Mindset Shifts for Financial Liberation: Real Estate Success Stories

October 24, 2023

Title: “Mindset Shifts for Financial Liberation: Real Estate Success Stories”

Episode: 203

“I don’t want to be a slave to a salary or wage. I don’t want to be trapped. I want to be free from all of that.”

In this episode of Profit First for REI podcast, we have Tom Zeeb. He is an author, national speaker, trainer, and real estate entrepreneur who once wanted to break free from his 9-to-5 job.

From having six figures in debt, Tom now works with other real estate investors to achieve their goal of financial freedom by getting their businesses built correctly.

Listen as we share how to do profitable deals. Enjoy the show!

Key Takeaways:

[01:04] Introducing Tom Zeeb

[02:45] Living beyond his means

[09:26] Having a network of people in his journey

[12:19] Tom’s first successful deal

[19:49] Being financially and budget-conscious

[25:03] The multi-exit strategy approach

[31:28] Connect with Tom Zeeb

Quotes:

[07:40] “I should have found a mentor or at least found a system of how-to that I can follow and make things happen.”

[12:30] “The first deal is awesome… but the second deal is more important.”

[21:19] “Everyone thinks they are planning ahead but their action just living moment to moment, day to day.”

Connect with Tom:

Website: https://www.tomzeeb.com/

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 wanted what I wanted, and that was primarily a lifestyle. And I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I wanted to do this. I wanted to be on my own. I didn’t want to have to answer to a boss. I didn’t want to be a slave to a salary or a wage. I didn’t want to be trapped. I wanted to be free from all of that and other people that were expressing their fears to me about my future, but they were coming at it out of that point of fear because they could never see themselves doing it. And you know what? That’s fine. Maybe they never could. The thing is, I’m different and I’m imagining a lot of your listeners are different. They know they could be different than everybody else and go off on their own and do it their way.

Speaker 2 (00:37):

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 R e I 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 (01:04):

We have national speaker and trainer and real estate investor, Tom Zeon today, which this was an amazing episode of which I do these intros after the fact. And this one, going from a dark place being six figures in debt to having some come to Jesus moments in the real estate world and taking some crazy things at the beginning and turning them these lemons into lemonade down the road. And then I know if you listen to this, can save you a lot of hurt and heartache points you in the right direction. And he gives you some of the best money mindsets I’ve heard just to be able to say, Hey, no more. I don’t want to live. Deal to deal. Gives you some great tips. Hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Hey everyone, it is David Richter, profit First I podcast here with Tom Zeeb. I’m super excited about this. I got introduced to him from my network and that usually means that those people are incredible because I love my network and the people in it and they trust and other people, and I want to borrow that trust. And Tom, though, I’ve known Tom just because of word of mouth too. I’ve heard him and speak and other places and he helps a ton of people. So Tom, thank you so much for being on the Profit First Show today.

Speaker 1 (02:14):

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, David.

Speaker 3 (02:15):

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I wanted to go right into it because, okay, looking at your bio, looks like there was this big life altering event that happened that got you out of nine to five, and I think starting with the bang, there might be a good place to start just to get people to know who you are. Why’d you get into real estate? Why are you teaching people? What got you all kicked off?

Speaker 1 (02:37):

Yeah, it was a combination of a bunch of unpleasant events, probably most of them my own doing. The first one was I had sunk horribly in the debt. I was 113 grand in the hall from college loans and credit cards and more credit cards and more credit cards. And I was living way my means, which there’s a certain point you sit there and realize how do I get out of this? So since I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of it and my job, I just escaped for a little bit, took a big old vacation, went on a big adventure trip with my buddies, and we went to India and went whitewater rafting, and I couldn’t stay on the raft in a class five wrap. It hit a really rough wrap, but I went flying. I was sucked on the water, no real time to breather, catch my breath, and instead of being totally scared about the possibilities of what might happen, I found myself getting angry, but not angry at the situation, angry, not at that current situation, get angry at my overall situation.

