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3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate
An Interview with 3 „Regular Joes‟ Who Turned
Their Hobby of Real Estate Investing into Multimillion-Dollar Businesses
By Sue Reddy Silverman
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Introduction
Now is the best time to invest in Real Estate. According to our experts, we will never have an
opportunity like this again. The market had tanked but it‟s starting to rise again now. It is going
to stabilize and turn around in the right direction. And right now, America is truly on sale.
Don‟t get left out of the game. Millions of dollars are being made in Real Estate in a variety of
ways, including buying heavily discounted HUD homes and selling them cheap; buying short
sales and flipping them and rehabbing homes. You can even make money just by connecting
buyers and sellers doing no real Real Estate work at all.
Find out how to make your millions in this new report “3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12
Weeks Flipping Real Estate.”
We got up-close-and-personal with three “Regular Joes” who turned their hobby of Real Estate
investing into multimillion-dollar businesses. And they told us exactly how they did it too.
These three masters reveal how they got started investing in Real Estate, what their primary
revenue pillars are, the Number 1 mistake new investors make, how they find buyers and sellers,
what their top marketing strategies are and how to make the really big bucks in Real Estate in a
very short time.
Their stories will inspire you; some will amuse you, but mostly they can lead you on a new and
faster path to prosperity.
We are pleased to share this informative report with you.
The Net Income Real Estate Team
www.NetIncomeRealEstate.com
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Expert Real Estate Investing Professionals
Josh Cantwell
A native of Northeast Ohio, Josh Cantwell graduated from Baldwin
Wallace College in 1998 with a Major in Business Administration
and a Minor in Communications. Although a full-time student and
college athlete, Josh was already driven to succeed in his career.
After graduation he obtained his Series 6, 63, 66 and life and health
insurance licenses, and worked as a Financial Advisor from 1999-
2004.
In 2004, Josh ventured out on his own and started investing in real
estate full time. He was able to combine his knowledge of Financial
Investing with real estate to create a very successful business,
which quickly grew and he began training and teaching apprentice
partners and students. He began Strategic Real Estate Coach in
2007, and since then has been involved in wholesale, rehab, rental,
foreclosure, pre-foreclosure and short sale transactions, and taught
thousands of investors how to replicate his success. Josh has vast
knowledge and experience in helping coaching clients, mentor
students and apprentice partners from across the U.S. in finding,
structuring, negotiating and closing various types of transactions for
a profit.
He has bought and sold more than 600 properties in 30 states, and
currently holds a robust rental portfolio of cash-flowing properties.
He is the founder of Sharp Concepts Realty, a real estate brokerage
based in Cleveland, Ohio. Josh lives in Strongsville, Ohio with his
wife and three children.
Jason Medley
Jason “The Money Man” Medley is the President of Flip My First
House LLC, a company dedicated to helping brand new as well as
seasoned real estate investors grow their businesses through a
broad spectrum of educational training products, tools, and short-
term funding options for flip transactions. FlipMyFirstHouse.com
is the parent company for the “My Beginner‟s Luck” brand, which
is specifically geared toward providing a three-step formula that
helps the new investor get their very first deal done.
It also parents the “Secret Six Figure Society” mastermind, which
consists of 37 of the nation‟s top real estate investors that meet
quarterly to share their recession-proof investing systems,
strategies, and profit sources.
Jason currently lives and enjoys life in Tampa, Florida, where he
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spends time “grillin and chillin” as he calls it with friends and
family. He frequently works from his home office “the dock,”
actively practicing what he is so passionate about teaching, living a
life full of freedom and choice where you set your own rules.
To learn more about flipping your first house or building a “house
flipping machine” that allows you to live life freely while making
your own rules, visit www.MyBeginnersLuck.com and
www.SecretSixFigureSociety.com
John Cochran
John Cochran, 29, from Dayton, Ohio, is Real Estate investor who
has flipped more than 150 Real Estate deals in his 11-year career.
He started off doing a lot of rehabbing, then he bought a HUD
House for $18.47 and got hooked on wholesaling homes for fat
profits. Once he tweaked his HUD Buying System
(www.hudwholesaling.com) to run smoothly without him, he
created a training program called Wholesaling Mastery to reveal to
the world the tips and tricks he uses on a daily basis to wholesale
more than 8 properties a month.
John is also the founder of one of the fastest growing Real Estate
Brokerages in the country "HomeBackers Realty." His brokerage is
very unique. It ONLY works with buyers. In fact, he has developed
a proprietary system called “BuyersonFire.com” that has allowed
him to build a very responsive buyers‟ list of 18,000+, including
retail, cash, rent-to-own and investor buyers in his own local
market. “When you have all the buyers in area, you pretty much
own the market and write your own paycheck,” he said.
With all of his Real Estate Investments and his Brokerage
combined, he is involved with more than 30 transactions a month.
John is also a systems nut! He is the founder of
TheKingofSystems.com and is in the process of developing a
software call AgentSoft that he claims will change the way Real
Estate is sold in just a couple of short years.
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3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate Josh Cantwell
Interviewer: How did you get started in real estate investing? What's your background?
Josh Cantwell: I actually got started in real estate investing, because as a financial planner
and as a financial advisor, I saw that a lot of my wealthiest clients didn't
have their money in the stock market, didn't have their money in
investments, like mutual funds and stocks and bonds. They owned real
estate. So back in 1997, I graduated from college, became a financial
planner at 21 years old, got my insurance licenses, series 6, series 7. And
over the next three, four, five years, I became really good at advising
people about money, but I quickly realized that my most successful and
wealthiest clients owned real estate. I took notice. They owned restaurants.
They owned not the restaurant, the business, but the restaurant building.
They owned rental properties. They owned commercial properties. They
owned single-family homes. They owned apartment houses. I took notice.
In 2003, I basically quit as a financial adviser. I was sick of that business,
because it's very constricting. It's very buttoned up, if you will. And I
decided to venture out into real estate. I just wanted to focus on pursuing
my dreams of becoming financially free and wealthy with real estate in a
business that was much more open to creative marketing ideas, creative
wealth-building strategies. I jumped right in and started focusing on pre-
foreclosures and short sales and foreclosure properties, because in my
area, northeast Ohio and Cleveland, we had already been hit by a
foreclosure crisis. The foreclosure crisis in Cleveland started in 1999,
because we had a bunch of Fortune 500 companies that moved out of the
area. So there became a lot of inventory, a lot of foreclosures, a lot of short
sales, a lot of bank-owned properties. So I immediately jumped into
foreclosures in the spring of 2004, and I've been a full-time real estate
investor ever since.
Interviewer: What are your top two primary revenue pillars; the ways you make money
with real estate?
Josh: I actually focus on seven revenue pillars. I don't recommend that investors
focus on seven, but I've been a full-time real estate investor for almost
nine years now, since 2004, so I focus on seven. My seven revenue pillars
are bank and government foreclosures, that's number one, short sales are
number two, lease options are number three, buyers that want them is
number four, raising capital is number five, marketing, especially Internet
marketing is number six, and number seven is passive income, passive
cash flow. If I was a brand new investor today, based on what's going on
in the market right now, I would focus on bank and government
foreclosures, and I would focus on rent-to-own properties, or lease
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options. Those would be my two revenue pillars as ways to make money
with real estate.
The reason why is, first of all, because the banks have tightened up their
lending criteria, and they're not lending money to even qualified buyers,
qualified applicants. There are a lot of people who, under normal
circumstances, would be able to buy a home but can't. They can't get a
bank loan. So that lends itself to an opportunity where you can take over a
property on a rent-to-own basis and then wholesale that property for a fee.
