The Science of Flipping - Episode 102: Justin Colby interviews Mitch Stephen the author of book My Life & 1000 houses

Episode Date: June 24, 2017

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab30bdb77", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/post/2391", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab30bdc02", {"title":"Episode 102: Justin Colby interviews Mitch Stephen the author of book My Life & 1000 houses","subtitle":null,"summary":null,"duration":"","poster":null,"chapters":"","transcripts":"","audio":[{"url":"https://audio.simplecast.com/73790.mp3","mimeType":"audio/mpeg","title":"AUDIO/MPEG","size":0}]}, "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); Justin Colby interviews Mitch Stephen the author of book My Life & 1000 houses. Learn some great creative strategies on this episode of The Science Of Flipping. Get a Free Coaching Call with TSOF team. CLICK HERE TO FILL THE FORM. JOIN MASTERMIND  — APPLY NOW!!

Welcome to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Colby. What's up, everybody? What is up? And welcome back to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I am your host, Justin Colby. If this is your first time, man, do we have a special guest for you. But before I get to my guest, I want everyone to come in who might be new to the Science of Flipping podcast or even myself and realize this podcast is all about creating systems, processes, and implementation and tools to create your life by design through flipping homes, through real estate investing. And so from time to time, I have special guests on. Today is one of those days. If it is your first time listening to the podcast, I urge you to go over to thescienceofflipping.com. There's a lot to the website, but the reason why I'm actually asking you to go there is because

I have a book on Amazon called The Science of Flipping. And I actually give it to my loyal listeners for free. I sell it on Amazon for $15. But for you, just go there. Go ahead and put in the information. And you can download the real book for free. And you can have it for free. And so ultimately, guys, there's a lot there.

If you're interested in talking to me further about our masterminds or even our coaching, go over to the Science of Flipping. Click the tab that says Coaching. Fill out the application. It's absolutely free. Or if you're interested in masterminds that I've been talking about, we have another mastermind. I have a week and a half of masterminds with our boardroom and boardroom elite mentors coming up in July, which will be awesome.

If you have any interest in talking to me or the rest of my team about the power of a mastermind, what really is included there, fill out the application. Again, get yourself in the game if this is something that is for you. And lastly, I've been receiving a lot of emails about something I talked about several episodes back, which is funding. I have partnered with a company that is an incredible funder. It is basically bridge funding to help you fill those gaps. You could go to the science of flipping. So TSOFfunding.com, TSOFfunding.com, and learn more about the funding partner that I've partnered with, how it works, and quite frankly, fill out the application because if you're a rehabber, if you're a wholesaler, you can use this money for marketing, you can use it for your rehabs,

you can use it for a number of reasons, right? So this is great money to be able to have in your bank at any given moment. So tsoffunding.com, go, check it out, and see if it's going to be a fit for you. So with all the paperwork out of the way, with all the housekeeping out of the way, I want to introduce my special guest here, Mitch Stephen, my friend. How are you, good sir? And what's going on, man? I'm doing great, glad I'm glad to be here good good well for those of you uh that want to know more about Mitch I'll let him do a little explaining but you know this is someone who is the real deal you know um in his career he's done well over 1500 homes he is a author of multiple books um one of his first books was my life in a Thousand Houses. He also has Failing Forward to Financial

Freedom. He is the real deal. I've actually been on his podcast. He's been out helping other people very similar to myself to try to help others learn how to avoid the pitfalls, learn how to make serious money, learn how to be an entrepreneur and a real estate investor. And so this is someone who really is the real deal. And so I'm excited to have you on the podcast, Mitch. Man, I'm happy to be here, Justin. Right on. So tell me, give us a little backstory about kind of how you got started and where you've gone from here. I mean, 1,500 houses is a lot of houses, right? And so you had to have kind of a back story of how you got started and how you got to where you are today. Well, I really learned everything by accident and pain.

