Epic Real Estate Investing - EREI 064: Mark Evans of the Real Estate Power Hour

Episode Date: September 9, 2013

Mark Evans of the Real Estate Power Hour podcast joins Matt on this episode of Epic Real Estate Investing to talk shop. Sit in, be a fly on the wall and steal their secrets. Download Matt's free course "How to Do Deals: No Money Required" at FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com 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. Okay, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Epic Real Estate Investing. This is the podcast where I show people how to get out of the rat race using real estate, and it all begins with just a simple shift in mindset, a shift in focus. And all you really need to do is just stop focusing on creating piles of cash, and start focusing on creating streams of income. And in real estate, that's what we call cash flow. And that's what we're focused on here.

And that's how we create wealth through real estate. That's how we get people out of the rat race. And I created my own personal financial freedom in less than four years. And what I've done is I've created a free course for you to show you exactly how to get started. I'm going to show you exactly how I were to do this all over again. I'm going to show you exactly step by step on how I do that. And you can access that free course at free real estate investing course. com free real estate investing course.com.

Okay, got a great show for you today. We're joined by a very special guest. We met through a mutual friend. And of all places, I met this mutual friend on the float of a Mardi Gras float this year earlier. And he said, we got to talking about what we do. And I told him what I was up to. And he says, hey, you got to talk to this guy. I think you guys would really click.

You do a lot of the same thing. you could probably share a lot of information and benefit a lot from each other. And so we connected and certainly turns out to be that's the case. So he's got his own podcast here on iTunes, the real estate power hour. So make sure you check that out. And I'm talking about speaking of none other than Mr. Mark Evans. Mark, welcome to the show. Hey, Matt, thank you very much, buddy.

How are you today? Doing fantastic. It's nice that we've actually coordinated our schedules and we get to actually speak now. There we go. I'm glad you're having me here. And you just got back from a big vacation, and I wanted to talk about that for a second. But, you know, if you can just kind of share with everybody, I guess your background on how you got started in real estate and what it is that's kept you here for so long, because you've been doing this for quite a while. Yeah, so a quick snippet.

You know, I started back in 96. I was the right old age of 18 years old. Honestly, I had no clue what I was doing. And all I knew in life, I was more afraid of what I knew as opposed to what I did. didn't know, which come to find out a lot of people are afraid to do stuff because they're afraid of the unknown. But I was more afraid of what I knew. So I just started taking action.

I watched one of those infomercials. I went to Florida. I had no money or credit. And I said, I need to be creative, obviously, in the way, shape, or form, and started going creative real estate. Did my first deal, so this is pretty cool, made more money than I've ever made in my life on one transaction. And, you know, started off that way.

And then ultimately, nearly went bankrupt twice because I was still trying to face. out, just doing things, a lot of things wrong. You know, I was doing my own proxy manager. I was doing all these things that I would not ever do again. But knowing what I know now, you know, I just kept going down that path and, you know, always don't let you do learn, you know, educate myself consistently and, you know, tune in the podcast or go to events or have mentors and just have people help you along the way in different parts of your life as you're going into the business.

So today and, you know, being able to travel the wolves for many years at a time, I traveled once for two and a half years straight where the business grew. Had more fun, made more money. Everything was 100% virtual. And now we started traveling again before we settled down to have children. That will change that travel schedule, I'm sure. So, you know, now I'm, we started traveling again on December 1, 2010. So we were homeless for two years.

We had zero house. We were just traveling all over the world. We do have a place in Florida now, though. But it's good, man. It's been a good. great business and a amazing life lesson, life lessons every day, it almost seems like. Right. That's awesome.

So being able to take so much time off, I mean, you must just have some amazing systems in place for those to operate while you're gone. Yeah, you know, we have amazing systems. I think a lot of times when people say systems, man, I think they kind of get a condoluted, meaning like, oh, I just need a system. I push a button and I make million. Well, there's humanization inside a real estate investor. It has to go on.

So there's got to be a human. So that needs to be part of your system. I think a lot of people are so focused in trying to create this mega system, that they do nothing. Systems are great, but if you don't use them or know how to use them, they're worthless. So for me, I'm a pretty simple guy. I'm a yellow notebook and thing guy, honestly, for me. But my team, I mean, we have internal deal pieces and management companies. I mean, everyone does stuff different.

So you have to adapt accordingly to what you're good at and what you're not good at. Right, right. As you know. Absolutely. You know, most of my audience that, you know, they're just getting their start in real estate investing. And I think it's always invaluable information that you can get from someone that's been doing this for a really long time because they've traveled that journey. They've had their successes. They've had their failures.

