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Podcast

UNIN 18 Pamela | Consistency Mindset

Consistency Mindset: From Delivering Pizzas To A 9-Figure Real Estate Career With Pamela Bardhi

  Real estate is the industry that creates the most millionaires. But in order to break into the industry, you need the right mindset. You need consistency. Real estate markets are changing constantly, so you need to be prepared to pivot and you need to be consistent at that. That is why it’s important to start at your niche, and then you can build from there. Join Tim Herriage as he talks to real estate and life coach, Pamela Bardhi about how she went from delivering pizzas to creating a 9-figure real estate career. She was also featured in Forbes and Time Magazine at 27 years old. Discover how she made it in this industry by having the right mindset. Find out why real estate is really just a numbers game and how you can really know your math. Also, learn why you need to focus on your niche first before you branch out to other markets. So what are you waiting for? Go out there and start hustling. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Consistency Mindset: From Delivering Pizzas To A 9-Figure Real Estate Career With Pamela Bardhi A member of my family is here, Pam Bardhi. Thank you for stopping by. Thank you so much for having me, Tim.   I have known you for several months now. I have been following you online. I’m glad you were able to swing to Dallas. Why don’t you take a minute and tell the audience a little bit about yourself? I am the real estate underdog. If you notice on my title, it says, “Real estate underdog.” I went from delivering pizzas to a nine-figure real estate career. People are like, “Pam, how the hell did you do that?” There is a whole backstory to all of that, which I can get into. It’s totally up to you, but that is what happened. I made it through flipping properties in the Boston, Massachusetts market, but it didn’t start that way. I like to start each episode with what I call the bluff, the bottom line up front. When I was in the Marine Corps, they always told us, “Don’t bury the lead. The general has got to know the most important thing in case he has to get up,” or something like that. What I want you to do is take two minutes, pour into the audience, and talk about the most important things that you see in today’s economy, real estate market, and society in general. Things you think people should be doing or maybe staying away from at this phase in the market. The most important thing for you to know and understand when it comes to this is to know your numbers. Please never fall in love with the deal and the property. Fall in love with the numbers. One of the most critical things that I have learned throughout my real estate development career has been to know your numbers and analyze them properly. Leave a lot of buffer room and contingency for that construction budget because we all know what can happen. For example, I had budgeted a 20% contingency in every single one of my deals before COVID hit. Thank God I did because I needed that for my construction material. Otherwise, these are the types of things that people lose their shirts. As the market is shifting, make sure that you know your numbers like the back of your hand, and be conservative. I can’t stress how important that is. Not only that, but also focus on multiple exit strategies. You look at a property. If something comes across my desk, I need to look at it as a short-term rental, a long-term rental or if I can flip it, and all the different avenues that I can take with it before I do the deal. The second most important piece to that is before you ever put an offer on a property, you need to know roughly what your property margin is going to be in each of those exit strategies. If you know your numbers and you have multiple exit strategies, you cannot lose. The third thing that I would mention to you guys, especially in this market, because we came off of the summer season. Everyone is making money. Everyone is happy and driving. That’s great. Now you got to prepare for winter. What are you going to do about that? What comes next? Make sure that you have these multiple exit strategies, you have everything in place, and you know your numbers and profit margin in advance because it’s going to be very cool. There is this thing called math. They used to teach it in school, but they haven’t taught it in real estate in the last couple of years because you could say, “We will sell the house for $1 million.” It would sell, and if it didn’t, wait a month and it would. I was at a mastermind and somebody said, “These houses, I’m reducing the price three times in the first two weeks.” I was like, “Are you bad at math?” He was like, “What do you mean?” I was like, “Aren’t you running the average of the last three sold comps in the last 90 days, pricing it at that, and seeing that it’s going to take 25 days on the market?” He was like, “I hadn’t thought about that.” These people don’t have that experience and skillset. I know you’re a real estate agent as well. Talk about how people can maybe hone those skills that they need to be better at in this stage of the market. I come from three different angles of the real estate development game. I’m a licensed general contractor. I’m a real estate developer. I also have my real estate license. What’s interesting for me is I become a triple threat on a project because I can look at it

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UNIN 11 | Probate Properties

Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing: Getting Creative With Probate Properties With Al Nicoletti

  Things aren’t exactly breezy in the real estate market right now, so you have to get creative when it comes to investing. There are niches out there that are relatively untapped and yet are virtually immune to recession. Probate properties is one of these niches, and this is what Al Nicoletti specializes in. In this conversation with Tim Herriage, Al talks in detail about the journey he took in real estate and how he eventually found his niche in probate properties. He also tells us crucial things any investor who’s thinking of giving probate a try should watch out for. Tune in and learn how creative thinking can get you success in real estate even when inventory is at an all-time low! — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing: Getting Creative With Probate Properties With Al Nicoletti I’ve got my good friend Al with me. Thank you for coming in. I love It. I’d love to let you start off. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself. I could go through a whole thing, but I’ll keep it concise a little bit for you. From Miami, I played violin for fifteen years. I’m a natural musician. When I was in music for that long, I wanted to know what I was going to do with my life, like make money. I knew music wasn’t going to get me to that next level. I had to make a lot of decisions. I picked law school, of all things, not medicine or anything like that. I was going to take that and I was going to do some entertainment law thing. I had no idea where it was going to go. Law led me down a path to real estate because when I got out of law school, passed the bar, took my first job, and it was with a real estate attorney, my first mentor. At the time, we were doing foreclosure defense and dabbling in a little probate. We weren’t as heavy as I am now, but we were getting into a lot of that stuff. I saw for the first-time closings, titles, and foreclosures. A few years after that, I moved to Jacksonville and I had a job up there. That’s when I started my role in the whole probate real estate world. I went from musician to lawyer, marketer, speaker, podcast host, and all the above. It’s been a wild adventure ever since. I’ve been so impressed by your energy level. I’ve never seen anyone bring it and then you bring it more, and then you never stop bringing it. Do you sleep? That’s what a lot of people ask. They’re like, “When do you sleep? You’re constantly working. We see you on Facebook and Instagram. We can’t get you off our feeds.” Yes, I sleep. I make sure that’s something that’s important that you get that rest because you got to keep up that energy level. You are one of the guests that whenever I saw your name come across as a booking, I thought, “I can’t wait to hear this guy’s bottom line up front.” Every week, I asked the guest to help me deliver what I call the bottom-line upfront. When I used to brief generals in the Marine Corps, we were taught to never bury the lead. You got to get the most important thing conveyed in case the general has to get up or you get mortars coming in, or whatever. Take whatever it is you’re thinking about and pour it into the audience. Things that you’re seeing or observing in the market nowadays. Things they should be thinking about, should and shouldn’t be doing. Are you with me? I’m ready. Bottom-line upfront, go. In a market that’s tough right now where inventory is at an all-time low, it’s so important to reevaluate strategies in real estate that you weren’t thinking about before. Whether you were doing wholesaling before and now you get into land or short-term like Airbnb, it’s important to evaluate the market you’re in right now. What’s really important is realizing the niches out there like probate that can provide an opportunity for you in the market because probate’s one of those niches that are recession-proof and pandemic-proof.   It is a constant niche. When all-time low inventory is happening right now, you have to be able to look at other things and creative opportunities that exist out there. Maybe it’s not buying the whole house. Maybe it’s buying the partial interest and maybe you are able to find a way to creatively get around that because there’s so much opportunity out there that there are deals everywhere, but it’s a matter of how you make it and get creative that makes the difference in your game. You said foreclosure defense. When was that? That was in 2016. You did a little probate. You went from music to law school to entertainment law to foreclosure defense, and then you found probate and it’s stuck. What was it about probate that attracted you to it? There was an opportunity in the market with real estate. There are so many properties that are out there that are under people’s names. What I discovered was there were probate opportunities where somebody owned the property, but the heirs can’t sell that property without probate being done. What I recognize is there was some issue where you can’t sell it. We had to find a solution to that situation. That’s where I found that opportunity. Thousands of properties out there were able to come in and find a way to solve it. That solution and that overcoming issue to help heirs to help the situation and to offload the real estate, something about that made me tick. It exploded from there. I had Kurt Carlton on, the Founder of New Western Acquisitions. One of the interesting things that he said is we’ve got to

