How Childhood Programming Drives Entrepreneurial Mistakes | Ep 7

Most entrepreneurs get in business to make a bunch of money because a lot of them think it'll bring them happiness and fulfillment. And the real answer is that you have that happiness and fulfillment inside you right now. And when you can do that work and get there, the chances of you making the money that you want to make go up. I've just proven that in the last three years. In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shamil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation.

With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Title Agents Podcast. Today, I have the pleasure of having my good friend Brad Chandler, serial entrepreneur, life and happiness coach, and a podcaster. Brad first got introduced to real estate when he read a book in ninth grade on how to buy houses.

In 2002, an investor bought his neighbor's house in Vienna, Virginia, and after talking with the investor, he decided to start Express Home Buyers. And if you live in a DC area, it's impossible not to know Brad, and will you buy your home in seven days or less? Those commercials. Twenty years later, Express Home Buyers has bought and sold 4,000 homes across the country and runs primarily without his involvement. In early 21, he went through a major life transformation and found freedom and happiness through self-love.

In 2022, because of the profound shift, he felt obligated to share this path with others and started Brad Chandler coaching, where he now helps others overcome childhood programming so they can live the life of their dreams. You can find out more about this at https://unlocklimitlessyou.com Welcome Brad to the show. Hey man, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I know you fairly well.

We've known each other for a little over 20 years now. Tell our audience your story, where you grew up and how you got started in business. Yeah man, I got started in business when I was in seventh grade selling blow pops at the school until they shut me down. I remember I had like $80 in change and I thought I was rich and the school was like, no, you can't do that or we're going to expel you. So that was my first entrepreneurial venture.

I helped my stepbrother when I was in high school. He used to cut out school early and he'd come pick me up and we put flyers out for a landscaping company that till this day, 30 something years later, he's still running. I don't have any percentage. I probably should have but no percentage there. And yeah, then I started Express Homebuyers.

I actually started a home inspection company before that. It's been interesting, right? I've done a lot of different things and I've used Express Homebuyers as a business to allow me to follow what, you know, after 47 years I figured out why I was put on this earth and it's to help people find freedom and happiness. So I get to do that every day now and, you know, have the Express Homebuyers run in the background. Tell us the story how you started Express Homebuyers and Express Homebuyers do what kind of business volume you do now.

Yeah, so I started, I decided after talking to that investor who bought my neighbor's house in probably like November, December 2002 that this is what I was going to do. I was going to freaking flip houses and fix and flip real estate. And so it took me eight long months to find my first deal, but I did. I stayed persistent in July and August. I bought six houses and then in October I went to my boss and I said I quit.

I am starting a company and I came home and told my wife at the time and she's like, are you crazy? We have a newborn son and I've got two kids and you're quitting your job? I was like, it'll be fine. And where were you working then? I was working with a small developer in Springfield that bought like rundown apartments in the district and like fixed them up and either sold them as condos or did section 8 rentals.

Yeah, it was around that October time frame that I went to this guy just called me out of the blue and it was like, Hey, I saw you bought a house in my neighborhood. Do you want to meet? And I'm like, sure, because I was looking for a partner at the time for kind of quality of life issues. And at that time I had a negative $80,000 net worth from graduate school. I had no money.

And this guy happened to be, his name was Judd Allen. And we went and had a chicken cheesesteak at this, the best chicken cheesesteak ever I've had in my life at this place called Edie's on route seven and Bailey's crossroads. And over that, is it still there over that chicken cheesesteak? He was like, well, I've got $10,000. I'll put it up.

And we formed our company right then and there, because I had this huge vision to have this nationwide home buying company because I didn't know at the time, but after doing my transformative work, I learned that I had this feeling of not being enough. And so I thought that having a large company, making a ton of money would bring me happiness and fulfillment and it didn't. But anyway, back to the story. We'll talk more about that later. Yeah.

