KGCI: Real Estate on Air - From Agent to Investor: Gaining Traction on Your First Deal

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Summary:This episode is a practical guide for real estate agents who want to begin their journey as investors. It focuses on the critical first steps to gain traction, from leveraging your license to find off-market deals to a breakdown of low-down-payment financing strategies like "house hacking." Listeners will learn simple-yet-effective methods for analyzing a property's potential return and the mindset required to overcome "analysis paralysis." This is an essential listen for any agent looking to build personal wealth through the asset they know best.

You're listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast, empowering agents and investors to collaborate effectively and grow their businesses symbiotically. Your host, Randy Zemnock and Eric Gross, share real-life case studies, trending tactics, and expert strategies that have helped them to accomplish over $1 billion in sales volume. Whether you're a seasoned agent looking to expand your business or an investor seeking to optimize your returns, You're in the right place. This is the Investor Agent Nation podcast. Matt is a local investor to kind of like the Tampa Bradenton area, which is where

my wife and I are also located. We are a part of an investment group, Kingdom 320, which is a faith-based investing group locally. And I met Matt probably going, what was it, September was your guys' meeting in Tampa? So Randy was like, do you want to tag along with me? Do you want to kind of jump into this? And I was like, this sounds exciting. I would love to. So we had the opportunity to go over there and meet Matt, meet a ton of other investors locally.

I think there was 100, roughly 100 people at that meeting, maybe a little bit less, but there was two different meetings. And pretty much from the jump, Matt started, you know, reaching out. We offered something where we said, hey, you know, if you have some business going on, please reach out to us. we'd love to help you. And Matt kind of stuck out, I think I might have lost Matt. So I'll kind of continue the introduction. So Matt kind of stuck out in terms of he was reaching out. He had stuff going on.

He had deals being run. And every time he was doing it, I just got to pin you back up here. Every time he was kind of getting into it, we can kind of tell that, you know, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he was looking at comp wise. He knew what he was after. So today's meeting is going to be how to kind of get started and then how to, basically grow that, kind of throw some gasoline on the fire, be able to continue at growing.

So one of the most common things I get on the investment side of things is, hey, I have no clue where to get started. I want to get started. I can't take the jump. So Matt, do you want to go ahead and tell us how you got into real estate investing? Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So for me, it was a situation where I got laid off from my long term employment and wasn't really finding anything in my field and I decided to go to a life surge event in Tampa, which turned me on to Kingdom 320 and decided to just pursue something completely different. I had done a lot of remodeling and stuff back in my youth. And so I had that construction sort of background and knowledge. I hadn't used it in a while, but it was still

there and anyway I decided while I still had some severance money available I was gonna I was gonna jump in with both feet nice okay awesome like you said September is September's meeting was really when I had joined in August but September's meeting was really kind of the catalyst for me to really start taking more serious action up to that point was viewing a lot of videos and you know just training myself because it's you know it's like learning another language um if you've never done real estate before so i spent about 30 days doing that and then like i said that that after that meeting after that weekend i think it was probably maybe three days before i had my first deal locked up

yeah yeah and that's i mean i know pretty much as soon as we left that meeting one of the things we talked to everybody about was hey we're here to help out you know don't hesitate to ask questions and stuff like that. And then Matt posted in the Facebook group and was like, hey, I got a deal locked up. And it was like, all right, that was quick. So we ran through that with you. When you were doing some of the education stuff going into the real estate side of it, you said you did about 30 days of education.

Where were you doing that education? What were you using to kind of get yourself ready to make the move? Yeah. So with Kingdom 320, there's an extensive group of videos as well as, pretty much daily meetings that are like this where you can interact and ask questions and that sort of thing

so probably 90% of it was through that okay now through that I don't know my fault go ahead