So, you know, I bought a couple of condos when I was young, and I was living in one, and I was renting out the other. And then I sold them and made more money than I did for the whole year working at my job. And so the light bulb kind of went off. I started reading some books like Nothing Down by Robert Allen and Think and Grow Rich and just started to learn that there was this underground educational source that was constantly talking about financial freedom. And I tapped into that vein and started becoming more and more conscious of what I'd been taught all my life and then what I really wanted. And I didn't want to have a job, and I wanted to be free as much as you can be free. And I started flipping houses

and I exceeded my wildest expectations and I'm still growing today and I plan on growing every day until the day I die. And so when you started, obviously you were kind of living in it, but what has been your major strategy? And I know your story and so I kind of want kind of living in it, but what has been your major strategy? And I know your story, and so I kind of want to let you say it, but how has your strategies changed over time? What do you focus on now? What would you really kind of advise? My podcast really caters to wholesalers and rehabbers and wholetailers, right? But there's a whole section of this real estate investing world that I don't partake in

heavily. And so, you know, how did you start and how has that transitioned over the years? Well, I mean, I wanted, I started out as, you know, buying into the buy and hold myth, you know, that I could borrow money and I could rent something out for a thousand dollars and pay out 500 and that I would have you know 500 a month positive cash flow on each house and you know it just turned out to not be true because they were discounting all my liabilities everything from the doorknob to the roof and everything in between I was responsible for every time it broke I was also responsible for pay, and I was subject to unscrupulous renters and people that didn't have my best interest at heart. And I wanted out of that, and I couldn't get out of it in the neighborhoods that I bought the houses.

People couldn't qualify for loans if the house could qualify. And so I started, by accident, I hired a mentor who taught me how to owner finance these houses and get large down payments or larger down payments and then collect mortgage payments where I'm not responsible for anything. It's not my house. I sell the house on payments.

And so when the air conditioner or whatever gives out, it's not my air conditioner i don't own the house i sold it you know i took a down payment and i'm owed payments for 30 years and so uh when i did that amazingly enough i had 25 houses like this was 20 years ago and i didn't even believe in it wholeheartedly. I was told to do this and I was going through the motions, faking it because I was desperate. And I collected about $3,000 per house in a down payment, which wasn't much to me. But at times, 25 houses, that was $75,000. So I sold all the houses with down payments to the people that were inside of them. Put $75,000 in the bank, and the $75,000, $8,000 that was supposed to be mine on paper in the landlord model

was actually mine in the owner finance model because the money was coming in, and it was sticking in my bank account because there was no one to write a check out for. I just collected the payment, made my payment, kept the spread, and there was no one else to write a check to. You know, so the light bulb went off and I started owner financing houses as a general rule. These days I buy and sell about just under 100 houses a year, and maybe 35% of those are wholesale, and maybe about 10% are retail, and the other 55% or 60%, you know, I'm owner financing. And it's a way of getting cash today

and building an income stream for tomorrow and not being a landlord. It's a way to have cash flow without being a landlord. So let's walk through the art of it, right? Take me through a transaction of how you do it, right? Because I've had guests on that talk about lease options. I've had, you know, I've done many, many wrap deals, right? Where you keep the existing loan in place. There's so many different strategies. So let's talk about how you, let's walk through a deal on how you would structure that owner financing.

I find a house I can buy for $50,000. I borrow $52,000 at 8% interest, five years, interest-only payments, non-recourse, collateral-only loan from private individuals. And I give them a lien on my house. Now, I bought it for $50, but I borrowed $52 because I have to replace the advertising budget that it takes to find this house. And sometimes it takes a little more, and sometimes it takes a little less. But, you know, it's about $2, bucks to find the kind of houses i'm looking for

which is houses i can buy at half of the owner finance value so i back into the rents to arrive at a price of what i can sell the house for because the core belief of my business is that a person paying a thousand dollars rent would rather pay a thousand dollars to own okay and so i use the rents and so uh then i owner finance this house for a for a hundred thousand with ten thousand down i carry a ninety thousand dollar uh balance for my home buyer uh he owes me 850 i. I owe about $350. So I'm clearing $500 in the middle. And so my buyer occupant sends me a check for $1,000. I pay $150 in taxes and insurance. Then I have $850 left over. And out of that $850, I pay my debt of $350,000 per month, and I keep the $500,000. So I'm doing wraparound mortgages.

