PP 650: Things That Actually Add Value to Your Personal Life and Business with Michael Green
“Stay on the journey of educating yourself. You never get to being great. You work on being great.” -Michael Green
What determines a high quality of life? When you were a kid, you were often asked about your dreams. Now that you are older, your dreams might have changed as you get to know yourself better. In this episode, Kim and Michael Green, the CFO of the Flip Factor Academy talk about things that add meaning and value to your work. Michael discusses some ways to apply the “quality over quantity” principle in life, business, and books! He also shares how to create freedom for yourself without falling into credit traps, choose activities that are worth your expertise, manage finances, and give back to the community. Tune in and find out how you can recognize opportunities easier and get to your goal faster!
Highlights:
02:01 From A Mere Boy To A Man
10:27 Freedom Creates Happiness
16:08 Quality Over Quantity
20:49 E-Myth Coaching
26:57 The Start Of Flipping Business
35:17 Flipping & Coaching
45:32 Digging Profit
Resources Mentioned
Book
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Micalowicz
Inspirational Quotes:
07:51 “It takes something hard in life to push you into being. You have to be tested essentially.” – Michael Green
13:17 “Freedom creates happiness and the ability to do whatever we want.” – Michael Green
41:12 “Everybody’s in better shape and more energetic if we’re more productive.” – Michael Green
51:10 “Stay on the journey of learning, educating yourself, being more positive. You never get to being great. You work on being great.” – Michael Green
51:22 “Enjoying the journey is the key to being successful.” – Michael Green
About Michael:
Michael Green is the founder and CFO of the Flip Factor Academy. He is also the founder of the Flip Factor Mastermind and Business Mastery Group. Michael grew up in Baltimore, got in trouble as a teenager, and dropped out of high school, and at the age of 21, took a stand to break the cycle of poverty, crime, and negativity that he had grown up around. This passion for helping his students get the best results and running his business at the highest level has resulted in him being nominated by ThinkRealty as House Flipper of the Year and vecomet the go to coach for house flippers who want to scale their business quickly. Over the past decade, he’s gotten to speak on stages of hundreds of people, live a lifestyle of freedom, and work with students across the globe, spreading his message of High Profit House Flipping.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
Kim Sutton: Welcome back to the Positive Productivity podcast. This is your host, Kim Sutton. For all of you who are coming back, welcome back. You’ve heard me say over and over again that Positive Productivity is not about perfection, it doesn’t need to be painful either. However, this morning, I got to tell you before I introduce today’s guest, we have three inches of snow outside and the tornado sirens were going off as we warmed up for this interview. So just keep on pushing forward through anything, the tornado siren went off, there was no tornado heading our way. But even with snow on the ground in Ohio, we get those sirens. But that was completely a complete tangent. Today’s guest is Michael Green. He’s a real estate investor and the host of The Flip Factor podcast. Michael, I’m so happy to have you here.
Michael Green: Oh, thanks for inviting me. I’m excited to be on the show. I’m big fan of all your stuff systems and everything is my thing.
Kim Sutton: Oh, awesome. Michael, how did you get into this? Or actually, let’s go back a little bit further, what was your childhood dream? I always loved to know what people wanted to be when they were little.
Michael Green: When I was little, I think every kid thinks like a firefighter, astronaut and all that. I feel like I gravitated towards being in business for myself. I got in so much trouble as a kid doing stuff that obviously like selling candy. And then next thing I know, I could sell firecrackers instead. The schools weren’t real happy about that so I got kicked out and got in trouble. I feel like it was that entrepreneurial spirit that got me into a lot of trouble as a teenager because I grew up in bad neighborhood projects and wasn’t a lot of positive role models, a lot of stuff. I got into it and it wasn’t legal and it got me in like it was rough for me as a kid. I made a big change when I was around, I got in trouble, ended up going to prison when I was 17 years old for a few years, and it was where I changed my life and I got an opportunity to be funny enough. Prison was the place I got exposed to like some higher level thought processes, through having nothing to do, I started reading books. First time in my life that I read a book called, Think and Grow Rich, a very popular book. Well, the stuff that the guy was talking about in the book, I’d never had anyone tell me anything like that, or really expose me to positivity, or your ability to do anything you want. I thought that the only way you can make money from where I was was doing illegal stuff. And because I’ve never had anyone show me any difference, obviously, I went from reading that book to reading many others, just making a big life change.
I got out and started doing flooring, hardwood flooring and a pretty tough job. Also one with the GED, criminal background could do, and I was more than happy to do it. I decided I was going to be the best at that and make the most of it. End up making good living for multiple years. But it ended up, I saw someone flipping a house, I was doing flooring him. And now that’s how I got [inaudible]. He said: “Hey, there’s this free thing you can go to.” And you see these all the time, but 10 years ago, they were pretty rare, you didn’t see that often. A guy came out and he’s like, here’s how you can make money house flipping. I’d watch every flip of this house and every show like that. Still today, I watched those shows. I’m still very addicted to him even though people think, if you flip many houses, it would be boring. But I’m really a fan of house flipping. I love the design. I love the architecture. I just like everything about it. It’s a lot of fun for me, still today.
Kim Sutton: Do you ever watch those shows in Grown when they’re making decisions.
Michael Green: Oh, God, I think that’s probably the most fun. I have dialogues with the TV like, no, don’t do that. No, you’re gonna lose money. I know they’re creating that as drama, and it’s part of why I’m addicted to it. Maybe it’s the drama of them making mistakes, but I still enjoy them. I’m not gonna always take away a few nuggets of things that are really great ideas, but half of what they’re showing on there has been produced by the TV shows to make people entertained, but it’s not really what house flipping is.
