WS1470: Earning Millions through Real Estate | #Highlights

EPISODE 1470

[INTRODUCTION]

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show and I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today we packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you’re gonna enjoy this show. Thank you for being with us today!

[INTERVIEW 1]

WS: Our guest is Brian Wagers. Thanks for being on the show, Brian.

Brian Wagers (BW): Thanks for having me, Whitney. Pleasure.

WS: Brian is the founder of Wagers Capital where he has grown a net worth of over one million dollars and has over 300 doors valued at over 12 million dollars all under the age of 30. I’m looking forward to this story, Brian. I know many of the listeners are attempting to accomplish the same thing or even if they’re over the age of 30, they’re trying to get there. But he brings a focused dedication to the oversight of the portfolio, leveraging his local knowledge and relationships to execute their strategy.

Brian is also logistics manager of a Fortune 500 company where he is the top broker in Northwest Arkansas and top 10 in his region.

Brian, thank you again, grateful for your time, you’re definitely someone that’s taking massive action at a young age. I love hearing those stories and seeing guys like yourself and gals, making it happen and jumping out there. I want to hear how you’ve done that.

First, give us a little background on yourself and how you got into real estate, all those things, but really want to get into your story because you’ve taken action that so many need to.

BW: Yeah, thanks again for having me. A little bit about myself, I was born and raised in Cincinnati, went to the University of Kentucky to get my economics major there. Right after college, I joined a commissioned based sales company, worked there for about three years and then I started to have an income problem, you know? I was making a lot of money, working a lot of hours to get to where I was and I wanted to figure out what I could do with this extra income that I had worked so hard to do.

And when you’re in commission, you are part of that higher tax bracket. Seeing so much of your commission come out towards taxes was pretty painful for me. I started looking at what do people in America doing to create wealth and a lot of it was either real estate or stocks. I had my company’s 401(k) plan so I was already doing the 6% towards our Roth IRA. But I looked at the stock market was my first venture I should say and it was just watching the stocks go up and down. I bought GoPro at $35, watched it go down to $5. That was really fun experience.

Then I knew just watch it, you couldn’t do that as a day job and watched the stocks all day. I found BiggerPockets, you know, I think a lot of people get started finding the free resources on there. I knew I wanted to get into real estate. About four years ago, I bought a single-family house, it was great, you know, the mortgage was 500, I rented it out for 950. I managed it myself. Everything was going good, but I was just doing the math and it was going to take way too long to get to where I wanted to be, you know, as a passive income standpoint, tax benefit standpoint.

Something I heard early on was find a niche. A lot of people that I listen to, went into commercial real estate and the most common thing they would say was, “I wish I would have got started in commercial real estate earlier. I wish I would have started getting into multifamily earlier.” It was something that kind of clicked with me, seeing the economy, the scale of multifamily, being able to hire professional property management. I read every book you could, went to a couple of different seminars and listened to your podcast, searched all podcast for multifamily and just read and listen as much I could and built up a little confidence in.

I found a 12-unit on market. I had finally convinced a friend to invest with me on the deal, you know, I had shown them what I was doing with it. I shown all the numbers on the multi-family, the 12-unit property and once they h ad agreed to okay, you know, talked with his wife, said, “Okay, we’ll finance that,” you know, the down payment the 12-unit was off the market. Kept following up with the broker and apparently the deal fell through and so I was there ready to go and that was 12 units, that was that one year after the single-family unit and then here we are, about four years since I first single family today.

In the introduction, you said 300 units right now to 350, we actually closed on a 50 unit a couple of weeks ago.

WS: Nice, congratulations. What’s your main mode of operation now, are you syndicating deals or are you – what’s your asset class of choice now?

BW: That’s a great question. Everything I’ve done today has either been by myself, I’ve even seller-financed a 20-unit deal and everything I’ve done up to this point has been joint venturing. Either myself or joint venturing. But now, I’m looking to do a true syndication. So everything I’ve built so far has been this joint venturing but I’ve been able to retire my wife or retire. So now, she’s doing the marketing and she built the website, she’s putting content out on Instagram, Facebook, she’s got a little bit of background in marketing.

