Welcome to The Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and you’re investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.
Josh: So hey guys, this is Josh, welcome back to Accelerated Investor, happy to have you back. And in this episode I wanted to kind of set the table. A few weeks ago I was able to sit down with a couple of our highest and high level coaches, Kyle Garifo from Chicago, DK Kim from Orlando and Chris Cedar from Billings, Montana, and these guys combined, have closed over 500 real estate transactions and own several hundred units of rentals between the three of them. And they’re all guys that I’ve personally mentored and coached. And we sat down a few weeks ago and had just a great fun conversation about the traits of elite entrepreneurs, the traits of elite real estate investors, and what are some of the successful traits that we see in our best highest performing coaching students and members. And then also what are some of the characteristics of people that don’t succeed, people that fail.
Josh: What are some things that they do wrong that we want to avoid? Uh, and then also I talked to the guys a little bit about their entrepreneurial journey from starting from their previous jobs. Kyle was a therapist, you know, had clients sitting on the couch and we’re talking to them about their personal issues, to quitting his job and jumping into real estate full time. DK is a former immigration and title attorney. And Chris Cedar was not really sure what the heck he was going to do when he graduated from college and then jumped into real estate full time. And I thought it was really fun interviewing them, talking with them about their real estate success journey and some of those successful traits that it takes to make it and really succeed. And some of the traits of those people that kind of fail and don’t make it what are the things that they do wrong. So I really hope you enjoy this interview. I had a blast putting it on and if you like it and you feel like you’ve gotten something out of it, definitely let us know. Give us some feedback and I hope you enjoy it. So here we go.
Josh: So, hey guys, Josh Cantwell here. Welcome back. I’m excited to be with all of you today and a do a call with our coaches, with a bunch of successful investors who are coaches with us and our leadership team at Strategic Real Estate Coach, which includes Chris Cedar from Billings, Montana. What’s up, Chris? How are you?
Chris: Good. Doing great.
Josh: Awesome. Kyle Garifo from the northwest Chicago suburbs. What’s up Kyle?
Kyle: What’s going on?
Josh: And DK Kim, our coach and real estate attorney from Orlando, Florida. What’s up DK?
DK: How are you? I’m doing great today Josh.
Josh: Awesome. So what we’re doing here today is we’ve invited some of our, uh, our highest end coaching students that we call a Master’s Elite and Maverick Mastermind members to join us. And what I wanted to do was kind of interview Chris and Kyle and DK, who all now have at least about 10 years of real estate investing experience. DK hen did you officially kind of jump into real estate investing, DK? Was it about six years ago?
DK: Yeah, full time. I think it was like 2012, 2013, yeah.
Josh: Yeah and Chris, when did you start investing?
Chris: In 2009.
Josh: 2009, so going on 10 years. And Kyle, how about you?
Kyle: 2007.
Josh: 07, yeah. So I’ve got 10 years, 12 years, and about 6 years of experience plus me added up, it’s over 30, 35 years of experience. Chris, give or take, about how many deals have you been involved in your career?
Chris: Oh, I mean hundreds. I lost track a while ago, but probably…
Josh: 400 plus?
Chris: Yeah, I mean probably 120 plus rehabs. Who knows how many wholesale deals, probably 80 or 90 and then a bunch of rental property and probably 200 plus.
Josh: Yeah. Awesome. Kyle, how about you?
Kyle: Yeah, I think I’m probably about 275 to 280, somewhere around there and everyday it’s going up so.
Josh: And DK. How about yourself?
DK: Somewhere like 150 plus. Yeah.
Josh: And then all the guys that you know, and I’ve done nearly a thousand, about 400, 400 something or wholesale and short sale deals that we wholesaled out and then, you know, several hundred rentals and rehabs, over 350 plus private lender loans. And we also all of us own cash flow and rentals, commercial buildings, Kyle’s in the assisted living and independent living market and Chris owns a bunch of multifamily properties. DK owns a bunch of rentals. DK was the founding member of Golf Shore Bank. And we also just raised about $4 million that we put into a bunch of apartment deal. So I’m an equity owner now in about 1,150 units of apartments outside of Atlanta. And we own about a 15% share of those. It’s a $70 million portfolio down in Atlanta, which is pretty cool.
Josh: So just a ton of experience. And what we thought we’d do today is not only for our listeners want to welcome all of you guys onto the call, but for everybody who, you know, will join our coaching program in the future, maybe catch this in a podcast is really just talking about two things. One is have each of these guys just kind of comment on their life cycle as an investor, whether it was starting out as a, you know, as an attorney and getting into real estate starting out as a wholesaler. Then getting into bigger deals or in Kyle’s case, doing a lot of short sale flips and getting into commercial. Now all the guys have raised a lot of private money. So that’s the first conversation is just to hear from them. What was that like? What challenges did they face, what would they do differently and their life cycle as an investor?
Josh: And then the second conversation just around what are some traits, what are some specific things that they thought that they did well? And what are some specific things that they see in their coaching students that they’re most successful coaching students are doing? And what those traits of their coaching students that make those coaching students successful. And what are some things that some of their coaching students that are not succeeding? What are some of their characteristics that they’re just not doing well? Whether it’s just not taking action, being lazy, not raising enough money, those kinds of things.
Josh: So I’m going to start with Kyle because I’ve known Kyle the longest. Kyle and I go back at least 10 years in our relationship and sort of mentor student. And also Kyle is our head coach in our coaching program. So he helps us put together the curriculum as well as Chris and DK. But known Kyle the longest and know Kyle on a pretty personal basis, his wife and kids. And so Kyle, just tell us for a couple minutes here, you know, what was your start like in real estate? And you went from new to intermediate to a really advanced investor now. What was that life cycle for you and what did you think that you did well along that journey and what are some things that you would’ve done differently?
Kyle: Yeah, and it’s still an ever changing and growing, obviously even today. But yeah, I mean I started in 07 for those that don’t know, I was a therapist, a clinical therapist on the couch, have conversations that that’s what I did. And when most people need therapies, usually evenings, afternoon an hour. So I was working crappy hours. I was working like noon to nine, noon to 10 sometimes I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I just had a couple of kids right around there and I just wasn’t spending the time that I wanted to with. And I just needed a change for me. And a, I am a product of watching too many shows on HGTV or I certainly was back then. And yes, there will shows back then. Even 07, I just said, how hard could this be?
Kyle: I mean, that’s literally what it was. And I just got more into it. I started following Josh and Shrek even back then in oh seven, probably one of the first guru and there was a lot of them out there back then as well too in 07. You know, like Jeff said, there was a lot of short sales, people we’re doing a lot of short sales back then, where we were just buying, not even touching the property’s not even really, you know, I sometimes would spend under a $100 bucks putting on a new lock and I’d have that property sold. So I did, I quit 07. I literally quit Thursday, bought a house on that Monday, bought an REO property. That was my first flip, but I did, it took me about a god nine months to do.