Kim Sutton: I recently, and I don’t have a cable at home. So every time I travel, HGTV goes on the TV as soon as I get into the hotel room, and that is part necessity party entertainment. At home, it is never quiet. You heard the sirens before we started. Literally, when I tried to get quiet, I got sirens. When I go away, if I’m in a quiet hotel room all by myself, it’s almost scary. Does that make sense? Like a scary quiet?
Michael Green: I guess it makes a lot of sense. I grew up in the city and there was not always like sirens, cop sirens and just people around. And when I went out to the county, I thought, Oh, I’m gonna love a nice yard. There’s times at night where it’s so quiet that I was like, I’m not used to this. This feels like–
Kim Sutton: It’s a deafening quiet, isn’t it?
Michael Green: It’s like a horror movie. It’s like when things start to jump out the woods on you, you’re definitely more at risk of danger where I grew up than living in the County, I just wasn’t used to it. Like you said, you’re used to always having stuff going on.
Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely. When I moved here to Ohio, I moved here from Westchester County, New York. So right outside of the city, and well, to anybody who knows Westchester County, I lived in the butt of Westchester County, I just want to make that clear. It was not like Chappaqua, $8 million houses, I lived in the apartment buildings right close to the border of the Bronx. So we had the bus going by at all hours of the day. And I swear, some days, it was trying to see how closely to get to the cars just to see how many car alarms it could set off every single night. So moving from there to here, and being able to get through the night without car alarms, because there were some days that those car alarms would not go off at all. The people would be two blocks up, and they wouldn’t hear their car alarm going off. But anyway, I know that’s a complete tangent. I’m good at tangents. Anyway, so when I go away, I turn on HGTV and I just discovered this, it’s not house flipping, I think they’re in Tennessee, or Kentucky, maybe you know the show that I’m talking about. It’s a small town, home renovations at an affordable cost, they have been a southern drawl, like, wow, I love this. Because so many times on social media, especially for entrepreneurs, we see these huge success stories that aren’t necessarily accurate depictions of the truth. But when I’m watching HGTV, I want to see opportunities that I could actually do with my budget, not just what’s available in Southern California.
Michael Green: Yes, very different.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, absolutely. But I want to go back to what you were saying, did you read Think and Grow Rich? Did you say you read that while you were in prison?
Michael Green: Prison library, yeah. They had some cool stuff in there. I found that they had a lot of other great books on psychology, and I didn’t read all, I mean, honestly, we all have this time in our life, or we go from being a boy to a man, or we kind of get into being an adult and that was my time. I think some people do in college, some people do if they go to the army or military, some people don’t do until later in life, it just really depends on them. Takes something hard in life to kind of push you into being. You have to be tested essentially, it’s a belief that I have. So those books were just the perfect time as I was going through that test of like, who I was going to become really started to shape and mold me, and I loved them. Honestly, I still am today. Still today, I read a lot of books, and really enjoy stuff like that. My library is getting really big.
Kim Sutton: I want to apologize to you and to anybody else who has been in the prison system, because I know that I have judged unfairly. Because I haven’t thought about the opportunities of the personal growth opportunities that many have while in prison. I think a lot of people, and I’m sure you’ve encountered the stereotyping that we think, Oh, you’ve been in prison, I can’t talk to you.
Michael Green: It’s a fair stereotype, to be honest. The recidivism rate is like 89% of people go to prison and they go back, and getting out of that cycle is no easy task. It honestly is. I realized the second I walked in the door, it wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t meant to be that person. It’s just not true for everyone else. I wish it was on any level. I hire people, if you know my construction part of my business, if they want to work for me, I never hold that against them if they want to change their life. But you’re right. With the same time though, I do keep a close eye on it. Even though I’ve come from the same place, I know how many people would fit right into that stereotype so I have to be logical about it. I totally understand it.
Kim Sutton: Well, thank you for not being hard on me for my stereotype. I always feel bad for passing judgment. I know that there’s other ways that people could be, I could do the same about my husband, or about myself. And by the way, I’m 40 and I’m still growing up. But I was 30 before I was introduced to any type of personal development. It’s been a decade long process, and I know it’s gonna last me through the rest of my life. It’s constant growth, but I never saw that growth opportunity. I may not have grown up in the projects, but the way that I grew up, I thought that was the way that life was. You graduate from high school, I mean, this is just how it was in my town. You graduate from high school, you go to college, you get a job, you have kids, you go to work every day, you come home, you live for the weekends, and take it or leave it. That’s how it is. You can hate your job. So what? You’re making money, save for retirement and hope to die happy. Hope. But a lot of people are just living this routine, not thinking of the bigger possibilities outside.
Michael Green: Who’s there to teach us? It’s great shows like yours that really start to open people’s eyes to the better quality life that we can have. Again, we learned from others as a society. We see what other people do. And we’re seeing more people now become entrepreneurial, start their own online businesses, do podcasts than ever before, but even still, it’s a very small percentage of the general population. Most people are like you said, there’s following the routine that’s safe. But honestly, when you start really thinking about it like, do we really want to live our life? Do we not want to be the best version of ourselves? Yeah, I was so underperforming as a teenager, and then my 20’s, I got better. And in my 30’s, I feel like I started to hit my stride. And I’m in my 43 now, and I’m really excited about the next 10 to 15 years, like what’s possible?
Kim Sutton: Could you ever imagine that it would just keep on getting better the older that you got?
