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Relationship Currency—A Live Conversation

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Following up on recent podcast episodes about The Five Currencies (Financial, Effort, Time, Expertise and Relationship), Jeff hosts a live discussion with friend and coaching client Joe Hefley. In this episode, Jeff and Joe have an engaging conversation about the real-life, day-to-day dynamics of growing an “account” full of Relationship Currency.

Episode Transcript

Almost any currency, you have to earn in some way money, you’ve got to, you’ve got to figure out it earn that time, you’ve got to make time when you build relationships, you might have somebody who’s got that time, you might have somebody who’s got the money, you might have somebody who’s got the expertise that you don’t have that you can draw from there well, and because you’ve created a good relationship with him a friendship, some sort of bond, you’re exchanging, you’re not just constantly asking and taking from somebody and if you’re really building a relationship, well, it is back and forth. It’s not a one way thing.

Welcome to racking up rentals, a show about how regular people, those of us without huge war chest of capital, insider connections, can build lasting wealth acquiring a portfolio of buy and hold real estate. But we don’t just go mainstream looking at what’s on the market and asking banks for loans, nor are we posting WE BUY HOUSES signs, we’re just looking for quote, motivated sellers to make lowball offers to you see, we are people oriented dealmakers, we sit down directly with sellers to work out Win Win deals without agents or any other obstacles, and buy properties nobody else even knows are for sale. I’m Jeff from a thoughtful real estate entrepreneur. If you’re the kind of real estate investor who wants long term wealth, not get rich quick gimmicks or pictures of yourself holding fat checks on social media, this show is for you, join me and quietly become the wealthiest person on your block. Now let’s go rack up a rental portfolio. Hey, welcome back. And thank you for joining me for another episode of racking up rentals. We’ve got a really cool and different type of show for you today. But first, just know that the show notes for this episode can be found at thoughtful our e.com/e 137. And if you would, please do us a big favor by hitting that subscribe button in your podcast app or the Follow button. It would really help you to make sure of course you don’t miss any other episodes. But it really also helps fellow thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs to find the show, because the podcast platforms know that you are listening onward with today’s episode. So like I mentioned, we have a cool in different type of episode today. Now, as you might recall, a while back, I wrote and published a PDF guide called the other four currencies. And it was about how to use your non cash resources in your real estate investing efforts. And what it really ends up focusing on is the idea of relationship, capital. And that when you have relationship capital, it’s almost like having a bank account. And as you build relationships with people, it’s almost like you are making deposits into that bank account. And you are stockpiling that form of currency. And then there are absolutely ways that you can use that currency later to get your real estate investing deals. Done. So not too long after I published this, I got a message from my friend and deals workshop coaching client, Joe Heffley. And Joe said, you know, I’ve got a couple thoughts on this as it really got my wheels turning. And I’d like to chat about it with you if you’re open to that. And I thought about and I said yeah, of course I’m open to that. But I had this idea. I said you know what, I bet we’re gonna have a discussion here that other people might really benefit from hearing. So I suggested to Joe that we record our conversation, just have a normal conversation, but recorded and then make it available to the rest of our thoughtful real estate entrepreneur community through the podcast. And he graciously accepted that. And so that’s what we’ve got for you today. So without further ado, I’m going to transition here towards letting us listen to the conversation that Joe and I had about the kind of practical everyday sort of aspects of how we think about relationship capital and the other four currencies, in the pursuit of everything we are trying to accomplish in our real estate, investing businesses and life. Alright, so without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Joe and I. Okay, Joe, thanks for joining me.

Of course, thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I should say thank you, because really, this conversation is at your suggestion, and I know that you know, when I when I released the the other four currencies PDF guide thing the other day I and we were talking about relationship currency, I know that, you know, kind of resonated with you and also kind of got your wheels turning a little bit and allowed you to probably put some words some things it sounds like you really have already kind of believed in for a long time.

Almost Definitely. It’s something I could really hold on to I mean, when you look at a lot of the other currencies, it’s some people look at money. It’s intimidating look at time, like all right, where am I going to find the time well, relationships, it’s something that you don’t have to put too much time into, but you do have to put in effort. Yeah. Yeah,

absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, when you and I were talking sort of in prep for this conversation, to share with everybody else, one of the things that you mentioned that I, I thought was just a cool and unique angle on this is that I, I presented the five currencies as sort of five separate things. And just for the idea that we’re always trading one for the other, you know, we’re often trading time for expertise, and then we’re trading, you know, energy for, you know, money or whatever it might be. But one of the things you pointed out was that if you look at the other four currencies, it’s like relationship is actually upstream of all of them, in a sense that that relationship is something that opens a door and leads to those other ones. Can you tell us a little bit about what you meant when you were telling me that?

