BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 420: Trading His Man Cave for a “Money Cave” That Makes THOUSANDS a Month

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Turning a man cave into a “money cave” Airbnb making thousands of extra dollars a month? It doesn’t get more house-hackable than this! Ron Curtis was able to pick up his first home in a pricey area for only a few thousand dollars. But how he funded his “money cave” is even more impressive. Within just hours, Ron was able to get $20K to renovate and rehab his basement unit, turning a few thousand dollars into two fully-furnished units and a house hack that pays his mortgage for him. Want to hear how he did it? Tune in! Ron is a serial entrepreneur. If it makes money, Ron has tried it. From renting cars on Turo to managing Airbnbs, starting his own credit repair and financial coaching consultancy, and turning his primary residence into a cash-flowing short-term rental, Ron isn’t messing around. He does all this while still having a typical W2 job, allowing him to save almost all the income he collects so that he can invest even faster. But, just five years ago, Ron was in a different financial state. After blowing five figures on travel, trips, and going out, Ron took a step back and looked at all the credit card debthe racked up. Thanks to a helpful coworker, he was able to pay it off without succumbing to twenty-plus percent interest rates. Ron used this same strategy to help his friends pay off their debt and eventually start coaching. Now, running multiple cash-flowing businesses, Ron has side hustles that outpace most people’s nine-to-five. So how does he do it all with just twenty-four hours in the day? He’ll share his secrets in this episode! In This Episode We Cover The two easiest ways to escape credit card debt (and which one Ron recommends) Low money down real estate loans and the mortgage programs you MUST know about Starting your side hustles and the true cost of building a business Short-term rental house hacking and turning spare space into extra cash Outsourcing and delegating using VAs (virtual assistants) so you DON’T have to work for your business Business credit cards and using yours to buy assets that will make you richer And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Join BiggerPockets for FREE Scott's Instagram Connect with James BiggerPockets Grab Scott’s Book, “Set for Life” Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Money Moment Listen to The “On The Market” Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BiggerPockets Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-420   Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email us: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast where we interview Ron Curtis and talk about his journey from debt to sprawling, fledgling, growing empire. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Scott Trench and with me today is James Dainerd from our sister podcast on the market. Thanks for having me back, Scott. I like hanging out with you talking about money. Yeah, always, always very fun. So thanks for, thanks for coming back. James and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world or go on and make big time investments in assets like real estate or start your own business will help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams. James, I was really

impressed with Ron's journey from debt to accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in wealth to house hacking, to building an empire. I mean, this guy is, is unpasted to take over the world one day and won't be that long in the distant, it won't be in the too distant future when that happens. Yeah, he is addicted to the grind. I love it. Like, he's just going, going, going. And then, you know, and he actually made the best step.

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Ron is a financial literacy coach who also works in real estate and has a full-time job in the government. After smashing 10,000, thousand dollars in debt, he created a real estate business, which allows him mostly passive cash flow through leveraging VAs and AI. Ron, I'm so excited to have you here on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here as well. Awesome. Could you get started by telling us a little bit about yourself and maybe giving us a quick overview of your money story? All right. So my name's Ron Curtis. Some people like to refer to me as Dr. Financial. I'm born and raised in Washington, D.C. I attended Virginia Conwell University,

VCU Rams in Richmond, Virginia. I graduated with my bachelor's in human resource management, specializing in business. I'm pretty much what I do now, I consider myself a non-of-fivepreneur. I have a full-time job. I work for the D.C. government, specifically with project management and contract oversight. And from the time I clock out at 4.30 or 5 o'clock, I'm taking calls, helping people with credit, taxes, and teaching them how to create different ways of passive income and additional revenue streams. Awesome. And my understanding is that upon graduation from VCU, you immediately became rich. And that was the end of the story, right? In a perfect life, it would be. But that's not actually what happened. It was a little different.

Yeah. Would you mind tell us a little bit about that and how you got into debt, for example? Yeah, so I got out of college. I got my first job landed a 50K as an internship to turn into a fourth-time job, which was a blessing. I was living at home. with my parents so I didn't have a lot of bills. So one thing I started doing was using my credit cards, right? So I have a passion for teacher people with financial literacy, specifically started with credit. And the reason being is because right out of college, I got $10,000 in a credit card debt, going to one of D.C.'s most popular streets, which is U Street, going to happy hour bars, traveling, taking trips, and things of that nature. And before I knew it,

my monthly minimum went from $200 a month to $750 a month in a Blake of or not. Yeah, Ron, I love that you are teaching financial literacy because a lot of times when people get in like your situation, they get into an internship, they get them in college or they get into a job. They haven't been taught like the finance, like what the cost of money is. Like what a credit card actually cost you and why you should use it very sparingly or like even student loan debt. Same type of thing where it just racks up. Like as we get out of college, we have so much debt racked up. It's like how do you get out of it? What? So how do, what? What steps did you take to start? Once you realized how much your payments had gone up and what kind of

debt you were increasing, what kind of steps? I guess when was the realization that you had to make some changes and what kind of steps did you take? That's a great question. So I would give all the credit to one of my good friends named Adam Duncan. He's actually from the UK. He was a contractor that worked with me. He had 30 years of experience and finance prior to coming over to the United States and working in government contracts. And something that always stuck in the back of my mind, he told me he bought two Audis on credit with the credit card, and he bought flats for his parents in the UK.