Michael Green: No, but it is. I wouldn’t have thought that. Because when you’re young, you always look at older people and you’re like, Oh, God, I never want to be like that. But now, there’s a certain wisdom that comes with age. There’s a lot of cool benefits of being a little bit older, being a better place in life.
Kim Sutton: I feel like I’m sounding like a spoiled suburban girl. But compared to many, I mean, just look at how you were brought up. I don’t know anything besides what you just shared, but compared to how you were brought up, I was brought up, I had it pretty easy. But I think it’s interesting how we view quality of life as different as we grow. I mean, in my teens and in my 20’s, I thought that the more money I had, the better the quality of life I had.I didn’t realize that quality of life was terminated by so many other factors, most importantly, happiness. But I didn’t realize that happiness was also contingent upon me, and not the money in my bank.
Michael Green: Yeah. Because sometimes, we caught up. I did this for quite a while where, probably the first one, I started realizing that I could make more money, and I could be an entrepreneur, and I would like flipping houses. I spent the first six years flipping houses where I worked. I mean, every waking hour of the day because I was insatiable about growing a business. I got to a place where I was doing 150 houses a year, and honestly, zero quality of life. There’s this big shift where my partner who was 20 years older than me at the time was like, Hey, I don’t want to keep going at this pace. I’m in my 60’s, I know you’re 40, just about three and a half years ago, and he’s like, I want to do something a little smaller, more laid back. And we decided to split the company up in a very friendly way. We were best friends and still are great friends today. We realized that there was a different way of doing it. He actually kind of jarred me and called me to take this different path. And when I went and started my own business, and I got a great coach, and he met the coach I was working with at the time, and he really started talking about life and some of the bigger picture stuff. I realized now, I work about 15 hours a week and my incomes doubled what it was when I was doing a lot more houses. The freedom that I think creates happiness, the ability to do whatever we want, go to Costa Rica, for me, I love going traveling and doing cool stuff, and just being able to do that, that freedom. I’ve seen people create that freedom with 100K a year, they just figured out how to live on 50 of it and save the other 50 than having that, two years ago, I got 100K sitting in the bank and you only need 50K to live very easily in a great place where you’re not worried about bills anymore and you’re not stressed out about you’re not living day to day like most of us do. Like the credit card companies want us to. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but that’s what, it’s good for them if you’re buying things you can’t afford all the time because it constantly keeps you in that cycle of debt and having to grind it out every day that kind of pay everything off that you’ve bought before you could afford.
Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, I was talking to a certified financial planner yesterday and we were talking just about that. I’ve had family members who declared bankruptcy and they had no problem getting a new credit card after they declared bankruptcy. I went through a lot of financial struggle with my first business, my credit score sucks. I’ve even shared my credit score on a previous episode of the podcast, and I’m happy that I can’t get another credit card because I don’t want to be in that trap. But I feel bad for the family members who went bankrupt and got another credit card because the credit card companies are totally poaching on the fact that they know they can’t file bankruptcy for another seven years. So yeah, let’s help them rack up a whole much more debt and charge them 50% interest.
Michael Green: You talk about like the mafia and criminals. We think of criminals, but they’re legal criminals. I mean, they are so smart on how they work things out. And honestly, getting educated about it is already responsibility, like you said, just starting to understand that credit is a trap. And honestly, I try not to use credit at all anymore, versus like buying a house or car, some of the big stuff. But with a little purchases, I hold myself back. And if I’m not willing to take it out of my bank account, I don’t really want it. Most of the time, we buy things and we don’t care about it a month later, and we’re paying for two or three years.
Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, I’m staring at a recumbent exercise bike with a laptop stand that I had the best intentions of using, and I use this tracking tool. It’s called strides that I track what I want to do every single day, and this app never fails to remind me that it’s been 110 days since I used my bike. But at the moment, I’ve got money, I can buy it. I want to go back through to the 150 houses a year. It took me five to six years in my business to discover that I needed to focus on quality over quantity, would you say that the quality of your work went up at all? Or actually maybe I should ask first, what did your quantity go to? How many houses do you do a year now?
Michael Green: Right now, because I was able to take a lot of the key team members with me, I’m doing somewhere between like 40 to 50 houses a year. But every year, I’ve been practicing exactly what you just said, I’ve been scaling down in order to profit up. Because through wisdom and a lot of experience, I’ve realized that I can actually do less houses and make more money, and create better profit margins and happier customers, and just a happier way of doing business in general. So yes, I’m working on getting down to 30. And this is a very contradictory thing that you hear in the house flipping industry, everyone’s talking about scale your business, do more houses. I really have been focused on making more profits, like you said, quality over quantity, and quality of profits, quality of product, everything. I’ve students, I work with 10 houses a year, and they’re bringing in 4 or 500K income of 10 houses a year. There’s times where I’ve done 150 and brought the same income. You talk about the risk of doing 150, required 16 employees, $100,000 a month in expenses, very stressful working, couldn’t even have a vacation, honestly, I couldn’t unplug, I’d be reading books and listening to audio stuff at the beach. So it is a much better lifestyle now when I’m not focusing on volume. It’s just the trap that sometimes we get competitive, we want to be seen as successful. The one thing that did come with doing that many houses that a lot of people are just really impressed by, and it made me feel confident and good about myself. But I realized that that confidence that I was chasing, and that validation I was chasing caused me not to run my businesses successfully. And it happened for me right around six or seven years also. So a little bit slower than you, but after we’ve done business for a while, we realize like you said, quality over quantity. I love that.