My buyer's note wraps around my lender's note, wraparound mortgage, and I'm keeping the spread. So do you see in this scenario where I made $10,000 that month to create a $500 positive cash flow. If I do that three times a month, I've made $30,000 for the month, and I'm up to $1,500 cash flow. You know, if I do that, you know, 20 times a year, I've made $200,000 for the year, and I have $10,000 a month coming in. Right. I've just been doing it for 20 years. So let me ask you, and I teach something called wholetailing,

which part of that aspect is you need to figure out how to raise private money. You mentioned you would borrow $52,000 privately. What's your strategy there, right? So, for example, are you borrowing from a bank? Are you borrowing privately? No, private people. Private people. Okay, what would be your suggestion?

Because my listeners get to hear a lot of me. What's your advice when raising money? There's a lot of listeners out there who are simply wholesale. Traditionally, they wholesale because they don't have the money to buy it, right? And they don't have the credit to go to the bank. So you and I... Let's just explain to them how much they're leaving on the table. You wholesale a deal, you make about $10,000 wholesale, and you're done. I just made $10,000

in a down payment, and I got 30 years of $500 a month coming in. That's $180,000. The wholesaler just left $180,000 in future income out of his equation. So where would you have him go? The question I'm going for is where would you have him go find that private money? And how would you have him find it and get it, right? Yeah, well, most of the reasons why people can't find it, the number one reason is they don't ask. I mean, every time someone says, I can't find private money, I say, great, how many people have you talked to in the last 30 days? None.

Right. Well, there's your problem. That's your big problem. How about you just pick anybody random every day and tell them what you do? Like, hi, my name's Mitch Steven. I help average people achieve above average rates of return on their idle money, and I give them very, very valuable Texas real estate as collateral. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Just do it once a day to anybody.

I don't care who it is. You can't do it 100 times and not get money. It's a numbers game. Now, if you want to be more select, let's go hang out in places where people have money. You know? You want to find money, go where the money is. One time they asked a bank robber, why do you rob banks? He said, that's where the

money is. I like that joke. That's a good one, actually. If you're going to go look for money, why don't you go someplace where money hangs out? Why don't you join the golf club and learn to play golf, or if you know how to play golf, join that golf club that costs $400 a month. There's people there with money.

If you're sitting in a bar where the drink specials are a buck, there's not going to be anybody sitting next to you with any money. When you go to a place that doesn't have drink specials and the bourbon and soda is $7.50 a pop, there's some people with some money sitting in there. No doubt. You know, so change where you're hanging out. And, you know, if you called on attorneys, an attorney a day, you couldn't make it 50 days without finding money. Just tell an attorney to look over your business plan. And the trick is, is to present the plan and you show them your plan and say, look, I borrowed

this money at 8% interest only, five years, non-recourse, collateral only loan, and shut up. And if anybody's a businessman at all, the next question coming out of their mouth, if you can be quiet long enough, the next question coming out of their mouth is, where do you get that money? And that's when you lean back in your chair and go, well, Bob, I get it from people that used to be on the stock market and now they're worth half as much as they used to be and they're never going back. And they're watching their money sit around in 1% CDs. Why? Do you know someone we can help? You know someone who could use 8%? Who do you know? And he says, hell yeah, I know somebody, me. That's the most powerful thing I have found.

I couldn't agree with you more. I never ask for money. Do you know of anyone who would be interested? Do you know anyone who would like this concept? More often than not, Mitch, you hit it on the head. What I have found to be true is exactly what you said, which is they usually say, me, I'm interested. Tell me more. And you're not asking them.