Speaker 3 (03:37):

All

Speaker 1 (03:38):

I had done was get into financial trouble. All I had done was keep digging a hole, and now my solution was to escape rather than work on the problem. So I swo to myself that I get out of this thing is going to be different. It was going to be a lot different. But I got back home, David, nothing was different. I still had all the debt now I had more

Speaker 3 (03:57):

Cost

Speaker 1 (03:57):

Of the trip. I still had the job. I still wasn’t going to get $113,000 raise. It was like I had no way out and I didn’t know what to do. And then that’s when my eyes became opened to real estate investing because somebody handed me a copy of Robert Kiyosaki’s book, the famous Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Speaker 3 (04:14):

Okay, so that’s how it got kicked off. Then you read that book and then was that it was that game over from there and you just went down that path? Or did it scare you to death and be like, oh, this is it, but I don’t know if I want to do it? What were the feelings after you read Rich Dad? Poor Dad?

Speaker 1 (04:28):

Yeah, if only had been that easy. My feelings were of, I finally had a path forward and a way out. All the frustrations I felt when I was drowning. I now had an answer for them. I didn’t have an answer to those questions before. The thing is though, look, I adore Robert Kazaki. I adore that book, but it gives you a rough idea of maybe what you should be doing with no details. So all I knew was, hey, go buy cash flowing real estate. I didn’t even own my own house. So I went and bought a six unit building. I partnered up with my sister who was in the same shape, bought a six unit building in New York City, in Brooklyn, New York, and I wound up with six professional tenants who knew how to manipulate the system and play the game and not pay us a penny. Now I was drowning even deeper.

Speaker 3 (05:15):

You now, okay, there’s some to unpack there too. So you went out, you read Rich Dad poured it. From the time you read Rich Dad to buying that six unit, how much time had elapsed there? When did you take action? Was it within the first year or how quick did you Oh,

Speaker 1 (05:32):

Well, within the first year, I want to say the four to five month range. I mean, he got me fired up. I was all sparked up, ready to go. I had to make a change. And it was, yeah, maybe five-ish months I was looking and then locked this place down and woo-hoo. Oh, talk about a wild ride.

Speaker 3 (05:49):

Yeah. So talk about that then. So then you actually buy it. You say, I’m going to be different. I’m going to buy into the Rich Dad port ad I’m going to do it. And then you get six professional tenants that know how to not pay. So how did that affect your next real estate investing journey?

Speaker 1 (06:06):

Well, the whole thing was miserable at the time, right? Because now I’ve got a mortgage, I’ve got all this heating oil and a very cold winter. I’ve got all these repairs and I’ve got all these people that aren’t paying now, where’s that money going to come from? So I had made a bad situation worse or I’d made a horrendous situation, absolutely ridiculously horrendous. But luckily during that time, I had discovered my local Real Estate Investors association, and I walked into a room full of real people doing real deals, like real things happening. It wasn’t just book knowledge anymore. It wasn’t the stuff I was reading at the library or the bookstore. It was real people. And I went, oh wow. Look at everything that’s going on here. This is interesting. Let me see what else I could do.

Speaker 3 (06:51):

Okay, so then we’ll go down that road. But before we go down that path, I want to ask, looking back, would you have bought that six unit or what would you have done differently after reading Rich Dad Port Dad? Because it sounds like you were hot to Trott, so you probably would’ve still taken action, but what would you have done now knowing what you know before? Or would you say no, keep it the same because it got you to where you are today type thing?

Speaker 1 (07:19):

No, that’s the interesting thing, right about trauma and trouble is you never want to go through that again, and yet it made you who you are. So why would you want to skip it? So that makes it difficult answer. If I had to do it right, the fact that I was hot to truck was wonderful, but I should have learned something first. I should have learned some actual how to. I should have found a mentor or at least found a system of how to, that I could follow and make things happen rather than basically get my face punched in for many months before figuring it out the hard way. But again, maybe there’s other people like me with a thick skull, and that’s the only way you learn. So I’m not saying I’d want to go through it again, but I would because 20 whatever, three years later, I’m thrilled with the outcome. I’m

Speaker 3 (08:07):

Thrilled

Speaker 1 (08:07):

With what I’ve done in life.

