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Welcome to Action Solves Everything, the show for those who want to stop overthinking and start producing. I'm your host, Alex Montagno, broker, leader, and founder of Lockstep Realty. Around here, we believe movement creates momentum, clarity comes from doing, and the agents who take action are the ones who win. Every episode is built to help you grow your skills, your confidence, and your career. Now let's get to work. Today we got Max Moore joining us on the show. He is a co-owner at Roots Realty out of Indianapolis. They saw growth in, uh, 2025 grow from 4 to 10 agents on their team. They tipped the scales at $47 million in production on, uh, north of 185 deals. He co-runs the Roots Podcast with his partner Tyler Lingle, and they had over 100 million views across all platforms in 2025, and that grew from zero. One of the true brands in the Indianapolis real estate market. Max, what's up, man? How's it going? What up? Thanks for having me on the show. Dude, get into it, man. Tell us all about you. What are you working on? What's going on over at Roots? Yeah, we're working on growing, as all of us are, I feel like. But growth in agent count. I mean, that's the, the main focus this year is just like getting us aligned as co-founders between Tyler and I so that we can support 18+ agents is kind of the benchmark where we're looking at and just steadily leaping up from there and being true business owners instead of producers, right? Like a lot of us get stuck in that production phase and we're trying to grow out of that as quick as we possibly can. Love that. Why don't you hit a little bit on what growth looks like, how you're identifying, you know, 18 agents means 8 more for you guys this year based on where you started the year. And so how are you doing that while protecting the culture that you guys have already built? Yeah, I think we have one of the strongest cultures in the game out of anybody, any team that I've seen, and I'll stand on that. And the way that that's been is culture is not a Culture is not something that you just throw out some brand promises and good branding and say, okay, we're all going to be best friends. It's like, no, the relationship between— it starts at the core, the relationship between Tyler and I, and then the relationship between me and our employee, to the employee, to the lowest producing agent on the team, or the newest who just got licensed. You have to have all these true connections. And a lot of what we do leads back to faith journey independently and taking risk through life. I don't think there's a single person on our team that doesn't have a background where they've taken a bunch of risks, fallen, or gotten into a career where they didn't love it and pivoted. So we all kind of have humble beginnings, which makes us rooted, right? No pun intended. And that's what we're looking for is people that engage in the same and have the same background and the same story. So for that, I don't know if you got all the same like-minded people in the room, you are going to be able to protect your culture because they're going to want to work together. Has it always been like that for you guys? No, not at all. That's like on, we're probably on version 6 of the team. And after version 1, it was very clear that if somebody doesn't have an investment, if they're not investment-minded or lifelong learning isn't at the tip for them, then they don't fit in our room. Almost to the point where you have to own a deed, you have to have a deed to a property to be an agent on our team. You can't be a renter on our team. I say that we have one agent who is a renter working as fast as he possibly can to get into a live and flip. And it's like, okay, we see that mentality, we can grow into it. Outside of that, everybody's owned a property at some point. And that has been like the secret vault for us. Like you have to be able to break down that door to get into the room because if a young 20s, has that checked in their life journey and they're an agent 1099, they're probably going to do pretty well and they're going to fit in really well. So yeah, no, 1.0, it was not that at all. We didn't know what we needed. We're like, you want to be on a team with us? Let's go join. And that was the biggest mistakes in the early 2023 year. Going through your iterations of 1 to 6, can you talk a little bit about what tearing things apart, rebuilding, tearing apart again looks like. And I think that's more for the entrepreneurial listener here that it's like, how do you keep going? When do you know to tear it apart? What's that all look like from your seat? Because everybody sees from an outside perspective Iteration 6 and they love it and it's fun. I've gotten to know you really well over the last handful of years and I've really enjoyed that. So I've seen more of the under the hood, but Share for folks what it looks like, and for the entrepreneur that may be struggling, why don't you share some of that? How you know what it looked like, why you did it, how you got here? Yeah, I think it's easy to know when you're