Kyle: I did all the work myself, all the cabinetry, flooring. I didn’t do the electrical, but I certainly did everything that I could possibly do. I learned a lot as well too, but made a lot of mistakes. And the first mistake doing the work myself was obviously the biggest mistake that I made. And what I did realize, because I sold right before the bust in 2008 I made I think $1,200 bucks. Honestly, I did nine months of work, made about $1,200 bucks, brought a home of my wife and I’m like, Hey, look, I made $1,200 bucks. And she’s like that. If you need a job, you know, go, go get a job, yeah. So, but what I did learn is that I loved the business. I loved everything about it. I loved the, the work. I love the hunt of the deal. I loved the dealing with real estate agents.
Kyle: I loved dealing with buyers. I just love everything about it. But rehabbing with for me was just more of, kind of an intro point at that point in time. That’s when I really started getting into more of the short sales and then beginning with Shrek and Josh you and I were working on that for awhile until I became a student with you in 2011 full time when I remember you saying this to me that I needed an evergreen business, right? I needed a business that could always change, always be there for me whenever the market changed. Because short sales, although I still do some, I’ve got like four or five going right now that are in the process of wherever, whatever stage they’re in is not really my main business at all. When I was doing 25 to 30 deals at a time, now I’m doing four of those, you know, just straight negotiating with banks.
Kyle: I don’t do any of the negotiating, I don’t do any of that anymore. But I did need an evergreen business. I needed a business that was going to change along with the, you know, the times on the market, which it has rehabbing will always be around now people will always have a crappy houses that we can buy at a reduced price and fix up and sell to somebody else. So that was kind of the beginning start for me. And I advanced from there with education coaching, you know, I don’t know how much money I’ve spent, investing in my education, my training. To me, I look at it as like having a doctorate degree. You know, you don’t want somebody operating on you that, that took, you know, maybe a few months online course, you know, and doing open heart surgery with you.
Kyle: For us, it’s a lot of education. You look at, you know, anybody on the screen right here. We’ve all spent a ton of money on our education to get where we’re at right now. And I’ve got formal education now. I’ve got a master’s degree that I got certifications. I, you know, as a therapist, you need all that as well too, which did help me do this business ironically as well too because this is a people business and it just allowed me to go from one person to person business to another dealing with homeowners and sellers and lawyers and REO agents and all that stuff. I was able to transition. That’s been one of the strengths for me is that I think sometimes, and even my own students, they forget that this is a person to person business and it’s all about the numbers and the deal and how much money I can make.
Kyle: And you have to be willing to help people in this business and not make any money because you’ll make more money with that philosophy and that attitude then you will constantly about the money and the hunt. I get asked weekly from people, you know, how do I do this? How can I do this? I just inherited a property. How do I, do you know, any good agents? Do you know this? Do you know, a good plumber, you know, all of those things that you have to be willing to help people out in this business to do because that’ll come back to me certainly in the future as well. So I don’t remember what are you even asking me is the question, Josh. That’s kind of my intro, you know, that’s kind of how I got started into…
Josh: So tell us where you’re at today. So we start in like there’s the evergreen business and really I think, you know, the fabric of our company and what we train and coach our students found is that funding equals freedom. If you have an evergreen business and your business model is to buy, fix and sell, but you’ve got to have the underlying evergreen part of that business is funding. You can have t the by fix and keep model and lots of rental single-family rentals or multifamily or even apartments where the underlying fabric of that is funding.
Josh: You could do assisted living or independent living senior care facilities. Again, if that’s your business, the underlying evergreen part of that is you do the same thing over and over and over and you have funding to do it. So tell us more about where you’re at today. What are you focused on? You know, obviously still doing some single family flips and single-family rehabs and a lot of big properties, I’ve seen you do multimillion dollar properties. Tell us about what you’re working on right now. What is the evergreen model for, you know, the funding that supports what you’re up to?
Kyle: Yeah, exactly. I mean at the end of the day, the funding and the private capital and even traditional bank financing, I have to get more into that now as well too because of the projects that I’m doing. It just makes more sense for me to now to do traditional bank financing on a lot of these projects. But my single family residential flips that just have sort of taken a third back seat now to everything. That’s sort of my third project of what I’m doing. My condo development in the city, I’ve got three condos in the city that I built from ground up. Those are on the market right now. I’ve got a single-family conversion that I converted it from a duplex that will sell for probably $2.1 million when it’s all said and done. And then I’ve got a piece of land that I just got, we just passed our zoning for to build a another three units there.
Kyle: So we’ll break ground on that in probably about a month or so. So traditional financing I’m getting bank loans for definitely those projects as well too because private money for, you know, a project is going to take a year. It would be awfully expensive at 12% if I get bank financing and pay 6% that’s far better. But I still need, you know, $200,000 down from $300,000 down and that’s where private money comes into play. And that’s where I’m utilizing private money. I couldn’t, I couldn’t do these deals and these kinds of development. What’s out there newchy?
Josh: Yeah, there’s DK, Chris and Kyle. Dominic’s home from school sick.
Kyle: Oh boy.
Josh: For three days and he’s feeling better. How’s your, he’s got like a 103 fever for the last three days. So he’s hanging out, right. What are you up to man? Nothing hard go back upstairs. All right, I’ll see upstairs in a bit all right.
Kyle: So yeah, so doing my flips right now as a single family, we’ve got three of those going right now and my counter developments we’ve got another four of those going. And then my assisted living as you talked about my residential boutique assisted living. We just passed all of our villages zoning for that, which was quite the process. And then we’re in the process of getting a loan right now for $4.2 million bucks right now, getting a loan for that and start breaking ground on probably the end of April with that maybe beginning of May. What kind of a project is that like your residential assisted living? How big, how many units, how many beds?
Kyle: Yeah, so we’re building, we’ll be building two 9,800 square foot houses. Each of those holds 16 residents per. And then once those are done, we’re going to build a 7,500 square foot and that’ll hold 12.
Josh: Same area, same cul de sac, same piece of land?
Kyle: Same piece of land we bought it at 2.8 acre piece of land last July for this exact purpose. Zoning took us about six months to do and that’s the village even opening or wanting us with open arms, it’s still talking about a half a year to get zoning through to convince people that this is something that the neighborhood wants and that’s going to be good, you know, for the neighborhood certainly. But yeah, when, when we’re all said and done, once we, you know, that’s going to cash flow for us about one point $8 million net a year, which won’t suck certainly. So, you know, asked me a couple of years and we’re up and running.