Speaker 3 (08:08):

Well, I like how you put it. You said, I would still do it the same way because of it made me who I am, but if I had to do it right, if I had to go back and now knowing what right is, here’s how to do it, because then that experience helps. The next person can you shorten their gap and that’s why you train and help a lot of people because you’ve gone some down those roads where it’s like, no, no, no, don’t go this way. And it’s like being able to help people from that perspective too.

Speaker 1 (08:35):

Yeah, that’s one of the things I love about helping my students is I can say, look, there’s a pit, there’s a pitfall there. There’s a hurdle. There’s a wall that don’t. It’s going to come out and smack you in the face. So I want you to recognize that’s going to happen, but I also want you to know how to get around it quickly. That way you still get the experience and success of getting around that hurdle or over that, but you don’t get the massive damage done for you by being blindsided by it.

Speaker 3 (09:00):

Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. So then, man, I love that because it just helps people get on the right foot, even though you might go down the wrong foot at some point, but it helps you at least, at least get over some of those hurdles faster. Then you went to aea. How did having a network of people help you on your journey? Did that take you to that next level at that point? Or did a worse situation get worse?

Speaker 1 (09:26):

No things got better at that point. Partially, I think it helps in a number of different ways. There’s the obvious detailed knowledge that comes at arria. They have all these different training programs and different guest trainers and Saturday classes that I was taking a ton of those to learn and really drill down. But it’s also something subtly psychological that comes from watching other people actually do something and hearing their success stories for real in front of you, where it wasn’t just book knowledge or late night TV knowledge, it was is real people doing things and that makes something click where it’s, well, if they’re doing it, why can’t I?

Speaker 3 (10:03):

Yeah, that’s a good connection for people to make because a lot of people never even get that opportunity to see other people like that. So if you’re wondering what the heck we’re talking about are Reas and Real Estate Investing Association or there’s meetup groups in your area where real estate investors congregate? That’s what we’re talking about. Look one up in your area. It sounds like it helped Tom and it honestly helped me at the beginning of my career. Just a lot of good connections there. Okay, so keep that going. Then. What was the journey from the reel? Did you go out okay? Wasn’t your only deal, right, the six unit, what was the next deal you did? Did you learn from that? Did you do a home run on the next deal? What happened after that?

Speaker 1 (10:42):

Oh, the next deal, I would absolutely call home run. I started marketing a little closer into home. I was living in Washington DC at the time,

Speaker 3 (10:50):

And I

Speaker 1 (10:50):

Got a small little row house under contract from marketing, negotiated it, put it together, and this one, I had someone else offer to take the contract off my hands. They really wanted that property. And I thought, well, but I was going to fix it up. I’m not done fixing it yet. I haven’t even started. They’re like, no, no, no, no, you don’t understand. I want to buy it from you right now as it is. I didn’t even know how you could do that. You could do that legally. Really. He said, yeah, I’ll walk you through the process. No problem. So I wound up assigning my contract before settlement. This is wholesaling. I just had no idea. I didn’t know the term, I didn’t know anything. So I almost, without knowing what I was doing, I walked off with just shy of $23,000 as a wholesale profit, $22,819 and 66 cents. That changed everything for me.

Speaker 3 (11:41):

Huh? Now it wasn’t a story. Now it was your life.

Speaker 1 (11:45):

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:45):

No,

Speaker 1 (11:46):

I was real serious. My second deal gave me five grand. Just five grand, but yikes. That’s a lot off your first two deals.

Speaker 3 (11:54):

And there

Speaker 1 (11:54):

Was a total change from the disaster I was in before.

