Making Money by Giving it AWAY with Spencer Vann: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:02John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to make money by giving it away. To drop these value bombs, I brought Spencer Vann into EO Fire Studios. Spencer overcame a career-ending basketball injury, discovered surplus funds investing, and learned how to generate income by helping others recover unclaimed money. In today's value bombs, we talk about how to come in open and ready to learn how to banks offload money from foreclosures.

0:32John Lee Dumas:There's an opportunity to recover it and help someone restart their life. And you can do everything yourself, but most people don't have the specialized knowledge to do it well and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Spencer and ours. Monsters. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:01John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, are you ready to build something special in the next 50 days? Check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something, short and strategic step-by-step videos by me, JLD. On day 50, you'll have a valuable asset, And the best part is it's completely free. Visit eofire.com slash YouTube and start day one today. Spencer, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's going on, everybody? Super excited to be here. And yeah, I would say the biggest thing is that I think most people are actually focusing on the wrong things.

1:50Instead of trying to focus on what you want and focus on accomplishing a goal, I think people need to focus on who they want to become. Fire Nation, who do you want to become?

1:59John Lee Dumas:Who is the individual you want to become? Do you want to be a philanthropist? Do you want to be generous? Well, you might be listening to the right episode because we're talking about making money by giving it away. So this almost sounds too good to be true, Spencer, so let's talk about it. Surplus funds. I chatted a little bit about it in the introduction, but I want to get detailed about what exactly surplus funds are. That's a great question. And listen, when I first learned about it, I had the exact same reaction that I'm sure a lot of people do, which is, is this even real? Like this has to be, you know, some BS or a scam or something like that.

2:37And what I realized is just like anything in the world where there's an opportunity, an opportunity is usually caused by a problem. And the problem that surplus funds is focused on is the fact that the government is sitting on almost$100 billion of lost money that is owed to 1 in 10 Americans. And I figured out many years ago that if I just connected those people with their lost money, they didn't even know that they're owed in most cases, I'd collect a finder's fee, 10%, 20%, 30%, and make a full-time income, literally not selling anything, just giving away money.

3:11John Lee Dumas:So Fire Nation, this just might not be too good to be true. This might be the reality that we're all hoping for here. So I want to go into the next obvious question here, which is how? How exactly can one person make money with surplus funds? The whole problem that we're looking to solve is simply connecting those people that are owed money with the money that they're owed. And so we created a proprietary process to do this. We call it find, connect, collect, because ultimately, you know, that's all it really comes down to. Finding people that are owed money, connecting with them, and then collecting their money.

3:47And, of course, a hefty finder's fee for your time. So what that looks like tactically is going on different websites. In fact, everyone in your audience that's listening, I would challenge all of you guys to go on Google and search the state that you live in or the country that you live in, followed by the phrase unclaimed property. And what you'll find out is that in most places around the world, there is a website, government website, with literally hundreds of millions of billions of dollars of lost money that's just sitting there for you to collect. And a lot of people are owed money. So find out if you're owed money.

4:22and once you find if you're owed money find out if there's a you can get a list of people that owe money right once you have that list you just connect with them you call them you know you can you know use different marketing tactics that of course you know automated marketing and hire virtual assistants there's many different ways to do it but you connect with them and then ultimately you get them to want to work with you simply by saying look we can help you collect this money and it's pretty easy straightforward process that we've been doing we've helped you know literally thousands of people collect money and collect money for them and collect yourself a finer thing.

4:54John Lee Dumas:So let's get a couple of specific examples. Like this could be an example from you and your life, maybe from somebody like your mentor, David Church. Give us a specific walkthrough of like what this could look like on a kind of blow by blow basis where you did X, you did Y, you did Z and then ABC happens? I would say one of the best examples I have is my grandmother. So my grandma was owed money. She was owed about$7 ,000 from an insurance payout from the 1960s that she never received. And what happens is, is when someone's owed money legally, like, right, there's some form of legal binding agreement between a company or a person and another person and another company.

5:40That money has to be paid out to that person. And if for some reason, you know, party A can't find the person that they're supposed to be paying, they're legally required to pay them. They have to send that money to the government. And the government just holds onto it. So the state of California had been literally holding onto this six,$7 ,000 since the mid 1960s when this insurance payout happened. And it took me, you know, until I really got into this just, you know, several years ago now, I looked up all my family members and I was like, oh, my grandma owed$7 ,000. So of course, I didn't charge my grandma.