Kim Sutton: Well, I’m going through the, it’s like part two, but it didn’t take another six to seven years of that right now. I had been committing to a lot of work, I was building funnels for clients, it was white labeling for them, and I was getting paid a certain amount. They were getting paid double what I was, and I was getting my cut. But I realized the amount of work that I had to take on in order to make what I needed to sustain our cost of living was so much, and I was just exhausted. And then it occurred to me, especially because I started cutting back and I had time to actually talk to people. It’s amazing how you can have so much work and you don’t have time to talk and relate to people. That astounds me that it’s just there. But anyway, I took time to talk to people. I realized, Oh, my gosh, people are paying four times on what I’m getting paid. So I put myself out there and said: “Yep, this is my rate.” Seeing right away came in. And all of a sudden, off of one project, I get paid what I was off of four previously. I can imagine, and because I’m only having to take on, and I don’t want to just take on one, I’d like to take on two at that, but I can put more focus on each person, give them the quality that they deserve. I’m almost thinking about, let’s just say a kitchen flip instead of putting laminate countertops in, I’m giving them the marble because I’m not spread so thin.
Michael Green: I agree. I don’t know if it just takes getting a little older and just seeing things a little bit differently. But once you start focusing on quality, it’s everything. And in house flipping, just getting your systems down, everything you talk about building automated systems and just these little small tweaks, or create big dollars in house flipping, and when we’re doing too much volume, and we’re doing too much at a cheap rate, meaning that maybe we’re making 15 or 20K a house instead of making 40 or 50 house. Then we end up not having time to build systems out of automations, we end up really bogged down with what I call low paid activities instead of working on our high paid activity. So a big part of how I only work about 15 hours a week is I only do super high paid activities that I know are going to make my business move forward. And then I understand that the lower paid activities as much as I like to control things and make everything perfect, I understand they’re not that important. So if I hired someone to say 10 or 20 bucks an hour to do those for me, and they only did it at 65 to 70% of quality of what I do, they’re getting done, which is better than me taking on everything. And this has been a hard shift for me because I would say naturally, I like to kind of make sure everything’s going well, so it’s hard for me to let loose of things. But when I realized that I don’t have to let loose of everything, I can actually keep the high paid activities for myself to do. Well, that’s my 15 hours a week, and I really very much enjoy doing the high paid activity. I know how meaningful they are to my business. And this is true for any industry, not just house flipping.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. You mentioned earlier that you hired an EMyth Coach, I’m assuming, but I know assuming is bad. Did you read the EMyth?
Michael Green: Oh, for sure. Yeah, I did. I actually became an EMyth Coach myself.
Kim Sutton: You did?
Michael Green: Yeah. Because before I was doing house flipping coaching, my whole partner wouldn’t let me teach people how to flip houses because he had a scarcity mindset. He’s like, well, we don’t tell him our secrets, and then we’ll be creating our own competition. So when we split up a couple years ago and sold our business, I was able to actually fulfill my dream of teaching people how to flip houses. But before that, for three or four years, I was able just to coach people in different industries that were not competing with mine. So it was awesome that I got to learn that, and the guy that I work with is actually like the first or second EMyth coach from 30 years ago when they started the coaching program. So very wise, been around a long time, I’m still working with him today, three and a half years later.
Kim Sutton: I had no idea that there were Emyths coaches, and I’m almost embarrassed. But I’m not because I know there’s so many other entrepreneurs who have been around, if not longer than I have as an entrepreneur, or as you have who’ve still not read it. But I only read it earlier this year. I’ve had this business for seven years, and I talk about systems all the time. I’m going through the book, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I should have listened to all those people who were telling me, not just for the couple years of my business, but even since starting the podcast.,Oh, the E Myth changed my life. When you hear that 100 times, you should probably read it.
Michael Green: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. I think I just wasn’t in the place. I have to admit, I read Think and Grow Rich. But at that point, when I read it, I was reading it because everybody was saying it too, and I wasn’t really ready to read it. That might not make any sense to anybody, but I know that I have to reread it because I didn’t get out of it as much as they should have.
Michael Green: Well, when I read it the first time, totally, for me, it was something I’d never been, and I’d never heard that type of positivity and just awesome high level thinking. And honestly, I got very little out of it. But that little bit was so different that it just propelled me forward, it got me moving. But I just read Think and Grow Rich off three months ago. I don’t know, I didn’t even remember the book that changed my life because I was seeing it so differently. So this makes a lot of sense. I believe you could read any great book once a year, once every two years and get a completely different, like learn more from it, we only retain about 15% of what we read anyhow. But as you’ve had different life experiences, you’ll experience the things that are being taught in that book very differently. So yeah, great books can be read all the time, like every year if you wanted to. And you get a lot from them.
Kim Sutton: Michael, who would be on your mental board of directors?
Michael Green: Mental board of directors? I love, honestly, today, how to win friends and influence people. It’s just been great for me. I have that book for me as one of my favorites. I read it every six months. I also love the one thing, I have a hard time ever picking one person because there’s so many good things that come, like little nuggets I get from so many things. So for me, it’s all about just constantly staying involved, and challenging my brain, and learning from many people because I don’t think any one person has all the answers, but they all help you get where you need to go.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. How many books are you reading right now?
Michael Green: I try to read one at a time because I’m reading multiples, reading like the first chapter. Right now, just one book at a time. I go through one, and I’m actually switching to audiobooks over the last couple months because I’m finding that I can consume them better in my downtime while I’m driving, or maybe it’s late and I can’t read because I don’t want to turn a light on and then be up all night. So I’m finding it much easier to consume audiobooks. For me, that’s a personal preference for everyone.
