When Chris Craddock graduated college in 2000, he worked as a staff for a Christian ministry where he earned $20,000 a year. After 3 years, his wife got pregnant and he knew he needed to earn more. This was when he looked into real estate investing and got the idea of talking to people who were in distress and offered to buy their houses. In the next four months, he ended up making 12 times as much as he did in a year doing his previous job.
Inspired by Gary Keller’s book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, Chris decided to build his own team in 2014. In 2020, Chris’s team made 501 transactions, both on and off-market, for $167 million in sales volume. He has also expanded to several ancillary businesses including home insurance, title, and mortgage.
Today, Chris Craddock is the Founder and CEO of The Redux Group. He is a nationally certified Life Coach with a Doctorate in Leadership and is the driving force behind REI Revive which is an advanced online training that teaches how to turn dead leads into cash. He is also the host of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast and entrepreneur who runs multiple successful businesses in the Washington DC Metro area (and Richmond, VA).
In this episode, we talked about:
03:59 The key to being a great leader
04:44 A great resource for anyone looking to recruit great people.
08:23 How Chris started his career in real estate
14:44 What Chris thinks of having a home insurance business
24:35 Why Chris got into coaching
25:18 A really good ancillary business that I think a lot of people miss
31:25 The problem with entrepreneurs
34:39 What was the idea behind the Uncommon Real Estate podcast?
35:23 Why every real estate agent needs to be an investor
36:58 What is Chris’ morning routine
38:49 Why we need to become corporate athletes
To get in touch with Chris Craddock, check the links below:
Instagram: Chris Craddock @craddrock
Facebook: Uncommon Real Estate Podcast
REI Revive: http://chriscraddock.com
Podcast Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 0:34
Alright, Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the Grit podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth. I'm the founder of Sisu and your host of the show. And today, I'm really excited about this conversation I get to have with Chris product. And Chris actually runs a team; he has 11 businesses, that's which, you know, I'm an, I'm a serial entrepreneur, I hear 11 businesses, I want to learn more about those. So we're gonna dive into that today. But Chris runs a real estate team doing 30-65 transactions a month, you guys all know, every month, not the same. So he's over the eXp now came from, it's been in KW for a long time. So many people in this industry started and built their careers at KW. I think they have an amazing training program over there. And now he's made a move over to eXp. And anyway, I want to dive in and learn more about these businesses. Chris, what else do you want to share with us? So maybe I'll just give an update. You know, he's got a bunch of ancillary businesses to go into real estate. He's a coach, and he has a coaching company doing life coaching, doing real estate coaching. He's got his own podcast, which hopefully I'll get to be on that podcast here in the near future. And what else do you want to share? Chris, before we dive into your businesses learning more about what you got going on?
Chris Craddock 1:46
I don't know, man. I mean, I think you kind of hit on all these different things excited to kind of unpack some of this stuff with you and just hang with you for the next little bit here.
Brian Charlesworth 1:54
Awesome. Great. Well, thank you for joining. I really appreciate it looking forward to our time together and getting to know you better. So starting out, you say you have 11 businesses, can you just walk us through like, what are those real quick?
Chris Craddock 2:05
Yeah, and I'll tell you, I, I'll probably leave some of them out. You know, every time I go through the list,
Brian Charlesworth 2:13
I just want like a general overview like hey, you know, I've got these ancillary businesses, I've got coaching companies, podcasting, whatever, investing, I left out investing. So you know,
Chris Craddock 2:24
Yeah, absolutely. And I've got business partners in almost every single one of them that actually runs in the face of those businesses, which is why I keep leaving, I'm leaving things out, because I keep forgetting, like, versus running, which is a great place to be where I'm not the one doing it. But yeah, so I'll go through it. One is, you know, the obviously real estate than a regular transaction, business, I've got a title company, I've got a property and casualty and life insurance company, I have a construction company, a coaching business, in the investor world, a coaching business in the agent world, I've got a full flipping business a buy and hold portfolio business, something called legal shield, which I think is amazing. If you do any investment, it's basically like a prepaid legal and for all of my clients that come through, you can get a will like for free with the company. So every buddy that buys a house should have a will. And so it's just a great way to protect our clients. What else my wife is the branch manager runs our net, our lending company. So we've got that the lending piece going on, I went over to eXp. So I have the revenue share of eXp. And I know I'm leaving some stuff out. But I guess I'll just,
Brian Charlesworth 3:40
That's a great start. So I love that you said hey, you know what, I've got a face for each company. And you know, we are just right now finalizing a series around here at Sisu. And, you know, in talking to these investors, and you know, listening to books, and podcasts and all these things, everyone says the key thing to being a great leader is being able to recruit great people around you. And so that's the first takeaway I want to have with this podcast today. Because it's absolute truth like you would not be able to do the things you're doing if you didn't recruit the talent to run each of these businesses for you. So can you share with us, how have you done that? That's, that's a talent in itself.
