KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Strategies for Beginners and Pros: Real Estate Investing Success with Curtis Grimes

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Summary:In this episode, host Kathy Burns interviews Orlando-based agent Kurtis Grimes to explore practical strategies for real estate growth. They discuss Kurtis's transition from construction into real estate investing, using fourplex house-hacking strategies to build passive income and live rent-free. The conversation addresses current market hurdles like Florida’s home insurance and roofing rules, while emphasizing proactive buyer prep. Additionally, they highlight how agents can leverage ChatGPT and AI prompts for custom GPT assistants, board-of-director strategy tools, and automated social media workflows.

Today's guest is Curtis Grimes. He is an agent out of the Orlando area. Started from scratch, build a construction business, built that up over years, evolved into real estate, and he has got an incredible story of grit, but also lots of great tools of how he's running his business that you can benefit from. So stay tuned. Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of. Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence.

And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same. Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. Join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful systems, and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable. Pick a video and start learning. Your journey to success starts now. Hey, everybody, it's Kathy Burns here with Real Estate Riches, and I've got a great guy on here today.

Curtis Grimes is out of Florida. I'm loving everything about how he's got his background all set up. I'm loving it. So anyway, we're going to get started and introduce you, Curtis. Welcome. Well, thank you very much, Kathy, for having me here. It's really something that I had been thinking about doing as well, is doing a podcast.

I mean, I get a lot of people that talk about my radio voice. So that's one of the things that I've been wanting to do. And then honestly, I've gotten about four or five lineups right now with other people doing podcasts that have requested me to come on. And I don't know what the great demand is for myself at the moment. But, hey, I'll take it. I'll take it, right? Well, you know, you and I were just talking a minute ago. I am a huge believer in being visual and podcasts make it visible.

Everybody's listening to podcasts and this one gets put on our YouTube channel as well. It's on all the podcast channels. So we get exposure that way. And agents are honestly hungry to figure out what to do in challenging markets. Some get it, just dive in and figure it out. Some are like, I don't even know how to even raise my hand. Some are paralyzed. some are joining forces and doing little networking things together.

And that's what we're going to kind of talk about. So tell me a little bit about you. It looks like you got in the business around 1999, not as a realtor, but more in construction and property management. Tell me about that piece. Well, I'm originally from New York. I grew up in New York. I grew up in Queens, New York.

Kid born in the projects. And when I first got into the business, I was in elevators. And then after that, I started a small construction company. So, you know, and then that small construction company had a crew of guys, you know, working with that. My wife was, it's so many things that went on during that time. So it's kind of a lot to cover within that time. Matter of fact, I had a piece that was published in the Black Enterprise magazine that I wrote in, the 2006 edition of Black Enterprise.

It was a little piece that I had written in and they published it about keeping the American dream. So something that really kind of told our story of how we got started buying and flipping properties as well. So, you know, our first home in 99 was a four-family home in New Rochelle, New York. I lived in the basement and rent it out. Well, I couldn't rent it out until I fixed it up because the house was a poor closure when we got into it. So, I mean, we went on the first floor and the radiator for the first floor apartment was down in the basement. So it was falling through the floor. You can see it in the ceiling.

So it was one of those type of job. And, you know, I fixed that up. We worked, fixed it up and rented out the top three floors and was able to help create a, you know, passive income from having that property. And like I said, basically I've lived rent free because my tenants paid my mortgage and I'm working my job. So I got to keep my earnings from that. And we ended up buying more property. So that's kind of how we got started within real estate. Well, I'll tell you, I was just talking to a guy.

I'm a classic car gal. Kind of see my little shadows over there. And I go to car shows all the time. So I live in Morrisville, North Carolina. And it's called Ray City because NASCAR is right here. But a lot of the guys that live in the area are classic car guys. So I was talking to the son of one of them, and he was telling me how he was going to start this new job and he wanted to get into investing.

I said, well, I'm going to tell you something. The smartest move you can do is not buy an individual home, do just what you did. You get at least two, get at least a duplex if you can a triplex, fourplex if you can. I said the rent will count towards your financing. There's a lot of different programs for doing it that way that you can get in without having huge amount of cash. And I said, do that because you can live mortgage-free because other people are paying it. If one tenant goes out of your house and you only have a single family home, you're in trouble.

