SPEAKER_02 0:00

Everybody started coming over my house and literally watching me work.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You know, you you be good at your thing, I'll be good at my thing, and we'll crush it together. The more hands you shake, the more money you make. How do you find the right people to partner with?

SPEAKER_02 0:13

At one point, I literally had like seven different partnerships going.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Was there ever a point where you're like, well, should I hire this person or should I partner with somebody?

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Like they need to understand you're gonna make mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Like, I've gotta beat me at this level so that I can go face me at the next level.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I don't want to just push your product. I want you to push me.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

What's up, everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner Profit Podcast. Obviously, I'm dressed a little different here today. I've got my cowboy hat on because of the person I'm interviewing. Saw that they were wearing one in all of their social media and definitely knew I had to show up with mine on too. It's Mr. Clifford Walker, dude. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

What's going on, brother? First off, it uh it's an honor uh and a blessing and a privilege uh to be here with you. I'm super excited, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Man, I am feeling the same. For for everybody that doesn't know you, give us a little bit of the backstory. How'd you get to where you are today?

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Um, and then too, hold on, let me address the cowboy hat. You look incredible, right? You you look something like a farmer, right? Like you got some roots there under that hat.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yeah, like I've like I've done this thing a time or two. I've even got the dust settling on the hat. We're we're good to go.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Exactly, exactly. But no, what's what's funny is uh I got started in real estate investing in 2019. I was a truck driver before I got started. Oh wow, and um, oh man, I absolutely hated it. I hated it every single bit of it. Shout out to all the truck drivers there. And uh I did that for like seven years or so. But anywho, what's funny, I was in West Texas, and if anybody knows anything about West Texas, there's literally like nothing out there, and so ironically, the only station that would pick up where I was, it was so rural, it would happen to be a guy talking about real estate investing and talking about how much money he was making, wholesaling real estate. And at the time, like that was all I had to listen to. So I'm just driving and like sitting on the edge of my seat, like listening to this guy, and I'm like, this is it. I'm gonna start doing wholesaling real estate. Whenever I get home, I told my wife, I'm like, babe, we're gonna start wholesaling real estate. And she's like, What the heck are you talking about? And what is that? And uh, but no, it's it's been history from that. I was bit by that bug and and went to every conference and seminar and and meetup and started hiring every coach that I could. And and uh yeah, led me here though.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

That's that's amazing. And now you teach other people how to do it, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Mm-hmm. Yes, sir. And so I kind of fumbled my way into coaching. It was weird how it happened. So at the time, one of my very first coaches and mentors is a local guy out in Dallas, and when I got connected to him, I literally just started doing the things that he was coaching, right? Like following the steps, and guess what? It worked. Like I started getting deals, and his whole community was like, Well, what is Clifford doing? How is Clifford doing it? Like, they were just almost like dumbfounded, respectfully, like, how is this working for him? And it was like, y'all, I'm just doing what he's telling me to do. Like, but it was uh it was funny, so everybody started just gravitating to me, like so much so to where everybody started coming over my house and literally watching me work, and it was so funny because my wife got to a point she was like, Clifford, do not bring anybody else in my home, and so that ended up becoming so big to where the guy that I was getting coaching from had to start reserving conference rooms for us because literally his entire community was like just trying to see what I was doing and how I was doing it, and that's kind of how I fumbled in my way into coaching, and yeah, it was it was completely by accident.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

That's awesome. Those are those are the best stories, though. You know, it's like I would I always kind of said the same thing. I got into coaching and I was like, I'm not a coach. I don't I always say like I got into the info business and people would have started calling me coach, and I'm like, I'm not a coach, I don't know what you what do you what are you what are you talking about? I'm not your business coach, I'm just teaching you Facebook ads. And they're like, no, come on, keep coaching me. It's so that's funny. We talked about this a little bit pre-show. You were saying, you know, real estate is just such a relationship business. How have you used relationships, partnerships, those types of things to grow what you've been doing both in real estate and in coaching?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

I think for me specifically, I just realized early on that that it it is, it's a relationship-based business. Um, and that the more hands you shake, the more money you make. I don't really know what gave me that idea, but I just started partnering with people and working with so many different people, right? Like, I mentioned, for example, like when all of these people were coming to watch me work, I'm like, well, let me ask y'all, would you be interested in doing a joint venture with me? Like, y'all cover all the Facebook ads, you pay for that, you set that up, and then guess what? I'll run the leads and we split these deals 50-50. It just became such an amazing experience because at one point I literally had like seven different partnerships going. And you talking about pouring gasoline on what you were doing, like I went 10x pretty quickly because of that, and it just made me realize like, oh, this is all relationships. Like, I don't have to have it all figured out, I just gotta find the grant that knows how to run the ads, right? I just I don't I don't need to be a computer wizard, and so I just really learned to leverage that on so many different levels, not just on the real estate side, but even on the coaching side.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Was that kind of your process? It's like, okay, what do I need help with? And just go find somebody that can help you and more or less try to partner with them in doing it instead of paying them to exchange services, you partner with them and give them a share on the upside of the business?

