The Keith Andrews Podcast

Building a Dream Business and Traveling Freely | Nicholas Munn E18

• Keith Andrews • Season 1 • Episode 18

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This episode of 'The Real Estate Junkie' takes a unique turn as Keith sits down with Nicholas Munn, owner of Munn Communications and the inventor of the Elite Card Pro digital contact card. For the first time, we won't be talking about real estate, but instead, we'll be exploring what it means to create a business that allows you to have the freedom to live your dream. Nicholas and his better half travel the country in their converted airport shuttle bus while running an innovative business. From a chance meeting at a local barbershop to an inspiring conversation about their journey and digital innovation, this episode is packed with adventure, ingenuity, and practical insights for anyone looking to break the mold. Don't miss out on this inspiring story!

Connect with Nic:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@elitecard.pro

Get a special discount on an Elite Card:
https://elitecardpro.com/keith

Connect with Keith:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkeithandrews
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamkeithandrews
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@iamkeithandrews

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When I was 15, I learned how to bypass the code on hotel room doors. And my buddy and I would go and we'd get the presidential suite, make sure no one was in there. We'd hang out for the night. It was a ball go up to the Ritz Carlton on the eighth floor. There was so many cookies and drinks and everything. And you need a special key card to get up there. But if you take the elevator to the seventh floor, stairwell to the eighth, you ask the front desk for a decoded key card because your little brother collects They'll hand you one as a souvenir. And so we just went up there, acted like we belonged. Welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Junkie Podcast. Today we're going off topic and not talking about real estate. One of the great things about having a podcast is meeting people with interesting stories who are doing exceptional things. Like our special guest today, Nicholas Munn. Nick and his better half Catalina travel the country in their converted shuttle bus, living their dream while running an innovative business. Nick developed an amazing business card that uses NFC technology to share contact information with just a tap. I met Nick at my local barber shop and was immediately impressed by his unique approach to networking. So let's dive into his journey, their travels and the story behind this revolutionary business card. All right, man, Nick, it's great to have you on my show, man. I just this is this is cool because This is the first time I've actually done a live interview on my podcast. Right now we're in my basement and it's also the first time we're going to go off topic and not talk about real estate, but we are going to talk about something real and that is having the ability to travel and live life on your own terms. And Nick has created an incredible company that has an incredible solution. But I want to start out and find more about who you are and before sitting down in this chair, what got you here? Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you so much for having me, taking time out of your day to do this. I'm really excited to share my story. And actually what brought me here was the game of pool we just played. that you crushed me at. That is true. I crushed you today, but you crushed me in the barbershop. Let's be honest. Absolutely. That's where we met. My better half and I, we started this company back in March of 2022. We knew we both really wanted to travel. We had plane tickets to Spain. We were going to backpack through Europe for three months and then COVID came and that kind of shut those travels down. We ended up saying, well, we want to travel the United States first. Yeah. Right. Explore this. That way when we go to Europe, people ask us about the United, what's what's it all like? And we can give them a better answer than just the small towns we were confined to growing up. I was born in Sweden in a small town called Ullared. Really? Yep. Moved to the States when I was just a baby. California, Nevada, Lake Tahoe there. We talked a little bit about that. Lived in Oklahoma for five years and ended up moving to Florida and really found our home there, set up our roots. And that's where I met Catalina, actually. What were you doing at that time? Work -wise? So I was actually working at a Ford dealership, right? One of the top dealerships in North America, Sarasota Ford. And I started there as a technician. I went to vocational school in order to get there. I knew cars were my passion. And I worked my way up until when I was a service advisor. And that's really when my career sort of take off. I was a decade younger, I'm the youngest guy in the office. And my goal was to make sure that with every client I worked with, that they come back and work with me next time, six months down the line, a year. And that's really where things started to change for me. Yeah, so I know in that industry what's big is especially for job security and everything else is Your ratings and reviews, right? So talk to us about that because I think that's really where you uncovered something that changed your life Absolutely. So I had the highest customer satisfaction rating in the dealership and then I was ranked the top 20 in the nation for all four dealerships essentially Kind of what started this path out was I had coded my very first digital type business card, the same as the one you have, but a lot less professional looking. But essentially every client I worked with, I tapped their phone, I'd say, hey, next time you come back and work with me, all you have to do is type in oil change or car or Ford, pull my name right up, we can get you scheduled in. And that helped a lot with customer attention, making sure they came back to work with me as opposed to anyone else on the line. And I could build those long -term