Kim Sutton: I don’t want you listeners to worry because I tried, but I was horrible at it. And then I realized that it wasn’t safe, but I also love audiobooks. However, I like to have the hard copies so I can take notes and highlight. I admit that I was trying to listen and highlight while driving. Don’t do that. Just don’t do that. But I love having the notes, and I love to take pictures of what I’m reading so I can share the little blurbs that I find for people. My problem with listening to audiobooks before, I fall asleep and I’m gonna have to go back and find where I was. But it’s usually, it’s not a horrible thing because who doesn’t pick up something awesome when they go back and listen, but it’s like, oh, I know, I miss something. And I probably still absorbed it subconsciously. But like, let’s just read when we’re awake.
Michael Green: Right now, what I’m doing, and it’s been very effective. I’m finding that I’m retaining more of what I’m learning this way as I listen to everything at high speed, like maybe two X, one time quickly and get through it, and then I go back. Like you said, I’ll actually listen to it slower, I’ll get the book, then take notes and really kind of break it down and try to retain as much. But the first time when we’re hearing it, like you said it, you’re not ready for it. But when you listen to it the second time, it’ll take on a very different meaning, and you’ll really retain and get a lot of the lessons out of there. I think I’ve watched a YouTube video from Eric Thomas. He was talking about how he takes a book, and he’ll spend a month on one chapter. He’s like, people read 20 books a month, but he’s like, you could take one great book and spend six months of your life mastering what’s in that book. I don’t disagree with it. And I find it out, that’s what I’m trying to do more of lately. We talked about quality over quantity, reading 20 books a month and not retaining anything is no better than reading one book every six months, but taking all the lessons from it, really utilizing them and implementing them in your life.
Kim Sutton: Hmm, I hit a goal this year. I wanted to read, I think it was 52 books one a week. And thank you for just helping me realize, that’s another example of quality over quantity. Because the books that I’ve read, at the moment that I’ve read them, and by the way, I’m not reading one book at a time, that’s been a goal, but I hope my kids misplace the book that I’m reading. But when I’ve gone through each book at that specific time, I may have 12 books finished at the end of this year, but I got exactly what I needed to have each book at the time that I read it.
Michael Green: It makes a lot of sense.
Kim Sutton: You were doing hardwood floors, or floor installation, you were working with a guy who was flipping houses, what was your first step to actually get into yourself.
Michael Green: I thought about it for years. I mean, I’d read books, watch TV shows, and it wasn’t YouTube back then. Was just anything I could get my hands on for about six years, I’m very analytical. So I was definitely in paralysis by analysis, or whatever way it goes. I was just very paralyzed because I was just analyzing everything. And when I met this guy, he’s like, go to this free two hour seminar. The guy started talking about everything that, he was just dropping stuff on me that made sense. And the books were like a hard way of getting some information, but never could you interact. So he eventually told me: “Hey, look, it’s 15K to work with me.” By the way, I was 100K in debt at the time, so I was pretty broken. But he’s like: “No, I’ll show you how to take all your credit cards that are maxed out. ” Then extended credit lines on him. I ended up putting about 7,500 across like five credit cards, and then he agreed to do like $200 a month payment that I didn’t really have, and I just jumped in. Honestly, it was the first time in my life that I’d ever done anything like that or invest in myself. It was really scary because I don’t think I’ve ever even spent maybe 500 bucks on my education other than just buying books and stuff. I’ve never taken any big commitment. This was a year long program, I got to work with him. There’s two classes every week in person. It was like a little University, local Maryland. I love that concept. They would obviously do that online these days.
But the biggest probably take away from it was that, two times a week, I got to go and be with other people who wanted to be investors, speak with people who are already flipping and just being around that community was the key. It wasn’t just what he was teaching me. Because honestly, he even the best coach, he was even the best person that I’d ever met. He’s a little bit of a character, he’s known for his reputation, but there wasn’t a lot other choices out there at that time. So he was the only one in town. But with that being said, I have a high level of appreciation because he obviously taught me some of the slick things. He figured out some of the ways to do things, not to do. But it really came down to being around the community for years of my life being around other people with the same ambitions. I was able to go six weeks into working with them. I did my first deal. I didn’t have the money to renovate it so he showed me how to take that contract that I’d signed and sell it off to another investor. I did that for him, got a 16K check, which was another way on the program and kept 1,000 bucks for myself. And obviously after that point, it all got real. The six years of studying, failing the constant, trying to do something, I mean, I went to see 50 houses with a realtor because someone said that that’s what you’re supposed to do in a book and we didn’t get any of them. Honestly, I’m glad I did because I don’t even know if it would have been a good deal or not. So with him, he got everything clear for me, and the support of others around me was like the big kind of power that really helped me get into the flipping business.
Kim Sutton: Michael, I’m curious, and I know this could be a trade secret, you also said that you like to teach people. In my area of Ohio, there have been, especially recently, a fair number of foreclosures, would you start at foreclosures if you are looking at getting into the flipping?
Michael Green: Yeah. I always start, and I share everything openly. Because honestly, what I’ve learned, the high level stuff that me and my partner didn’t agree with, but I do, is you can teach everything you know to people and they’ll still want you to help them implement it. My coaching, you can learn most of what I teach online for free. But in the coaching, I’m actually holding you accountable and pushing you forward. The first thing with anybody I work with when they’re new is I work with them, teaching them how to play, we call the sandbox where it’s free, instead of saying, hey, I want you to spend $2,000 a month marketing, you can go right to foreclosures, the MLS, courthouse, auctions, you can go to wholesalers, you’ve got a lot of people out there who are doing the work for you who can sell you deals. Now, there’s a very specific way you have to do it to make that work, and that is a longer process that takes usually about an hour just for me to get someone open to the concept of exactly how to come through the MLS, look for what we call five star prospects. So as you look through 50 houses, there’s one or two that are worth you spending your time on.
