Epic Real Estate Investing - Corporate America to Full Time Real Estate Investor with Mike Hambright | Episode 146

Episode Date: February 23, 2015

Today, Matt welcomes fellow podcaster and mastermind member, Mike Hambright, to the show. Mike has purchased hundreds of houses, mentors a rapidly growing team of real estate investors from coast to coast that buys tens of millions of dollars worth of houses per year, and has taught large groups of real estate investors in person (and thousands online) how to become successful rehabbers.   On today’s episode Mike discusses what he learned by transitioning from corporate America to full-time investing, how he keeps a good relationship with his business partner/wife, and what he sees for the future of real estate investing. Enjoy! -------  The free course is new and improved! To access to the two fastest and easiest strategies to a paycheck in real estate, go to FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com or text “FreeCourse” to 55678. What interests you most? E ducation P roperties I ncome C oaching Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Broadcasting from Terrio Studios in Glendale, California. It's time for Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. Uh, yeah. Hello, and welcome. Welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. This is the place where I show people how to escape that rat race, that darn rat race thing using real estate. And I'm going to show you how to do it on your own.

I'm going to show you how to do it all by yourself right here. or I'll do it for you and show you how that works on a brand new podcast that I launched this year, turnkey real estate investing. And right now, it's currently sitting in the number one new and noteworthy position in the business category. And it's even appearing on page one of new and noteworthy of all podcasts, all of the podcasts on iTunes. It's right down on the homepage. So thank you so much for the support of that show.

It would not be there if it weren't for you. and it wouldn't be staying there if people weren't really hungry for an alternative to traditional advice on achieving financial freedom. You know, as the traditional advice of go to work, save your money, live below your means, invest 10% and just kind of hope everything pans out by the time you reach retirement age. That advice, that plan right there? That plan is failing 95% of the American population. If you've been here longer than a few episodes, you've heard me say that before. And I'm going to continue to say it until people start changing their ways. because if you keep doing the same thing, you're going to keep getting the same result.

All righty. So the first step to take on a new and improved road to do something different, a road with greater probability of reaching your desired destination, and with greater speed too, because it works faster as well, what you need to do is to shift your focus from making piles of money to making streams of money. That's the first step. That's the first step right there. Maintain that mindset and follow it up with core of that action.

Yeah, you've got to do something too. It's not just a sit in front of the fireplace and pray and hopefully everything works out. No, you got to follow it up. You got to take action as well. But do that and you are on your way. Shift your focus from making piles of money to making streams of money. Follow that up with Corollett action and you are on your way. You know, a lot of people think that this right here, this is a real estate show.

And it is, but more than a real estate show, it's a money show. It's a financial freedom show. It's a financial education show because if you choose to shift your focus in the manner that I just described, real estate. The reason it's a real estate show is because it's the vehicle that will enable the greatest possibility for you to manifest the rewards that come from a creating streams of money mindset. Make sense? Real estate is just the vehicle. This is really all about your financial freedom. This is about getting you out from underneath the thumb of demand, so to speak.

All right? Just real estate is where you got the greatest shot and making it happen for you, to making it a reality. All right. We don't live in La La Land here. We play in the real world. In real estate, that's where it's at. So here we are. Just seven days since our last episode, we're releasing a new episode every single Monday. We've cut back on the third-degree Thursdays and Financial Freedom Fridays for a while.

But since last Monday, the episode where I shared with you a new partner of mine, Eric, and he's working with working with me to create epic fast funding. And so if you missed last episode and you need money for your business, go back and listen to episode number 145. Check it out. Okay. And you get all the details of how the plan works and what the expenses are and who it's for and who gets approved.

But in a nutshell, I'll just run down it really quick. I introduce you to a new source of business funding that is straight FICO score driven. You just need a decent FICO score. I think it's like $6.7, $7,000, and above. If you got that, okay, you're almost there. And then you just state your income. Yes, stated income. It's making a comeback, apparently.

