Do You Want to Make More Excuses or More Money? Real Estate Legend Ron Legrand Reveals His Money-Making Secrets

April 18, 2022

Episode 84: Do You Want to Make More Excuses or More Money? Real Estate Legend Ron Legrand Reveals His Money-Making Secrets

THE PROFIT FIRST PODCAST

April 18, 2022

David Richter

Summary:

Meet the Godfather of creative real estate, Ron LeGrand. He was born with the heart of an entrepreneur and started doing business transactions by the time he was eighteen. Ron entered the real estate world in 1982, and from then on, his innovative mind, true heart, and logical systems propelled him to sell houses without any risks.

Discover the secret strategy that got him to garner massive deals for the last 37 years. Strap in, and let’s hear out how this genius climbed his way up the ladder.

Key Takeaways:

[1:51] What got him started in real estate, and why did he choose real estate?

[6:03] People who are looking for a lot of excuses don’t make a lot of money

[6:28] The problem of low self-esteem

[7:48] You have to be careful to whom you’ll listen. It would help if you weren’t listening to anybody until you have—a reason to believe that you can trust what anyone says.

[12:46] His journey facing six market corrections

[14:20] Delegation, Automation, and Systemization makes real estate easier

[19:09] The absolute key is selecting the best people for your business

[22:21] How important is it to know your business numbers?

[27:22] Take action, go out there and implement things

[30:29] Get your education from qualified people to render it

Quotes:

[0:13] “When you spend your life swapping hours for dollars and never really hit a home run, you never really had way more money to live on. It’s hard to get into the mindset that you’re entitled to get more money.”

[11:11] “Somewhere along the line, we have to start digging a little deeper, and find a faster and easier way to make money without the risk.”

[22:30] “Anybody running their business that doesn’t know their numbers wouldn’t be in the business very long.”

Links:

Join Ron LeGrand’s Online Training- http://ronlegrand.com/terms

Tired of living deal to deal?

If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal, and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David

Transcript:

Ron Legrand

I think one of the biggest problems that students come to me today with, David, is low self-esteem. They have a low opinion of what they’re worthy of. When you spend your life swapping hours for dollars, and you never even really hit a home run, you’ve never even really had way more money than you need to live on, it’s kind of hard to get into the mindset that I am entitled to make more money, I’m worthy, I can do it, but I’m not sure because I’ve never done it before.

Announcer:

Welcome to The Profit First REI Podcast where real estate investors master financial management, eradicate entrepreneurial poverty and learn to be profitable from day one. Now for your host, David Richter.

David Richter

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another very special episode of The Profit First REI Podcast here with Ron Legrand. If you don’t know this name, then are you in real estate? He’s impacted so many lives, taught so many people, has done so many deals, helped a lot of people that I don’t know if you are doing real estate. If you haven’t heard about Ron Legrand, you need to look him up and you need to see what he’s doing because he’s done a lot of amazing things over the years. So, Ron, thanks for being on the podcast today.

Ron Legrand

It is my pleasure. What a great introduction.

David Richter

Yeah. I get to see a lot of people in these mastermind behind the scenes and it’s been nice getting to know you and rub shoulders in that aspect as well, and everyone respects you in the real estate space. And you’re as real in there as you are on the webinars and stuff. And I like that too, seeing who’s really the real person. It’s not someone totally different behind the scenes. So that’s awesome. But Ron, let’s dive into it. Let’s let people know, for you, what got you started in real estate investing and why real estate?

Ron Legrand

Hunger.

David Richter

Hunger.

Ron Legrand

Yeah. I was working in a service station. I was managing the station and I was also the mechanic, which means I’d be interrupted every few minutes in the hot Florida sun because I had to go out and pump gas back when we used to do that. You’re too young to remember that. And then we had to work on cars and it was not really a fun job.

I was actually managing the station, but still making no money, barely get by. And crap, we had to buy groceries at least two times a week, couldn’t afford a whole week’s worth at one time. And I’d already been married 17 years. This was in 1982, I’m talking about, so that tells you how old I am. Well, in fact, we just celebrated our 56th wedding anniversary.

David Richter

Oh wow. Congratulations. That’s awesome.

Ron Legrand

So anyway, I just frankly woke up one morning and decided I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life after my wife and I got an argument over she wanted washing a machine, that I couldn’t afford to buy her, to wash my filthy clothes with. So I just made a conscious decision. Sometimes in our lives, David, something just snaps and it changes the way you start thinking. You just decide I’ve had enough. And some people need to get down to the point to where they’ve had enough before they can make a decision they can actually follow up on and implement to change things.

So I went out and I started looking. I had no idea what I was looking for, but saw an ad that said, come learn how to buy real estate without money or credit, and that appealed to me, had neither. I knew it wasn’t true. It had to be a scam, but I went down and checked it out. And next thing you know, I’m in a two day seminar. Had to scrape up the money for that one. And three weeks later, I got my first check on a low wholesale deal. Made three grand on that. Most important check I’ve ever got in my life.

That gave me the confidence to go forward and convinced me that I could do it and that I could do it here and I could do it now. And I just continually spun out. Next thing you know, a couple years gone by and I’m over a million dollars in equity in real estate because I was buying them and fixing them and buying them and renting them and buying them and selling them and wholesaling and the whole bottle of wax, like a man on fire.

And so I built a so-called millionaire portfolio within two years, but that didn’t make the cashflow all that great, because sometimes it was negative. And I decided I wasn’t going to live long enough to get rich this way because my life was destroyed by taking care of all these low income tenants that everything went wrong in their life, they wanted me to get involved in it. And I said, “Oh God.”

So I used to have dark hair back then. See? No more. So that’s how I got started frankly. And I just kept on going, honestly. I guess what’s the difference between most people and me is I just kept on going. Most of them run across a little obstacle, went back to work and nothing changed and some of them died that way, unfortunately. So it’s all in here.

David Richter

Yeah. So then versus now, because now I feel like, and I’m sure this happened in the last cycle too, that there’s just an overabundance of real estate investors. And what do you think from that, when you jumped into real estate to now? What helps people stay for the long term? What is that thing that makes one investor succeed where others don’t stick on and don’t hang on?

Ron Legrand

Well, just so you’ll know, when I got started in 1982, there were a ton of investors out there then. There’s been a ton of investors out there every single year since. I don’t know when they were more or when they were less, honestly I don’t care because nothing they do is going to affect me anyway. I sure never worried about my competition, I was too busy making my own money to care about them, let them worry about me. And that carries right up to the day, by the way in anything I do, I don’t care about my competition. Usually wind up doing business with them before it’s over.

So there’s always going to be competition and if one wants to use that for a convenient excuse not to do anything, it works. It works for you, it works for me, but there’s a whole bunch of excuses you can use if that’s what you want. But I discovered that people who are looking for excuses don’t make much money. People who ignore all the excuses they can come up with and just get to work and quit worrying about all the other things that don’t matter and start making money. And that’s easy to compound once you get that machine rolling, but plenty of excuses.

