Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I’m your host Justin Stoddart I’m fired up excited today about our guest, Mike Ciorrocco. He’s also known as Mikey, see, he’s a big time player in the lending space out of South Florida does some incredible things. You’re going to love what this man does not only in the mortgage space, but in helping helping people see and pursue their own potential. There’s a lot in common between me and Mike. So let me just remind you the Pat, that purpose and passion of this show is to help you think bigger as you do your activities change and as your activities change, and your results start to follow. And then you could have a bigger impact on the world. My My passion is on helping people tap into that untapped potential. I believe that the greatest untapped natural resource out there is human potential. And Mike and I today are going to help you tap into that, which you’re missing out on that untapped human potential inside of you. Let me give you a little background on Mike “C-Roc” as he’s known, he’s a motivator of facilitator, dynamic public speaker to fierce friend and coach at his core. He’s a grinder that gets after it. I hear him on mentoring calls. He and I both have been mentored by Grant Cardone, and I hear him light a fire, not only in his own business, but also on the mentoring calls it’s really fun to see. He that actually has led him to inspire others to see the greatness inside of themselves and the sound totally similar to like what I’m all about. I love it. Mike is a manager at Nations Lending and residential mortgage company, he and his three best friends have built one of the most profitable divisions within Nations Lending from the ground up helping their clients find the ability from a financial standpoint to purchase their dream homes. Now, in addition to that, he speaks to, you know, thousands of real estate agents. He’s a thought leader, as you can see from the studio behind him and on his hat you’re at he’s asking the question, What are you made of? So Mike C I want to welcome you to the think bigger real estate show today. appreciate you taking the time. I’m really excited about we’re going to talk about today.
Let’s go Justin. Let’s make it happen. Man, good. Glad to be here. Glad you invited me on your show. And et’s blow this thing up, man. Let’s provide some great content.
Justin Stoddart
Let’s do it. I’m excited. So let’s, let’s start off by talking about the mentorship with Grant Cardone was not inexpensive, right? Tell me why you decided to invest in yourself and your own business, specifically in the 10 X Mentor Program.
Mike Ciorrocco
Well, first of all, let me let me we got I got to correct you, but and that’s part of us having one on one like each of us accountability hold each other accountable. It’s not a lot of money. It was that I think it was a 997 right. It’s not a lot of money, dude. Because Listen, the thing is, is that when people see $997 1000 bucks, they’re thinking small, right? So that’s one of the biggest things that since I’ve been following grant for about two years now. One of the biggest things that he’s taught me is that I’m thinking too small, he thought too small, and that’s why he shared it with everyone else. And so I started thinking of myself, okay, that 997 like, for example, with this Mentor Program 997, right? What does it get in me? If I don’t do it? What does it cost to me? And what I found out, by the way, the mentor, there’s a lot of stuff that goes along with it that we found out once we got in there. But prior to knowing what it was all involved in the network, and all the benefits from it, I thought to myself, what does it cost me not to be in this? And so I switched my thinking. Right? And, yeah, so so but the thing is, is that one of the lessons that we learned is that when you go to a mentoring program, you spend money on something or if you have a big goal, you go share it with someone, and then you see the reaction. Right? Remember, I’m going over that, and Hey, listen, I have mentoring by Grant Cardone, it’s 997. And I’m learning a lot this night Just shut up. And then you see, yeah, you see the response. And then you can figure out where people’s heads really are and whether you want to be around those people that much. Because the people that say, Wow, man, really tell me more about it or hope you do. With those are the people you want to be around. But the people that said what you did what thousand bucks for what I meant, come on, man, get them out. Remove that. That’s what I always talk about removing all obstacles. I have goals in mind for myself that are big. And if I shared it with you guys, you might you might think I’m crazy might laugh because a lot of people do laugh at my goals. And those are the people that aren’t going to ride on my plane when I get a plane. That’s what I always say to myself. So sharing your goals with people is one of the things we learned and then removing the obstacles because people are obstacles most of the time. It’s the people that are closest to you that are obstacles. So these are some of the things that I learned in it. But uh, yeah, I mean, I was in it and and the thing is, we get to network in before the call and after the call, and that’s how we met.
