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, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. I am so glad that you’re back here to join me again for yet another episode and I appreciate it so much. All of you who are sharing this on social media, leaving us ratings and reviews, learning about real estate, real estate, entrepreneurship, hearing from some of our self-development guests to become a bigger, better version of yourself. Whether you’re a real estate entrepreneur, broker, lender or mortgage originator, whether you’re a multifamily investor, rehab flipper, or whether you’re just getting started and you’re just interested in learning more about how to create additional cashflow from real estate. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you taking the opportunity to grow in your own life and take time out to listen to this. Whether you’re at the gym, whether you’re walking, whether you’re in the car, whatever it is. I appreciate you, I appreciate your commitment to your success.

Josh: Today I am interviewing Chris Walsh and Brian Laporte. To give you a little bit of an idea of their background, they partnered up just about a year ago. Chris spent over 10 years as a pro golfer and helped develop the golf tech systems and the golf tech business in the greater Cleveland operations of which he’s a part-time owner. And he caught the real estate bug a few years ago, having accumulated 12 units. Prior to his partnership with Brian.

Josh: Brian Spent 15 years in sales and business development and has a background in commercial construction. Chris and Brian over the past year or so have become regular repeat basically partners with us. We fund a ton of their real estate investments, their cash flowing rental properties, their flips, their small balance commercial properties. They’re investing throughout northeast Ohio, which is in my own backyard. And get this, Chris and Brian partnered up just about one ago and in the past year they’ve accumulated over 70 units across 26 properties in less than 12 months.

Josh: And that includes single-family rentals, duplexes and some small balance multifamily assets. They expect by the end of 2019 by the end of this year, within about 18 months of kicking off their partnership, they expect to have over $250,000 in annual cashflow, $700,000 in refinance cash out proceeds. $1.8 million in equity in their deals and expect to have over $200,000 of annual equity growth in appreciation from their assets as well as the principal pay down from their mortgages and they plan to simply continue this pattern of success that they’re on scale up and continue to buy larger and larger assets. So Chris and Brian, welcome to Accelerated Investor. What’s going on guys?

Chris: Good to be here. Thanks for having us, Josh.

Brian: Thanks a lot for having us on.

Josh: You bet. You bet. Now a little bit of additional color. I was actually out in the field with the guys with Chris and Brian just last week. I was out looking at some different properties, filming some Facebook ads for some of our private lending things that we do, and also met the guys and did a case study at a property on Lake Avenue. So guys, why don’t we just jump in today, just tell us a little bit more about what your strategy is right now are you, again, investing for income, investing for flips, wholesaling, people want to know, I’ve talked a little bit about it and how does, your business all come together? Meaning the money making strategy and then also what role Brian, do you play? Chris, what role do you play inside the business?

Chris: So basically strategy is, we try to buy off market deals. We try to buy the worst property in the best neighborhoods. We go in there, we renovate them, we put a great tenant in there, and then we take it to the bank, we refinance it, we take all of our money out. We usually have a bunch of built in equity. We try to take some cash out of the deals and then they’ll cash flow. Basically we’re trying to, we’re buying for cashflow right now and we’re hoping we’re buying in the right areas that potentially will appreciate, but we’re not betting on that. It’s all kind of a cashflow play.

Brian: Yeah, there’s no speculation. It’s not speculated for the appreciation playing that game.

Josh: Got it. So buy, rehab, rent, refinance and then you know, roll and repeat into the next deal. Now let me ask you guys about that particular strategy for you because I know a lot of investors would love to do that. And at the same time, when they’re getting going in the business, they’re also looking at, well I can’t wait for all this equity, I can’t eat my equity, right? So how am I paying my bills, my business bills? How am I paying my personal expenses? I think everybody would love to do that one strategy and only focus on that. Matter of fact, for me, if I could go back and look at the 700 properties that I flipped and wholesaled, if I could do it all over again, I would go back and keep them all. But you know, the business has to eat, your family has to eat, you have to eat in the meantime. So how do you balance the need for today’s income with your longterm investment strategy?