Kyle: But that’s passive income, that’s really our strategy that we have there. This it’s located about two miles from where I live so checking up on things is going to be a piece of cake. But in terms of my number one strategy, you know, that’s it.
Josh: Yeah. And what I’m kind of hearing at the end of that conversation is just that, you know, got into the business because you didn’t like what you were doing before or just wanted more of the freedom, personal freedom to do what I want like to hang out at home. I went to the office this morning, but to be home because my daughter’s got a doctor’s appointment. I know my son is sick, my wife is not feeling that great and it’s the personal freedom, right? To leave the office to come home, support the family, be there, do this with you guys. That’s a big part of why we do what we do.
Josh: And the other piece is the passive income, right? You know, like you’re talking about your play for long term wealth, long term equity, appreciation for your balance sheet take care of your family is this independent residential assisted living. And that $1.8 million, so that’s fantastic. So you go from your first deal, you quit on Thursday by a house and a Monday now too, you know, uh, about 30 units or so of residential assisted living, almost 45 units actually of residential assisted living and that’s part of that evolution. And we’ll talk a little bit more Kyle in a second about some of the traits of success that you feel you had as well as some of the things you see in your students, that allow you to make that transition over time. Yeah so Chris, how about you man? So you know, Chris and I met years ago as affiliates actually, Chris was doing some coaching and some training and kind of promoting some of our products.
Josh: We’re promoting some of his stuff and Chris has been one of our coaches now for many years, and it’s sort of a family business with his dad, owning a bunch of rental properties. And so Chris, talk for a little bit more about your start, the evolution, kind of where you’re at today and what your focus is today in your business to build your portfolio on your balance sheet.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I got, sorry, my dog is hearing dogs across the street barking and while I’m doing this. But yeah, I got started so 2009 after I had graduated college, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. From there I talked to my father and he had been a real estate broker, real estate investor for since the 1980’s. So I decided, okay, maybe I’ll try out real estate investing. So I went to work for a couple months for pretty much directly for him in his business. You know, he showed me the ropes, managing rentals, how he went about finding houses, how he found deals, how to work with contractors and all that stuff.
Chris: And then from, I started my own business and, and the first full year I ended up doing three real estate deals. I bought a rental property, I did a wholesale deal and did a rehab. And the biggest thing from that first year that I think I would have went back and changed is I would have studied more or learned more about how to find deals. Because I felt like my only real source for finding deals then was the MLS and then pretty much referrals going, being funneled to my father since he’d been in it for so long. He gets a lot of referrals if somebody wants to sell a fixer upper, a lot of times they just talk to him. So I think that would have been one of my biggest things because once the next year, once I really did learn about marketing, about direct mail, about how to find deals, the flood gates kind of opened up on my business.
Chris: Once I started sending out consistent direct mail that next year I think I did 10 or 12 deals, like eight rehabs and poor wholesale deals. And then each year, the more I ramped up the marketing the more deals I was able to do. So that I would definitely say is one of the bigger things. And then of course for me to be able to do those deals, I had to have access to money. Luckily, you know for me, I had a father that had connections with private lenders with bank financing where I could have access to that funding so I didn’t have to focus on it as much. But yeah, that’s really where I went.
Josh: How about today, Chris? What’s your focus? You guys have a bunch of rental properties. Still a lot of single-family stuff, right? Are you guys working more on more commercial stuff or, I know you’re working on your golf game a lot. Tell us about that.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So our focus, my focus right now is pretty much the rehabbing business itself, it runs pretty smoothly, pretty on autopilot. My focus with that is about 10 to 12 deals a year, just with the rehabbing. And that, yeah, I really, all I have to do is I check on my contractor a couple times a week, either over the phone or usually go and check on the properties once a week. Currently we have two rehabs in the works and then we have two more that we just bought a week ago. So those are in different stages. Once our guys get done on those, they’ll to these other ones.
Josh: Got It. Tell our audience just a little bit more about your long term passive income play in your passion for rental properties, owning rentals, cash flow. I mean Kyle talked a little bit more about his big, this living facility. As long as I’ve known you, Chris I’ve always seemed like you were mostly focused on single-family rentals, owning rentals, your Dad owns a bunch of rentals. Tell us a little more about that as far as, because that’s why we’re all in this right is passive income, financial independence. So for our audience that’s trying to get to that point of like, hey, I don’t really like my job, or I just really want to do real estate. It sounds really sexy and fun, but I want to get to the point where I can play more golf and I want to have this personal freedom to do what I want. What does that like for you? What does that look like?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So my goal with rentals every year I usually set a goal to buy a certain amount, you know, a certain number more doors. This year, what do I have? It looks like I’m buying, I want to buy five more rental units. Currently between me and my father, we have somewhere around 130 rental units that, you know, some of them are his, some of them are mine, some of them we own together. Eventually, you know, it’s all going to come to come to me. But my goal has always been with the rentals is to, and I’ve got there with the build up enough of my own where the passive income from those rentals covers all of my living expenses and then some, so that way, you know, if I do want to, and what I do a lot in the summer is play golf that way. If I want to know, I’m going to take July off, I’m not going to not going to really do much in July. I’m just going to go, you know, all my expenses, anything that that comes up is going to be covered from my passive income with the rental properties and with the rehabbing business, you know, pretty much just runs itself right now. You know, that takes me a couple hours a week to check on those.
Josh: The rentals, big checks from your rehabs, couple of wholesale deals in between allows you a lot of free time to play some golf man. Chris is pretty much a scratch golfer, which is pretty, pretty amazing. So DK, how about you? You know, DK I originally met a friend of mine, John Cochran was kind of putting out an offer to do a one on one strategy session and DK kind of signed up for that. I met DK through John, came up to my Cleveland and we met in my virtual office at that time. And we met there in the conference room and DK was just about being really passionate for quitting his job. So this is a more recent, you know, case study about five, six years ago.
Josh: You know, DK was a real estate attorney and an immigration attorney and you know, it was kind of sick of the grind of that, you know, had a young new family, his kids, Amanda and Emma were little and was really thinking like, I’m building a family, I want to be home. So DK talk for a second just about that pivot because we’ve got guys that are, you know, in the corporate world or their therapist or their attorneys like you were, doctors or whatever and want to do this business. So what was your fear when you were making that pivot and how did you successfully make the transition?
DK: Yeah, the number one fear was like, am I really going to do this and am I going to pull the trigger? Because at that time, I think I signed up like September, 2012 for 40 K flips. Went through all the modules and I’m like, okay, this is the guy like I want, I really want to do this. But like with anything, it was just all, okay, this is all theory. This is, I don’t know. And then how am I going to pay the bills, you know, 60, 70 hour weeks. It was terrible my second daughter was born in November. And so I had all these thoughts floating in my head. And then finally at the end of the day, just like I tell my clients at that time, like, stop coming to me for advice. I already gave you the advice, you just need to go out and execute.