out of sync with yourself. There's always an 80/20, right? We should 80% of the time be doing what we love, but 20% of the time we have to do the stuff that drives us mad and super annoying. And when you are flipped, and constantly you're doing all the things that you hate doing and 20% of the time you're not appreciating the things that you love anymore, you probably can sense that something's going wrong. And for us, it's like between Tyler and I, whenever I see either of us slip into this like 50/50 where sometimes we do things we like, sometimes not, okay, let's look at the whole system. Is the way that we are running transaction fees, is that correct? Is it padding the bank account for roots in for us as founders, or are we just pouring in and supporting the business? I know we know plenty of team leaders who should charge way more than they do for their own, especially for how much work they do. And just looking at, there's so many different, in the 6 renditions, it's not 6 different sets of people that have been on the team. It's like 6 different financial models, 6 different sets of agents, 6 different core beliefs that happen. And for me, it's all about getting the right people in the room and then also sorting them and putting them in the right seat. That's been huge as an entrepreneur. My background comes from GNC, running a store in Glendale and then in Plainfield, worked there for W-2 and then bought one, as you know. So I own the GNC in Plainfield and that thing has been a bane to my existence until this year because I finally realized, oh, I have the right people working there. At least the right one, right person. He's a great guy, has all the right core values. He just isn't a sales dog. And what is required in that store is a sales dog. So at the end of last year, I got super frustrated with it and I'm like, this is bogging me down. Not, it doesn't even matter about the money I'm putting into it. It's like the time that I'm thinking about it. I either have to get rid of it or I have to solve the problem. And I made a strategic hire to somebody who had come into the store over 100 times saying, I want a job here. My dream is to work here. I want to work here. I want to work here. He's 45 and his only hurdle was he needed a car. So I stopped, prayed on it, had thoughtful conversations with my board of advisors, people in my life that I trust and take big heavy decisions with. Some of them said, you're batshit crazy. Don't buy this random guy a car. He's going to take it and run. And others were like, Yeah, this is a great idea. You should go look at Tesla. Everybody hates Elon right now and he's doing great deals. So got the guy at Tesla. He's been working for me in the past 3 months. We have had the highest sale months. It just keeps on going up that I've had since I own the place and enough that it's turning it around. It's like, oh yeah, this wasn't a bad idea. But as an entrepreneur, you start to lose hope, right? You're like, oh, I was an idiot. Why did I ever buy that? How did I ever think that was going to work? It's like one small tweak and getting the right person in there. And then we vertically integrated and I moved the guy that was running it, GNC, over to Roots and he's happier now and doing work that suits him better. And you can see a flow state happening and he's flourishing. He's like 4 years unhappy in a job. They shouldn't have been in. Right guy, wrong seat. Dude, it's crazy. I had a coach years ago, I think it was probably like 2016, 2017, and I was struggling to find happiness in my own business as a realtor. And I remember just being like, "Man, I always feel like I need to tear this thing apart and I need to start over. I don't do this, I don't do that. I see the most successful people do this and that." And this coach I had at the time, her name was Storm, she always just said, "Alex, It's all tweaks and changes within your business every single day and small modifications along the journey. So like maybe turn the knob one way to the right and then the next day you turn it back to the left and you like, you work out the kinks along the way and then that helps determine like it's never really tearing it all the way down. Sometimes it is or some sector that it falls into that, but it's never like the entire thing. So, man, I I want to talk with you more offline about the GNC story. That is so cool. But look, I don't think as an entrepreneur, if you're treating people well and you're keeping the main thing at the forefront of what you're trying to accomplish while taking care of good people, I don't think there are such things as bad decisions. There's no perfect pay model. There's no perfect incentive model. There's just the model that you're creating and how you want to run it. So I have a ton of respect for you to see your path and just go for it. Look, the worst-case scenario, the guy steals a car and he's gone and you're out that money, and then you figure it out after that, right? Right. The first day he started, my brother texted me. He's like, "You give him the car yet?" Like, "Yeah." He's like, "That's crazy. I saw