Justin Stoddart
It’s true. You know, I want to I want to capital, I put up an explanation point, what you just said there is that you’re right, everybody looks at like how much does it cost you to do something where as you said, we’re It cost me not to do it. I’ve a coach, you said, What’s the cost of the cost? actually had somebody at one point point this out? He said, How much did you make last year? And then he said, Take a million dollars a year and subtract that from what you made, subtract what you made last year from a million dollars. And he said, Okay, let’s say just for, you know, easy routing purposes, let’s say it was $200,000. He said, it costs you $800,000 last year to not know how to make a million dollars. Not a great way to look at it. It’s absolutely man, like that thousand dollar mentoring program all of a sudden, is that expensive when you start to realize like, what, like, how, how much is it costing me to not know how to make more money? And I think for you know, real estate agents, which are our common audience, right? There’s sometimes a lack of wanting to invest in in themselves, right? Is that I can’t like it’s, it’s, it’s like hyper focus on the bottom line, as opposed to what grant teaches which is like, look at the top line. I’m focused on the top line.
How do I drive the revenue. And then you start looking at investments as opposed to savings, you start looking at, you know, spending money, not saving money, but spending money, that’s going to get a great return. That’s something that’s really showing you this.
Mike Ciorrocco
Well, you hear the same back in the day, it takes money to make money, right? So when you don’t know something, and Grant says this one too, when you have no of something you don’t know something. So when you have no of something, you don’t k n o w something. And it’s so true. If you don’t have any money, you don’t know something about money. So you need to figure out how to get money and you need to learn and figure it out. And the Mentor Program, what it does is it speeds things up. So the way I looked at this, Justin is I can do things on my own, which I have in the past. You know, I started a mortgage branch in a division and I did it on my own without hardly any mentoring, which I didn’t, I didn’t k n o w, right, I didn’t know better. So what happened is, is that it took me a lot of time and money to get us to where we are today. Way, way, way, way more than 997 so you’re going to spend money on a mentoring program or being with a mentor or learning or classes or knowledge, you’re going to spend a certain amount of money, but I guarantee you guarantee you that you’re going to spend more time which is money, and a lot more money, not getting a mentor or not investing in yourself, and you have no idea what that’s going to cost. And I can guarantee that it’s probably 100 times more than you spend on a mentor or education. As far as you know, money.
Justin Stoddart
100 percent, you know, it’s interesting, I think about that with different like websites and funnels that I’ve tried to build myself, and I get to the Edit, I still don’t like it, I still don’t use it. And it’s the opportunity cost, right? I mean, the scarcity side of me is like I’ll just build this and save a couple thousand dollars to not pay someone or not hire someone to do this. But the opportunity cost of not spending time where I’m great spending time where I’m I can generate revenue. Instead I’m doing things that other people are proficient at and great at. Yeah, I’m watering down and diluting down my own value to the marketplace by trying Save money, right? By trying to not invest in things that are going to propel me to the next level. Again, I see it all the time with with clients of like who I can’t, I can’t afford a transaction coordinator, I’ve got to do my own paperwork. I can’t afford that. You know, agent, I can’t afford to have this and that and it’s like, you can’t afford to not have one. Right long as you’re reallocating that time that you’re now saving towards generating towards revenue generating activities. If you did that, you’d be like, oh, wow, I haven’t realized how expensive it has been for me to not have these great people around me these great systems around me these outsourced options around me.