But it's here, stated income. And the funds are unsecured. And the approvals are up to $200,000. But get this, the bottom is $50,000. So that's the minimum you're going to get is $50,000 if you're approved, and up to $200,000. And it's only a 60-second application process. and you receive your funds in as little as seven days.

I think Eric said seven to ten days and you will receive your funds. Now, I'm certainly not going to name names and put everyone's business out there, but I do see that of the 40 applications that came in from this audience since last Monday, of all 40 of those applications, only two were deemed unqualified. Only two, only two out of 40. I think that's pretty remarkable. Four of you have received a clean approval and your funds are all. already in route if they haven't arrived already, depending on when you're listening to this.

But that's just seven days ago. And being just seven days ago, I mean, these must be the people that submitted their application the day that the episode was released. Talk about moving at the speed of instruction. And of those four people, not one of them, not one of them was approved for less than $80,000. Now, three more of people have received conditional approval. I'm not sure what those conditions are, but they received conditional approval. That's seven total.

And out of those seven, none of those have received less than $80,000, been approved for less than $80,000. And then the remaining 20, they're still in pending process. They're still, you know, working back and forth. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like and what's going on there. But there's 20 more that are still pending. But I think that's pretty remarkable. In just seven days out of 40, seven people are approved or are conditionally approved and four of them are clean approved and got their funds. on their way. So if you'd like to tap into a minimum of $50,000 for your business and up to $200,000

for funds that you can use for whatever you want, by the way, there's no restrictions on what you use it for. I think they have to be business related, but it can be for your rehabs, for your office supplies, your marketing materials, your postcards or your yellow letter mailings, whatever, or even property purchases. You can even buy property with it. And I think that could potentially be your best use of these funds, you know, converting that low interest debt into passive income for yourself. Venture over to cash flow savvy. Maybe we can help you with this, right?

Or go to grove and grow rich.com and sign up for our upcoming property tour in March in Indianapolis, or depending on when you're listening to this, that could be any of our property tours because we're doing a bunch this year. And what you could do is use those funds to pay for your trip. You could pay for your hotel. You could pay for your airfare, and which is also fully tax deductible. and then you could use more of those funds to purchase a turnkey cash flowing property. It's just an idea.

Whatever you do with the funds you receive, whether from Epic Fast funding or anywhere else, see to it that you're investing back into your business in a way that will cause you to make more money in your business. You know, this seems to be, at least right now, it looks like it's a very good source of funds. And I don't, but having said that, I don't want you to go get yourself in any trouble. make sure you're smart with those funds. Make sure you put it into something that actually pays you back. If you're going to borrow money, make sure that you buy an asset that pays you back more than what it's costing you to borrow for. Okay.

That's just basic financial responsibility, 101. All righty. Now, if you'd like to see if you qualify, just go over to epicfastfunding.com, complete their 60-second application. And a minimum of $50,000 could be yours in just seven to ten days. So that's those that acted right away last week, got their funds in less than seven days. So go to epicfastfunding.com. All right, enough of that. Got a great show for you today, a great guest specifically, a fellow podcaster, a fellow

member of my mastermind group and an all-around great guy, really, really good guy. And he's going to share with you how he made the transition from corporate America and absolutely crushed it his very first year in real estate. And he continues to crush it. He's really remarkable and really awesome dude. And then he's going to share a bit about this new project that he's working around, around providing real estate investors a platform to more easily cash in on their wholesale deals. It's a pretty cool idea.

And so I'm going to introduce you to him in 30 seconds right after this. If waiting for your investments to grow feels like waiting for paint or dry. There's a powerful secret your financial planner doesn't want you to know. You can accelerate your investments growth by two. three, or even four times. That's bad news for Wall Street, but great news for you. We're cash flow savvy, and we'd like to offer you free information that will show you how to take control of your investments and double, triple, or even quadruple their returns. And it's yours for free. For the secret your financial planner doesn't want you to know, go to cashflow savvy.com.

