Meet the King of Creative Finance and his Journey of Resilience | Pace Morby | EP8
Meet Pace Morby, host of A&E’s most popular TV show ‘Triple Digit Flip’ and one of the most creative real estate investors on the planet! Using dozens of non-traditional strategies called Creative Finance, Pace has acquired 1,000’s of doors nationwide and built a portfolio totaling over $450 million in assets. Each week, Pace teaches tens of thousands of students in his online communities which is becoming the #1 source for anyone looking to get started in real estate utilizing Subject To, Seller Finance and the Gator Method!
We dive deep into the rollercoaster of building kick-ass businesses, with a spotlight on the wild realms of real estate and construction. I spill the beans on my real estate adventures, eager to share the wisdom I’ve picked up, and can’t hide my admiration for Pace Morby’s extremely impressive and successful business. Pace opens up about climbing out of tough spots to make a name in real estate, emphasizing creativity and resilience. He shares his saga of starting a construction biz from scratch, facing down bankruptcy, and pivoting on a mentor’s advice. We also riff on seizing COVID opportunities, leading to Pace’s staggering $450 million net worth, despite the debt drama. The convo gets real about the importance of giving back, the art of patience, and how empowering our teams turned things around overnight. I get into the nitty-gritty of scaling challenges and the quest for a top-notch team, while Pace talks about the power of community, resilience, and genuine connections at networking events. Wrapping up, we touch on staying hungry for success, with Pace eyeing billionaire status while juggling family life, embodying the essence of chasing dreams, staying real, and breaking barriers.
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Justin: What is up entrepreneur DNA family, I have a good friend of mine and someone who I genuinely admire, he has done something in a very short amount of time that not even myself or many people, you know have been able to build. Pace Morby is in the house. What’s up, brother?
Pace: What’s up, Justin, how you doing, brother?
Justin: Dude I’m doing blessed. I’m doing blessed. You, you are up early. Right now it is Saturday, as we record this, I’ll tell all of you entrepreneurs out there, the grind is real. This man has built he doesn’t have to be doing this. Let’s put it that way. He’s financially in a place, he doesn’t need to be up at, you know, six in the morning on Saturday doing a podcast with me. But that is why I needed to have him on this podcast. And I want to give you a lot of credit to start because if you don’t know Pace Morby at this moment, and you’ve been following me you must be living under a rock. He has built something incredibly special in the real estate space. He has created a community that is the best we have ever seen in our space. But he is just a Go Giver, it is all because of the person he is not what he’s doing tactically, which is also very amazing. But guys, first make sure you are following him. He’s a best selling author of two books, I believe at this point. He has an incredible community, he has hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. But we’re going to be talking about how it is to be running a business? So, I’m excited for this one, dude, this will be good. Thank you. Well, first of all, let’s start off by this, I met you at probably one of the your lower points in life I would get in. Now I don’t know you as a child. So maybe there’s other moments, but I met you at a RIA meeting. And you were basically coming out from the ashes of a very dark moment in your real estate space. And we both I think know what we’re talking about. But I wanted to come in here and let everyone know, all the accolades I just gave them are even more powerful. Because if not like he was just given us. He literally built it from burning all the way down. Let’s talk about those moments.
Pace: Yeah. Let’s see, let’s see, 64 months ago, so little over five years ago, my daughter was born Corbin and the same day she was born. I also received a letter in the mail that one of my largest customers was filing bankruptcy on not only me, but also like 16 other people. And what I was doing at the time, I was doing two things. I ran two businesses. One I had been doing wholesale fix and flip and rentals for three years prior to that. And I was also running a large construction company that that’s all I knew at the time, right? So I when I got home, I’m a Mormon. So what Mormons do is we go to our missions, I went to my mission, got home from Korea, immediately was like, How do I get into a business? Well, the only thing I knew the only options I had, right, everything comes down to Options. The only options I had were getting to construction, because that’s what my dad did. So I got into construction. And I got really creative with the way that I would build my business and construction. One I use social media freakin 15 years ago, I was actually using social media and I got a lot of work because of that. In fact, I landed open door offer pad in Zillow as my customers. And my company did incredibly well, because of social media, those companies, of course, would go into a new town and they would go on Instagram to find contractors. And they would do like, let’s find the hashtags that say, like Arizona contractor or whatever else. And the name of my company