Mulkey has over two decades of experience and most recently served as chief technology officer of healthcare startup GoodRx. Earlier in his career, he held executive roles at Ticketmaster, Shopzilla, and Aspiration.com. “With its industry-leading data assets and proprietary technologies, First American is at the forefront of real estate innovation,” Mulkey said. “I’m looking forward … [Read more…]
Finishing school, joining the workforce and moving out on your own is a rite of passage for many young people. Today’s young adults are taking longer to make this transition, and doing it less often overall than previous generations, according to a new Zillow analysis.
In 1980, 1990 and 2000, the tipping point age at which more people lived independently than not remained steady at 23. But by 2007, it had risen to 25, and then to 26 in 2017. And not only does it take longer for young adults to begin living independently, but fewer people ever do. A smaller share of adults of every age lived independently in 2017 than 1980, including a 10-percentage-point gap for 40-year-olds.
Typically, adults begin living independently later in more expensive
metros, and the gap has widened over the past four decades. Since 1980,
the tipping point age has increased by an average of about four years in
metros in the top quarter of most expensive home values, compared to
about two years for metros in the bottom three quarters. In 2017, the
tipping point age was highest in Riverside, Los Angeles, New York and Miami
at 29. Each of these metros have seen their tipping point ages increase
by at least five years since 1980, while it has only increased one year
in less-expensive Oklahoma City, for example – from 21 to 22.
Young people today more often pursue higher education, which typically delays when they begin working full-time. In previous decades, people with a high school education lived independently at similar rates to those with a college education, likely due to the additional years of earnings they can accrue in their early 20s while their college counterparts are in school. Now, there is a significant gap. Those with a college degree are more likely to live independently than those with a high school education by age 26, and at age 30 the gap widens to 12 percentage points.
Changes in social and cultural norms, as well as affordability challenges, likely explain some of the shift. Young people today are more likely than their predecessors to live in urban cores, where housing is more expensive and rent price growth has hindered the ability of renters to afford a home without roommates or save enough of their salaries each month for a down payment. Increased demand for starter homes as the large Millennial generation reaches typical home-buying age, along with persistently low inventory, has contributed to robust home value appreciation in many large metro areas, making it more difficult for first-time buyers to get into a home.
“It’s true that people are becoming homeowners later and later in life, but even before that today’s adults are taking significantly longer to simply live on their own,” said Skylar Olsen, director of economic research at Zillow. “While some may consider the impact of evolving tastes and cultural norms, as economists we can point to very real changes in household budgets that make the classic tactics of sticking with mom and dad or extending those college roommate years past graduation more appealing. As the costs of life’s basics outpace incomes, parents that offer housing after their children’s schooling has ended can provide breathing space, allowing the next generation to begin paying off substantial college debt. Smaller, more accessible housing markets often tout not just the possibility of homeownership for today’s adults, but simply the opportunity for independence and privacy – features of life that major job markets struggle to offer more and more.”
Source: realtybiznews.com
On Saturday night, David Zee and his family had only 20 minutes to get out of their home in a gated community in Rolling Hills Estates after the ground shifted and threatened to send it and other homes down a canyon.
Since then, the slide has gotten worse.
“It’s just amazing how quickly this all happened,” Zee, 52, said Monday morning after he returned to his street on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
“The ground is still moving,” he said. His home is “still standing, but I don’t know.”
A dozen houses were evacuated because of a major ground shift.
Here is what we know:
Officials say they are still investigating.
Pete Goodrich, a Rolling Hills Estates building official, said geologists will inspect the site and decide what can be done.
The land movement “could be due to the extensive rains that we’ve had … but we don’t know,” Goodrich said.
Rolling Hills Estates Mayor Britt Huff said officials were surprised by the destruction.
“This neighborhood was built in 1978, and it’s been solid for 45 years,” Huff said. “So we’re very much in shock by what is happening here.”
Officials said they are monitoring other homes in the neighborhood for movement.
In areas where the bedrock is very deep, rainwater can seep deep underground during multiple rainstorms. During a series of repeated heavy storms, water can eventually start to accumulate and build up pressure, The Times reported in 2017.
The pressure can destabilize an entire chunk of land, causing it to collapse downhill. Landslides can happen slowly and show warning signs, such as cracking or subtle movements, that allow people time to escape. But they also can strike rapidly with no warning, even on a rainless day months after the end of the rainy season.
Deep-seated landslides, which involve slides greater than 15 feet deep, often strike in areas with a history of wet winters. The U.S. Geological Survey has warned that such slides can become active many months after such events.
One such example occurred nearly two decades ago in Bluebird Canyon in Laguna Beach. On a foggy morning in June 2005, 17 homes were destroyed and 11 seriously damaged by a landslide that struck seemingly out of nowhere. Heavy rains had fallen from the previous December through February of that year, but no rainfall occurred just before or during the landslide.
It is still unclear whether rain was a factor in the Rolling Hills Estates slide.
The Palos Verdes Peninsula has long been prone to landslides. A dormant landslide complex has shaped the area for hundreds of thousands of years. It was reactivated 67 years ago and is threatening to destroy homes and infrastructure.
In 1997, workers from 18 small businesses evacuated two buildings in a Rolling Hills Estates office park as the walls began to warp, windows cracked and sidewalks buckled.
In the 1980s, land movement in the Flying Triangle — a sloping, sea-view area of Rolling Hills — destroyed several expensive homes.
The most dramatic slide currently in the peninsula is affecting Portuguese Bend, an area on the south side named after a whaling operation, now known for its natural beauty and native vegetation.
The geological phenomenon has hit a 240-acre area particularly hard over the last seven decades, causing fissures to open in the earth and homes to strain, buckle and drift, sometimes onto adjacent properties.
City officials are planning to mitigate the landslide before it’s too late.
“Something catastrophic is imminent,” Ara Mihranian, a city planner, told The Times in March. Since being named city manager in 2019, he has made slowing the landslide a primary focus.
The Portuguese Bend landslide was triggered in summer 1956 — nearly two decades before Rancho Palos Verdes became a city — when a Los Angeles County road crew was constructing an extension of Crenshaw Boulevard that would run from Crest Road to Palos Verdes Drive South.
The crew dug up thousands of tons of dirt for the project and dropped it on top of the ancient landslide zone, which hadn’t moved in 4,800 years. The extension was never completed, but the weight and movement of the dirt shifted the balance of the earth enough to reactivate the slide, sending the land into a slow-motion descent toward the sea.
In recent years, the landslide’s harm has been more incremental than the initial destruction in 1956 that tore up a community clubhouse and 130 area homes. City officials said the land moves sometimes horizontally, sometimes vertically. Sometimes inches, sometimes feet.
Officials said it moves at a pace of roughly 8 feet, in a southwesterly direction, per year. Over the last 15 years, sections of land have moved from 100 to 225 feet horizontally and dropped 8 to 18 feet vertically.
The most noticeable damage is to Palos Verdes Drive South — the road that winds along the coastal cliffs — warping it into a crooked, hilly mess with dips that make your stomach jump. The city has to send maintenance crews once a month to fill cracks, which costs roughly $1 million each year.
For the record:
12:32 p.m. July 11, 2023A previous version of this story said the Rolling Hills Estates neighborhood affected by the slides is on the northern side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. It is in the southwestern part of the peninsula.
The homes affected by the ground shift were red-tagged after firefighters and investigators found them visibly leaning Saturday afternoon. The community is on the southwestern side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
The homes are continuing their gradual decline down the hillside, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Sheila Kelliher said Monday morning.
“Things are still shifting there,” Kelliher said. “The hillside is still moving. We don’t know the extent of that movement, but geographical engineers are on their way to the site to further assess the situation.”
Times staff writers Jack Fleming and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
Source: latimes.com
Aspiring home buyers with medical debt are more likely than others to be denied a mortgage, while those with student loan debt more often put off buying. That’s according to the 4th annual Zillow Group Report on Consumer Housing Trends, released today.
Personal debt – particularly credit card, student loan and medical – tremendously impacts the type and features of home someone can afford, their timeline for buying a home, their ability to afford an adequate down payment and, ultimately, whether or not they are approved for a mortgage, according to the report, the largest and most comprehensive survey of real estate consumers.