I don't know my fault go ahead yeah you cut out I couldn't hear you. Yeah, I was just saying, go ahead. Now, when you were doing, one of the things, because I did the same thing when I got into the business, I started in on bigger pockets, listened to everything. But one of the things I struggled with when I got out of doing that, that took it, it was the toughest thing for me was analysis paralysis, which is what I have. A lot of our newer investors that we work with, they go through that. You do all of the education, you do all of the learning, and you're just trying to soak up as much as you can. What kind of helped you not fall into that analysis paralysis where you were able to make a move? Yeah, I would say that I did have some of that early on because I'm not a big risk taker with my finances and stuff like that. So there was a certain amount of that while I was going through those video trainings and stuff. Because I was looking for properties actively, but I would look at it and sort of like you say, get paralyzed by the you just feel overwhelmed by what's going on and then you know after we after we had gone

through that that that meeting that you were at with randy you know i saw a deal start to finish it wasn't in all these little it wasn't in all the little chunks of videos it was like start to finish i could see the product i could see it just made it real you know so for me that was like okay even though i'm scared i got to do it scared so that was kind of my model getting into it was I'm scared but I'm going to do it scared. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think I think there's something to that I think no matter the analysis paralysis is really tough because you feel like the more information you consume, you're almost mitigating your risk. But I think realistically what happens is there's more risk because

you're passing up on opportunities and I fell into as well. Like my first, it took me a year. It didn't take 30 days of me to finally like actually step out of that and go do something because I just was nervous and I was like, okay, like this can go wrong or this can go wrong or what if, you know, what if this happens? I don't know what's going on. So I will say that kind of leads into one of the next questions I wanted to talk about on your first deal. Was there anything that popped up that was or was there anything that you had to overcome that like now that you've done it, you're like, okay, stuff's going to pop up. That's okay. And now you know that you're not going to know everything when it comes to real estate. You just kind of have to roll into punches. Yeah, I think on the very first deal, we're still actively rehabbing that property. But on that, on that deal, you know, I learned very quickly that I shouldn't necessarily trust somebody else's comps. And, you know, I had submitted that deal to you and Randy to kind of take a look at, but it was very late in the game. I was literally three or four days from closing. And, you know, all of a sudden, you guys are like throwing up red flags for me to say, hey, man, you need a baby back out of this.

the reality is we had we had gone into this deal to help an 81 year old lady get out of a situation in an older home that she couldn't manage anymore and we were three days from closing so I wasn't going to back out even if I was going to lose a little bit of money you know I just made the decision and my wife made the decision we just prayed about it and said look we're if we end up losing money it'll be the cost of education and and if we don't then it'll be just God blessing us for an effort to help somebody out. The second deal, you know, there was a lot of little surprises along the way, but the big one for us was at the very last minute.

We discovered that the property was actually on a septic, and we thought the whole time it was on city sewer and water. And in fact, I had personally turned off the water valve, so I had no reason to doubt that it wasn't on city sewer, but long story. short as it was on a septic system we ended up having to get an inspection and um and of course it came back with the recommendation of replacement about $12,000 and um so we you know that was a surprise we ended up negotiating with the uh with the buyer um a couple grand off of that but you know again that was one of those things where um you know if i'm if i'm in a little bit more rural area for absolutely

going to be checking that out differently than I did the first time for sure yeah and there's there's a couple lessons in there I'll say on the first one with the comp thing I was kind of going to the uh I was alluding almost to the 70 thing so you know I'm glad you even brought that up like yeah that's one like I don't know anybody that would have the courage to do what you did with it like it speaks just highly of like your character for me and Randy like I ran the comps and I said you know this to me I'm not seeing the comp range that the listing agent was giving. And I don't think it was anything, you know, intentionally done by the listing agent. I just think it's, you know, sometimes one, comps are tough.

And two, everybody runs them differently. And if an agent hasn't been taught how to run comps, kind of how an appraiser is going to, it's a really tough way to line it up. So I remember, you know, telling you like, hey, me on my open house. And I will, like, through detail, take you through how I'm seeing these comps lay out. Because it was really important to me that you knew going into it. but um and you had the information you got everything and you still decided you know what like for what you're wanting to do your worst case was you were going to lose some money and it was

going to be an education but you were still going to make the decision to help the seller out and also take action so I love the um you know it's almost like a paying for a tuition you know people that are going to school for you know going to a four year school they're paying $40,000 a year to be there sometimes that's paying tuition so if you go ahead with a deal and lose some money, obviously it's not ideal. You don't want to flip in a position where you can't lose a little bit of money or completely destroy you financially, but it's not at the end of the world either. And that one's still going on. And then while you had sent me that one, you also sent me another one to run. And that one I said, you know,

hey, thumbs up. We're looking good here. Coms look good. You know, should be pretty solid. So that one start to finish was probably your first one technically because it did sell. And I think honestly the fact that you had two deals going on at once was actually a huge benefit because you could almost mitigate the one where the comps were a little bit wrong with the other one. You can almost say, like, okay, this one's still going to be really solid. I'm able to mitigate this first one. And then on the second one, and I would say, I was going to say on our third one, same thing.