Brian: I mean, right now both of us have other sources of income, so that helps. The scales are rapidly tipping. Where our real estate businesses overtaking those? But I mean that in our current, today’s situation for just an instantaneous cashflow, that helps. But we’re also, I mean, it’s almost right now, every week we’re adding additional cashflow in our real estate portfolio. It’s literally every week. And we look at our numbers, our cashflow is going up. It could just keeps continuing going like this.

Brian: So in our bio, let me just give you that quick snapshot and we kind of look ahead at the end of this year, we’re looking at going, okay, we just need to not mess up the next four months and that cashflow and that foundation is going to be there to allow us to go elephant hunting the bigger deals to do the networking that allows us to go after and spend that time analyzing in everything that goes into trying to attack those larger deals.

Josh: Got it.

Chris: Yeah. We’re still both working other jobs and that’s kind of, it’s going to be less and less of that and more of the focus on just building a real estate portfolio and continuing to scale.

Josh: Got It. Yeah. Fantastic. So having some of that other source of income while you’re doing this, so because you’re doing this, you kind of almost have two full time jobs, right? You got your regular day job and then also this real estate thing. Which you built a massive portfolio in a very short amount of time, tell me how you balance it all and tell me a little bit more about your team that helps you pull it all off.

Chris: The balance is tough when you’re working two full time jobs. I’m not, I’ve been scaling back from my job. But it’s been tough. I mean we, you know, you spend almost all your time either working in your normal job and then building the business. So it’s been a little bit of a sacrifice, but it’s, it’s been fun. We’ve gotten to meet a lot of cool people like yourself and we’ve had a lot of good partners. We just hired a property manager who’s we call her the human Leatherman. She basically does everything.

Chris: I don’t know how we did it before her and as we go along we found a really good contractor. We found really good lending partners like yourselves and we just kind of continue to put the pieces together and you know, we’re just kind of learning on the fly like everybody else. But uh, the further down the road we go the more pieces we’re putting together and the more streamlined it’s getting.

Brian: I mean, the team is like, Chris said people being on the team, even if they’re not employees, is massively, massively important. I mean in January we were sitting there on the contract and the execution side going, man that’s, that’s really holding us back and we spent a lot of time concentrating on it, and then that’s becoming more and more streamlined.

Brian: Even like even the Freeland team, I mean the number of text messages, if you look back through my phone or I’m texting someone at Freeland at 6:45 AM or 7:00 AM is like the list is long, you know. So that, I mean that’s huge for us. You know, I mean your guys were doing, you got do one of your key guys out having another kid. But you’re other people stepped up to bat and we’re coming through for us that just normal draw money. But things that needed to happen on a few projects yesterday and it was like they’re keeping us in the loop. They’re going, I’m not having to chase everything down. We’re spending time on other stuff, you know? So that team is key.

Chris: Yeah. That’s huge.

Josh: Let’s do a deeper dive on the team then. So help me understand like who on your team is focused on property acquisition and what property acquisition strategies are you using to find your deals?

Chris: So we kind of joke, I mean this is kind of him and I right now I say I’m the CEO and he’s the COO. I do a lot of the, I find a lot of the deals and I find a lot, I try to raise a lot of money and he obviously is starting to do more of that and he’s a lot better as far as like the operation side of it. So we actually, it’s a pretty good, it’s a pretty good team. I’m horrible at what he does.

Brian: Yeah, I mean it’s a good, it’s a good combo. There’s definitely, we definitely have separate skill sets. If we were both the same we’ve probably crashed and burned already.

Josh: Right? Yeah. I’ve found even my own businesses, almost all of my real estate enterprises, I’m kind of on my third partnership, my original first partnership, one of us focused on property acquisition and one of us focused on getting properties out the door. We were wholesaling primarily doing a lot of short sales and pre-foreclosures, but we eventually found that we both had the same skillset. We built big businesses. We decided to buy each other out because we almost felt like we had two CEOs and it was tough to operate that way, but we’re starting to confuse our employees and businesses has got big enough we split them up.

