WS1058: The Secret of Achieving Rapid Results in Real Estate

EPISODE 1051

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.6] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell. 

0:00:24.1 

Whitney Sewell: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, you are going to hear me speaking at an event at a Mastermind group that I spoke out about a month ago. This group is gathered by Ellis Hammond and it’s a great group of guys and gals who are driven, they are focused, they are ready to hustle. Many are already hustling and making things happen, and just a great group. 

I hope that you enjoy… I love sharing my story with groups like this, and I think today you’re gonna hear probably parts of that story that you’ve never heard before, even after over 1000 episodes, I think there’s probably parts of this that you’ve never heard before. And so, I hope you enjoy the show, I hope you are motivated, encouraged. And I’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to reach out to me personally or get in the group, the Facebook group, either one. Have a blessed day!

0:01:16.0 

WS: I’ll start with a little story. Many years back, I was on a large stage for about two weeks to go in front of a large group talking about real estate, and I immediately got on the stage and I said, Boom! I just threw a hammer through the drywall that I just hung up. I was so angry, I was so mad. We were newly married, we’d only been married probably a year and a half at that time, and she was so mad at me as well, I had spent her money, I spent her money. But it was a great deal. It was a great deal. It was a great deal. I can’t understand it like, why could she understand that this is a great deal? It just made so much sense. Right, so during this time, you’ll hear more about this story or what was happening. But my wife and I, we had been married, like I said, about a year and a half of this time, we were remodeling a house while living in it, and she had had to watch the dishes in the tub for a lot longer than I would like to admit, and it was quite stressful. I was a police officer then as well, working the worst schedule, working every night weekend and holiday, working all the overtime I possibly could just be making practically nothing. It felt like that anyway. Right. And so that pushed us in many ways, but also we had a desire for her to be at home, we had children, I knew making 25 grand a year, maybe 30, if I worked a bunch of overtime, maybe 35 if I just really cranked out all the overtime I could. It was gonna be very difficult. Right.

So, I’m gonna come back to that story later as I talk, because so much of that is exactly what we’ve been talking about today. When we’re talking about husband wives and different things, it’s so important that you’re both on the same mission and at that time shall senior not, we had not talked about all these things, so we were just newly wed, we did not receive great council growing up, we weren’t really believers at that time. We thought we knew the word, but there was no relationship really with Christ. So, we know that now, but we were said, Oh yeah, we go to church every Sunday, but we did not have a relationship with the Lord really. He was not a big part of our marriage, and it was obviously different from now.

But I just want you to think about that scenario, we were not on the same mission, we were not going the same direction with our business for sure. Right. I wanna share a secret with you right off the bat, and I want you to pay attention, so everybody wants to know how we went from raising $250,000, so our first project, I raised $250,000. It took me weeks to do it in tons of work, man. But I was thankful, I would say thankful. No friends and family invested, nobody in our family is wealthy. It didn’t come from money of any kind whatsoever, I had the best job probably anyone in my family had ever had. But then being able to consistently raise tens of millions in a few hours. Now, I think Andy was talking earlier about, I wanna be able to do it quicker. They were faster. And there are some ways to do that and it takes time. It does not happen overnight. I wanna tell you some critical things about my mission, my mindset or why and my how, how we got to where we’re at, and this is probably one of the most important things to teach you how to not be transaction-focused by loyalty-focused. Very important, if you wanna raise a lot of money.

So, the secret is going fast, you have to show up to give, seems simple. It seems simple, but it’s something I have to work on constantly. Something I have to work on in every conversation, I have to show up to give, I have to think about how I am acting with someone for the first time, I want to be there to serve them. I want to be there to serve them. And that is going to change the way you do business. It’s gonna change the way you think about other people. But it is. It’s another mindset shift. It’s not always a win-win. Forget about win-win. Just show up to give. Over the past couple of years, $15 million assets, we talk about some of this. We do have an approximation contract, we have three development projects as well going on, it’s not in that, and interviewed over a thousand people, quite a few in this room as well. And my network has exploded and I’ve been able to talk in front of many, many stages now. Many, many people, hundreds and even thousands at a time that never imagined being able to speak in front of it as many people as I have. A few years ago, probably four years ago, if you’d ask me, even ask me probably what a podcast was, I would have, may not have been able to tell you what a podcast was.