More than two thirds of renters have debt, and about a quarter of
renters and home buyers said their debt caused them to be denied either a
rental agreement or a mortgage at some point. That impact was most
commonly reported by those with medical debt, which has a unique
capacity to bust budgets. Nearly two-thirds of renters and 44% of
homeowners with medical debt said they couldn’t cover an unforeseen $1,000 expense. That’s compared to about half of all renters and one-fifth of all homeowners.
Half of renters and 39% of buyers said student debt led them to delay buying a home. And once they do, it impacts how much they are able to put down, ultimately affecting their monthly budgets for decades. Two-thirds of buyers with any kind of debt put down less than 20% when they secure a mortgage, compared with 40% of buyers without debt. The share is even higher (76%) for buyers with student debt. Putting down less than 20%, while fairly common, not only increases monthly payments but also can lead to added expenses if a lender requires private mortgage insurance or other upfront fees to compensate for the added risk.
And for those burdened with debt, financial sacrifices are common – 73% of renters and 68% of buyers with debt said they made at least one financial sacrifice to afford their home, compared with half of renters and 39% of buyers without debt. The most commonly cited lifestyle changes were reducing spending on entertainment, picking up additional work, cutting back on vacation and decreasing spending on technology. Those in debt also are more likely to go over their home buying budgets.
“When we focus on low unemployment and the strong economy, we often
forget that in many ways the rising costs of life can erode most of
those gains,” said Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s
director of economic research. “Health care has never been more
expensive. Getting a college degree, a path more likely to lead to
economic success for those able to get through it, has never been more
expensive. U.S. housing values and rents have never been more expensive.
While incomes, both at the high and low end, are growing, the pace
hasn’t kept up with those crucial life expenses. That’s fact and
Americans are feeling it.”
Source: realtybiznews.com
From the outside, the rows of tile-roof houses in a new community in Menifee don’t look much different from those in other subdivisions cropping up in this fast-growing city in Riverside County. But on the inside, these all-electric homes are revolutionary, offering a glimpse of the zero-emission future we should be hurtling toward to fight climate change and adapt to its effects.
All the houses in the Durango and Oak Shade at Shadow Mountain communities, two adjacent KB Home subdivisions I visited in May for an opening event, were built without natural gas hookups or appliances. Each of the 219 homes comes with rooftop solar panels, heat pumps for heating and cooling, induction cooktops and other energy-efficient electric appliances, and a smart electrical panel that manages energy use. In the garage is a battery storage system that can power the home during an outage and in the evenings when the cost of electricity from the grid is higher.
They’ll also soon be connected to a shared community battery storage facility the size of a shipping container that’s a backbone of a system known as a microgrid. It will allow residents to disconnect from the electrical grid during an outage, and use the backup power to keep their lights on for a few days.
The garage of an all-electric, solar powered home in a new KB Home subdivision in Menifee includes a battery storage system that can power the home during an outage and in the evenings when the cost of electricity from the grid is higher.
(Tony Barboza/Los Angeles Times)
I expected these homes to come with a premium price tag, given their futuristic amenities. But they start around $520,000, and a 2,900-square foot, four-bedroom, two-bath Spanish-style home recently sold for about $590,000. Buyers aren’t paying extra for technology that would otherwise cost $30,000, according to the homebuilder, because the project was subsidized by a $6.65 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.
The homes have other energy efficiency features such as spray foam insulation under the roof to help cool the attic and the living space below. The houses are essentially “like a Yeti cooler,” as one official with SunPower, the company that provided their solar and battery-storage systems, told me. That’s life changing in this corner of Riverside County where summer days often exceed 100 degrees and utility bills climb painfully high.
After spending a few hours checking out the homes’ energy-smart features and listening to company and government officials talk up their climate-friendliness and resilience, I was almost envious. The people moving into these houses are living in a world that, for now, remains a distant reality for most Californians for whom a fossil fuel-free home is still very much a pipe dream. And it highlighted how much work there is yet to do by state officials to ensure all Californians start to benefit from home electrification as that need becomes increasingly obvious in a world altered by climate change.
Underscoring that feeling for me was a remark by a California Energy Commission official in attendance, who noted that new construction accounts for less than 1% of the state’s housing stock in any given year.
California has 14 million homes and builds only about 110,000 new housing units a year. So even if all new homes are built with at least one electric heat pump, as the Energy Commission expects, that would account for only about 8% of all homes by 2030, 14% by 2040, and 20% by 2050. That’s not anywhere near fast enough to slash climate-warming emissions, which means that most of this transition will have to happen by replacing appliances in existing homes.
For now, California remains heavily dependent on fossil fuel in daily life, especially the methane gas that powers the majority of home appliances. For most of us, the transition to zero-emission electric living will be far more complicated, messy and slow than buying a new home.
The furnaces, stoves, clothes dryers and water heaters in our homes and businesses may not seem like big polluters individually, but they all add up to a lot. Buildings are one of the biggest emissions sources in California, responsible for about 25% of its climate pollution. But California still lacks the kind of straightforward zero-emission targets for buildings that it has already adopted for other major pollution sources like electricity generation and new cars.
A representative of Schneider Electric demonstrates a smart electrical panel during a launch event at a KB Home subdivision in Menifee on May 22.
(Tony Barboza / Los Angeles Times)
Because home appliances like furnaces and water heaters can last 15 years or longer, scaling up action over the next few years is critical if we are to get on a path to zero out greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury and avert catastrophic levels of climate change.
A recent report by Rewiring America, an electrification-focused nonprofit organization, found that to meet those climate targets the U.S. has to dramatically increase the pace of replacing fossil-fueled appliances and cars over the next three years. That would mean purchasing about 14 million more electric heat pumps, water heaters, stoves, rooftop solar systems and electric vehicles above what’s expected.
While California has some laudable goals, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s target of installing 6 million heat pumps by 2030, state officials acknowledge that much greater numbers will be needed to put California on track to achieving a carbon-neutral economy by 2045.
State air quality regulators plan to end the sale of new gas-fueled furnaces and water heaters by 2030, and the Inflation Reduction Act and its array of consumer rebate and incentive programs should help bring down the cost of replacing them with electric heat pump models. But state leaders need to establish clear and ambitious targets for home electrification, while pursuing creative solutions such as establishing a neighborhood decarbonization program to retrofit entire low-income communities with electric appliances and infrastructure at the same time.
There are reasons for optimism, including the home construction industry’s embrace of electric technology. Heat pumps are doing particularly well, now accounting for more than 50% of the market in new construction.
But I’ve also encountered troubling stories that make me really concerned about the slow and uneven pace of change. I’ve heard from homeowners struggling to turn their houses all-electric and their travails through a thicket of contractor resistance, government red tape and other obstacles. I’ve spoken to community leaders who fear that low-income tenants and other disadvantaged groups will end up shouldering most of the burdens of electrification, like higher utility bills and rent increases landlords are likely to impose to pay for electrical upgrades. I’ve covered legal setbacks and fossil fuel industry resistance operations that are hindering the transition to healthier, gas-free homes.
At my family’s 1950s-era tract house, I want to replace the gas water heater, furnace, dryer and stove with heat pump and induction models as soon as we can afford to. But I know that will be a long, expensive journey with no shortage of complications — and electrical work.
For now, our entry point is a $100 countertop induction cooktop we’ve started to use instead of our gas burners. It boils water faster and doesn’t pollute the air, but draws so much electricity that we can’t turn on other kitchen appliances at the same time or it overloads the circuit.
Whether we rent or own or have a new or historic home, everyone should be able to live in an efficient, non-polluting and climate-ready dwelling even if it wasn’t purpose-built for an all-electric world like the new construction in Menifee. None of us should have to wait decades for that to be our reality too.
Source: latimes.com
One of my mentors, Carol, is rich.
By rich, I don’t mean she takes selfies on private planes. Rather, she’s achieved a level of comfort and freedom that most sensible people are striving for.
Carol lives in a nice place in the safe part of town, donates generously to charity, and spends more of her time on her passions and hobbies than on work. Her bank account balance has two commas in it, and she hasn’t really worried about money since Barack Obama held a senate seat.
Carol’s neighbors in the “Whole Foods-y” part of town are mostly lawyers, CEOs, and even a few movie stars hiding from the paparazzi. There’s even a Bitcoin zillionaire living somewhere above her, trading crypto all day and “sucking up the building’s power” she jokes.