Mike Ciorrocco
Yeah, let’s let’s take a step back for a minute. Because one thing I I know for a fact that when we do a podcast or we do anything, in order to connect with people, we got to tell them where we’re from a little bit, right. And we gave a little bit of intro with where I’m from, but I need to share this with your listeners and with you because I want to make sure people understand where I’m coming from what drives me. That’s great. When I was 11 years old, and I shouldn’t do this up front, I apologize. But when I was 11 years old, I was living with my dad for three years. point I came from a broken home. I didn’t know my parents together ever. And it was always a every other weekend type thing when I was with one of the parents, right? When I was eight, I decided to live with my dad. And I went through three years of basically hell, physical, not physical, psychological and emotional abuse. And I wasn’t physically abused, thank God. But there was a bad environment. And when I was 11 years old, I decided to move back with my mom. And you know, this is common to a lot of people. It’s not an ordinary, I mean, a unique story. It’s more ordinary than unique. However, that’s why it’s so powerful because people can connect to it because they can relate to it. And when I told my dad, I wanted to move back with my mom, my dad being my hero, okay, had a masonry business. That’s why I have the bricks on the logo back here, had laid masonry versus business laid bricks, laid block poured concrete, he always had $100 wad of cash in his pocket, right. He did well for himself and I always looked up to him for that water cash he always would show it and and when I decided to move back with my mom
My dad basically gave up on me. He said he sure you’re gonna live with your mom who’s who’s not that well off, you know, I’ll tell you what, and he pulled this wad of cash out and put the hundred dollar bill off and crumpled it up and threw it at me and said, you’re going to need this when you’re living on the streets with your mother one day. And now mind you, I’m 11 years old, right? And feeling like I’m the one that did something wrong. When I’m trying to make something better for myself and get out of a bad culture environment. I didn’t know the word culture back then. And at that moment, besides being destroyed and just rejected, you know, by my hero, I’m stubborn to a fault, Justin. So at that moment, I decided, you know what, you’re not going to be right pal. I’m going to be a better father than you. I’m going to be a better husband and you I’m going to be a better businessman than you. At 11 years old. I made that commitment to myself. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I just decided that moment he is not going to win. So every part of my life since then, I’ve been trying to prove that point and hit that commitment. And number two, I wanted to help people that have been through that same struggle.
They’ve been given up on by their father someone. And so every time I go through a tough time, a setback, things aren’t going my way. I always refer back to that and saying, Hey, man, you got to push through, you got to overcome, you’re not letting that sucker sucker win. And now I love them to death. I don’t talk to them now, not not by my means. And if I sold them, I give them a big hug. But I’m not letting them win. And so I drive back on that. And that’s where that’s where you made up movement came from. And I want to try to encourage every single person to look back at your life and find something, something just like that, that you can drive off of, and you can think about when things get tough for you. Because if you don’t have that, man, it’s really difficult life can get difficult, you know. And so I wanted to I wanted to share that with your listeners because I want them to understand where my drive comes from the the stuff that I’m sharing and the stuff that I learned in the text mentor and the stuff that you learn. It really doesn’t matter if you’re not going to apply it and you don’t have some kind of driving force behind it. So I just wanted to share that with you before we start.
Justin Stoddart
Man, I mean, I’m sorry to hear that you and your dad aren’t in communication. I think that’s his loss, right? I think I actually once heard a story of a father who was kind of in a similar spot, and his son really couldn’t understand. Like, like, How could my dad do this to me? And like, he was a spiritual guy, he just thought about it prayed about like, like, Why would my dad like walk out and be like that? Like, why would he not have contact with me? And he said, like, I feel like the answer did come like it just like, I couldn’t get it until I had a child. And then once I had a child, they had a place to receive that, like, I could get it. And the answer came is that it was it was his loss. Like he was the one that was missing out. And I at that point, I got it because I was a dad and I was seeing that, you know, sure, I would have benefited by having my dad around, no doubt. But really, the the one who missed out the most, you know, was the father who wasn’t able to be a part of his Yep. So it’s it’s inspiring to hear that you despite not having that, that you’ve actually used his influence and his impact, to inspire you to go on to do great things. I think that’s that’s an interesting way to look at life as if you know, depending upon how you want to go about life, you can look around and find good or bad things and use them as a crutch as an excuse as to why you didn’t do something or like you just did. You say, look, I had a bad thing happened. And that’s actually what’s inspired me to go on to find the greatness within me. Like what a bit of, you know, if you go about life that way, no matter what happens, whether it’s a great thing or whether it’s a tragedy, you turn into good and you use it as fuel, right?