was Arizona contracting. And so my name would come up all the time in these hashtags searches. And I did that intentionally because I was like, I don’t care what the name of my company is. I just want to make sure that it’s recognizable. And it’s something that somebody’s going to type in, right. And I just I just had this company called Air AZ contracting, Arizona contracting and open door calls me one day and they’re like, Hey, we’re a new company. We’re starting out. And, you know, we’re looking for contractors and like, Okay, some cool little company, I had no idea how big they were going to be. And I was their first contractor for a number of years, I ran all of their construction ran all of their operations inside of Arizona, and then I jumped to Dallas, jumped to Vegas, everything went incredibly well with them. Until they came to me and they go, Hey, we’re changing our entire business model. We’re not getting any renovation whatsoever. I’m like, what? Hold on, what do you mean? Like you’re not going to do any renovation on the next house? They’re like, No, because they’re doing they’re giving me 50 houses a month to renovate right 50 And the average ticket the average amount of money they would have me renovate was 50 grand, so they were giving me like two and a half million dollars a month in revenue. Yeah, it was crazy. That was making crazy good money and I got lucky but then one day they come to me and they go, Hey, we’re not going to do any more renovations. We’re basically going to put in less than 1% of the purchase price back into the house. I’m like your average purchase price is 300 grand, you’re going to put 3000 I was in dollars in these houses. And there Yeah, and on top of it, we’re going to bring it all in house. So here’s $100,000 check, have a great life I was gonna shoot. So I had 180 employees dead dedicated just to open door the time 180 And you know, the the feeling you have, when you have an employee, you feel responsible for these for sure, as you are responsible for that. So I go, Oh, crap. Alright, so here’s what I did, I found local investors in Arizona go, Alright, I’m gonna, I’m going to take my 180 Guys, I’m going to find 18 customers of mine, and basically dedicate 10 of my guys to each one of these customers. And so I landed across a customer and his name is John, I don’t need to say his last name. I don’t want to embarrass him or call him out. But that is truly His name. And for four years, I would do work for this guy. And I would put $100,000 of renovation into his business, I was pulling a lot of it out of my wholesale business. And I was putting it into his business, because I just started wholesaling and doing all these things all simultaneously. And I’m just a doer, right, like a lot. I’m just a doer, I implement immediately. I have a hard time last night, I had Jim quick on my show. And I have three pages of notes. And today, I cannot wait to actually implement them immediately. Right? No doubt, if I take a note, it’s getting done tomorrow, like I’m just one of those people. And so I immediately start diversifying my customer base, but I am pulling wholesale money in. I’m putting it into John’s business because this is how I got creative. I went to all of these customers 18 of them. And I take responsibility for this. I gave John a loaded gun to shoot me in the face with like I gave him. I gave him a loaded gun. And here’s what I mean by that. I would go to all these fix and flippers they’re much smaller than open door is they have a much smaller bank account than open door did. So I said, Look, if you don’t squabble and scribble over my renovation costs, and we don’t do this whole I’m gonna get three renovation or three but or three quote thing and just hire me. I’ll get to work and I’ll actually front load your construction, I’ll pay for your renovation costs. And then you pay me when you sell the house. And what I want is I wanted a little percentage of your profit and I was just leveraged creatively leveraging myself into people’s businesses. Now I was doing creative finance at the time, I was doing sub two and seller finance and all these things. And so I was really starting to use my creative juices. And essentially what I did with John is over the course of about three years, I just deployed, I don’t know $500,000 in money that he had not paid me back. And so one summer this is 2018. One summer comes to me he’s like, I need I know I owe you half a million bucks. I know I do. What I need is another half a million dollars, and I could pay you back and bro I was already duck like I was already dug in this hole. So I just Yeah, and I didn’t have anybody around me that I was like leveraging their advice. I just wasn’t part of masterminds. I wasn’t doing any of that stuff. I didn’t have a mentor. So I made a really stupid decision. And what I did is I sold a bunch of my rentals and I got a bunch more my wholesale business and I put a half a million dollars into his business so he could we could finish these houses that he had on his chopping block to sell and he goes and then sells these houses, gets all his money back and then files bankruptcy on me and 16 other people. So I didn’t lean the properties because I was one of these guys that did a deal off a handshake never in like I if my grandma asked me for $1 loan I’m documenting that freakin thing. Right? So I just.
Justin:the image of your grandmother, your great grandma, hold on, let me get this DocuSign over.