Chris Craddock 4:24
So the first thing that I throw out, is this, you know, I've always led large groups of people actually, I don't mention this, my wife says I need to mention it more often. And it did take a massive toll. But actually, I went back to school and I have a doctorate in leadership. So I spent a lot of time you know, working on leadership and growth. But there's a book here's a great resource if you're looking to recruit great people. It's called top grading that I would recommend that everybody read if you're a leader, you know, obviously anything from john Maxwell, but this is a separate one that's called top grading. The idea is how do you bring these people into your world? How do you top-grade your organization and bring in better people around you? But this is something I think about a lot. Because I look at some of the people in my organization. And I know that five years ago, these people, they would have been my friends, but they would have never wanted to be in my organization, they wouldn't want to be in my world. And part of the reason why I believe that they are, they stay in my world is because literally every morning, every morning, I wake up, and one of the things that I do is I write down my goals. I, you know, I'm a Christian guy. So I like I always pray for the guys and the people in my world, like, because I care about them, I literally, I care about these people that I am in the world with, but also when I pray for them, and then I think about them, and think how can I grow my world, because if I don't grow the world that I'm in, they're gonna outgrow me. And they're gonna say, hey, this was a great time while we were together, but I need to go into a different space where I'm not going to hit a glass ceiling. So I literally think every morning, how can my world get bigger. And if I don't think that then all of these massively talented people are going to outgrow me and, and they're going to move on to other stuff. And I'm going to be stuck with people that are less than me, you know. And then the great thing is, I look around, and there are so many people that are more talented than I am. But they're willing to follow me because they know that I'm always running. I'm always thinking about how to make their world bigger. And you know, and the thing is, you don't want to be the genius with 1000 helpers, you want to be surrounded by so many people that are the geniuses and that you can make you and all of your organization bad.
Brian Charlesworth 6:35
Yeah, that that is such valuable information. We could just stop the podcast now. And if everyone would remember that, like this would be one of the most valuable podcasts you listen to, right. So very cool. So one of the things you said is you're Christian, I know you're a family, man, you have six kids. I don't want to skip over that. So let's talk a little bit about your family because I can tell that's important to you.
Chris Craddock 6:59
Yeah, you know, it's always been a Go big or go home kind of guy. Right? And so like, you're gonna have one Mondays, we'll have six right now, huh? So yeah, I've got I got six kids. My third, we adopted him as well. So our family, it's a little bit weird. You know, I'm, like, five, nine. And so all of our families kind of like middle height. And then I've got like, my third one is like, he's gonna be like a six-foot-three black man. Just like there are massive, massive guys. So yeah, it's fun, like our, you know, over the last couple years as race and everything has been tearing everybody apart. You know, it's just so fun to come home and see like everybody all freaked out about everything. And then I see my boys who are literally, you know, white and black, you know, just the brothers and they love each other. And it's just like, man, the words guys just got to stop going crazy because it's possible to literally live like brothers here and Yes, they are. And so yeah, it's fun. It's It's amazing. I as you can tell I'm well you probably can tell I'm an extrovert disc profile Monday, a massively high D and a massively high I so having a bunch of people around. It's like a party all the time. I love it.
Brian Charlesworth 8:07
Yeah, very cool. That's, that's fine. Because I haven't met that many people who are super high D super I, I happen to be one of those as well. So
Chris Craddock 8:17
We're gonna have to party and talk about business. Come on, let's do it.
Brian Charlesworth 8:21
Very exciting. So I'm talking about your business. I mean, this all started with real estate. Is that right? Tell me about your history. And your real estate career. Let's go back in time a little bit.