relationships. So real quick, just to show the listeners, if you're not watching this on YouTube and you're just listening to this, you may want to check us out on YouTube. But I was at the barber shop here in Colorado Springs with my son, waiting for him to get his hair cut. And there's a pool table in there. And Nick comes with this hat on and he goes, hey, man, you want to play a game of pool? And I'm like, sure, why not? And again, he crushes We play nine ball. I'd never played nine ball before so it was definitely a spanking and a learning lesson at the same time. But you know we had a good conversation at the end of it. He asked me what I do and he pulled out his business card and I thought I was gonna take it from him but I didn't. He just tapped it on my phone and I instantly had his contact and I was like whoa I'd never seen anything like that before. So you say you started this idea at the dealership right? So that's actually, so when I was working at Ford, my whole goal was make sure they come back and work with me again in the future, right? The returning client is the most valuable client, right? So around the same time, we were incentivized to get Google reviews. The owner of dealership would spiff us for every five -star review that came in with our name on it. And I would ask 10 people, hey, if you felt like I took care of you, you'd like to do the same for me? If you leave me a review, it really helps me out. And nine out of 10 people would be like, sure, absolutely. But they forget. You were great, but as soon as they walk out that door, they're hit with their 99 other problems. Life gets in the way. It's no one's fault, but they ended up not getting done. Just like you said. Um, so I had coded one that linked right to the Google review page. But what, what made you think of even doing that in the first place? Like where do you, like tell me that part. All right. Well, so we'll go down a kind of funny path back in my indiscriminate youth. Right. Uh, when I was 15, I learned how to bypass the code on hotel room doors and my buddy and I would go and we'd get the presidential suite, make sure no one was in there. We'd hang out for the night. It was a ball go up to the Ritz Carlton on the eighth floor. There was so many cookies and drinks and everything. And you need a special key card to get up there. But if you take the elevator to the seventh floor stairwell to the eighth, you ask the front desk for a decoded key card because your little brother collects them. They'll hand you one as a souvenir. And so we just went up there, acted like we belonged, knocked on the door, made sure no one was in the presidential suite there, bypassed the lock, went in and we spent the night. It was awesome. Didn't sleep at all, but it was just a ball. had a competition to see who could throw cookies past the furthest dock from the balcony. We climbed up onto the roof, played football on the roof for a little bit and literally went down for the complimentary breakfast in the morning. It was fantastic. It was amazing. But just like anything fly too close to the sun, you burn your wings. And I really wanted to make sure that the path I was creating for myself was a legitimate one and a true one. So a little of my coding experience came from there. My dad was an IT guy. I can tell you that none of that stuff is genetic. I had to learn that all the hard way. I always say my great grandfather worked on the radio, my grandfather worked on TVs, my dad works in computers, and now I'm working with mobile devices, phones, and artificial intelligence. You basically learned how to the key cards at hotels and then take it to here. So NFC technology, it's those the same, it's called near field communication and it's the same technology as in your credit cards. Whenever you use like the tap to pay at a gas station or at convenience store. Same technology except we recoded it so they work with phones. A lot of people have a little bit of a deterrent when it comes to someone tapping it to your phone. But what these cards do is all they do is give a person your information, right? Your business card, your contact, your phone number, your email. It doesn't pull anything whatsoever. All it is is a transfer of your information to them. It's up to them whether or not they reach out to you. Now, are all phones enabled to receive this? Yep. So all phones 2018 and newer, they're going to have that NFC feature. Some androids before that also did, but a good rule of thumb is iPhones 7 and up. They all have the NFC feature built Androids, you do sometimes have to swipe down in the settings and turn NFC on, but in iPhones they're always on. You know, when you first shared your contact with me and you told me that, I actually have a business and I can create one for you. And I thought, the first thing I thought was, well, that's really cool, but couldn't I just like, why would I need a business card? Why can't I just touch my phone to someone else's or share that information that way? That was like me being the devil's advocate. and just kind of looking at this, how, how is this like long -term really going to work? But then I realized because I do hand out business cards from time to time in my business and real estate, you know, I'm an investor and I'm also a real estate agent and I need to give my information to people and I don't give them cards. Usually I sit there with them and type in the information, but this revolutionized it for me. And it's cool because I actually get to pull it and it has my logo on it and everything so that gets imprinted in their mind with me. I'm handing it to them but then I'm pulling it back because I'm leaving them the information. I just thought that was so cool that you came up with this idea in the first place. And then when I found out more that you guys are literally living your dream. This is your business that's supporting that dream. You guys bought an old school bus or an old shuttle bus, right? Old airport shuttle bus. Old airport shuttle bus. And you built a mobile home out of it that you're driving around the country, going to amazing places, having amazing experiences, and really living the life of your