6:13I didn't collect a fine or fee from my grandma because it's my family. But I went through the same process. I gave her a call and I said, grandma, I have some great news. I'm now going to be your favorite grandson ever because I'm going to give you$7 ,000. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I told her about the lost money. And of course, she remembered the insurance and it was from a fire from one of the properties that she owned. And she had no idea she was owed the money in the first place. So I just told her, here, here's some forms. I sent her some forms. And obviously, again, I'm not collecting any money personally, but just said, here, fill out these forms.

6:45We submitted it to the state, and the state sent her a check. So that's typically how the process goes. Now, the other side of things is there's many different ways that people are owed money. And one of the most powerful things that we do is we work with people that have just gone through a traumatic event known as foreclosure. And especially now moving into this potential recession that everyone's talking about, we're probably going to see a pretty big uptick in foreclosures in the next 24, 36 months. And what happens when those foreclosures go on the market and they sell at auction, that excess amount of money, so let's say someone owes$100 ,000 back on their mortgage, and if the house sells for$150 ,000 or$200 ,000, that extra money that's not owed back to the bank, that's supposed to be paid out to the person who got foreclosed on.

7:31But we all know banks are not in the business of actually going and giving away money, right? So they just try to get rid of that money and send it to the state as quickly as possible. And it gives us an opportunity to come in and connect the dots there, give that money back to someone who really needs it, who just lost their house, probably lost their job, in many cases is living at home with their parents or with another family member, and now has a nest egg that they can restart their life with. So that's probably my favorite side of this business. But the beautiful thing is there's many different ways someone could be owed money.

7:58John Lee Dumas:I mean, this Fire Nation is something that you can give a gift to a family member of. This is such a cool story here. I can only imagine the joy your grandmother got when she received that$7 ,000. Now, this was from the 70s, as you mentioned. Is there any interest this money's making? Is it collecting or is it just literally a stagnant dollar amount since that date? That's an amazing question. So one of the thing that's really interesting about the industry that I'm in is there is interest that's being produced, but the government actually gets to cheat and take all the interest. And so the reason why there is so much money that's stuck there, and literally some people that are owed money, just to give your audience an idea, Kevin Hart, famous comedian, is owed money.

8:39Elon Musk is owed money. Former President Trump is owed money. So the former head of the government is owed money from the government. And the reason why that is, is because the government has an incentive to keep the money, right? Because they get to collect interest as tax revenue, basically, as long as the money stays there. So unfortunately, that's the way that the system is. But again, that creates an opportunity for people like me and people like you guys to come in and build an income for yourself while actually going out and helping other people too.

9:10John Lee Dumas:The head of the government is owed money by the government. That is sweet, sweet, ironic justice, Fire Nation. And we have so many more cool things to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting. Everything works together seamlessly.

9:45John Lee Dumas:Plus, award-winning 24-7 support, so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack. A 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap, and more. Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Fire Nation, are you ready to create something special in just 50 days? If you just thought yes, then check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something.

10:29John Lee Dumas:Every video is short, clear, and built to move you forward one intentional step at a time. Clarity, offer, validation systems momentum. By day 50, you are not working on something. You have built something, something to be proud of. And this is completely free on my YouTube channel right now. If you're done letting weeks just drift on by, visit eofire.com slash YouTube. That's eofire.com slash YouTube and press play on day one. 50 days will pass in the blink of an eye. The only question is whether you'll still be thinking or finally building something special. Spencer, we're back. And I just love that example of the grandmother so much.

11:11John Lee Dumas:I'd love another example. Like this could be a friend of yours, a client of yours, just stretch back into your memory bangs, which was another really cool example of a time that somebody followed this process and found that they did in fact have some significant money waiting for them. I think one of the coolest successes and stories that I've had since I've really gotten into this in the last several years, we worked with this lady. Her name was Stephanie. And when we started, she was a student of ours. We teach, obviously, how to do this. She came in, and she was working as a postwoman. She had been working in the post office her entire life and just wanted a change and really wanted to do something different.

11:55and came in and honestly, John, really struggled, like really, really, really struggled because she didn't have any of the baseline knowledge or anything of being an entrepreneur. She never even considered being an entrepreneur, right? So we worked with her and we kind of coached her and worked with her. And I'll never forget the day I got an email, and this is maybe four or five years ago now, that she had gotten something. She's like, oh, I got a yes. I'm super excited. Like I got to send over the paperwork to get this deal confirmed. And I said, cool, let me jump on a quick call with you. So I jump on a call with her and I'm like, cool.