It's a lot more solid with the comps and everything. And so, so again, it will finish up with its remodel very, very close to the time that the first one is. And again, we'll mitigate any loss that may come from that, I believe, on that one, too. So we're solid on that one. And I would say even so with the one where the septic popped up, like obviously it's not ideal. That's a very scary thing to have happened. it's a pretty large repair. It's not something you budgeted for.

But there's a couple things to that. One, you did the work yourself on it. It was one of the better flips I think I've ever listed. Sorry, I had my phone ring. It was one of the better flips I've ever, you know, had listed in terms of the work. And everybody that came through said the same thing. You were able to kind of control costs because of that. So you were able to keep the rehab budget down.

And the numbers just totally made sense with where you were at on it. So the septic, obviously being a surprise, there's going to be stuff that pops up in real estate. There's going to be open permits you didn't know about. There's going to be issues that pop up and kind of tied it back into that analysis, paralysis conversation. You can't have the answer to everything. You almost have to just roll with the punches in real estate. You have to. I know we talked a lot during that deal, and I was just like, look, like, this happens on every transaction.

There's always something that's going to pop up. And you're never going to know what it is. It can be small, can be huge, but you almost can't stress about it. You just have to be like, okay, this is what's happened. Now I have to kind of come up with what are the solutions and the ways to go about it. Yeah, and that was good advice. You know, I think I told you at the time, you know, we've moved 13 times in our marriage and we've never had a delay in closing or anything pop up at the last minute.

So that was new to us, but you're reassuring, you know, that, hey, this happens a lot, you know, this kind of thing. So you just, you know, you live in the gray, right? It's not black and white. And even though our past experience has been pretty black and white in the grand scheme of things, you know, it was a really good reminder for me to live in the gray and just trusting God that it's going to work out. And he gave us agents that were caring enough to dig in and help us navigate through that.

So thanks Eric and Katie for that. Yeah, no, we appreciate it. And that's just one of those where like there's going to be so many things that happen in real estate. And like you said, I mean, when you're just buying a home once every seven to 10 years, like, there's a mitigation almost to the fact that, like, it can be a loss of a process. You're not handling transactions as often. But when you start to become an investor, like, I have never met an investor that hasn't run into some sort of issue. And actually, one of the things I love is, like, networking with other investors and agents because I hear stuff all the time where I'm like, oh, crap, like I didn't even think of that. So then what I do is, you know, that's something that completely changes.

like we almost have like little SOPs and I'm like okay like from here on out we're going to add this in so that that mitigates the risk so you know there's only so much you can do but I think if you're constantly getting started and looking at you know being fearful and thinking of you know how many unknowns there are out there you'll never get started because in real estate anything and I mean literally anything can happen at any given time so and then with the third deal, like that was something that you had the other two projects going on and then you reached out to me and he said, hey, I have another deal. I would like to have you run it. So we ran it and you decided to take on that third deal. What was kind of the thought process? You're a new

investor. You've got two flips going on. One of them's under contract. One of them's just getting kind of going. What was the thought process to go ahead and start with the third project? Yeah, for me, for me, it was just about trying to start to build some momentum. You know, so you're not starting from scratch again. You know, once you sell it, you have to start over again. And you've got a, you know, a 30-day window to really do nothing. And, you know, I didn't want that. I didn't want the cash flow, you know, to be limited in that way.