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Absolutely. A hundred percent. And then it makes so much more sense too, because you're not, well, at one point I made this mistake, but you're not maxing out credit cards, you're not right.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Right, you're not it it's just it helps.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

You're leveraging other people's expertise and and giving them a share in your business. Is that hard to do in the beginning of a business? Maybe when people feel like they don't have a lot of traction or success? Because I know I've heard of people trying to be like, well, just do this for me and I'll pay you a little bit. Do you find that service providers were averse to that, or were you having so much, did you have so much proof that, like, no, look, here I'm I'm really good at this, you know, you you be good at your thing, I'll be good at my thing, and we'll crush it together.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

I think that even if somebody's starting out, this is still a good route to go. Because the I think the problem, and and you've been in this business a lot longer than me, right? But I think the problem with new entrepreneurs, um, we get scattered, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

And and we end up leaving our lane of genius, right? The thing that makes us us. And when you start trying to worry about bookkeeping, right? Like I'm not a bookkeeper. Like it came to a point where it's like I don't even get to touch the books anymore, right? My wife goes over all of that stuff and she says, okay, this is where we are, this is where we're not, this is what's going on. Because if you leave me to your books for five minutes, me looking at it, I'm gonna mess it up. I just want you to know I'm gonna mess something up just by looking at it. So it allowed me to really cut the noise out and focus on my lane. I realized that my lane is just talking to people.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

How do you find the right people to partner with? You know, it takes a certain level of discernment, I think, to A, know what you need help with, and then B, how to find the right people to help you with that thing. What what was your process there?

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Oh, I went through some bad partnerships. That's the process it's gonna say sometimes. I went through some bad ones, and I think that I realized too, just make it simpler for yourself and create things like uh just simple joint venture agreements to where there's not long-term, like you're not tied to each other long term, right? If anybody wants to end it, it it can end smoothly if anybody decides to break their go their separate way. Because at the beginning, I was creating LLCs with these people and oh my God, that was such a such a mistake on so many different levels. But I think just setting up from the very beginning, uh simple joint venture agreements, understanding roles and responsibilities and who's doing what, and then just be prepared to go through people, right? Yeah, I think that if you set stuff up or set the expectations up uh at the very beginning, it does help a lot more to where it's like, hey Grant, this is really what I'm needing help with. Like it's easy for us to know what we need help with, right? Like I know that for or at least it is for me. I know that I'm not a tech person. I'm not, right? And so if it's something like setting up Facebook ads for an example, I would just say, hey Grant, I really need somebody to set these Facebook ads up, manage them, optimize them. This is what's going on. So the result can be me talking to sellers, me getting leads, and and us closing deals, basically.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

So find find the points that it's like, hey, I know I need to be creating content, um, but I'm not a content creator, I'm not a videographer or a copywriter. And so if you can partner with me and help me do that, you know, we we can just go further, faster together. And so it sounds like was there ever a point where you're like, well, should I hire this person or should I partner with with somebody? Like, did you ever have any of those things, or did you kind of just leverage your growth through partnerships and not have a lot of people that you hired?

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Both. I went through I went through both. First, it was a lot of partnerships, then it was like, okay, I got some good traction with that. Let me just hire people and then stop the partnerships so that way I could potentially have more and make more. And then that was Rocky, like that's a whole nother thing, too. Like you go through these. I'm a baby in this business. I've only been doing this since 2019, so I didn't have any management experience, any leadership role. Like, I was a truck driver, right? Uh, truth be told, I was a high school dropout, like there's no massive degrees behind me. So for me hiring people and trying to build this into a business, I went through this massive learning curve.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

