From Burnout to Raw, Life-Changing Transformational Breakthroughs of Success with Nick Aalerud
Key Takeaways
- True success is not measured by money, but by who you become in the process.
- Burnout is often the result of chasing ego-driven goals instead of living with intention.
- Delegation, presence, and spiritual alignment are key to sustainable, fulfilling growth.
United States Real Estate Investor
The REI Agent with Nick Aalerud
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The Power of Purpose Over Profit
In this heart-stirring episode of The REI Agent Podcast, host Mattias welcomes transformational real estate leader Nick Aalerud for one of the most soul-awakening interviews yet.
Nick’s journey isn't your typical rags-to-riches tale.
It's deeper.
It's grittier.
It's a full-circle story of collapse and resurrection.
With over $100 million in real estate deals under his belt and seven companies built from the ground up, Nick reveals the devastating personal cost of relentless hustle.
“I thought I was producing for the family, but I was just chasing importance,” he admits.
That realization sparked a radical transformation that led him from working himself into burnout to living a purpose-filled life of intentionality and healing.
It All Started With an Infomercial and a Dream
Nick’s real estate story began where many others have found their spark: an infomercial.
A banker at the time, stuck in the grind and stressed beyond belief, he took a wild chance on a late-night promise to buy real estate with no money down.
“I literally bought five houses in one week,” he shares. “And seven months later, four went to short sale, and one went to foreclosure.”
The financial fallout was severe, but it was the internal collapse that shook him to the core. Rather than let the failure define him, Nick used it to fuel his rebirth.
“That failure I thought would end me actually opened every door I needed,” he says.
Building the Empire That Would Eventually Burn Him Out
From flipping homes to building a rental portfolio, from launching a brokerage to managing seven companies across multiple states, Nick's obsession with success paid off... on paper.
Behind the scenes, though, his life was unraveling.
“I wanted to be the guy who could say he built it all,” he reflects. “But I became a man who had everything and nothing at the same time.”
His marriage fell apart.
His health deteriorated. And eventually, he stepped away from everything, taking 18 months off just to breathe again.
The turning point?
A plant medicine retreat that cracked him open in a way no seminar or spreadsheet ever could.
Awakening to a New Kind of Wealth
Nick’s second act is not about numbers.
It’s about meaning.
About alignment.
About life.
He still owns commercial properties, hotels, RV parks, and hundreds of rentals. But now, it’s all built around one central question: Who do I want to become?
“What if we’ve already done enough just by being born?” he asks. “Everything else is just extra. It’s bonus.”
Today, Nick helps other overachieving entrepreneurs rewire their lives.
Through his coaching programs and communities, he shows them how to build businesses that align with their true purpose rather than break them down in pursuit of the next goal.
Letting Go to Grow
The conversation turns tactical too, as Nick shares how he finally learned to delegate and trust.
“I'm a recovering control freak,” he laughs, “but if you're hiring someone to do a job, let them do the job. Set the KPIs and get out of the way.”
He also reveals the power of hiring a virtual assistant and building team systems that allow him to live freely.
“You need one person in your life you don’t have to micromanage. Then you realize, maybe you don’t have to control everything else either.”
A Journey Back to Wholeness
Nick’s golden nugget at the end of the show perfectly encapsulates his message:
“It’s not about the target. It’s about who you have to become to reach it.”
Whether you’re an agent who’s never done a deal or a multi-millionaire investor feeling lost in the grind, Nick’s story is a living testament that success is not the finish line.
It’s the transformation you go through on the way.
Success is Becoming, Not Arriving
Nick Aalerud’s story is a mirror for anyone who’s ever sacrificed too much in the name of success.
It’s a reminder that financial freedom is meaningless without emotional and relational wealth.
“We can work hard,” Nick says. “But we’re not here just to grind. We’re here to live.”
This episode is not just an interview.
It’s an invitation.
To stop.
To breathe.
To rethink everything.
And to remember that the most successful life is one you actually love living.
Stay tuned for more inspiring stories on The REI Agent podcast, your go-to source for insights, inspiration, and strategies from top agents and investors who are living their best lives through real estate.
For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com.
Related Articles
- Therapy You Didn’t Know You Needed (Holistic Wisdom for Real Estate Professionals)
- From For Sale Signs to Life Design (How The REI Agent Transforms Real Estate Into Holistic Wealth)
- Achieving Holistic Wealth and Success Through Real Estate (Insights from The REI Agent)
- Partnering with Investors (How Real Estate Agents Can Exponentially Maximize Profits)
United States Real Estate Investor
United States Real Estate Investor
Contact Nick Aalerud
United States Real Estate Investor
Mentioned References
- Profit First for Real Estate Agents by David Richter
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
- The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer
- A Course in Miracles
- Marshall Sylver
- Naval Ravikant
- Buddha
United States Real Estate Investor
Transcript
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I'm Mattias, an agent and investor.
And I'm Erica, a licensed therapist.
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.
Ready to level up?
Let's do it.
Welcome back to the REI Agent. Just Mattias here today. We are kind of gearing up for a music festival that happens every year that I've sponsored from my real estate sales side.