Judd and I now have been in partnership for 22 years and have just had an amazing, amazing run. I mean, I know, you know, Judd Wells as well. That's awesome. What was the year you started the Express Home Buyers? 2003 is when we bought our first house and that's when Judd and I came together.

That's awesome. So you went through the 2008 crash and how do you navigate that? Yeah, we went through the worst real estate downturn in the history of real estate and probably, you know, two of the biggest run-ups ever from 2000. I mean, I guess it's just been one big run-up now that I think about it. From 2011 to now, it's just been like this.

Never happened. It absolutely. So I can say that we have operated in the worst downturn ever in real estate and absolutely the best. There's never been a run of appreciation like this ever. So how do we navigate?

We got really lean. At the time, we had a real estate brokerage team and again, back to my unworthiness. I was trying to be the first agent to ever sell a billion dollars in one year. So I was focused on top line and looking back, Judd was like, I think we lost a million dollars in that business this year. Let's get rid of it.

Because when the tax credits went away, the first time home buyer tax credits went away in 2010, our inventory went from about 24 million to like 21 million overnight. I don't know how much debt we had on at the point. We probably had like 20 million on it. So it was pretty tight. It got really tight.

And so we got really lean. We started reaching out to brokerages and really like partnering with them and offering them incentives. We renovated houses. We always made them a little nicer than what was in the neighborhood because as Judd used to say, we didn't need to sell a hundred houses. We just need to sell one house in one neighborhood and it had to be the nicest house.

So we started spending money on landscaping and just got really lean and fought really hard and we made it. I know you touched on this a little bit just right now, but what were some of the biggest challenges you faced when building express homebuyers and how do you overcome them? And you talked about navigating 08. Yeah. So Moe, I, we, I guess, because Judd was involved to some degree, it was probably mostly me, but over a stretch of, from like 2005 to 2017, we had five mistakes that cost us $9 million.

And when I look back on those mistakes, they were all around me trying to do something I shouldn't have been doing, taking on some fight, expanding to some market, doing development deals, all because I thought that if I could make that money, that money would bring me fulfillment and happiness. And I know that I'm not the only one because I run in a lot of circles and I'm in some of the biggest masterminds and I'm in, I'm pretty connected in this business. It's not just me. There's a lot of people that feel unworthy. It's probably one of the biggest, you know, negative side effects or negative things that people deal with in the entire world.

And when you don't feel enough, you try to do some crazy stuff to feel enough. You try to do too much. You get distracted. You have the shiny object syndrome. So I look back now, that was it, not the market, not the people, not the processes.

It was my mindset. I wasn't enough. So I had to do more and more and more and more and more. So if you have a business that's in chaos, the best thing you can do is figure out, do you have some of these limiting beliefs? And one of the best ways to do it is I kind of created this quiz just for me because I didn't know I had any of these issues and so many people listening won't even know they have these issues.

So if you want to find out if you have some of these limiting beliefs, just go to unlockliminalissue.com forward slash quiz. Take the quiz. It takes three minutes. It's 12 questions and it will tell you if you have these things that might be holding you back or creating chaos in your business or contributing to your shitty marriage or contributing to your kids, you know, anxiety or depression. So that's it.

When I look back at business, the biggest thing I had to navigate that I didn't even know was the thing between my two ears that that was it. The mistakes, the 90 million dollar worth of mistakes was that I just expanded to other fields. You didn't understand, you didn't know or practically just passed. It was everything. It was opening the realty company.

It was getting involved in a lawsuit that cost almost two million dollars. It was getting involved with three development deals that we didn't know what we were doing. It cost us three million dollars. It was trying to renovate houses on a huge scale with like a four hour radius. I mean, we had like 80 projects going on at one point in time.

It was just a bunch of different things. But they all had one common theme and that theme was if we can just make a bunch of money, things will be amazing. And he talks about mindset. And I know you mentioned in previous interviews that mindset is crucial for success. Can you elaborate on the key mindset shifts that helped you grow your business?