Josh: And my second business, I really focused on raising money, finding deals and really running and being the face of the company. My brother Mark actually ran the back end of the business, focused on primarily rehabs and rehab flips and doing construction. And today almost all of the things that we do are inside of our Freeland brand. It’s me and my business partner, Glenn and I focus primarily on raising money, building the brand and marketing.

Josh: And then Glenn focuses again on more of the back of the house in the money management, the fund management, looking over our apartment buildings that we own and dealing with back relationships and making sure basically the machine has all the parts moving. And you’ve got to have different skillsets, right? So tell me a little bit more about that and about the team. So specifically like if you guys are finding deals what techniques are you using? And then as soon as you find it and close on it and a lot of the deals we’re funding, but when you close on it then who’s onsite actually doing the renovations? Rehabbing, overseeing the contractors.

Brian: Hmm. That’s a good, so I mean, like I said back in January, which feels like it was yesterday, we talked about it every day. How are we going to do that process? How are we going to, how can we deal with these deals in front of us if we can’t bring them on and execute them. And what we ended up with, we have a guy wasn’t an employee. He owned his own company. Wasn’t I guess in love with all the stuff involved in running a company and all the boring vanilla stuff, paperwork, whatever, all the organization stuff but was willing to kind of come on in run all our projects. We have a more active hand in it, not just him via general contractor that every other once in a while we pay him a big bill and he handles everything else.

Brian: We pay the labor almost instantaneously every Friday. We buy all the material direct. We’re buying material much cheaper. We’re not getting his mark up on him and he is learning to work with us because we’ve talked to him multiple times every day. So he’s learning our system and what we’re doing and what we’re looking for. So we say, hey, we’re looking at this property, which is almost daily. We’re looking at different things. What do you think it’s decisions are made like over a few text messages? We agree. I mean..

Chris: Yeah, he doesn’t need a whole lot of babysitting.

Brian: Boom, boom, boom, what do you think? Hey, oh you guys didn’t think about this, this is a $15,000 thing. Oh okay, good to know. Oh, we thought this might be 70 grand. Kirk, can you stop by and look at it, go and do your thing. He goes, oh no guys, we don’t need to do that we don’t need to do that. Here’s, we come up with numbers fast. So.

Chris: I mean, once you start doing it, it seems really vanilla and really kind of normal to talk about those numbers. I mean, but it allows you to make decisions. Yes or you can just, no decisions are good because you decided that, nope, that’s, and now move on with your life. But we make them real fast and have him managed projects, knock it out and know what we want, allows us to spend our time on stuff that helps us grow the business.

Josh: It’s huge. I mean the operators that I know that we found a lot of deals with or we partner with the apartment buildings that we own, it all requires that one guy or that one girl who’s truly the boots on the ground operator who’s actually onsite buying material, organizing the laborers, organizing the subcontractors and making sure that every single day there’s progress made.

Josh: Whether it’s stabilizing and flipping a property, whether it’s stabilizing and renting a single family, whether it’s a lease turnover when a lease comes up and you know, freshening up the paint and LVP, flooring, you’ve got to have that one person that’s onsite otherwise, because raising money and finding deals is totally scalable, right? You can raise unlimited amount of money, you could buy an unlimited amount of properties, but if you can’t stabilize them on the backend successfully, you’re going to have a whole lot of nonperforming assets, right?

Brian: Their the worst.

Josh: So yeah, that’s the worst. So big, big, big deal there. So once you have a property that stabilize, then, so tell me about your, your basically lease management, your lease subsidy of a leasing agent. How do you guys advertise and fill up your rentals?

Chris: So we did have a leasing agent actually we’re in the hunt for a new one if you know anyone good. Um, we just kind of use Facebook, Facebook Marketplace, Zillow, Trulia, Craigslist, all that stuff. We’ve actually, in the last month kind of pivoted a little bit because we have some unique properties. We’re actually started to, we’ll do some Airbnbs and we found that the gross rents on the Airbnbs in the right area can be significantly higher than the long-term stuff.

