don't even know if you're at a bragging point at two million anymore right no no you gotta be like a three three five four for people hey guys welcome to another episode of break it down with braden super excited i got my boy michael graham on here today michael thanks for joining me you're welcome hey i love that energy you don't know this viewers but braden had to do 20 push-ups right now before he walked in the door so he could get his energy yeah and some pull-ups let's go um i've known michael here for shoot probably six seven years now i think coming up something like that yeah i think right when i got into magnus i think you were still at uh keller williams and that was kind of cool and it took a while for you to give me a come over to the docs uh michael's at exp realty uh tell everybody a little bit about yourself tell everyone about how long you been in real estate where you're at now what you've been up to um great question so i've been in real estate since 2004 i moved to scottsdale um so that's 17 or 18 years i can't do math really well especially on the spot um do we look into the camera hello or do we just look at each other right conversation awesome um if you want to really make a statement i didn't want it yeah i didn't want it to be awkward it's really setting the tone like i've done a podcast before but i've never done it on camera so i didn't know how's my profile so uh so yeah i've been in real estate for 18 years it's been a great career i love real estate and it's allowed us the flexibility to make good money and then take some time off and and uh enjoy life and travel because that's what we're really all about and um yeah so now i'm uh i'm here in scottsdale i'm working putting deals together hustling um and uh exp has been a great company i moved to them in 2018 i want to say um so been there for four years and yeah just a good concept i guess i've been up you know a predominantly an individual agent my wife worked with me for some time we have two children now so she's been at home for the last four years since we had our first baby three years um and uh yeah so um but yeah i've been predominantly an independent agent had her working with me at one point i did hire multiple people on my team to uh service a town home project that we sold it was kind of like a new build project um and uh yeah um what was that project it was called arium arium town homes how many units was that uh there were 24 units i believe on that piece and there were a couple phases so there was another real estate company that worked before we took over that second phase i think they were just tired or it was fizzling out between them and something they needed to make a change so we came in there and sold out and finished that project and it was good um after that project in 2018 um actually it was 2017 that we sold out of that when we finished up that project uh we decided to take a sabbatical to mexico and we lived in playa del carmen for a few months and the month prior to that we traveled around uh uh europe for about five weeks so it was a really good that's why i love real estate right because we sold we did well and then we said okay now we're gonna you know we rented our house out airbnb which did really well we live in old town scottsdale i remodeled my house so it's like a brand new home we did that in 2015 and it's you know five minutes from fashion square mall so that did well but it allowed us the opportunity to go travel be in a different place and some really cool things happen while we were on that trip um and one of which is danielle got pregnant my wife and we had been trying to have kids for a while and so that was a really cool surprise um and just a yeah just a great trip and we just got to do that same thing again at the beginning of this year we went and lived in san carlos mexico i think i was telling you that's where i learned how to kite surf which was amazing so that's one of my new addictions is kite surfing and we were there for three months rented our house out again airbnb and did well with it and uh we're going back again uh next year in january so it's ruining my snow ski season but um the wind is just amazing down there it's it's like a cold hard punch wind um and just the spot that we have there in san carlos is amazing it's you know beautiful views and just a really cool community of kite surfers and yeah um so just fun just enjoying life man i love it that's what we're doing dude um started another company as well this year yep tell everyone about that i think that's yeah pretty cool thing started it actually in 2018 that was another big thing that happened on that so yeah okay so it's been four years when i went on that trip to playa del carmen um that's when this idea came to me i went out to the beach with some friends and got totally sunburned and we only had an umbrella and we had some beach blankets i got bit by sand fleas too have you ever gotten bit by sand please before it sounds well that's a treat aside from getting a bad sunburn um but anyway that night i had this crazy dream i woke up at 3am and kept my eyes closed and just finished out the vision that i had of this dream while i was laying in bed at three o'clock in the morning with my eyes closed and i woke up the next day and i was like my parents were visiting us there at the time and i sat everybody down and i said get your coffee don't talk okay are you guys settling because i have to tell you something i mean that's how compelled i was you know that's how moved i was by by this vision and so yeah four years later um i have