But Carol is none of these things. In fact, she’s never made more than $60,000 a year. Instead of scaling some corporate ladder or selling a tech company, she somehow got rich just by rotating pretty normal job roles for 35 years. At some point on her career carousel, she’s been a teacher, accountant, and secretary.
So how exactly did Carol get rich? Inheritance? Luck? Buying 1,000 shares of TSLA in 2011?
When I asked her (we have that kind of blunt relationship), her tone was so mundane and matter-of-fact that you’d think she was giving me the time of day:
“Get rich slowly, hun!”
Wait, what does that mean? How can you get rich and achieve lasting comfort and freedom without selling a company or winning the lottery? Why is Carol’s method of “getting rich slow” so effective, and how can you pull it off?
In this piece, I’m going to teach you how totally normal people like Carol get rich (and you can, too). Without further ado, let’s investigate how the rich get rich (and you can, too).
What’s Ahead:
There are two types of rich people: happy rich people and unhappy rich people. The key to becoming a happy rich person is to establish your “why.”
Why do you want to get rich? After all, a seven-figure bank statement is just numbers on a screen. What do you want to do with the money?
Well, you probably want to get rich so that you can buy something.
Some people want to get rich so that they can buy something with a price tag, like a mantis green Lamborghini Huracán or a six-bedroom house. But chances are that if you’re reading Money Under 30, you’re probably more interested in something more enduring and conceptual, like freedom, comfort, safety, health, or the most valuable asset of all: time.
If you think about it, everything I just listed is a currency. You have a “balance” of each, and you exchange them back and forth all day like a personal stock exchange.
For example, when you go to work, you trade 8-10 hours of time for one day’s salary. Conversely, when you take an Uber to the airport instead of the bus, you trade $31 to save an hour of time.
For a good visual of these intangible currencies, I like to look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Photo credit: SimplePsychology.org
On a conscious or subconscious level, most people try to get rich so that they can take care of all of their basic needs. Naturally, they take care of their physiological needs first (shelter, food, etc.), and then keep earning to cover “safety” needs (paying off debt, health insurance, etc.).
However, level three of the pyramid is where happy and unhappy rich people tend to diverge.
Unhappy rich people keep earning piles of money and forget to convert it to needs. Although they could work a little less to spend time with family or developing their passions, they choose not to. Over time, they even give up their safety needs, working so hard that it negatively impacts their health. With heavy money bags weighing them down, they end up tumbling back down the pyramid.
The whole point of getting rich is so that you can take care of your needs, all the way from sheltering yourself to finding purpose and achieving self-actualization.
If the act of getting rich makes you miserable, what’s the point?
I enlisted the help of Varun Marneni, an advisor with Atlanta’s CPC Advisors and Raymond James Financial Services. At 31 years old, Varun is 23 years younger than the average wealth advisor in America and is passionate about making an impact on people by helping them navigate the complexities of their finances.
Happy rich people like Carol never lose sight of why they wanted to get rich: namely, to achieve freedom.
“Remember – your goal isn’t to get ‘rich’ – it’s to become financially independent” says Varun. “After a certain point, it’s time to stop trading your other needs for money, and reverse the flow. Money can (and should) buy freedom, which in turn can facilitate love, belonging, esteem, health, and self-actualization. Besides, giving up your mental health to get rich is counterproductive. Unhealthiness can affect your ability to perform, be a good person, and even make money. The simple fact is that it’s easier to get rich when you’re happy along the way.”
So how can you get rich without giving up your needs along the way? Well, let’s look at the options.
In his decade-plus studying wealth-builders, Varun has seen four general ways the rich get rich. He also has an easy recommendation for the method you should use.
Let’s analyze the four most common methods to getting rich.
“Get rich slowly, hun!” Carol said, matter-of-factly.
Then, she silently returned to the task of fetching two Key Lime Pie LaCroixs from the fridge.
I, on the other hand, was bubbling up with questions like a shaken champagne bottle. I asked her to elaborate and mentally cleared my calendar for a four-hour coaching session. But before she could even sit, she’d already given me her entire strategy:
“I’ve saved and invested 20% of my income since I was your age.”
But… what did you invest in, I zealously inquired?
“Oh, hun, I don’t invest any of my own money. I let Andrew [her financial advisor] do it.”
In addition to her 401(k), Carol had opened an investment account in her mid-20s, contributing as much of her paycheck as possible to it while her financial advisor managed it. They set a medium-risk portfolio, and she let it mature for years.
So… that’s it? The secret to getting rich without working 12 hours a day or betting the farm on Bitcoin is to open an investment account, keep adding to it, and… wait?
“Pretty much, yeah,” Varun says.
Carol’s not just some lucky outlier, either. According to Thomas C. Corley, author of the Rich Habits series of books, roughly half of rich Americans are just average earners who saved and “prudently invested” 20% of their income for decades. No CEO salary, no crypto bets, just smart money management.
Prudent investments could be hands-on like real estate, but for most low-key rich folks, it was just depositing into an investment account managed by someone else.
So if this method is so effective, and totally normal people get rich that way, it begs the question why nobody talks about it.
Carol’s neighbor, “the Bitcoin zillionaire,”, is 29. Rumor has it that he bought thousands of bitcoins when they traded at $2 a pop, which would’ve been around November of 2011. At the time of this writing (early 2021), a single bitcoin is worth $50,000.
Stories like that create a pretty potent sense of FOMO. A few clicks and he never had to break out his resume ever again. Sigh.
But if you truly want to subject yourself to FOMO Central, look no further than r/wallstreetbets, the now-infamous subreddit for retail aka amateur investors.
“WSB” is full of 22-year-old millionaires proudly showcasing their skyrocketing portfolios after having bet the farm on individual stocks.
But if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Such is the case with r/WSB. “This isn’t investing; it’s gambling” warns Varun.
Even if you do get lucky once, amateur day trading simply isn’t a path to sustainable long-term wealth. “Sure, you can make a 100% return on a stock – but how are you going to do that month after month?”
This method to getting rich is to work your fanny off. You can become a partner at Deloitte, for example, and make $355,000 on average (according to Glassdoor). And that’s chump change compared to your bonuses, retirement benefits, and stock options.
However, the path to becoming a partner at Deloitte isn’t short, easy, or even guaranteed. It takes more than a decade of sterling work, plus a chest full of medals and the universal approval of your clients and colleagues.
The sky-high bar for entry is why only out of 113,000 Deloitte employees, fewer than 1,000 ever reach the level of partner.
Attaining a high-salaried position is a surefire way to get rich, but it can be extremely difficult to juggle your work and your needs. In most roles earning $250,000+, you’ll end up trading most of your time and freedom: the two currencies that are the hardest to buy back.
Even getting there can take a lot of time and freedom. All of Glassdoor’s top 25 highest-paying jobs “require many years of advanced education [or] years of experience gained over time.”
Of course, there are plenty of people working high-salaried roles who love their jobs and have a great work-life balance. But it’s not the norm, and getting to that point can take decades.
In 2019, when Forbes announced Kylie Jenner as the youngest self-made billionaire ever, we all responded with the world’s largest collective eye-roll.
Sure, she’d built a profitable makeup and modeling empire, and claims that her parents had cut her off at 15, but was she really on an equal footing to the rest of us, as the title implies?
Certainly not, because even if she didn’t inherit cash, she did inherit her parents’ platform, network, and financial guidance; all worth way more than a lump sum.
The Forbes/Kylie Jenner drama serves to highlight a common way the rich get rich and stay rich: through the passing down of cash and assets, but also platforms, privilege, and financial guidance.
You may or may not inherit wealth in the traditional sense, and it’s safer to assume that you won’t. According to CNBC, over 70% of young people expect an inheritance, but only 40% of their parents plan to give one.
But that doesn’t mean inheritance is totally out as a way to get rich. If your folks have done well for themselves, you can ask them for other forms of inheritance, such as advice and connections. For example, if your parents are financially independent, chances are they have a great financial advisor helping them who would gladly have a complimentary planning session with you.
Overall, however, inheritance isn’t really a viable or predictable way to get rich.
What’s next?
Getting rich slowly is the most simple and straightforward way to get rich in this country. So why does nobody talk about it?
Well, here’s my theory:
How would you react to this headline?
“She saved 20% of her income for 30 years, and now she’s rich!”
