3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate An Interview with 3 Regular Joes Who Turned Their Hobby of Real Estate Investing into

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2 3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate An Interview with 3 Regular Joes Who Turned Their Hobby of Real Estate Investing into Multimillion-Dollar Businesses By Sue Reddy Silverman 2

3 Introduction Now is the best time to invest in Real Estate. According to our experts, we will never have an opportunity like this again. The market had tanked but it s starting to rise again now. It is going to stabilize and turn around in the right direction. And right now, America is truly on sale. Don t get left out of the game. Millions of dollars are being made in Real Estate in a variety of ways, including buying heavily discounted HUD homes and selling them cheap; buying short sales and flipping them and rehabbing homes. You can even make money just by connecting buyers and sellers doing no real Real Estate work at all. Find out how to make your millions in this new report 3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate. We got up-close-and-personal with three Regular Joes who turned their hobby of Real Estate investing into multimillion-dollar businesses. And they told us exactly how they did it too. These three masters reveal how they got started investing in Real Estate, what their primary revenue pillars are, the Number 1 mistake new investors make, how they find buyers and sellers, what their top marketing strategies are and how to make the really big bucks in Real Estate in a very short time. Their stories will inspire you; some will amuse you, but mostly they can lead you on a new and faster path to prosperity. We are pleased to share this informative report with you. The Net Income Real Estate Team 3

4 Expert Real Estate Investing Professionals A native of Northeast Ohio, Josh Cantwell graduated from Baldwin Wallace College in 1998 with a Major in Business Administration and a Minor in Communications. Although a full-time student and college athlete, Josh was already driven to succeed in his career. After graduation he obtained his Series 6, 63, 66 and life and health insurance licenses, and worked as a Financial Advisor from Josh Cantwell In 2004, Josh ventured out on his own and started investing in real estate full time. He was able to combine his knowledge of Financial Investing with real estate to create a very successful business, which quickly grew and he began training and teaching apprentice partners and students. He began Strategic Real Estate Coach in 2007, and since then has been involved in wholesale, rehab, rental, foreclosure, pre-foreclosure and short sale transactions, and taught thousands of investors how to replicate his success. Josh has vast knowledge and experience in helping coaching clients, mentor students and apprentice partners from across the U.S. in finding, structuring, negotiating and closing various types of transactions for a profit. He has bought and sold more than 600 properties in 30 states, and currently holds a robust rental portfolio of cash-flowing properties. He is the founder of Sharp Concepts Realty, a real estate brokerage based in Cleveland, Ohio. Josh lives in Strongsville, Ohio with his wife and three children. Nate Kennedy is the founder and publisher of the Savvy Investor Newsletter, Training Literature, and Certified Investor Blog. Nate has been investing in Real Estate for over 10 years in multiple markets across the United States. He is a known for his wholesaling skills, even though he rehabs properties and owns quite a few rentals. Nate Kennedy Besides providing investing, marketing, and business growth strategies to empower others, Nate spends as much time possible enjoying life adventures with wife and kids. According to Nate, he would not be living a fulfilling life without his simple belief that you should Provide value first, serve others, and everything else will fall in line 4

5 John Cochran, 29, from Dayton, Ohio, is Real Estate investor who has flipped more than 150 Real Estate deals in his 11-year career. He started off doing a lot of rehabbing, then he bought a HUD House for $18.47 and got hooked on wholesaling homes for fat profits. Once he tweaked his HUD Buying System ( to run smoothly without him, he created a training program called Wholesaling Mastery to reveal to the world the tips and tricks he uses on a daily basis to wholesale more than 8 properties a month. John Cochran John is also the founder of one of the fastest growing Real Estate Brokerages in the country "HomeBackers Realty." His brokerage is very unique. It ONLY works with buyers. In fact, he has developed a proprietary system called BuyersonFire.com that has allowed him to build a very responsive buyers list of 18,000+, including retail, cash, rent-to-own and investor buyers in his own local market. When you have all the buyers in area, you pretty much own the market and write your own paycheck, he said. With all of his Real Estate Investments and his Brokerage combined, he is involved with more than 30 transactions a month. John is also a systems nut! He is the founder of TheKingofSystems.com and is in the process of developing a software call AgentSoft that he claims will change the way Real Estate is sold in just a couple of short years. 5