Pace: She’s like, Dude, your document is costing more money than the dollar you’re loaning me. Yeah, exactly. But I want that dollar back grand ma. That’s right. So he files bankruptcy on me, I ended up this ends up being the best thing ever. And here’s a couple of reasons why I had already been told the universe that had already told me you’re going to crush in real estate. Here’s this amazing business and I was making probably 40 $50,000 A month as either wholesaling or fixing and flipping or, you know, acquiring rentals, etc. And I already been doing that. But I Dude this was the psychology of what I was going through. I believed so much in other people’s businesses because I did not believe in myself that I had a hard time or an impossible time letting go of my construction business that actually relied on other people (That’s right) to go and do my own thing that only relied on myself. And because I did not believe in myself I continually divested my risk into other people’s businesses. So I would put all my eggs in other people’s baskets of like, okay, you have an open door, offer pad Zillow, you guys give me this comfort blanket, that, you know, everything’s going to be just fine and I’m divesting all of my risk into your businesses. And then when John filed bankruptcy on me and all those other people and I had to liquidate. I had to sell 43, rentals, everything that I had, just to pay my payrolls, to cover all my costs, get out of the business, and start from scratch, essentially I had no money, it didn’t even have like, 100 bucks on a credit card. Like I didn’t have anything. Luckily, I knew how to wholesale and you had to do these things. So all I had to do was fill my pipeline get money going, and I was good. Yeah. And you look back on this, and it was the universe, smacking me in the face saying, dude, believe in yourself, you stupid son of a bitch, like, go on believe yourself and go do the thing. Now, what I did different at that time, which was the game changer for me, is I started hiring mentors and having outside counsel, outside advice from people that were doing bigger things than I was doing at the time. And I had, you know, I had nothing, I started from nothing. But I had everything. Yeah, it’s the same thing that you give your students, it’s the same thing. A lot of really great mentors give their student students which is options to make money without the need of somebody else. I hadn’t that I didn’t have any money in the bank. But I had skills, bro, I had skills that I could go make money next week, right? No matter where I was in the country, I love when Jay Z says this, he says, drop me anywhere on God’s green earth, and I will triple my worth, which to me is financial freedom, like take all my money away. But I have financial freedom because I know how to go make money in a day or in a week that does not rely on any outside factor besides my own knowledge. So build everything from 60 months ago, to where we are today, zero to 60 months.
Justin: So let’s talk about exactly that is a great pivot because I want everyone to know that was a pivotal time in your life that I’ve gone through, you’ve gone through. Anyone that people are like, oh, we want to be Pace or Justin or whoever. We’d had these moments, everybody that is very, very important for you to understand is we don’t make gold every day. We don’t you know, it’s not always puppy dogs and rainbows. We absolutely have to eat our sandwiches too, because we want something bigger and we want to go for bigger you’re gonna have hurdles and challenges and so Pace has gone through it too. But now, I want to fast forward because I met you I remember very specifically meeting you your energy is downright contagious is why you’ve been able to build it. We are at the Phoenix Ria, I believe I think it was Chris. And you came I was talking to Jamil and you came up like a thunderstorm. “Justin Colby what’s up I’m Pace Morby, good to meet you ask anyone they all know who I am good to meet you both”. And you just bound, bound. You knew my name first of all, so I immediately it was like, Who is this cat? Right? Camille? is laughing because you obviously are, you know, with Jamil and I’m like, Ah, and from that point, right, you I’ve had you speak on my stage. We spoke on virtual. We’ve spoken to other people stages. Yeah. And I sit here today in admiration. Uh, you know, you and I had a four hour car drive. You mean, Jamil did a road trip together from Greensboro, South Carolina. We went over there from Atlanta. Yeah.
Justin: We’ve had great stories along this friendship that we’ve developed over five years. But I’ll never forget how you introduce yourself and how that started for you. And you’re just going this way. Now you were coming out of those ashes that five years ago.
Pace: Yeah, I had asked. When I when I saw you at the Phoenix RIA. I had nothing but skills and a dream. And I was like, I’m never going to rely on another human being. And so and yeah, I was and still am a fan of yours. And I immediately walked up to you. I was like, Hey, Justin Colby, huge fan. You’re amazing. I think you had somebody on your team was there. And you were speaking at the RIA that night, that you were a guest speaker at the Ria. And I was volunteering at the RIA and I was volunteering for Iman because I was like, I have all this time and energy. I don’t have to be on my construction in my construction company, because I just shut it down. Where can I apply myself and instead of, you know, it’s that thing that people say if you can get in the in the room, serve the water at the table? Mm hmm. And that’s what I was doing at that RIA. I was serving the water at the table. I was just figuring out how can I get in wherever I possibly can provide value and so I was bouncing around because I was actually volunteering it Chris Iman’s RIA.