You’d probably think ummm… duh? And that’s the whole point! Getting rich slowly, the way half of rich people did it, isn’t headline-worthy at all. It’s boring. Martin Scorcese simply isn’t making movies about investors who build wealth over decades of safe investing.
Getting rich slowly isn’t glamorous, either. In fact, most people who look rich are in debt. Those Instagram influencers dangling Bentley keys and Prada bags in their followers’ faces are most likely in deep financial trouble. 96% of YouTubers make under $15k per year, and as one former influencer with 340k followers confessed, “I’ve walked a red carpet with $80 in my bank account.”
“Most people who are actually rich look and act pretty normal,” says Varun. They shop at Publix, drive eight-year-old Acuras, and live in homes just big enough for them and their loved ones. “Rich people don’t buy into the ‘rich people lifestyle’ because it costs money that they’d rather invest.”
There’s nothing wrong with buying fancy things, especially if they support your needs like comfort, health, or esteem. I “invested” in an old Lexus because of its low True Cost to Own®. Likewise, my friend Amanda bought a Burberry coat because it’s well-made, long-lasting, and it simply makes her happy.
But “slow rich” people never feel the need to prove how rich they are. They get rich precisely because they don’t buy into the glamorous lifestyle.
Like vampires, truly rich people are among us, hiding in plain sight. It can be hard, then, to spot one and ask them for advice.
Thankfully, we have Varun and Carol to set us up.
Saving and investing 20% of your income is an essential part of getting rich, but it’s only part of the picture.
“The path to financial independence is like a chair. There are four legs, and if one is too short or missing, the chair topples over.”
So, what are the other three legs to getting rich slowly?
As Varun puts it, “squeezing the lemon” is maximizing your existing money through:
What I’m about to share may sound obvious, but “9 out of 10 people don’t squeeze the lemon, and it needlessly delays their financial goals.”
Tax efficiency, not to be confused with tax evasion, is simply making sure you’re not paying more taxes than necessary.
A big part of tax efficiency is filing your taxes accurately and on time. Any tax software that helps you maximize deductions, such as those for Home Office and charitable donations, is great.
Another way to become tax efficient, specific to 1099 folks, is to funnel your income through an LLC. This will slash your self-employment taxes and provide some bankruptcy protection. If you own a business with more than one employee, I recommend consulting with a tax attorney for more ways to be tax-efficient, since there are too many to list here. A phone call could save you thousands.
Lastly, always be sure to take advantage of your various retirement plans offered through employers such as 401(k)s or IRAs and Roth IRAs.
“Many employers offer 401(k) matching and it’s important to at least put enough money in to take advantage of that,” says Varun.
So that’s tax efficiency: simply making sure you’re not giving Uncle Sam freebies.
Patching leaks involves, quite simply, slashing unnecessary expenses.
As a first step to getting rich, I strongly recommend you consolidate all of your financial information into a single dashboard. Getting a holistic picture of all of your accounts in one place is a huge stress-reliever and helps you find unpleasant “gotchas” like hidden charges and disused subscriptions.
Once you squeeze the lemon to save money, the next step is to multiply it.
Thomas C. Corley says the secret to sustainable wealth is “prudent investing.” What exactly does that mean? Are you going to have to get your Series 7 and start trading?
Not at all. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Prudent investing just means responsible investing, and there’s nothing more responsible than letting a trained professional invest for you.
Carol has never personally traded a stock in her life.
Human financial advisors typically charge a 1% management fee, which includes comprehensive wealth management solutions, soup to nuts. Think guidance on buying or selling a business, retirement planning, education funding help, insurance advice, and estate planning.
Robo-advisors typically charge 0.30%. The tradeoff is that they may not offer a human touch or personalized financial planning advice. But once you set some goals and risk parameters, they’ll manage your money for you, 24/7, for less.
Whether you opt for a real-life or AI-driven financial advisor, the important thing is that you invest. A pile of money in your checking account is just losing value due to inflation.
If you can’t afford to invest 20% of your paycheck, start with 5% and work your way up. Squeeze the lemon harder and pool that money into your investment accounts.
Another great source of investment capital is your credit card rewards points. Oftentimes this is cash you didn’t even realize you had, so you might as well invest it!
A solid, “investor-friendly” card option is the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. It offers 5X points on travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards®, 3X points on dining, 2X points on all other travel purchases, so you can quickly accumulate points and dump them straight into your investment account.
Prudent investing isn’t just about putting money in; it’s about leaving it in. When markets dip or accounts lose value, people tend to panic-pull, and it’s almost always a mistake.
Per Varun:
“the most difficult thing to do in investing is disentangling personal emotions from logic and tuning out the media. The so-called pundits will always give you 100 reasons why times have never been scarier and why you shouldn’t be investing and they are usually incorrect. 1968 was a difficult year for our country with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, War in Vietnam and the highly contentious election. Since then, we have had wars, 9/11, impeachments, tariffs, COVID 19 more recently and so much more. Despite all of this, the Dow Jones Index marched from 906 in 1968 to 32,000 as of this writing”
Daily market news can challenge your investment discipline. Their messages are often meant to stir anxiety about the future and your finances.
But as Varun says, “successful investors look beyond the headlines, have a long-term approach, and follow certain time-tested principles such as diversification and suitable asset location.”
Once you’ve begun investing money, it’s time to protect it. You don’t want bankruptcy to saw off a leg on your chair!
Earlier, I mentioned a critical form of bankruptcy protection for self-employed folks: routing payments through an LLC. Having an LLC as a “middleman” is important because it means anyone paying you has to sue the LLC first before suing you personally, reducing your liability.
However, lawsuits aren’t the most common source of bankruptcy in this country. Not even close.
“The #1 source of personal bankruptcy in America medical debt.”
If you can afford it, good health insurance will help insulate you from bankruptcy. But staying healthy itself is a key component of getting rich. Running, meditating, doing yoga, and eating healthy don’t just create happiness – they’re part of getting rich. “Healthy people are less likely to end up in the ER, and they work more effectively and make better decisions.”
Varun doesn’t want you to live like a pauper while you slowly get rich. In fact, getting rich slowly should be extremely enjoyable and fulfilling.
But what are rich people spending money on, if not Aston Martins?
“Rich people buy experiences, not things.”
Science overwhelmingly supports the idea that experiences make us happier than things. Plus, they’re often cheaper. That’s why most low-key rich people have come to the same conclusion:
Experiences are a good investment. Remember that happy rich people reinvest their capital into their needs. They realize that experiences provide more freedom, esteem, love, and belonging than most things can, so that’s what they choose to spend on.
Part of what makes experiences such a great investment is that the happiness you glean from experiences is infinitely renewable. Here’s some advice that Varun often offers his clients:
“In 10 years, you’ll remember the time you spent in Hawaii. You’ll remember who you were with, the laughter you shared, the experiences you had. You won’t remember what kind of watch you were wearing.”
Unlike an Aston Martin, experiences are affordable even while you’re getting rich and won’t delay your goals. Even after you put 20% of your paycheck into an investment account, you’ll probably still have enough cash left over for a pair of tickets to that funky new museum or a one-night AirBnB stay in the mountains.
Plus, experiences are less susceptible to hedonic adaptation, which drives our tendency to want to upgrade our things every few years. For example, even if you buy a brand new phone and a fast new car today, eventually you’ll get bored of both and want to pay for an upgrade. But a $20 ticket to a concert will always be fun, and never go out of style.
Even before hedonic adaptation can kick in, Varun warns of another expensive psychological trap many fall into: the Diderot Effect. In his essay “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown,” Denis Diderot, an 18th-century French philosopher, describes how his fancy robe made his closet look cheap. So he upgraded his closet, but that made his room look cheap. Upgrading his room made his house look cheap, and before he knew it, he sat bankrupt in a mansion.
Experiences may drive the desire to have more experiences, but they don’t necessarily have to be more expensive ones. Furthermore, those experiences will help grow you as a person, provide companionship, and support your mental health.
Things are awesome, but experiences are a more cost-effective way to feel joy while you accumulate wealth.
“Getting rich slowly won’t feel slow if you’re enjoying the journey.”
Before I wrap up, what smart moves can you make in the next 30 minutes to start getting rich?
Fake rich people on Instagram are fun to watch, but they can create FOMO and encourage bad buying decisions. They are “influencers,” after all.
Instead, Varun strongly recommends that you “surround yourself with people who have financial discipline.”