12:28So, I mean, how much money are you recovering? And typically, you know, a deal ranges, I mean, it ranges pretty wildly, but, you know, we'll see deals probably on average about 10 to 20 grand, you know, sometimes around 50 grand, right? A hundred grand. And that's total money recovered. Then obviously, you know, you get a percentage of that as your finder's fee. Well, I asked Stephanie this and she was like, oh, it's a$487 ,000. Whoa. And I'm like, what do you mean it's more than one deal? She's like, no, no, it's just one deal. It's$487 ,000. And what had happened was, as I mentioned before the break, when family's going to foreclosure, again, they can be owed large sums of money.

13:06And this was a particular individual who was pretty wealthy and had a very nice house. But when he had passed away, his kids inherited it, and they just didn't take good care of it. And, you know, long story short, ended up with this massive amount of surplus that she got to recover. And she ended up making, I think it was like 70 grand on one deal. So, yeah, that was really cool to me because, I mean, you can literally see someone's life changed, not only from the family that she helped out and getting closure on kind of their loss, but also with her. I mean, she just made an entire year's income in one deal.

13:44John Lee Dumas:Now, how exactly does it work when like you essentially, you know, are doing the work, you find the money that's been lost and yada, yada, you contact the family, but they're like, well, wait a second, this is my money. Like, yeah, you found it, but it's my money. Like, I don't want to pay you a finder's fee. Like, how does that, how does that approach work? Is that kind of like part of your coaching and that's part of your guidance? Or is there like an actual locked in finder's fee that's kind of like regulated by law? Yeah. Surplus funds is kind of the wild west of the real estate world. And that's originally where I learned it from.

14:16And in the real estate world, it's like if you're a realtor, you get 3%. And yes, it's negotiable. But for the most part, it's like you're getting 3%. Maybe you get 2.5 or something. But it's somewhere in that range. With surplus funds, in many ways, it's like a unique opportunity. right and it's it's a it's a blue ocean because of the fact that most of the time people haven't ever heard of a surplus fund recovery agent so they have no idea what makes sense which on one hand unfortunately creates an opportunity for a lot of people to to get scammed and one of the things that my company has really kind of fought hard against is people coming in and doing what we do and you know basically misleading people and saying hey you know we think you're only owed a thousand dollars when in reality they know they're owed a hundred thousand dollars right and then people will come and say we think you're only owed a thousand dollars here here's 500 bucks assign over the right to it to us and then we'll collect if there's any money and in reality they're making you know 99 000 right or you know whatever it is right and so we fought hard against that typically speaking you know you'll collect between 10 and 30 percent and when people say hey you know um i could just do this on my own you know i mean the reality is is you could do a lot of things on you're on, right?

15:26Like you could, you could represent yourself in court, right? But the reality is beyond that, most people don't have the specialized knowledge to actually go and do that successfully. So what we see a lot of times when people kind of say that it's like, okay, cool. And then we'll call them a month later and be like, all right, so how much further have you gotten this process? And most of the time it's, I tried it, couldn't figure it out. And, or honestly, I totally forgot about it. Will you just take care of it for me?

15:48John Lee Dumas:Totally makes sense. I mean, it's one of those things where you see in the movies, I'm going to represent myself in this legal case that's a murder charge against me. And it's just like, yeah, that might not be the best idea because there's a reason why people go to school for three years and then practice and practice and practice. So you can get a fair shake because there's a lot of things that could go wrong when you don't know what you're doing. Now, one thing I want to move into is real estate investing. How does all of this and what you do in general work in the real estate investing world?

16:22It's funny. I had my start in real estate. I'll give you kind of the short version. Growing up, I was a huge basketball player. And I was like, in my head, I'm going to the NBA. And I mean, I was obsessed. I'd play four or five hours a day, plus working out in the gym, plus all this stuff, right? And my whole identity was this basketball player. And then when I was 15 years old, I shattered my ankle, couldn't walk for six months. And beyond that, I shattered my entire identity. I was like, I can't be the person that I thought I was going to be now. so long story short um we grew up growing up we always rented and my mom but she'd keep me company while i was recovering and just tell me her dream was always to buy a house and i don't know one day just clicked i was like you know if i get into real estate i can not only learn about real estate not only can i make some money and help my mom buy a house but at the bare minimum i could just get some connections and you know help her get with the right people to get a good deal or something right so at 16 i started studying real estate um started like a bird dogging company at 17 and eventually was wholesaling on my real estate license at 18.

17:20By the time I was 19, I had spent so much time studying and learning real estate. I had this, one of those 70 page spiral notebooks. Uh, and from literally from cover to cover filled up every single page with every single real estate investing strategy I could find on the internet. I mean, everything from like the very basic stuff that you could look up with a Google search and learn about in five minutes to like the most like under the radar, like never talked about secret real estate stuff that no one ever really talks about. And I thought I knew everything. I had a lot of pride. I was like, I am the king of real estate at 19 years old.