a black Tesla in Ohio." He's already hit the border. He's gone. That's so funny. He's not, uh, dude, so talk about, like, let's look at, like, Roots as a whole. And, you know, you talk about moving a guy from GNC to Roots, and then you say, you know, right person, right seat. Can you talk about that and how you guys are structured now and what that looks like for agents that work for you guys, and then people that are, like, looking at Roots from afar so they can understand your guys's model a little more? Yeah, the, uh The best thing that I have done at Roots is we had— there's an agent that's on our team who's one of our top producers and he was a teacher and I meet with him for the first time. He was like Tyler's friend in college and that already was giving me red flags because I'm like, I don't want to hire friends of either of us. Let's get new people, new relationships. And so ultimately we were like, join the brokerage and we'll see what happens. So he gets on the brokerage. Start noticing him showing up to things and keep bumping into him. And finally I'm like, dude, why are you not just on Roots? Come join us. So he gets on, he's working in every prep period while still teaching full-time, trying to get on calls, trying to get going. And I finally got fed up myself. I'm like, he wants to be here. He feels called to be here, but he can't financially. What does it take to not be a teacher next year? So we put him on a role where he's running listing coordinator for us. For a year and we hadn't had a listing coordinator before, but I went from being all on the buy side to focusing really heavy on the list side into '24 and '25. I needed it. I needed the support. So we pull him over, he quits teaching, has close to a $10 million year last year, first full year in the business while running a listing coordinator position, just absolutely running it and made I don't even know, compared to his teacher salary, I hope it was 3x, if not 2.5x what he was making in the classroom. And for me, watching that, like his journey is immense joy. And it just takes that gut feeling. Oh, I know he's got it. He just needs the runway and figuring out how I can provide it. That's what I'm obsessed with as a leader and our structure. That's how it comes from the top down. It's like, I'm consistently raising up 2 brand new agents and taking 2 agents from the middle, trying to pull them up, 2 from the top, making their lives easier. My entire motto is a team lead. I want to help people at the top work not as hard or less. They should still go

fight for deals, but not be showing houses at 7: 13:37

30 on a Friday night. And I want to take people that are hungry from the bottom and give them the opportunity to rise. Up. And I think if we're always constantly— growth looks different for everybody, right? But if we're constantly helping everybody on our teams grow and they are hungry to grow, we're going to be in a good spot. So it's been— I never thought team lead was the thing that I would fit in because I enjoyed being an agent, was hungry to be an agent. But now I'm like, I don't want to answer the phone when somebody calls me to buy a house. I'll answer it just so that I can advocate for my agents on the team, but I definitely don't want to be the one writing the contract. One, I think if your agents don't realize how fortunate they are to have a leader like that in the room whose whole driving source is a version of success that best suits them, whether it's more time, more opportunity, more efficiency, whatever it may be, more leverage. That is a huge pride thing for my seat that we focus on too. I think it's why you and I jam out so well is different arenas, similar missions, but we get there a little differently. But I think they should really appreciate how powerful that is and how special that is as a leader. I'd be curious, have you always been wired up that way or how did you learn and how did you get here? Go back as far as you want. Maybe you were born this way, maybe you played a sport and you were a great teammate and you were the John Stockton of your teams, but I'd be curious to learn. Yeah. I swam growing up, so very individual sport. I guess there's a team aspect of we're all dying trying to survive a practice and cheering each other on. But if we audited that, The teammates on those teams, they, I don't know if they would say that I was the best team leader out there, which honestly maybe is where it is born because I unfortunately lost the ability to be able to do that in high school. And my whole plan was to go to college and swim, and then I developed a rare disorder called exercise-induced anaphylaxis. So can't get my heart rate over 150 and being plucked out and it ending. I wasn't at peace with that. I'm still not at peace with that. I coach probably for that reason. I coach swimming with my brother. I volunteer with the Danville swim team for that reason because I still want to be in it. And when I reflect on the time, it was like, oh, everything was about max. I wanted to be the best. I wanted the accolades. I didn't give a shit if we won a meet or