Show notes:

1:49 – What is a ‘Super Sick Deal?’

3:35 – How to shift from attracting small deals, to bigger ones

5:21 – A cool tip to turn a crappy day around

6:50 – How to make goal setting simpler, and easy to follow through on

10:21 – The mindset required to get out of massive debt

15:00 – Why big wins are often followed by two steps back

19:43 – A very entertaining anecdote on Mike’s favorite part about being a dad right now

Mentions & Resources

Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill

The Big Leap – Gay Hendricks

The Millionaire Real Estate Investor – Jay Papasan

The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson

Connect with Mike

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.schlichte.1

Website: https://my505home.com

Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Hey, welcome back. It’s Avram Gonzales from the Babies and Business podcast. I’m here with good friend and colleague, Mr. Michael Schlichte. What’s good with you, Mike?

Michael Schlichte: Not a lot, man. I’m happy to be on and excited to talk about what I’ve been working on out in the world and inside my own head.

Avram Gonzales: Absolutely. So Mike is a father, a real estate, I will call him a mini mogul here in Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, New Mexico. And one of the things that always inspired me about Mike and why he’s on the podcast with us here today is because he’s somebody who’s always had a vision. Has worked through many different hardships and many different transformations of the mind to arrive where he is today, which is building, and we’re, we’re going to talk about this later, in the process of building almost done with that dream home. Okay. But more importantly, architecting his desired life. So, so excited to have you here, Mike.

The first thing I want to ask you about is the super sick deal. Mike shared with me recently one of his defining purposes, right? And one of the things that you’re architecting in your life is the super sick deal. Tell me about that, and that conversation that we had, um, that I’m talking about.

Michael Schlichte: Yeah, the super sick deal started when I, um, just trying to get my head right, you know, trying to think of what I could focus my energy on, focus my manifestation powers on. And one of those things that a recurring theme that I’ve done, whether through exercise or meditation is health, wealth and love. And I had this recurring, you know, mantra in my head for a really long time and I refined it.

Um, because I wanted to do, I wanted it to be a little bit more specific. And so one of the specifics that I focus on is, um, I write super sick deals every day. And I would say this as I’m running, as I’m playing soccer, as I’m doing like, you know, sort of like flow state type stuff, I write super sick deals every day, usually in sequence with my footsteps.

So that was sort of the way that I was training my brain to be ready for, um, a super sick deal. Well, what is a super sick deal is the question. And so, um, this year, my definiteness of purpose statement is I live a life full of adventure filled with family connection fueled by super sick deals. And a super sick deal for me, it just means, uh, that it’s a deal like a real estate deal, cause that’s the business that I’m in, that fills my longing to achieve, and grow, and at the same time fills my bank account. And one of the things as an entrepreneur that’s motivated me and probably many people that are listening would be freedom.

This mindset of like financial freedom creates these freedoms that I can explore with my family. Freedoms I can explore with my friends. And so having that freedom, from what I’ve been able to tell the freedom I’ve achieved has come from large windfalls of cash through large deals that are highly profitable.

And the other thing I found in real estate is the the small deals take just as much time as the big deals. And so if you can focus your powers of manifestation, whatever you want to call prayer, whatever your word of the day is, um, if you focus that energy, whatever you focus on expands. And so if you focus it on a large deal, you start to manifest large deals in your life.

If you focus on small deals, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just, you’re probably going to get small deals with the occasional big one. So I really have focused the last two years of my career on, on allocating time and energy for large deals. And I call them super sick deals because it’s way more fun.

Avram Gonzales: it is way more fun. Have you found any sort of maybe imposter syndrome as you cast that vision wider

Michael Schlichte: Yeah. I mean, I think anyone who’s had any sort of success material or otherwise runs into that right away. I mean, there’s no, there’s no shortage of biographies that you can read on people that talk about that. So, yeah, I mean, I think the, the, “I’m not good enough” for these types of deals or the comparison to other people that maybe have more experience than you.