You're not selling them. You're not selling them. You're simply laying it out. Here's what my business looks like. I borrow at 8%. I buy the home. I'm getting a return of whatever, 15%. You know, here's how you're protected by the real estate asset. Do you know anyone who would be interested in, you know,

something like this, a business model like this? And more often than not, you're not. Do you know someone who could use, you know somebody who could use 8% with a collateral like this. I mean, collateral that's substantially worth more, a physical property that's substantially worth substantial more than what they're loaning. And so here's what happens. They're either going to get paid or they're going to get my house. In this example, I average 58% loan to owner finance value, 58%. So on a $100,000 house, my average lender lends me $58,000 on a house that I can owner finance for $100,000. That's average. And so what's the worst thing can happen to my

private lender? Worst thing that happens to him is that I pay him on time. Because if I don't pay him, he's going to get my $100,000 house. So he's either going to make 8%. That's the worst thing can happen to him, is that he's going to make 8% on his money like I promised him. If I don't pay him, he's going to get a $100,000 house for $58,000. That's substantially better than 8%. There's no doubt about that.

I hear you loud and clear. I mean, again, the reason why I have you on my show, you are the real deal. And I know you coach and you mentor all across the country. There's not a city that you couldn't teach someone how to do this in, correct? I mean, I can teach anyone in any city. The question is, some markets are not as adaptable for owner financing. I mean, when you go to Los Angeles and the price of a 3,200 square foot house is $500,000 or $450,000, that's not where the sweet spot is in owner financed houses.

The sweet spot is in affordable properties that the person inside the house that owes you a payment every month owes you $100,000 or less. So we've got to find economies and marketplaces that have that kind of house. I call them Walmart houses for Walmart people. And now you can find $100,000 houses in California, maybe, but they're going to be in devastatingly tough war zones, and that's not what I'm advocating. I'm advocating like Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, houses that routinely have places in cities that routinely have houses for sale traditionally for $150,000 and $200,000. Traditionally, they have hordes of houses

in that price range, and they're not the bottom of the barrel. And so that when you find deals on these houses, you're paying $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, and you're able to double that in the owner finance sales price. And the reason why we picked this price point is so that you can interchange the payment with the rent. A guy paying $1,000 a month rent can own this house for $1,000 a month, including the principal interest taxes and insurance, if he has a little bit of a down payment. Yep. Yep.

So what is your price point? Yeah, I think you brought up that my next question was going to simply be, what's the highest you'd probably go for the purchase price? Maybe 200 grand? I mean, everything depends upon the rent, right? Well, it also depends on the down payment. And the down payment, right. I said where the guy owes you 100 or less. So you could do it in a $400,000 house if the guy will give you 300,000 down. Got it. And why do you stick to $100,000 or less? More people have $20,000 than have $300,000. Amen. Amen.

You know, so, I mean, I can still do, I mean, it works best at $100,000. I'm still owner financing houses at $120,000, $130,000, $140,000, but I'm looking for people that have 25, 30, 40,000 down. And people go, well, not very many people have that much down. And I say, you know, I'm not looking for very many people. As a matter of fact, I just need one out of a town with a million seven. Yeah, right. I just need one. Another great question is where do you find those buyers?

Where are you finding the people? Where is that one person? How are you marketing if you are marketing? How are you finding the buyers? That's the easiest thing in the world. You watch a four-minute video at livecom.com, L-I-V-E-C-O-M-M.com, as in livecommunications.com. I put up 20 signs around my houses, around the neighborhood. I put one in the front yard. I've got 10 houses for sale. I got 10 phone numbers that I purchased from Livecom. Each one of those phone numbers is forwarded to a recording

about the house that I assigned it to. So phone number number one goes to a recording to house on 123 Main Street. Phone number number two goes to the house on 5678 Jones Street and so on and so forth for 10 houses. So now 10 houses with 21 signs apiece all through the neighborhood and the front yard, that's 210 signs. I'm getting 50 to 100 phone calls a day, Friday, certainly on the weekends, even during the week sometimes. And I forward them to the recording so my salespeople don't have to handle that volume of calls.

