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UNIN 25 | Real Estate

All Things Real Estate: Getting Started, Scaling Your Team, And Living The Dream With Jason Mcdougall

  Finding opportunities in the market has always been hyped and encouraged—but it is actually as challenging as it is dreamy. In this episode, Jason McDougall shares with us his financial journey and all the gold nuggets he got in real estate from learning the hard way! Jason is a DFW All-Star, real estate investor, and founder of Next Era Home Buyers. How do you pick a market to focus on? Why is success in social media not as perfect as it seems? How do you gain freedom from real estate? Tune in and learn all about getting started in real estate, scaling your team, and ultimately, living the dream! — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   All Things Real Estate: Getting Started, Scaling Your Team, And Living The Dream With Jason Mcdougall I’m here with a good friend of mine, Jason McDougall. Jason, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me on again. Jason is a DFW all-star real estate investor. I’ve known him for about a decade now. Jason, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? I got into real estate in 2016. I had a W-2 job that I felt like somebody wanted way more than I did. I fired my boss in 2016. My wife was a few months pregnant. I started out wholesaling and flipping and then got into the rentals. That’s where I am now, stacking up the rentals. That’s a good time, 2016. I’m not sure about the whole pregnant wife part being a good time. It was fun. We don’t know what we don’t know. We forget what we did know. I like to start every week with a segment I call the Bottom Line Up Front, the BLUF. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was an intelligence guy. We had to brief the generals. They would always say, “Don’t bury the lead.” You have to say the most important thing up front in case there’s a mortar attack or people have to get up and leave or whatever. Bottom Line Up Front, up to two minutes, anything you think people should be thinking about now, maybe focusing on, maybe avoiding, monitoring in their business or the economy. Take it away. The most important thing to look for right now is opportunities. Back when I got started in 2016 is when I started buying houses. I was in real estate in 2011 trying to learn the business. Those were the best buying opportunities of most people’s careers. We’re about to get into the same situation now. Don’t be fearful of the market. Buy them, but buy the houses responsibly. Make sure you’re buying them deep enough to account for any drop in value in the future or something like that. Also, stack up some cash to make sure that you’re staying liquid during that time too. Both those things are super important. A lot of the people that are on the sidelines right now are going to miss some great opportunities to buy some good deals to hang onto for many years to come. That’s my advice. You said some things that are important that we have to peel back the onion. Buying deep. Why do you say buy deep right now? We all don’t know what’s going to happen with the market. It could go down by 10% or 20%. I personally don’t think that’s going to happen, but you never know. Buying deep where you have enough equity portion to always make sure you’re not upside down, and there’s enough juice in that deal. Maybe if you have to refinance it in a few months after your rehab and the market’s changed, you’re still good. You’re not going to be stuck with something in a bad loan or whatever. At RCN, to do well over $1 billion in loans, and as I shared with you at lunch, trying to do another $500 million or so by the end of the year, we’ve always got to have cash. When you’re funding hundreds of loans a week, you have to have cash. There are some people that say cash is trash. It rhymes and it makes a good little meme. You said during the BLUF to sit on cash or conserve cash. What is your business or investing thesis on how much cash to keep at any point in time? I don’t know that there’s a number. For each person, it’s probably different. For me, I want to have enough where I can maintain if there are no rents for six months across my portfolio. I want to make sure I’m not going to have to give those properties back. I want to make sure I can cover the debt on those. Also, for opportunities. There are some opportunities that might come up where maybe a lender isn’t available or maybe you can’t get funds fast enough or something, but it’s a great deal. You want to have cash available for that too. Cash is trash. I’ve heard that. I know it is because of inflation and stuff, but it also makes you feel good to be sitting on some cash. You can’t put a number on that investing-wise. There’s no return on how you feel. A great mentor of mine used to say that real estate can make a millionaire out of a multimillionaire quickly. You can get real estate rich and cash poor. You can’t service your obligations, but you also can’t take advantage of opportunities. That opportunity cost is huge. Real estate isn’t completely liquid. It’s pretty liquid. You can sell a house, but that takes time. If you have an event where you need some liquidity and all your liquidity is tied up in equity, then you’re stuck. What amount of cash these days can buy a house? You hear everyone complaining about how affordable homes are. You hear everyone complaining that you can’t get started in this. What’s the