Mike Ciorrocco
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you’re saying that, you know what, I just got an idea. It just got a I got an idea, man. And I didn’t ever thought about this this this way before and the way this aligns with our business. You hear when we’re on the mentor call and somebody will call, ask a question. This past call. They said this, hey, I’ve tried to get this this agent. Let’s just say, I’m trying to get this prospect. And I’ve tried everything. I’ve done this. I’ve done that phone call visit. I didn’t send them pizza, but nothing’s working. Right and what the answer was, what was the answer? Do you remember? Remember, they said your word everything’s working. And number two, your funnels not big enough. You got one person that you’re worried about grow your grow your prospects, right so here’s I just hit this this hit me when you’re talking about that. My I was so fortunate when I was 11 and I left my dad’s house went to my mom said I had to step that his name was George he died about a year ago. And I’m not his blood kid, right but he took me in like a father. Like the best father you could possibly have. Okay, but what happens is my dad gave up on me right? And that’s like a customer if you think about this, this might be totally screwed up, but I’m just telling you like, I feel it right. If he gave up on me and that was like a customer that gave up on me and I didn’t want to focus and just sit there and worry and drive this guess what I went out found a new one. You know what I mean? So it’s it’s a little warped I’m sure but it just hit me like, you know what? Hit the you said his loss, right? That’s the prospects loss. You do everything you possibly can to get a prospect and then don’t stress and worry go get some war. Too many people get hung up on one prospect and if they do everything they possibly can and make that prospect still doesn’t come around, they sit there and mope and they let it affect that the next transaction the next prospect the next relationship that they can have and that’s one thing that I didn’t do so I noticed that that I really took hold to my step that George and we got like this he was hard on me by the way, I was 11 years old, he was busting my ass man. He would he would drive me and I hated it he was hard on me but we were tight and that’s similar situation to find going out finding new relationships go out find a new it happens in girlfriend a boyfriend situations and husband and wife situations as well. somebody loses a relationship with someone then they get all down in the dumps and this and that instead of focusing on the next relationship that they need to have. So I’m glad you said that because that that all that’s
Justin Stoddart
I do remember that answered it was like a total paradigm shift because like, what the you know, what the the questioner was asking is like, what else can I do? And they just what about a different way is like you’re solving the wrong problem. You’ve got one prospect. That’s the problem. The problem is you need 100 of them. And you need to be delivering big value to 100 of them and over 100 of them, you’ll find the one that resident that who’s with whom your value resonates. And you know, that kind of down that thread. That’s been a really a big aha for me. And I think grant touched on this, you know, in our last call, which was, everything works. And you mentioned it earlier, right? Everything works, even the three non calls it and here’s a prime example of this one of my best clients right now. We showed up down in San Diego, right? I’m in Portland, Oregon, down in San Diego at a real estate coaching event. I’m sitting by the turnstile waiting for my luggage, I look over and there’s Brad, I’m like, hey, Brad, how are you? And he like looks at me and like sheepishly, he’s like, oh, man, Hey, how are you? Good to see unexpect to see you here. And he says, I think I owe you a call, like maybe four or five calls. And, you know, I honestly didn’t think that he was even noticing that he was making the connection. at that event. He and I spent some time together, I got him as a client. He’s been a great client ever since those four or five calls that I thought were falling on deaf ears, maybe even irritating him, or in his brain working on him, he knew that he was gonna get back to me, he just didn’t know when. And I think, again, we tend to discount activity. And we put too short of a timeframe on it is that if somebody doesn’t respond immediately, then it must not work. And we must move on, right? Yes, we ought to have, like you said, have a white funnel. But we also want to have a wide funnel of activities that we’re utilizing on people because the reality is, all of us, all of our lives are already busy. And to make time for somebody else, a new relationship to make time for a new partnership. It takes time it takes capacity and you have to be persistent in adding real value consistently in order for someone to be like, okay, like, I can’t say yes yet, but I’ve got to make space here because this person is persistent. They must have real value. I’ve got to make space to be able to evaluate and then make space to actually go into business with them. Look, I think we discount that. And that’s, I think, at the essence of the 10 X rule, that’s the essence of what Grants teaching is that you can have everything you want, if you’re willing to do enough activities, most people aren’t. But if you catch that vision, and you really double down a certain activity, you’ll start to see that it’s, it’s not a very crowded environment when you start to do that, because most people will desist a long time ago.