You know, maybe you can't make up that extra payment. What if you can't get it rented for two or three months? I watched my mother do this and I saw she would, and literally moved from one house to the other, she would put which one that came on the market and put both her house she lived in and the other one for rent at the same time to whichever one went first, that's where she would move if she had to. I mean, that's grit, which is what you showed, a lot of grit. Oh, yeah. Well, in this, especially in this market, you're going to have to have some grit or you're going to have to have a whole lot of money in your bank account,

one or the other. Either you got a whole, you know, you got a lot on reserve or, you're going to have to have some grit. So I like to have a little bit of both. Yeah, me too. Me too. I like residual income a lot. So you're still doing the, are you doing property management too? I don't really do the property management as as much. I mean, I manage a couple of properties pretty much for myself, my own properties. But not for clients or anything like that. We don't do any property management on that level. but what we do is try to help people get into with other management companies that work directly with that because that's not something I work with directly all the time. I wouldn't want to ever, ever.

It's a nightmare. Let somebody else have that. Dealing with tenants and landlords is not, I'd rather deal with crazy sellers and, you know, people that don't know the value of their home. And they think it's worth more than what it is. I can deal with that a little bit easier at times. So true. So in Florida, tell me some of the challenges that you're dealing with.

My first thought, and I'm going to ask you about this, is roofs. Okay. Well, the insurance companies have, you know, made it kind of challenging when it comes to roofs. Matter of fact, I'm waiting. I've been battling with my own insurance company for my own roof on my house because I had some hail damage a while back. And it takes a while. It's a process. But the regulatory, they are regulating it right now. You know, the governor's kind of stepped in as well. And legislation has passed a couple of laws that, you know, the insurance companies can't just bail on you or kind of just dismiss you from being on the policy.

So they have, I know in North Carolina, because I have a property in North Carolina as well. And I have, what is it, NCJUI or something like that. So you're saying like with your own, I was thinking, I didn't even know that they could not renew your policy. I was thinking more like if I'm like I, for example, I had a home, 1999 home original roof. I knew that that was going to be a problem child. But I didn't know to the level of how it was going on. I asked one of my friends who owns a state farm agency. I said that the roof is 1999.

Are we going to have problems getting that house insured? She goes, you're not going to get it in. because that roof is too old. It's going to need to be replaced. Most insurers won't even take it on. And I was shooting for multiple offers on this thing. So that was my vision. And I thought, if I get multiple offers and now we find out that you've got to get a new roof and I haven't strategized this, we're going to be in trouble. So I went on chat GPT because I am a fan. And I actually went on GROC and I said, do deep research. what's going on with roofs and insurance companies when it's a buyer-seller situation

versus a homeowner because that was more important to me because I don't want to have a buyer there now we're 50% through the deal and we find out they can't get insurance on the house because well they can get it on the house but not on the roof so it would be ridered out and I'm like that's not going to work so that's one of the first things that I do with when I have buyers, I try to make sure that they get their insurance set up. You know, when we're doing right before they even, you know, once they give their escrow and they got everything in escrow and the appraisal is about to come in, I'm like, look, contact the insurance companies, make sure you get all of this stuff done before you even

try to pay for an appraisal. So. Yes. That's smart. That's really smart. I've never done that. Dang it. I'm going to add that to my list.

I work more with sellers, but that's a very valid point. I never saw anybody have problems with the insurance before, but now with the roof. And it's, you're the worst state. We're the second worst. And Texas is the other state that had the biggest issues where a lot of these insurance companies, like for North Carolina, it's 15 years. Even if you have the architectural shingles on your roof and they're in good shape, you could be not insured just because they don't want to take the risk.

And those three tab shingles, you know, you won't. Yeah, Erie won't even ensure a single house. And that's what a lot of those track homes are that are built, you know, like in those less expensive homes in the communities. Well, people don't know that when they're buying the house. Not at all. Not at all, right? And so this is another red, this is just another thing about being informed in real estate

and why I like doing these podcasts where we talk about this kind of stuff because I learned about it in CE that it might be a problem. It was not on my list to even deal with before I listed this house with my client and I was in CE and I started doing some homework on before we had listed it. And I said, we got ourselves a problem here. Now, fortunately, she had the money to replace the roof. So boom, that was done. Now I have a selling point because now I got a brand new roof.

That's a big, exciting thing I can say in my marketing, right? And it was powerful. So it looked good. It was great. They did the garage as well, so that was all good. But I wondered how it was happening in Florida when you're working with resales, probably because you're experienced with it. You're paying attention to it.