Break the ice with your friends about financial planning, swap advice, and try to cultivate a sphere of positive influence. To prevent awkwardness, talk about how you’re investing, not how much. I have a few friends that I regularly talk to about financial planning, and it helps the process feel social, validating, and fun.
If you haven’t already, head to your online banking dashboard and spend a few minutes browsing through all of your transactions from the last month. If there are any recurring charges you don’t recognize or don’t need, cancel them.
If you cancel $25 worth of subscriptions today, that’s $10,000 you might’ve wasted over 30 years. If you invest that $25 per month instead, it can create $15,000 in 30 years. That’s a delta in your net worth of $25,000, all accomplished in a few clicks.
To get rich by investing, you don’t have to pick a single stock yourself. Again, it’s actually better if you don’t. What a wonderful world we live in where “lazy portfolios” exist as one of the best ways to build wealth.
Once you’ve opened an investment account and set goals and risk parameters, your final (but critical) step is to set up monthly auto-deposits of 20% of your paycheck (or however much you can afford).
Then, you’ll start getting rich in your sleep.
Investing 20% of your income for 30 years is a proven method that roughly half of rich Americans used to achieve financial independence. It’s boring but it works.
If you’re intimidated by the prospect of investing, that’s all the more reason to let a professional do it for you, human or otherwise. You can open an investment account and set up auto deposits in just a few minutes, and your future self will let out a massive sigh of relief when you do.
As you’re making money in your sleep, remember that truly rich people don’t buy into “the rich lifestyle.” Don’t be seduced by designer bags or meme stocks on r/wallstreetbets. If your method of getting rich feels slow and boring, you’re doing it right!
While the method to getting rich slowly might be boring, the journey should be anything but. “Investing” in experiences, passions, and relationships along the way will set you up to be a happy rich person; martyrdom to work is not necessary.
Enjoy the journey, and for more on saving and investing, stick with Money Under 30.
Source: moneyunder30.com
Most homeowners these days rely on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to finance their homes.
But there are obvious drawbacks to the 30-year fixed, one being that it lasts a whopping 30 years.
That means it takes three entire decades to pay off the mortgage, unless you employ some tactics to pay it off sooner.
In any case, this means borrowers that select the 30-year fixed will have a tough time accruing home equity, as interest is front-loaded so payments for the first many years of the loan do little to attack the principal balance.
Unfortunately, the 30-year fixed is often a necessary evil for homeowners because it’s more affordable than other products like the 15-year fixed, and a lot safer than say a 5/1 ARM, which while cheaper, can adjust higher.
But what if you could get the best of all worlds? A mortgage that is one part 30-year fixed, one part 15-year fixed, and another part 5/1 ARM?
Well, the National Association of Realtors floated such an idea recently in their “BRED Mortgage,” which stands for blended rate equity driver.
The name says it all – it’s a hybrid mortgage designed to build equity faster than a traditional fixed-rate mortgage.
Here are some of the ways the BRED mortgage could work:
For a first-time home buyer short on down payment cash, they could go with a blend of the 30-year fixed and a 15-year fixed.
The mortgage would be split up into an 80% 30-year fixed first mortgage and a 20% 15-year fixed second mortgage.
Assuming a $200,000 loan amount, this would increase the monthly mortgage payment by $85 compared to a mortgage with 3% down, but the homeowner would accrue 40% more equity after five years.
Ideally, this structure would give the first-timer the needed equity to sell their first property and trade-up to another more expensive one several years down the line.
The only catch is that they would need a bit more income to make those higher payments and meet DTI requirements.
There’s also an option for an existing homeowner looking for a lower monthly payment, who can’t decide between an ARM and a fixed mortgage.
The BRED could allow for a mix of 60% 5/1 ARM, 30% 30‐year fixed, and 10% 15‐year fixed resulting in a monthly payment that is $20 less per month than a mortgage with 10% down.
The owner would accrue 30% more equity at the end of five years, though they would be subject to a rate adjustment on the ARM portion of the loan after five years.
Still, if they held the loan long-term the 15-year fixed piece would eventually fall off and could result in a payment below that of a 30-year fixed.
You could also blend a 15-year fixed and 30-year fixed so that it’s mostly the former, allowing for a more affordable way to build equity.
There are other benefits to the BRED mortgage that tie directly into equity building, such as the release of private mortgage insurance faster (since the LTV would fall to 78% quicker).
More equity would also make it easier to unload a home, or tap equity in the future if cash was needed. The borrower would also have an easier time refinancing without fear of being underwater.
Of course, it all depends on whether homeowners actually want to build equity and tie up cash in their homes. They may want to invest elsewhere.
At the moment, there isn’t really a market for BRED mortgages, though it could be a reality in the future as lenders look for alternatives to the 30-year fixed.
This kind of reminds me of the Wealth Building Home Loan created by Edward Pinto and Stephen Oliner of the AEI.
Source: thetruthaboutmortgage.com
When it comes to investing in stocks, there’s no single way to analyze stocks to find a sure winner. That being said, there are many methods that ordinary investors can use to find stocks that are trading at a discount to their underlying value.
The first step in how to analyze a stock before buying is reviewing financial statements. From there, investors can use various methods of analysis to assess investment opportunities and potentially identify worthwhile investments.
The process of stock analysis can reveal important information about a company and its history, allowing investors to make more informed decisions about buying or selling stocks. Analyzing stocks can help investors identify which investment opportunities they believe will deliver strong returns. Further, stock analysis can assist investors in spotting potentially bad investments.
Whether you’re strategy involves short vs. long term investing, or day trading, analyzing stocks is going to be important
The first step in understanding stock analysis is knowing the basics of business reporting. There are three main types of financial statements that an investor may need to look at when doing analysis:
• Income statement: This statement shows a company’s profits, which are calculated by subtracting expenses from revenue.
• Balance sheet: The balance sheet compares a company’s assets, liabilities, and stockholder equity.
• Statement of cash flows: This statement outlines how a company is spending and earning its money.
In addition to these statements, a company’s earnings report contains information that can be useful for doing qualitative analysis. The annual report includes the company’s plans for the future and stock value predictions.
The next step in stock evaluation is deciding which type of analysis to do. Here’s a look at some of the different methods for how to analyze a stock.
Technical analysis is a method for analyzing stocks that looks directly at a stock’s supply and demand in order to make investing decisions. This form of analysis takes the stance that all information needed is present within stock charts and the analysis of history and trends.
Some key focal points of technical analysis are:
• Stock prices move in trends.
• History repeats itself.
• Stock price history can be used to make price predictions.
• Stock price contains all relevant information for making investing decisions.
• Technical analysis does not consider intrinsic value.
Trend indicators are one of the most important parts of technical analysis. These indicators attempt to show traders whether a stock will go up or down in value. Uptrends mean higher highs and higher lowers, whereas downtrends mean lower lows and lower highs. Some common trend tools include linear regression, parabolic SAR, MACD, and moving averages.
Technical analysis also uses leading indicators and lagging indicators. Leading indicators signal before new trends occur, while lagging indicators signal after a trend has ended. These indicators look at information such as volume, price, price movement, open, and close.
There can be some pros and cons to using technical analysis, however, which can be important to consider when factoring in your risk tolerance.
Day traders tend to focus on technical analysis to try to capitalize on short-term price fluctuations. But because technical analysis generally focuses on short-term fluctuations in price, it’s not as often used for finding long-term investment opportunities.
Further, while technical analysis relies on objective and consistent data, it can produce false signals, particularly during trading conditions that aren’t ideal. This method of analysis also fails to take into consideration key fundamentals about individual shares or the stock market.
When considering how to analyze a stock, it’s also a good idea to look at whether the company behind the stock is really a good business. Qualitative analysis looks into factors like a company’s leadership team, product, and the overall industry it’s a part of.
A few key qualitative metrics to look at are:
• Competitive advantage: Does the company have a unique edge that will help it be successful in the long term? If a company has patents, a unique manufacturing method, or broad distribution, these can be positive competitive advantages.
• Business model: Analyzing a business model includes looking at products, services, brand identity, and customers to get a sense of what the company is offering.
• Strong leadership: Even a great idea and product can fail with poor management. Looking into the credentials of the CEO and top executives of a company can help in evaluating whether it’s a good investment.