It’s great having her be able to spearhead that so we can start letting more people know about the benefits and hopefully going into that true syndication.

WS: Yeah, you know, a million-dollar net worth by age of 30, I want to hear just some actionable steps that you took. I mean, massive action, right? We hear that, you had mentioned it earlier before even recording like that. That words so often, use in our space but it’s so true, you have to take some massive action and not be afraid to step out there, right?

I’ve heard from so many people who have had success in this business and many businesses, at some point, they had to just put themselves out there, they had to take a steps forward and really get out of their comfort zone ultimately. What did that look like for you? To make this happen and to where you really started to gain some traction.

BW: That was a big thing for me, you know, going to school for economics, you’re always taught to analyze everything to death, you know, that was something I had to unteach myself, just taking action before you think you’re ready. I think putting yourself in a situation to where you may have to look up and answer or look something up. But for me, I Googled my first step was I Googled every commercial lender in my area so I just searched commercial lender, Northwest Arkansas and I got a list of 10 people, called each bank.

“Hey, do you guys – can I speak with someone in your commercial lending department,” and then from there, “Do you guys finance apartment buildings?” And from there, you know, usually, a lot of the commercial lending, people, when they hear apartment building, they perk up a little bit, you know? Because even the banks know it’s a good sound investment, especially local banks when you show them your business plan so that was a thing for me getting.

And then I did the same thing with commercial brokers, got a list of all the commercial brokers in my area. Some people search LoopNet so you might not be able to find a good apartment deal on loop net but you can find good commercial brokers on LoopNet selling other asset classes.

Sometimes on LoopNet, you might be finding someone who is selling an office building or something of that nature and you call them and ask them and you kind of tell them what you want to do.

For me, that was finding the C class apartments in B areas and renovating them and fixing them up to get them to that B level and telling them about what your plan was. So, that was for me, just finding each person and your team that you want to have and getting a list of people in the area and just calling them not being afraid to fumble over your words a little bit or not knowing the right answer but just calling and getting that conversation going and I think, with each different conversation, it gets a little bit easier, it gets a little bit more flowing.

WS: You know, you had that 12 unit and you found somebody to partner with you or to finance ultimately the down payment for that property. Tell us about convincing that partner or you know, how did you meet this person? Is this someone that you’ve known a long time, what was that relationship like for them to trust you in that way to come in and do that.

BW: Yeah, I say, it was a lot of back and forth, it was actually my fiancé at the time’s father. My now father in law.

WS: Hopefully the deal went good.

BW: Yeah, he actually ended up joint venturing with me with a lot of other deals h ere. It did go pretty good. But that conversation, he owned 10 single-family homes free and clear and it was almost just an education about leveraging in a good way, you know, showing them how debt can be beneficial.

He had been through different financial crisis and he wanted to be safe as possible. It was a lot of back and forth with him, with his wife. I printed out spreadsheets, I made pie graphs just showing them the visual tools of it, telling them about the tax benefits of the commercial real estate. I think it was just you know, getting over that education standpoint about commercial real estate and showing them, “Hey, here is what would happen worst case scenario. We have a couple of tenants move out, we’re still looking good.”

I think showing them the downside and the upside, not just selling the upside, I think added a little more trust. Here’s what happens if we have to bring the rents down. The rents are trending up, but here’s what could happen if they went down for some reason.

[INTERVIEW 2]

WS: Our guest is Zack Boothe. Thanks for being on the show, Zack.

Zack Boothe (ZB): Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.

WS: Zach went from washing windows to making $1.2 million in his third year of business as a real estate investor. He is here to share how he was able to accomplish his task to spar others to take control of their financial lives. He is most proud of his accomplishment and his ability to help others have life-changing financial success in their businesses.