Can you elaborate a little more on that? Yeah. So look, I went to therapy for three decades. I went to 50 different marriage counseling sessions. And in one three hour session in this Park City Airbnb bedroom, my life forever changed.

And the gentleman that led me through this change, he was coaching Fortune 500 CEOs. And the whole reason that he got into space is he'd come in and they'd be like, hey, I got this problem in this marketing and this sales problem and this COO. This is a mess. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's like, I can't help you until you fix your problem between your two ears and your mindset.

So that's why I'm sitting here talking to you today, because this guy went to try to help people. And he's like, it's not the business that's a problem. It's the way you think. So what was the mindset shift that I made? We simply went back to my childhood and we figured out the times in my childhood where I lacked control or I went through some stressful or traumatic situation and we figured out what was the meanings I placed on those a mess." And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

He's like, I can't help you until you fix your problem between your two ears and your mindset. So, that's why I'm sitting here talking to you today because this guy went to try to help people and he's like, it's not the business that's a problem, it's the way you think. So, what was the mindset shift that I made? We simply went back to my childhood and we figured out the times in my childhood where I lacked control or I went through some stressful or traumatic situation and we figured out what was the meanings I placed on those events. And as children to protect ourselves, we always take on the brunt of everything because if we can control it, then we can make it better.

If it's our parents' fault, then we're screwed because there's nothing we can do. So, we always internalize that it's our fault. So, in that Park City bedroom, when I realized, oh my God, I have nothing left to prove. I'm already enough. This wasn't my issue.

This was my parents' issue. Everything changed. How did it change? I came back and I was like, since I don't need to go open new markets and get involved in lawsuits, what am I going to do? I'm going to make an impact.

So, that's what I started focusing on. How can I make an impact in the lives of my employees, the sellers, our investors, and we didn't have to go open new markets. And then these last three years, Mo, my business has completely changed. There's not chaos day-to-day. Things actually run smoothly and we're growing methodically.

I'm not coming back from every mastermind saying, we got to do this, and we got to do this, and let's open this market. Yeah, because back then it was just like, I got to do whatever I can. I got to prove my worth because I want to be loved in this world. And now I'm just like, okay, that might be a good idea, but we're not ready for it now. And so, my net worth in these last three years has grown two or three times bigger than any other three-year period in the 20-something years I was in business because I'm focusing on making an impact rather than making money to prove my worth.

And when you stop trying to make money to prove your worth and you focus on making an impact, the money will come more than ever. And I think also you stepped away from the business running day-to-day operations. A lot of times as leaders, we can be like the hurdle or the roadblock road and kind of really having amazing people around you letting them do their thing. But I'm going to go back to the mindset. I think that we are an impediment, not because we're an entrepreneur, but it's because of our mindset.

The reason that I'm not involved in the business now and I'm not involved, that's not fair. I do about an hour a week and I still give some feedback and stuff, but overall not involved. The reason is, is because my heart isn't into it, Mo. I wasn't put here to build houses or to fix and flip houses. What I was put here for was to help people radically change their lives.

But if I would have gone through this transformation and realized that real estate really is my passion, I would not be an impediment anymore. With my new mindset, I actually think I would add a lot of value to express homebuyers. It's just, I want to live my life the way that I want to and I don't want to do something that I don't wake up every day and be like, this is amazing. What I do now as a happiness coach, man, I love it. I could go, for those of you who are watching the video, there's 50, 60 books behind me.

I could take that pile of books and go get a beach umbrella and sit on the beach for eight hours a day. I'm not lying when I say for the next 20 years and never get bored reading stuff about psychology and trauma and mindset and childhood programming. If you said, hey, you got to go spend a week reading books on real estate investing, I wouldn't even make it an hour. I'd be like, no, I'm going to go for a swim or a walk or something. When you find what you absolutely love to do and your purpose and passion in life, things come easy and I believe that I'm going to make more money in this space than I'll ever will in real estate because I can't get enough of this stuff.