The people calling get all the information, but surprisingly enough, I do not leave a phone number to contact my salespeople at the end of that recording. At the end of the recording it says, if this seems like the house for you and your family and you do have a substantial down payment of $10,000 or more, then this is how you might become the owner of it. You get in your car and you drive over there and you get out of your car and you look through the windows of the house and you walk around the house and you check out the neighborhood. And if this is still the house for you and your family and you're definitely sure that you have over $10,000 to put down, then you can call the red number in the front window,

and someone will be out there to show you the house. Now, that moves 100 phone calls down to about eight that vetted themselves. Now, here's the kicker. I collect the phone number of everyone who called, and right this minute, I have 5,766 people, and it's also a pre-scheduling feature. And every first of the month, I send out a text that says, if you've already bought a house or you're no longer in the market for an owner-financed house at homestogo.net,

please text STOP now to be removed from this list. Despite that going out every first of every month automatically, I have 5,766 people that still want to know when my next owner finance house comes available and where it is. And so with my program, I can text that 5,600 people for two cents per person. I text it when I'm going to go show a house and say like I'm going to show a house at 7. I text 5,600 people at four o'clock with a text message that says, I'm going to be at one, two, three main street at seven o'clock. Lights will be on, doors will be open. If you want to come see this owner financed home, I'll be there at seven. I go to show one person the house and I end up showing 12 people a house

and I get three offers with three different size down payments and three different kinds of backgrounds. And I get to pick which one I want. My average days on market is eight days. That's great. So you actually do put it on the MLS? Do you ever put it on the MLS? No, because realtors don't understand what I do. Right.

Right. No. And besides, I don't need to, and Iors don't understand what I do. Right. Right. No, I don't. And besides, I don't need to and I don't need to pay the commission. My average day is eight, eight, eight days on the market. My average day is on market. I mean, I'm hitting 5,700 people dead between the eyes. These people called on my house for sale with owner financing signs. It doesn't get any better than that. And so I just let 5,700 people know that I have a house that will accept their lackluster credit folder and maybe get them in a house. How much down payment do you have? Let's see what I can do. And what do you charge them? What's their interest rate typically?

I know if you're paying 8%, where do you typically create your note with? Well, it depends a lot. You know, Dodd-Frank, you've got to float some stuff. But I let my – you know, Dodd-Frank's easy enough. You hire a company to keep you compliant, and they tell you what you can charge. But it's, you know, a little over 10% right now. I always just charge 10%. I have the right today to go up to about 10.6%, but I just usually pick 10%.

I just want to make sure that I'm monitored every time I do a deal every week. I've got to check with my compliant personnel to make sure that the rates are still where I thought they were and that I can charge 10%. But even if I have to charge 9 or nine and a half, it's okay. Well, yeah, because you're doubling the loan, right? You're borrowing at 50 and you're giving a loan at 100. So even if you're, I mean, at the end of the day, 9% is still going to be a lot more on 100 grand than it is on 50 grand, right? It's going to be double. I mean, I can charge less than 8% and still come out because I'm financing $90,000. I mean, I'm financing $50,000, and they're financing $90,000.

Plus, they gave me $10,000 down. So, yeah, it's a really, really wonderful business and strategy because if there's such thing as a recession-proof strategy, this is one of them. And let me tell you why. Justin, what happens in the recession? What do banks typically do in a recession? They're going to raise their interest rates. It's going to be harder to get loans. They clam up.

At first, they don't even loan. They just stop loaning. Like in 2008, they just stopped loaning money, didn't they? Mm-hmm. So what happens to the prices of houses when banks tighten up on lending? House sales slow down. Right. When house sales slow down, what happens to the price of the houses?