This year, we're actually launching the team as part of the marketing efforts in that festival with a sponsorship. So looking forward to that. A lot of things are kind of coming in line with that.
We're getting social media up and running and kind of having campaigns. We have winning two free tickets for the next year as part of the marketing we're doing. So creating a whole bunch of different landing pages and all sorts of good, fun stuff.
I actually hired a team of VAs that kind of have different expertise like funnel development, SEO content creation, graphic design, and all that kind of stuff is part of the package. And I've been basically overseeing them to try to kind of get all this in line. So it's crunch time on that end.
It's crunch time from just trying to pack and figure out how to have everything you need when you're at the festival. So we're looking forward to it a lot. And it's one of the things that our family has kind of grown up or we started our family kind of going to this.
I think the first year, our oldest daughter was maybe one, maybe. And we've gone every year since then, except for one year, I think it didn't happen because of COVID. And then another year, it didn't happen because we didn't go because Sawyer, our youngest, was born.
So he actually has birthdays usually on the weekend, which makes it also extra special. But we were looking at pictures yesterday of through the years, this festival. Again, it's a family-friendly festival.
So it's not like we're taking our kids to Bonnaroo. So it's just been a lot of fun to see kind of them growing up, going to this thing. They look forward to it.
It's a big, yeah, it's a good example of kind of a why that we kind of do everything we do. This is a fun way we can sponsor, we can use the business to kind of help provide this opportunity for our kids. We are now in the fanciest area of camping, the RV site, instead of just kind of being in a field with porta-potties, which kind of makes a nice change as well.
But it's, yeah, again, kind of like one of the why's of why we do it all. This makes it a lasting memory for our kids. Yesterday was also Father's Day.
So I've been a bit sick. I had COVID. I've probably talked about this on the podcast here recently.
But I then got my daughter's stomach bug. And so that was fun. I got to go through feeling, I never got like a full blown case, but I definitely felt very drained and off.
So a lot of resting. I slept, took two naps yesterday, which was glorious. And I guess that's a really nice treat for a parent on their special day.
And got to hear the kids be nice to me and give me sweet cards. And we set up a tent. Erica set up a tent.
And we watched a movie in it and kind of had charcuterie. So it was overall a beautiful, beautiful Father's Day for me. This all kind of ties into our guest today.
Nick is an awesome guest for the show. He's done it all. He's had a brokerage.
He has investments and kind of went through this whole journey of what does it mean? What's it worth? Why am I doing this?
I need to focus on what's most important in life. And so he goes through all that. I won't steal his thunder there.
But it was a really good podcast. And I think learning from him, learning from his lessons and keeping focused on the big picture of kind of why do we do all this? What's the most important thing in our life?
Is it really the next sale? Or is it making sure that we are there for our families, keeping ourselves healthy, all that kind of stuff? But I'll let Nick talk about it more.
Without further ado, here's Nick. Welcome back to the REI Agent. I'm here with Nick Aalerud.
Nick, thanks so much for joining us.
Oh my gosh, Mattias. I'm so excited and refreshing to be on a podcast that's not all about grind and hustle. Appreciate you.
What's the point of life? What's the point of making money and achieving things if you're not enjoying it?
Amen. Amen.
Nick, tell me a little bit. Well, first of all, where are you coming out of?
Coming from Boston, Massachusetts, a little bit north of Boston.
Okay, cool. We're not too far apart here. Two hours south of DC.
Tell me about how you kind of got into the real estate space. I know you've had different avenues and different ventures along the way. But let's kind of just start from the beginning.
Totally, totally. I was a banker first in finance in Mellon Bank in Boston. And man, they promoted me three times, still making under $50,000 a year.
And now I own like 30 people under me. It was like stressful.
Oh, wow.
And then 50, 60 hours, 70 hour weeks. So it got really, really stressful. And you and your audience can laugh at me, Mattias.
But I literally saw an infomercial on television that said, learn to buy real estate, pennies on the dollar. I was like, oh, maybe that'll get me out of the corporate grind. Maybe that's my way in.
And so I bought my first info product on an infomercial. And then I kind of caught that learning bug. So I went all in.
And thousands of dollars later, ended up doing my first five deals in real estate. This is more from the investment side. I came in from the investment side.
And I didn't know what I didn't know. And it's fair to share the first story. Didn't know what I didn't know.
Had a guy in Minnesota telling me all about these great deals. He was finding undervalued real estate. He was lining up these tenant buyers to come in and rent to own the properties.
And then we'd all make money when they cashed out three years from now, right? With 20% above what we paid for them. He needed me just to be the lone guy, sign on the dotted lines.
And I'm like, wait a second. I can make money. He's going to teach me how to do this.
And we make money in the resale. Like, I'm going to buy five of them in one week. 2005.
So I was a first time homebuyer. Also bought four other houses in the same week. All 90 to 100% leverage back then.
Because numbers look great on a spreadsheet. And then we had a call with him the next week to move in the net tenants in and start getting the rent collected. And the tenant applications that we were shown didn't exist.
The rent didn't exist. The applications and this management thing didn't exist. But the mortgages that I signed, Mattias, they did exist.