So we spend more time changing people’s thinking than anything else, changing their thinking about what real estate is all about, because honestly, when people come to me, they’ve got all these myths running around their head and all these false impressions of what it is about. And they listen to all the people out there trying to tell them what don’t work and it’s illegal here and it don’t work here and this is a hot market and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Of course, all of them are broke and have no idea what they’re talking about, but we humans are conditioned to believe all this crap and absorb it. The next thing you know, they’ve stolen our dreams. And believe me, the world’s full of dream stealers and that’s not going to change. In fact, it’s just getting worse. Some people just live to criticize, condemn and complain and tear you down because the last thing they want to see is you succeed and they’re down here wallowing around in the mud where they want company. And if you’re not careful, they’ll have company because they’ll convince you.

So you have to be careful to whom you listen. Broke people cannot make you rich and you shouldn’t be listening to anybody until you have a reason to believe that you can trust what they say. And even then you take it with a grain of salt. I have a T-shirt, Dave, that says, “The whole world is full of crap.”

David Richter

That’s good. I like that.

Ron Legrand

Yeah.

David Richter

You and my dad would get along well.

Ron Legrand

I’m sure because he’s old too?

David Richter

Oh yeah. See, he’s got a lot of those types of sayings and I absolutely love them.

Ron Legrand

Yeah, I bet I would.

David Richter

Awesome. So flip side. So you think that, or you know, because you’ve seen it, the mindset, the excuses, people down on themselves, what about the people that break through that and come out on the other side? What would you say, for your most successful students, what is the common denominator for the most successful people?

Ron Legrand

The common denominator is that they keep going and pushing through all the really insignificant things that stop them in the beginning. I mean, it’s not insignificant to them, but there are no new problems. Well, I haven’t seen any and I’ve been at this 40 years. There is no new problems. Okay? They’re all the same, they’re just new to you, and they’re not hard to fix. There is no problem in the world of buying and selling houses that is very difficult to fix.

And in fact, if you don’t believe that, go get into another business. Go buy a restaurant. I’ve had six of them for crying out loud. If you want to buy a business that you work your ass off and don’t make any money at it, you got tons of problems and people and all that crap. Compared to what we do in real estate, it’s not even fair to compare the two.

We get high transaction value checks where most of the country is operating on low transaction value checks. We don’t have to do very many deals to make a ton of money, and we do not use money or credit. I will not allow my students to use their credit. If I catch him applying for a loan, I send a six foot eight guy after him. His name is Guido, tattooed from head to tail, got a big stick and there will be blood.

We do not guarantee debt. It’s the biggest mistake people make, but unfortunately they don’t realize it till after they’ve made it and things don’t work out the way they planned. Especially going into these uncertain times where in my opinion, there’s absolutely going to have to be a market correction. I don’t think it’s that far off. And I always tell my people, David, the only way you can not worry about another market correction is to make sure that you get out of personally guaranteed debt and build tons of cashflow that do not rely on you selling something immediately for a price you thought you were going to sell it for.

Let me explain that. If I’m in the rehabbing business, I’ve got to cash out. Market drops on me, I’m in deep ca-ca. I’m going to wind up not making any money. If I’m in the terms business like I am today, I buy on terms and I lease-option and put tenant buyers in there, and I hope they never cash me out, because I make a big old multi-thousand dollar check today from a non-refundable option deposit. I get a big monthly cashflow in these big, nice, beautiful homes in these beautiful areas, not these crack houses in a war zone. I get appreciation, I get depreciation. I usually get free equity the day I buy it. I get to raise the price because we’re selling it on terms. We get to raise the price even higher than they’re raising them in this crazy market we’re in and I get all of the benefits of wealth.

So in other words, I’m getting a check today, but I’m creating cashflow and wealth all in one deal, unlike those that are out there wholesaling and rehabbing and retailing and doing everything the hard way, like I used to do. Okay, I’ll confess, 20 plus years of that, so I get it. But somewhere along the line, we have to start digging a little deeper and looking for the faster and the easier ways to make money without the risk. And frankly, getting all your personally guaranteed debt out of your life is the most important thing I think you can be doing while simultaneously building the cashflow to the point where you don’t have to worry about just making a living.

So we can do that in real estate and we can do it very quickly. But like you say, once I start, if I’m under the impression that I don’t have to do anything or everything’s going to work out just exactly like it did in the seminar and I’m not going to have to get out of my comfort zone, I’m going to give up and quit and I’m not going to get very far.

But on the other hand, when people tell me about the problems they have in real estate, I ask them, do you know of another business that you can start and run that is not going to have problems and things that you’ve never done before that you have to learn to do, because there isn’t any? Payoffs in our business are so big, not only the cash, but also the tax advantages, it’s hard to beat it with another business. And I’ve had several and still got a few.

David Richter

No, that’s awesome, and that’s great advice. So for you, you said you had 20 years of learning it the hard way and then something had to change. Was that a market correction where you were like, you know what? I’m tired of doing this. I want to do the terms and I want to build the wealth now and for later? Was that what happened?

Ron Legrand

Yeah, actually I’ve been through six market corrections, the worst being ’08. However, you can call what we’re doing right now market correction. Market prices are going up, but it’s definitely a market correction. They’re going to come back down. And back in the ’80s, very few people that are watching this will know this, but back in the ’80s, when I started in this business, prime rate was 16% interest. Can you imagine trying to get houses financed when the prime rate is 16% interest? I mean the whole industry died, especially after Reagan passed the 1986 tax law to take away the tax advantages of owning real estate. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a Republican do in my life. Okay?

And it killed the market. And the point is we had to learn about terms. We had to learn about buying and selling with owner financing and lease options because that’s about the only way you can get in and out of houses. Realtors were dropping like flies, giving up their licenses, because it was just a miserable time to be in that business. And ultimately that changed, but that stuck with me over the years and I learned to apply those.

I don’t know why it took me so long, frankly, because I learned it in the ’80s, but I really didn’t start applying it until the late ’90s and the early 2000s and been applying it ever since. And it’s been getting better ever since because we constantly work on making it easier, and easier, and easier for our students. They don’t have to do much of anything, it’s all done for them. I mean, even the calls to the sellers are done for them, for crying out loud.

So I will say this, I’ve never seen a time in my 40 years where it’s easier to be in the real estate business than it is now because of delegation and automation and systematization. Back when I started, that was way before Al Gore invented the internet, man. We didn’t have all that cool stuff.

David Richter

Yeah. Well, that’s great. No I love that. So would you say being in the terms and being in that type business, did that help during 2007, ‘8, ‘9, when a lot of other businesses were going down?

Ron Legrand

In 2008, when Lehman Brothers went down in September of ’08, my company’s revenue dropped about 80%. My personal revenue dropped about 80%. So it’s a good thing that I had other cashflow coming in at that time, or I probably would not be here now. We had to lay off half of our staff all in one day and we had to claw through that and there were some miserable times after that and we had trouble paying our bills. I mean, look, you either pay your payroll or you pay a bill outside your company. It’s a pretty easy choice and anybody in my position would’ve done the same thing. We got them all paid, but it was not fun dealing with people and couldn’t keep your promises.

So it would’ve been easier just to fold it up and quit, and frankly, a lot of people did and a lot of businesses, a lot of businesses. But we kept up on plugging and we took a couple, three years to get back on our feet, but we adapted. And I guess that’s one of the biggest keys to being successful in this life is that you have to adapt with the times. You got to be willing to change and the best thing you can do is get ahead of this. Before it’s too late, start changing.