It goes down. Prices go down. If no one can buy houses, what happens to rent? It goes up. My sales price is based on the rent. So in the recession of 2008, all the way for the next four or five years, my houses were appreciating in the middle of a recession. My owner-financed houses were appreciating because I based my sales price on the rent.

If the rent's $900 today, then the sales price is around $90,000. If the rent goes up to $1,000, now my sales price is at $1,000. I'm just trying to get the guy's monthly payment on his rent. I'm trying to get that to be a payment on a house. So naturally, if the rent goes up, I can raise the price of my house. So here's the magical thing about the owner finance strategy when you use um private lenders during the recession i wasn't i was buying houses at the low of the low because i didn't need a bank and i was selling

them at the high of the high because i didn't need a bank because the banks were closed. The banks were closed for even people with high credit scores. So in a recession, when everyone else is out of business, I'm the only guy open because I didn't need a bank to buy the house and I didn't need a bank to sell the house. And I boom in the bad times. I boomed in the recession. I bought a house a day for 40 days in a row until it scared me because I looked up and I had 40 vacancies because I was running so hard buying houses. I wasn't focusing too much on the sales. Today, I have that down with systems, and it wouldn't happen to me. But in 2009, February 1st, I started buying houses because I said,

you know, now's the time to buy. Everything's crashed. I mean, you buy low, right? And it was low. So I jumped in. I started buying. I bought 40 houses in a row. I think I missed one day in a 40-day window that I didn't close on a house to buy it.

And that would not be possible with a bank. You can't steal houses in slow motion. Private money is fast. It asks little questions, and you get to name your terms of the private money. The private lender does not dictate to me what he's going to pay me like the banks do. I tell him what color money I need for it,

and he needs to find that color for me if he wants to make 8%. No doubt. I mean, at that point, you went in for 40 days. That's $2 million in private money that you raised and bought homes every single day. Yeah. In December of this past year, my daughter called me and said, I think we have a problem. My daughter's closed every deal in and out for 22 years at my office.

She's 42. She started with me when she was 20 and so she called me and says we have a problem I said what's the problem she says we got to close 12 houses 12 days I said what's the problem she said it's nine hundred and seventy three thousand dollars total I said what's the problem she paused for a minute says well you can basically come up with a million dollars in 12 days. I said, is everyone at the office? She said, yeah.

I said, okay, make sure no one leaves. I'm going to be there in 30 minutes. I got there. I explained to them what the perceived problem was, that we needed a million dollars in 12 days. I proceeded to pick up the phone, and in three phone calls and in less than 15 minutes, done deal, we're done. Does everyone understand?

Don't slow down. Keep going. Love minutes. Done deal. We're done. Does everyone understand? Don't slow down. Keep going. Love it. Love it. So listen, you're an amazing author. You have three books out there. Can you tell everyone

a little bit more about these three books you have out there? Well, thank you. Yeah, all of the books are under the series My Life in a Thousand Houses. I never planned to write a book.

It was never on my bucket list. It was never in my future as far as I knew. Something tragic happened, and I sat down to reflect on my life, and I instinctively, without knowing what I was doing, I sat down and I cataloged my life, and it became my autobiography of my life in a thousand houses, which is basically what happens after the Get Rich seminar. This is what the gurus forget to tell you. This is what really happens out there.

This is the true story of the things that maybe they're glossing over or they're just flat leaving out, or maybe I'm just a dummy and don't know how to handle it, but this is what happens. And so the first book was My Life in a Thousand Houses, Failing Forward to Financial Freedom. That book was in a by accident book, believe it or not. And, but I got so much attention from that book. And the question, the biggest question of the, of the day was how in the world do you find so many houses? So then I wrote a sequel called My Life in a Thousand Houses, 200 plus ways to find bargain properties.

There's actually 250 ways in the book, but I always over-deliver. Thank you very much. And then I wrote the book that I really wanted to write after that. I kind of got into the book writing thing because I was reaching so many people. I didn't realize so many people needed a way to get out of their situation. And while there's lots of ways to get out of it, I had found one way, and I was telling the world about it. And so I wanted to write the book, My Life in a Thousand Houses, The Art of Owner Financing. Now, I will warn you, The Art of Owner Financing, you can go on Amazon.

