Max:
It’s hard to pick one. There’s kind of a few that are sort of like baseline foundational. Gary Kelly or Gary Keller’s books are all pretty good. So one thing that helps with focus essentialism deep work, really books that I like the best are the ones that involve focus and concentration because that’s where I see the most gains and whatever we’re doing is with focus and concentration and just, you know, just real precision. Millionaire Real Estate Investors’ a good one. But those are a few of my favorites.
Brent:
Okay, so I’ve got to ask now because I started my career at Keller Williams. So are you related to Mr. Gary Keller?
Max:
No, it’s just a coincidence. But maybe, I mean, maybe. He’s got great company. And I have a lot of colleagues that have been with them and great training. So it’s a great company and great books. And so I would check out any of his for sure.
Brett:
Excellent. Well, thanks for sharing. I appreciate that. The next question is this: give me a mobile or digital resource you recommend for your business?
Max:
For people to reach out to me or something that I use for my business?
Brett:
Something that you use for your business. What would you recommend?
Max:
The tool that we’ve used in the last year that we’ve gotten a lot of gains from his eye, we use Monday.com. For our, our CRM, we looked at us on a Monday was just a little easier to use. And that was beneficial because my team is all over. And so we can communicate well with that. I like following up with people. I think we invest a lot of money, starting a relationship, but the real money is in building it and continuance. So I like follow up tools and staying in touch with people, and I like automation. So I use Active Campaign for all of my email touches and all my retargeting campaigns. And that goes, you know, that’s been working well. So there’s a, I use a lot of them. And there’s a lot of great ones out there. For me, it’s been helpful just to find something that’s good, invest more in the front end to research, what it is I want to use, and then just stick with it and learn it. I’m noticing when I’m getting to your, two or three or four, using a tool that we’re becoming just much more proficient with and we get a lot more value from it. Instead of just always switching is not good. Switching is the opposite of focus. There’s a lot of switching that’s going on right now and just when with our culture and the mindset, and so I’m not a hater of that it’s cool that things are happening so fast. I’m just kind of old school. I’m getting a lot of good results by just really, really hyper-focusing and hyper-targeting things and just trying to play a long game.
Just never give up because your life can change pretty fast. And so regardless of where you're at now, and you know what's going on right now, there's a lot of challenges and struggles, but you can turn it around pretty quick. Click To Tweet
Brett:
Love it. Well said. Favorite leadership quote or theme that you strive to live by?
Max:
I don’t know who said it, live long and prosper. Wasn’t that a cling on or something from Star Trek? I like that one. I like if you help enough people get what they want, then you’ll get what you want. I think that’s the kind of mantra that we live by.
Brett:
Zig Ziglar. Yeah, that’s a fantastic one. Next question, what are you curious about right now?
Max:
I’m curious about digital marketing. I focus a lot on it. We’re getting very proficient at it. I like taking the digital world and then the physical world in marketing and putting them together, I see a lot of horsepower from that. I’m very curious about the relationship between things happening so fast. But for us as humans, as we study history don’t change that much, our instincts don’t change that much. And our instincts are driven around, creating social networks and building trust and relationships. And so I like doing that, but then, in the digital space. And so those are some things that we’re working on for our consulting clients, and getting results from digital marketing is probably gonna be around for a while. And I’ve noticed with a lot of technologies as a business owner when I didn’t understand it very well. It was very hard for me to inspect who was a good provider versus not a good provider. And so I wasted a lot of money. So now I’m focusing on what are these pillar things that business owners have to know. And to be successful, and then learning it up to a point where I can either outsource it or choose to do it myself.
Brett:
Fantastic. Love that. Last question in the more minor listeners, where they can find yet how do you stay centered, Max. After all your success and after you transitioned from math teacher to selling houses to a publisher to not reading as much now, reading a ton and teaching others how to write books, how do you stay centered in your values? And then how do you stay encouraged to reach for new big goals?
Max:
Well, the second one recently, big goals are easy. Because this is like a DNA thing. When you watch the Olympics, Brett, do you ever see those guys and they are great gals and they win something amazing? And they’re like, it’s been 30 years in the making, and I’m excited right now and then I’m gonna have a pizza tonight and then tomorrow, I’m gonna set a new goal. So that’s just the way I’m wired. And I don’t I can’t turn that off. It does help it hurt or make it harder to be centered. Go to a church that helps. I love God. And that’s why we branded our company, savior homebuyers, I get a lot of help from my wife, I confide in her and I get, I’m open to feedback. I think it’s easier to be centered if you’re coachable. So awareness is important, like knowing what it is that I’m doing and if it’s good or bad, how it’s affecting other people. But I’m asking people that are around me, my friends, my family for feedback. And that’s because I’m always trying to course-correct and you have to be following the right map and sometimes need other people to help you navigate.
Brett:
So well said. I recently started to implement a leadership strategy, which is asking those closest to you three questions. What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? And what should I start doing? And then just be willing to listen, right? And just be open to their feedback and humbly receive it all right. So what should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? And then what should I start doing? that can give you a lot of amazing feedback. So I did that with my wife. And it was good. It was good. Do you know? No, I had to think about it and absorb it and say yes. Okay, and because otherwise, you’re not aware, you’re right. If you’re not asking those questions, and don’t open for feedback, how are you going to see those blind spots? And how are you going to grow? So, thank you so much for sharing that. Any last words for listeners, and please remind our listeners where they can find you?
Max:
I just commend everybody for getting involved in your show. It’s great. I’m a fan too and investing in your education, your knowledge is super, super important. I just commend everybody who listened for doing that. I’m looking forward to the next time we get to visit and if people want to reach out the best way as I said, we’ve created some resources just for your listeners. So they can access those deals, chasing you.com forward slash Brett with two T’s and then they can access these resources and start building out that you know, a platform to you know, get more of whatever it is that they want, you know, education is a great tool and, you know, leveraging becoming an author is a real superpower.
Brett:
Amazing. Thank you Max Keller for being here and using your superpower of blessing others to Financial Intelligence through real estate, through entrepreneurs into leadership, and through writing their books being published, show appreciates you and we encourage you to keep using the gifts you’ve been given to bless others like you’re doing. And with that, too, we also want to thank our listeners for listening to another episode of the capital gains tax solutions podcast. As always, we believe the highest net worth individuals and those who helped them struggle with clarifying their capital gains tax deferral options, not having a clear plan is the enemy and using a proven tax deferral strategy such as the deferred sales trust, or writing your new book right to become an expert to attract new sellers if you’re in the real estate business is the best way for you to grow your wealth. So please, please, please reach out to the max. Reach out to me if I can be of any service to you for selling anything that’s highly appreciated our primary home business commercial real estate, We’re doing cryptocurrency cases we’re doing stock sales, go to capitalgainstaxsolutions.com for that, and if you’re business professionals go to experttaxsecrets.com. To learn more about how the stress of deferred sales can help you grow your business. With that, please rate review, subscribe, we will appreciate all of you. Be blessed and go help and serve some people today. Goodbye, everybody.
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