Oh, gosh.
And so 10 mortgages. Can only float those for so long. And my very first five deals in real estate, about seven months later, four went to short sale, one went to foreclosure.
And I literally thought my life was completely over. Like, I couldn't believe I just made that horrible mistake.
Oh, man. Yeah.
That was the first. So I say, listen, I know your audience is all about investing in real estate. They have the knowledge and the tools.
But now part of what I share is that was just a process, right? Like that failure for me, which I thought was the ending of my life, was just like, oh, now I have to learn how to do real estate without cash or credit. How do we do that?
How do I feed my family doing it this other way? And that opened up all these other doors to start all the other companies. Yeah.
Oh, that's awesome. Because actually, I met, interviewed another guy that, yeah, he actually attributes his success now in investing to his foreclosure. He went through that bubble burst because, yeah, exactly like you said, he had become outside of the banks.
And so now he's created this whole network and this whole private lending, all the different creative stuff. And so it's a really good story about how you can take, a lot of people would have given up. A lot of people wouldn't have taken the first step.
And a lot more people would have been like, I'm never touching real estate again. So, yeah. That's a personal line.
How did you get through that?
Oh, man. You know, it's funny, I had, in that phase where I was like buying all these seminars and courses and boot camps and things, I had already paid for a hypnotist called Marshall Silver. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's, you know, Vegas style entertainer.
But he does these motivational seminars. So I'd already paid for it. Whatever, I'm going to go to this thing.
My life's over. I'm seeing what's available to me. And to this day, it's funny because I can't be hypnotized.
Can't be hypnotized. However, I found myself laying on the floor of that hotel with a lot of other people and I had like one voice talking to the other voice. Like, you know, I can't believe that guy did this to me.
My life is over, this and that. And the other one's like, are you ready yet? Are you done yet?
Are you done with those excuses? And it was like crazy to me, still feeling like there was a battle in my brain. And ultimately, I came out of that event with the entire different mindset of like stop being the victim.
Like, as long as I could take ownership that I made the decisions, I took the steps forward and I failed. Now I can start fixing it. And that became everything.
Like you just mentioned, I started getting a private lender database. I started talking to a lot more sellers just over the phone and partnered with somebody else that could buy the properties and he would pay me to help, you know, negotiate deals for him. And it was kind of a really beautiful segue into, right, what became an eight-figure company.
So it's kind of neat. Wow.
Yeah, that's powerful. That is, I was going to say, what a perfect time to go to something like that where you I've had, I haven't had a hypnotist session, but I had a breathwork session where we were all laying on like the floor. We all had like those like, you know, private DJ or personal DJ, whatever headphones on where, you know, just hear our own thing.
And mind deep breathwork, you did that. That's crazy. Or so whatever that was.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was, man, it was powerful.
It was like 45 minutes of deep breathing, which I don't know if you ever done breathwork, but that's a long time. And I left like on a different planet. Like it was, it was amazing.
It was so amazing. So I can imagine like coming from, you know, a mindset or being in a place where you're just, you know, kind of desperate to like, you're needing something, you're needing something to like kind of push you forward. That it would have been a, you just been primed and ready to, to, to, yeah, have a good mindset shift.
I mean, that's a, that's a big momentous occasion that happened.
Yeah. Amen. And you know what happened too, though, is that my brain got so strong, right?
If I made one mistake or one failure, I just became fix it and move on, right? Put it in SOP, put it in a process and move on. So it'll never happen again, never happen again.
And that became like my impetus for how I lived, which again, created massive financial success. But as, as part of your podcast and what you talk about, right? Like I did that also in my relationships.
I did that also, you know, in my body where it's like, well, that didn't work out. So let's shelve that, not feel any of it and move on to something that does work, you know, like not talk about it. And, um, that all, everything had its, its toll.
And I learned so many valuable lessons along the way, um, through building what I thought was all the success and producing for the family, right. And, and, and creating for the sake of like building a bigger team, building bigger goals, bigger targets, bigger cashflow goals, bigger transactional goals, right. Recruiting the agency to a place where we had like 40 agents, like let's become bigger than the other competitor down the street.
Like we can do this and all, you know, kind of for the wrong reasons, like building for the sake of let me see how far I can push this. How, how can I grow this to a place where like my ego is satisfied, which as we know is a losing game. I will never, ever achieve that goal.
Yeah, that's powerful.
That's fascinating. So, so you got to a point, well, I don't want to skip ahead in your story here. So like, tell us a little bit more about, um, yeah, you built this, you said a figure based business, real estate investing business.
Um, what did you have? Were you flipping? Were you, uh, holding rentals?
Um, what were you doing in that, with that rental portfolio or that portfolio?
Yeah, yeah. So we started, uh, flipping, right. So I started in the Boston market, um, uh, partner with that other guy when he didn't have any money or credit.
He taught me a lot through the process. Started going to those meetups or what they, you know, Ria's back then they would call them investor associations.
Yeah.
And then, um, finally had enough money to do my first three Decker, triple Decker in Somerville. It was, uh, you know, uh, I was so proud of it. It was like my first deal with my name back on it, even though I still had no, no credit, right.
