Epic Real Estate Investing - [PART II] 12 Lessons From 12 Years of Investing in Real Estate | 366

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

Today on The Epic Real Estate Investing Show, get the last 6 of Matt's 12 lessons from 12 years of investing in real estate! Learn one huge mistake new entrepreneurs make and how to avoid it, what happened when Matt switched from single family homes to multi-family properties, specific questions you can ask yourself to minimize risk in your business, and much, much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. Yo. I'm not sure for what you came for. Throw you smoke up your ass, seminar, it's next door. Line your tips up, man, just like a neck for. All you're winning and you're wanting, yo, that's what we check for. I'm building piles of cash, create cash flow.

Epic real estate investment, I make your cash grow. Won't I can tell you ain't work smart at all. Tell people you work hard, you ain't working hard at all. Go deep with your investment before going wide. Too cold for your next. Yo, you need to go inside. It's not a money problem. It's an idea of problem.

Epic real estate investment, then we can solve them. Scared money, don't make money. Passing income cash flow, yo, how you create money. Savers and losers. Open your eyes and see them. Matt Derry, y'all creating your financial freedom. Cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

Cash flow. Welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. Glad you found us because, you know, if you're frustrated because you don't know how or where to get started or restarted or don't have the time to do it or you lack the necessary funds to seemingly get it done. I want you know that you're in the right place because each and every week here we cover different strategies and tactics and ideas for getting your real estate business to your next level, your next level, how to get it done in the time that you do have available

and creative funding or creative funding and financing strategies to build a cash flowing portfolio that can set you free to provide for yourself and your family and to anyone else that you want to provide for to where you can call the shots in your world you're in control of your life that's what financial freedom does for you in the world of which we live there's nothing else in our society that replaces money in which the way in which the way it serves us right so money is really important and if you like money you want money you want wealth you want um you just want a big fat bank account and you want a monthly cash flowing portfolio flowing into that bank account there's no other, there's no better way to do it than through real estate.

It's produced more wealth than anything else on the planet. Real estate is the final frontier where the average person has a legitimate shot at creating epic wealth. Got it. So let's pick up from where we left off last week. As I shared with you that after 15 years in the music business, I ended up bagging groceries. Someone asked me, well, how did you end up, you started the whole story last week with

bagging groceries. How did you get to bagging groceries at the age of? to 34. Well, I started in the music business. I had 15 years in the music business did pretty well for myself, but I ended up bagging groceries when the digital download came along as the video killed the radio star. The digital download killed the music store. And so everybody changed the way in which they consume music and it put us out of business. It turned the whole industry upside down even. And I had to start life from scratch. I had to start over right there in middle age and that life began with bagging groceries for $7 an hour. And after six months of soul

searching, I made the leap from grocery bagger because I wasn't going to stay there forever, but I did have to eat. I didn't have to keep a roof over my head. So I did that as I figured out what I was going to do. And at the age of 34, I started as a real estate agent. That was a big false start for myself. But then after I realized that that wasn't the place for me, I landed on my feet as a real estate investor, and that happened a little over 12 years ago. And I'm not done. I haven't reached my real estate investing goals yet. I'm still actively investing. It's still my full-time thing. And I don't profess to know it all, by the way, as I haven't seen it all, but I've seen a lot. And I love that, I think it's State Farm, the insurance commercial when they say, we know a thing or two because we've

seen a thing or two. I've got a lot more to see, but I have seen a thing or two. And I've got more than a thousand transactions under my belt. I still flip 10 to 15 properties each month. I hold 50 or so houses and notes in my portfolio, a combination of those two. And maybe that doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't seem like a lot to you, or maybe it does seem like a lot. It's all relative. And what I do know is over the past 12 years that I've been a full-time investor, I've been able to identify 12 lessons that I've learned that if I could have incorporated these lessons from day one, there's no doubt in my mind that I would have traveled twice as far as I have. I would have gone so much further.

So I want to share these with you so that you can go further. You can sidestep these landmines that are out there as well as accelerate in other areas that you may be doing already well in to help you get to your real estate investing goals even faster. It's not get rich fast over here, but it is get rich faster than how most people go about it. So let's get into those 12 lessons from 12 years. investing in real estate. I shared the first six with you last week, last Monday. And so if you missed that, go back and grab those when you get a chance. And then we'll resume here today with the rest.