It’s interesting to see how things happen, and I remember probably two years before that, Chelsea and I were at a couples retreat. And I was praying with my pastor, and I can’t even remember where this came from, but he was praying and He prayed that the Lord would use me to speak. And he compared me to Moses not wanting to speak and I thought, “where did that come from?” And it’s so interesting how the Lord does those things. I get to look back and just praise the Lord and try to figure out what I was gonna do as a career, policing seems like an easy transition. I love the uniform, I love the service and the discipline. So out of 1,200 applicants, there were five positions with Kentucky City police. I was blessed to have one of those. I loved to work on the road. I would have worked for free the first two years. I loved it. And so, I do work every Friday and Saturday night, ’cause that’s when I could get into the most stuff. I mean, really, that was before I was married as well. And then finally, we got married, and ifI didn’t get home till like 6 or 8 in the morning, then she knew something happened. But being a police officer was great, but again, making $25-30 grand a year, there was just no room for advancement. There’s nowhere to go. Also guys retiring, making $40 grand here, 30 years of service on and finally the writing was on the wall, where am I gonna go here? What is this gonna do for a family? I had no college. 

I almost felt a little helpless at this time. This was the same time that we had moved as a couple and we had moved to get close for the family, and we were part of a church where we met another couple of the Lord just to save us speaking through this amazing testimony and then how he used them to speak to us as well. But during that time, it was obvious, we just passed each other the hallway, the first to the year of marriage. And he said, you know what, as much as I enjoy this, this is not what’s best, and it’s just not what is best for our family, so I had to make a change, and so we did. We made a big change during this time too, being in law enforcement, that’s what pushed me to supplement our income, I was looking, looking, trying to figure out what can we do to supplement our income, I learned that not only had one or two people built wealth in real estate, they’re like hundreds of thousands people a bit well in real estate, and so, Okay, if that many people can do it, then I can probably do it to something… Right. I may not be Donald Trump, but I can probably do something to supplement our income. We want in my life that I’ll stay at home when we have children. It’s gonna be very difficult on $30 grand a year. Right.

So we pushed, we bought two triplexes and we learned a lot the hard way, made a ton of mistakes, but we got started. At the same time I became a federal agent, again, a very difficult process getting hired as a federal agent, but it was a big step up for me, right. I doubled my income, immediately a better benefit, it’s better everything, working the normal schedule, now I can actually sleep in the same bed as my wife at the same time, and all those perks. Right, but that was probably one of the best jobs my family had had, and so you can imagine when I start to talk about real estate and doing something completely different, that’s kind of a shocker, right. This is probably more of a shock to some of you.

Since I was a little boy, I wanted to train horses. I loved riding horses, it was just a passion of mine since I was very young. So we moved to Virginia, and late or not, we bought a farm, and I was training again, and we still had some rentals. I had a 15-unit building at this time that I partnered with another guy. I started training horses. And I loved it, I was clinics all over the country, I was doing lots of lessons, I was selling horses for more money than I ever imagined, so every or so I saw the stain, the saddle stock lips in both hands, but just lots of tricks, lots of things I never imagined being able to do those things, but this took an extreme amount of time, extreme amount of time to get to this level and to be able to do these things. 

This horse right here, his name is Shamrock, he’s pretty special, he’s probably my best ever. So I did lots of tricks with him at Liberty, meaning nothing on him I can ask. So meaning horses, I teach lay down. I’d stand on them while they’re laying down and pop whips and throw tarps over them, all kinds of stuff. So, just to give you an idea, it took lots of time. Lots of time. So I was also working full-time, I was training at night till midnight most nights, just sacrificing the familytime to make all that happen. And I bring this up because you may also have a passion that’s somewhat holding you back. Could I have made a lot of money training horses? Yes, I was making better money than I thought I probably could have. Even while I was only doing it after hours after my federal agent position. However, it was never gonna be passive, it was never gonna build wealth. And everybody wanted me to train their horses, wanted me to give them lessons. 

And so one fall, Chelsea and I were walking on the page, we were just praying, and we were just reflecting on where we’re at, where are we going, do we see ourselves doing what we’re doing now three years from now. And it was just obvious then. We almost can’t explain it. How we both just have base about this ’cause that obviously invested a ton of time into this. And it was becoming pretty well known at that time. And so this was like the beginning of September, and by the end of September, we had listed our farm for sale, we decided you know what, if we’re gonna be committed to commercial real estate, we’re gonna be all in on. 

So we sold our farm between Christmas and New Years, we were moving out, the house,we’d always dreamed of the farm, and that was very difficult, and that’s when I see to this passion, it may not be horse training for you, but this thing that I just wanted to do since I was very young and I was doing it, I was finally achieving that. But I can see that, you know what, this is really gonna hold us back, our family, if I’m not gonna be able to pursue real estate and do this at the same time, so we sold the farm and we sold everything related to the horse training business. 