Absolutely. And what I also do, I use it as a negotiating piece as well. I mean, you know, if the roof needs to be replaced, then we go, you know, especially if I'm because I work with a lot of buyers on my side. Usually my wife works on the listing side, so she'll take the listings. Even if it's like one of my listings or whatever. She'll take the listings that I usually work with the buyer. Well, it makes sense.

You know, when I had a business partner before, we each had our own strengths. Like, she would handle all the paperwork and all the people. I didn't want to just, you know, after we were under contract, all those negotiations, you handle that. I don't want that piece. Just let me go do the marketing. Let me be the happy person. Let me bring them all in. And then you handled the paperwork.

And it worked out great for seven years. But anyway, okay. that's good. So I wanted to talk to you about that. So what are you doing with AI in your business? Well, keeping up with my clients. I mean, just newsletters, we send out every month. We send out a monthly newsletter. You know, we generate the newsletter, of course, put it together. But of course, like any interaction with it, that's kind of through AI. We help create some of the, you know, go to chat, GBT, give us like what's going on in the community. gives us a list. Matter of fact, my wife and I, we just went to Chicago for her birthday and planned the whole itinerary. So it's a lot of different things that you can do with it.

So that's the great, that's, it's a great tool. And honestly, we're still, we're still learning and it's still developing. It's learning us and we're learning it all at the same time. Yeah. Well, I was just listening to somebody yesterday, Tony Robbins was talking about it. and it said, we are on the downs side of where it's about to just go like that. And it's really true. I teach it to realtors who want to get started with chat GPT, who need to understand all the variables, how to create their own custom GPT,

how to use the GPs on the left-hand side tasks. I'll give you a tip. I trained it to, I just said, I'm going to create a task. I want you to create a task so that every day you tell me at 6 a.m. in the morning. That's when I get up. What's the latest update on this platform? And then I want you to talk to me like I'm a fifth grader and tell me how to use it. And I said, and then if there's a day where there's no upgrade, just say there's no upgrades today, Kathy, and it emails that to me every single morning. Every single morning. Oh, wow. Yeah, which is great. Great.

Well, there's something like, you know, just keeping up with market stats and things like that, you know, our association, I'm part of ORA. So they have something called the Monday morning quarterback, which gives us pretty much all the stats, lets us know, you know, where price values are, how many homes were sold within the last week or whatever within the month. So it kind of keeps you up to speed on everything that's going on within the market, you know, the median home prices. Right. what's moving what's not moving what areas are more likely to move instead of the sale exactly the areas where people are moving to a little bit more exactly well I follow so much on AI my eyes just want to fall out sometimes but one thing I just read I follow this guy Jonathan Mast on Facebook and his is AI for prompts for entrepreneurs. Well, those prompts are,

you know, bendable to your whatever field you're in. And what I've learned from him are so many different ideas, how to think different and bring that into my business. And he creates GPTs, which you'll notice on the left hand side, it'll say, explore GPTs and you can search them all. And what that is, somebody's created a package of a prompt to do a specific role. And I took a class with him and it was how to create GPTs. I had done one on my own for studying for real estate exams and any state in the country. And I did it as an experiment. Well, I didn't know how to do it when I started it. I asked JATGPT to teach me how to do it. And it was great. I had ideas of what I wanted it to do, and I wanted it to cover all the states, and I wanted to make sure that it knew the style of the tests in all the different states.

And if you have the pay-for version, you can upload different documents. Well, I said I wanted to be able to upload chapter one and have it be a study buddy with me. And so it would ask me questions in the same format that that particular state did them in. Was it multiple choice? was it three multiple choice, five multiple choice, whatever the state was. And I said, do you know how to do this? And it said, yeah, I got this. I'm like, okay, then let's go for this.

So then I said, okay, I'm going to have you tell the student to upload chapter one. You're going to give them a series of questions, let's say 15. And all the ones that they miss, I want you to remember, give it to them, but jumble up where the answers are. So like last time it was the right answer was A. No, I want it maybe the right answer to be in the C position because I want them to really grab it. And then once they get all those right, now they can move on to chapter two and upload that one. So it forces them to really get that chapter by chapter. And you can see how many people have used it.

And I was surprised. I did ACE, your real estate exam. I did ACE because I wanted to be first in the search. And so the last time I looked, there were 50 people and I was pretty excited because that was a year ago. My daughter and I just played with it to see if we could create it. Well. Yeah. Well, I see you have a, you yourself have a lot of tools out there for people as well.

