The Thunder From Down Under with Graham Solomon and Nicholas Nick of Lead Mining

Transcript

(00:02) Graham Solomon
And we are live. Welcome to the Thunder from Down Under podcast, I’m your host, Graham Solomon. What we’re going to do is bring guests in from all over the REI landscape, interview them, probe them, try and get some gold nuggets and a few little secrets for you guys that can help you in your REI business. But generally, we’ll bring in guests from a very wide range and try to dig deep into how they’ve been successful in their genres, how they’ve been successful in moving forward, and growing their businesses.

And then from there, we get to know them a little bit, get to know the behind-the-scenes stuff, their motivations, tough times they’ve been through, and generally share their journeys with you guys and ask a lot of questions. A special guest today that’s coming in is Nicholas Nick from Lead Mining. You guys have probably seen him around. He’s actually in the REI Collaborate Networking JV group. He’s actually dropped a few videos in the last couple of weeks, and he’s dropped some good content.

He’s a high-energy guy. So we’re going to get him into the green room, bring him in, and put him under the spotlight and hopefully get him to share some of his trade secrets with you guys. There he is. He’s in the, I can see him in the green room. I’ll let him in. So without any further ado, we’ll bring in the man himself, Nicholas Nick, who is a high-energy guy. I’m going to have to get pumped up to be on the same level as him. So I’m going to bring him in now. Nicholas, can you hear me?

(01:35) Nicholas Nick
Yes, there he is. Thanks for coming in. I know you’re a busy man. I really appreciate you taking the time out to jump in and share your knowledge and basically experience from what you do in the industry. So without any further ado, let’s get it hard straight from the outset. I want to actually just basically ask you who you are and how you got started in the REI business.

(02:02) Nicholas Nick
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I was pumped to be here, Graham. So I totally appreciate that. I feel global now.

(02:17) Graham Solomon
You’re the number one guest, you know, first guest on the Thunder from Down Under podcast. So, you know, you’ve been blamed all over Australia at the moment. So, and the world.

(02:27) Nicholas Nick
I’m global. Mom, I made it, Mom. Thank you. Thank you so much. And you know, I’m Nicholas Nick. I’m the founder of leadminingpros.com. We’re essentially a lead generation service for real estate investors. And what we do is we provide five main services: list pulling for only two cents per record, skip tracing at seven cents per record, cold calling, Americans or Filipinos, text messages, amazing services.

And so we’ve been very blessed over the years. We’re four years in, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the results. Now, that covers the intro. Now, how did I get started in real estate? I think that was the second part.

(03:28) Graham Solomon
Do you have questions? You had, how did you when you looked at it and had a vision? Well, you know, where were you in life? And where did you want to go? And basically, how did you get started?

(03:41) Nicholas Nick
Yeah, so this is going to be a great journey. So Graham, you don’t know this yet, but you’re about to learn a lot about the guerrilla work I did to get to where I’m at. So I have a very unique path. I kind of did my whole life in reverse. I used to work 70 hours a week as a restaurant manager. I was in the restaurant industry from ages 17 to 30.

And I was a manager from ages 20 to 30. So from 20 to 30, I was at least putting in 60-hour weeks. I always had a 10-hour-a-week commute on top of that. And what I did is I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was like listening to all these books during my commute. And Gary V, I wasn’t even an entrepreneur back then. I just liked Gary V. And back then, and this was a long time ago, entrepreneurship wasn’t the common thing that it is today, you know. And so I’m listening to Gary V’s teaching me so much, but I don’t even know what I’m learning because I really don’t know what he’s saying, right?

But I loved it. So I’m listening to these audiobooks. I’m learning all about entrepreneurship, leadership. And as a restaurant manager, I really climbed the ranks in a skillful way, not necessarily financially or anything, but I was definitely known to be the best manager in the company. My employees were the happiest. My numbers were the best. My results seemed the easiest. I was like always the example. And I never made it look like I was working hard in a profession where everybody works too hard. So that’s where I started. So my foundation was overworking, underpaid, you know, I just made a post yesterday. And in my 20s, one job paid me $28,000 a year. And I was working over 70 hours a week at that job.

And that was salary. So there wasn’t like overtime, it wasn’t like bonuses, none of that. It was, what is that? It’s $700 a week last. I think it’s like $650 a week or something. But anyway, so my and I share all that to say that my grassroots are bathed in and hard work and blood, sweat, and tears. So after that, I’m sure you can imagine nothing is difficult after 13 years, 70 hours a week, right? Like life over Greece. So I end up doing, I’m doing the restaurant management and I’m dying to get out. I’m like, I don’t know. I gotta leave this. I gotta get behind.

And I wake up one day and I’m like, what am I doing? Like I literally felt like a rat in a cage. You know, I was so great at what I did. Everyone that comes in is happy and they’re getting a great experience. And yet I’m not providing myself a great life experience. So I woke up to this in my 30s, terrified I would wake up in my 40s the same way, 10 years later, like lost and behind. So I right away, I decided I was going to quit. Now I gave myself till the end of the year to quit. Unfortunately, I think I quit like 30 days later. I was a little too late.