And uh now I'm trying to I'm finding a good sweet balance. I'm just at a point where small strategic partnerships, or if I'm bringing on people, I'm asking, okay, is this a per can this person be commission based only? Right? Like, what does that look like for somebody? So it's one of those things where if you don't perform, you you don't get paid, so to speak. So I'm finding a balance now at this stage.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I think a lot of people that listen to this like, man, I just don't know if I want to do all that work and it not work out. But what I've learned as an entrepreneur is you kind of have to. You gotta just, and I don't know if you can maybe shed a light on this, but I've always had that kind of fail-forward mentality is like not everything's gonna work out. And as an entrepreneur, it's like I I grew up in baseball playing baseball, and you know, baseball, if you if you get a hit three out of ten times, you're a hall of famer. And it kind of helped me carry that philosophy forward in business. It's like, man, I don't need everything to be a home run because I'm either gonna win or I'm gonna learn something from this experience. It's gonna help set me up to win bigger the next time I go and uh and and try to do this. And so is that kind of like the mentality for you? And maybe what's made you so successful is you're just gonna try it and you're gonna learn, you're gonna move forward, or or what was it for you?

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Yeah, I think it's just being okay with with failing forward. I think the good thing about me is that I never cared about looking stupid, right? I do I do a pretty good job sometimes of doing that, and so I'm okay with that. If I mess up, life goes on. You know what I mean? Like if I make a mistake, I apologize for it, I pick myself up, I dust my knees off right, or whatever it may be, and keep moving forward. I I think it's truly that kind of cowboy mentality, like that country mentality, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Stepdad used to say you had a cowboy up, it's time to do that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Exactly. And I think that for our listeners or your listeners, right, like they need to understand you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna, especially if you're new and starting out. I can imagine even at any stage, right? Like the anytime we're leveling to a new level, it's it's un it's uncharted territories, right? It's it's unfamiliar grounds for us. Yeah, we're gonna fall into a pothole, we're gonna stumble over a rock, like it's new ground.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah. It for me, I've always kind of treated it like a video game. Like, I've gotta beat me at this level so that I can go face me at the next level, and then I gotta beat that guy so that I can face the next guy. Because we're always growing, we're always changing and always developing. I always thought it was funny because when I was growing up, everyone was like, Well, nobody likes change, nobody changes, um, you know, change is hard. I'm like, but then as I've grown up, I'm like, everybody changes all the time. What are we talking about? Like, I don't remember I I know I'm very few people that are the same, and maybe that's an anomaly. Maybe that's not maybe that you know what everybody said is true, and I'm different, I guess, or we're all different, I guess. I think a lot of people in the personal development space are changing non-stop, it's just a part of a part of it all. But I would agree, you just gotta go for it. Yeah, you're gonna we have a saying in my house which is like we're we're gonna do it scared. We're all probably typically a little scared, yeah. Uh, and I don't know if you felt the same way. I would I could imagine going from having a full-time career as a trucker being like, we're gonna go wholesale real estate. You you're like, yeah, and I hope this works out.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Man, it was uh it was so crazy because I'm naturally an introvert, uh, I'm naturally a quiet man, I naturally keep to myself. When I started going to all these networking events and meeting people, I would be so nervous. I kid you not, my wife would literally have to pray with me to calm my nerves. Right? Because I'm like, what do I say to these people? Like they're like, you know, these are massive real estate investors. Come to find out they're not massive real estate investors, right? Like we're all new.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Figuring it out, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Yeah, but but I just had this image like, oh man, people are gonna know I'm a dumb truck driver or whatever it may be, right? But yeah, you talking about scared and nervous. Heck yeah, right? On so many different levels.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

If somebody was listening to this and they were maybe newer or they were thinking about their business a little bit differently when it comes to you know growing through the leverage that partnerships and relationships can offer you, what was the first and most key partnership that you developed that helped kind of really take you to the next level and helped you grow?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