For new realtors, I see, you know, I kind of looked you up a little bit before we got, you know, this is our first time meeting. I was like, let me see who this lady is. And listen, I shouldn't just went to chat GPT and probably it would have told me it gave me everything. think that I'm over here looking through Google and searching different things and looking at your website and reading your information and going from rookie to rock star and you know just I love it. So that's really good. I've had a lot of people interviewing me on my story because I started really at almost 56, a month short, and I'll be 75 this month.

So I'm very young in heart. But I was broke when I started. So the grit like you're talking about when you started and I started in 2006, when it was starting to climb in North Carolina, and then she tanked. And my daughter was supporting me. I had some, I lived a large lifestyle, so I gathered up some of those trinkets that I could sell over on eBay for three years. I did that off and on as I needed cash, gave up a wonderful watch that I treasured. And people got incredible deals all around the world because I sold all around the world.

But my mom was a realtor in the industry, but I didn't grow up with that. She did that at a later age. She started, I think, around 48 or self, maybe 49. But she became a rock star herself. You know, when you've got necessity, you're going to figure it out. And that's really one of the things I want to say to people today. You just have to have grit and figure it out. Go on chat, TPT and say, I need help.

I need some support out here. Who could be some mentors? What are groups that I could get involved in? Or I don't have to spend a lot of money because there's so much upselling. to real estate agents in this industry. It frustrates me because through the years, I have probably tried everything out there and wasted so much money. When, especially today with YouTube and podcasts, there's so much free information where you can level up. And the truth is, you can just ask chat GPT. I am lost. I need some ideas. Here's where I live. Here's what I know. Here's my budget.

here's what, you know, maybe I'm a single mom and I've got to try and work this out. I would ask all those questions, help me design a lifestyle where I can still be a good mom. I'm paying attention to what my budget is, how much money I've got to bring in so I can make sales ethically without needing the sale. That's a big deal. Well, you definitely have to educate yourself in this business. And you definitely have to invest in yourself. So I think that's one of the biggest things is definitely invest in yourself and learning to speak the language.

I think that, you know, it's with anything. If you go to school to become a doctor or if you go to school to become a, I don't know, an auto mechanic, it doesn't make a difference because there's a language for every field that you're going to. Absolutely. So it's not a new language. So I was just at a convention in Spain, just. a week and a half ago, which is very exciting. And there was a whole panel up there, and they were all into AI. And I'll tell you what, the players in this industry, they are all using AI on every level of

their business. And I'm just sitting there like a little kid in a candy store trying to capture it all, because it was so inspiring. One of the women gets off. I knew her a little bit. We're starting to talk, And she goes, I created a GPT, which is that little condensed instructor, to create my board of directors. And I said, what? And she goes, yeah, they don't even have to be alive. And so I, and she said, and I give all my goals to them. It tells me what I need to do for this week, like especially if I had a particular thing I needed to accomplish this week. And then accountability gives me insight on how to do that.

So she picked different coaches. There were health coaches. There were relationship coaches. There were mindset coaches. There were real estate coaches. There was investment coaches. And I thought, I'm going to do this myself because I have a GPT that creates GPTs. And so I asked ChatchipT, help me do this.

And so it did. And I've got, I started with Jesus because I figured I better start with him. I got Zig Ziglar in there. I've got the founder of the company that I'm with because I think he's brilliant. He's a tech maven. I got Richard Branson for fun and lots of different people. And so I created that GPT. And then I'm sitting there.

It's probably 11 o'clock at night because that's when I'm inspired. I just can't stop. I said, wait a minute. I think this is marketable. I think I could sell this course. For an hour course, I teach not just realtors, but small business owners on how to have their board of directors to guide them. Because let's say I've had businesses before, but I failed at several of them because I

didn't understand the accounting piece of it. So the bookkeeping, the accounting, that a CPA person needs to be in there to guide you as well. Because realtors are, they kind of fail at that. And this was one of them as far as getting my stuff together with my books in the beginning. Well, this is a business. And that's what people have to know when they get into this. You know, your job isn't really just selling houses.

It's not just about houses. It's about you've got to be part psychologists. You've got to understand people's emotions and feelings are wrapped up in this as well. So it's a lot of different things that you have to do. And you have to run it like it's a business. Absolutely. I think that's one of the key things. That's really key.

In the beginning, when you're not making much money, it's hard to pay those taxes. But the lesson learned was pay them anyway, figure it out. Find a way. do something different, you know. One thing I wanted to ask you about, how are you doing with your social media? Are you getting yourself out there or are you just so established you got all repeat business? Well, I mean, we post daily and we use AI, you know, within our company, we have a program full command and we can set up and it's all automated.