I didn't know what the flat was at the time, but I'm like, you did not buy two Audis on the credit card. I thought he was lying. And literally that same day, when I got that notification from Amex, that my minimum payment went up to $750 a month, I immediately went to Adam and said, hey Adam, this is not work related. I have a question for you. He took me into the conference room on my lunch break. I didn't eat lunch that day. And he did something that changed my life forever.

So what he did was he made me write down all of my credit cards, what their balances were and what the APR percentage rates were. He made me add them all up. So let's say easy numbers. I have five credit cards at 20% interest rate each, right? With that $10,000 when you added it up, he said you're paying back 100% interest on the $10,000 that you borrow. So what that means is you're paying back a dollar or a dollar for every dollar or double that you borrow. And he said you had two options. So he laid out something called a balance transfer, which I'm pretty sure you are

familiar with. And he also laid out a debt consolidation loan. With the balance transfer, explain to me, you know, you can get pre-approved for a credit card, take that balance, $10,000. on your five credit cards and roll it over to their credit card for a nominal fee. And you pretty much divide those payments by 12 months. Okay. So when we did that math, I think it came down to around $6 to $700 per month.

That was not feasible or realistic with my $50,000 a year salary living in Washington, D.C. So the other option that he gave me was a debt consolidation loan. And the way that he expressed it to me was you need to go buy cheaper money. And I said, what does that mean? So all in all, what he did was he showed me the option of how to go and get a debt consolidation loan and pretty much get a fixed interest rate under 10%. I believe it was at 9% unsecure loan. The bank cut a check for me that same week for the same $10,000.

And they took $200 a month out of my account, $100 every two weeks. And I never felt it since. Since that day, I taught my friends who were going to party with me and traveling with me as well. It worked for them. And then I was able to launch a successful credit repair education business. That's awesome. So how long did it take you to pay off that initial loan? So I mean, it was a five-year loan. Three years in, if that's happened in 2018, three years in, I had a Chevy Impolid failed. The transmission went on me. I was underwater on the car. The transmission repair was more expensive than actual what the car was worth. So I actually had to

roll another $3,000 into it. But as of right now, that debt is totally paid off. So I would say I was paying a little bit extra every now and then, but I would say less than five years, less than a loan term. But in my opinion, that was a great tradeoff. I think I might have gave them an additional $1,500 to $2,000 over that five-year period to allow me to breathe again and get my head above water. So do you feel like there's a lot of folks out there in your work that you're, are you finding a lot of folks who kind of through a very similar situation? or, you know, is that talked about a lot? How are you, how common is the situation you found in, do you think? All right. So it's very common, especially in the United States. So we live in a

debt well society, right? So with my credit restoration business, I'm looking at hundreds to thousands of credit reports per year, right? I do free credit consultations for all of my clients. And if there's one common denominator that I see, everybody has high interest credit card debt. And the reason being is, I don't believe anybody has bad credit. people have cash flow problems. If you had enough money to pay off your bills, you would in the simplest form. But when you have inflation, you have the price of gas rising, groceries, things of that nature, you know, and your salary's not rising or you're not getting a raise, it's going to be a deficit on one spectrum. So what was the trigger in here that, you know, that was a great moment that got you to pay off this debt and refinance it. And that was really helpful from this individual you referenced earlier. What was the, the aha moment in this process where you decided, hey, I should become a financial literacy coach and begin teaching other folks this. Did you have an experience where someone you realized this was common and other people were bringing this to you? Yes, that's a great question. So shortly after I got myself out of credit card. dead and found a way to go buy cheaper money. Like I said, I helped a couple of my friends who were also

partying with me and traveling, and it worked for them, right? So I said, wow, now I have social proof. Ironically, pre-pandemic, I had a health scare. A doctor tried to tell me that she thought I had lung cancer. And that was the first time in my life that I ever thought about death. By the grace of God, I never really had too many people around me that had passed away. But in that moment, that was my aha moment. And I said, wow, I'm not going to be here forever. So I have to get this information out to as many people and help as many people as I can. Because financial literacy is not taught at home. It's not taught at school. And oftentimes it's not taught in the streets, right? So I realized what I had to do was get my voice out. And what I did or my story out. And what I did,

I went and published the ebook. I listened to a podcast. It's called Earn Your Leisure. A guy named Ash Cash as an author and what he ended up doing was he, in his podcast, he talked about how you can publish a book for less than $50. So I went, listened to the podcast, took the same step similar to how I did with Seth for Life. We'll get into that. And I went and published the e-book called Financial Lit Understanding Credit Cards. In the most simplest form, I wrote a 10-page paper on credit education and my experience with it and how I expressed to deliver it to my clients. And I sent it to a virtual assistant on Fiverr, paid them $35. They turned into an e-book that was password protected.

And I started selling it organically to my friends and family on social media at $5 each. I sold it over 500 copies, made over $500. That's a nice ROI. And then shortly after that, I partnered with a credit restoration consultant. And then I invested some money into a mentorship that taught me how to actually do the credit game. I love that story. And from my opinion, the best businesses that are ever created are actually not created to make revenue. They're created to help cause a solution for people.