So anyway, I started in the terms business. I don’t remember what got me in it. It might even have been by accident, but I grow to love it real fast. Look, I still rehab a house or two now and then, but I haven’t rehabbed one in quite a while and I don’t care if I ever do rehab another one, if you want to be honest, because that’s the hardest way to make money in the business there is.

Wholesaling is easy, but you get one little old check and you got to go out and do it again. You got to give half of that to the government. So what do you gain? You don’t gain anything but a little bit of money. It’s kind of like going and working on a job. And you and I both know people who wholesale 150, 200 houses a year, but still all they’re getting is big checks, making big money. But dig deep, what are they doing with the money?

Now, I have no idea. It’s none of my business, but making that money would be all right, but remember they’re giving a minimum of 37% of it to the IRS because they’re in a higher tax brackets. They’re gaining no positive cashflow. They’re gaining no depreciation, no appreciation, no future wealth. So they better do something with that money to create those things, because they’re not doing it in real estate.

In my terms business, I’m doing it while simultaneously getting great big old checks. I ain’t going to do a deal for less than a $20,000 within a few days after I buy the house, put a tenant buyer in the house. But remember they’re nice houses and they’re in the nice neighborhoods, they’re not garbage. Some people listening that have been in the low income rental business have a hard time understanding how I can get somebody to give me 20, 30, 40, $50,000 on a non-refundable deposit. Well, it’s because of the quality of the product that I’m offering them.

So I get terms and I don’t have to pay cash, I don’t have to raise private money and I certainly don’t have to deal with … Contractors sometimes do a little bit of work, but I don’t have to deal with rehabs, long-term holding periods, the banks, the picky buyers and all of that stuff. So I’m in and I’m out, usually don’t touch the house. I get paid quickly and I keep getting paid long term, sometimes 20 plus years. So it’s a different world.

David Richter

Yeah, it is. That’s awesome. Want to switch gears here, maybe just a little bit, because you’ve also built a great team around you as well too. You’ve got a really great team. And I wanted to ask before we talk about the team, but what would you say your superpower, your strength is? Is it putting together the deals or bringing the right people together and building that business? What would you say is your personal, like this is what I like to do and this is what I know I’m good at doing?

Ron Legrand

Well, in real estate it’s putting together the right deals because I have a commercial mastermind group as well and we’re partnering with them on commercial deals.

David Richter

Awesome.

Single family houses I can do in my sleep, it don’t stir up the molecular structure of my brain actually. Done so where I can’t quit counting. 10, 15 years ago at 3000. I don’t know how many I did, I don’t care. But as far as the company, Global Publishing that puts on my seminars all over the country and virtual as well now, and has been doing that for, golly, since 1999, however many years ago, that was. What is that? I don’t know, 22 years, I guess.

David Richter

22, 23 years. Yeah.

Ron Legrand

The key most absolutely is the people. Did I select the best people? No. I selected … train them and work with them and create the environment that they want to work in. I got a note says your internet connection is unstable. So if we go off, I wasn’t mad at you.

David Richter

Okay. No, it’s okay.

Ron Legrand

And that girl right now is Jennifer Shedlin. She’s been with me for 17 some plus, odd years.

David Richter

Wow.

Ron Legrand

She runs the show. She makes almost all of the decisions. Of course, it didn’t start that way. She came in to work in HR and I did that to remove the previous COO because it was more of a roadblock, couldn’t get anything done. It was one of those mindsets that you got to make a decision. When you’re leading, you better be making decisions because if you don’t, then people who want to move faster than you are going to leave.

So really I got to credit it to her to be honest with you because I haven’t picked any of the people in the building. I honestly don’t even know how many there are. I don’t deal with them from day to day. I deal with a handful that have to do with what I do, which is teach, do podcasts, go on the road. And also my marketing team, we meet from time to time. And that’s about all I do because I’ve delegated it, trained them along the way and more importantly, turned them loose and let them do what they do.

And look, you have to build trust. You have to be able to trust the people or you’re not there yet. You’re not going to be ever be able to get out of the way until you trust the people that you put there. And some people have a hard time believing, David, that somebody could actually replace me. I laugh at that. There’s not one damn thing you do in your business that somebody else can’t do it for you, not one, and that includes making the decisions. But you got to get them to that point and then let them make those decisions.

And that’s one thing that Jennifer does well, is that she lets the people contribute, think for themselves, bring stuff to the table, feel like they’re a part of the business because they are, share the stuff with them that most people don’t. We know our people know our numbers. I’m not afraid to share my numbers with my employees. They’re the reason for it. Why not? And it works because now they feel like a family. I’ve got, I don’t know how many people been there over 15 years. I mean, been a whole slew of them in there over 10 years.

David Richter

Wow.

Ron Legrand

Because they’re not going to get a better environment and they’re not going to get better culture and they’re probably not even going to be able to find a better income than what we pay. So that’s the reason that I don’t have to get up and go to work every day.

David Richter

That’s awesome. I love that. Culture and making sure that they’re empowered to make those decisions. I think that’s key. That is huge. Just a couple of final questions here. You talked about your numbers and this being The Profit First REI Podcast, let’s talk about that just a little bit. So your team knows your numbers, you know your numbers. How important would you say to the real estate investors listening is it to know the numbers of the business?

Ron Legrand

I would tell you anybody that’s running a business that don’t know their numbers is not going to be in business very long. I don’t care what business it is. I had restaurants. What if I didn’t know what my food cost was when it goes up or when it goes down or my labor? What if I didn’t know what it cost me to advertise and get a customer? I mean, I can’t believe that companies would run them and basically run them out of their checkbook, which is a big pet peeve of yours, I’m sure.

David Richter

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ron Legrand

Because if there’s money in the checkbook, that don’t mean you’re making money.

David Richter

Right.

Ron Legrand

And if there’s no money in there, that doesn’t mean you’re not making money either. So I teach my people that you better know what your break even is before the month starts, not wait till it’s over and hope you made some money because that’s going to guide the decisions you make along the way. That means you need to know what your expenses are and what your projected income is. And that’s just a couple of the numbers.

One number that, I mean, just boggles my mind, you go out to any brick and mortar business, they have no idea what it costs them to get a customer or what that customer is worth. They have none. Heck, most of them don’t even know who their customers are, they don’t even collect their names and a contact. What an idiotic … How’re you going to communicate with the people that do business with you, if you don’t even collect their information?

Well, you can rest assured when they came into my restaurant, we shamelessly bribed them into filling out the card and putting them into our club. And that club, every week they got emails with specials, and it worked, brought them in. We communicated with them, make them feel like they’re part of the family. And there’s not a business out there that can’t do that, but they don’t. And it’s not really their fault, just nobody teaches them how to do it. So they just go out and do their thing and do their craft and hope they will come and hope they survive. And of course, most of them don’t. Businesses are dropping like flies out there right now. Aren’t they?

David Richter

Yeah. Yeah. They really are.

Ron Legrand

Yeah.