I think I just come back down to adding value for, for myself and for my customers. And the more I do that, the more I focus in the less that imposter syndrome comes up because you know, I’m lucky.

And I think Avram, you probably find this in your businesses that there’s a lot of routine built into our business, but occasionally you have a client where you’re, you’re pretty certain that you’re the only person that could have helped that client, right? No one else in the industry could have provided the type of service that you provided, the type of value you provided. And so I cling to those when I have those clients or I have a super sick deal that I’m like no one else around me, my peers.

I did this better than anyone around. You gotta, you gotta like celebrate the victories. My, my sister says that a lot. Like you have to celebrate victories. You have to cling to them because life is hard and challenging and it wants to knock you down. So,

Avram Gonzales: On those days? Cause they’re there. You want that reminder. I had, I had this friend, Cassie. She had this file that she called the “Cassie is Awesome” file. And she would just take every single testimonial or a good thing that happened in her business and put it in there because of all the rough days that were in between, she could just open it up and then drink that in and feel that again.

So you, you and Danielle, your wife, Danielle are a power team. You work together intimately, of course, on your goals and the evolution of those goals. So tell me a little bit about how that’s changed over the years. I mean, it seems like a very big focus and the thing that you both get excited about.

Michael Schlichte: Yeah. I think, um, I am a little bit more rigid in my belief systems and like how I think the world works. Danielle is more of a free spirit, more free flowing. So her ability to manifest is at least in my opinion, more natural. It’s, um, sort of like this in the nineties, we used to say “no doy,” right? It was like, duh, you know?

So she’s able to like hold these things in her mind over extended periods of time without losing focus or forgetting. Like my brain, just, I forget stuff like I, I can focus on something for a time and then it’s just evaporates. And so for me, like I have to write things down, I have to write down my goals and then I review them annually.

And so one thing that I do is I write a 1 page definiteness of purpose statement, which is, um, adapted from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and, uh, some of the other things that he has to do with like mastermind group. So that’s my purpose statement. It’s always 1 page. It has three focuses, family, business, and fitness.

Um, sometimes there’s some spirituality mixed in there, depending on what I have going on in my personal life. But it’s just a one pager. It’s a reminder. I tape it to my printer. I look at it once a month, or once every other month, and as just a reminder. And then, I always have an annual statement. This year, the statement is, I live a full life.

A full… I live a… Life full of adventure, which you have to be careful with adventure.

Avram Gonzales: You do.

Michael Schlichte: When you tempt the fates with that phrase, it’s very ambiguous. And so I’ve had to remind myself as I go through different adventures with the house build, with my business, um, I have to remind myself that I asked for these adventures and that can be sometimes a harsh reminder.

So yeah, I keep it simple. One page, I share it with Danielle. Um, anything that’s on there. The following year that I didn’t take a single action point on, I didn’t do a single thing to work towards that goal. I scrape it. I don’t let it linger on there multiple years in a row, because honestly, if you have 12 months to accomplish something and you’re not even taking the first step, it’s probably not really the direction that you want to go in. So it’s a one pager. I keep it simple. And I usually like some catchy saying at the front so that it helps me read it throughout the year and get excited.

Avram Gonzales: I love it. I can appreciate that big time and I can appreciate the, uh, the complimentary nature that you have in your relationship. You know, Rachel and I are the same way. We’re like these very opposite uncertain things. And it sounds like, if I had to guess that she probably helps you come back to your center sometimes when things uh, don’t go according to plan.

Michael Schlichte: Yeah, totally. And I don’t know how she holds these things in her mind, but sometimes I’m like, “Would you just manifest like, you know, millions and millions of dollars for us. So I don’t have to go to work,” you know, cause I think honestly she could do it, but she just doesn’t, she’s not motivated really by finance.

She’s not motivated by money. Um, and so it is an interesting combination. So

Avram Gonzales: Come on, Danielle. Pick up the slack

Michael Schlichte: yeah. Place, place the order with the universe. Let’s go make it happen. Cause I’m struggling.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah So I know that the two of you went through early especially earlier on in your entrepreneurial career, you guys had some massive debt that you were dealing with, right? You weren’t always in this place where you’re able to build wealth, wealth for yourself and your family. So describe to me what your mindset was like when you guys were digging your way out and pushing forward.