And, you know, the fact that you had a health scare and you're like, you weren't really thinking about the monetary side. You're like, I need to help people. Like, because you're right. No one does get this financial literacy. Like, no one learns to understand debt. And understanding debt will change everything in your life, whether it's an investor or in your own personal, how you live your life. lifestyle, but where was the transition where you go, okay, I'm giving this positive message. I can set all these things up and you can provide this for a fairly, the way you set it up is

very cost effective, right? You put all it on paper. You put this whole thing together for 50 bucks roughly, right? And then you're able to sell it for a very reasonable price, which is awesome. You get to give back. You're making it affordable. But where was that moment where you're going, okay, not only can I help people, but I can help myself and create money? Because I know, as we create businesses. We're always focusing on the problem and then the revenue comes later and we're going, oh, great, cool. Then how do we change it from there? That's a great question. So I really like that. I like impact over income. I really like this. So my aha moment with that was after I sold those copies, then when I partnered with a guy named Mamadu, Max Credit Score, Shout out the Max Credit

Score. He poured a lot into me. He pretty much allowed me to shadow him for two to three months for free at no cost to me, and he showed me how to teach people how to read their credit reports, how to close a client, how to onboard them, things of that nature. My aha moment was during the pandemic when I fell in love with residual income. And the reason being is because when I met with those clients and when they signed up with me, we were helping fix their credit. It was a value for value exchange. But what I loved about it was he had me on a pay scale system where every Friday I

got paid out. And let's say the program was $1,000 over six months. If your initial payment was $200 and it was $100 a month, I got paid out 25 to 30 percent of each client, each month, each month, that each client each month, why they were in the program. So every Friday during the pandemic, I was getting paid, you know, a sizable amount of money based on work that I did months prior. And then at the same time, I'm seeing people scores grow. I'm seeing people get pre-approved for credit cards that they never had. I'm seeing people getting into homes based on the credit program, buying cards, started businesses, things of that nature. And that's when I realized it was really something. Sounds like you were really building a lot of credit karma. Credit carving.

Yeah. A quick question here. Do you need a degree or certificate? It sounds like you attended some sort program to get into this business? Yeah. So it all varies with states that you live in. I believe I applied or joined a program where I got this thing is called the CCA. It's some type of credit association where you go in. They give you some brief knowledge of the credit industry, the laws and things of that nature. And then I went in, paid for that certification. I got certified for it. And then I invested $3,000 using a 0% interest credit card under my business, right, into a credit mentorship after Mamadu. It's a guy named CEO, Godwin on Instagram, and he pretty much broke down the entire legal

and business structure of how to run a successful credit repair business and scale. His company is actually called scaling with credit, but he broke down all the laws from every state, all the licenses that you need, all the laws and regulations and things of that nature. It was an amazing course. Yeah, and you take it, I love this story, right? because as we create these ideas that help people, they create money for us. And then you kind of have two options at the point.

You either can blow it and have fun with it, or you can reinvest. And the steps that you took is, you know, then you're taking your next steps is to educate yourself further to where you can then grow even later, which is huge. And a lot of people skip that step right now.

They just want the money and they want to get it going. And, you know, you were taking advantage of this income and buying more things. So how did things like Scott's set for Lifebook or these online courses, is that you're buying, how did that take you to the next step from providing the service to start investing? That's a great question. So I love spending time with knowledge, right? Knowledge is something nobody can ever take away from you. So particularly with Scott's Sephylaife book, during a pandemic, as many of us were, I was crammed up in a house. I was living with my family at the time,

family of five. And I was like, I have to get out this house. I work with D.C. government. I'm getting checks every two weeks on the hour. Like, and I said, I have to get out and start working out, start getting some fresh air. I came across Scott's book, and every single day until I finished it, I walked around my neighborhood and listened to the book. And he literally laid out the steps that I needed to complete to go and create, you know, this, this, this, he laid out the steps that I needed to go and create this change in my life. So my main goal was to purchase a home and get out of my parents' house, right?

I had two younger brothers in college right behind me. I have to be the example. I have to leave, right? So one thing that I firmly remember him saying was it teaches you how to save your first $25,000 and it teaches you how to go house hack after that. Those are the main two key points that I got from it. The pandemic allowed me by me working for a D.C. government job, making a nominal salary to save my $25,000, right?

I've always wanted to be a landlord. I've always wanted a house hack from the time I got out of college. The first program I ever found about was NACA. And then I started to research more programs that were in Washington, D.C. in my area, right? So after I listened to Scott's book, it gave me the ignition that I needed to take action on all the information that I had. Not just the pandemic. The world's about to be over. People are, you know, passing away and transitioning.

Again, I'm not going to be here forever. I need to stop sitting on this information and start applying it. Now I play jump row with it. So by the grace of God, from listening to his book, I was able to devise a strategy. I purchased the house in Washington, D.C. for $423,000. And I only spent $3,700 out of my pocket to do so. What year did you buy this property? I bought my first house March 2021.

I listened to your book probably in the summertime, probably like June. July, August. It wasn't too hot when I was walking outside. But yeah. So I was able to purchase my home in March 2021 for $3,700. My earnest money deposit was $5,000. I got back $1,200 at closing. They fronted me $32,500 in down payment and closing costs. I purchased my house and my main reason was buying the house was centrally located. I live less than 10 minutes away from the Nationals Baseball Stadium, the Adi, soccer field, two of the major wharfs in Washington, D.C., Amazon HQ, a lot of different places and the highway. It's two minutes away from my house. I had to make sure whatever house I bought

had to have a private entrance. I bought a house with a private entrance, and my house was actually remodeled and upgraded when I bought it. From that, I leveraged credit. I knew I knew I like cooking. I like inviting people, so I had a big backyard, a big open living room. but at my basement was, I had to make a decision. When I bought that house, I said, do I want a man cave or do I want a money cave? So I bought a house in southeast Washington, D.C. It's the largest ward in D.C. is the most at-risk and poverty-stricken ward. But in Washington, D.C., the average price is $450,000 right now.

