Key Strategies for Success in Real Estate with Michael Hellickson

Watch or Listen to the full episode

Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally Real Estate show home of the guaranteed sold program or we’ll buy it I’m Adrienne and I’m still Attilio and if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Team lally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Our guest today is a real estate Titan with over 20 years of experience since 1991. He reached the top 1% of agents now nationally, before graduating high school known as the top short sale expert he’s appeared in on Glenn Beck CNBC, the Dave Ramsey show, the Fox Business Network.

ADRIENNE: 
He served a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Hamburg, Germany and currently lives in Bonney Lake Washington. Please welcome our guest, the founder and president of Club Wealth Coaching and Consulting Michael Hellickson. Yes,

ATTILIO: 
he also likes long walks on the beach in the moonlight he does writing poetry and traveling and traveling.

MICHAEL: 
long walks on the beach. That sounds exhausting short walks on the beach actually

ATTILIO: 
spreads but wind sprints on the beach. But yeah, so thanks so much for being on the show, you know, we had a awesome opportunity to be in New York City for a RATE Mastermind and hear you speak and and

ADRIENNE: 
then we were on your podcast. Yeah. And that was amazing to get in front of your community and spend that time with you. And now we’re having you here, because you got a lot of value.

ATTILIO: 
I know, we have a lot of realtors that listen to the show, Michael and what what, you know, the message that we gotta get out to the realtors is like, how about investing in these things you’re selling called homes, so that you can get some passive income and not be sitting in open house when you’re 92 years old.

ADRIENNE: 
But what they’ve got to do that was able to generate income. And that’s actually the first topic that we’re going to go over with Michael. Yeah. What can an agent do vert to virtually guarantee success in 2024? Yeah, how can I get that income? So they can go and invest?

ATTILIO: 
Yes. Well,

MICHAEL:
you know, first and foremost, it’s funny, because when I was when I was the number one agent on the planet, I was doing about 120 to 180 transactions a month carrying about 750 listings. And that all sounds really great. Maybe it was it was great money. But at the end of the day, I had to get up every day and go do it again. And again. And again. And again.

ATTILIO: 
It was too long walks on the beach.

MICHAEL: 
Well, and so, you know, no matter how much money you make selling real estate, if you don’t invest some of it in real estate, you’re gonna be condemned to a life of, I gotta get up every day, and I gotta do the grind over and over and over again. And so yes, I agree with you, to your point, it’s very important that agents become what I like to call their own best client, right? Like, we need to get out there. And we need to be buying from real estate. And, and quite a bit of it. In fact, it’s not okay, you know, it’s not gonna be enough to just buy a couple of houses here and there. Yeah, you gotta get out there. And you gotta be aggressively buying cash flowing rental properties on a regular basis? Well, you know, so to your question, you know, how do I do that? How do I get the money together to go out and be able to buy some of these properties? Well, there’s really only three ways to build wealth, right? Firstly, you can make more, you got to spend less, and you got to invest the difference? It’s pretty simple, right? So how does a real estate agent make more? Well, there’s three things that a real estate agent has to do on a daily basis, and it should be 90% of their day. And that’s very simple. It’s lead generation, lead, follow up. And lead conversion. That’s it. Everything else is noise, right? Everybody wants to do all the fun stuff and shiny objects, and you know, the AI and, you know, the cool, latest, greatest this, that and the other reality is all of those things combined, really only make up a very small percentage of what really brings success in real estate. But agents need to do is they need to get to the office early. Right? I like to you know, agents that go to a physical office every day, be in that office at 730. Every morning, by eight o’clock, you’re on the phones for four hours a day, at minimum, you’re making outbound calls, driving business, right, getting people to want to do business with you finding those people that are ready to transact business now. And nurturing the people that aren’t ready to do business yet, but will be at some point. So focus

ADRIENNE: 
is what it sounds like.

ATTILIO: 
I call it hyper full. Yeah, yes. Absolutely.

MICHAEL: 
You know, it’s funny, because, you know, like, we talked about my son the other day, right now, he’s the number one listing agent in America. He’s 22 years old.