I couldn't get a bank loan. So hard money and private money and the, and that deal broke even. And I was so happy because a proof of concept, I can make this work.
I don't have to lose everything. Right. Right.
And then from there, just little by little by little, um, became really, really good right at sourcing, uh, sourcing potential opportunities, whether it's on MLS or off MLS and, and moving into that rehab, I became just really good at working. I didn't know anything about, uh, I wasn't handy at all. I was a banker.
So I learned right. How to pretend to be handy, really just dealing with contracts and working with scopes of work and working with budgets. Right.
And you start to learn the more practice you get, what costs, what, how much time this is. And you kind of know when someone's on your team or when somebody isn't, and you, you can kind of work through there too. We started building that up to, you know, 100 and then 200 and then 300 projects.
And, uh, uh, eventually this is kind of a cool segue into the rental part because knowing that that was still transactional, right? Just like as an agent, commissions are transactional rehabs are transactional. And I remember, you know, 20, 2010, uh, around 2009, I'm like, okay, this is all great, but like, I'm not building any cashflow.
Right. I have to continue. I work every single day.
I'm out looking for the next one. I'm trying to complete this one. And there's a people out here that brought me out to a market in Western Pennsylvania, which is very different than the Boston market.
Right. And you might've heard this story from other people where you could, we could buy a house cash out there for about 10 or $15,000, invest another $15,000 into it. And we could rent it for $600 a month.
And for me, those numbers worked all day long.
Yeah.
My new, I called it momentum investing. My new thing here, I would do four rehabs here, rough profit margin on those rehabs for about $40,000 each back then. So I would then take one of those, the 40,000 going by a house in this Western Pennsylvania market.
And it worked. We started building a very small rental portfolio in that way, which was generating cash flows, but also not knowing what I didn't know. Right.
We were in like a D plus rental market. So you kind of get that quality of, of, of tenant or resident. There's no labor, no jobs in this market.
It was just cheap, cheap housing. People just like school teachers, people just looking for really safe, affordable housing. And that's what we did out there for a while.
Okay.
So that became like the little rental pod. And finally in 2016, 10 years after my initial credit loss, I was, I was dangerous again. I could get bank loans.
And we started doing, now I knew I had 10 years of experience. So then I started moving into right. Some bigger six families, 12 families, value add multi unit properties and portfolios.
And we would do like, we took down a couple of those 200 unit value ads and like South Carolina and Florida. So we started kind of doing that.
Yeah. Like a syndication model or?
Yes. Back then. Yep.
Yeah. That's awesome. So did you ever start burying property as well when you were doing these rehabs, like keeping them if they were in a good location and you had enough equity built in?
Absolutely.
I mean, you've had to wait until you've gotten, you were able to be financeable, right? I mean, that was a burden there.
Right. Before the term BRRRR came out though, Matt and Mattias, we thought we were like really clever. So we called that the No Cash Left Behind Act of 2011.
So that's kind of what we did. And, and yeah, until obviously, as you know, in the last three or four years as the financial markets shifted and changed. Now we love a good burr deal when we can still find one.
Finding capital markets to fund has been a little bit more challenging.
Yeah. The interest rates make it, make it a lot harder to actually cashflow. Especially I would imagine, I mean, Boston's like incredibly expensive, right?
Yeah. Everywhere I invest, let's put, it's not in Boston. I'm in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, anywhere else.
Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.
Okay. So then you had this machine going. What got you to get into actually running a brokerage and having agents, et cetera, or becoming an agent?
Yeah. It was, it was sort of like, it's kind of like I would always have a problem and how do we fix it? Right.
Just like I trained my brain. So we were investing first rental portfolio and it was, I felt so bad for this poor buyer's agent. I mean, I was putting her through so much, right?
Like can we, let's go to the MLS, let's pull all these things. Cause it's rehabs too. So, and I had control issues cause I had been burned.
Right. So every single time she would show me these three comps and would tell me why it would be selling for this much when you were done fixing it. I couldn't really like, I was, I was the annoying client.
I was like, can I just see those comps again? Can I really see? Cause like my money's on the line.
I doesn't need to like really look in deep down at the, so I finally like, I felt so bad for her. I'm like, I'm just going to get my license. And I literally only got my license to get access to the MLS.
That was it. And I joined, you know, one of the standard old school brokerages that still had me, even though I told him my intentions, I still had to do the uptime and the calls in the front. And he had me do listing presentations for, you know, for everybody.
And it was really cool being exposed to the retail side, even though I had never had any intention. But I'll tell you the biggest mistake I made, we're going to talk about lots of biggest mistakes, but one of the biggest mistakes I made was after getting my broker's license, you know, three years later, I went in front of those, one of those investor networking groups and I go up to the front and I'm so proud cause I just got this broker's license. And at that time there was no other brokerages in Massachusetts that were investor friendly.
They were all traditional retail. This is 2010. So I go up in front of this meeting and I say, Hey everybody, we have the first investor friendly brokerage.
