Mastering Growth Through Strategic Coaching
The Power of Coaching: Insights from Real Estate Expert Seth Sundberg
In the world of personal and professional growth, coaching is often the silent engine driving exceptional performance. Whether you're an athlete, an entrepreneur, or someone striving for a big goal, the right guidance can propel you to heights you never imagined. In this week’s episode of “The Amanda Kaufman Show,” I had the privilege of sitting down with Seth Sundberg, a multifamily real estate expert and former professional basketball player, to dive deep into the transformative role of coaching.
Coaching: The Cornerstone of Success
Seth’s journey began on the basketball court, where coaching was an inseparable part of his life from the age of 12. He describes it as second nature, sharing, “I kind of took for granted that everyone had coaches.” From his professional sports career to his transition into the real estate world, Seth emphasized that coaching isn't just for athletes. It’s a critical asset for anyone looking to excel.
Even in his own multifamily real estate business, Seth leans into coaching principles, offering personalized support to his clients through an accelerator program. He highlighted the importance of not only having coaches but ensuring they’re the right influences. “We all have influences,” he said. “It’s about making sure they’re leading you in the direction you want to go.”
The Real Estate Lesson: Residential vs. Multifamily Investments
As Seth transitioned from basketball to real estate, he encountered a key realization: multifamily investments operate more like businesses than single-family homes. He explained, “In multifamily, you’re not just buying property; you’re buying a business with marketing, operations, and tenant profiles to manage.” This approach diversifies risk and creates scalability, much like how entrepreneurs can transition from one-on-one coaching to running group programs or selling courses.
For Seth, this shift was a game-changer. While residential properties carry a higher vulnerability—like losing all your income when a single tenant leaves—a multifamily property can absorb minor setbacks without derailing the operation. It’s about building something sustainable, a lesson he teaches through his coaching programs.
The Courage to Take Smarter Risks
Yet, as Seth noted, many people shy away from multifamily investments, believing it to be out of reach. This hesitation, he shared, often stems from a fear of the unknown and the mental hurdles we place on ourselves. “It’s not rocket science,” Seth reassures. “It’s just a bit different from what you might already know.”
His advice? Take the leap. Whether it’s through learning underwriting (which Seth offers free training for—DM him on Instagram!) or stepping into a new challenge, action is the antidote to fear. As Seth put it, “It doesn’t have to be perfect action. Just action.”
Lessons for Every Kind of Coach
Whether you’re in real estate, business coaching, or another specialty, Seth’s approach is a masterclass in focus and generosity. He emphasized identifying the one key area—your leverage point—that unlocks the most growth for your clients. For his multifamily coaching, it’s mastering underwriting. For me, it’s helping coaches nail their messaging and psychology of change.
And in a move I absolutely loved, Seth gives away that transformative leverage point for free. Why? Because when you lead with value, you cultivate trust, authenticity, and lasting relationships.
Seth’s Recipe for Coaching That Doesn’t Suck
At the end of our conversation, I asked Seth what makes a coach great. His answer boiled down to three steps:
Have a Clear Goal: Help your clients define how their actions align with their ultimate vision.
Identify the Next Step: Success doesn’t require seeing the whole staircase—just the next best action.
Remove Blockers: Work with your clients to eliminate the mental or practical barriers standing in their way.
With these principles, Seth’s coaching doesn’t just lead to success—it makes it inevitable.
If this resonates with you, be sure to check out the full episode and connect with Seth Sundberg on Instagram for his free underwriting training. And if you’re a coach looking for ways to scale, take a page from Seth’s playbook: focus on that one game-changing skill, deliver it with heart, and watch your impact grow.
Connect with Seth
📸 Instagram: @SethSundberg DM the word "Underwriting" to get his free training.