Chris Craddock 8:33
Yeah. So I graduated college, in 2000. Went on staff with an organization called young life changed my life. One day, it was so powerful, so great, but you know, I live in the DC area. So I made about $20,000 a year with your mind, which, if you know, the DC area and doesn't that doesn't go very far. And so when my wife got pregnant in 2003, I knew I need to do something to make some more money. So I went to the library because it was before Google is kind of the fount of all information, checked out every book they had on real estate investing, just read them all. And one of the things that are I mean, one of the truisms of my life is, you know, imperfect action Trump’s perfect inaction any day of the week, right? And so I just saw I read on there like, hey, go talk to people that are in distress, knock on the door offer to buy their house. And so I just started knocking on these doors and people that were in distress. And like, people started saying, Yeah, I'll sell you my house. I didn't know what to do, honestly, like, I'm like, now what do I do? So I've got a real estate agent friend of mine who literally wrote up the offers and we split the deals because I literally knew nothing except go find deals. And so I found deals and that's one of the things that I've learned in life is a lot of times people think they need to know all the answers and they outsmart themselves. Just go if you want to invest, go find the deal. The money will show up, right? Like, like people will invest it. I've got my iPhone here, right? So my iPhone, it's worth probably 1000 bucks, right? If I were to offer you this iPhone for 200 bucks, you've got your own phone, you'd obviously say, I mean, if somebody offered me $1,000 iPhone for 200 bucks, I'd say, Yeah, why? Because I know I could put it on eBay tomorrow for 600 bucks and make a bunch of money on it. So that's the whole thing. You know, if you find the deals, the money will show up. And so I ended up making 12 times what I made in a year in the next four months, that set me up for the next number of years continuing to do ministry, I love ministry. But then, you know, as you have more kids, the money started disappearing. So I went back, this was after the crash, went back and started flipping houses. Again, at this point, most of the people that were in distress are, were short sale scenarios. And so the banks were paying commissions to agents, you couldn't just knock off the commission get a lower price. So I got a license just to do my own short sale deals. And then I read Gary Keller's MREA book and make it just made sense. So we started building our team in December 2014. And last year, in 2020, we did 501 transactions, both on and off-market for 167 million in volume.
Brian Charlesworth 11:04
So that is such a great story. I mean, take action, right action is always better than you can know everything and be afraid to take action, and you're not going to have success. Take action, and everything will come together for you. And that's exactly what it sounds like you've done. Chris, which I have a ton of respect for that. Congratulations. I mean, you went from trying to figure out how do I get above 20 grand to Okay, I'm flipping all these homes. Now I'm gonna go read the MREA book. And now I'm going to build a team where I'm making a million dollars a year here, I'm making a million dollars a year here making however much through and now you've expanded that to all these ancillary businesses and the one ancillary business that you mentioned, prior to this call, that very few team owners actually have his home insurance. So I want to talk about that for a minute. Like, how did you start that business? I think that's like a missing link that everyone in your situation should actually dive in and do because that's recurring revenue for life, typically, or at least, like these people are not going to change their homeowners’ insurance is my experience. So like it once you have that business, you own that business?
Chris Craddock 12:17
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so I will say this, out of all my businesses, this is the only one that like cash on cash a net negative right now. So it's not, it's not my favorite one as far as like, get rich quick, but it is definitely get rich and stay rich kind of a business. So I've had this for three years, I'm out of pocket. 50 grand, I just want to be because everybody loves to tell me their successes. And
Brian Charlesworth 12:49
I'm acting like, oh, everyone should be in this business. And now you're saying, Hey, wait a minute. I've been here for three years, here's where I'm at. So
Chris Craddock 12:55
Yeah, like, it's not a bad business. So I'm out of pocket 50 grand on me, like, what I will say is I own I think 56% of the business you know, right now we could sell our business to back to the company that has everything for I believe that our book is worth about just under 400,000 right now, so I could sell it for that much back to the business. We're finally at a point where we can either take distributions because our book is now kicking off enough to pay our, pay my business partner who is has been, you know, slugging it out building the book, it's been paying him. But now we can either take distributions or hire more people to build the book a lot faster. And you know, because my other businesses kick out enough cash, I think we're going to put it back in and hire more people, and some of my buddies that have done this faster. So one of my really good friends, he ended up being his first year his net negative 250,000. The second year, he was break-even, his third year, he was net positive, I think 150,000. And now it's, it's been going from there, but he invested big time in having a ton of producers to build the book, because anybody, just like you said, Brian, the real power in insurance is the book, right? what we learned from our company, is if you go after car insurance, then you know, it's all about the price. But if you go after home insurance, people are under contract for a house, at least in our, in our markets, you're required by if you have a financing addendum within 10 days to have insurance secured. And so when we just introduce, like, as soon as we go under contract, we introduced them to our insurance guy, like they literally changed, like, I think we have something like you know, an 85% capture rate. So it's a great business, but if you think that you're gonna get very wealthy very quick, like it definitely is not that at all. But I mean, I think it's probably going to be one of my more valuable businesses here within the next couple of years based on the projection of where It goes because your first couple years, you just don't make much money. And then also in the DC area, there are other places like I know Texas has flooding, Florida has flooding. So in the DC area, like an average home insurance policy for an average home is about $700 a year versus when you look at some of these other places where they have natural disasters and other things, their home insurance policies are way, way higher. So you can make a lot more money on that.