ADRIENNE: 
That’s amazing. Well,

MICHAEL: 
and I appreciate it. I’m not saying that to brag about my son. I’m just saying that, like, Here’s a young person that doesn’t have the experience that other agents have, but doesn’t have the track record that other agents have that doesn’t have the money and the backing and the tools and all that stuff. A lot of agents, what does he have going for? Discipline? Discipline, grit. Yes. Yes. And those are the things that are causing him to have great success when at times when other agents just aren’t. And so anybody can do that. Right? This is this isn’t the there’s no secret sauce to it. It’s just being very very consistent every single day and when you’re very very consistent every single day the results follow. I mean, look at you guys, you guys are crushing it not because you’re not not to take any away from your intelligence. I mean, you guys are very smart people. But that’s not why you’re having so much success. You’re having success because you’re combining that intelligence with hard work on a consistent daily basis.

ATTILIO: 
Michael, I’m caveman me get up early me go office, me make phone calls, until

ADRIENNE: 
Attilio actually used to have with a colleague sale. He had this he called it the caveman listing presentation did have one and that’s Totally call it me get

ATTILIO: 
up early me go office me make phone call me sell home. Me live lifestyle most people won’t

MICHAEL: 
know it’s funny though I mean, I know you’re joking when you say that but hey, there’s some truth to this, you think about it, there’s truth to I can be a caveman and I can get out there and put the effort in and I’m going to out produce the smartest person in the world that won’t do a deal that will that won’t put the time, effort and energy in on a consistent basis. So I agree with you, I think.

ATTILIO: 
I mean, I, you know, sometimes marketing is so good that you forget the product or service. But there was one out there. I don’t even know what it was. But like, it’s so simple. Even a caveman can do it. And then the main character was the caveman. Yeah, well.

ADRIENNE: 
The caveman Yeah. But

ATTILIO: 
he couldn’t I’ll do the gecko. That’s right. The point being is that you can use that in everything. Because we’re not willing to do the simple things that even a caveman will do. Right? That’s what you’re talking about? It’s a very simple thing. Yeah.

MICHAEL: 
Well, that’s like the foundation, right? That’s the starting point. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things you could do to really, you know, to accelerate the growth to accentuate the success. But the foundation of all of it is the discipline, right? It’s, it’s getting in the office early in the morning, making those phone calls and then you start doing things like radio, TV, billboards, you know, other other great marketing channels, right? Social media, there’s a million different great marketing channels. But those are built on top of that foundation of, you know, I’m going to get up every morning, I’m going to be aggressive with the process. And so

ATTILIO: 
yeah, I mean, I always know you would agree with this. But you can have a marketing based business that’s prospecting, enhance, or you can have a prospecting based business, that’s marketing enhance a journey, Adrian, and I definitely run a prospecting based business that’s marketing enhanced, because no matter what’s going on with the market, it doesn’t cause anything that big of a phone. That’s right.

ADRIENNE: 
That’s right. Why did I say to open house, right? I mean, gotta get in front of people. This is an agent,

ATTILIO: 
who’s super good. Ruben, shout out to Ruben getting it dialed in, he hasn’t been meaning standard. I said, get your okole. That’s Hawaiian for Butt in an open house every day for the next 30 days. He’s like, doing 20 days into it. And he says, it’s amazing how focused I got.

MICHAEL: 
Your point, you know, and by the way, I consider open houses prospecting, right? I mean, that’s, that’s, and to your point, I would, if I look across the country right now, at all the top agents across the country, the ones that have a marketing based business that is prospecting enhanced, they do well, all right, as long as that prospecting component is there, but the ones that have a prospecting business, that’s marketing hands, they crush it, yeah, they, because they’re the ones that have the most discipline. And so those are the ones where when you add that marketing component to their prospecting, all of a sudden, it’s like putting gas on a fire, and they just explode immense rocket fuel to them. And so that being said, the opposite is not necessarily true. Because for someone who has grown up in a marketing environment, and is now trying to add the prospecting, the prospecting, feels really hard to them, right. Whereas the person that’s been, you know, come up through a prospecting environment, and they’re just adding marketing man, that’s easy, man now, and just got a whole lot easier. It didn’t get harder, it got tons easier. And so, you know, and along with that, I think the component, you know, lead generation is very important. But I think that I think the component that gets really missed, that is the most important is the lead follow up. And you look at these agents, you know, who are the top agents around the country, it’s the people that have, you know, figured out lead generation, they’ve created a surplus of leads, and then they’ve gone out and they’ve really learned lead follow up at a deep level. And once they learn that, game over, like, because the person who follows up the most, they’re going to, they’re going to be the one that gets the business period. And that’s just because most people, they won’t make more than one or two calls to somebody before they give up. Whereas the person that’s really going to follow up, they might follow up with somebody 27 times over two or three years before that person finally does business with them. In fact, the average right now do you guys know that right now in America right now? Yes. It’s taking on average 28 months from the time a listing lead comes in till the time that person list their home is on average. 28 Crazy, right? Yes.