Chris: So we’re doing a little bit more of that and it’s actually seems like it’s a lot simpler lease some of these Airbnbs out than it is the long-term places. So we’ve kind of gone through a couple of different leasing agents. I’ve done some of that and I want nothing to do with it. So where we’re always looking to hire good people. So I think that’s kind of the, as we’re scaling, we have to find good people and continue to add a team members. So that’s kind of been a challenge for us lately.

Brian: That’s probably our next, my next big concentration is that leasing agent thing on our property manager who’s brought on who can literally, she’s managed large, large complexes, you know, multi hundreds of units. She has some serious experience in that. We’re probably going to shift her into some of that role here shortly, but Chris does bring up a good point. I mean we’ve been debating do we take a percentage of our portfolio and really it’s a case by case and try out some of this Airbnb stuff because it kind of stepped us into this new world. I’s pretty interesting. I mean the income from it looks good.

Brian: We’re getting a lot of inquiries and some things people looking for this like intermediate three and four month rentals instead of signing the traditional one year lease. So it’s a different way to take a good asset and make it be income producing. You know, it’s kind of something we’ve kind of systematize that pretty quick and I think we’d be silly not to just at least do small bites of that continuously if it’s the right because, the right play.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Why not? I mean, even if 85&, 90% of your portfolio was long-term rentals and you start out with 5%, 10%, 15% of it and see how it goes and then, you know, if it’s continuing to work then grow that piece. So guys, what do you think is the number one sort of principle or philosophy or strategy that you guys are operating on today that’s made you successful? You guys really only been doing this for a year. A lot of people would be like, wow, look at all the units they own. 26 properties, multiple units. It’s a lot in a short amount of time.

Josh: And to be doing it to build long-term sort of cashflow and legacy wealth, I think is really the number one reason why people get into real estate, right? It’s equity creation, it’s cashflow creation, it’s reduction of taxes. But what principle, philosophy, strategy, what do you guys do? What’s the one thing that you think that you’ve done over the past 12 months? If you could pinpoint one thing that’s allowed you to be successful, what do you think that one thing is that really stands out?

Chris: I would say for me, and Brian might have a different answer, is we’ve gotten really good coaching. So a friend of ours, Steve Morris, who owns 600 or 700 units as a coaching group, we’ve gotten into that and then we’ve plugged in some masterminds. Tim Braut’s, who’s a friend and business partner years, just started plugging in to some of his masterminds and just getting around people that are thinking bigger, that have already done things that we’re struggling through. And it seems like it, we go to these masterminds and it’s like, yeah, I’ve done this, do this, go here and do this, read this book, talk to this person.

Chris: And you can just get past these roadblocks much faster instead of trying to figure it all out on your own. Someone’s already dealt with the problem that we’re struggling with. So why not just go to them and say, what do I do? And obviously, you know, like you got to pay for these things. You got to pay for good coaching, but the best at anything have good coaches. I don’t care if it’s sports, if it’s business, if it’s whatever. I think just getting around the right people and surrounding yourself. I always try to be the dumbest, poorest person in the room and in that room, I know I’m in the right place.

Josh: There you go. Nice. I like that.

Brian: I mean, I would agree with that 110%. I mean our normal business strategy is actually super vanilla right now. We succeeded at this, let’s do it again. Do it again. Wash, rinse, repeat. But Chris kind of hit on it within that, the you don’t have to figure it out yourself. You don’t have to do it yourself. I think about myself over the years being in sales and that so many times I’m like, I don’t like how that guy’s doing it, I’m going to do it myself. I’m going to do this better for this client. I’m going to do it myself. And I think back at that time I spent that really was not valuable time spent. And probably our core thing is like, you know what, somebody has figured this out. I don’t care if it’s somebody we don’t know on some Internet forum, somebody like you guys, I mean you just you just hit your network of people.