Brian Charlesworth 15:26
Yeah, that's such great advice. That's why I love I love getting together with people like you because I've actually been saying to my wife, I've been saying it in Sisu, like why don't we start a home insurance company. But you know, it's not as a short-term, quick, fast thing. It's something it takes time to build. And so the great thing about it's similar to your rev share, right? It builds, and then it gets bigger, and it gets bigger, and it gets bigger. And ultimately, it ends up being a really nice long-term steady cash flow.
Chris Craddock 15:58
Yeah, yeah. And, and the attrition rate is really low. I think our attrition rate is about 13%. So it's really low. I mean, you see in the industry-wide, it's a little bit higher than that. It's just about 20%, I think that is what you're seeing. So we have a very low attrition rate. And so as you build the business, the business stays strong. Are you going to do is just give it a little bit of love every year, and you'll get it?
Brian Charlesworth 16:22
Yeah, okay. I want to talk about lending, a lot of real estate team owners are figuring out how they can do lending, how they can do title. Let's talk about lending for a second. I know you have a solution. You said it's working out great. Tell me more about that.
Chris Craddock 16:38
Yeah, so I've seen all the JV models, the JV models, how they work for if you're, if you're not married, if you don't have a business partner, that's not in production, you probably should go with the JV models. But the problem with the JV models is there's not much there's not just not much out there as far as the price point goes. Because what they do is they pay the way in the lending world. You know, some of you guys may or may know this, some of you may not the way they, your basis of getting paid as your basis points, right that. And so on most of these JV models, they get lenders that they pay just a small, small amount of basis points to just a fraction of what they get at like almost any other company and they're saying, Well, hey, you're tied in with these high producers. So you can take a tiny, tiny little bit of money, well, they will most lenders, most lenders will take a slight discount to be in business and have a business that they know about know is coming. But most of the time, what I'm seeing is that in a lot of the JV models is that they're paying so little that any of the good lenders end up like just not wanting to stay in that model very long. And then you end up with some really, really terrible lenders, because they're getting paid so low, and you just see that turnover. And so I don't want to you know, crap on the JV models, I'm sure there's some out there that are working just great. But most of my friends that are in those models have had that exact same problem. I've got a couple of buddies right now we probably I don't want to say their name, you know, on the podcast, but I'm sure we know them because they're people that almost everybody knows that are in these models trying to get out of them right now, because they've been such a mess with, you know, lenders just rolling over, but what we see in the net branch model, and that's what we're, you know, we're a part of, and I'd be happy to talk to anybody about it just reach out to me on Instagram. But, uh, within that branch model, the cool thing is, you're in charge of it. So my wife is the branch manager, and she is in charge, of what we pay that loan officer. So obviously, if you pay the loan officer more, then you can get a higher caliber loan officer, right. And literally, she can make the call if it deals going sideways, and you need to throw money at a deal to save it, which has happened with our team a couple of times she can make that call for us or for any of the other agents that are working with, with the branch right. So there's just a lot more she has a lot more say in that because she is the branch manager she gets, she gets to make the call on that stuff. And so,
Brian Charlesworth 19:12
If you didn't have your wife to be the branch manager, well, what would you do?
Chris Craddock 19:16
Well, you know, a lot of my other friends they have business partners who are non-producing. So that would be the other option, you've got to be compliant, you've got to be RESPA compliant. And so those are the easiest ways to do it is you have either non producing business partner or a spouse, that's the branch manager. And so I know there are other ways but those are the ways that I’ve been familiar with and I've seen just with so many different people. But yeah, you got to make sure that you're compliant because there's no other side business that that's worth you're not being compliant on but that's the way that it works for us. And that's the way it works for a lot of my really good friends that are getting into this, that big teams.
Brian Charlesworth 19:57
Okay, very cool. I may want to take some more questions. And that went offline. But for this, the last thing,
Chris Craddock 20:03
I'll say this too. I mean, the numbers in that are just pretty ridiculous. I mean, I do believe that very quickly, you know, we, we got within five years, got to the place where we net well over a million dollars a year with our retail team with our real estate team. And I'll tell you, I think it'll be look right now we're pacing that like maybe, maybe 15 months to get to that with lending. It's, it's ridiculous. Like, we're gonna, we're probably gonna end up, you know, doing as much on that side as we do from the retail team.
Brian Charlesworth 20:36
Yeah. Which makes you think, what better way to double your business? Right?