David Richter

So like you’ve said, I don’t think a lot of businesses learn that. They are just flying by the seat of their pants. Where did you learn to make sure that you knew everyone’s name, you can market to them, you can make sure that they felt like a family?

Ron Legrand

Well, because honestly, when I started in real estate, I didn’t do all of that. But when I started information marketing and actually teaching what I knew in 1987, I knew I had to keep track of who my customers were and then I became an expert on marketing over the years and teach it. And spent I don’t know how many millions of dollars I spent on marketing. It doesn’t much matter anymore, but when you’re in the world of marketing, you learn you better know your numbers or you’re going to get killed real quick.

So that came from there, but it’s inherent in every business that I’ve ever touched since. I mean, I’m not going to work with anybody that can’t tell me what their numbers are because that’s all I want to know, what are our numbers based on that particular business. And if they’re going to hang around me, they better know them.

David Richter

Right? Yeah, no kidding. And thankfully I think shows like Shark Tank, if they’ve watched them where stuff is really put forward of like, yeah, you better know your numbers if you’re going to go in front of a real investor and pitch anything. It’s even more important for your business to be able to just sustain that, to be able to go to the next level or whatever you want to do.

Ron Legrand

How many times did you see people going there, they say, “What’s your cost?” “I really don’t know.” “Well, what’s your spread? What’s your margin?” “I’m not sure.” Give me a break. See, that’s the kind of mentality that one better … Very clearly, you’re either going to get trained to do the business before you get into the business or you’re going to get trained after. And trust me, if you don’t get trained before you get in it, you’re probably not going to be in it long. And that’s how most people learn how to run a business. They go through several of them along the way.

David Richter

Exactly. They learn via mistakes, failures, and then, hey, get back on the horse.

Ron Legrand

You think education is expensive? Try ignorance.

David Richter

Right? Yes, exactly. Oh man. Are you a reader? Do you like reading? Do you recommend any books to people as you’re out there?

Ron Legrand

I have a stack of books about six feet high.

David Richter

Okay.

Ron Legrand

Someday I’m going to read them. Sure. In fact, I just got a couple here for Christmas presents and the truth is I am not nearly as avid a reader as I used to be. Something’s really got to be interesting to me to make me read it, but I do like books on tape because I’ll plug them in my car and listen them to them in my car. I can read, I can write as well, and if I write it’s something productive, maybe even a sales letter or something. And when I have the choice … I mean, I’m not saying I don’t read, but I don’t sit around and read books very long because I don’t have the patience for it and there’s always so many other things I could be doing.

David Richter

Right. No, I love that. Take action. The next time, if you’re listening to this now, take action sometimes instead of just sitting down to read and make sure you’re doing something productive. I love that. Producing content versus consuming content.

Ron Legrand

There’s nothing wrong with reading. I mean, I’m certainly not knocking reading.

David Richter

Oh yeah. Yeah. There’s definitely … No, but yeah, I think of that a lot, like is what you’re reading really helping you get to that next level or could you go out and do what it’s talking about right then and go out of there and do that? Awesome. So just a couple last questions. General advice for the real estate investors listening to this, what would you say your best advice to give them right now?

Ron Legrand

I would say be very careful to whom you listen because the whole world is full of people that just don’t have any idea what they’re talking about. And if you’re under the impression that they want you to succeed, quit kidding yourself. I mean, there’s only but a handful of people in your life that want you to succeed and they’re probably under your roof and, or you were birthed from her, one of the two. Everybody else does not want you to succeed. So I don’t care what they say. Think about it, do you want your friends and relatives to succeed and leave you down here wallowing around trying to get by? Internally, you do not. So you should know that and very carefully weed out the stuff that people come at you with.

I mean, look, we’re in a hot market right now, everybody knows that. And of course that gives them a really good excuse for saying, well, this term stuff won’t work in this hot market. Baloney, it absolutely works in this hot market. In fact, we just did a four day event here a couple weeks ago, we did 19 deals for students on terms calling sellers in a live event, their leads that they brought to class. 19 deals and literally that’s two days of three people calling those leads. 19 terms deals all over the country. But it don’t work here. I’ve never done a live event where we did that where we didn’t do deals.

Okay, so you got to call some. My virtual assistants do all the hard work making these closing calls. Asking them three questions is all we do. It takes two, three minutes per call. But every deal is worth 20,000 plus. So compare that to what people do for 20 grand plus and you’ll see this business is hard to beat. Okay, you got to learn a few things, but you got to hang in here. You got to have some grit. Geez, people just want to quit the first time they hit a little old roadblock. What are you going to do that don’t have roadblocks? I don’t know what it is. You want roadblocks, go buy a restaurant. You’ll understand how easy this business is, I’ll tell you that right now.

So got to hang in there. You got to get the proper education. And if you think it’s expensive, it’s absolutely dirt cheap. And I don’t care if you have to go through 2, 3, 4, 5 trainers to get the one that they helps you the most, I get that all the time. Okay, people come to me, rarely do I have somebody come to me that hadn’t been to somebody else first. Like everything else in the world, some you can work with, some you can’t. Some give you information you can work with, some don’t. And I’m not the cure all to everybody, but I can tell you that most of the people out there teaching right now are my students or their students that I’ve taught them real estate and then taught to train on real estate.

David Richter

Right, yeah.

Ron Legrand

You need to go get your education from people that are qualified to render it. And that should probably take a little time and effort on your part to check that out before you go believing all the hype and all the fancy videos. It’s easy to make the fancy videos. It’s not hard to learn what I know over a 40 year period, because you just can’t. You just can’t do it in a few years.

But whether it’s me or whether it’s somebody else pay for the quality education, do not try to get it on your own. It’s going to cost you many, many times more than what anybody charges you for it, regardless of what that number is. And be willing to take and listen, and take good quality advice and then implement it.

And of course the big thing is implementation. You can go to seminars, sit in seminars until your butt hurts, till your ears bleed and your eyes are crossed and that won’t do a bit of good until you come out of there and implement it. That’s what I did on my very first seminar, David, I implemented immediately and I got that first check. I don’t know where I would have been if I didn’t. I’d probably quit like everybody else.

David Richter

Right. Well, I’m glad you didn’t and think there’s thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands that have listened to you and done what you have recommended and turned their life around. So I’m really glad you didn’t. Now, the last question here. You’ve provided a ton of value here, like you always do. What are you working on right now? What seminars are coming up? What webinars? What are you doing, working on now?

Ron Legrand

Well, here I can give all your listeners a place to go to learn the terms business because I went through it step by step, online. It’s ronlegrand.com/terms. Spell my name right. It’s L-E-G-R-A-N-D, not L-A, there’s no E on the end. ronlegrand.com/terms. And there’s a whole hour and I think 15 minute online training on that. And I take you right on through that from beginning to end. You’ll see where the money’s made in terms and that should excite you. If it don’t excite you, play it again, because you slept through half of it.

I’m doing commercial projects with my commercial mastermind group, got several of those working right now. I want more. Then I’m always looking for single family house deals with our students. I partner with them if they need the money for those who are in our mentoring program. And then we’re working on growing Global Publishing this coming year, much bigger than it was in the past.

