#111: I Can’t Think of Any Better Way to Teach Somebody a New Industry. I Couldn’t Be Happier With The Program and I Would Just Say Do It, Just Do It.

Hi, my name’s Dave. I’m from New York. I live about two hours north of New York City in the Hudson Valley. I still work full-time in a small publishing company that two of my brothers own. Now you might be able to tell from the color of my hair that I have a fair amount of experience, and I do, but when it comes to real estate investing, I don’t, and that’s important to me because I wanna get some experience. You see, a number of my friends and siblings talk about retirement, and I’m not quite ready for retirement.

More specifically, I’m not quite ready financially for my retirement. I do have a 401K, or a pension plan at work, and I’m working on that, but every dollar of that is invested in stocks or bonds or even cash, which isn’t an investment at all. I’m just not comfortable that my retirement is, depending on the market swings that the stock market can have and bond market.
I made a decision about a year ago that I was gonna make a significant contribution to my retirement, but not just with cash at work, but through real estate investing.

There’s two big reasons why I chose real estate. Number one, it’s a real asset. It’s a hard asset. It’s not subject to paper money stocks, bonds, et cetera. Secondly, the income. Rental properties produce income and if I can get enough rental properties to produce income, that supplements the income that I need to take out of my retirement, which means I don’t have to have as big a retirement fund, or I can start sooner.

I got busy trying to find someone who could help me become a real estate expert. I went out on the web and there’s no shortage. I didn’t know anybody local, and there’s no shortage of people that wanna sell you a package, but I ran into Freedom Mentor and Phil, and I really connected with Phil’s message. He has many, many videos out there, and it was great that he has them out there for free.

So I got his book, I read the book quickly and said, “I can do this.”. I didn’t understand everything that he said in the book, but I knew I could learn, and so I started to dream, and I began to think about all the things I could do as an investor. I could pay down my mortgage, and I could donate more money to my nephew’s charity. My wife and I could do some cool things.

Everybody has a dream list, and a wish list. The problem was, I was dreaming and thankfully Phil kept sending me videos every three, four weeks. I’d get another video with another snippet and thank you Phil, you were being the mentor, and I just didn’t know I was the apprentice yet, but you got me there.
Finally, I pulled the trigger and about three, four months into it, I have a great deal that I closed that I wanna tell you about. One of the things that was important to me was lead generation or a pipeline. I spent my career in sales and marketing and management positions and Phil help me setup a lead generation system. So one afternoon, before I had left work, I got a phone call from a lady who was trying to sell a house. Long story short, I asked her a bunch of questions, I agreed to go see her property.

Now, it was a little bit funky because it wasn’t her property. She was doing this for her mother, but it wasn’t her mother’s property. It was her mother’s aunt’s property, so there was power of attorney involved and I thought well, that’s a little messy, I’m not sure what that means. Not only that, the property was considered mixed use. It wasn’t just a single family home. It was in a village and so the main level had been zoned commercial and the upstairs was residential.

I called up one of the coaches at Freedom Mentor and they said, “Look, if you can get a feel for what the value is, just see if you can get it under contract.”, so I went down to see the property and it was in pitifully bad shape. About a 1900, 1910 home that was built and it was in bad shape. The winter had burst the pipes so the water was turned off. The power was also turned off because they didn’t have the money to pay for it. The basement had asbestos on all the pipes. The foundation was cracked several places. The actual main level, the retail, was an old hair salon from the 1970’s and big ole hair dryers in there. It was kind of cool, but not cool. It hadn’t been painted or cleaned, I’m sure of it, in about 30 or 40 years. The upstairs residential was equally desperate.

I told her, I thought I might be able to make an offer and I gave her a price and she agreed. Got her mother on the phone, we talked about it and I said, “I’m gonna have to meet your mom too.”, but we had a deal. Then I thought, oh my gosh, how do I get rid of this thing. I don’t want this. So again back to the coaches and they had a strategy that said look, lets go flip it to another investor or a contractor. Don’t make a lot of money, just put it out there at a reasonable price and let’s see if we can get some interest.

I immediately called about 15 contractors in the area. I scheduled a few of them to come see it and I started marketing the property other places. In three days, I had eight offers, and eight offers, multiple offer situation drove the price up $17,000 over my asking price for a net profit of $38,018. Pretty amazing, I thought wow, what luck, but honestly the coaches, it was their plan. They did what they were supposed to do and they got me to do what I was suppose to do.

I have to tell you, I couldn’t have done it without them and want to just say a quick something about Freedom Mentor and Phil and all the coaches, really. I did exactly what they told me to do. Before I even read the third chaper, I was calling people up and talking to them. I made mistakes. I asked bad questions. I didn’t know the answers to some, but I learned along the way and I got a deal signed. Then, Freedom Mentor helped me close that deal, so I couldn’t be happier with this experience and I just wanna say the whole concept of Freedom Mentor, the mentoring process, I can’t think of any better way to teach somebody a new job or a new industry than to coach them. You get there much faster.

If you want to learn mistakes the hard way, do it yourself, but if you have a coach, or a team of coaches, you get there quickly and you make fewer mistakes, cost you less and you have bigger success.
If you’re looking to be a real estate investor, and you are not already a real estate investing expert, you need a coach and I would say you need Freedom Mentor. The only thing I would say differently is don’t wait for a long time like I did. I dreamed about it instead of doing it. I spent about a year thinking about investing. Once I pulled the trigger, three, four months later, I got $38,000 while I’m still working full-time. I couldn’t be happier with the program and I would just say do it, just do it. Do it now actually.