Justin: Dude, you are incredible. And so like, like we just talked about, I wish I knew you closer then it could have been riding this train with you. Because again, I give you all the all the credit man, you have surpassed all of us who’ve been around for I’ve done this for a decade, brother, you have to understand I’ve done educating in real estate investing since 2007. But I’ve been educating since 2014. And you’ve taken all of us who have done it for way longer. And you’ve just showed us and you said here. And here’s another thing I’m going a little sidebar, you also are the guy that quite literally is taking us old heads who’ve been done doing this for decades said, let me show you my blueprint. And you are literally exposing your blueprint of what you’ve done in this amazing culture you were created to a mastermind that we both belong in. Yeah, we’re part of the same mastermind together, and you’re like, Guys, we’re going to set up meetings, we’re going to you guys can come to my office, I’m going to do these zooms. I’m going to expose everything. And that just continues to go to your credit about the person you are the leader, you are the you know, in the industry leader, and so I couldn’t be prouder to call you a friend. But dude, just to kind of get back in track. I want everyone to know where you are today. Right? Because we just went over your darkest, maybe it wasn’t even your darkest moment. But because that was the thing that I’m very well aware of. When you’re a million dollars out and you get a bankruptcy note saying hey, you’re never getting this money back. You have a I think you had your first child already. Right? It’s What you said?
Pace: Yeah, the day that she was born, I got the letter, the Bankruptcy Law.
Justin: Oh, Super neat. I mean, that is exact now, dude, it is so empowering to hear that because I think everyone has to understand where you are today. Because that is a tough moment you have the best thing in your entire life ever happened. I personally, for sure, I would guess at the worst thing business wise, all within hours of each other.
Pace: Yeah, I had a grin and bear it right. It was like when my brother had a brother that also hung himself and I had my mom and dad were in such shambles over that. That experience that I had to stand up, get the ceremony going, get the gravesite, get the this get the headstone do, do all of the coordinating, because my mom and dad were basically crippled with emotion. And it was similar to that I just had to grin and bear it, push the trauma down, shut up and put a smile in your face and walk forward with faith. And know, like Jamil didn’t know until about two months later, I called him I said I have no money, I need to sell my rentals will you have Keighley sell all my rentals and he sold 43 rentals at like 60 cents on the dollar. So I could get capital to pay my payrolls and do all my things and whatever else. And I remember paying for my daughter’s hospital bill with a credit card wondering if the credit card was going to cover the costs. And, you know, all the you know, we’ve all been there, everybody’s been there for. And then, you know, fast forward to today our business what our business looks like. Now we have. And I know this specifically, because on YouTube, it’s starting to get become a thing where the FTC is starting to actually go on influencers, YouTube channels, yeah. And they’re saying, If you claim something, even on your free content, and then we see an ad for your mentorship, and you claim something here that you can’t back up. We don’t care what you said in the ad, we’re going to say your nuancing and you’re conditioning the marketplace to believe something that though when they see your ad, even if your ad is spot on, and you don’t make any, like wild claims, will come in and shut down your business. So, I had this idea where I was like, oh, you know what, I love that. I think that’s great. I’m gonna lean into that. So I called this FTC, this person from the FTC. And I said, can you advise us? What are the things you don’t like about my YouTube? And by a I put them on like a retainer. (No kidding). Yeah. And I said, What do you not like about my YouTube? They go, you make a lot of claims. You say stuff like you don’t pay taxes, you say you owe on this many units you blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you know how many units you have? And I honestly I don’t like down to the door. I do not know that. But I could ask somebody on my team. And they’re like, Yeah, but you’re saying stuff on YouTube. That’s like, you’re saying 2,200 units? You don’t own 2,200 units you own 2,181? Probably, and you’re just rounding up I go, Yeah, you’re, you’re probably right. So I hired this person. And then I hired they gave me this FBI investigator like this third party company to go through and verify all my assets, verify all my revenue, verify my tax returns, verify how many doors I own. And this is what they came up with. I own 2181 doors. I don’t own any of those with a single credit poll. I did not pull any credit did not use any credentials. All of those are owned with creative finance, all the way from single family homes, mobile home parks, RV parks, we just closed on a big $5 million RV park the other day, all seller finance, (I saw that) up to my largest asset, which is 587 units, creative finance, massive buildings with all of this is owned with creative finance. So that’s cool. I’m all I’m at a point now where we have about $450 million in real estate that we own. And I only have partners on 20 million of that. (Say that against how much do you own?) $450 million in real estate, which is great. Now we have a lot of debt against that. Obviously it’s not like I have a net worth of $450 million.
Justin: But I’ll tell you another great story about me and pace. I remember specifically going getting our car rental. And I’m wearing a nice watch and he is wearing his Timex and yeah he can afford more than Timex. And me and Jamil are like, alright, PACE come, you could probably do something here. And you say until I have a net worth of what was the number? Cuz I remember it clearly. Do you remember that?
Pace: Net worth was I think was 500 million or something like that.