• Industry trends: If an industry is struggling, or looks like it may in the future, an investor may decide not to invest in companies in that industry. On the other hand, new and growing industries may be better investments. This is not always the case, as there are strong companies in weak industries, and vice versa.
Similar to technical analysis, quantitative analysis looks at data and numbers in an attempt to predict future price movements. Specifically, quantitative analysis evaluates data, such as a company’s revenues, price-to-earnings ratio, and earnings-per-share ratio, and uses statistical modeling and mathematical techniques to predict a stock’s value.
The upside is that this financial data is publicly available, and it creates an objective, consistent starting point. It can help with identifying patterns, and it can be useful in assessing risk. However, it requires sifting through a lot of data. Further, there’s no certainty when it comes to patterns, which can change.
Fundamental analysis looks at a company from a basic financial standpoint. This gives investors a sense of the company’s financial health and whether its stock may be under- or overvalued. Fundamental analysis takes the stance that a company’s stock price doesn’t necessarily equate to its value.
There are a number of key tools for fundamental analysis that investors might want to familiarize themselves with and use to get a fuller picture of a stock.
One of the main goals for many investors is to buy into profitable companies. Earnings per share, or EPS, tells investors how much profit a company earns per each share of stock, and how much investors are benefiting from those earnings. Companies report EPS quarterly, and the figure is calculated by dividing a company’s net income, minus dividend payouts, by the number of outstanding shares.
Understanding earnings per share can give investors guidance on a stock’s potential movement. On a basic level, a high EPS is a good sign, but it’s especially important that a company shows a high or growing EPS over time. The reason for this is that a company might have a temporarily high EPS if they cut some expenses or sell off assets, but that wouldn’t be a good indicator of the actual profitability of their business.
Likewise, a negative EPS over time is an indicator that an investor may not want to buy a stock.
While EPS relates directly to a company’s stock, revenue can show investors how well a company is doing outside the markets. Positive and increasing revenues are an indicator that a company is growing and expanding.
Some large companies, especially tech companies, have increasing revenues over time with a negative EPS because they continue to feed profits back into the growing business. These companies can see significant stock value increases despite their lack of profit.
One can also look at revenue growth, which tracks changes in revenue over time.
One of the most common methods of analyzing stocks is to look at the P/E ratio, which compares a company’s current stock price to its earnings per share. P/E is found by dividing the price of one share of a stock by its EPS. Generally, a lower P/E ratio is a good sign.
Using this ratio is a good way to compare different stocks. One can also compare an individual company’s P/E ratio with an index like the S&P 500 Index to get a sense of how the company is doing relative to the overall market.
The downside of P/E is that it doesn’t include growth.
Since P/E doesn’t include growth, the PEG ratio is another popular tool for analyzing stocks and evaluating stock performance. To look at EPS and revenue together, investors can use the price-earnings-growth ratio, or PEG.
PEG is calculated by dividing a stock’s P/E by its projected 12-month forward revenue growth rate. In general, a PEG lower than 1 is a good sign, and a PEG higher than 2 indicates that a stock may be overpriced.
PEG can also be used to make predictions about the future. By looking at PEG for different time periods in the past, investors can make a more informed guess about what the stock may do next.
The P/S ratio compares a company’s stock price to its revenues. It’s found by dividing stock price by revenues. This can be useful when comparing competitors — if the P/S is low, it might be more advantageous to buy.
Although profits and revenue are important to look at, so is a company’s debt and its ability to pay it back. If a company goes into more and more debt in order to continue growing, and they’re unable to pay it back, it’s not a good sign.
Debt-equity ratio is found by dividing a company’s total liabilities (debt) by its shareholder equity. In general, a debt-equity ratio under 0.1 is a good sign, while a debt-equity ratio higher than 0.5 can be a red flag for the future.
Similar to debt-to-equity, debt-to-EBITDA measures the ability a company has to pay off its debts. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization.
A high debt-to-EBITDA ratio indicates that a company has a high amount of debt that it may not be able to pay off.
While a stock’s price can vary significantly from day to day, dividend payments are a way that investors can earn a consistent amount of money each quarter or year. Not every company pays out dividends, but large, established companies sometimes pay out some of their earnings to shareholders rather than reinvesting the money into their business.
Dividend yield is calculated by dividing a company’s annual dividend payment by its share price. The average dividend yield for S&P 500 companies is around 2%.
One thing to note is that dividends are not guaranteed — companies can change their dividend amounts at any time. So if a company has a particularly high dividend yield, it may not stay that way.
Price-to-book ratio, or P/B, compares a company’s stock market value to its book value. This is a useful tool for finding companies that are currently undervalued, meaning those that have a significant amount of growth but still relatively low stock prices.
P/B ratio is found by dividing the market price of a stock by the company’s book value of equity. The book value of equity is found by subtracting the company’s total liabilities from its assets.
When companies release quarterly and annual earnings reports, many of them include projections for upcoming revenue and EPS. These reports are a useful tool for investors to get a sense of a stock’s future. They can also affect stock price as other shareholders and investors will react to the news in the report.
Wall Street analysts regularly release reports about the overall stock market as well as individual companies and stocks. These reports include information such as 12-month targets, stock ratings, company comparisons, and financial projections. By reading multiple reports, investors may start to see common trends.
While analysts aren’t always correct and can’t predict global events that affect the markets, these reports can be a useful tool for investors. They can keep them up-to-date on any key happenings that may be on the horizon for particular companies. The information in the reports also can result in stock prices going up or down, since investors will react to the predictions.
Here’s a quick rundown looking at the key differences between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Again, this can be important when weighing your risk need to knows as an investor.
|
Quantitative vs. Qualitative Analysis |
|
|---|---|
| Quantitative Analysis | Qualitative Analysis |
| Looks at data and numerical figures to predict price movements | Looks at business factors such as leadership, product, and industry |
| May require sifting through a lot of data, and may be difficult for some investors | Metrics include business models, competitive advantage, and industry trends |
| Concerned more with the “quantity” and hard data a business produces | Concerned more with the “quality” of a business |
If you feel like you can do a little stock analysis on your own, there are some pros and cons to it.
Perhaps the most obvious pro to doing your own stock analysis is that you don’t need to pay someone else to do it, you can do it on your own schedule, and learn as you go. You can develop knowledge that’ll likely help you as you continue to invest in the future. There are also numerous tools out there that you can use to analyze stocks which may not have been around in years or decades past.
Stock analysis can be an involved process, which can require a lot of investment in and of itself — both monetarily (if you’re using paid tools) and in terms of time. Depending on how deep you want to go, too, it can be a complex process. You may get frustrated or burnt out, or even make a mistake that leads to a bad investment decision.
There are a number of ways to analyze stocks, including technical, fundamental, quantitative, and qualitative analysis. The more an investor gets comfortable with terms like P/E ratio and earnings reports, the more informed they can be before making any decisions. Stock analysis is an involved process, however, and may be above the typical investors’ head and ability.
It is important to do your research and homework in relation to your investments, however. If you feel like you could use some guidance or a helping hand, speaking with a financial professional is never really a bad idea.
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For a limited time, opening and funding an account gives you the opportunity to win up to $1,000 in the stock of your choice.
There’s no “best” way to analyze stocks. The right option for an investor will depend on their personal preferences and investing objectives. And remember, there’s no need to just use one method to analyze a stock — often, analysts will combine different methods of analysis to generate a more robust stock analysis.
There are a ton of potential indicators that investors can look at, but some broad indicators that investors can start with include stock price history, moving averages, a company’s competitive advantages, business models, and industry trends.
A very, very basic example of stock analysis would include looking at a stock’s share price, comparing it to its historical averages and moving averages, overall market conditions, and looking at the company’s financial statements to try and gauge where it might move next.
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Source: sofi.com
Hey, welcome back to the show, everyone! I’m excited to have you here! I’m thrilled to have my good friend Steve Trang on the podcast today! Steve is an amazing real estate investor and a well-known leader in the sales department of real estate. He is responsible for assisting numerous teams and salespeople to help take their business to another level. That is what we are going to talk about today, how to become a sales leader to build a team that can help you scale your business to the next level.
Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Flip Nerd Show. Really excited, uh, to have you here today. Really excited to have, uh, my good friend Steve t Trang. I was on his podcast several years back, and I know I told him it’s, it’s always a little weird being on the other side of the microphone and being a guest on somebody else’s podcast when you have a really dominant podcast.