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UNIN 17 Chad | Optimizing Real Estate Business

Optimizing Your Real Estate Business To Live Life To The Fullest With Chad Weeden

  There’s nothing wrong with working hard to grow your business. But as Tim says, the business is the vehicle, not the dream. One man who’s got that concept down is Chad Weeden of Fusion Real Estate Investment Group. In this episode, Chad talks with Tim Herriage about how he’s optimizing his real estate business to make time for what matters most: family. By automating processes, getting marketing down, and having a trusted team, Chad has built his business to function in a way where he can make spontaneous plans and still get things done. He even spent a month vacationing without his business missing a beat. If you want to learn how he did it, tune in to this episode! Be moved by Chad’s philosophy and learn the strategies to help you live life to the fullest without compromising the growth of your business. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Optimizing Your Real Estate Business To Live Life To The Fullest With Chad Weeden I’m here with my friend, Chad Weeden. Chad, thank you for being here. I appreciate you having me. Chad, why don’t you take a second and tell everybody a little bit about yourself? That’s a long story. I’m a former military guy who somehow ended up in the car business. I was a finance manager for a long time. I’m a failed business owner the first time around, broke as hell, and found real estate investing. That’s the shortest term. I’m not going to steal your story, but folks, I’m here with the greatest dad I know. We’re going to talk about that in a little bit because it’s a big part of my passion for this business. I start every week with a session I call the Bottom Line Up Front. As a military guy, you know what I mean. General, we’re in the tent, we’re briefing, mortar rounds come, and the general has to leave. I got to make sure he knew the most important thing. I want you to share the most important things happening now in business, the things people need to be focused on, things they need to be thinking about, and maybe things they should be trying to avoid. Impart your wisdom and the things they need to take away what’s happening now. I’ll start with my focus. I was in the car business when the crash happened in 2008. My focus now is to be smart and make sure that I’m not missing out on any opportunities. I feel like I don’t want to get crazy and out of hand, but I don’t want to miss the boat. Back then, I missed the boat on some things out of fear. For a lot of us as entrepreneurs, fear is a driver. It can stall your trajectory on what you want to do. Outside of that, I’m still looking to capitalize on all of the things that are right in front of my plate. One thing I don’t want to lose track of is why I got into this business and why I got out of the business that I was in. We’ll probably touch more on that. I’ve focused on chasing time. That’s been my number one thing, chasing time for my family. We’re blessed with an autistic little guy. Our whole family is totally blessed. That’s been my life focus now, going on what we’re doing. I try and intertwine and weave in and out of life, with that being my main focus. I would say don’t miss on opportunities, but don’t get too crazy. That’s all I have to say. That was great. You brought it up, so we’re going to go straight there. Many people get into this business. On my personal website, the headline says, “The business is a vehicle, not the dream.” I’ve been there. I’ve got lost in the business I claimed to have created to spend a lot of time with my family. I never saw my family because I was working in the business. Did you spend how many days in Florida? We spent six weeks roughly in Florida and a whole full month in Key West. We pretty much hung out on our boat every day. It’s the Salt Life. It was incredible. It’s you, your wife, and your kids. Did you shut your business down during that time? No. The investments side of my business never skipped a beat. I got back home, and I was behind on some stuff, but we still bought as many houses as we were going to buy, regardless of whether I was in the Keys or sitting in my office in the basement of the house. Your wife, Wendy, is a realtor. She’s a multi-state broker in Denver and South Carolina. We both have teams. It’s amazing. One thing we’ve figured out, and I do this to my wife a lot, is, “Drop of a hat.” We’re going to be gone for a week. We’re going to hit the road. We do these road trips. For example, I’d booked Airbnb for a month, and we’re going to live somewhere for a month. I always get this same response from her, “What? Can we just stay home?” I am not a homebody. I’ve crafted my business to be able to live that way because I’ve sat in the office and the car business for so long, chained to a desk, that I envy people that could travel and do what they wanted to do. I love my children and my dogs, but I’ve told my wife that when the young one is no longer in school, we’re going. I’m going to be up in the Northeast during the summer. I’m going to be in the South in the winter. Part of that, which I’m guilty of, is making excuses on why I can’t do it now. I could find someone to board the dogs. I could