You can read my reviews. I have over 200 five-star reviews there. I'm going to be really transparent here, Justin, and you'll appreciate this. The first 10 reviews are me and my family, so disregard the first 10 reviews, okay? But after that, they're legit. Okay, I like it. I like being honest. I got to laugh at myself.

So the first 10, you know, you can't go there with no reviews. So the first 10 I manipulated. But after that, they're legit. And that book at Amazon is $55. And a lot of people, I mean, some people call me and say, why in the world is that book so expensive? And I say, you know what? Step away from that book.

You're not ready yet. Don't touch it. You don't understand. You're not ready. You know, if you don't understand why a book is $55, then you're not ready yet. Don't touch it. You don't understand. You're not ready. If you don't understand why a book's $55, then you're not ready. Yeah? Because that book's worth a million. Of course.

You read it and you grab the concept, it's easily worth a million bucks. Love it. Love it. So as an author, I would have to assume you've done your fair share of reading. What would be one of those books that you would recommend besides your own, obviously, that would be life changing, would really help someone understand what maybe you and I took years and years of experience and, you know, failing forward, as you like to say, and hurting ourselves and getting back up. I mean, what would be a book that you'd really advocate that, you know, a beginner, maybe someone who's just getting started, what would that book be? Well, like, I didn't go to college.

I like to tell everyone I graduated from La Calle U. La Calle means the street in Spanish. I'm actually going to get a college ring that says La Calle University on it just as a joke. I like it. Everyone else has got their college ring. I got one. My college was way more expensive than their college because mine didn't give a crap and would deliver nothing if I did something wrong.

It would take all my money. But it depends on where a person is from. So if you don't have college, I really suggest that you read Think and Grow Rich because I was starting to beat myself up a little bit as I got into because some of the wealthiest people in the world were forced to go become self-employed to break their glass ceiling. Then they figured it out because they had no choice. Every time they increased the bottom line of their company, they were the 100% recipient of it. You know, you could be in sales for a corporation and you could increase the sales for that company $5 million a year ongoing into the future. What are they going to give you? A gold watch, a plaque and a trip to Hawaii? You know? And when I figure out how to increase the bottom line by $5 million a year, that's all my money. And so

if you don't have college, if you do, I mean, there's other things. You know, nothing down was a great lesson in how to function when you're tight and don't have a lot of capital. It was a great lesson. But I'll tell you something. I read all these self-help books and all these self-improvement books and i'm going to make a statement here uh you know it was all described in the book written about 2 000 years ago called the bible and all he did was rehash it the secret all those books they're just reiterating the truth and the the natural laws that were the only difference between the secret and the bible is i believe someone created that universe.

The secret seems to put out there that the universe is just there for some reason. But anyway, so if you start to look at it, all the things you're supposed to do, from Zig Ziglar to Tony Robbins to whoever you want to study, it's not original. They've just been repackaging something that was written 2, 2000 years ago. Yeah, I agree with you. I totally agree with you actually. So yeah, that was great. So listen, I want everyone to understand where to find you. I know you have an incredible podcast on iTunes as well. reinvestorsummit.com. That is spelled R-E-I-N-V-E-S-T-O-R-S-U-M-M-I-T.com. But where else would they be able to get a hold of you or find you? Man, there is so much free stuff at 1000houses.com. It's 1000houses.com.