🌐Website: www.sevenfoot.capital
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✨Key Moments
00:00 The Importance of Coaching in Life
03:47 Transitioning from Sports to Real Estate
06:37 Understanding the Real Estate Landscape
09:43 The Shift from Residential to Multifamily
12:55 Identifying Leverage Points for Transformation
15:45 The Psychology of Change and Action
18:44 Key Qualities of Effective Coaches
Full Transcript
Seth Sundberg (00:00)
one of the examples I tell people too is that residential is buying a house, right? That's what you're buying, right? And you're going to put a tenant in, you're do whatever it is.
with multifamily, you're buying a business, right? So the business has, you know, multi different, you know, tons of different factors that go into it, marketing operations, right? Tenant profile, things like that. You know, the pro the property itself matters. but there's a lot more to it than just, know, I'm just buying this, this sticks and bricks house. Right?
Amanda Kaufman (00:48)
Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show and we are continuing our series on coaches that don't suck. And Seth Sundberg, welcome to the show. I'm really excited that you're here as another coach that doesn't Love it. So Seth is a former professional basketball player.
Seth Sundberg (01:04)
Thanks Amanda, honored to be here
Amanda Kaufman (01:12)
and he brings his passion and drive to the real estate industry. And as the founder and CEO of Seven Foot Solutions, he specializes in multifamily real estate, helping clients achieve high returns with strategic insights. Seth also runs an accelerator program for multifamily operators and vendors, offering personalized coaching to elevate their success. A frequent podcast guest, he shares his valuable market trends and investment strategies.
So Seth, I'm just so excited that you were ready to jump on the show and talk to us a little bit about Coaches That Don't Suck. Talk to me a little bit about what the role of coaching has been in your own life. Like, why is coaching important to you?
Seth Sundberg (01:54)
Sure. Yeah, no, it's great. You know, it's really interesting, Amanda, because I played professional basketball for seven years, played with the Lakers for a while, played overseas in about 10 different countries. But even before that, when I first started, when I was playing basketball at 12 years old, there was always coaches. So it was just something I just grew up with.
kind of took for granted, right? That everybody was just getting coached at some level. It was just part of the process, right? And it's just like, okay, what does coach want us to do? Do I like this? Do I not? Right? You figure out how you interact with different coaches. But having that just be part of the, ingrained into me early on was like, why, we all have coaches, whether it's a parent, whether it's, we're getting influences from somewhere. And it's like, are we making sure that these people are the right influences to be directed?
Amanda Kaufman (02:16)
Mmm, because it was so normalized. Yes.
Seth Sundberg (02:44)
us and pouring into us, right? yeah, it's...
Amanda Kaufman (02:47)
Gosh, I really appreciate you highlighting that because you're also reminding me like, goodness, you I remember being five years old and saying to my mother, I desperately want to be a figure skater. And we picked up figure skates from like a garage sale type situation. the next thing was to enroll in lessons and to join a club. And, you know, in my own journey, was the same. Like I didn't do professional basketball, but I did figure skate until
Seth Sundberg (03:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (03:17)
I was 22 years old and coaching played a massive role in my progress there and I never really thought about it But you're so right like I think I did receive a lot of coaching for not just figure skating But I also did student government. I also did science fair I also did you know, like all these things growing up and it was very normalized for me at a very young age to seek mentorship to seek guidance and Yeah, like wow, I honestly really hadn't considered
just how normalized coaching really was for me too, that I then later became a consultant and a coach. Like, kind of sounds like, feels like duh, but I'm actually having a bit of a download about it. That's cool. Yeah.
Seth Sundberg (03:51)
Yeah, yeah.
huh.
Exactly. Yeah, no, and it's not normalized, which is unfortunate, right? And the vast majority of people and entrepreneurs as well, you know, go through a lot of the journey and, you know, just without direction, without coaching, without, you know, kind of pitfall expectations and, you know, awareness and things of that nature. It's funny. The other thing that's kind of not normalized is supplementation. And, you know, part of being an athlete, you know, I have a supplement company called Inside Out Goodness as well.
Amanda Kaufman (04:22)
Mmm.
Seth Sundberg (04:28)
we focus on mental health as probiotics and things like that as well too.