I think of that often Avram, because we, we do have so much material abundance and success in our life right now. Sometimes with abundance and success comes doubt. You know, and I, I used, um, you know, I was highly motivated. I wanted to be successful materially. So I was highly motivated the books that I was reading, the authors that I was reading, they all kind of had the same foundation of, you know, believe it and you can achieve it sort of thing. So I was naively confident based on that, but I also really clung to mathematics. So I knew that my goal was to be a millionaire. And really when I started to pursue it seriously was when I realized I was 20, 28 years old, really heavily in debt.

Michael Schlichte: I had thought at that time I would for sure be a multimillionaire. Um, and I was, I was not, I was negative ne t worth, um, a lot of debt. And so I just looked at it from a mathematical perspective and I thought, okay, I’m 20, 28 years old. The, the statistics say that I have to save 600 a month to retire at age 59 and a half as a, as a millionaire.

And so I just started that, you know, I just, every month I had, I had my 600 that was earmarked for, uh, my financial goals. And, you know, I used other tools, you know, debt snowballs and things like that, but I think naivety. I have to credit it to sort of this unwavering faith that I was going to be successful.

And part of that is because I saw people in the world that were not smart. That were successful. I saw people in the world that were not hardworking and were successful materially, and I thought, man, I’m, I am smart and I am hardworking. I’m definitely going to be successful. It’s just, I need more discipline.

I need more strategy. I need more knowledge. And, you know, I couldn’t have even begun to describe at age 28, everything that I would learn throughout my thirties and now I’m 41. So, you know, I think naivety. And so sometimes I have to come back to that, Avram, I have to say to myself, “I have all of this abundance.

I have all these tools in my tool bag. I have all this track record of success. So why am I worrying about paying my mortgage next month?” I have a savings account. I have retirement. I have assets. I have all these tools that I didn’t have, but for some reason in my twenties, I was just like, I didn’t have any of that.

I had no experience. I had no money. I had nothing, but I’m like, Oh, I’m going to be rich for sure. You know? And so I think sometimes I have to remind myself, like, get back to that naive state of mind and forget, you know, worrying about, Oh, what am I going to lose today? Like, well, am I going to lose, you know, my connection with my wife?

Am I going to lose connection with my son? Am I going to lose this upcoming client? Am I going to lose the super sick deal that I’ve been working on for a year? Like. That’s just noise. Like, just focus on what you want. Focus on the abundance that you have, and what I’m grateful for, and what I’m thankful for.

And when I do that, the other stuff seems to fade away. And guess what? Those things start showing up more and more in my life. When I’m focused on the other side, You know, my car gets broken into. I back into a pole,. You know, like there’s just stuff like that happens. They’re distractions. So anyways, I think that’s naivety is probably my, my answer to that question.

I was naively confident.

Avram Gonzales: That’s good. And it’s honest. I think a lot of us in our twenties, especially young men, we’re just like, we just kind of go for it. And that’s kind of the superpower of being in your twenties and having nothing to fear. I think that’s something I realized you reminded me of as you were talking, uh, worrying about all the stuff that you could lose.

You know, it took me a long time to realize that I am never going to go totally broke because I would never allow myself to be there. Your, your head can go to the worst possible places, but what’s your baseline? Most of us are, are saying to the universe right now, I’m, I’m surviving. At least I’m surviving.

So you’re not going to be homeless. You’re not going to be without food. You’re not going to be without money. Like even the worst case scenario, guess what’s going to happen. You lose everything. Something will find its way back to you very quickly. So I want to shift gears here as we start to wrap up.

You and Danielle have embarked on this huge journey of building your custom home. Something that maybe you thought for a while you never would after selling and buying so many houses, flipping them, like, do I really want to build a custom house? Tell me about what that journey is like being so close to the end.