I want anyone who's ever been interested in real estate to come on up and you can sign up and we'll be the first investor friendly office. And that night, Mattias, I had 30 people come up and sign up. And I want to be very clear.
I had no back office. I had no transaction coordinator. I had no paperwork management effective engines.
I had nothing. And I learned very quickly what, what that wasn't fair to them and it wasn't fair to me and trying to coach them and lead them. And a lot of them were just falling through the cracks and I felt responsible and restarted with three agents about six months later that, you know, I could just, so I could scale with them.
Right. And that just became like, Oh, now, now we have access to MLS. Now, if we are looking to try to make a rehab happen and it doesn't happen, most of the sellers, right?
They're not investor clients. They want to get the most amount of money for their home. Just makes sense that they would list it with an agent.
Right. So we started to have that branch to offer that solution.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's, that's really cool. I mean, that's, yeah, there's a lot of benefits to having knowledge in both spaces.
And I think you're hitting on some of those. I mean, did, so did you stick with mainly investor clients then? Or did you branch out to be kind of just general residential as well?
Yeah, I was never general residential, but a lot of my agents, we had a whole retail department, right? They were more experienced than I was in working through that. So we would deal with the investment side or multifamily side.
And if agents wanted to get the most amount of money for their home, which most of them did, you would be able to just refer them to that retail branch.
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, I've been, I've been chewing on how to take that side on more myself because I kind of started off with residential sales and got into investing. And I have worked with investors, don't get me wrong, but like kind of more systemizing that kind of two different approaches.
And so far I've had a lot of benefit of my knowledge of flipping and, you know, seeing the possibilities of a rundown house and having the contractors and the contacts and all that kind of stuff to help in my residential sales. I mean, we do really well with getting a house ready for the market, for example, or, you know, helping a buyer see what it could be.
Oh, and talk about an option that not many other agents can bring to the table, right? So our tagline started to become, even if we can't buy, we still can help because that's the whole point. Our goal was not to get the deal, it was to push them and bring them where they needed to go.
Could be just a contractor, we didn't have to be involved at all. Maybe they just needed to fix this boiler for a long time and couldn't get a contractor to do it, but they had the money to hold the house and wanted to live there.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Now, did you ever find that there was – how do you walk the line of like trying to find good deals for yourself and then also trying to, you know, get the most money for your people you serve? Was that a difficult line to walk?
Not really. Not when you realize, you know, there's two – there's different solutions for every person.
Yeah.
So when someone would call our, you know, like the sellers we would work with on the investor side were all purely motivated, right? Yeah. They had an issue that we could try to solve.
And that solution wasn't necessarily us buying their home, right? But it's what is that solution that we can craft that may or may not help them? And one of the first questions we would ask or our team would ask when we have a team, the acquisitions team, you know, have you considered listing your house with an agent?
And if they say no, you know, why not? And then moving into, well, you're right. Maybe I should have done that.
Easily, that's not – Right. That's not going into our acquisitions funnel. Right.
That'll go to the listing funnel. But if they say yes and I can't because or, you know, my mom's going to an assisted living facility in two weeks and we need to come up with this amount of money, you know, and this is the only thing I can think of to do it, right? And we have a solution where maybe we can come up with some quick moving expenses plus some of that that might even go hard that no buyers in their right mind would ever just, right, pay cash before a closing.
That's totally at risk. Right. But we could do certain things like that for certain people in a smart way.
So anyway, it's two different funnels, I think. It's very different.
Yeah. No, I love that. And I think that's a huge opportunity that people could really take advantage of.
And like you're kind of talking about, you can get some marketing out there that captures people and kind of funnels in the different ways. So I love that. Then, okay, so you built up the team up to 40 different agents, right?
Yeah. When's the big melt time? When did you have that?
When did we get to that part?
Yep, we're getting there. So every branch that we started was an answer or a solution to a problem. So our next branch that we started was, you know, we had a construction team.
We also had a property management firm because we were dealing with all of the property managers. And again, call it control, you know, we're in the business. No one cares about our properties as much as we do.
Like we know how to treat our residents better. So we created the SOPs, created a back office and hired the team and started a property management company. And we, you know, it was called Peak Performance Property Management.
We did Mass, New Hampshire and Maine. And as time went on, the big, as we already shared, right? My relationships, I was doing what I thought was the right thing.
I was producing for the family, right? Going into these masterminds, going to all of these big networking groups, being asked to speak across the country. Like this is me.
I thought that was me producing. In reality, right? That might have been me chasing importance or chasing some sort of value for myself.
And so I wouldn't pay attention to some of the things that might have mattered back home. And my first wife, who was my business partner in real estate. I never forget, I was madly, this is my high school sweetheart, like madly in love with her.
And we get married. And it was like night and day from like two weeks after our honeymoon, we come back. We just bought this four family in a really terrible area.
But that was who we were, right? Real estate investors and cash flow. So we bought this four family in a rough area and we had one of the networking groups.
And I went there and she wasn't there with me. I was like, where are you? She's like, oh, I'm home.
I thought we could, you know, have dinner together now. I was like, wait, really? But we've been doing this for two years.