DK: And I said, you know what? And when I saw that the two on ones, I said, you know what? I got to take my own advice, just go out and do it. And I said yes. I, plus I had a history, no matter what I’ve done, like once I put my mind to it and I knew what my goals and my visions were, which was to be financially free eventually, of course. But also I just, I would rather talk to paint. I’d rather talk to contractors than, dealing with clients who just, you know, like…
Josh: You’d rather talk to paint.
DK: Right.
Josh: Kyle was in the same way, like I’d rather talk to paint then have another client sitting on the couch as a therapist, right.
DK: A lot of times that was true.
Josh: We got to use that in our events or something. Like I’d rather talk to paint.
DK: It actually smelled better than some of the clients that came in, right. But for me the tipping point professionally as an attorney was, why am I having more passion about their case where had they hired an attorney in advance, it could have prevented the whole situation. And I had client appointments where they just didn’t show up to the appointment and the next day there was like a green card hearing. It’s like, okay, like if you don’t show up, you don’t care. And so that’s kind of what sparked it.
DK: But the biggest thing for me was I knew where I wanted to go and a lot of people were just like, you’re crazy. You’re going to throw away your legal degree. You know, like, why are you doing this? Are you having a midlife crisis? I’m like, no, it’s because like I want to be over here. I don’t want the hours. And so for me was, I knew where I wanted to go and where I am today is where I want to be. But you know, you have your 5 year goals, your 10 year goals, 20 year goals, 30 year goals. But that was the best decision I ever made. But for me it was, I have to execute, take my own advice, just being as an attorney, but also senior modules, you know, just go do it, you know, be like Nike, go do it, you know.
Josh: DK, tell us about what you’re up to now. You’re, you’re looking at apartment developments, new construction. You’re in a competitive market, like most of us are in Orlando. So tell us what, what are you doing now? What’s your business model? What are you focused on?
DK: Yes. Apparently right now I have two rehabs going on concurrently. I have one closing scheduled for next third by liquidation closing next Friday, acquiring another property next week. So that’s the residential, single-family home business model. In regards to apartments, I’m still working on that. I’ve met so many people I’ve met my first billionaire crazy. Met a lot of different people, met some fund managers out in Japan via the telephone. I’m still trying to crack this a $45 million capital raise or $12 to $15 month million initial startup fund, and then get funding from either Wells Fargo or Bank Of America for construction loan. So it’s been, I’ve been meeting a lot of really big people. So it’s like right there and then also have new construction, single-family houses for new construction that’s happening up in Ocala, Gainesville area, which is about an hour and a half away.
DK: The numbers are great there. We’re finally getting our first permit in the next week and a half or two. There was some roadblocks over there, but finally all that’s been weaseled out and then something else I kind of added on. I kind of didn’t really want to, but I just knew a lot of people. I’m playing more in the commercial realtor world. And so I brokered a deal with Holiday Inn Express and so that was fun. But then also part of that it kind of trickled down. So I’m kind of adding on a little bit more commercial real estate. I mean, I have the knowledge, so I just figured, hey, why not, you know use that as well? But in regards to rentals, I have rentals going on, but I’m spending a lot of my time for the future rentals, where it would be like $3.5 half million dollar in operating income for these apartments. So that’s where I’m spending probably, 70% of my time talking to the real big fish for, you know, to take down this apartment situation.
Josh: I think that’s part of the evolution, right? It’s like as you do a lot of deals and hustle and make lots of transactions, whether it’s wholesale, rehab, rental, all single family, it gets to the point where it’s just like, okay, I don’t know that I have much more capacity or much more time to just keep doing this. I see what kind of potential it has I could build my team around this or I could just do bigger deals and bigger deals I don’t have to do the number, the same number of deals to equal, significantly more money, more capital, more opportunity. That’s why we built our fund because I knew I could raise money and put it in a pool and fund and my team could do most of the day to day, heavy lifting of underwriting and originating loans and servicing those loans and those kinds of things.
Josh: That was my big jump into commercial was actually just running a commercial private equity fund that made private lender loans. You know, other guys are focused on different things. So help me understand how guys, second question. What were some of the things that you guys did well to make this transition happen successfully? So Kyle, back to you. If you’re thinking about what are some of the things that you’re, that allowed you to go from short sales and wholesaling to big rehab flips now to developing properties ground up in the city of Chicago and these big independent living facilities, you own some other commercial buildings and rental properties and apartments, what are maybe one or two of the characteristics that you think that that this is definitely something I did right to help me move up to this level of investing?
Kyle: Well, I think first and foremost, you have to be willing to take risks. I mean, if you’re not willing to take a risk at all, you’re going to be stagnant. You’re going to be complacent, you’re going to do what you do every single day. And if that’s working nine to five, and I hear so many people, as I’m sure you guys do as well, to say, I wish I could do what you do, right? And there’s no reason why people can’t do what we do, we’re not any more special than anybody else, I don’t think in terms of our skill set. Now we may have more knowledge than them, but that’s just through growth and learning and education. But it doesn’t take a genius to do what we do, it just doesn’t. But it does take somebody who’s willing to risk and with risk comes failure and you have to be willing to fail as well too.
Kyle: You know, going from, like you said, single families, to going from short sales and single families to commercial developments, condos, to now my biggest risk of assisted living, you know, taking out a large loan of $4 million on a piece of dirt to say I think this is going to be successful, is a gigantic risk. You know, it just is, but backed by numbers and our education and our knowledge and what we’re doing, we’re willing to take that risk because we know that that reward is going to be great. But I think that’s the thing that, that I have done right is I’ve been willing to, not only put my toes in the water, but be able to jump in and then figure out how to swim.
Kyle: You know, we were operating our assisted living, with really no idea what we were doing, but we figured out our first one that we have operational now that that’s going to be sold and that’s propelled us to do then these other buildings as well too. And then we’re going to be more and more and more. So to answer your question, for me, it’s just been willing to take on that risk, but then also be willing to fail as well too, and then figure out what it is that we were doing wrong to go and correct that and do it right, so.
Josh: Yeah. Fantastic. Chris, how about you? Is there any characteristics or things you’d think you did well along your journey in the last five or 10 years or so?
