Investor Cheat Code Podcast with Mike Simmons

Matt Theriault is an entrepreneur, author, success coach, and host of Do Over, a weekly podcast inspiring “come back” stories that teach people how to start over with ease, speed, and lasting success.

Also the creator of the Epic Real Estate Investing podcast, Matt focuses on financial education, the importance of multiple streams of income, and teaching people how to create wealth through conventional and creative real estate investing.

Having spent 15 years developing a successful career in the music industry, Matt lost it all when digital downloads killed the CD distributor. At the age of 34, he found himself flat-broke and bagging groceries. Without a “plan B,” he was forced to learn something new.

Through consistent action and self-education, he's been able to rise again using real estate as his reinvention vehicle. Matt is best known for his seamless blending of personal development and actionable steps to achieving financial independence through real estate.

Matt is the founder of the Epic Pro Academy, as well as the acclaimed author of Do Over.

Even though Matt started out as a real estate agent, he definitely does not recommend that everyone go that route. It's just not necessary, according to Matt, in order for you to achieve success in real estate. He did it because he thought that that was what he was supposed to do.

As of the recording of this podcast, Matt's current portfolio consists of 188 doors, and is evenly distributed between single-family and multi-family properties.

Matt currently invests in several different states and works with many different investors. Many investors that he works with have the money, but neither the time nor the inclination to invest in real estate; they partner with Matt in order to leverage his knowledge and experience.

Matt's experience is unbelievable! This is an interview that you simply have to listen to. Please check it out!

Links

www.matttheriault.com- to learn more about Matt

www.yourdoover.com - Matt's weekly podcast based inspiring “come back” stories

www.epicrealestate.com - Matt's real estate podcast

Today is going to be one these days when I give you a little bit of tough love.

What you have to understand about real estate is that it doesn't take an incredible amount of intelligence--I mean that in a very positive way. It doesn't take a whole lot of luck either--if you're doing it right, you don't have to be incredibly lucky. What real estate does take is time. You can minimize it and try to keep it under control, but it's always going to take time.

When you're starting out, things take a long time because you don't know how to do them, so you're working more slowly and thoughtfully. That's normal and right.

If you work a full-time job, enjoy a full social life, and have a bunch of hobbies, maybe even a few kids, and you want to try to insert real estate into your schedule, something's got to give. Real estate takes time. You can't expect to work on real estate for a couple of hours late every night. If you want to be involved in real estate, you're going to have to find time. You're going to have to sacrifice some time on the weekends or after work. You have to make time for real estate because, especially in the beginning, real estate will take up a ton of time. You need to prioritize and decide what can be sacrificed to make time for your business.

You can invest in real estate without a lot of money or experience. But you are definitely going to need time.

It is the fourth quarter of the year, and today I'm going to use some (American) football analogies.

In football, and a lot of sports, when you're going into the last quarter of the game you might have to adjust your strategy. You definitely have to look at what's been working or not working for you so far. In your business, I suggest that you look at what you've done and what you wanted to get done by the end of this year.

If you're not three-quarters of the way there yet, you're probably not going to get there unless you make some changes. In this fourth quarter, you have to reassess. If you've completely missed the mark so far, make a new, more realistic goal. Never give up; make sure you have an attainable goal that will inspire you to keep pushing.

Assess you goals and see where you are. If you've already met your goal or are really close, don't sit back and relax. Adjust that goal so that you're challenging yourself.

There's a difference between dreaming big and being unrealistic.

As you're going into the fourth quarter, in sports, in life, and in business, sometimes you have to adjust the game plan for maximum results.

Today we're going to be talking about negotiations. Not everyone is a natural-born negotiator--I don't think I am, but I've learned to negotiate effectively. In this business, everything is a negotiation, so you need to learn how to do it well.

The obvious negotiations are purchase and sale prices. You're going to negotiate to get the lowest purchase price and the highest sale price. Negotiating is key to this business.