So Washington, D.C. in Congress Heights, I purchased the house for $423,000. That's probably one of the most cheapest homes that you can buy. DC at this time, around $400,000 in a turnkey livable. It had a private interest in the basement. I leveraged a home renovation loan based on some knowledge that I learned from that $3,000 course that I invested in. And I was able to go and get $20,000 within two hours to remodel my basement and put a full kitchen down there. I only needed $15,000 of that. So I gave $5,000 back to the bank. My monthly note on that is $300 per month. And on average during peak season, my basement brings in anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000 revenue. So I took the same concepts of house hacking

and implemented in my basement and I turn my single family home into a duplex. And you've now had this for two years, it sounds like. And when is peak season? So peak season in Washington, in D.C. where top five short-term rental markets in the country, due to the tourism that we have, the capital, the monument, these museums are never going anywhere. So based on the data that I have in my experience in the past 18 to 19 months, peak season is from March to August. And it makes sense a lot of times August schools start back up kids, go back summer vacations over. But due to all the government and the hospitals and the infrastructure and the business here, it's a great time from September to February to transition to midterm rentums.

The way you scaled and bought your property is like it is the epitome of the American dream, in my opinion, right? It's about using leverage and buying it right. There's so many fallacies online or what people are talking about. It's all about chasing the deal. You'll make money in real estate if you get the best deal. But like what you just talked about was you paid for something that was fully renovated at the top of the market value for what it was right there. But by putting the right debt on the property, it changed everything. And, you know, I actually I want, one thing I'd like to explore a little bit is the NACA program because it is a great program. It's a lot of times people just shoot right past it. Can you explain to the listeners a little bit what that program is?

And then how did you get a secondary loan after you got that? Because that's a huge thing right there too. It's hard to get a second loan sometimes after you get your first. Those things are, by putting the right leverage on, it allowed you to get in this money cave, essentially. Will you walk our listeners through that? Because they, That's huge. You got into a property for $3,500 and you're making $3,000 a month. The return is through the roof. Yeah, so actually, I didn't use the NACA program. The NACA program was the first program that I was ever interested in. And I know about it so much, I could probably be a NACA counselor. The NACA program allows you to purchase up to a four-unit building. A lot of times, they do not really care about what your credit score is. They allow you to buy down your interest rate almost all the way down to 1%. And they also, take care of your closing costs and your down payment. It's a great program, but for me, I think about

leverage and I think about long term. So one of the things that I didn't like about the NACA program at the time when I was applying was something called Payment Shock. So Payment Shock pretty much shows they pre-approved you for how much, how much of a mortgage that you can afford. But if you don't pay rent like me when I was living with my parents, you have to show on paper that you can save a certain amount of money each month to make your mortgage, right? NACA isn't just going to give you a home for a mortgage that you can't afford. They want to make sure that you're well-equipped and that you understand, you know, what are the responsibilities that come with owning a home. I would highly recommend it. It's a great way to tap into wealth and get into buy your first property and also house hacking,

but it just didn't work for me based on the numbers. Ron, what's your monthly mortgage payment on this property? My monthly mortgage, when I bought it, it was 1883 property tax. taxes went up is $2,048 right now. So during peak season, the money cave, which I love, I would use that term forever now, the money cave totally pays for your mortgage and this $300 per month renovation loan. And the rest of the year, it mostly covers it. Is that fair to say? Yeah. And it also covers in peak season my utilities, gas, water, electricity, the home renovation loan, my cleaning expenses for my cleaners, and then my mortgage. So most times I'm breaking even.

And one reason is because I use pricing automation software to maximize each booking potential for each night. Which software do you use? I use Price Labs. Okay. Well, shout out to our friends at Price Labs. Yeah, I think you got to use a pricing solution like that to maximize it. So that's awesome that you're doing that.

And you're running a great business here. What I think is awesome about this is how much were you earning at the time when you got this loan again? When I got this loan, I was making $80,000. year working for the D.C. government. Awesome. So even in a really expensive market like D.C., one of the most expensive markets in the country with this, these programs are help folks get into their first property. And if you use the loan like Ron did, then you're going to be able to get this and you use it as a house hack. You turn your basement into the money cave, not the

man cave. That's going to allow you to get started in real estate investing. I actually wonder if today in middle of the year 2023, if it's almost a better time to get started in real estate investing than it has been in a long while, if you're able to take advantage of some of these types of programs. Do you think that's the case or do you think that you got really good timing? Oh, no, no. All these programs are amazing. So when I found out about NACA and I started going to these first time homebys seminars and networking events and going to me with lenders and getting pre-approved, I start finding about other programs. And one beautiful thing about programs, a lot of times they work together. So I was able to leverage a program called DC Open Doors. DC Open Doors is a program in D.C. where they will pretty much give you, I think, 3% of the down payment and closing

costs for your home based on a purchase price of your home. So they were able to give me $12,500, okay? DC has another program called H-P. And they have a program called EAP. H-P is for anybody that wants to purchase a home in D.C. I think they recently increased their limits, the highest that you can get is like $160,000. It scales based on your household size and also how much money that you make. But the thing that I didn't like about that program is once it was time to close, everything,

they wanted pretty much everything over half of $3,000 in your bank account. So if I save $25,000 and after $3,000, they want to have of everything to go towards closing. I didn't want to do that. but they also have a sister program called EAP, right? And that one is for D.C. government employees, first-time responders, and I think teachers as well. So what they do is they gave me $20,000 for down payment and closing costs. And it's actually, I don't have to pay it back for 30 years unless I refinanced my house or my home is no longer my primary residence. So all the know, and then they also gave me a free $5,000 grant just because,