17:53I had an ego. You would not believe. And one day I was at this real estate meeting and it was like this little mini real estate club with like 15 people in it. And this guy goes to the front of the room and he starts talking about this idea of surplus funds, of recovering money after someone goes to foreclosure. And I've got my 70-page notebook and I'm scrolling through this thing and I'm like, what the heck is this guy talking about, right? And I can't find it in my notebook. And so now I'm just, my default was, oh, he must be scamming us, right? Kind of like we talked about earlier, it's like, this sounds too good to be true.

18:22So I'm raising my hand and I'm asking him some very direct questions, you know, kind of in front of everybody. And every time I ask him a question, he doesn't get mad, he doesn't get angry, he doesn't get upset. He literally just answers the question and it makes perfect sense. And now I'm getting more angry because I'm like, oh, this guy, this guy is one-upping me. So I'm going through, I'm going through, I keep going, ask him four or five six questions he keeps answering all of them so after he he goes and he's done he was a guest speaker that event that the guy that ran the event was a good buddy and kind of a mentor of mine i go up to him his name was david and i said david why would you have this guy as a scam artist this is not real and david looks at me and says what are you talking about i said the surplus fun thing this is this can't be real there's no way he looks at me he's like spencer i've been doing this for years like what do you mean this isn't real and i was like there's no way.

19:05Like teach me how to do it. So he teaches me how to do it. And I start making money with it. I'm like, dude, this is amazing. I'm like, not only do, you know, I was making cold calls to people who had just lost their house and I was, you know, not who just lost their, who were losing their house. And I was offering to buy their house in foreclosure. Okay. Not, not very much fun. Then I was making cold calls to people who are in probate. So they just lost somebody and I was offering to buy the house they just inherited. Right. Also not very fun. But now I was making cold calls, literally telling people that I want to give them money.

19:33And it was like the easiest cold call ever. I was like, this is like the easiest product to sell ever. So it's just money. And I was like, dude, why is no one talking about this online? And that was the point where I was like, you know, we need to bring this online and educate people about this because especially if you're in real estate, but if you've been in any entrepreneurial role or any, any type of role where you're communicating with people, sales, marketing, anything like that. And, you know, you want an opportunity to create an income, whether it be a side income, a main income. You know, this is a vehicle in which you literally don't have to sign anything.

20:06You just have to give away money. And the person that gives away the most money wins.

20:11John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, these are the kind of things where when you're in the right place, and you're just open, you can be lucky, you can learn some cool things here. I love to say that luck is where effort meets opportunity. And where was Spencer? He was the right place at the right time. He wasn't necessarily open at first. I mean, he was a little skeptical, a little sounds a little scammy, a slimy, but he kept digging. He kept asking questions and he found this opportunity. That's just absolutely nuts. So with everything that you share, Spencer, let's end with a bang. How can fire nation get started in what you've done?

20:43John Lee Dumas:Surplus funds with all of this jazz, what you've learned from David church, et cetera. How can fire nation get started? Jump over to my YouTube channel, Spencer J van, check out our YouTube videos on there. I've got a ton of free training on how to do this successfully, whether you're starting off with a bunch of business experience and a bunch of capital to invest, or you're starting off with absolutely nothing. Either way is totally fine. We've had people come in and have success with both sides of the spectrum. And like John just said, come in open, ready to learn. And that was one of the biggest lessons I learned from that day was like, I might think I know a lot, but let's always take a step back and be ready to learn when there's an opportunity because you never know what you're going to find out.

21:27Go check out my YouTube channel. Go watch some of those training videos. And trust me, you'll be blown away at some of the success. We have our top students doing about five to six million dollars a year in income from giving away money. And we've got 5 ,000 students, give or take. So go check it out.

21:43John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, take action. Make it happen. At least give yourself a chance to learn something new and then you make your decision. Does this feel right? Does this look right? Does this excite me? If it does, you take the next step because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with SV and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. Type Spencer in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about today, links to everything. And check out his YouTube channel, Faux Show. And Spencer, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

22:18John Lee Dumas:For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Appreciate you, brother. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Spencer and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Goaded and Gary Vaynerchuk. The common path to uncommon success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams.

22:56John Lee Dumas:Visit uncommonsuccessbook.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, Plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, are you ready to build something special in the next 50 days? Check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something. Short and strategic step-by-step videos by me, JLD.