But here’s those two triplexes. Again, tired of chasing tenants and I said it wasn’t a scalable business model. And I say that I still have so much brain damage from these two. Believe me when I say those words, the apartments, and Chelsea still cringes, you know, like, Oh, that was such a difficult time because I was self-managing, did not have a clue what I was doing. I just did a very poor deal, just a number of things, but the biggest thing was the time I missed mentally with my new bride. We’ve been married less than two years, and my mind was just always thinking about the tenant that was fixing to me about or trying to get that unit turned over or the AC that was failing, and I should have known about that for my bohol, those things, right. 

But during that time when we sold the farm is also when I went to my first real estate conference. Okay, large conference. And again, I started meeting guys and gals who were buying 100 unit complexes, and they had only been in the business a year or two, and I, wait a minute, I really thought that to be able to buy a 100 unit building you had to be doing this for 30 years or more. Right. Who does that? Right, one, I don’t know who those guys are. Maybe one day I could do that, but I never expected it, but I went to this conference and my eyes were opened again to all these people that were doing it, and again I thought, Okay, hey, they can do this, I can probably do something bigger than what I’m doing now. 

So I did. My eyes were opened. We sold the farm. And an important part here is I hired a mentor. Hired a mentor, I knew that I wanted somebody that had been there and done that. They had a big process in finding what I felt like I was the right mentor, a few key things, or when somebody was in the business now, I wanted somebody that I could speak to personally, not a team of coaches under them, and somebody I just felt like genuinely cared about my success. I did a lot of due diligence on bigger pockets and different places, asking questions, people will share with you their experience.

And so I just encourage you, I had many mentors now, that was really a mindset shift when I hired that mentor, it was $12,500, and we were fixing, start another adoption process, we knew that was fixing the cost is another probably $50 grand, and that was a lot of money to u.

And Chelsea and I, we’re both like, should we really do this? Should we hire a mentor? I am so glad I did. It’s just a no-brainer now, but at the time, that was a massive amount of money to us. Obviously, we started a podcast, a few of you, and you have been interviewed over a thousand days straight now, and I encourage you if you wanna hear more about a story with Chelsea and I, show 1,000, 1,001, and then it was a Saturday, Sunday. Then next Saturday, Sunday, it was just a series of us just talking about that whole process and a much more detail, and really her talking more.

So building teams, hiring people, scaling, we’re gonna talk about this again in a minute, but doing a daily podcast pushed me to do things that I would have never done before. I’ve personally never edited the first piece of audio, the first piece of video, I’ve never made a piece of artwork. I’ve never posted a show on our website on the internet anywhere, because I knew doing a daily show, there’s no way that I could keep up. It was not possible if I’d done a weekly show, just the way that I would have thought, I would have said, you know what, I’m gonna save some money, I’ll do this myself, I’ll learn how to edit some audio video, I’ll do it, I’ll be able to do it I would have gotten frustrated most likely, quite honestly. 

And it wouldn’t have even seemed as bad either, you know, there’s a lot of people that start weekly shows and quit, that happens often, and not too many people start daily shows and quit. I don’t know many people that have even tried, and I wouldn’t even recommend it to most. But what’s behind that growth is our why, our mission. I would like to mention David Platt. When Chelsea and I moved to Roanoke for that federal agent position, we were really new believers at that time, and we were just growing in our walls, growing in our faith, and we were exposed to David Platt, and I think he does what is called Secret Church. If you don’t know about it, I encourage you to look it up. But we had just moved there. The next week with Secret Church, and we went. He was talking about caring for orphans and what I was, we grew up in a one-stop pack town, I didn’t know anybody that was ever adopted. I was never exposed to that really, that I can remember, Chelsea or I. But David was talking about how they had adopted. There were over 150 million orphans in the world. How it can cost $40, $60 grand to bring a child home through adoption. We didn’t have a clue about any of that stuff. But on our way home, all we could ask ourselves, or why would we not adopt? Why would we not adopt? It seemed like the right thing to do. I, I’ve seen that simple. So I’m so thankful now that we’re really ignorant to the process. I mean really. And we’ve done it four times and with one failed placement, but anyway, it is quite a rollercoaster, but worth every second.

But why would we not adopt? So within a week, we turned in our application to adopt from Ethiopia. Two years later, our first son Samuel comes home from Ethiopia. A year later, Elijah comes home to adoption, he was born in the States. And our daughter, we now enjoy, also came to our family through adoption, she’s two now. So this mission has changed everything about us. This thing the Lord did, and Chelsea and I at this time, we had no idea what it would be now. And even through our foundation and what not now. But it changed everything about our business, and it’s changed everything about even the growth of our business, I didn’t see that coming. The Lord had a different plan. The Lord had a very different plan and how he was going to use all this, but the importance of your why is everything for us now, and it’s becoming everything for many other people now as well

[0:16:18.0] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.lifebridgecapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

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