And, you know, my hope is to do at least 10 this year. And, you know, there was no way to, there was no way to do. do that unless I keep moving. I mean, I'm looking at two more right now, even though I've got too active. Yeah. You know, I haven't secured them yet, but, you know, again, I know these two are going to go on the market within the next month. By that time, the next one or two that I, you know, that I have in the works right now will be closing and I can start on those projects as well and just keep that momentum flowing. Yep. No, I love that. And one of the conversations we probably have with our agents on our team the most is building out your pipeline. And I think with agents and investors,

it's the same. It's always having something going on. Like, obviously you want business now. You want to, you know, want to be working with a buyer seller right now. You want to be flipping a house right now. I'm trying to find a buy and hold right now. But you almost have to think long term. So once these projects are done, if all of your focus, I think it tends to happen a lot in real estate as well. If all of your focus is on, okay, just got to get these projects done. That's the only one. I can focus on. Then when they're done, you're going to have this lull of there's nothing else lined up. There's nothing else going on. I think what you're doing right now, honestly, makes the most sense because, and we'll talk a little bit about this, you have a GC that helps

you a ton, you know, somebody that you can rely on and is very helpful and just does a great job. So we'll talk about that here in a second. But while those projects are going on, you're able to focus on that, but you're also able to take your attention and say, okay, you know, I know these are going to be wrapped up once they are. I want to have some other properties identified. And then if a good deal comes across, you can jump on it. And then if these clothes and there isn't a good deal out there, you don't have to feel forced to be like, okay, well, I need another project. So, you know, I'm going to fudge the numbers here. I'm going to push the ARB a little bit higher than I should. Yeah. No, that's really good. And I think, you know, having a good

G.C for sure is definitely been a blessing for me. You know, because the one thing I learned on that first flip with the septic issues, I did all that work myself. And it left no time for me to work on the business. I was in it up to my eyeballs. And, you know, so, you know, once I got done with the work on that and I got re-engaged in actually building my business and stuff, that's when I, on this third property. I said, okay, Brian, I need you to, to, you know, run the show basically as the contractor here and let me focus on finding more properties and making us most of more money. So that's been

really good. So I'm still heavily involved, but I'm not involved every day like I was. Yeah. Well, there's a benefit to that. Like I've talked to some investors too. Like if you know how to do the work, if a deal does get hairy or if the numbers get tight or, you know, first day you're doing demo and something pops up that you weren't expecting. you know the benefits are you can say okay well i can go in and tile the bathrooms it's not ideal to do something like that you don't want to do that but there's kind of a safe to it um and the other part is like me and katie we've we've done work ourselves as well is when you talk to a gc you know or a sub or anything like that like you know if they're you know bull crappity or not to put it

nicely like you know like you know it's not going to cost 15 dollars you know per square foot to install LVP like you know I know we're way off there so it's kind of a good benefit to have so with you wanting to do 10 projects you've got two going on currently you just sold one what are your thoughts are you thinking you're going to do one or two at a time how was your thought of growing that out I mean I would I would like to have at least three go at all times you know but it's been like I said it's been a little bit weird the last I don't know, I'd say probably the last month

it's been more difficult for me to find a deal that makes sense. I mean, I've looked at a lot of properties, but I'm not going to pull the trigger just to pull the trigger. I'm not going to make sure that it's you know, that it's going to be a fruitful thing. So like I said, I've got two that are in the works right now. You know, I'm hoping

both work out. I mean, that'd be great. But if they don't, I'm still looking every single day and networking and trying to get different pipelines or different streams of information coming to me through different wholesale groups and, you know, different RIAs and different partnerships and stuff like that. So I definitely have been building that network in the last probably 90 days and starting to see more activity there. Yeah. No, that's, you know, I think we talked.

quite a bit, you know, just about deals and stuff like that. And it's, you know, it's one of those things where you know, like, if a deal doesn't pencil out or if we have an ARV on it, like, one, I think we've learned this, you know, wholesalers are not going to always have, you know, the most accurate ARV. They're not going to have the most accurate scope of work. Like, their job, I get a lot of investors that send me a wholesale deal and I'm like, hey, their ARV is a hundred thousand more than it should be. And they're like, well, that's, you know, how can they do that? That's, you know, they're not telling the truth. And it's like, their job is to sell this property. Like, you know, they're not real estate experts per se. And if they're pulling

comps, you know, there might be one that's $100,000 over, but it might have a pool and it might have 500 square feet more. And there's all these intricacies that they're not sure what to look for. They might be pulling comps a mile and a half out. So you do have to be kind of careful when you're getting stuff from a wholesalers. But there's also this like, we talked about analysis, paralysis, but there's also this discipline that's required that is really tough as an investor when you want to pull the trigger and you're just like I want more deals like I want to keep things going but you're getting these opportunities and you have to say hey even if it works out numbers wise then it's 15,000 profit and you're kind of thinking like man do I want to take on all of this risk