I showed them, I think I had $2,500 in savings. So all in all, I had $32,500 in down payment and closing costs. When I closed my house, this is an amazing thing right here. When I closed on my house, my lender told me I had extra money and they won't give me a check back because I used the programs, right? So I had an extra, let's say, $12,000. They used a little over $10,000 to buy out my PMI for the life of the loan. So I don't have to pay mortgage insurance on my loan. That's like an extra $150 to $300 less than on top of my mortgage. And when I put in that $5,000 earnest money deposit and I got $1,200 back, they allow me to purchase an extended homeowner's warranty that I think was for three to five years. So I'm real big on leveraging OPM, which is my

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amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registered Agent.com slash money free. Sorry, I could resist. So, Ron, I'm very, very impressed that you shopped out every type of lender because a lot of people just, they hear one idea and they just run with it, right? And And slowing down and exploring the right debt is essential, getting that first debt done. How did you take the step and get that second? Because a lot of people get jammed up on house hacking because they buy this property. They want to do the renovations, but they don't have the money. So lining up that the secondary loan was probably more important for you to create cash flow than even the take down loan.

What steps did you take to get there? And then what did the transition from renovating into making sure that you were making money to cover for that debt? where did that all kind of transpire? Great question. So like I said, when I invested in that course, I've done a lot of things. I had a rental car business prior to this, renting cars on tour on a higher car, and I've been using credit to leverage all these different types of things. So like, I bought my first rental car on a credit card. I split it with a guy that I knew on Instagram for a week, $6,000 down the middle, right? So in this course that I purchased and I invested in this

mentorship, of course, they're telling you all of the different funding plays, right? all of the different banks that are giving you money no docs etc and i found out about a bank called light stream so light stream is a sister bank um to sun trust and they were giving out loans um high interest loans with a low interest loans were high amounts and people were using them to go by cars right because they were saying you don't have to show your uh you don't have to submit the title right and you get a car at a very low interest rate right so i said I'm not going to do that because it's going to come back to me at some point, right? I don't want them messaging me.

So when I went on a lot, I was exploring the other options that they had, and they were actually approving people for home renovation loans. I had just purchased a home. I had a 750 or better credit score. I had strong W-2s. So I went on and applied for it. I got the $20,000 in the same, within the same day that I applied for it. And your network is really your network.

So for me being a credit restoration consultant, one of my main theater pools of clients, referrals are realtors and lenders. So I built up a report with different realtors and lenders and realtors and lenders are, well, realtors are really plugged in with contractors. So I reached out to one of my good brothers named Blake. He's a real estate agent in Washington, D.C. I asked him, did he have any contractors that he trusted that he could refer to me? He referred them to me. Since I work for the D.C. government and I'm always getting quotes, a rule of thumb that I live by is you always got to get three quotes.

because people make up prices every single day. So I called in three different contractors, act like I had no idea what I wanted. And as I asked questions and see who probably vetted them, I was able to pick the right one. He gave me a quote on how much everything cost. And to tell you the truth, I had no idea what I was doing. I never did a renovation before.

But I just trusted that referral, and I trusted my numbers. So I went and got this guy, paid him in cash. I wish I could have used credit to do it and get all the rewards points and things. nature, but he was able to go in and refurbish my basement and I'm turning into exactly what I needed. I love that. Three quotes on everything. Money, contractors, doesn't matter what your pricing,

get three quotes. That is the truth right there. A couple quick questions here. How much cash did you have prior to going into the transaction, your first home purchase? How much did you accumulate? So I was able, by the grace of God, I was able to save $25,000. When I purchased my house, by the time, If I closed in March, of course, I have a tracker still that has every dollar that I spent to start it up. I may have spent like $8 to $10,000 furnishing it, buying things of that nature. And I still had around $20,000. So I always believe in investing in OPM. And the reason being is I could have used my $20,000 that I saved in my parents' house to go and start this project.

And I had no idea what I was doing and it could have failed. But I was able to go and leverage the bank's money. And now I'm only paying $300 a month for business where my RRs. wise about 10x. So I think that's, I completely agree with that that that principle here. And you got to get started somewhere. And when you're getting started on the journey, you have $25,000. I completely agree. Put as little as possible down. Keep it in the bank and try to and try to keep that flexibility. So you have optionality later. It's there's a difference between irresponsible leverage. It would be way more irresponsible, in my opinion, to have no cash and to be a hundred, you know, and,

and, and to have a little bit less debt than to do exactly what you did. So I, I, I love it. it. I think it's fantastic. The next year, you're now getting this Airbnb income and the money cave is starting to generate for you. How does that affect your savings rate? And how do you get, I believe, to the next property? I believe you have several properties now. So the first thing is I was able to, well, once I got my house and now I'm running the business, from running a rental car business, I realized Airbnb and rental cars are pretty much the same. only your rental car can't drive 10 states away and you got to go pick it up. I mean, your Airbnb can't do that, but your rental car can.

So what I realized was once people start seeing that I was doing Airbnb, like I've done since the pandemic, I've done drop shipping, I've done vending machines, I've done credit, I've done rental cars, and I do Airbnb and financial services now. But when people were seeing that, I was doing that word and mouth started spreading. So one of my business partners, her name's Wydia, she saw that I was doing the e-book. She went and I showed her how to get an e-book. She went and got it, right?

