Epic Real Estate Investing - The Art of Creating Cash and Wealth in Any Market - Sensei Gilliland | 1087

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

In today’s episode, Matt is joined with Sensei Gilliland who is specialized in the art of creating cash and wealth thru buying, selling, and investing in real estate using all the economic and real estate cycles, including the one that we are in right now! Tune in and learn what’s working in real estate, right now, what you have to do to thrive, how you can get Sensei’s freebies, and much, much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit R-E-I-Aase.com.

Here's Matt. Hey there, Epic Investor. It's Matt Terrio from Epic Real Estate, where we show people how to invest in real estate with an emphasis on retiring early. So if this is your first time here, and that sounds of interest to you, really glad that you found us. And if you like what you hear, make sure you hit the subscribe button before you go. And if this is not your first time here, welcome back. And thank you for sharing this with your friends and family. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you doing that. So thank you.

Got some positive news, a little outside of it. of real estate. We're going to get to the real estate. We're going to get about to make them money. But you got to be alive to actually enjoy it. So this is life or death information, in my opinion. So I'm here to be the bearer of good news because Lord knows we have enough bearers of bad news these days. No shortage of people out there to tell us what's wrong with us, right? Where the problems are. What's wrong with the people? What's wrong with the system and what's wrong with the country? So let's all just kind of make an attempt to be a little bit more solution oriented. And let's not get so outraged at every single thing we disagree with, right?

I wish we could go back to the world where we could just disagree and go on about our business. But everything's got to be a thing now. But anyway, I mentioned a few episodes ago that I started listening to Joe Rogan's podcast. And I even mentioned I was on the fence for an episode or two. I felt like I was missing out and I didn't really quite get it. But I forced myself to listen and I am totally hooked. Love this dude. And you're probably like, yeah, no.

No, duh, Matt. Wake up. Welcome to the 21st century. Whatever. But a great show. I really love it. I love his guests. I love the way he interviews.

He's a great listener. I aspire to be a better podcaster just from listening to Joe. He's that great. Anyway, as we're all inundated with how bad COVID is and what we have to do to stop the spread, right? We've got to wear the gloves, wash the hands, and watch our social distancing. And we're told to do that on a daily basis, multiple times. multiple times per day, but there's literally no discussion about strengthening the immune system or staying healthy, is that appears to be a huge factor.

And this is one of Joe's missions, and he mentions this frequently on his show in almost every single interview. And if I can just be a little bit of loudspeaker for that and pass it on to a few more people, I think it would be a really good thing. And here's where he talks about frequently. And I got a little bit more information. I talked about this like a couple episodes ago, but I got some more.

I went and did a little bit of research and dug up the actual report and the studies that he was referring to from his guest that he had on the show. But what it says was very few deaths are from COVID directly. So your immune system and staying healthy are really important because it's almost required, almost required, that you have an underlying condition for this thing to be deadly. I mean, if you look at the science, the scientific reports and listen to the doctors and not your politicians and not the dumb old CNN and Fox News, just listen to the science, go to the CDC and listen to what people are doing around the country, or excuse me, around the globe. Because if you look at the science, diabetes and hypertension seem to be like the real killers here, as they were killing a lot of people before COVID even came around.

COVID is just kind of pushing them over the edge. But I'm no doctor. I'm just telling you what I read. I don't know anything. I'm just a dumb old real estate investor. But like I said, we can't enjoy the money that we make from real estate if we're not around anymore.

So I touched on this a minute ago, but it's really important, I think, to point out the role of vitamin D amid this pandemic. So vitamin D, if you didn't know, it plays a significant role. Like, we need it already before the pandemic, right? It plays a significant role in the regulation of calcium and maintenance of phosphorus levels

in the blood. And these factors, they're vital for maintaining healthy bones. So we need the vitamin D for the healthy bones. People need vitamin D to allow the intestines to stimulate and absorb calcium and reclaim calcium that the kidneys would otherwise excrete. So this is important. It's really important. And I started working out with a trainer, I don't know, a little over a year ago.

And she has me on a, I got a giant stack. of supplements that I take every single day. But vitamin D was something that she wanted me to take separately in addition to what was included in my multivitamin that she was giving me. And so I've been on it for more than a year now. And thankfully, but I've been on it. And when I went and got my checkup with my doctor here a couple months ago, I got all my blood work done.

And I was actually deficient in vitamin D. But I was like, how could this be? I'm taking a supplement. He says, you need to take a lot more. So now I'm taking a lot more. I've taken 15,000 I use, I think, which I think only 5,000 is recommended, but I've been taking the 5,000 and I was deficient. So my doctor told me to take more.

So I'm not taking that willy-nilly. I'm doing it because he told me to. But here's the deal. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, the guest on Joe's podcast, that kind of revealed all of this information and shared this with him and shared it with the audience. She's a PhD. She's a biochemist. She's conducted extensive research on aging and

cancer and nutrition, including groundbreaking studies on how vitamin and mineral deficiencies affect our overall health. And her interview, I think, was one of the most exciting and hopeful things that I've listened to regarding the coronavirus. It's one of the greatest things I've heard yet. There's talks of the vaccine coming out really soon and the talks of the therapeutics are working better and better and better, but there's a lot of stuff we can do preventatively. And the news, just the powers that be, the system that we got, not sharing it with us. You know, say what you want about either candidate, but the media is really starting to show themselves as public enemy number one. I think they're even worse than potentially the protesters, because they give the protesters something to protest about meaning, or I guess they magnify it.

They're not the source of it, but they're certainly the magnifiers. And, you know, just the president gets such backlash for fanning the flames of hate and being so divisive. And maybe he is. I don't know. But I got to say CNN has yet. to meet a bonfire. They didn't try to extinguish with gasoline. You know, anytime they see any sort of smoke, you know, they're over there with their gas tank or their gas can and pouring it on and right on top. I think they should be held accountable to tell you the truth.

I think they are really controlling the country's mindset, particularly the mob mentality that's causing so much destruction. Anyway, let's not go there. This is supposed to be the bearer of good news, right. So during Dr. Patrick's interview, she shared a study of 780 COVID-19 patients in Indonesia, and it wasn't here in the U.S., who was in Indonesia, and found that 98.9% of these patients who died of COVID-19 were deficient in vitamin D. 98.9%. So that just leaves out 1.1% that that had vitamin D died, right? Another study in the Philippines of 212 patients, with COVID-19 showed these findings. Patients with higher levels of vitamin D

were eight times more likely to have a mild case of the virus and 20 times more likely to not have a severe case of COVID-19 at all. Just what my own doctor said to me a couple months ago that I shared with you. Vitamin D, it's not a cure, but it will keep you out of the hospital. Those were his exact words, and that's what the study really, reveals as well. And here's the really good thing. Only 4.1% of cases with normal vitamin D levels died. Only 4.1% of the cases with normal vitamin D levels died. And one more interesting finding there from the Indonesia study that it in this, the Indonesia study here mirrors what they found in the

Philippines. They found that the patients who were vitamin D deficient were approximately 19.12 times more likely to die from COVID than patients with normal vitamin D levels. levels. So the vitamin D factor proved more statistically significant. This was an amazing part. The vitamin D factor proved more statistically significant than age. Patients over 50 were 10 times more likely to die than younger patients. But the vitamin D thing is bigger, a bigger factor. It's a bigger factor than the sex because male cases were six times more likely to die than female cases. and it's a bigger factor than even pre-existing conditions, 11 times more likely to diet if they had a pre-existing condition.

The vitamin D factor could have, per the study, in both of them, they showed that this could have helped if people were sufficient in their vitamin T, vitamin D levels. So the takeaway here is, I mean, you can't control your age or your sex, but you can't control your vitamin D level. And you get that by either natural sun, light, a lot of it, or by taking a supplement. All righty. Let's see. There's one more thing here. A small study was conducted at Louisiana State University on April 24th, 2020 on the COVID-19 patients

in the intensive care unit of these patients, 84% were vitamin D insufficient. So this is an American study. So they said, in the intensive care unit, 84% were insufficient in their levels of vitamin D. But here's the really interesting part of those patients who were under 70, years old, 100% of them were vitamin D insufficient. 100%. That's like almost all of them, right? 100%. That's all of them that were under 75 years old.