Amanda Kaufman (04:32)
wow.
Seth Sundberg (04:33)
And it's really, you know, again, that's, that's another thing that for me was just kind of, you know, all right, we're going to take supplements. You're to take multivitamins. going to take proteins. You know, you're going to do all these things for performance based supplementation. And it was just kind of part of the process of, you know, being an athlete. And I think to be in a top performance of anything, you know, in life, you know, in any industry, right, you want to, you want to take advantage of these things that are available. And, and, you know, coaching comes in the form of a lot of different ways, right? It's, you know, it's one-on-one private coaching. It's reading books.
Amanda Kaufman (05:00)
Totally.
Seth Sundberg (05:03)
It's YouTube, there's so much stuff out there now. It's getting the right teachers in place and things like that. So yeah, but I think it's a critical piece to the puzzle for sure.
Amanda Kaufman (05:13)
I really love this and it's sparking a bit of a question in me, which is how did you discover that it's not normal? Like, did you ever have a season, for example, where you just believed that you should be able to figure everything out all by yourself or you should already know something? Like, what revealed to you the truth that there are so many people who would benefit from your knowledge and your expertise?
Seth Sundberg (05:32)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. mean, it hit me at first when I was transitioning from basketball into the real world. I wasn't sure what I was going to do once I got done with basketball. It's kind of all I knew. But I was smart enough to know that if my, you know, I'd spent a lot of money, I made a lot of money, and I was smart enough to know that if my income drops, that, you know, my spending still stays up, that, you know, it's only going to be, it's going to be short lived for a while. Right. So I made some money, put some money into some real estate projects early on and didn't know what I was doing.
Amanda Kaufman (05:48)
Right.
Right.
Seth Sundberg (06:07)
doing really, but you know, got a, had a, had a good real estate agent and that's, and a not so great loan officer. And that was really when I started going, there's actually, there's actually like, you know, people that aren't good at what they do. Right. And I ended up, I ended up, you know, I ended up moving into, you know, running a branch of a national mortgage company myself, and we did really well. And, know, it was a good time, but, know, cause I really found out that I liked that type of thing. But, know, yeah, you just kind of see.
that there's good advice and there's not great advice, right? And sometimes, you know, one of the things I've found is that our family is the ones, as much as they care about us and as much as they want us to succeed and have our back and things like that, they're the ones that are giving us kind of more cautionary advice just based on, don't get hurt, you know, type of thing. it's like, sometimes, you you play the game and sometimes you get punched in the face or elbowed in the neck or I'm sure figure skating, you you've fallen down, right? So it's, you know, it's like those
Amanda Kaufman (07:06)
Yeah.
Seth Sundberg (07:07)
things are part of the journey and embracing those is really an important piece of the puzzle too.
Amanda Kaufman (07:10)
Totally.
Well, without risk, there is no reward. Right. And I think that there's a ton of I love how you put that. Like, it's so true that, you know, typically your family, your friends, the people that maybe you grew up with and it was a complete, you know, random chance that you had those particular relationships. It doesn't stop them from caring about you. But if you have a path that is different, if you're inspired by another path,
Seth Sundberg (07:16)
Absolutely.
Amanda Kaufman (07:41)
Yeah, you do really want to be careful about that advice. I heard a great quote this summer and it was, the most expensive advice is the bad advice you take.
And I loved that because I'm somebody who to change my trajectory in life, I invested in going to college and I took on the student loans. And then after that, I invested in in my career in a really significant way. And then when I decided to become an entrepreneur, guess what? I realized I didn't know diddly-doo about being an entrepreneur in this space. So I invested again, masterminds, coaching, connection books. I invest a ridiculous
Seth Sundberg (08:18)
Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (08:21)
you know, amount of time, it feels like, I think like in comparison to what is normal into that growth and that development, because I know that I'm going places and in order to go there, I've got to take the risks. But I think like the dumbest risks that you take are probably the ones where you are going completely alone, not in the sense of avoiding your family, but more in the sense of like,
Seth Sundberg (08:31)
Great.