not. Like my freshman year, we could have won state and that didn't happen, partly because I missed an event, like missed finals in an event as a freshman, fortunate to even be at the meet, but I missed because all I cared about was me and the, like, losing that and walking out and looking back and going, oh, I wonder if I was a little bit more humble and like helped everybody else around me, if that would have been better. And I kind of just led into that. Into the workforce and watched how when I helped somebody that immediately or delayed, something came back around and my life got better. And that has just rippled and compounded into real estate where anytime, like, I don't know how to write a purchase agreement, somebody leans over at a brokerage meeting, he's like, oh, I can help you with that. Okay, great. Let's write a purchase agreement. So then the next time that I hear somebody doesn't know how to write one, Let me help them. And just kind of that giving first mentality. But I don't know, maybe it was the loss of swimming. I haven't fully thought about that until just now. Dude, it's incredible, man. A good friend of mine told me when I started building Lockstep, he was like, I think you're going to have a hard time getting buy-in from agents because you would classify real estate as an individual sport. Like a bunch of people, a bunch of 1099s doing their own thing. How are you going to get them to buy into a culture? How are you going to get them to attend meetings at particular times? And brick by brick, day by day, some days are better than others. And all of a sudden you look around and there is like people wear the badge of honor, whether it's like Roots or Lockstep. I think it's something that you look at and you're like, "Man, how did we get here?" But it is that one day at a time concept. And it's the servant leader where it's like,

I will take the call at 6:00 at night or 7: 18:14

00 at night to help my peer. So then there's a day when they can do the same thing for the person in the seat next to them, whether they work for Lockstep or whether they work for Roots, it doesn't really matter. But that's just how you become wired. And for the longest time, I always tell my story that when I came over to eXp and I started working with Drew Schrader, it was like people referred to us as the golden retriever and the pit bull. And I was the pit bull, unfortunately. And it was like I had this concept and this mentality of like, don't look my homework. I don't care. I'm here for myself, and then I want to go do my own life. One day I looked up and I was like, man, this, this like me versus the industry sucks. Like, it's exhausting that every deal is a war, every conversation is, is like this needled negotiation where you're trying to create an edge that you don't need to. And the COVID market in 2020 really forced this concept of like agent collaboration and agents working together because The industry was really hard. The world was hard. And I don't have a particular thing in my life that caused it either, but it was like a switch that flipped where all of a sudden it was like, if you build better relationships and you're better to everyone around you, it's unbelievable how our industry gives, it just comes back. Whether it's like, "Hey, Max, I have a deal. Do you want it?" And you're like, "Why did they call me?" And it's like, "Well, you were really nice to me a year ago and agents don't always do that." So I think it's just amazing what you're doing for not only your team, but that breeds out through the rest of the marketplace as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that comes back to some of the events that we do. And there's some, we'll host investor events and we'll have attendees that are like, you should charge for this, or you should do a mastermind. They're like, we want to learn more. Where can we learn more? It's like, we're going to continue to give because on the investment side, when at least I wanted to buy a rental property or do a flip. It was like I had one resource to go to on YouTube and to learn, and that was it. I didn't know how to meet anybody locally. I didn't use an agent on my first deal. I just went and bought it and like laid flooring myself and went to a title company, closed on it, and I didn't even know that I needed to go to a title company. Fortunately, the seller did and explained that to me. Chase Bank helped along the way where I got my mortgage all online because I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't understand what a real estate agent was. I just bought a house. I wanted to invest in real estate. So for us, it's like I want to find that 18-year-old, 19-year-old kid that just wants to invest in real estate and help them along the way. And if they become an agent or become a lifetime customer or client or whatever, great. If not, Then we impacted their journey and it's even better. And it's been fun to host events locally and help change the landscape of what a landlord is because historically they're not that great, but I think Indy can change. Let's talk about that. Talk a little