Then she told her I was doing rental cars. I told her how to do it. She went and got rental cars. Then she saw that I was doing Airbnb, and she went and got three Airbnbs and one year handing me the keys and say, Ron, go manage it for me. She put her trust in me.

So from that, now I'm managing four in my first year, right? And then it just became a word of mouth referral-based business where now I managed 25 Airbnb. is just taking the same systems and processes that I cramped it in my one basement money cave. And now I've been able to cookie cut the process. And I firmly believe that I can cookie cut it across any city, anywhere in the world, as long as I have access to cleaners and Wi-Fi. Everyone's always looking for the key to scaling.

The key to scaling is doing good business. Like Ron just said. How can we get money together? That's my motto. That is the model. Like, everyone's looking for the... How many people do I hire? How much infrastructure I need? Do good business. And the businesses grow, right? Like, because when you started referring this out, did you have any intention of operating and managing their business and collecting income?

Or was it just doing a good thing and it evolved into that? I didn't. So when I had my first one from September 21 to December, December, the end of December, I had one property. By April, May, I had two properties. She went and got another property like in August. and then she went and bought a condo towards the inner part of that year. And then I just started having multiple people come to me, asking me to run their property. So it's cool doing the books on your property, right? You know your numbers.

It's cool doing the books on two, three more. But then when you hit 10 and you're doing financials for everybody else and sending out monthly spreadsheets and things like that, from my other businesses, learning how to automate and streamline people processes and systems, I said, okay, I have to create a scalable system that will work for me. And my niche specifically is co-hosting. I co-host and property manage people's properties for small percentages of each booking. But the thing about it is I've run the entire

day-to-day operations of their business. And all of my owners, they just sit back, they collect the check, their mortgage or rent is paid, and they profit as well. You know, what I'm trying to kind of zoom out, so if I'm zooming out and thinking about your story and what I've heard so far, you know, you started out probably weren't really familiar with a lot of the basics in personal finance, weren't financially illiterate to some degree, racked up this debt, had your aha moment, crushed that, crushed the debt, saved up 20 grand, bought a house hack, converted it into an Airbnb business. And by the way, during this whole period, you're not just doing this. You're also taking a shot at a new business idea in all these different directions, these

rental car business, the e-book, the financial services consulting. And how many, you know, years are we into it now where you've been aggressively saving, paying off debt and taking these shots? Is it five, probably five or six years now that you've been working again from this? Well, from the debt was 2018. I was still party and having fun. I had my scare in October 2019. I'm sorry. Yeah, and I published my book January 1st, 2020, I believe. And then the pandemic happened in March. You'd be increasingly serious about building your financial position as an intentional top priority in your life for the last three, four years. Is that fair? Three, four years, yep. And your savings rate, how is that increased? You know, you had 20 grand, where you saving $1,000 or $2,000 a month in order to save that up? How is that accelerated over the last few years? It's definitely accelerated. And that's what made me want to start investing in learning the taxes, starting the tax business. A lot of my money, I reinvest into my business. I'm not really big on flashy things and toys like that. I like spending money on things that generate money for me. And I like finding a way, like when I bought my house and I realized, oh, wow, I could depreciate my house, but not to land in D.C. and save money with my AGI, I was like, wow, they don't teach us this in school. Or like, if I start a business, I can write all.

you know, ordinary expenses that I would spend money on every single day. But now I can use them, you know, to leverage for my business that are actual business expenses. So I can definitely see that, you know, my finances have increased. If I just had a nine to five, I would be below water. One stream of income is too close to none. Love it. Would it be fair to say, though, that you're saving thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of dollars a month at this point in your business endeavors? I would say, yeah, right now. So a lot of the, work that I put in. It's the same thing with the, with the credit. The work that I was putting in, so I've only been doing short term rentals for 18 months, right? 18 months scale from 1 to 25, right?

And if I had three to four last year this time, and then now I have another 20, I'm now seeing the compound effect. It's busy season in Washington, D.C. It's Memorial Day weekend. The pools just open, right? Pools open on Sunday, Saturday, right? So now I'm seeing bookings come in and those small residuals 15 to 20 percent of each booking now, you know, pounding up in my account. And now, you know, thinking of ways, how can I leverage this for my taxes? How can I now go and buy another property for myself so I can own 100 percent instead of owning 20 percent of the grape or the watermelon in a sense? It's about being that deal junkie. You just keep going. You just got to let the money grow and keep putting it to work. So, you know, part of the reason you've been able to

to kind of grow that capital every month and really pay off debts is running a good business. And you've mentioned a couple times that you could run this business in any market, any place, any time. How, what steps, you know, you went from doing credit repair ebooks to now running a business that has a very solid operation, which there's so many steps in there that you have to take to get it to where you can let it run itself? How did you, so. So, So when you started doing the Airbnbs and you started scaling it, what steps did you take? I know you do a lot with VAs and AI. Like what steps did you take to make it efficient?

And what are you using now to scale from there to kind of increase that cash flow? Yeah, that's a great question. So I feel like it's a building block effect. So everything that I've done started with D.C. government. One of my first roles in D.C. government, I was a C. Data analyst. So I'm real big on systems. I'm real big on tech and things of that nature, streamline them and making things efficient. So when I'm doing demos on price labs, beyond pricing, wheelhouse pricing, and all these things

of that nature, I know that all of them are pretty much due the same thing, but some of them have different bells and whistles, right? Once I found out about leveraging virtual assistance with economies or skills where I can pay virtual assistance in Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan, with U.S. dollars, and those dollars go way further in their economies, it's like they're so skilled with tasks and organization and things of that nature. All I have to do is, take a quick zoom with them or record a loom to show them, right? So I leverage virtual assistance for my day-to-day business with my rental car business, with my credit repair business as well.