You know, just the life of an entrepreneur, you teeter with bankruptcy frequently. And, you know, we're all used to that. And, but, you know, the market right now, I think, is a very different market than probably what it was 17 years ago when you got started. And, you know, knowing what you know now, and if you were to get started today, you know, how would you go about it? What would you be the first thing you did and kind of walk me through that? Yeah, so again, I always think, you know, first of all, just so we're clear, on my side, I never got affected by the market condition when it changed in 0708. because I'm a different investor. I'm a straight cash flow investor.

I buy for cash flow only. I'm never, you know, appreciation. If we sell with appreciation, it's more icing on the cake. So everything we do have the cash flow play. If it sells great, we make more money. If it doesn't sell, I'm still generating cash flow, and I'm happy with force-case scenario returns. So in today's market, though, I mean, what I would do

and what I wish I would have done when I first started, it had been a lot easier, is I would start focusing on me. a lot more and started believing in it quicker. You know, I drug my feet trying to figure out, you know, first of I had no money and no credit. So I'm like, how in the world does someone have $50,000 lying around that would buy one of my pieces of property, you know? So I started thinking about that.

So what I did, and I actually reversed the process. I stopped going after sellers because I could talk to sellers. I started getting good at it, but I'd tie these properties up and I wouldn't be able to perform and close them. So instead, what I did is, okay, let's go after buyers. Let's run some ghost ads or phantom ads or whatever you want to call them. Extract buyers.

And I see this everywhere going on right now, you know, three bedroom, two-bathouse, $28,000,000, cash. So immediately they're going to extract a cash buyer, typically an investor buyer,

and then get them on your list and ask them, what are you looking for, a part of town, what kind of deals you like, et cetera, and just take the backwards approach to the investment strategy. Mm-hmm.

Right? So for me, that gave me a lot of confidence. I knew I had 10 people I've talked to, free of them, I felt very confident to close a deal. west side of Columbus, three baths, three bedroom, two baths with a backyard fence, two car garage. I kind of knew their criteria.

But we're now looking for exactly what they wanted, not only say like a realtor, but kind of like a realtor. You know, where you're talking to a buyer, buyer tells you what they want. So when someone would, real quick, and I want to continue, but real quick, when someone would call you on, you know, your phantom ad, you know, how would you respond when they said, hey, I saw this problem, property, I want it. Well, they're not seeing a property. They're actually seeing a sign that says three bed, two, about $20K cash. So what I would do is I would say, hey, you know, thanks for calling on the ad. I'm not sure what's going on with that property.

However, tell me what you're looking for. Let me get back to you here shortly. Got it. You know, or thanks for calling my ad. I mean, you could be totally transparent. Thanks for calling me. We have a lot of properties available. Tell me what you're looking for and we'll go from there.

Mm-hmm. Right? So companies do this all the time. Oh, totally. I mean, look at like Walmarts and all these guys, like, you know, say free soda, but in the top of the corner says, buy one, get one free. It's just drawing you in. Right.

So I want to draw the clients then, start the conversation, like, let's go on the first date, let's get their name first, and then go on the first date, and then start building trust-report relationship with systems, via phone, email, or both. Mm-hmm. Okay, so the person calls in, they tell you what they're looking for, and how do you go about looking for it if you're not a realtor? Well, again, something happens magically from what I've seen. People calling our real estate investors, real estate investors run in cycles.

Oftentimes they're buying, oftentimes they're selling, oftentimes they're looking for money. We're all three at the same time sometimes. Right. So when you're talking to these prospects, what I would do, they say, tell me what you're looking for, what kind of deals are you going, what kind of deals have you done? And by the way, do you have any properties for sell? If you get 10 calls, I could almost guarantee at least one or two people have property to sell.

That's their business. They buy and sell real estate. Right. And then I would just go backtrack. I'd go on Craigslist on the real estate section. People that say, we buy houses. Just go backwards with that approach. Call these people.

Their investors are trying to sell property. Right? They buy properties and they have inventory to sell. We just start building up your local environment, whatever that means. For you. Totally. It's an awesome approach. So that approach has built you quite the successful business.

What does your business look like today? What has that approach built for you over the years? Yeah, so, you know, now knowing what I know, again, I think everyone has to start somewhere. I think that's a great starting point, what I just shared with them. But now we have online pieces, right? Online is so massive. I mean, every day, I mean, there's days we get 1,500, 2,000 new prospects a day coming into our front-end funnel. If it's a rent-owned buyer, the retail buyer, the real estate investor, seller or buyer,

And then what we do is our systems start separating them. And why doing that, it's building trust report relationship, you know, through funny emails, having fun with the prospects, letting them know who we are. And that's what I focus on. I focus in on the business every day. I don't worry about if I'm going to buy a deal or sell a deal because we know the system and the people that we have in place are going to allow those pieces to happen if people are coming in on the front end. So what I do honestly, I'm focusing on how do I build this bigger, more efficient, and effective. effective and more profitable for everybody involved. So I have, you know, we have deal coordinators in Long Island, New York.