And then also if there’s anything you’d like to share about moments where you felt really tested in this process? Because I would bet that something this big would test you in maybe some roundabout ways along the way.

Michael Schlichte: Yeah. You’re, you’re familiar with Gay Hendricks book, The Big Leap, which the premise is that we all have a thermostat of success, a thermostat for love, a thermostat for goodness, that when, when triggered, we end up sort of figuring out a way to bring that temperature down. So, you know, it explains a lot of lottery winners.

It explains a lot of Olympic gold medalists. They win a gold medal and the very next day, desperately depressed because they’ve achieved this amazing thing. But now they’re like, now what, you know, now what, cause you still have to wake up with yourself. You still have to wake up in the next day and do your thing.

So the upper limit for me has been a challenge. My, my blueprint, my financial blueprint from a child was one of lack, um, not poverty, but not wealth by any stretch of the imagination, large family, single income. So yeah, I think my upper limit has been triggered multiple times. The day I signed the construction loan, which was huge. You know, the, the checks that I’ve written, which have been huge, you know, the amount of money that we’ve spent on this project far exceeded my expectations of what I would say, what I personally would spend on a, on a, on a house. Um, I had a friend of mine who got hurt a couple of years ago when we first were deciding like, are we going to do this?

Are we going to stretch and like build our dream home? It’s a 20 year, uh, process in the making and he got hurt, almost died in a coma. And that week I’m like, you know what? I think I would trade all this. I would trade rental properties, vacant land. I would trade the cash I have in the bank. I would trade all of it to check off the box of we built a dream home.

We built, you know, it’s a magnificent property. I mean, it’s far superseded any expectations that I would have had that we, Danielle and I would have been able to accomplish in, in a single lifetime. And the answer at that point in time, because that was so raw and like, you know, when you tragedy brings out interesting parts of people, but, um, I thought, yeah, you know, I would trade it all.

I would trade all my assets, all my money, everything to like have this creation. And I didn’t realize I was giving commands to the universe in that moment, because I really did have to trade a lot more than I was hoping, uh, to accomplish it. So, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve always flown under the radar.

And so this, this house is not an under the radar house. You know, we’ve always remained debt free and we don’t take out auto debt. Um, we don’t have any credit card debt. Um, but this is a, this house is on another level. And so certainly like my own identity has been challenged of like, who am I really? Am I really this conservative, fiscally conservative, entrepreneur who always leverages his cash perfe ctly and never makes a mistake on investments. And the answer to that question is no, I am not because I have this ridiculous house that we’re building. And, uh, but boy, has it been an amazing creative outlet for my wife! She’s designed it from ground zero.

We don’t have an interior designer. She did all that work on her own. She’s made all the acquisitions, all the purchasing people have offered her jobs within the industry because of the way that our house is coming out, we’re going to be featured in a local magazine called Su Casa, for the Parade of Homes in October.

So we’re super excited about that. And it’s just been a challenge every day is a challenge. And we’re about three weeks away from moving in. So

Avram Gonzales: Crazy. It’s gonna be a fun little housewarming come, uh, 4th of July ish.

Michael Schlichte: It will, yes, it

Avram Gonzales: Wild. All right. Well, hey, we’re winding down here on time. I’m sure our listeners would love to know where it is that you’re hanging out online. Where can they connect with you?

Michael Schlichte: Um, probably Facebook, uh, or my website, um, My505Home.com, I’m re digging into The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, which is a book of foundational book for me that I read 15 years ago. And I’m, I’m actually starting a paid mastermind group through that. Um, so if anybody’s interested in learning how to become a millionaire real estate investor, that would be a really good.

Um, track for you. It’s eight weeks long. Uh, you’ll be meeting with me once a week. I’m going to be sharing all my tools, my calculators, my loan agreements, like loan docs for raising hard money, all that stuff, uh, will be included in the class. So that’s going to be really fun. Um, so yeah, Facebook or, or my website.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. My505Home.com. We’re going to have everything, all of Mike’s contact information loaded up in the show notes. You can catch it on the website, BabiesAndBizPod.Com or Babies and Biz Podcast. It’s still getting weird saying that, uh, that URL out loud, but we’re going to wrap things up here. Mike, it’s been awesome having you, powerful, strong father, building his dream, visioning with his family.