Chris Craddock 20:42
Yeah, I mean, literally, I think about how hard it is, I mean, we're out there working, we're gonna double our retail business, but it's a whole heck of a lot harder to double that then, you know, have other ways where, where stuff comes in,
Brian Charlesworth 20:56
See I mean, it's called leverage, right? I mean, you have as a real estate team owner, you pretty much control you have to give people the option. It's this is RESPA compliant, right, you have to give people the option as to who they want to use as a lender, but you get to advise them as to options and, you know, steer them your direction, for lending for title for home insurance for anything that you want, right. So being in that position for you guys who have built all these solid businesses, definitely take advantage of what we're hearing today from Chris, because this is money.
Chris Craddock 21:34
And what I love the most is literally on with the net Ranch, like literally, you get a chance to bring in a lender that you think is incredible, right? So your clients are getting massively good service do, you can make sure that that lender is paid probably better than they're getting paid now. So they're really, really happy. Third, like the branch manager gets to work with a rate. So you can make sure that your clients are getting a great rate. So they're getting a great rate, great service. And like, it's just, there's just so many good pieces to that thing, where it just makes it, it makes it a win. It makes it a huge win.
Brian Charlesworth 22:13
Okay, Chris, so I'm measuring your excitement for a mortgage at about nine and a half your excitement for home insurance, I'm measuring that down around about a three, where on the scale this title come in.
Chris Craddock 22:42
Title is incredible. Like title is great. So we're not in an attorney state, although my business partner is an attorney. So the great thing about the title is, again, you got to make sure you're compliant, make sure you're doing everything right, all your disclosures and everything there. But the great thing about title is like I mean, most title companies don't really have a competitive advantage. And if you're in real estate, you know what the advantages are? You know, where things are? I mean, I'll tell you, there have been so many times that you know, just because we say we want to be an agent-friendly title company, there are so many times that we'll call somebody say, Oh my gosh, this deal is blown up, it needs to close today. But we can't close till 8 pm you just get on the phone with a processor or closer and just say, can you do us a favor, can you please get us close, but it's like, 8 pm we'll make sure that you get paid extra money or whatever, just like work extra and be there. And because we know what's so important, we're able to ask those favors. And then also just make sure that they're happy to again, you got to have a great culture. But that's what I love about the title is like the money is pretty incredible. And title as well. So I looked at it and you don't even have to do that much more to be able to, to bring in really, really great money at Titan.
Brian Charlesworth 24:02
So not only are you bringing in more money, you're actually providing better service because you can actually determine and I've seen this I mean being as close to the business as I am I’ve seen teams partner with preferred vendors that just don't work out. Right. And maybe the reason is because they don't understand the importance they don't understand from the real estate perspective of what these clients expect. And the kind of service you have to provide. Right? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, okay, this is this has been fun. Let's shift gears a little bit. So here you are, you have this real estate investing company moves into real estate team owner, thanks to Gary Keller and his book. Then you move into all these ancillary businesses. And now is that when this whole coaching company like you're a life coach, and a real estate coach, how do you find time to do that? Right? Well, the way you find time is because you have someone running each of your businesses, but like Why go there? I mean, you're doing great, right? Why go there?
Chris Craddock 25:03
Yeah, well, and before we move on to that, let them can I just say one last thing about the ancillary businesses that I think is getting overlooked. If you do that, I think what you said is most of the people on here have a pretty big team. One of the best if you look at dollar per hour for businesses, if you can get into construction, I'm not talking about punch out, but partner with somebody that does kitchens, bathrooms, and remodeling, roofs, all that stuff, they've got about a 50% margin on all that stuff. So the margins are really amazing. And if you have a big team, literally anytime somebody needs to get a kitchen done or bathroom, done, you will have your team with a massive waitlist to get stuff done. And the amount that you make, I mean, an average, you know, in our area, DC area, the average kitchen is between 35 and 50. Grand, right? And at a 50% margin. Like it's pretty, pretty huge. And all you got to do is have your team just make the connection with people. So that's a really, really good ancillary that I think a lot of people miss. Now, you do not want to get into punch out fixing leaky faucets, fixing some drywall, like, like there is no money there. And I don't care how well you think you can run it. There's no money in that. It's only the big stuff. So I just want to throw that out there. Alright, coaching.
Brian Charlesworth 26:16
Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. I mean, kitchen kitchens, bathrooms, and remodeling. Great advice. But it doesn't sound like that's a business you want to start that's a business, you want to find someone who already does it, you're sending them business, you're getting a piece of it. Is that right?