Seven through 12. We'll do that today. And again, in no particular order. So number seven, this was a, you know what I was thinking about last week and after I was editing and producing and editing the podcast and uploading it for you. I kind of heard it back. And I kind of had like a down vibe to it. I don't know, at least it kind of came off that way or I can see how it could come off that way. These are, these lessons that I'm going over, those six that I went over last week and the

six that I'm going to go over today, I just want you to watch out. I think real estate is great. I think it's your only shot at creating real wealth. The average person, they don't really have any other opportunities. I mean, sure there's are, there are, you can go. invent something, invent something you could go and write a hit song or write a best-selling novel or, you know, there's all types of different things out there that can produce wealth for yourself. But the odds against those panning out are so much against you.

But when it comes to real estate, when 74% of the wealthiest 1% have either made their money or preserve their money in real estate, those stats, they're very telling. There's nothing else out there. Like writing a hit song is not even a measurable percentage on the amount of wealth that's created in this world for the amount of people that have created wealth. But almost three quarters of those people have either made their money, the wealthiest people in our society have made their money or preserved their money in real estate. That's what you call a clue.

It's what you call evidence. So real estate, it's the final frontier where the average person has a legitimate shot. at creating epic wealth. So everything that I've ever shared with you on this show to this point and everything that you've heard everywhere else that real estate promises, it's all 100% true. But it doesn't mean it's easy. It's just the easiest way to get there per the statistics. Okay. So with these lessons, I'm sharing with you, these are some of the toughest lessons that I've learned so I can help you help your journey and make real estate investing even easier for you. But it's not just easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, and you know, you go out and you buy a house

and it's all done and now you're wealthy. It's still a business. There's still risks involved. There's still things you have to watch out for. You have to be careful. It takes experience. It takes some skill, take some guidance. All right. So that's what these lessons for. So if last week sounded a little bit down, just to understand I'm sharing these lessons with you. And I don't know, maybe indirectly or subconsciously, they've been attached to some painful experiences in my life and maybe that pain came through in my voice. So I'll try and keep it a little bit more lively today, but these lessons here are no more lively, but more upbeat and more positive.

But these lessons here, they're no less important because they're coming on the second version of this show on part two of the show. They're just as important. And the lessons that if you can take these lessons and you can apply these lessons and you're investing from this point forward, you can avoid a lot of pain. Got it? you can avoid a lot of money lost and everything that real estate promises can be yours faster and easier. Got it. All right, cool. So number seven, don't assume that your knowledge of one asset class

will translate to another. Don't assume your knowledge and your experience of one asset class will translate to another. I want you to check your ego. Just because you might have crushed it in self-storage doesn't mean you're going to crush it in apartment buildings. Just because you're doing really well in notes doesn't mean you're going to go out and crush it in land. You might, and there's a good chance you will, because there are a lot of similar experiences, but don't assume just because you're a stud in one asset class that you're going to be a stud or a stud in another. I want you to check your ego, listen to the people that have been there before. Never stop learning. Never stop learning. This lesson comes to me after making the transition really from single family to multifamily. I'll

give you my personal experience here. At the time when I, when I made this transition, I had more than 100 single family properties to my name. And I had found a 14-unit building and thought, hey, it's just 14 single families under one roof. How difficult could it be? I got this. I mean, I am a successful real estate investor. That's what I was thinking. And true, I was a very successful real estate investor.

But that success doesn't automatically translate to another asset class or to, other asset classes. The experience that I've had will certainly help me, but it doesn't mean it's just, it doesn't mean it's automatic. Now, in hindsight, multifamily properties, they weren't difficult, right? There's a lot of people very successful with multi-family properties. I don't think they're difficult. There were just things about a multifamily building in that strategy and that investment class that I just didn't know. That's all. So to simplify it, investing in multifamily's it's a business and managing them is another business. So one thing that's kind of different about multifamilies and single families that I learned

was it's just it's a business within a business. It's not so much of the set it and forget it type of investing that single family properties can be. I'd say that very, I'm going to emphasize how it can be. It doesn't mean that I didn't say single families was set it and forget it. But it can be that way, especially when you start doing it for a while and you got a bunch of them under your belt. and you kind of figure the thing out, and it can be set it and forget it for the most part.

But with the multifamily, there's just many more knobs and dials to watch. Also, one of the previous lessons that I shared last week that contributed to my frustration with multifamily properties, and that would be to delegate, don't abdicate. You know, I picked up this 14-unit building and turned it over to someone else to manage for me. I abdicated. I didn't delegate. I said, here, run this and pay me. Don't tell me anything.