That's cashflow savvy.com. On the phone from the Flipnerd podcast, Mr. Mike Hambright. Mike, Welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Hey, happy to be here. Yeah, I'm glad that you're here, too. Happy New Year, by the way. Absolutely, same to you. I heard you just got back from Iceland. I was following you on Facebook.

How was that? Yeah, it was an interesting experience. We've gotten to a point to where, you know, some of our friends like Sean McCloskey and stuff like that, we really kind of rethinking why we worked so hard and stuff. So the past few years we've been traveling a fair bit, and that's just one of those kind of bucket list items, which was to go to Iceland for New Year's.

So definitely some things that you could not see anywhere else in terms of kind of natural beauty and seeing the northern lights and stuff like that. So we checked off our list. Super. I've got a few things I've checked off my bucket list, and they weren't quite what I was expecting. Yeah.

I was a little disappointed in a couple of things that I went out and did. Did Iceland live up to your expectations? Yeah, I mean, definitely something exotic. for sure. I think, you know, there were some pros and cons. We were, I think I was telling you before, it was dark, like 20 hours a day this time of year. So that was one of the things that were, it's a little bit kind of dreary from that regard. But now it was definitely, it was definitely a good experience. And we have a seven-year-old son. We try to give him lots of experiences, too. So he was there with us. And no regrets. I'd like to go back. I'd probably go during the summertime, but I would know it was definitely a good trip. Super. Well, glad you're back. And, you know, let's talk about real estate. How did you get started into real estate? You know, I wasn't terrible grammar, by the way. How did you get started in real estate investing? There we go. Okay. So, yeah, I, gosh, 2008, summer of 2008, we started. We had never invested in our lives. I was going to say, we, it's my wife and I that won our business. So we kind of had left corporate America or we're in the process of leaving. And my wife. wife had just had our son, and she had left her job as a consultant.

And we were kind of reflecting on, actually, I had left, I had started another company before this that really ended up not going anywhere, kind of an online business. But we were kind of faced with, do we go back to corporate America, back to what we did before, which we really didn't want to do. I had an interest in real estate investing, and we decided to kind of dive in. and it just made sense for us to join home vesters, and we buy our house folks, which is a franchise business.

And because we kind of had a high opportunity cost, if you really had to ramp up quickly, and we really needed to do volume in order to justify leaving our jobs where we actually did fairly well before. And so we appreciated all the things that a franchise provided. So, you know, we bought a homevester's franchise in summer of the 2008, and it worked out great. I mean, the market, as you know, that time was kind of crashing around a lot of people, and we didn't have any bad habits. We didn't have any legacy inventory.

We were fortunate to have got access to some funding that wasn't drying up like a lot of other people, and so we just kind of ran head in. In fact, we ended up buying 65 houses in our first year without ever having purchased a house before than what else we lived in. It turned out to be a good year. And since that time, I guess, over the past six years or so, we've probably bought about 300 houses or so, all kind of inside of the home vester system, which we're still a part of.

Sweet. I know a lot of people listen to this show that are trying to make that transition from corporate America into real estate investing, or maybe they're not necessarily corporate America, but they do have a full-time job that's pretty demanding of their time. Looking back, what are a couple of tips

that you could give somebody that's looking to make that transition. Yeah, and I actually mentor a lot of people now inside of the home investor system that I recruit new franchisee. And we'll talk about this all the time. This is a pretty common thing. I think, you know, I think, Matt, your story is similar to where you got to a point to where, you know, failure or not being successful in real estate just wasn't an option that you were willing to accept.

Like, it just wasn't an option. And I think that's one challenge that a lot of people have is when they have kind of one foot in their old job or their old life and they're trying to move into a new job, they sometimes don't have enough pain or don't take it seriously enough to kind of go all in. And so I think it's very possible to still have a job and start as a real estate investor, but you've got to get that excuse out of the way that, and it's probably subconscious more than anything, that, well, I still have my paycheck over here and my job over here, and it's not that bad. I think you've got to be willing to kind of invest in it because it's a business and don't treat it like a hobby.