I have a COO, a couple of COOs, one in San Diego, and one out in West Palm Beach, Florida. And what their jobs are to do is to work on the systems, build the team, and, you know, keep the pieces moving for us. That's awesome, awesome. So what is there left for you to do? What are you doing during the day? Besides traveling. Yeah. Honestly, that's what we did.

I mean, we do a lot of traveling. So, I mean, you know, we just got back from a 42-day journey in Spain. I've been traveling a lot. So I've written seven bus selling books now. So I have actually have five more in the worst right now as a weekend. Wow. And I do that for, you know, again, I think it's a great way to give back to an awesome business. It's been awesome to us with all the money to go to charity, which is always neat.

So I work harder on that, and then I do real estate anymore. But again, as any smart person with, you know, business owner, you have to always be looking at your business. So every morning I'm looking at stats, how many weeks came in, you know, how many streams of income are rolling in, who's doing what, who do we have to fire, who do we have to hire, you know, and all those people, it's just things that business owners actually have to do. So I love the business. So I could work in it. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like this. We could work all day long. You know, we have no problem doing it.

It's not a big deal to us. But, you know, life is a pretty big thing for me. You know, I just had a passing of an aunt. She was awesome and just passed unexpectedly through cancer. Actually, my brother-in-law's, his mother just found out she has, you know, age, I think, four or five cancer, so it's not too good for her three months maybe. So to me, like, as I get older, you know, life starts becoming more, you know, important to me. But, you know, the memories, not the big houses and the big cars,

but, you know, like the memory's taking your family on a family vacation and stuff like that. I have a lot of time to plan trips and stuff. That's awesome. So may I ask, what does your portfolio look like or what, how big did you, let me ask you in a different way. At what point were you able to really start experiencing the freedom where you're able to start taking some time off? What did your portfolio look like at that moment?

So there's a couple sides of that. So I was, I, some people could say I gained success at a rather young age. I was like 22 years old. Like honestly, at 22 years old, I could never, I would never have to work again if I didn't want to. So, but what happened is I was an entrepreneur. I didn't read the E-MF. I didn't understand what, you know, working in the system meant and all that, that I was working on the business, not on the business.

So I built it wrong. That's what it almost caused me bankruptcy, right? a lot of cash flow coming in, but I was managing the properties myself. So I understood, to me, cash was never king. Everyone always says cash is king, cash is king. That's partially correct. To me, to be set free, it's cash flow is king. If I have 10,000 a month coming in, I can create a pretty amazing lifestyle in 10,000 a month. Right. There's a lot, it's like lottery winners, right? I think something happened in my life around 22, 23. I saw a lottery thing like most people go bankrupt. Well, they had a lot of cash. Why are they going bankrupt? So I started thinking,

about that and I was like okay I have in rentals I have a lot of rentals single families back then is all I did single families and deflectus I said this is great but I'm not good at managing so I started you know that's how I learned how to wholesale Matt is I was going to go bankrupt if I didn't figure out a way to generate revenue like big chunks of revenue so I started wholesaling my portfolio and then December what was this June of 05 so June of 05 that's 27 that's when I said that's when I started getting things back on track. And I looked at my fiance, Dina, and I said, let's take the trip for a week.

And I was like, there's got to be more to life than just working. I mean, I'd be at the office all day. You know, we were doing lots of rehab and all that. I wanted to be big, big, big. But then I stopped focusing on how much I made, like how much money we made and started focused on how much money do we keep. Right. And that was a big mental shift for me because, again, everyone around us is like,

oh, I made $10 million this year. So I wanted to do that. But what you didn't understand behind the scenes is they're leverage to the hill and they only, they borrowed $11 million to make $10 million. Right. You know? So I started like, again, I think it's more maturing

as a business owner. I started reading a lot of books like E-MIS, like I said. There's a lot of great books on this stuff. But just started learning and saying, okay, how do I compartmentalize this into our business in my life? And at 27, December 31st, 2005, I left. I left my office.