I didn't say that, but that was kind of my vibe and my emotion around that thing. And I'm much smarter now. I mean, that's what bad experiences do for you. They educate you. They make you smarter. You know, in real estate, you're making money or you're getting an education. So I am much smarter now. And those bad experiences, that's what they do.

They educate you. And good management of bad experiences, what that leads to is great. growth. Bad experiences, they can stop us in our tracks or they can cause us to make decisions that we would like to put off. They can make us deal with issues we would rather not face. And those bad decisions can make changes that make us feel uncomfortable. Bad experiences, they prompt us to face who we are and where we are. And what we do with that experience, it defines who become. And my outlook on bad experience like this is, It's to reload and fire again.

Just this time with better aim, focus, and experience. Okay? You know, when going into something new, just check your ego. Listen to the people that have been there before. And another lesson that I learned with my multifamily experience is, and it's not, this isn't exclusive to multifamily, but I learned it here. It was just a lesson that was actually magnified for me here. And that is to, and this brings us to lesson number eight for the day,

to go deep before going wide. You know, entrepreneurs, they have a tendency to be impatient. And they want to build and grow an empire as fast as possible. And to most new entrepreneurs, growth, it looks like width. More, more, more, right? However, after you've learned that growth is not by going wide with your endeavors, but rather by going deep with what works, then an entrepreneur will experience true growth.

You know, you want to go deeper, much deeper than you think before you want to go wide. Most entrepreneurs, they go wide too fast. So go deep with your core business, become great at it, and see to it that it is a true business before starting a quote unquote second business. And I'd say a true business is one that runs with or without you. until your business reaches that state, resist, do everything you can to resist starting a second

business or expanding your existing one. You know, if you don't have the systems in place for a small business to run on its own, then you're going to really struggle and potentially collapse altogether when you try to run a bigger business without those systems. So if your systems can't run that small business, don't get caught in this trap thinking that you'll figure it out when the business gets bigger. Okay, apply this idea also to your asset class, to your market, to your lead generation, to your conversion process, to everything.

For example, resist adding a new market to your investing until you get your existing market efficiently working for you. Adding more market does not make your business better. It makes it more complicated. It makes you busier. It makes you frantic. It steals your time. You want to.

you want to get your current market working before you go and expand it to another one. It's not going to make it better. A lot of people think it does. And I've made some hasty decisions in the interest of growth. And in hindsight, flat out bad decisions. But the only way to get to a place where you consistently make good decisions is from racking of experiences and experiences come from making bad decisions. And I share this with you because I just, I sadly see so many people quit real estate

because of the bad decisions that they've made, failing to take responsibility for those decisions, and they blame it on the real estate itself. You know, they say stuff like, I'll never do that again. I just had this conversation with my uncle this last week, and we hadn't seen each other for a while, actually a really long while.

It's funny how family emergencies they'll bring people together. But anyway, he had asked me how many properties I had now, because I hadn't talked to him so long. and he went on to reminisce about how the one rental that he purchased in the past was such a disaster that he'd never get into real estate again. I thought, wow, what a waste of that experience. He walked away from that experience and that education with totally the wrong lesson. I mean, imagine if you walked away from every bad experience like that.

Where would you be today? I mean, you wouldn't even be able to walk if after the first time you fell down, you said, I'll never try that again. This walking thing, this is for the bird. That hurt. Anyway, got a little off topic there. The lesson here is go deep before going wide. Deep is where the growth is.

No need for you now to experience that yourself. You can now leverage my experience in this arena to make good decisions from this point forward, about growth, about expansion. Go deep before you go wide. Go much deeper than you think. And when you think you've gone deep enough, go a little bit deeper before you go wide. All right.

Don't confuse width with growth. Number nine, think big. Yeah, don't be afraid to think big. Don't let the zeros scare you. What I mean by that? And this is a pretty simple. There's no more work involved in a million dollar deal than there is in a $100,000 deal.

You know, discounted real estate is discounted real estate. And there is no shortage of buyers and lenders for a deal, any deal. There's a lot of money in the system right now. And there really always is for discounted real estate. And there's just, there's no shortage of buyers and lenders partners for a deal, any deal. And actually, really, the bigger, typically the easier. The bigger the deal, typically the easier. Not to mention bigger profits.

And when I say that easier, if there's a lot of profit involved, it's easier to find money. It's easier to find partners. It's easier to find people that are willing to help you. And I find with those bigger zeros, you're typically dealing with smarter people as well, which makes the relationships easier. And the air is cleaner up there. The view is better. And the competition is less as well. So think big.