Yeah, definitely. I think the best way to say it is time. Well, almost any currency, you have to earn in some way money, you’ve got to, you’ve got to figure out how to earn that time, you’ve got to make time. When you build relationships, you might have somebody who’s got that time, you might have somebody who’s got the money, he might have somebody who’s got the expertise that you don’t have that you can draw from there. Well, and because you’ve created a good relationship with them a friendship, some sort of bond, you’re exchanging, you’re not just constantly asking, and taking from somebody and if you’re really building a relationship, well, it is back and forth. It’s not a one way thing. So having having good relationships, genuine relationships with people will open the door for everything else that that you might be short, verses time. I mean, other things can can help you lead to the other, the other currencies, you know, time can get you money, but money can’t buy you friends. Yeah,

I so yeah. When you said that a few minutes ago, that really resonated with me as well. It’s like in my notes, I wrote the word relationship and an arrow, and it’s like, the arrow could go to any of the other four currencies. But you can’t rearrange that in exactly the same way. Every time. You can’t say, you know, money leads to arrow relationships to your point, right, that, you know, you can’t by your friends, you actually have to earn those in a different way. So it’s like, so I guess, to paraphrase my thought on what what I took away from, you know, your reflection, and I think one of the big reasons why it’s valuable to share this conversation with everybody is that it’s like, if you’re looking at the other four, if you’re looking at the currencies, that you feel like you might have a low balance on time, money, energy, expertise, even if you can’t go out and start filling those piggy banks, right this very second, if you do go out and start filling the relationship piggy bank, the relationship piggy bank can actually lead to bigger account balances, so to speak with those other ones that you feel like you’re lacking. Does that seem right to you, when

most definitely, like you and I spoke with earlier, my relationships have opened doors with people who have been willing to help me out, because of the fact that they’ve seen the type of person I am, what I want to do with the knowledge that I’m being given, and probably get opportunities that not many people are getting, just because the fact that I’m building these relationships in a correct way. The people I’ve tried to build relationships with and meet, I’ve tried to make sure it’s always been for the right reasons. Any time I’ve tried to give praise to somebody, I’ve tried to just make sure it’s something genuine. I’m not trying to go over the top. It’s not a look at me. It’s a thank you.

Yeah, yeah. So then it sounds like you are you’ve been investing in relationships. And you are, you’re finding that you’re already kind of getting ROI from that investment, or that there’s some reciprocity going on. Right. You’re, you’re contributing in a way to the relationship with other people. And you find that now, they’re now actively contributing sort of back to you in exchange

100%. And being somebody who’s extremely, you know, if you’re going to look at all the currencies on this cash pours, anybody could hope to not be, but it’s really affecting me zero. I’ve still had some of the same opportunities as if I had $20,000 in the bank right now. Yeah, honestly, I’m getting the same exact opportunities thrown at me. So the fact that I’ve been able to build relationships has made the fact that I don’t have cash mean, nothing. Yeah, it’s meant absolutely nothing, which actually now saying that out loud is a really nice thing to say, because we’ve had conversations and that’s something that I’m like, oh, man, when that point gets there, but when I’m not looking forward, and I’m looking back, I’ve already done that a couple times. So why am I worried?

Yeah. You know, I think one of the keys will be when you do have more resources and some of those other forms like cash, to not like take your foot off the gas in terms of all the proactive effort you put into building relationships now because when you have both of those things going for you then that’s going to be like a real A powerful, you know, combination,