6 3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate Josh Cantwell Josh Cantwell: How did you get started in real estate investing? What's your background? I actually got started in real estate investing, because as a financial planner and as a financial advisor, I saw that a lot of my wealthiest clients didn't have their money in the stock market, didn't have their money in investments, like mutual funds and stocks and bonds. They owned real estate. So back in 1997, I graduated from college, became a financial planner at 21 years old, got my insurance licenses, series 6, series 7. And over the next three, four, five years, I became really good at advising people about money, but I quickly realized that my most successful and wealthiest clients owned real estate. I took notice. They owned restaurants. They owned not the restaurant, the business, but the restaurant building. They owned rental properties. They owned commercial properties. They owned single-family homes. They owned apartment houses. I took notice. In 2003, I basically quit as a financial adviser. I was sick of that business, because it's very constricting. It's very buttoned up, if you will. And I decided to venture out into real estate. I just wanted to focus on pursuing my dreams of becoming financially free and wealthy with real estate in a business that was much more open to creative marketing ideas, creative wealth-building strategies. I jumped right in and started focusing on preforeclosures and short sales and foreclosure properties, because in my area, northeast Ohio and Cleveland, we had already been hit by a foreclosure crisis. The foreclosure crisis in Cleveland started in 1999, because we had a bunch of Fortune 500 companies that moved out of the area. So there became a lot of inventory, a lot of foreclosures, a lot of short sales, a lot of bank-owned properties. So I immediately jumped into foreclosures in the spring of 2004, and I've been a full-time real estate investor ever since. Josh: What are your top two primary revenue pillars; the ways you make money with real estate? I actually focus on seven revenue pillars. I don't recommend that investors focus on seven, but I've been a full-time real estate investor for almost nine years now, since 2004, so I focus on seven. My seven revenue pillars are bank and government foreclosures, that's number one, short sales are number two, lease options are number three, buyers that want them is number four, raising capital is number five, marketing, especially Internet marketing is number six, and number seven is passive income, passive cash flow. If I was a brand new investor today, based on what's going on in the market right now, I would focus on bank and government foreclosures, and I would focus on rent-to-own properties, or lease 6

7 options. Those would be my two revenue pillars as ways to make money with real estate. The reason why is, first of all, because the banks have tightened up their lending criteria, and they're not lending money to even qualified buyers, qualified applicants. There are a lot of people who, under normal circumstances, would be able to buy a home but can't. They can't get a bank loan. So that lends itself to an opportunity where you can take over a property on a rent-to-own basis and then wholesale that property for a fee. I use what I call the magic document, which is also a letter of intent. My number one revenue pillar would be wholesaling lease options. My second quick cash revenue pillar is wholesaling and renovating government and bank foreclosures. The reason why is, number one, there's a lot of inventory. Number two, there's a lot more inventory to come. There's a lot of government and bank foreclosures that are going to hit the market over the next two to five years. Josh: What's the biggest mistake new investors make? The biggest mistake that new investors make is not raising capital. They don't have capital. The reason they focus on wholesaling or they focus on quick cash strategies is because they don't have money. So they say, if I don't have money to fund transactions, I've got to wholesale. I've got to get properties, I've got to get them under contract, and I've got to wholesale them to somebody else. The hope is that they will wholesale enough properties and stuff enough money into the bank that they will eventually be able to use that money in their savings account to buy up properties, fix it and sell it and do a big deal. Do a big rehab with a big profit. So the biggest mistake they make is believing out of the gate that they don't have credibility, that they don't have experience, that they don't know how to raise money, so they don't raise capital. If I could go back and do it all over again, the first thing I would do is I would become a student of money. I would become a student of rate of return. I would become a student of raising capital, because if you have money, you can fund almost any transaction, you can do almost any deal, and your competition will actually bring you deals. If you have money, you become the go-to guy, and you can get a piece of a lot of different transactions. And you can become the centerpiece of your community, because people will lend you money or partner with you and bring you money, and other investors will bring you deals. So you're the centerpiece, you're the hub of all that activity. If you don't raise money, you'll be stuck being a wholesaler, and you'll never be able to do the really big deals. What's the top marketing strategy to generate seller leads or buying opportunities for this revenue pillar? 7