So I end up, I walk out on my career, my restaurant career, they end up doing something that was disrespectful. It’s not a very big deal now. But in the moment, they ended up scheduling me 90 hours a week for six weeks straight. And I protest, I said, guys, I’m not going to do that. That’s crazy. I’ve been here for four years. I’m not not going to work like this anymore. I refuse to work like this anymore. And we were having like opposite epiphanies. I was deciding I want to work less and they were deciding they need me to work more. And I went to them and I was like, guys, I’m not going to do this.

They did not fix it. And I left the very next day. Now is when my real journey to real estate started. So I was working from home. I wasn’t working. Well, I was unemployed.

(08:26) Graham Solomon
Yeah, yeah, well, hopefully unemployed. I’m unemployed. And I’m like depressed. You know, I’m used to working my ass off. And I’m used to providing I was married at the time. I’m not anymore.

But I was married at the time. And you know, me and my ex-wife, you know, we had to make it work. And we did. I sat unemployed for nine weeks before something special happened. Now what happened that was special, I didn’t even know, was I applied for a job at a company called Clever Investor. They are a real estate education company that teaches people how to invest wholesaling by an old fix and flip.

And I had no idea. I’ve been I’ve been flipping burgers for 13 years, man. What’s real estate? You talking to me about French fries and beef? I’m all yours. Okay.

But I knew I could do it. I knew I was skilled. I was how great of a leader I was. I knew that I could adapt. And so I end up getting the job. I’m actually an assistant. I’m holding doors, getting cups of coffee, taking notes about things I don’t even understand. Just supporting these two executives is what I was doing. So three months goes by.

I still don’t even know what Clever does. I’m just good at managing all the shit that my bosses are throwing at me. And I come to find out that we’re actually selling mentorship. They were selling someone else’s brain to somebody else to shortcut their problems. That was like crazy to me. I was like, what? Like, we can sell someone else’s experience to somebody. Like, that’s wild. And Mike, money? Yeah, a lot of money. A lot of exactly. And so it was really unique.

So then I realized we were doing real estate and coaching and investing and all this stuff. And so once I realized that, I was able to get more control. I catch three promotions in my first

nine months of working there. I started off as an assistant. I’m the office manager, then I am the actual manager, and then I become the executive. And I end up overseeing the entire department underneath me, which was student services. This was people who paid us to invest in real estate. Once you paid that company, you became in my world. Now, I need to make sure you’re happy and I need to make sure you’re taking care of.

(11:00) Graham Solomon
Okay. And there’s no one better to take care of you than, you know, pop a neck over here. I actually care. You know, I just went from selling nine dollar hamburgers to $30,000 education courses, right? So imagine how serious I took that experience. I took it very seriously when someone came in.

So anyways, this is my first touch with real estate. I’m an executive and I’m in the perfect spot. I am not involved with teaching anyone. I’m involved with making sure people get taught, right? Those are two different things. I didn’t need experience in real estate to make sure that my team was effective at their job.

I had to make sure they followed a system that they did what they were supposed to do. They showed up. They made sure the customer was happy, you know, that those emotional things. And that’s what I was great at, you know. So that was my first thing. I held that position for three years and the company just massively benefited from it. Their retention rate dropped, their performance increased, and most importantly, I made a lot of great connections. So now I’m in that career and things start to, I start to realize my time is running out. Okay.

(12:25) Graham Solomon
That it was actually a stepping stone. Did you realize it was, you had that feeling it was a stepping stone to something bigger? Or with the company?

(12:35) Nicholas Nick
Well, you know, so I ended up turning it into a stepping stone, right? At the time, I still did not want to be an entrepreneur. I’ve been unemployed for like 15 years at this time, and I’m a damn good employee. And I at this time still wasn’t even ready to be an entrepreneur, but the facts were the facts, right? And the facts were, when I was a cook, I wanted to be a restaurant manager. When I was a restaurant manager, I wanted to be an area director.

You know, when I was an area director, I wanted to be an executive. Now I’m an executive, and it’s still not working. So it became a stepping stone by default. So that’s actually a great question. You know, I just, I kept accomplishing my goals, except it wasn’t solving my fucking problems.

(13:27) Graham Solomon
You had a deeper, you had a deeper drive. You had something inside of you still burning.

(13:31) Nicholas Nick
Right. Yeah, exactly. I couldn’t let myself be held back, not that anyone I clever was holding me back. But you know, bosses and leadership and politics, there’s a lot of shit going on there. And so I didn’t realize at the time, but I was, like you said, understanding that, wow, this is a stepping stone, you know, and I ended up, one of the things I did at Clever is we threw a live event that taught people how to pursue leads. In the beginning, we used direct mail.

It was very expensive for people who attended. And then a lot of people started complaining about the expense and who do they complain to me, right? I’m the guy. I’m the executive to make sure that they’re happy. And so then I took those complaints and I figured out that cold calling was free, right? Keep in mind, I’m still used to flipping burgers. I know how to save money and run great systems, you know, and we’re complaining about this huge expense of direct mail, the USPS mail, right? You can’t get out of paying them to mail something. So if you want to do postcards, you’re paying 45 cents per postcard period.

You know, cold calling, this little guy right here, it’s free. So we had, we called all these students in, we taught them how to pull a list, skip trace it, cold call. And I probably threw like 15 of these events. I ended up working closely with Dean Graziosi. And I threw some of these events for him. I actually taught him how to throw these events.