bit. What are your events? When are they? Give them your shameless plug here. I've been fortunate to speak on one and I am so grateful to you and Tyler that allowed me to do that. Unfortunately, I was up there with Murph Dogg, so I had to, I had to share the mic a little much, but it's, I couldn't get over how packed that venue was when it was like 15 degrees out in December back in 2024. But why don't you share a little bit about your event? Tell people how they can find them and what that looks like. Yeah, we do. There's 2 to 3 different events that we do. The big one is the masterclass 3 times a year. The next one's coming up in March, I think March 19th. Fun. You just go to rootsreality.co/events, but we host a panel that it's all education. So we've got a longtime flip guy in Dave Short going to be on the panel talking through his process, and he runs events himself. He's bringing all of his attendees to that. So it'll be a cool investment community experience across Indy because I think as far as investors go, it's probably the two largest events that every single time have confliction where they're running and we're running. So people have to make a choice. Do we go to the Root thing or go hang out with Dave? And then we do Coffee and Connects. We try to do those every month that there's not a masterclass. So you'll have to look out for where those are at. We'll get you in one of the Coffee and Connects. Those have been an amazing addition for us. We were doing happy hours, toss them back,

beers at 3: 22:54

00 PM on a Thursday and it was like a bunch of wholesalers coming out, nobody else because everybody has a 9 to 5 that wants to be at our events. And I'm like, we can't do this anymore. We need more connections. So these Coffee and Connects are a lot more table discussion driven after keynote speech and they've been amazing to add in. And then the big event this year is July 7th. It's not investment driven at all. It's giving back to the community. So we're doing a Street sweep across the entire city. The goal is to have 777 individuals come out, grab a trash bag, pick up some trash. There'll be 30 different stations across Indianapolis that you can participate in that. So that's at indystreetsweep.com is the place to go check that out, sign up. Dude, hard to keep all this in front of you. In your seat, how are you putting this together? And then what's the driving catalyst behind all of that? I know you talked about helping people buy their first home and sharing that. And just dive more into that. I think that's something we shouldn't just graze over. Yeah. Yeah. For the investor event side, I met Tyler in late 2020 and I went to his first event and there was 15 people there, him standing on a milk carton on the street corner, and everybody's listening to him yap about whatever the quadplex he had just bought. But the passion behind it and the purpose, he's like, I just want to create a space for people to come together because I don't know what I'm doing and I want to learn and be able to learn alongside others and kind of iron sharpens iron. So that was my first taste into it. I never thought about doing events or having a community. I was kind of in that solo mindset still of like, well, I don't need an agent because I went and bought a house. Why would I become an agent? I didn't use one. Now I know the value of them. I screwed myself on that deal. And you still own that house? I have since sold it. Yeah, I sold it unfortunately. I also wish that I would've kept it. Oh man. I won't get into that then, but you can keep going. So, and I think the big event that's gone from 15 people to close to 200 is just a testament to the need there that in 2 years that many people have started to come and come back and we're doing like, we got a new venue for the Coffee and Connects and we've outgrown that one. So now we got to go to a new one and we just have to keep getting a bigger space. The street sweeps though is The thing I'm most passionate about, because I just can't believe how dirty our parks become, how dirty the street becomes. This is a place that we live and we play and we work, and we're supposed to love our city and love our neighbor and serve each other. And if that's true, you would think that we would serve the place that's clean, right? Keep your kitchen filthy or your living room or your office filthy, but yet our own backyard is. So we're trying to hit as much as we can when it's in the warmer months, hit the parks locally. So every month throughout the summer, we have a smaller event, Broad Ripple Parks coming up in March, and all leading up to this huge citywide initiative that's ran through Citizen Seven with Roots and then Multiply. Indy are the, the three big partners coming together on it. It's going to be a fun day. Can't miss it, dude. Send that information to me. I'd love that to get in front of our Lockstep team just to be a part of it. Because I think, yeah, dude, I think you're right, man. Like, I think Indianapolis is such a special place. It's, you know, it's has this like big city, like a lot of big city amenities in it, but