WS1237: From Olympian To Real Estate Agent with Hans Struzyna

EPISODE 1237

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0

Hans Struzyna (HS): In rowing, in particular, it’s a repetitive sport. You get really good at one motion which is the rowing stroke, right? But, you go climb the real estate mountain and there are so many avenues in real estate – you can invest, you can be an agent, you can flip, you can wholesale, you can be on title or lending. There are all these things around it and there are different ways to be successful in that space.

0:00:22

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Hans Struzyna. Hans is a top Bay Area real estate agent for high-performing Bay Area Professionals, an Olympic Rower, and a podcaster for driven people who want more from life. His days consist of hustling for his clients in Alameda, Oakland, and Piedmont, having compelling conversations with thought leaders on his podcast, and tearing it up with his Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy on the East Bay trails.

Has is just a very unique individual. I love this conversation. It’s just incredible to meet somebody like this that is so driven, right? He’s an Olympic athlete. And that doesn’t happen by accident. Folks, I love just the drive behind athletes and how that connects to just the entrepreneurial drive as well, and how it can be so similar. I was never an epic athlete by any means, but I would like to think of an entrepreneur, it’s kind of a similar mindset. 

You cannot give up when things are difficult, and that’s why most people do not become an entrepreneur, or they don’t have high levels of success. Because things get difficult and they give up. Well, when you’re an Olympic athlete, that is just not an option, and Hans goes through that today. He’s gonna talk some about mindset, but he’s gonna get in, just say achieving excellence as an elite athlete, right? The perseverance to failure. And he’s gonna talk about some failure that I think is gonna be encouraging to you as well. And you know, things like this, it just doesn’t happen by accident. 

And so, but the rowing is a team sport and he’s gonna get into some lessons learned through that, that’s gonna help you. But how this also connects to business, then it’s gonna take a unique turn during the conversation because he works with lots of high-net-worth individuals and who we would call investors in our business. But for him, he’s trying to sell them a home or sell their home for them one way or the other. And so it’s just interesting the dynamic that’s some of the same in our businesses, and we’re gonna get into that.

But another neat turn that the conversation takes that was very important to Hans is about his marriage and the importance of building that strong marriage, especially in business. And business can sure take a ride from marriage and from many entrepreneurs, unfortunately. And it’s just, to me, it’s not worth it. I don’t care how successful a business to be can never be worth your marriage, and I love the focus Hans puts on that, and even bringing it up during the conversation or even in some of his suggested questions. 

I enjoy meeting Hans and I know you are going to enjoy meeting him as well.

[INTERVIEW]

0:03:15.0

WS: We are back at GoBundance, and I am thankful to be in person with my guest today, and this one specifically has an amazing background. It’s not every day I get to interview an Olympic athlete who’s now become an entrepreneur and very successful. Hans, welcome to the show. 

0:03:33.0

HS: It’s a pleasure to be here, thanks for having me. 

0:03:36.0

WS: Honored to meet you. And it’s one of the great things about GoBundance, there are many people here who are high achievers, they are go-getters, but in very different industries and many things, we can learn from each other. And so it’s an amazing atmosphere, and I hope the listeners will consider GoBundance. They’ve just provided an amazing event.

But I wanna learn a little more about. I want to learn a little more about you and your background because I think it says a lot about your success as an entrepreneur, right? And we’re gonna connect those things, ’cause not everyone can say they’ve done what it takes to become an Olympic athlete, and that’s not something that happens overnight too. And becoming a successful entrepreneur doesn’t happen overnight either. And so, I think there are tons of similarities there that happened to make those things happen. Neither of those is easy. Tell us a little more about your back story and being the athlete, becoming the athlete that you became and then we’ll move forward.

0:04:32.3 

HS: My story begins in Seattle, Washington. I was born to very wonderful, loving parents who gave me a lot of opportunities. One of the most impactful ones is to try the sport of rowing. Most people think it’s a pretty transport, “how the heck do I even get into rowing?” That’s a pretty typical question.