And whether you're doing a full-time or part-time, just mentally kind of go all in, spend every waking moment you can, making sure that you can make that transition because unless you are kind of fully committed, you know, it's really hard to be successful really at anything. Right, right. So it's really just hitting a point where, you know, the pain of not changing is more painful than the pain of changing, I guess. Yeah, absolutely.

I think hopefully a lot of people over the past few years this last kind of downturn in the economy are, you know, I think a lot of people have realized that that job that always felt safe or that stream of income that always felt safe, if it's coming from somebody else really isn't as safe as maybe you once thought. I mean, it really was my kind of store. I was at a large Fortune, you know, $250,000. that everybody knows really well, and I was kind of a made man.

I mean, I could do whatever I want, work directly for the CEO. And literally, this guy was the limit. I never thought I would leave that company. I was only there for three years, ultimately. But, you know, what happened was I was the CEO's right-hand man that he got fired. And so, you know, I was the outspoken, you know, young guy that didn't have a shield anymore. And so I was basically next to go. And it was that kind of awakening.

Then I went to work for a startup company that was flying high. I mean, they were doing really well. Got up to a half billion dollars in sales. And I was there for 18 months, and then they filed bankruptcy. And it was just this. And then my wife was pregnant at the time. So for me, you know, my story is this kind of realization of, wow, I wasn't safe at a big company, not safe at a startup, even though we had some crazy success.

And now here I am for the first time ever about to have. a child and my wife is cleaning her job. So I'm the sole breadwinner here. Failure is not an option for me. Right. And it really kind of took that realization of I'm not safe anywhere unless I have more control over my financial destiny. So for me, real estate is a path that I chose.

But it was really that kind of realization that I can't be dependent upon anybody else anymore. It causes me to lose sleep at night for sure. You know, you hear that message so frequently on the lack of security and stability out there in corporate America and just just in having a job overall. And you hear it from so many different sources. You read it by reading books and listening to podcasts, watching TV, listen to the radio. You hear it from, you know, your elders and your friends.

You hear it from everywhere. But you just don't, like what you were saying, is you had that realization. You don't really get it until it happens to you, right? Right. Yeah, absolutely. You kind of, I think a lot of people assume that they're safe. And again, it comes kind of back to that, I guess, that pain. They just don't feel the pain enough to want to make a change or be willing to kind of go on in and commit.

Another thing that's interesting about your situation is also a very common concern. And I bet you could speak on this based on the way that you mentor your franchisees. Working with your wife, you know, that's a big division in a lot of households. Like one is a little bit more entrepreneur-minded and one is a little bit, you know, more traditional, safe and secure-minded, quote-unquote. quote. Yeah. What, were you guys on the same page right from the beginning or was that a little bit of a challenge to, to get pointed in the same direction or an alignment with your, you know,

there's always challenges for sure. I would say, you know, we, we have a, we, it's just, it's a, you know, it's nowhere to go with this, man. It's interesting, you know, we have, there are certain aspects that my wife, Lindsay, does in the business that just I can't do. I don't enjoy it. I'm not good at it. And there are things that I'm good at that she would struggle with.

And so from that perspective, you know, from a business perspective, we make good partners. Now, absolutely the challenge is drawing the line between kind of personal and business life. And I'm definitely not the right person to tell you exactly, to be an example for exactly how it should be done. Because we struggle with it. We work a lot. we are launching another business and we have a few other businesses that are all kind of in the real estate space and so we tend to be kind of on 24-7 and it causes some problems I think we just that's part of why we you know we like to travel and do things try to get away and and just you know reflect a little

bit on why we work so hard and there definitely have been times where we talk about it and I'm like look we worked this hard to create a better life for ourselves, not for this vehicle we've chosen to give us freedom to somehow come between us. I think it's one of those things that we talk about, we realize it's an issue, and we're constantly under maintenance to make sure that we don't let it come between us because it can.