So the study's conclusion, vitamin D insufficiency is highly prevalent and severe COVID-19 patients. So take your vitamin D. It won't hurt. You need it anyway. So just make sure that you're actually taking it and get your son.

and to get your supplement, the vitamin C and the zinc help as well, per my doctor. Don't forget to exercise. All key, all of these contribute to a strong immune system. I want you guys around, all right? So there's your good news for the day. So my guest today, even more good news. Can you imagine? Specializes in the art of creating cash and wealth through buying, selling, and investing in real estate

through all economic and real estate cycles, including the one that we're in right now. and he's going to share with you what's working right now and what you have to do to thrive right now and stick around until the end as he's got some really cool free tools and resources for you to give away for free free stuff so please help me welcome to the show mr sensea gilleland sensei welcome to the epic real estate investing show hey appreciate it thanks man yeah we met we crossed past i don't know maybe 10 years ago 11 years ago uh it was at um the magazine the 411 one real estate marketing thing. I think we had booths next door to each other.

Oh, you know what? It's funny that you mentioned that. Now it just totally triggered that. That's right. It was in San Diego. And there was like three people that showed up. Yeah, there was like, yes. Two booths and three people.

And boy, we beat them up too. No. Anyway, I remember me from then. And I've just kind of, because of how, what do they call this stuff? Social media. Yes. I don't know why I was lost for us for that. But through social media.

I mean, I've just kind of seen you around and you're very predominant and you're out there teaching and you've got great case studies and stories. And I was just like, you know what? Let's just get on the line and talk. So here we are. Well, I appreciate that. You bet. So before we get into it, what were you doing just before you got into real estate? Oh, man.

What was I doing? I was searching is what I was doing. I graduated high school in 87, 88, open up my first business, which I still owned today. And so by 93, I was starting to think, you know what, I got to do something else because the martial arts and boxing gyms that I own are after school programs, evening fitness classes, but I have my mornings and days free. And so I thought I was going to get into a coin-off car wash. Love the idea. Residual income, hire senior citizen for a couple of hours to fill up the soap and clean up the place, cash basis, you know. But here's the thing. I didn't know anything about real estate. I understood the concept of the business, but I didn't know about leasing, build the suit, you know, buy in land zoning. And so when I started learning about real estate, I quickly got out of that coin-op idea, went towards real estate because I learned that real estate controls all businesses. All right. Well, that just answered my next question. What is how to get into real estate? So I can stand by the cars and the planes and show my cash.

That's what was in. Got it. So what do you mean by that? We expound on that, that the real estate owns all business. Well, you know, I learned that real estate really controls all businesses.

I mean, think of the business right now. What's it controlled by? Someone will come up and say, well, what about the satellites? Yeah, but what do they relay back down towards?

Something that's on a piece of land. Right. And since I'm kind of a control freak when it comes of business, I thought, man, I really like the idea of having control. And so that way I don't have to look over my shoulder to somebody else or tell me that I've got to vacate my property because they've got bigger and better plans and I've got to move my business somewhere else. And I've already experienced that with prior to that with my martial arts business. So I didn't want to do that again. And then I remember going back, my grandfather, he was an attorney to quite a few celebrities back in the 50s, 60s, 70s.

and he passed away when I was young, but I just remember going around with him in his car, and he owned properties in Redondo Beach and Marina Del Rey and Dana Point, and I didn't know him, but I was 12 years old, but I was starting to think, man, man,

he did something right because if he were still alive today at that time, what would those properties be worth? What did he pay for him way back when? Right. You know, set for life. So that's what made me move forward. Got it. Okay, so making that type of transition,

which is a rather you know, one, I think it's the first time I've ever heard that. What did your first real estate deal look like? Oh, Will. That is something that a lot of people look at me and think, are you freaking nuts? I mean, my whole family did, you know, I have a, when you look at rich dad, poor dad, that's the way I grew up. I had rich grandparents and I had poor parents. And so the only time I got to drive in a nice car, go somewhere besides Taco Bell when I was a kid was with my grandparents, right? So the mentality of my mom and my dad and everybody else, my family is the renter's mentality. And so they go, oh, there he goes again, get rich quick type of scheme, you know, and so I had to prove them wrong. I got into real estate 94 learning everything I could.

I signed up for what they called seminars back then. They weren't boot camps. Seminars, I learned. The reason I got into it is I wanted to fix and flip. But the next thing you know, I'm taking courses in creative financing and mobile home parks and asset protection. And that was just way over my head. All I knew is that you buy low, you sell high, you make some profit off it. I get it.

So I was living in Whittier Hills at the time. I just had just got engaged, moved in with my fiancé, got married, had a kid, bought a house, my own home that was a textbook style. It was a short sale with the lady that lived in Arizona. She was an alcoholic and her husband had passed away and the house was a mess. Exactly what I learned in all the eight tracks I was listening to, right? So I bought it and it had a lot of potential. So I bought it, fixed up, cashed out refinement. I went over to Fort Myers, Florida to buy my first fix and flip. And that's where I started,

1995. Sweet. All right. So what is your real estate business look like today? My real estate business has gone from fix and flipping in 1995 to in 1998, learned everything I could about wholesaling and purchase options to 2000 opening up black belt investors as a real estate education consulting and investment provider. And ran real estate clubs in four different locations, three here in Southern California, went in Scottsdale for 14 to 16 years. And today we're still doing the education where we have nine different courses, coaching and consulting, whether it's real estate or business.

And then as far as my knowledge, we're the second oldest turnkey provider in California. Okay. Very good. So is your business actively investing in real estate right now? Absolutely. So at any given moment, we probably have right around 33 rehabs going at any given moment. That's a lot. Okay. And are those all in one market? They spread out across the country. Right now, they're actually spread out between three markets. The three would be Phoenix, Cleveland, Ohio, and Southern California. Southern California is really just for black belt investors where we're buying, fixing, and flipping, or wholesaling here.

And in fact, that's actually kind of faded out, be honest with you. I'm doing more subject two deals here locally. Phoenix strictly fix and flip. And then over in Cleveland, we fix and we renovate and get it repaired for what of our clients to buy as a turnkey investment. Got it. Okay. So I have some other questions here. I'm going to ask you.

But now I'm thinking about something else when you say you've got 33 deals going on or any 33 flips projects. Moving into this, I don't know, what do you think? What do you think the market is going? and how is that impacting how you're doing business, I guess, is what I'm going to know. Well, you know, everybody's had a great time in real estate in the past few years, right? Yeah, that last four years. That's a decade, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt for sure, because I'll be honest with you, I've made more money during the downturn than I made, you know, pre-great great recession.

I thought I was like that, hey, I thought I was the champ of real estate going from 1994 to 2007, 2008. We're hearing nothing but crickets in the office because people are scrambling, not sharing one. what to do. But by 2009, we reinvented ourselves and we did more deals from 2009 to 2014 than any other time period. So you're right. Going back 10 years, pandemic hits, right? No one knows what to do again. It's kind of like 2008 all over again. But one thing that we learned real quick is that, okay, a lot of our investors were white knuckling money in late March, early April and throughout May. But in June, people started to relax a little bit. Investors said, you know, what am I doing? Why am I holding onto this money, let's still be active because when there's panic, there's profits.

And so they started investing with me again and it picked right back up at late of June. Panic, there's profits. I say when there's crisis, there's cash. So that's good. And I say circumstance creates contracts. There you go. I like that. Yep.

All right. So, you know, I think when we all, like March 15th or so, I think we all thought, okay, we're going to have to settle down for a few weeks and, you know, we'll be back. to normal and here we are, I don't know, what, five, six months later. Yeah. I'm starting to like get used to the idea that, you know, sitting around to waiting for the good old days to come back might be the wrong strategy and really to double down and do as much business as you can in the best way that you can right now.

And then if we do come out of this, which I think we will, sure. What does be that much better and that much stronger for it? Absolutely. Right. So over the last five, six months, how has business changed? for you in the way that you operate. Well, the educational courses that are live is basically, it's dead. It's dead.

It's done. Yeah, and we do a lot of real estate investor tours. That's done for now. And that's a procrastination part on my end is that I've always known that I should move my courses online and I haven't because I really love getting up in front of people and teaching. And I find that we have better success statistics being live. I mean, think about this.

So much better. I'm a boxer. I'm a martial artist. And if you came to me and said, hey, I want to learn how to grapple, great, I'm going to give you all the A-Tracks, audio, video, tutorials,

go to YouTube University and learn all you want. And I say, do that for five years. And five days a week for five hours a day, and you do it religiously. You know what? You do it so well that you become the Wikipedia of martial arts and grappling,

right? Then I go to another guy and I say, hey, you know what? You want to learn how to grapple? Come into my gym for five weeks, one hour a day, five days a week. And you're going to do

some calisthenics, you're going to get choked out, you're going to be hitting the bag. Now it's time to tow the line. You know, the two of you meet, and you've got the same characteristics. You've got the same abilities, skill set, size, weight. Everything's basically a clone of each other except for one big difference. One is book smart and one is actually ring smart. Who do you think is going to win? Of course, the person that's ring smart, right?