I use what I call the magic document, which is also a letter of intent. My
number one revenue pillar would be wholesaling lease options. My second
quick cash revenue pillar is wholesaling and renovating government and
bank foreclosures. The reason why is, number one, there's a lot of
inventory. Number two, there's a lot more inventory to come. There's a lot
of government and bank foreclosures that are going to hit the market over
the next two to five years.
Interviewer: What's the biggest mistake new investors make?
Josh: The biggest mistake that new investors make is not raising capital. They
don't have capital. The reason they focus on wholesaling or they focus on
quick cash strategies is because they don't have money. So they say, if I
don't have money to fund transactions, I've got to wholesale. I've got to get
properties, I've got to get them under contract, and I've got to wholesale
them to somebody else. The hope is that they will wholesale enough
properties and stuff enough money into the bank that they will eventually
be able to use that money in their savings account to buy up properties, fix
it and sell it and do a big deal. Do a big rehab with a big profit. So the
biggest mistake they make is believing out of the gate that they don't have
credibility, that they don't have experience, that they don't know how to
raise money, so they don't raise capital.
If I could go back and do it all over again, the first thing I would do is I
would become a student of money. I would become a student of rate of
return. I would become a student of raising capital, because if you have
money, you can fund almost any transaction, you can do almost any deal,
and your competition will actually bring you deals. If you have money,
you become the go-to guy, and you can get a piece of a lot of different
transactions. And you can become the centerpiece of your community,
because people will lend you money or partner with you and bring you
money, and other investors will bring you deals. So you're the centerpiece,
you're the hub of all that activity. If you don't raise money, you'll be stuck
being a wholesaler, and you'll never be able to do the really big deals.
Interviewer: What's the top marketing strategy to generate seller leads or buying
opportunities for this revenue pillar?
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Josh: There are two revenue pillars. The one is rent-to-owns and lease options.
What's funny about that is that we find all of our seller leads on Craigslist,
and we find all of our buyer leads on Craigslist. So we actually are able to
use some specific emails and some different ways that we contact
landlords and homeowners on Craigslist. We basically work with them,
we meet with them, we take over their property using a letter of intent.
Then we wholesale the properties to buyers who are also coming from
Craigslist. It's almost funny, because you're just the middleman. You're
just connecting people that are already on Craigslist who don't know that
the other exists. We're just connecting the two. That's for the rent-to-own.
Our best way is simply through Craigslist. It sounds very basic, but it's
absolutely true. That's where we get our entire seller and buyer leads.
When it comes to wholesaling government and bank foreclosures, one of
the best ways to find seller deals for government foreclosures is a website
called www.hudhomestore.com. That's where all the HUD properties are
at. That's where all the government foreclosures are at. For a lot of the
bank-owned properties, those are on two websites. One is called
HomePath, and the other one is called HomeSteps. That's Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac's websites where they list their inventory of bank
foreclosures. So that's the best place to find those seller properties. Of
course, the other way is through the multiple listing services in your local
area, where you can use the MLS to find these government and bank
foreclosures as well. But all the buyers‟ leads we get off of Craigslist for
the most part.
Interviewer: Walk me through the A to Z process of doing a deal.
Josh: Okay. So let's talk about rent-to-owns or lease options for a minute. What
we have to do is, if a seller has a lot of equity, they're not going to be a
candidate for a rent-to-own deal. So take an example. Somebody who has
a house that's worth $150,000 and they only owe $100,000. That seller is
not going to be very motivated, so they're not a candidate. People who are
overleveraged, so you take a property again that's worth $100,000 and
they owe $200,000, that's really a short sale, they're not going to be
motivated, or they're not really able to do a lease option either. So what
we're really looking for is the people who have little or no equity.
The good thing is, for this investment strategy, there are 26 million people,
according to CoreLogic - which is a big marketing and analytics company
for the real estate industry - according to CoreLogic, there are 26 million
people who have no equity, who are overleveraged, or have less than 10%
equity. Those people are ideal candidates who have been trying to sell
their house but can't sell it because they don't have any equity to pay a
realtor, or they don't have any equity to unload the property. So those
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people oftentimes are at the end of their rope. They don't know what to do,
and they just want to stop paying the mortgage. We can take over those
properties.
What we do is we find those people on Craigslist. We use specific ads to
market to those properties. When people call us back, we go through a
specific sales script that we use. We find out how much equity they have
over the phone, and then we set an appointment with them and we go meet
with them. When we meet with them, if it's fit, we use what's called a
letter of intent to lock up that property. The seller signs it and the investor
signs it. It basically lays out the terms of the deal. What are we going to
pay for it, how long are we going to be able to rent it before we buy it,
how much money are we going to put down.
The most important part is how long is your option period. An option
period is how long can I have to market the property before I have to
either back out of the deal or before I have to move into it. So the option
period is 90 days. So what we do is we get the letter of intent signed. Then
we pass the letter of intent off to our attorney, and the attorney actually
structures the final agreements. The attorney structures the purchase and
sales agreement, the option to purchase agreement, the rental agreement,
and the assignment agreement as well as all the disclosures.
Then we have 90 days to market and wholesale and sell that property to a
buyer. So then what we're going to do is we're going to market that house
all over Craigslist, and we're going to market the property through other
tools like SellPoint and Postlets and other different ways that we can
market the property on the Internet, and we're going to try to get as many
buyers in as we can. Once we find a buyer who wants to basically take
over the property, we then lock up that buyer with a new purchase
agreement, and we get that to our attorney, and then our attorney basically
has us step out of the transaction, and he matches up the seller and the new
buyer, and the new buyer pays us an assignment fee to take over our
transaction. So that's exactly how you put together a lease option
assignment.
In a wholesale, like a bank or government foreclosure, you have the option
with those to do one of two things. You can either wholesale those
properties to another investor, or you can keep them and rehab them. So,
let's talk about the ability to wholesale them. Well, a HUD property, or a
government foreclosure, what you do is you bid on these properties
through the HUD home store. And then once you get your offer accepted,
then you're going to have about 45 days or so until you have to buy the
property. During that 45 days, you're going to market that property on
Craigslist to find someone to take it off of your hands. And then when you
do, you're going to buy the property and then sell it in the same day. It's
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usually what's called a back-to-back transaction. You buy the property,
let's say today, for $50,000, and you sell it today for $57,000, for example.
After your closing costs and things like that, you might get a $4,000
wholesale fee. So that's HUD wholesaling. That's wholesaling government
foreclosures.
The last option is to buy a property, fix it and sell it. That process is a
great way to make big money, meaning we wholesale properties for quick
cash, and we rehab properties for big profits. When we rehab a property,
we might buy that same property for $50,000, but we're going to put
$20,000 or $25,000 worth of renovations and repairs into it. Now we're
into it for, let's say $75,000, and we're going to put it on the market for
$140,000 and it's going to sell for $140,000. We have the ability then to
make... my target number when we do a buy, fix, and sell or a fix and flip,
as we call it, is to make no less than $40,000. Of course, in that
transaction, you need capital to fund the purchase, you need a reliable
contractor who's going to fix the property up, and you need a reliable real
estate agent who's going to help you unload and sell the property once it's
repaired and back on the market.
Interviewer: How do people do real estate investing with no credit, cash, or experience?
Josh: Great question. So, the way you do real estate with no credit and no cash
is by raising capital. You have one of two options. You can either raise
capital from private money partners who are people who have money on
the sidelines. They have money in their IRAs, they have money in a
savings account, they have money in a CD, they have money in annuity or
a bond or the stock market, and they're not happy with the return that
they're getting. There is so much of that money right now available it's
almost ridiculous. There's really nowhere to run to get a good, reliable rate
of return. What I mean is CD rates are extremely low, bond rates are
extremely low, fixed annuity rates are extremely low. They're all below
3%. The stock market is very volatile, up and down, up and down. On
average, the stock market is only going to yield, over a long period of
time, let's call it 30 years, the stock market is only going to yield about 9%
return.