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UNIN 14 | Investment Insurance

Investment Insurance: Do’s and Don’ts For Your Real Estate Business With Corey Maxwell

  The market is about to shift, and you have to be ready. Investment insurance is one way to do that. In today’s episode, Tim Herriage chats with Corey Maxwell, Co-Managing Partner of Birmingham Insurance Group. With volatile market conditions, you must start thinking of ways to protect your business and assets. Corey is here to share his wisdom on how you can do just that. Plus, he gives valuable insights on what you should and shouldn’t be doing for your business to succeed. Don’t miss the golden nuggets from this episode, and tune in to get practical tips and mindset strategies that will position you for success. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Investment Insurance: Do’s and Don’ts For Your Real Estate Business With Corey Maxwell I have Corey Maxwell. Corey, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. I’m glad to be here. I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t wait to talk about fishing and college football but first, why don’t you tell our readers a little bit about yourself? I am one of the Cofounders and Managing Partners at Birmingham Insurance Group, BIG Insurance. We specialize in insurance for investors and property management companies. We take care of folks all across the country, 50 states. We’re also investors. We’re in the fight every day like everyone else is. We look forward to learning and growing along with everyone else here. Full disclosure, in December 2021, when we met, we entered into an agreement for me to sell REI Choice Insurance to you at BIG. You’re my partner, you and Jason Henderson as well. I like to get that out there. I wanted you to come here, Corey, because you and Jason are investors and have been involved in hard money and other businesses. We all operate the largest real estate investor-focused insurance agency in the nation. There are some others out there but I’m going to call us the largest. We’re the largest non-exclusive. Every episode, I start with the Bottom Line Up Front. Imagine when I was in the Marine Corps, I used to brief generals. They always said, “You don’t bury the lead. You have to lead with the bottom line up front.” If the general has to get up and leave the room or if there’s a mortar attack, you’ve got to get the most important thing. I’m going to give you two minutes to tell the readers the most important things that you see happening in the real estate market, industry and businesses and then some things that you think they should be doing and anything you think they should stay away from or not be doing. I appreciate the opportunity to share some ideas. In the marketplace, a lot is going on. Everybody’s paying attention to the midterm elections and inflation. Quite frankly, there are several things that I would recommend and focus on. First of all, being, “Don’t follow my path.” When it comes to achieving your goals, focus on your true self. Authenticity is key.   You can’t fake it but you can fake it until you make it. Be yourself. Go all in. Many people have too many opportunities. I’m one of them. Instead of getting analysis paralysis, find something that’s working and stick with it. Be committed. When I say be committed, be fully committed. Focus your attention, accomplish your goal and then you can move on to the next task or opportunity. I also made a note to remind myself, as well as everyone else, to find a mentor. Learning it on your works but it’s one of the reasons why franchises like McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and others that are well known make it a whole lot more often than mom-and-pop shops. Find a mentor, somebody that can show you the loopholes, opportunities and shortcuts. It saves you a lot of time, heartache and energy. The two number one things I would focus on are tied for first. Be ready because the market is about to shift as inflation continues to hover at highs and the mortgage business has slowed down at a pace faster than any other time in the last several years. Foreclosures are about to start back over again and people are going to lose their businesses. Be ready, have your money in order and go get them. There’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s dive into that. I’ll throw the hard part out there first. You said, “Don’t be like me.” What are we referencing there? Everybody has wins and losses. If you are going to be successful, you have to be willing to try but more importantly, to fail because failure is where the best lessons come from if you’re paying attention and you are willing to learn from the process. What I recommend is don’t follow my path but more importantly, find a mentor, somebody who has already been down this road, is familiar with the bumps and the turns and who can tell you to brake, accelerate, hang a left and right. You and I both have been in the ditch at some point in our lives. The last thing we want to do is get back in that ditch because, in the best scenario, we’re going to have to winch ourselves out. At the worst, we’re going to smack a tree and game over. Many people that are successful attempt to pretend as if they were never unsuccessful. They forget the challenges that we all make it through. It’s not the challenges we encounter. It’s the challenges we make it through. It’s those challenges that make us good business people, parents and spouses. It was interesting you said, “Fail but pay attention.” That’s a powerful combination of words to me because often we fail but rarely do we pay attention to why we failed. Corey, talk a little bit about some of the things you see going on in the marketplace. It could