So that's why I've always done. Sorry, I should have put you on the other role. I thought it was book. But, and that's why I never, I never moved over on the online stuff, but I knew I should have. And so that's my fault. And that's where we're losing revenue, a lot of revenue on the education side. But on the real estate side and in the consulting and coaching side, we're doing well because people are asking questions like your audience wants to hear the answers to.

And then on the real estate side, again, like I said, it picked up in June. and the reason it picked up, I think people just realized that, you know, there's an opportunity here. And let's get involved in real estate, honestly, has weathered this storm pretty damn well. Yeah. When you say? Yeah, it's remarkable what the retail market is doing. It's still as strong as ever, maybe even stronger. Yeah.

Right. Well, my wife's a realtor. So she's finding that many of the properties that are out there are, there's a bidding war going on. We haven't seen bidding wars in a couple of years, right? And so that's happening. But again, that really depends on which market you're in because every market has a different real estate cycle, a different mindset, at different income levels. So, you know, when you're in a primary market like, you know, Southern California, Northern California or Phoenix or Boston or New York, you know, we're at the very, very, very top. And still, there's this, things are slowing down because the interest rates were creeping up and the prices were creeping up.

And then all of a sudden, what, a few weeks ago, the interest rates went like that. and all the buying's back again. But it's a different mindset if we're all the way over in Cleveland because properties on average that we sell over there, you know, 70, 75,000 bucks. And 99.9% of my investors pay all cash. Yep. That remarkable.

Were you born and raised in Southern California? Yeah, I was, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I was too. I'm fifth generation. My son is the sixth generation. So I think we were like the original settlers there. I don't know much about my family history,

but I can imagine I go back six generations, do the math. That's probably what happened. Yeah. But I remember I got involved with a partner in a property in Memphis, Tennessee. Right. It was a 14-unit multifamily, and I went out there. And that thing went to hell. But while I was there, I saw kind of made what you saw in Cleveland, because we've been in Cleveland as well.

They have houses for 60, 70 grand, and these things will rent for $8,900 bucks. Yeah. It was remarkable. Yeah. I was like, I had no idea. This was like a totally different world to me. Yeah. So shifting on that.

My biggest challenge in those markets, because we did it in St. Louis as well. Indianapolis, we've done really well in. We haven't had the same issues there in Birmingham and a place in Alabama, Huntsville. So we've done really well there. But the challenges, like kind of with the same price point. But in those other markets, like a Cleveland, of St. Louis and in Memphis, we really struggled with property management. And I would say, and I'm glad to talk to you, and maybe these are self-serving questions,

but I think I left more money in Cleveland than I ever took out because of bad property management. How have you been able to get good performing properties for your clients? Yeah, I think that's everybody's worry, right? How can I watch over my property and how are not going to be stolen from and how do I know if they're actually managing? There's a lot of great property managers out there. I'm just talking nationwide. There's a lot of great property managers. But property managers can be your best friend.

or your worst enemy. They can make or break you. You know, you get a high turnover, then you get the property rent ready again. It's going to cost you a couple of grand. That can take away a lot of the money that you earn that year if you even earned any money that year. So I have gone through property management companies in Cleveland because I've been in Cleveland for 10 years now. I got there in 2010. I've gone through several property management companies. It got to the point where I was working with some big, heavy investors that also were running into the problem. And, So they actually opened up a property management company and they hired me as their business consultant.

And the reason why they hired me is because I have helped build two Inc. 5,000 property management companies. And so with my know-how of knowing what should be in a management company, they've launched the management company, they've been there for a couple years and they've been phenomenal. So we've done very, very well with them because they understand it's really that for investors, buy investors type of mindset when it comes to property management. management. Got it.

So Cleveland is the market that you're doing your turnkey in. Are you in any other markets? So Phoenix, I've been in Phoenix since 1999. We still offer turnkey investments over there. There's just a big difference in, in, yeah, in price and rents. I mean, you mentioned eight, nine hundred bucks. I got to spend $140,000 in Phoenix to get that $900 a month. It'll be a great property, great neighborhood.

But I'm spending maybe a minimum of $140,000 where I can go over to Cleveland and I can spend $70 and I'll get $1,000. month and rents. So that's the appeal to the investor that's seeking to build that cash flow side. But we recently left Indianapolis, Kansas City, Missouri, El Paso, Texas within the last two years. And the reason for that, not that there's nothing wrong in the markets, the markets are great. I think I still own properties in all those markets. I love them. But when our investors are taking a look at those three markets that I mentioned compared to a Cleveland where Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and Indianapolis, to me, are like twin sisters. It's the same economy, same rents, same type of housing, same climate, the same everything. And then they compare it to a Cleveland, which is almost pretty much the same, there's about a $30,000 acquisition difference there. And so they would rather go into Cleveland. I find that most people that have hard time with property management or in Cleveland is that when you're buying in the inner cities of Cleveland. We don't do that. We buy everything we do is in the suburbs.

Got it. Yeah. That's good advice there. I think that's probably going to even better advice and you've positioned your investors to do really, really well, considering the current social and economic climate. Exactly. And playing over that, you know as well as I do. Existratics, everything. So we need to know how to get out of it before we get into it, right? So we want to buy neighborhoods that are strong working class or better because if my investor decides that they want to sell or trade up or liquidate or whatever they want to do, they have the ability to sell at top dollar in a retail market because they have first time, second time buyers in there. But if you're buying inner city, you're buying because it's cheap because the numbers look great on the spreadsheet, you're a fool because you're going to be fighting for your rents, you're going to have high turnover, your vacancy rate is going to be much higher, and your passive income, which I never say it's passive here in real estate. It's residual income because it requires work. You're going to end up losing and you're going to have that horror story in real estate. So spend an extra few bucks and move into a neighborhood to where maybe you would live in. Right. You know, it's, you know, hindsight is 2020 because, I mean, 12 months ago, the trend was all the millennials

are moving into the city because they want to walk everywhere and they don't want to own cars or don't want to own houses and they want to be mobile and they want to be internet efficient and now it's like everyone's leaving the inner city because they want to go out where they can own weapons right true true it's funny but um i think your people are going to do really well if if you've gone to the suburbs and you know there's a big migration even to rural areas now yeah it's interesting what we're going through no no doubt You keep on, I mean, every day you get a new piece of information that causes you to think a little bit differently about what's your next step. Exactly.

So I'm looking at the current economy being, you know, held up by the eviction moratoriums, the foreclosure moratoriums, the stimulus packages. Who knows if the second one is going to come out? You and I will, I mean, people will be hearing this in a couple weeks. So who knows what happens even in those two weeks. And I just want to preface that in case I say something entirely stupid right now. But when do you think that the market is going to adjust? When do you think there's going to be an influx of motivated sellers and discount properties out there? After the election.

After the election, yeah. There'll be no virus on November 4th either. And they go, poof, magically on. You know, look, I talked to property, just like you, I talked to property management companies all over the nation. because, you know, we have been real estate nomads over the last 25 years. And so I have my investors and my properties from coast to coast all the way to Hawaii. So I'm in communication with these managers all the time. And I'm getting pretty much the same feedback, you know, in regards to non-paying tenants,

whether those non-paying tenants are not able to pay because they truly lost their job or have a financial hardship or they think, you know, the government's going to come in and save them so they're just still working and not paying thinking that they're going to be forgiven. Whether it's a tenant or a homeowner, people are being hurt right now. And those that are not able to make a mortgage payment or make a rental payment, I hope that there's going to be some solution, whether it's from local government or federal government to help these people out, because the last thing I want is for someone to lose their home. Even though that's the way I make my money is often distressed people and distressed properties. I don't want them to lose their home,

and I don't want investors to lose their investment properties. But with that said, there is going to be an influx of vacancies coming or an influx of notice of defaults coming in our direction, whether it's owned by a homeowner or an investor. And so those of those people that are listening right now, you know, you've got to prepare yourself. I mean, a lot of people want to get into investing when the timing is right. There is no right timing. The timing is now, whether it's April bus market or the worst market. And you're going to have to learn how to adapt to the market like a Navy SEAL adapts to their train when they go to war. We're not going to act like army grunts or back in the Civil War carrying our bayonet

running into each other and then just dying off. We've got to be strategic. So what does that mean for us? For me, I can tell you I got through the Great Recession because I was not just able to relying on a retail side like everybody else did. And I didn't just strictly rely on a wholesale side. I relied on everything in between and that's where purchase options really came to play. Whether you're going to be working with lease options, sandwich lease options, subject to contract for deeds, I turned positives in the negatives. I got people to stay in their homes. I got renters to stay in place. And I also took over a lot of mortgages and properties into positives. Did I say it backwards?