Chris Craddock 26:28
Yeah, that's the smallest amount of equity I have in any of my businesses. I'm 15% in that business. So So yeah, that's the smallest amount. But literally all, like when I broke down my dollar per hour per business that I personally am a part of that is the best dollar per hour out of all of that, because it's literally my agents just make the connection. That's it, like make the connection. They sell it, they do it. And it's great. So
Brian Charlesworth 26:56
And once again, it comes down to service for the client, right? Yeah, if you can offer them, someone who you know, is going to do an outstanding job. Well, guess what? You just probably earned a real estate client for life, right?
Chris Craddock 27:11
100%. That's it. So now coaching. So here's the thing with coaching. One, I love helping people, I look back. And when I started, I mean, I listened to a lot of podcasts. And the cool thing for me was, anytime I listen to somebody, I like their vibe, I would reach out to them. If they gave their name and number, I would reach out and be like, Hey, can we connect? That was it was amazing. Because these people that are doing hundreds of deals a year 1000s of deals a year would say yes. And I'm like, Well, I can't I can't believe they said yes. Okay, cool. So then I get on the phone and say, Hey,
Brian Charlesworth 27:46
once again, stop right there. Because what did you do? You took action, which most people let the fear stop them from doing exactly what you did, which is why you've been so successful. So I just want to point that out, we will continue on. So they say yes.
Chris Craddock 28:00
And I'd ask for a 15-minute call. And the crazy thing is at the end of the 15-minute call, I'm like, hey, I want to respect your time. And they're like, No, no, you got any other questions. And then we could go on. I mean, these people that are making, you know, million dollars a year, were like spending an hour on the phone with me. And I'll tell you, I think that that was one of the main reasons my learning curve got shaped the way it did. Because, you know, I love how Tony Robbins says it you can compress decades into days, right? And so like, you don't have to learn the hard way, you can listen to somebody else. And they can tell you how to call it by numbers, and just do what they say, right? And so for me, like one, you know, and I'll make this an offer to any of your listeners, like anybody that reaches out to me, like through dm on Instagram, I always answer every question, I'm sure at some point, I won't be able to do that. But it does take more than a day I want you to right away because I do get a lot of them. But it means so much to me that I want to do that for other people. The second thing is coaching. One of the things that mean the most to me is like I've had so many mentors, so many people just build into my life. And I just can't even believe the life that I get to live right now. I'm so blessed. And so just excited about the fact that I get to live this life. And so I love helping other people accomplish that as well. So for us, part of the reason we grew as fast as we did was because I had a mentor, essentially say, you know, you cannot if you were the leader of the team, if you were the Rainmaker of the team, you can't spend your time working to bring in one more deal to more deals, calling your sphere and getting that next one deal. If you really want to grow, you've got to figure out how to bring in five deals, 10 deals 50 deals from one relationship. And so I started thinking about I'm like, Okay, I know builders could do that. And now I got a construction company, but I didn't know at the time. So I know builders can do that. But where else it's the investors, these investors that spend 10s of 1000s of dollars on marketing to distressed sellers every month. Well, what happens when they find these people that don't want to sell at 65 or 75 cents on the dollar, right? They sit and die in their CRM So that's when I went to these investors and started building relationships there. And they all tried to work with real estate agents, and some of them do. But none of them have done it at a high level, like none of them have done it at a high level. Well, we started doing that. And literally, over the last few months, one of our investors that we work with, we literally spend about $60,000 a month in referral fees to them, like 60,000 a month just goes back in referral fees. And so that was the thing that I just felt was so amazing. And so I built a coaching program, kind of teaching other people how to do this, like turn the trash into cash, right? How to like you actually make money on these things that have just been sitting in dying in a CRM.
Brian Charlesworth 30:41
That's awesome. So do you do this in group coaching? Or do you do one on one coaching? What kind of coaching do you do?