So the way you do deals with no cash and no credit is by going and talking
to what I call private money partners. These are people who have maybe
an old 401K or an old IRA or they have money in a savings account, they
have money in a CD, and the money is just sitting there earning no
interest, or they're not paying attention to it. These people will happily
partner with real estate investors, or loan money to real estate investors to
fund these transactions, provided that the investor with the capital can get,
I feel, a good double-digit rate of return is somewhere between 10 to 25%
return on their money. My target number is 15 to 18%. If I can provide
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somebody an investment opportunity where I do the deal and they give me
the funding and I could pay them 15 to 18% on their money, I can raise a
lot of capital.
Anybody reading this report can raise a lot of capital, because there's just
no other place that somebody can go to get a 15 to 18% rate of return. So
the first way that they do deals with no cash or credit is to raise money.
The second way is to become a wholesaler, to wholesale lease options, and
to wholesale HUD properties, because you don't need any money when
you wholesale a property. You don't need any cash to fund those
transactions.
The experience is going to come from knowledge. Of course, reading
eBooks, reading courses, investing into someone's education is going to
give them the knowledge that they need, and eventually, they're going to
go out and do a deal or two or five or ten. So, the funny thing about
anybody who's been successful with real estate, they all started with no
experience. It's just about going out there and taking the knowledge that
you have and going out there and trying it, just doing it, taking your first
step. Even if you make a mistake, you're one step closer to knowing more
and doing more. The thing that I think most people make the mistake of is
they buy lots of books and tapes and courses and they never do anything
with it. So the experience is going to come over time, and confidence
comes from experience and knowledge, and that's how you make up for it.
Interviewer: Why is now the best time to get into real estate for revenue generation?
Josh: Right now is the best time for a couple reasons. Number one, there are a
ton of home owners who would like to sell who can't. So there's a ton of
lease option wholesaling opportunities. Number two, there's a ton of
government and bank foreclosures that are available right now all across
the United States. Number three, capital is very available, meaning private
money partners. Not banks, not mortgage companies, not hard money
lenders, but private money partners are everywhere. You just have to open
your mouth and talk to people and ask for the money, because there's just
nowhere else for people to get a good rate of return on their IRAs and their
CDs and stuff like that.
Number four is that the market is at its bottom. The market is going to
rebound. The market is going to get better. You're seeing a lot of the
hedge funds and a lot of international investors investing in United States
real estate. The market really can't go any lower, so the market is going to
go up. So now is the time to get in and buy while it's low, and over time,
we'll see more normal appreciation in real estate.
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Interviewer: Can someone be involved in real estate the way you approach real estate
while still having a job, or does it need to be a full-time commitment?
Josh: Great question. Absolutely, somebody can do this part-time. Matter of
fact, a lot of our successful members and students started doing this part-
time. I have a coaching student that I've had for a long time, her name is
Sabrina, and she lives in New York City. She invests in properties in the
city of New York. I've worked with her. She had a full-time job, and she
started investing in real estate part-time. Basically, I was with her the day
she quit her job, and she went full-time into real estate and has never
turned back.
At the beginning, it's just like working out. This is how I like to phrase it.
It's just like working out. Let's say somebody has never been in the gym.
Maybe they're a little bit overweight, and they want to get in shape. If they
want to get in shape and they go to the gym for the first three days in a
row, and they work out for two and a half hours, and they're going
absolutely crazy, eventually by day four, they're going to be pretty beat
down. They're going to be tired, and they're probably never going to go
back to the gym.
So investing in real estate part-time is very similar in that I'd rather see
people ease into it and start to do just one deal a month. They can do that
with two to four hours. They can do that in their spare time. Sending out
emails to people on Craigslist, putting ads on Craigslist. That can all be
done at night, on the weekends. So, not only can people do it part-time,
I've personally worked with people who did it part-time and eventually
went full-time. Matter of fact, I bought my first two investment properties
while I had a full-time job, and I did it part-time before I went full-time.
Interviewer: Do you have any success stories you can relay of students of yours who
went from having a job and transitioned into doing real estate full-time,
which you pretty much just did?
Josh: Sure. I have countless number of students who had a job and were doing
different things. Another student of mine is a guy named Kyle from
Chicago. He was a therapist. He worked with people as a therapist during
the day and started doing real estate part-time in the evenings. He was
doing some pre-foreclosures and short sales and eventually was so
successful at it in the evening he went and closed a couple of really huge
transactions, bought houses and fixed them up and sold them for a big
profit, and he went full-time. I am one of those people. I was a full-time
financial planner, bought my first investment property while I was a full-
time financial planner. It was a two-family rental property. Then I bought
another property that I bought, fixed, and sold while I was still a financial
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planner, and then I went full-time into real estate. I mentioned Sabrina,
who was doing deals part-time and then went full-time.
Interviewer: Is there a specific personality that better lends itself to doing what you do?
Josh: No. There are two types of, not necessarily personalities, but two types of
characteristics, I think, or instincts, that work well in our industry. One is
somebody who's a really good researcher, somebody who's really good at
data and analytics and looking stuff up, because a lot of real estate is just
numbers. It's, I can buy a property for $50,000, I can fix it up for $20,000
I'm into it for $70,000, and I can sell it for $140,000. Well, that sounds
like a pretty good deal to me. There's $70,000 of profit there. So the first
person is somebody who likes data, likes to research, likes numbers, and
likes spreadsheets and putting those things together. That's number one.
The second person is somebody who is a quick state, someone who if they
get an idea, they're just going to go for it. They don't care about the data.
They don't care about the research. They're just a mover and shaker. I'm a
student of a program called the Kolbe Profile, kolbe.com, the Kolbe
Profile. The Kolbe Profile has four different modes or four different types
of instincts. I find that most people in my industry are either what's called
an initiating fact finder, or a high red, meaning that they like data, they
like research, they like the past, they like numbers, they like to research
things. The other mode that I find is successful in my industry is
somebody who's a quick state, which is me. Somebody who sees
something, sees an opportunity, and just goes for it, regardless of what the
repercussions might be. But those aren't really personality traits. Those are
instincts.
Interviewer: Are there any geographical areas that are more effective for applying your
methodology than others?
Josh: Definitely. The two or three strategies that I've talked about, which is the
lease option assignments and the wholesaling government and bank
foreclosures and rehabbing government and bank foreclosures. The middle
of the country. Get rid of the coastlines near the beach. Get rid of those,
and anything in the middle of the country is a great place to do what I do.
The reason why is that property values are a little bit lower than they are
on the coastlines. Coastline properties tend to be a little bit more
expensive. And number two is that we're able to get a lot of big discounts.
When you're in tropical areas or coastline type of areas, you're going to
find a lot of big demand in those areas, and prices are going to be a little
bit higher, and properties are going to be a little bit tougher to find. So
geographically, I would say anything from Nevada over to on the east
coast, Pennsylvania, and then down into Atlanta, Texas, the industrial
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Midwest, the heartland. Texas, those kinds of areas are all great for what I
do.
Interviewer: What's a reasonable expectation someone should set for the first year
revenue goals if they follow your method?
Josh: There's no reason why somebody can't make six figures in their first year
doing what I do. Six figures is only about $8,000 a month in revenue. So
that's about two deals a month, and that's two wholesale deals. $4,000 on
one, $4,000 on the other. $8,000 a month, 12 months, that's about
$100,000 a year. Also, if somebody does one rehab project, two
renovation projects a year - we don't do a renovation project unless we can
make $40,000. So if you do two of those a year, that's $80,000 in one year.
There's no reason why, based on the current circumstances - there's so
much inventory, there's so much capital available - there's no reason why
somebody can't make $100,000 a year.