8 Josh: There are two revenue pillars. The one is rent-to-owns and lease options. What's funny about that is that we find all of our seller leads on Craigslist, and we find all of our buyer leads on Craigslist. So we actually are able to use some specific s and some different ways that we contact landlords and homeowners on Craigslist. We basically work with them, we meet with them, we take over their property using a letter of intent. Then we wholesale the properties to buyers who are also coming from Craigslist. It's almost funny, because you're just the middleman. You're just connecting people that are already on Craigslist who don't know that the other exists. We're just connecting the two. That's for the rent-to-own. Our best way is simply through Craigslist. It sounds very basic, but it's absolutely true. That's where we get our entire seller and buyer leads. When it comes to wholesaling government and bank foreclosures, one of the best ways to find seller deals for government foreclosures is a website called That's where all the HUD properties are at. That's where all the government foreclosures are at. For a lot of the bank-owned properties, those are on two websites. One is called HomePath, and the other one is called HomeSteps. That's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's websites where they list their inventory of bank foreclosures. So that's the best place to find those seller properties. Of course, the other way is through the multiple listing services in your local area, where you can use the MLS to find these government and bank foreclosures as well. But all the buyers leads we get off of Craigslist for the most part. Josh: Walk me through the A to Z process of doing a deal. Okay. So let's talk about rent-to-owns or lease options for a minute. What we have to do is, if a seller has a lot of equity, they're not going to be a candidate for a rent-to-own deal. So take an example. Somebody who has a house that's worth $150,000 and they only owe $100,000. That seller is not going to be very motivated, so they're not a candidate. People who are overleveraged, so you take a property again that's worth $100,000 and they owe $200,000, that's really a short sale, they're not going to be motivated, or they're not really able to do a lease option either. So what we're really looking for is the people who have little or no equity. The good thing is, for this investment strategy, there are 26 million people, according to CoreLogic - which is a big marketing and analytics company for the real estate industry - according to CoreLogic, there are 26 million people who have no equity, who are overleveraged, or have less than 10% equity. Those people are ideal candidates who have been trying to sell their house but can't sell it because they don't have any equity to pay a realtor, or they don't have any equity to unload the property. So those 8

9 people oftentimes are at the end of their rope. They don't know what to do, and they just want to stop paying the mortgage. We can take over those properties. What we do is we find those people on Craigslist. We use specific ads to market to those properties. When people call us back, we go through a specific sales script that we use. We find out how much equity they have over the phone, and then we set an appointment with them and we go meet with them. When we meet with them, if it's fit, we use what's called a letter of intent to lock up that property. The seller signs it and the investor signs it. It basically lays out the terms of the deal. What are we going to pay for it, how long are we going to be able to rent it before we buy it, how much money are we going to put down. The most important part is how long is your option period. An option period is how long can I have to market the property before I have to either back out of the deal or before I have to move into it. So the option period is 90 days. So what we do is we get the letter of intent signed. Then we pass the letter of intent off to our attorney, and the attorney actually structures the final agreements. The attorney structures the purchase and sales agreement, the option to purchase agreement, the rental agreement, and the assignment agreement as well as all the disclosures. Then we have 90 days to market and wholesale and sell that property to a buyer. So then what we're going to do is we're going to market that house all over Craigslist, and we're going to market the property through other tools like SellPoint and Postlets and other different ways that we can market the property on the Internet, and we're going to try to get as many buyers in as we can. Once we find a buyer who wants to basically take over the property, we then lock up that buyer with a new purchase agreement, and we get that to our attorney, and then our attorney basically has us step out of the transaction, and he matches up the seller and the new buyer, and the new buyer pays us an assignment fee to take over our transaction. So that's exactly how you put together a lease option assignment. In a wholesale, like a bank or government foreclosure, you have the option with those to do one of two things. You can either wholesale those properties to another investor, or you can keep them and rehab them. So, let's talk about the ability to wholesale them. Well, a HUD property, or a government foreclosure, what you do is you bid on these properties through the HUD home store. And then once you get your offer accepted, then you're going to have about 45 days or so until you have to buy the property. During that 45 days, you're going to market that property on Craigslist to find someone to take it off of your hands. And then when you do, you're going to buy the property and then sell it in the same day. It's 9

10 usually what's called a back-to-back transaction. You buy the property, let's say today, for $50,000, and you sell it today for $57,000, for example. After your closing costs and things like that, you might get a $4,000 wholesale fee. So that's HUD wholesaling. That's wholesaling government foreclosures. The last option is to buy a property, fix it and sell it. That process is a great way to make big money, meaning we wholesale properties for quick cash, and we rehab properties for big profits. When we rehab a property, we might buy that same property for $50,000, but we're going to put $20,000 or $25,000 worth of renovations and repairs into it. Now we're into it for, let's say $75,000, and we're going to put it on the market for $140,000 and it's going to sell for $140,000. We have the ability then to make... my target number when we do a buy, fix, and sell or a fix and flip, as we call it, is to make no less than $40,000. Of course, in that transaction, you need capital to fund the purchase, you need a reliable contractor who's going to fix the property up, and you need a reliable real estate agent who's going to help you unload and sell the property once it's repaired and back on the market. Josh: How do people do real estate investing with no credit, cash, or experience? Great question. So, the way you do real estate with no credit and no cash is by raising capital. You have one of two options. You can either raise capital from private money partners who are people who have money on the sidelines. They have money in their IRAs, they have money in a savings account, they have money in a CD, they have money in annuity or a bond or the stock market, and they're not happy with the return that they're getting. There is so much of that money right now available it's almost ridiculous. There's really nowhere to run to get a good, reliable rate of return. What I mean is CD rates are extremely low, bond rates are extremely low, fixed annuity rates are extremely low. They're all below 3%. The stock market is very volatile, up and down, up and down. On average, the stock market is only going to yield, over a long period of time, let's call it 30 years, the stock market is only going to yield about 9% return. So the way you do deals with no cash and no credit is by going and talking to what I call private money partners. These are people who have maybe an old 401K or an old IRA or they have money in a savings account, they have money in a CD, and the money is just sitting there earning no interest, or they're not paying attention to it. These people will happily partner with real estate investors, or loan money to real estate investors to fund these transactions, provided that the investor with the capital can get, I feel, a good double-digit rate of return is somewhere between 10 to 25% return on their money. My target number is 15 to 18%. If I can provide 10