two patents that have been awarded on that product and i have a patent pending another design um so the product the name of the company is called shadyco um you can pronounce it shade echo but it's the word shade and the word echo i'll clump together um and what shadyco is it's an outdoor company but our main flagship product right now is a unique design for an all-in-one shade that converts to a hammock so it's the only shade that can convert to a hammock and so what what it is it's an all-in-one we have two different units like a less expensive unit that just comes with a shoulder strap bag and a more expensive one that comes with a fully functioning hiking backpack right so you can store all kinds of stuff in it you can you know use the the the clamps and the and the straps on the outside to put more stuff in the backpack so the whole idea behind this concept was i like to fly to playa del carmen and i'm not taking a big umbrella or i'm not taking one of these giant like canopy things right you know you're never traveling and then when you get to these places that you're on the beach you need shade unless you're in an all-inclusive resort where there's like already beach umbrellas set up if you like to travel remote and you're in like tulum right you're on some desolate beach there's palm trees like i love hammocks right so i love hanging in this hammock i'm in between palm trees i'm listening to ocean that's like my jam right and and i love you know kneading shade is important and having a somewhere to lay too so when i came up with this concept and i mean it's been years in the making of me going down to the beach trying it out making changes right going back to the my manufacturer and like hey we got to change this and the engineer hey let's design this and so we've created all kinds of bells and whistles where it's like there's a blanket on the bottom right so you have somewhere to lay there's a shade on the top it's fully adjustable there's telescopic posts that go from like 18 inches all the way up to six and a half feet so you can stand under this there's like little screw anchors right that go into the sand yeah there's sand anchors and those attach the telescopic posts but then we've also created grass anchors so if you're at the park like you use these and so we're trying to create it to where it's modular to where you know we sell accessories that complement it i'm working on some sandbag anchor anchors right now that will run out as a prototype so if there's super heavy wind you can attach those but the idea is how do i have everything i want for the outdoors in one bag and i never have to think about it it's just always in my car right if i live in san diego it's always in my car i show up at the beach and i'm there it's a pain and can i say bad words oh yeah it's a pain in the ass to go to the beach because it takes 30 minutes to load the car and 30 minutes to walk all your crap exactly dude imagine if you didn't have to do that imagine if you just had one backpack and you just showed up and you knew you'd be comfortable with that one backpack now if you're having some sort of giant freaking family yeah you're going to take the extra time to take those big heavy structures because you're going to need way more square footage shaded and all that kind of stuff but i'm talking about man i want a place to lay i want the thing and you know and the fact that it converts into hammocks is pretty cool and unique because when you're on those kind of trips you just convert that thing back into a hammock at night and now you're chilling so it's all kind of in one place that's that's the idea i love it yeah it's great great product and uh when's the shipping date so they get here at the end of july they're on the water right now so they've been manufactured um our first run was a kickstarter campaign that we did last summer we raised 67 000 and got about 280 clients um and uh and so yeah they'll get their products at the end and i over ordered products because we're going to open up a store on amazon to start um and so we'll be selling them on amazon here at the end of july love it so yeah it's very cool yeah it's a lot of fun um let's jump back into real estate so um obviously you've got a lot of experience in the industry uh you've seen the ups when the in the 08 market and the downs and stuff and what we've what we've uh seen over the course the time yeah where do you see the market going what are you what are you seeing now it's gonna crash man it's gonna crash we're all gonna die no you know i don't know i have no i have no idea you know i i couldn't have told you that a weird pandemic was going to hit uh either and that we would be running out of toilet paper at costco people would be beating each other up in the parking lot could have totally not seen that um but uh yeah the market's softening right now for sure uh houses are staying on the market a little longer we're seeing price decreases we're seeing in in interest rates going up and it things are adjusting right um but do we have a lot of straw buyers a lot of fake money out there where people own five houses but they don't even have a job kind of thing like we saw in 2008 i don't think the lenders got that careless this time around um have we experienced massive inflation and and just you know housing prices going through the roof yes you know but that's softening you know will it be 10 will it be 20 will be 30 maybe you know will it be a hundred percent though like we saw no eight you know or fifty percent you know i i don't i don't know i don't know i don't think so but but i'm not the economic nerd to ask those types of questions i mean you just had two nice listings that you put under contract within a couple days still right yeah yeah um yeah and i just took another off market um well i just took another listing so it will be on market but it's off market right now but um yeah i had a client moving from florida that's been looking and super picky and not liking what she was seeing at the one one or the one two that she was willing to spend for the right house something came on the market for 8. 