But in the Seattle region, for anyone who’s from the Pacific Northwest, you see it, it’s visible. You’ve got two bridges that go over Lake Washington. You see a lot of crews out there, it’s in the consciousness of the community. We as a family started doing private lessons just as a summer thing for fun to do. And I found that I was good at it and I was interested in it, so then I got encouraged to join the Rec team and then joined the Fall Team, and to simply put it, that led me to a 12 and a half year career that ended up getting me all the way to the Olympic Games. 

For context, I played football, basketball, I wasn’t much of a baseball or soccer guy, track and field did a bunch of the typical stuff, but I grew really late. And so I think I was in fourth grade, I was one of the best kids on the field in football and one of the bigger kids. Fifth grade showed up for trades, the small skid, it just shot up like that. That was a big part of my story, especially as an adolescent athlete, trying to learn how to fit in. I knew I could compete, I could run fast, I could jump and stuff, but when you’re shorter than everybody else in 50 pounds lighter, contact sports are not your jam. And so I eventually found rowing and part of what initially drew me to it was it was non-contact. It was about you and what you can produce on the rowing machine and then what you’re responsible for in the boat, and how you can work together with everybody else to make the boat go. And you win or you lose together. It’s not like you can have an MVP on the losing team who scores 50 points, but you still lose the game. Literally, everyone gets the same session.

And so obviously, I didn’t have that thought process when I was a sophomore in high school, learning how to row but that was certainly in retrospect, a big part of my success in my… what I loved about the sport initially and what drew me into it.

0:06:35.5 

WS: Speak to your dedication to that – to become an Olympic athlete, maybe you can even speak to the hours and commitment level of practice and dedication. It sounds like you started at a very young age.

0:06:48.0

HS: Six days a week almost all year, it’s a year-round sport, ’cause there’s a fall season and a spring season. In the fall season, you do long-distance races. You do what’s called a head race, which is essentially a time trial for somewhere between five and 10 kilometers on a river or around Boise, and then the spring season is all the sprint racing, that’s 2000 meters, and it’s basically a 2000-meter course, like a swimming pool with lanes and everyone starts at the same time. The first one to the finish line. It’s winter. So it’s like a swimming pool in that way.

And rowing is a cardiovascular intense sport. Your VO2 max is critical, and the way the human body’s physiology works is you just have to put in hours to increase your view to the max. Essentially, it’s your ability to process and use oxygen and perform by using that oxygen. It turns out that I have really large lungs, which made me good at this sport. I think I was in the top 5% of the United States team when they tested us or something like that for lung capacity as well. 

But going back to your original thing, the way you train that is just by volume, 20-30K a day. Once I got into the national team, three, four hours a day during practice, ’cause you just have to put in hours and distance, and it’s like anyone who wants to train for a marathon, you have to run certain amounts of time and your body’s physiology in rowing improves beyond college. And so really most will max out their potential around 27 years old, plus or minus, and obviously when you’re out of college, you can train more and more and more. And so it was always just a part of my life and it was part of my daily routine, wake up and eat and go train, and sleep and train and so forth and so on for quite a long time for, as I said, 12 and a half years.

0:08:29.8 

WS: What helped you to stay so committed? And I feel like I even as an entrepreneur, especially many of us, maybe the listeners are in a process of getting a business started in it, and I wanna connect this in a minute, like how this has helped you become an entrepreneur in your business, success. However, even at a young age, not many are committed at that level to anything, but you were, just all the training. It’s just incredible to me that, Hey, even at a young age that You’re that laser-focused, I’m becoming that good.

