Category: <![CDATA[Podcast]]>

Some people are born into wealth, but none are born into success. Success needs to be earned, through pain, hard work, and perseverance.

Patrick Bet-David came to the United States during the Iranian Revolution of 1978, after already being a refugee in Germany. Patrick served in the U.S. Army and prided himself on his ability to party, but after a family health emergency, he decided enough was enough, and he became the hard-working, driven man he is today.

Now, a successful businessman, media producer, best selling author, and CEO, Patrick has a lot of wisdom to share for young and aspiring businesspeople. One of his biggest lessons: don’t waste your pain. Patrick shows how the best of the best in business, sports, or any other field are consistently putting themselves in positions where they have to fight to be the best. Patrick argues that even if you’re the best basketball player in your high school, once you go to college you may be at the bottom of the list, and once you become the best in college, you may be stuck again at the bottom of the professional leagues. This means you have to constantly change, adapt, and improve yourself to become the best of the best.

We also talk about Patrick’s book, Your Next Five Moves and how people who are masters in their skillset are thinking at least five moves ahead of their competition. Want to buy a house? What are the next 5-10 moves you could make right now to get that done. Most people do a single step, stop because it’s too hard, and leave it at that. If you want to be the best of the best, you need to think bigger and understand the importance of the sequencing of those steps.

Anything over 100 units tends to scare many investors, especially rookie investors. How do you even get to 100 units when it’s already challenging enough to get one? That answer is simple: stack them slowly over time. That’s exactly what today’s guest, Erika Sleger, did. Erika heard about house hacking from a lecture in college, so once she graduated she decided to buy a fourplex, live in one unit, and rent out the others.

She learnt some valuable skills from that first fourplex and later sold it for a nice profit, 1031 exchanged it into an 18 unit, and started collecting rent. From there, she used her equity on the 18 unit to buy a 64 unit. Another 16 units here, some more units there, and before she knew it Erika had over 120 rental units. She acquired all of these properties through 1031 exchanges and pulling cash out via refinances for down payments.

Managing over 100 units isn’t easy, it took Erika a while to find management that worked, and she was still managing her managers. Even with the best due diligence, Erika talks through the challenges of filling and managing so many units. That’s why Erika sold her multifamily properties and moved her money into commercial real estate.

Now she owns “amazon-proof” commercial spaces for coffee shops, a daycare center, and even a car maintenance shop. These leases are triple net, and give her the flexibility to move wherever she wants in the world, without having to over-manage a property manager. This is what “the stack” done correctly looks like!

You’ve probably heard of The Breakfast Club, the morning radio show in over 90 markets that covers everything from hip hop culture, to celebrity gossip, to politics and more. If you’ve listened, you may recognize DJ Envy’s voice. He’s here today with his partner Cesar Pina, to talk real estate, seminars, and business.

DJ Envy grew up in Queens, New York, and was neighbors with a successful DJ. After he heard how much money DJs were making in the city, he decided to start DJ-ing himself, and began releasing mixtapes. As his success grew, he started working for a radio station and landed a morning show, which later became known as The Breakfast Club.

After buying his first house and later selling it due to a long commute, Envy walked away with around $80,000. He was hooked, and knew that real estate was a long-term way for him to build his wealth and create success for him and his family. He started out buying a house every year and selling it a year later, then bought some homes in Detroit for $15,000 that sold for over $260,000! Envy wanted to get more into real estate, so he was introduced to Cesar.

Cesar was serving time in prison when he first learnt about real estate investing. Once he was released, he decided to jump in. He bought single family homes, then small multifamily homes, then went on to commercial buildings. Now, he owns more than 1,600 units and flips anywhere from 60 to 80 houses per year! His new book, Flipping Keys, comes out later this month.

Cesar and Envy became an unstoppable duo, and now they’re teaching others how they too can buy rentals and flip houses. They see this as a way to serve their community and let those who may be unaware of real estate investing have a chance at success and financial freedom.

