OPM Mastery

I get many emails from listeners and readers about getting a

As many of you know, I have stopped buying rentals in Colorado.

How I determine whether to flip a house or hold it

I am a real estate agent, which helps me get many good deal. You

There are a few things I do to get awesome deals.

Acting fast and making very solid offers with no contingencies

If you want to see exactly how I search the MLS, what I look for

The podcast is really starting to take off! Thank you all who

Don’t forget to get entered into the contest for a Blueprint by

[0:00:58.8] MF: Hey everyone, Mark Ferguson

Today, I want to talk about how to get a great deal on

So before I get into that, want to think everybody who has been

I’ve had a lot of great emails from people who loved the book,

And in the following months, I’ll be coming out with my real

All right, getting started on how to find a great deal. The

So the first property I want to talk about is some land I

My plan for this property at the moment is to try and turn it to

To go through with this subdivision, I would have to meet with

The cost wouldn’t be too high with a county and all that part

So I’ll keep everyone updated on how that works and how that

Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, they don’t have every property in

All right, and the hot sheet is the list of new listings that

If I’m checking a couple of times a day, it’s not very many

So I’m like, “Hey, any piece of land under $100,000 is probably

I said, “Go for it, write that in there too, I’m happy to do

I’m like, “Okay?” I said, “It’s a full price offer with

I mean there was just nothing wrong with it, totally fine. So we

Now I’m in the process of refinancing it with my local portfolio

All right, another property I bought recently, actually I have

It was occupied, talked to the owner a little bit, the house was

No financing contingency, although I am going to be financing

So I’m like, “Okay,” I got everything signed, under contract,

I didn’t quite have enough cash to buy this one since I just

I think on the last probably 10 houses I’ve bought, two of them

So I’m not out there making offers all the time on properties

So our median price in Greeley right now is $250,000. Finding

The tenants in the other house happened to be outside so I

So I came in at $118,000 in one and $103,000 on the other. So on

So again, the no inspection and no contingencies helped me out,

But those houses will probably be worth both over $180,000, both

All right, the next house I bought was out in the country again,

Did my inspection, got them to see the house, it needed some

All right, another one I bought back in March was a wholesale

However one of the first properties, this company sent through

So they want to make sure I was serious about it. I was okay

That will be another great one. I’m always looking for

All right, another property I bought, this one I bought a few

I made an offer right away at $125, no inspections, becoming a

So those are the last few properties I bought, as you can see,

I think a lot of people get frustrated because they check the

I mean I am very selective on when I make an offer on, these

Now, it’s very tricky not doing an inspection if you’re not

You really have to know what you’re doing and yes you might miss

You’re probably not going to be buying eight a year so it’s okay

Just because that’s the way I do it, that does not mean it’s the

I mentioned auction sites before, I have bought a number of

So really, what I would do as a strategy is obviously, use the

There’s a lot of MLS systems that can be setup to send you

Another things to consider is when you’re looking for a real

It’s awesome to have an agent who can send you deals, that’s

So I think the perfect agent for a brand new investor sometimes

So you’ve got to be knowledgeable in that aspect of it and

I am not a good agent to work with if you want to buy flips, or

All right, last thing I want to talk about is direct marketing,

I do not feel good about myself telling someone I’ll buy their

But it takes a lot of effort to pull off a direct marketing

But it can work out great if that’s what you're really focusing

All right, so that is all I have got for this podcast as far as

All right, thank you guys for listening, if you have any

[END]

Most of the guests I have on the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast, are very successful investors, who have their own website or podcast. On today's show, my guest has no podcast, no website and nothing to sell you. Michelle Yarber is a real estate investor I have known for a few years, who I met through my blog. Michelle lives in Wyoming, but owns properties in multiple states, and Justin on my team actually sold her a couple of properties in Colorado. Michelle, has done very well investing on a part-time basis, while having administrative assistant jobs. Michelle even loans private money to other investors and is thinking about buying rentals in other areas of the country, besides Colorado and Wyoming, because prices are so high in those areas. Michelle, has never been on a podcast or done anything like this, and she did an awesome job! Make sure you listen to the show to see what her take is on the current real estate market and how her investing progressed.

Michelle grew up in Southern California and it was pure chance that got her interested in real estate investing. She bought a house in California, held it for a few years, and thanks to an appreciating market, made a nice profit when she sold it. I don't think holding houses for appreciation is the best way to invest in real estate, but it got Michelle interested in buying more houses. She ended up moving to Wyoming to be closer to her family and learned more about real estate investing. She did not have an online resource or mentor, but learned a lot on her own and from a local agent and investor.

Who should you listen to when investing in real estate?

Michelle wanted to invest in real estate for a while, before she actually bought a rental property. While living in Wyoming, she bought a personal house for herself. After a few years she decided to move into something different, but the market was not where she hoped it would be to sell her home. Instead of selling, she decided to rent it out and became an accidental landlord. Many people get into trouble when they rent a home, because they could not sell it. Michelle had a great experience with a good tenant and knew she wanted more properties.

After having a good experience with her personal house, that was turned into a rental, Michelle decided to buy a true rental property. She found a great real estate agent, who was also an investor. That agent helped her decide what would be a good rental and after 6 months of looking at homes she bought a rental property. Michelle admits, the first rental she bought did not have the greatest numbers. She paid over $190,000 for it and hoped it would rent for $1,200 a month. The home needed almost no work and thanks to a hot rental market in Cheyenne, she rented it for $1,700 a month!

How to rent a home.

After buying her first rental, Michelle found online resources like my blog and other real estate investing sites. She realized, the rent to value ratios on her rental in Cheyenne were not ideal. Prices in Cheyenne also continued to rise and it was tough to find a good deal in the area. She started to look at new markets and contacted me about buying rentals in my town, Greeley Colorado. I don't work with investors myself, because I have too much going on to provide good service. Justin on my team is an awesome agent, and was able to help Michelle buy two houses in Greeley, that had much better rental numbers.

How much cash flow do you need on rentals?

Michelle was in the process of buying more rentals and was going to get her real estate license as well, to help her save money and find deals. Prices in Colorado have skyrocketed the last couple of years, and she could no longer find good rentals in the area (I have had the same problem). Michelle decided not to get her license, not invest in Colorado and has found other ways to make money in real estate. Instead of buying rentals, she has started lending money to private investors across the country and even partnered on a few long-distance flips.

Michelle joined the Complete Blueprint program I offer this year to help her learn about new markets. She is hoping to invest in rentals again, in areas with more cash flow and lower prices. We have talked about Florida and a few other markets that may make sense for her. She is also continuing to lend private money and watch the valus on

The podcast is really starting to take off! Thank you all who listen and reach out to me. If you know of anyone who might be an interesting guest send me an email:[email protected]. If you enjoy the show, be sure to leave a review on iTunes!

LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW FOR US OVER ON ITUNES

[0:00:58.8] MF: Hey everyone it’s Mark Ferguson with Invest Four More and welcome to another episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate podcast. Today, I have a guest who most of you have probably never heard of, but she is a local investor, someone who I have known for a few years and who has been very successful but also is not a huge online marketer or someone trying to sell anything which is always nice to talk to as well.

I have Michelle Yarber as our guest today who lives in Wyoming has actually bought houses in Wyoming, in Colorado, and is actually doing some long distance investing as well. So I brought Michelle on to talk to her about how she got started, how she’s progressed and what her goals are for the future. So Michelle, thank you so much for being on this show, I appreciate it.

[0:01:44.9] MY: Thank you Mark, thank you so much for having me on.

[0:01:47.9] MF: Oh yeah, I appreciate you being on. I know you don’t do this often or maybe ever at all. I know it’s not easy for you to do.

[0:01:52.9] MY: That’s right.

[0:01:55.9] MF: So this first thing I always ask is how did you get started in real estate? What first attracted you to the idea of investing in real estate and what steps did you take to pursue that route?

[0:02:11.5] MY: Well I’ve never really been one to invest in the stock market. With it being so unpredictable but I live in California and I have bought and sold my own homes in the past and I saw how much profit can be made and tangible asset that can really weather economical storms pretty well as long as you buy right. So that’s what kind of drew me to real estate is just seeing in the past successful fails and profits.

[0:02:46.3] MF: I didn’t realize you were in California, what part of California were you in?

[0:02:50.5] MY: I was in southern California, I was born there in California and I lived there until I was about 38.

[0:02:58.4] MF: Okay. So I’m sure you saw some up and down markets there and some crazy appreciation being in Southern California.

[0:03:06.6] MY: Yes, very crazy yes. One house that we had, we bought it for just under $100,000 and sold it about six or seven years later for $165.

[0:03:21.5] MF: Nice, yup, that’s always nice to make money just by sitting there pretty much. So how did you make your way to Wyoming? What led you to that area?

[0:03:32.8] MY: Well, my sister met her husband out there in California, he was from this area, Wellington and Cheyenne and he was out in LA land he’s been out there for a couple of years and was planning to come back here and my sister met him and this was over 20 years ago and they ended up getting married and coming back here and then my mom retired out here also maybe five years after that. And so I was the only one left, just my mom and my sister and I and this eventually missed my family and followed them out here.

[0:04:13.6] MF: Cool, that’s a good reason to come. Real estate is not your career. What have you done for a living and what has been your main career?

[0:04:25.5] MY: My main career has been really just administrative clerical type work. I’ve been working with the state of Wyoming now for the past nine years and yeah, just administrative and I kind of fell into real estate back in around 2003 when I bought a house here. I’d been here for about three years, bought a house here and ended up being an accidental landlord a couple of years later.

[0:04:56.4] MF: Now accidental landlord, I know of people start that way, I don’t know if they have any idea what they’re getting themselves into but basically you own a house, you can’t sell it or don’t want to sell it or for whatever reason you want to rent it out instead and then sometimes it works out okay but a lot of times I hear some horror stories on accidental land lording but what was that experience like? Was it what you thought it would be or was it tougher?

[0:05:20.0] MY: No, it was very smooth and that’s what really kind of got me interested in real estate because I did rent it out for a little over a year, I found a really nice girl who rented it and she was always on time with her payments and even early in fact. So it was very successful and I sold it, the market wasn’t so great when I decided to rent it out so I thought I’d keep it and sold it about a year and a half later and made a really good profit. It was successful. So that’s why it was something that I really was interested in later.

[0:06:00.6] MF: Okay, did that kind get you started investing more? Did it take you a while to buy another investment property?

[0:06:05.9] MY: It did take me several more years after that to buy an investment property, yes.

[0:06:11.3] MF: What was that next investment property? What attracted you to that one?

[0:06:16.0] MY: Well, it was another single family house, that’s really all I’m interested in is single family houses like you. What happened was, sadly my dad passed away in 2011 and he left me some money. So I wanted to make him proud and do something that I knew I could be successful in if I really put my mind to it. Since being or having a rental house in the past to work out so well I decided with that money to buy my first investment property and really get started.

[0:06:51.1] MF: Was that one in Wyoming as well?

[0:06:53.0] MY: Yup, that’s the one here in Wyoming and it was before I had heard about Bigger Pockets and so that was actually hard to challenge because I hadn’t heard about Bigger Pockets, I really didn’t know what to look for in a rental property but at the same time, it was also exciting because I kind of learn about things and even when I was still somewhat apprehensive about what I was getting into, I knew that I wanted to do something with rentals. So my agent, who is also a good friend of mine, probably spent a good six months helping me find this house.

[0:07:34.4] MF: Wow. How much did you buy that house from him because or did you remember how much you first rented it for?

[0:07:40.2] MY: I bought it, again this was before Bigger Pockets, so I probably overpaid a little bit but it was in the summer of 2012 and I paid $192 for it.

[0:07:52.7] MF: Well, you learn. No.

[0:07:54.6] MY: Yes, yeah.

[0:07:55.9] MF: Okay. And then after that, I know that was in the Cheyenne area. You actually started investing in Colorado after that one, correct?

[0:08:03.8] MY: That is correct. About two years later, that was probably right around the time that you and I met and you hooked me up with Justin who I have to say is awesome.

[0:08:17.2] MF: Oh thank you. He is an agent on my team, so I appreciate that.

[0:08:22.9] MY: Yup. I decided to buy in Colorado. I just, I really liked the market in Colorado economy wise and there’s so much to do down there and I started looking at houses online a little bit and I realized that I could probably get a newer house, an even bigger house for about what I paid in Cheyenne.

[0:08:50.7] MF: Okay. That always surprises me because not to say anything bad about Wyoming but it’s the least popular state in the country and it’s very windy up there but…

[0:09:03.2] MY: Yes it is.

[0:09:05.7] MF: It just surprised me how high property values are there. Do you think it’s because — I know oil and gas is huge in Wyoming, there’s also a lot of military in the area. Do you know what it is you think that pushes prices up so high in your area?

[0:09:20.6] MY: You know? I honestly don’t. Those are two really good ideas, I don’t know it? It has always been that way. Wages don’t keep up with the price of housing. We have new developments going in that are starting in the high $200’s and I don’t know where these people are coming from and how they can afford it working in Wyoming. Maybe they’re coming from Colorado and California?

[0:09:47.0] MF: Right. Because most of — do you know the population of Cheyenne? Is it 60? That’s what I remember, about 60,000?

[0:09:54.6] MY: 60,000.

[0:09:56.9] MF: Today in Wyoming?

[0:09:57.7] MY: Well, Casper might be surpassing us now but Cheyenne is the capital and you’re right, there’s about 60 in the city and then we have probably outlying areas. I think I read somewhere with the outlying areas probably closer to even 80 to 100,000.

[0:10:16.4] MF: Okay. Really, where I’m at is about 100,000. So I can see why you want to invest somewhere else just because with prices that high and then you kind of scratch your head a little bit, wondering why they’re so high and if they can maintain that level and I’m assuming the rents weren’t really high enough either to make up for the high prices, which as an investment.

[0:10:40.1] MY: Yeah, when I first started, I use a property manager here so I was in contact with him constantly on houses I was looking at and that is right when the oil and gas really kind of exploded here back in 2012 and he was quoting me about $1,200 a month rent. By the time I bought the house and closed and have some rehab work done on it we were getting $1,700 a month for it.

[0:11:08.4] MF: Holy cow. That’s crazy, wow.

[0:11:12.9] MY: It was really nice.

[0:11:14.2] MF: Yeah, that’s not too bad of an investment after that rent increase and did it need much work when you bought that house?

[0:11:22.7] MY: What’s that? Sorry?

[0:11:24.2] MF: Did the house need much work when you bought it? The one in Wyoming?

[0:11:27.3] MY: No, it really didn’t, just really little things. I actually had the master bathroom, that was probably the main thing, I just had the master bathroom updated and worked on some and I put in a sprinkler system, so nothing major.

[0:11:44.6] MF: Okay. Going from Wyoming to Colorado, what attracted you to the Colorado market for rental properties?

[0:11:53.5] MY: I would say I could tell it was already growing in Colorado quite a bit. So the economy, the diversity of people there, the fact that — and this was right about when you and I met and we were talking about the fact that there wasn’t a lot of housing available because of the building.

Just the fact that I could get bigger, newer houses and as an example, one of the houses I bought down there two years later after I bought my Cheyenne rental. I paid $190,000 I believe it was. So $2,000 less and got a fully flipped renovated home.

[0:12:37.6] MF: Right. Yup, I remember that house in right next to the park.

[0:12:42.6] MY: Right next to a park, yes. Beautiful home, big and pretty close to the rent that I was getting here.

[0:12:52.8] MF: Right. Just for people who are listening, that wasn’t my house, I didn’t own it. It was one that was listed by someone else and owned by someone else, but Justin helped Michelle buy it and you bought another one shortly after that, correct?

[0:13:06.7] MY: Actually that was the second one I bought. The other one I bought, I paid — I don’t remember. I think that one was around $175 and that one rent for $1,500. The one next to the park rent for $16 and by the way, my Cheyenne rental is down to $1,500 a month now because of the oil and gas. Kind of falling flat here too.

[0:13:32.1] MF: I was wondering about that. Have prices started to change at all as far as value? Or just the rents up there?

[0:13:40.0] MY: I don’t think it’s as hot of a market as it was. It seems that the DOM is a little bit longer than it had been. The prices I think are probably about the same, maybe a little less. I just really don’t watch the Cheyenne market too much anymore.

[0:14:01.2] MF: Right. Okay. So I know you had thought about buying more properties in Northern Colorado area but recently I think you may have decided against that. What was your reason behind that and what are you thinking about the whole area in general?

[0:14:20.3] MY: Right. I was thinking about buying a couple of more in Greeley, and Justin and I had talked earlier this year about that and he had thought there was a possibility that it would work out. But again we talked via email here just within the last couple of weeks and he’s of course had the same feeling as you are that the market is just so hot down there and it’s exploding so much that I don’t think cash flow is going to work out for me.

So I think what I’m planning to do now is just keep my long distance flips that I’m funding, which is another avenue that I’m doing and maybe look out of state for some rentals but I haven’t nailed down a market yet.

[0:15:10.2] MF: Okay. Yeah, to reiterate what I’ve been saying and what you’ve just said about the Greeley market, those houses you bought a couple of years ago for $190 and $175 are probably worth $230 and a little more than that right now, it’s crazy what it’s done. The rents might have gone up a little bit, but the rents haven’t really gone up nearly as much as prices have and that just makes it harder to buy rentals.

[0:15:41.0] MY: It does. I love the equity like you, I can’t believe in not even two years yet but those is how those have gone up so much. But yes, the rents aren’t increasing along with them.

[0:15:52.7] MF: Right, yeah, it’s crazy over here and we’re finally starting to approach the price where they can build at for the media in value, so that’s kind of what I was telling Justin. I don’t think our prices can go up as high as they have been for much longer. It’s just been crazy going up 15% a year.

[0:16:13.7] MY: Yeah.

[0:16:13.9] MF: It’s just not sustainable.

[0:16:15.1] MY: It’s not sustainable, yes, exactly. People, in the entry level buyers are already probably priced out of the market.

[0:16:23.5] MF: Right. We’re looking to sell with my rentals here actually this week and that’s when I might exchange into new properties in Florida and we looked at the MLS and there were 10 houses in the entire Greeley-Evans area under $200,000 in the entire are that were for sale.

[0:16:42.6] MY: Wow.

[0:16:42.7] MF: Yeah. Everything else was over $200 and three of those are mobile homes.

[0:16:48.1] MY: Oh no.

[0:16:50.1] MF: Yeah. All right, you were talking about…

[0:16:55.5] MY: That’s so crazy.

[0:16:57.7] MF: Yeah, it is crazy. A new way you’re investing, but you are basically investing with someone else who is flipping and providing the money for them to flip, is that right?

[0:17:07.6] MY: That’s correct.

[0:17:09.9] MF: So how did you find that person and what attracted you to that way of investing?

[0:17:15.2] MY: Well again, by that time I had heard about Bigger Pockets which is just an amazing wealth of information. I started listening to all of the podcasts and one of them was Jay Scott’s podcast where he talked about using private money for his flips and this was something I had never heard of before. So I looked into it, I ended up contacting Jay and did a three way call with him and his partner at the time, Marty Boardman.

They were teaming up and doing flips in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the time because Jay lived in Atlanta and Marty lived in Arizona. They were looking I think for a little less expensive market to kind of flip in. So I did that three way call and ended up funding one flip that I did with them and then Jay ended up shortly after that, he ended up moving to Maryland and building his own house and he kind of flipping on the back burner.

Marty and I talked about continuing, but Marty was kind of growing in to a little bit longer term, I think like two to three year kind of investments and at the time, I am can kind of still on that feeling. I like to be in and out quicker than that within a year.

[0:18:39.3] MF: Right. When you’re doing this, are you getting a percentage of the profits or they’re just paying you a percentage on the money you invest? How does that work?

[0:18:49.4] MY: Yes, I am doing — what I’m doing now and what I did with Jay and Marty was they did pay a percentage every month rather than a joint venture kind of deal where you don’t get paid at all until the house sells and then you split the profit 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever. But what I’m doing now is getting a monthly percentage.

[0:19:15.2] MF: Okay, that makes sense because I used some private money in some of my flips in different deals and I have always preferred to do — to pay someone a percentage on the money they lent, an interest rate and not do the joint venture partnering thing. Mostly just because I’m a control freak and don’t like to make decisions with anybody else.

[0:19:36.1] MY: It seems like the majority of flippers do like to do it that way from what I found.

[0:19:41.9] MF: I mean, honestly I think you make more money as a flipper, you pay less financing cost when you’re not sharing a profit as well which is another reason why I do it.

[0:19:51.8] MY: Yeah.

[0:19:52.4] MF: Interesting. Has that been working out well?

[0:19:56.2] MY: That’s been working out great, I’ve just been doing that probably at least two years now. When Jay quit doing flips, he introduced me to a good friend of his also in Atlanta. So I’m on my third flip with this other guy in Atlanta and he’s paying 12 and a half percent so a lot better than what I could make on a CD.

[0:20:24.6] MF: Yeah, about 12 times what you say.

[0:20:27.2] MY: Yes, right now. I’m also working with another flipper in New York and he was paying me 10%, we decided he didn’t have any flips. I did two flips with him and then he didn’t have anything in the pipeline. We did kind of a more unusual contract which is a two year contract and that actually ends here in about three weeks and he’s paying eight and a half percent on that.

[0:20:58.0] MF: Okay.

[0:20:59.5] MY: It’s not a flip, it’s more of a contact with the loan against a building that he owns.

[0:21:06.7] MF: Okay. So you’ve got investments all over the place.

[0:21:12.0] MY: Yeah I do, and I’ve never been to these places.

[0:21:17.5] MF: You said you thought about buying rental properties in other states in different markets. Have you started researching markets and looking into that more indefinitely?

[0:21:28.0] MY: I was researching Milwaukee for a while there because I did do a lot of internet research when I was working with Marty and Jay. So that’s one market I thought of and the prices are just really affordable there and the rents are pretty good from what I hear. I have also — I thought about Atlanta but I think that’s too expensive now. I’ve done some research into that and then of course Florida where everybody wants to invest because of the weather and the beach.

[0:22:02.3] MF: Right.

[0:22:03.1] MY: I haven’t really nailed down anything yet because I think I’m going to just keep on doing funding for flips for a little while now.

[0:22:12.8] MF: Okay, great. Well that’s awesome. And yeah, Milwaukee is a place I’ve heard a ton of people investing in because the rents, compared to the property values are so good there. Especially for multifamily. And then I know, I talked to Jay Scott a few times and he is actually investing in Buffalo, New York. I think I might be doing some flips, I’m not sure if he’s holding for long term but he started doing some stuff up there. Which I’ve heard is also an interesting market, but I’ve never been there. Pretty far away.

[0:22:48.7] MY: They’re pretty high on property tax aren’t they?

[0:22:52.6] MF: Yes they are. So taxes are pretty high up there. I’ve heard Milwaukee taxes are a little higher, not crazy high but higher than what we’re used to and the nice thing about Florida is their taxes are pretty similar to what they are in Colorado, maybe a little higher but not much at all.

[0:23:09.4] MY: That’s good.

[0:23:10.2] MF: Yeah, some of the properties I was looking at for $100,000 to $150,000, the highest taxes I think I saw were about $1,200 a year.

[0:23:20.7] MY: That’s not bad at all.

[0:23:22.4] MF: No, not bad.

[0:23:23.7] MY: That’s what I pay here.

[0:23:25.0] MF: Yeah. Taxes here I think are probably a little lower than Wyoming but they’re pretty close.

[0:23:30.6] MY: Yeah. They are probably about I would say about $400 a year lower in Greeley than in Cheyenne.

[0:23:39.0] MF: Okay, good to know. I’m curious with your rental do you have now and you’re investing with the flips, do you have any goals for how many rentals you want in the future or how much money you want to invest in the flips or anything? Or are you just kind of taking it day by day and seeing how it goes?

[0:23:59.1] MY: Yeah at this point I am kind of taking it day by day. My goals right now are to continue learning as much as possible about this great business, to make my money make money and have fun doing it and I really love to donate, I donate to a lot of animal rescues and the more I make moves, the more I can donate.

But I plan to hold my current three rentals long term of course and then in a short term, just continue to do the private lending, in fact, my sister and I are flying out to Chicago next month to meet with a new flipper who works out of Illinois and Indiana and I’m going to do some joint ventures with him actually.

[0:24:46.4] MF: Oh nice. Well you’ve got all kinds of things going on.

[0:24:51.4] MY: Yeah. It’s been pretty busy.

[0:24:56.6] MF: Yeah. There’s one thing I want to ask you about too is I know at one point, you had thought about getting your real estate license but is that on hold right now?

[0:25:05.7] MY: That is on hold right now. I’ve decided that I’m going to retire from my job at the end of the year and I’m just going to, I think, enjoy retirement and enjoy having some free time. I have got a horse down in Fort Collins and so I plan to spend more time down there riding her and just relax.

[0:25:32.3] MF: That’s a good idea to me. I’m curious, what made you want to become an agent or pursue that idea to begin with? Was it for your own investing or were you planning to sell houses to other people? What were your plans for being an agent?

[0:25:47.0] MY: Well it’s funny, it was initially so that I could save money on my own investments when I was planning to buy more rentals, and you were instrumental in me making that decision. But then it kind of evolved into, “Well, if I’m going to get my license then pay all the fees that go along with it, I might as well work for an agency and sell houses too.”

So it kind of evolved into that and then that’s when I realized I really didn’t want another job and it’s pretty impossible to do that part time and I work part time now and I love it. So I decided not to go into it for that reason because I would have put 100% into it and I just wasn’t ready for another — to start another career.

[0:26:38.8] MF: Nope, that makes sense. Plus, if you’re not going to be buying properties in the area then it doesn’t benefit you on that side either.

[0:26:46.2] MY: Exactly, yup.

[0:26:46.7] MF: So I completely understand. Well this is nice to know that my advice was going to have you cut us out of the deal so we couldn’t sell you houses anymore.

[0:26:59.1] MY: I think that if I had ever moved down there, you guys had said that there was possibly a job opening for me.

[0:27:07.8] MF: Right, yeah we probably could have figured something out so it would have been. I tell that to agents all the time who want to work with investors because there’s a lot of people who feel, “Well I’m an investor, I can know how to work with investors better,” and the first thing is, so many people who want to be real estate investors never buy a house and aren’t really serious.

So it’s really easy to waste your time working with investors as an agent. You have to be very careful who you work with. The second problem is, if you work with the investors who are really good in buying a lot of houses, it’s almost guaranteed at some point they’re going to realize, “Well, if I just get my own license I’m going to save $20,000 a year or whatever it is.”

So you can’t count on working with the same investor all the time, especially when you get into those really good investors. So we’ve had a number of investors in our team that we’ve worked with over the years and eventually almost all of them got their license themselves to save money and it just makes sense for the investor.

[0:28:05.4] MY: It does make sense, yup. This is a business of making money, so the more you can save and they say “when you buy is when you make your money”.

[0:28:16.2] MF: Yup, exactly. Cool. Well, I had a couple of more questions and then I think we’re getting close to the end here but looking back at your investing and buying rental properties, what do you think was the most challenging thing for you? Learning to invest and buying? Was it just learning the whole process, was there just too many things to figure out? What do you think was the biggest challenge?

[0:28:39.5] MY: Well, when I first got started and bought my first rental property here in Cheyenne, I just didn’t know what to look for, I didn’t know what a tenant would want, what was too much, what was too little, that kind of thing. It was, like I said, it was about a six month process and it was on and off. I wasn’t super serious yet about finding a house although looking back on these past five years of investing I wish I started buying rentals like 30 years ago.

[0:29:10.8] MF: Right.

[0:29:13.4] MY: Yeah, the challenge because I’ve become an accidental landlord and really didn’t have time to think about it and my tenant at that time was a friend of a friend. There wasn’t even any advertising involved. It was this time around it was just a huge learning experience. This time it was going to be a business, I wanted to be successful at it.

I had to find a good property manager, a house. It was a lot different, a lot more thought went into it and not having any kind of road map or really any advice going forward. I think I made a few mistakes but fortunately it all turned out good in the end.

[0:30:00.7] MF: That’s good. I think that reminds me of something else a lot of people run into in that situation is they kind of rely on real estate agents or maybe even lenders to tell them what a good rental property is. Sometimes they can get good advice but a lot of times they don’t have any idea what a good rental is themselves either. It does pay to learn all that yourself.

You can take advice from agents and lenders and property managers, but the same time the more you can learn yourself, the better off you’re going to be because yeah. Some people consider a great rental property to be something much different from what other people consider to be a good rental property.

[0:30:40.0] MY: They sure do. I did that too and I actually did have — my agent is actually an investor herself now. She has three rental properties and she had even flipped the house here in Cheyenne so she was probably the best I could have as far as agents that understand investing. But still, I mean she wasn’t a high end investor. She still dealt with properties for just the person who is buying the house to live in themselves.

[0:31:17.5] MF: Right. Very cool. Well, I think that is all I had, great job, I know you’re a little nervous coming in to this, which is awesome. I’m impressed by all you’ve accomplished.

[0:31:30.6] MY: Thank you.

[0:31:31.1] MF: Real estate obviously is not your full time job or at all and you’ve done well investing and being a private money lender. So I’m curious to see what happens in your future and yeah, I know we worked together a little bit and you’ve worked with our team, happy to hear they’ve done a good job for you and if there’s anything we can do to help you out, happy to do anything we can.

[0:31:52.7] MY: Thank you and I have to say, I wanted to add this too, when Justin and I looked for that first house, I never worked with him before, after the first one or two houses he knew exactly what I wanted and he would just take videos with his cellphone and email them to me so I didn’t have to come down for every single house.

He pointed out the good and the bad, as far as from a rental perspective, and it made buying that house so much easier. In fact, the two houses I bought from him, I bought and closed within six months and the first house in Cheyenne, it took me six months to even find it.

[0:32:34.4] MF: Right.

[0:32:36.5] MY: But what I really want to say is on the second house, I did not even see that house before I made an offer on it. Justin had showed it to someone who for whatever reason, they weren’t interested in it. He thought of me, he took videos and sent them to me. I loved it and I put in an offer on it without even seeing it. That’s the one by the park.

[0:33:01.0] MF: Yes, that’s awesome and thank you for saying that. I’m glad he’s done a great job and I think that shows the importance of a good agent too, especially if you’re going to invest out of your area.

[0:33:12.2] MY: It sure does.

[0:33:12.7] MF: You have to have an awesome agent that can be your eyes and ears because you’re only an hour away really but still, I mean if you’re going to invest out of state, you can’t go see every house you want to make an offer. It doesn’t work.

[0:33:27.0] MY: Exactly yeah. No, I was still working, so taking time off work, he saved me so many hours.

[0:33:32.9] MF: Oh that’s great. I’ll let him know that.

[0:33:35.6] MY: Okay thanks.

[0:33:38.8] MF: Cool, well very good job. You did awesome and I’m sure we’ll keep in touch and if you need anything from me, please let me know and yeah, thank you again for being on the podcast.

[0:33:50.3] MY: Thank you Mark so much.

[0:33:52.4] MF: All right, you have a good day.

[0:33:54.3] MY: You too. Bye-bye.

[0:33:56.4] MF: Bye.

[END]

On this episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast, I talk about my history. How I grew up in a real estate family, what my goals were growing up, how I lost track of those goals, and then got back on track. Even though I grew up around real estate, I wanted nothing to do with it after high school, and even after college. I wanted to make my own way, but I was sucked back into the business, and boy am I glad it happened that way. Not only do I discuss how my career has progressed from an agent not making much money, to where I am now. I talk a lot about what I have done to be more successful. How changing the way I thought and acted, made me much more successful.

My dad was a real estate agent when I was born. I remember sleeping under his desk in the office when I was three, and always being at the office with him. I did not mind being with him and in the office, but for some reason I wanted nothing to do with real estate in high school and college. I think I wanted to create my own way, and not rely on him to make a living. When I graduated from college, my prospects for the job I thought I deserved at the time, did not look good. I couldn't believe every company wanted me to start at the bottom, and work my way up! Working for my father part-time became a way to make money after college, and figure out what I wanted to do.

After working for him part-time, I decided I liked the real estate business. I could make my own schedule, I loved helping him with flips and I made okay money. I got my real estate license, started selling houses and went into real estate full-time.

Can part-time real estate agents be successful?

When I first started as a real estate agent, I did not do very well. I tried to hide from the phone, do all my marketing online, and I was not the most outgoing person. I also did my best not to listen to how others had succeeded. I thought I could do it all on my own. I let my ego get in the way of being successful. For five years, I made under $50,000 a year and much of that money I made from working on fix and flips. I liked the free time, the flexible schedule, and people told my I was doing well, but I knew I could do much better.

In 2006, I decided to repair a flip by myself, because I thought I would make more money without paying contractors. It was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. However, I learned a lot from that experience and it lit a fire in me. I knew I had to change the way I was doing things if I wanted to be more successful. I accidentally created some goals, I got out of my comfort zone and I got a random call to complete a BPO. That BPO was the gateway to getting in to the REO business. I went from selling 10 houses a year, to 50 houses a year, to 100 houses a year and over 200 houses in one year.

How to get started in the REO business.

I was making good money selling REO listings and completing BPOs, but I worked all the time and it was stressful. I also did not have much to show for the money I was making. It is amazing how the more money we make, the more money we spend. I started investing in rentals to invest my money better, I started to ramp up the flip business to make more money and I ended up buying out my dad, so I could run everything. Not only did I make those business decisions, but I started to invest heavily in myself. I spent a lot of money on books, CD's, coaching programs and it changed my life. I learned to become less stressed, hire more people to help me and be happier. The happier I became, the more successful I became. Here are some articles that talk about the things I do now, to help me be successful:

One thing I always wanted as a kid, was a Lamborghini. I wanted one all through high school and college. I even told my college roommate I would have a Lamborghini by the time I was 25. He thought I was crazy and laughed at me. Technically, he was right. I did not get a Lamborghini by 25, but I got one by 35. After college, I entered the real world and came to the realization that normal people do not own Lamborghini's, and I would never have one. I also convinced myself I did not want one, they were too impractical, I would be showing off and does anyone really need a Lamborghini?

Well, when I told myself I didn't want that car, I was lying to myself. I was covering up the thoughts that I could never get that car, with I don't really want it. When I stopped dreaming, I halted my growth as a person and my success. After investing money in myself, and going through coaching, I realized I was hurting myself by masking what I really wanted in life. I made big goals, made a goal to buy a Lamborghini and I reached that goal faster than I ever thought possible. The cool part, is the car has doubled in value since I bought it!

I hope you listen to this podcast, because I provide a lot more insight into how I got to where I am today, and why the way we thing has so much to do with our success.

The podcast is really starting to take off! Thank you all who listen and reach out to me. If you know of anyone who might be an interesting guest send me an email:[email protected]. If you enjoy the show, be sure to leave a review on iTunes!

LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW FOR US OVER ON ITUNES

I published my new book: Build a Rental Property Empire: The no-nonsense book on finding deals, financing the right way, and managing wisely, a couple of weeks ago. Thank you everyone for making it a number 1 new release on Amazon! If you picked up a copy of the paperback or eBook, leave me a review (by April 15th). You will be entered to win a Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing. If you leave a review, be sure to send me an email so I know how to contact you.

[00:00:59.0] MF: Hey everyone, Mark Ferguson with Invest Four More here. I am back with another episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. Today, we’re going to talk about some of my history, how I grew up in real estate, how my career evolved, things I’ve learned along the way and try and share some tips for success I have discovered as well. So I’m really excited to get into that to kind of give you guys some more details on where I came from, how I shaped my career, my attitude, all of that.

I think our attitude is a huge part of our success. Once I really start working on that, everything changed for me significantly but before I get into that too much, when this comes out I just want to remind everybody my new book, Build a Rental Empire, which came out a few weeks ago, has become a number one Amazon new release. Really cool to see that happen, if you leave a review for it by April 14th, shoot me an e-mail to [email protected]. You will get entered to win a Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing. I’m going to pick one winner from the reviews submitted.

So far, I think there had been eight reviews so you have a very good chance of winning at this moment. Hopefully that goes up a little bit and the Complete Blueprint is the program I have to buy weekly coaching calls, e-mail coaching, 300 page guide, calls to action, video training. I have a ton of different stuff in that program. So I’m really excited to get that new book going and hopefully, I can get some more reviews on it. It’s fun for me to write books. I love seeing that.

[00:02:36.8]

All right, moving onto my history. I’m going to start from the very beginning. I won’t go into too much detail to bore you guys but I was born in 1979, so that makes me 37 now and when I was born, my dad had been a real estate agent for about one year. He got licensed in 1978 and before he was an agent, he had a number of different jobs but primarily, he was a school teacher.

He taught algebra in high school and my mom convinced him that he needed to change careers. Being a school teacher in the 70’s just was not going to cut it. They already had two kids. I was the last of three kids. So he took the jump, got into real estate and in the very beginning, he struggled like a lot of agents do but he found his niche in working with country properties.

Working on properties that have acreages, farm houses and he loved real estate from the very beginning and built a very, very successful business. 10 years later, he was doing extremely well selling a 100 houses a year basically himself and one other assistant but along the way, I used to sleep under his desk when I was three. I remember that.

He would take me to school, pick me up but a lot of times, I was with him showing houses. My mom helped him as well so I grew up around real estate and it definitely gave me an idea of what real estate is all about and maybe it was just because I wanted to be independent but I never wanted anything to do with selling houses or buying houses when I got older.

I wanted to be something else completely different. I didn’t want to be in real estate, but before I got to that point, one quick story. As many of you know, I have a Lamborghini Diablo but as I was growing up, as I was younger my parents were not into cars at all. They didn’t care, they were just transportation to them but my sister, Wendy, who was 10 years older than me was the one who got me into cars.

So when I was six, I remember going into a bookstore with her and she had bought this book. It’s The World’s Fastest Cars and I saw that book. I saw it and I was so jealous. I was so mad that she was buying that book and I begged her and begged her to give that book to me and to buy me a copy of that book because I couldn’t believe there were so many cool cars in that book.

I was so disappointed when she told me no, it was for her. My birthday was a week later and she ended up giving me that book for my birthday but in that book was Aston Martin V8, the Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari’s, all kind of cool cars that I like now and I know that shaped me a little bit but there is a point in that story. As I grew up, I got more into cars.

I love cars. In high school, I had three Toyota Supras, I had a Toyota Land Cruiser, all types of cars. I would buy them, get great deals on them, sell them once in a while when I had to but I bought cars all over the country driving back home because I get better deals in different states. So after high school, I always played sports. I did fairly well in high school, nothing phenomenal.

I went to the University of Colorado at Boulder and I actually started out in their engineering program. So I got into the engineering school, super excited. I started taking classes like calculus II, physics and all of a sudden I was not as nearly as excited as I was before. Part of me wanted to be independent and away from my parents and have some fun and part of me did not want to study all the time to learn those numbers and I started asking myself, “Do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?”

[00:06:20.4]

Do I want to crunch numbers? Do I want to be doing these type of things? I’m like, “No, I don’t”. I hate it so I transferred to business. I went to the business school. I got my focus on finance. I still ended up graduating in four years, thanks to doing some summer school classes. I loved business. Business was awesome. It didn’t teach me a whole lot about what I do now but I did have one really good entrepreneurial class.

Really the focus of business school was get a degree, go work in a corporate job, try and work yourself up the corporate ladder, maybe in 20 years you’ll become high enough up the ladder you’ll be a CFO, maybe a CEO, but you have to work 80 hours a week. As soon as you get to that high position, you might have to work even more but you’ll be making a lot of money and the more and more I thought about that, I’m like, “Man that does not seem fun to me either.”

I mean working that hard for that long without any real guarantee for what your future will be, you’re future is dependent on your managers, other people, your bosses hiring you, seeing your potential not always on what you do and it just gotten back in my head, “Man, this does not sound like a fun way to do it either,” but I graduated from college and I started looking for a banking job.

My degree is finance. My primary reason for wanting to get a banking job was because I wanted to get money. I had no real affinity for banks or the industry. I’m just like, “Well, it seems like people make a lot of money in this industry.” What I found was banks did not want to hire you unless you want to be a teller and work your way up from the very bottom, make no money.

The same thing, hopefully they’ll see your potential, hope they work you up the ladder and I said, “This does not sound fun to me either.” So I ended up going back home working part time with my dad in the real estate business. I did not move in with them. I actually stayed in an apartment building my sister managed. She had college rentals at the time and then she also managed an apartment building for some other investors.

I was an onsite manager at that building called the Oasis Tower in Greeley, Colorado. So I had a lot of fun there but I also started to get into real estate more. I got my license, became a real estate agent and I helped my dad did a few fix and flips. I really liked the fix and flipping part of it. I really like that side of it. The agent side, I was not that great at.

I didn’t like talking to people on the phone, I didn’t like marketing, I didn’t like doing a lot of things that you have to do to be a good agent. So instead of doing those things, I really focused on trying to create marketing things on the internet, signing up for lead sources, doing all kinds of different things, things that my dad had never really done.

My dad was always traditional, market to your past clients, do an awesome job with your clients, always do the right thing for them, send them postcards, newsletters, keep in touch with them and he did extremely well with that and I want to do things a little different so I went another route and my route did not work at all. We had some success doing some flips on that side of it but I did not sell so many houses.

I sold maybe 10 houses a year as an agent. It was not very much and it was mostly because I wasn’t willing to do, you know, get outside my comfort zone to do what really had to be done to be a good agent. I was trying to hide behind the computer, do online marketing, get leads that way and even if you get leads that way and you get leads from the internet or your computer, you still have to talk to people.

You still have to follow up with them, you still have to treat them the right way. So it’s not like I was doing anything that different from what my dad was doing. I was doing it different but I was doing it two things wrong by going in the internet and then not following up well and not talking to people as much as I should. So it’s a pretty frustrating couple of years out of college.

I did okay. I made $40,000, $50,000 a year because I was selling those 10 houses, because we did some flips which I made a percentage on. I bought my first house in 2002, 2003. I paid $189,000 for it. It was one of the peak of the market in Colorado. I thought it was an okay deal but they’re selling it six, seven years later for $190,000 after I put about $15 or $20,000 of work into it.

So it ended up not the best investment but it was a good learning experience. Did a lot of the work myself but in those first few years, getting back to the car story, I’d always told myself in college and high school, “I’m going to have a Ferrari, I’m going to have a Lamborghini,” no doubt about it. I’m going to make all these money.

Then when I got out of college and I got into the real world, I really started to get this in franchise about things aren’t going how they are, I started listening to society and the media. It’s like, “Hey, you’re making $40 to $50,000 a year, you should be ecstatic. You’re 22 years old, why are you complaining? You have a house, you’re in an awesome financial position.”

But there is still something in the back of my mind saying, “Things aren’t improving fast enough.” Even though I am making that money, I wasn’t really saving any money. I didn’t have very much in my savings account. I had a personal house but would my mortgage go down maybe a thousand or $2,000 a year, so that’s not saving that much and I really started to look at my life and how things are happening and I stopped believing I’d never get nice cars. I stopped believing that I have this awesome amazing life and it really brought me down a little bit and around 2005-2006, I knew I had to change things and do something different.

So the first thing that I started doing was I started doing some of the work on our flips and threw on extra money. I’m like, “Okay, I’ll just work harder. That’s how I will make more money. I’ll just do more work, work harder.” I started working more hours, doing painting on some of our flips, earning an hourly wage and that made me a little more money. It didn’t made a huge difference but it earned me a little bit and then end up buying a flip that I wanted to do all the work on myself.

I have talked about this story before on some of my other podcast but a horrible decision. It took me six months to do all the work. I did the windows, doors, kitchen, bath, painting, flooring, fixtures, it was a mess and the house was like a hundred years old so nothing was straight. It was all crooked and it was very frustrating. So after all that, our market was going down. I ended up losing money on the deal plus I wasted six months of my life working on it.

[00:12:50.9]

It was really, really frustrating and at that point I’m like, “Okay, that obviously didn’t work. Now I really have to change the way I am doing things because this isn’t working.” The first thing that I did was I vowed never to ever work on a flip again myself. I did the work myself, which I’ve pretty much stuck to that but then I still am looking at the real estate business.

We didn’t do many flips that year because I was so busy on this house, we weren’t buying anything else, I didn’t sell many houses because I was so busy working on this house. I didn’t talk to clients or meet with people and so I wrote out a plan that was meant to show my dad that, “Hey, my pay structure isn’t that fair. There’s other people on our team making more money but they don’t work as hard as me.”

It’s like a big complain, that’s what it was but what I ended up doing was writing out how many houses I have to sell to make a $100,000 a year which was one of the goals that I had for a long time and so I wrote out this big plan showing how many I have to sell, what I have to do and the numbers that I have to sell just seemed absolutely crazy.

It seemed ridiculous and that was my point I was trying to make my dad to see how crazy I have to be to do these things and he looked at it and said, “Yeah, yeah you know, just keep working hard. You will get there,” and he wasn’t very impressed with my plan which I spent a lot of time on it but annoyingly to me what that plan did was it kind of got stuck in my head how many houses I have to sell, how many foreclosures I have to do.

I was making goals without really realizing it is what I was doing and in the past, I had always resisted making any goals, I had resisted going to conferences, I had resisted learning or listening to CD’s or audio tapes. The biggest reason why, I think, I find my ego getting in the way saying, “Hey, I am smart enough. I didn’t have to learn from somebody else. I don’t have to listen to this other person, I can do this by myself. I don’t have to go to conferences.

I’m not going to learn anything new. I am smart enough to do this all by myself and I don’t need to set goals, I don’t need to do all of that stuff. That’s for other people, I am smart enough. I don’t have to do that stuff myself.” So it was all my ego pretty much derailing my career because I was too smart to learn anything new. Too smart to learn from other people and that really hurt me.

[00:15:08.5]

But by accidentally making those goals, I started thinking about how to sell houses, how to do more flips and it just got stuck in my head. My subconscious started thinking more than my brain which is a good thing and the next year, maybe it was that same year later in the year, a company randomly called me asking me to do broker price opinion, a BPO.

A BPO is done by REO agents, real estate agents who work with foreclosures for banks. I had no idea what a BPO was and I started doing some research. I’m like, “What is this? What do I have to do?” And they’re like, “Well, you just have to fill up this report, find some comps, drive by the property, take some pictures, fax us back the report back.”

It was 2006, it wasn’t that long ago but they are still faxing stuff and you get paid $50 bucks. I’m like, “Sweet! That’s not a bad deal”. It’s much better than painting a house for four hours or $50 bucks or whatever it was. So I did that, maybe it took me a couple of hours to do everything in my first one. I’m like, “That wasn’t too bad. That was pretty easy.”

I started researching BPO’s, REO’s and I did something that was completely and totally out of my comfort zone. I looked up what banks were foreclosing on homes on a weekly public trustee’s sale. They would publish notice of election and demand, what bank is foreclosing on the homes. I looked at that report, I looked at what banks were foreclosing on houses and I just cold calling those banks.

The ones I can get a hold of, I just called up their number, started talking to people, I might have to talk to five to 10 people before they can get me to the department, the loss mitigation or default department, foreclosure department, whatever that bank calls it and I started talking to people and they told me exactly how to get their listings.

“Sign up here, sign up for this website, oh this asset management company over here handles our REO’s and you need to talk to them,” and so I did exactly what they said. I signed up with all those websites. I signed up with those asset management companies and I couldn’t believe it but probably a month later, I started getting more and more orders for BPO’s.

[00:17:21.4]

More broker price opinions just kept coming in and all of a sudden I was doing 10 to 15 a week. I’m like, “Wow, this is cool!” I’m getting paid $50 per BPO, I’m making decent money now. It’s not manual labor, it’s pretty simple for me. I got it down where I could do a BPO in half an hour, maybe 45 minutes and I got my first REO listing two months after calling those banks.

That was like a lightbulb that went off my head. I could not believe that e-mail I got. I still remember it. The e-mail came in and it says, “New property assignment”, and I have never seen an e-mail like that before and I knew what it was in the back of my head I’m like, “I think that I just got an REO listing,” and I didn’t want to open it because I didn’t want to ruin it.

But I’m like, “Okay, I’d better check it out.” So I opened it and it was a new REO assignment. It was in Frederick, Colorado which was about 30 miles from me and I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea what to do. I just knew they gave me some tasks, I had to go and look at it in 24 hours. So I left the house in five minutes, drove to the property, took pictures, drove back, submitted my inspection.

They gave me all these other tasks to re-key it, to have the yard work done, I had no idea what I was doing so I actually took my parent’s truck, took their lawn mower, drove to the property myself and mowed the lawn myself. Now, the banks don’t want you doing that. You’re not supposed to do the work yourself on these properties but I didn’t know any better at the time.

I made an invoice, I didn’t over charge them or anything. I think I gave them a pretty good deal for me mowing the lawn and so I’ve mowed the lawn, someone else did the rekey. I didn’t know how to do that, I cleaned up some of the yard and I was off and running in my first REO property. I think I got two that first year, it was the end of the year. I think maybe October is when I first got my first one.

Then that next following year, I got 18 REO properties, did a couple hundred BPO’s, all of a sudden I had a brand new niche, brand new career and I was like, “Holy cow, this is awesome!” And I know, it may seem random that someone just called me with a BPO, which was random but if I really hadn’t been thinking about how to increase business, how to do things differently, I may just have said, “No. I don’t want to do a BPO, what’s that?” And just not even thought about it.

But because I had it in my head that I needed to improve things, I had this goal I had to do, I’m like, “Hey, I’ll take a chance. I will try it.” I also took a chance calling banks without any idea what I was talking about, what I was doing. I never cold called anyone in my life but I did it for some reason with banks.

[00:19:56.0]

Things just exploded for me in 2008-2009 selling, I went from 18 REO sales to 50 the next year to 80 the next year to 150 the year after that. I got up to 200, it was awesome and along the way, I stopped doing fix and flips with my dad because I was so busy, we just didn’t have time for them. We might have done one or two years for a while and I got the HUD contract so I applied to be a HUD listing broker with a couple of different companies.

Randomly, I got in with First Preston and HomeTelos because I had listed a property for First Preston before and someone from HomeTelos calls me and says, “Hey, we see that you’re in First Preston’s database, you might have sold a house for us?” I’m like, “Yeah, I did. I asked the management company that sold REO’s”.

They’re like, “Okay, do you want to list HUD homes?” I’m like, “Yes, I want to list HUD homes.” If you’re in the industry, you know HUD homes are a huge deal. If you can become a HUD listing broker is very lucrative. The asset manager says, “Well, hey I’ve got a property in Sterling, Colorado. I can’t find a listing broker for it. Can you do it today?” And Sterling is about 95 miles away from me.

I did not hesitate, I’m like, “Yes. I will do it.” I got the information, I drove out there, got the inspection done and it turns out I had actually submitted an application to that company to become a HUD listing broker but they never saw that. They didn’t called me because of that, they just called me because I had listed a property for First Preston before and the two companies were basically linked together.

The next week, I think they sent me 18 new listings in one week for HUD. It was crazy but I was doing BPO’s, I was driving all over the state, it was insane. I was working 14 hour days. This was before we had kids but I was married and we were super excited. I mean it wasn’t like my wife and me are having a hard time because we were working so much.

[00:21:56.1]

We’re just like, “Oh my God, this is crazy,” because she was an agent as well at the time but I knew something had to change. There’s no way I could keep up doing 14 hour days, working 10 hours on the weekend every day. It was just, no ways. So I hired an assistant. I was still working with my father but I did things separate from him.

I hired my first assistant, Nikki, who’s still with me. She’s awesome. I taught her how to submit expenses for REO properties and banks. Many of the banks want you to pay for the lawn care, pay for repairs, pay for utilities and they will pay you back. So I taught her how to do that. I taught her to do BPO’s, I taught her how to do all kinds of different things, which made my life so much easier.

Once I got the REO business stabilized, she is helping with it, then I went back to revisit fix and flipping with my father and I started to focus on, “Hey, we can make this flipping work. We made it work before, I have more time now. Let’s do that.” So we focused on fix and flipping, did great, flipping five or six houses a year. About 2010, I had know I wanted to buy rental properties for a long time but it’s still hard to save money.

Even selling all of those houses, even doing the flips, it’s just really hard to save money. My wife and I bought a new house, we are having kids in 2010, twins which was very expensive. The whole process was extremely expensive and it’s just very hard to save money. But eventually in 2010, I bought my first rental and that was really cool. I paid $96,900 for it. I figured it would rent for $1,000 a month.

It needed almost no work. It was built in 2005, I ended up renting it for $1,050. Now it’s rented for $1,400 a month, which is awesome but I bought that rental, I kept buying rentals and then things were just going better and better and better but I still kind of felt — always felt anxious about money. I’m always, “Things couldn’t last like this forever.” REO won’t always be up and I really started to take a look at my life.

I really delved into self-improvement around 2012 and that’s when I’m like, “Okay, I’ve done well. I’m making good money. I’ve got a taste of what success can mean,” and I did a few really simple things. I simply searched online for “how to be rich, how to make more money, how to invest better” and I just started researching things.

I started researching and looking into different programs, I started buying books, reading books, I started buying audio CD’s, listening to audio CD’s, I listened to all kinds of people. It’s funny, one of the biggest influences on me is Kevin Trudeau who, if you know who he is, he’s a nut job. He’s actually in jail right now for 10 years but he created this CD series about being positive and outlook on life.

It really was something that really helped me changed my attitude and focus on life. So even though he himself is not the best person in the world that really helped me focus on what’s important in life. So I progressed from having no goals, no plans, just riding along trying to do everything myself to accidentally setting some goals to finding some success.

Working like crazy then to getting married, buying rental properties and then I really started to look at my attitude and my life and started to get a plan for what I was going to do with everything because up to that point, it had kind of been a rollercoaster that I was just riding on. It wasn’t something that I had planned or laid out ahead of time. It was just riding the wave

[00:25:42.2]

But when I got into the self-improvement, the attitude, the goal setting, I really started to get a better picture of how my life could be, how I should think, how I should act and I started doing Jack Canfield coaching which is an awesome coaching system. It’s was very expensive. It was six or $7,000 dollars, which I had never paid for anything like that before.

Any amount of money that close but I did it and it changed my life even more, creating a hundred goals. It gave me the confidence to buy out my father and take over the business. It had me changed my goals for buying houses, everything just moved up faster, reduced stress in my life about money. It gave me more free time, it was just insane.

Going back full circle to when I was growing up and wanting that Lamborghini, wanting those cars, all after college, I had never really believed I could do that. You kind of lose faith, you stop having those dreams and that was me. I’m like, “Well, you know maybe when I’m 70 I might be able to save enough money to have an old Lamborghini or something, who knows?”

Then as things progressed, I didn’t really think about it either but as I started making more money and then looking into self-improvement, I’m like, “Why did I gave up on that dream? Why did I forget about it?” It’s because I didn’t believe in it. It was because I didn’t believe that I could do it myself and that was obviously a huge mistake.

When I started to believe in things again, started to believe in what I can do, I made a goal in 2013. Actually, before I get too far ahead of myself, in 2012 I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to be able to buy a Lamborghini. Maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years I’m going to do it. That’s going to be a lifetime goal of mine,” and I didn’t gave a specific date but I said, “I’m going to buy a freaking Lamborghini in 10 years or 15 years or whatever it is.”

[00:27:37.3]

Then I did Jack Canfield coaching and went through all these change over my life and attitude and I made a goal to buy a Lamborghini in 2014, which was just insane to me. I ended up doing it. A lot of help or thanks goes to this blog because I wrote it down so everybody could see that goal so I was held accountable and it was just amazing.

Doing that was just crazy from where I had been eight years ago to going that far. Eight years seems a long time but it’s really not and business went crazy. The flips were doing awesome. Taking over the business was a great experience. I hired one of my best friends to come work for me as my manager. I have awesome family.

Things just have been fantastic and a lot of that happened just because randomly, I started setting those goals. So I have a point to this podcast, it’s not just to give you my life story but I want to go through at the end here and tell you some of the most important things I have learned and done as far as success, attitude, how I’ve become successful whether it’s on purpose or not.

The first thing obviously is setting goals. I mean that is so huge in my life now. For anybody, if you don’t know where you want to go, how in the world are you going to get there? You can’t just ride along life and hope things happen to you. You’ve got to make it happen and goals are the first step in doing that. Be as specific as you possibly can.

How much money do you want to make? How many houses do you want to sell? Whatever it is, try and be specific so you can picture those things in your mind. Don’t be afraid to set big goals that you don’t think you can reach. So many people are like, “Well, I don’t want to be disappointed.” Well, a goal is not there to disappoint you if you don’t reach it. It’s to get you farther than you would be without that goal.

So if I want to sell a hundred houses in a year but I sold 20 this year, well I’m not going to say, “Next year my goal is to sell 25 houses because that’s realistic.” No, I’m going to make the goal — maybe set a hundred but maybe I’ll say, “I’m going to sell 50 houses next year” and you bet I’m probably going to sell more houses having a goal 50 than I’d do having a goal at 25.

[00:29:47.0]

So many people have reached this little goals and they quit. They go, “Okay, I don’t have to do anything else. I’ve got my goal.” But if your goal is so high that it’s really tough to reach it, you’re going to keep pushing the whole time to reach that goal. So big goals, there’s a lot of goals I have not reached. I’ve made some big goals but I know they’ve pushed me harder and I’ve gotten farther because of those goals even if I didn’t reach it.

Another thing is being positive. Yes, I’m a huge fan of our attitude. There’s a lot of different things with the law of attraction and The Secret, that maybe came out a while ago about if you’re positive, things naturally come to you and I like to look at it from a logical standpoint of just how thinking about happy things, being happy yourself, looking at the positive side of things puts you in a better mood, for one thing.

You’re more open to opportunities, you’re more pleasant to be around, you network with people, you talk to more people and that alone will make you more successful plus it really does tell your subconscious, “Hey, if I’m happy I want to keep being happy. What can you do to make me happy?” So a huge believer in being positive and as happy as I possibly can be.

Another thing that really helps me is just a daily routine. Every night, I will sit in my office at home, I will kind of write down in my journal what I’m thankful for. I will try to meditate a little bit if I can. It’s tough, I always feel like I have so many things going on and I want to spend time with my family but I still do my best to take time out for myself.

I try to plan my day a little bit the next day or my week and then review what’s really important to me. What’s going on in my life, what are the big things going on? Just try and keep myself relaxed, grounded and thinking about the big picture not getting caught up in all the busy work. Time management has been huge, that was something that I learned as well.

Just trying to schedule as many things as I can, the more things I have scheduled, the less surprises I have, the more I can get done and along with that comes focus. I used to do 10 different things at once thinking multitasking was getting things done faster. I learned that gets things a lot slower when you multitask. You’re constantly leaving off where you left here, trying to figure out what you’re doing, stopping.

If you can focus on one thing, do that thing until you’re finished or do that thing for a certain amount of time, you will get things done so much faster than if you are doing 10 different things at once. So focus is huge for me. People still don’t believe me but I work about 40 hours a week. In fact, after this podcast I’m going to play nine holes of golf with my brother in law.

[00:32:22.5]

So I play golf twice a week, during the week, I very rarely at all work on the weekends. I get into work about 8:30 or nine, depending on what’s going on. I usually get home from work about five maybe 5:30 and then I do some work at home a little bit usually with the blog but I do not work all the time. I’ve hired a great team and really have a lot of help to make my life not just successful but relaxing and enjoyable as well.

That brings back to another thing is delegation, having people help you to where you want to be. You can’t do everything yourself. Like I said before in the beginning, I try to do it all by myself and it was a big mistake. Whether it is having a mentor to help you learn something new, going to conferences to learn about your field and learn new things or network or hiring someone to mow your lawn, hiring someone to change your oil on your car.

As a male in the United States there’s a lot of expectations about being manly and mowing your own lawn and changing your oil and what it means to be masculine and I’m so much happier letting other people do that stuff than doing it myself. Sure, yes I can change the oil in my car but it takes me an hour and I have to go buy the oil and I have to clean up the mess after I’m done, and I have to crawl under my car to do it.

Why don’t I just take it somewhere and have it done where they can do it in 10 minutes or 15 minutes? I can pay them $30, I don’t make a mess, I don’t have to go to the store and save me three times as much time. The same with my lawn. If I am mowing my lawn, I’ve got my little push mower. The other guys, they’ve got these riding mowers, they can do it half the time.

I don’t have to get gas for the mower. I don’t have to take it in to get tuned up, I can spend that time hanging out with my family, doing other things. A really cool thing that I learned is don’t do anything below your pay grade and what that basically means is if you’re worth a $100 an hour, if that’s your monetary value you put on the hours you work of your time, don’t do work that you can hire out for less than that.

If you can hire someone to mow your lawn for $10 an hour, do it. If you can hire someone to send out mail or some market for you for $20 an hour, do it. Save your time for the most valuable things and you will be so much successful in life.

[00:34:42.9]

All right, so I think that is about all for today’s podcast. I have been talking for a while. This is all I am going off the top of my head here. I don’t have any notes to go off of. I may have skipped a few things but those are really the most important things that have helped me succeed and my story about how I got started, how my career progressed.

I guess a few things that I might talk about before I head out here is what my plans are for the future because that’s important. You always have to be constantly improving, I think constantly have something to shoot for to be happy in life. I don’t think being comfortable is being happy. I think being out of your comfort zone and constantly changing, that makes people happy.

It makes life exciting but I am working on a development now. As I said, I try to develop 34 acres into some lots. That’s something brand new for me. I have never done it before. I’ve got a $500,000 that are flip still and I am trying to work to ten on, that’s progress. I’ve never done a flip close to that expensive. I’ve been getting more private money lending this year. That is something brand new.

I’m thinking about investing in Florida which is brand new. I’ve got a couple of properties here I’m getting ready to sell and hopefully exchange into new properties in Florida. I’ve got a lender who I’m working with to get qualified down there and then as far as big things, I’d still love to have a car dealership at some point in my life. That’s a big goal for me, to be able to buy more cars, have more fun.

I’m working on building an addition on my personal house. A four car garage plus a new deck. We have to redo our deck anyway so we might put a garage underneath it as well and just more free time, more vacations is a goal as well. Just the more time that I can spend with my family, the better. Of course, the blog is doing awesome, doing amazing. I spend a lot of time on it but I love all the support I get.

All the people who tell me I’m helping them and helping change their investing, keep it coming. That’s all I’ve got. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Be sure to leave comments, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and again, if you guys want to leave a review for my Build a Rental Property Empire book, I love to see it. I’ll leave a link in the article, it goes over this podcast.

Thanks for listening and I hope everybody has an awesome spring and summer.

[END]

On the Invest Four More Podcast, I usually interview real estate investors or agents, but today I interview a lender. Mike Bowen, is a lender in Colorado that my team has worked with numerous times. Mike is one of the top lenders in the nation as far as number of deals done per year and is a tremendous business person. In this interview, we talked about a number of things including: why real estate agents succeed, what investors need to look out for when getting a loan, how to build a team and much more. I think Mike and I could have talked for another 3 hours, but we are both busy guys!

Mike did not start out as a lender, in fact he started out in the oil fields. He was doing manual labor jobs, when an older friend told him he was quitting and going into real estate. Mike could not understand why anyone would want to give up the easy money that was in oil, but he had a lot of respect for his friend and wanted to know why he was getting into real estate. It turns out doing manual labor your entire life for an hourly wage, is not so appealing once you get into your forties or fifties. Mike did a lot of thinking, and decided he would get into real estate as well. He actually started out as an agent, and signed on with a broker as soon as he got his license.

Mike was expecting some training or guidance when he became an agent. But his broker basically told him to start knocking on doors and that was it. With no training and no direction, Mike did not like being an agent. He also loved to work with numbers and he felt being a real estate agent was too emotional for him. After a couple of years as a real estate agent, Mike became a lender.

A lender helps prospective home owners get a loan to buy a house. Almost every bank hires lenders to work with potential borrowers and close on loans. Typically the lenders work on commission, much like real estate agents. Mike started out working with a big bank, because he thought that would give him credibility. Working with a big bank did give him some credibility, but it also limited him greatly. Big banks, had more restrictions and it was much harder to get a loan done, than with a smaller mortgage broker. Mike switched companies and started to find a lot of success as a lender.

How to be successful in real estate and life

Mike was doing many deals a month, making great money and loving life. He was loving life until the recession hit, and then his world fell apart. People stopped buying houses after the recession and hit and it became much more difficult to get a loan. In 2011, Mike was almost completely broke. Mike gave lending one more shot, he moved to a new company and told himself there was no way he was not going to succeed. With a new attitude and new company, Mike closed more loans in three months than he had the entire last year and was back on his feet. Mike built his business with multiple lending products, built a team and now is one of the top lenders in the country.

Mike has learned a lot about real estate as a lender and agent. He has also learned a lot from dealing with many agents and investors. Mike sees many agents come and go in the business and has a few pieces of advice for agents.

Mike talks a lot about working with investors as well. Many investors do not save enough money to buy rentals and are surprised when they talk to a lender. Some investors also max out how much they can qualify for on their personal residence, which makes it very tough to buy a rental.

Mike works for Guild Mortgage in Denver and works loans throughout the state. I can personally vouch for him as a great lender. Mike can be reached by emailing him at [email protected] or you can him directly at 303-995-4663.

The podcast is really starting to take off! Thank you all who listen and reach out to me. If you know of anyone who might be an interesting guest send me an email:[email protected]. If you enjoy the show, be sure to leave a review on iTunes!

LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW FOR US OVER ON ITUNES

I published my new book: Build a Rental Property Empire: The no-nonsense book on finding deals, financing the right way, and managing wisely, last week. Thank you everyone for making it a number 1 new release on Amazon! If you picked up a copy of the paperback or eBook, leave me a review. You will be entered to win a Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing. If you leave a review, be sure to send me an email so I know how to contact you.

[0:00:58.6] MB: Hey everyone, it’s Mark Ferguson with Invest Four More and welcome to another episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast. I have a really awesome guest on today’s show. Mike Bowen who is with Guild Mortgage in the Denver area.

I have not had a lender on the show before, but he is just super successful, he does a lot of teaching himself, has worked with our team and done an awesome job and I’m really excited to hear his perspective, learn how he got in the business what he’s learned over the years and I think he can provide some great insight for investors and agents as well.

So Mike, thank you so much for being on the show, how are you doing?

[0:01:39.1] MB: I’m doing well Mark, thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.

[0:01:41.2] MF: Yeah, no problem. I’m glad to have you on the show. I always like to start out talking to guests, just figuring out how did you first get involved in real estate? How did you first become a lender? What drew you to the business?

[0:01:55.1] MB: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. I think kind of looking back, I was in the oil field for a long time, I used to drive around in a truck and check oil wealth and the guy that I worked for, his name is Tim, decided to get his license and he actually was getting out of the oil business and I asked him when I was 21, 22 years old, “Why would you do that? I though, there’s a lot of money in oil, why would you do that?”

And when he told me, “Listen and listen closely is how he put it to me. If I could go back and redo my life,” he was probably 58 or 60 at the time. He says, “If I could go back and redo my life I would start in real estate, it’s a really strong profession, it’s interesting, it’s different, there’s a lot of reasons,” but he says, “I would go back and I would start a career in real estate.”

So I respecting him a lot, he was kind of a first mentor for me and I literally went out I think six months later and took the course and got licensed as a real estate agent in 1994.

[0:02:53.8] MF: Wow, so I didn’t even realize that you were an agent before you were a lender.

[0:02:57.4] MB: Yeah.

[0:02:59.0] MF: So how was it when you first became an agent, was it all that you thought it would be?

[0:03:02.8] MB: Definitely not. I was licensed as a real estate agent, did that for two years, ’94 to ’96 and I think it’s funny because when I first got in, I came to work in a suit and came to work, reported to my managing broker and said, “Great, what do you need me to do?” Kind of looked at me and said, “Go get business,” and I literally had no idea what that even meant.

“What do you mean get business?” He says, “Go door knock,” and I had no idea, I didn’t have any guidance at what that even meant and I quickly started jumping in, I was pretty fearless, I just went out and door knocked and I started to get with people and I figured out that being on the real estate side, that’s a hard gig.

It allowed me to gain a huge respect for those of you in the profession, out there working with real estate, what I did also show me is for my personality style, I just decided, you know what? Numbers are a better fit for me, it was always something that I excelled at, working numbers, being creative with numbers. So in ’96 I decided to go towards the lending part of things. That was kind of my very first start.

[0:04:06.5] MF: Very cool. It’s interesting because I’ve always liked numbers too in that side of it more than — I’ve never door knocked as an agent but as an agent, you just have to talk to people, whatever you do, there’s no way you can get around talking to people and getting yourself out there and I found REO as an agent, which was kind of more a numbers game, a system’s game but what drew you to lending and how did that work out when you first started becoming a lender?

[0:04:34.9] MB: Yeah, so I mean I started on a team with a local guy, you’ll find with me if you talk to me, I believe in mentors, I believe in hooking up with people that do things better than me or smarter than me at the time and at that time there’s a guy named Dale and he’s a lender. I was his assistant, so that was ’96, I did that for three years and then I branched out on my own after that around 1999 I guess that would be.

I think what attracted me to the lending side is yeah, I think working with numbers, I always say that numbers are kind of black and white and in other words, if somebody wants a payment, the numbers will either work or they won’t. Where real estate can be a little bit more working in the grey right?

Does it have a big enough bedrooms, is the carpet the right color and for me it was those kind of grey areas that I think didn’t always work for my personality style. I wanted more black and white. If I can make the numbers work, can I earn you as a client? Yes or no? And I enjoyed that kind of direction I think.

[0:05:33.7] MF: Right. Being a real estate agent, you’re working with a lot of emotions. It doesn’t always makes sense what people do. It takes some getting used to that’s for sure.

[0:05:46.2] MB: I was thinking, that’s exactly right and I think when you talked about the REO Mark, what strikes me is really, when you — this is really what I teach a lot. I’m coached with a business coach and I do coaching myself, I have six students that I coach nationwide and then I do a lot of courses, training courses and things, business planning courses and I love doing that because what I teach and, you’ll probably relate to this being an REO is business is really business.” No matter what you’re doing, what you’re selling, business is kind of universal.

The tactics and the things that we all work as a business owner are really similar. The problem that I see is sometimes agents don’t see themselves as a business owner and they see themselves as a sales person and they’re kind of viewing it as that’s the game that sells rather than being a good business person.

Recording their results and being very thoughtful and tactical in their business rather than emotional. I think back to what you just said, I mean, that’s what I’m working to change that perception to people that will come to my courses is really hey, emotion never serves us well in business, it just doesn’t. It’s impossible to eliminate it but it doesn’t service very well so if we can be tactical and make decisions tactically, we’re going to be better for it.

[0:07:05.8] MF: That is an awesome point. I completely agree with you about real estate agents, treating themselves as a business. I think one of the easiest business you can start is becoming an agent or maybe even being a lender, I’m not familiar on the lending side but so many agents start and just kind of feel like you did, you show up your job and expect someone to tell you what to do and if you’re not at the right brokerage, you’re not with the right company that has training. What do you mean you want me to tell you what to do? You go figure it out man. Yeah, it has to be a business and you really need the right training as well to succeed as an agent.

[0:07:41.0] MB: Big deal, it really is. I’ll tell you a quick story. My mom was just licensed in the industry so she’s a licensed real estate agent, that’s the advice I gave her, all the things she was worried about was just more to do with how to write a contract and all important stuff, certainly how to write a contract, how to get into MLS, all really necessary but what I really was trying to help her with is start off the same way you would start off if you started a business, a flower shop.

You’d never go into that flower shop without having the right tracking systems and the right software to be able to run your point of sale, your registry and your point of sale software and things like that. You would have to set all those things up. You’d have to have them in place to be a respectable business owner but you’re right. I think those of us in real estate and even lending, we all jump in and we forget those basic business techniques and things that we have to do.

[0:08:38.3] MF: Right. Yeah, as well, you start a flower shop, you want to know how many flowers you have to sell, what the cost is of those flowers and many agents just jump in without any idea how many houses they need to sell, how much money they need to make to survive, what the expenses are and it’s so important to know all that stuff before you get in to the business.

[0:08:57.7] MB: I couldn’t agree more, absolutely.

[0:09:01.1] MF: So being on the lending side, I’m curious, is it similar to being an agent with different job descriptions or is it just completely different as a lender?

[0:09:12.0] MB: No, I think yeah, I think it’s absolutely similar. I think where you go for your deal, probably 75% of the business I do is with agents. That happens to be my focus is relationships and talking with people and understanding their business. So agents are a big focus where I think if you’re an agent, you’re going to pick some place. REO for instance or past clients or your sphere or maybe you’re going to get with Relocation Company or maybe a builder.

But in other words, the game is the same, right? We’re all hustling trying to earn a deal and earn people’s trust, it’s just a matter of where you’re going for that, what direction you’re going to go to get those leads. I think that really the game is the same and I’ll even boil it down farther, I really believe it all really comes down to again good business tactics of course. But then it really boils down to relationships.

Whether you’re an agent or you’re a lender, if you’re good at forming relationships and people take to you and they feel like they can trust you. You’re almost always going to do well is my opinion. As long as you’re out playing the game right? In other words if you’re a stay at home and you’re a great guy and you’re not going to do any business, right? If you’re out meeting people and you have those basics where you can form relationships and again you come off trustworthy and you act in that manner as well and you’re out meeting people. That’s most of the game in my opinion. IT’s the piece that people don’t think about just meet a lot of people and do a good job and work with integrity, I guess would be the word.

[0:10:46.7] MF: You know BJ and David are in our team but one thing I loved about them was when they first joined our team, they went out and talked to people like the first day they were on the job. They had no idea what they’re doing, no clue about how to write a contract or do any of that, they just went and talked to people.

They’re like, “You know? The people is brand new and had no idea what he was doing but I was honest with him I told him and they were cool with it.” And I’m like, “Okay, well if you can do the job and keep in contact with me." I think that’s the biggest thing an agent can do, It amazes me how many agents won’t return phone calls, won’t return emails. It’s like they don’t want to be an agent but for some reason they’re in the business. I don’t understand it.

[0:11:26.2] MB: Well yeah, I can bring a little insight, I don’t know about agents but loan officers, what I’m amazed is as I talked, I’m the branch manager over here. I’ve got 10 loan officers that work for me and then I have six coaching students and just talking with people nationwide and things.

This is what I’ve learned in the last two years to my shock and amazement, most people, even though we’re in a sales position, you wouldn’t think this, they have call reluctance. They’re afraid of the denial, they’re afraid to get on the phone. The reason why a lender won’t call back when something goes wrong is because they’re afraid of being yelled at, it’s uncomfortable for them and they’re afraid of what that agent might say to them.

I never would have guessed that because I think well, I can understand that that’s hard but if you’re in the position that we are, you would think your personality would suit those kind of activities but what I find a lot ifs when I talk to them and I say, “Why don’t you call back? Why don’t you return that call,” and the answer is often the same. I’m scared, I don’t’ want to call them until I know the answer because I’m afraid that they might ask me something I don’t know or they might say something that makes me uncomfortable so I try to gather all the information before calling the real estate agent and then I say, “Even if it means taking two or three days?Yes, even if it means taking two or three days.”

My philosophy has always been call them immediately because they appreciate that even if you don’t have all the answers. I think it’s more important to be fast and get on the ball and don’t worry about it right? If appraisal comes in low, it’s not a lender’s fault he didn’t do it but they’re afraid to call that out because they’re afraid everybody’s going to get mad at them. It’s interesting because I think you really have to get over that call reluctance and that fear of somebody just being upset at the situation and don’t take it personal. Again, take the emotion out of it.

[0:13:14.6] MF: Right, that’s awesome. I think with agents too though, maybe they’ll get an information gathering stage or they’re busy and they forget to call someone back right away. They feel like it’s too long for them to call them back or they’re worried that someone might be mad and took so long to call him back, so they just don’t do at all. It’s even worse. Very cool. When you went out on your own as a lender, did you start your own company, did you just kind of… how does that work? How did that full process start?

[0:13:42.0] MB: Yeah, in 1999 I decided to leave and I think I’m thinking where I went immediately after that. I think I went to US bank and decided that the big bank was probably the way I needed to go and then that just wasn’t a great fit. I think the big banks are tough to deal with. Most of us probably know it’s tough to get things done in a timely manner.

I work fast, I like things to happen fast, I don’t like waiting around for things so it’s just not my personality. So I quickly moved to what I thought was better fit and it ended up being it was a smaller bank, kind of a mid-sized bank and that worked really well. When you get out in there, it’s kind of like being a real estate agent.

At that time there was no licensing, it was even easier than being a real estate agent, you basically landed the job and you’re a 100% commission and you go out and hustle the streets, you try to show people what you’re about and earn their trust and start to get deals going. I think through years and years, I had some pretty good success, rose to the top of that bank and really thought like I had something figured out and I told this story actually yesterday in the class that I taught your office there.

Really personal story. I think for years, I was working, really felt pretty good about myself, I was really proud of myself, I have risen to the top of my company at least. I thought, “Hey, I’m really somebody I’ve really come up and you get where you think boy, I’ve got this business figured out.”

2008, 2009 comes along and I realize I’m really a three legged stool and when that one product that I was hanging my hat on, my little niche product that I was selling, they pulled out from underneath me, my three legged stool became a two legged stool and it tumbled. I had from 2009 to 2011 the toughest financial time of my life and I don’t think that I’m unique, I know a lot of people had a really tough time. A lot of people say it’s the economy and there was a lot of blame to be given and I don’t blame any part of the economy, I blame myself.

I had a flawed business plan. I see it clearly now. I had one product that I hung my hat on and I sold the heck out of it and I was known for doing it and that’s really great. Again, when you don’t have enough lets on your chair, it doesn’t take much to kind of topple over. From 2009 to this, 2011, I spent a lot of time trying to get my business rebuilt unsuccessfully, ran through all my savings and was flat broke.

October 2011 and I mean flat broke. Sold my properties, everything I’d worked for was gone and I was desperate, I was absolutely desperate and really came to my wife and I said, I got one last idea before I have to get a nine to five job which sounded terrible to me. That was 2011 October. I told her I’d get October, November, December if you can give me that, I’m going to work like a dog, I’ll probably sleep at the office right?

It was a really intense deal for me and I say you may not even see me in three months, that’s how bad I have to make this work, I came to guild mortgage, was just where I’m at now. They’re a direct lender, they had a few things that I thought boy, a direct lender in house, underwriting, that’s unheard of in this market, I can beat everybody with that. I really felt like I had the tools to beat anybody.

I kind of… whether that was true or not is probably irrelevant, it’s really more I believed it. I believed it in my heart that I had something that no other lender could offer. I went out on the market October to December and by then I had closed as much business in three months as I did the entire year 2011 elsewhere.

Then yeah, fast forward and all of a sudden my four years of guilt mortgage has been by far the most successful time in my entire 20 year career. You won’t meet a more grateful person. I’m extremely grateful and humbled at the experience and I learned a ton and what I learned is be a business person. Make sure you have a sound business plan and I didn’t, I deserved what happened to me right? I’d like to think that I’ve got a much better business plan today.

[0:17:49.6] MF: Right. That’s a really awesome story and I’m sure many people can relate with it but just be able to come back from that in that position shows your resilience and not everything ends on money if you still have the right attitude and the right drive but I’m going to give you a chance to brag right now. I know you guys are tops in Colorado in a number of categories. Tell us a little bit about your team and how well you’ve done the last few years.

[0:18:15.6] MB: Thank you, it’s not so hard to brag and that’s not because I’m not bragging about me, I’m bragging about my team and what we’ve been able to accomplish as a group and again back in the past, I would have taken all the glory because that’s the way I was built a little bit more and I think in time I realize you just can’t do it alone. Right now I’ve got a 10 person team. When I started I had nobody. Literally no body, I was a one man show.

October 2011, fast forward today, I have 10 people, I have support people that help get the loans done, I have a full time dialler, really kind of a business development gal that calls all my clients, keeps in touch with them, we send them gifts and we take very good care of them and she kind of keeps me on track with all that stuff.

To give you a little bit of a run down in 2012, we closed 125 units for $25 million and we made the top club here at Guild Mortgage President’s Club. 2013 we did $36 million, made President’s Club, 2014 we did $44 million President’s Club and then 2015 we did $75 million for 330 transaction and we hit Chairman’s Club which is the very top and that ranks us I think in units, we’re ranked nationwide in the top 30 nationwide in units and then the top I think 200 in volume. So as a team, to exceed anything I ever dreamt up long ago, I mean I never thought I could hit these kind of levels and that thing Mark that I will say that I am the proudest off is I have a healthier business plan but I am happier in my life than I ever was before and my 10 people would tell you this is the best place and best team they’ve ever worked on.

The volume is really cool and I’m very proud of that of course. I’m really proud of the fact that we’re doing it without compromising our lives, our clients are very ,very happy and again, I don’t want to paint a picture like we’re perfect over here. We certainly have our falls and we do some things wrong, we really do.

But I think in this business, perfection is probably not achievable, there’s just too many working parts but I would say we’re as close as I’ve ever come in my life and in my career and there’s balance there and I have a number of realtors that I consider friends and just the relationships that I’ve made, that I didn’t have in the past, it’s been quite a journey, it’s been amazing, we’re really proud of it.

[0:20:43.7] MF: Yeah, that’s awesome and I’m really glad you brought that up. I run a real estate team too and I know one thing you talked about yesterday was you worked about 40 hours a week right now, it’s not like you work nonstop and that’s all you do in your entire life. I think obviously, one of the main reasons you can do that is because you have a team and people you trust and systems setup. But I talk to so many people who are afraid to have a team or afraid to hire people because they think it will be more hassle and more work. But really, it is the complete opposite if you get things setup right.

[0:21:17.7] MB: It’s the complete opposite. I think there’s a lot of things. I mean a lot of people want to just hire an assistant and feel like you’ll feel instant release and it doesn’t really work that way. You have to — I think like anything in life, you really have to come up with a plan and by the way there’s plans out there and that’s what I do is I share my plan, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here.

In fact, I was reading your manual that Mike, your office manager gave me. And the manual, that manual is actually outstanding and it really talks about everybody thinks they got to come up with some innovative way to sell real estate when in fact there’s 10 tried and true ways and focuses that you can do that will get you where you want to be.

You don’t have to be that innovative. Just work a plan and work it really well. What I really kind of show in my classes is just start a plan where you’re going to start with relationships, you’re going to hire your first employee but you’re going to do it right, you’re going to have job duties written down so they know exactly how to make you happy as their leader.

If you do that, they’ll feel more organized and they feel more fulfilled when they get their job duty list done and you give them a big pat on the back or you give them a gift certificate to dinner and they start to feel really good about it. It’s the beginning of something. Then your second one comes in and that person is uplifted by how happy that first employee is. Right?

Then you do the same thing with them and there’s a process here that you really have to follow and it’s very systematic and it’s not like you just throw somebody in there and hope that it changed your business. I think that’s the biggest mistake I hear is people say, “I hired an assistant, it was too much work so I got rid of her.”

Then I’m like, “You missed the beauty of it, right? You never got to that point because you didn’t” — could be they had a bad employee that just didn’t work but it really, more times than not, it’s the leader’s fault, we just don’t do a good job. Being a leader is something we all take for granted is what I’ve learned for two years now. That’s been my primary focus.

Being a leader is the hardest thing you’ll ever do in business. Trying to lead people and inspire people, they’re very difficult, I think you have to take that very seriously as well and how you’re going to speak to them, how you’re going to lead them, how you’re going to communicate what you expect out of them.

It can’t be verbal, it has to be written so they know exactly what you expect and how to make you happy. I mean there’s a lot of piece of this, Mark, and I don’t know that we have time to go to every piece but that’s the start of it, is then you’re right, you have to get to a certain point, once you get to a certain amount of employees and it depends on the volume of your business and the complexity.

But you get to a certain amount of employees, you’ll feel that release starting to happen, you literally get to a point where you maybe have four employees and the fourth one is the leader of the other three. So you’re no longer managing those three people, you’re really only managing your team lead and they’re having to deal with those other three people and that’s when, to me, the magic starts to happen.

[0:24:11.6] MF: Right. Justin on our team is kind of that role for me and people think it’s so complicated to hire people and do payroll and do all the stuff and what I did was I hired Justin, I let him deal it. I’m like, “You figure all this technical stuff out,” and there’s companies that will do that.

Like you said, the leader has to focus on more important things than the technicalities. You can always get those figured out or hire someone, the company to do that kind of stuff. That’s awesome information. I really appreciate that.

[0:24:41.0] MB: Well that’s really big what you did, I think a lot of leaders and I hear constantly what we believe and we kind of joke about it in my coaching circle of we’re also kind of full of ourselves that we think nobody could possibly do any facet at this business, any better than we could. It just isn’t right. We just can’t imagine somebody could do it as well as. It’s interesting, as I start getting going and I start assigning people on my team different things and then after I train them and after some time, I start to see different conversion rations that I used to achieve.

Now they’re exceeding what I ever did. So the you start to understand, kind of like what you said with Justin, he probably has skills that you may be either don’t have or you don’t want to focus on to become great at them and he exceeds what you ever could have done. Does that make sense?

[0:25:32.2] MF: Yeah. For sure. Everybody on my team that does something better than I can do. Once you realize that, it’s kind of like, “Oh wow, I don’t have to do everything myself. And it even works better when I don’t.”

[0:25:45.2] MB: Then you find when you do get in the mix of things, your team yells at you because they’re like, “All right, now you’re just screwing things up,” just stay out of the way and you’re like, “All right, I’ll just stay out of the way.”

[0:25:53.8] MF: Yup, exactly. That’s great advice and I love the whole team concept as you know. I want to move on to a couple of more things that maybe might help some of the listeners out there. You work with a lot of agents. You work with investors as well. From the lending side, when you’re working with a real estate investor, I’m curious if there are certain things or certain mistakes you see them make or certain things they assume will happen or be easier that aren’t. What are some tips you can give for investors who are trying to get loans on properties?

[0:26:27.9] MB: That’s a really good question. I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked that in that way, but it’s a great question. I think the biggest thing I see in investors a lot of times, they want into what they perceive as going to be maybe relatively easy money without really understanding what it takes.

Number one, a lot of investor, I get a lot of my past clients calling me and they want to buy a property but they have no money. The perception is that you can get in with 5% down or three percent down. I think when you’re going to be an investor, I think just kind of planning ahead and knowing that you can get in with as little as 15% but remember, when you’re buying investment property, your return or your cash flow every month is really a bit key when you’re looking at that stuff.

With 15% down, not only is your loan amount higher but then you’re going to have mortgage insurance. When you do that, you have to rent it for so much just to be able to cash flow that property and make it make sense. A lot of people don’t think about that piece of it even when you get to 20%, you don’t have mortgage insurance but then the rate is higher. 20% is kind of a good place to be but the rate is higher.

If you’re really wanting to put yourself in a good position in terms of cash flow, you’re going to want 25% down, there’s no mortgage insurance, that’s where the rates hit the most premium levels, that’s really the piece of it that you want to get to.

Yeah, I think the other piece of it that I see a lot of investors tend to be pretty savvy and they may be self-employed, I see that a lot. They don’t want to be bothered with the whole idea of giving all the stuff that we need as a lender. I think that would be another piece of advice. Understand that when you’re buying an investment property for a lender, that’s a high risk comparison to your primary resident. An investment property is a high risk purchase. With a thought being that if you get into financial trouble, you’re going to walk away from your rentals long before you’re going to walk away from your home where your family is right?

I think understanding it is a more high risk for the lenders so therefore it’s going to be a higher scrutinized right? They’re going to lend tax returns, they’re going to want the letters of explanation if you have anything unusual. Just understanding that lending is harder anyway these days but if you’re doing an investment property, it’s going to be that much harder. Does that makes sense Mark?

[0:28:48.8] MF: Yup, that makes a lot of sense. One thing too, I think you might want to, or you could touch on too is when investors are self-employed and they own a lot of rental properties, there’s a ton of tax advantages. But at the same time that really decreases your income and can really hurt your ability to qualify. Is it wise to deduct every possible thing you can if it shows you it makes no money?

[0:29:13.2] MB: That’s a great one and we see that so, so often. It’s hard because that fraction of the nation is really excluded from getting homes and I don’t think a lot of people know that what you just brought up. But you’re exactly right.

When you own a business, your accountants and everybody in the world is always going to tell you, “Write off your car, your gas, your oil changes, part of your house if you can. Right everything under the sun.” Really, what people don’t think about is what you’re really saying to the IRS and the government is, “Please don’t charge me taxes on this write-offs because it’s not income to me, it’s really expenses to me.” That’s really what a write-off is and again.

People don’t think of it that way. If you made a hundred thousand dollars gross but you come up with $50,000 dollars in write-offs, you’re not being taxed on $50,000 right? Then the other part, you are being taxed, only $50,000 out of the $100,000 you’re being taxed on, you can’t use anymore to qualify than what you’re taxed on. So it would be only $50,000 in my example. That does put you in a spot where really and truly that person maybe made really good money but because they had a great accountant and they’re really creative and they wrote off everything they could. Yeah they saved a little bit of money on taxes but now they can’t qualify for anything for their family.

So I think yeah, that’s a big consideration. What I usually tell people is, it’s just about knowing that fact and just planning ahead. If you think you’re going to buy a house in the next year or two then you’re going to have to just pay the taxes, you want to show your max income so you can have the income to qualify for a new property when you’re ready. If you’re good and solid and you don’t expect to buy any real estate then by all means, take advantage of the tax laws, that’s why they’re there, and save yourself the money.

[0:31:00.8] MF: Yeah, awesome advice and then one thing you just reminded me off too is, people who have bad credit or people who don’t think they can buy a house, a lot of times they’ll put off talking to a lender or they’ll just delay it. But what I always tell people is whether you have awesome credit or bad credit, one of the best things you can do first is talk to a lender, to see what position you’re in because in my experience, lenders can help fix things better than almost anybody if there are problems.

Like you said, if there’s not enough income being shown, you can tell them that so they know sooner rather than, you want to buy a house in a month and figure out “Oh wait, I don’t have the income to last two years to buy a house.”

[0:31:39.2] MB: I can tell you Mark to tell your listeners out there. One thing that I would really say is what you said is exactly right. Remember, lenders see thousands of scenarios a year. This is very common for us, we see people with outstanding credits, challenging credit, really low credit scores, all different scenarios.

Don’t be afraid to call the lender. I can tell you that people sometimes, they call and they’re embarrassed about maybe different financial hardships they’ve had or different problems they’ve had on their credit and then again, back to what we said, it becomes an emotional thing where it’s very hard for them to work through that if they can remove themselves and say, “Listen, everybody has trouble, I want to move on, I want to get this fixed and call us with an open mind,” we’ll help them. Nobody’s judging them here at lenders because again, we see it in all different ways, we probably been there our self. It’s okay, right? Don’t worry about it, call us, let us give you advice and maybe we can’t do it today but maybe we can in three months or six months or nine months or 12 months.

But let us help you through that or at least give you the advice and then the best thing you can do is follow that advice. Just work through it, it may be a process. One of the things that I have to my clients is, “Listen, getting your credit in the shape that it’s in didn’t happen overnight and fixing it won’t either, it’s a process. We have to work at it,” right?

[0:33:02.7] MF: That’s great advice and one thing too that you’ve told our team before is, a lot of people think that their credit is really bad, they need to go to one of these credit repair agencies first. But you told us, many times a lender can fix it without charging you anything too if it’s not depending on a situation.

[0:33:20.1] MB: Sometimes if it’s more minor, you’re right. If they’ve got a letter saying it wasn’t their fault and we can get that, sometimes we can just send it off to the creditors and get it rebuilt for a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost. Now, there are times that the credit is really, it’s got some pretty major issues to it and then we would refer it off to someone that really can help them kind of work through it on an ongoing basis and get that stuff done.

But a lot of times we can, even with the bigger stuff, we could at least advise them at what to do to be honest, a lot of people just don’t want to do the work themselves, they would rather pay somebody and that’s okay, that’s what they’re there to do. Either way, no matter how you do it, the point I would make is don’t make it emotional, make it more tactical and say, “I want to buy a home for my family,” or if it’s an investment property, “Hey, I want to start investing in real estate.” I know there’s some steps I have to take to get there and then seek the advice of professionals that you trust to get it done.

[0:34:17.9] MF: That’s great advice. Mike, this has been awesome, I have a feeling we could keep talking for like three hours if we wanted to. But we both have a schedule. Before we go, do you have one piece of advice, one tip for someone who is looking to buy a home or one thing I always try to tell people, I don’t know if you agree with this or not is, just because a lender says you can qualify for $300,000 doesn’t mean you have to buy a $300,000 house.

Because we use the term house poor in our industry where you spend all of your money in the house, you can’t save anything you can’t invest. What’s your advice to people who are looking to buy a houses?

[0:34:54.4] MB: Well I’ll tell you. Part of what I do is coach people in finances as well. What my advice would be is figure out a monthly budget where you’re able to save 20% of your gross income and buy a house that you can afford after you’ve saved 20% each month. Don’t worry about what the lender says. Take 20%, put it away each month and then buy a house that first within your budget after that. But have a personal family budget before doing it.

[0:35:23.7] MF: That’s awesome, great advice and one more thing, I know we’re getting a little closer to the end but if you qualify for the most, you possibly can on your personal house then it’s going to be virtually impossible to buy an investment property too because you’re just maxed out.

[0:35:36.5] MB: That’s exactly right, now there are some — yeah, you’re right, there are some ad backs, we can give you rental credit for instance if the market rent on a house is a thousand bucks typically we can use like 70% of that. It would be like $700 to offset, there are some ways that we can do that but you’re right, if you ran right up against the ledge there with your primary residence, it’s not going to leave much room for investing and therefore doesn’t leave you much room to build a future right? To save money.

[0:36:06.4] MF: Awesome, fantastic job, before we go, if people are in Colorado, they want to find an awesome lender, what’s the best way to contact you to get a hold of you?

[0:36:15.3] MB: You can email me or my team at [email protected] or you can call me directly at 303-995-4663. That is my cellphone.

[0:36:33.3] MF: Awesome. Well Mike, I appreciate it so much, I’ll list that information on the website too when this podcast goes up. Really appreciate it, awesome job and yeah, thank you so much, I might to have you on again here a little later.

[0:36:46.3] MB: Anytime Mark, I’m honored, it was cool, a lot of fun.

[0:36:49.3] MF: All right, cool, well take care Mike, have a great day and we’ll talk soon.

[0:36:54.1] MB: Thanks, you too. Bye-bye.

[0:36:54.1] MF: All right, bye.

[END]

There are many house flippers, who end up becoming real estate wholesalers. I think many people feel you become a wholesaler first, and then work your way up to flipping. Many very successful real estate investors like to wholesale, because it takes less time and less money than flipping. On today's episode of the Invest Four More Real Estate Podcast, I interview Cory Boatright, who is a real estate investor and entrepreneur. Most real estate investors, think of themselves as entrepreneurs, but Cory has started over 40 companies. Not all of them succeeded, in fact most of them failed, but a couple of businesses hit it big. Cory tells us all about how he started out in real estate at age of 21, started many non real estate related companies and has evolved from flipper, to wholesaler to coach.

Cory bought his first house at the age of 21, a fixer upper. He was not planning to be a big real estate investor at that time, he just thought buying one house would be a good investment. He bought the house and ended up doing most of the work himself to fix it up. I can relate to this very well, as one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was repairing a flip myself! Cory lived in that house for a couple of years and it turned out to be an awesome investment. Cory was still distracted by other business and was focused on a number of other businesses, including drop shipping. One of the businesses that succeeded for Cory was selling high-end electronics (this was 15 years ago). Those plasma televisions we buy now for $500 were once $15,000 and that was what he sold. He ended up selling that business and then pursuing real estate full-time.

Cory knew nothing about real estate investing, except that he made decent money on the property he bought. He began his education by purchasing every real estate course he could find on eBay. He bought the courses, learned what he could, and then sold them back to other people on eBay. He learned all about flipping, wholesaling, tax liens and many other strategies.

Cory started out flipping, but quickly grew tired of dealing with contractors. He switched his business model to wholesaling and loved it. During the late 2000's the housing crisis hit and Cory found a new niche, short sales. He started a loss mitigation company that helped agents and investors negotiate short sales with banks. Cory loved working with short sales and the profit that came with it. He even helped develop software to make the short sale process easier. But bank regulations changed how he was able to conduct business and short sales became less profitable as time went on.

Here is a great article on short sales

As you can see, Cory has not just been a real estate investor. He has started companies and businesses to help real estate investors and help himself invest better as well. After learning new techniques and better ways to invest, Cory was approached about coaching. The next phase of his real estate journey opened up when he started helping others learn how to invest in real estate. Cory has a thriving coaching business for real estate and as a life coach as well. Cory still invests in real estate himself, but his 60 rentals he once owned were reduced greatly due to a divorce. He highly suggest not getting a divorce!

Cory can be found at realestateinvestingprofits.com, where he also has a great podcast and many resources for investors.

The podcast is really starting to take off! Thank you all who listen and reach out to me. If you know of anyone who might be an interesting guest send me an email:[email protected]. If you enjoy the show, be sure to leave a review on iTunes!

LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW FOR US OVER ON ITUNES

I published my new book: Build a Rental Property Empire: The no-nonsense book on finding deals, financing the right way, and managing wisely., earlier this week. Thank you everyone for making it a number 1 new release on Amazon! If you picked up a copy of the paperback or eBook, leave me a review. You will be entered to win a Complete Blueprint for Successful Real Estate Investing. If you leave a review, be sure to send me an email so I know how to contact you.

[0:00:58.0] MF: Hey everyone, Mark Ferguson with Invest Four More, welcome to another episode of the Invest Four More real estate podcast. I’ve got a really cool guest on for this show, Cory Boatright with Real Estate Investing Profits and phenomenal results coaching is with me. Cory’s got his own podcast and extremely successful investor and does some really interesting things in his life.

Cory, thank you so much for joining me, how are you today?

[0:01:23.7] CB: Phenomenal man, thanks for having me on here, I appreciate it.

[0:01:25.9] MF: Yeah, no problem. Great to have you, I know you’ve had a really interesting journey, you started over 40 companies, only a couple were successful, hoping that lead you to real estate. We are talking in a podcast that I did for you the other day and you got started at a very young age in real estate, how did you first get involved in real estate?

[0:01:46.8] CB: Sure. 21 years old when I got my first rental property, I kind of stumbled into it with one of my good friends and it was a little duplex in Oklahoma city and didn’t know what I was doing but we ended up moving in that place, fixing everything ourselves which I thought was going to save me a lot of money just like when you and I were talking how sometimes the logical things don’t always come out most profitable in the end and what happened was I fixed all those things myself.

Learned what I didn’t want to do very quickly but over two years lived in that place so it saved money and ended up flipping it for almost double what we paid for and that really was the first time, I was like, “Wow, this is pretty interesting.” However, at the time I was growing my E-commerce business which was a high end electronics, high end AB Electronics Company and we were just doing really well with that.

All my focus was — I’m sorry if you can hear the background noise but I’m here at Starbucks, actually it’s all about shop, I use Starbucks. Basically it’s growing that business and it began to take off. You remember when plasma TV’s were 15, $20,000 mark.

[0:03:06.9] MF: Yeah.

[0:03:07.4] CB: They first came out. That’s when I got involved with that when it was just right here and it was just cruising up and now of course you can go, same TV I used to sell for 15, $16,000. You can go down the store now and buy for $500 and it’s pretty insane. That’s the nature of electronics.

That happens, I grew that business, I sold it before I was aged 25 and I got really excited form that, I knew I wanted to do something else and I started to look around and notice a lot of folks that I sold these plasma TV’s to, I kept a list of all these clients and they were highly affluent. Obviously, not everyone could afford something like that and the ones that could, they were doing pretty well and do you know whenever I would talk to these folks, I’d ask them, “What made you successful? What was it that gave you the ability to be able to get something like this?”

Because it was a high — it’s like a toy right? Some of these guys were just stroking checks and it’s just really, at the time, my early 20’s I was just like, “Wow, this is very exciting to me and I want to learn.” I asked them a lot of questions and some of them would take an hour on the phone and talk to me about stories. I think about 95% of them all had a story with real estate.

[0:04:28.1] MF: That’s awesome. I want to get into that more but first I’m guessing that was one of the two companies that succeeded. You said you had started over 40 companies. But, what was your game plan when you were younger, were you just trying different things to see what’s successful or how did you start 40 companies?

[0:04:47.8] CB: I know, it sounds crazy right? I had a TNC video company with one of my good friends as well which we actually sold VCR tapes to lawyers for deposition trials and whatnot and they used to pay $120 for these things and it was just because basically there’s only a couple of guys in town that would provide this service for them.

I figured out a way to obviously get a VCR tape cheaper than $125 and we would go and make these recordings and did that for a little bit. I sold Wicker knives for a while, I sold Genzi knives for a while. I got involved with several little MLM companies. At one point I had my own car business, its called Boat Ride Auto Finders. I had a car lot, we had “buy here, pay here loans”.

The list can go on and on, most of these things I figured out I did not like to do them and the real estate business and the drop ship business which was interesting, the high end electronics business was a drop shipping business and I just so happened to live in a town where the founder of a company called Petra Industries, he actually started this company which was a drop shipping warehouse, if you will, for all these other companies.

He was going to the founder of the company that did a billion dollars in business the second year that I recognized what he was doing. I looked at his numbers and hit a billion dollars in business and he lived in my city. He was going to my church. I actually had a chance to connect with him and worked some bills out and that business grew and I grew that business and I sold that business and from there really start looking more heavily into real estate. And form real estate — really, that’s the other business that has been successful.

The drop shipping business which also had to do with Internet and I succeeded in that business because I was great at marketing and the same guy can sell the same TV right? I would sell faster and more TV’s than he would because I realize what the market wanted, I would go online and find these places where people were hanging out to buy this high end electronics and it was places where they had Net Jets’ ads on there, it had pictures of people with Rolexes.

They had pictures of people with the boats, they had pictures with attractive women and on this pictures and having a lifestyle business, with all lifestyles. When I posted different images in marketing, it was all about lifestyle and then it was all about how fast somebody wanted to have an answer to something because these people are used to getting what they want.

I just catered to that and it gave me the advantage but from there, skip on from there and went to in real estate, I started, after I sold my business, I started looking at other different methodologies, I didn’t know anything really about real estate, besides the fact I stumbled across one when I was 21 years old.

So I really wanted to learn as fast as possible and I went on eBay and I started to type in “real estate investing”, “teach me real estate investing”. I just went on eBay and started typing all this stuff about real estate investing and I ended up getting course after course. All the Ron LeGrand courses, all the Carlton Sheets courses, you remember these? Remember that big Ron LeGran three, like yellow, blue, red? All that he had for wholesaling and for flipping houses.

He had one for doing fix and flips and what I would do is add a strategy. I would go through these courses marked on eBay, I would go through and I mark them up, I put highlighter on them and I mark it and put the notes in, I’d take all these bits and pieces out of these courses and I make my own kind of notebook of things that I thought was the most important then I would resell the course back on eBay and sometimes I would get more money when I resold the course than whenever I bought it.

For one year and one day, 366 days, I did nothing in my car except listening to audio books for one full year which is tough for me. I’m a musician and play guitar, when I got in my car I wanted to listen to music but for one full year, my discipline was, “Don’t do anything besides listen to audio,” and in fact it was a joke, I had my friends, when we’d says, “Who’s car are we going to go into?” “Oh don’t go into Cory’s car because all you’re going to hear is learning,” right?  They didn’t want to hear it.

So one full year I did that but I went through it and I learned tons of Brian Tracy, book Psychology of Selling, Dale Carnegie books, How to Win Friends, and Influence People, tons of Tony Robbins’ stuff. I read the whole bible, I had a whole bible on audio. Just tons of self-development books and tons of real estate books. Ron LeGrand courses, Carlton Sheats courses. Back in the day there was these tons of teachers and it really gave me I think a good foundation on the fact that, “Wow, I don’t have to go to school to learn this, I thought I had to be — have a certification, I thought I had to had have a degree to do this?” I really did.

I know it sounds silly now but I really thought that if I’m going to be dealing in real estate, to me this is like, this is such a big deal, I put it up there right along with law. If I’m going to be doing something like this and I’ve really got to — but when I realize it, most people that were doing real estate that were being successful at it were either fix and flippers or wholesalers. I remember the day that I figured out that someone didn’t need money to flip their own house. Do you remember you’re figuring out the fact that wholesaling really meant flipping papers, not houses?

[0:10:45.3] MF: Right.

[0:10:45.6] CB: You remember that? You remember when you thought — for a long time I still thought wholesaling meant I was going to buy somebody’s house and then I flip it but most of the time you’re signing a contract. And so that gave me permission in a way to go, “If I don’t need the money to go do this stuff,” because I thought, “Okay, I have some money but I didn’t really want to spend it all at one time.”

I thought, “If I don’t need the money to do this well what do I need? I need education, I need specialized education on how to do it.” That’s what I did, I learned on how to do something and got out there and started hustling man, hustling hard and became a bird dog for a mentor of mine and then from there I realized that he was flipping properties.

So I started to flip my own properties and then from there I had a fix and flip business which I was not able to learn how to succeed because I just didn’t know how to keep contractors not drunk on Saturdays. Really.

[0:11:46.3] MF: We all run into that problem.

[0:11:47.6] CB: Yeah, you run into it right? The days I thought I was going to make 25, $30,000 on the flip here in Oklahoma fix and flip, I’d ended up making $15 which is still okay but the whole point is when you’re taking a deal down to make double than what you would make on a wholesale deal.

I just started to focus more and more on other parts of real estate and for me, what really kind of set the trajectory was wholesaling. That was in 2006, 2005, 6, 7 was a good time to get involved in a little thing called short sales. That’s for me when I started to put all the focus in short sales, that’s when everything took off for me because I realize that you could actually make more money from a property that was over leveraged, no equity, than you could from one that hadn’t had the equity.

When I realize that, that time, not very many people were doing it, I think Jeff Caller at the time was doing it, if you remember Jeff. Not too many people were really doing the short sale game. I just started loss Mitigation Company and took off and that really, we did for about four years solid in the short sale game and focused heavily on that.

Had a big loss Mitigation Company, we were discounting on average 500, $600,000 a month from banks and we got up over $50 million dollars total from whenever we completely, I’m not involved with short sales as much now because of all the red tape that came out as you probably know.

You’re talking about doing BPO’s, we had 50 short sales in the hop for any given time Mark. Any given time we’d have 50 short sales in the pipeline. We’re closing on average two, sometimes three a week, I had BPO agents that were all around Oklahoma and sometimes when I couldn’t get the BPO number I would find out who that just came out to do the BPO for the bank and I’d order another BPO from the same person that just went out and did the BPO.

He wouldn’t even go back out the house. He would just send me the same one that he sent the bank. That was one of the ways that I was able to get the number from the bank which I knew when I had that number where they’re going to be, they’re going to be around 80, 82, 83 cents on the dollar and sometimes that BPE, as you know, could come in pretty low.

We did really well on short sales and then of course all the new changes came out, the FHA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and started new regulations and how long you had to hold the property and then the big option came out, the option agreement with Jeff Watson was a big proponent when that first came out.

I went through that whole deal and then we started moving to doing land trust instead of doing purchase agreements and went from land trust, went over to doing option agreements and it just became after a while, you’re just trying to figure out a way to — as an investor you’ll figure out a way to get around something but whenever the feds started coming in and really was trying to make an example of people.

Even if you’re done, your eyes and crossing your tease. At the end of the day, whenever you went to closing and you signed off on something, you would say something along the lines of you didn’t already have this property, resold, you didn’t have a buyer already waiting for it, you weren’t going to resell the property for at least 90 days and it started getting more complicated.

We started selling LLC’s to get around it, we started to put stuff more in land trust. After a while man, it just wasn’t worth it, there’s just easier ways to find a paycheck.

[0:15:27.2] MF: Right. Yeah, let me stop you there for a second but for those who don’t know. A short sale, basically the owner of the home, their loan is more than they can sell it for. I give your houses $100,000, you might have a loan of a $120,000 and you have to go to the bank, ask for basically permission to sell it for less than what the banks owed and the bank is taking a loss on those deals.

When you started your loss mitigation company, I’ve heard of different people using that term as far as if they help agents negotiate with banks but it sounds like you were basically trying to negotiate short sales to purchase yourself, is that right? Then wholesale?

[0:16:05.2] CB: We have both of it. We had an investor company that was putting offers in and then my time, my ex-wife at the time which was also a real estate agent and we had a credited system for all the real estate agents that we got for a title company. We do these classes and we weren’t really able to solicit but we’d give out our cards and say if you have a deal, you have a question about it.

Everyone was calling us about these short sales because no one knew about them and the agents hated doing them because it took forever. Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to worry about — we’ll do all the loss mitigation for you. That worked out really well, we got a lot of agents who got credits for working with this, brought us deals, it worked out really well.

[0:16:49.2] MF: Yeah, as an agent who has worked on short sales. I can see using any company because like you said it can take the six months to complete a short sale with some of the banks like bank of America or some other ones and you’re sending them pages and pages. That usually had to be faxed at that time which was crazy and yeah, it was just a huge pain to get anything through.

No, very cool. From what you said as far as a new changing regulations, they pretty much made it impossible to wholesale short sales now because all the regulations and you can’t resell it within a certain amount of days, like you said you don’t know a buyer beforehand, there’s a lot of red tape now on short sales.

[0:17:30.5] CB: It was to get the most, it’s not impossible. People still do it now, mostly with cash buyers but at the time, we were using retail buyers because when you use a retail buyer, you were making the most amount of money. Imagine, you get a short sale for let’s say 75,000, you got it resold for 130.

It’s a pretty good chunk of money but that’s a retail buyer, they’re getting a loan, they’re putting money up. Then you’d have to have the banks understand what was going on and the lenders have to understand what’s going on and that was pretty as the regulations starting to get tighter and tighter, that was very difficult.

Then we started to just move to cash buyers and that was a lot easier, definitely a lot easier. Anytime you’re dealing with cash buyers, it’s so much easier. There’s just not nearly as much red tape but back to what we’re talking about short sale very quickly. You’re right about the fax, when you fax things in all the documents, it was sometimes this thick.

It would take sometimes a week to get the paper work plus you’re trying to get it from the home owner. The home owner has to give you all the authorizations. Everything that you basically a power of attorney if you will to some degree of everything. You just met this person right? You’re trying to get all this information.

You have to really know what you’re doing, you have to have negotiations down, you have to have your strategy down. We had a pretty good team on how that worked. The entrepreneurial side of me of course was thinking, how can I make this process, anytime I see a ping, a process of that’s painful, I always get excited. One of my good mentors told me that whenever you have a headache or it sucks for you but fantastic for Tylenol.

Great advice right? Because you said be Tylenol, how could you be Tylenol? I found a guy that started a software company, he actually had a great software and we started to go and look and see what can we do to make a short sale package quicker. How can we get it automated basically?

We sure enough started a software company that was called short sale builder. If you remember, it got pretty big, we had almost 5,000 users, we charge $97 a month. It was a pretty big business, this was before real flow really came out which I know Greg and Josh at the time are really good friends.

Short sale commander and all these other companies are coming out but we were just right in there and we came out the thing called the short sale builder and you hit a button and it would build the whole packet and it was automated and all you had to do is fill in a couple of fields and it would automate it and our packets were going to the top because when you’re dealing with loss litigators, they’re making $10 an hour, they wanted to make it simple. That’s what we did, we found a way to make the package simple for them.

We knew exactly what they needed in the order that they wanted it in and that’s what we did, we created this short sale software and ran that business for two years and so that was all a part of that whole short sale movement and yeah, that was another part of the whole sorts of things and then I became a reluctant kind of information marketer for that business. First I was doing this Dennis here in Oklahoma city, I was having a Dennis where people come for breakfast and then people are asking me more questions, let’s do lunch.

We did lunch and then we started doing dinners and we started doing group dinners and we started doing group dinners and then we started putting on classes for the title company and everything — we started doing this and someone said why don’t you just create a corps, this guy named Chris Chico connected with me one time because I was on a forum called easy HUD back in the days, it’s called easy HUD.

I was answering everybody’s questions on this forum, he said, “Dude, you are this guy that is an authority figure for this short sales and on a forum, do you want to be a moderator?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll be a moderator, that’s cool.” After I did that, he said, “Hey, I got a big list of people, let’s do this webinar thing,” which at the time no one, I mean I hadn’t even barely heard of a webinar but, “You need to create a course and we’ll split it, we’ll create it and we’ll sell it for $1,500 and we’ll split the profits 50/50.”

I was like, “What? A course, like one of those guys on TV?” Literally it’s not something that really I was thinking of doing but they started explaining the fact that you make a course one time, you could sell it forever and you could help a lot more people and all these things I’m doing I could just sell them my course. I thought okay, that makes sense. I created a course and I think the first night we did our webinar, we sold like 150 courses on the webinar.

[0:21:52.3] MF: Wow.

[0:21:53.0] CB: Which was for $1,500 man, it was like a game changer, it was the biggest aha thing in my life. I was like, “Wow! I mean we just crushed it and people loved it and it was exciting.” From there, I was hooked. I was hooked form the internet and real estate fusion right? I started to go to these different events, one called the virtual investing seminar, that’s where I met Preston Eli. You know Preston. I met Gary boomer shine, I met Sam Bale. I met Collin Egbert from realestateinvestor.com back in the day.

I met all these other guys that you see and teach now. I think Dan Meryl was at that one, Chris Chico was at that one, just tons of people, they’re kind of just getting started and that’s where I met some of those guys and then we did a virtual investing seminar two and just started to see more and more real estate going online. More and more going online. You had to figure out a way to get in front of those people. Yeah, that was a little bit of the story, interesting thinking back about it now.

[0:22:57.8] MF: Very cool. So along, I mean you’ve done obviously a tremendous amount of different businesses and your career’s evolved or their business have evolved in that interesting route from wholesaling to short selling to coaching. Are you investing in real estate still now yourself or, I mean what’s your personal investing look like?

[0:23:16.7] CB: Sure, I have a portfolio of properties right now, I had 60 at one point, it’s down quite a bit less than that now when I went through a divorce that was not a good recommendation for keeping properties. But yeah, so I still have a little portfolio or properties. Yeah, I still have a little portfolio properties which is cash flow is always great.

Especially if you have paid free and clear houses, someone’s always going to need a place to live, you’re never going to go wrong investing in real estate. Someone’s always going to need a place to live okay? I know you know this better than anybody but it’s always a great investment. The challenge is that whenever I started getting involved with it, there were bank of America and Chase, all these were allowing you to do 10 properties per spouse.

You know what I’m talking about, you could do 10 for that. It’s easy to just get a whole bunch of properties and told what I would say is make sure that you think things through a little bit and don’t buy properties on cash flow. Back in the day, it was really easy to get caught up that you’re just going to get all these cash flow and these renters you’re going to pay for the rest of their lives and that’s true.

You have a renter pay, that’s true. At the end of the day you want to buy a property based on the value of that whole sell value of that property, if you are an investor, it is your responsibility to purchase that property at a price that is going to make sense to the person selling it to you, but it’s also going to make sense to you that you don’t want to buy anywhere near retail.

As an investor, it’s an absolute shame if you pay anything more than 80% of a property, in fact, here in Oklahoma, I mean we bought properties for 50, 60 cents on the dollar. I think it’s a travesty as an investor if you’re buying anything near your retail. It’s your responsibility as an investor to be a good negotiator because negotiations go right along with being a good investor.

If you’re an investor and not a good negotiator, I mean you’re going to pay way too much money for properties. Biggest advice that I could say about being an investor is learn negotiations. Because you’re going to be dealing with someone that has an issue with time, they need to get rid of a property quickly and have a reason.

There’s a motivation. So the better that you can get at defining and understanding which of those motivations and what that time means to that person and be a good listener and be in Tylenol to whenever they have the headache. You’re going to win. Sometimes that means that you’re buying properties at a price you’re thinking, “Why would anybody ever sell me that?” Think about in your life, if you’ve ever had something, it doesn’t have to be a house but you had something and it was worth a lot of money.

Whether that’s a $200 shirt or $200 pair of jeans or $500 pair of shoes or a thousand dollar watch or $3,000 watch or whatever and you just for some reason the value wasn’t the emphasis at the time of you wanting to get rid of that thing right? Maybe it was that bed, a couch, or something like that. You know what I’m talking about? We all do it right? We got to get very good at being negotiator.

One thing I teach in our coaching program called How to Flip Contracts Not Houses is we talk about the four personality types Mark and I put an animal to them just so people can remember them and it’s worked really well by doing it. We talk about the Koala, the personality, we talk about the monkey personality, we talk about the owl personality and the shark personality.

If you are a koala which basically you can just tell people what to do, that’s the koala personality but you can’t be over aggressive because they get really freaked out about it. If you’re the monkey and you’re smiling, you’re the type of person that wants to just make everybody feel good and smile and telling jokes and you’re being just kind of general about things and you come in and you’re the owl personality and you’re very specific saying, “I’m going to give you $30,123.5 for your house.”

That’s going to turn off the monkey because they’re not used to being that specific about things. They just want to smile and have a good time the whole point of the monkey is to influence you even if the very thing that they want to influence you wasn’t the beginning thing that I just started out with. So it’s important to understand negotiations. It’s a shark, the shark personality is going to be very overbearing, they’re either going to have a dead fish handshake when you meet him or they’re going to be very aggressive, they’re going to talk loud.

What’s the disadvantage about the shark? They’re not good listeners and they want you to get right to the point. If you’re a person that likes to tell a bunch of stories like the monkey does, shark is not going to deal with you, you’re not going to get as best of a deal. I think understanding personality types is one of the advantages that you can have on getting the best deal as an investor.

[0:28:17.9] MF: That’s great. What you talk about with getting great deals on rentals, I always like to say, “Buying below market value.” You don’t want to pay retail even if you’re cash flowing, cash flow is great, I love to buy for cash flow but if you walk in with 20% equity, it’s such a huge bonus if you ever need to get out of that property or you want to build fast, it makes it so much easier than paying straight retail.

[0:28:38.7] CB: It’s so much does. Yes, absolutely.

[0:28:41.2] MF: With the personality thing, I think like you say, so many people want to do their own thing, what’s comfortable to them but I liken it to someone wants to email you in your column every day, it’s not going to work, if someone wants to call you every day and you’re scared to talk in the phone, you just want to email them, it’s not going to work, it’s the same type of thing, just figuring out what works best for that person not what’s best for you…

[0:29:03.5] CB: That’s right.

[0:29:03.6] MF: …makes things so much easier when negotiating it and doing deals. It’s great advice.

[0:29:08.0] CB: Generally interested in the person’s situation. If they say, “So what are you wanting to sell the house for? It’s a nice house, why do you want to get rid of this thing?” “Oh man, my grandma is sick and I’ve really got to get some money to help her out and I can’t stay here.”

Don’t just go, “Okay, I’m sorry about that your grandma’s sick, what happened to her you know?” If the personality type, depending on if they’re telling you that first off? The shark is going to be — he will get very quick to a point. I got a few things going on in my life right now. Okay, well, obviously, he’s not wanting you to engage in the story. But listen, be a good listener.

Someone’s telling you my grandma is sick and they start telling you details, she’s down at this hospital and she is this many months away from living or whatever story. Man, hang out in that story for a little bit. Be genuinely interested and care about people. Sometimes we just look at people at numbers. I’m guilty of it too. Whenever you start looking at business and people, they start to blend together but people are people.

They have feelings, they have emotions, they have desires and wants and fears. They have objective things that they want to accomplish goals they want to check. They also have dislikes and likes that they would either like you or dislike you very quickly. It has a lot to do with you understanding that personality type and how they are and making them feel comfortable. Fantastic book, I know you read it. It’s called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

One of the very best books talks about marrying modelling. Very important to understand that. I want to go back to about the offers because you mentioned this I think it’s important, we come up and we teach in a class called WMRP Mark. This is a very simple way, the very simplest way that I could come up to explaining how to make offers. Let’s say you have a hundred thousand dollar house okay? We use WMRP, the $100,000 is the R value. After repair value we’ve all heard of before okay? We call that worth. That’s what the worth is, okay?

The WMRP, so the worth and then the M stands for the wholesale market. What is the market for wholesale? For here in Oklahoma City, it’s going to be 60, 70 cents on the dollar. For this example, $100,000. Now you’ve got the worth, now you got the wholesale market, it’s 70,000. Next one is WMR, the repairs so that’s what R stands for. How do you, if you’re not a contractor, how do you come up with repairs?

Well what we use is $12.50 times the square footage. This example it’s a thousand square foot home. That’s $12,500. Before I even look at the house, before I even look at the house, I know unless it’s just a complete absolute hit, we’re going to use a number around $12.50 for the repairs and then after that is the profit the pit, stands for profit and we work in $10,000 on every single whole sale flip, right?

Now you’ve got WMRP. What do you think on a $100,000 property, how much money are you going to make an offer on that property right? If you have $100,000 then you got 70% at your mark, that’s $70,000. Now you’ve got $12,500 because it’s $12.56 times a thousand square feet. $70,000 minus $12,500 is what?

[0:32:42.4] MF: You’re $57,500.

[0:32:45.6] CB: Then you minus $10,000 off that.

[0:32:48.3] MF: $47,500.

[0:32:49.5] CB: That’s where you’re going to start. Let’s say that you don’t make a $10,000 profit, let’s say you make five, it’s better to always start at 10 because you can always come down. I see people all the time going, “Oh there’s no way I’m going to make that.” They’ll make the offer on a property with their profit in mind because they’ll think I’m a good guy.

I’m only going to make about $5,000, $3,000 on there. That’s fine but you want to start higher because you may get beaten up on that property and it’s your responsibility as a good negotiator to start a little higher. That’s what we do, we build it in and I’m telling you, unless you’re on the east coast or west coast, you want to use what your wholesale market is. Maybe closer to 85, 90 cents on the dollar but using that formula and sometimes that $12.50 mark on the east coast.

They’d use anywhere from I think it’s $17.50 to $20 worth it. Obviously if you’re around La Hoya it’s a lot different but you know what your wholesale market is. What are people paying for properties in your area and then what’s the general idea what they’re getting repaired for and you find that number out and you can start making quite a few offers on property site unseen and it’s amazing how close you’re going to be within a couple of thousand dollars by using that little formula.

[0:34:04.2] MF: That’s awesome. You’ve mentioned your coaching programs quite a bit? Obviously you know your stuff. You know you’re wholesaling, you know the flipping side of it. What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you to start learning more about you? Is it your website? Or I know you have an awesome podcast as well.

[0:34:19.9] CB: I love for them to just go on your podcast. I love that people come to the podcast and just listen to some of the interviews and if they’re interested from there, obviously just like you, we have to be a good fit right? Three coaching and application based only, maybe you don’t like me, that’s okay, maybe you do, maybe we will get into a good program where we can learn together.

We have different programs available but go to the podcast first and then once you’re there, if you’re at realestateinvestingprofits.com. Go ahead and sign up, get on our list and then you’ll see a little link at the top for coaching and that will explain more about our different programs. I don’t want to spend all the time here talking about the programs but we got a really successful students.

I really focus on making you get to your first deal, first flip as soon as possible and usually that’s going to be about $7,500 to $10,000 pay day. From there, then you can look at other things you want to do. It’s amazing to me how many people talk about doing commercial deals and short sale deals and fix and flips and all these other things and Mark, they’ve never done their first flip.

[0:35:32.8] MF: Right, it’s called focus right? Focus on one thing first.

[0:35:36.6] CB: Because there’s so many things out there you know? Imagine the confidence that you get that when you get that first pay day and all of a sudden, everybody’s telling you it couldn’t work, you’ve now have proven them wrong but what’s more importantly, you’ve proven yourself that it works.

I’m telling you, the confidence that you get whenever you see that wire or you go to the title company, you get that check, the confidence that you get from that moment — I always tell my students to frame their first check. Sometimes it might be $3,500, it might be, heck, it might be $1,500 but it might be a whopping 15 — $20,000 depending on where you are.

A guy in San Diego right now does a $42,000 flip. $42,000 whole sale flip, okay? Where he put a piece of paper and flipped it. That’s just amazing.

[0:36:24.4] MF: Nice. All right, one last thing before we get going here. I know you’ve got to go, I’ve got to go here pretty soon. What’s one piece of advice for people who haven’t started investing in real estate, they want to get started, what’s something they can do to take action right away.

I always tell people, “You’ve got to take action at some point. You can educate yourself all you want but really, to get the ball rolling, you got to take some action.” What do you think is something someone can do to really get started?

[0:36:50.9] CB: Sure. Obviously whenever I talk to different folks about why they haven’t done their first flip yet, the number one reason is fear. You can say in all these other different ways but it comes down to, they were unsure or they’re fearful of some particular method right?

Here’s the thing about fear. I look at fear like a balloon okay? The more air you put in fear, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The funny thing is, even though they’re just air in that thing, it looks massive and here’s the other thing. When you step away from fear, which is what most people do because they don’t want to deal with it and it’s kind of guarding what they want on the other side is you I know on the other side of fear is everything that you want but it’s guarding you, right?

As you step away from it, fear gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But as you step into it, it gets smaller. The first mindset tweak is step into fear and it gets smaller. Not stepping away. The other thing is, remember on Ghost Busters whenever a slimer… remember slimer? Remember that thing that was just guarding that door and Dan Akroyd and the other guy was sitting there with their Ghostbuster guns and it was coming at them and they were freaking out right? That thing is coming at you. It looks mean and scary and then it hits them and what happens? Did they die?

[0:38:20.6] MF: Nope, they got a little dirty.

[0:38:22.2] CB: They got slimed. Remember that? They got slimed, I got slimed right? That’s the worst thing that’s going to happen to you. You’re going to get slimed meaning that people are going to say stuff about you that may hurt your feelings okay?

You have to get over that, as an investor, you have to have some thick skin because if it was easy, everybody would be doing it okay? You’re walking into your fear, don’t worry about getting slimed because on the other side of that is everything you’ve ever wanted. Fear is guarding the door to your dreams or ambitions, everything that you ever wanted.

I know it sounds motivational but it’s actually psychologically the truth. Read this book called My Happy Chemicals. It talks about the way that our brain responds to cortisol and the way our brain responds to certain fears of our lives, we’re either usually living in the past or the future.

Usually not living in the present because something in the past has scared us or something was scared of what’s going to happen in the future right? My biggest thing to get across here is step into fear. The worst thing that could happen is you get slimed but the best thing that happen is you’ll get over it, you’ll overcome it on the other side of it is everything you’ve ever wanted in life.

[0:39:41.3] MF: I think the scenario, it could happen. It’s not worth talking on things and then thinking about it instead of investing or depositing it like it happened from it. If you just change your whole mindset about how you look at things, it changes things big time. Great advice. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Cory for being on the show, really appreciated it. Again, realestateinvestingprofits.com, that’s your site, phenomenal podcast as well.

[0:40:11.1] CB: Thank you man.

[0:40:11.6] MF: Yeah. I’ll do a write up with this, have all your contact information for people who want to get a hold of you and yeah, thank you very much for being on the show.

[0:40:18.3] CB: Thanks, I appreciate it man. Sorry about the background noise.

[0:40:22.6] MF: No worries. All right, take care.

[0:40:25.9] CB: See you mark.

[0:40:27.2] MF: Bye.