11 somebody an investment opportunity where I do the deal and they give me the funding and I could pay them 15 to 18% on their money, I can raise a lot of capital. Anybody reading this report can raise a lot of capital, because there's just no other place that somebody can go to get a 15 to 18% rate of return. So the first way that they do deals with no cash or credit is to raise money. The second way is to become a wholesaler, to wholesale lease options, and to wholesale HUD properties, because you don't need any money when you wholesale a property. You don't need any cash to fund those transactions. The experience is going to come from knowledge. Of course, reading ebooks, reading courses, investing into someone's education is going to give them the knowledge that they need, and eventually, they're going to go out and do a deal or two or five or ten. So, the funny thing about anybody who's been successful with real estate, they all started with no experience. It's just about going out there and taking the knowledge that you have and going out there and trying it, just doing it, taking your first step. Even if you make a mistake, you're one step closer to knowing more and doing more. The thing that I think most people make the mistake of is they buy lots of books and tapes and courses and they never do anything with it. So the experience is going to come over time, and confidence comes from experience and knowledge, and that's how you make up for it. Josh: Why is now the best time to get into real estate for revenue generation? Right now is the best time for a couple reasons. Number one, there are a ton of home owners who would like to sell who can't. So there's a ton of lease option wholesaling opportunities. Number two, there's a ton of government and bank foreclosures that are available right now all across the United States. Number three, capital is very available, meaning private money partners. Not banks, not mortgage companies, not hard money lenders, but private money partners are everywhere. You just have to open your mouth and talk to people and ask for the money, because there's just nowhere else for people to get a good rate of return on their IRAs and their CDs and stuff like that. Number four is that the market is at its bottom. The market is going to rebound. The market is going to get better. You're seeing a lot of the hedge funds and a lot of international investors investing in United States real estate. The market really can't go any lower, so the market is going to go up. So now is the time to get in and buy while it's low, and over time, we'll see more normal appreciation in real estate. 11

12 Josh: Can someone be involved in real estate the way you approach real estate while still having a job, or does it need to be a full-time commitment? Great question. Absolutely, somebody can do this part-time. Matter of fact, a lot of our successful members and students started doing this parttime. I have a coaching student that I've had for a long time, her name is Sabrina, and she lives in New York City. She invests in properties in the city of New York. I've worked with her. She had a full-time job, and she started investing in real estate part-time. Basically, I was with her the day she quit her job, and she went full-time into real estate and has never turned back. At the beginning, it's just like working out. This is how I like to phrase it. It's just like working out. Let's say somebody has never been in the gym. Maybe they're a little bit overweight, and they want to get in shape. If they want to get in shape and they go to the gym for the first three days in a row, and they work out for two and a half hours, and they're going absolutely crazy, eventually by day four, they're going to be pretty beat down. They're going to be tired, and they're probably never going to go back to the gym. So investing in real estate part-time is very similar in that I'd rather see people ease into it and start to do just one deal a month. They can do that with two to four hours. They can do that in their spare time. Sending out s to people on Craigslist, putting ads on Craigslist. That can all be done at night, on the weekends. So, not only can people do it part-time, I've personally worked with people who did it part-time and eventually went full-time. Matter of fact, I bought my first two investment properties while I had a full-time job, and I did it part-time before I went full-time. Josh: Do you have any success stories you can relay of students of yours who went from having a job and transitioned into doing real estate full-time, which you pretty much just did? Sure. I have countless number of students who had a job and were doing different things. Another student of mine is a guy named Kyle from Chicago. He was a therapist. He worked with people as a therapist during the day and started doing real estate part-time in the evenings. He was doing some pre-foreclosures and short sales and eventually was so successful at it in the evening he went and closed a couple of really huge transactions, bought houses and fixed them up and sold them for a big profit, and he went full-time. I am one of those people. I was a full-time financial planner, bought my first investment property while I was a fulltime financial planner. It was a two-family rental property. Then I bought another property that I bought, fixed, and sold while I was still a financial 12