ADRIENNE: 
That’s a lot of follow up. And yeah, discipline.

ATTILIO: 
Confucius say take 28 months so

ADRIENNE: 
yeah, and they would see like some of our listings right now. You know, we may be talking to them Well, years ago. Eric, we can say his name but he was a guest on our show. He was a guest on the show for years. years. Yes, warriors were talking to him counseling him helping him through all these different odds and ends and

ATTILIO: 
went to Europe moving back to the mainland moving back to Hawaii.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah, remodeling his home. Like there’s just problems with you know, there’s just all sorts of issues.

ATTILIO: 
And when we finished up, I don’t get to talk to you on Mondays we update. I’m gonna miss you guys. So now it’s like Margarita Monday updates. Hey, do you have any good margaritas this week? Because we’re not updating them

ADRIENNE: 
to say live. Oh, yeah. So yeah. So follow up is, is crucial. 70 80%

ATTILIO: 
of your income, right from the follow up? Well, you know, yeah, call the woods and they never go back to me, I guess they’re not interested.

MICHAEL: 
There’s a script that I always like to teach people, the ones that are the ones that are really reluctant to follow up tenaciously over a long period of time. And I just tell them, here’s the magic strip. This is the one script you need to learn. You’re ready for it. I hope everybody’s writing. Yeah, would you? Would you like? Would you like fries with that? That’s the only script they need to learn? Would you like fries with? Once they learn that script, they’re gonna know they’re gonna know exactly what they need to say every day at work? Because guess what, you won’t be in real estate anymore. If you don’t like long term nurture.

ATTILIO: 
I will tell you right now, the one sentence heard by more part time Realtors when they when they put you on hold, but they forgot to hit the mute button. Yes. Would you like fries with that?

ADRIENNE: 
So okay, so on that note, I know that we have some topics that you know, we are going to be touching on. Yeah. So the next topic is should agents have a side hustle, side

ATTILIO: 
hustle?

MICHAEL: 
You know, it’s such a great topic. And you know, here’s the thing. I’m not opposed to side hustles that relate to real estate, I have a real challenge with an agent that says, you know, I’m gonna go out, I’m going to have this side hustle. And I’m going to, you know, make money building websites for people or,

ATTILIO: 
you know, like, Uber. Yeah. Well,

MICHAEL: 
that’s, that’s a very common side hustle for a lot of agents. Did

ATTILIO: 
you know The there are the same number of drivers for Uber and Lyft, as there are members in the car. I’m just kidding. Just

ADRIENNE: 
kidding, just making stuff up. So I think with that with a side hustle, you know, as you’re building your business and getting into it, it’s okay to bridge that gap. But it can be a distraction, if it’s not in that same industry. So for example, if you’re an active real estate investor as your side hustle, and also helping clients, I think that those go together hand in hand. But you

MICHAEL: 
Well, I see people all the time that have dual Can we call we don’t call them part time agents, we say their dual career. And the reason is because if you if you go at it thinking I’m going to work 20 hours a week in real estate until I start getting my feet under me, and I start making some money, then I get it, that’s not gonna work. But if you go at it, like, Okay, I’ve got this job over here, that’s 40 hours a week, and that’s, you know, that’s my, that’s my day job that’s gonna, you know, pay the bills today. And then I’ve got this other job over here. That’s also 40 hours a week on real estate right? Now, you’ve got a chance right now. But guess what you’re gonna have to do during your 40 hours of real estate time, you’re gonna feel a lot more focused and disciplined than the other agents out there. And I can tell you, I’ve got lots of clients who started this way Amber Flynn Jared is a great example of this Amber. And actually, a lot of the top agents on her team all started off as what we call dual career. And, in fact, I want to say her top five agents, or all dual career. Now Amber, when she started selling real estate, was also dual career she’s now doing she’s in a town of 35,000 people, a very small town in Cookeville, Tennessee, and she did 497 turns into

ATTILIO: 
Cookeville here, and

ADRIENNE: 
you know, it’s funny. That’s my that’s where my son goes to school is in Cookeville. Tennessee.

ATTILIO: 
School trade school. Yes. Oh,

MICHAEL: 
that’s awesome. Well, she’s the number one team she owns the number one team in Cookeville, Tennessee. They’re on track this year to do 663 transactions. Wow. And okay.