95 and it met all the criteria and we were lucky because the the the couple that owns the house were just meticulous so they kept it right and they priced it right because they're appraisers so they didn't over price and so we came in at full price and just locked it down right away i mean very rarely do i give a listing agent just hours to respond right i always give them 24 hours because i i want to give them room to breathe and i'm like okay but on this one i'm like okay we're coming a little bit over and i asked and checked with her like if we give you a really good offer you'll respond right and they're like we don't have a time limit so i wrote it for them to respond 11 p. m that night because i didn't want to compete with anybody and we locked it down and it was a good it was a good deal yeah um so and uh and then i never go to the west side but i randomly sold something on the west side which is a new build um new to me too in avondale it's called alamar and it's a new project and dr houghton had a nice house for 450ish for a client that's moving from idaho how big was that um about eighteen hundred square feet that's pretty good so and a pretty house a nice layout you know the new builds now you know flow with that open concept they're able to fit four beds in there so four bed two bath um is it two bed or two and a half bath i can't remember um but not bad for 450 in today's market right but you know things have changed i used to i used to think that a million dollar home was like oh my god he lives in a million-dollar home now a million dollar homes like you live there maybe not that much but but it's like more from my perspective like i wouldn't pay a million bucks for that house it's definitely not like a bragging point like it used to be like oh i'm in a million dollar property like okay great that house was worth five hundred thousand two years ago so good for you and i don't even know if you're at a bragging point at two million anymore right no no you gotta be like a three three five four for people to be like dang that house is pimp yep that's true anything under two million it's not you're getting some like crazy big monstrosity house anymore it's got a huge yard anymore yes it's still you still might be in the track neighborhood right not a custom build or whatever you're like oh wow all right crazy some crazy appreciation that's for sure yeah um so what's your favorite thing about real estate then um other than the freedom of course yes you know i love i love working hard when i work hard i do take good strides of time off i have little mini retirements you know when i go on these sabbaticals for three months at a time because you know anybody can go on a two-week vacation right but when you go live somewhere else for a couple or a few months it's a really cool change in rhythm and tempo for your life right and i think it fills your soul in such a way that you're able to see things differently and more clearly when you approach them again and whatever it is that you do and sometimes things fall in your lap like shadyco fell in my lap when i went away but back to your question what i love about real estate i love negotiating i feel really good when i get a deal done like yesterday i took a listing for 2.
2 million in old town and i knocked on this guy's door six or seven years ago and i've always followed up because he's got a dynamite property it's 30 000 square feet he's got two houses on thirty thousand square foot a lot okay right he's got two houses on there right the bigger one twenty two thousand square feet and then the smaller one seventeen hundred square feet they've subdivided their own property so there's one lot that's ten thousand and another lot that's like 20 000 right but they literally are in a neighborhood that's residential it has no hoa and it's the only one that's connected to fashion square mall it's on paradise parkway so you can walk to fashion square mall without having to cross a major street huge for the vacation room right so um i'm trying to work a plan where we create a syndicate on that property we do a general partnership get some investors and we take that down ourselves but i but signing that listing contract was awesome yesterday because i've been following up with them and they're such do-it-yourselfers non-committing like you know i don't want to commit because we have so many opportunities and so many people and i had to close them like six or seven times i mean i had to break everything out dude i was like you guys know me like you know my two daughters like i live down the street like i'm gonna take really good care of you just trust me and i won't let you down like we can rip this contract up if i don't do my job at any time like i had to close them over and over again they're like well we just don't want to commit you know and i'm like listen i'm like then you're gonna get what you've been getting which is you haven't sold your house yet people have said they'd be willing to do this or that or whatever so i just had to