13 planner, and then I went full-time into real estate. I mentioned Sabrina, who was doing deals part-time and then went full-time. Josh: Is there a specific personality that better lends itself to doing what you do? No. There are two types of, not necessarily personalities, but two types of characteristics, I think, or instincts, that work well in our industry. One is somebody who's a really good researcher, somebody who's really good at data and analytics and looking stuff up, because a lot of real estate is just numbers. It's, I can buy a property for $50,000, I can fix it up for $20,000 I'm into it for $70,000, and I can sell it for $140,000. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. There's $70,000 of profit there. So the first person is somebody who likes data, likes to research, likes numbers, and likes spreadsheets and putting those things together. That's number one. The second person is somebody who is a quick state, someone who if they get an idea, they're just going to go for it. They don't care about the data. They don't care about the research. They're just a mover and shaker. I'm a student of a program called the Kolbe Profile, kolbe.com, the Kolbe Profile. The Kolbe Profile has four different modes or four different types of instincts. I find that most people in my industry are either what's called an initiating fact finder, or a high red, meaning that they like data, they like research, they like the past, they like numbers, they like to research things. The other mode that I find is successful in my industry is somebody who's a quick state, which is me. Somebody who sees something, sees an opportunity, and just goes for it, regardless of what the repercussions might be. But those aren't really personality traits. Those are instincts. Josh: Are there any geographical areas that are more effective for applying your methodology than others? Definitely. The two or three strategies that I've talked about, which is the lease option assignments and the wholesaling government and bank foreclosures and rehabbing government and bank foreclosures. The middle of the country. Get rid of the coastlines near the beach. Get rid of those, and anything in the middle of the country is a great place to do what I do. The reason why is that property values are a little bit lower than they are on the coastlines. Coastline properties tend to be a little bit more expensive. And number two is that we're able to get a lot of big discounts. When you're in tropical areas or coastline type of areas, you're going to find a lot of big demand in those areas, and prices are going to be a little bit higher, and properties are going to be a little bit tougher to find. So geographically, I would say anything from Nevada over to on the east coast, Pennsylvania, and then down into Atlanta, Texas, the industrial 13

14 Midwest, the heartland. Texas, those kinds of areas are all great for what I do. Josh: What's a reasonable expectation someone should set for the first year revenue goals if they follow your method? There's no reason why somebody can't make six figures in their first year doing what I do. Six figures is only about $8,000 a month in revenue. So that's about two deals a month, and that's two wholesale deals. $4,000 on one, $4,000 on the other. $8,000 a month, 12 months, that's about $100,000 a year. Also, if somebody does one rehab project, two renovation projects a year - we don't do a renovation project unless we can make $40,000. So if you do two of those a year, that's $80,000 in one year. There's no reason why, based on the current circumstances - there's so much inventory, there's so much capital available - there's no reason why somebody can't make $100,000 a year. Now, reasonable? There's no reason why somebody can't... if their goal is to make an extra $20,000 a year, there's no reason why somebody can't do one wholesale deal a quarter and make an extra $5,000 every quarter and make $20,000. But it just depends on how hard somebody wants to work, how quickly they are to implement. You see, I learned a long time ago that ideas mean nothing without implementation. There's lots of great ideas, everyone's got new ideas, but it's often we don't need new ideas. What we do need to do is just implement the ideas that we already know. It depends how hard somebody wants to work or how long they want to work. If somebody is looking for a get rich quick scheme, that's not real estate. Real estate does take some effort, some knowledge, and some research, and some time. It's not like you can flip a house today without doing any work. It doesn't take a lot of work though. It only takes maybe one to four hours to put together a deal. Josh: What about for the second year and beyond? What should be a realistic goal that someone could set for themselves? Again, it depends how much work they want to put in, but if somebody is a full-time investor, there's no reason why after the first year they can't consistently make $100,000 a year or more. I know lots of my students, friends, myself included, we're in this business to have money, to have freedom, and to be wealthy. So to get to the point where somebody is making $200,000 a year, $300,000 a year or more is the goal. Also, to create long-term passive income, to own properties that will eventually be paid off from a tenant buyer or a renter who pays the property off, and that property is now free and clear. It's spitting off income, it's spitting off cash flow, and it's worth more and more and more every year. So, it should be very realistic for someone to set their expectations to not make any less 14