Don't be afraid to think big. Okay. It's no more additional work. If you can do the exact same amount of work and add a zero to your profit, why not? Number 10, this is a biggie, really big. Eliminate all single points of failure. Look for the single points of failure in your business and start going to work on those, eliminating those. You know, real estate, the real estate, that's the easy part.

Real estate is safe. People are risky. Real estate is safe. People are risky. Diversify your team as well as your markets, as well as your asset class. You want to start your property managers out slowly. You want to micromanage contractors. And I always say property managers and contracts. I always go to those people.

And when I say real estate is safe, people are risky. Those are kind of the two people I'm talking about. Your property managers and your contractors. Not exclusive to them, but mostly. You know, I look back on every single dime I've ever lost in real estate. And it can be summed up to either, whether it's directly or indirectly, bad property management or bad contractors. If you eliminate those two things, if you can get those two things under control, boy,

the sky is the limit with real estate. It's really tough to lose. It's really tough to mess it up. Again, delegate. Don't abdicate. Don't do that. You know, at least once per quarter, this is how you eliminate your single person. points of failure. At least once per quarter, and we do this in my office, I want you to ask yourself,

if I were my competition, how would I put myself out of business? Once per quarter, I want you to ask yourself that. In fact, I ask yourself that right now. If you were your competition right now, how would you put yourself out of business? Would it be destroying your pay-per-click campaign? or would it be taking your secret postcard away? Or would it be your property manager passing away? Right? So how would you put yourself out of business? What would be the easiest way to put yourself out of business if you were your competition?

I want you to scribble down everything you can possibly think of and then go to work and either creating redundancy in that part of your business. So it's not a single point of failure. or creating some sort of safety net. And whether that's, I don't know, maybe some money in the bank, a reserve account, or it's an insurance policy or something like that. Okay. But go to work there.

You know, and I said, talked about the property manager passing away. Might sound like an odd example for you, but that was actually my example. That's where I got burned significantly. And to this day, it's something that will come up of which I still have to pay for. I mean, this is a mistake I made six years ago. And it still comes back to haunt me every now and then. You know, when I was really hot on Memphis, I was buying everything I could in that market. And in my turnkey clients, I was telling them that they were buying everything they could find.

And at the height, I had more than 100 units of my own in that market and close to 60 properties of my clients, all managed by one person. And when that person passed away, I was in deep crap. I mean, I panicked. And that's 160 units that were there all of a sudden in an instant unmanaged, halfway across the country from where I was. And so, yeah, I panicked. Yep, good old calm, cool, and collected.

Matt panicked. And I acted hastily, willing to really hire anyone that even remotely fit the bill to take over these more than 150 units. and when they didn't work out, I had to find another. And, you know, and even that person didn't turn out to be perfect, and I don't even have that person anymore. But really, this was a six-month process to stabilize this collective portfolio. And there were a lot of missed rents in there, a lot over that six months. Like most of the rent was missed.

And that really, it put me in a hole, a deep hole. And I put my clients in a deep hole. hole, of which I ended up carrying the load for everybody. I couldn't let them get into the deep hole like I was, so I had to write a lot of checks to keep everybody whole and complete. It set me back quite a bit. And that property manager, he represented a single point of failure in my business. And when it failed, it failed big. Now, in every market, I have at least two property managers. I've got two realtors, I got two contractors, and I share the wealth with all of them. I spread my business around with all of them, and everybody knows of each other.

And although it's not a perfect system, it's far better than what I had in place. But it's not perfect, but I do notice the performance of my entire portfolio has significantly improved. The expenses of my portfolio has significantly decreased. I notice I get thank you notes from my clients. Now, and, you know, everything is performing much better since I put that in place. I eliminated those single points of failure and I doubled up on my team at least. In some of my markets, I've tripled up on my team. Yeah, so the performance has improved, the expenses have decreased.

But most of all, if God forbid another property manager passes away or another property manager goes out of business, I've got somebody in place to help me. minimize losses and stabilize performance until I can put another team together. So that's what diversifying your team can look like. But you want to look at every aspect of your business this way. You want to look at your markets this way. You know, if you're in a market that's dependent on a single industry, that's something that could put you out of business if that industry goes out.