Now, reasonable? There's no reason why somebody can't... if their goal is
to make an extra $20,000 a year, there's no reason why somebody can't do
one wholesale deal a quarter and make an extra $5,000 every quarter and
make $20,000. But it just depends on how hard somebody wants to work,
how quickly they are to implement. You see, I learned a long time ago that
ideas mean nothing without implementation. There's lots of great ideas,
everyone's got new ideas, but it's often we don't need new ideas. What we
do need to do is just implement the ideas that we already know. It depends
how hard somebody wants to work or how long they want to work. If
somebody is looking for a get rich quick scheme, that's not real estate.
Real estate does take some effort, some knowledge, and some research,
and some time. It's not like you can flip a house today without doing any
work. It doesn't take a lot of work though. It only takes maybe one to four
hours to put together a deal.
Interviewer: What about for the second year and beyond? What should be a realistic
goal that someone could set for themselves?
Josh: Again, it depends how much work they want to put in, but if somebody is
a full-time investor, there's no reason why after the first year they can't
consistently make $100,000 a year or more. I know lots of my students,
friends, myself included, we're in this business to have money, to have
freedom, and to be wealthy. So to get to the point where somebody is
making $200,000 a year, $300,000 a year or more is the goal. Also, to
create long-term passive income, to own properties that will eventually be
paid off from a tenant buyer or a renter who pays the property off, and that
property is now free and clear. It's spitting off income, it's spitting off cash
flow, and it's worth more and more and more every year. So, it should be
very realistic for someone to set their expectations to not make any less
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than $100,000 a year or more and then to leapfrog into year two, year
three, to double that and triple that every year thereafter.
Interviewer: Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
Josh: The only thing I would like to add is anything worthwhile is going to take
some work. When people think, I can do this part-time, and I don't need to
focus on it. Hopefully something will fall in my lap. There's always
somebody out there who's working really hard pursuing their goals, so
those people who are just kind of floating through the wind and hoping
something lucky happens to them, that's probably never going to happen.
Success is a combination of hard work, knowledge, and being in a place
where deals fall in their lap because of the hard work they put in. It's not
luck. It's just opportunity meeting hard work, and all that kind of comes
together. So I would say anything worth pursuing is going to take some
hard work.
Finally, you need to be daring. To chase any kind of dream, goal, some
big, hairy, audacious goal - my friend calls it a B-HAG - big, hairy,
audacious goal, you have to be daring. You have to be willing to try things
you've never tried, do things you've never done, and expand your horizons
and expect more, and go out and try stuff that other people would never
try. You have to be daring, and you have to try new things, and you have
to have some big, hairy, audacious goal that you're trying to pursue.
Because if you're just hoping to do a little bit more, you're probably going
to get a little bit more. But if you pursue some big, hairy, audacious goal
and you end up halfway there, you're probably better off than 90% of the
people out there.
Interviewer: For people interested in finding out more, where do they need to go?
Josh: My main website is www.strategicrealestatecoach.com. They can find all
kinds of tools and resources there and my personal story. I'm a father, I'm
a husband, I have three little kids, but I'm also a pancreatic cancer
survivor. I have a pretty amazing story about how I was diagnosed. My
son was actually just born. My wife had an emergency C-section. My son
was born with a cyst in his neck and was having trouble breathing. My son
had surgery when he was two and a half weeks old, and while my son was
in the hospital, after his surgery, I was 35 years old, and I was diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer. Two months later, I had a surgery. I had a surgery
that saved my life. The surgeon pulled off a surgery that most surgeons
would never even dare to try. So my story of loss and overcome and
challenge and achievement and success and coming back from that is at
www.middlemanincome.com. That's my story, and that's where people
can watch the video of everything that's happened to me in the past year or
so.
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3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate Jason Medley
Interviewer: How did you get started in real estate investing? What's your background?
Jason: My background is I didn't start out in real estate investing. I started out as
a mortgage broker back in like 2000 and was doing really amazingly well
other than Florida and the market was exploding with refinances. And then
as we got into the 2000s, it was exploding with the housing boom and new
construction. It was a nice ride. I was doing a ton of business. I had 20
loan officers and three or four processes, and things were great. Then all
of a sudden, the market crashed, took a tank, whatever you'd like to see. I
found myself trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do. So I
started going through the process of reinventing myself, and that's when
short sales were starting to come into play at that time, especially in
Florida. Some of the folks were upside down. So I actually started
processing short sale files for a real estate agent. I did not like that,
because it was tough work and I didn't make much from it.
I noticed some other folks that were actually flipping short sales; buying
short sales and reselling at a higher price. So I started doing that in order
to try to get into the real estate investment game. It was cool at that point,
which was five or six years ago, because you didn‟t need any money. And
I went through a period at that time with the market changing and a
divorce and all that kind of good stuff, where I didn't have any. You didn't
need any money at that time, because if you bought a property for sale at
$100,000 on short sale and you could resell it the same day to someone
else who, let's say, would pay $125,000, then you could use their money,
their $125,000 to pay for your $100,000 purchase, and then you got to
keep the profit in the middle. That changed. That's what's called a dry
closing, because you didn't need any funds on the first part.
Then they began to require that you have your own pockets, which meant,
it's all fine and dandy that you've got this property resold at a higher price,
but you can't use their money. You're going to have to bring your own
$100,000. That became a problem for a lot of folks, because a lot of folks
were actually doing those types of transactions, but when that changed, if
you didn't have that kind of money, you were out of the game. So I had a
huge deal on the plate. I was buying for $402,000 and reselling for
$495,000 on the same day. About three days before that, my title
company, the folks that actually closed the deal called and said, "Jason,
you can no longer use your in buyer's money. Today's Wednesday, and on
Friday, you've got to bring $402,000 to close." I thought, well, that's going
to be a problem, because I didn't have $402,000.
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However, that was one of the best, most amazing moments of my
professional career, because that's when from an investment standpoint
and a money standpoint, it really took off. Because again, I needed
$402,000 to resell for $495,000. So I called a buddy of mine who lent me
the 402 just for a couple of hours. I bought it with $402,000 in the
morning, and I resold it that afternoon for $495,000. To borrow that
money just for a few hours, I gave him back $408,000. So he made what
we call two points on his money. A point is 1% of the loan amount. One
point would be $4,000 on $400,000, and two points would be $408,000.
So needless to say, he enjoyed that quite thoroughly, to make $8,000 for
wiring me $400,000 for a few hours.
When the transaction wrapped up, he said, "Jason, can we do this again?" I
said, "Well, yeah, because there are some rules that have just changed in
the short sales investing space, and everybody that does these is going to
start needing this money for these short-term one-day loans." That is when
my life and my business career really took a dynamic shift from the
struggle I had gone through. I had been very successful as a mortgage
broker, extremely successful, but with the change in the market, and then
as I said going through a lovely divorce, which so many of us have gone
through. I had gone through a tough time.
When I started flipping those short sales and then the change in financing
requirements that's when things just exploded for me, because what I did
was I saw the opportunity to provide that money, that short-term, that one-
day money for other investors across the country who were doing those
same types of deals I was doing. But now, they actually had to have the
money on the first transaction. So again, to make it simple, if you bought a
house for $5 and the same day you were going to sell it for 7, if you didn't
have the $5, you were going to lose that $2 profit.
So, I started a company called iVisionary Financial, and we began to lend
that short-term, one-day money. It's actually called transactional funding.
We got to the point where we were doing 30 to 35 deals a month lending
that money to investors across the country, and it turned into a very robust
business. That's actually how I know a couple of the guys who are also a
part of what this book will become, myself and Josh Cantwell and John.
Josh was a big author, a big coach, a big mentor to a lot of folks and
taught them those types of strategies, and then I would provide the money
to them. That's really when things began to turn around for me, and I've
been blessed beyond measure ever since then, to be back on top and be
enjoying a lot of success. So that's my story.
