Then I put another $20,000 into marketing. So I was about $50,000 in before I closed a single deal. That first deal took six months and paid me $4,600. Why six months? Because I had no real way to reach my mentor. A course on a shelf and a call twice a month is not access. Every time I got stuck, I stayed stuck. The momentum finally caught when I got the right support. Six or seven deals over the next six months. Around 20 to 25 transactions in the first year and a half. A few hundred thousand dollars in, enough to walk away from my $120,000 position at Johnson & Johnson. I still think about how much faster that would have gone if I'd had then what I can give you now. Access to the right room. And that’s exactly what The Growth Collective is about. Not a course. Not a call every two weeks. It's a private room of operators who are actively moving volume, and here's what you get the day you're in: - Off-market deal flow matched to what you actually buy. Deals come to you. No cold calls, no MLS scrolling. - Capital that moves. A direct line to our private capital partners for fix&flip and creative deals, so you stop passing on the ones you can't fund fast enough. - Systems and AI built from twelve years and nine figures of real transactions, so you scale without rebuilding the wheel. - Direct access to me and my team. A weekly deal room, members-only Slack, strategy sessions, and one-on-ones with me.  - The full ecosystem behind it: AI platforms for off-market deals, capital and everything you’d need to scale your biz in 2026. On top of that, the room itself is the real asset. Active flippers doing 35+ deals a year. Operators closing 40 to 300-unit multifamily. Members with family office money on speed dial. You will not be the smartest person in the room. By design. Which means the playbooks, the capital partners, and the expensive lessons they already paid for are one message away from you. It's $1,000 a month to start, or $10,000 for the year. One deal from the room usually pays the seat back many times over. For an operator already doing deals, that is not a cost. It's the cheapest infrastructure you will ever buy. A no-brainer for the right person, and an easy no for everyone else.

If you are a licensed real estate agent or broker, you already know the quiet truth of this business. You paid for the school. You paid for the test. You pay for the license, the desk, the tech, the admin fees. And the brokerage promised you nothing in return. The numbers say it plainly. Most agents close fewer than five deals a year. That is not a full-time income. That is a part-time result for a full-time effort. Here is what almost no one tells you. There is a whole side of real estate your brokerage never trained you on. Off-market deals. Private capital. Wholesale contracts that need a buyer. The agents who learn to work that side stop chasing listings and start earning on repeat. That is what The Deal Maker ai Network was built to give you. It is free to join, you do not need anything beyond the license you already hold, and you earn by referring deals you are already standing next to. We are opening 15 founding member seats. The founding 15 get onboarded personally, get in before this ever carries a fee, and keep that founding status for good. When the 15 are gone, the next group waits and the next group may pay. If you are an agent or broker and you want one of the 15 seats, comment "FOUNDING" below. I will personally send you the details and how to claim your seat. You have carried the cost of this business long enough. It is time it paid you back.

They were sold a lie. The lie was that more leads would fix it. More leads do not fix a structural problem. And a single income rail, in a business with low transaction frequency and fixed expenses, is a structural problem. No amount of cold calling out-runs the math. The fix is more rails, not more leads. Our network opens them up to you in the book of contacts you already have. Comment the word "STRUCTURE" below and I will send you the breakdown.

A mother sets one less plate. A kid grows up with a photograph instead of a dad. Someone who should be here, laughing at the grill, just isn't. They were young. Most of them younger than us. And they went anyway, so people they would never meet could live free. I think about that on days like today. How the ordinary stuff, a slow morning, my kids in the yard, time with people I love, none of it was free. Someone paid for it. So before the day gets loud, go quiet for one minute. Remember them. Honor them. Be grateful. They gave everything. The least we can give is a moment. Whose name will you carry in your heart today? Doug

Maybe it is a client who sold a company last year. Maybe it is a friend with $500,000 sitting in the bank earning four percent. Maybe it is a relative who has been a passive investor in two deals and would do ten more if the right one ever reached him. You have always filed that person under "friend." File them under "asset." Why? Because right now, there is an operator with a real building, a real track record, and a real deal who needs a capital partner. You introduce the two, and three things happen at once. Your friend gets a return that beats the bank on a real asset. The operator gets funded. And you are paid on the closing. Nobody loses. Everybody wins. And connections like this will produce you five-figure fees on a single deal. The better part. When that first investment goes well, your friend does the next one, and the one after that. You are paid every time. One introduction. One relationship. Passive income that keeps coming your way. We have closed nine figures in deals since 2014, with more than 1,000 closings run through this exact affiliate network system. If you have someone in your network with capital, comment "CONNECT," and I will send you how the introduction works and pays you ongoing income by literally just connecting the dots.