Brian: And like you said, a lot of times we’re not the smartest guys in the room, which means your network is probably going to give you some really good insight. I mean, we do that literally weekly trying to get insight and advice from people who’ve done it before. People that are bigger. And then the coaching thing is I mean that’s easily the biggest strategy. I mean you, you said you’d go to the masterminds and you’re sitting next to people and the stuff they used to keep you up at night. If you almost look back and laugh and go, I was worried about those little things. One conversation, boom, that’s figured out and I shouldn’t be thinking like this size.

Chris: Let’s think bigger.

Josh: Nice. That’s fantastic. So guys, let’s pivot to your past. We’ve talked a little bit about where you’re at today, a little bit about your strategy and what’s important to you guys and growing your business. But where were you guys at when you started your real estate business? What helped you catch the bug? Was it something in your regular life that you were thinking like, you know, I’ve just got to do something bigger. My regular jobs not enough?

Josh: Or was it the pursuit of income, the pursuit of equity, or were you kind of running from the pain of something else? And the reason why I ask is, you know, when I was getting started in real estate, it was kind of a little bit of both. I was a financial advisor. I was advising people on all of their different income and their different financial plans, retirement plans.

Josh: And I noticed that my biggest clients didn’t just have their money in the stock market. They owned real estate. And at the same time I also hated my job. I was working tons of nights. I was working tons of weekends. I was getting porched on a regular basis. And porched in the financial planning world is when you drive out to somebody’s house that’s 45 minutes away at 8:00 o’clock on a Thursday night, you ring the doorbell, you’re on the porch and nobody answers the door.

Brian: Ouch.

Josh: So I was sick and tired of getting porched and you know, just driving out in the middle, late at night to have an evening meeting with a client and them just not showing up. And so I was really starting to resent the job and I had to find something else. And of course, real estate had all this upside as well. So what about for you guys? What pleasure were you pursuing? What did you view real estate to be as far as the upside and was there anything that you were running away from?

Chris: You want to go first?

Brian: Yeah, sure. I mean for myself, so I’m 41. I mean, it goes back to just out college. My wife was in Grad school and found an apartment and it was, I have 50 or 60 unit building and the guy was able to give her an apartment for free. She managed and paid all our expenses and she managed the place and I remember talking to the guy and thinking, you know, I’m 23 years old it was really tough to comprehend it all. But he owned the building next door and he owned that building and he always seemed like every time I saw him he was in shorts and flip flops and he’s taken his boat out and he’s this and that. And so super ignorant, but you started trying, I remember doing spreadsheets back then me and my buddy trying to figure out his business and go through like the model of how do you even do this thing?

Brian: And then you know, you fast forward a little bit. So it was always kind of in the back of my mind like that’s crazy. That’s an awesome business. And life happens. You have three kids, get married, go through all that and doing all that 2008 happens. It’s like the world’s going to fall apart and just continuously, you know, reading things, you meet successful people like you said, and oh, it turns out they own x million dollars of real estate. And as that goes on as it got more recent years here, you know, you talked about all in one year’s time we did all this. Well, previous to that one year is a lot of time talking to people.

Brian: A lot of time reading, trying to understand how do you make that leap frog, it’s easy to buy two or three properties. Anybody can kind of save up a little cash and go do that, but how do you leap frog it into a business so that amount of time doing it. And then once we partnered up and it was just hit the gas pedal and go. I mean, you put all that practice, all that learning and reading, every networking, that kind of stuff into practice and you just keep hammering at it. So, kind of a little bit of a roller coaster, but now that we’re on it, it’s full go nice.

Josh: Nice, nice.

Chris: I would say for me it’s a little bit, I played golf for a living and I was around a lot of very successful people that didn’t trade their time for money and that always intrigued me. And then both my parents died pretty young and it’s like I want to live a big life, you don’t know how long you’re on this planet for. So it’s like I want to experience the best this life have to offer. I want to go travel, I want to be able to go spend time with family, spend time with friends and not be, feel like I’m tied down to this job where you get, you get two weeks of vacation and I mean, that doesn’t seem like a life to me, right.