Interviewer: That's fascinating. I think in that story you‟ve probably answered a variety
of my questions, including the next two, but I am going to ask you to
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elaborate on them anyway please. What are your top two primary revenue
pillars; the ways you make money with real estate?
Jason: Yeah. I mean, it's changed over the years. My top two pillars right now, I
would say obviously, from the lending perspective. Then, one of the things
that I'll share, and I think would be a real benefit if you're reading this, is
another pillar that I call „Beginner's Luck.‟ We'll probably go into detail
on that. I'll be glad to break that strategy down for you when you're ready.
Interviewer: Okay, you can go now.
Jason: Okay. One of the things that I think is of critical importance is when you
first start out in real estate, when you're looking at traditional methods real
estate can be extremely challenging to get off the ground, because the
reality of it is that becoming a real estate investor requires a whole new set
of skills that can be daunting. You've got to think about whether you're
going to rehab houses or buy houses and wholesale them to other
investors. There's such a unique skill set involved that I think will
typically stop most people in their tracks because of fear.
You may say, what are those things? Think about it. How do you find
those discounted properties? Once you find them and you talk to the seller,
what do you say to them to get them to give you a discount? Once you've
started talking to them, what's the biggest thing you've got to discuss?
What price will you sell it to me for? So many folks are afraid of
determining the wrong value. "I don't know how to determine what that
house is worth," or "Even if I can determine what it's worth in today's
market, it needs repairs, and I don't know how to determine repairs. If it
needs repairs and then I've got to make a profit, how do I put that into the
mix?" Really, determining value and what offer price to make and
negotiation success.
If you can get all that right, then you've got to go down the path of trying
to figure out how to write this daunting contract, which has got details and
things in it that bind you to obviously your word. How can you structure
clauses to where if something goes wrong, you could potentially get out of
it without losing money? Maybe talk about money. Some folks starting out
may not have much money. Typically when you contract out a home, the
seller wants what we call earnest money, or just a little good faith money.
Where do I get the good faith money? So there's just a whole set of skills
that comes with getting starting in real estate that can, a lot of times, put
fear in folks and keep them from going forward.
Or a lot of times, let's say you get through all that, you've got the deal, and
then you say, "Okay, where in the world am I going to get the money to
close on this thing?" So, that's a whole other battle in itself. Being a
19
speaker and an author and a trainer and having products out there that help
investors, one of the things that I've put together was I wanted to figure
out how can folks get started without having to do all of those complicated
things, yet still make money in real estate and create a foundation where,
once you've established that foundation, you can progress into some of
those other more challenging aspects of real estate and grow from there.
So what I did was I created a system called „Beginner's Luck.” What
„Beginner's Luck‟ is, is it's strictly about creating relationships. If you
create relationships, you can make money, and you don't have to do any of
those things I just talked about. You don't have to find the property, you
don't have to determine the price, you don't have to estimate repairs, you
don't have to write contracts. The reason you don't have to do that is
because of the way the market is structured right now.
In this marketplace, you've got basically two sets of people. You've got
people that have a skill set that involves finding these kinds of properties,
but they don't typically have the money. They're just real good
bloodhounds, if you will. Then you've got a group of people who have a
ton of money, and they're called cash buyers. Cash buyers make up about,
at this moment, about 40% of every single transaction that's taking place.
They don't necessarily have the good skill set of finding a good deal. Plus
they don't usually have the time. They just want to create a passive
income. So, you find the deal, I'll buy it, I'll collect the rent, and I don't
want to deal with all that other stuff.
The thing is, and where the opportunity lies, is that sometimes, those two
people don't know each other. The people with the money don't really
know the people who I call the inventory controllers who have got the
great deals. They're often referred to as wholesalers or real estate
wholesalers. When you use „Beginner's Luck,‟ what you do is you focus
on finding and attracting those people that have cash, the cash buyers.
They're very easy to find, extremely easy to find. Then you focus on
finding people that control the inventory. Again, same thing, very easy to
find. They're the folks in the newspaper that have the "we buy houses" ads
and stuff like that.
What you simply do is you place those two folks together. When you
place them together and the person, the cash buyer, purchases a property
from one of the inventory controllers, as you say, or a wholesaler,
whoever it might be, that wholesaler will compensate you for that. When
you do that, you didn't have to find the property, because the wholesaler
had the property. You didn't have to negotiate with the seller, because
they're telling you, "Here's my bottom line." You didn't have to write a big
fancy contract, because the wholesaler already did it. The wholesaler is
going to do it with the cash buyer.
20
You didn't have to inspect the property. You didn't have to determine
value, because all that stuff is already done. You're just simply bringing
those two parties together. For me, I've funded thousands of deals for
investors across the country, and that's tied me to the best of the best. I've
seen what works, what doesn't, what's easy, what's simple, what's
complicated, and what's formulaic. To me, that's the easiest way for
people to get started is following that „Beginner's Luck‟ formula, because
it doesn't have all the cumbersome steps typically associated with typical
real estate, which often deters most new investors. They think „this stuff is
too complicated."
Interviewer: Right. So you just want to be the conduit. You want to be the liaison. You
put one party together with the other party, and then you get compensated
for that.
Jason: Exactly. And you didn't have to go brain-dead in the process. Once you
get that done, once you get a few of those deals under your belt and you've
got some checks coming in and some breathing room, then you've got time
to start learning those necessary skill sets to advance without having the
pressure of, "Oh my gosh, I've got to get a check."
Interviewer: What's the biggest mistake new investors make?
Jason: I think the biggest mistake...I don't think, I know. The biggest mistake that
new investors make is that they don't pick a niche. What I mean by that is
quite simply, there are a hundred ways, if not more, to make money in real
estate. You've got to pick one. What I mean by that is, there are short
sales, there's rehab, there's REOs, there's buying properties at the auction.
I could go on and on and on about the different ways to make money in
real estate.
I think what happens to new real estate investors is they find one way and
they're learning about it, and then somebody else tells them about another
way and they're learning about it, and then another way. Before you know
it, you‟re focused on three or four things. Well that's not focused. Being
that real estate is an in-depth subject, if you don't focus on one, you won't
ever do any of them well. One of the things that I always tell business
folks or someone who's trying to become an entrepreneur is, if you chase
too many rabbits, you're not going to catch a one. That's what my grandma
used to always tell me.
Interviewer: Cute, where are you from?
Jason: I'm from Louisville, Kentucky.
21
So absolutely, I think you've got to pick a niche. You pick a niche and you
say, "This is what I want to do, and this is what's going to feed me." Once
you get that particular niche to where it sustains you, providing income for
you where you can breathe and live on that, then you can start adding in.
"I've been working this „Beginner's Luck‟ type system, and I'm feeling
well with that. Now I'm going to try and do the inventory control. I'm
going to work on wholesale." Then once you get wholesaling down, you
say, "You know, I'm doing really well at this. Maybe I'm going to try and
rehab one of these properties." But I think you've got to master one niche
at a time. Otherwise, you end up chasing four or five and you don't end up
making any money.
Interviewer: What's the top marketing strategy to generate seller leads and buying
opportunities for this revenue pillar?
Jason: Again, the revenue pillar that I've talked about, you don't really have to
generate seller leads. Again, when you talk about some of the other niches
we've talked about, you do. But with the „Beginner's Luck‟ side of things,
you're not really generating what most people would consider sellers,
because you're thinking of the home owner or maybe it's the bank in an
REO situation. But you don't really have to generate seller leads. In fact,
your "seller" is the individual that's already acquired the discounted
property. And again, I call them the people that control the inventory or
"wholesalers." They've already done all of that with the distressed seller.
They've found the property, they've written the contract, they've analyzed
the deal, they've determined its value. They've done all that.