And when you learn how to pick those one or two out, you can go see him and you have a good chance of getting a deal done with that and making you get a property that will make you money. But you have to learn a few other things on top of that. You have to learn how to walk through a house and understand exactly what it’s going to cost to renovate it. You have to be able to look at the layout, which obviously I think would be easy for you with your architecture background where you want to know like, okay, it’s a three one right now. But if I move this, I can make a master suite, I could put another bed and the bath in the basement, and I could open this kitchen up. So once you understand the layout, it’s easy to put a line item budget together. You do all that in like 15, 20 minutes once you learn the technique of it, even without any real construction experience because I got into this, I knew how to do flooring, but I had no other construction experience. Everyone says: “Well, you were in flooring, so you knew construction.” I was like: “Well, I knew one piece out of the 50 things you had to do.” I mean, there’s probably somebody who knows how to put a door knob and that wouldn’t make you a contractor. You would have one thing that needs to be done out of 50, and that would be awesome. That would go well, but everything else was a complete mystery to me.
Kim Sutton: So my husband and I bought our house about a year and a half ago. We lived here for three years before we bought it, we were renting to own. And there was a point when we weren’t sure if we were actually going to be able to buy it so we started looking around the town. We found this fantastic two story house with a basement. It was older, like 1910’s, 1920’s, huge grand attic. I was an interior architect, but that does not mean that I knew the structure and the bones. I just want to make that clear. And is it called a knob and tube?
Michael Green: Hmm.
Kim Sutton: I went and turned on the light and the sparks flew out of the little button. And that was like my husband’s first red flag, he’s like, sweetie, we have five kids living at home, we will not be able to buy this place unless we move in right away. And with all the work it needs, it’s just not going to be safe. I know that’s not, what I’m talking about is not flipping. But looking at just replacing the electrical with updated, and then all the windows and it was a two. It had been two families for years. So taking down all the walls, and getting rid of the second kitchen, he’s like, no. And the more we dug into it and finally got up to the attic, we found that there’s been animals. I don’t even know what kind, I was just looking at the size of their poop to be totally honest. Yeah, I think we’re just not going to do this. But I’d love to know what happened to it. The final for me, and as a podcaster yourself, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this. When we’re looking through the house, all of a sudden I hear a train horn going by. I had not realized how close the train tracks were like, yeah, that’s not gonna work. At least not right away. I need to record podcasts, it’s hard enough the tornado sirens. With the trains going by? No, thank you. So your podcasts come about after you separated from your partner?
Michael Green: Yeah. Everything from a coaching standpoint, started probably about six months afterwards . Because as my coach was saying: “Mike, how are you going to give back?” We quickly, like six month period, got the business working well . Got me from 60, 70 hours a week down to 15, 20 hours a week, and really got purposeful about that quality over quantity. And that means like, okay, well, next level. How do you want to give back? What do you want to do? I realized I wasn’t a soup kitchen guy. Some people are, and I’m nothing bad about them. That just didn’t mean that we have to know who we are. But I had helped a few friends over the years, like really grow productive businesses, make money and kind of go from being not very wealthy, kind of always struggling to having some financial freedom. I told him: “I always dreamed about coaching, but couldn’t do it with my partner.” Not using him as an excuse, but it just was easier once I was on my own to do it.
So we were like, cool, you can give back. He’s like, you realize you can give back to people, and so I started coaching people for free. Literally taking one on one clients. I was charging nothing, just to gain some experience. And then obviously, I found that people need to invest a little bit of money to be serious. So I started charging just so that people would take the training seriously. And then eventually, it became a supply and demand thing. I’m still a lot cheaper than most coaches out there, and I go way above and beyond. But the coaching business today is not a profit center for me, I’ve never even taken a cheque from it. I’m probably one of the few people, but with that being said, I have to keep it really small. And so it came on the podcast, and all the coaching came once I was free to do that. It’s kind of what I spend my, after my first 15 to 20 hours running my flipping business, my free time is following my passion and my journey, which is helping others and giving back, and I’ve made that still my big thing. I still make all my money from flipping, not from coaching.
Kim Sutton: I love that. I realized in May, June this year that, so about six months ago for listeners, that I was giving away a lot of free time to one on one clients. Number one, it was hurting the clients who had paid because my focus was split, and they weren’t necessarily getting what they paid for. The second thing that I realized, and keep in mind, I’ve had the podcast for three years now. The second thing, I realized that while I was helping one person for free, I could have been creating content that was helping hundreds, thousands, millions potentially, anything from videos where I’m showing a system that’s working for me to creating a course, or multiple courses. I have chronic idea disorder, Michael, I’m writing a book on it. I have chronic idea disorder. So the book isn’t written yet. So I tend to do a few more things than I probably should, but I’ve been able to actually start building two courses that I had wanted to build for forever. I’m going through the beta right now, but had I still been doing the free one on one work, which I’m not saying, I won’t do for anybody. But if I were still doing it, I wouldn’t have that time in my bucket.