the opportunity to live here, the cost of living, the opportunity to invest owning multifamily, owning a home. The American dream is truly possible in Indianapolis. And I think that's a big part of what makes it special, along with the Hoosier hospitality that comes alongside of it. And it's the least you could do as somebody that's passionate about your city that gets to take advantage and reap the benefits of all those things is to care for it. And even if it's a day or a couple hours within a day, Man, the impact you guys are going to make is insane. I can't wait to hear how many— 777 people is such a fun number. It will be really neat to look back in a couple years and see that number be 7,770. You know what I mean? And I think with some real juice behind it and a real purpose, in addition to the momentum that Indianapolis has as a metropolitan, I think it's like, I think it will be fun to watch. Yeah, the idea of 777 came up and at face value, I'm like, 777, no way. And we have gotten deep into planning it. We got the website launched and I'm like, could it be 7,000? I have teased out the idea. We'll see what happens. It's such a simple idea to get behind. And the UI that we've put together for signup is It's just a hero's journey of come on 7/7. And once you sign up, then you get the promotion for all the micro events, the micro cleanups that we're doing as well. Yeah, it's been good. We've done 2 of them so far and have been able to pick up— we need to start weighing it or counting bags or something, but we're definitely over 100, like, big black trash bags filled up. That's crazy. Yeah. And what's unfortunate is in some areas you could fill that trash bag tomorrow. In a week, you could need to go back there and do it again. Right. But hey, that's what— that's your calling, man. Like, there's people there and there's never a wrong time to do the right thing. Right. I want to hit on these Coffee and Connects a little bit. Why don't you share some insight on what those are and what those are doing and just dive into that? Yeah, it's kind of similar to what you guys are doing on the agent side on your, your Thursday meetups monthly. Third Thursday is when you do that? Last Thursday. Last Thursday, but in an investor forum. So the event map is 30 minutes of connection, 30 minutes of keynote, and then 30 minutes of group table talk. I was sitting at one of the masterclasses up on the panel looking out at all these people that had just been talking for 45 minutes and trying to get everybody to take a seat. And I'm not a loud guy. Yeah. And I'm like, can somebody hit the lights, do something so I can get some attention? And finally everybody sits down. I'm like, I just think people want to get in the room and learn from each other. And I'm like, how can I put structure? So I just freestyled out. I'm like, hey, we usually do happy hours. We're not going to do those anymore. We're going to start doing Coffee and Connects. We're going to put any of you that

want to be in a room at 7: 30:11

30 in the morning on a Wednesday or a Friday, You know, once a month and just come hang out and we'll see what happens. And the first one, I just had like all these discussion questions put out and presented to my team. No, that's going to be so boring and chaotic. You can't just give people discussion questions. You need to have some sort of speaker. So we've done a total of 3 of them now. And the,

the staying power is how I'm going to refer to it as. It's 7: 30:41

30 to

9: 30:44

00 AM, so it's an hour and a half event. I have yet to see one of these events where there's not somebody still connecting with somebody at noon on a Wednesday. Tying that connection to the events that we do with agents, it is, it's insane that like you run this event and I get to see it because people are in my office when I'm like, I don't know who these two people are, what they're talking about, but they're Stay as long as you'd like. That's the whole point of this. I think there's such an interesting thing, investing in real estate, being educated about the marketplace in real estate. There's been so much change, but also so much access to information. And look, that's a blessing and a curse at the same time. As much great information that's out there, there's not enough, and there's a lot of poor deadly information. But seeing that stuff and seeing the connection of people, look, I think it's such a powerful thing. It's what makes Indianapolis great. Talk about the Hoosier hospitality thing. When are those events, the Coffee and Connects? They're in the morning. We're transitioning the day. We were doing Thursday mornings, but I feel like everybody does Thursday morning or Thursday evening. So we're moving it to either Wednesday or Friday. So the next one's going to be in April. I'm going to have Josh Wagner on who's mine and Tyler's coach, business entrepreneur coach, which is not real estate investing. However, the frameworks that he has to just get yourself right and get the mindset ready to go, I'm so excited to see what he has to share. I want to loop all the way back. How did you become