The easiest way to find those people is you can do a few searches. You
can look in your local newspaper. There's a section in pretty much
anybody's local newspaper that says, "We buy houses," and there's a list of
folks in there. Another way you could do it is to go on Google and type in
the words "sell my house back" or "we buy houses" and then your city. I
live in Tampa, so I might go to "we buy houses Tampa" and you'll get a
list of those wholesalers in there. That would probably be the easiest way
to find them. I've got a whole list of... I got about, golly, 10 ways to find
those folks, but those are a couple of fairly simple ones you could start.
Interviewer: What's your top marketing strategy?
Jason: My top marketing strategy. I've got so many that are advanced, but I just
don't think that... to me, there's not any really "marketing" for the people
that control the inventory. I can tell you right where they're at, tell you
how to call them. Probably more important is what to say to them. They've
got the property, those wholesalers, those inventory controllers. But on the
other side, when it comes to finding the cash buyers, I'd say the top
strategy... and again, if you'll notice, everything I'm going through here
22
with you, it doesn't really cost any money. I think that's important when
folks are getting started. But trying to find and create relationships with
cash buyers, I would say the top marketing strategy is what we call bandit
signs. There are physical bandit signs and there are virtual bandit signs.
Bandit signs are the signs that you see when you're driving down the street
and it says, "3.2, cash only, 1,100 square feet, need to sell ASAP, call this
number." That's a bandit sign. So, the top method that I think attracts those
people is, once you have created some relationships with the folks that
have the inventory, again your wholesalers, they can give you a list of
properties, and you can create bandit signs for those properties. The folks
that typically call on those properties, again because you put on there cash
only, those are your cash buyers.
Then you can kind of replicate that into what I call virtual bandit signs,
which is placing those same ads on Craigslist. What will start to happen is,
when you do that marketing, you'll start to accumulate and build a list of
cash buyers. Once you've got a list of folks that have the inventory, then
you've got a list of folks that want it, then you've got to put the two of
them together. Those two strategies, your physical bandit signs, your
virtual bandit signs, are the best marketing to find those cash buyers,
create the relationship, and then start bringing A and B together so you can
see some money.
Interviewer: Why is now the best time to get into real estate for revenue generation?
Jason: I think right now is best time, because the market is starting to stabilize
and maybe turn around in the right direction. When that happens... I don't
know if you remember the good old days. You could buy up homes for
$100,000, and a month later it was worth $110,000. So, that's where we're
at when we have a stabilization going on in the marketplace and possibly
increases start to happen in certain markets. So what happens is, once you
find the property that's discounted... let's say you bought a property for
$50,000 and it's worth $70,000. By the time you sell it, it might be worth
$75,000, because the market is starting to change, the market is starting to
move. In some places across the country, that is very feasible right now.
Like the market I live in, Tampa, is white hot. Most of your major areas
out there are. But most people who are layman and not in the real estate
space aren't aware of it. It's absolutely the reality and the equation. So I
think it's a great time simply for that. A lot of times if you're a newer
investor, if you make some mistakes, you can get yourself in some trouble,
whereas when you're in a market that's starting to turn, sometimes you
make a mistake. "That mistake cost me $2,000, but the property went up
$5,000, so I actually made $3,000." So I think we're in a market that can
buffer any mistakes you make. Again, it's not a huge deal with the system
23
we were talking about, because you don't have any money at risk or
anything like that. That to me is why it's a great time to get started right
now.
Interviewer: Do you have a success story that you can relay of students or associates of
yours who went from having a job and then transitioning to doing full-
time real estate?
Jason: Yes, two friends of mine right there in Tampa. One of them is the
wholesaler/inventory controller, and the other was a gentleman who
implemented the „Beginner's Luck‟ system. He did exactly that. He had
some relationships with cash buyers, and he took that cash buyer to the
gentleman that controlled the inventory, and he was paid I think it was
$3,000 at closing for simply bringing the two folks together.
Interviewer: Are there any geographical areas that are better than others for applying
your type methodology?
Jason: I don't know that there are any geographies that are better than others. I
think certainly, based upon where you live, there's going to be potentially
more opportunity if you live in a big city, where tons of investing is going
on, versus a smaller, maybe a little country town, where obviously there
won't be as much opportunity. At the same time, I kind of look at that in
two ways. One, the way that I just explained.
And then on the other hand, if you live in a smaller town, there probably
won't be near as much competition. I actually just had a gentleman out of
Mississippi, and I can't remember exactly what city he was in. But he lives
in a very, very small town, and he dominates it, because it's just not
something... real estate investing and stuff is just not as visual or as out
front as it is in some other major cities. He's like the only game in town.
He crushes it. Do I think there's more opportunity from a chance to do
more volume in some bigger cities? Yeah. But if you're in a smaller town
and there's not much competition, you might do just as well.
Interviewer: What's a reasonable expectation for someone to set for the first year of
revenue goals if they follow your method?
Jason: I genuinely think that if someone followed this method and they put some
elbow grease into it, I think you could really reasonably expect to make at
least $50,000.
Interviewer: What would you expect in the second year?
Jason: I think the second year it could really be the sky‟s is the limit. Of course,
this is based upon an individual. There will be people that might make
24
$50,000 one year and $300,000 the next. There might be some people that
make $20,000 and then $50,000 the next. It's really about who you are as a
person and as an individual and what kind of work ethic you have and how
fast you are. The thing with what we've talked about, which I call
„Beginner's Luck,‟ is it's a foundational building block to start moving into
something else. For example, if you started out doing „Beginner's Luck‟
your first year, and then you said, "This second year, I'm going to start
doing rehab." Well, there's big bucks in rehab, but a lot more risk. But if
you started getting good in rehab in your second year, you could explode.
If you continue to do „Beginner's Luck,‟ well your income would continue
to grow, but maybe not at the same pace. I don't want to mislead anybody
and say, "$50,000 your first year and a half a million dollars the second."
Interviewer: Right, it depends on the effort, of course.
Jason: It depends on the effort, it depends on the individual, your learning curve.
I just always like to shoot straight with folks.
Interviewer: Sure. Now we're at the end. Let's talk about what you do. You're a
speaker. You're a mentor.
Jason: Speaker, mentor, author.
Interviewer: Author. What did you write?
Jason: My first book is on Amazon. It's called "How to Make Extra Money
Flipping Houses While on Vacation.”
Yeah. It's not to be taken literally, and the forward of the book explains
that. Really what it is, I run a mastermind with about 40 of the top
investors from across the country. I interviewed one of those guys, and he
basically explained how he's automated his business to where he just had
gotten back from the Czech Republic for two and a half months. He was
with his wife and four children and still flipped houses while he was in the
Czech Republic. So really, the book itself was, here's the type of life you
can create once you learn how to automate your business to where it runs
with not a lot of your involvement.
Interviewer: People interested in learning how to get started in real estate investing
should go to www.mybeginnersluck.com.
Jason: Yes. www.mybeginnersluck.com. They can download a free report and
get started.
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3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate
John Cochran
Interviewer: How did you get started in real estate investing? What's your background?
John Cochran: Well, it's kind of funny the way I got started in real estate investing. I used
to play baseball. I played baseball anywhere from the age of literally 5 to
when I was 19, and I was really good at it. I got hurt. When I was in high
school, I had a lot of pro scouts looking at me to go into the major leagues
when I was in high school. And I got hurt. I dislocated my arm. You're
probably wondering, what the hell does this have to do with anything with
real estate? After I dislocated my arm, I had a call on the answering
machine from a guy named Ed Zanta, a scout for the Colorado Rockies.
He wanted me to try out for his team. Obviously I couldn't do that,
because I had just dislocated my arm and I just got back from the hospital.