And then I’ve got a whole bunch of classic cars at my house that I work on to keep me busy. I don’t have anything to do much. And I work on them at night and basically, it ain’t for money. Trust me, it ain’t for the money. But I buy a few, sell one now and then, and I just enjoy driving them. All of us old people like old things.

David Richter

That’s awesome. And there you go, that’s how you can get a hold of him, get that terms training, get your life turned around. Wherever you are right now, make sure you can go out there, listen to Ron’s stuff. He’s done this, helped so many people. So really appreciative of him coming on, giving his time, making sure that you as a listener can get that and get in there, implement, like he said at the end. Implement, implement, that’s really what separates the people with excuses, from the people who go out there and blow through those excuses as well too. So make sure you follow that advice. Ron-

Ron Legrand

And-

David Richter

Yeah, go ahead.

Ron Legrand

One thing before we go. When you do this and you actually get your first or your next check, you got to send me a testimonial letter. It is required. It’s in federal law, passed in early 2018. So you must send me a testimonial. I’ll put you on our wall in our building. We’ve got testimonials all over the building. I mean, they’re on our walls. They take the place of wallpaper.

David Richter

Nice.

Ron Legrand

So I would love to add you to it. And it’s been my pleasure to be here, David. It’s been fun working with you and I hope we’ve done something to increase the value of the lives that you touch.

David Richter

Yeah. You really have today and would love to continue that. You can find more of these episodes at simplecfo.wpengine.com, and the book Profit First for Real Estate Investing. But this has been another amazing episode. Thank you so much again, Ron.

Ron Legrand

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode valuable, could you do me a quick favor? Could you give us an honest rating within iTunes. And be honest, you could say whether you liked it or not. And obviously with iTunes, the more reviews and ratings we have, the better it is for other people that are searching for a profit first in a podcast. So we’d love to be ranked on there and that’s thanks to your help. So we would really appreciate that if you would like to go give us a rating.

Also, if you’re looking to connect with us further, I would highly recommend checking out our Facebook group, Profit First for Real Estate Investors. And that’s literally what it’s called. So you can type in Profit First for Real Estate Investors and you’ll be able to find our Facebook group right there. So come join active real estate investors who are supporting each other and growing their businesses and profits together. That’s what that group is all about. The links should be in the description below.

And if you’re interested in working with us and implementing profit first in your real estate business, we offer coaching and guidance. So if you want to work with someone who’s actually Profit First certified and who works right now currently with real estate businesses, you can actually go start your application process by going to simplecfo.wpengine.com/apply, or just go right to simplecfo.wpengine.com and there’s an apply button right on there, if you want to actually start your Profit First journey with someone who can actually walk you through those step by step and help you know and grow your cashflow.

Thanks again for joining us for another episode of The Profit First REI Podcast. See you next episode.

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Title: “Profit First Strategies with Jay Conner: The Power of Private Money”

Episode: 242

There are 15 reasons to love about borrowing private money over traditional money. One of them is making your own rules for your private money.

In this episode of Profit First for REI podcast, Jay Conner, a nationally renowned real estate investor and the king of private money. He talks about how private money works.

Jay helps you get your money from private lenders and will share with you the mindset that will get you money in the door without you ever having to worry about it.

Listen and enjoy the show!

Key Takeaways:

[01:01] Introducing Jay Conner

[05:00] Introduction to private money

[08:30] The Great News Phone Call

[11:23] Why don’t you use your own money?

[13:18] Maintaining relationships with private lenders

[15:40] Private money vs traditional money

[22:05] Things that make them want to recommend you

[25:18] Advice for real estate investors

[29:01] Connect with Jay Conner

Quotes:

[07:34] “If you are talking about private money and raising private money with an individual and you got a deal for them to fund, you already sounded desperate.”

[12:07] “If you want to scale your business, private money is the way to go.”

[16:05] “In this world of private money, we make the rules. We set the interest rate, we sent the length and all of that.”

Connect with Jay:

Website: https://www.jayconner.com/book-details/

Tired of living deal to deal?

If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David

Transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

I got 15 reasons I love private money over traditional money. I won’t share all 15, but the biggest one is it puts you in the driver’s seat. The traditional way to borrow money is you go to the bank and get on your hands and knees and you’re begging and chasing. Well, they are making the rules right? Like the lender is making the rules. But in this world of private money, we make the rules, we set the interest rate, we set the length of the note and all that.

Speaker 2 (00:34):

If you’re a real estate investor who’s sick and tired of living deal to deal, then welcome home. Hear from everyday real estate investors just like you, and discover how they’ve completely transformed their business by taking a profit First approach. This is the profit first for REI podcast, where we believe revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. It’s time to start making profit a habit in your business. So here’s your host, David Richter.

Speaker 3 (01:01):

We have Jay Connor back on the podcast. I love Jay Connor. He helps you get your money, the money from private lenders and that whole framework and process, but he does it from a passion and a place of heart. And servant Teachership. I feel like he goes out there and is a servant teacher of how private money works. Listen to this episode. He gives the magic question he tells about desperation and private lending, and I thought his perspective was so good, and then ultimately the mindset that will get you money in the door without you ever having to worry about it. So listen to this episode. Can’t wait for you to get value from it. Thank you for being a listener of the Profit First. RII podcast. Have a great episode. Hey, here’s the profit first RI podcast. Really excited to have Jay Connor back because he’s the came of private money. And this is where I love to go into this topic because I don’t care what kind of business you’re in, you probably need help with this, but especially if you’re in the real estate world, this comes up all the time at every event I’m at with every conversation I have. So we’re having the cane here talk about private money today. So Jay, thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 1 (02:07):

Hey David, thank you so much for having me come on here to talk about my most favorite topic. Of course, that being private money. And why is that? Because private money’s had a bigger impact on our real estate investing business than any other strategy that we’ve implemented in our business.

Speaker 3 (02:24):

Why did you go down that road though? I mean, you teach this all the time. You’re helping a ton of people, like anyone I’ve ever talked to that works with you is like he taught me how to do and I got money and it actually works. So I mean, how did you even go down that road where it made a difference on you and then you wanted to get it to others?

Speaker 1 (02:43):

Well, I actually backed into it. I didn’t do it on purpose. So here’s what happened. So my wife, Carol, joy and I, we’ve been investing in real estate, single family houses, other real estate full time here in eastern North Carolina since 2003. And here’s what happened. From 2003 until 2009, David, all I knew to do in my real estate investing business was rely on the local banks to fund my deals. I mean, all I knew to do was go to the bank, get on my hands and knees, put my hand underneath my chin, raise my skirt up so they could look at all my personal financial statements and stuff and actually beg to get my deals funded. That’s all I knew to do. And so I had a big wake up call in January of 2009 after being in this business here in Eastern North Carolina. I called up my banker.

(03:38):

I told him about these two deals I had under contract in Newport, these two single family houses. And David, I learned like that over the telephone that my line of credit had been shut down with no notice. My banker, his name was Steve, and the bank was bb and t at the time. I said, Steve, what in the world are you telling me? My line of credit is shut down. I got two deals under contract. You gave me no notice. Why is the bank closing my line of credit? He said, Jay, don’t. There’s a global financial crisis going on right now. I said, no, but now you just gave me a global financial crisis. Financial crisis, yeah, I ain’t got no way to fund my deals. And I got ’em under contract. So I hung up the phone and here’s what happened, David. I sat here and I asked myself a very important question.