I mean, it's hard to find downtime when both people in a relationship are working as hard as we do, outside of the house. Right, right. Every time I ask that question, the answer is almost always communication. And it sounds like that's the, that's, yeah, I think, you know, all parties. There's a lot of real estate partnerships, and not being on spouses, and I've seen a lot of them fail. I'm sure you have to.

And I think what it ends up coming down to is communications and expectations, right? I mean, there's, I think a lot of people, whether it's a spouse or a family member or just a friend, that, if it gets to the point to where one person feels like they're pulling more of the weight than the other person, that's where the problem's kind of lie. And so I think it just takes being open. I would almost say schedule time on the calendar, whether it's once a month or once a quarter or whatever, to just talk about and say, how are we doing? Everybody happy here and just essentially have a meeting to discuss.

It's like auto maintenance, right? You've got to do it every once in a while to make sure things keep running. absolutely and if it's any different in a partnership in your business. Right. Yeah. It's amazing on how many, you know, we haven't known each other that long, maybe six, seven months or so. But it's amazing how many similarities there are already just in, because I work with my

wife as well. Yeah. She does everything I hate doing. And I do everything she hates doing. So it's a perfect mix. We don't have a lot of overlap. We don't interact a lot on the business level, but we do talk about it all the time. in our free time together, and we set those little appointments to check in and make sure everything's

cool as well. So good advice, good advice. So let's talk real estate specifically now. I mean, I think what we just talked about is so important for the success and the stability of your real estate business. But let's talk about the business. You chose the home vesters franchise, the little we buy ugly houses. They have that trademark, yes? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I thought so. So if you put that on your Craigslist ad, are you in trouble? Yeah, actually, they're pretty protective of the brand. Yeah, there's always all sorts of lawsuits and stuff going on. So I kind of advise people not to mess with it because they really don't fool around with that.

I was always thinking, I'm going to put, we buy uglier houses. Yeah. Okay, so they must have a really good model because you jumped out with no real estate experience or you jumped in with no real estate experience and did 65 deals in your first year. So explain how that happens if you can and briefly. Yeah, I think so no doubt we worked really hard, no doubt, and we still do. But I think, you know, most real estate coaches and mentors that are out there, if you've listened to any of them for any period of time,

they all at some point are going to bring up some lessons on how to run your business like a franchise. You know, it's just a systematic approach. what you do with your advertising, how you answer the calls or how you address leads, how you evaluate deals, how you kind of process everything. In this business, you know, everything needs to be very kind of detailed and process awareness for the most part. And I think for us, coming from corporate America, the ability to kind of step into a system that we didn't have to figure that all out on our own allowed us to really focus on generating leads, even though we literally write a check for that to advertising to help get leads for the most part. But it really allowed us to focus on what makes us money, which is buying and selling houses.

So we didn't have to focus so much on developing all these systems. And really we had, you know, somebody there. In fact, that's the role I play for a lot of people now. I have nearly 70 franchisees around the country that I actually mentor, because I brought into the system and I mentor and coach them. And that's kind of the role, a big part of the role that I play. is understanding what their goals are, what is that they want to achieve, and then really kind of help them provide confidence as to how this works,

how the system works, and, in fact, it does work. And so I think that's a big part of it is just not having to figure out all the systems on my own. And those systems change. I mean, you know, there's technology that's changing all the time. And it's easy to just, if you're part of a system where there's, We have over 500 franchisees now, so it's basically 500 plus DTree dishes out there that are trying stuff, sharing what works and what not worked with each other real time and at big events that we have and on weekly webinars and all sorts of stuff to work. You're able to climb the learning curve so much faster when you're part of a network like that. Right, right.