Chris Craddock 30:46
Yeah, so are you ever by what it is, is it's a video module teaching people how, like how to do it, because I'm all about I love it education, but it's got to be instruction, not education, color by numbers, like get your mind and get your ideas out of it. Because I really believe to be great, you need to imitate and then innovate, right? So my wife is a professional writer. And what she says is, the worst writers in the world all break the rules of writing, the best writers in the world all break the rules of writing. The difference is that the worst writers in the world don't know the rules. And the best writers in the world. They know the rules of writing, so they can break the rules in an innovative way. Well, the problem with entrepreneurs and everybody listening to this is an entrepreneur, right? The problem with us is that we're massively creative. And so we start creating before we know all the rules before we know all the different pieces. So if we can understand the scripts, the dialogues, why things work, then we can innovate. But if we innovate too soon, we're going to make the same stupid mistakes that other people made 1000 times in a row. And I love how Keith Cunningham in his book The Road Less stupid, you know, talks about paying the stupid tax, you're gonna pay the stupid tax. So you know, just learn from other people imitate then innovate, don't pay the stupid tax. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 32:02
So you know, one of the things I love most about the world of real estate, which, you know, I dove into this world, I don't know about six years ago, I grew up with a dad in real estate, but everybody is willing to, to help. And Coach and everybody wants everybody else to succeed. There's not this. For the most part, I shouldn't say everybody, team owners, I think a lot of agents get in the mix of their local area. And they feel like, Oh, I hate this agent and I compete, but team owners are like, yeah, let's you know, there's enough to go around. Let's lift each other. Let's rise tide, and we'll raise all boats. Right. So anyway, I love that about this business. I love that. You feel like, Hey, you know what? They did this for me? I'm going to do it for others.
Chris Craddock 32:44
You also asked do I do? Is it only so that's our younger vibe? I do have a couple of personal one on one clients. But I, I honestly say no more than I say, Yes, I charge a lot. Because I only want to say yes to people that are fit the right category. Because you know, I think that if somebody doesn't have a path to where they can get a million dollars within the next 24 months, then that's not really where I want to do like the individual one-on-one coaching. So so that's the thing there where I just very like but I'll do the group coaching all the other stuff, kind of give them giving them the stuff but for me, you know, I feel like that's an area where if I'm doing one on one like they've got to have like big goals, big dreams and not be. It's funny. I think that a lot of people see education as a hobby, and not actually, you know, wanting to actually do what it says.
Brian Charlesworth 33:36
Yeah, yeah, I don't blame you. I mean, you want to change people's lives, right? You want to see big results. And that's part of what you're looking for. If someone comes to you so great. You've I mean, you've shared so many great things. The last thing, last thing before we wrap up, but I'll let you share your information. But I'd love to hear more about your podcasts. Yeah. Tell us about that. Why did you start a podcast? I'm guessing the same reason.
Chris Craddock 33:58
Yeah, you know, and I know the average listener listens to seven podcasts. So I keep listening to this one. And I'd love to be one of your seven. But it's called uncommon real estate. And the whole idea is that common people do common things. And it's for the uncommon real estate agent. I think when you look at it, it's funny. I mean, like I have a top agent or somebody who is uncommon, come and speak to my team. At our, we do a huddle every morning, and on Friday mornings I bring somebody else in. And it's so funny because we'll just give one example. Every every time I always ask if it's a top-tier person, I say hey, what's your morning routine? I don't give them a heads up on it. Now if somebody is listening here, now they know that it's coming. But every single time if they have a massively successful team, they always have a rock-solid morning routine, right? Success leaves clues. So that's the whole idea. But behind the uncommon real estate is what is it that what are the clues that lead people to be uncommon, and so the whole goal for that is because I believe that all real estate agents need to be amazing at their craft, and so that they make money there. But they need to parlay that into an investment. Because if you're just good at being a real estate agent, then your wealth is only as good as your next transaction. Or is it only as good as the upswing in the market? Right? When the market slows down, everything else slows down. So I don't want to have transactional-based wealth, I want to make sure I've heard the definition of wealth is when your money works harder than you do. Right. So I think that every real estate agent needs to be an investor as well. So I'm in a number of masterminds with some world-class investors. So I bring on I do about half of the episodes are with real estate agents, how to be better at your craft. The other half is with world-class investors teaching you how to build wealth, how to really grow that beyond your neck beyond your next transaction.
Brian Charlesworth 35:54
Awesome. So so much of what you say. I hear Tony Robbins coming out of you. So you've been to a lot of Tony Robbins events. Tell us how many of those you've been to like you've been to everything right?
Chris Craddock 36:06
So I actually the crazy thing is I haven't been to all the Tony Robbins events. But Tony Robbins is probably one of my mentors. And I probably have, I probably have logged well over two or 3000 hours listening to Tony Robbins, everything that he has out there. So you know, I met event after event after event. And it is actually one of the things that I'm very sad about. But I've not been to any Tony Robbins spends yet. But I spent a fortune on developing. And Tony needs to be one of those people that I had it but I love Tony
Brian Charlesworth 36:37
Yeah, you absolutely need to go to his event. He's having his first live event again. Believe sometime in October in Florida. So usually go, I've been all of his events, but I'm going just because I want to be there again, I want to be in that atmosphere. So I'm going to end with something I'm going to steal from you actually. So you can't just talk about that without telling us what is your morning routine?