Justin: Yeah. And I think you personally said like 20 million to you or something of that.
Pace: That’s what it was. Yeah, it was at the time, it was like, I want to make sure my net worth is $20 million, just from real estate, and then I’ll buy myself a nice watch.
Justin: And let’s just say he has done both of these things. But that delayed gratification is what we don’t see anymore. Right? And God I we could go for hours. Because that alone, I remember sitting there and again, Jamil, and I, you know, you may have been around longer than people know you have in the Phoenix market right as to your point. But you know, I’ve done this now since 2007, Phoenix, Jamil started, I think 2005, I think in Phoenix. So we knew each other for a lot of years, you five years ago came into my life. And it has been incredible, but I’ll tell you, whether it is the lessons that you learn from your experience that we just spoke about, and in finding a way to have delayed gratification. But you might be the only person I know that would have delayed that amount of gratification and had bigger objectives and had bigger desires. I’m not just talking about the material things right. You have nice stuff. You know, I’ve been to your house, I know where you got, you know what I mean? Like, but the watch thing you said I don’t need to go spend that kind of money in a watch, because I don’t care enough about it until I hit a certain goal. Yeah. I don’t know anyone anymore, quite literally, that that has that level of commitment to have delayed gratification. That’s a huge reason of your success, bro.
Pace: Yeah, I was I was thinking about one time I said, Alright, so you know, you walk into like, a country club or a restaurant or whatever. And there’s these chairs, like a bottle of cherries like that they’ll put into Shirley Temple or some sort of drink. And a lot of people go over, pull the chair out and eat it while they’re waiting for their drink, or they’re waiting for whatever. And I always looked at it, like I want the cherry on the very top of whatever that is that I built, right I don’t want to have, let’s say that I’m doing like a build your own sundae thing, right and build your own ice cream thing. And you’re all with your family. And it was kind of building banana splits and whatever else. I wanted to build the actual Sundae, and then put the very the cherry on the very top without eating it and like have it. And the cherry on top was a nice watch, right? Like for me, I go I want a Patek. Specifically I want a Patek Phillipe, I want the nicest watch I could possibly get. I don’t want to like, gradually get to that watch. I want to build something so impressive that people go, why do you not have a watch that it’s more than $200? This doesn’t make any sense. And so I thought about it and I manifested manifest it. And you know, we did the thing, which is crazy to think about how much the net worth has built just because of COVID. Like think about COVID all the real estate I bought during COVID and how it all went up. I mean, I just by sitting there like this year, my net worth will probably go up $20 million this year just by sitting doing nothing because of the real estate we acquired right? It’s crazy. And what’s also crazy is I’m at a point now where I don’t need any more real estate. That’s the weirdest thing is like do I want to continue to buy more real estate than I currently have? Well here’s the problem. The problem is if I make the money that I’m going to make next year, I will have to buy real estate I’m kind of in this now this world of I have to buy $100 million a year in real estate or I pay taxes. Yep. And I don’t want to move to Puerto Rico. I want to live here and I hate paying money to the to the tax man and so I’ll continue to buy real estate but what I’ve done different is now I’ve gone to my team and I’ve alright anybody that stays with me for over 10 years you guys will I’m going to give away 20% of all my real estate holdings to people that stay with me for over 10 years now not 20% each to a pool right? So I’m now building the real estate portfolio not for me anymore and building it for the people on the team and so like my head of operations Molly my you know head of transaction coordination Allison and Heidi, my asset manager, all of these people will doubt when I buy a piece of real estate or and I talk about it on YouTube. I now know I’m not rubbing their face in my success. I’m actually bringing them along for the ride. And bro I’m telling you it’s like Hey, we just bought this and we this and we that my whole team went from saying, Yeah, Pace bought another piece of real estate, we got to go and do this and we got to, Pace did this, but we have to do the work Pace did this, but we have to do the work, which is what it was before. Now, without me even changing the culture, like purposely just giving them a piece of the success, a significant piece, by the way, all of a sudden, it’s we bought a piece of real estate, and we need to do this and the management, the cashflow, the vacancy, all of those things improved almost overnight. And I was like, Well, why wasn’t I doing this before? This is crazy. (That’s right). So you know, we pay them incredibly well. But anyway, so so just to cap that off, we own $450 million in real estate, we have a great lending business that we make 16-17% of our money every single year off of that, that’s great. That’s that alone is enough money for me to survive on just that. That’s it. It’s so it’s such a great thing because nobody really wants to own real estate if you really think about it, like what you want are the benefits of real estate but you don’t want to deal with the crap.