Zach, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for your time. Grateful to have you on and to hear this amazing journey that you had. Getting to that $1.2 million in one year, I mean, most people only dream of that having that success in any business, much less for a real estate business. Welcome.

Give us some back story, let’s build up to that time. I know there’s many things in your story that I know are going to encourage our listeners as well as they are on this real estate journey also.

ZB: Yeah. Well, thanks. That’s an awesome intro. Thank you. Yeah, sometimes I look at what I was able to accomplish and it’s like, “Wow! How did I do that?” sometimes, right? Feel very grateful, feel very blessed. I had amazing people around me to get there and it was not an easy journey for sure. But I’m on your podcast to share this story, not to like, “Hey, look at me. Look how great I am.” But I want other people to understand that I’m no one special and that they can do it too. Truly, like I truly want to help other people.

One of my main focuses of hitting that success is I want to have a platform to give back, right? My journey in entrepreneurship started when I was 17 actually. I’m 31 years old now. I started working when I was actually 11. We grew up pretty poor, my had a side business doing yard care, so I had to work. Working was just a requirement. My dad’s pretty tough dude. He wasn’t easy on me or my three brothers. Well, my youngest yeah. You know how the youngest is, right? Always spoiled.

WS: Yeah, the oldest don’t go away with anything. The youngest can go burn the back shit, then nobody says a word, right?

ZB: Right, exactly. When I was 16, my parents took the stance of, “Okay. You’re a man now, you can take care of yourself, you have some responsibilities.” They paid for my food, they paid for my housing and they had taught me how to take care of myself. But I had to pay for my own insurance if I wanted to drive. I had to pay for the gas if I borrowed the vehicles. If I wanted a vehicle, I had to buy the vehicle. The wouldn’t even co-sign a loan. I had to pay for my own basketball stuff, and basketball cost if I wanted to play basketball in high school still.

I had to work. I had to find time on the weekends when I was trying to play basketball. I’m like, I had to kind of take care of myself at that point and some things. Which was the greatest blessing ever, I’m so grateful for my father that in a young age like forced me to go out and work. I had made cheese and done handcrafted cheese, and I’ve framed houses and finish carpentry, loan mowing and I did taxidermy and worked in a wood mill. I did all these different jobs by the time I was 17 years old.

At 17, I was like, “Okay, this sucks. I can work harder than most of my bosses.” And I’m getting like five, six, eight, nine bucks an hour, depending on the job, so I’m like, “All right. I can start a business. It doesn’t look that hard, right?” So I started a window cleaning business. I grew that for nearly a decade.

WS: Then how old were you then?

ZB: I was 17 when I started.

WS: Oh, okay. Wow!

ZB: On my 18th birthday, actually on my birthday, I went and get my first business license, I got insured and licensed. Because I couldn’t get some of the larger contracts I was trying to get because I don’t have that license and insurance. My dad didn’t want to take the potential risk and cost of a potential lawsuit or something, so he wouldn’t co-sign on a business application. I had to wait until my 18th birthday. That’s actually what I did for my birthday.

Entrepreneurship has been really important to me for a long time. From the outside looking in, this was five years ago. From the outside looking in, I was successful. I had three trucks, I had 13 employees, I had a YouTube channel that had blown up on window cleaning and tutorials. You can look it up now. I think it has like over 10 million views on just the one video. It was great, but I was not satisfied. I had a lot of problems. I mean, I wasn’t making that much money. My employees were constant turnover. I was not running profitable. I was like 10% profit margin, which was terrible.

I had some debt that I couldn’t pay off. It was like this burden over me and I was just struggling. I wasn’t happy at all. Part of it, I was taking risk with my safety, getting on crazy ladders and like — I have this picture that I posted in Facebook, popped up as a memory the other day and it’s like me at the top of this flag pole, feeding a cord through the pulley system. I made the post and I was like, “Ha-ha, I hope my mom doesn’t see this” as a joke. But now I see it, it makes me sick. I did that for 50 bucks. What the hell? Why would you ever do that, right?