You know, I remember back in the 80s, I think was the 80s? It might have been the 70s, 80s. It's before I was a real estate investor, but I remember this story because there was a local story, you know, in Lakewood and Long Beach here in Los Angeles. The, those neighborhoods, those residents were heavily dependent on the aerospace industry. And when a couple of those, I think it was McDonald-Douglas and Boeing or something like that, when they started doing massive layoffs, the real estate market there just, it collapsed. It just disappeared. I think this happened in Houston in the last couple years with the oil industry. Right?

So you want to check your markets for that. You want to make sure that those aren't your single points of failure. Your asset class might want to diversify your asset class. Like I hold a good balance of actual properties and notes now. Your key people, are there people that you just could not move forward with without? Right. That might be your single point of failure. Or maybe it's even you.

Maybe you are your single point of failure. Maybe if you walked out and got hit by a bus, your business would die and your family would suffer because they would no longer have an income because you are the single point of failure. You know, at some point, you're going to want to duplicate yourself. You're going to want to be a redundant piece in your business,

a redundant piece in your business. That's when your business will be a real business. So go through your business. I want you to eliminate all single points of failure. Once per quarter, I want you to ask the question, if I were my competition, how would I put myself out of business? I want you to write every single thing down and then go to work on either creating redundancy in that portion or putting some sort of insurance policy on that piece.

That's your single point of failure. Okay? Number 11. Say no more often. Practice saying no. You know, as entrepreneurs, we see opportunity everywhere. And we like to say yes. And for a couple reasons.

One, we're entrepreneurs and we want all of the opportunity. We want to be big. We want to grow. We want to make lots of money. That's why we're entrepreneurs. We want to conquer the world. But also as entrepreneurs, as you're getting started, you know, the money, it can have its inconsistent moments. Or you can have your uncertainties about whether one thing is going to work for you or not.

And you'll say yes to things because as a backup plan or just in case or as a supplemental income or a supplemental income stream. say no more often. And when this comes to real estate and deals, you know, missing out on a good deal is far better than getting involved in a bad one. You know, just because someone is willing to sell you their house at a discount doesn't mean you should buy it. Just because someone is willing to give you their house doesn't mean you should take it. And just because you may be super close with your price and terms with a seller, you're super

close on getting a deal, doesn't mean you should flex and compromise your minimum deal standards to do that deal. You want to be a shopper of deals. Don't be a buyer. You want to be a shopper of deals. And shoppers say no more often than buyers. The best investors are shoppers. And here's what I mean.

Several years ago. That's probably about six years ago or so too. I was offered a 50-unit building at $1,000 a door. Yep, I was going to get a 50 unit building for $50,000. That was very exciting to me. I was like, you know, every unit needed to be completely rebuilt. But gosh, I was just doing the math and I had the bricks alone of the structure estimated at more than $50,000.

I couldn't buy that many bricks for $50,000. Not to mention the giant parcel of land that building sat on as well. This seemed like a smoking deal. And it was. and I bought it just to buy it. But it wasn't what I was shopping for. It wasn't in my asset class at the moment. I didn't have a team in place to rehab it.

I didn't have the funds either to complete the rehab or even started it at that moment. But it just seemed too good to pass up. So I bought it. Well, I sat on it for more than a year, had to pay the property taxes, had to pay the weed abatement penalties, had to pay county and, you know,

had to keep the condemnation board at bay, letting them know I was going to do it before they condemned the property and took it away from me. I was constantly kicking squatters out of the property. I mean, it was a huge pain in the ass. Now, I did pull out of that deal and I was able to sell it for $100 grand.

I did okay on it financially. I don't think I really lost any money on the deal. But I'm not sure if even that profit was worth the year long, I don't know, probably 18 month long headache that the property was. I don't know if it was worth it. And then the opportunity costs as well. I mean, I think those are incalculable. You know, just the stress that I had that building put on me, who knows what I missed out on that I wasn't thinking clearly or I lost sleep and, you know, I missed out on other deals because I was so concerned with this. So the whole point is know what you're looking for.

okay know what you're looking for and if you find something that doesn't exactly match err on the side of saying no now you might i mean every situation is going to be different there's too many variables at play for me to give you an absolute here but i just want you to air on the side of saying no because it's much better to miss out on a good deal than it is to pick up a bad one stay focused on you okay it's this kind of another version of going deep before going wide. You want to go deeper in what you know before going wide into stuff that you know less about. Okay. So that's number 11. Say no more often. All right. Number 12. I want you to practice your people skills like any other skill. Practice. Drill. Rehears. Because real estate, it's a people business.