And I was like, wow, I could just hire virtual assistance to do 24-7 customer service because I'm tired of respond to the guest inquiries, right? So I took some of those same nuggets that I learned along the way and I just built on them, right? Also, with channel managers, it's easy to manage one or two properties on Airbnb, but when you're managing 20 at a time, you have multiple calendars, you have multiple, uh, prices,

you have multiple, um, check-ins and checkouts and turnovers, I realize I need a system that brings all this together that automates it, right? Um, my channel manager that I use is called a spitable. It allows me to go in.

It has AI built into it, right? It has direct booking websites. It has, uh, calendar seat. Uh, and it also allows me to diversify my list is across multiple platforms.

So I just kind of built everything, um, from one to another and I took all of the knowledge that I had and I'm bringing it together. I spend time with this every single day. It's the compound effect. I think that's awesome. And the compound effect that you keep saying, that's one of my favorite books. And that's what I'm, that's what I'm trying to show. Like what's happening here is a clear beginning of a very, very awesome future compounding story based on what we've heard here. And it's already paying off an enormous dividends. And it's just really, really fun and exciting to watch and hear about here.

Could you give us an overview of what your current empire looks like today? You have the 25 Airbnbs. You've got your personal property. You've got a fleet of rental cars and you've got this business around financial literacy. Is that it? Or are the things that are going on beyond, is that it? Is that all you're doing? Or is there any other parts to this empire that we should be aware of? That's a great question. So pretty much I had to scale down and focus. I consider myself a jackaball trades. Some people say, like, you can multitask. I'm just very efficient and learning something,

figuring out how to make it work and then delegating it, outsourcing it, right? I feel like money is just used to trade value for value. So right now, I actually sold on my rental cars at the peak at the end of the pandemic. The reason being is because the cars were so cheap during the pandemic, and then due to the semiconductor shift shortage, a lot of used cars were very expensive. A prime example, the first car I ever bought with the guy my guy Rob. We split a car for $12,000 $6,000 on our credit card.

That car was $12,000. We rented it for a year, made our money, had our expenses, right, all, etc. And then we sold the car, car max cut us a check for $10,000. We split it $5,5, paid our taxes, only did our thing, right? And once I saw that cars were selling like hot kicks, I had three to four Nissan versus, I had a 2014-4 focus that was making $1,000. a month in revenue, I realized I had to narrow my focus and, like, let those things go. I still have a course.

I still consult with my 9 to 5 is its maintenance oversight for vehicle technology and things of that nature. But I just couldn't focus on that anymore. But right now, I have two main arenas. It's financial services. I have a credit restoration and education business. And I also have a tax preparation business. And I also do public speaking.

I'm working on a financial literacy curriculum to teach some of these key concepts to schools, churches, businesses, non-profits, and underserved communities. And then this new thing within the past, you know, 18 months is the property management. I consult with people. It's either you partner with me. I run your property for you or I can like teach you what I know and get your systems in place so you can start doing the same thing. So Ron, how many hours a night do you sleep? I don't sleep much. And how many energy drinks do you drink a day? Because mine has gotten. Me, I love the entrepreneur nonstop deal flow. Working all day just to work more is my cup. That's how I run my life. That's a great question. So to me, like going to work feels like work for me.

Having to wake up at 6.30 drive to the office, I may have a 20 to 30 minute commute. I work from 8 to 4.30. I'm be lining out the door at 4.30 every single day. I don't care. Every single day out. And by 435 on my way home, I'm taking a call with somebody helping and adding value to them. Realistically speaking, when I'm working from 435 to 10, 10, 30 at night, it doesn't feel like work to me. I don't drink coffee. I don't do energy drinks, anything like that. But when I get off work, that's when I feel the most alive. When I'm helping people with their finances, when I'm securing another deal. And when I can do that full time, it's going to be an amazing thing. But right now I'm just standing.

until I'm in a position where I can come up and, you know, go be my own 9 to 5 boss, or 9 or 9 to 9 boss. Well, let's walk through a couple. Because you can't be too far, right? You've got, you've just consolidated your portfolio, probably are sitting on some cash. You've got the house hack income and you've got all these business enterprises. When are you going to go full time? Honestly, what God tells me.

So what I'm doing is right now, I have a low stress job. It's low stress. When they start getting on my nerves, they can see me, you know, walk out the door. I definitely believe that your 9 to 5 is your primary investor. Without a 9 to 5, I wouldn't be able to have access to those first time home buying programs that leverage allow me get to home. I wouldn't have those strong W-2s to go ahead and do that. And I wouldn't have the guaranteed every two-week cash flow that's coming in to help me, you know, pay all my credit cards and invest in my businesses, right? So all of this is pretty new to me.

I don't have a mentor. I would say I'm self-taught with a lot of this stuff. And I'm learning day by day. but what my goal is is to become fully vested in my jobs and leverage the full 1K money to go purchase more real estate. I love that. People jump. They want to quit their W2 jobs so badly. They quit too early when you have like right now you've used credit and lending to really push you through in life and really 10x your income. If you don't have that W2 job, it's hard to get debt. And so there's this balance point to where you don't want to bail first because like you just said,

And I love that. Your W-2 is your principal investor. That is a hundred. I've never heard that before. And that is a great truth behind that because access to debt, access to money can change your life like you've been talking about. So don't jump off that ship too early. Exactly.