Yeah. Positive and negatives. I'm sorry, yes. How did you make any money now? I just made the market worse. Negative is in depositous by doing that. And that was a lifesaver for me in 2008 and early 2009. So you said two things in there.

People have got to prepare, right? What does preparing look like to you right now? How would you advise somebody? preparing, so it depends. Are you an investor that wants to build a real estate business and create cash? Are you an investor that wants to build a real estate portfolio to build wealth? Because really, it's only these two things in real estate. You either need a paycheck and build a business to get away from your J.O.B.

Or you're making lots of money. You've got residual income coming in from different directions, and you want to build a real estate portfolio. Now, either you're going to buy a house to fix and flip or wholesale or do purchase options where you're going to buy and hold. I do everything on the wholesale level. Don't pay retail for anything. Right. Right. So for me to prepare, I got to prepare on the wholesale side to be able to acquire properties for cash, just like I did in 2009, 10, 11, 12. It was a cash transaction. And if it was not cash, then I went over to structuring creative financing. So I was prepared on both sides to either take down a property all cash, whether it's your cash or borrowed money, and or if the cash

transaction didn't work to be able to create a solution for all parties using creative financing. And so everybody that's listening today, you've got to figure out, do I need a paycheck, or am I going to go after rental properties? Either way, you need to learn the wholesaling techniques. And then what I mean by wholesaling is this, I'm not just talking about assigning contracts because I think that's a misconception. Wholesaling is just buying properties below market value at a good discount. And if I'm a rehabber, I have to buy at a wholesale price.

If I'm going to do some sort of creative financing, I'm going after a wholesale price. If I'm going to buy a rental property, I am buying at wholesale. So prepare. Get your money in order. Get your finances in order. Get your strategy in order. And you're going to have to study, which I believe, man, is the number one reason most investors fail is because they don't study. Listen, you can list a podcast, you can watch infomercials, you can watch, go to boot camps three days.

Yes, we need all of that. It is necessary. But what's even more necessary is to study the materials that you've learned and put them into action. I mean, let me ask you Matt, if you had a heart condition, are you going to go to the doctor that learned from YouTube University or the doctor that actually went to your trainings and then actually studied under your wing, to make sure that they can wean themselves off and be self-sufficient. Another one of those tough questions. Yeah. No, I get it.

Totally. I think study and practice and drill and rehearse are essential. Absolutely. It looks so easy to watch it on a TV show. And then when you go out there to the real world, you get stuck, right? For sure. So I hope that answered your question. Pardon me?

I hope that answered your question. No, totally. I'm curious, and I really like talking to the people that are practitioners and also educators and trainers. I don't know. Have you found this? Since I became a trainer, I have become a much better real estate investor. By far. By far. Right? By far. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what you've gotten out of training, but listen, I've been teaching since I was the age of 12, not real estate I wish, but martial arts. And the people that I taught at the age of 12 were teenagers and adults. when you're a teacher, you are forced to learn because you're going to be hammered with questions. And I find that I get hammered with questions that typically, I don't know answers to coming from a beginner. So I would rather fight a black belt than a white belt any day because the black belt is finesse.

And I can flow with that person. But that white belt is very unorthodox. And punches are coming from left field. And then I got to sit in there and think, wait a minute. You're biting and there's clawing. Yes, and I have to adjust to that and I have to learn, right? And you break down the strategies, you break down the techniques, you break down the definitions of certain words,

and it makes you a bigger, better strategy. So what I do with a lot of my students, I encourage them all the time. Open up your own meetup account. But I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. That's okay. You hire Matt. You hire me to come in and teach a course and you'll learn along the way,

but you're now engaged. You're now sharpening the edge of your blade by doing that. Yeah. There's so many benefits of that type of environment. I mean, the best way to learn something is to teach it, especially right after you learned it, and then the retention just goes up like that. Running your own meetups,

even if you are borrowing someone else's credibility like you or myself, like you just elevated your credibility amongst the whole room. Absolutely. And that is money. It attracts buyers. It attracts sellers. tracks partners. It's a lead generator. Listen, I ran real estate clubs from 2002 until just recently when I decided to retire from it. It's lead generators. And they happen seemingly on accident.

It's just happenstance. Like, you know what, Matt, I've been coming here for a long time and I've got $100,000. What should I do with it? You know what I mean? Like, oh, another tough question. Another tough question. But I mean, that stuff happens all the time, but it's so indirect and it feels like luck or it feels like just an accident and it's not. You open up one of those meetings. I couldn't agree more. Well, I tell people all the time, luck is for people that don't know what they're doing.

I open up a real estate club for a reason. To strengthen my strategies and tactics and vocabulary and everything comes along with that and to build contacts for lead generation. Because look, you know, we call them real estate clubs. Now they're called meetups, you know, whatever. But here's the thing. The people that attend are, beginning novice and some intermediate.

And if they come with a deal, sometimes they get a tiger by its tail. They think it's a tiger by its tail, but for me, it's like picking up a, you know, a ladybug. Right. Right? So now we, now we combine forces and we both make money.

Absolutely. You mentioned also about timing right now and there is no good time, or I should say there's no bad time to get into real estate if you're educated and you study. I totally, Well, how long ago we met? And I can't believe how much you and I think alike.

Because we're actually pretty rare. And I've been fighting this thing for a while. Now I'm going on a tangent, but I'm going to come back to this thing, that I've been promoting buy and hold from day one. Yeah. You know? And I was like, you know, if you need some cash, just flip the stuff really quickly that didn't fit your criteria at a hold.

But make hold your intent, right? Right. But I've just watched all of these educators and trainers seemingly, the big profiles, seemingly making a boatload of money, just wholesale, wholesale, wholesale, wholesale. And I'm like, it's just a high-paying job, and it's a grind, and you're going to get burned out. And then one day you're going to wake up and you're not going to want to do it anymore. Just the cash flow is just in the wealth-building aspects of holding real estate are crucial. So it's nice to talk to somebody else. Yeah, but you've got to agree.

There's some people that just can't buy and hold. They don't have the credit and they don't have the cash, right? and they don't have the mentality. And so they do need to wholesale to create some paychecks there. But they got to use that as part of their arsenal to eventually to where they can buy up and get a bigger and better gun. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think more than what you just said, though, I think it's more of the mentality, right?

They're seduced by the $30,000 they can make on the fix and flip. And they're totally turned off by the $300 a month they would make on the cash flow. Right. Right. And when you shift that around, they're one. is significantly faster to financial freedom, and it's totally counterintuitive. Well, like I said earlier, I mean, look, you're either flipping as a cash generator. You're not going to get wealthy flipping properties.

You will never get wealthy flipping properties. You might be able to buy some spinning rims for your pento, but you're not going to get wealthy. To get wealthy, you have to buy and hold assets. Right. So there's nothing wrong with the old strategy of flip, flip, flip, flip, buy and hold. Flip, flip, flip, buy and hold. You can do that. I mean, that's what we do here, Black Belt investors.

Yep. We treat our flips as a cash generator, parlay that money over to build a wealth. Yep. Absolutely. Now, you said timing. So all of that was just to say, it's never a bad time because if you're going to buy and hold, who cares about the timing? That's my perspective.

You still want to buy it the wholesale level, right? But who cares about the timing? I don't. Some of people may, but I don't. But someone that at this time, like these types of times, particularly in 2000, say 2005, 2006, everybody was flipping properties. Everybody was having a blast. Everyone would make money. It was easy. And 2007, 2008, 2009, everybody ran from real estate as far as they could. And they said, whew, I'll never do that again. Thank God. I got a job at Walmart. Yeah, exactly. So here we are coming

into this unique timing, what the future holds. We don't really know. I wish we did, but we don't. But we have an idea as to what's going to happen. We can look at certain indicators. what would be your, for someone just getting started, what would be your advice for them to get the fastest results possible, get some traction and get moving in the right direction? Are we talking about the buying old side or the buy and sell side? Let's talk about somebody first that's, you know, they're part of these 10 million people that don't have a job right now.

Okay. I would say that probably the easiest thing for someone would be to do this. They need a paycheck, right? That's what they're looking for. They need a paycheck. to me, wholesaling is going to be the easiest way to go, just because it doesn't require the cash to put up. It doesn't require the credit. You don't have to put your name on title.