You're not doing this with me now? And she's like, no. Within a month, she had this entire different expectation of what a relationship or marriage could be.
And when I couldn't give that to her, Mattias, she went and found it with another guy.
Ah, man.
Like within like a month and a half from being married. And it's funny because it like broke me. And my next relationship, again, because my brain does what it does.
Next relationship, I will be with somebody who could never, ever, you know, cheat on me, leave me, whatever it would be. And my next relationship was my insurance agent in my real estate career. And once again, though, I found myself, right?
I found myself not being invested in the relationship. It was more of a checklist item. It was more like, well, I want a couple of kids.
And therefore, this woman is never going to cheat on me. She's never going to leave me. And I felt, I'm saying this to you, I felt now going back, like how awful was that, right?
For me to almost like take this woman's love life and like not even really truly be in love with her. But she and I, you know, we created this family unit. And I wanted the family unit more than anything.
But I thought I was doing that by working more. I thought I was doing that by having another goal of 300 deals this year. I thought I was doing that by setting another gross commission target for the real estate team, right?
I thought that's what I was supposed to be doing. When in reality, I was not present. I was not a present father.
I was not a present partner. And all I wanted to do was that, but I didn't know it, you know?
Right. It was coming out a different way. Yeah.
And it took the most, the nastiest and messiest divorce in the world to, which I felt I deserved in those three and a four years for me to kind of be emotionally and physically and mentally completely checked out of life, of business. I was emotionally drained every single day. And little by little by little, I had a COO in the companies.
We were running seven companies at that point.
Wow.
And I just told him, I'm like, I'm not going to be here for at least six months. And that turned into a year, turned into 18 months. And the universe had ways of telling me what was and what isn't important.
And with all of that in the shift and the divorce was finally finalized, I came back to the office and just realized like, what had I done? And I came back and looked at my calendar again and my entire week was full of, it wasn't an exaggeration when I said it was like 22 Zoom meetings, right? Like hosting two networking groups, trying to drive these seven companies at the same time and then be there for the COO, be there for the CTO, be there for like, I was like, what am I doing?
I started this for freedom, like financial freedom to be able to travel and spend time with people that I loved. And clearly I had not had that happen. Yeah.
So won't get into this one certain thing. I was invited by another real estate guy to a meditation retreat. And at that meditation retreat, they served some delicate plant medicines, which I was not open to.
I was four hours away from home though and I had to lean into the process. And I will just, I'll share like that was in 2021 and that completely shifted. One night shifted everything in my entire, entire world and started becoming much more intentional.
Just like you, I found breath work. We found yoga. I found like energy work.
I'm crazy now. I'm completely crazy and I've never felt more fulfilled or satisfied. And now that's why I love these podcasts because it's not hustle and grind.
It's like, how can we take what we've learned to build and build it in a really fulfilling way? Looking at our family, looking at our fun, right? Looking at our fitness, looking at our everything in, in, in work-life integration instead of balance.
You know, I like the integration piece more than balance now. Yeah.
Somebody was recently describing it as kind of like if you think, if you see a tight rope walker with like the big rod or whatever they're holding there, they're like trying to stay balanced or whatever. And just sometimes you're going to be leaning into the work. There's going to be times where you're going to have to be, but you have to just remember to, to, you know, balance back and swing back when you can.
Um, so yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's hard to, to not to avoid saying, you know, how do you say balance completely, but it is a little bit like of a, you know, what is balance and, and, and it's hard to, it's, it's more about like looking, if you look at time blocking in a week, for example, you can look at it maybe that way in a year with, you know, what is most important to you as family work, you know, relationships, all that stuff.
So.
Oh my God, that's so perfect. And you don't have to do what I did. So ultimately I shut down five of the seven companies and I didn't do it in an easy way, right?
Everyone thinks there's a sexy sale at the end of the tunnel. No, no, no. I was called to get all of this off my plate that didn't serve me anymore.
So we shut down and shut down hard. And we had a lot of projects still in the pipeline. We had a lot of, you know, people that were kind of left in the lurch and we had to have tough conversations with team members that, you know, we need to rehouse and have to go somewhere else for me.
People don't have to do what I did.
Wow.
If they're just present in this moment, like how can, how can we just be in this moment and not have to actually the brain that says to do and to achieve and to hustle and to target set. And that is real. And that's not why we're here.
Like that's just how we were taught and programmed as an entrepreneur, as type a, and what can, how can we just like be in the moment without having to strive or effort, you know? And then we can go back, we can go back to the effort and the hustle. Like you said, we can balance back and forth.
Yeah. I mean, I feel like, you know, it's, it's also, well, you know, I heard, I heard, um, do you know Naval Ravikant? No.
Are you familiar with him? He, uh, was on a podcast here recently, uh, modern wisdom, I believe it was. And I heard him describe, um, how like they were, they were talking about kind of the giving up the pursuit of things or giving up like, you know, the, the earthly desires, if you want to get into the crazy hippie world together here for a minute.
And, and he was talking about how it's, it's a lot easier to do so once you've achieved things, once you've kind of, you know, built your empire, if you will. And he, he was referring to like Buddha, for example, who was a prince. So like he, he had the ability to like, kind of denounce things, but he already had them.