Speaker 3 (11:58):

Okay, so then you do that first deal. What’s running through your head at that point? How did it feel doing the, I should say, first deal after the six? We’re not even counting the six, the first successful deal, the first successful deal. How did it feel after that, especially with the debt? I’d love to know how those pieces connected.

Speaker 1 (12:19):

Yeah, well, you have a combination of feelings like, wow, that was incredible. This is great. But then this weird feeling sets in, and I’ve noticed it with everybody I’ve ever trained. The first deal’s awesome, right? There’s nothing like the first time, it’s great, it’s fantastic, but I make the argument that the second deal is more important,

Speaker 3 (12:39):

Your

Speaker 1 (12:39):

Second successful deal because that first time you gotten the deal done, but this little voice in the back of your head says, oh, that was just a fluke. Oh dude, you were just lucky. Now lightning ain’t going to strike twice. And so you actually start doubting that it was anything other than luck.

Speaker 3 (12:56):

But

Speaker 1 (12:56):

When you do the second successful deal, now wait a minute, lightning did strike twice. You did do this again. You did make it happen a second time. It wasn’t just random. And so that’s when you start to really believe in yourself and that changes everything moving forward.

Speaker 3 (13:10):

Man, I like that a lot. It’s giving yourself that proof of concept so that way you could see like, Hey, it works. It actually works. It wasn’t just a one-off fluke. Okay, so then you did that first successful deal, you did that second deal, which is just as important if not more important. When did you take the plunge into real estate full time? What you at in real estate full time at that point? What else was going on in Tom’s life?

Speaker 1 (13:37):

Well, okay, so when I had bought that six unit building, I quit my job because that’s what I really wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (13:44):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:45):

Because yeah, a six unit building that was now David had things gone well, it would’ve paid out $800 a month.

Speaker 3 (13:51):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:51):

Now I know that sounds maybe okay, but that’s not as much as my job was paying me. And quite honestly, I can’t do the math in my head, but 113,000 in debt divided by a hundred dollars a month, I’m not really sure. That was a way out.

Speaker 3 (14:06):

Yeah, that’s a long, that’s a lot of months. It’s a

Speaker 1 (14:08):

Long time. It’s a lot of months, a lot of years. Maybe a lifetime or more. So I was pretty stupid in that respect too, and had no clue what was going on. And so I had quit my job probably foolishly and prematurely. And when I was in trouble again, and I went and got a temp job, I had a temp job to try to make ends meet and pull it together. And it was that temp job that kept me afloat. Well as the eventual that the 22 8 came along and the five grand came along my first successful deals. And then once I had a few more deals under my belt and I was, Hey, this is moving, this is working, then I was able to not go back to the temp job.

Speaker 3 (14:52):

How far into that, how many deals? So after their second deal, the five K in deal, did you actually say, Hey, I don’t need to go back to the temp job.

Speaker 1 (15:00):

That was the best part. It only took me about six months. I focused hard. I paid all that freaking debt off. What a beautiful day

Speaker 3 (15:08):

Within those six months.

Speaker 1 (15:09):

Within six months. Wow. I mean, it was it before, I was like, how do you do this without a gun or white powder? How do you pay off debt? And then suddenly it was, well, wait a minute. Just keep doing what you’re doing buddy. Keep marketing the fine deals, put ’em in a contract and sell ’em to somebody else at the Rio group. Because there’s a reason that works because the rehabbers are so wrapped up rehabbing properties that they stop marketing for new ones. Therefore, when they’re done, they’re starting over from scratch. And the landlords get so busy managing tenants and toilets that they stop marketing, they stop negotiating, and then when they need something new, they’re starting up again. So if I just stay consistent at finding them and negotiating them, I’ve always got somebody to sell to.

Speaker 3 (15:55):

That’s good. And I like how you tied it back into the Rio. That’s where they were congregating. So you go back there and then you could find the source of your buyers. And that’s really good. And I love what you said. You paid it off in the six months. I also liked how you said without guns or the powder, which was great. So yes, and we condone real estate here. That’s what we’re doing to get there. But I like that because you went from being hopeless of like, I’ve got 113 K in debt, plus all this other stuff going on, plus then I did the six unit. Then it sounds like once you did your first successful deal and then even went back to the temp job and then started doing more deals, you were able to dig yourself out of that hole within six months versus 150 months or whatever it would’ve been with the $800 if you would’ve had that by itself.

