Josh Cantwell: So, hey, guys, welcome back. Hey, it’s Josh Cantwell with Accelerated Real Estate Investor. Thank you so much for being here today. Got a bunch of new ratings and reviews of the podcast lately. So, for all of you, I want to say thank you. And we just had tons of people on our webinars that we’ve been doing. If you haven’t registered for one of our live webinars, go to FreelandVentures.com and jump on our Contact Us form and our mailing list to be included in some of our training webinars in our investment webinars. And I wanted to basically introduce a new guest today on the show. His name is Tony Javier. He has done over a thousand real estate deals. His company has been ranked and rated in the Inc 5000 of fastest growing companies in America. He automates his business through two ways, which I think this is a really cool interview that you’re going to like. He automates his business two ways. One, TV ads. So, we’re going to talk specifically about getting deal flow through TV commercials and why that’s better than radio, why that’s better than Facebook ads. So, you’re going to love that part of the interview. Secondly, Tony also has a niche in gap funding. So, he’s able to insert himself into a lot of deal flow when people are getting maybe a hard money loan or private money loan for a residential deal and he brings in that last 20% or 30% that somebody needs for the down payment and for the closing costs, the soft costs.

And Tony has a unique program that I’m not aware of other people doing where he will gap fund that shortfall, that 20% to 30% that people need for their flips. Tony is also considering doing this on commercial deals for apartments. So, those of you that are doing commercial and following the podcast for commercial, I think you’ll love to hear that. And so, I’m excited to have this interview. Tony also spends a lot of time on the interview talking about the mastermind and how much importance the mastermind has had in his business, the gap funding, and the TV commercial programs. And I think you’re going to love the way he automates his business using these two specific niches. So, enjoy the interview on Accelerated Real Estate Investor with me and Tony Javier. Here we go.

[INTERVIEW]

Josh Cantwell: So, hey, Tony. Listen, so excited to have you on Accelerated Real Estate Investor. Thanks for carving out a few minutes. Let’s get jumped in right away. So, how are you today?

Tony Javier: Doing good. It’s good to connect, Josh.

Josh Cantwell: Absolutely. Tony, so love to hear from guests, you know, what they’re up to right now that gets them going like deals, what kind of partnerships they’re doing, events in books, what they’re kind of up to right now today that they’re really excited for, that really gets them out of bed, what they’re passionate for. So, tell us about you. Tell us about your business. What’s going on right now?

Tony Javier: Oh, man. Lots of great things going on. You know, I’ve been in business 20 years now. Any time is a good time to invest but right now there are so many great things going on in the real estate world where right now if you find opportunities, there are so many ways to capitalize on them. So, over 20 years, I’ve done close to 1,000 flips in my residential business. I still love that business. I don’t spend a lot of time in that business because I’ve got a great team in place. So, really, right now, what I love is helping other real estate investors in many facets. So, I’ve got a TV program that I’ve mentioned to you that I’m helping real estate investors around the country do TV commercials. I’m actually partnering and doing TV commercials now with those clients, some of those clients, and doing deals together. And I think the biggest thing I like right now is that I found an opportunity to help other real estate investors by funding their deals that normally they wouldn’t have been able to fund. So, the way it came about is a couple of years ago, I had a hard money lender come to me and say, “Hey, I’ve got guys that can find really good deals. They can get approved for these loans because they’re good properties. They just don’t have the money to do these deals.”

And so, he put together this program. He did a couple of deals himself and he came to me and he said, “Hey, I’m running out of money. Can you help fund some of these deals through my real estate investors?” So, I did that for a couple of years. On the side, he would send me deals. I’d fund down payments for real estate investors. I got good returns. They got good returns. It did really well. And then finally, last year I said, “You know what, I really think I need to get this out to other real estate investors and figure out how to help them fund more deals,” because, as you know, like cash is king and a lot of investors don’t have a lot of cash to do a lot of deals. They may be able to do one themselves. They may be able to do two. But to be able to scale a real business and have the capital to do many different projects at a time is really tough. So, that’s really what I love right now is that I’m starting to scale that part up where I’m helping other real estate investors fund deals by bringing down payments so they can cover their closing costs and down payments. And then we’re now figuring out how to bring first mortgage lending into that mix as well. So, that’s what I love right now about what we’re doing in our business.