15 than $100,000 a year or more and then to leapfrog into year two, year three, to double that and triple that every year thereafter. Josh: Is there anything else that you'd like to add? The only thing I would like to add is anything worthwhile is going to take some work. When people think, I can do this part-time, and I don't need to focus on it. Hopefully something will fall in my lap. There's always somebody out there who's working really hard pursuing their goals, so those people who are just kind of floating through the wind and hoping something lucky happens to them, that's probably never going to happen. Success is a combination of hard work, knowledge, and being in a place where deals fall in their lap because of the hard work they put in. It's not luck. It's just opportunity meeting hard work, and all that kind of comes together. So I would say anything worth pursuing is going to take some hard work. Finally, you need to be daring. To chase any kind of dream, goal, some big, hairy, audacious goal - my friend calls it a B-HAG - big, hairy, audacious goal, you have to be daring. You have to be willing to try things you've never tried, do things you've never done, and expand your horizons and expect more, and go out and try stuff that other people would never try. You have to be daring, and you have to try new things, and you have to have some big, hairy, audacious goal that you're trying to pursue. Because if you're just hoping to do a little bit more, you're probably going to get a little bit more. But if you pursue some big, hairy, audacious goal and you end up halfway there, you're probably better off than 90% of the people out there. Josh: For people interested in finding out more, where do they need to go? My main website is They can find all kinds of tools and resources there and my personal story. I'm a father, I'm a husband, I have three little kids, but I'm also a pancreatic cancer survivor. I have a pretty amazing story about how I was diagnosed. My son was actually just born. My wife had an emergency C-section. My son was born with a cyst in his neck and was having trouble breathing. My son had surgery when he was two and a half weeks old, and while my son was in the hospital, after his surgery, I was 35 years old, and I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Two months later, I had a surgery. I had a surgery that saved my life. The surgeon pulled off a surgery that most surgeons would never even dare to try. So my story of loss and overcome and challenge and achievement and success and coming back from that is at That's my story, and that's where people can watch the video of everything that's happened to me in the past year or so. 15

16 3 Proven Ways to Quit Your Job in 12 Weeks Flipping Real Estate Nate Kennedy Nate Kennedy: What is your background? How did you get started in real estate investing? Great question, and the reason I got started was I first started out in the business as a mortgage broker. I started financing deals and helping people get loans to do real estate deals. I was working with some investors that were doing some investment properties and I was like, Wow, man, these guys are doing some great things. They re making money with their deals, and they seem to have a little bit better lifestyle than I do, when I was working like mad and putting in 12+ hours per day. So, I ultimately got into the real estate investing business. Getting started out it definitely didn t go as planned. I had a lot of bumps and bruises along the way, but it turned out to be a very, very valuable lesson over time, and has me where I m at today. It all led to my first deal, and man was it nerve wracking and exciting for me. While doing my first deal I stumbled upon my mentor. He even did a private loan for me on a deal that I did as well, which was kind of cool, because he made a bunch of money with me, and the deal went great, you know. Then it was off to the races from there, after that first deal. After my first deal I moved into my favorite strategy, which is wholesaling. But before I jump into why, let s move on to the next question I get, which is, what s my overall investing strategy. Nate: What is your overall investing strategy? I believe I have a very unique approach to real estate investing. I m a firm believer that to have a well-rounded investment company, you have to do a handful of things. Step one is you obviously need to generate leads for your business, and I ll explain how that s important a little bit later, and how it can be a revenue stream for your business. Just know that you want to generate leads so you can do deals. Now if you re just getting started out and you have minimal cash in the bank to invest in your business, I highly recommend wholesaling. 16

17 Wholesaling are the deals that keep the lights on, bring in good paydays, let you have that fun lifestyle. It s a very transactional-based business. And we currently average $7,200 per wholesale deal that we do. Once you start successfully wholesaling and you start stacking your cash to build revenue in your business, you will want to start looking for and doing some rehabs to take some of that money, and dump it back into your business. Get involved in rehabs. Rehabs are usually more profitable then wholesale deals. We make more profit on these deals and they do take a little more risk and time to get done. As we successfully complete rehab deals, we get larger chunks of money. We use that money for a couple of different things, and one is the 3 rd investing segment of my Compound Investing Formula. We use it to stock away and build our assets and we also take that money to put towards our third investing tier. This tier is very important for your business, and it gets you passive cash flow. So we ll invest that money into other cash flowing deals and businesses. That s the whole thing we strive for. We want passive income. When people talk about being in real estate investing and making money while you sleep, and having passive income it s these buy and hold deals. You build this part of your business over time. Just to recap, if you re getting started, begin with wholesaling to build your experience and cash flow. It s minimal risk for you, and definitely minimal outlay to get started. You re just assigning contracts. Afterwards, move into rehabs. Now that you ve got a little bit of experience to do these types of deals and get bigger chunks of cash. Then it is time to reinvest that cash into your business and into passive cash flow through picking up rentals. Nate: What are your primary revenue streams? (The ways you make money with REI.) Our first way starts with our lead generation. The way my system works, is that when we generate leads we make money with them before we close deals. We do this by separating our leads into a couple buckets of people. 17