I left my whole team and said, I'm going to travel for a month. I was scared to death. My portfolio looked really good. It was strong. We had a lot of great rentals still have these properties to date. Most of them, right? Because portfolio is always changing as it grows. But it was a lot of single families, fourplexes,

and I started understanding small apartment complexes. And, again, because they each one have different animals, and get involved with, and understanding and know-how. And then, you know, I left for a month and I didn't come back for two and a half years. Wow. I started realizing, you know, wow,

it's amazing waking up on the beach. I'm from Columbus, Ohio area. So in the winters, anybody listening is from that area. It's not too warm in late December, early January. That was all going on. I was in Florida. I was in South Beach, actually.

Just waking up, going on in the ocean every day, hanging out. So I was making more, man. I actually started making more because I wasn't micromanaging. At the office, I'd hear someone on a conversation talking to a seller or a buyer, and I would go nuts. Right. Like, I would never say that. What do you don't?

Like, conversations business owners don't ever need to hear, really. Yeah. You know, so I started extracting myself from the simple day-to-day, you know, operations, and really started focusing on the big picture, you know, leading with a purpose and a mission and giving the team, you know, the vision that I had as the owner. We still do today. That's my main role with that. Awesome. Awesome.

You know, you mentioned something right at the beginning of that little segment about what your portfolio looked like. And you said that at age 22, you could have stopped working and never worked another day in your life. And I have a lot of, I get a lot of email correspondence from younger people, people just graduating high school or just graduating college or they're right in the middle there somewhere. And their biggest concern, their biggest fear is going out into the real estate world and being taken seriously. What would you say to them about that fear? Is it justified or how do they overcome it? What is their strategy? How did you not have that?

And how did you get over that when you were so young? Well, again, I don't think H has anything to do with it. I think that's just a procrastination piece. If you're serious, people will take you serious. Period. I mean, there's really, that's how I mean, no one's stopping me. I mean, that's how I thought about it. And the truth is I never even thought like, oh, my God, I'm only 18 years old.

Why is this person going to sell me a property? You know, I'm thinking, why wouldn't they? I'm going to help them, right? So I came with a solution. I wasn't coming as a problem. Right. So, you know, again, we have clients too. It comes to like 50, 60, 67 years old saying the same kind of thing.

You know, well, I don't have any money or credit. Why would they take me serious? Well, they don't know, nor do they care. Right. You focus on the people that you're going after. help them with their problem, create a solution, you'll be taking very serious. I just as a sister.

I don't know if Justin Bieber. The kid's making millions of dollars a year. And he's like what? No, he's 19 now, but he's making million. Right? So he's not sitting around and saying, well, I'm going to get real serious with my music career when I get older

so people take me more serious. You have a gift, and you're chasing your dream and going after it. I think the doors will open, wide open. If anything, as an investor, man, I'm sure you experienced this, but I want to see the younger, kids succeed. I want to help them. You know, so I think it's great to get them out there going

in the business. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think the message, the essence of what you just said right there, that particular moment is, you know, just being raised to go and start making money and saving your money and putting it away in the 401K and living below your means and do that for 40 years and save enough and hopefully it's all going to turn out. And You know, we've seen what that strategy and that philosophy is getting people today. And the insanity is the whole object there is to save enough money so you can create a residual income for yourself in retirement. When through real estate, you can create that residual income right now, enjoy it right now, and still have it in retirement. Exactly.

You know what I mean? Like it's such a roundabout pattern that the younger generation is taught. I mean, shoot, for what that's worth, what we were taught. I mean, they've been teaching that for, you know, generations. So it's good to have another freedom fighter out there. I love it. There's obviously a reason, right, they teach people that, you know, sit down, shut up, raise your hands, and only speak when you're spoken to kind of thing, mentality.

Right. Right. For the bigger guys to be able to control them. And, you know, a lot of them to lead that lifestyle. So, yeah, I love them. I love young people. I don't care if you're 80, if you discovered, you know, this podcast or, you know, real estate investing and you want to take the world by storm, now is the time. Mm-hmm.

I agree. I mean, right now, if you don't do it right now, I mean, we're so blessed with an opportunity that, you know, most people have never been, you know, given before. I mean, just the, you know, I think the ability to buy so far below replacement costs right there. That one aspect, that one little detail alone, is. is like such a huge opportunity. And then you can cash flow at the same time. Like you got best of both worlds. Like it's just, it's awesome.

So if you don't get it now, get it now. Yeah. Cool. So speaking of your message and your mission and passing this on and paying it forward, you know, you have your own podcast over there on iTunes or over here on iTunes, I should say, the real estate power hour. What's that about? What's your focus there?