Mike Ciorrocco
Here’s the thing, man and Jared said this, and I use this all the time we plant seeds, and we water them. And you just water that seed until it starts to grow. And the thing is, is that if you have one of something grant said this to you have one is something you’ll start to hate it, you’ll start to resent it. You have. So anything that’s good in life, you want to have multiples, right? But when you start to hate that person, because you’re not focusing on the relationships, then you come off the wrong way when you still try to follow up. If you do follow up at all, you come off the wrong way to them. They sense that of course they’re not going to work with you. So what you need to do is you need to reach out to the prospect, be creative, do all different things. Stay great attitude friendly, happy understanding of why they haven’t done business with you yet. Maybe it’s because they have a lot of other things on their mind. It’s not the right time, they have another partnership already. Timing is a big issue too, because it might not be the right time. But if you stay with it, and you keep watering to see what and see, when that timing comes up, you’re there. They’re not all going to turn it into transactions or relationships. So that’s why you need a lot of them. And you got to think big on the prospecting side of things. Bunch of seeds. You want to plant a bunch of seeds to farmers don’t plant one corn seed in the field. Yeah, right. Can we even count how many seeds they actually plant when they plant a field of corn?
If you think of your business that way, man, I’m gonna tell you something that made a difference for me. But a year ago, I decided to get known because grant said, Hey, money follows attention. I was sitting at the 10 X growth conference in Miami. And he put up a graph on the screen and he showed his Google I guess it was like his Google activity or trend would go on a graph that was going up, and then it showed his money, it was going up and it match that trend, and that hit me and I’m like, you know what, I I’ve been trying to get known locally in my local market. By the way, I’m in Maryland, I go to Miami because I have a branch there as well. Okay, South Florida, I go to I go to Miami once a month, and I’m in Maryland most of the time than the Mid Atlantic region. But I try to get known in Maryland, like not even in Maryland, just in my town or my county, right. And that’s what I did for years. And all my people, everybody around everybody does that every single person in your business, my business, real estate, they just do it in their own little town. I started to think bigger. And I started waking up every morning being obsessed getting known worldwide. And I said, you know, what, if I get worldwide known or known worldwide, locally is not going to be a problem, brother, locally, everybody find out because if I get known throughout South Africa, which by the way, all of a sudden this started happening, and when I started thinking this way, get the podcast, writing a blog, all these different activities that I’m doing. All of a sudden, I’m getting reached people reaching out from Germany, South Africa, Australia. I was on a podcast in Australia yesterday. Australia is on the other side of the globe.
So, if you’re known globally, you don’t have to worry about local, you don’t have to worry about that it takes care of itself. So that big, big, big thing that I’ve come to realize over the last year is one, whatever you want to do be obsessed about it. And number two, get known globally focus on a bigger, bigger, bigger target. And all the little targets will take care of themselves, man,
Justin Stoddart
I agree, you know, think bigger is very similar strategy, you know, to what I had, and this can maybe kind of parlay into, like what our unique value propositions are for for agents. I found that in my industry title and escrow In fact, you guys are probably not an escrow state right you guys probably use attorneys is that your Yep. Oh, here we use that like escrow officer, right. So title and escrow are combined under the Maryland Maryland escrow and Delaware, we’re in Delaware to that to that attorney state. Okay, got it. So you see both sides. So in my industry, it’s very common for someone who’s in a business development role for the title company to be a friendly customer service representative, right. How can I help you today I’ve got some company tools I’m going to share with you. I’m going to put you on our company email blast. And it’s it’s very, it’s very common, right. And what I realized is that if I was going to be in conversations with an add value to the biggest producers, that I needed to not only be a helpful vendor, I needed to be appear someone who they could look at say, Look, you’re a top producer in your industry. I’m a top producer in mine, I think we can learn from each other. And I said, What if I could actually get really good at some things that they would want to know about? To where I could mentor them to where they were coming to me saying, teach me how you do that. And so my push in my aim is how do I become a mentor to my biggest clients and prospective clients to where they want me to be in their business because of what they’re seeing me do. I’m not I’m not the liaison to value I am the value and the to get to me, right? Or to get to that value. They come to me not through me as a pass off to someone in my network that’s helpful to write. But what can I demonstrate in my business? What can I do that shows that?
You know and offspring of that it’s exactly why I started this is I had to learn this digital media space because I knew that real estate agents are losing business because the massive portals of Redfin and Zillow and Trulia are gaining attention before real estate agents. They’re poaching those clients and they’re, they’re reselling them in the form of leads to clients. So, real estate agent, very similar to what you’re talking about, needs to actually gain the attention of their clients, more so than even what Zillow is doing. Because if you’re in the brain, if you own real estate in your clients and prospective clients brain, there’s no doubt they’re going to use you to buy and sell their own physical real estate. And so how do I gain mindshare? That’s, that’s what I’ve been all about. So that I can teach it right so they can teach you the agents. So that’s one part of my value proposition sounds like it’s, you know, very similar to yours as well.
Mike Ciorrocco
Yeah, thing is man, the problem is not Redfin, or Trulia or any of this that’s all distractions, man. I don’t worry about any other mortgage company. I don’t I don’t mean man. Listen, my job is to get known I want to learn real estate which I was a real estate agent before I was in the mortgage business, but I want to learn marketing and real estate better than real estate agents that we serve. And if I could do that, like you said, then they come to you. And so the problem with real estate agents and not just real estate agents, mortgage people to title people sales in general, is people don’t do enough activity.
Let’s face it, they don’t think big enough. And they don’t get known. Those are the three things reasons. It’s not Trulia it’s not Redfin, it’s not anything else. It’s those three things. And if they would focus on those three things, bottom line, there’s a lot of problem in the real estate industry, because there’s a lot of realtors associations that people belong to, and they go for continuing education. And they go for these workshops, and this net, not one of them, talks about the things that we learned in the 10 X mentor group, not one of them, and that’s a problem and we’re in the business to make money and they’re real estate agents are in the business to make money. So I don’t know why realtor organizations don’t talk more about making money in it show agents how to make money. Obviously, ethicsis important. Don’t get me wrong. Obviously, you really shouldn’t have to teach someone ethics. They should know. Right is right and wrong is wrong, do good things, good things happen do bad things, bad things happen. Don’t poach costs. I mean, it’s it. That’s common sense. But they spend too much time on that stuff. And they should spend more time we’ll make it money.
Justin Stoddart
Which creates the opportunity for you and i right. I mean, if that stuff were common, yours at my value propositions that have to be different, the fact that those associations only teach people how to stay out of jail, right and not get sued, which is good, it’s important things to know. But I agree, I think they overemphasize that and under emphasize the fact of why are most real estate agents broke it’s it’s the exact reason that you just described is it because and what Branden Dawson talked about on the last call, which is most people don’t prospect because they don’t do it enough. So they never get good at it get confident enough to really have the conversations, because again, they’re they’re afraid, but it’s a self perpetuating cycle. If you don’t do it enough, then it’s always going to be scared you’re never going to do it. Whereas if you just start doing it, you move through that fear and start doing it. You’ll get good enough to a pretty soon it’s like I can really help people I can get in front of people, I get them, I can get conversations with people and be in business with them. And for a couple of reasons, one because of that, that skill set actually works. But to that realtors say, Man, I need to know sales skills like this guy. Like I need to know sales skills like that gap, right? There’s your again, demoing what they need to be doing their own.
Mike Ciorrocco
It’s attractive. Yeah, you know, mindset, positive mindset. Success and attention are attractive And so if we can get that like, okay, so I know this and I’m sure you know this because haven’t we been there before? Where we were like, man, how so? And so getting all this business, I’m here struggling. I’ve been there before. So I thought that I’m just preaching to people. I preach to myself with this all the time. And I sit there, man, they’re doing so good. What How the heck are they doing that? And he Meanwhile, sit in my office talking to myself for talking to my partners about this. Instead of going out and doing the things you’re supposed to be doing that the other people that are successful are doing. Get known activities, massive amounts of activities, big goals. And you know that that’s something that I know like I said, because I’ve been there before. A lot of people hear me preaching and talking about this stuff. And they’re like, oh, man, you know, How’s it? I’ve been there, bro. I’ve been broke before have been, I’ve been mediocre before. I ain’t never going back. I’ll tell you that right now. Because once you get a taste of it, and you understand it, you want to do it yourself and you want to help other people do it because you want people around you that are successful in massive action. Nobody’s holding you back. Everybody’s lifting each other up.
Justin Stoddart
powerful stuff, man. I want to share quickly kind of my aha from my roleplay with Grant Cardone, I actually mentioned you in there. When I was starting, I was trying out grant see that that my business was convincing real estate agents to do business with me as opposed to doing business with somebody else. And, you know, at first I got pretty obliterated. I was hanging around and grabbed was like done, calls fail, but see his face? Did everybody see the competence drop out of his face calls over? Right? And then he kind of wanted this rant at like studying other salespeople. And I was like, okay, you just lit my fire. Give me another shot. Let’s go again. And I think I held my own.
You know, the aha that I had coming from? That is what got Grant’s attention is when I said, Great congratulations on your 30 deals this past year, you seem like a guy that want to do 50 deals, the people that I work with, go from 30 to 50. He was like, wait a minute, stop. Did you just tell me you give me 20 more deals? I said, Yes, I can. He said, Great. When can we meet when we talk about that? And although at first I was like, I don’t know how to get somebody 20 more deals that has been occupying my thoughts incessantly since that call of like, the big players that want to be in business with it all other value propositions melt away regardless of of loyalties with their existing providers of what somebody either legally or illegally paying for under the table, all that stuff, it becomes irrelevant. If I put another $200,000 in someone’s pocket because of the value that I’m bringing. And so that has become my whole focus my whole value proposition which is not about being friendly or even helping them refine a system so that they have a little bit better, you know, life balance, like share all that stuff, great. But the end of the day, all that stuff figures itself out if I am I contributing in such a way that 20 more deals right my or that top line, the top line, right, exactly back to the top line solves all the other problems that they’re facing, right? They get higher up the stuff that’s keeping them away from their family, etc, etc.
Mike Ciorrocco
Here’s a big lesson here. Okay. Branden Dawson tells the story about how he got in touch with grant and how he started partner up with grant powerful, okay, I would love to partner up with grant Matter of fact, I’m going to but I learned from Brandon how to do this and then you could take it down and do it on your level and your local level. You know, he went to the tenex growth conference with intention. I wanted to see what was going on there. He wanted to see what people had to say. And then once he bought into it. And he understood the 10 X movement understood Grant is legit, he actually filled a stadium with 34 35,000 people. What happened from that point is, is that he went back and he paid for diamond access, he paid for access to grant. First of all, we talked about that in the mentor group a lot. The cheapest way to do things is to pay for access. And he paid for access. And when he was going to take a picture with him, right selfie picture behind that they had the 10 X backdrop of whatever he said and whispered in his ear, hey, listen, what would I have to do? Or will the process be to go through and explain to you how we can make billions together? I got an idea, something to that effect. Change the ballgame. Change the ballgame. So if that’s how they think those guys that make hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Why wouldn’t we do it on our local small scale at our local level? quick call, by the way, we’re doing real estate agent calls. We always do and we try to set coffee we try to make make relationships, build relationships, the game changer for us, okay. We used to call and say hey, listen, we’d love to help you grow your business help you make your transactions smooth. yada, yada, yada, none of that you have time work. Game changer right here. I text an agent or call an agent say, Hey, listen, do you handle home buyers, or you just the listing agent because a lot of times that would be their objection to us. I’m just the listing agent, I just can’t have cash buyers come still I only do listings. And they’re so full of crap because all of them if they had a buyer come across their desk that was ready to buy, they would take them out, show them the house and take that commission. So I text her call to Hey, listen, do you handle home buyers? Because I have some buyers in your market?
Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah. Okay, great. I gotta go over the program that we have, I need to set up a call with you. Bang, bang never had to know it’s 100% close rate. never had anything like this before in my life. It goes to that right there that principle of finding out how to grow somebody’s top line. And when we do that we have a proprietary process where we’re doing this at our company at nations London, it’s it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And now what we do, and I’m not going to release all of it right now. But what we do is we get them in our ecosystem. Just like the TEDx Grant cardones got us all in this ecosystem, once you buy a book, or once you do anything, you’re in their ecosystem, emails, internet, you know, you got they got the pixels, like laser focused on you, right? So what I thought and I got from that is okay, how can I get referral partners, not just agents, but referral partners and our past customers, which we call our power base, into our ecosystem, so that they’re only thinking about nation’s lending. They’re only thinking about see rock and his team, they’re only thinking about us. That’s the idea that we’ve come up with it nation’s lending my marketing department, the best in the business, without a doubt. We have some geniuses in there, Howard Lee and his team. And we talked about ecosystems a lot. And I got it from him. And then I also noticed that grant and Jared were talking about it. And so that’s what you want to focus on is getting that top line growth for people and then bring them into your ecosystem so that they only have another option that they want to work with you. They want more, they crave more from you, whether it’s leads to make their business grow or knowledge where they can make more money or any of that kind of stuff. That’s what’s needed in the industry. And in order to do that, Justin, you got to get up to snuff on your knowledge and know more about it than they do.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah. I love it, man. Such good stuff. love hearing about your value proposition, what you’re doing. No doubt, we have a very bright future implementing the stuff that we’ve learned from grant from each other. I’m gonna ask you our final question here. As we wrap up, Mike, this has been fun. I’d love to do this all day. But let’s let’s, let’s finish with this question. You’re a big thinker. No doubt. What does a guy like you do to continue to be a big thinker to continue to expand your possibilities? Teach us.
Mike Ciorrocco
Well, first of all, I I’m human, just like everyone else. So I’ll have some times where things are working for me. And something I was talking about the two two little voices in your head. Something creeps in and says you don’t deserve that. Like what do you that? You just got lucky there. That’s not from work that you did or your abilities. That’s it. You have this little voice and I crushed that son of a. I don’t know if I’m a lot of custom here, man, but I crushed that son of a gun, man, I’ll step on it because soon as it starts to creep in, you gotta stop it right away because it manifests itself. So when you have two voices, and again, everybody’s got voices in their head. You have to be crazy voices. You talk to yourself a lot. Look, this has quotes around it. I don’t know if you can see it, but it has quotes around it. What do you made of because I say that to myself all the time. What do you made up man? What do you made of I’m built for this. I talked to myself all the time. But the voice that you need to listen to in your head is very important. You need to stop the negative voice we all have it. And what happens is as long as I do that, and as long as I’m focused on that I continue to think big I feel like I’m I’m capable of anything. Now I can’t run a four minute probably can’t run under four minute mile like a three minute mile. But physically i can i can get towards it. But anything else that can like that can happen. I always think to myself, I can accomplish that. So and so did it. I know I can do it.
Justin Stoddart
They’re human too.
Mike Ciorrocco
That’s what goes through me. It’s all about self talk, reinforcing constantly writing my goals down, and then sharing them with people to see who’s going to be on my side and who to get out of my life. Because that’s very important. People are so scared to do that it’s harsh. But if your wife or husband or brother or mother or father does not support you and your dreams, like grant says they’re robbing you, they’re stealing from you. And if anybody stole from you would you want them in your life?
Justin Stoddart
Powerful and powerful? Yeah, I am. I love hearing big thinkers like you. What are you made of? That’s powerful. And I think what you’re made up has to do with the people around you as well like you’re saying is that we can we could be choosy and who we spend our time with and those people that expand our possibilities. You’ve done that for all of us today, Michael and thank you for your time coming on that you think that your real estate show, helping expand our possibilities and I;m going to encourage this audience if you’re not yet following this guy, how do they find you Mike, where do the find you?
Mike Ciorrocco
Well on IG, Instagram, it’s mikeycroc and also I have a private Facebook group called What do you made up with Mike ciroc just like that. And if you any of your listeners want to jump in there I’ll go ahead and prove them. Join them in there. We share our stories for inspiring other people. We lift people up. It’s all about just building people and finding out what we’re made of.
Justin Stoddart
Love it man super powerful. Thank you again for coming on the show today. My final request of everybody beyond just sharing this out going to join in Mike’s group are three simple words and they are GO THINK BIGGER! Thank you today Mike for helping us do that. Been a total pleasure I’m and look forward to our next conversation.
Mike Ciorrocco
Thank you, Justin. Appreciate you, man.
Justin Stoddart
You bet you too.