so passionate about real estate as a whole? You touched on earlier, you bought your first home from a seller on your own. You always wanted to own. What made you passionate about that at such a young age? Yeah. There were two major moments. One is my parents owned a rental when I was super young. I think this might be like one or maybe the second memory that I have at the youngest age. It was their first home. They didn't sell it. They went and bought a new construction, needed a bigger house because they were having me. And they kept this one as a rental. And the only reason I remember it is because I almost drove a car into a garage because my dad left the car on. I guess he can't get arrested for this at this point, but I guess he did leave like a 4-year-old in the car. Alone. And I'll get told that that's wrong when this airs. My mom will listen to it and will tell me I'm wrong. So sorry, Mom. But I can remember revving the engine up and he was inside with these tenants trying to get rent. And this chick throws a pot at the dad or her husband, like a boiling pot of water. Well, my dad's in there trying to either evict them or get rent. I obviously can't remember, but I couldn't I didn't understand why we kept going to this house. It was like every month we kept driving to this house and it was the longest way away as a kid. And I'm like, why do we keep going here? And they, it's always, it's a rental property, it's a rental, it's a rental, it's a rental. And then they finally sold it to my grandpa and then he had to go to court over a tenant. And I just kept hearing about this rental in the super early years. It was the only investment that anybody had. And that marked me just the fact that there was like, why do we own a second house but we don't ever go to the second house? And then when I was in high school, my brother went to UND and UND is extremely expensive for room and board. And I went and got to, I was fortunate enough that we're 4 years apart and there was some good relationship development time where in high school I got to go to a college and hang out with him on the weekends. And it was close enough that my parents would allow me to go stay on like siblings weekend. And we, the first year, we're like sleeping in this dorm and you, this is a random person that you just live with now. And it's like, yep, that's Connor. I don't even know why I remember his roommate's name. They weren't friends or anything. And so he did that and he, his, the people that lived across the street or across the hallway from him, hit their parents, bought them a house. And he sat down and crunched the numbers because they were explaining it to him on how it's going to be so much cheaper. I wish I knew what the room and board was, but say it's whatever, $20,000 a year, probably more than that to live in this shoebox with another human compared to they could go buy a house on campus for $100,000. I think they bought one on Edward for, if anybody knows UND, they bought one on Edward right behind the new nursing pavilion at the time. For 90 grand. It was a 2-bed or it was a studio, it was a bungalow, just open concept. And my dad went down there and I, it was a sophomore year in high school. I got to go and swing a hammer with him and build out this like carport into this huge living room and turn the back of the house into a bedroom and split the front area into 2 bedrooms and make it a 3-bed, 2-bath with a ginormous shared living space. They shared the kitchen and they got these tenants in that were paying them $500 a month each room, plus they were saving on room and board with my brother. And I was like, this is so cool. You guys are getting $1,000. You own this house. I still didn't understand appreciation yet at the time or what adding value is. I was just like, you're getting $1,000. And in high school, I'm like, that's awesome. Venmo straight to their bank account. So the next year he comes back and he is like, what if we did it again? And pitched it to him and found a house and they did it again. And I found myself, I don't know why my brother was never swinging a hammer, but my dad and I built out a bedroom and this master bed and this porch area turned a 2-bed, 1-bath into, I think that one ended up staying as a 3-1. And once again, rented all the bedrooms out and now they're getting like $2,500 a month. And this cycle I wish continued for my own sake, but it didn't. They didn't end up buying anymore. And then 2019, my senior year, I can remember we're driving to Florida and they're on the phone with their realtor at the time, just going through offer negotiations on the first house. And I'm going to buff the numbers, but I feel like they sold it for $170,000. For $180,000 or something crazy. Oh man. Yeah. And it was like 3 years later, and I knew that they had bought it for $90,000 and had only put like $20,000 into it to build out all the stuff that they did. And now they're selling it for a 6-figure gain. And that was where it was like, boom, click. And my dad had mentioned like these BiggerPockets books or something that he had read and, or how to get into real