You eliminate all the risk factors, what you're doing. And so with that, you just need to learn a few little different strategies than what all the other wholesalers are doing. Marketing is everything when it comes to business, and it must be extremely consistent. You can't just put up a bandit side thinking that deals are going to fall into your lap. You create funnels through your marketing. You have inbound and outbound marketing. But the cool thing is this, it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. And if that at all, I'll be honest with you guys.

I don't like, I don't wear finances on my forehead. You don't ask me how much I make and don't tell me how many properties I own. But I'll tell you this. I was talking to a new marketing agency. And I generate somewhere in between $150,000 to $200,000 alone just off of Facebook and not paying for ads a year. So that should tell you if you know how to market properly and you're willing to step outside of the comfort zone and network with others that are direct, then you can co wholesale with somebody and make a couple bucks along the way until you build it to the point where you can do it on your own. So maybe Matt's got a property and I don't have a property, but I've been building a buyer's list. I'm going to run over to Matt and say, hey, you have any properties that I can maybe share with my investors?

what's Matt going to say, no, I don't want to make any money. Of course he's going to say it. And whether that's a bird dog fee or an affiliate fee or marketing fee or splitting the profits, who cares? It's money in my pocket. And then I go on to the next one. Got it. Okay, so that might have been the answer to this question, but I'll ask it in a different way.

If someone needed a paycheck in the next 30 days and they were only allowed one channel of marketing and they had minimal budget for it, what would that advice be from you? build relationships with professional services that deal with distressed people and distressed property. Okay. Direct source. Elaborate? Well, let's say, for instance, two weeks ago, I was working with an estate attorney.

An estate attorney that I met at a city of commerce event, not a city of commerce event. He was there mingling. I was there mingling. Met him. Now, he's an estate attorney. This is the state that he's working with has to liquidate properties. I made promises up and down that I can do the job for him. So with that, now he's bringing me over two properties for me to take over.

That's direct. There is no competition. Nobody knows about that. Now, I would love to say this. I would love to say, okay, maybe you don't have the lingo down to go talk to an attorney and be able to develop that relationship. Once COVID is over and the auctions open back up, because we have online auctions. I'll give you another one.

The live auctions, there's plenty of live auctions. happening today. Some counties have them every day, and then there are a lot of counties that only have them once a month. Get down to the auction. Here's what I would do. I would sit back and you're going to have someone that's an auctioneer. You're going to have a line of everybody sitting in a lawn chair with a hoodie over the head, earbuds in their ears, a laptop on their knees, typing away, blurting out lots of numbers. Then you've got people in the middle that will buy a property one, two, three a month because they make their living, fixing, and flipping. Then you've got a bunch of look you lose in the back. Soon as someone wins a bid, I'm going to go introduce myself to say, hey, congratulations.

on that property you just purchased. Let me ask you, what are you going to do with it? I'm going to fix and flip it. I'm actually in the same business myself, but my name is, your name is? Great to meet you, Joe. Joe, if I can get this property sold as is within the next 72 hours without you having to swing a hammer and make a very healthy, healthy profit, would

you be interested? Yeah, I'd be interested. Great. I got the property address. Let's exchange contact information. I take that. I go over to Matt. Hey, Matt, you have buyers?

I got a property wholesale deal. Mm-hmm. I don't have the buyer. I don't have the deal. I'm just the matchmaker. Got it. Actually, that's exactly how I got started. Really?

Not at the auction, though. I played matchmaker on Craigslist. Yeah. I was like, okay, we got a bunch of houses for sale, and we got a big section where people want houses. Let's call and take inventory, then come over and share the inventory with these people. That's exactly how I got started.

Sweet. All right. So there's another thing that genius attracts a genius. if I don't say so as myself. Can you tell my wife that, please? Yeah, right. If you tell mine, we'll be good. You know, being an educator and being around for as long as you've been and as, you know,

I hear stuff all the time from other educators. What's one piece of advice, bad advice you hear out there that just makes you cringe? One piece of, oh, so much. Man, how do you choose this? Like, you know, so many flying stars by me, I got to grab one. Bad advice that just makes me cringe. I don't think it's just one piece of device. I think it's the misconception is that it's easy.

This is a career. This is a job. And when they make everything so flashy, like I mentioned earlier, standing by the car in the planes, and all you have to do this and just pay $9.97, and it's super easy, it's wrong. That's what makes me cringe,

because then you've got these trainers that are taken $80,000 from someone that is a lifetime savings and they ended up with nothing because they have a W-2 mindset and not an entrepreneur spirit. And they don't know what to do and they've lost everything. That's what makes me cringe. And I get all the time, Sense, I wish I would have found you sooner. Right. Wow. Okay. I'm not going to say it again, but I've heard this.

same thing. What a boring conversation. Hey, that's me too. But yeah, I would concur with that. I have people that kind of do pre-screening and to see if this is going to be a good fit for us,

people that want to learn and they're showing interest in what we do. If anyone is like, I'm going to try this out for 30, 45 days. I'll go. Turn them away. If anybody comes to me and says, this is all I got. I need to pay my rent in the next 30 days. It's not the, it's not because I don't want their money. It's not because I don't think they can be successful. It's because it's a wrong mindset.

That's right. I'm so glad you brought that. I'm glad to hear that from another peer because this is one thing that my wife does compliment me on quite often because she hears me. She works in my office. She hears me. I just last week talked to someone over in Irvine that's a divorced mom, has one daughter living with her mom, dad wants to buy a property over in Cleveland because she thinks it's going to be your savior. It's residual income, right? And she's just not a candidate. And I said, sorry, I just, you're just not a candidate. It'd be easy for me to take your money and make a profit, but where's that going to leave you? You know, so whether it's buying a property or, like you said, take an educational course. If I know the person just doesn't have it up here and don't have it here

and they're just going to struggle, there are no go because I love positive statistics. Google me, you're not going to find one darn negative thing about Black Belt investors at all. And I hold small groups. I don't do large classes. I did them before. They're great moneymakers, but the statistics of people actually getting to from point A to point B is very, very low. So now I hold small groups instead. And then empower them by doing that.

And they're out there. Many of these clubs meetups here in California are my students. students. Yeah. It's exciting. That's more fuel for me than anything. Yeah. I was about to say me too, but I'm not going to. Fantastic. So, just, and I thought about this while you're talking. So you're married to a real estate agent. I was a real estate agent for four and a half years or so before I became an investor. Okay. Are you still an agent? No, I let my license expire. Okay. I just didn't want to do continued education. I was like,

there's too much memorization of stuff I'm never going to have to remember. Yeah. Right? Like, is what really turned me off of it. Like algebra too. But when we're talking about mentality, we're talking about turning clients away.

The one that I'm really starting to resist is the actual real estate agent. Okay. I don't know if you've noticed this or if you have real estate agents that have wanted to make this transition to real estate investor. But they just have that they come with the, and I find this more and more. now I'm trying to work with them a little bit more because I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity on the multiple listing service coming up. And they just got the mentality is I got it. I know

it. They're not coachable. I already know how to do this and they whine and complain when it doesn't work. Yeah. I don't know if you have the same types of experiences. Absolutely. I would easily say about 30 to 40 percent of clients that come to learn creative financing or wholesaling or how to rehab are real estate agents. And I applaud those guys because they know that they don't know at all. That's why they're in my course. But most people I try to work with already have their little cookie cutter mindset. And that's all on the retail side. And then they tell me stupid stuff like, it's my fiduciary, you know, responsible. But BS, come on. No, it's not. A deal is a deal. You're just trying to protect your commissions because you're such, you are chasing a commission

which is capped. And a wholesaler is chasing a profit where there's no cap. Right. Right? Yeah. So there's a lot of similarities between the real estate agent and the investor, whether they're wholesaling contracts, fixing and flipping or a landlord. There's a lot of similarities.

The difference is that, again, one is capped and the other one is not. And I'd work for profits before I'd ever work for commissions. 100%. Yeah. And so with these agents, we, like for instance, I'm big, I've always been big on doing letter of intent to purchases. I do them verbally. I do them directly on Zillow. I do them on paper. And if I ask an agent, hey, you want to work with me on this? They're like, I don't think I can do that. I don't think that's legal. I'm like, have you ever made a verbal offer? Yes. All this is a verbal

offer on paper. Oh, really? I got to check with my broker. And then I got to educate the broker. Okay, there's nothing wrong. If you don't know, you just don't know. But the mindset of saying, well, I can't do it because it's illegal. No, illegal means you don't know what you're talking about. is what it translates to. But investors got to understand. The real estate agent has been trained to work on the retail side with a home buyer or a home seller that will buy and sell one house every seven years. Versus to work with an investor that may come in lower on their purchase price, but they'll do seven in one year. Hmm, let's do the math here.