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UNIN 13 | Real Estate

Making Connections And Recognizing Opportunities In The Real Estate Industry With Zach Coppinger

  The real estate industry is broad and is divided up into different specialties. With that, you have a lot to learn to see how it works and strategies you can execute to build your portfolio and succeed in the real estate world. Listen to this episode as our guest, Zach Coppinger, shares valuable insights into building your network and recognizing opportunities in the real estate world. In today’s market and economy, you should know which things you should focus on regarding investments, so Zach gives an overview of what you can do to keep your business moving forward. He also discusses how you can manage labor and material costs. Tune in to learn more about the marketplace and how to attract potential clients. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Making Connections And Recognizing Opportunities In The Real Estate Industry With Zach Coppinger I am joined by a good friend of mine, Zach Coppinger. Zach, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Zach, tell the audience a little bit about yourself. I got my start in real estate investing by buying houses for you back in September 2013. It was a while ago. I started buying single-family houses for you. I ended up going out and doing my own thing in 2014 and 2015. I have pretty much stayed in the single-family space since then. I focused on building up a rental portfolio early on. I pivoted in 2018 and 2019 to focus a little bit more on the owner finance and note origination business but still holding those. I simultaneously built the rental and the note business and still trying to stay pretty narrow with those two business strategies. I am proud of you. My wife is more proud of you. Zach, I like to start each week with something we call the Bottom Line Upfront. Just imagine someone riding around in their car. They queue up for the show, get out, get gas, and cannot find it when they get back in. In the Marine Corps, when we brief the generals, they always say, “Do not bury the lead. You lead with the most important thing up front in case you get mortar rounds.” I am going to have you talk to the readers and talk about the things in the market, the economy, and the real estate cycle nowadays that they need to be focused on, thinking about, they need to be doing and avoid. Take two minutes and give them the bottom line upfront. This marketplace now, over the past few years, has allowed investors to get pretty lazy with numbers. You could have overbought the house, over-rehabbed the house or gone over budget, and you are fine if you held it for five months. You ended up appreciating 10% and 15% in that time. It allows investors to get pretty lazy with numbers. You keep winning whenever you go into those scenarios long enough, and you start to feel pretty comfortable. You can just keep doing and repeating it. Getting a grasp on your numbers again, having real ARVs, real rehab budgets with updated pricing with material issues, in our personal business, we have seen materials go up. The contractors have tried not to put their labor up too much because they submit a bid. We push back a little bit and say, “It used to be 30%, 40% less. There is going to be a tail in labor pricing going up as well as the material pricing.” With this marketplace, we are starting to see a bit of a plateau with numbers in most asset classes, as far as pricing and single-family. I would say getting a good grasp on the real ARV, the real rehab, not assuming that the market is going to work you out of that. It is because the market is a little bit unknown. It seems very difficult to predict that it is going to keep moving up at the pace that it has been. Right in line with that, having a little bit of a cushion in case you missed it. There are a lot of sayings out there, “Cash is trash.” You are losing money if it is just sitting in your account. Inflation stated rate might be 7%, 8%. We feel like it is a little bit more. Losing value on that money is just sitting in your account but providing you the platform to not lose your business in case you miss a deal. How much liquidity is enough? It is personal for each person. What we try to do is about 10% of how much money we are borrowing. If we borrow $5 million, we try to keep $500,000 in cash reserves. It is a comfortable position that we found and allows us to float 6 to 8 months of paying out debt service without any money coming in. To sum it up, have a good grasp of your numbers. Do not think that the market is going to get you out of a sticky situation moving forward and maintain a comfortable amount of liquidity. Make sure that a comfortable amount is calculated. Try to have some basis for why you are doing it, whether it is just being able to service debt for a certain amount of time if you have no money coming in, being able to go over on your rehabs and still be able to pay your guys and get rid of the property. The property might sell for a little bit less than you anticipated.   There is a lot to unpack. The first question is that you are not new in the business by any measure. Like you said earlier, you got into it around 2013. It has been up. Where do you get the information you need to plan for the unknown? I am a pretty conservative guy by nature. A backstory a little bit. I