And I think one of the key things here, and one of the things that people might struggle with, if they haven't gone out and achieve things is that you might always feel like you have something like you have to prove something, you know, like you've gone out and proved you can do things like, uh, build a eight figure business. You've gone out and prove that you can be successful that, and that you choose to live a more balanced life now. And, and you, you are choosing to do.
And I think a lot of people might struggle with not feeling like they, like, I feel like they, they, uh, need to prove it to themselves and to prove to the world that they can go out and be something, be successful, et cetera. And I think what you and I are both saying is that it doesn't mean you can't go after these things. It's just about not losing what's important, uh, along the way and focusing on your, what you want out of life in general.
And if success is all it is, is that's all you want. I mean, maybe you need to go do a plant based, uh, medicine.
It's true. And it's the definition of that success, right? I think just in our Western hemisphere, success is cashflow.
It's net worth. It's balance sheets versus what if it, what if it's, what if it's presence? Like what if it's, uh, being present with ourself?
So you're right. Like if you haven't, if you do feel like you have that drive to prove something, you know, I would first sit with that, right? Like where's, what does that drive coming from?
Like, you know, the fact I share this with my community now and we're all type a entrepreneurs and most of us are real estate. Right. And you know, what would, what if we've already done enough now?
I know this is the opposite, right? But like, I'm telling that for a reason, because if we can feel into that, if we can sit with that really uncomfortable thought, cause our brain can't comprehend it. Like what if we've already done everything we needed to do just by being born into the body, right?
Like what if that's the miracle and everything else on top of that is like extra, it's like creation, it's bonus. And I'll be the first one to say that like when I shut down and we didn't just, you know, eight figure businesses like didn't, you know, over a mil in debt, not including the, you know, 24 million in mortgages. And that was so difficult for me to sit with, but I knew, I knew that if once I learned how to sit with like my decision being the right one and I knew how to sit with me being who I was presently, that I could start to then use my brain in a very different way, like aligning it right with, with who I really was instead of just doing it to prove myself.
Now I'm doing it with intention, with presence and purpose to move in and start to attract all of a sudden I would attract better deals. I attracted better partners. I attracted low interest debt, right?
Like real estate became a part of my spiritual journey and it's like I'm a walking example of you don't have to continuously effort and grind and hustle, right? Like you can, we can switch the narrative where it'll all come to us by just us sending an intention and doing the right things every single day for ourselves, right? Not just getting on the phone and making thousand calls like we can do just setting ourselves right.
So thanks for letting me get that out there because it's like so powerful. It's been so powerful for me and I'm seeing shifts every single day.
Yeah. That's, that's amazing. So, so how does, how does it look like for you now?
What are you doing now that you've made this shift?
Doing is the wrong word being, no, I'm just kidding. But like, I'll tell you, this is the opposite of who I was three years ago, Mattias. So I'm just like sharing, right?
So I, yeah, I love it. The first year and a half I would get up and I would have an entire brain freak out mind spiral. What am I supposed to be doing today?
Who am I now? I'm not producing. So, you know, what value do I have?
Like first I had to fight all those demons, which took a solid year and a half. And now I wake up. I wake up anytime between, I used to have a three hour, and also brain just like must do your meditation, must do your journaling, must do like all the miracle morning stuff.
And even that became like checklist, checklist. Yeah. So what can I do with intention?
So I wake up, I have my boys 50% of the time. And when I don't, I'm with my wife, my new wife. And so I wake up between 6, 630.
I will immediately just do some sort of workout or fitness routine, right? Drink a ton of water. And then I'll move into, I have a book up there called A Course in Miracles.
So I will read a chapter or the day, it's a daily book. So I'll read that. I'll journal it.
I'll then move into my calendar for the day. And typically depending on the day, the certain days are more creative days. Certain days are masculine grind hustle days.
Depending on what they are or fulfillment. So we still have commercial assets. We still, we have a couple of hotels.
We've got a couple of RV parks and campgrounds. We have about 100 and we're down from 1,000 units to about 160 rental units between like three different states. And every single one of those, right?
I've put strategic managers or operators now in place. And the hardest part was being able to trust and not have to micromanage every single day. So we have asset management meetings either every two weeks or every four weeks, depending on where the asset is and its stabilization process.
And then from there, I'm doing this. I mean, this is like pretty, it's pretty awesome. And I do have a coaching business.
So we do, I have some one-on-one work and some small group work where people, a lot of burnt out type A entrepreneurs that are looking to kind of get to their next level.
What tips would you have for people that are looking to be able to delegate more to hand off and not micromanage?
What a great question. I thought you're gonna ask me a different question. I had that one prepared.
Go through losing absolutely everything so that it can't get much worse than that. And then you can trust other people. No, don't do that.
That's not the right way to do it. Um, yeah, that's a great question.
Is it like a muscle you have to exercise that it kind of gets stronger and easier as you go?
A thousand percent. And I still catch, I apologize immediately, like when we're starting to have an operator or manager discussion or a partnership discussion, I'll just come and say my journey. Like, what don't you know, I'm a recovering control freak.