A guy could launch a career from the free stuff I put there. I have a really different philosophy. I'll tell you just about everything I know that I can think of. And if you're the kind of two or three percenter that can go out there on their own without any hand-holding and launch your career, more power to you. I think a lot of people come to the conclusion that it's a lot of information and that if they could pick up the phone and call the guy who had done it 1500 times in a row um they could probably shortcut their life and shortcut their path some people come to that conclusion and i'm there for those people with my mentoring and stuff but i give a lot of free stuff away the first 100 pages of my book failing forward to financial book, Failing Forward to Financial Freedom, hour and 15-minute webinar on owner financing 101, two or three or four hours of recorded Q&A sessions where you can hear how I'm handling

students and what their problems are and what the answers are to their problems or how we're going to try to get them to the next level. You can listen to the demeanor of the whole conversation and see if it's for you. Because I really don't want anybody who's not ready or doesn't want to come. So I just give you as much information about me, and you can listen in on my phone calls and stuff, real-life stuff, to see if I'm the guy for you. Because I don't want to be on any losing teams. So if you're, you know, I'm not right for you.

And also, you've got to be right for me. I don't want to mentor or take money from anybody who's not in the right market or doesn't have the right, the right attitude or, or skills. I'll rather tell you to, you know, go do X, Y, and Z and come back to me later when I think you're more ready. Right. You know, the last four people that I mentored all owned over 100 houses. I don't really take new, new, new people. I like people that have done at least 10 or 15 or 20 deals, know how to write a contract a little bit anyways. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm with you. I think everyone, even myself, even to this day, I still continue to hire business mentors, personal mentors, some real estate mentors. I'm part of Mastermind,

so I don't hire individual mentors for that. Masterminds have been an incredible influence on me and have helped me really scale my business. But you're hitting on the head, I think, even everyone at all times, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, I mean, anyone still has coaches. No matter how good you are, you still have a shooting coach or a putting coach. So I couldn't agree more. Whether it's Mitch, myself, or others out there, really look at getting yourself a mentor to really get started in this business, to really escalate your game in this business.

So I really appreciate your time today, Mitch. Really do. When you target someone, though, or you think of someone, do your research. Make sure they have done what you want to do and that they're the kind of person that you want to be at the end of the day. If they're not both of those things, then you need to find someone else. And do your research, please, because I'm sure you get this, too, Justin. So many people are disappointed with their mentor coach that it's starting to be a flag. And I don't want to be part of that group.

So I do two things to make sure that I don't fall into that group. One is I ask you to do all the research on me possibly, and I give you everything you need to do it. And then two, I want to know about you. I want to know about the person that's applying for the mentorship because if I don't think they're ready, then that they're going to make their money back, I don't want to take the gig it's not

all about the money for me i mean i got i made plenty of money so it's a little bit it's got to be more than the money to this it's got to be a win or else you know because talking to people that are losing that have your phone number that can call you every day that's stressful for me and i don't need stress like that i i agree i agree there's a lot of there's a lot of pressure uh to deliver as a mentor as a coach as someone who is the leader so if you give it if you give a damn there is yeah if you don't it doesn't matter if you're like those mill houses taking on thousands of people and then you call in and they're reading out of a script out of a book somewhere and they maybe did 10 houses in their life or maybe they did none i mean they don't care they're not they're they're not they're give a damn meters registering a little low if you

ask me so my my register is real high so i really pick who i want i can only take about 10 people at a time anyways because because when you call that i'm the guy who answers the phone i mean you really know how many people can how many people can I really take? Right. You know? Right. No, that's awesome. Well, great. Well, guys, again, Mitch is the real deal. I vouch for him. Go ahead, find him on podcasts, on iTunes. He has the websites, he has the books. Mitch, I really appreciate you spending the time with us, man. Hey, this has been my pleasure and much, much luck and success to you and your podcast and everything.

Oh, I appreciate it. All right, guys, that is it. This has been Ask the Expert with Mitch Stephen, and guys, I really appreciate it. If you guys continue to listen, you really love what we're doing here, go to iTunes, give us a rating. Just be honest.

If it's great, great. Make sure it's known to be great. If you want more, say what you want more from. Give a star rating. Give a review, and I'd really appreciate that. But for now, that is all. I'm Justin Colby, and this has been the Science of Flipping. See you next episode. Peace.