When you jump in to that system, so you obviously there's a buy-in, so you buy into their system, in the foundation of every real estate investing business is lead generation. So do they give you the leads or are you responsible for your own lead generation? There's really two parts. One is, for the most part, we rely on them to generate leads. So in a market like, let's just say Dallas, where I primarily operate, there are actually about 25 franchisees here. So we actually meet once a month and we pool our money together.

you know, now we may be talking about March advertising. So we'll say, hey, this is how much we're going to spend in total in March, and here's how we want to spend it. And then we basically let our kind of advertising, there's an agent, Home Secretary has a partnership with an agency that will go out and kind of execute our plan, which is a combination of television, a lot of direct mail, internet initiatives. we do a lot of outdoor advertising here.

And so we kind of come up with basically how much we're going to spend and then how we're going to spend it, and then we hand it over for somebody else to go execute, and we literally just write our checks that collectively add up to the total amount of our advertising plan. And however much I contribute to the total pool, so let's hypothetically give an example of if there were, let's just say there were 10 people advertising, and we were spending $10,000 in our market,

and we each put in $1,000, and we would each, anytime somebody contacts us whether it's online or over a billboard or a direct mail, whatever it might be, there's kind of an intelligent routing system that all those numbers are tied to. So if somebody calls that lead, the system is already predetermined who the next lead is going to so that it ensures that everybody gets their 10% of leads.

So, yeah, it's kind of a lead allocation system, which is actually really cool. But, you know, the reality is we actually spend a quarter million dollars a month in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, and there are 25 people, and some that's been one, and some have spent $25,000. And so, you know, everybody's allocations are kind of all over the board. But it's a very fair system that allows us to kind of all operate in the same market without really competing with each other that much. Right, right. Sweet.

So we also teach people how to generate leads and stuff on their own through networking and relationships and what we call dig leading, just finding deals in neighborhoods while you're out there and systems like that. But, yeah, we're able to kind of rely on the system a lot for our traditional advertising. Got it.

With the, you know, you and I are part of the same mastermind group and there's been a lot of talks over the last several months of, you know, we're making this shift from this sterile and analytical environment into this sales and marketing environment. Have you noticed,

well, first, how long have you been part of the HomeVesters organization? So since the summer 2008. So yeah, six and a half years, I guess. Okay. So have you noticed a difference in the response rate of your marketing and advertising, say, the last six months? Yeah, and I think that's real market-specific. But I definitely think nationally everybody would agree that it's more competitive than it has been in a long time right now.

And that's kind of impacted also by some institutional buying hedge funds in some areas. and some larger operations that are competing more with the individual investors these days. But I think that we buy a lot of – your comment was about people that were able to buy from the comfort of their computer before and now having to actually go out beat the bushes and talk to people. That's really how inside a homebuyers always. That's kind of how our model has always been. And so a lot of people are kind of shifting into our space, if you will, because they had to.

But, you know, I think there's always, we tend to buy a lot of houses from events that happen in people's lives. So whether it's, you know, death, divorce, inheritance, problem rental properties, a lot of things like that. And those things have always existed. They're always going to exist. And so there's always opportunities to buy houses there. So, you know, collectively inside of our system, we've just had to find some ways to, to get more innovative and use more technology in terms of the list that we mail to or how we market online to try to stay ahead of the curve.

But, yeah, it's gotten more competitive. I would say generally speaking, you know, we feel like when we get deals now, they tend to be a little bit more profitable because we're trying to stick to our fundamentals of buying them right. But it has definitely gotten a little bit harder to buy in most markets. So do you see that lasting or do you see that shifting sometime soon? What is your prediction for that? Yeah, it definitely will shift as to when, you know, who knows.

But I think, you know, when some of the easy money starts to go away and some of the institutional buyers stop buying, which actually a lot of them already have, then it starts to kind of loose and up a little bit. We might be starting to see a little bit of that, I bet, kind of the middle of this year. Yeah, I actually think so too. as no human nature that if they're out there spending

a bunch of money in marketing and not getting the results that they expected they will quit. That's just what people do and I know that those that weather the storm and stay consistent and consistent with their marketing are the ones that are going to come out on top for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep.