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UNIN 12 | Fix And Flip

How You Can Fix And Flip Around Market Shifts And Why Local Flippers Are Crucial To Solving The Inventory Crisis With Kurt Carlton

  The state of our economy today is an open book and we see the hit everywhere. But how has it been in the real estate space? Specifically, how has it been in the fix and flip niche? In this episode, Kurt Carlton, President and co-founder of New Western, talks about market shifts and the several factors affecting the real estate market. He also shares insights on what the current inventory crisis is really looking like. Tune in and learn more about initiatives for fix and flip developers and how you can battle inflation and hustle your way to the top. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   How You Can Fix And Flip Around Market Shifts And Why Local Flippers Are Crucial To Solving The Inventory Crisis With Kurt Carlton Welcome back to the show. Thanks for coming back. I am joined by a good friend, Kurt Carlton. Kurt, thanks for stopping by. It is a pleasure. Kurt, take a minute, say hello, and tell a little bit about you and New Western. We operate a marketplace for investors to find houses to rehab. We do it in 20 states and we will be in probably 10 or 15 more. We are expanding rapidly. A lot has changed since 2008, but we have been doing this since 2009. I remember when you started and it seemed like bad timing to me, but I am very impressed with what you have done and the marketplace you have developed. I want to get straight into some content here. The first segment is Bottom Line Upfront. What I do is I give each guest two minutes. When I was in the Marine Corps, I used to brief generals. I always said, “You do not bury the lead. You give the general the most important information up front in case mortar shells come in.” What I am going to do is I am going to give you two minutes to talk to the readers and pontificate about what people should be thinking about, what they should be looking at, any data that is interesting to you that you are watching that you think people should watch. Things you think they should be doing or maybe some things that you have seen in the market that you think people should not do. Bottom Line Upfront, go. There a couple of big things. It is getting exciting again. Inflation is the big one. That is what everybody is looking at. Nobody seems to share the opinion on how to measure it, but it is here and it is big. Warren Buffett famously said in 2012, “The biggest hedge against inflation is the 30-year Fannie Mae mortgage.” It is a perfect defense against inflation. Even though rates are higher, you can reset your mortgage rate if rates go down through a refinance, as long as your financial condition stays the same. You cannot repurchase a home again later, if the price increases. I do not think that there is a future where home price appreciation starts to go backward rapidly. Inventory is at such an unhealthy low number. It would be unreasonable to think that you are going to lose home value. I think we will be just fine on homes. That is very much separate from a lot of the other concerns in the economy. I think what is different in this potential recession that we are going into now is, in the past, we did not have as much warning and the Fed did not do as well in giving us a warning ahead of time. They did not communicate as well. When a recession or these issues were nigh upon us, they had to react. What they are doing a really good job of is communicating so that the market can understand where we are heading and can slow down before they need to raise rates. I think that is already happening. We are narrowly looking at a soft landing as opposed to a hard landing, but we will see. I would continue to buy real estate. I would certainly leverage fixed-rate mortgages and debt whenever you can. That would be my advice, given the lack of inventory we have now. You brought up the dirty word, Fed. You said they are doing a good job. You may be the only person I have heard say that, but you are right. They have given us a heads up. Interest rates have doubled, but they have doubled from not even the bottom of the basement, like under the basement, under the foundation piers, down into the Earth’s crust. You brought the crystal ball segment of the show up earlier. Do you think that still rates could still go up? The idea is that they will continue to increase. If you saw it in 2018, we had the same issue. Rates went up and then they reversed it. Who knows if that is going to happen? The inflationary pressure is different than what it was in 2018. Nobody knows where we are going to go, soft landing, hard landing. Your teeth are on the edge. If you push too far, it is like a chain reaction. Everybody goes. I listened to Ben Bernanke in 2008 about how that was potentially avoidable, which I am not sure I believe. It was right before he handed us a signed book and all that. Maybe he was trying to save us. Everybody complained so much. They drove it to happen. Nobody knows, but what is different than it has been in the past is the Fed does a lot more forecasting about what they are going to do. That allows the market to react. It allows the slowdown that we need to slow down inflation and the labor costs that need to happen. I look at this more, real estate-wise, moving towards normalization and not moving towards a recession. It is inserting