(04:27):

And so I’m going to share this question with your audience right now. This question I’m going to share with you will help you solve any problem you’ve got. I don’t care if it’s business, financial, career, health, relationships. I don’t care what your problem is. By the way, David, these people going around and saying, any problem, you got some opportunity I want to throw up. I didn’t have no opportunity. I had a problem of not funding my deal. So here’s the question I asked myself. The question I asked myself was, Jay, who do you know that can help you with your problem? And when I asked myself that question, I immediately thought of my good friend Jeff, who lived in Greensboro, North Carolina at the time, and he was investing in real estate. And so I called him up and I told him what happened. And he said, well, Jay, welcome to the club.

(05:18):

I said, what club? He said, the club of the bank shutting you down and losing amount of credit. They shut me down last week. I said, well, how are you funding your deals, Jeff? He says, well, have you ever heard of private money? And I hadn’t. So Jeff told me about private money. He told me about self-directed IRAs and how people can use their retirement accounts and funds that they currently have and move them over to a self-directed IRA company and then loan that money out to us real estate investors, either tax deferred or tax free depending on the type of account they’ve got. Well, that just opened up my whole world. I’d never heard of that. And so what did I do? How did raise $2,150,000 in less than 90 days after being cut off from the bank? Well, here’s what I did, and here’s the secret sauce I put on my teacher hat.

(06:10):

So I put on my teacher cap, which is my private money teacher cap, and I just started teaching people in my own network what private money is, how they can earn high rates of returns safely and securely. And what’s interesting, Carol, joy and I, we got 47 private lenders right now. Not one of them had ever heard of private money and private lending. Not one of them had ever heard of self-directed IRA companies and what a third party custodian is. That’s important by the way, to establish a relationship with a self-directed IRA company because over half of my private lenders are using their retirement funds. And if I didn’t have that relationship to introduce them to move their retirement funds over, I’d be missing out on over half of my private money. So how did I go about raising all this money when I was cut off from the banks?

(07:02):

I led with a servant’s heart. I led with education. And here’s a really, really important point. I separated the activity. I separated the conversations of telling people what private money is and how they can earn high rates of return safely and securely and having a deal for them to fund. You see, desperation has got a smell to it. And when you talk about is that not true, David? Yeah, very true. So if you’re talking about private money and raising private money with an individual and you got a deal for them to fund, you’re already sounding desperate and you’re not even trying to sound desperate. So we don’t talk about deals and when we’re first exposing somebody to how they can earn high rates of return, we talk about private money. So how do we separate those conversations? Well, when someone has told me that they’ve got, let’s say they’ve got $150,000 they want to invest and get high rates of return conservatively, I’ll say, great, I’ll put your money to work for you just as soon as possible.

(08:11):

I don’t talk about a deal upfront. If they’ve got retirement funds that they want to get higher rates of return on, I’ll introduce ’em to the self-directed IRA company that I recommend. They’ll get their funds moved over. And so here’s what happens and here’s the magic sauce, David, I give ’em and I call ’em up with what I call the great news phone call. What in the world is the great news phone call? Well, the great news phone call is not a pitch. I’ve never pitched a deal in my life ever since I started raising private money in 2009. I pick up my handset with my cord attached to it here in North Carolina and I call some of your, don’t even know what that is. And let’s say, David, let’s say you’re one of my private lenders. So I’ll put my phone right up here and you’ll answer the phone and we’ll have a little chitchat and I’ll say, Dave, I got great news for you.

(09:06):

I can now put your money to work. I got a house in Newport with an after repaired value of $200,000. The funding requires 150. Closing is next Tuesday. You’ll need to have your funds wired to my real estate attorney next Monday. I’m going to have my real estate attorney email you the wiring instructions end of conversation. Notice I didn’t ask If you want to fund the deal, of course you want to fund the deal. You’ve been waiting for the phone call. I’ve told you the program. I’ve taught you the program, you know what kind of rate you get, what the maximum loan to value is, the program that I’ve taught you. And so now you’re waiting for the good news phone call, which I just gave you. And in addition to that, if you as my private lender, if you’ve moved your retirement funds over to a self-directed IRA company, you ain’t earning any money until I put your money to work.

(10:04):

You moved it at my recommendation. Now I’m ethically bound to put your money to work. You ain’t earning any money until you actually put her to work. So again, we separate conversations, we leave with a servant’s heart, we educate, and by the way, David, these people going around saying don’t just get the deal under contract. The money is show up. I want to throw up where is the money going to show up? Is it just going to rain out of clouds or something? No, get the money lined up and you can get it lined up fast. Just like me. There’s always going to be deals.

Speaker 3 (10:38):

Yeah. Oh man, that’s really good stuff. I love how you went down that road and it helped you personally. Now you’re just teaching a lot of people. I love that magic question. Who do you know that can help me with my problem? It’s that who, it’s not always the how. It’s the who did I know, and in that point it really helped you. I also run into a lot of times, I don’t know if you see this, where there’s someone who’s like, I could save a couple interest points if I just use my own money versus a private lender’s funds. What are your thoughts on that of always taking down your own deals versus going out there and putting the work into getting a private lender?

Speaker 1 (11:17):

Sure, I get that question all the time. They say, Jay, you making all that money? Why don’t you use your own money to invest in real estate? Why are you still borrowing private money? Well, here’s the answer. If you’re just going to do one deal, that’s a great use of your money. That’s a fantastic use of your money. But do you want to scale your business? I mean, right now we’ve got seven different projects going on, single family houses simultaneously. Well, I don’t want my money buried in seven houses or projects simultaneously, which here in our local market can easily be over 3 million with the prices of our homes. So if you want to scale and really, I mean most people have got a bottom of the bucket in their checkbook. So if you want to scale your business, then private money is the way to go. Another answer to that question is, do I want to pay myself 8% or do I want to use my money for something else,

Speaker 3 (12:22):

Right? Yep.

Speaker 1 (12:24):

So that’s a couple of answers to why I use private lending and why I’m still using 47 private lenders,

Speaker 3 (12:33):

Which is great. I love what you said. If you want to scale, it can run out of cash real quick. If you just keep using your own money where a lot of people have to choose between, okay, paying some percentage points or sleeping at night, and it’s like, I think I like your option a whole lot better, especially if you’re looking to grow. But I like how you said that one deal. That’s okay, but if you are looking to be a real estate investor, this is something you’re going to have to go down that road. Now, last time I asked you some questions about the private lending process. I don’t think I asked this one though, is how do you maintain a relationship with that many private lenders? You’ve got 47 people in your network that you call up with the good news call. So is it like how do you maintain a relationship with all those people?

Speaker 1 (13:22):

I mail ’em checks.

Speaker 3 (13:25):

I love that. That’s a great answer. Oh man. No better way to keep a relationship there.

Speaker 1 (13:33):

I mean, they love getting money in the mail, right? Yeah. They love mailbox money, so I mail ’em checks.