or grade and building building relationship with somebody that you’ve met in some way and making it more meaningful. Like I said, Money, again, doesn’t have to be in the equation because money isn’t going to buy you friends. So whether you meet somebody that’s worth $50 or $50 million, you should be looking at them in the exact same way, like, what can I do for this person they’re gonna appreciate because I appreciate what they’ve done for me, what can I do to show them that what they’ve done hasn’t gone unnoticed. And that, you know, I want to be in their life and around them because of the fact that who they are, and I feel that we’re going to mesh well together. So how do I do that? Do I go spend a ton of money? I don’t have no, because now I’m going to look like a complete idiot. I’ve, I’ve given more than I’m able to give. And when it comes to giving, you should give all you can, but nothing more, nothing less. And just because you can drop $200 on something doesn’t mean you can afford to spend $200 on something. So stay like when I gave something to Greg to say, hey, thank you for having me here. The guys, I don’t know what he’s worth, but I’m sure there’s he’s gotten gifts that are better than anything I could ever afford. So when I’m going through my head, I’m like, money isn’t what I need to think about. What is what’s important to this man, so I got ahold of people who were close to him, I said, Hey, what’s important to him, you know, his family, you know, other things that are important. So I decided to have something made for him, based on you know, what was important to him, what I felt was what he liked what he enjoyed, and just wrote a nice, thank you. And that right there, stuck out like a sore thumb. Greg calls me a couple days later, he goes, there’s 100 people there. And he’s like, and four people brought anything to say thank you. That said, that meant a lot to me, because I’m the the new person there and the in a room full of people that at the time, I’m like, oh, I want these people to be my peers, to find out, you know, having somebody else say no, you are, you are their peer. And it’s because of actions like that, because I just showing that I have appreciated being there. Yeah, I don’t know how much further I can elaborate on that. But yeah,

well, I was, you know, I was the the fortunate beneficiary of of some of your relationship building and thoughtfulness a couple months ago, when you sent me a bookmark, that you had a bookmark made a metal bookmark with a grave expression on it. And it just was just a nice way of saying thank you to me for, you know, I guess the conversations we’ve had, and just the stuff that I do in the thoughtful real estate community. And to me, that was events. Yeah, I meant so much to me just to receive it, because it was the symbolism of the message and that someone would take 20 minutes out of their out of their life to like, I’m going to order this and have it sent. And that meant a lot to me. And as we were getting ready for this conversation, I was thinking like, really what you did there is you invested thoughtfulness, to come up with the right idea that would resonate with your audience, right? You just told that story a moment ago to about giving a gift to somebody else. And I feel like when you gave me the bookmark to it was the same. The same thing like that the actual gift was the thoughtfulness that went into it. And then it manifested in the form of something physical that showed up in my mail. Right. But the real gift was the thoughtfulness behind it, which contributes I mean, it adds tons and tons of deposits into the relationship, currency piggy bank.

Well, it was the same thing. I sat there, okay, what do I have, I have time and a relationship to give, I don’t have a lot of money. But I don’t want to do something just really cheap. So I found something that I could afford, that’s not going to break my bank that was still, you know, put thought into it. I said, Hey, here’s somebody who I know from what is talks reads a lot. I read a lot. I don’t have a good bookmark. I’m willing to bet if he’s anything like me, he doesn’t have a good bookmark. Let’s change that. And that’s just kind of how I went about it. Yeah, it was nothing more than a thank you. You’d help. You’d help me a bunch. I mean, definitely, the value you’ve given me and all your help has been much more than I spent ordering that and sending it over to you for sure. Yeah. And I mean, I’ve got a million more thank yous to come your way in the future, I’m sure.

Say thank you in advance for for the future. Thank you.

Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

Well, I was going to talk about the idea of exchange. You know, my coach, Greg, who you’ve gotten to know now, too, is one of the one of the words I’d say he uses the most, and he uses it in the context of, of relationships, and just with the idea that every relationship, whether there’s a business component to it or not, is an exchange in the sense that it’s not just one person exchanging money for relationship. It’s actually two people really exchanging relationship. And it’s also I find, it’s not so much about a scorekeeping thing like oh, well, you know, Joe Semia bookmark. So now I need to send him something back because that would that would be sort of like keeping score. I just want to keep the score relatively even. But instead, it’s much more of the spirit of knowing that like, you just contribute to the relationship as much as you can, when the opportunities arise, you also receive those contributions from the other person as often as, as they can, whenever those opportunities arise. And it’s just kind of an ongoing, like, proactive effort to make deposits into those relationship. Bank accounts, but both ways. And that’s why I think the word exchange is so such a good word, I guess to describe

this. Well, again, here’s where everything but money comes in. You can give somebody your time, your energy, your expertise, that doesn’t really take much it doesn’t take anything out of you. Sometimes, I mean, your your energy might your time might, but I mean, that’s all something you could also give into a relationship that really, when you look at the cost and monetary cost you little to nothing. Yeah, but the ROI on that again, I mean, if you’re just building a stronger relationship, stronger relationships you have, the more the more doors that open, the more people are willing to do for you. Just because, you know, they appreciate you they know it’s going to come back to them. So yeah. Yeah. You know, one

of the things I didn’t mention before I was gonna bring this up, because I hadn’t thought of it until after we started recording that I wrote it down in my notes, but, you know, you’re knee deep in the deals workshop right now. And I was just curious, like, from your perspective, like, what were some of the were some of the places that you see the idea of relationship showing up in the deals workshop because the deals workshop existed before the the the other four currencies thing, which is very recent. So I probably didn’t call it out exactly in the same way in the deals workshop that I buried, call it out very literally in the other four currencies. thing, but where are you seeing it show up in there?