One of the worst things you can do when you negotiate is to be desperate. You do not want to negotiate in a state of desperation. People can smell the desperation on you, and you're not going to be able to negotiate effectively. When you don't have a deadline looming over you, you can wait for a better offer. When you're negotiating, you have to put yourself in a position where you can and will walk away from a negotiation if it's not going well.

You have to work hard to avoid being in a position of desperation when you're negotiating. Work hard to be the person in the negotiation who is able to walk away.

Today I want to talk about dominating a market--is it better to try to dominate a small market or to branch out and look for deals all over? Do you want  to be a big fish in a small pond, or a smaller fish in a big pond?

My opinion on this changes. When I started out, I was all about dominating one city--knowing everything about a city and how much properties in it go for. I think that's a good philosophy when you're starting out because it allows you to get your feet wet and start your business without spreading yourself too thin. That said, I was starting out in 2008 when there was a huge collapse in the real estate market and there were tons of foreclosures. There weren't that many investors around, so you could really do tons of deals in one small area. I don't think deals are that concentrated in one area anymore.

I have since branched out and I am very open to deals in other cities. I still won't drive for hours and hours to find a deal, but I think that an hour radius from where I live should be able to sustain my business and let me grow for the foreseeable future. However, if you're in a rural area, you might have to drive a bit farther away.

In any case, I think that, as your business grows, you're going to have to branch out geographically as well as in terms of the type of real estate you invest in. I want to open myself up to as many options and possibilities as I reasonably can.

If you're new, I suggest you try to stay local, but don't ignore the numbers. If you can't find a good deal in your city, then you're going to have to branch out.

I'm not a fan of investing out-of-state if you're not a seasoned investor or at least have a great relationship with another investor out-of-state. It takes a very seasoned investor with a high risk tolerance and some capital to invest out-of-state without strong connections.

 

 

 

In this episode, I interview Noah St. John. Noah is the author of an amazing new Hay House book called The Book of Afformations: Discovering The Missing Piece to Abundant Health, Wealth, Love, and Happiness. In addition to being an author, Noah is an accomplished speaker and is sought after all over the for his insight, inspirational and motivational message.

This interview really got me motivated to up my game this year. Noah is incredibly insightful; you will be blown away after listening to this interview, and be ready to go out there and break down the barriers that keep you from being everything that you can be!

Noah had an interesting beginning to his life. He grew up dirt poor in Kennebunkport, one of the wealthiest communities in Maine. A constant argument between Noah's parents when he was growing up was about money. They worked very hard, but just didn't have a lot of money. He saw money all around him in the community, but just didn't have any. He also had no one to talk to, so he went to the library and read books from some of the best-known authors in the field of achievement and personal growth; authors like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill.

Fast forward to 1997. Noah found himself in college for the second time with only $800 to his name. He was divorced, broke, and unhappy. All of his worldly possessions were literally in a dorm room the size of a large closet.

It was at this time in 1997 that Noah had an epiphany--while taking a shower, of all places! His epiphany was basically that the human brain responds to questions better than it responds to statements that it doesn't believe to begin with. So, when you ask yourself a question, your brain immediately seeks answers. When you make a statement that isn't true, such as an affirmation like "I am rich," your brain simply says "No, I'm not."

What Noah discovered was that, through asking yourself empowering questions, your brain was able to work on coming up with incredible answers. This is what he calls afformations.

Noah's afformations are an incredibly powerful concept. It could very well change the way people view personal growth and development. Tune into this episode and listen to it in its entirety. I know you're going to be blown away by this concept, and ready to start using afformations in your own life!

Links

www.afformationsbook.com - Noah's book all about afformations!

noahstjohn.com - Noah's website

This week, I want to expand on the topic of "no money down" investing, which I discussed with Brandon Turner in Monday's interview.

Today I will talk about getting creative when it comes to investing in real estate with no money down by combining different ways of buying property. This is a little more advanced and requires some planning, but can work very well.

For example, you can get an FHA loan which will allow you to buy property and put in only a very small percentage of the money. Then, to fund the rehab, you could use a hard money lender or a private money lender who you will pay back after you make a profit. You could also use a hard money lender for the purchase and then a private money lender to fill in the gap and fund the rehab. Another method would be to wholesale a property and use the money you make to fund a rehab.