Yeah, totally. educating the broker, which is a fun thing to do. Well, they are broke for a reason, right? I just moved here to Vegas, so I've only been here about a year now. And I live in a market now where I could actually practice my business. I was in Los Angeles and is a buy and hold investor. That's not the optimal place to be. But just coming here, and I shared with an agent, this is what I want to do.

I want to present these seller finance deals to these properties that have been on the market for more than 90 days. and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he says, well, I don't know. I would have to check this out with my broker, right? And so I got on the broker and then she was like, what, so what is this? I've never heard of this. Is this something new that you're bringing to town? Like I was this mafia ring. Sam. Yes. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Funny stories. Yeah, they are. Let's see. I did so much work in Vegas. I sold literally thousands of houses in Vegas. We worked the auctions for quite some time. 2010 and 2014 until Blackstone really came in and took over in auction.com. But, yeah, we, man, we bought a lot of properties of the auction there. Yeah, the headlines for the last two weeks, they're talking about potentially 300,000 evictions as soon as the moratorium is lifted. It's, there's going to be a lot of work here. I'll look forward to.

Right. Yeah, I mean, some of the, because they're saying some of the major casinos will probably never open again. Like there's that much damage has been done. So you have those types of businesses that employ that quantity of people. Those quantity of people can't pay their rent. And so there's going to be a little turnover here. I think everyone's just going to go from one house to the other house and then they'll start from scratch. Yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, scary times also makes me alert. I mean, it's like pain. I do with pain every day, you know, physical pain. But it reminds me, don't step that way. do this instead. Let's manipulate this. Let's change things up so we can start getting benefits out of it. So I welcome it because when it's easy like 2003 to 2006 or easy like the last four, five, six years, we get complacent and people aren't willing to learn new strategies. And I welcome it. Bring it on. I mean, absolutely. And the fact that you just said that is the reason, another reason I invited you on is because I really don't want to talk to any.

anybody right now that has been in the business for less than 10 years because they just don't know what it's like to go through what we might be going through here. We're likely to go through. You know, they might have some good information, but they don't have the experience and, you know, everything that they got, they might even have good information. They might have great intent, but it's all secondhand information and no experience there. So how do you find your good real estate agents that are willing to listen to you and been around for the last 10 years or more?

You work with a lot of bad ones. That's how I found my property managers. I worked with a lot of bad ones before I got the good one. You know, the thing that I've been accustomed to saying now is like the real estate, this is the safest thing out there. It's the people that are risky. Yeah. Right?

It's the agents. It's the property managers. It's the contractors. Like those, that's where money is lost, right? If you can evaluate a house and you have your exit strategy in place, then it's really difficult to mess it up, you know? Absolutely. So yeah, to answer your question a little bit more directly, I make a lot of offers on Craigslist,

just floating over email letters of intent, emails of intent, we'll call it. And because I find that the agents that are on Craigslist, I mean, that's, nobody wants to work on Craigslist if they don't have to, but I find them to be a little bit more hustle-oriented, a little bit more hustle-minded. Good to know, because I've bowed out from Craigslist probably easy to last five years. I've just been going different avenues. You know, when I'm looking for a real estate agent or a realtor or a broker that's willing to work with me, they usually funneled through my real estate clubs or other real estate investment

events because they're open-minded to learn and they want to learn. So now I can train them my way. Right, right. It's funny you said that because that broker story I was just telling you about with that agent. I had that agent come in, sit in one of my fulfillment classes for all of my clients that paid me a lot of money to be there. I said, you come in. you watch me how I'm training these people because this is what I want you to do for me

out there in the real world. But that did not work either. I thought I was like, okay, I can leverage this activity and then that failed for me too. We go through a heck of a lot more fails than wins any day. Yeah, true. So I think you said something earlier about, you know, you've got this W-2 mindset with these entrepreneur ambitions, right? Yep.

And I think that's a lot of real estate agents. Yeah. We've got this W-2 mindset with that entrepreneur ideas. Yeah, but the saturation of real estate agents, man, I can walk down the house and throw a rock and more likely when I hit a house, it's going to be an agent. Yes. Right? And I think the last stat that I read was about a year ago. It said 38% of real estate agents actually on their own home.

So what does that tell you? That's mentioned in my book. I wrote about that in my book. Oh, did you? Yeah. It was amazing on how few agents in the office. office that I was working in actually owned their own house. And they were the biggest advocates of buying a house, but don't own one themselves, which I thought was. Yeah, it's like the real estate,

or it's like a Mercedes dealership where the guy's selling you on how great this Mercedes, but then drives off on a Dotson B210, right? Right. For listeners, anybody that has a Dotson B210, but you did graduate high school in 1987 because only that you would know B210. Very good. Yeah, we'll leave real estate agents alone. I didn't mean to go down that path. Well, I'm not, I'm not knocking them. We need them in the marketplace. They serve a purpose, no doubt. But the difficulty that investors have with agents is having them to have the open mindset to learn the investor strategies.

And vice versa. I mean, there's a lot of investors that won't work with agents because investors think they know more than an agent because that's the way I was trained. You're here. Agents are here. And we used to knock down agents all the time because that's how I was trained. But that was wrong. That's wrong to do.

You got to do this. No one's here or here. It's just two different businesses. One's wholesale, one's retail, you know? Give me something that you've learned from, as an investor, something you've learned from a real estate agent. Something I'll learn from a real estate agent. Well, you want me to start not-to-do list?

Okay, so they do have a, right? Actually, what I learned, the very first thing that I found extremely valuable, learning from an eight, actually it was a real estate broker, was learning how to read a preliminary title report. That was valuable. And they had a background in title. So that was, and today I still do that. One of the most important things.

Exciting read. Yeah. I just feel my closing agent, my escrow officer, is title clean? Cool. All right, moving on. Great. So, I don't know, I have this question here. It's a good question, and it's something practical,

something that people useful can use. What's the best book you've read in the last 12 months and how did it impact you? I don't read books. All right. There we go. Moving on next point. Hey, I'll tell you this. I do listen to audio, though.

Okay, go ahead. So I'm just, I don't have the attention spent. I'll have to read the page over and over and over again to get it. It's just me. I just can't get it. I listen to audio books. And so the last audio book I listened to was from a guy named David Burkett. he's a Christian

he was you Dave Ramsey succeeded him so so he was prior to Dave Ramsey and it's all about entrepreneurship and business doing it God's way that's awesome boy

Dave Ramsey is not he did not carry that torch though with the message I don't think he came out of his I said David Larry Burkett I'm sorry Larry Burkett I don't think he came out of Larry's camp but Larry was the big guy And the next big guy on radio was Dave Ramsey.

Got it. Because Dave Ramsey is no risk. You're not allowed to take any risk whatsoever. Don't flip properties. Don't flip properties. People got to, because I don't know if people bring this up to you, but they bring it to me. Well, Dave Ramsey said, I love Dave Ramsey. When I go on road trips, I'll listen to him.

I love it, right? Because, again, I'm in a position listening to a radio, I listen to a radio, listen to a caller, talking about problems, and I come up with solutions. what would I do? Not what would Dave Ramsey do? What would I do? And then I put things in a line. Sometimes we're out of whack.

Sometimes we're lined up, right? But people got to remember, don't bring Dave Ramsey stuff to me in regards to how to invest because Dave Ramsey's group of listeners are people that are in debt or broke. Right? I'm not dealing with that over there. I'm dealing with people that have money and assets or maybe on the way and getting that direction.

Completely different audience. Yep. but he has so many more of them, which is tragic, right? The audience. I was telling, it was just in one of our fulfillment classes last weekend, we were talking about Dave Ramsey

because they were a big, big fan. I was like, well, Dave is good, like if this is zero, Dave is good to help you get from here to zero. Yeah. But Dave is no use to you from get to zero up to a wealthy status. Like it's just,

it doesn't calculate. It's just not his, a niche. Right. You know, right? I mean, I'm sure he can teach me a lot about investing. I had no doubt, but that's not what he's teaching his audience. Right. He's teaching his audience how to dig yourself out of that hole and not get back in that hole again. Right. Right. I was, uh, never mind. I'll say it. And I started. All right, we were on, we were on good books. So I was going to say, when I was talking to Robert Kiyosaki, and I was like, oh, you see that name I just dropped there. But actually, when I was interviewing him for this podcast a while back, I had asked him about,

Dave Ramsey and they're really good friends. Yeah. And they teach just opposite ends of the spectrum of what they teach. And Robert had nothing but good things and he's a good guy. He's just talking to the lower middle class that needs help financially and he helps and I help people that've got

money and want to make it bigger. Right. And I don't think either one of them were wrong. It just Dave Ramsey's model doesn't fit my model, but it fits millions of others. Right. It depends on which phase and life you're in, I guess. super well let's end this on a really positive note what's in the future right now that's got you really excited um well if i'm going to go on a timeline um i'm going to just rattle a few things off elections

i'm not i'm not that politics guy but i know where i stand i know what i want so i'm looking forward to see the the outcome of that i'm also looking forward to this pandemic ending whether it's sometime soon or 2021 because because I want to see the changes. I want to feel the changes. I don't mind going through some pain and I expect to go through some business pain, but pain helps you grow, right? I'm going to the gym to put myself through pain and be sore. So I'm looking forward to that experience and then measure that up to the experience of, you know, 2008 and measure that up to my experience of the dot-com recession as well and measure that to where I got started in real estate coming out of a recession. So I want to, I really want to compare. and and tests, not tests, but to compare all these different recessions and downturns to see where I can grow and fit in. So I'm excited about that. I'm also excited.