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Real Estate Strategies And Tips With Jawad Dashti Of TooDash CRE

  If you want to succeed in real estate, it’s not enough to sit on the sidelines and learn everything. If you don’t put all of that knowledge to work, you’re not going to be able to do anything. You have to take action. Jawad Dashti the owner of TooDash CRE, likens it to playing Monopoly without knowing the rules. In this episode of Uncontested Investing, Jawad sits down with Tim Herriage to tell us how exactly this works for him. He also talks about making the “safe bet” in real estate and why you don’t have to aim to beat the bigger players all the time. Tune in and get some real, actionable tips that will get you going on real estate even through these trying times! — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Real Estate Is All About Taking Action: Real Estate Strategies And Tips WITH Jawad Dashti Of TooDash CRE I’m with my buddy, Jawad Dashti. Jawad, thanks for coming. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself. I’ve been in real estate for years. I don’t find myself to be that great at it but I figured that if you make as few mistakes as possible, that alone makes it work out pretty well. You started as a plumber, correct? Yeah. I was in construction working for all these home flippers right before the 2008 bust. Everybody was bragging about how much money they were making. I figured that if they could do it, I could because I knew all about construction. How’d that work out for you? I learned that knowing construction doesn’t do anything at all with real estate. It’s a numbers game. I had to get up and put in some work attitude. To me, that’s what’s paid off the best. You’ve always been one of those people I admire in the DFW area. Every episode, we start with the Bottom Line Up Front, the BLUF. When I was in the Marine Corps, we used to brief generals. They would always say, “Don’t bury the lead. Get the most important information out and share it in case a General has to get up and leave a mortar fire or something like that.” What I’m going to do is give you two minutes to share what you think people should be thinking about in the real estate market, maybe what you think they shouldn’t be doing, what they should be doing or what you’re doing to continue to grow and also protect yourself. The best advice that I could give is that we’re going through some different times, which seems to happen about every eight years in the economy. That’s when the most money is made and lost. The people that win the game are the ones that pay attention. I tell people to look at the economy, what’s going on and all the transitions because everything’s changing. If you can try to determine where things are going, you need to think about 3 to 5 years ahead of the game. As you’ve seen, the office is changing and a lot of places are converting into multifamily. A lot of multifamilies are converting into multi-use. If you notice which way neighborhoods are growing and how real estate is changing and you can be a little bit ahead of the game, it’ll pay off for you. It’s a good time. The inflation has taken off and assets are growing. I have no concern about being in the game. For the people that think that the real estate market is going to crash because of the interest rates, I still think that mortgage rates are low compared to the average. If the whole world went bust, we’re all screwed anyway. Keep playing the game. If you commit to it, put in the work and try to think a little bit ahead, you’re going to do well. One of the things that stuck out the most to me following you on social media the last couple of years is the way you play the tax game. Where did you learn that? I can’t give credit to any books because I don’t read books at all. It’s funny, I can read stuff on my phone all day but reading a book, I’m allergic to it. It’s going to investor meetups, watching shows like this and REI groups. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of content from shows like this. I overhear conversations. When I see people who are smarter than I talk, I try to eavesdrop on them.   I won’t hear everything that I need to know to fully understand the game but I can hear enough to hear a word like 1031 exchange or some kind of phrase like accelerated depreciation. I go home, google it and research it non-stop until I feel like I’m a master at it. I always try to tell people it’s like trying to play Monopoly without reading the rules. How do you expect to win the game when you don’t know the rules? Many people do that. People talk trash about taxes all the time. I love taxes because I don’t have to pay them. The IRS and the government make these rules to manipulate the economy. They’re paving the way for what they want you to do and paying a tax as a penalty for not doing what they want. If you play the game, you can make a lot of money and not have to pay them anything. That’s the way to do it. Read the rules. You own Precision Plumbing and multifamily, commercial, chicken coop and a bunch of single-family. Let’s start at the beginning, maybe on a high-level cover of how you progress from venture to venture. With the single-family, the first deal that I got, I was winging it. Luckily, it went well for me on my first deal. I purchased a single-family deal. Luckily, it was a

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