Justin: You want the ROI right? You want the return on your investment. You want you want your money make money while you sleep period end of story that is the passive income. That’s it You and I both know I have a big grudge against passive income.
Pace: I got a seven man team managing it right? Like I’ve got a freakin football team managing my assets. And so right there’s problems every day. We just had a Molly called me yesterday. And she says, Hey, let’s catch up. I want to talk about things. And I go, why don’t we not ever talk about the real estate like you don’t want to talk to me about the real estate. She’s like, because we got it covered. We don’t want to, we want you to go do the thing you need to be doing. We got it covered. I’m like, Are we having anything? Bad happen? Should we have bad things happen every day? You just don’t need to hear about I go give me one like I just I need to be connected to the real estate portfolio for a minute. Give me one. She goes okay, I’ll give you one. 43 unit in San Angelo, Texas, we decided we needed to fire the property manager that we inherited from the seller. And we fired her. And we did not know that the laptop that she used was actually her laptop. The guy who he bought the property from never bought her her own computer. He was such a cheapskate. So when she we fired her she took the laptop home, which has all the deposits, all the tenants names, all the situations, all the leases, everything you could imagine. And she took it home. And so now she’s holding it hostage. She goes, Yeah, I’ll give it to you. But I want $25,000 This is my computer and my this and my that. And I’m like, Oh, all right. Yeah, that’s great. Please don’t tell me anything more about the real estate I don’t want. And that’s our last conversation for a little while. Yeah, so it’s, you know, we still continue to buy a lot of real estate this year, we bought 100 million next year, we’ll buy another 100 million now. We now own six different businesses we’ve acquired all through creative finance. So one of those businesses right down the road from you, it’s called the plant guy. Very cool business does like $5 million a year in revenue. I bought that with creative finance, I now we own 50% of it, Matthew laying the founder of that business, just didn’t know how to scale past where he was, which is about 5 million a year in revenue. So we brought our RC suite to the table. So I now have kind of an Alex or mosey model, where I get businesses that come to me and say I need help. And either it’s we’re helping them sell, we’re buying them or getting a piece of them for through consulting, like consulting for equity type of situation. All three.
Justin: You know, you’re probably already doing this, but just you talking about that on this episode probably drives more traffic and you get equity for the traffic. I mean, it’s just brilliant.
Pace: Yeah, well, the challenge, the challenge we have right now is that we don’t have a C suite capable of handling more than like five businesses a year. And so we turn a lot of people down. And we’re our team just isn’t big enough yet. So we’re kind of in the beginning stages of that. And I think at some point, in five years, seven years, people will go, Wait, you’re a real estate guy too. You know because we’ll buy so many businesses. And so, we’ve got that going, I’ve got a big virtual assistant business that we used to work with real estate investors, we don’t do that anymore. It’s mostly like medical billing, insurance companies, stuff like that, that business does $20 million a year in revenue. So a bunch of stuff, we have a bunch of things that I have my fingers and nails, I own a nationwide title company of 43 states not 50 but 43 states we’re in and I do well on all of those things I verted I vertically integrated a lot of the things that my community needs into ways that I can provide a service that I can control that provides a need that need they have in a very specific way so for example, if I teach somebody creative finance and they go yeah, go find a title company. I got sick of saying that. I got sick of my people I’m sure you deal with this too. They come back and they go this title company doesn’t want to do this or this person doesn’t want to do that. They don’t want to do a double close or even a wholesale deal. And I go fine. I’m just gonna frickin buy a title company expand nationwide and I’ll control the narrative and boom that took us three years to do but here we are now. When somebody learns what I do they go to a specific title company, they don’t have any issues, right? So there’s a lot of those things that we’ve built. And I now have a little over 600 employees. So the day I met you, I had zero 60 months later, I have 620, I think is the amount of employees that I have,
Justin: We’re going to pause because we need to talk about that in what I mean pause. Throughout this last 34, 50, 40 minutes, you’ve, there’s been a consistent team that you’ve been talking about, bro. And this is what I hope most, if not all entrepreneurs will get from this, regardless of where they’re at, when listening to this episode. Pace has cared more about the people that he has created than he cared more about the money or the business itself. He sold his rentals to go pay for his payroll, he has always focused on the community, the people that how many community members do you have now in subsidy right now?
Pace: Sub to 13,000.