(15:17) Graham Solomon
Actually, actually, I’ll just cut in there. That’s how I got started all the way from Australia was Dean Graziosi. How’s that? Yeah. Yeah.

(15:25) Nicholas Nick
Yeah.

(15:26) Graham Solomon
I didn’t actually end up doing any of his stuff, you know, but I come across him and Tony Robbins with this, this particular group without doing KBB. And then I’ll stumble over on his videos of this thing called whole styling. I’m like, what is this? So I just, yeah. I know what you’re saying. Like he was, he was pretty, he’s a big deal back then when he looked really, really bring it out in the mainstream.

(15:52) Nicholas Nick
He was huge. And I was so lucky to be there. And, you know, and thanks to my relationship with Clever, they introduced me to Dean. And I’m like, I’m literally out of the restaurant industry for one year at this point. And I’m working with Dean Graziosi. Right.

And I was like, so guys, like whoever’s watching this, you know, I saw someone say that the military service was their stepping stone. You know, just keep in mind that like, you know, what we’re experiencing, it’s a part of catapulting us. We can get caught in the trap of guilt tripping us because we feel behind or we should be successful by now. But the truth is, you’re in a great spot and it’s up to you to learn everything that you can while you can learn from somebody else. You know, when you’re an entrepreneur, every mistake hurts really fucking bad because it’s only your mistake. When you work for a corporation, make the fucking mistakes because now you can afford to.

And then when you grow and you move on from that, you’re going to have way more experience. And that was something I did really well, Graham. No one’s better. No one’s better at making mistakes than I am.

(17:07) Graham Solomon
And I’ll do it as a park at the air for a sec because I want to continue on from where you met Dean and obviously like, you know, great mentor and all the rest of it. But I just want to go back because you started off about, you know, your work in 80 hours a week, you grind it and develop to work ethic before you even got into real estate. That’s what you’re good at.

You sure that people’s experiences were good. And you talk about Gary, that’s what he talks about, isn’t it? You know, you’ve got to do the hard work before you get to the level where are these opportunities going to come to you. So you already established a work ethic. And then, you know, you said the next step in stone was you got into the first company.

And that, you know, you already had that work ethic. So that you brought it into across into the industry, didn’t you? From like you said, flipping burgers, but you had the same work ethic developed. You brought that in. And obviously, when people, you know, look, you know, Dean Gracie, and they see someone like you, they go, this guy’s got a bit of something about him. So then you start rubbing shoulders with people and they take you under their wings.

(18:10) Nicholas Nick
Right. So there’s some quick points there. Look, you know, a friend of mine’s right into Gary V. And Gary V’s basically says that you’ve got to earn your stripes.

You’ve got to get out there for two years and grind and do the hard work. You can’t expect it to come from day one. So you were, you know, without even probing, you’ve already dropped a couple of big nuggets here because they’re key points. You know what I mean? That’s the reality of any business is get out there and work hard and develop your work ethic, develop your skills. So yeah, so you see, you’ve met you with Dean Gracie Ozie. Did, you know, did you understand how sort of big he was in the industry and and all that?

(18:46) Nicholas Nick
Yeah, you know, at the time, this was a huge deal, right? So this was a relationship between him and Clever. And I can tell that Clever was like, we got to do this, right? This is a huge deal. Like Dean’s business was doing a hundred million dollars a year in sales at the time. And they had like four employees.

So when they unleashed me to handle it, it was a huge deal, you know, and I felt honored, but also because I didn’t really know who these people were too much. I wasn’t that nervous. I’m like, yeah, yeah, you know, I know what to do. Like I didn’t, I wasn’t starstruck at the time, if that makes sense, because I haven’t been in that industry my whole life. If I had, I’d probably be more nervous and stuff. But you know, you’re exactly right about, you know, developing, you know, the work ethic. One thing that I used to say was, if you are not the best employee, you are not

ready to be a good entrepreneur. Yeah. And it’s like a lot of people think they can be this really shitty employee, and then wake up one day and be the greatest CEO in the world.

Okay. I got bad news for you. It’s not going to happen. So if anyone’s out there slacking or if anyone’s out there not doing everything they’re supposed to be doing, you got to fix that shit before you level up. And that was the kind of stuff that I did. You know, Graham, over the years, you don’t think that when something knocks over that I don’t want to pick it up, you know, something falls over, you know, in the restaurant industry, this is kind of gross.

But it’s true. In the restaurant industry, people do poop on the floor. It happens. It happens. You know, you spend 13 years running restaurants. I’ve encountered poop on the floor probably five times, you know.

And when those things happen, I never gave that task away. You know, I always took care of it myself. You know, I figured I was the highest paid person in the building. I figured if anyone’s paid to take care of this, it’s me. And I could have just as easily grabbed the lowest paid person in the building and said, Hey, go pick that up.

(20:58) Graham Solomon
You know, but for example, you lead your team, by example. So you’re saying we’re going into battle, follow me and they’ll follow you because they know that you’re going to do the hard yards with them and you’re not going to run. You’re going to be head first.

So that’s that’s your style of management in it is of leadership is, I’m not going to ask you to do anything that I won’t do. Exactly. Let’s let’s let’s all do it and let’s do it together and do it well. So yeah, that’s that’s your particular style. And not everyone’s like that, but you know, look, I’m similar. I can hear your land clear.

So, you know, that’s that’s great for someone coming behind you to see you at the point of the poop up off the floor. That’s pretty, you know, that’s like, well, this guy gets down and he’s part of, you know, he’s the leader, but he’s part of the team.

(21:46) Nicholas Nick
He’s not scared. Yeah, he’s scared to get his hands dirty. So so you get to there, you’re like you said, you’re sort of climbing the ladder, but you’re still sort of like you said you’re not there’s something still burning inside. So once you actually were, that was a big sort of, you know, you’re going to work, try and work with Dean Graziosi, the company saying this is important. Where did it go?

And how did you get into your own gig from there? Well, basically, you know, time I could start sensing, you know, time was running out at Clever. And so what happened was I had requested to work from home. I realized that some of my my relationships with my employees at Clever were great.

My relationships with some of the other executives, those are the ones that, you know, I had problems with, you know, and so that was difficult. You know, I want everyone to like me. I want everyone to, you know, be there with me. And but, you know, a lot of people didn’t. And you know what? Maybe I asked for, you know, so I get it.

So I decided, I said, Hey, look, you know what, the office politics thing, it’s not working out for me. Okay. I said, why don’t you send me home? You can cut my pay. And then I’ll get all I’ll get my whole job done working from home. Okay.

So they actually said, they said, don’t think about it. And the next day I get a call before I’m supposed to be at the office. And they said, Nick, great news. We’re going to take you up on your offer. We’re going to cut your pay by 50%. And we’re going to send you home.

And we’re going to make you 1099. And you never have to step foot in this office again. And I said, where do I sign?

(24:26) Graham Solomon
Okay. So I go into work, I signed the paperwork, and I never stepped foot in the office again. And I continued working from home. Now, now I have all this free time. I’m not driving anymore. And what Clever didn’t know, which isn’t that big of a deal, because the nature of the relationship changed, was that I had already had my job systematized. I had already had everything all figured out. I didn’t need to go home and really work that hard. I was only putting in about five to 10 hours a week, when before my commitment was 40 to 50 hours a week.

So now I had 30 to 35 extra hours a week in my life. And just how we spoke, I knew that this wasn’t it for me. You know, I knew that this was my stepping stone. So as I’m looking for what’s next, I throw the strongest thing I have in my arsenal, which is my work ethic. And I saw that cold calling was working. So I went home and I cold called three to 600 people a day for over three months.

(26:39) Graham Solomon
And how long ago was this Nick? How far back are we talking?

(26:43) Nicholas Nick
This is four years ago. This is four years ago. So you’re working virtually before anyone even knew what virtual work was. Look, the whole world knows it now. But so you’re ahead of your time, you’re working virtually, you live in the dream, you’re at home, you’re going, I’m in my pajamas. I’m doing this. Cool.

So you set that up. And then on top of that, people don’t realize that cold calling and texting probably didn’t really take off to say a year and a half after that, did it? Like, direct mail was the main thing, wasn’t it? And like, I know, I’ve only been doing this, you know, for two years, and cold calling and texting sort of blew up then. It was sort of in that six months period before. So, so you’ve not only, you’ve started this virtual lifestyle that no one’s really heard of yet, definitely like, what is it?

Ari, I know, made you’re working from home. And then all of a sudden, so this is sort of cutting edge, because a lot of people listening with just single cold callings normal, texting is normal. This was back. I mean, I’ll get everyone’s always cold call, but direct mail was the main thing in the business of that time, wasn’t it?

(27:49) Nicholas Nick
No. Well, you’re right. And see though, it’s interesting you pointed that out, because that was the problem I solved at that company was they were mainly teaching direct mail. And you know what? That’s expensive.

Very expensive. And you know, it doesn’t always hit. Sometimes you do a direct mail campaign, you spend $2,000 and the phone doesn’t even ring. You know, I mean, it, yeah, it happens. When you cold call, you want to spend $2,000 on cold calling, you’re probably going to close a deal, you know, I mean, that’s a, that’s probably a fact, you know. And so the whole nature was different. And it was that innovation, right? And that’s kind of what you’re speaking to right now is the innovation, right? So this innovation to be ahead of my time, and I was always good at systematizing everything.

And that’s now exactly what I’ve done. I’m sure I’ve done for everyone, you know, Lead Mining is going to break over $850,000 in sales this year. And you know, we’re almost at the mill mark where this closed. And we just started four years ago. And our first year, I think we did 580,000, you know, so it’s like, we’re really climbing year after year, our way up. And then you do that innovation that, you know, really got me there. I always was a half a step ahead, not a full step, you know, but just a half a step. You know, I meet 21 year olds who make more money than I ever have. And I’m like, damn, dude, I am so far behind. But that’s why I was saying earlier, like we can’t think about how far behind we are. For years, I hated my restaurant career. For years.

I was upset. I was bitter. I wasted so much time. But you know what? That shit made me who I am today.

(30:43) Graham Solomon
And it only helps it helps you to move quickly. But you don’t waste time anymore. You’ve learned that. So you, so you know, look, it’s just another nugget is you’re always trying to look for new ways to solve people’s problems ahead of the game. So you’ve become, but you’ve become, and it was probably already in your nature, because you were service orientated when you’re flipping burgers, you’re solving people’s problems, making them happy, creating a vibe. But you actually, you’ve got that built into you as a visionary, you’re always trying to change and make things better.

So that’s a part of your business now is you’re always trying to get in front of the game. And, you know, so that’s another problem that you’ve got that you’ve developed from flipping burgers in the restaurant business to now into your business. So there’s another nugget for people is always trying, you know, trying to solve people’s problems and be ahead of the game. So, so

cool. So now, so, you know, now you’re at home. And this is where you got into what you’re doing now, you develop that while you had the extra time. And, you know, look, did you know what you’re doing when you started or you just thought, oh, I’ll just start cold cold. And did you just sort of have a plan or you just sort of learned as you went for the first time?

(32:43) Nicholas Nick
No, so I actually had a business partner when I first started. And my business partner was my best friend. I met him through Clever. And he was a Wall Street stockbroker for 12 years. So I basically had my Mr. Miyagi.

And, you know, he was amazing. And he was hard on me. Let me tell you, Wall Street Broker from New York City, you know, but I was a restaurant manager. So our love languages spoke to each other. He would make fun of me. He would jab at me. And you know, and this is my first time ever cold calling. I actually am about to start releasing videos of my first day ever. So here’s another secret I did, Graham, that I think really catapulted my skill set was I recorded everything.

So on, I used to log into Zoom and meet with my partner. And then I would hit the record button and make the cold calls on speakerphone. So then I would look back at the end of the day. Everything was recorded. Everything. So then I took these recordings at the end of every day.

This is a true story. I recorded six hours of cold calling all day long. And then I watched the entire video back. And I edited out the clips of each individual cold call. And I made a video out of it. 22 days of cold call. And it was, it’s hard watching yourself do something you suck at. So not only was my partner being hard on me, but I’m watching it later, re-embarrassed, re-insulted, re-upset. And I’m just like, oh my god, but it caused me to level up even faster and shorten that learning curve.

And I think that that’s a part of that work ethic, right? It’s like, I just dove into literally mastering cold call. And it really made a huge difference. So my luck, my boost was given to me by my Mr. Miyagi. His name was Chris. And to this day, like I’m so thankful I had him.

He made me better day by day. And most importantly, knowing I had a partner to wake up to and work with really pushed me through a lot of bullshit that I think a lot of entrepreneurs deal with. You know, if it was just me, unlike unlike us, I probably would have quit a long time ago. But knowing that I could wake up with someone and hey, Chris is going to be on Zoom today. I can’t wait. We’re going to laugh.

We’re going to cry. You know, it’s going to be a blast. We’re going to be together. You know, I think that was a huge part of keeping me in the game and keeping me successful.

(35:58) Graham Solomon
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that’s another absolute nugget is, you know, you’ve got to surround yourself with like a lot of people, but you’ve also got to have people that are ahead of the way ahead of you. The drag you sort of forward, like I said, like they, you know, you’ve got to have some mentors and you’re going to have some people that are next level that have been there done that. So that obviously developed your mindset. He probably drilled a lot of stuff into you mindset wise as well. I mean, you obviously had a good work.

I think you had, I mean, to be able to take all those things and then rewatch them yourself motivated, but then he took it. Like you said, he leveled you up to the next level. And did you sort of change the circle? Like, do you sort of surround yourself with a lot more people in the industry then? Did you sort of?

(37:43) Nicholas Nick
Well, so the thing was, you know, at this point, I’d been leading this real estate education company for three years. So I mean, you know, my circle was only real estate people, you know. So at the time, Clever had forced me to level up my circle.

You know, I’m throwing these live events, we’re flying people in from all over the nation. You know, I mean, it was a big deal, what we did. So I had a really, I was like the face almost to some of these people. They needed something, they knew they could call Nick to get it. So that was a big part of my come up. So what I started doing was cold calling every day.

And then I used to go online, I was very public with it, you know, and one of the students from Clever, one of the customers, calls me up and says, hey, Nick, I see a cold call. Will you cold call for me? I said, yeah, well, $150 a week. Another guy calls me up, hey, I see a cold call. Will you cold call for me? Hell, yeah, I will, $150 a week.

You know, and I ended up picking up three, those were my first three clients. And that was just for fun. So I ended up picking up three clients in total and keep in mind Clever is still paying me to work from home. So before I know it, I have like the same exact salary. And I’m working from home working like 12 hours a week right now. And I’m at my old salary from Clever.

And that was a big deal. I could tell I was on to something, you know, and, and then one day, the magical day, I wake up, I’m hyper competitive. And I wake up and I see a competitor, a foreign competitor, make a post offering her Filipino cold callers. And even in the post, the English was broken. It wasn’t even a good post. And then I was like, I remember I read it.

And I was like, Nick, are you going to let her out market you? Are you going to let her do better marketing than you? That marketing sucks. And it’s still better than yours. Because you’re saying nothing. Okay. And I literally I made a post. I couldn’t even tell you what it said today.

I know it started with, Hey, everyone, I don’t normally do this, but I just wanted to share with you something I’m creating. Now back then, we were only Americans. Now you can choose Americans or Filipinos. But I was like, we are an all American cold calling company. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. On that post, I got over 280 people comment their email address saying they were interested.

That night, I stayed up till two in the morning. It was a Sunday. I said up till two in the morning on Sunday. And I emailed every freaking person directly. The next morning, this post literally went viral. The next morning, the post was deleted from the Facebook group, because it was in a Facebook group. And my post, which I didn’t know, was breaking the rules of self promotion. But so I want you guys to keep in mind, if I would have slept on my success, I would have woken up to nothing. Instead, I stayed up till two in the morning, emailed 287 people.

And when I found out the post was deleted, I didn’t give a shit, because I emailed everybody. I had everything. And then that next day, I signed up 20 clients to a business that wasn’t even figured out yet. And and that’s when my life really changed. That’s when I knew I had something. And from that day forward, I don’t think we’ve ever done less than $7,000 in sales in a week. You know, and recently we’re closer to like 15 to 20. But you know, back then, I mean, once once that post went out, I was making seven G’s a seven G’s a week right away.

(36:49) Graham Solomon
It took massive action. You saw an opportunity bang. You didn’t go on. I have an app and I’ll come back later and do it. You just went bang. Here’s an opportunity. And you implemented it straight away.

You send it. Yeah, because that’s really interesting. You say that because yeah, we had to wait until the next day, opportunity gone. You wouldn’t go to watch it. So yeah, now I want to ask you, because I could talk to you for the next four hours, listen to your four hours and eat. But I’ll just, I wanted to look for the people that are listening, you know, with what you do, like you’re a specialist in your particular field.

What, you know, what’s some sort of goal nuggets for them, like to do to say it’s just hard work and practice, like get on the phone, call call. Or do you say you’ve got to have systems in place, you’ve got to, you know, like your set systems up is it easier to probably go to someone like you to get set up and be structured, rather than just trying to do it yourself out of your, you know what I mean, like, you know, people starting off now, you know, what’s the best way for them to sort of take off in the things that you do, list pulling, lead mining, call calling, what’s your advice to them?

(38:02) Nicholas Nick
So I love that question. And basically the way it works is for list pulling and skip tracing, I would really

just use our services. We are some of the cheapest out there, no doubt about it, especially combined for the list and the skip tracing, it’s only nine cents. Some people charge more than that for just skip tracing.

So I would definitely focus on that. Now next up is cold calling. Now I do offer a cold calling course and it’s only $50 right now. It was $250. You can find that on our website. I highly recommend checking out our cold calling course. And I think you should start by doing the work yourself. Now the first 500 to 1000 cold calls, you should really do yourself.

Number one, you just, you should learn how to talk to people about real estate. It’s going to, who cares, suck at it. Who gives a shit? You got to get better. And don’t get stuck on mock calls. Mock calls are bullshit. Okay, make the fucking call. Make the real call. You can mock call until your eyes bleed. And when you get in the lab, okay, you’re not going to be any better. So just actual cold call.

The only way to get experience is to get experience, not to fake. But I recommend doing all the cold calling yourself. At least the first 500 to 1000 dials. Learn the lingo, learn the jargon, learn that you can go toe to toe with a stranger in a real estate conversation. These things are extremely important. Then you’re going to learn a couple things. Number one, you’re good at it and you love it. Number two, you’re good at it and you hate it. Number three, you suck at it and you hate it. Okay, there’s the only three things that are going to happen.

Now, if you’re good at it and you love it, keep doing it. Make millions of dollars. Do it as much as you can till you don’t want to do it anymore. Then you find somebody like me. If you find out that you don’t like it, that’s where I can come in too. Like my service is no contracts, no commitments, no hidden fees. And I literally don’t think that you could do what I do for cheaper even if you did it on your own. You know, our price includes a dialer, a trained employee, we develop them, we do everything. And our average cold caller has been with us for over two and a half years.

So you literally get like fire power right away. You don’t have to like ramp up or deal with someone who sucks and make them better like you would normally have to. But so I recommend doing the legwork yourself, right? Of course, the guy with the work ethic is going to say that. Then once you either make enough or love it enough, don’t do it anymore. You know, and then you can start outsourcing it out, especially like, you know, some of my clients, I’ve had we’ve had over 20 clients, granted, it’s not that much over four years, but we’ve had over 20 clients buy our smallest package.

And when they do that, they close a deal off of it. So we have a $250 package and 20 times people have closed deals the first time they’ve worked with us and they’ll make 10 to $30,000 on that deal. They’ll spend $250 and they’ll make $10,000. You know, and that to me is, hey, in my opinion, give me 5,000 more. Hire us for a half a year and then you go close more deals, you know, whenever that’s the case. And now you’re now you can begin to scale.

(42:00) Graham Solomon
Yeah, and people, look, that was a question for sort of for what you would advise new people. Now, people that have been in the business of a while that have been through all that, they would just go, I totally agree, the only way I can scale is stop doing all those things and step back and get other people and outsource it. So that’s probably the next step is, you know, for people that are actually already established, they’re looking for people like you that are reliable, that do a good service because they want to actually spend less time doing that and develop their business.

So, you know, that sort of covers all aspects from beginners to intermediate to experienced. Just quickly, the last thing while I’ve still got you, we’ve got to do a couple of minutes, you’ve talked about a lot of mindset, you’ve talked a lot of people you’ve listened to and do you still constantly work on your mindset? Do you still listen to stuff all the time?

(43:00) Nicholas Nick
You know, that’s a good question. You know, I’ve been so good at doing it myself. You know, that I probably take for granted some of the things that I do that keep my mindset strong, you know, some of the low-hanging fruit is I’m big on celebrating.

Okay, like if I’m going to beat myself up, then I’m going to celebrate myself. You know, and so that’s a really big thing that I do. Number two is I like alone time, you know, I really respect my energy and how I spend it.

You know, as an entrepreneur who, you know, owns a million-dollar business and I don’t have a lot of costs, you know, I have a lot of pretty time and a lot of profit and I can really choose to spend my day, however I want to. And so I try to force myself to be positive and productive and not just drink all day or eat fried food all day. I mean, do I want to do these things? Absolutely I want to, you know, but the reality is they’re not good for you. They kill your momentum. So my real advice would be I’m great at maintaining momentum and that’s one of the biggest things you can do.

Learn the behaviors that give you momentum, learn the behaviors that take it away. Stop doing the shit that takes your momentum away, whether it’s lying or drinking or I’m not even saying that these things are all necessarily bad, drinking is bad, but you know, I’ll be the first to admit that if I don’t drink for like a month and I have a cocktail, the next night I have a cocktail and the next night I have a cocktail. And before I know it, I’m like, what the fuck just happened?

You know, coffee does that to me. You know, I don’t even drink coffee. If I drink coffee, I’ll get so ramped up. My brain gets so crazy. I can’t even handle it. But then I’ll find myself not stop drinking it too.

So, you know, we have to make sure that coffee kills my momentum. Alcohol kills my momentum. Okay, these things kill it.

So, I need to make sure if I even use them, that I’m doing something else that improves my momentum, like going for a run or a bike ride or a working out or audiobooks. And then I’ll touch on that real quick with the audiobook. So, you know, in the past, my stuff, number one audiobook, I recommend Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, hands down.

It’s probably the book that made me the man that I am today. I’ve listened to it over four times and I love it. That book is amazing. I recommend starting there. You know, after that, I listened to a bunch of leadership books and a bunch of personal development books. And then now, because I feel like I have all that, I really only listen to marketing books because, you know, I feel like I’m on the momentum.

What I need to do next is I need to buckle down and own my genius. And my genius is I’m a brilliant marketer. And I need to be a more brilliant one.

So, what I’m trying to do right now with my life, my mindset’s good, my bank account’s good, my exercise is good. Now, it’s time for me to take my business from $800,000 to $3 million. And I own that.

I’m the guy. I’m not going to hire someone else to run my Facebook ads. I’m not going to hire someone else to write my email copy. I’m too good at it. And it’s too expensive to hire someone else anyways. So, I need to figure this out for myself.

And so, that’s my next phase is taking the next skill. I need to master and master in it. And for me, right now that’s marketing. But the unique thing about pursuing marketing is your kind of learning marketing is also learning about the world. Everything is marketing. Every ad we see is selling us.

And what learning marketing does is it’s kind of also focusing on personal development at the same time because you’re learning how other people are developed by your message.

(47:31) Graham Solomon
Actually, Dean Graziosi, you’ll remember this one probably. If you’re not selling, you’re being sold to. Life is just a relationship to everything.

If you’re not projecting yourself, you’re being projected on. So, that’s because he’s a marketing genius, isn’t he?

(47:51) Nicholas Nick
You’re exactly right. And you know what, I love being a customer. That being said, Facebook and their ads, I love Facebook ads. I buy so much shit on Facebook ads. And a lot of people complain about it, but I love it. And it’s like, I love selling.

I love being sold. And it’s just about knowing when it’s happening and knowing that we are in control. And if you like being sold, you may actually like selling even more because I love buying shit.

(48:24) Graham Solomon
There’s nothing more fun than I just want to, I’m just going to ask you now, we’re just going to wrap up. I’m just going to ask you about how people contact you and all that. But just before that, there’s one thing that really sticks out to

me.

And this is because I’m an international with an accent. One of the things that I found early days was I did me cold calling. I was terrible at it. And I cut my teeth to my own calling. Then I actually put someone across and it was the Filipino cold call. And they’d been trained a little pod.

And she was very good. But what I noticed is, especially back then, this is a couple of two years ago, is it was very negative to be hit with someone with an accent who cold called you, then to be passed on to the next guy that’s got in Australia. People started to go scam.

I was getting you a scam. What you offer is you offer US callers as well, which is a real nice because the same accents, you know what I mean? It’s like and like I said, a lot of the Filipino calls got really good accents and I really want, you know, you couldn’t pick it.

But culturally, your US callers know the culture. It’s taken me two years to fully get around all the American culture, being in groups, being immersed with people from the US. So that’s a very important thing.

If you’ve got people that know cultural things, like even if they’re in a certain state, they know who the football teams are in the state. They know the baseball teams. They know they can make conversations.

So I think it’s a key point with your business where you’ve got not just the Filipino calls, but you’ve got the US callers. So I just, yeah, where were you 12 months ago, Nick? Where were you? I needed you.

(50:05) Nicholas Nick
You know, you’d be surprised how many people say that. You know, I just got off a call this morning and the guy was like, this is exactly what we’ve been looking for. I can’t believe I just found you.

And you know, that’s the beauty of what I’ve created, you know, and the even more unique brand that I didn’t realize was I’m really the only one out there of my kind. You know, you might find a big service like Lead Sherpa, but that’s like $500 a month and that’s before you even send a text message. You might find a virtual assistant company, but you have to hire that person, train them, do all this other stuff.