We’re going to enter the rapid fire question round. We got like five quick questions for you before we round it out. Let’s hit it.

So what’s your favorite part of being a dad right now?

Michael Schlichte: Uh, right now I would say Oliver sometimes will come to me and he’ll just say, “Dad, I need violence,” which, which means he wants to wrestle, you know? And so it’s time to go. Like when he says I need violence, maybe, you know, we’ve been on screens too long or something. We need to get pent up energy out. But he goes, just turns and he said, “Dad, I need some violence.”

And so that’s, it’s time to go on that.

Avram Gonzales: That’s hilarious.

What’s the most interesting or challenging thing that you’re navigating as a parent right now?

Michael Schlichte: I would definitely say like screen time. I mean, that’s, I think for us, personally, as, as humans, I think everyone is struggling with that. It’s just getting so easy to just stay on your devices. And so screen time and then when to push, you know, like, do you push him to sports, to music, you know, kids have it easy these days, you know, I think they need to be pushed a little bit.

So it’s just determining where to push, when to push, cause you don’t want to push kids away from an activity, right? You don’t want to drive them so hard towards something that they, they reject it, uh, which we’ve all experienced. So those two things.

Avram Gonzales: Interesting balance to maintain.

What’s a developmental thing that your son Oliver has done that’s kind of surprised you recently?

Michael Schlichte: Uh, he made a math loop the other day with out of a cube with these recycling recurring numbers, like each line equal the next and to the next and to the next. And I had like three people check his work because I’m like, this can’t be real. He’s like, “Oh yeah, I just made it.” So that and he just, we downloaded Zelda, the Tears of the Kingdom. And he like plays it for 15 minutes. He knows how to do all this stuff and he’s eight, which I can’t it’s, it’s wild. So that’s been a lot of fun.

Avram Gonzales: That’s cool.

What book are you reading right now?

Michael Schlichte: Uh, so The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, I just reread The Big Leap, cause that’s something I struggle with quarterly. Um, but for fun, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson is just, I mean, if you want to stop watching YouTube, you want to stop watching Netflix. You want to put down news you want to go and like, just, let your mind go, The way of Kings is a phenomenal series. Uh, it’s fiction. Of course.

Avram Gonzales: Cool. We’ll link that up in the show notes too.

Last question, what’s a word of encouragement that you’d give to entrepreneurial dads that are still in their first six months with their first kiddo?

Michael Schlichte: It gets easier, Avram. That’s what I would say. I think for men specifically, I can’t speak for everyone. This is a generalization obviously, but I think it’s hard to connect with an infant that’s so interconnected with a mom, right? They’re breastfeeding typically. And they’re just, they’re, they’re tight.

Like nothing can. Nothing can or should get in the way of that bond. So you can feel like an outsider in your own family because you don’t get that immediate connection. Again, everyone is different, but many of the men that I’ve spoken to are just like, man, yeah, I’m, I’m second fiddle this and that. And I would say right around a year, I shared this with Avram originally that that connection then starts to grow.

And now my son’s eight and like. it-tides have turned, you know, he still needs his mom. He still loves his mom, but you know, dad time is, is where it’s at.

Avram Gonzales: I mean, that’s where you’re going to get some violence, right? It’s with Papa. Well,

Michael Schlichte: when you need violence, you come to dad.

Avram Gonzales: That’s great. Well, thanks, Mike. A pleasure and a joy is always to have you on here and thank you listeners for tuning in. That’s a wrap for the Babies and Business Podcast. Make sure to connect with us online on all the social platforms that matter to you most @babiesandbizpod.

That’s where you can find us, and hey, go to iTunes, rate this show, give us a comment, let us know how awesome it was. It really helps us reach other entrepreneurial parents who are trying to find their own way. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you on the next one.