Cool. So of these 65 houses, what are you doing with them? Are you wholesaling? Are you fixing flipping? Are you holding? Well, that's changed over time. I mean, we've bought for a few years we did 60 to 70 houses a year. We don't do quite as many anymore because I have other businesses now that I kind of spread between. But we bought a few hundred houses over the past few years. I started off by being about 50% wholesale and 50% retail. I've always been kind of a retail guy. Actually, the last three years or so, I've primarily been a retail

retailer, whether I'm, you know, I would say up until 12 to 18 months ago, we were kind of doing what I kind of called knockout rehab, so we would make them the nicest house on the street by far. And then over the past year, maybe 18 months, we've been doing more of what we kind of referred to as wholesaling, so maybe just cleaning them up a little bit or maybe doing almost nothing and putting them on the NLS to either attract a first-time home buyer that's going to build some sweat equity and get a deal, but they're willing to pay more than what a wholesale. A traditional kind of wholesale investor that would buy from us would, or we're selling

it to more of a buy-and-hold type investor that's generally willing to pay a little bit more than a rehab or might. Right. Cool. So that's going good, and I'm going to shift gears here, but just before I do, if someone wanted to find out that they've been listening and they think, hey, this homebester's thing might be a good fit for me. I'd like to know some more.

Where would you suggest that they go? Yeah, so I actually have a website, recruiting website, where we have some information, and you can sign up for a webinar. It's kind of a play on the Wevo, Ugly Housleyhouse's phrase, but it's Ugly Opportunities.com, so Ugly Opportunities, IES.

Dot com. I like that. That's something I would have thought of. Clever, Mike. I love it. Okay, so Ugly Opportunities. com, if HomeVestor sounds like it might be a good fit for you, at least go.

It would make sense. go get the information and to make an educated decision about whether that is or not. So let's shift gears. I know you're working on some other big things. So tell me what's going on that's exciting in your world right now. Well, you know, I started a podcast at the beginning of the last year, Flip Nerd. And where it really took off, Matt, is you were on the show on one of the early shows. I think you were in the top maybe 20 or so.

And it was like a rocket after that, man. And we just took off. Well, you know, that's just what I do, Mike. I know, I know. But, you know, we actually did 150 shows last year we published, which are kind of interviews, like we're doing here. I actually do, while a lot of people listen to our shows and they're in the iTunes store and podcasts,

we also, they're actually video interviews. So not that there's a tremendous amount of excitement going on in the videos, but personally I like to, I like the video model because I like to kind of look at people when we're talking and stuff. But anyway, yeah, we did 100% of the shows last year And getting some momentum there for sure Under the Flip Nerd podcast And I really started the show

In anticipation of building and launching a pretty significant web platform That will also be at Flipnerd.com And as we sit here in kind of mid-January, We'll be launching that In the Dallas-Forth Market, at least, within about 30 days from now, roughly. So kind of by February or so, we'll actually be launched nationwide, even though we're going to really kind of focus on working out some bugs and stuff for a little while. But we've basically created a very, very robust platform that has a couple of key components. So the first is really a wholesale NLS-type platform.

So you can list deals in about 8,700 markets. We've kind of segmented the site so that when you join, everything you see is in your market or the market you operate in, you can change markets with a couple clicks. But if you were in Chicago, for example, you would only see wholesale listings that are in Chicago. You'd only see vendors that are Chicago. You'd see events that are coming up in Chicago.

And so it's very specific and carved out to be local for you. But wholesale listings where members of our site can post deals or they can find deals. And there's an option for members to receive real-time listing notifications of new properties that are popped up in their market. And then we've created a tool that's kind of like Angie's List, where vendors can advertise on the site, advertise the business from general contractors, painters, electricians, pest control, title companies, attorneys on and on and on.