Retiring via passive income is why most people get into real estate, but rarely does someone accomplish that goal within just two years! Rachel Richards, real estate investor, agent, and author of Money Honey shares her story of aggressive real estate acquisition. All purchased, by the way, with at least 20% down!

While her friends in high school may have been reading for fun, Rachel was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and trying to find the best way to become financially free. After she graduated from college she took jobs where she felt underappreciated and at some points, humiliated. She realized that this was not the path she would go down, and started investing shortly after in 2017. By 2018, Rachel and her husband had acquired 38 doors. Yes, you heard that right, 38 doors in under two years!

These rental properties allowed Rachel and her husband to retire, as they were making six-figure incomes solely from their properties alone. This didn’t mean two years in she was still a rookie. Far from it actually. Rachel had to systematize her rental properties as much as she could within those two years so she could manage them long distance without having huge headaches along the way.

Rachel shares some interesting stories, from turning a duplex into a short-term boarding home, to catching her property managers stealing over $6,000 from her. She’s learnt a lot and put her knowledge into her books Money Honey and Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement, both of which may help you get to where she’s at now!

We’re taking a bit of a detour from our regular programming to answer some live questions on real estate mindset! Brandon and David take live questions from investors across the nation on some of the most hard-hitting/commonly contemplated real estate questions and topics such as…

Is perceived “risk” deterring you from making strong financial decisions?
How do you keep the fire going as an agent and investor when you get rejected?
When should you allow team members to take on your roles and processes?
What to do to get over the fear of partnerships?
How do you balance ambition and being content with your success?
How to find inspiration in other people’s success?
What to do when there is SO much opportunity but you don’t know what to choose?
And More!

Brandon and David spend some time answering all of the above questions with life lessons they’ve learned in their investing careers. The solution to the problem isn’t always cut and dry, but almost all of these questions come up in a real estate investor’s career, one way or another.

If you didn’t get your question answered in this episode, stay tuned as we may plan to do another Live Q&A in the future!

Steve Trang is all over social media, he runs a real estate brokerage, a sales training business, and a title company, but he didn’t start out as a real estate professional. Steve was actually an engineer at Intel before he made the leap to become an agent. As luck would have it, Steve got in right as the market was about to tank in 2007/2008. Did this stop him from finding success? Of course not!

Steve was interested in real estate, and after finding out what agents did for a living, he knew he needed to make a career switch. He left his corporate job and headed into real estate, trying to get any leads he could as an agent. His prior employer, Intel, told him that he was welcomed back if he ever needed a job, but when he tried to come back a couple years later, they didn’t have a position available for him. He knew the bridge was burnt, and it was time for him to go full throttle on real estate.

Now, a decade or so later, Steve is teaching his tips and tricks to aspiring agents, wholesalers, and de al finders alike. He has a very specific hiring process, and will only start to evaluate a candidate that fits into his time-tested requirements. This helps him weed out potential employees and keep only the serious ones around.

Steve gives some pointers on the best cold calling tips, the common mistakes that newbies make, and how to mitigate rejection when a cold call goes sour. If you’re afraid to cold call or afraid of being rejected in general during real estate prospecting, Steve talks through how he uses rejection to hit the successful metrics he needs!

Does it ever seem like working overtime is a competition? We often see people bragging about how they work 60 hour weeks, work on weekends, or spend the most time at the office or in front of their computer. Does this constant overworking actually accomplish something or is it more of a chest-beating competition?

Michael Hyatt argues that working crazy hours rarely does anything for our productivity, and if anything, can make our work sluggish and dull. He should know, in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as teams were working more than ever from home, Michael decided to do the opposite. Michael lowered his (and his team’s) working hours from 40 hours a week, to 30 hours a week. The result? A profit increase of nearly 100% and company-wide productivity boost.