(16:42):

So that to me is pretty incredible and should give a lot of people hope, I would think, because there’s a lot of people out there that listening in the real estate world, or even not in the real estate world, wanting get in. And it’s like what you just gave them was hope to be like, okay, get the first deal done. But the second one is proof of concept, and then just keep at, it sounds like you stuck to it too. You had at no point where you’re like, I’m just going to throw the towel in on real estate investing. Did you ever think that for those first six months?

Speaker 1 (17:11):

There’s always doubt at the beginning. And like I said, the second deal locks it in more.

Speaker 3 (17:18):

I’ll

Speaker 1 (17:18):

Tell you, by the time six months have gone and I’d put another five, six deals under my belt and paid this debt off, I’m onto something here. So even though friends and family, I mean God love ’em, but they were concerned like, well, how are you going to survive without a steady job? How are you going to survive without a pension? And oh my, oh goodness me, healthcare, screw it. I’ll pay for my own healthcare. I mean, it’s one extra deal a year who caress? But that was my mentality. That was because David, I started to realize there was something different. Something had snapped inside of me. I wanted what I wanted, and that was primarily a lifestyle. And I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I wanted to do this. I wanted to be on my own. I didn’t want to have to answer to a boss.

(18:00):

I didn’t want to be a slave to a salary or a wage. I didn’t want to be trapped. I wanted to be free from all of that and other people that were expressing their fears to me about my future, but they were coming at it out of that point of fear. They could never see themselves doing it. And you know what? That’s fine. Maybe they never could. The thing is, I’m different, and I’m imagining a lot of your listeners are different. They know they could be different than everybody else and go off on their own and do it their way.

Speaker 3 (18:28):

Yeah, no, I love that. And I love how you gave that path of, okay, got in debt because of some of these decisions. Then even did a bad deal at the very beginning, but then even dug yourself out of that hole too. You don’t still own that six unit to you?

Speaker 1 (18:44):

No, no. I lost it. Lost it on a short sale,

Speaker 3 (18:47):

Lost it on a short sale,

Speaker 1 (18:49):

Lost it on a short sale.

Speaker 3 (18:50):

Once

Speaker 1 (18:50):

My initial, as those first and second deals were going down, I was in basically pre-foreclosure audit. I stopped paying that. One of the tenants had attacked my sister when she was trying to collect some rent.

Speaker 3 (19:04):

Oh my

Speaker 1 (19:04):

Gosh. It was bad. The worst. And so I was happy.

Speaker 3 (19:07):

Just

Speaker 1 (19:07):

Let it go. The crazy thing was I couldn’t find an investor to help at the beginning. Why are all these people marketing if they’re not going to answer the phone?

Speaker 3 (19:16):

Right? Yeah, no kidding. It’s another thing too, right? It’s like get out there and then why are you even going to put yourself out there? Oh my gosh. Just so many things. We could go down that road, but let’s keep it moving here. So you paid off that debt. Let me ask this though, because it’s the profit first, r i I podcast talking to ’em about the money mindset a little bit. You paid off all that debt. Were you able to keep your expenses low where you didn’t get into a bad debt scenario again once you got into the real estate investing world?

Speaker 1 (19:49):

Yeah, at that point, I sat down, had that heart to heart with myself that crawled hard look in the mirror and said, you screwed up, buddy. You can’t do that again. At that point, I had shut a number of my credit cards down that way. Look, I mean, the first rule of a hole is stop digging.