0:08:57.5 

HS: To be clear, I was not laser-focused on the Olympics at 14 and 15 and 16 and so forth. When I started, I was the new guy, I was the rookie, what we call it, novices in high school. And I was in the third varsity boat. And then I was just good enough that when someone got sick, I got moved up to the JV my first year. And then my goal was like, okay, getting to the JV, and then my goal was getting to the varsity, and then my goal was get recruited and where I’m going with this is I was always going to just whatever was the next thing that was just ahead of where I was and was hopefully attainable, but it just pushed me, I’ve heard books and people say 4% beyond your capacity is the number, something like that, whatever the number is. That was kind of my trajectory. Until I was about a junior in college, I didn’t think the Olympics were anything I cared about.

But then I competed at my college team, which has a number of international athletes and people who had already been to the Olympics for their various countries, and I was competing and beating many of them. And then I was like, “Oh, I might be able to do this,” and that’s when the Olympic push actually started, it was over half way through.

0:10:06.5 

WS: One thing that really stood out to me there is that you had a vision for the next thing. You achieved it, well, okay, the next thing, and you probably had some of those things in mind. It, they was like stair steps almost for you, they weren’t always this brand new thing, but there was something in mind, got a vision of where you were going next. 

So I wanna connect it now to your entrepreneurship, your success as an entrepreneur, lead us through that a little bit, and you make it to the Olympics, and now as an athlete, maybe that career is over with. I’m not really sure what happens at that point to an Olympic athlete, but how did you decide what you’re gonna do next and what happened?

0:10:41.4 

HS: The real estate was always in my family. My dad’s a real estate attorney, two of my uncles are big developers in Seattle, one of my other uncles owns two or three big apartment buildings in Philadelphia, and my aunt is an architect, so I’ve always sort of had this in the periphery. And so I always knew real estate was gonna be a vehicle in my life somewhere somehow. So to paint the picture of the August 2016, Rio games, we were a first-week sport, which means our finals were done halfway through, and then the second week was a party. The only problem is we didn’t do as well as we wanted, we got fourth. And that was a real crushing blow to my psyche, frankly, and I wasn’t in a good place mentally, so I wasn’t having a lot of fun, and I was feeling really bad for myself, come home, continued that pity party for a while. But I knew that I needed to do something. 

And so I got into real estate on the residential side through a friend who had supported me when I was training, who was a real estate agent who was also flipping houses in Southern California. And he’s like, I think I have a job for you. I think I have an opportunity. “Come here. Come down here for two days. Let’s talk about it.” Long story short, that allowed me to open up an “office” of his division in the Bay Area using his systems, using his knowledge, but I was in a different market all of a sudden.

And I learned a lot really quickly, ultimately, that’s kind of where I got into this whole concept of real estate, flipping houses, buying rentals, selling, representing, and then all the ancillary stuff that surrounds that world.

0:12:11.8 

WS: That’s incredible. Just the transition that had to happen, no doubt that would have been a major letdown but obviously, you did overcome that as well. Tell me a little bit about how just the perseverance that you had to have, the commitment level that you had as an Olympic athlete have helped you now become the entrepreneur that you are?

0:12:28.7 

HS: Coming off the Olympics, I went to therapy for a while. I got a life coach. It was frankly like an 18-month process to really get my head back into the space of like, I can be good at something again, ’cause I was so peaked out. I was so close to the top of a mountain that so few people can get to, which is the Olympics in this case. And then you gotta come back down and be new again. And that was my experience in real estate, that sucked, frankly, and it was really hard, especially ’cause you didn’t achieve the goal in the Olympics, and now you’re starting this new thing knowing that that’s still hanging over your head a little bit.

And ultimately I realized I couldn’t let this one five and a half minute race to find 12 and a half years of work and friendships and performance and so forth, and so to take that into the business world, it took a year and a half, two years to really start to get my feet under me to realize like, “Hey, this is another mountain I can climb, and it’s a bigger mountain and it’s totally different, and it opens up these doors.” In rowing, in particular, it’s a repetitive sport. You get really good at one motion which is the rowing stroke, right? But, you go climb the real estate mountain and there are so many avenues in real estate – you can invest, you can be an agent, you can flip, you can wholesale, you can be on title or lending. There are all these things around it and there are different ways to be successful in that space. And I realized there’s a lot of life to live and a lot of big cool stuff out there. And so what I know is how to be coachable, how to work hard, how to delay gratification, and if I can just take some of those aspects that I was really good at in rowing, put them in the real estate, probably gonna go climb that mountain pretty quickly.

0:14:08.6 

WS: I love that. I love that you highlighted that. Obviously, you’re an Olympic athlete and you came off that and you hired coaches. You had somebody mentoring you or guiding you. And I interviewed JM a few minutes ago, who coaches entrepreneurs all the time when we’re talking about coaching, and we talked about a lot on the show, and I can’t stress enough the importance of hiring a coach. 

But oftentimes, the first time you do it, it’s like, “Man, should I really spend this money? Is it really worth it?” But I think even your example of, maybe you call it a failure, I don’t know, I don’t think it was a failure being even in fourth place. It’s such an achievement to make it there and to do what you did. But I think too many of the listeners can probably relate to, maybe they have a business that didn’t go the way they wanted it, or they didn’t reach that top of that mountain like you said, or maybe even a W2 position that, man, they just didn’t make it. And now they’re just like, “I don’t even know if I can do the real estate thing.”

And so, what would be your advice really to them now that is saying that maybe they’ve had that “failure” and they didn’t hit it over the job or the business that they started, and now it’s just like, “I don’t even know if I can do the real estate thing. Now, I’m just not motivated to even try something new.”

0:15:24.0 

HS: Failure is only failure if you don’t keep going. In college, I was at the University of Washington and anyone who knows rowing is the winningest program in the last several decades at this point. My senior year was the first of five consecutive national championships that we won. And I won two. I went in my sophomore, in my senior year. And so we had six out of seven basically, and I was part of that early team that really went there. But we also lost too. We were second in two of them, and that felt like an utter failure, we could have curled up into a ball and got all sad and come back and not come back the next year, but instead, we realized like, no, this is a goal that we want. And we all are here, it’s worthy of our effort in our time, and it’s something we desire. And we just re-committed to it and went back into it. 

So I think to answer your question, number one, it has to be something that is worth it to you. We can all fail it stuff if we don’t care about it, you gotta ask yourself, are you sort of self-sabotaging yourself because you’re scared of actually succeeding it, or is this something you actually don’t want ’cause if you don’t want it, go put your efforts somewhere else. But if you’re failing and you’re using that as a crutch or an excuse to not keep going, you’re giving yourself a cop-out and you’re giving yourself a reason to pull back into “Oh, it failed 10 years ago. That’s a terrible idea. I’m never gonna do that again.” Or you could take the knowledge from the failure, why did we lose, why did the job not work out, why did the investors lose money, etcetera. And then get smarter, ’cause again, it’s just, it’s only a failure if you let it be that way for in perpetuity.

0:16:59.0

WS: And times are tough if you’re not committed to it or you’re gonna quit it. So I wanna move forward a little bit, and now you are focused on luxury homes, luxury living and you’re working with lots of high-net-worth individuals, and so it’s an interesting connection because in our business, obviously that’s a major part of our business, is talking and speaking to high-net-worth individuals presenting ourselves in a manner that they build a relationship. Build a relationship and they wanna partner with us, they trust us, those things. 

I’d love to hear that from your perspective and maybe can speak to your business model a little bit so the listeners understand, but then how you’ve done that? How you’ve built those relationships with high-net-worth individuals? How you’ve learned that skill set? And then maybe tips on how you’re finding new ones as well?

0:17:44.3 

HS: A lot of my business now comes between referrals and open houses. I am fortunate to be part of a team that sells more houses and more high-end houses than anybody in our county, frankly. And so I get the opportunity to host a lot of really high-end open houses. When I first joined this team, the principals had this concept of lean in, lean out, especially pertaining to open houses, physically body language, you’re up against someone’s face. It’s like you want something from them, if you can picture that, versus if you’re kind of leaning back physically a little bit, you’re separating a little space and you’re like, “I don’t need this, I kinda want it, but I don’t need it.” It’s a totally different engagement.

And so I have applied that to those relationships and say, “I don’t need your transaction,” even though I did at the time, I was like, “If you wanna blow the deal up, you don’t wanna write on, this is a stupid house, don’t do it. This is five reasons why you shouldn’t buy this house, and then they’d wanna buy the house,” or I don’t need your business, I am part of a very good team, I have a big book of business. I want you to get the best house you possibly can, and if now is not the right time and you need to come back in three years, that’s cool. We’ll be here when you have this, I have a neighbor who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he owns a publicly traded company that he took public and he’s still the owner, which is really rare, especially in the industry that he’s in. And his thing is always, he puts his defenses up when he thinks people want something from him, ’cause basically, everybody does. He wants to be treated like a normal person. He just wants to grow around and have a good time and invite people over to his pool and we’re just having a drink and shooting the shit. 

If you can bring that to those engagements, I think you will stand out with those high-net-worth people, especially when you’re going to raise capital, “I don’t need it, I want it, and here’s why I want it. H.ere’s why I think you should want to give it to me.” It’s just a different thing with that type of person, in my opinion.

0:19:39.3 

WS: It’s a mindset shift, how you’re relating to this individual and not having to want in mind when you’re beginning the relationship. I think it’s a great example of your neighbor as well, and obviously, I think, he’s expressed to you, he’s shared that with you that everybody wants something for me, but it’s a massive turn-off completely. Right? 

Any tips around how you’ve done that well? Maybe with new relationships or how you’ve built the relationship. And I think too, sometimes it’s hard not to come off like you’re wanting something right? Any tips around that or anything that’s worked for you? I guess taking it slow or building relations, quality relationship.

0:20:18.7 

HS: Well, as an agent, and as sort of a luxury agent, I like Ryan Serhant. I follow him, I watched him, I follow his podcast, his YouTube channel, and he’s always really polished, really well-dressed, really intelligent, but he brings this fun factor to what he does. And I try to bring the same thing when I’m showing a house. I want someone to go into a house with me, and it’s like we’re just shopping with a friend who knows a lot about what’s the value of this house or the utility of this house to them, and it’s fun. 

And that engagement, I think there are so many people who want things from other people, but also are very rigid and business and put on a tie and the whole thing, and there’s a time and a place for that. But especially in this kind of thing, they’re buying a personal residents, they want to raise their family there and they wanna have a good time doing good feelings about all of it. Right? And so I feel like if I can bring that fun factor and that authenticity, I emote more, I use my hands when I talk, I raise my voice, lower my voice, I do, I just,  I literally step into this character of myself, and it’s just a little more fun. And whether or not they’re responding, I’m just doing it anyway, and it always works. Everyone has a better time, they’re always feeling better at the end when you go first and you get bigger across their arms and now they’re in the space all of a sudden.

And so I think the same is true with investment ’cause ROI numbers, spreadsheets, it’s all boring but when you add some emotion and some spice to it, if you will, people start to react to it differently.

0:21:53.5 

WS: I love that. And what was the gay name? 

0:21:58.9 

HS: Ryan Serhant, he’s the number one broker in the country, I think. Anyways, he’s in New York City and in many other markets now, and he sells a lot of high-end houses.

0:22:07.7 

WS: It’s incredible too that you follow somebody like that, that you’re learning a lot from just constantly education. But I love how you’re paying attention to your client, you’re paying attention to their body language, I can hear you talking about the cross our arms, and it kinda helps open them up when you take the lead in that. 

I wanted to focus on something else and wanna change gears a little bit on you, ’cause there’s something that your team listed, and listeners probably know this maybe, that oftentimes, guests will send suggested topics that we talk about. And one that was on there that I wanted to ask you about, because I don’t see it ever, really. I talk about it often when I’m interviewed on shows, but one of the things you listed was building a loving, lasting marriage.

0:22:50.7 

HS: Yeah, I thought you were going there.

0:22:51.7 

WS: And so I wanna hear why that’s on there, I wanna hear more about that ’cause that’s so important to me. I hope it’s so important to the listener, ’cause if you wanna be a successful entrepreneur, you need this, right? So share with us. What does that mean?

0:23:06.1 

HS: I’ve been married for two and a half years now, almost two and a half years, and we’ve been dating for over eight. So the relationship is not new, but it is not seasoned per se. I saw my parents get divorced and what that did to them both physically, emotionally, and financially, and I’ve seen her family go through some ups and downs as well, and then obviously friends and acquaintances and you hear about stuff, right? Divorce is probably one of the biggest wealth trainers you could possibly engage in as a human being, you just look at the numbers, you cut everything in half, literally.

0:23:45.3 

WS: Life draining too. 

0:23:48.7 

HS: And financially draining. I saw my dad go through this. I mean he lost, he’s not a big guy, but he lost 15 or 20 pounds, his face got all sunk in and it was just like, “Oh my gosh, you’ve aged 15 years and two months.” And then I’ve also had this, I guess they’re mentors at this point, a couple, older couple who are very successful financially and are just good friends of ours at this point, and they tell their girls who you marry is the biggest, most important decision you will ever make, ’cause it impacts so much stuff. 

And so, when I put that on there, to me, if your home life isn’t right, or if there’s this thing that’s not like you could have a million dollars in the bank, you could have all these investments, all this passive income, but if you come home at the end of the day, and you don’t enjoy the person who’s there and they don’t enjoy you, and you guys are going through motions ’cause there are kids or there’s obligation and others, you wanna save face or whatever. That sucks. I don’t care how much money you have, that sucks.

And to me, it’s not worth having extra money if I can’t enjoy it with her in this case, and so we take that pretty seriously. We interviewed five or six couples before we decided to get married as to how people, whose relationships we respected, how did they do it? Literally, we interviewed them and tried to figure out what they did well and what they would do differently, and it was just this commitment like, “Hey, if we’re gonna go on this life journey together, we’re gonna have,” ‘Cause we’re aligned on our investing, she just joined me in real estate, she’s licensed now, so we’re teaming up in that way, we own investments together, we have whatever, we have all this, these goals. And if we are gonna go on that journey together financially, we also need to go on this relationship thing together too.

0:25:31.2 

WS: I love that, I just love that. I love that it was on there, that it’s a focus of yours in your life. I think it’s so crucial, and could not have started a business or I became an entrepreneur if have the support of my bride. And I would go flip burgers at McDonald’s the rest of my life, if it weren’t for our marriage. Financial success is not worth losing your spouse or your children or whatever, it’s just…

So I just appreciated that being on there, but I wanted to ask you, I thought it was so wise too if you all spoke to other couples that you respected, right? And their experience, they’ve been through the ups and downs and walked the walk. Right? But I wanna ask you, what are a couple of things you took away from that? 

0:26:16.3 

HS: Therapy is totally okay. Call it whatever the hell you want, the therapy is fine, individually and together, we’ve done both. And being okay that you’re separate people, but you’re also, there are three people in the relationship, there’s her, there’s me, and there’s us. We each come to with our own set of bugaboos and life experiences and preferences in every avenue. Right? What kind of food do we eat, when we go to bed? Just the simple stuff, all the way down to how we move our money around and so forth, and she’s very risk-averse, I’m less so. So we have to find that medium and give each other space to be individuals, but also being together. Not easy, obviously, but certainly important. I have movies, she doesn’t watch movies as much, the movies, I watch it, and that she doesn’t like movies, period. That’s part of you. That’s cool. You go do that, I’m gonna go do a puzzle, that sort of thing.

And so, leaving that space for each other to be individuals, but also having that cohesion together, I think is one of the biggest things that I thought came out of some of those interviews and conversations.

0:27:23.5 

WS: What about operating a business while ensuring that you’re spending time on your marriage? You’re spending time with your bride, but man, operating a business, especially getting one started is very time-consuming, right? And I can imagine even someone you’re… just pursuing to operate at an elite level, like you’re used to that right? And that commitment level in business, and even myself, I was like, “Man, I was willing to do 800 hours a week. If that’s what I took.” I was just like, “Okay, whatever it takes.” 

But I had to step back sometimes and think, “Okay, man, the family is really sacrificing here.” And so how do you do that? How do you structure or any tips around structuring your time? Just ensuring that you’re present. Any thoughts around that?

0:28:05.7 

HS: Well, the good news is I married an Olympic athlete as well, so that helps. But that’s why it’s important who you marry, ’cause I had some criteria like, we gotta work out, she’s gotta eat sushi. She didn’t at the time, but she tried it and now she loves it. But it’s important who you marry, and if they’re on the same wave, if you’ve got someone who’s very entrepreneur and do your 800 hours a week, and you’ve got someone who wants to punch the clock in a W-2, get the benefits and just be done at 5 o’clock, that is not gonna work very effectively. There’s gonna be give and take somewhere.

And so I think that that decision is really critical, but also you just have to protect your time at a certain point. You have to calendar things, even though it feels like our marriage shouldn’t be a business, and we’ve said that, I’m sure everyone else has said that. At a certain point, if you’re growing something, you have to just protect the space on the calendar. So Wednesday, 4:30, we have a 30-minute dog walk, so we take our dog and we go walk her around the neighborhood, sometimes we’ll run her up and down the street on the bikes, and then at 5 o’clock is date night, and then the whole rest of the night is protected for whatever we wanna do. And I even tell new clients when I bring them in, I said, “Unless we’re negotiating an offer or something, super emergency comes up, don’t expect to hear from me on Wednesday night.” And I’m pretty good at that.  Sometimes stuff happens, but I’m pretty good at it. Setting that expectation, so protecting it.

And then lately we’ve started taking that a step further and actually making plans like multiple weeks ahead, and instead of just saying, “Oh, we got to 5 o’clock. Now, what do we do? Oh, let’s just do the norming that we always do, ’cause that’s the easy thing.” We’ve actually started making dinner reservations places, new restaurants we’ve never been, and that’s just kind of a thing we like to do now. And so it’s on the calendar. It’s something to look forward to and it’s blocked. And so we protect that time and now we don’t have to answer the phone, the dog is taken care of, we’re out for a couple of hours, we’re having a new experience at this restaurant that we’ve never tried, but it has a good Yelp review or whatever. And that’s what we’re doing. 

0:30:11.6 

WS: It just shows your care for one another, right? You’re taking the time to plan, you’re taking the time to block your calendar, you even let your clients know that “hey, I’m not available.” You’re not checking your phone the whole time, you’re sitting on a date together.

0:30:21.3 

HS: Which shocking is when I tell people that 100% of them respect it. And I thought even people reach out and be like, “Oh shoot, it’s your date night, I’m so sorry.” They’re apologizing to me. And they’re my client. Right, people really respect that.

0:30:34.6 

WS: I just appreciate you putting that on there, I think it should be talked about more. When I share about my entrepreneurial journey and the difficulty of getting started a business going, and man, it’s not easy.

0:30:46.0 

HS: It is, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. She retired from her rowing career earlier than me, started her job, and started her career earlier than me, and so she was financially supporting us for a while until I got going in real estate. And now has given me the space and the opportunity to build what I have. And now I slingshot had passed where she was, and now she has the opportunity to take a step back, change her business, she’s joining real estate and doing some other things. And so we’re doing that for one another. But yeah, there’s no such thing as self-made in my opinion. Everyone has someone who’s helping them.

0:31:24.0 

WS: No such thing as self-made. I could not agree more. What about just a couple of minutes left, unfortunately, but what about some daily habits that you have now that you’re disciplined about that have helped you achieve this level of success? 