Chris: Yeah, I definitely say in the beginning it was putting in more work than a normal person probably would do. I remember the beginning few years, you know, I’ve lived and breathed real estate investing. I was either, you know, listening to a podcast, reading a book, educating myself, learning something new or I was out there working in the business, putting what I learned into action. And it seemed like having my, I pretty much had my day scheduled out where, okay, I’m going to do this part of the real estate investing business for two hours. This part of the real estate investing business, cold calling for two hours, sending mail and having my day scheduled out where it was like 10 hours a day every day, just hustling in the business is what helped me. And then of course adding in education, time for education where I was learning something new and then adding that to my business, trying it out, testing it, figuring out if it worked, if it didn’t, you know, trying something new.
Chris: But you got to put in the work, you got to get out there and do this business, the first couple of years are going to be hard. It’s going to be a lot of work and the people that I see that succeed are the ones that put in the most effort. You know, then once, I’d say once you’re through those first couple of years, then it gets easier because you know how to do all that stuff. You’ve started to systemize your business, you figured out all of the crap that doesn’t work, so you can just not do that and just focus on the few things that do work for you. Every area, everyone, every business is going to be a little different because what works for me is not always going to work for you or DK or Kyle. But yeah, for everyone, I encourage, you know, try a bunch of different things to figure out what’s going to work for you, what system is going to be best for you.
Josh: Yeah, I think it’s interesting, Chris like, just the work load getting started in 2004 and it might be my old business partner on the phone. This was back when like Nextel had the phones that had the little beeper thing on the side and you could almost like it was almost like a CB radio. So we had a little thing on the side and it would like click click and he would be like, Hey Josh you there? And it was like, it would just sound off in my kitchen and we’d be on the phone like every night man just talking about everything we were trying to do and things that were working and things that weren’t, staying late at night. Get to the office at like 8:00 in the morning, work until like 12:30 go to the gym, go back to work at 2:00 in the afternoon, stay til 10:00 o’clock at night.
Josh: And I remember how exhilarating it was the next day to be like over, like just destroyed tired but know that I just put in like an amazing amount of effort, an amazing amount of work and push the business forward and how much I enjoy that. And even nights now when my kids go to bed and my wife is tired, she’s doing something upstairs at the house and I’m down here in my office until like 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, just getting things done the next day I’m tired as shit, but just the sense of accomplishment because I just put in more time sometimes that’s all it takes is just the effort the extra time.
Josh: I mean there’s a lot of things you can get done in a year and some people get a year’s worth of work done in three months. Some people get a year’s worth of work done in a year. Some people get a year’s worth of work done in five years. It’s just a matter of how much effort, just pure time and hustle you want to put into it, right. And a lot of our students had real success that are getting off the ground quickly and having success fast. Some of them are just the guy that we’re just willing to work longer and harder period, the end, right, it’s just part of the deal. Nobody’s going to say I was really, really successful and I was lazy as shit, nobody ever says that, right. DK, how about for you man? What are some of the things you think you did right along your journey?
DK: Definitely I agree with everything in regards to you have to have a work ethic. But for me that first year after I met you and John in February of 2013 when I got away with it and I still preach to the students and to the also the students who’ve failed miserably is they don’t make any efforts in private lending at all. They are so scared of getting that no or that rejection or I don’t know enough people who have money and I tell them I did the same thing you said, it’s not about whether these people in your list of 100 have money or not just communicate what it is that you’re doing.
DK: And I literally took that to heart. I had like, I don’t know, list of 230 or something and I just set the appointments, set the appointments, because if I didn’t make that phone call or send that email, I wasn’t going to go to where I needed to go. And it took me about, I don’t know, somewhere between 15 to 18 of rejections until finally I had my first private lender and that was like the best thing in the world and probably around like rejection number five, I’m like, I don’t know if I can do this. I mean it’s there, it’s always there, you know, but to overcome that was very key. But my work ethic was raised that private capital and that’s what saved me starting in year one. And it’s gotten easier over the years. Now I just text message or make a quick phone call, hey, you got $500,000 grand? Okay, yeah, great give me the wire instructions, you know? But yeah, I can’t get there until you get those first one or two private lenders, so.
Josh: When Daymond John was at our event, you know, he said like, you know, we invest in people every time we invest in a deal on shark tank, we invest in people. That’s what our private lenders are doing for us and for our students, is their investing in your deal, the deal’s got to make sense. Like how am I going to make a return? How am I going to make money? And we have all kinds of systems that the four of us have created around raising private money. And we can talk about that on another call some other time. But you’ve got to have a devastatingly simple offer, a devastatingly powerful and simple offer that people can invest in. We all started, I started, we’re going to pay a 12% interest or 15% of our profits, whichever is greater. And nobody ever said, that’s a dumb idea.
Josh: Like nobody ever said like, oh my God, that’s so stupid I would never do that. Nobody ever said that. And so you just have to have that offer to start and just educate people about how they can flip properties in their IRA or educate people about how they can buy their own rental properties or where they source deals. Everybody wants to be in real estate, you just got to be out there as the top of mine reference and teach them how they can do it. And then people are going to say, you know, I don’t have time for this I think I’ll just invest in your deals and I’ll, I’ll get a taste of how this works investing in your deals. And then they become a private lender. And it’s funny, a lot of them never then actively invest and then they just stay as a private lender forever, which is great for us, right.
Josh: So second piece of the conversation guys is if I asked all of you, if you look back at your most successful coaching students, what were some of the traits, you know, two, three, five traits of success that your most successful students carry? A recurring theme that you see in your students that make it longterm and that do well in this business. What do you think some of those traits are? So Kyle back to you. What are some traits that you think you’re most successful people? Have you been coaching with me for over three, four years. You’ve coached dozens if not hundreds of our students in a one on one fashion. So you really, and you’ve done Boots On The Ground where you actually fly out to their market and work with them for, you know, 48 to 72 hours. So you have a real in depth knowledge about what they’re experiencing, what their fears are, what their successes are with their business models are. If you take all of that combined, what are some of the features and traits that you see in the recurring students that have the most success?
Kyle: Yeah, and you mentioned Boots On The Ground. I’m actually leaving for one, this coming Monday. And I’m excited about that one in particular as well too because the student that I have there for me, the ones who are action takers, I mean that’s going to be first and foremost ones that are out making offers. I’m blown away when we do our phone calls every two weeks and hey, how many offers you made? I made one that’s not going to get it done right. That’s not going to get it done. I just talked to one of our students who’s in our mastermind. You, know who’s actually on this call and you know, the guy’s making 25 30 offers a week to try to get one accepted and he understands that. And you asked me like, I like Joe and that’s why he is successful because he’s constantly making offers, he’s constantly taking action and failure is okay. It’s just one step close for him to getting a yes, you know, he’s one step closer to being successful.