Speaker 3 (13:41):

So you mail ’em checks. So you’ve built a good enough business where you can keep 47 lenders busy and their money active.

Speaker 1 (13:50):

Well, to be totally transparent, I mean, it is a juggling act to tell you the truth. I mean, there’s more money than there is deals.

Speaker 3 (14:00):

Yep.

Speaker 1 (14:01):

There’s more money than there is deals. And so we got 47 private lenders. Some of them have got $30,000 with us, some of ’em have got a million dollars with us. I can’t buy a house for 30,000, but I can use 30,000 for rehab money. You can use private money, borrow private money in a junior position, you’ve got to disclose that. But I can put private money in a junior lien. But what comes into play there is what we call total loan to value. So I’m not going to be borrowing more than 75% of the after repaired value. I didn’t say the purchase price 75% of the after repaired value. But let’s say back to that example that we just talked about, David, where if I’ve got a after repaired value on a home of 200,000 for easy figuring, I can borrow up to 150,000. That’s 75% of the after repaired value. But if I buy it for a hundred thousand, which I do all the time, 50% of the after repaired value, I can have a private lender in first position at a hundred grand. I could have another private lender in second position at 50 grand. So add a hundred to the 50, now one 50 divided by 200,000 after repaired value, I got a total loan to value of still 75%.

Speaker 3 (15:27):

Yeah, I love that. And it seems like private money gives you flexibility and

Speaker 1 (15:32):

Options. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (15:34):

Yeah, that makes sense. A hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (15:37):

Oh, absolutely. Flexibility is where it’s all at. I got 15 reasons. I love private money over traditional money. I won’t share all 15, but the biggest one is it puts you in the driver’s seat. The traditional way to borrow money is you go to the bank and get on your hands and knees and you’re begging and chasing, well, they are making the rules, right? The lender is making the rules. But in this world of private money, we make the rules, we set the interest rate, we set the length of the node and all that.

Speaker 3 (16:14):

I love that. Flexibility is the ultimate play in real estate. You want to have flexibility and you want to be able to have that. So I love what you teach. Who is the person that you’re trying to teach out there? Is it the person that’s done one deal a thousand deals? Who are you trying to help the most with your business?

Speaker 1 (16:33):

Yeah, that’s interesting. At my live events, which is called the private money conference, and my live events, we have about 60% or so have already done deals. They’ve already done deals. They want to scale their business. They are real estate investors wanting to scale their business, and about 40% are looking to get their very first deal. So I’m helping everybody. I mean Stu and Harriet Baldwin from New York State, they enrolled and joined my mastermind membership community and they already had a portfolio of a hundred houses. They’d already raised over $2 million in private money, but they wanted to see how I went about it. Well, just one webinar that I recorded with them brought in 1.2 million in additional private private money. So I’ve worked with real estate investors that are brand new and those that are also seasoned to help them get more private money ready to go for their business.

Speaker 3 (17:33):

I love that. It sounds like a lot of people out there need private money, and even if you’re just getting started, if you don’t have the funds to do that first deal, like you mentioned, you do that first deal, that one deal at a time, it might be okay, but this sounds like a great spot where if you’re getting into it or if you’ve got lots of stuff going on, this could be another way to make sure your company can keep running without what you ran into with the banks back in 2007, eight or oh nine. Would you say that’s true as well?

Speaker 1 (18:04):

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve met very, very few people. In fact, I can’t even think of one. I haven’t met any real estate investor that says, I got enough money.

Speaker 3 (18:20):

Yeah, me either.

Speaker 1 (18:22):

I can’t use any more private money. However, David, you are looking at one right now. I got about almost $2 million right now, what I call sitting on the shelf waiting to be deployed. And I tell you what, I’ve had new private lenders come into my world that want to invest and just to prove to them that I can perform. I’ll take the new private lender’s money and pay off a current private lender, refinance the deal so I can get their money to work for ’em, right?

Speaker 3 (18:53):

Ah, yep, that makes sense. I like that. As you grow and scale, you might run into that issue and you make one lender a little bit happy. I mean, at least they’re getting paid off, but then they probably come back to you and say, I want you to put my money to work again. Do you have that come up a lot?

Speaker 1 (19:12):

Quite frankly, when I pay ’em off, they’re not happy.

Speaker 3 (19:17):

That’s why I said just a little happy, maybe a little bit.

Speaker 1 (19:20):

But when I pay ’em off, they’re not making any money on that money. In fact, with a new private lender, I’ll get ready to pay ’em off cashing out on a deal and I’ll call ’em up and say, Hey, just want you to know that you’re going to have a check coming in the mail from a real estate attorney’s trust account. We’re paying off this house. And they’ll say, Jay, can’t you just keep the money? And I’ll go, no, I can’t keep the money unless I’ve got your money secured by a property because we do not borrow unsecured funds. Now, here’s maybe a little advanced strategy for some folks, but I do substitutions of collateral or loan modifications all the time. If it’s a small amount of money that a private lender’s invested 30, 40, $50,000, and we use it for rehabbing a property. So when I’ve got another property I’m getting ready to start on, I’ll substitute the collateral and keep that 30 or $50,000 note in play. So they keep earning money on that money, but we will substitute the collateral just to a different project that we’re moving to.

Speaker 3 (20:25):

That’s awesome. So then sounds like you have a good problem. It’s like, I want that. Well, I think a lot of real estate investors would rather the problem, I have too much money versus I’ve got these deals and I can’t fund them. So I really like how you teach people that and where it could snowball into this, where it’s like, I’ve got 47 private lenders, I’ve got to go out there and get the deals for ’em. Absolutely. And I really like that. And

Speaker 1 (20:50):

For goodness sakes, you don’t start out with 47 private lenders. I started out with one, right? I started out with one and then that quickly became two and three and four and five because private lenders tell other people what’s going on. So I haven’t actively attracted private money for years because our current private lenders just keep sending us people. In fact, day before yesterday, day before yesterday, I got a phone call from the mother of a good friend of mine, his name’s Craig, lives in Newburg, North Carolina. Craig had told his mother about this investment thing that I got going on and she had never heard of it, which is really funny. I’ve been doing it now private money since 2009. So she calls me up and she says, Hey, my son’s been telling me about this investment thing you got going on. Tell me about it. So word of mouth gets around very, very quickly when you start doing business with private lenders the way I do.

Speaker 3 (21:53):

Yeah, I like that a lot. So in order to get people to talk like that, what are the biggest things that you do for your current private lenders that makes them want to recommend you?

Speaker 1 (22:07):

Well pay ’em on time.

Speaker 3 (22:08):

There you go. That’s a big one. Sounds like that would be a really great place to start.

Speaker 1 (22:12):

Pay ’em on time. But I also have three times a year I put on a party for our private lenders at the Dunes Club. So we have three times a year a VIP reception over at the Dunes Club on the beach, and it’s just an evening of private lenders getting together and we have a good old time and I feed them and give them all the soft shell crabs they want, and I tell ’em to bring their friends with them.

Speaker 3 (22:42):

Yeah, that’s awesome. So number one though, that anyone can do at any stage is pay people on time. So actually pay, would you say, what about communication? I hear that come up sometimes too. How do you do a good job on the communication with your private lenders as well?