Amanda Kaufman (08:49)
Like you being a professional basketball player, like if you went and just hung out with a bunch of footballers, like how was that going to support your career? know? Yeah, yeah. So. So what what is your alignment in the real estate? Like why why pursue that space? What was it about that that that drew you in as your is your next focus?
Seth Sundberg (08:57)
Right, right, right. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Yeah, it's got to be in alignment for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. So, so when I, like I said, when I retired from basketball, kind of just fell into it, you know, and, really just started to, to, I didn't know why the loan officer wasn't great. You know, I just knew I wasn't clear, like nothing was explained to me. You know, I didn't know anything about finance or anything like that at the time. So I started, absolutely. Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (09:18)
Mm-hmm.
And that had a big impact on you, right? Like just for those that don't have that experience, do you mind just like explaining a little bit about what happened because of the bad advice?
Seth Sundberg (09:40)
Yeah, so I mean it was just like, yeah, she was just, she...
It wasn't necessarily bad advice. was little, little clarity on the process, right? She was just going, here's what you do, sign this, do that. You know, it was more, it was more process based rather than going, look, you're buying your first places. Like here's what's, here's what you want to look out for. Here's how debt works. You know, here's how the interest rates and the terms adjust those and adjust your risk profile and you know, on the properties and what you plan with it. And here's why this is that. And nothing was really kind of laid out like that. So I was just kind
Amanda Kaufman (09:50)
Okay.
Right, very procedural.
Mmm.
Seth Sundberg (10:13)
of like, you know, flapping in the wind a bit there. And, but I, but I started, so I started digging into it more and go, well, let me just find out on my own, right? What is, what is happening here? And, and really liked that the financing, the debt, the equity structure, the property structuring. So, you know, again, had the, had the mortgage company, had an investment firm that primarily we're doing residential, acquisitions and, some renovations, mostly buy and hold stuff. But,
One of the things that I regret, and I've done some dumb things in my life, but one of the things that I actually do regret is not getting into multifamily way back when.
Right. It took me, it took me until about 2017 to really understand the differences between residential and multifamily acquisitions and investing in real estate. And I just think that multifamily offers, you know, so much more opportunity. The risk profiles are lower. you know, but there's just this kind of, even for, even for the professional, you know, residential people that I talk with, there's just this gap, this knowledge gap and this, you know, kind of lack of understanding of what the differences are in that transition.
Amanda Kaufman (10:50)
How?
Seth Sundberg (11:19)
And some things you have to unlearn from residential real estate to bring it over into multifamily real estate. But that's why the accelerator is there and that's why we put it together. it's really great.
Amanda Kaufman (11:30)
That makes like a lot of sense. I'm not actually in real estate myself, but it does make sense that if you're doing something that's multifamily, would diversify your risk as opposed to having things be purely based on residential. It's like maybe the play less obvious and maybe it looks like it's more risky, but it strikes me that if you do know what you're doing, that it really could have far reaching benefit over the long term. Yeah.
Seth Sundberg (11:42)
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. And one of the examples I tell people too is that residential is buying a house, right? That's what you're buying, right? And you're going to put a tenant in, you're do whatever it is.
with multifamily, you're buying a business, right? So the business has, you know, multi different, you know, tons of different factors that go into it, marketing operations, right? Tenant profile, things like that. You know, the pro the property itself matters. but there's a lot more to it than just, know, I'm just buying this, this sticks and bricks house. Right? So,
Amanda Kaufman (12:25)
my gosh, you are literally also just describing. I love talking to you, Seth. You're very good at like sparking things, you know. This is a little like the discovery that I had of moving from being exclusively a private coach where I am trading the time for the money. I still do private coaching. very much enjoy it. But when I very first started, I was just a coach and I was trading that time for money. And my life, my family's life,
and the impact that I was able to have changed dramatically when I added curriculum and I made it into group programs. And it's kind of the same idea as like, you you're moving from just like the asset of your time to this machine that has multiple inputs, multiple outputs. You have to manage more in some senses, but now it becomes something that's scalable, it's diversified. You know, I went from like, if in my old business,
Seth Sundberg (13:01)
Hmm. Interesting, yeah.
Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (13:24)
model if I had, you know, a max of say 10 private clients, then that exposed me to a lot more risk than when I went into a scalable model and I was able to have so many different people paying less each. But it meant that like to get fired, it was like 100 people have to fire me instead of just 10. Right. So, yeah, that's interesting. I love that correlation.
Seth Sundberg (13:40)
Yep. Yep.
Right. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. And the equivalent of that in multifamily is that if you have 100 units, and two tenants move out, right, you're not hurting, right? You got 2 % vacancy, right? But if you got one tenant in one house and that one tenant moves out, right, you're scrambling, right? So, yeah, it's a different model for sure.
Amanda Kaufman (14:03)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Talk to me about the courage that it takes for somebody to do something smarter. I mean, like, because it is smarter. It is scalable. It's more diversified. And yet, most people stay at that level of residential. You know? What do you think is behind that?
Seth Sundberg (14:25)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, I think like we talked about, it's a bit, it's a bit of just, you know.
there's not really a veil there. It's just, you know, it's feels like there is, right? It feels like there's, there's something that you have to pull back to really understand. And it's, and it's like, Ooh, it's, it's tricky back there or it's, you know, whatever. And it's, and it's not, and that's part of the head trash that I, that I work with people on a weekly basis about is going, look, it's not, you know, it's not different. It's just, mean, it's not, it's not, you know, it's not rocket science. It's not, you know, a mystery. It's just, it's just a bit, you know, a bit different than what you've been working on. And the way that you,
Amanda Kaufman (14:43)
Mmm.
Seth Sundberg (15:08)
you approach it, you know, the way you look at acquisitions in this space is a little bit different, but you know, it's like, it's like lift, you know, it's like, I want to get in shape, right? Go, what do you got to do? You got to pick up something heavy for a little while. Then you, you know, and put it down and do that over and over again. And now you're in shape right now. Your body's used to that process. Right? So, you know, one of the first things that I work with people on, you know, in the accelerator is really just understanding underwriting because underwriting, while it's a little, you know, it takes some time, right? To do. there's, there's a, there's a,
time investment for sure. Once you get that, it opens up all the doors. You start seeing kind of behind the curtain, right? And that's the biggest space and the biggest thing in the multifamily space to be able to just underwrite it, understand where the deals are, what the moving pieces are, where the value opportunities are. And I'll tell this too, I think I'm so passionate about that underwriting part that if anybody in your audience wants to learn more underwriting, they can just DM me on Instagram.
Amanda Kaufman (15:45)
Mm-hmm.
Seth Sundberg (16:07)
Seth Sundberg and I'll give them our underwriting training for free for sure. So, yeah, I'm happy to do that for your audience for sure.
Amanda Kaufman (16:14)
I love that.
Yeah, thank you so much, Seth. And I think like whatever kind of coaching you happen to do, whether you're in, you know, real estate or if you are like me or business coach or maybe you're you're doing financial coaching or relational coaching. I really want to just point out something brilliant that Seth just did, which is he identified a leverage point that is really important to transformation. Like that one leverage point of the underwriting. Like when you get that
Everything else it's like this domino move that it that it creates the transformation that you're after and I would say like in my space the domino move is is like messaging Copywriting and understanding the psychology of change like when you get that
Seth Sundberg (16:49)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Amanda Kaufman (17:03)
then everything else is easier. Your sales are easier. Your marketing is easier. Your coaching is more effective, right? But like identifying that one magic thing. And the other thing that Seth did that is freaking genius is give that away. You know, give the most powerful piece that you have away for free because then people will see just how transformative it really is. And then you're in a much better position for building a really authentic relationship. I love that. was genius. It's so good.
Seth Sundberg (17:07)
Right.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, one of the things that—sorry, you mentioned something too.