Kyle: So again, somebody who’s willing to take risks and be an action taker is certainly one of the key steps for our students. I think just being persistent and consistent is pretty important as well too. And that could apply to a wide variety of things, whether it’s making offers, whether it’s your marketing, whether it’s how many people you’re talking about, private money, it’s being persistent and consistent with it. Because you think it’s just going to show up any one of those features, they’re not just going to show up at your doorstep, whether it’s leads, private money, who knows? You have to be willing to work at it. And like DK says, eventually it does come to you over time, but that’s not going to show up the very first time as well too.
Kyle: And then I think just for me, and I guess that could apply to other students as well as, surrounding yourself with successful people as well too is so critical, right, it’s so critical. That’s why we have our mastermind group. But even in your own personal friend group, if you look around with who your friends are, I mean, my, most of my friends are business owners, entrepreneurs, people that are have their own freedom that are obviously financially stable, ect. And that’s just who I relate to the best. That’s not to say that somebody who doesn’t make as much money as me is not a friend of mine. It’s just that that’s who I can grow and expand their business and we’re always looking to help each other’s business and what can we do. And I think I can apply that to my successful students as well too, that they, I know that they surround themselves with people that are always trying to improve their business as well as that they can approve other people’s business as well.
Kyle: Because that’s really what it’s about for me. It comes back to this being a people business, and you know, it’s just a trait that I think people often overlook of, of their surrounding their environment. How you know, how they view themselves as is a lot of times how other people view them as well too. And if people don’t have the confidence and are not willing to take the risk, it’s, this is very difficult to do in this business. So that’s I think, you know, traits that I see in a lot of our students.
Josh: Yeah. A lot of good points there. Especially like I think one of the things that’s most fun in my life is progress and progress means that you’re learning, right? So learning something new. And so the more seasoned I get in business, the more people we coach, the more money we raise, the bigger our fund gets bigger portfolio gets. I find myself asking more and more and more questions because the people that were with me or for me, they know more about marketing than I do. They know more about the project than I do. They know more about certain parts of the business than I do. So just I ask a ton of questions. I want to ask questions I learn when I learn, I feel like I’m making progress. And that’s fun for me, right. And so being around, to your point, Kyle, being around other people who are already successful, getting really good at asking them questions about what they’re doing.
Josh: How are they surrounding themselves with A players? How did they fund their business? How do they exit their business? How do they make in relationships? Like who are key people that they know that they’ve met? I just had a conversation literally an hour before we started this. I met a mortgage broker’s name is Anthony Dimarco through my niece, and that stuff. I met him about a year ago. I stayed in touch with Anthony because I could just tell that he hustled, right? I could tell he was not, not a guy that’s just, you know, making millions of dollars a year, probably making a couple of hundred grand. But just hustling, hustling. I started to stay in touch with Anthony. Now Anthony left the job as a mortgage broker and works with, for Collier’s as a commercial broker, primarily works in apartments and multifamily.
Josh: So I talked to him at noon today and we’ve kept in touch, kept in touch just because he was a fun guy to be around and I was learning things from him and he’s hustling his face off. I actually tried to hire him about six months ago. But just today he’s like, I’ve got a 50 unit off market apartment. I’ve got a 207 unit off market apartment. I’ve got another 140 unit off market and I’ve got a 24 unit that he’s all bringing to market now and is interested to know if I’m interested in looking at these. And I’m like, of course. So it just because years ago I could tell he was an A player and I just wanted to stay in touch with them. And then all of now there’s this opportunity. I don’t know if I’ll buy any of those, but I’m certainly going to review them all and make offers on all of them.
Josh: So opportunity just through your network because you’re just staying in touch with fun people, people who were successful. It’s really, really fun, the opportunity to kind of. I got an email yesterday from my friend Ryan Moran who runs Capitalism.com who wants to start a fund with me to invest in ecommerce businesses. And the one that email I got yesterday is a business that’s needing funding. They are a foods business that is a business that is in whole foods that has kind of the eye of Amazon and they’re selling things on Amazon. But they need funding and Ryan’s talking about raising money to give that business funding and own equity in that business. Again, just because of our relationship, just somebody fun to network with and stay in touch with, Ryan. So really, really fun stuff there. Chris, how about you? What kind of characteristics do you see of our students that are successful? What are they doing that you see consistently from them?
Chris: I think for me the biggest, the ones that are most successful are the ones that follow the follow a plan. They actually put in the effort into the plan. Because a lot of times with some of my students, you know, they’ll work a nine to five job full time. So what we, what I usually like to do is create some sort of a action plan for them and give them, you know, small tasks each week that they can complete. So you know, two hours on Monday maybe their analyzing deals, scanning the MLS, pulling deals to make offers on.
Chris: But the students that just simply follow the plan and put in effort each and every day, they’re the ones that, that I see make it happen that actually get deals and then being consistent with that plan because you have to, you have to be putting in offers doing that each and every day, each and every week. The ones that, you know, they’ll do it for a month and then maybe a couple months they won’t do much. Those are the ones that don’t have the success. So I’d say that’s the biggest thing there for most of mine.
Josh: I actually haven’t written up on my whiteboard just three words, think, plan, execute. Think, plan, execute. And some days I feel like, oh my God, I’ve got so much shit going on. You guys all feel the same way, right? I’ve got so much crap going on. So my favorite days are the days where I really don’t do anything that I take all the crap and that’s in my head and I think, and I haven’t, oh this red notebook in my bag and I got just one page of notes for Freeland, one page of notes for Shrek, one page of notes of my personal things I’ve got to do with my wife and with my kids and my family. And then I’ve got another page of just personal investments outside onside of Freeland Retail Properties and apartment building and stuff I own on a personal basis. And most of my favorite day is just decluttering, right?
Josh: Just taking everything that’s in my mind and getting it all written down. So think plan kind of go together because then I feel the freedom to go execute, right? The freedom to not have this clutter, all this crap in my head. And some people are like, just execute, execute, execute, execute, execute is great, but oftentimes it creates so much chaos that nothing really ever comes together, right? So it’s think, plan, execute and the fact, you know, all of you guys as coaches and myself, that’s what we’re helping our students do think and plan and think and plan, have that plan so they can just feel free to go execute all the time and feel like they’re making progress on that plan and where they’re going to go.
Josh: And that’s what we do as coaches, hold people accountable, thinking and plan with them, hold them accountable to the execution. The one thing we can’t do is execute for them, right? We can’t do the job for you, you have to do the job that’s your job as a business owner. But what we can do as coaches is help you think and plan. That’s what we do well is what Chris does. Kyle, so D, how about you? What are some of the recurring themes you see from your most successful folks?
DK: So after they take action, it’s the discipline, discipline. I think Chris and Kyle talked about being consistent, but for me it’s to be consistent you got to have that discipline. Don’t get these hot and cold streaks and then to go along with that is to have the eight players who will also believe in that sheer vision you know, as one cohesive unit. Just like we talk about , you get one bad apple, it’s going to ruin everything. So, but yeah, for me it’s always been the discipline and the getting the A players on that particular student’s team to make that vision happen.