I've said it a thousand times. At least every piece of real estate you've been. buy or sell will be from or two another person. If it's your job to buy low and sell high, the better your people skills are, the wider that that gap is going to be. The wider the gap from how low you buy to how high you sell, the wider that that gap is going to be. So if you practice drill and rehearse your people skills in the same manner a professional basketball player does his jump shot, if you treat your people skills like you would treat any other

skill like a jump shot or your free throws or dribbling the ball, real estate can pay you far more than the NBA will ever pay any single player, even if it's greatest star. It's a skill that pays the bills in the profession that you've chose in the endeavor that you are pursuing. It's a skill that pays the bills and then some. It's why if you haven't already, you've got to get to our next ground and pound school. that's what we do there it's this skill you're going to apply at ground and pound school dot com okay but the point here the lesson is practice your people skills like any other skill

practice drill rehearsed just like an athlete practices their craft or a musician or an artist practices their craft because this is your craft and the better your people skills are the more money you're going to make point blank that simple all right so between last week's episode and this week's, that's 12 lessons I've learned from 12 years of investing in real estate. And if you were to add up the dollars that I paid the School of Hard Knocks for those lessons, for that tuition, you're looking at a seven-figure education that you just got for free. And I've got two more lessons for you. Because I wasn't sure how to fit these in.

I haven't been investing in real estate for 14 years, so I couldn't call it the 14 lessons from 14 years of investing in real estate. So I gave you 12. It just sounded better, 12 lessons from 12 years. But I've got 14 lessons from 12 years. And now I'm going to give you these two extras, we'll just call these bonus lessons. And the first bonus lesson is cooperation over competition. Choose cooperation over competition. And I have no real way to measure this. So I'm not 100% sure factually, but I'm 99% sure instinctively that I've made far more money by cooperating with other investors in my respective markets than I've lost from their quote-unquote competition.

You know, investors are buyers, investors are sellers, and they can't buy and sell everything. They're going to need help from other investors. And you too, you're going to frequently need help as well. So treat your fellow investors with respect. Treat your fellow investors with integrity. Do right by them. Your reputation here is important. And look at them as allies rather than competition.

Cooperate. Choose cooperation over competition. Be willing. Also, be willing to give first. Don't sit there and wait for what are you going to do for me before I give back to you. don't get into that competitive, weird competitive thing like, and get all protective. And, you know, I want you to be willing to give first and give, give this way. Give with no expectations that it's going to be reciprocated.

Just give. And don't hold a grudge if your, if your goodwill isn't reciprocated. Don't have any expectations. It's the only way you can be disappointed is if you have expectations. So, yeah, give without expecting. Give by and detach yourself from the outcome. Don't hold a grudge if, you know, your goodwill doesn't get reciprocated. Give and cooperate in this manner.

And the long run will be yours to win. In fact, you will win. I mean, competition and negativity and keeping secrets, holding back and, you know, and getting in there and, you know, fighting and scrapping for yours. all that, that can win in the short term. That competition and that negativity, that can win in the short term. But cooperation and positivity, it always prevails and comes out the winner in the long run. Okay.

So choose cooperation over competition. Number 14. This is a bonus lesson number two. Whatever you calculate your rehab budgets to be. and this isn't like a full lesson, but it's important. I've learned this the hard way a couple times. Whatever you calculate your rehab budget to be,

just before you close and begin work, double the budget. Just before you close the deal and start your work, I want you to double the budget. I mean, it's not always going to be double, but if you're prepared for it, life as a real estate investor will be a much happier and less stressful endeavor for you.

And another note to this point, always calculate a second exit strategy in case plan A doesn't pan out. You know, knowing that you're prepared for what can go wrong allows you to sleep better. It allows you to be, you know, better rested. And when you're better rested, you think more clearly. You make better decisions. and you profit bigger and more frequently because you're thinking more clearly and making better decisions. So with that rehab budget, plan on doubling it.

Have something in place in case it gets doubled. It's not a big deal to you. And second thing is always have a plan B for your exit strategy in case plan A doesn't pan out because sometimes it doesn't. All righty. So there you go. 12 lessons from 12 years of investing in real estate. Now you know, but they'll only impact your business if from here you do what you now know.

Knowledge, it's not power. Contrary to all popular thinking, knowledge is not power. Applied knowledge is your access to power. You know what to do. Now do what you know. As a true teacher, will never tell you what to do. You know, you know what to do. Now you just have to do it.

All right? Take care. God bless and to your success. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Huh. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us. We got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-Sweet Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com. Thank you.