and stress for 15,000 over six months and if you come to that answer some people would love that others wouldn't but if you come to that conclusion that hey that's not worth it it's better to pass on something like that and then look for other opportunities know what you're looking for you know one thing you do is you stick very local to the Bradenton and parish area and you know it very well but you're also not chasing opportunities you know in Tallahassee on you know you're not looking for flips crazy far distances you're staying where you know yeah and that's just the control freak in me I need to be yeah I don't think I'm ever going to be the site unseen buyer you know in different states yeah like some some investors are but um but you know

i do want to keep it close enough that i can keep my eyes on the project and and have those relationships built with contractors that like i said that i can trust and stuff and you know uh brian and i worked really well together because he's here local he lives you know in palmetto so he's right one town over from me and and and he's kind of the same way he doesn't want to go two hours away for a job, it just doesn't make sense for his business either. So, you know, there's plenty of homes here. There's plenty of homes here. Plenty of opportunity here. And it's just a matter of finding the right ones and not getting yourself in too deep. I will say, you know, the, the, you mentioned about the ARVs and all that kind of stuff. And one of my, one of my strategies has been to make sure that

I'm buying properties, you know, where the ARV is under 500,000 or thereabouts, just to be strategic about what's still moving in the market, you know, because things that are higher price down here just aren't moving. And, you know, the days on market, it's just eating up your margin, you know, when it's going 200 days, 200 plus days. So, you know, that's kind of been part of my strategy is to get the price point right. Yeah, and I think there's something very important to just knowing your market like you know you want to not especially in Tampa Bradenton St. Pete they're all it's like kind of one big market but smaller local markets is our days on market you know it's pushing closer to 100 days and Zillow just changed their

forecast for Tampa so you know they were expecting I think like 3% appreciation and Tampa going into 2026 and now it's changed to negative 1.5% and that's not a that's not a huge swing number still makes sense with a swing like that. But what you have to understand is your holding costs go up considerably. Like if I'm dealing with investors in Cincinnati, our holding costs are, hey, as soon as it's done, this is going to get listed. And if it's done right and the work is done correctly and it's priced properly, it's going to be off the market in 10 days. And then it'll sell in 30. So you have a month holding cost on top of the flip. But here in Tampa, here in Bradenton and all that, like, it's not uncommon for houses to sit on the market for three or four

months. So, you know, knowing that, knowing that you can kind of be very dialed into it, knowing that you don't want to go, 500 plus is kind of second home territory. Well, there's not a lot of people right now that are like, I'm gladly sell my 2% mortgage home and get an 8% mortgage home just because I want to add in a game room. Like most people right now are like, we're good, we'll go without that. So those homes, 500,000 plus and up, tend to sit longer than homes that are 500,000 and below. So I love that you do have a buy box that you stick to. I love that you have a location you stick to. It's typically block homes. It's typically, you know, you haven't sent me, I've had some investors send me like a one bed, one bath, 400 square feet. And it's like,

who are we going to sell that to? Like that's, you know, there's not a huge buyer pool for it. So it's great that you kind of know that this is what people want in the market. And you can kind of focus in on that. One of the questions I had, so for a lot of people that are struggling to get started, one, just taking that first step, like, what would be your recommendation just in terms of what kind of got you to finally say, you know what, like, I'm ready to go. I know you said going to that in-person class, but is there any, like, if somebody's listening to this, they haven't done a deal, but they really want to.

What would be your advice? I would say networking is definitely one of the things that you want to be doing and take a partner and not necessarily a true JV partner but you know it can be if you want it to be but you need to have a mentor I think if you don't know what you're doing as far as construction goes and things like that

so yeah you know on the house that we sold already you know we had some folks that are in the Kingdom 320 group that had never done a flip before and they just wanted to ride along with me you know and see it start to finish and through that you know we've made some really good friendships

and we've worked on other deals together since then but don't underestimate you know where that next deal is going to come from through a partner partnership that you've made and also don't underestimate

who you think might have money to loan, you know, I never, I never would have fought to ask, you know, certain people, you know, just based on, I guess, just based on my past, you just don't ever ask people for money. It's just kind of how you brought up. But there's a lot more money out there than you think there is. And so don't let that be the barrier. You know, the fear that there's not going to be money there. The way you're going to find it is through networking and making calls and just talking to people about what's working, what's not. And, you know, that's, that's, that.