Speaker 3 (20:08):

Well,

Speaker 1 (20:08):

Then you got to stop digging. And the credit card companies don’t necessarily help because they don’t have you stop digging. They take your shovel away, but then they give you a backhoe and they let you dig deeper and faster. And so I realized there’s some sort of weird user trap here that I’m not into this. I’m going to stop and just try to be very cold Turkey. And it’s hard to live within your means. I get it, particularly when you haven’t been. But when I suddenly have no choice, then things stabilize. It’s like, well, if I want something, let’s bring in a deal to do it. Want to take a trip? Great. Let’s do a deal to make it happen. I know what I need every month now. I suddenly became a lot more financially conscious and budget. That was one of the things I had never been, and that’s why you can get into so much trouble. It’s just not understanding the numbers. Now that I finally understood my numbers and saw where I went wrong, I swore to myself. I’m not going back into that trap. As tempting as it is, I’m not. I’m out. I want to stay out. I don’t want to go back to

Speaker 3 (21:06):

Why do you think a lot of real estate investors live deal to deal and they stay stuck in the rat race in the real estate world?

Speaker 1 (21:15):

Partially it’s the mentality of not being able to plan ahead.

(21:19):

Everyone thinks they’re planning ahead, but they’re actually just living moment to moment, day to day, which creates a hand the mouth existence. There is a point where you go, wait a minute, I need to put something away. There might be a rainy day. Was it just a cliche that you need to put money away for a rainy day? I mean, it’s a cliche for a reason because they’re all going to be rainy days. I don’t know how you can live for longer than a couple years and not realize that sometimes there’s rainy days or rainy months or rainy years, and you have an obligation to be responsible for that to yourself, to your loved ones, to your spouse, to your kids, right, to your family. You need to take care of everybody. And so I think sometimes that helps too. You get a little older, you start having those things or family obligations, and you go, okay, let me plan a little bit differently. So I’m cautious to make sure, hey, I’m building retirement accounts.

Speaker 3 (22:13):

I’m

Speaker 1 (22:13):

Making sure I have staying power in the bank. And then you can start to move, because admittedly at the beginning I just focused on money making things,

Speaker 3 (22:21):

But

Speaker 1 (22:24):

You have to do more money making things. You don’t have any money anymore. And then there was a certain point where it’s, okay, well now I’ll buy some cash flowing rentals. Now I’ll do some things that are more longer term investments. Now I’ll lend out some money and get a return on it. Because you’re starting to think not just the hand, the mouth kind of aspects of it.

Speaker 3 (22:42):

That makes sense. I like how you said at the beginning, you have to do the moneymaking things. You got to get money in the door. But then it’s like as you get more stabilized, you’re giving yourself that staying power. Okay, if we didn’t do a deal, got to at least some money in the bank and giving yourself a little bit breathing room, thinking about the retirement accounts, and then always just making sure that you keep the long-term ahead of you versus just the hand of mouth deal to deal, okay, is that next one closed? Good. I can eat this month

Speaker 1 (23:10):

Versus

Speaker 3 (23:11):

Yeah, versus the, okay,

Speaker 1 (23:14):

That whole concept of the staying power I think is important. Staying power would be how long you, if you didn’t make a penny right now, how long could you survive before you ran out of pennies in the bank?

(23:26):

That’s staying power. And you measure that in maybe weeks, months, hopefully years at this point. I know I’m not, I kind of live like I’m retired, but I’m not retired yet, but I know I have, I’ve got like six, seven years worth of staying power. So I’m not sweating it out. But when I only had six weeks of staying power, I was sweating it out. I had to do the next deal. So you want to keep this idea of staying power in mind and keep building up that padding of how long does it take before you run dry? And then you’ll get to a point where eventually that staying power will be longer than your lifespan,

Speaker 3 (24:02):

Which is great. So that way you don’t have to, Forrest Gump, you don’t have to worry about money anymore. That’s one less thing. No, I love that. That’s great. And that’s great obviously for this podcast too. I want you as a listener to listen to this and to see that. I love what you said, Tom. This is a great journey, especially for this podcast. So thank you for going on your own journey here and coming out the other side and helping people, like going from in debt, so much in debt, the six figures, we see a lot of people, six figures in debt and they start there. But then to be able to not only get out of there, but then to come out on the other side and have that one-on-one conversation with yourself that come to Jesus moment of like, Hey, I need to stop doing what got me into this position in the first place. So I think that’s a lot of lessons learned. Then to land the plane a little bit, where did you go from, okay, now you’re in real estate, not doing the temp, like to recap the last few years of your real estate journey, plus what you do to help train other people too?