Mike: But, um, you know, he gets the opportunity to kind of put the shoe on the other foot, and Steve really is an amazing leader in the, in the sales side of the industry as a real estate investor. But he’s responsible for helping train a lot of teams and a lot of. Uh, salespeople directly to help take their business to another level, and that’s when the business gets good.
Mike: So, welcome to Real Estate Investing Secrets. We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives, but most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else and chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve? Financial freedom.
Mike: My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an [00:01:00] investing business that allows you to change your life and the world around you, and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Camp Bright from flip nerd.com, and your questions get answered here on the Real Estate Investing Secrets Show.
Mike: Uh, Steve, welcome to the show.
Steve: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m, I’m really excited to be here.
Mike: Yeah. Glad to have you here. We, we’ve been talking about doing stuff like this for a while and glad we mm-hmm. Uh, finally have you here. So I don’t know if you need an introduction, Steve, but for those that might not know you, maybe just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate.
Steve: Yeah, sure. So, um, you know, real estate disruptors, how most people know me, I got in real estate the same way I think as everyone else, which is reading Rich Dad, poor Dad. Uh, the purple Bible is what I like to refer to, to that as. But you know, I’ll go back a little bit further. You know, something that, uh, seems to resonate with a lot of people is I talk about creating a hundred millionaires and I’ve had someone ask me like, why do you create millionaires?
Steve: Uh, and for me it really goes back to his historically speaking, [00:02:00] um, You know, I, I, I’ve been preaching the gospel of capitalism, of entrepreneurship. You know, profit’s been a bad word for like the past couple decades. Uh, and, uh, I, I run a profitable business. I’m not ashamed of that. Uh, and the reason why this is, is, uh, my grandparents, uh, many, many decades ago, uh, lost everything in China due to communism, and they fled China, uh, to Vietnam and rebuilt everything, and then lost everything again.
Steve: Due to communism, right? And so my parents fled on, on these terrible rickety boats, uh, where they were, not themselves, but other people that were on these boats, you know, perished in the oceans because of shark attacks, or people that were, you know, raped and murdered in the, in the open seas by pirates, right?
Steve: Because there’s all these people fleeing with, with their stuff. And so I was born in a refugee camp, uh, before making all the way to the states. So, you know, when I talk about creating a hundred millionaires, The reason why it’s so important to me is [00:03:00] that I, I believe we should be valuable. I believe we should invest in ourselves.
Steve: I believe we should be helping other people, and the more profitable we are, the more people we can help. So, Uh, just, that’s just a quick background about myself. Yeah, that’s a
Mike: hard one to top. I mean, I care about other people’s success, but, uh, you know, and I, I didn’t, I just, I didn’t have, you know, I had a loving family but we grew up very poor and stuff, but never went through anything like that.
Mike: So, you know, very, very well I didn’t
Steve: Awesome my parents.
Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome. And I think, you know, one of the challenges, and maybe you appreciate this cuz you have kids too. Is like how do you convey those like work ethic things to your kids because what they see is life that’s easier than what you had.
Mike: For sure. And in my instance, the same thing. Oh yeah. Different but just, you know, yeah. Those are challenging to convey those things. Right. And so, you
Steve: know, definitely as a challenge, especially with uh, you know, we tell our kids we’re poor, which is an outright lie, but you know, we’re telling ’em we can’t afford things [00:04:00] and it makes sense to them cuz they don’t know any better.
Steve: Right. Just like we were poor and we didn’t know any better. Uh, but then, you know, mom and dad are both dropping him off in Teslas at school. And so, you know, all their kids friends are saying like, you guys are rich. Like, we’re not. And so if we’re getting to the point now where like we’re having honest conversations about, more honest, not completely honest, but more honest conversations and instead of saying, you know, we can’t, uh, we can’t afford it now we say it’s not in the budget.
Steve: So it’s a different way of saying the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: Well, Steve, along the lines of creating millionaires, I know what you really want probably is. To help people achieve freedom, right? Their goals. And it, and it’s not all about money. It’s about living a lifestyle that supports whatever you wanna do with your life.
Mike: I think most people would probably agree with that. And one of those things, you know, that I found over the years, and I’ve done plenty of coaching and, you know, uh, lots of, you know, supporting lots of real estate investors is helping people transition out of. Essentially a job, which is what a lot of real estate investors have, even if they have some level of success.
Mike: Of course, most [00:05:00] people fail before they ever do their first deal or even a deal or two. And then the next level is really stuck in a job where they’re doing everything themselves. Right? And so from a sales perspective, it it honestly, even a lot of people that are successful in real estate early on, it’s because they’re good at sales or they hustle really hard.
Mike: Yeah. To just make it happen. Right. So we’re gonna talk today about essentially building a sales team, becoming a sales leader. And, um, part of that is becoming a sales manager and not just a sales salesperson. Right. Right, right. And so let’s talk a little bit about that transition because just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you can manage it.
Mike: You know, I found that, and I think a lot of folks have found that too. So just talk about that transition of going from the doer to the person that has to recruit, train, and lead doers.
Steve: Yeah, it’s, it’s such a tough transition because it’s a completely different skillset, right? Like, It’s one thing to sit in a living room across from a homeowner and talk to ’em about what they’re going through and helping ’em out of a tough situation.
Steve: Right? That’s one thing. And then eventually, you know, [00:06:00] we, we, uh, hand off the paperwork to someone else, right? And then eventually we’re generating the lease for someone else to go, and we ask ourselves like, why won’t this person run the appointment the right way? Why aren’t they accountable? Why aren’t they doing the follow up?
Steve: That lead’s been in there forever? Why aren’t they hitting it harder? And one of the things that we fail, uh, as we’re, as we’re moving up into sales management, which is not something that we do because we want to, but just because it’s like the next logical step is I need to hire salespeople, otherwise I’m gonna be doing it forever.
Steve: Right? We don’t, we don’t do as great a job of putting ourselves in the position. Of a new salesperson that’s coming in, right? Because when we come in, like when we first start, uh, I started on the realtor side. I worked underneath a, a broker, right? There’s all these promises, like we got these leads where you saw these appointments and you just show up and you just close these deals and we’ll take care of everything else, right?
Steve: Those are the promises. And then you get in and there’s not nearly as many leads as promised. Appointments are not booked as promised, and it feels like we’re just micromanage all day. [00:07:00] Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do this? And. For us, what we found, uh, thanks to my good friend, uh, Ren is the best way to get a salesperson to run their book of business, like it’s their own business.
Steve: It’s to help them build that book of business and help ’em understand as a partnership where we work together. So one thing we’re guilty of is we’re setting KPIs. Right. But when we say KPIs, what do we do? We have our business plan, all right? This year I wanna do 10 million in revenue. In order to do 10 million in revenue, I need to do 800 K a month in revenue in order to do 800 K a month in revenue.
Steve: I need this many contracts, blah, blah, blah. And we break it all the way, all the way down. Now, all sales guy, you’re responsible for this many contracts a week, this many dials, this many contacts, right? But at no point when we did the annual plan that we asked the sales guy, What do you want? What’s important to you?
Steve: What’s your lifestyle you’re trying [00:08:00] to achieve? Uh, what are your outcomes? What’s your big, hairy, audacious goal? Right? We don’t ask these questions. We’re more, it’s more of a top-down management, and what we found was, if I say, all right, Mike, what’s important to you? Why is that important? You know, and you hear like, whether it’s, you know, I wanna put my kids through private school.
Steve: I wanna retire my parents, I wanna retire my spouse. I wanna be able to buy that nice car. I wanna buy that dream house. I wanna do this epic trip, uh, epic vacation, whatever it is. How many of us know what is the driving force behind our salespeople? And then after understanding the driving force behind our salespeople, sitting down with them and helping them uncover to hit those targets, how many contracts do they need to hit a week?
Steve: And after that, okay, in order to have this many contracts, how many appointments do you need to sit? How many conversations do you need to have? How much talk time do you need? How much follow up do you need to do? Right? But once we do all of this, it’s no longer [00:09:00] my KPIs and my quotas, right? This is no longer about Steve.
Steve: This is about Mike, right? Mike said he wants to live in a gated community. Mike said he wants to be able to put his kids through private school cause that’s important to his wife. Whatever it is, right? So Mike has said he wants to make a hundred thousand a year to do A, B, and C. Now it’s my responsibility as your leader and mentor, which we don’t really consider ourselves to be.