I want to be the best, not to show Brad is the best, but I want to be the best because the better I am, the more impact that I can make in this world. Who's going to stop me? Most psychologists and therapists, they don't want to go home and read books about psychology and therapists. Most of them got into the business because they were trying to heal themselves. Going back to skill in your business, I've known you since the Vistage days when we were in the same mastermind group.

Since then, every time I see you, we don't spend a lot of time together, but whenever I see you, you're always fine tuning your systems, processes, marketing, and we literally were never happy with you. I was trying to get better and better and better. You just elaborate on how important it is to always keep fine tuning systems and processes, and especially marketing. Your business was mainly focused on online marketing to find the deals. Yeah, TV.

We spent most of our money on TV over the years. One of the first books I ever read when I started Express Homebuyers was called E-Myth by Michael Gerber. It's all about systematizing your business. Whether you're going to open one store or 5,000 stores, you want to create the business as if you're going to open 5,000. That way, everything is systematized.

I think it's really, really important. Systems and processes, and I'm not really good at it. I keep pushing it because I know the importance of it, but I'm not good. I remember back in the days, Judd and I hired a consultant from E-Myth. Oh my gosh, he's more ADD than I am, and we're sitting in this office.

I literally can remember like this yesterday. He's got a golf club, and he's swinging the golf club around the room. I'm like, Judd, sit down. But the thing is, this gets back to passion and purpose. I don't know about him.

He probably likes real estate more than I do. But our passion and purpose certainly wasn't in building processes. So if you take nothing more away from this conversation, then find your purpose in life because everything becomes easier when you're fulfilled. It's a huge part of happiness. You're like, well, Brad, I can't find my purpose.

I'm 47 years old like I was. It took me 47 years, or I'm 60, or I'm 40. Whatever age it is, I can't find my purpose. One of the reasons you may not be able to find your purpose is because you might be living in a constant fight or flight state. If you have some of these programming issues that I've talked about that create these negative issues in your life, these negative behaviors, then you likely are in a fight or flight state.

When you do the work, and our program is five weeks, literally in five weeks, people go from lack of self-love to extreme self-love, and everything changes. One of the things that changes is you can take a deep breath because you've killed the proverbial lion that's chasing you. And if there's a lion chasing you, how can you think creatively about your business and really love your kids and your wife? It's hard, right? But once you get those limiting beliefs pushed away and out, then you can take a deep breath and be like, oh, this is why I'm here.

Awesome. We're going to stick with Title Agents podcast, and we're going to go more to your podcast and your coaching in a minute. What advice would you give to Title Agents looking to expand their network and work more closely with investors and wholesalers? And I'm not pretty sure you know the stats. I think the last couple of years, a third of transactions nationwide are off-market, which is probably a lot of it has to do with iBuyer and wholesalers and investors.

So what advice would you give Title Agents to working with wholesalers like yourself and investors? I think it's just put your money where your mouth is. When you say you're going to do something, commit to doing it. This business, I know because I've worked with so many Title Agents that it's not like selling the family that's going to buy the house with the white picket fence. A lot of these deals have a lot of hair on them, and therefore, they're probably less profitable.

So you got to set up your business to one, cater to the investor, but know that this business is going to be less profitable. But it's a volume play. It's most investors are going to buy the average retail buyer, I think, buys a house every seven years, whereas we're buying 30 houses a month. So I would just say, get really, really good at the nuances of dealing with sellers and buyers who may not always be receptive. Really know the ins and outs of title issues and title defects and stuff, and working with heirs and people in prison and drug addicts, all of the hair.

Get really, really good at that. And then go in, why are you different? You've got to have that unique selling proposition, the USP. What is different about you? How are you going to serve me?

