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 your investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor, I’m so excited to be with you today, whether you’re at the gym, whether you’re hanging out with friends, whether you’re at your office. I just want to thank you for taking the time to spend with me each and every week, whether it’s a solo cast like this or when we have a guest. And just leveling up your game, leveling up your investing, leveling up your entrepreneurship, and hopefully I’m having a big impact on your life, a big impact on your investing and hopefully part of your journey to take you and your business. You’re investing in your relationships to the absolute next level. Thank you so much for all of you who have been sharing on social media, asking questions, leading ratings and reviews, whether it’s on iTunes as a podcast or the different iTunes platforms or YouTube.

I just know that we’ve been getting tons of great feedback and thousands and thousands and thousands of listens and downloads. And so I’m so excited to be part of your journey. Today I want to answer a very important question. Actually yesterday I was on the phone with a potential investor who is looking at investing in either our fund or in our private lender opportunities or in our apartments that we invest in. And he asked me a question and he says, Hey, Josh, I did some research on you. Tell me why, if you’re so successful with real estate, why do you coach? Why do you have an investment business if it’s so successful? Why do you also have, basically an information publishing, coaching, training business? And he went all the way back to the 1980’s and referenced some of the late night TV infomercial gurus, which I thought it was entertaining because I bought some products from those guys back in the 90s and the early two thousands.

And so I want to answer that question today. If you’re so successful with real estate, why do you coach? Why do you educate? And I have a three-pronged answer. So three parts, three steps. And it’s a fair question. I think anybody who’s a student or people on social media or people on podcast or in this case, this particular investor who’s very accredited, who’s got millions of dollars and who is considering making an investment with me and my business, he says, you know, well, it, you know, if you’re so successful, you know, why do you educate? You know, what’s in it for you. And he also asked me to what makes a successful student? So I want to answer those questions today. So if you’re so successful with real estate, why do you educate? So first of all, I want to answer that in three parts.

Number one, it’s in my DNA to coach and educate. I can tell you that when I was in college and I was in high school, I was pretty much the captain of every team I was on. It was in my DNA to not only play the game but to also help be sort of a coach on the field with everybody else that I was playing with. Like I tried to not only be the best player but also be a mentor to the younger guys or to lead the team. Or when I was in the huddle during football to talk a little bit more to motivate my team when I was in college and I was a senior, I was a captain on the football team when I graduated from college and I started as a financial advisor I was quickly identified by my boss to not only be a big producer and a good financial planner, but also to be a potential good mentor to the new financial planners that had come on board.

Many of the new financial planners, I was 23, 24, 25 years old. Many of them were 50 and 60 years old. They were twice my age and I was mentoring them on how to grow their financial planning practice. And then when I got into real estate right away, in the first couple of months, I started full time in 2004 basically June of 2004 and by July, August of that year, I had brought in 10 guys who I knew I could mentor but who could also bring me deal flow for us to wholesale, buy, do short sales, do investments, do flips. And I realized I could quickly scale my business from just me and my business partner to 10 more people if I could coach other folks. If I could coach other, you know, want to be entrepreneurs, coach other new investors. And in my first full calendar year in real estate, we were able to do a hundred transactions, a hundred wholesale deals, a hundred short sales because we blended investing with coaching.

And so the first thing that I recognize is it’s in my DNA to be a coach. Also, when I was in my mid twenties I wasn’t married yet, I didn’t have kids. I volunteered to coach a sixth grade basketball team at Saint Ambrose school. Even though I didn’t have a player, a friend, I didn’t have a cousin. I didn’t have a niece or a nephew or a son or a daughter on the team. It was just in my DNA. I wanted to coach. I like to be on the field. I like to be out in the field in real estate. I like to be on the court coaching a team. So it’s in my DNA and today as a CEO and as a founder of multiple businesses, I’m essentially coaching my team every day, coaching us to think through blind spots, to come up with marketing campaigns, funnels, buying properties, creating relationships, raising private money.

My job as a CEO today is to coach my team, my staff, and help them level up their game. And so when you’re a CEO, when you’re a founder, when you’re growing a business, it’s going to be part of the job description to coach other people, whether you’re coaching students or borrowers or passive investors or your own internal team, your own internal staff coaching other people. Has to be part of your DNA if you’re going to be a successful CEO. But luckily I was born and raised in an entrepreneurial family, my father owned a employee benefits business and I saw my dad coach his employees. So if you’re going to be educating, it has to be in your DNA. So when people say, well, Josh, if you’re so successful at real estate, why do you coach? The first piece is not only is it in my DNA, but it’s required of a good CEO to be a good coach, okay. So that’s the first reason.

The second reason is that coaching, I found back in 2004 when I coached my first group of that first 8 or 10 mentor students in my own market to help me find more wholesale deals, I realized that it could be wildly profitable to coach. I realized that by taking my knowledge and helping other people, we could do more deals. We could make more money and in that arrangement, instead of them paying me to coach them, I coached them for free in order for them to bring me more deal flow. Bring me more deals and we split those deals up. And so I realized that coaching can be a very profitable business. When I was a financial advisor, I got an override from the office, from the general manager of the office, paid me an override to mentor other new financial advisors.