Not only does your work quality benefit, but so do your relationships, your health, and your outlook on life when you are off of the “grind mode”. Michael believes this so much that he wrote a book about it. Win at Work and Succeed at Life goes through what Michael calls the “double win”: winning at life and work, with no tradeoffs!

Michael lists a handful of ways you can instantly improve your work/life balance. Tips on sleep, nutrition, and getting your “daily big 3” done so you can accomplish goals that matter, instead of just being productive. If you ever feel like a workaholic, these tips will help you align back to a productive yet enjoyable schedule.

First-time home buyer? At some point, all of us were. How do you make sure you’re getting a great deal, how should you pay for it, and what can you do to make sure it’s a purchase that will help you grow your wealth. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen, hosts of the BiggerPockets Money Show. Their new book, First-Time Home Buyer, shows how to buy your first property in a way that sets you up for long-term success.

Most people see their primary home as an investment, but that isn’t usually the truth. Housing is a cost, and like many costs in life, we should try to minimize it when we can. Having a lower housing cost can allow you to invest more of your money, build up safety reserves for repairs, and have the financial bandwidth to live with less stress.

Scott and Mindy debate cash flow vs appreciation, how much you should put down on your home, and what kind of liquidity position you need to be in to find success in your purchase and future endeavors. Even if you’re not looking to build a rental empire, this is a fantastic book for anyone who is looking into buying for the first time. Don’t know about equity, title insurance, or other real estate terms? No problem! First-Time Home Buyer has you covered.

We’ve known for a long time that humans aren’t great at multitasking. Once distracted, our brains find it hard to let go of the new information we’ve just learnt or seen. This is why the constant onslaught of emails, messages, texts, and phone calls could be killing our productivity and creativity. Cal Newport, author of A World Without Email, has seen this first hand.

Cal discusses something he likes to call “Hyperactive Hivemind Workflow”, which is essentially what happens to our brains when we’re constantly being nudged by electronic messages. When you’ve got your head down and are working hard on an important project, just a simple glance at an email can spin everything out of whack.

Here’s the thing, this is happening to all of us, all the time. We are constantly monitoring our emails and messages, and by the mid afternoon, we’re out of energy. We’ve exhausted all of our cognitive resources. But isn’t it productive to check emails and respond to them quickly throughout the day? This is what Cal refers to as the “fool’s gold of busyness”.

Luckily, there are some ways to get us into a more productive state, without having a barrage of emails in our inbox. Cal talks about efficient meetings, Kanban boards, restricting ad hoc communication, having office hours, and being intentional with your time and attention. While these small email responses may seem like just a minute here or a minute there, they actually eat up a huge part of our work life.

Busy people tend to be…busy, and often, real estate investing is one of the things that they “just don’t have time for”. If you feel that way, listen to today’s guest, Dion Mcneeley as he describes his own system for buying real estate the “lazy” way.

Dion was a police officer and a truck driving instructor, taking care of his kids as a single parent, and struggling to get ahead. He went from $89,000 in debt to becoming debt free and financially free, thanks to the help of rental properties, in just 10 years.

After buying his primary home, Dion heard of success in owning rental properties, so he decided to move out of his house and into an apartment to see if he fit as a landlord. He rented the house to his friend, who later moved out without notifying him. Dion tried to make landlording work with another tenant, but ended up being underwater on the house payments. This is when he found BiggerPockets and read Rich Dad Poor Dad. 

What was Dion’s mistake? He wasn’t running his rental properties like a business. After upgrading his processes, he went on to buy and house hack a duplex. Then he bought another duplex as an investment, and another one, then another house hack duplex. Within just 6 years, he had 7 units and was raking in $2,700 a month in pure cash flow!

Dion talks about the mistakes he made, why he prefers side-by-side duplexes, how he’s located his properties for maximum asset protection, and goes into his amazing strategy for getting tenants to sign longer leases and raise their own rents. You can check out Dion’s Youtube channel or find him on the Real Estate Rookie Facebook Group!