Nobody really wanted to look at me anymore. It turned the pro scouts
away from looking at me. So I decided to go to junior college. I picked
Destin, Florida. At the time, it was called Okaloosa-Walton Community
College. The reason I wanted to go there was because there were a lot of
people who had gotten drafted into the major leagues from that college,
and I knew a lot of those people. So that's where I wanted to go.
I graduated high school in 2002 and I bought a house. I bought the house
retail. I really could give two shits about going ahead and getting a deal on
a home at the time. I really didn't know any better. I was a major league
baseball player. I could care less about money or anything like that. So I
went ahead and I paid retail for a house in Destin, Florida. Baseball didn't
end up working out for me. I remember to this day, I caught a ball, and I
just remember, I was just like, do I really want to do this for the rest of my
life? My decision was no.
I ended up quitting the baseball team, which meant that I really had no
reason to be in college anymore down in Florida, but I still had this house.
My mom ended up convincing me to keep this house for a year, just keep
it for a year and just rent it out. I hated it. I did not want to do it. I hired a
property management company to handle it. I wanted nothing to do with
it. A year went by, and my tenant was paying, and then year two came
along, and my tenant stopped paying me.
So, what happened was that, since they stopped paying me, I pretty much
had to make a decision on what I wanted to do with the house. My mom
tried to get me to keep it, and I wanted to get rid of it. Little did I know
that the market in Florida at the time had really boomed. This was back in
2005, about 2004, 2005, the market had really, really went up, and little
did I know that just from holding onto that house, I was able to get a lot
26
of equity, even though I bought it retail. What happened is that I put the
house up on the market myself as a „for sale by owner.‟
I went down there and I painted the house before I really started
outsourcing a lot of stuff. I got carpet installed, etc. Then, I put a „for sale
by owner‟ sign in the yard, and I had about eight people contact me saying
that they wanted that house. Well, I ended up selling the house, and I
made a $57,000 profit. I was 19 years old and I made a $57,000 profit on
that house, and I did nothing. I bought it retail, and then I just let the
market appreciate it, and I got lucky. That's the whole truth. I got lucky.
So what did I do next? I went back to Ohio with my $57,000 check, and to
be honest with you, I blew every single bit of that money because I was 19
years old.
Interviewer: I had that feeling.
John: Yeah. But after I blew all that money, I really started analyzing and
thinking, and I was just like, wait a second. I just made $57,000 on a
house, and that was pretty freaking cool. So, then I started really getting
intrigued with the real estate market. I started getting mentors on my side
and the rest is history on how I just got hooked into the business from that
moment on of making that big profit. I really started learning and studying
everything that I possibly could, and that's how I got into the business.
Interviewer: What are your top two primary revenue pillars; the ways you make money
with real estate?
John: 100% it's wholesaling HUD homes from the government and working
with buyers, 100%. I have one of the largest, if not the largest, buyers‟ list
in the United States. It's self-generated. I did not buy any of the leads, and
I have a buyers list of over 18,000 buyers just from my own local market.
Interviewer: That's impressive. So you really turned out to like what you do.
John: Absolutely. Hell, I'm in Maui right now just chilling in Maui. My business
and everything, it just runs. We do a little bit over $100,000 a month on
the investing side. Then we do about another $50,000 a month just
working with buyers for our real estate brokerage, HomeBackers Realty.
Interviewer: If you were starting out as a new real estate investor in today's market,
what would be the one thing you would focus on?
John: I would focus on wholesaling to bring in quick cash and I would also
focus on building a big buyers‟ list, because the buyers are the fastest
route to the paycheck by far, the easiest way to get money. Whenever you
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have all the buyers and you control the market with all the buyers, you can
pretty much write your own paychecks.
Interviewer: What's the biggest mistake new investors make?
John: The biggest mistake investors make is probably lack of knowledge and
fear. When I was new into the business, it was not overwhelming, but it
was very scary to buy my first couple homes. I'm buying two homes
tomorrow and I'm selling one today, and that's 6,000 miles away from
where I'm at. So, probably not getting the right mentors is another one.
Not getting the right mentors I would say would be another one.
Interviewer: What's the top marketing strategy to generate seller leads and buying
opportunities for this revenue pillar?
John: Well, for seller leads, we focus almost 100% on HUD wholesaling, and
we do not have to market for those seller leads. We just get them off of a
website. We get the seller leads off of a website, and then we have
different bidding strategies that we use in order to buy the properties
cheap. So there's a lot of tips and tricks to the HUD wholesaling business
that I've created. But you do not have to market your seller leads, which is
why I like it. Zero money out of your pocket.
Interviewer: What's your top marketing strategy?
John: To be honest with you, we only market for buyers. Our best marketing
strategy for that is Facebook, Facebook CPC.
Interviewer: Walk me through the A to Z process of doing a deal.
John: Are you talking about a seller deal?
Interviewer: You can pick.
John: For a seller deal, the A to Z process is we will go to hudhomestore.com,
and what we will do is we will download a list of all the properties that we
can buy. Then we import that list that we downloaded from
hudhomestore.com, and we will import that into our own list that I went
ahead and created that knows HUD numbers. So it tells you what to bid
and what to counter. It tells you everything that you need to do from a
spreadsheet. Then what will happen is I will bid on these properties.
Actually I don't know how to do it. I have a virtual system going ahead
and doing it. They will bid on the properties, and then we will get counter
offers backs.
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Fast forwarding, we can either accept their counter offer or not, or they
will flat out just accept our offer. So, once we get an offer accepted, we
will send a package in to the HUD's asset manager. From there, we will
start marketing the property to find our buyer. We will also go through and
email our buyers list to find a buyer for that property. We will show the
property to the buyers prior to going ahead and buying the property, and
then we will schedule a back-to-back closing once we find our buyer. It's
really easy doing the HUD wholesaling as well, because what our strategy
is that we buy the properties from HUD at a discount, and then we sell
them cheaper than what HUD has then up on the market for.
So, to give you an example, if HUD has a property up on the market for
$100,000, we're buying that property for, say, $70,000, but we're bringing
it back to the market for, say, $89,000. So, we're bringing it back to the
market cheaper than what HUD has it up on the market for, and we
completely confused the hell out of the market, because, as you know,
HUD's asking prices for the properties are at bank-owned prices anyway,
so they're really cheap. So, nobody can really figure out how we're buying
the properties so cheap and then bringing them back to the market even
cheaper than what HUD had them up on the market for. Then we close on
them, and we make the money on them.
Interviewer: Nice system. How do people invest in real estate with no credit, cash, or
experience?
John: Raising capital. First of all, you've got to get a mentor to give you the
experience, but you really truly do need zero experience. A lot of our
students, they are very green. We mentor them, put them through all of our
weekly coaching calls, and then they learn from me what has to be done.
You do not need any cash or credit, because you can use the transactional
funding. We actually have two transactional funders that we can
recommend to everybody as well. But you've got to focus on money.
You've got to focus on bringing in private money. The truth of it is that
when you focus on bringing in so much private money and you have all
the money, the deals just come with it.
But it works vice versa as well. Once you find a good real estate deal, the
money is almost attracted to you, because once you find that deal, almost
anybody will fund it because the deal is so good. So you can ask your
friends, your family, stuff like that. That's where a lot of people go wrong
is that they have the fear of not having money hold them back from doing
real estate transactions. But the truth of it is that either when you have the
deal, the money comes with it because all you've got to do is flap your
jaw, or when you raise capital like Josh Cantwell does, you raise a lot of
capital, the deals that you can do are absolutely endless.
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Interviewer: Why is now the best time to get into real estate for revenue generation?
John: We will never have an opportunity like this again in the real estate market.
The market went down, it went up. It's starting to go up a little bit now
again. America is truly on sale. Now is the time to buy and hold
properties as well. So, if you're buying them cheap, they're going to start
appreciating, which they're already starting to go up. So by far, now is the
time to buy and hold. But we do a lot of wholesaling right now as well.