Michael Green: I hear what you’re saying, and you need to prioritize, like you said, you can help a lot more people. And if your mission is to help, like you said, doing a video that anyone can watch and you’re basically doing what you teach, or you’re automating the way you give back, you very much can automate that. I found that I can automate a lot of the free content, a lot of like, Hey, here’s the system, here’s how it works and give them a lot of great stuff. But a lot of stuff we do, people actually pay me is all about me pushing them across things that they’re not getting through themselves, and then holding them accountable to follow through. Because most people think, oh, if I just knew the systems, or the secret stuff that Mike knows that I’d be able to do everything. What I found out over the years is that’s just not true. Someone can give me the exact plan, and then I have to follow it. I think the greatest analogy I’ve ever thought about is like a diet. Diets aren’t very complicated. Eat less, eat better, exercise more, and you’ll lose weight. I don’t know why we all struggle with it, or at least me personally. Because it’s no fun to do and I kind of enjoy a cheeseburger and some gelato and stuff like that. It’s hard to follow a diet, but it’s very simple, like there’s a huge industry and making it complex. You need this ninja way of doing this or that, but everything in life is having someone help push you through. I think that’s true with exercising. I think that’s why treadmills and bikes don’t tend to get used very often because there’s no one pushing you, and there’s no one there. There’s no personal trainer. The first time I’ve had any success is having a personal trainer come to my house three days a week, and he has the key to my house. So if I’m sleeping and I don’t wake up, he walks in and pulls me out of bed, which doesn’t happen very often. But somehow, yeah, my alarm doesn’t go off. I’m not missing training. I’ve been working on it for three years now, and it’s the only way I’ve been able to be consistent.
Kim Sutton: Do you think there’s something to be said though for the fact that you are making that ongoing investment? Because that’s why I feel like I’m not riding my bike. I already paid for it, but if I had to pay it on a daily, or monthly,or weekly basis for it to be here, I would have to bet my butt that my butt would be sitting on it every single day.
Michael Green: I agree with that. Because every time you pay it, it becomes front of mind. Right now you’re paying and you’re like, oh, man, I gotta make sure I’m using that. I just paid the payment on, or I pay for to use it.
Kim Sutton: I think I just got another idea, which doesn’t help anything. But maybe I need to have a bucket that I pay into if I don’t use the bike every day.
Michael Green: Interesting. We just joined CrossFit or something like CrossFit, and it’s like 40 bucks a week. I mean, me and my girlfriend, who also works with me, I said: “Part of the company, I’ll pay for it. But if you don’t go, you pay for it.” And she’s like, she was a little afraid of that because she knows, and I know that we are always perfect with sticking with things. ABut she’s like: “No, I’ll do it.” Well, if you don’t do it, then you have to pay for it. But I’ll pay for it if you do. Because it’s in my best interest. Obviously, as everybody’s in better shape and more energetic, we’re more productive.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I want to share something that’s working for me. But first, I have a question for you. As a coach, have you ever thought about coaching? Is the right word inmates when they come out, what’s the right word for after you get out of jail?
Michael Green: I guess inmates, I don’t know. It’s been over 25 years now. I just realized the other day that the last one I got out is 21 years old and 22 years ago, so that’s like a lifetime ago. I’ve thought about it, I haven’t found a way to do it. I haven’t found a way that’s reasonable, because unfortunately, there’d be a very specific way. I’ve tried to find a way to get involved, but anytime you start offering yourself up to free things, they have a very specific way. They like to do it, whether it’s productive, whether it works, and you almost have to kind of spearhead it yourself and create it, or you’d have to follow, and I’m not great at following other people’s stuff. If it doesn’t line up and make sense, I’m not afraid to admit that. If they have a system and there’s holes in it, I’m really very good at breaking things down, making them very effective. And getting results for people is like my specialty, I love it, whether that’s an inmate or changes. It is one of my dreams to do that. Probably the other dream was to really help people before they go to prison.
My mom actually is working and thinking about a way to take kids from poor neighborhoods where we don’t have as many opportunities and start teaching them construction over the summers in our flips. Because I personally believe construction for people who are not going to go to college is one of the biggest opportunities that exists today because we’re getting so far away from anyone wanting to do anything close to manual labor. A lot of my guys that work for me make well over 200K a year doing electric, plumbing, construction, carpentry, they’re making really good money. So if they’re learning good ways to be a very profitable construction person, and most of the time they’re not even swinging a hammer, they’re just getting a home people do it. They’re managing those people, they’re learning the construction business and I think it’s a great opportunity. I would love to teach that to kids that don’t have other opportunities or just don’t have a lot of, they don’t want to go to college because college isn’t for everyone, right? It’s for most, but not for everyone.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I’m going to have to look up who this previous guest was. I’m horrible about names, but I think this guest might actually be in the Baltimore area as well. Graphic design company, he hires high risk high school students and teaches them how to do the design and brings them into the business and shows them the greater opportunities. I’m going to, I’ll refer back and I’ll get in touch with you. I love how you said that you can automate free things, and this is just something that I set up in the last couple weeks. Honestly, not yet complete. But what I realized is that things don’t need to be finished before they get started. That might drive some people crazy, but I have a 30 day work smarter not harder challenge. Every day, the person gets a video in my members area. But I realized right now Facebook Messenger bot are really, they’re doing really well because the open rate is something like 80 or 90%. So even though the people who opt in for this free challenge are getting a daily email, telling them that the new content is available, I’m allowing them to opt in via Facebook Messenger bot and then now they get a daily reminder in Facebook. I’m loving it because when I see Facebook messages come through, there’s some that I am subscribed to because it gets a little nauseous. But reminding people, hey, here’s the link, go watch today’s video. My inbox is the first place that I started flipping when I run out of time, like the $10, $20 activity that you’re talking about before, I should not be cleaning out my inbox. I know that the people who need to work smarter, not harder challenge, their inboxes are likely a mess too. So let’s give them an easy way to remember, hey, this content is here to help you out.