dreams. Because you said, like you said, you want to be able to travel. This is enabling you to do that. And you can run this. You're running this business from anywhere, right? All you need is the internet and that's it. Absolutely. And I'll be clear too, is we didn't come up with the idea or create it, right? Along the time that we had the idea and started using it, there were other companies that had just started doing it too. They were on the precipice and so small and a lot of businesses just weren't aware of it. And then when we coded our first one and I'd share it with every client and they'd shoot me a text, hey, Nick, bring me a car in front of oil change. Absolutely. I get you scheduled in. And I grew my customer relationship rating to the top of the dealership and top of the nation. That's where the dealership really saw the value of it. And it was kind of funny because I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. I'm a big believer that results speak for themselves. And again, I was on that legitimate path. I want to do everything the right way. I want to stay true to my authentic self. Right. And I didn't want to go down any sort of nefarious path, which we all sometimes do in our indiscriminate youth. Right. Yes, definitely. I've been there. And so back to the story is around the same time we were incentivized to get those Google reviews and I'd coded a review placard. That's a looked like a much more basic version. of what we have now and essentially I would just tap it to the client's phone. It would take them right to the review page for the dealership and all they'd have to do is click five stars and say Nick was great and post and they would do that as I was pulling up their vehicle and I earned 150 five -star Google reviews in a three -month period and the owner of the dealership, calls me into his office. I had no idea what this was about. I was nervous as heck and I printed out my surveys, my reviews, I printed out my numbers, I went to him and I said, I'll show him I'm good at what I do. And he goes, Nick, I was looking at the Google reviews. How in the heck do you have 130 more five stars than the guy standing next to you? What are you doing differently? Right. And so I showed him the Google review card I'd been using and I showed him my elite contact card and just how helpful it had been. Big thing about it too, this is in Florida. So like 85 % of our clients are 65 years and older, right? You show them a QR code, a lot of times they'll shy away from that. And even intimidate, practically be offended that you're asking them to scan a QR code. but I don't know only that, there's often times where you're sitting there and you're like going like this, and it's just taking forever, and then the sun's hitting you in a certain way, yeah, it's a pain, but with this it's just a tap and you got the contact. It's pretty incredible. And the owner of the dealership, he was so impressed with it and had seen the results that he actually commissioned me to set up the entire dealership with our Google review placards and our Elite contact cards. That's what gave Catalina and I the confidence to go out on our own and do this for other businesses we've gotten the bus around the same time because you can't spell business without bus and That has been our vessel because we knew our definite purpose and passion is to travel and experience this world And the bus has been our vessel in order to do that kind of making it our mobile office Got it. And and so when did you decide to pull the plug and say you know what? I'm quitting my job and I'm gonna just we're gonna go jump in because As an entrepreneur, that's pretty much what you have to do is unless you are completely immersed, you're not going to be successful. From my experience and from a lot of the entrepreneurs that I've talked to, it's always like all, all in or nothing, right? If you're just like sticking your feet in there and it's a little side hustle, it's going to stay a side hustle forever. There has to be a point where you're like, okay, I'm all in and you have to be confident and believe in yourself. in order to make it happen. it sounds like that's what you did. So when did you actually quit your job? That was June of 2022, June, July of 2022. I'm a big believer that don't ever burn a bridge, right? I was great there. I was loved. I loved the people there. It was just a really great business, really great energy around there. And I actually, when I gave my notice to a lot of people give a two week notice, I gave a two months notice. Nice. brought it in and my, you ever see Goodwill Hunting? Yes. He goes, I got to see about a girl. Yes. That was the last line on my two month notice was I got to go see about a girl. And that's when we had made the decision that we are going to convert this bus. We had just gotten it and we were going to drive up to Northern Michigan and do the whole rebuild or the build, guess. Well, we're definitely going to, I'm definitely going to try to get a video of the inside of that thing. It's literally parked in front of my house right now. And We just got done taking a few pictures, but I want to go on and on the inside and see what you guys have done. It's pretty incredible. there's not a lot of people that have the, the fortitude to actually jump into a business. And then on top of that, say, you know what, we're leave everything. We're going to travel. because you know, traveling when you're young, when you're, when you're able to do it and Steph saying, Hey, maybe I'll do this when I retire. If you're not going to do it. there's no time like the present and you guys are living proof of What is in store? Like what's next for you? What's your plan? Right. So our definite purpose is to travel. We did the whole East Coast. We did the Southern portion. We're going to head North from Colorado after this. We're going to go up through Denver again, which was great. We're going to make our way up to Montana, Wyoming. I can't remember the order is, but I'll know when I get there. Oregon, make our way over and then we'll come down the coast of California in California and Lake Tahoe actually is where our COO Chase White. He