Chris: You talk to people that have been working for the same company for 30 years and have taken, I got three weeks of vacation this year that that’s just not how I, when I’m 80 years old, hopefully and I’m on my deathbed. That’s not how I want to tell my story. I want to live this big, amazing life and, you know, get the most out of it while I’m here.

Josh: Fantastic guys. What about the future, right? You’ve been at this for a little over 12 months, 70 units, 26 buildings. Tell us where do you see your life and your real estate investing, you know, three, five, 10 years from now.

Chris: So we’re just going to take the same strategy and start to do it on bigger buildings. So we, you know, we start out in single-family fourplex. We’ve got a 10 unit building under contract doing the same model. We actually just got an a text last night. Guys got 128 unit building he wants us to look at on Friday. And just kind of that same model. We buy it under valued, go in and renovate it. Put great tenants in there, refinance it, and just keep scaling up.

Brian: We’ve become a little magnetic. We’ve proven ourselves within a certain network that, like you said, we were together last night and Chris got the text about this, this apartment building as I’m sure you will know, opportunities start coming at us without even reaching out and trying to grab them.

Chris: Yeah.

Brian: So, you know, the, the opportunities are there to scale up. It’s going to just be up to us to continue to do it.

Chris: We’re at the Indians game last night watching batting practice on the field with one of our coaches and business partners and we got a text, hey, want to come look at a 128 unit?

Brian: We were just hanging in right field right next to home plate, so.

Chris: Things are just starting to, you know, as we’re getting better at, we close on all our deals and we’re, we’re reliable and we do what we say we do. People want us to, you know, more people want to partner up with us, which has been pretty fortunate and we have more opportunities. We’re just going to continue to take them and grow. And I don’t see an end in sight. I know we really enjoy doing what we’re doing here and scaling and growing.

Chris: So I don’t know, maybe we’ll own 10,000 units here in a couple of years and start buying jets like Grant Cardone.

Josh: Nice, nice.

Brian: It is a fascinating thing. And just to be able to like for me personally to teach, my kids are young, the oldest is 12 but to teach them that this is the way this happens. I mean they’ve come down to our properties and we’ve brought them before. Actually Memphis was with us at the Bailey, it was destroyed. It was uninhabited. It looked like destroyed, she helped me like much drywall and tear it and she’s like, oh my gosh, what is this? Then she was there when we finished it and now it’s a cashflowing properties in like, you know, they’re like, oh, this is how this works, you know? But yeah, I mean when I was 12 or when I was 25 no one would ever, and it was nobody’s fault. I didn’t learn that and no one ever taught me how this works and how the flow of the money works and how the deals work. It just didn’t, didn’t, wasn’t there for me.

Josh: So you’re going to pass that along to your kids, Huh? Help them understand entrepreneurship and man even if kids are doctors or lawyers or nurses or teachers they’re going to own real estate right on the side. So much like you and much like me, you know, if you have your regular day job and you kind of catch the bug and then you’re like, okay, I’m out, I’m done. So even if my kids think they want to be, you know, a technician of some kind doing a job, I hope they catch the real estate bug, owned some properties with me and then eventually leave that job. Much like the three of us have done. So guys, tell me about it.

Chris: The beauty of it is if you want to go and be a doctor or a painter or anything, real estate can give you the freedom to not have to trade your time for money and go do whatever you want and you have income coming in. So go do whatever you want. I think people that have time and freedom on their hands can start doing big things instead of worrying about trading your time for money and always worried about having it. You’ve had some health issues I have as well. When if you can’t work for a long periods of time because of some health issues, that money goes away pretty quickly. That alone is a big reason to have that passive income coming in in case something happens to you or your family, you don’t have to worry about not having to work.

Brian: And that’s really, really good point.

Josh: Yeah, it’s what it’s all about guys. I mean passive cashflow and pursuit of basically personal freedom. You know, I was talking with Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank who spoke at one of my events and we were talking in the green room before and after his keynote and you know, Kevin and I were just talking about personal freedom. He’s like, that’s really the definition of entrepreneurship. If you’re pursuing personal freedom, you know, the freedom to do what you want. You know, obviously the income and the wealth and the equity and all that stuff comes with it. If you’re successful, a lot of businesses are not successful, but the definition of an entrepreneur according to Kevin, was anybody who is pursuing personal and they’re willing to risk not having the quote unquote guarantee of a job and regular, recurring, you know, paycheck. In order to be an entrepreneur, you are now an entrepreneur.