Essentially, everywhere? I mean, if not, not even just through the videos, but through our own, you know, the the courses our own, our people in general, their, you know, Lisa, Lisa, Michael, all these people that are in there, you know, cheering each other on helping each other out. We don’t personally know each other. We, as far as I know, you know, Lisa, Michael never met, you know, these are all people that I’m seeing weekly that I’m building relationships with sharing expertise with sharing time with. Dan, there’s one spot I mean, from the beginning, we talked about the importance of relationship just in how we do business, which is probably the I mean, when it comes down to it relationship is probably the core tenant of what’s most important, and everything we talk about from relationships with our peers, to relationships with sellers to money, people, everything that our mortgage, Title Company, everything. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s really the most core thing. I mean, we just keep rapping back to it. And every example you can go okay, well, it comes back to having relationship built, because, again, it’s going to lead to everything else in there. Yeah, it’s going to open up the gatekeepers that are, you know, that have those good deals in line that you might not have heard of, well, you know, good relationships. I mean, look at look at the story, one of our, one of our fellow people got to say the other day, you know, property manager gets a hold of who did they think of? How that happened? She didn’t buy him off relationship. Yeah, that’s the ultimate door opener. Yeah. So it’s the cheapest of all the currencies? Yeah,

absolutely. I mean, yeah, the infinite resource, and I just, I love that, that, you know, I can, you can make massive investments in relationship with me, and vice versa. And that doesn’t mean we have less relationship left to give to other people. It’s just, you know, it’s just infinite really, in that sense. And I love that. I mean, truly, like, it’s kind of literally like the idea of, of the definition of like abundance mentality is thinking that there’s not a finite amount of this relationship that we can rack up

or give other people. And then the only other one, we could really say that about his expertise. Everything else is finite. energy, time, money. It’s all finite.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, the other thing about relationship too, is it gives you the benefit of the doubt in challenging times, as well. So it opens doors, right. And I think of it opening doors as being kind of like a you know, it’s on the front end of a relationship, the relationship currency you have opens possibility for things but even after you have possibility, relationship currency gives you the benefit of doubt. I’ll give you a real life example from just today that I’m humbled to share this and a little embarrassed to share this experience too. So just today, I pushed for it a a podcast episode, that for everybody listening now, this will be you know, one or two episodes ago for you, but it’s about how do you establish the credibility to have the seller feel good about being your lender, basically. And so I kind of talk about three three specific things you do there, but the overarching idea is that basically, if your relationship currency is strong enough, you know the overall amount of focus they’re going to be paying on like underwriting you so to speak. As a borrower. It’s really not usually a lot. So I published that episode. And I walked to my computer. being super honest and vulnerable. This is embarrassing. But there’s an email not from a seller but from a private lender who said, Hey, Jeff just noticed, you know, you usually like rock solid, consistent on payments. And I noticed this one that was due a couple of days ago didn’t show up, I just want to make sure everything was okay. And I, I was like, Whoa, and I went and check the records. And like, sure enough, I just goofed on something I had to it was sort of a manual payment I had to make, it wasn’t just an automated thing. And I totally goofed. And I wrote back and I was like, just hand in hand, you know, like, oh, my gosh, as you know, this is not how I like to operate. I am so sorry. I screwed this up. And here’s I’ve done it, I’ve made I’ve made right by it. I’ve corrected it. I’ve you know, paid a late fee, all that kind of stuff. And then immediately he wrote back he’s like, no, no, no, don’t wait, like, thank you. But that’s that’s not the important part. I’m just glad to know everything’s okay. We have no doubt about, you know, the way you are doing things. I’m just glad to hear that, like, everything’s okay. Thanks for solving the mistake. And if we didn’t have that level of relationship, currency, this error on my part, which again, I’m embarrassed to say that I made a mistake, but I guess, you know, I guess I’m human at the same time, but the relationship currency kind of helped to smooth over what could have otherwise been a problem by me just goofing something up.