Josh Cantwell: Nice, Tony. So, let’s peel back the onion a little bit. You’ve done a thousand deals. You have obviously created a niche here. We ran a private equity fund for a long time. We did first mortgage lending for private money and hard money loans, resi and commercial, and absolutely what you just said is accurate in that a lot of people maybe find 10 good deals but they can only fund two of them. We didn’t want to approve people for more than a few loans at a time because they didn’t have the equity to put the downstroke and some money up for the rehab draw to start the rehab process and then get reimbursed. So, give me an example. Let’s say somebody finds a property they can buy for $150,000, needs $40,000 of improvements, they’re into it for 190-ish plus soft costs, maybe 200. And the deal’s going to flip and sell for, let’s say, north of 250, maybe 260, 280, something like that. So, they’re all in for roughly 70% and the down payment might be 20% of the deal. So, if you’re all in for 200, it might be roughly 40,000. It could be structured a couple of different ways. It could be 20% of the purchase price plus the soft costs. Either way, it’s probably around $30,000 to $40,000 down to get the deal started and get closing costs funded. How does it work? Under that example, how would you come in? What would you charge? How can people work with you?

Tony Javier: Now, that’s a great example because those numbers are pretty similar to what we deal with. So, typically, hard money lenders are going to require anywhere from 10% to 30% down. It’s usually 20%. So, 20% is spot on. So, on a $150,000 purchase, they’re going to need $30,000 down. Sometimes the hard money lender will allow them to borrow 100% of the renovations, sometimes 90. But any which way on a deal like that, it’s typically around 50, 55, maybe $60,000 that’s needed between down payment, closing costs, and if the lender requires reserves. So, what we’ll do is we’ll bring that $60,000 is the second position. It’s very risky for us because if it defaults, then the first position has first rights, and then whatever’s leftover, we may potentially get. So, we are taking a very high-risk position. So, the terms are going to be higher than what you went on the first position. We take a second position and we fund that deal so that the investor typically has very little, if any, money in that deal. So, that allows them to do more deals. There’s just a lot of different benefits to it. And I’ve been doing this for a long time so I have a lot of newer investors that will take advantage of our program. And coaching isn’t a part of it but I have so many students that will come to me and be like, “Hey, I had a contractor issue. I had whatever kind of issues.”

So, I offer my consulting to them like, “Hey, let’s jump on the phone. I want to help you get through this deal,” not only because I want to get paid but I’ve been through these growing pains throughout the years and I really like that side of it as well. Not only helping other investors do these deals but also trying to figure out how to help them do it more efficiently. And people have brought me deals and I don’t say, “Don’t do this deal,” but I’m like, “I wouldn’t do this deal.” You know what I’m saying? So, there are other things outside of just the lending that we provide with that. And, you know, just mentoring people through the deal flow and trying to run numbers correctly and just run the projects more efficiently is what we love to do as well.

Josh Cantwell: How do you guys get paid? Like, do you guys charge what kind of interest rates, profits? You guys charge an equity share of the deal? How does that work for you guys?

Tony Javier: Yeah. We charge a flat fee. So, I don’t do a bunch of jump points and all kinds of different fees. I just do one fee. It sounds kind of high but it’s typically a minimum of 20% of the loan. So, if someone asks for $50,000, we’re going to charge $10,000 on that deal. The rate is high when you look at it from the standpoint of just an interest rate but it is a smaller part of the deal and you got to realize the risk we’re taking in that. I mean, if someone doesn’t do any renovations to the property or gets halfway through and quits like we’re not getting that money back, whereas the first position lenders if they’re not made whole, they’re going to get probably a good portion of their money back even on a deal that goes bad. So, we take a riskier position. We get higher returns for it. And that also allows us to get higher returns for our investors as well because I only have so much money to do those deals. I’ve proven it out with all the projects we have done. We’ve really only had two projects that have gone “bad.” One, we actually got our money back and then some because we rehabbed the project and put it on the market. And right now, I’m going through one where we’re trying to figure out if we’re just going to dispo it and get part of our money back if we’re going to rehab it and get all of it back. But any which way, we have room to bring other investors in on those deals and get them at least a 20% return on their money.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. So, the borrower essentially has got the first mortgage, the second mortgage. But on second, they just got to cut a check and come up with the money for the 20% of your loan amount, and they’re getting access to buybacks or 6X, whatever their cost is. So, if their cost is $10,000, you guys are funding $50,000. That’s 20% of 50, and it’s just a way for them to get access to more capital. Again, slightly more expensive but it’s the toughest money to get. It’s the money that most people don’t have and it’s what’s holding them back from doing a lot more deals. As you guys are getting paid to put up that money and it’s a great return for you, certainly, when we ran our private equity fund, that would have solved a huge niche for a lot of people and a huge value-add for a lot of folks to be able to bring those dollars in. Tony, are you guys funding deals all over the country or are there certain states you guys work in, certain regions? Tell me about that.

Tony Javier: Yeah. All over the country. We just happen to find a lot of deals in Texas for some reason. I don’t know. We funded a lot of deals in Texas. But I think the only state we’re not funding right now is Oregon mainly because there’s lending laws there from what I understand. It’s a little bit of a gray area where you’re supposed to have a brick-and-mortar in order to do any kind of loans there. But other than that, we haven’t found any other states. We may come across one or two others that have some weird things that maybe we don’t want to lend there. But, yeah, we’re doing them all over the country and it’s really about the borrower and the deal. If we have a pretty good borrower, they don’t have to have great credit. I’ve got people that have brought me really good deals and not only did they not have the money but they eventually figured out that they couldn’t qualify either because they didn’t have the credit or they had to have the reserves themselves in the bank. So, I’ve actually signed on those loans for other people and JV’d with them on those deals so we can get pretty creative by doing deals, you know, not only all over the country but structuring them in different ways.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. Love it. You guys ever do commercial stuff or did you see a commercial in the future?

Tony Javier: Well, interesting enough, I just had a deal sent to me yesterday and I was like, “Did my guy add an extra zero or two zeros to the end of this deal? Because I think it was close to a $100 million deal. It was like 70 some million. I don’t know. I have to look through the numbers again. But, yeah, we’re looking at commercial deals now. We’d like to do smaller deals that are like $50,000 to $100,000 gap fund deals and if they’re first positions also, then we can do obviously a lot higher than that. But we typically stick to residential. We’ve had some commercial deals sent to us that we just haven’t quite done yet. But if the deal makes sense and we figure we can put it together, then we would definitely do commercial as well.

Josh Cantwell: I love it. Awesome stuff, Tony. So, you’ve had a lot of success, thousand deals that you’ve done. You’re JV-ing with a lot of people now through this gap funding type of program but it all started somewhere. So, help us understand where you got going. Like, how did this begin for you, this journey? You know, were you at a W-2 situation and sort of trying to create some extra income? You know, when did you kind of catch the itch and when did real estate become a passion for you?

Tony Javier: Yeah. So, I started 20 years ago, a long time ago. When I say 20 years ago, some people were like, “Did you start when you were 15?” I’m like, “Thank you. I appreciate that.” But I actually started when I was 21. I was in college. I was waiting tables and I was I think at the time I was a junior, yeah, junior. I think maybe I just started my junior year in college. So, luckily, I had a little bit more time on the side. I mean, working and going to school obviously put together is probably pretty close to full time. But I still had summers and all that kind of stuff to do to have a little bit more time and not as much responsibility when married and have kids and all that kind of stuff. So, I was able to dedicate a lot of time to real estate my first couple of years to where I did it on the side and then eventually, after about two years, quit my job and quit school with nine hours left to graduate, believe it or not. I still have six hours, no, I had three hours left to go because I went back and took three hours and I found out three hours dropped off of what I was supposed to have. And so, I have three hours left to graduate, believe it or not. That’s typical entrepreneur, right? You know, we get to the finish line and figure out how to distract ourselves with something else. But now it’s worked out and I bought an info product on TV called No Down Payment by Carleton Sheets. I know you’ve heard of that.

Josh Cantwell: For sure. I got one.

Tony Javier: Yeah. A lot of people have that. So, that’s how I got started. Just started buying properties with no money down. Had my dad cosign on the first couple of properties, help me with a down payment on one of them, and been buying properties pretty much no money down since then. You know, we bring in a lot of investors on our deals because we’re doing pretty good volume and, yeah, just scaled up the business. About five or six years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to kind of step out of the operations of my business from Wichita, Kansas and I now live in San Diego and have a really good team that manages my operation out there.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. Fantastic stuff. Help me understand the team. You are investing now virtually from San Diego into Wichita. You’re able to focus on the funding side of the business, the gap funding side of the business. That’s a way to kind of leverage operators to JV with other operators to allow you to have some scale. So, it’s not just your team in Wichita but the people that you’re gap funding for. Tell me about some of the important players on your team. Who are some of the folks that or whether they’re in your lending business or your rehabbing business that kind of are the glue? Typically, what I find in a lot of businesses that are successful, it could be real estate or any other type of business, there’s usually a leadership team, a couple of people, guys, girls, three or four members who really drive the bus that really push the thing forward. Who is that in your business? What do they do? And why are they so important?

Tony Javier: Yeah. That’s a great question. That, to me, is the key to the success of any business. You can have the greatest marketing, you can have all the money lined up in the world, but like if you don’t have people to operate your business, you can only do so much. First ten years of my business, I had a lot of the wrong people and it showed. Even though I was growing, it was so painful to grow. Now, it’s like 20 years or 10 years after the first 10 years, like after I started figuring out the people part of it and just some things maybe we’ll get into here like the growth of it is just so much easier. I’ve started a bunch of businesses in the last few years that are growing significantly and it has to do with people. So, from a flipping and operations standpoint, I had a vision for my business once I figured out I needed more people. So, I kind of hit rock bottom at one point. I had to fire my staff for the second time like literally my whole staff within like 30 days was gone for many different reasons. And so, when I looked at rebuilding, I’m like, “Okay. I need to hire better people, need to have better systems in place.” And then there are obviously many other things that come into play. But when I started envisioning it, I said, “Okay.” Now, I took everything back. I was doing acquisitions, I was doing the marketing, I was doing the disposition, I was doing the project management and I thought I needed to do a lot of those to have control of the business because I thought I could do it the best.

So, I started envisioning, “Okay. How can I have different departments and start building those out?” So, the first thing I hired was my sister who is with me to this day. She’s the glue to my business. She took over, did the admin role and the property management, had a bunch of rental properties. So, that right there was the stuff that was taking a lot of my time wasn’t quite as important. And then as we started hiring, I’d say, “Okay. What are the different divisions?” Then we hired a transaction coordinator, then we hired an acquisitions person. And then my sister went from property management, hired another property manager. We moved her over to acquisitions. And then there’s a couple of other roles. I can’t remember if I said transaction coordination, marketing. There are all these departments we had to fill. But what it comes down to is that the key integrator is the one that really is going to get things like organizing system so visionary and integrator. Visionary is someone that sees it. Integrator is the one that can actually push the buttons and organize everything and really get it into motion. And so, my sister was my first true integrator where if I gave her something, I knew it was going to be done and I could just throw as many things at her as I possibly could, and she could get it done.

So, now, as I’m building these other businesses, I’m finding other integrators for my business. So, I have a TV program that I’ve got an integrator there. I’m fully entrenched in that because I’m helping grow that. And then the gap funding, same thing. I’ve got an integrator that takes the deals. They underwrite them, they send them to me on a platter and say, “Hey, I want to approve this deal.” And then I own a co-working space. I’ve got integrators in that business. So, what it comes down to is getting really good people in place and finding that one person at least in each business that you can have them help organize whatever it is in that business that needs to be organized, that when you start scaling it, you start hiring. It’s way more put together as opposed to before I was just throwing stuff against the wall and not having that one really good key person to be the glue of everything.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. Love it. Tony, looking back now with all the success that you’ve had and the JV deals that you’re doing, you’re like most of us, very kind of meager, very modest start doing deals. What kind of advice would you give your younger former self? Like, when you think back with the last 20 years or what you did right, what you did wrong, we often learned the most from the mistakes that we made. The wins are great but you learn by losing and you learn by screwing things up but you learn the most that way. What have you learned along the way? What kind of advice would you give our audience and your younger former self about what you did right and wrong? And what kind of things would you encourage people to do to really scale up faster than you or I ever have?

Tony Javier: Yeah. That’s a great question, Josh. You know, I get that question quite a bit. Twenty years, you know this. I mean, you go through so many painful things through entrepreneurship, right? So, if I could go back and tell myself 20 years ago, like, “Hey, you need to do these things,” man, it would be such a game-changer. I would say when I think of that question, there’s probably two main things that come to mind. Now, I’m a residential real estate investor by heart. So, for me, TV commercials are a no-brainer. So, if anybody’s getting into residential real estate, you know, people think it’s really expensive and really hard to get into and all that kind of stuff but we have a really good program where we help not only experienced investors, but new investors get on TV and help them scale up their business very fast and very quickly. So, I wish I would have found TV sooner. I found it 11 years in the business, so I started nine years ago. So, that’s one thing is if you can afford it, it’s not as expensive as you think but doing TV commercials may just help with so much branding and credibility and getting leads right away. It’s a really good marketing method that not many people are doing. So, that’s one thing.

And then from just the business standpoint, it’s surrounding yourself with people that are doing what you want to do and where you want to be. So, I’m sure you run or a part of mastermind groups, Josh, like just being around other like-minded people that are doing great things, seeing people do things around the country differently than you that you can implement your business, being able to ask people like, “Hey, I’m having these challenges,” and then being able to give their experience, seeing people doing, you know, the first mastermind I went to, I want to say I was doing a little over 50 deals a year and I was seeing guys doing like 300 deals a year. And I’m like, “I didn’t even know people were doing 300 deals a year.” And then all of a sudden, my deal flow started going up quite a bit. So, that could be in the form of coaches, mentors, and mastermind groups. So, just like leaning on other people and figuring out how to get to that next step faster as opposed to, again, I compare the first 10 years of my business to the second 10 years. The first 10 years was me putting my head down, trying to figure things out myself, and not asking for help. These last 10 years have been if I have a struggle, I’ve got someone that I can call. I’ve got a coach I can call. I can get into a mastermind group and see what they’re doing and figure out how I can take those things into my business and make them bigger and better.

So, just those two things alone is worth finding something that you can scale your business faster and quicker with. For me, it would be TV and then just having a network of people that you can call on to meet with on a regular basis to either pick their brain, get motivation and inspiration, or just have as a group you can lean on for whatever it is that you need.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. I love it. That’s fantastic advice, Tony. Let’s wrap up with what we call our final five. Are you ready for these?

Tony Javier: Yeah. Let’s do it.

Josh Cantwell: All right. Cool. So, let me kind of swing this around a little bit because I think I know some of the answers based on what we’ve already discussed. So, I’m going to ask you in a slightly different order. So, my first question for you, you just mentioned mastermind, what do you think is maybe the number one piece of advice or lesson that you learned from actually being in a mastermind? Was there one thing or a moment that you were at a mastermind, you were sitting in it, you’re like, “Oh my God, that was unbelievable?” What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten specifically from a mastermind?

Tony Javier: Well, I don’t want to call this advice. I want to call this just like eye-opening. So, first 10 years of my business again, I just stuck my head down and the reason I didn’t ask for help is I thought, “Because I can’t figure these things out, I’m not a good business owner and if I ask someone else, I’d look weak and I would look stupid like I should have this figured out.” So, going into a room and this actually happened at the last mastermind I held in San Diego, one of the comments someone had was like they didn’t realize so many people had so many struggles just like we do. Like, when we get into this business, we think we’re alone and we’re like, “Oh, I messed that up, I’m an idiot.” But then you realize other people are messing things up that are way outside and maybe bigger than what you messed up. And so, we kick ourselves quite a bit. So, I think just that in general like realizing that if you mess something up, we’re human. It happens. And what you’ll realize is if you look at some of the biggest companies out there, almost all of them were this close to failing. If you look at Starbucks, if you look at Zappos, I mean, all these companies that they’ve written books on like, literally, they were this close to going bankrupt almost every single time. And there’s something that they did that turned it around and they figured it out and became these 100 million to a billion-dollar company.

So, just realize if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. And I’ve almost gone out of business several times like I’ve almost like quit and been like I want to give up because it was so painful. But when it came down to it, looking back, I’m like, “Those weren’t that big of a deal like you can figure things out.”

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. I love it. Tony, you mentioned mastermind. You’ve also mentioned mentors and coaches. Who’s been the mentor that’s had the biggest impact in your life and why?

Tony Javier: Yeah. So, after the first 10 years in business like I needed to make a change and I came across Than Merrill, Fortune Builders, right? A lot of you guys know who he is. And that’s when he first started his mastery program. So, he was the first one that I heard that was not looking at properties, not managing projects like he had a real estate investing company that he wasn’t in the everyday operations of the business. And when I first heard that, I’m like, “There’s no way that can happen.” Like, there’s no way he’s not looking at properties, there’s no way he’s not meeting with sellers like how can he find people that can do it as good as him, right? So, that was the first coaching program that I bought into that gave me that vision of like you can create a business that doesn’t need you. And within about I think it was about four years after I bought into that program, I was completely out of my business where all I had to do was approve deals we were buying, approve deals we were selling, approve budgets, and 95% of the operation was done without me. So, that was my first jump into coaching or mentorship that has really paid off.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. Love it. Tony, when you’re as a CEO, multiple successful businesses, you’ve got to get away as a CEO and think decompress, look for blind spots. What’s your favorite way to do that? What’s your favorite place to go to do that, to get away, to think, to identify what are the good, what are the bad, what’s the ugly about my business and how do I fix it?

Tony Javier: Yeah. So, people laugh at me when I say this but I love pickleball. I don’t know if you play pickleball.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah.

Tony Javier: Yeah. It’s addicting. I got turned on to it a couple of years ago and honestly, like if there’s a three-hour period of my day where I don’t have anything, or I say we don’t have anything scheduled. I always have emails and text messages and things I can get into. But like, if I’m just not feeling it that day or if even if I’m feeling it that day, sometimes I’ll just go play. And then all of a sudden, as I play, like I get more energy. And then what happens is if I know I’m playing that day like I’ll go from like 11 to 1, 11 to 2 or sometimes I know I’m leaving at like 3:00 to go play, my day is way more efficient because I know I have less time and then I’m actually really excited knowing that I’m leaving at 3 and I go on playing so like my day is just so much better just mentally. So, for me, like if I can just go play for a couple of hours, it clears my head. If anybody has ever, you know, if you guys start playing like it’s just fun to be able to go out there and just smack the ball and just kind of get some energy out. But for me, on a weekly or daily basis, that’s my getaway.

And then vacations, man, just getting away for I try and get away at least once a quarter. We will go somewhere. We’re going to Florida next month. We went to Tahoe a couple of weeks ago. So, just getting away from the business, even if you work an hour a day sometimes like sometimes I’ll decompress for just seven days straight and not touch an email or text message. But for me, that’s kind of hard because I’ve got so many things going where I’ll just go in for an hour a day, check some emails, send some messages, that kind of thing. But just getting away from the everyday, whether it’s something on a daily basis or weekly basis like pickleball or going on vacation and just getting out of the everyday norm is something that helps me reset.

Josh Cantwell: I love it. Tony, what’s your favorite way – I think I know the answer to this. What’s your favorite way to find deals?

Tony Javier: Yeah. You got it. TV.

Josh Cantwell: TV.

Tony Javier: Yes. Real quick on this. So, I started TV nine years ago, and to this day, people are like even the most experienced real estate investors are like, “I have not heard anybody talk about doing TV for motivated sellers.” And so, last year, I had someone convince me to put together a program showing real estate investors how to do TV because we’ve had tremendous success on TV. And not only that, but we do the implementation. So, I created a program last year on teaching people how to do it but 95% of the implementation we do. We’ve got the scripts. We’ve got the shows we know that work. I mean, we’ve basically taken a formula that we used in Wichita and now we’ve plugged it in close to 100 different markets and it’s working in almost every single market we plug into. And so, that’s what I love the most and it’s so scalable and it’s so easy and it’s something that is the number one marketing thing I think you can do for your real estate investing business.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, I love it. That’s great. I think so many people have gone digital with Facebook ads. I think it’s great to zig when they zag. If they’re going to Facebook ads and you’re going back to TV, I think it’s a great move. And I’ve got some students of mine, some friends of mine that do it, love it, and they really subscribe to it. And last question for you, Tony, is what’s your favorite way to find money? And let me add one more thing. When you answer this, find money for your deals, find money to lend out especially with your gap funding, how has TV allowed you to have more brand recognition to raise more capital? So, what’s your favorite way to raise money, to get money for your deals and for your fund and for your lending, but add on how has TV impacted that credibility to raise more money?

Tony Javier: Yeah. That’s a great question. So, first part of it is raising money. I’ve raised money in the weirdest places like I’ve started up conversation. I’m an introvert. So, like for me to start a conversation is I just have to feel something from somebody so like it’s in a locker room one time like at a fairly high-end gym in Wichita, and this was 10 or 12 years ago. And for some reason, I just felt like I needed to strike up a conversation with this guy. So, I find out he used to work at a bank. He did some private money lending. And I just told him about my business and we hit it off, and within 12 months, he had over a million dollars invested with us. So, places like that, you know, we went on a hiking trip to Switzerland about six years ago, and it’s a pretty good amount of money to do some of those trips. So, you meet some really good people because they’re usually business owners, they’re doing a lot of great things, they’re movers and shakers. But I just started a conversation with someone in the group and told him what I did and told them as subtle as they just mentioned that we get really good returns for real estate investors. And I didn’t know what this guy did. I found out he owned an insurance company. He had a partner in his business that was super-wealthy, and they invest in a ton of our deals, just starting from a conversation.

So, anytime someone’s raising money, I’m like, “Just tell everybody what you do and somehow put in there that you make a lot of money for real estate investors passively and they’re going to start asking questions. You don’t even have to pitch it.” So, that’s the first part of it is just conversations on an everyday basis, especially those in situations where you’re going to find people that are kind of thinking at a higher level, mastermind groups, and that kind of thing. And then TV. We had a guy that saw our TV commercial one time. He walked into our office and he said, “Hey, I see you guys are buying houses. I thought about investing in real estate, but I really don’t want to buy houses. Tell me what you can do.” And same thing as the guy in the gym. It’s like within 12 months he brought in his parents as well. This is a pretty young guy that was doing pretty well but his family had money too. So, he brought his parents in. Within 12 months, they had over a million dollars invested with us. And so, TV not only brought them in but when we have a conversation and someone refer like our CPA just sends all of his clients to us, like if they have money sitting and they talk about investing, we’ll send them to us. And then the conversation is, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen you on TV for years now,” it’s a slam dunk. Like, they already know who we are. They know we’re credible. They’ve seen my face on TV for however many years, and it makes it so much easier to raise money in our market.

Josh Cantwell: Love it. A lot of takeaways from this interview, Tony. Really appreciate you coming on today. I know there’s going to be some of our audience that’s looking forward to connecting with you on your gap funding programs or TV program just to learn from you, get mentored by you. Where can people get more information?

Tony Javier: Yeah. So, my personal website has most of my stuff on there. If you go to TonyJavier.com, TV programs on there, gap funding if you need gap funding. I don’t have any information for investors that want to talk about. I teach people how to do gap funding as well and mentor them that way. So, there are some ways I’m sure to get a hold of me on the site there. But, yeah, if you want to connect with me, I’d love to help you out and see how we can further your real estate investing business or career.

Josh Cantwell: Awesome. Awesome stuff, Tony. Listen, great interview. Appreciate you sharing all this candid information. Thank you so much for joining me today on Accelerated Real Estate Investor.

Tony Javier: Thanks, Josh. Appreciate you.

[CLOSING]

Josh Cantwell: Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed that interview on Accelerated Real Estate Investor with me and Tony Javier. If you did, please open up your iPhone, your smartphone, your Samsung, whatever you’re on, and leave us a five-star rating and review. Just type in a couple of words. Tell us how you like the podcast. I’d appreciate that if you do that right now, wherever you’re listening. Also, we’ve got some new investment opportunities. We’ve got some new apartment buildings that we’re buying here in the next three months. It’s a couple of deals. We got a few hundred, actually about 700 units under contract. If you’d like to hear about those deals and how you can invest passively and earn eight different streams of income, go visit our website, FreelandVentures.com/Passive. There you can register on our investor portal and you can learn more about how to invest passively with us. Just want to say thanks. I’m always so grateful and happy to be able to share this content information with every single one of you. I appreciate you. Appreciate you listening. Thank you. And we’ll see you next time. Take care.

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