18 We have bucket one of people that have cash and want to buy real estate right now, so we extract those people and we do deals with them. Then we have our second, larger bucket of people that we attract, who are people who want some more information to become a better investor, or learn whether or not this is the opportunity for them. We then provide them with our information and training to help them become an investor with cash to do deals. And before we had our own products and training that we would sell, we would provide other people s products and trainings and make what s called an affiliate commission. If your system does not allow you to make money before you ever closed a deal then you can tweak a few things to start doing it. This is a big lacking piece that a lot of investors miss. It s a huge opportunity to make $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a month of revenue for your business, simply by providing affiliate products to your list. It s a big bucket of people who want to learn, want to get started and decide whether this is for them. What s really cool about educating these people is you re educating them and helping them learn how to grow their business. And eventually they will get the cash to close deals with you. You re bringing them up with you as your grow your business. So that s one way we generate revenue. Then we also generate revenue with our wholesale flips, where we basically just assign contracts. Another revenue stream for us is our rehabs projects, and then obviously we have our passive cash flow through our rental properties. Nate: If you were starting out as a new real estate investor in today s market what would be the one thing you d focus on? If you re just getting started, I would focus on generating leads so you can wholesale deals. Get a contract on a deal, and then assign that contract. That would be the very first thing I would do. The main reasons I would start with wholesale properties is because it s minimal risk for you to get started, it s very minimal outlay financially, and it allows you to get your feet wet in this real estate investing business without taking massive risk. 18

19 Unfortunately, I have seen so many real estate investors jump into bigger projects then they can handle, and they end up with a property that just doesn t cash flow that well, or potentially end upside down on you, because the rehab ended up being a lot crazier than you thought. Nate: What's the biggest mistake new investors make? Well, this is what I mentioned. What happens is investors try to emulate what they see on TV. Get a property under contract, get funding for that property, turn around and rehab that property, and try to resale that property. The challenge is, if they ve never rehabbed a property before, there are so many things that pop up during a rehab project, that are hard to anticipate when new. For example, if you get into a rehab project and find out the structure floor issues that you did not account for you still need to get the money in place and fix it. Otherwise you will fail inspection and not be able to continue. If you don t have that extra $10,000 that you ve got to put into your rehab, you could be stuck with a deal. What I am trying to say is, I think the biggest thing is trying to do too much too fast. I highly recommend simply assigning contracts to get started as opposed to trying to become a real estate mogul overnight. Keep in mind, you re not going to get rich quick in real estate. You re going to make a lot of money really quick, but you re not going to get rich quick, so make sure you build your business accordingly. You re going to have to put the time and energy into building it, and if you do it, you will reap the rewards of those efforts. So, I would highly recommend not jumping in and trying to do massive deals right away, and try to get that one hit wonder opportunity. That s a big mistake I see a lot of investors make. Take it steady, and get some good deals done and some experience under your belt with assigning contracts with minimal risk. Nate: What is your top marketing strategy to generate seller leads / buying opportunities? Ah, great question. The life blood of a business. I would say we do a lot of things good, but we do two things really well. 19

20 One of them is direct mail. I really like to focus on direct mail. I can spend $500 on a campaign and get a really good response that ends in a couple deals. My Return on Investment for direct mail is enormous, because I am spending $500 to make $14,000 or more. And it s every time we send direct mail, we end up with deals, so I love that opportunity, I love doing it. Another piece that we do great is Google advertising. We buy placements on Google Ads for investors and sellers. It allows us to generate sellers in distress that come directly to us, fill out forms on our site online and tell us how we can help them. Those are my two favorite. I didn t always start there, because they re paid scenarios, but they re my favorite ones based on where we re at. Nate: What s your top marketing strategy to generate buyers to buy properties from you? Well, my main two sources one is I generate a lot of leads online of investors looking for more information for real estate investing. This allows me to build what s called my list, and as they subscribe to my list they get an that says, Are you interested in buying real estate properties? If so, get on our VIP Buyer list. This form extracts the exact information I need to determine what deals they want and how much money they have. They tell me, you know, what types of properties they re interested in, how much cash they have to invest, where that cash is coming from, whether it s a line of credit, a self-directed IRA, whether that is a, you know, it s, they re getting funding from someone else, whether they have a hard money source. We are learning all this about our investor, so we know what types of deals they can do, how fast they can move on those deals, and then we go ahead and we follow up with them, and we get our deals in place with them. That is my favorite strategy for generating buyers. And there are so many different ways that you can do it, with Google advertising, with Facebook. 20