And for me, it's really important that deals close on time, and that there's constant connection and feedback between the buyers and sellers. Thank you for that awesome feedback. And you and I are big fans of Masterminds. I mean, a couple of them, you're a collective genius, and I'm sure a couple more. Can you just talk about the power of Masterminds and how it changed your life and your business?

Yeah, I don't know if I could say it changed my life. I know that I've made millions of dollars of revenue from being in Masterminds. I can remember in my ego itself, when Jason Medley at CG reached out to me 15 years ago or something and said, do you want to join? And I'm like, man, I don't know if I want to give all my secrets. I'm going to be the top dog in the room.

And I got there and I was like, oh, I'm not the top dog in the room. So I was humbled. It was tough though. Again, when you don't feel enough, and most human beings to some degree don't, when you go into these rooms with these people who are doing so well, I constantly would compare myself because my marker was always money. So they are absolutely vital, but don't go there and compare yourself and say, I suck and I'm going to do more and then come back to your company and try to implement 30 things in six weeks.

Go there with just how can I be better? I'm going to learn something and how can I get better than I was yesterday? And that can be in all areas of your life. How can I be a little bit better of a father and a husband and a brother and a friend and a leader than I was yesterday? Rather than comparing yourself to, well, I may be better than yesterday, but man, Mo's making so much more money than me.

So I'm an idiot. Don't do that. But go to a mastermind, stay humble, make connections, help people, give, give, give. And if you're in the right place, you're going to get the investment, the return is just infinite. Awesome.

Thank you. Going back to your breakthrough in 2021, can you share what happened and the experience you had, which made a major impact on your life and mission and purpose? Yeah, I touched on it, most entrepreneurs get in business to make a bunch of money. Cause a lot of them think that it'll bring them happiness and fulfillment. And the real answer is that you have that happiness and fulfillment inside you right now.

And when you can do that work and get there, the chances of you making the money that you want to make go up. I've just proven that in the last three years. So what happened is this is. Anthony DeMello. He was a Jesuit who moved to India, so he's kind of got, and he spent 30 years in India, so it's really cool because he's got the Jesus and the Buddha thing going at the same time, so you get the best of both worlds.

That's awesome. How about a favorite quote of all time? Wow, my old self would have said, getting wealthy isn't hard, it's just doing things others wouldn't do. Look, I've got a thousand quotes. The one that's coming to my mind for some reason is, pain moves through families until someone's willing to feel it.

When you have this, I'm not enough, there is a zero chance you're not impacting your children. So if you have kids with behavioral problems, or you have marital problems, and you want to heal them and fix them, don't go looking to fix the person or get your kid counseling, whatever. It all begins with you. You are the cause of it, and if you can recognize that, notice I didn't say it's your fault, because it's not your fault. None of this is your fault, but you're the cause of it, and when you can heal, you're gonna see how things just radically change around you, and your family, and your business, and your health.

Who is that puppy behind you, that little cute, who's been asleep the whole time? That is Rosie, my four-year-old mini golden doodle. She's a pleasure, so affectionate, so loving. That's awesome. Well, Brad, thank you so much for all the wisdom, and sharing your story, and how do people get a hold of you again?

Yeah, so unlocklimitlessyou.com forward slash Brad has every single piece of contact information. It even has my cell phone. If you're struggling, pick it up, and call me. It's got all my social media platforms. It's got the self-love quiz.

It's got our How to Be Happier Luncheoners podcast, so go there. If you want to schedule a free session, it's on there as well. Awesome. Thank you so much, Brad. And that's a wrap on today's journey with Mo Shamil from the Title Agents podcast, reminding you that mastering the art of innovation is key in the title industry's fast-paced world.

If you're finding it tough to keep up with the changes and challenges, remember, you're not alone. Our calendar is open for you. Find the link in the show notes and let's connect. Make sure to hit subscribe to not miss out on strategies that elevate and insights that empower. Together, we'll navigate the future of the industry.

I look forward to our next meeting in the upcoming episode. Keep pushing, keep innovating, and see you in the next episode.