Speaker 1 (25:05):

So I keep a multi exit strategy approach,

(25:10):

And I say that because I think a lot of people get oddly obsessed with exit strategy and then forget that all deals are the same at the beginning. It’s the exit strategy that makes them different, whether you’re going to wholesale it, whether you’re going to rehab it and resell it, buy and hold it, commercial, whatever. Those are all exit strategies. The beginning, they’re all the same. You have to market to find the deal. You have to negotiate to make it into a deal. Then you got to know how to put it under contract, keep control over it, and actually get it to that initial settlement. That’s the same for everybody. Then you choose your exit strategy, which one works for you or which ones might work for you. It’s good to have options. And so I realized that even though I focused on wholesaling for a number of years, hey, just bringing in money was addictive and nice,

Speaker 3 (25:56):

But

Speaker 1 (25:57):

It didn’t change when I decided to go after the bigger money and do some rehabs when I went after the steady money and the wealth appreciation from buying and holding, it was the same things that I had been learning in wholesaling. Find deals, make deals get paid.

Speaker 3 (26:10):

Yeah, I like that. So then you got the multi exit strategy. So then now do you own a bunch of rentals or what does real estate look like for you today?

Speaker 1 (26:20):

Yeah, it’s a mix. Well, normally I’ve held some rentals. I’ve just recently, as of a few months ago, sold off my last one.

Speaker 3 (26:28):

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 (26:29):

I’ve been in a bit of a rehab hon, and a sellathon, and I’m going to move where I have that money parked and what types of investments. So I’m in between the phase of having pulled out of one class and I want to move it into another because things change as you get older and your outlook changes and the age and your kids change and everything else, your patience level with things change. But yeah, so I do a little bit of everything. I still prefer wholesaling, but that’s just me. That’s a personality type thing. I love marketing and I love negotiating. I love negotiating, getting into making deals that way. Bingo. And then I don’t like lingering in a deal, so I love just selling it off to somebody else and moving it on.

Speaker 3 (27:12):

Yeah, no, I love that. That’s great. And then I love that mindset of, hey, it’s a different stage of life. And then just reassessing, where are we now? What do we need to get to and what does life look like for us? And I love how you said some things that get a little less patience as we get older. So it’s like sometimes the tenants and toilets, aren all that fun. So getting through that. Okay. Then you also train people, right? You also help real estate investors or people out there getting their deals. Can you talk about that? When did you start doing that and helping other people?

Speaker 1 (27:45):

I started in 2005. So when I’m talking about my first deal and stuff, that was 2001.

Speaker 3 (27:51):

A few

Speaker 1 (27:51):

Years later, I had a kid approach me at a R group and he said, can you train me? I said, train you. I don’t know. I mean what I would do to teach. And he said, look, please, I really need your help. And he told me his story and I went, okay, well, I couldn’t turn him down. So I taught him everything I know about marketing, everything I know about negotiation, everything I knew about contracts, controlling, getting paid. And I got him through his first deal and he was ecstatic about it and it worked out really well for him. And then over the years he kept doing more deals, kept coming through for advice, and then all these years later, he is become quite the big dog in his town. And it’s great to the point of even turning around an old rundown emptied out town where all the factory jobs had left the town, fell apart and got decrepit.