ATTILIO: 
Okay, she can you know, she can get the all beef hot dogs as opposed support,

MICHAEL:
right? Yeah, she doesn’t have to do the veggie dogs or anything like that, or the or the, you know, the cheap ones. The good the good hot dogs. Tinker Johnsonville I think she’s doing real good. But that being said, you know, she started off as dual career but get this she decided that she was going to make this hurt work for her right. Peter Boutrous. Same thing. He was working a government job and he said no, look, I’m gonna put the time in. I’m gonna they both did this and all the people that have seemed to have success with this, make the decision that they’re going to put the time in and they’re going to work those 40 hours every minute. They have And guess what they’re sacrificing because every time you say yes to something, you got to say no to something. Right. So they’re sacrificing time with their family. They’re sacrificing going out with their buddies on the weekend. They’re sacrificing drinking, you know? Because yeah. Oh, they’re sacrificing sleep. They’re sacrificing lino downtime. You guys to make Yeah, Netflix, right? There’s no known as Netflix and chill for them. Right? Yes, word. Right. Well,

ADRIENNE: 
that was Attilio he was he was triple he had the triple curse.

ATTILIO: 
I want the three of us to share our personal stories from the I call it the acorn that turned into the what’s the tree? Acorn can oak tree? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Acorn to Oak Tree story that all of us real quick. So I had a full time job. I was working at servco as a manufacturer’s rep for split ACs. I also taught the motorcycle basic rider course at the community college. Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday. And then I was a part time stevedore for this temp agency and had 11 listings.

ADRIENNE: 
Oh, my God, and didn’t sleep. And my

ATTILIO: 
beautiful mother and my kids at the time was at home raising the kids. So it was Do or die. And this is what I tell agents that like, oh, I have a significant other makes plenty money. Like how do I bridge that gap? And we got savings and we got all this time and I can focus on my business. Baloney. When you don’t have time. You giddy up. You get here. I think that’s the problem. You get too much time to start your business. Yeah, but anyway, yep. Fast forward. Today. I only do one thing I sell real estate. And I lift weights with my 16 year old workout. And I work out. I love working out anyway. Michael, you acorn to the oak tree? What was it in the beginning for you?

MICHAEL: 
So I was I was as a young man, I was before I graduated high school I was, you know, I owned a landscaping company. I mean, I did all kinds of stuff as a kid. But you know, I had a landscaping company had about 30 kids working for me going out and mowing lawns and all this kind of stuff. And I’m like, Dude, this is this is not going to be my long term gig. And I started looking for well, you know, where am I going to make the most money? And then once I make money, how am I going to invest properly? And how am I gonna turn that money into a lot more money? Well, the easiest career is you gotta be in sales, right? If you if you don’t want to go to college, and you want to make a lot of money, and you can talk well then guess what? You sales, right? And where do most people you know, so if I’m going to sell I need to find an expensive product to sell. It’s gonna pay me so it’s either airplanes or real estate. And so then I thought, Okay, well, where do people may, you know, like where to most millionaires make their money and it’s real estate. So I thought, well, real estate sales make sense, right. So I got all my credits early before I graduated high school. And so I went to summer school between my junior and my senior year, so I wouldn’t have to go to school once I turned 18. As soon as I turned 18 went out, got my real estate license. And before I graduated high school, I was the number one agent my office. Wow. And it sounds great. But all it meant was I was just less broke than the other ones. Right? I still broke just less broke than everybody else. But I’ll tell you what, what what was interesting is, how does an 18 year old kid come along and out produce 150 adults moustache didn’t have a great mustache. But I did have discipline. And so to Adrienne to your point. That’s all it took. And right if you have a modicum of intelligence, and you will, and you’ll just do an unreasonable amount of work. Guess what you can out produce anybody in this business? You absolutely can. I don’t care who it is. There are people right now, we don’t know who the number one agents going to be five years from now? Because

ATTILIO: 
they don’t have a license yet.

MICHAEL:
They probably don’t. Yes, right. I’ve

ATTILIO: 
seen people like blasting past where age are in a lot shorter time a lot younger, just knocking it out of the park and power to them. We love it. Love seeing that. Absolutely.

ADRIENNE: 
Well, Michael, we have about five minutes left in the show. And if you want to touch on the investing in real estate question because I like that part of the REIT mastermind was like okay, it reminded us and I took your formula, and just started to apply it. And we’re in escrow and a property in Alabama in Alabama. I’m putting offers in on other properties as well as it is fine

ATTILIO: 
in escrow on a single family home and cooksville tent. No, no.