I was taking all these risks. My right shoulder still has problems and my rotator cuff from constantly washing. My employees would call in sick, so I’d have to go out on job sites all the time. I was just unhappy and I wanted to do something different. When I was at out washing, I was listening to podcast just like this, right? Or listening to books, because I didn’t have time. I told myself, I didn’t have time to read at the time and I wanted to get into real estate investing. I had bought a duplex, it was great but I was running into those roadblocks, right?

How do you get more debt when your debt income ration sucks? How do you get another loan or commercial loan when you don’t have 20% to 30% down? I was hitting all these roadblocks, I’m like, “Okay. What do I do?” I tried flipping houses and I started talking to all my wealthy window cleaning clients if they’d fund a flip, and I tried to do a flip and I lost money. I was like, “Man, this sucks.” Like, “How can I tap into this world of real estate investing?”

I started learning about some different mentors and coaches that taught something called wholesaling, which is essentially syndications, right, for single-families, for small multi-families. Where you put the property under contract and that contract is assignable. You can sell that purchase contract. You just sign it to someone else’s LLC or to someone else. They close on it and pay you a fee. I was like, “Wow, that’s for me, right? I can do some marketing. I can do some sales. I can do this.”

I paid a mentor 10 grand. Not only did I never do a deal, I never produced lead, I never even talked to a seller that would sell their house at a low enough price that would work, right? I kind of gave up for a couple of years. I’d beat myself up. The reason I really like went for it and paid that 10 grand, my son was born and it was the most beautiful day of my life. But I couldn’t help but only focus and think about how am I going to pay these medical bills. It still makes me kind of sad. Instead of focusing on the most beautiful experience ever, I was focusing on how do I pay these bills.

I’m sure so many people that listen, they’ve either had this story and have found success or they’re searching for success and they haven’t quite found it, and they can feel that, right? They feel the pain of not being able to have a quality of life because of money. I took that risk, paid 10 grand, put most of it on a credit card, never did a deal.

I had an experience where one of my window cleaning clients, he was actually a developer. Very wealthy dude, got talking to him. I was like, “Man, that’s so cool. I’d love to buy two rentals this year.” He’s like, “Oh, I got two rentals. I don’t want to deal with them. Haven’t collected rents in four months. They’re just a headaches.” And he basically just gave them to me. Sell or finance, like no money down, just hand it over to me. I was like, “Holy shit.” Like people will give you properties at massive discounts at great terms. You just got to find the right people. It does exist, right?

I started searching for another mentor, and I found one. I paid him nine grand, the next mentor and I started doing some deals. I wholesaled my first deal, like the traditional route. Put the property in a contract, sell the contract. I sold it for 10 grand. It was good. I started doing few deals and I walked away from window cleaning at that point. That first year, we brought in about $100,000, but it was not all profits of course. I probably pocketed $30,000, which is pretty food. I could barely pay my bills. Still had debt hanging over my head.

I was actually reading Multi-Family Millions and I know we talked about this off the show, which is a book about a guy in apartment complexes and doing multi-family syndications. There’s a little sentence in there, a little paragraph where he says that, “If you don’t understand that real estate investing is marketing, if you can’t get that between your two ears, you won’t be in business for long.” It made me thing like, “Wow! If multi-family investing, like the core foundation of it is marketing, like how true is that for wholesaling for smaller properties.” Like, I need to find a good marketing strategy. I need to find sellers at a higher rate, like I need marketing.

The thing is, I had found those properties through some marketing like marketing to people that were delinquent on their taxes and stuff.  But it was a few properties here and there, it wasn’t consistent, it wasn’t consistent enough to really build a business around. I was having to do everything, right? There was no room for hiring employees. I learned about something that really changed my business. That first 12 months of doing what I call Driving for Dollars, we did just shy of a half a million dollars, and my life was changed.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I hope you’re telling your friends about Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to LifeBridgeCapital.com and start investing today.

[END]