I might have lost here for a second. Oh, did we lose Matt? Sorry, we lost me there. Yeah, I was going to say. I think I lost. yeah yeah but but anyway that gave that gave me the confidence to you know that I wasn't doing it alone

yeah you know I mean my wife my wife is involved very limited in this you know because she works full time and and she's just not all that interested in the numbers and the whatever she'd love to be a designer yeah so so yeah

it's you know you've got to have people that you can call and talk to and trust build trust in relationship with that'll be long term. I think there's something really Yeah, I think there's something really important to kind of the first part you said about and we can talk about the second part as well

but I think when I got into real estate I think a lot of us like we feel isolated and I think that is part of what makes it tough to make a decision because you're so afraid that like if you make it like you don't have anybody there there's something to finding either somebody who's a local expert or finding a mentor or finding other

people that want to get into it with you and helping each other, talking to them, communicating them, like kind of pouring back into them. Same similar situation when I finally was able to kind of get into making decisions real estate wise. I found somebody who took me under his wing, was an investor, taught me what he knew, helped kind of build that confidence up. And then the decisions become a lot easier because you're not afraid like, okay, what if I make this mistake?

You know that the person, one, you have somebody else that's. that's in it with you if you are partnering whether it's jv or not but two if it's somebody who has that experience that kind of like wisdom then you know like okay as things happen as things come up i'm not going to be you know up a creek wondering what's going on you're going to have somebody that you can say hey what did you do here what do you do there um and networking events like go to them as often as you can i'm the worst at it like i never go as often as i should i think you go every single week as an agent as an investor title company whatever it is like go out and talk with people what's going on with the market what are they struggling with um matt one of the things that

you probably do better than anybody i have met before in real estate and i've done this for a while just like you have no problem adding value to other people and pouring back into them like there's a lot of newer um investors in our group that like you said you will take on for you know a rider you'll say hey come to my flip let's go walk it you're not expecting anything in return you're just helping these people and in the long run like those those people might get into wholesaling and you'll be the first person that gets their deal or they might decide hey flipping's not for me i see what matt's doing but i do have 150 grand sitting in the bank that you know he can use um it could be that they know a contractor and they're like hey like you know this person's great so you just never know

what those relationships and what adding value to people will do. It's something I think doesn't happen enough in business. I think a lot of times we do see it as competition. People kind of shy away from collaboration. I just think there's so much you miss out on. There's so many opportunities out there. There's so many people that can, you never know who can fundamentally change your life in this business.

Like one conversation can completely change your trajectory. And that's what happened with me. And it's something that it's like the more you kind of put yourself out there, talk to people about it, the more you set yourself up for that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Now that you've got three deals,

one close, two deals going on under your belt, what are some lessons, what are some takeaways that you're going to kind of use going forward? Yeah, I think on the positive side, like I said, being at the right price point, making sure you do your own research that that sort of thing i think on the on the real real learning sides like the real life learning side is um you know with the first deal i did all the work myself so i controlled the timing on these other two deals i've had to have electricians i've had

to have plumbers you know um and and unfortunately they don't work on the same timeline that i want to work on all the time because they're busy with other things and um and they they may not be as communicative as I would like about when they're coming and how fast it's going to take and, you know, that sort of thing. So I'm learning to navigate that. Again, coming from, coming from a long-term employment, you know, where I was, where I was the leader, you know, of teams of hundreds of people, I was expecting, you know, I always, I always got the answer I needed or wanted pretty darn quick. Yeah. So I'm learning to be, I'm learning to be a little more flage. with my expectations from a communication standpoint and lead times, you know, for materials

and stuff like that. So, yeah, those are learnings that I'm sure will continue. But they were ones that, that probably cost us a few weeks here and there in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, it's that, I think that's a good one. Like, you, I think even having worked with you on the first one, like you are very much, like, once to be in control knowing what's going on. which is an amazing trait.