ADRIENNE: 
That’ll be next because that’s where my son is going to school. He wants to buy property there. So we’ll be we’ll be reaching out. So

MICHAEL: 
what So what’s congratulations on your property By the way?

ADRIENNE: 
Thank you very you know, everybody, formula

ATTILIO: 
either blow up a myth or get on the step one. How do we invest in

MICHAEL: 
real Okay, so, so here’s the deal. First of all, everybody needs to be buying real estate, right? I mean, there’s the fact of matter is if you’re not buying real estate, you’re you’re getting behind, you’re falling behind, you know, any cash, you’ve got the bank, the inflation is going to take care of that. It’s going to whittle that down to nothing. Anytime you’re investing in the stock market, you’re making 27 times less than you should be on your money. I can make 27 Eight Tax returns in real estate what I can make in the stock market. And I can do it with a far less risk. And so the real estate’s the place to be. So what do I buy? Number one I buy in red states, and this has nothing to do with politics. I well, I mean, I shouldn’t say it has nothing to do with my politics. I don’t care if you’re black, white, Republican, Democrat, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, I don’t get hurt by any of that stuff. You know, what I care about? Can you get along? Can we help each other out? Can we make money together? You know, you know, can we respect one another? Those are things I care about. But here’s what I will tell you when it comes to real estate. Red states favorite landlords, blue states favorite tenants are? Where do you think I buy, buy, buy and read statements, because that’s where that’s where they favorite landlords, right? And so it just, it’s a good business decision. Like you saw what happened to Trump in New York and all of my buddies that invested in New York, they’re pulling all their money out of it now. Nobody wants to buy they’re in theirs for good reason. Nice. So that being said, I also buy on something called the 1% rule. In other words, if I buy a house for $500,000, it must rent down for $5,000 A month or I will not buy it. Next, it’s got to have 20% equity. And that means I either put 20% down or I get a really good deal on it or whatever. But no matter what, when I close on a property, I’ve got 20% equity in that property. And then number three, I have 25% arbitrage very important, that means the difference between the principal interest taxes, insurance, and the rent that I collect must be at least 25%. So my rent has to be at least 25% higher than my guy. Now that doesn’t guarantee cashflow. But it’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be very cashflow positive on that property if I follow that rule.

ATTILIO: 
Because most people don’t speak French.

MICHAEL:
That being said, guys, it is such a big deal following these simple rules, will for the most part keep you out of trouble. I also I don’t buy for appreciation I buy for cash flow. Now appreciation is going to happen. That’s just icing on the cake. And then I take advantage of things like I’ve got somebody paying down my mortgage, my property is going up in value. I take advantage of leverage, right because I you know, for every dollar I invest, I’m actually getting five times that money in the investment because I might put 20% down but the bank’s putting the other 80% up, right? Yes. So they’re paying, they’re paying for 80% for this property. Or I’m using them using 80% of their money to and I’m grilling on 100% of that right? And then I get depreciation and tax benefits.

ADRIENNE: 
I get all those tax benefits.

ATTILIO: 
Depreciation is the number one prescription for depression. When you have old taxes that’s right. My accountant have prescribed for me depreciation you say for us with how much taxes I owe and Cost Segregation Take two pills of depreciation call me in the morning and

ADRIENNE: 
my my like well, we unfortunately we are out of time we need to have a Part B. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. We love the content, the information, Michael,

ATTILIO: 
where can people get a hold of you? Because they’re gonna want more of you? Yes. Where? All right.

MICHAEL: 
So very quickly, I say this we need next time we do this we need to show real estate agents how they’ll never pay taxes again, if they don’t, we’re gonna tell them today. And so that’s that’s critical. So if they people want to get a hold of me, obviously can follow me on social media. You know, live search, Michael hellickson, h e l l i c k s o n on social media. I’m on Facebook a lot. You can certainly search for Club Wealth, that’s our company. But if you go to, if people want to get a hold of me, they want to learn more. Just shoot me a text message. I’ll even give you my cell phone number. Give it 20630064532063006453 You guys want to get a hold of me shoot me a text message. I’ll give you some more ways we can contact one another to help you out where I can help you out. And yeah, we’ll go from

ADRIENNE: 
there. Alright, Thanks, Michael. Thank you. Aloha.

Follow Us On Social Media