Chris Craddock 37:02
Sure. Yeah. So my morning routine. It's funny, because naturally, I'm a night person, right. And I'm also a really good salesperson. And the worst part about being a good salesperson is you can sell yourself on your own BS. So for so many years, I sold myself on the fact that I'm more creative at night, I have less distractions at night, I'm not foggy at night, all of these different things. So I would stay up really late and wake up late. And you know, it just costs me massive amounts of success. But I also read a lot I listened a lot I felt I do a lot of biographies, and all the people that I listened to that I think I really respect without a doubt somebody's going to tell me at some point other than a rock star, right rock stars wake up late. But other than that, they all like they all wake up early and know that in order to win the year, you got to win the quarter to win the quarter, you got to win the month. To win the month, you got to win the week, to win the week, you got to win the day. And to win the day, you got to win the morning, right. And so you bring it down to your irreducible minimum. And so my morning routine, I wake up, I write my goals because I found anytime I feel like I'm in a fog or malaise, it means that I feel like my goals are way too far away. So I want to keep them close to me and interact with my goals every day. I'm a Christian guy. So I read my Bible every morning. So I feed myself spiritually. I pray for the people in my world, I think about the people in my world, how can I grow their life? How can I grow my life, I go down to my basement, I've got a gym in my basement, I work out because I want to feed myself physically. During that time, I always have my like, I've got this big Bluetooth speaker that I like this big JBL speaker that I carry around the house with me and so I'll turn on a podcast or turn on Audible book and listen to something. So at the same time, I'm feeding myself physically, I'm also getting ready for the day I think about an athlete, right? They're listening stuff. You know, we're corporate athletes, we get out there and we do it. So some getting ready for the day that I go upstairs to have breakfast with my kids talk life into them, kind of give them vision for themselves. I go up take a shower, I turn on my JBL speaker with the waterproof speaker. I'm listening to something getting ready for it. And then my wife and I usually have like a five-minute meeting, before I start the day just kind of getting having our own little morning huddle for our family because a family is a business with six kids. And then that should be another business I should add or not. And then I, we have a morning meeting, we went from having three meetings a week to as a team, we now have five meetings a week just because like the navy seals, when COVID happen. They say the seals, you never rise to the level of your aspirations. You always fall to the level of your training. So we added more training for our team. And so I teach that three mornings a week and then and then I'm on it the other two mornings a week. Yeah. And then we start the day and I usually, I pick out my rocks that I have to do the things that are most important. And I work to make sure those get done before noon.
Brian Charlesworth 39:55
Yeah. So what time do you get up in the morning now you went from being a late riser to what time now?
Chris Craddock 40:00
Yeah. So on the mornings and some mornings, I've played racquetball instead of go to the gym. So on my racquetball mornings, I wake up at five on my non-racquetball mornings, I wake up at six.
Brian Charlesworth 40:09
Okay. So let's say you were waking up at seven before and you just moved it to six? Well, again, I think I think this was Tony Robbins that I heard this from the first time, but you're essentially adding an hour on every day, which is adding 20 hours on every month, assuming you're working 20 hour, months, right, which you take that 20 hours, and you multiply it out by the number of months in a year. And essentially, you basically gain another month of work by doing that. So anyway, I mean, it's fascinating. It's amazing, just the slight changes, you know, that that tiny little millimeter shift just can totally change your life. So anyway, I could go on all day. I know we both have a hard stop here in a few minutes. The last thing I want to get from you is just your contact information. People want to reach you. You said you'll respond through Instagram, what are the best ways to get ahold of you?
Chris Craddock 41:06
So Instagram @craddrock, not my last name, but an old cheesy High School nickname, I need to figure out how to change it but one of these days right @craddrock, I'll respond to any. Anybody who wants to DM me, I'll respond and you know, happy to chat with you happy to do what return the favor people did to make. Rei revive. That is you just go to my name ChrisCraddock.com and click Apply. And we'll just check it out. See if your business is the right business for that. So that's an easy way to do it right there. And then our Facebook page Uncommon Real Estate. So those are the easiest ways to get ahold of me and kind of get into the same ecosystem.
Brian Charlesworth 41:48
Great, Chris, Hey, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really, really enjoyed getting to know you. And I'm sure I'm going to dive deeper and getting know you a lot better here, you know, in the coming months and year. So also to the listeners, thank you for listening consistently. And, you know, you may want to check out Chris's podcasts as well, which he talked about today. And we will catch you all next week. Thanks again, Chris.
Chris Craddock 42:13
Thanks for having me.