21 I think it s a huge opportunity for investors just getting started out to hone those skills, and generate those leads, and the best part is, as you generate more and more leads, you have that other revenue stream that I talked about, with your investors for affiliate products and offering them different things that will help them become better investors. So, those are my two favorites my favorite one is online lead generation. My second, obviously, would be direct mail as well, like I talked about for sellers. Nate: How do people do real estate with no credit, cash or experience? This is kind of the elephant in the room, or whatever you say, that big myth that s out there that people wonder if it s true. I ve got to tell you it is absolutely doable to do real estate deals with no credit, cash or experience with one caveat. You don t have to put your cash into buying the property, but you will have to put a little bit of cash in for what s called an earnest money deposit, and you don t need credit to do that. And frankly, you don t need experience, because you can learn as you go. The most successful people I ve ever met, they jump on in, they get it done. They hit a couple of roadblocks, but they overcome them, they step over those roadblocks and they move forward. And that s what successful investors do, and that s why you see people expanding their business, because they don t let roadblocks get in their way, and neither should you. The fastest way to do real estate deals with no cash, no credit or experience, is simply wholesaling properties. Remember, wholesaling is getting a property under contract with a seller and then turning around to assign that property off to a buyer. You can do this in two buyer avenues with wholesale deals. You can do this with properties that you get at a very low dollar amount compared to what it s worth, which is a phenomenal way. You get it cheap and you sell it cheap to an investor. 21

22 Another way is to get involved with wholesaling pretty houses or lease options. These tend to be properties that don t have a lot of equity in it. You get it under contract and then you sell it to a rent to own tenant. That s a second way that you can get in, no cash, no credit, no experience. You get the experience as you go, so that s what s meant by that, which is another great question. Nate: Why is now the best time to get into real estate for revenue generation? Well, there is a long answer and a short answer. I ll try to keep it in between. Getting involved in real estate to generate revenue is proven. Time and time again, it has been proven that real estate investing is a very big source of major wealth for a lot of people. Getting involved right now, the deals are everywhere and there s actually a ridiculous amount of cash available. There are a lot of people with money that are looking for investments besides the stock market and other avenues. And real estate has always been a steady-eddy opportunity that allows investors to make good profit when done right. So, I think right now is a huge opportunity for you to get in and wholesale deals and make quick cash, it s a great opportunity for you to do some bigger deals with rehabs, and sell those to your investors or end buyers. And there s also a huge opportunity for you to start stacking your passive income opportunities by collecting rentals. Real Quick: I want to cover something important about the balance of wholesales and rentals. I find some people start doing too many rentals and get away from wholesales. This mistake because leads to monthly cash flow issues. They are getting the monthly income, but they don t have enough cash flow to keep the lights on and live their lifestyle as well. So, don t get in the rut where you stop wholesaling just to do rentals. You want to make sure you re doing both until you have enough cash stacked up to where it only makes sense. With that said, right now is a huge opportunity. Heck even, Warren Buffet is supporting the avenue of making money with real estate investing. 22

23 Nate: Can someone be involved in real estate the way you approach real estate while still having a job or does it need to be a full-time commitment? First, I m never going to tell anybody to quit their day job when they first get started as a real estate investor. You don t want to quit your day job right away. What you want to do is start building your business. You can easily do it and it comes down to being focused. So when you have that time off from your job, what you can do is build the business one piece at a time and get successful. Get a deal closed. You don t need endless hours to run this business. Sometimes I feel guilty about the lack of time I put into my business. It plays tricks with me that I am making so much with such little effort. When you do decide to quit your day job and go full time investor, you re really only going to be working part-time anyways because you re going to have systems in place that make it possible for you to have a better lifestyle as opposed to have a 9 to 5 grind type job. You don t want to quit one job to go work in another, do you? So, as a real estate investor, there are so many ways to build successful systems in your business to where you re working part-time, to grow and spend more time and live the lifestyle that you choose. I call this being a lifestyle investor. If you build the systems, you ll have the lifestyle that you want. If you don t build the systems, then you re going to just have another job. You should definitely take full advantage of having the right systems in place and we give you all kinds of free information to help you with that to grow your business. So, YES! Absolutely, you can do this as a part-time basis to get started, and even as you go full time, you ll eventually still be part-time anyways. In the meantime, don t quit your day job until you have successfully built your investing business and you feel comfortable doing that. Tell me some of your success stories regarding students or associates of yours who went from having a job and transitioned into doing real estate full time. 23