And you know, with us, we’re only real estate. And that’s all we do. And if you look around, there’s not one other company that even provides Americans. And I didn’t plan that. That’s a part of that innovation. You know, even the innovation was so strong.

I’m still ahead four years in. You know, there’s still no one out there close, because I’m so far ahead. And that’s something Gary V taught me, which is, if your competitors are always looking at you, they’re always going to be behind you, because they’re going to be doing what you’ve already done.

And I’m not even looking at my competitors. I’m always looking ahead. I’m looking at my customers, looking at my clients. What can I do better for them? What can I create to serve them? Not what’s everyone else doing out there?

(51:36) Graham Solomon
So, I’ve actually just sort of had on the bottom of the screen your number. I’m not sure whether I’ve got the, I’m not a missed out the www dot on your, they’re good, they’re good. So this is the thing you actually say that, I mean, you’ve dropped some videos in my Facebook group, a bit of content, and you actually say, hey, my numbers on my website ring me.

So you’re pretty approachable for someone, you know, that’s established like you are. So what’s the best way people just to reach out to you, go to the website first or

(52:12) Nicholas Nick
Yeah, you know, I like people going to the website only so they could call me with more questions, if that makes sense. So, you know, my advice is check out the website, leadminingpros.com. The phone number on there does ring my cell phone.

So feel free to reach out if you need anything. I am totally here for you. And even if you don’t want to hire us and you just have some questions about cold calling, how to start next or anything in general.

Not only am I an entrepreneur and a successful one, but I’m in the real estate space. I can help you with the broad spectrum of things. And I’m a firm believer in providing value first.

And so if you guys want to call and just shoot the shit, I’m here for that too. Even if you plan on buying in a month or you’re not ready yet, that’s fine. Let’s start our relationship.

So I encourage everyone just reach out and give us a call.

(53:01) Graham Solomon
And with that, what we’ll do is once we jump off in the call, whack some stuff in the comments. And, you know, as we go, look, you know, people can put all that information in the comments. And yeah, I encourage people to reach out because once again, if you’re looking to scale, and you need to, you know, automate and delegate.

And if you can find someone that really specializes in a field, bang, there’s Nick. And yeah, I encourage people to, I’m probably going to be the first one in the chat grabbing stuff and ringing it. Like I said, where it was 12 months ago, you know, but look now, I want to talk for, you know, we’ve probably gone way over because I was going to try and keep it shorter.

But there’s so many things I’ve asked you. But I mean, that, you know, what you’ve just shared with us for people, you know, the listening to this, it’s valuable information, you know, rewatch it, dig down into, you know, sort of the steps and, you know, Nick didn’t just wake up one morning and end up here. It’s taken a transition.

And he’s told you how he got there. He’s mindset and everything. So go back and watch it. But I really appreciate it. First, I appreciate your dropping the videos in the group for the last couple of weeks, little real short nuggets. And I really appreciate it.

I know the people in the group appreciate it. And secondly, for coming on, because like I said, you’re the sort of guy you could just hang your high energy and I could probably speak five hours nonstop without because of your energy. So I really appreciate it.

We’ve kept it under an hour. So that’s a good job. But I encourage people to reach out to Nick. If this is what you need in your business, reach out to Nick, because once again, reach out to someone who’s an innovator in the field, who’s already got all the systems in place, don’t reach out to someone that’s all over the place.

And you know, reach out to Nick if you need your service. And thanks for coming on, Nick. I really appreciate it. And yeah, look, you know, I know that your next goals to go to the next level will happen, will happen because you make things happen. So congratulations on your business.

Thanks for coming in. And I really appreciate it. And I’ll be reaching out to you along the way to some of your services. So I appreciate it. Thanks for coming in. And yeah, I’ll catch up with you around the traps.

(55:13) Nicholas Nick
Yeah, I’ll be here, man. Thank you so much. And I feel free to reach out, Graham. Thank you so much for having me on. I had a great time. And I’d love to come back whenever you want. So just feel free to reach out.

(55:23) Graham Solomon
Yeah, well, that’s true. Because there’s so many other questions I had for you. But we sort of, you know, when someone, you know, gets in the zone, you don’t get them out of the zone. You let them keep talking. So, you know, I’m sure, you know, everyone got a lot out of it. So we’ll have you in down the track.

And we’ll probably hit you with a few more questions that people sort of asked me along the way. But all right, I’ll let you go. And yeah, thanks for coming in. And good luck with the future. Hopefully, you can get to that goal sooner than later.

(55:55) Nicholas Nick
I’m working on it. Thank you so much.

(55:57) Graham Solomon
No worries. All right. Thanks, Nick. So yeah, well, there you go, guys, wrap it up. High energy guy, Nicholas Nick. And like I said, reach out to him. If you’re looking for those services, reach out to him.

But, you know, I hope you guys just got the meat and potatoes out of that, which was, you know, Nick’s work ethic, everything that he puts in his high energy. And yeah, thanks for joining us today in the Thunder from Down Under Podcast. And I will wrap it up now, guys.

So enjoy the rest of your week. And we’ll have someone next week, a new guest on next week. And thank you for listening. And thank you for Nick for coming on. That was, that was awesome. And go out there and crush it, guys.

I’ll sign out. We’ll speak soon.