Amanda Kaufman (17:33)
Yeah, it was so good. Yeah, it was awesome. I love it. go ahead.
Seth Sundberg (17:40)
There's no lack of information in this world. If it was an information issue, everybody would be wealthy, everybody would be fulfilling their dreams, everybody would be living the lifestyle that they want to live, period. That's not the issue. The issue, as you mentioned, what is the psychology of change, is taking action. What gets you from what you have been doing to the next step? You have to know what that next step looks like and understand those goals clearly and all of that,
Amanda Kaufman (17:43)
Hmm.
Seth Sundberg (18:09)
that's the biggest piece and just taking action, right, is the thing and it doesn't have to be perfect action, just action.
Amanda Kaufman (18:12)
I love that.
Yeah, totally, totally believe that. know, one of my favorite little turns of phrase is your success is in sequencing. And, you know, I know as a rookie coach, one of my mistakes was I was trying to take the hundreds of books that I've read and try to like force feed that as if I'm some kind of a Wikipedia. And it's like, let Wikipedia be Wikipedia. Your role as an expert is to facilitate moving things faster with greater confidence and cost avoidance.
So that success is really like, what are you prioritizing? In what order? Have some kind of a rationale for why you're following that plan, but then go, like go do the thing, right? And get the result. I love it. So I've been asking everyone in this segment, what are three things that you believe makes a coach not suck?
Seth Sundberg (18:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Hmm, that's a great question.
I think one of the things that I've seen in a lot of, at least in the multifamily space is that people get into the space and they go, cool, I just want to do multifamily. I just want to be a part of an apartment complex and whether it's through syndication or joint venture or buy it outright, whatever the case may be. And they don't have a clear goal of how this asset class fits into their lifestyle, what there's going to be an impact for. So I think having a clear goal, knowing what that is from the long term, right?
and the second piece would be then identifying what is the next step that...
from the position that they're at to get to a higher to the next level. Right. And it's, you don't have to understand what the 50 steps after that are, right? Just identify what that clear next step is. Right. And then that, you know, then it's really, what is the blocker to action to that? Right. So I think those are the three things that, you know, if coaches are focusing on that constantly, right. And that's what we do every week in the accelerator with, with our guys too is, you know, it's just go through that, right? Does this, does this deal, you know, you get shiny object syndrome and you can kind of veer
Amanda Kaufman (19:57)
Mmm.
Seth Sundberg (20:11)
off to the main plan and it's just like, is that the right thing? So you pull people back a lot of times and you go, great, okay, now that we've gotten back here, what's the next step? What's the clear next step? And you just keep doing that over and over on a daily basis and success becomes an inevitable, it just becomes an inevitable over a certain period of time.
Amanda Kaufman (20:35)
Something a lot of my clients really experience is this overwhelm, like they have to do everything all at once. And I just feel compelled to tell you, given your history, I always refer to the next action as the NBA. It's the next best action, right? It's the next best action. But I just thought it was just so funny you said that that was one of the things. That's awesome. So Seth, you mentioned it before, mention it again. How is the best way for people to follow you?
Seth Sundberg (20:47)
There you go. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah. That's great.
Sure. Yeah, Instagram is the best platform that we have a lot of our information on. It's Seth Sundberg. And S-E-T-H-S-U-N-D-B-E-R-G. You can follow me there. And again, if anybody's interested in the underwritings, just DM me underwriting and we'll get.
Amanda Kaufman (21:18)
Outstanding. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Seth.
Seth Sundberg (21:21)
Absolutely, it was fun. Thanks Amanda.
Amanda Kaufman (21:23)
And thanks for joining us, listener. Do us a favor, go ahead and leave a five-star review. Seth works super hard for this interview. He absolutely deserves it. And go ahead and share this with three of your friends. If you've got friends that are in coaching and this would be inspiring for them to build more specialty in what they do, share it. If you've got friends that are in real estate or hoping to go into real estate, share it so that they get to know Seth and they get to hear some of these ideas. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss
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