estate investing. I don't know, somewhere along the way he had mentioned some education on it and I just went on Amazon, bought a book and read it and started listening to the BiggerPockets podcast. And that was the true marking. Physically, I like doing things with my hand. I like building things. In another life, I would just be doing live-in flips in my 20s the whole way through. Man, it's so fascinating. You tell that story and I sit here and I can feel when I was in college, I was a leasing agent for a guy that owned a ton of rental properties on Butler's campus. And this guy always showed up when he was teaching me how to do it in his black Mercedes, his black wingtips, dress shirt, coming from another business that he owned. And he owned 25 rental properties on Butler's campus. And he was a shark, man. Still is. I just remember thinking,"This guy has it all." And then you see what rents are, what people are paying for rents. And looking back, I won't get into the math on the portfolio that he owns today, but it is high five figures all around Butler and in all sorts of spots around Indiana, Ohio. And it was like, for me, it was like, you see it and then it's hard to unsee that as something that you learn in your life. And so I remember when I got into real estate, it was like I didn't have another outlet from a job that I was running from and a career that I hated, but it was always like, well, I did this leasing agent job and this guy had cool houses. And I guess if you treat a tenant like you treat a buyer and you show a house, you sell a house and you learn the process. But I think it's so cool to dive back into what you started with and then that same investment path being the identity of what Roots really is and helping people plant roots and things like that. I think it's so neat. So I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't anticipate to be— I actually thought I'd be a pastor. So here we are. I think you found your calling. I think you're doing a killer job with that. But dude, this has been fantastic. I always wrap this with two things. One, What does the concept of like taking action mean to you? And talk to it from the standpoint of like somebody who may be struggling or somebody who may need like that extra nudge and that boost. Yeah. Yeah. If you're struggling, shoot me a DM. I have a tracker for you that will absolutely change everything. I built this out. I've been using it. I've been using it since I started selling., and I basically just put out like, what are the actions I have to do in a day to win the day and also be on pace to win the year? Because it's so hard in this industry. I actually, I go to too much action. I literally will get anxiety over, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing enough, then I just do more, which then burns you out. Right. Um, and this tracker has been able to keep me at peace. Because each day I'll go in and I'll mark off, yep, did a real estate review, updated somebody about the market, had a phone call with a client, whatever it may be. There's like 23 big moments, which one of them on there is like self-care, went and played a round of golf. Boom, I get points. And I've built it out over the years to where it now has like a scoring system. So I've gamified it and it's been huge for our team to just go in and plug in. Every time that they hit one of those markers and score 60 points in a day and they'll light up our group chat, like, got my points for today. And that it's all about action. You don't get a point if you don't do something. And sitting at a stall, just idle, is the epitome of not going after your goals, which doesn't belong in our room and shouldn't belong in our industry. But unfortunately, the barrier to entry is way too low. You have to be hungry, but being hungry is only going to get you so far, right? You're hungry, you're going to probably go find a burger to eat, but what are you going to do whenever you get hungry next time? Right? And so it's finding that consistency, the consistent action and something to keep you on track for. It has been huge for me. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that, Max. How do folks find you online? Yeah, just BruceRelady.co. You'll stumble. You'll find me. Awesome, Max. This was awesome. There's so much good stuff in here for the listeners. I'm really appreciative of the time together and the relationship we've built over the years, man. Congrats on all your success and we'll see you out there. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Thanks for listening to Action Solves Everything. If today's episode pushed you, challenged you, or helped you even take one step forward, send it to someone else who needs that same nudge. We all get better when we grow together. And if you're looking for a partnership that actually believes in coaching, collaboration, accountability, and actually becoming the best version of yourself, shoot me a message online at all social handles @AlexMontagano. That's Alex Montagano. Remember, success rewards the ones who move. Take action, and I'll see you on the next episode.