So, you know, we set it up for the week. We have a VA that helps us out with that type of stuff and gets it all set up so that it gets published and goes on to social media. So we stay present. We're present on social media. So we're not hard to find. But we do have enough repeat business that, you know, clients that know us, that people do business with who they know, like and trust and have a good amount of people that know like and trust us. So I think that's one of the great things. I think so too. I think that's why for me, visibility on social media is actually really critical. I just got a call before we get on here.

And this woman said, are you Kathy Burns and do you do real estate? I go, yes. And I almost didn't answer the phone because I didn't recognize the number because it gets only spammers, right? And I didn't even say my name. I just said hello, which is also I'm expecting you to be a spammer. And this woman gets on and asks that. And she goes, can you help me buy home?

I go, I guess so let's talk. I said, she goes, well, a woman from State Farm said, you're the one I need to call. And I'm like, well, that works. I mean, how about that? That was a first for me because I don't even know who that State Farm woman might be. And but I think that people are going to, you know, there's definitely looking on Google and they're looking on, they'll be looking much more on AI as that evolves. They're not there yet where they're doing so many searches there.

but that's going to happen your Google page, your presence, you probably do Google reviews on your business page and things like that. That's important. Yeah, reviews are very important. I mean, we've had a couple of clients that called in. They've seen our Instagram feed or our social media or they looked on Zillow. You know, my Zillow reviews are pretty good. So, and they've seen us on there and they were like, hey, we're looking to move from Utah to come to, you know, Florida.

So and vice versa. I have people that we knew in New York that are looking maybe not even to move to Florida. They're looking to move someplace else. Like in your matter of fact, I have somebody moving to Charlotte area. So, you know, and that's the other great thing about this business is being able to have really good referral partners. So and that's one of the other things that I definitely work on is building those referral-based businesses. So that, hey, you know, I know Kathy in, I forgot the little town that you're in. I know it's up.

I know it's up above near, what is it, Lake Norman. Yeah, I'm on Lake Norman. I sell a lot of the waterfronts here. Okay. All right. So if I know anybody that's going to Lake Norman, I'm going to be like, hey, I know Kathy over there and I'll be sending them your way. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Where are you at exactly? It says Orlando. I'm in Orlando. I'm out of the Lake Nona office in the Orlando area. So, you know, medical city, the new VA is there. I mean, we're close to everything. That's one of the biggest sort of areas besides, you know, Windermere, which has its own name, Windermere, Winter Park, you know, the really prestigious areas. But we're close to all of it, close to, of course, the big mouse house, you know. Yeah, that's great.

And we got the new Universal Studio. I haven't been there yet, but I got to definitely go check that out. That's the new park that they just opened up. So it's so much going on here in Florida too. That's the other great thing. There's a lot of great things going on here. I can't believe that I've been here living here now almost 20 years. Yeah, that's me too.

I'm 20 years this year. 20 years this year in North Carolina. I came from Michigan. Oh, nice. I was running from that snow. I don't blame it. I don't blame it. Same here.

Same here. It was more of a life change. It wasn't really the snow, but the snow was definitely a determining factor. That's for sure. Yeah, life change for me too. That's exactly what it was. And it was great.

You know, people are afraid of change, but the truth is sometimes that new walk could just open up a life you just never even imagined. That's what's done for me. Yeah. Change is inevitable. It's always happening. Yes.

Well, listen, it's been great having you on here. I know you got lots of nuggets for us. And I appreciate all of that. We're going to put all your information in, all the different spots that it's going to be all over the Internet. So you're going to get more visibility, buddy. Well, I appreciate it. Hey, every little bit helps.

And hopefully I can bring some visibility to you from my end as well. So, you know, when people say, hey, I see Curtis, was on your show and I want to move to the Lake Norman area of North Carolina. So I just don't want you to forget that the referral came from over here. Of course. Of course. I won't forget, buddy. All right.

Well, thanks so much. And I appreciate you very much. And I just want to say to everybody, pay attention to courtesy's your guy in Orlando. And he and his wife will help you out in every way that they can. So see you in the next one. So thanks for joining me on this episode of Real Estate Riches. that great. I'm sure you've got a nugget or two. I know I did. So if you liked it, please subscribe below, share it with everybody, make some comments. We really find that invaluable.

And if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little bit more, let's get to a business strategy call. I'll have the link below. Let's see if we can't mastermind together and see if we can't empower each other. That would be great. So until next time, signing up. Hope to see you on the next one.