I think I'm at a point right now where I'm starting to do that in the in the coaching space, right? Right where I'm having very strategic affiliates to where the people that sign up for our community and join our community, they're going to need products, right? Whether that's PropStream for running comps or pulling datas, right? Well, now I can go and have an affiliate with PropStream and have them paying me monthly, right? And it was so funny because when I first got the first one in, it was like, oh, that's cool. I got a little $200 payment every month. That was cute. And then it started getting over to $500, and then it started getting over a thousand bucks, and now it's getting over to $2,000. And I'm like, wow, well, we're really starting to see some really significant income, right? Like, you think about it on the real estate side of things, how long or what type of rentals would we need to get to secure $2,000 a month in income, $3,000 a month in income. Yeah, and now I think now I'm really starting to see it. So if people can get those affiliates or those partnerships out of the gate, and now I make it a two-way streak because I sat down with some of these and I said, Hey, this is what I'm about, this is what our community's about. I don't want to just push your product, I want you to push me. I want you to push me as a as a preferred coach. If you believe in the value that I bring and you believe the work that we're doing, right? So now when people sign up for our community through their email list and through those things, well, guess what? That's free marketing. They've already built trust and rapport with their email list. And so when they send me out, like, hey y'all, there's tons of real estate coaches, but you need to check out Clifford the Cowboy Closer. He's one of our preferred coaches. You know, he's the real deal. He's actually doing deals, he's actually in that business. So now my authority when I'm introduced to those people has has gone up traumatically. You get that transference of trust. Transfer trust. I like that. Exactly. Yeah. And so I think if if people can start to find amazing partnerships like that, absolutely share.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

And it just helps us so much. I mean, the purpose of business is to find new ways to make money so that you can continually grow the income streams. Because there's multiple ways to grow revenue in a company. Everybody always thinks, well, I just have to wholesale more houses, or I've just got to sell more software subscriptions, or I just got to do this. And that's like, no, not really. Actually, most businesses have at least a half a dozen different opportunities, ways to monetize, because it costs so much money today to build an audience. And so you've got to do everything that you can to help offset the cost to build that audience. And oh, by the way, building a business, the cost of doing that is building an audience. If you don't have an audience of people that are going to buy your products or services, you do not have a business. Yeah. And I think a lot of people get caught up in that because they're more artists than they are entrepreneurs. You know, they're really good at building houses or flipping houses or building software or painting paintings or selling hot dogs. And it's like, yeah, but if nobody knows you do it, you're not going to have any customers, you're not going to get any sales. And so I certainly couldn't agree more. Obviously, I spend all day, every day creating partnerships, you know, exactly the capacity that you're talking about. So I I'm heavily bought into the idea that that is one of the most important things that anybody can do. And I spend a lot of time working in real estate. And I tell people all the time, like, if you're just starting out, it's the best time to go set up all these partnerships.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

You're going to get people that are going to help fund the growth of your company, and that will help you create a level of stability that you've probably not had in a long time. I uh I don't want to take up too much of your your time. I want to respect your time. So I always like to ask this last question before we uh cap off is you know, what's the number one way that we as listeners of the Partner Profit Podcast can partner with you? How can we help you grow?

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Oh man, if you're looking for a preferred coach or community, uh again, we we in the real estate corral, we're a national community. We help people get started in real estate investing, right? Off of the bench and into the game, whether it's buying their first rental and building for retirement, right, or or doing their first flip. So, you know, we're always looking for people to uh that are in alignment. I think that's very important too. Um, we're a community that this isn't just about going out there and lowballing offers. We truly believe that we're building generational wealth by serving other people and to make a kingdom impact. And so if people are in alignment with that, then hey, we would love to find a way to work together uh and and grow together in that scenario. But if folks just want to learn tips and things of that nature, they're always more than welcome to follow me on YouTube or Instagram or social media, Clifford the Cowboy Closer. Um I post a YouTube video every single day. Every single day. So um I'm pretty active on all platforms.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Love it. Well, we'll make sure that we link up all the ways that people can do that, connect with you and support you. I can't say how much I appreciate you spending some time with me today helping me break out the cowboy hat. It's been on the shelf for a little too long. I appreciate that. Uh but the content, I really appreciate the conversation. You know, it was it was a lot of really valuable strategic and tactical takeaways that I know that people listening to this are gonna be able to get a lot of value from. So thanks, man.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

No, absolutely. It was my pleasure. And just yeah, any last thought for listeners, y'all. If you get an opportunity to work with Grant or or build partnerships, listen, it has been a game changer for me personally. Do not go in here and try to be this lone ranger, take on the world yourself, build amazing partnerships, and it will bless your life on so many different levels.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

I'm gonna I'm gonna end it with that. Listen to every word that Clifford just said. Uh yeah, you will be very successful. We appreciate you, man.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

And uh Mark that yes, I will.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

I will go. I'll send an email following this uh podcast. Uh no, thanks again, man. I really appreciate you and appreciate everybody that's continuing to listen to the Partner and Profit podcast. This has been an amazing, amazing episode. Go make sure you connect with Clifford, and we'll see you on the next one. Peace.