Speaker 1 (23:03):

Well, it must be good enough. They never go away,

Speaker 3 (23:06):

Right? Yeah, that’s the big things I hear.

Speaker 1 (23:10):

Here’s one thing I have not delegated as far as communication. I personally, I mean my relationships with my private lenders are very, very important. So I personally pick up the phone, pick up the phone, and call my private lenders when I have got a deal for them to fund. I do not delegate that out. I could

(23:37):

Delegate that out, but I don’t, when I got a deal for them to fund, I’m the person on the phone keeping that relationship When I’m getting ready to pay them off. I don’t have a check just show up in the mail. Of course they got to sign a payoff instruction letter if a different closing agent is closing it for a buyer. But before any of that happens, I personally call ’em up and I tell ’em that we’ve got that property sold. We’re getting ready to pay you off. Or I’ll call ’em up and I’ll say, Hey, we’re getting ready to pay this property off, but I will keep your note open so you can keep earning money. I’m just going to substitute the collateral. We got some documents we’re going to email to you for you to sign and send back the communication. I’m personally involved in putting their money to work and letting them know when we’re cashing out and where they are on the deal.

Speaker 3 (24:31):

That’s awesome. Then since it’s the profit first I podcast here, I love this concept of the private money because you need your cash in your accounts. So to be able to run your business, do those things, and then setting up a separate account just for your private money lenders, so it makes it easier to do what Jay just told you to pay them back, to pay them back on time to be in good communication with them. So now this has been really good. Do you have any other advice before I ask you? How could they work with you? How can they get in touch with, because I know this is something that is needed desperately, that I send people your way all the time. I know I trust you to help people, but any other last minute advice here that you would give to the real estate investors listening to the podcast?

Speaker 1 (25:18):

Sure. I appreciate you asking that question. It’s going to be very hard to own a lot of real estate

(25:26):

Until you own the real estate between your ears. So what do I mean by that? People ask me, how do I start? How do I start raising money? I can tell you how you start raising private money. You get your heart right, you get your mindset right. So what do I mean by that? Well, what do you do? You lead with a servant’s heart, you lead with education, you put your private lender money hat on, you private lender, teacher hat on, and you leave with education, don’t pitch deals, and you really, really are concerned about the other person and realize, part of this mindset is realize you’ve got an opportunity to change people’s lives, right?

Speaker 3 (26:11):

That’s so good.

Speaker 1 (26:13):

We’ve got countless people that are particularly in their retirement years, that have thanked me and Carol Joy for making a difference in their retirement years to where they can, I mean, they don’t want to touch their principal. They want to live off of their principal investment. So they’ve been able to travel, go see grandkids, do all this stuff that they couldn’t do otherwise until they got involved in our program. So just know that you’ve got a way to really make an impact on other people’s lives. And lemme tell you another part of mindset. It ain’t about reaping. It’s not about reaping. It’s all about sowing. It’s all about sowing. I can’t be reaping all that private money and deals until I have sown and given and led with value first. So how you sow is how you’re going to reap.

Speaker 3 (27:08):

Yeah. Oh man, this is so good. I’m glad I asked that question because I hear the passion in your voice and I hear that you really care about the people you work with, the people that have private money lenders out there, you care about that relationship. I love what you said. Get your heart right, get your head right. I also think, like you said too, that if they don’t have that desperation has a smell. So if you’re out there, you’re desperate and you’re just going out there, then you won’t have people like you have that want to keep coming back, that want to continuously invest in you. So that was, I think, the best advice that you could give right there. Get it between your ears and get your heart right. I absolutely love that. And just to recap too, I love your magic question.

(27:55):

Who do you know that can help me with my problem? Then one day you’re going to wake up and you’re going to be like Jay, and you’re going to be helping other people with their problem. I’ve got money. I want to put it somewhere, and you’re the able to get them to where they can be. Desperation has a smell. I love that. And then honestly, I love that pivot. You are like, it’s not about the reaping, it’s not about the interest that I’m making or the profit I’m making for the deal. It’s more about sowing those seeds and ultimately you’re changing lives. That’s why you get private money, and it’s like that interest that you’re paying them is twofold. It’s like you get to sleep at night, you’re not using all your money and you’re getting to help someone else get a return that they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else or in someone that they trust as well too, and that’s a little bit more tangible than the stock markets or all this other Bitcoin, some of that stuff that’s floating around out there. So this has been awesome. So how do people then, Jay, take that next step with you? Do you have a book? You talked about an event. What can people do?

Speaker 1 (29:01):

Absolutely. Well for your audience, David, I’ve got two gifts. First of all, I finished writing my book Where to Get the Money. Now, this is not a ebook. This is a book book that we actually send in the mail Autographic where to get the money. Now the subtitle is How and Where to Get Money for Your Real Estate Deals Without Relying on Hard Money Lenders or Traditional Lenders. It’ll walk you through step by step how to get all the private money you would want. Very, very easy to read. It’s $20 on Amazon, but you can get it for free. Being David’s audience, just cover shipping. You can go to www dot j Connor, J-A-Y-C-O-N-N-E r.com/book. So I’m an er, not an or. So that’s j Connor, J-A-Y-C-O-N-N-E r.com/book, and we’ll three day priority mail it out to you. Now, in addition to that, I’ve got an upcoming $3,000 per ticket live event right around the corner. But for your audience, Dave, I’m going to let everybody come for free with a measly $97 registration fee. This private money event. You can check it out at www.theprivatemoneyconference.com. The private money conference.com. That’s coming up right around the corner in June. Get on over there. Registrations are open, and I’d love to meet you in person at the private money conference.com.

Speaker 3 (30:31):

Awesome. I’m excited about that too. I love what you’re doing and you’re solving a big need that we hear all the time. Just like all people always needing to sharpen their acts when it comes to private money, you graciously have also invited me there to speak about Profit First. So I’m excited to get to tell people about that so they can get more private money and be more confident and not be desperate when they go and ask for people. So I’m really excited about that as well. So make sure we’re going to put those links there, but make sure either get his book or go to that event. I cannot endorse Jay Moore because I know how many people he helps, but then he also has the heart. You heard it right here. That’s how he wants to help you too. It’s very much a heart and a mission and a passion for him.

(31:13):

So Jay, thank you for coming on, for sharing your wisdom, your knowledge today. If you are listening to this episode and you feel stuck like, what the heck is going on? Where is my money? I don’t know what to do. I’m a little bit nervous to go out there and get private money. I can’t keep my own house in order. That’s where you could go to simple cfo.com where we can help you walk you through that process. We’ll link you up to Jay too. If you need private money or need to learn about private money, this is who we recommend. I recommend Jay to many people, so make sure that if you need that help you go to simple cfo.com. But Jay, again, thank you for being on the show and sharing your wisdom here today.

Speaker 1 (31:51):

David, thank you so much for having me. God bless you.

Speaker 2 (31:54):

This episode of the Profit First for REI podcast is over, but there are plenty more where that came from. Are you ready to learn how David and his team can help implement the Profit First system in your business? Schedule a discovery call@simplecfo.com right now. We’ll see you next time on The Profit First for REI podcast with David Richter.

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