Justin: And this is a year ago, two years ago, you talked about kind of creating sub subject matter experts within that community like transactional coordinating all these different things, because he’s looking at what people need, versus what he wants, right? And he’s delivering the need of those people above his own. You know, self, if you will. And so hopefully, if you’re out there, and whether you just went through a moment, like Pace has gone through, like I have gone through, find a way to care more about the people, I do something similar to Pace, and I didn’t even know Pace did this, but my general manager now has 30% of all my holdings. And it’s because he’s been with me for eight years. And he has seen some dark, dark days. I mean, dark, and he hasn’t gone anywhere, right? (He earn that 30% that’s awesome). Yeah. And the reason being is because he’s fought through it. I mean, we’ve had days where we’ve cried together, because it was, when I say dark guys, it was literally there’s nothing left. I can’t pay him, I can’t pay myself, there’s we’re empty, right. And he’s been there and he hasn’t left. He hasn’t gotten anywhere. He’s stayed true. We’re buying two to five houses a week, right? Now he gets 30% of whatever we’re keeping the portfolio. If there’s a business partner involved, like a lot of my community members, just like you, we’ll bring me a deal, we’ll have an equity share. So whatever my site is, he gets 30%. And it’s because of the person he is. So I would encourage you and implore you if you take nothing else from everything Pace has been talking about, focus on your people first, and you’re gonna reap the rewards.
Pace: It’s really hard to do that, especially when you have nothing to give, right? And it really, really is. And I tell people, the reason why Michael Jordan was the greatest of all time is not because of the Rings, not because of the shots that he made. Because you look at him, he missed way more shots than he made. Why was Michael Jordan the best in my mind? He was the best because he made the impossible look easy. And so when you’re doing the impossible stuff, which is you’re standing at a meet up and you’re like, I don’t have any value. I don’t have any money. I don’t have any this. I haven’t had success. Okay. Who would you have to be? Who would you have to become in that moment? In order to convey that you are there to help people like how would you feel? How would you walk? How would you talk. And so same thing, when I met you at that Ria, I had that thought process of I have nothing but my own face, my own hands, my own voicemail, this, that’s all I have to give. And so I’m going to just pour into everybody, I possibly can meet as many people as they possibly can, love on as many people as they possibly can. And those compound effects don’t show up the next day. They don’t show up for weeks, they don’t show up for months. But then all of a sudden, somebody has a deal or an opportunity or this and the first person they think of is you know, those things will start producing fruit those seeds you plant will start producing fruit but Gosh, it’s hard when you have nothing. It is so hard when you have nothing. And there’s people that come to come to me and they go, why don’t have any value to give people. I go, let me tell you the number one thing that people need a value from you, or anybody else, the number one thing people need is a friend. So when you’re going to a real estate meetup or you’re going to an entrepreneur meetup, you’re going to wherever a seminar, whatever, the number one thing people need in that room is not more education, not more information, the number one thing people need is a friend. And so, if you can’t figure out how to be a friend and friendly, and go read how to win “Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and then go and do it. So that is all I had. That was the only tool I had when I first started it. And same thing with Justin like when you lose everything, and you start from scratch, guess what you have your ability to connect with people. And it is honestly the most powerful tool. The problem is it just takes a while for those fruits to start to bear.
Justin: There’s so many you know, we haven’t even gotten to a bunch of my questions, because I want to be respectful of your time. But when you go through those dark days, and we’ll kind of wrap it up on this because I know all of us as entrepreneurs, their dark days, weeks, months, years, for some. What helps you push through? And by the way, how funny are these? Where do these even come from? Watch this, you want to Yeah, let’s just make it happen.