I am doing much better. And here's the thing, if I'm hiring you for this, or if I'm partnering with you to do this job, and you see me going back into old habits, I want you to call me out on it because that's going to be a coaching moment for me. Like, I need you to say, hey, my job, I got this.
And for the people who do tend to over control or want to do that, like if you have a set of straight up KPIs, right, he performs indicators for that asset, or maybe it's for your brokerage. If you're a owner broker and you now are putting in, like a managing broker or something like that, like just have them meet with you once a month or twice a month. And you get to choose what are those indicators that you want to have them report to you on.
And you'll know the strength of the business by where those indicators are. So if you have that data, rest just becomes a conversation around like, how are you doing? Can I offer you any support, right?
And if the data is not good, my next question to them is, is this expected, right? Is this a surprise? And the only wrong answer to that would be yes, right?
Like if there's bad data and they're surprised by it, now we have to have a different conversation. But if it's bad data, like this was expected because, that's fantastic, you know?
Yeah. That's really good. I mean, that's really good advice for people.
I think a lot of agents don't think about delegating at all. And I think it's a big challenge to overcome. And a lot of them think they have to do everything themselves.
That's a huge burnout precursor, right? Because we're not, we all have our strengths. We all have what we're good at and what moves the needle the most.
And learning to trust others and give it to others so that you can focus on what moves the needle the most and gives you the most fulfillment is huge.
Absolutely, absolutely. There's a great, I mean, you probably, your people already know, the best, one of the best first hires I've ever made was just an executive assistant. Or it was a marketing assistant, turned into an executive assistant.
And we found her on onlinejobs.ph, right? Filipino, yeah. And I mean, she's been a godsend.
I've had one with me for the last nine years. Wow. I've had one with me for just two years.
And we've had a whole army of them in the past, like for different contract work. But when you have someone else that just knows you in depth, knows your calendar, knows who you are, knows how you operate, knows how you think, it just becomes, it's a wonderful, beautiful thing where you have one person in your entire world you don't have to control or micromanage. And if you have that one person, who else is possible to not have to micromanage or control?
Right, yeah, that's true. And I think there's a lot of fear and stuff preventing people from doing it. But I think even if you don't get it right the first time, it's a good step to take.
And yeah, continue that path to live the life you really want to. And Nick, do you want to answer the question you thought I was going to ask? Do you want to just ask it, or do you want to get into the golden nugget?
Sure, nope, we can get to the golden nugget.
That's totally cool, yeah.
What golden nugget do you have for our listeners? I feel like you've got a wealth of nuggets here.
I appreciate that. No, you know, and it did come to me during our conversation, right? So it's not in the target, it's in the becoming, the person you're supposed to be to get to the target.
Right, it's not in, even as a, learning how to invest as an agent, right? Like that's so unbelievably powerful to build that legacy for like them and the family. And yet, in order to have a portfolio that throws off, right, $100,000 a month, it's not even about the $100,000 a month, it's the person you or the relationship you and your wife or your husband have to go through to get that $100,000 a month in income.
That's all that life's about. And $100,000 will come as a byproduct of you becoming that person.
Wow, I love that. That's powerful. It's a great golden nugget.
How about a book? Do you have any books that you feel are fundamental, everybody should read, or one do you think you're currently just really enjoying that you would recommend?
Oh, total. I mean, there's so many books that have already been stated in the podcast here, so I'm gonna try to avoid all those. Four, yeah, so many business books.
So I'm gonna, the business book, which might have been already announced here, but it's Profit First for Real Estate Agents, right? We chatted about that a little bit. Mike Michalowicz wrote Profit First.
I believe it's David Richter who wrote for real estate agents, and it was awesome. Takes your transactional, we had all our agents do it, where it takes your transactional and moves it into buckets that help take care of your marketing, take care of your taxes, take care of your fund bucket, and puts an investing bucket. So you can use that to put into passive opportunities or to build an active investment business.
And the other one, like more of a spiritual allowing book, was the Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. Okay. The guy who just wanted to meditate in the woods and ended up being a multi-billionaire just by saying yes to certain things in his life to allow him to become this person.
And he didn't have any creds, didn't have any qualifications, but he's got a beautiful little tribe now down in Gainesville, Florida that submit to just trusting the process, like surrendering to life in all of its forms. It's pretty cool.
That sounds awesome. I'm gonna have to check that one out. Yeah, so where could people find you if they want to just follow your journey more or maybe talk to you about coaching?
Yeah, sure. We're revamping the website, but it's NickAalerud.com. It's my name, Nick, A-A-L-E-R-U-D.com.
Otherwise, I'm all over like Instagram and Facebook and the other social media engines. And yeah, they can see kind of, if they like this, there's more of this. I can't help myself, and I have to talk life when we talk business.
Everyone wants to come to me for tactical business strategies, but the whole point is like becoming, right?
Yeah, what do you lead with? That's great. Nick, it's been a lot of fun.
This has been a really fun, refreshing conversation. Yeah, really enjoyed it.
Me too, man. Thank you so much for having me on.
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.
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