Maybe I, you said you just moved to Vegas. I'm actually looking to move myself. So I'm exploring new things there. And I love discovery because I get bored quick. So discovery means new markets. That's why I love what I do in real estate, because I start. started in Florida, I worked my way flipping properties to California over to Hawaii, coming back and then going back across the states again, discovering new markets, discovering new cultures,

and discovering not new strategies, but older strategies to where I can cultivate into new strategies. That excites me. Nice. Well, those are all good things. That was a big list. Sorry. Oh, it's great. I mean, there's some of the things here that's, I mean, just, I've never been a political person.

And now that quarantine locked us in our house, the TV sucked me in, and now I'm totally into the stories and the ways that are going. So, yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how that turns out. Yeah. Well, what are you looking forward to? What am I looking forward to? I'm looking forward to November 4th. Yeah. The day after the election.

because I really think good or bad the world's going to be completely different or it's going to change really, really fast. And I think it's going to be loaded with tons of opportunity. Yeah. And I'm kind of making notes of where I think that opportunity might be. I just talked to a guy and he just put this in such a good way. You know, the keyword or one of the little catchphrases when we all went into quarantine about business was pivoting.

You got to pivot. Things have changed. You got to pivot. And this guy talked to me and he said, you know what? You can't pivot unless you have an anchor point. And right now there is no anchor point. And he says, what we really need to do is just focus on the outcome that you want and be very, very open to the different ways of how you can attain it.

Because, you know, a good formula for success would be to identify somebody else who is successful doing and what it is that you want to do has the life that you want to have and just kind of, you know, unwind how they created it and then kind of follow that same path in the same manner. And there's a really good shot. You got the possibility or probability of creating something very similar. And right now, I don't think that's actually great advice. And I think that's all going to, we're all going to really kind of discover that right after this election is over and the world settles down a little bit. So I'm kind of looking at that way now. I'm on wide open on how I get there. I know where I want to go, but I'm wide open on how I want to, or how I will get there.

Yeah. And so am I. And that's why I mentioned, I don't mind. I'm looking to move out of state because I am open to the change. Whether positive or negative, I will turn, I'll make sure I say it right this time, negative into positive. Right? While everybody, well, everybody is like hunker down in their house and you've got to wear your mask and do all this stuff. I'm not knocking. I'm not knocking. that that's the way you feel then great. Stay in your house. You look better with a mask on anyways. But I took my family and we went to Cabo for two weeks. We were there from, you know, mid July to the very beginning of August. And I didn't mind exploring that. What was the other countries doing? And that, you know what? The way they treated us with it and the way they're handling COVID is somewhat similar,

but better also. And so I learned a little bit while I was there. I'm not going to hunker down in fear. Right. Okay? Because fear is going to make you fail faster than anything else. Yeah. So I don't want the F word. And I'm not going to, I don't mind taking risk. And we all know that if you're an entrepreneur, you're a risk taker, but it's calculated risks along the way.

So traveling people that think, oh, you're nuts for going over in a different country. Are you going to be able to come back? Okay. You got to remember. Okay. So on that note, I keep on thinking we're about to wrap this up, but you keep on saying things that inspire news things. that inspire news things.

There are new ideas. What is Mexico like right now? Because I actually was contemplating going there on the ocean myself. Yeah. Phenomenal. In fact, I'm actually thinking about going back. Really?

Because they've been open throughout, well, you're able to travel. We went to Cabo San Lucas. So you were able to, to my knowledge, able to travel during any time during the pandemic. But everything was closed down in Cabo for four months. I took it,

okay, if I got to stay in my hotel and look at the ocean every single day, that's fine. want to get away. We got there and they were slowly starting open things up. The occupancy rate in hotels are maxed out at 25%. So there's a lot of hotels there with and they didn't max out at 25% when I was there. So we had the beaches to ourselves. We had the pools to ourselves. We had the restaurants to ourselves. We had the resort to ourselves. It was pretty darn awesome. And the way they handled it is is they're taking more precautions than we're taking over here. What I mean by that is that of course when you get off the plane, you go through customs.

are going to check your temperature. Okay, get that. But before you can enter into crossing the border line in the airport, everywhere you go, whether it's at the airport or at a hotel, a grocery store, a liquor store, you must get your temperature taken, you must get a squirt of hand sanitizer, and you must step onto a floor mat that has some sort of solution,

and then step onto another mat to dry off your shoes so that you're not carrying this way you go. And what Cabo is really doing is, hey, look, we're a linear economy. We're economy that solely survives on tourism. We can handle this. And at that time, they only had like 200-something cases throughout this whole time in Cabo. And I think they're trying to prove to everybody, we can do this. And to me, they did a great job.

And everybody was extremely friendly. Everybody was welcoming. The government was very good. they closed down the beaches at a certain time, you know, they had it under control. Nice. There you go. They knew what they wanted. They knew the outcome they wanted and just changed the way they got there.

Not allowing the looting or the rioting or anything else that's going on. We could go down that path. I won't go down that. Okay. So where do you live now? My office is in Corona. I live in Eastvale, which is just north of Corona. Corona, California, right?

Yeah, Corona California. Okay. So you're thinking about moving. I made that move about a year ago after thinking about it for three years previous. Yeah. Why are you moving? Well, I've been wanting, number one reason I wanted to move was to discover new lands and new territories and new routines. But what's that?

New foods and new people. Yes, yes. I follow Guy Fierry everywhere. So, but five years ago, I wanted to move because I didn't like. like the politics in California. I don't like the taxes in California. I don't like the traffic and the impact of people in California. It's just over and cover some. And so I wanted that change better for my family and for us financially to stretch my dollar out more than I can do in here California. Don't get me wrong. I live well here. Not great but well, but stepping outside

of these borders, as you know, everything in price basically drops dramatically, right? So we were poking around the past five years. We're ready to make our move in 2019. That was the plan to move. But my kids begged and plead, please stay until we finish school. I have two kids that are out of school now. One's in college. And I have a daughter that's a sophomore this year.

And she's like, please, Dad, don't let me graduate somewhere else. And I made our promise. I said, okay, I will tell you what, I'll suck it up here for the next, you know, three years, four years at that time. if you do well your freshman year. You do well your freshman year. We'll stay still until you graduate. They will make the move.

Okay, Dale, do well. She screwed up. So I am now on the hunt of looking for another mark to move into. And there are certain criteria that's important for me moving into those markets. Matt, ask me why? Why? Why? Why that was important?

Because I am looking for some comfort. I'm looking for diversity and diversity can come from housing, from income to restaurants. I'm looking, I like where I live in Eastvale because it's kind of a melting pot. I like cultures,

but I'm looking really to find a place that, number one, good politics or values that I have because we all like to be surrounded around people that are like us, let's be honest. Two, the cost of living is very important.

I want to stretch that dollar. Three, I want to be able to put my shotgun out the window and pop off around if I want to. And so that way, I want some space, you know? And the other thing, I need to be near an airport because I do travel a lot for business purposes.