(28:35):

And he’s been the catalyst for rebuilding it. And I always keep him in mind as my inspiration for teaching because look, admittedly it sounds a little corny, but if I can have that impact on a lot of people and a lot of different small towns all across America, that’s pretty groovy when you turn these turns around. And I don’t think anyone in his town knows my name, but I know how much I’m responsible, therefore through him from just putting the spark into him that made it happen. And so that’s why I love to teach because it takes people that were in similar situations to where I was, they feel stuck or they’re trapped in their job or they’re worn out from their job or they’re behind in debt, whatever it is, and it shows them a way out, a much faster way out than waiting a lifetime for your job to pay off.

Speaker 3 (29:22):

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And I love that. It’s a great, I love that story, just being able to have a student, your first student go out there and really change a lot of people’s lives it sounds like, in that small town and then being able to help there. And then that sounds like what’s kept you going? So have you been training since 2005 in some sort of fashion?

Speaker 1 (29:44):

Yes. Do it today. So since then, I’ve always had a coaching program because it just word spreads. People come to you and I tend to be very patient with questions and answers as well, and people like that. So I speak across the country at different R groups. I love meeting people at these real estate investors, associations, great people. Bring ’em into an overall training program that I work with people for a year. We work online every month. We work on the phone every month and then a couple of live in-person events each year as well to get people moving on how do you market the fine deals? How do you negotiate to make and how do you put ’em under control? And then figure out which exit strategy you want to do any of the exit strategies.

Speaker 3 (30:23):

Awesome. So then you tell them or you show them, here’s the different exit strategies and here’s the different things you could do to be able to get this deal out the door.

Speaker 1 (30:32):

Yeah, David, it’s all the detailed stuff I wished I had when I had just started. It’s the stuff that I was missing. If I had this stuff, I never would’ve bought that six going in blind.

Speaker 3 (30:45):

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (30:46):

I would’ve started with the good ones.

Speaker 3 (30:48):

I love it. Absolutely love it. Well, this has been awesome. I think there’s been so many nuggets here from just the mindset around money and your journey going through there from in debt, spending more than you’re making to all that stuff to then how real estate really got you out of that hole and then you had the come to Jesus moment. And then also just a lot of the other stuff, real estate investing and networking and the power of where you’re going to find your people, getting through the first deal, getting to the second deal and how that’s more important because you have proof of concept. So many golden nuggets here. How do people get ahold of you now if they’re interested in the training or whatever you want to, I don’t know if it’s a podcast or whatever you want to point them to.

Speaker 1 (31:27):

Yeah, got you. Combination two websites I’d check out. The first one is my podcast, the Art and Science of Realestate Negotiation. That’s at tom zeeb.com, T O M Z as in zebra, e e B as in boy.com. And then my training website is traction realestate mentors.com. Lots of videos and trainings and downloads and gifts for people.

Speaker 3 (31:51):

So traction realestate mentor.com for the training, and then say the podcast one one more

Speaker 1 (31:58):

Time, guess tom zeeb.com.

Speaker 3 (32:01):

Tom zeeb.com. So go to his name, make sure you get on the podcast and list to his stuff there. But then also go to the training. I mean, someone who’s been through it, he’s been through the ups and downs, helped a lot of other people. This has been great. So if you want more of time, if you like his, it is, he’s very, very much just wants to help you. But then also very calm of just being able to answer the questions, get where you want to go, and taking you down that path. Absolutely love it. He comes highly recommended from the people in my sphere. So if you trust me and them go down that path as well too, Tom is someone that can help you. Thank you so much, Tom, for being on this episode. This was a really fun one to record and thanks for being a great guest here.

(32:43):

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And remember, if you’re out there and you’re having trouble with money, if you’re spending everything you’re making and you’re living that rat race or you’re living deal to deal, go to simple cfo.com. We can at least point you in the right direction, see if we’re a good fit, or at least give you some tips to stop living, deal to deal. Good grief. You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to do that. Tom gave you hope here. We want to give you hope too. So go to simple cfo.com. Remember to make profit a habit in your business.

Speaker 2 (33:11):

This episode of the Profit First for R e I 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 r e I podcast with David Richter.

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?

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.