kind of like just nudge them along and i even had to you know listen i'll give you a break if you're if these people that you're really talking about come to fruition and they're your buyers i'll reduce my commission to this just so that you can you know feel good about that i you know and and then i said if i bring my own buyer i'll reduce the commission of this and you know so i had to kind of work through it and finally got a signature so i love that about real estate is like that and i will take care of them right i've had to do that several times with people to get them to to trust me and get them over the edge but you know once once i i get them in my hands it's like yeah i love my job because i do i like i like providing a high level of service and a really good level of negotiating and just taking care of them like if i were taking care of my own parents or myself right like i'm completely detached to the outcome and i show up and tell the truth that's something that i learned from mike ferry it always sticks with me mike ferry i don't know if you know that tom's dead yeah tom's dad right so he had a very he still has a very successful coaching company but he said in one of their training seminars one time he said show up tell the truth and don't be attached to the outcome and it's great because we used to call that when i sold books door-to-door in college the buying atmosphere and the buying atmosphere is the opposite of a sales person that rushes up to you in a retail store right um the the sales person runs up you know what are you looking for can i help you try anything on your first reaction is like no no i'm good that's a bad buying answer a good buying atmosphere is you know braden i don't care if you buy anything today or you don't that doesn't affect me what i want to do is help you if you want to move forward you know just give me a simple yes or no if you'd like to move forward or not you know and and you won't hurt my feelings we'll still be friends if we can't do business and that kind of buying up atmosphere allows the buyer to buy it allows them to make a decision on their own because they don't feel the pressure of you like i have to make this sale right now yesterday inside i was like i have to get this close but i'm not telling them that i'm like i don't need this you need me and that's so that's property you want to buy yourself actually to airbnb is that what you thought yes i want to put together some investors and and and put that together so while i'm telling you i know you know some people with a couple of dollars in their pockets maybe more than that so we can talk about that after this yeah because i think that'll be a dynamic property i did some research on it with one of my um airbnb gals and she on the 15 bed 9 bath and that's when we thought we were building several different structures but she came back with a figure of 451 000 per year on the gross income so you have to obviously take out your costs from that but um that's big i mean even if you bring in 250 on a product like that you know it's going to be about 2 million to take it down and then another million to rehab it so you'll be in at 3 million so um you know bringing in 250 net a year i mean you'll you'll pay that back in eight or nine years so it'll be a good sound investment and just the location's not going anywhere i don't think fashion square mall is ever going to disappear right with louis vuitton and gucci there you know and lines out the door to go buy those things which i don't get by the way crazy i know you walk in there like there's a line outside of gucci needing to buy a bag that makes sense yeah yeah yeah um so what were you saying i i saw something interesting on instagram and i i don't know exactly what the guy said but he said you know the youth today you know why are they buying these spending this exorbitant amount of money on these things right like louis vuitton and that sort of thing and and he said that you know when you lack freedom what you need to identify with is something that gives you that empowerment right and so this you look for the symbol of those things right so it's like if you have the newest air jordans on or you have the louis vuitton it's like you're you're possessing that you know that uh that that power of freedom you know that that's something that you're identifying with something he was explaining i was listening to again this morning he was talking about how it's every most guys anyways or people in general are more about status than anything and so it's the bag makes you look like you've you're in that different status level of oh i'm bougie look at me i got this bag well and it's weird but the perception is there too right like so i drive a range rover and i bought this range rover when i was like super into the real estate thing and i was like you know trying to get to the next level and and doing this stuff and so i went out and bought this and i love the car obviously it's an awesome car but um part of it was you know a business decision like they're going to think that i know what i'm doing because this is what i drive and oddly enough that's exactly what happens um and it's a little bit older it's paid off but you know the older more conservative part of me now is like well i like not having a car payment so i'm not going to try to get a 1500 car payment or spend an extra 150 grand on this newer range rover when i already own mine and it looks good and it runs and it's you know awesome it's just i don't know when looking back do you think that actually helped you sell more