Josh: Yeah. Because what do you think some of the reasons why people fail? Opposite reason. Like what are some of the things that you see from people who are like, I’m so excited about real estate, but we all had that same thing. I’m so excited about real estate. We’re all in it, we’re all having success. We got portfolios and rehabs and flips and private money. There’s a lot of people that started the business at the same time we all did who failed and are out of it and they’re back to a regular job and they fail for whatever reason. So DK, how about you? What are some things that you see from students of yours or other investors in your market? People that you’ve come across who fail? What do you think some of the things that they have in common?
DK: Okay, so I’ll categorize it’s a longer list, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The easier ones are the ones who don’t take the action or if they did, they haven’t done the paradigm shift in their head to continue the momentum that they need to go on. So it’s like the negative fear, you know, like we’re talking about, we have the good fear that pushes us to elevate us, but once they feel somewhat of a success, there’s, you know for whatever reason, I don’t know, they just start caving in and then they, they get their self limiting beliefs and really focus on the negative and they just believe in that. It’s like, okay, I got the private funding, but I don’t know if this is going to sell or like, like don’t come up with all types of excuses, but they’ve come this far to work for it and then all of a sudden they just collapsed.
DK: I don’t know. I have a couple students who are like that. I’m like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, we just had this momentum for three or four months and then now you’re now you’re regressing, you know, it’s almost kind of like a buyer’s remorse type of situation. And so sometimes they can’t take themselves out. And even though I tell them, hey look, these are our goals this is what we’re doing. Why are you regressing? You know, like they can’t separate that. And then another one real quick is it comes down to private money again. Like they get one or two successes and then there’s people who are going to lend to them or whatever, but they stopped prospecting for private lenders.
DK: And I keep on telling me, you got to be like a football coach, you’re always evaluating talent, whether it’s contractors. I get tons of referrals. Hey, if you need another painter, I mean, yeah, I’ve got like three or four painters, but guess what? I’m still evaluating them and so I have my own little list, okay. And on a scale of one to five, okay five being the best yeah, this is a number five. If there’s opportunity in the future all right, I’ll I have him. So yeah, it’s just, there’s so many reasons, but I’ll just leave that as my top two that I see.
Josh: Yeah Kyle how about you? It’s things, reasons why you see some use coach, hundreds of people. What do you think some of the recurring themes are? Why people just don’t make it?
Kyle: Unrealistic expectations of this business? I think a lot of times they know a lot of people are coming back from whether we’re doing an event or a show and they see, you know, one of us onstage and one of our other success with students on stage and they think that, um, we were somehow given everything that we have at this point in time and, and the, the deal flow and the private money and the, you know, it’s that easy.
Kyle: So they think, oh, this is going to be a piece of cake. I’m going to make you know, $2 million this year. Okay I never want to tell you that you can’t make $2 million this year, but what’s your plan to do that? I don’t, I mean, I’m going to buy a couple houses. Well, you know, that’s not how it works, you know? I mean, if you’re okay, you’re going to buy a couple of houses and that’s what I think do as coaches, is we break those goals down for you, we reverse engineer that for you. But some people’s expectations of the amount of hard work that this is going to take. And I think DK was, you who said it, or Chris, like the first two years will not be easy, the first three and whatever it may be. You know, in 2010 it still wasn’t easy for me and I had been in the business for three years. It’s still not easy and I’m 10 years later into this business if anything, it’s almost harder now because I’m doing such bigger things and managing a lot more money and expectations and so you have to be willing to work hard. This is not a get rich scheme by any means. And I think the ones that we see, the ones that fail are the ones that come out of the gate the best, but then I was like, I want to do, this is a lot of work. You know, this is a lot of work and they’re just not willing to do the work and then they ultimately fail, so.
Josh: Yeah. The other thing I’ve seen from some of the students and some other people is lack of cash flow, right? So rehab focused on buying, fixing, selling, buying, fixing, selling. Well if you buy, fix and sell and you structure private money the way we teach it, where you get all the funding up front for the principal, the purchase, the rehab, your soft costs, your holding costs, and you pay your private lender at the end, all the interests that they’re owed and when the property sells, then your business doesn’t have a lot of cash flow requirements because all the interest is deferred to the end. I’ve seen several people, say like, well, I want to buy the next deal and the next, I don’t have a true private lender, so I’m going to go to an institutional private lender, like a lending home or even a free land or you know, you know, some of the different hard money lenders and private money lenders out there and I just got to buy these other properties because there’s a big profit at the end, it’s great.
Josh: But then all of a sudden we’ve got six new loans, six new mortgages, no cash flow. Well that can hurt quick. So it’s all about cash flow, right? So I love to buy properties, rehab them and sell them on rent to own. I love to buy properties, rehab them and keep them as rentals. Of course we buy rehab and sell all the time. But the ones that are successful are the ones that understand you got to have consistent cash flow, whether you’re filling in the gaps with wholesale profits, filling in the gaps with some rehab profits like Chris Seeder is doing, you know, popping on some big rehabs with your rental properties. But you know, cash flow is king man. You could get through a lot of problems.
Josh: You can and also having private money to kill it, like you said. Like if you get in a bind and the deals over budget, it’s overscheduled but you’ve got more private money that you can bring in or you’ve got cash flow that you can bring in. It solves a lot of problems, buys you time to work out of a bad deal or work out a deal that’s going sideways. So that’s a big one that is maybe growing too fast and doing too many rehabs too quickly and having too many cash flow obligations per month and not having the cash flow to cover the nut.
Josh: I see that from some students that get a little bit too optimistic too fast and they don’t have the financing structured the right way to allow them to grow in that capacity. Chris, how about you? What are some recurring things you see from, from some folks that don’t make it, that you know, that want to make it but get sour, negative on the business? What did they do wrong?
Chris: Yeah, I think one of the, one of the things that I’ve seen from quite a few people is their mindset. A lot of people, they either believe the media, they believe realtors or whoever that are telling them, hey, there’s, you can’t buy houses that cheap. There’s no deals in this market. So they really start to get this mindset that there aren’t any deals. So then that leads to them not putting in the effort where, you know, I found that I see the successful students in super competitive markets, they’re finding deals because they’re making more offers than anyone else.
Chris: And there’ll be a student in that same market that’s failing because he’s got the mindset and he just can’t get himself to actually go out and put in offers, get out there and hustle. So I’d say their mindset, they have this scarcity mindset where there is just not enough. Where if we can, I always try to, or if I can get them to start believing that deals are infinite there out there no matter what the market’s doing, there’s always going to be distressed property. There’s always going to be somebody that needs to sell. So yeah, that is the biggest thing. Getting them to believe that the deals are out there. Believe that there’s private money out there. Because if they don’t believe that, they’re not going to put in any effort whatsoever. They’re just going to sit on their couch and complain.