Yep. Awesome. Well, Ron, is there anything that you would leave us with any advice you'd give someone getting started in their financial literacy or investment journey that you'd like to leave us with before we adjourn? I would say, you know, sometimes experiences. the best teacher. Another thing is, I know a lot of people, they're listening to podcasts, they're watching YouTube videos, you're digesting all of this information, but you're still

sitting down. And I know it can be daunting. But honestly, when I bought that car on a credit car with a guy that I didn't even know, it changed my life forever. It was like jumping off the porch and crossing the street. So I would say if you're suffering from analysis, paralysis, you're playing double dutch with yourself, try. The worst thing that you can do is fail, and when you fail, it's not really a loss. You're learning. And you can monetize that ill, right?

If you go do something and mess up, somebody else can go do it and you can actually, you know, profit off that and recoup your losses. So don't be afraid to try. And, you know, you can really achieve anything that you put your mind to. It just takes action.

Well, thank you so much, Ron. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. and just so awesome to see all the successes that you had in a fairly short period of time here and wish you all the best on the journey to building a huge, but it's sure to be a huge empire that you'll oversee pretty shortly here. All right. Thanks for having me. And if anybody's listening to this, the power of social media is real. The last thing that I would say is definitely go by Scott's book.

This is, and I'm not endorsed by him or anything like that, that book changed my life. I wouldn't have 25 Airbnbs right now. I wouldn't be a midterm and short-term rental consultant without Scott's book. That book was one of the most easiest listens. I listened to books because it's easier for me to finish them. That was one of the best books that I've read or listened to in the past two to three years. And it was easily digestible. And he literally gave you the clear-cut steps that you need to go and make things happen.

So that's the last thing I'll say. But thank you all. I look forward to, you know, working with you all in the near future. And I wish success and health for all of you all. Thank you so much, Ron. Really appreciate that and the very nice words about Set for Life. I'm so glad it was helpful. And really, again, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. Thanks, Ron. Talk to you all soon. All right. That was Ron Curtis. James. What did you think? Oh, I love Ron. This guy is a workhorse. And not only that, I just love people that build businesses on helping people. And then they get the benefits out of that. And his story is so, awesome. He educated himself with your book. I mean, I've never heard someone plug a book so much. Yeah, that was a nice plug, huh? Yeah, I'm going to have to go reread the book now. You know, he educated himself. He took the steps and then he taught people the same process and

now he's making money just by teaching and doing good work. I love his story. Yeah, I think that the, I mean, the house hack is so critical, I think, as a starting point on a lot of these very rapid journeys to financial independence. Like I, it's just, I just feel like it's going to be really hard to, to break out of that, you know, $80,000 a year salary and then to really accumulate tens of thousands of dollars per year rapidly without making that, that move, that particular move in Ron's situation in particular. So I think that was really, really awesome that he went there.

And then, yeah, the debt, I had no idea. I used an FHA loan to buy the property, my first duplex, you know, almost 10 years ago. now. And clearly things have changed. I wasn't aware of a NACA program. I wasn't aware of a lot of the different tools that he was using. And I think that's a great place to go and educate yourself. After you've accumulated the first few tens of thousands of dollars in cash, I love the fact that he had the cash available before buying the house hack. And then he chose to finance the repairs and the down payment, all those types of things using these programs to give himself access to that cash. I think that's a really smart way to go about it. All for reasonable leverage

or even large leverage in a first house hack, but I don't like doing it if you don't have any cash position at all. Yeah, responsible leverage. Don't over leverage unless you got the cash. They can handle it. But, I mean, he is working, that time value of money, that is what he's using that all day every day. Borrow, borrow good debt and make good income to pay off your good debt.

It's just, and if you get in the habit of that, it, he is a true compound story. Awesome. One last observation I'll make that I really think is important is, you know, the way, the way Ron has gone about it is very aggressive, very responsible, and very high probability. And the basics of that framework are first, his formula, he spends a lot less than he earns. That was how he was able to pay off his debt. That was how he was able to rack up $20,000 in cash. And that was how he's been able to continue to accumulate cash over the last few years. And on top of that, he's taking a new action, like almost every month it seems, right, to some degree to try out

some sort of new entrepreneurial endeavor, like buying a car and renting it on a Turro, again, making his first house hack, managing a friend's Airbnb for them, writing an e-book, starting a financial literacy business and doing speaking engagements. That is a formula for success, and the formula is the formula, spending less than you earn, and then also these side bets one by one that you're making as rapidly as reasonable, and a few of them work and a few of them don't work, and he sells them off and consolidates, that is going to work over time. He's going to get a lot of experience in a lot of different fields very quickly. It's going to help him form a lot of different mental models. He's going to be able to scale businesses with higher and higher probability

as the years roll by. So really, really bullish on the trajectory that he's taking. I think he's going to have a lot of success going forward. Yeah, sometimes you've got to swing and miss. That's just life. What do you say experience is your best teacher? It's okay to fail. You know, like there's a favorite quote I hear all the time, fail forward. Like you can fail, just make sure you're moving forward in your learning lesson. And that's what he's done. We love it.

Well, James, should we get out of here? Let's do it. I'm ready. I'm ready to get some, the sun on. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is James Daneard and I am Scott Trench saying, Tootles, noodles. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you're looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash biggerpockets money.

BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaelin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.