houses maybe maybe maybe it helped me close more deals yeah exactly so somewhere in your psyche it maybe helps you like do you listen to bradley at all no no he's kind of a big hype man to kind of spot kind of like uh uh what's the big guy that uh grant cardone okay very similar to him yeah and he talked about it he's like you know when i'm working with somebody i want a guy that's got the watches he's got the cars he pulls up he's got everything right because he's he's doing it he's hustling he's hustling he's hustling and he mike ferry used to say that he's like if you're not doing enough deals go out and buy another car go out and buy another house get into debt make yourself work you know you make it fake until you make it so part of that like yes i agree with and then there's another part of it that's like i'm not trying to you know sell 500 houses a year and be a slave to my business and have 12 employees i have that means i have to show up at the office nine to five every day five days a week you know and sometimes on the weekend and sometimes like all year long you know and yeah i might be able to take a really nice vacation for a week or two and buy anything i want right thousand two thousand dollars a night at the ritz but guess what i can only be on for a week or two right i gotta come back so you know i've tried to have this especially with your two hours now too it's like okay where do you spend your time what's more important 100 and that's a big part of my life right like you know i have my real estate business i have shadyco and i've got my daughters and and and and my family and wife and and lately we got we have become completely addicted to pickleball i was already addicted to it but danielle wasn't playing right so i would show up after an hour and a half or two hours you've been gone for two hours and i've been here with it you know but now she's gotten into it and so she loves it so we've literally played two hours every morning for the last two months seven days a week yeah we just love it because herberger park is right down the street from where we live and so we go do pick up games and it's it's awesome for and here i am selling pickleball to you but it's awesome for a few times michael it's okay i love it it's awesome for a few different reasons number one it's an awesome workout right you work really good sweat number two it's super social you meet some super cool people and you have these great interactions with them and you kind of get to love these people you see them every day and they're super fun and friendly my parents biggest community right now is their pickleball right dude and you know i could see myself or us danielle and i hanging out with any of those people right after and we haven't yet but it's like my mom isn't you could pickleball bunko group my dad is in like three different leagues oh great they are obsessed it is like the biggest and the last thing right aside from the workout and the social part is that competitive component right it's like i want to win right and when i win i feel good you know and when somebody hits a good shot you feel good complimenting them and you feel kind of proud of them right when you watch them grow in their game but yeah there's just some certain shots in that game that you that you get you know and and you're just like dude i'm in it's like golf you make a birdie dude and you're like i'm coming i'm hooked i'm awesome and uh lately what's been super fun is we show up because the girls are up all night or whatever danielle's still breastfeeding so we're like out up late right we have a nanny that lives with us at the house and so she'll watch the kids while we go play pickleball but we usually go at about 8 or 8 30. and uh sometimes it'll be like everybody's kind of gone or we're kind of odd so i've been playing two on one where i'm against two players oh dude and when i win those games it's a good workout but when i win those games i'm like dude what's up i get jazz about that because you're you know you're fighting against two players but i think you you bring a different level of your game because you're the only one responsible for getting to every ball hitting every ball so you're sharper and uh yeah and we were doing that the other day with another friend leo that plays there leo and uh there was only three of us and i said okay you try and i told them the same thing like your game's going to be sharper and you know he he loved it he played super well i think he beat uh me and this other guy once um and yeah it was just a good cool experience oh yeah have you done that before played two on one i don't think so okay and you try it out how often do you play uh once a month i would say not not very often no you're too busy doing everything else which is like golfing here golfing there golfing here i love it there's only enough time for so much golf all right i know uh michael this has been awesome uh we're done already we sit here and chat forever i'm so good at talking dude i could talk for another hour how long was that uh how long have we been on here 25 26 minutes 26 minutes okay so cool that's too short not too long normally about 20 to 30. okay for everyone that wants to get a hold of you for all their real estate needs how can they reach out to you or if they need a shady code yeah how can they reach you um so shadyco is uh shadyco.
com our website will be up and and running here probably in the next month or no i'm sorry three weeks two to three weeks from now but it's uh the word shade and echo all altogether. com s-a-s-h-a-d-e eco.