Definitely. Yeah, the currency, reputation, whatever you want to call it, it, it goes with you. And that’s why being genuine is so extremely important. Because if you’re not, it’s gonna come out real quick. I mean, it might not be today might not be long, but it’ll come out. And then that word will slide real fast, I’m sure. Yeah, I mean, the real estate community might be large, but it’s also really tight knit, the more I’ve been finding out. And if you go doing something shady, I’m sure it’ll get around real quick. And nobody’s going to work with you. So that’s why, you know, being genuine is the most important part of of that, if you’re going to try to build relationships.

Yeah, it’s worthless. If not. Yeah, yeah, I love that about relationship currency is that not only is it the the infinite resource, but it’s just very much within our control to I mean, there’s really nobody who can stand in the way of us building relationships and making deposits into those accounts, if that’s what we choose to do. And it’s nice to know that you can kind of, you know, seize your destiny in that sense. Like, you can make those deposits whenever you want to, you’re not reliant upon anybody else have any outside circumstances to do that.

No, great. It just takes the effort takes time and I’m sure for some people, it might take a little bit of the little bravery on their hands. I mean, trying to go up and build relationships with people you hardly know isn’t easy. When I first wrote you just to like, say, thank you. You know, I didn’t hear back at first he looked at me like, oh, man, well, and then I go, he’s a busy guy. I’m sure he appreciates it. I’ll hear back if not, whatever. My point wasn’t to hear back. My point was to say thank you. And so I just went with that. And then you know, sure enough, few days later, when you had time got back a hold of me. And now here we are now, start building a dare I say a friendship.

You dare you there? Awesome.

Yeah. When I first was hanging out over at Greg’s I was telling at the hangar, people asked me how I knew everybody has like a, like I said, Sam, internet friends, because I didn’t want to say I was friends with you, because I barely knew you and just met you. You know, that’s, again, with being genuine about everything. You know, if I would have sat there, going around telling everybody I was your friend, you’d been like, Okay, I’m sure it would have been an awkward thing. But like, oh, yeah, your friend Joe, you’d be like, Oh, okay. Yeah.

So you’re my friend, as far as I’m concerned. So well, and thanks for, you know, reaching out and sort of initiating this conversation and then entertaining. You know, my, because you brought this up and I said, Well, why don’t we have this conversation recorded, and share with other people, because I think that we can all benefit from just just getting our wheels turning more and more about the idea of, of very intentional relationship building as well, I mean, just a genuine thing to do, but also kind of as a strategic way to try to, you know, advance towards the goals that we have for ourselves and think about those currencies and think, Well, I am investing in my future real estate portfolio by investing genuinely in these relationships. And so thanks for being willing to, you know, have this conversation publicly.

Oh, it’s been a blast. Thank you very much for having it with me. And, you know, having me on here to do it means a lot means a lot that my, my words and my thoughts resonate enough to where you feel more people need to hear it. So thank you very much for that compliment.

Yes, thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation that I had with Joe Heffley. And you know, it’s funny as I really listened to this conversation that he and I had, in order to do this podcast. I thought of it as almost like a book club, you know, where everybody reads the same book, and then everybody has discussions and the book in this case just happened to be the other four currencies. We’re discussing that topic. And I hope that you got a lot out of that. I hope it helped you think of some of the concepts and the other four currencies in a slightly different way. And be even more prepared to put those currencies to work in your life and your business. And by the way, I should tell you if you want to download the other four currencies PDF guide, you can go to thoughtful r e.com/currency. And with that, that brings us to the end of another episode of racking up rentals. So again, shownotes for this one can be found at thoughtful our e.com/e 137 Please do us a big favor by hitting that subscribe or follow button in your podcast app and rate and review the show. I see all the ratings and reviews. I’m always so grateful to see those. Did you know that we have a Facebook group for thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs as well. It’s called rental portfolio wealth builders and we would love to have you join us there. Just go to group dot thoughtful r e.com. And the magic of the internet will take you right to that page where you can join. If you liked this episode, and I hope you did, please take a screenshot of it, post it to Instagram and just tag us we are at thoughtful real estate. I’ll catch you in the next episode. Until then this is Jeff from the thoughtful real estate entrepreneur signing off. Thanks for listening to racking up rentals where we build long term wealth by being when when dealmakers remember solve the person to unlock the deal and solve the financing to unlock the profits.


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