Pace: It’s an apple thing. (that’s neat). Alright, got to turned it off in your settings, I forgot. I keep forgetting to turn it off. What helps me get through? I have a very specific personality type, that if my back is against the wall, I will perform better. Other people don’t perform that well, I, they break down, right? They’d rather, you know, if you go and watch Jim quick stuff, he has four different types of animals in terms of learning style, and how you communicate and how you perform and how you show up. He’s got the dolphin, the cheetah, the elephant, the owl, the owl. As you can imagine, the owl is all wise, but they also like to plan things very specifically, I’m the cheetah. And you need to tell me, Hey, you’re gonna starve to death. If you don’t take down that gazelle. That is where I performed best. And so what I have always done is it doesn’t matter if I make a million dollars in a month, I make $10,000 in a month does not matter. I get rid of all of my money. Every single month, I deploy it into things that I’m building, right? If it’s a vision, or an initiative, I’ll deploy money into something. I will buy tons of assets by a business I’ll get I get rid of all my money. Because I always want to be in that position of my back is against the wall and I have to get more money in now. Is it tiring? Yes. It is so tiring. It’s I have no time downtime. I don’t have weekends. I don’t have these things. But guess what I know myself. I know myself. It’s the same thing with Grant Cardone as the same personality, sitting there talking to him. He’s like, bro, if I got, if I have $100 million in the bank, I’m going to freakin south of France, and I’m hanging. But yeah, no money that make you count. And we’re just buying things and buying assets. I’m grinding, I’m working, I want to keep that hunger. And so somebody you know, people make that funny joke where they’re like, if you stay ready, you’ll never never have to get ready. That’s the mindset, I’m trying to always stay in this, I always want to feel like I’m one day away from not having anything, so that I perform every single day, the greatest advantage you have, when you’re starting out, you have a massive advantage. And the advantage is, you have nothing to lose. That’s it. You know, I have 620 employees and half a billion dollars in real estate, I got a lot to lose. That’s right. And so you start being a little trepid, a little hesitant, you start playing safe, you start doing these things, because you kind of need to. In the very beginning, you can make all the mistakes, you can screw everything up and nothing can happen to you know, nothing other than, you know, maybe a little bit of egg in your face. But guess what? People will say stuff like, Oh, it’s okay to fail. No, it’s not okay to fail, it is a requirement to fail. It is the glue that puts all of this stuff together, you have to fail, you have to forget people’s names, you have to forget this thing that you learn on a zoom, you have to forget these things, but apply it and go oh crap. I know, I know this. But I’m now in this moment where I’m in a homeowner’s house and I can’t figure out how to get over this objection or this and the other. You have to fail. You have to be in these moments all day long. Otherwise, you’re not learning and it sounds like common sense. But why is it not? Common practice is because people aren’t comfortable. So I know myself, I know that if you put $100 million in my bank account, I’m chillin, I’m going to the Bahamas, I’m investing in stupid things. So I’ve learned myself is get rid of that money. Go put into assets and act as if I don’t have money every single day. And my whole community if you ask somebody in my community, how much money do you think Pace sitting in their bank there? Oh, he shows us all the time. He has like negative $3,100 today. Now my companies are different, right? Like (I get it). I have partners who have you know, we have CFOs we have CEOs we have five financial and analysts. We have money. We have millions of dollars in the company’s bank accounts. Those are not my bank accounts. Those are joint partnership bank outs, but my money and my personal investment stuff. I am to zero all the time, all the time. And I think a lot of high achievers when you realize that that’s who you are and how you show up. I know if you put money in my bank account. I’m like, Hey, sweetheart, let’s go do this. Let’s go do that. Now. Here’s the difference. If I go to my wife, I go we need to go on vacations, which we do a lot of vacations all the time. But guess what I’m actually doing. I’m taking my kids and my wife on road trips and flights and travel to go make more money. I’m going to a real estate thing and speaking on stage I’m showing up to real estate we did a nine day road trip through Texas like hey guys, hey kids, we’re gonna go on a 90 road trip through the through Texas. Guess what we’re doing, visiting my properties and making YouTube content while they sit in the car while I film (That’s right). But they don’t, they don’t really know the difference. So that’s the family vacation all simultaneously and I want to build something so much bigger than I think was even possible 10 years ago, and I know you’re the same, like, the more you do, the further the goalposts, changes contract gets extended out. And I really just want to become the person that’s worthy of a billion dollars. I don’t want a billion dollars. I don’t care about a billion dollars, but I want to become the person that’s worthy of obtaining it. Yeah, in order to do that, I have to stay hungry all the time. If you if you stay ready, there’s no need to get ready. That’s basically the motto.
Justin. Mic drop I think we can wrap on that everybody again, if you follow me then you got to be following Pace if you don’t somehow some way bestselling author has grown one of the largest real estate communities out there if not the largest, has a half a billion in real estate this a close friend of mine. Someone I’m honored to call a friend, someone I look up to, someone who advises me whether you know it or not my friend you advise me even the moment that you just said what you said. I started taking all my traveling experiences in generating revenue from those traveling experience every time you told me that down in Tampa recently and so brother, thank you for your time today. And hopefully everyone goes and follows his pace on where Youtube, Instagram where do you want to have them all go to you?
Pace: If you ever want to talk to me go to Instagram I answer all my DMs myself with a voice memo typically, like while I’m driving or doing a thing, I’m voice memo and people back like oh, that’s a great question. Hey, I have a YouTube video go and type this in. YouTube’s a great place to learn and watch my deal break down stuff like that Instagrams a great place to come and ask me a question and I am the 99% of time answering those DMs so you want to ask me a question. You can’t do that on YouTube. You want to ask me a question come over to Instagram.
Justin: That’s it and they’ll all Pace Morby
Pace: Just Pace Morby I luckily, I’ve got a stupid name so there it’s hard to duplicate
Justin: Alright, you all I appreciate you. Talk to you guys later on entrepreneur DNA peace.