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Wholetailing: Flipping Real Estate With No Money With Travis Johnson

  Have you ever thought about flipping real estate deals but don’t know how to do it? You’re not alone. Travis Johnson, a successful house flipper in Minnesota and author of the Seven Figure Flipping Book, learned how to flip real estate the hard way. With no books or training when he first started, he did everything wrong and took financial losses. Today, Travis shares his experience on how to get involved in flipping real estate deals with no money, wholesaling strategies, and treating real estate investing as a real business. Tune in! — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Wholetailing: Flipping Real Estate With No Money With Travis Johnson Welcome to the show. With me in this episode is Travis Johnson. Travis, how are you? I’m very good. Thanks for having me here. I knew you from a mastermind but why don’t you take a minute to tell the reader a little bit about yourself? I’m based out of Minneapolis and the St. Paul area of Minnesota. I started investing part-time in real estate in 2001. I went full-time in 2016. I built my business from the ground up and doing quite well at it. I do a lot of rural investing. I also do a lot of the metropolitan where all the other investors are at. I like to start these episodes with what I call the bottom line up front. When I was in the Marine Corps, they always told us we had to tell the general the most important thing as soon as the briefing started in case he had to leave the room. Take two minutes. Talk to the reader about what you think the most important things are that they need to be paying attention to or doing in this market. That’s a pretty broad question that you’re asking me to answer but I can best answer it in regards to interest rates having a huge play. Over the last couple of years, interest rates have been fantastically low. When you purchase a house, if you had another contract and there was delay after delay, it didn’t matter. The values kept going up. It was an easy extra payday. Now, you have to pay more attention to interest rates going up. If you’re buying a higher-value house, you have to pay attention to that. The main point I would say is to pay attention to interest rates but also get out there and do stuff in regards to investing because wholetailing, which we can dive more into the show, is working well and will continue to work very well in the near future. I also have my little secret strategy as to how to invest in the rural market. We’re going to talk about wholetailing and rural markets. I love the interest rate conversation. It’s one of those things that I’m always having but let’s go back. What is a wholetail? How I define wholetailing is actual wholesaling. That’s where you get a property under contract with a motivated seller and then you’re going to find an investor that’s going to want to buy that contract from you on an assignment basis. You’re wholesaling it from the motivated seller to the end cash buyer and you’re making a fee in between. On the wholetail side of it is retail. If you take the retail side, you’re selling it to the consumer. It’s someone that’s getting a bank loan typically for the property. The property has to be in lendable condition. All the safety issues are taken off the table. Not having a collapsing deck is a good example but it is move-in ready other than it probably needs updates. That’s a good way to look at it for wholetailing. If you can do the actual wholetailing and eliminate the wholesaling part knowing that you’re going to capitalize very fast on turning around your wholesaling to a cash investor but it’s to an end-user or the person that’s going to cash you out on the retail end, you would make huge margins on your deals. How does that work? Are you charging full price? Is there a discount? What do the numbers look like? In the last couple of years, it has gone through the roof that what I thought was well over retail for a nice house. That’s what wholesaling was getting. Now, the retail price is going even higher so it’s back-filling. That’s how it works in regards to that. For me, the better answer is, for example, a house all fixed up was worth $150,000. It’s move-in ready. The paint colors are neutral. The carpet is in. The hardwood, floors are done. Everything’s fine about the property. I’ll wholetail it for $150,000. I’ll probably sell it for about $130,000 or $140,000. There is a slight discount underneath but you’re hardly doing any of the work on the inside. The nice thing is you’re getting this thing on the public market. Yes, MLS.   For some people that wholesale or assign properties, part of their problem is they can’t test the public market to get the maximum price. You’re going to have to take title to the property. There’s no way around it. Is this an inner-city thing? Is this a rural thing? Where do you find this strategy has the most bang for your buck? I’ve been fortunate to be very successful even in the rural markets. I’m doing that strategy a lot but if you want the biggest return, go to the heavy metropolitan areas where it’s a dense population. You’re going to make insane numbers doing the wholetailing strategy. How long have you been doing this? I’ve been doing it full-time since 2016 but investing part-time since 2001. What’s been the best part about it for you? The financial freedom and flexibility with family schedules. We have four kids. Being flexible with school schedules and getting everyone where they need to be, that’s what

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