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I was actually speaking at an event yesterday. Tim Bratz is a friend of ours and a big apartment investor, speaking at his event downtown Cleveland and Tim made a great analogy so I wanted to share it with you guys. You know, he talked he was talking about wealth and you know, he was talking about an apartment building. So if I have an apartment building and I have, it’s worth $5 million, there is no, wealth is not something that if you have wealth, I can’t have wealth. If somebody else has income or deal flow or private lenders, it’s not taking anything away from what I’m doing, right? And so he talked about, hey, I had this apartment building somebody else, some guy next to me raises up, buys a piece of dirt, builds an apartment building, and his apartment building is worth $5 or $10 million.
Josh: He just made $5 or $10 million worth of wealth, of real equity. And if he has a loan, maybe he made 2$ or $3 million worth of wealth. And he leveraged it with bank financing. But him building that apartment building didn’t take wealth away from me, even though I own the building next door, right? So wealth, deal flow, private money deals, it’s infinite, it’s infinite. There’s enough for everybody where if Chris has success, he’s not taking away success from other investors in Billings. Kyle has success not taking away from other investors in Chicago or DK in Orlando or me and Cleveland. We’re not taking away from other people as we build our businesses, we have an abundance mentality. There’s so much going on in the world today that everybody can be wealthy. And it’s the people that have that mindset, that are the people that think that it’s so competitive, I can’t have mine and you have yours too.
Josh: Well then they never get there. They never have their own deals and never have their own money. They never have their own success and that’s simply their own lack of faith and confidence in themselves. And again, that’s where coaching comes in. That’s where experience comes in. That’s where mentorship comes in to help them get beyond that. I mean, we all have fears. All four of us right now have fears. It’s probably a deal that we’re all freaking out about right now that we have in our pipeline something that we have a fear about, whether it’s an employee, whether it’s a private lender, whether it’s a deal we have, whether it’s DK apartment, Kyle’s assisted living, my fund, Chris golf game, whatever it is.
Josh: We’ve all got a fear, right? Something that’s going on that never goes away. And so to be a successful entrepreneur, it’s about understanding that there’s always going to be fear and not bring this up at our live events Easy E, the great rap artists said, it’s about having that fear push you from behind instead of standing in front of you. And I think that’s what we wake up and we get busy is the fear pushes us to make sure that we’re taking action and getting to the next level. So, well guys, listen, we got to wrap up. This is a really fun discussion man. I appreciate you guys jumping on. Any kind of final parting shots, words of advice? And I guess DK or Kyle I’ll start with you. And also Kyle, if you want to throw out for the people who will hear this, whether it’s a podcast, a YouTube video and your membership site. You want to throw out your contact information, your website. If people want to network with you in the Chicago area, become a private lender to you or bring you deal flow or wholesale, you would feel what are your, just kind of final parting shots and your contact information?
Kyle: Yeah, just go out there and do it. Just action. Don’t be a sideline player. You can’t be in the game on the sideline. And I know it’s trite and we say it all the time, but it’s so, it’s completely appropriate. You have to take action. You have to be willing to take risks. You have to be willing to fail. We’ve all failed countless, countless, countless times, you know, I mean, we just have and if you’re not willing to do that and you’re content with working your 9:00 to 5:00 gig or whatever it may be and your content at somebody else determining your salary, which is what ultimately that is. If you work a 9:00 to 5:00 gig, somebody else’s is determining how much money you can ultimately make, then that’s fine. But for those that want to be entrepreneurs and, and create their own freedom, financial freedom, time freedom, which, which for us four, that’s really what it’s all about, you know, it’s about the freedom that we can spend with our kids and, and golf and whatever it is, whatever you want to do and wherever you want to do it. Um, that’s, that’s what it’s ultimately about for me. So yeah, if you want to get in, touch me a email maybe as the best you can email me at, KGarifo. So KGARIFO@srecnow.com. S R E C N O W.com.
Josh: Fantastic. Chris, how about you? Any final parting shots or, if you know, if somebody hears this and there were the Billings market and they want to reach out to you and do a deal JV, how do they get ahold of you?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the, my final thought would be just like, like Kyle said, just get out there and make it happen. Educate yourself, read, listen to these podcasts, get into some coaching and then formulate a plan. Work backwards from, okay, I want to make $250,000 how many deals is that going to take me? How many offers am I going to have to make? How much direct mail am I going to have to send? How much private money am I going to have to raise? So factor in that, create yourself an action plan and follow it and put in more effort than you think it’s going to take also. That’s going to be key, getting out there, especially the first couple of years and just hustling your butt off working harder than everyone else. That’s going to be the biggest. Then if you want to get into contact with me, just search me on Facebook or Google and then you can find me. Shoot me a message there. That would probably be the easiest way.
Josh: Fantastic. DK. How about yourself, what are your thoughts?
DK: Yeah. Private money. Get your list of 100, finish your PowerPoint presentations and get your damn elevator pitch wraps okay. Those three things, you do, those three things and then on top of that, you know, set your appointments for your potential private lenders. That’s going to make your freedom happen. Everything will just follow through if you can just do that. And then yeah, my email, D as in David, K I M as in Mary at SREC, s r e c now.com.
Josh: Fantastic. Guys, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. We’ll talk to you soon.
DK: All right.
Kyle: Thank you Josh.
You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.
If there’s one thing you need to know about building a real estate investing business, it’s this: no two investors’ stories are identical.
It’s true… there are MANY successful, profitable, and happy real estate investors out there. But each one had their own failures, lessons, successes, and unique decisions along the way.
One of the best ways to stay motivated and to learn helpful insight for your own real estate investing business is to hear the stories of other investors who have walked the same road you’re currently travelling.
This podcast explores the journeys of REI experts and Strategic Real Estate Investor (SREC) coaches Kyle Garifo of Chicago, Chris Seder of Billings, Montana, and DK Kim of Orlando. Together, these gentlemen have invested in more than 500 real estate deals.
How these guys got into the business, their markets, and their current niches/areas of focus are entirely different. But they each have some amazingly helpful insight that you could potentially apply to your own REI business.
During their discussion, the guys also share some characteristics and patterns they’ve seen in successful real estate investors during their many years of working with students. Find out what they say is a definite indicator of someone who can build an extremely profitable business.
What’s Inside:
- Advice for pursuing “good enough” instead of perfection
- How to focus on the positive and learn from the failures
- Tips for taking action, perfecting your strategy, and responding to your market’s unique needs