So you're combining different methods to gather all the funds necessary. This means that you don't have to find a single source of money that can pay for absolutely everything.

All these different methods are available to you, you just have to think outside the box and get creative. There's a lot of ways to go about investing in real estate. There are rules when it comes to borrowing money, but the possibilities are virtually endless on how you can combine different forms of funding.

If you just did a deal using a creative combination of funding methods, make sure to comment below or email me to tell me all about it!

This week, I want to expand on the topic of "no money down" investing, which I discussed with Brandon Turner in Monday's interview.

Today I will be discussing wholesaling as a means of no money down investing. The topic is covered very well in Brandon's book, so I suggest you check that out.

Wholesaling as a no money down strategy goes likes this: you find a property, get it under contract with a seller, take that contract and assign it to an investor who is going to presumably flip that property and sell it to an end buyer. When you assign a property to an investor, you get paid an assignment fee, which can be anything you want; you are only restricted by the numbers for the deal. When you go to the investor, you really need to know how much money they're going to need for the rehab and what kind of profit they might want to make to calculate the fee you're going to ask for.

You can do this with little or no money down because you don't need to actually buy a property. Think of the assignment fee as a finder's fee.

The caveat is that it often takes money to find leads and motivated sellers, so you might need to spend a little money on things like direct marketing. It won't be thousands of dollars, but it will be something. There are ways to find leads without spending any money such as driving for dollars, but they will take more time.

Wholesaling a fantastic way to make money in real estate without having to spend money. You will need some knowledge and experience, but you will need little to no money to get started.

This week, I want to expand on the topic of "no money down" investing, which I discussed with Brandon Turner in Monday's interview.

Today I want to talk about what Brandon calls "house hacking." that is, owner occupied investment properties. A lot of people use this technique to get started in real estate, often unintentionally.

You can purchase a duplex, live in one part of it, and rent the other unit out. The person you are renting the unit to will be paying all or a good part of the mortgage you owe. So because you don't have to pay a mortgage, you have money available to renovate your unit. Then, when the lease is up on the second unit, you can live in that side and renovate it while renting out the unit you used to live in. The idea is that after a few years you will be able to sell the whole property for a good profit because you essentially flipped the property while living in it. You could take that profit and put it into your next property and keep going in this manner.

This is a way to get started in real estate without having to spend much of your own money, and you could theoretically do it over and over again until you've built up great savings.

There are a few different things to be aware of from an accounting or tax standpoint which I won't go into right now, but if this is a method that interests you, it's worth looking into further.

This week, I want to expand on the topic of "no money down" investing, which I discussed with Brandon Turner in Monday's interview.

Today, I want to address the topic in general--is no money down investing a real thing?

The short answer is yes and no. To think that you can invest in real estate without needing any money of any kind is inaccurate. When people say that you can invest with "no money down," they mean that you can invest with none of your money down.

The most common way to invest with no money down is that you're using someone else's money. This could be a private investor or even a family member or acquaintance who is interested in partnering with you on a deal. This is how I've done the vast majority of my deals! An investor will give you the money to buy and rehab a house while you put in the work and time to make the flip happen. You could also find a hard money lender who will fund the deal within certain parameters. Notice that the hard money lender is putting money down, but you're not. So to say that there won't be money put down anywhere is not true. You may even have to put in a small percentage of the money yourself. There's many other ways to do fund a deal with little or none of your money down; Brandon goes over these in detail in his new book.

So when you hear that it doesn't take any money to invest in real estate, that's only a half-truth; it doesn't necessarily take any of your own money, but somebody somewhere is putting money down. Still, not needing money of your own to invest in real estate is powerful, and I've built my entire career on this! Even people who do have money most often fund deals with someone else's money.

Your job is to find and build relationships, whether it be with an institution or a person, to the point that they will loan you money to invest in real estate. You can definitely do the real estate thing without having any savings to start with.