I realized that was a profitable business. I realized and 2007 when I did my first live training event, all the way back over 12 years ago, and I did my first live event, we sold a coaching program. I realized that group of 12 or 15 people that we mentored, not only did they pay us to coach them, but they did way more deals and made way more money than the students that did not get involved in coaching. So I realized very quickly that being a coach, being a mentor could be a very profitable business. Whether I was getting paid by doing more deals or whether I was getting paid an upfront fee to turn around and coach people, okay. Coaching is almost like running a marketing agency. If you think about a marketing agency, somebody invoices you, you pay them a fee, let’s say it’s $5,000 bucks a month, and they turn around and provide services to help you build your business, okay.

Coaching is very much the same. People pay me a fee, sometimes a very, very large five and six figure fee to coach them and in exchange I’m implanting all of my knowledge of 15 years in the real estate business, into their brain, giving them shortcuts, helping them identify blind spots that they would never, ever identify if they were operating alone. So number one, it’s in my DNA. Number two, I realized that coaching can be a profitable business. Now, Strategic Real Estate Coach, which is my coaching and information publishing, my media company, is a wildly profitable business. And so was it smart to be coaching people to be giving away both free and paid content? The answer is absolutely yes.

Now the third reason is within that ecosystem of coaching people out outside of just coaching and getting paid to be a coach, it’s also created, again, a tremendous amount of deal flow all the way back to 2004 and then when we started actually selling coaching in 2007 and we still sell coaching programs today. Those students, whether they’re paying us to buy one our books for you know, a free plus shipping offer or whether it’s a $40,000 coaching program, they’re all part of our ecosystem. So now they become not just a student, but they become multiple other things where we can work together, meaning we can fund their deals for them and some of those students become borrowers. Some of those students become passive investors with us. Some of those students give us and bring us deal flow. Some of those students refer us to other people who are doing deals, who are bringing us borrowers.

They refer us, they give us good comments. They also give us great feedback. Sometimes negative feedback of things we could have done better, but this ecosystem that’s been created through the coaching program has allowed us to do a lot more deals, have a tremendous amount more credibility, raise a lot more capital, find a lot more apartments. And when I walk into a room now, for the most part, when I’m in a real estate room, many of the people in the room already know me, right. Versus if I didn’t have a coaching business and I tried to walk into a room, I would have to build my credibility. I’d have to stack my credibility by talking about all the deals I did and how long I’ve been investing. And you know that we own 2200 units of apartments and we’ve done 700 deals and we’ve done 400 private lender loans.

I’d have to explain all that now because I have a coaching business and we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ratings and reviews on this podcast and on our website and on our Facebook page, we have all that I already get, I get asked to be on podcasts, I get asked to be on YouTube videos. I get asked to speak on stages and share content with people and I have a tremendous amount more credibility within my ecosystem that allows me to do more deals, okay. So if you’re so successful, Josh, with real estate, why do you educate? Number one, it’s in my DNA. I would do it anyway because I just love it. I love coaching. I love helping both real estate students and you know, sports athletes, I love it. Number two, it’s a profitable business and number three, the ecosystem allows us to have credibility and do more deal flow.

So how does this relate back to you? Well, if you’re going to be a real estate investor, entrepreneur, and especially for those of you out there that are already intermediate to advanced, right, what can you take away? Well first, if you open up the opportunity that you say that you’re going to coach others, what is that going to do for you? Well, first of all, it’s got to be in your DNA if you’re not willing to help other people for free. If you’re not willing to help other people and give, right? Giving starts the receiving process. So if you’re not willing to give content or give coaching to someone, if it’s not in your DNA, then don’t do it. But most people like to see other people succeed. Most people are, you know, selfless and they like to help. And so if it’s in your DNA like it is for me, then become a coach. Mentor some other people.

Number two, coaching can become a profitable business for you. You can mentor other people. They can either pay you to coach them or bring you more deal flow or both, okay? You can actually do more deals and scale your business by having mentor students or by mentoring other people. And number three, if you build a bigger ecosystem of people who follow you, people who are mentored by you, you’ll number one, do more deals. You’ll recruit more private money, you will have more influence. You’ll have a bigger YouTube channel, you’ll have a bigger podcasting channel, you’ll have a bigger email marketing list. You’ll have a bigger Facebook following, which is all going to allow you again, to do two things, which is get more deals and find more private money, right? So for all of the same reasons that I educate, even though I have a successful real estate business, even all those reasons why I educate, you should do the same thing.

Even if you’re relatively new, you should do the same thing. If it’s in your DNA, it can be a profitable business and your ecosystem will allow you to do more deals, okay? So those are all the reasons why educate. And for those of you out there that are haters, that are trolls, that are thinking like, why does he educate? Why does he do that if he’s so successful? Now you know my reasons why, whether you like it or not, I really don’t care. Those are my reasons. It’s been wildly successful for us and I hope you enjoyed my explanation. And frankly, if you don’t enjoy it, then unsubscribe. Stop listening because I could care less.

There’s so many people who do care, who do want to be mentored, that do want to do more deals, that do want to invest more money and they’re willing to bring us deals or invest in coaching. And I know we’re doing it and we have a very authentic reason behind it. I’m very proud of it. It’s not something that I shy away from. We’re super proud of it. I think a lot of people are frankly jealous about the amount of influence that we’ve created. All right, so those are my reasons for being a coach on top of my real estate investing business. And I hope you can become a coach in your own business as well.

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.