We have about 60 vendor categories. but those vendors can advertise on their site and have a great-looking profile page where they can add pictures and video, and then members can rate and rank them and write reviews on them to kind of improve our whole ecosystem so that the best vendors kind of pop up is, I'm sure Matt, you've heard people say, hey, do anybody know of a good electrician in this town? That's a common question that investors already asked, right? All the time. Yeah.

And so we're hoping to, and I've always kind of advised people, people that I coach and mentor, is like, don't ever use somebody as a contractor if you can help it unless somebody else has recommended them because, you know, nobody likes to be the guinea pig with their own wallet. And so we're hoping to kind of eliminate that issue for real estate investors. And there's a few other components where we're really embracing our relationships with RIA clubs and been hoping to continue putting out, you know, just great content. So, yeah, that's going to be launching here soon. We've been literally building the site for over a year, and we put kind of everything we've got into it and created something that we think, something that we wish had always existed. And so, you know, to use a cheesy cliche, it was kind of, you know, built by investors for investors, but we're excited about it. Awesome. Awesome.

Is that, is there an actual domain name or a web presence for that yet? Yeah, it'll be, well, not yet. So it'll be, it'll replace the current site at flipnare.com. Okay. nerd.com. That's right, yep. Super. And you're expecting the initial launch when?

It'll probably be mid-February, and again, we're going to kind of roll it out market. It'll actually be live everywhere. But in terms of where we kind of emphasize our growth efforts, we're going to do it on a market-by-market basis, and that'll start in the Dallas-Fort Worth Market, and we'll be kind of aggressively rolling it out after we go through kind of a beta test of working out some bugs. Super. Sounds like a huge endeavor. It's big. Yeah, no joke. I mean, we have a team of people building this for a year.

It's not a, you know, I've built other websites that we stand up in a few days or certainly a week or two, and this is definitely something much bigger than that. Right, this is not that. Got it. So what is the model going to be? I guess not a model, that's a bad word, not what I'm trying to get to, but what is it going to take to become a member? Yeah, so we actually. have a it is a membership site like you said so we have a $10 a month plan and a

$30 a month plan we're actually launching for the first few months we're going to actually come out at the $10 plan will actually be free and the $30 plan will be $10 a month and we're going to grandfather anybody once we do raise the prices it'll be grandfathered and so but still even for $10 a month you get access to real-time notifications of new wholesale deals in your market and you can market your deals to other people in your market. It's just an incredible value. Any of the sites that I would say that have any kind of similar component to us that are competitive,

best case scenario, their low-end price point is our high end. So from a value perspective, we have just a tremendous value that we're about to offer to people. Good deal. Well, awesome. Sounds exciting. I can't wait to see it. And congratulations on that. I know what it's like to work on something for so long and be,

right on the presbytis, prespapis, whatever. Yeah. Right on the brink of life. So I'm sure you're very excited and hard at work, and, you know, that's, I can relate. So, thanks, Matt. You bet, you bet.

So let's come back, maybe in a few months after you've got a little bit more established. We'll talk about it again and about also about whatever else is new that's going on in your life. Sound good? That sounds fantastic. Sounds great. Super. Well, I know you're a busy guy.

Thanks for your time. And, you know, good luck with your launch, and we'll talk soon. All right, man. Thank you. I'll be back in 30 seconds right after this. Real estate investors, you need to know this. If you do not have a lead capturing website, a recent study reveals that you are invisible to 90% of the people that want to do business with you. We are epic real estate websites.com, and we have an easy three-step solution for you. Step one, select a design.

Step two, choose your domain name. Step three, check out. Boom! You are now online capturing the names, emails, and phone numbers of people that want to do business with you. Go to Epic Real Estate Websites.com. Act now, and your domain name is free. Epic Real Estate Websites.com. I'll see you next week or catch me tomorrow on Turnkey Real Estate Investing, the new number one passive income podcast on iTunes. And I owe it all to you. Thank you. I'm Matt Terrio, Living the Dream. listening to Epic Real Estate Investing, the world's foremost authority on separating the facts from the BS in real estate investing education. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to visit

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