Like, it's a huge benefit. And I know when we had stuff kind of going on with that first deal, it's like there's only so much you can do. It's the same with contractors. Like you're going to, it almost takes like patience, like beyond belief. Like you're like, why are we not doing this? Like, I want this to get going. So sometimes it takes a lot.

Or even with like, if you're, yeah, I mean, if you remember with that first deal, I had ordered Tile for a back splash, you know, from Wayfair way in advance, but it came in wrong. It was like completely wrong color, wrong material, everything. And I was like, man, we're supposed to take pictures in like three days. I got to scramble. You know, so again, it's it's understanding that things can go wrong and having a plan B.

And not that you're plan being everything, but, you know, the things that are going to hold you up time-wise, you definitely want to try and mitigate any time lost if you can. Yeah. Yeah, and I think there's something to that too. Like we, it kind of sounds like from this conversation where like heck, wing it, like stuff's going to happen. But you don't want to do that in real estate. Like you want to stick to kind of like you really do want to control as much as you can. There's always going to be stuff that you can't, but you do want to make sure that like the decisions you're making are ones that, you know, are kind of thought out beforehand.

And I know you had kind of done this. I can tell just by the way you look at properties, but you kind of knew what you were going for property-wise. as to kind of marry like the investor age and nation that together is kind of like a lesson learned in this is I get a lot of investors that reach out to me and they're like send me any deal you get and it's like what's the deal you're looking for like flip do you want buy and hold are you want condos single family multifamily send me anything anytime somebody does that to me I never put them on the buyers list because it sounds terrible they're going to be a waste of time like if they're doing that like they're just like send me anything

you have it's like okay well you don't even know what you want then um so it's kind of controlling what you can and i know that like with you going for block home staying 500,000 and below you look for these properties that are and in a certain location you kind of know what you're looking for and what you want so that's a huge benefit yeah and i think there's i think there's other ways to diversify yourself in real estate other than you know taking that shotgun approach to just give me any deal you can And, you know, whether it be syndicated deals or whether it be just, you know, being a private money lender or things like that. There's other ways to navigate real estate and make money beyond what you're just your buybox is. And so I think rather than expanding your buybox to be anything and you become, you know, 80% good at a lot of things, but you're not 100% great at anything.

I think you're selling yourself short. Yeah. agreed wholeheartedly agreed um okay well so we'll kind of I want to have some questions at the end like I always want to do that so I'll kind of end it with you know you've been doing this for less than a year now you've got two deals that you're currently working on you have one that you just flipped you have more deals that you're running if there was like any bit of advice you could give yourself from when you started just you know six months ago is there anything that you'd kind of tell now Matt or like tell would now Matt tell previous Matt

like hey as you get into this journey like this is what i have to kind of impart wisdom wise what would you kind of say yeah again i think i think for me you know again being being sort of in this faith-based group um that's it's a very important part of of my life and and you know i was i was uh not trusting that god was going to provide at the very beginning and and you know aside from that meeting one one the book of joshua for me um you know when he's going over the over the jordan into jericho and you know god kept reinforcing to him to have courage and and faith you know and that and that's kind of what i've been clinging to for the last you know five or six months that you know what god's gonna god's gonna he started this he put me in this position i think intentionally and

he's he's linked us together intentionally and and I don't I think he's going to finish what he started I have to trust that absolutely and yeah so that's my biggest piece of advice I think is trust that the Lord's going to provide yeah no I love that I think that's I think that's amazing I think we all you know I think that's something we all need like I know you had even posted in our our Facebook group you know one morning that you know there's going to be times where you kind of lose that not lose it but you kind of the faith wanes a little bit. So, yeah, and then when that happens, it gets really scary.

So I think it's just kind of like resementing that faith, like kind of saying, like, you know, like there's a reason I'm doing this. There's a, there's a reason people are brought, you know, in your life that God has brought, you know, across our paths, like me and Katie always say all the time, like if it's meant to happen, it'll happen. But also it's just, it's mind blowing to me that how like, you know, whenever there's doubt or anything like that, God always kind of provides. there's always something, there's always like an answer to what we're worried about.

So I think especially getting into investing and just how much we don't control, it's the ultimate kind of like bait tester there. For more insights and to join the Investor Agent Nation community, visit investoragentnation.com. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star rating to help Randy and Eric continue delivering valuable content. that resonates with you. Thanks for listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast.