Our average investor has usually called 3-4 different lenders before they come to me and they usually find me through word of mouth. When they finally see the different kind of options I have for them to choose from, it’s like a light bulb going off as they can see their investment career open up in front of them. That’s the moment I love the most!
A Word About My Background…
My real estate journey started way back in 2004. I was working for a national retailer in the corporate world and was feeling unfulfilled. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and started watching the late-night infomercials about real estate and decided to go to a few seminars and after that I was hooked. I bought my first property to flip and subsequently made the No. 1 mistake most rookie investors make. After renovating the property I fell in love with it and didn’t want to sell it. Instead, I refinanced and pulled out $26,000. That was an eye-opener. I realized how much money it was possible to accumulate by forcing equity appreciation.
After getting my real estate license in 2005 I started wholesaling properties as well as doing fix and flips and becoming a landlord as well. I also joined a company called Fortune Builders who at the time had a national TV show on A&E called “Flip This House.” That was something of a turning point because I realized the importance of putting systems together to invest more efficiently. Within that organization, I became a mastery coach and taught people around the country how to get their real estate business up and running.
Through meeting so many people in real estate I learned that there were a lot of ways to make money without the headaches of simply being a landlord or doing fix and flips. I had a tenant in one of my commercial buildings who was going through a tough time because contractors he paid to work would take the money and run. In my flipping business I only chose contractors that were financially secure and they’d only get paid once certain benchmarks in the project were achieved, so I started a contracting business which dramatically increased my earnings. However, state guidelines about contracting changed and I had to reinvent my career again. I didn’t necessarily want to go back into fixing and flipping which was very time-consuming and exhausting. I went through some career counseling with the legendary career coach Bob Proctor. He told me a story about a guy in South Africa who sold his farm to go and look for diamonds when that industry was booming. He searched everywhere, bought all this equipment and didn’t find any diamonds. He became really frustrated and eventually his life ended tragically. Meanwhile, the guy who had bought his farm, was walking across his land one day when he saw an odd-looking rock. It was gleaming. He found out it was a diamond. He came to discover he had diamonds all over his land. The point of the story that Bob was making was that a lot of the time where we want to be successful is right under our nose.
He told me to really think about all the things that I did and what I liked and didn’t like. That was another turning point. I enjoyed teaching people how to get started in real estate investing, how to flip a home, how to wholesale a property. The disappointment that came with the teaching was watching students that had the knowledge but couldn’t find the money. Those that did have access to the money put that knowledge to work and were successful and that was the most fulfilling part of the whole transaction.