New people need to do a lot of wholesaling right now too. The seasoned
investors need to hold right now.
Interviewer: Can someone be involved in real estate the way you approach it while still
having a job, or does it need to be a full-time commitment?
John: No. Actually, most of the people that we train, they start off with a job.
Then they start making some good paychecks. Our goal is to get them to
quit that job and then get into it full-time.
Interviewer: What's your typical turnaround for that?
John: I've had people buy my HUD wholesaling course and make money within
the first 30 days. So, the whole truth of it is how people implement. If you
implement well and you use the strategies from our teachings, you're
going to crush it and crush it quick. It's all about you and how much you
implement. That's really the truth of it.
Interviewer: Can you relay some success stories of students or associates of yours who
went from having a job and transitioned into doing real estate full-time?
John: Absolutely. There are many people who have gone through our programs
that have a J-O-B, as they call it. They don‟t have any money and they‟re
kind of scared out of their mind. They get into our training. We give them
the confidence to do their first deal if they haven't done a deal yet and just
keep on growing on that. Then we teach them systems so that they can
remove themselves from not only the day-to-day activities of working
inside the business, but remove themselves from their J-O-B to work and
be financially free in real estate, working as their own boss.
Interviewer: What is it that gets people excited about your program? Is it a love of the
industry, the huge potential to make money? Or is it both?
John: I think it's freedom. I think it comes down to living the American dream. I
think everybody wants freedom. Everybody wants to live that lifestyle, but
I think that it starts with money. I think that it starts with money, but
money does not come with freedom by any means. So what my goal is
with all of my trainings is that I show people how to make an
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embarrassing amount of money, but at the same time, I show them how to
create systems so their business does not control them. There was a time
when I was in a lot of debt, and there was a time when it cost me $25,000
a month just to stay in business. I got myself out of all that stuff by... to
keep a long story short, My fiancée broke up with me for a guy in prison.
That was kind of a big awakening for me.
The whole truth of it was I just didn't have any time for her. I was
constantly stressed out, because I had $25,000 that I had to make each and
every single month, and that‟s how I got into a lot of debt. That's when I
developed my video system strategy on how I do systems inside of my
business. That's what they call me. They call me the king of systems for a
reason, because I know how to create systems. I know how to show people
how to create systems, and that's what my goal is, to get everybody to
work on their business rather than inside of their business. So to answer
your question, it starts with money, but it‟s also about freedom.
Interviewer: Systematize the system?
John: Systematize your business so it runs without you, kind of like mine is
running while I am in Maui.
Interviewer: What geographical areas are the most effective when applying your
methodology?
John: It works for the entire country.
Interviewer: Anywhere. International?
John: Absolutely.
Interviewer: What's a reasonable expectation someone should set for their first year
revenue goals if they follow your method?
John: You know, it depends on how hungry they are. I have people coming to
me that they're not as hungry as I am. My goal is to make millions of
dollars a year, and I do that. But a lot of people don't have that burning
desire to make that kind of money. What it really comes down to is asking
yourself why you want to make say $100,000 a year in your business?
Once you identify that, it‟s going to dictate how much money you need to
make.
Maybe your burning „why‟ is to take your family on a vacation every
single year and not ever have to worry about money. So you may want to
make $100,000 a year. Maybe you like to go golfing. Maybe you'd just
like to winter in Maui. You have to define your burning „why‟ first, and
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then you set your revenue goals after that. So, it's kind of a broad question
to be honest with you, but you've got to find out your burning „why.‟ I like
people to set a goal to make at least $5,000 a month starting off. That's
easy with automated HUD wholesaling.
Interviewer: Let‟s talk a little bit about your system, what it is, where people can find
you, and where do you want to go from here?
John: Well, our system is automated HUD wholesaling, and they can go find it
at www.wholesalingmastery.com. That site is all about how I buy HUD
homes. I once bought a HUD home for $18.47. That‟s when I got hooked
on the business. I just really dissected the business from inside and out and
since then, I created a system to duplicate that process.
So I created a course out of that, which is a total of five modules and about
20 hours of training. You get my HUD spreadsheet that already knows
HUD numbers. So all you have to do, just like I explained, from a deal
from start to finish, you just export the list into my spreadsheet, and then
my spreadsheet will tell you what to bid on the properties. Then my
course just shows you how to find the money, how to build a big buyers‟
list out of all these properties that you're going to be buying. How I buy
the properties so cheap. All the 31 different tips and tricks that I use on a
daily basis to buy, this month alone, 14 properties and profit $135,000,
just this month alone. It's all right there inside the course.
Also, I want to talk about another product called “Buyers on Fire,” and I
mentioned earlier that I have one of the biggest, if not the largest, buyers‟
lists in the entire country. That's self-generated leads. You can buy leads
and all this and that, but the whole truth behind it is that whenever you're
buying buyer leads, it's all junk, because you have to build a relationship
with those leads to really put the handcuffs on them and get them to buy
from you. You've got to build that relationship with them, and that's why I
suggest not to buy buyer leads, because you're not building those
handcuffs on those buyers.
So what we do is we have squeeze pages all over the Internet. I use
“Buyers on Fire.” It's the product that I created. And and then we have a
sequence. So they opt into our forms, into our website, and then there's a
sequence that runs. We have autoresponders that run in the background.
It's a funnel, and the very first funnel that they is an educational funnel,
and it runs for the entire course of a year. In that educational funnel, there
are links into every single one of those emails. So, all you do is you
educate them for a year, and whenever they click on one of those links
throughout the entire year, they move to a different funnel. You educate
them on the first funnel and then they‟re in your system.
32
As soon as you catch their attention, they raise their hand. Maybe it's day
one of going onto your funnel. Maybe it's day 364. They watch your
educational video by clicking that link. Now they've raised their hand.
They automatically are moved to a different campaign, a different funnel,
which has nothing but call to actions on there. So instead of educating
them, on the second funnel, there‟s nothing but call to action. "Hey, call
me. Call me. Call me. Email me back and let me know the five properties
that you want to see. Email me this. Email me that." It's all call to actions.
So the two funnels are very different. The first is an educational funnel.
The second funnel is a call-to-action funnel that nurtures your buyers. It
really puts the handcuffs on them, putting you as the expert in the field.
That's how I got 18,000 people on my buyers list, and that's how I can sell
all of my HUD properties or all the properties from the brokerage that we
have. That's how I do 30 transactions per month, because I have the
handcuffs on those 18,000 buyers.
Interviewer: How long did it take to create that system, „Buyers on Fire?‟
John: To create the entire system for the world to have access to it, it took me a
couple months. For me personally, I've been doing it for two years, and it
ended up taking me about six months of testing to find out what my buyers
really wanted so that I could get the handcuffs on them and so that I knew
that they bought from me and only me, not my competitors.
Interviewer: Now people interested in finding out more about your system should go to
www.wholesalingmastery.com?
John: Yes. Actually, the best thing to do is to go to www.thekingofsystems.com.
I have banners and all the courses that I just talked about. Buying a home
for $18.47, etc.
Interviewer: Is „Buyers on Fire‟ a website?
John: Yes it‟s a website, www.buyersonfire.com, and you can find that as well
on www.thekingofsystems.com.
Interviewer: And what's Homebackers Realty?
John: It's www.homebackers.com and that's a real estate brokerage that I own.
Our brokerage, we only work with buyers. We don't work with any sellers.
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Conclusion
Thank you for your interest in Real Estate Investing and the opportunity to present you with
three unique points of view on approaching the housing market as a way toward financial
freedom.
If you would like more information on Net Income Real Estate or to receive our free newsletter,
kindly visit www.netincomerealestate.com.
And, if you have not yet downloaded your free bonuses from each of our three investing pros,
you may follow the links below.
Bonuses:
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