Josh: If you’re pursuing personal freedom, that’s really what it’s about, right? To be able to go with your kids or go on a boat, take some time off, do what you want. But obviously it comes with a ton of hard work too. So guys as we kind of round third here and head for home. Tell me a little bit about some of the deals that you guys have done that have either worked out way better than expected or way worse than expected. What’s maybe one of the craziest deals you guys have done in the past year? What challenges did you face and how did you, you know, successfully exit that deal or make that deal work?

Chris: One of the better deals, we bought, we just, we’re just about to refinance. We bought this property in Ohio state for$61,000 we put $40,000 grand into it. We owed our lenders 10% so we’re all to it for $115,000 and just appraised at $250,000. We’re going to take 65%, we’re going to put a 65% loan and we’re going to get $40,000 grand in cash. And we turned it into an Airbnb and the thing is grossing like $4,700 a month, which is crazy, which is like three times what we get in rent. We’re like that kind of spurred us on to start doing more Airbnbs. Like this is ridiculous.

Brian: That was our first experiment. That was our first one.

Chris: That was our first Airbnb. Now we’re like, oh, let’s turn everything we own into an Airbnb. We’re not going to do that. You know, and some of the bad ones, we’ve just, nothing’s been something that’s not fixable. Maybe you go into a property and you start opening walls up and you have to spend more money on the rehab. I mean real estate, it seems like almost anything can be fixed over time, right. There’s been nothing that’s just been, oh my God, this is going to ruin us.

Brian: It just shifts a little bit and go. I mean one of our, I mean most of the stuff you said it’s been bad. It’s been very just kind of simple plain Jane. One of the first deals we did with you guys is one that was delayed. I mean we thought we had big, big plans. We were going to turn this into this three unit building all let’s get a couple of drawings drawn up and go to the city and that property would have been cash flowing three to four months ago because we didn’t, we thought it was easy to go to the city and get this thing changed and it’s delayed the project by forever. It’s going to be an awesome property. But like that’s one of the biggest kind of like…

Chris: Getting permits and stuff like that.

Brian: Struggles things we’ve had and it’s not an exciting story that every time we see it we’re like, this place is going to be awesome. It should have been awesome back in April already, you know?

Josh: Right.

Chris: No, like earth shattering things have happened to us yet. Maybe they will. But again, like we talked to, one of my buddies was like, you can figure out almost any problem. We’ll just go like Tim or Steve and like, Hey, what do you do here? And they’ll be like, oh just do this or a freaking out about it. And it’s like, oh, okay, I’ll go do that, it’s pretty simple, so.

Josh: Nice.

Chris: Having good mentors is important.

Josh: Yeah. And you know, speaking of mentors and mentoring and kind of getting advice. Last question for you guys before we wrap, which is if you think back at your younger former self, it could be a year ago when you guys got really going with your real estate business or it could be 15, 20 years ago when you guys were maybe graduating from college and starting your adult life, what would be the number one piece of advice that you would give to our audience or give to your younger former self?

Chris: I would have gone in and worked for someone in the real estate business immediately and I would have started buying real estate from day one. That’s my biggest regret is I didn’t start this earlier. I always read, I’ve always read a lot of books. I’ve always been interested in real estate and things like that, but I didn’t take action for a long time. I was so focused on trying to get onto the PGA tour. And then once I finally take action and you start finding the right people, it’s like, why did I not do this sooner? That’s my biggest regret and that’s what I would’ve told myself to get started sooner. Now, what’s that, when’s the best time to plant a tree? 30 years ago. When’s the next big time right now and I think that’s probably the most applicable thing for me.

Josh: Got It.

Brian: Yeah. I mean easy, I’d be the same way. I mean, you get programmed into the here I go. I mean, you know, I guess it just, maybe even from previous generations, you got to get good grades, get the good job, do that, and then you can plateau out. You can do great at your job. You’re making, you’re making good money. Even in a sales role. It can’t keep scaling up like that. It just doesn’t really exist in very many places versus this. And I noticed at age 25 when I had gone, even if I did every ounce of the work myself at age 25 find a way and borrow money from family, friends, do whatever you can and buy a place and fix it up in your spare time and rent it and do that again.

Brian: I mean, I didn’t just even started out simple like that. You know, and then obviously it would have just allowed me to keep spring boarding springboard up, up, up a little bit versus, you know, us doing it now. I mean, you talked to a 24 year old, even about it now and they’re probably scared, scared shitless to this. Like, how would I even do that? How would I, how would I, how would I, and it’s like, just go do it. What’s the worst case that happens? You know what I mean? What’s worse thing?

Josh: Right. Yeah. And like you said many times during this interview, like being around other people who’ve already been there, who are kind of at the place that you want to be or who, just five or six or seven steps ahead of you and being right there with them. I mean, I’ve, you know, I use the term r and d all the time, right? Not Research and development, but rip off and duplicate and, and so, you know, I would say I actually learned that, I heard that for the first time from the guy who originally founded the company, 1-800-GOT-JUNK. And he literally said in an interview very similar to this interview that he never had an original idea that he literally built the business off of simply watching other people.

Josh: And he took the words like not reinventing the wheel, literally. And he literally said, I’m going to take and rip off and duplicate. And steal every great idea I can from every mastermind I can from every coach and mentor I can and I’m going to put that into this business. And so he was just really transparent and upfront about R and D and I just love that. I heard that years and years ago and I think it’s phenomenal. So guys listen, we really love and appreciate the partnership with you guys and funding all the transactions for you guys that we’ve done. We continue to look forward to that going forward.

Chris: Yeah, you guys have been great partners. We really appreciate how you guys have helped us grow and you guys have been, you know, like traditional banks, it feels like, ah, you’re a bank but you guys really feel like a business partner and you guys really kind of help us streamline things and grow. So we appreciate your business as well. It’s been a good partnership.

Brian: Yeah, 100 percent. A member of the team for sure.

Josh: Yeah. So, hey guys, before I let you run, I’m sure there’s going to be hundreds, thousands of people who listen to this and really, really enjoy it. Our audience is growing and our community is getting bigger and if any of them want to reach out to you guys and touch base, invest with you wholesale properties to you, just connect with you, become a private lender. Just learn more about your business. What’s a good place that they can connect with you? You guys have phone number, email, website, Facebook page. What’s a good place for them to connect?

Chris: Yeah, so you can contact me on Instagram, Chris.Walsh.Cle. You can email me at CWAL4181@gmail.com and our website’s being built right now, so that should be done hopefully in the next week or two. And you want to text me (440) 829-7141. Don’t call me I want to answer, but if you texts me, you want to lend us some money, I’ll give you a call back.

Brian: Same for me, Brian.J.Laporte@gmail. (440) 665-9172.

Chris: He’ll answer the phone.

Brian: Yeah, maybe. Send the old texts is the is the best way. Instagram Brian.Laporte96 and shoot us something. We’re always interested in talking to good people. If anyone’s interested in partnering up in some way, you can’t, you can’t meet enough good people kind of is what we say.

Josh: Perfect. Thanks guys. Look forward to seeing you guys you know, quadruple your portfolio over the next 12 months or so and just be major players in the Cleveland market and we’re happy to be a part of it. So guys, thanks so much for joining us. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of accelerated investor, leave us a rating, leave us a review, share it on social media, leave the comments and questions right on the rent on the page, AcceleratedInvestorPodcast.com right in iTunes. Let us know how we did look, let us know what questions or comments you have for Brian and Chris and we’ll see you guys on the next episode. Thanks so much for being here. We’ll talk to you soon.

Chris: Thanks Josh.

Brian: Thanks 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.