does all the coding for the cards now. So that's been able to free up my time. They've been such a great help. Those two are our first two clients, the people who really believe in our vision from the get -go. now he does all the coding for it. He makes a lot of designs and stuff like that as well for the profiles, like your profiles, like yellow and black. He matches it to your logo. And then Jake, a production manager, he does all the prints and fulfillment, ships them out to all our clients all over the US. So you if someone was interested in and and by the way, here's a quick little plug This is a pretty awesome thing If you're anybody that gives out business cards runs out of business cards You definitely want to get this because you'll never run out again And I think you say after six months you send a new one too, right? If it starts wearing down or something like that You wouldn't have to worry about that. But if you're whether you're in real estate, you're an investor You want to share your contact your real estate agent? any business actually you could definitely benefit from having one of these cards. So how can people find you? How can they find this product and how can they sign up for it? Our website which is EliteCardPro .com and has all our information, client testimonials, things we've done. Also has the solution explained by a nine-year -old. Super adorable, super quick and we only had to pay her in candy. that was nice. Can't beat that. Nope. And we try to make them less expensive than paper business cards because it's the future and as technology advances, costs should go down, but that's not always the case. Right? So for a hundred bucks, if you're ordering 250, 500 cards a year that you're handing out, which maybe you're just handing out more or less, you're going to save money doing it. And it's one of those things too, where it's like, you don't have to completely go paperless. We have clients that do that. But it's one of the things that compliment the paper card very well. Yes, my dad always said know your audience right you got a 75 year old gentleman in front of you with a flip phone Maybe just hand him a paper business card, right? Yeah Yeah, but for the 99 % other clients you work with that have to have their phones You can just tap to the phone save it You can also hang them a paper card for like pan the fridge stay top of mind And that's really something where you're leaving a hell of impression You can hand you're never gonna run out of cards and you're gonna be saving money at the end of the day And then our Google review placards as Those are more so for the business oriented, but we do have a lot of real estate agents that have themselves listed on Google and the five -star reviews there You know, it's an investment that goes up there and it stays up there continues to return. Yes forever, right? Yes, absolutely So just removing the friction that's in exchanging your contact, you know typos and just taking them right to the Google review page It just removes a whole bunch of friction and and makes it easy and simple right which is what we need in this day These are 150 bucks, right? So you get 15 reviews. basically made your investment back. And then same thing as we do free replacements. If they lose it, we have placards that we set in store. Otherwise this is a construction company, Corbel builders, and they have them on hand. So when they're doing the final walkthrough with the client, they can tap into their phone and receive that five star review. One other product we have actually is the social media placard. And these are designed more so to look, look like this. When we put them in store, But we had a client up in Northern Michigan where one of the problems they ran into was they had thousands of followers on Instagram, right? And that's where they put their updates if they're having a sip and shop or they have seasonal deals. Like that's what social media is really great for is you have those returning clients or those clients that have been there, let them know about what's going on, right? And it's kind of like billboard advertising, staying top of mind. Well, they thousands of followers on social media, but like less than 1 % had ever stepped foot in the store. the people that were getting those updates, didn't matter, right? It wasn't fruitful. So we inserted one of our social media placards right there in the store, clients that either walked in or browsed, or when they checked out, they could just tap their phone to it, pulls up with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, whatever they were on the most is how we structure it. And then they could just literally with the click of a button be following it, no typing in a handle or scanning a QR code. making it quick and seamless and then those clients are getting all those updates, a staying type of mind and those are the clients you want to have those things because they've already been clients in the past so they might be in the future, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, awesome, awesome tech, awesome product. I love seeing that you guys are able to live your dream and travel. Again, you know, I went off topic. We usually talk about real estate. and living off of real estate and living off your investments. But when I ran into you and I saw this solution, I thought, hey, you know what? It's an interesting story and I'd love to have them on. So again, it was great having you. Thanks for coming through. Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. And to the real estate portion of it, we work with tons of real estate agents and the keywords end up being like home or house that they can type in, have it pull up that contact even if they forget them six months later, just game changer with referrals. And I could tell immediately when we met, started playing pool and that's a good energy. It's so great to meet people like that as we travel. We never know what's gonna happen. We never know. But the unknown is where all possibilities are, or where all things are possible, right? So enter with grace. That's right. All right, man. Thank you. Everyone out there, God bless. Peace out.