So, and weather is by far very, very important to me. I don't like extreme heat or humidity. Okay. And then my wife doesn't like the extreme cold. Got it. We got to stay in California then just for those three reasons. That's why we pay the high dollars to live here for the weather, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I moved out for the two things that you had said, taxes and traffic. Yeah. And, you know, I've got students in probably every single state in the United States. And it was really interesting, like being coming friends with them on Facebook and, you know, getting to kind of see where they live and how they live and stuff like that, that people that were coming to me to learn how to make money based on their pictures and where they were living in the Midwest, looked like they had a nicer house than me and doing a lot more fun stuff. And I found that very, very appealing because the dollar just goes so much further. Yeah. Right. For sure. And I'm,

and I'm looking forward. Now I've changed my mindset because the thing was, what you said, I've got students out in other states that have more beautiful, a more beautiful, a more beautiful home and more land than me being crunched up in the subdivision, even though I pay an arm and a leg for the place. It's nothing like what they have and they pay less. And so my wife is like, oh, my God, look what we can get for a million dollars in this town, a million dollars over in this town and this and that. And my daughter's like, oh, her eyes get all big. Only smokes, I'll take this wing over here type of thing, right? And so that was kind of my mindset. Now I'm like, you know what? Why? Why? I don't need a big house. I don't need all this extra space in the,

in a structure anymore. What I'd really like to do, Matt, is this, buy something that's very comfortable to where if we have guests or eventually have grandkids, they can come stay. And we've got that space, and we've got a little bit of land. But keep it to where I own the property free and clear or have a very manageable mortgage payment and live there for six months and live in Kabul for six months.

Go back home for six months. Live in Florida for six months. Live there for six months. Go live in Tuscany for six months. Why? Because I'm a real estate investor and I can. Amen to that. Totally. It's funny. I mean, I graduated in 1987 as well from high school. And so I guess we're at the same age. And it's funny, the older that I thought I was totally younger than you. Yeah, you look way younger than you.

It's amazing as your brain develops or maybe your character, your personality, your wisdom, that those types of things aren't as important to you. And I drive a Chevy blazer. And it's, I think it's in 1998 or something like that. that. And you're like, man, why don't you drive nice cars? Like, I'm just not into cars. This works fine and it's comfortable. It's got air conditioning. I'm good to go. But yeah, I've been thinking about all of those, all of those same things. So I'm glad we connected. Let's stay in touch. Yeah, I'd love to. I think it. And I enjoy your post. I try to like as many as I can. I mean, I have a social media manager. But when I jump on there, I'm like, oh, that's cool. That's really, I'll preach it, man. I love it. Cool. Thank you. Last thing, the taxes. It's really nice not to be under California taxes right now. Oh, yeah. That 13.

and a half percent. I heard the proposal. It might be going to 16 percent. Well, not just that. There's another proposal that's going to be taxed on the wealth as well. Now, I won't qualify because you have to have $30 million in assets. I'm like 29 and a half. Right. But 30 million. Just stop working now. Stop working now. But they're going to, you know, they got all these taxes coming left and right. And the problem is, is that they lie. They mask the title of the tax to make it sound like something. Oh, yeah. I'll read the headline like most people. do on social media and think that's just the way it is, but it's not. And then the next thing, you know, you've got these ignorant people, and I mean by ignorant, is that they don't research

what they're voting for. And they vote off of a title, a headline, sales copy, and they voted for the wrong thing. And yeah, so I expect that 16% tax and the other tax to come along for the wealthy of, you know, 0.4% if you make 30 million or more. And a lot more other things. coming too. What do you think of this that you've been brought voting up that the mass exodus of from California right now and a big migration to Texas at the moment? And with California being a deep blue state, Texas historically very red, are people really going to leave and still vote the same way, not recognizing that they're leaving because of what they voted for? I think the majority of people that will be leaving will be conservative. I think they're going to be, you know, going to be going

the conservative route. They're getting out of here because not only, well, because number one, the politics, you know, that's what I hear a lot from people. I go to church. I hear that a lot from the church members and outside of church as well. And then the entrepreneurs, I think the majority of entrepreneurs that at least I surround myself around are conservative. And so a lot of them want to get out of town. It's the conservatives that are leaving that. In my eyes. But there's definitely Democrats that are conservative Democrats.

You're not way left. You know what I mean? That this is just wrong. You know, Kennedy would roll over in his grave today, right, of what's happening. So you have those conservative Democrats that are moving out of the way. And then you do have those liberals or whatever they want to classify themselves politically that make a lot of money that's not standing by and saying, I'm not going to be taxed this. I'm out of here.

And so, yeah, look at my post on Facebook. If you go to Facebook, I put on there, anybody, this is just maybe two days ago. like a couple hundred replies. Anybody considering moving out of California? And I did that to test, kind of split test of where everybody's at, you know, mindset-wise of yes, no, I already did. And I don't let them just say yes or no. I go and I ask questions.

Why? Where do you call home? I'm looking to see where everybody's going. What's happening? Most people are going to the five diamond states, Florida, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and then those that residing here in California plan on moving. Right. Sweet.

I can talk. Now of a sudden I'm a political animal and I'm just like, who am I be coming? I don't recognize myself. Yeah, but I can bet you and I are both are just kind of biting our tongue too, is making sure we're not saying the wrong thing. It's funny that you had said the Kennedy thing is just like, you know, I'm very left socially and I'm very right fiscally is kind of where I am. And I just saw the actual definition online of a little meme of what the definition of a libertarian is.

I think that's who I am. I think I'm like right there in the middle. There's some cool things on this side, some cool things on that side, but we don't have that. Well, that's the thing. I mean, listen, as I'm a Republican, I'm just say it. I don't care. I'm a Republican. I don't agree with everything in the Republicans.

Same thing with Democrats. Democrats don't agree with everything that Democrats do. But, you know, the old adage, you've got to choose the lesser of the evil, right? And I'll do that. And since I am a Christian and I do follow the word of the Lord, I will measure up the politicians and their bills. and their proposals of what the Bible has to say. And that's where I'm going.

That's just me. Yeah, that's good. Glad to know you. My pleasure. That's staying in touch. Hey, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, and say, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, call out to Matt.

Or if he doesn't want to be bombarded with emails and texts and everything, blackbeltinvestors.com, that's plural, blackbeltinvestors.com, remote rehabs.com. Simply give us a call at 951-280-1900. Let me ask you, Matt. Is your audience like free things? No? Okay, I want.

Oh, they're all conservative. But I'm bummed. Well, I just want to add. I don't want, you know. Yes. All right, cool. Listen, I got a lot of things, but I'll name two. One, if you want a free strategy session, I'll offer that.

But I say go to Matt for that. You know, that's cool. But if you're interested in a calculator to run your numbers, whether it's a fix and flip or wholesale deal or a buy and hold, whether it's for a house or an apartment, send us an email at invest at black beltinvestors.com or call us and let us know that you're coming from Matt and you'll listen to the podcast and we will email it out to you for free. It's something that we use here in the office every single day. Cool. Invest at black investors. com. You got it. Sweet.

All right, partner, be good. And let's stay in touch and do this again. Hey, keep doing what you're doing. It's awesome. All right. Take care, buddy. Thank you. All righty, before we go, the show would not be complete if Mercedes didn't share her deal of the week.

So here she is. Mercedes Torres here, your turnkey girl from Cashflow Savvy with your super epic deal of the week. Now, this week's deal is super, super, super. special as it was purchased by Emily, David, and Emma from Eugene, Oregon. Emily and David are Emma's parents. And Emma is 15 years old. Now, Emma loves the concept of cash flow. As a matter of fact, she listens to our podcast every week.

So Emma, kudos to you. And Emma's father, David, is an accountant. So that family is fully aware of their finances. They love cash flow. They're all about deductions. And they're fully aware that Emma in just three short years will be on her way to college. So the plan is this cash flow property is going to pay for Emma's college education. The cash flow and the tax benefits are going to go to a separate bank.

account to pay for Emma's college tuition. Now, that is epic. So the property that Emma purchased is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is a three-bedroom, two and a half bath, fully rehabbed single family residence with granite countertop, hardwood floors, and a wide open floor plan. It has 1,482 square feet and the property is conveniently located next to a shopping center, a few schools, and right by the highway, making this property just super desirable for renters. The property rents for $1,200 per month and it's sold for $129,950. The ROI on this property is a whopping 8.27%. Now, Emma, congratulations on this amazing little rental that you picked up that is going to pay for your college education with the 20% that you put down. If you want to see the featured deal of the week and properties just like the one Emma picked up, go to cashflow savvy.com that savvy with two Vs, scroll to the bottom of the page and download the frustrated investors guide.

to passive income and you two will start to see the deal of the week. Catch you next week where cash flow is keen. For more information on the deal of the weekend, other properties just like it. And to get a free copy of the frustrated investors guide to passive income, go to cashflow savvy.com. And if you found this episode valuable, who else do you know? There's a good chance you don't, someone else who would. And if you think about it, when their name comes to mind, share it with them. and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here.

I'll take great care of them. That's it for today. God loves you, and so do I. Health, peace, blessings, and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Live in the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home world, we got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com. I'm