0:31:35.5 

HS: Frankly, right now, my habits and my rituals, if you will, are influx. I’ve done The Miracle Morning, I’ve done reading 10 pages and water and work out, so forth, and so on. I’m really, through GoBundance, this year, in particular, I’m really focused on a couple of key things. One of which is working out five days a week, whether it’s in the morning or the afternoon. I try and do it in the morning, but just ’cause the time. Drinking a lot of water, fasting, doing some intermittent fasting, and playing around with that to see how I like it. And then continuing to read books in the evening instead of just Netflix. I’ll do an episode of something and then I’ll pop open the Kindle and read a little bit before bed too. 

I’ve had tons of different habits tones, a different wake up times, tons of different things I was eating and drinking and so forth and so on, and those are great. But I’ve gotten to a place where I’m now re-exploring some of that stuff for myself. So honestly, it’s coming back to exercise and diet, frankly, in a nutshell for me right now.

0:32:40.4 

WS: No, those things are so important. And I can even go back and say, my wife and I changed our exercising, dieting, and retaining all those things. We noticed some massive changes, just even the way we could think, we were just more clear-minded, just there were many things that happened that were unexpected, and that was even at the beginning of our business, and that was so helpful, we’re so thankful. Even some intermittent fasting that we’ve done as well.

But I wanna ask you or we have to go, how do you like to give back? 

0:33:08.4 

HS: That is one of the… GoBundance has six pillars, and that is one of them. And that is an area that I’m working on figuring out how that’s gonna plug into my life, ’cause frankly, it’s been pretty minimal if non-existent. ‘Cause when you’re building, you think you gotta save it all and you gotta be selfish and you do to some degree. But I have got a couple of ways that I’m starting to give back now. One is, I’ve got two guys on my real estate team who were less than a year into their careers, and I’m their direct report. I’m also mentoring them, I’m spending a couple of hours a week with each of them on transactions on investing strategies, on building your business, on just getting your head out of your button, let’s go stuff. So that’s one. 

And then secondly, I’m working on trying to find a time with one of the local rowing clubs when I can go be a volunteer coach once every other week, once every week, to run a day of their training and give them feedback and give them some of the knowledge that I have accumulated. And there was a couple of rowing clubs, there’s one that’s really well funded and has a ton of kids, and then there’s this scrappy little one, and I’m giving back to the scrappy little one at the moment.

0:34:13.1 

WS: That’s incredible. I’m sure they are thankful for you and your expertise. Hans, it’s been a pleasure to meet you and just learn about your journey as an athlete and the level of dedication it takes to achieve that and make it to the Olympics. But then, also to become a successful entrepreneur. And I love to focus on your marriage, and unfortunately, many entrepreneur sacrifices their marriage and those key relationships to have success in business. And I would say they’re losing much more than what they ever gain in their business, and unfortunately, meaning here have shared that that’s what’s happened to the right. And I hate to hear that, but it’s a real thing.

And I think as driven as we are, and we can get so-called up in this thing over here and man, forget what’s so important. So I’m just grateful for the reminder of that and just that that’s a focus of yours and you’re helping the listeners think through that as well. So thank you so much, tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you?

0:35:09.4 

HS: So, I’m on pretty much every social media platform you can think of, Instagram and YouTube were the most active right now. So Instagram is @chiefsnah, which is Hans backwards. And if you go on my Instagram and you go into the highlight stories, I’ve got a story as to why that name exists, it’s a good one, you should go check that out. And then YouTube, I put up a real estate-related video once a week, and it’s focused on my local market, real estate-wise, and I try and give people as much advice on how to be successful there as I possibly can. And then I’ve got a website and that’s all linked up and all that kind of stuff. So, Instagram on YouTube or my two spots right now.

0:35:48.9 

WS: Hans, a pleasure to meet you, I hope you have a blessed day.

0:35:50.0

HS: Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:35:52.6 

WS: Thank you for being a loyal listener to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show. Share it with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget, go to www.LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today, Have a blessed day! 

[END]