Michael Green: Yeah, love your concept because you’re getting them away from the inbox and getting them into something that’s a little more cleaner, doesn’t have as much spam in it.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. What is your favorite system right now?
Michael Green: My favorite system right now has been just digging into profits. For many years, I’ve just kind of flipped and did it. So right now, I have a system where every week, I take a look at my financials, how much money I have? What money I’m going to need the next 30, 60, 90, what money’s coming in? But looking at the profitability of my flip instead of doing it, well, after the fact, I used to do it at the end of the year. My tax guy, now actually, when I say that I have a two month flip and I’m two weeks in, every week, I’m looking at like, where are we? How are we looking against the budget? So having that financial system has been probably one of the biggest game changers for me because I love systems around finding deals, and finding contractors, and doing all that. But it really doesn’t make it’s for it if you don’t understand the math, because the math tells you what’s working and what’s not. Where you should be applying pressure and where you should not be worrying about. But it’s always been, I would say that it’s definitely been my weakness, and it’s something I’ve just gotten together in the last year, honestly.
Kim Sutton: Michael, I cannot pronounce the guy’s last name. And the book is out next to my couch because that’s where I was reading it last. I told you that I’m reading multiple books, and I usually have one book per room. Mike, I cannot say his last name, Profit First, have you read that?
Michael Green: I’ve read it, yeah, about six months ago. It was a great book. And yeah, great, great recommendation.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. I just got through to the charts. When I was laying out, listeners, you just gotta read it. If you are thinking that just because you got paid, you have money to spend, think again. That’s the trap that I was in for so many years, and I’ve seen so many clients being, oh, hey, I’m waiting for my invoice to get paid, and then I can pay you. Where are you taking out profit for yourself? Are you taking out money for taxes? Like, hello? But I was doing that for years. And then at the end of the year, I look at what my net revenue is. I’m like, Oh, that’s painful. That’s half of what I would have been making at my last job.
Michael Green: I’m still doing it now. I’m up front about it too, like you, I don’t mind sharing my weaknesses. I’m still working on it now, trying to get the profit first, and I’m halfway there. At’s made just a huge difference even just getting halfway there. Obviously, in 2020 resolution and thing that I’m working on is to get to where I’m actually pulling my profit out, putting money aside squirreling money away because I just don’t like to do that for whatever reason. I have to get over whatever stops me from wanting to be that kind of person that just takes a little bit here and there and saves it up. I mean, I know people make way less than me, they have way more money because they’re so thoughtful of always taking like 10 cents of every dollar they make and putting it away and not touching it. If I put it away for a bit, I want a boat or something. I’m like, I’ll take it out of the squirrel fun. I got to stop doing that so that I’m not pulling your show 30 years from now. Again, flipping is great, like senior citizens flipping because I don’t have any retirement. We don’t want to do it forever.
Kim Sutton: Do you know how to pronounce his last name?
Michael Green: For Profit First? No, because I’m like you, I never remember names. I couldn’t even have told you his first name, but I remember the book though.
Kim Sutton: Okay. Well, he agreed to come on the podcast when I finished reading the book so I better get the last name pronounced by then. But one of the things that he says to do is start a profit account at another bank. That’s just like, really? So I have to go to another bank? I haven’t done that, but I am pulling out profit is just the rest of it, taxes. I’m hiring an accountant, and he can deal with that. I just don’t want to see the money out. I wanted to come in, somebody to take care of it and tell me what the budget is for expenses, and that would be awesome.
Michael Green: Yeah, you’re getting a true picture of what you actually have to spend. And the problem is when we’re self employed, as we get a bunch of money in our account, we think we’re rich and we have 200K in our account. We’re like, oh, my god, I’m a millionaire. And of course, I could buy this 15K thing. But we pay taxes, and we need money to run our business, and invest in our next flip and all that. We actually could be broken having 200K in our bank account if we don’t have a true clear picture. I love the concept, and maybe a hack to that would be doing like an online account, or having a way you could transfer it to one of those online savings accounts. That is just not something you look at every day with all your other finances.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, actually, I bank with a credit union. And maybe this is a hack for the listeners, they made me open up a savings account when they opened my business checking account, they have a minimum balance, but I actually renamed that account profit first so that’s where it goes. And I just tried my best to ignore what’s in there. But yeah, Michael, I have loved every second of this chat. I feel like there’s so much that we could share even just about flipping. But where can listeners go to find you, listen to your podcast, find out about your coaching and just learn more about you in general.
Michael Green: Two places, one would be my personal email which is Mike@theflipfactor.net. And then you go to the flipfactor.net website, which has all my podcasts on it. And obviously, I’m on Apple, everything, but we have all of our podcasts there and a bunch of free training and different stuff you can dive into. Get a feel for everything we’re teaching and doing, some awesome, very high level concepts.
Kim Sutton: Awesome. Well, listeners, all the links will be in the show notes, which you can find at thekimsutton.com/pp650. Episode 650, can you believe that?
Michael Green: Awesome, congratulations.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, thank you. Oh, my God, I would love to know if you have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget that you can share with listeners.
Michael Green: I think a great piece of advice, obviously, you mentioned this earlier, stay on the journey of learning, educating yourself, being more positive and realize that you never get to being great, you just work on being great. It’s something we do for the rest of our lives, and enjoying the journey is the key to being successful. That journey, unfortunately, never has an end. So when you learn to love it, then it just becomes part of your life, what you do, that’s true for anything you want to accomplish. You’re gonna have to learn to love the journey to whatever goal do you want to accomplish or the transformation to the person you want to be.