You know, my focus is the mentor people that want, you know, help people want to help themselves, right? We're not for everybody. I call myself politically incorrect, you know, dealmaker kind of thing. I do deals. Like, I love doing deals. I don't know just real estate now. You know, as I grow up, you know, we have multiple businesses and I have different ventures going on all the time. So I like to share real world experiences of like, hey, you know, stop, like, for example, our last one, stop doing real estate deals and start focusing on people, right?

Because real estate deals don't negotiate. they don't have emotions, it's just a piece, it's whatever. Right. They're focusing on these prospects and start talking to them and start, you know, get to know what they got going on and help them. So, you know, just little like nuggets of 17 years of being in business, not just real estate, but business, period, in life. You know, I feel like I bring something and help, you know,

shine a light on their life. And ideally, the goal is to get them moving forward and help them. Mm-hmm. It's awesome. So, super, I wanted you on because I wanted to demonstrate, you know, what focusing on cash flow can actually do for a person. And we're talking traveling months at a time. A two-year stint was for you at one time. Awesome.

You've got other ventures. Now you're teaching and you're giving back and everything has turned out really, really rosy and awesome for you. And now you're focused on a family. I think that's awesome. So looking back, let's go to the other side of the coin. what let's go let's talk about maybe some of the the mistakes that you've made that you swear you would never make again and and the type of mistakes that you wish someone would have told you about and how you could warn someone from making the same you know I kind of see the glass

always half full so I've made first of all I make mistakes every day still you know right so I think in any business I think there's a lot of people that are afraid to make mistakes so afraid they actually do nothing which is the biggest mistake so for me, my mistakes that I make consistently is shiny object syndrome, right? Getting excited. I don't do that as much anymore at all. But there's people out here like, oh, my gosh, I need this, I need this, we need this, before they can actually be successful as what they think.

So shiny object syndrome, I used to be horrendous with that mad. I mean, I bought everything. I still do buy stuff, but I don't, like, I don't buy it to learn 100 things. I buy it for one singular focus. What am I buying the product for? And is it going to help me get to the one step closer of what I'm shooting for? Instead of trying to, you know, I used to, I remember back in the day, I'd buy a product and try to learn everything from them. You know, it's hard to bundle 17 years or, you know, four years or even a year into a book or a course or training CDs or whatever.

So my biggest thing, you know, getting the mistakes, you know, buying right, I didn't buy it right sometimes. And I think you have to make a lot of the mistakes that you and I've made get to where we're at today. Someone could tell you 100 times not to make the mistake, but until you actually do it, you don't understand what we're even talking. talking about. Right. So I always look at it and I'm proud, I'm glad I always, you know, it's always kind of an inside joke with me and my team is like, you know, like, oh my gosh, Mark, you know, so stupid, why did you do that?

And I'm thinking, you know, well, they don't write books about people that had everything handed to them and it was easy. So it's kind of an inside thing that we always do. Obviously, we try to minimize mistakes. But, you know, buying wrong, I think it's always a big one. Not doing it soon enough. I wish I started when I was 10, knowing what I know now. You know, I wish you can play sad.

The kids these days are so technology inclined. I'm not very good on the computer. I understand it. I just don't know how to do a lot of the webpages and all that stuff. We hire people now. And, you know, I think, again, I think the biggest mistake I see people make and I've made is just not doing it big enough, fast enough, and making those crucial, life-changing decisions quick enough. Right.

Right. There's never a good time. No, you're right. And it's always the right time. So I couldn't agree more. That's perfect. Well, awesome. So if someone wanted to get in touch with you or check out what you're up to,

how would you recommend that they do that? I think, you know, you said it earlier. You know, join us over at the Real Estate Power Hour. Get to know us and, you know, again, spread the word and I'm there. Like I said, you have, you know, we do a lot of show requests. So if you've got questions and hot topics or creative financing, you know, thing for me, Matt, that's always the best if they just go visit the real estate power hour. It's awesome.

Awesome. Well, Mark, it's been an absolute honor. Thank you for joining us, taking time out of your busy schedule. And, you know, it seems like we're going to potentially our paths will be crossing even off the air. And maybe we can come back and talk about those at a later date. Sounds good. Sounds good, buddy. Appreciate it, Matt.

Thank you, guys. You bet, Mark. Thanks a butt. Yep. Okay, so if you happen to have a question, comment or concern that you'd like Mark to answer, go ahead and go on going over to the real estate power hour. And if you got something you'd like me to address here live on the show, you can share that with me on the Epic Real Estate Investing Hotline at 1-88-8-9-1-7203. Okay, until next time to your success.

I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. Take care. You've been 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 iTunes and share your thoughts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time here at Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit C-desweet Radio. com