Steve: But if you look at it, we spend a lot of money on mentorships and our sales guys don’t, right? As your leader and mentor, how can I help you accomplish your goals? And now we’re working together side by side and so, What we’re seeing now, which is like an incredible blessing, is our sales guys right now are working just as hard as me, the business owner.
Steve: And that was not true prior to 12 months ago, right? You’ve always got that guy that’s gonna hustle, right? I you always have that one in a hundred that’s gonna hustle. Now we’re getting, like, everyone’s either hustling or they voted themselves off the [00:10:00] island, and that’s, it’s, it’s a beautiful sight when you’re looking at
Mike: that.
Mike: And the problem is, is uh, if you don’t evaluate everybody’s goals, Then you let one person set the bar for how everybody else should act. But that might, they might, they might, that might be unrealistic for them. Right. Or they don’t have enough. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s not in their heart to achieve that level.
Mike: So you could have a really high performer and then you’re, you’re whipping everybody else because they’re not performing at that level, but maybe they have very different goals. Right?
Steve: Yeah. I mean, look, if you wanna make 80 K a year, For a lot of us, we hear 80 K a year and we hear that’s pitiful. Right?
Steve: That’s just the reality. If you’re listening to the podcast, 80 K a year is probably not your target. Right? But that’s a lot of freaking money for like 95% of the country. Right? So then who are we to say, you know, 80,000 a year is unacceptable, really. It’s like, okay, you wanna make 80 K a year? Okay, so do 80 K a year.
Steve: You need to 800 K a year in revenue, assuming you do a 10% compensation, right? Right. You need to do 800 K a year in revenue. Okay, well then you’re good for [00:11:00] 800 K. If I wanna do 10 million, I need to find the other 9.2 million in sales members that can do that. Right? So it’s not me getting you from 800 K to 1.2 and pushing you harder.
Steve: It’s like if 800 K helps you sleep good and you run a good family and this and that, it gets balance. Whatever’s important to you and you’re, and you’re aligned and your, and your align and your core values. I’m aligned and my core values. Then it’s on me to find other 9.2 in revenue to build my team.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: Share your thoughts on, so you, you mentioned something a moment ago with, uh, bringing salespeople on and the leads, they never get as many leads as what they thought they would get. So what mm-hmm. In every, every real estate investor struggles with this, and some people have very different business models than others, but what is the role of a salesperson and generating leads?
Mike: Like, honestly, in my business, for a long, long time, nobody on my team that was in sales had to generate leads, but the burden was always on me. Mm-hmm. You know, I could see them sitting around twiddling their thumbs because they don’t have enough leads, and that’s my problem. Um mm-hmm. [00:12:00] But I also know people that like, Hey, if you wanna work for me, you have to hunt for your own leads as well.
Mike: And there’s balances there. And everybody’s models are different based on what their channels are for lead gen. And there’s probably not a right, there’s probably not a right answer, but what is your answer? Like, what is the role of salespeople in actually generating leads to help feed themselves?
Steve: Sure.
Steve: So the first thing, the ideal right, is, is appointments. That’s the ideal, right? And do we offer those? Yes. But if you’re only relying on that, you’re relying too much on me. Right? So we have the scheduled appointments. Then the next part is we have people that raise their hands. This is the ppc. This is a direct mail, right?
Steve: They raise their hands. This is up to you to hustle. Cuz for us and our organization, the acquisition managers are jumping on the hottest, high, hottest, most expensive, most motivated leads, right? We don’t have lead managers talking to those guys. Right? So it’s up on, it’s up to you to like jump on those and, and, and, and run those right after that.
Steve: We’ve got so much freaking data, right? I’ve been in this business for 16 years now. It’s kind of crazy to say out [00:13:00] loud. So in all the years we have pulled every homeowner in this market. We’ve got their phone numbers in this market, right? So when you’re done with the hot leads and you’ve got time hit the warm leads, After that hit the cold leads, hit the leads we’ve never gotten ahold of.
Steve: Because if you wanna make money, there’s a way to make money. We’ve got the data, right. It’s up to you to go get it. So for us, the target is two contracts a week if you can’t hit the two contracts a week, right? Again, this is their target, not our target. Uh, but the target, we generally have two contracts a week.
Steve: We know that in order to do two contracts a week, you gotta have to have three quality appointments a day, right? And you’re not doing three quality appointments a day. Then you gotta hit a certain number, certain number of conversations. If you’re gonna hit a certain number of conversations, then you have to have a certain amount of talk time.
Steve: Right. And and this just goes back to, just think about back when you were hustling, right when you started Long time ago. When I started, a long time ago, there was no [00:14:00] question how hard we were willing to work. We were working weekends, we were working late, right? Lee comes in at 8 45 at night and we’re out to dinner.
Steve: Guess who’s taking the call, right? Babe, hang on a second. I gotta take a call. This is the money line. Right? And that’s what we called it. It was the money. I had a different ringtone when they called that number. I had a different phone. I the money. It was the money phone. The money phone, yeah. Right. So w this is, this was the standard of performance for us.
Steve: If we’re helping them build a book of business, why is this not the standard for them? And the reason why is cuz we’ve tolerated it. Because we were scared. With the hold salespeople accountable. And the reason why we’re afraid to hold salespeople accountable is cuz every time we held them accountable to our metrics and our targets, we got pushback.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I’ve realized is, um, that, you know, when people are trying to go from a solopreneur to building a team, one of the challenges is there, there could be these long cycles in [00:15:00] between having a, a salesperson on your team that’s a performer. And if they’re not mm-hmm. Then they quit or you fire ’em.
Mike: Mm-hmm. Then you’re back to just yourself. And so, oh yeah. There’s, you really should not have just one person. There’s this line, if you have one, you have none. Right. Because they’re so fragile. Mm-hmm. And for all of us as entrepreneurs, we don’t have a lot of bench strength. We don’t really have backups. We don’t have redundancy in our business often, but it’s mm-hmm.
Mike: Sales, sales and marketing are such a, a Dr. Important driver for the business. Just talk about the importance of, as we’re talking about building a team here. Having more than just one other person other than yourself, cuz then you’re only one person away from getting pulled back into the business at all
Steve: times.
Steve: Oh yeah. And that is the ultimate truth. I mean, that, that part hurts, right? So if you don’t have a strong bench when things go bad, you are back in the seat. Right. Which means you’ve gotta take time away from your wife, your kids, and your other commitments that you’ve made. Right? Especially if you’re, if you’re probably like Mike and myself with shiny object syndrome and we’re playing in these other arenas, these other [00:16:00] businesses.
Steve: Those other businesses get put on pause. Yeah. And you have to get back into the business, right? And so the importance of of building a team, if you look at wholesaling, right? It’s a sales and marketing business. If you look at flipping and realtor, right? It’s a sales and marketing business. Building a team is also a sales and marketing business.
Steve: We’ve got to generate leads, uh, just this past week. We, uh, we, we sign up for a new crm, go high level, right? And so we use Wise Hire to post the ads and we just set up the Zaps literally yesterday. Um, so that anyone that comes through Wise hire goes into go high level. And now my director recruiting gets to operate just outside of go high level.
Steve: And now he’s, now we have KPIs for recruiting. Right now we know how many outbound dials is he making, uh, to potential prospects. How many appointments is he having, right? Like we’re building this out as a sales and marketing business. For recruiting to our companies. That’s awesome. So I, I, I believe it’s absolutely paramount.
Steve: If you’re not [00:17:00] looking at recruiting as a sales and marketing component of your business, then you’re gonna be always lacking, or not lacking, but wanting, right? It’s like when you need somebody, you’re not hiring the most qualifier, you’re not hiring the highest caliber, you’re hiring who’s available and who’s available.
Steve: Generally speaking. It’s someone that’s on Craigslist or it’s on wise hiring. Indeed. And if you’re hiring that person who’s applying for a job today, you’re hiring someone that, for better or for worse, is not a fit for someone else, right? It’s like, um, either they were unwanted and unmanageable by someone else, or they were poorly managed by somebody else.
Steve: But either way, uh, they weren’t good enough to be, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? They didn’t do everything they could to keep that person.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. The, it, it, there’s some truth in the best salespeople are like, people find them, they don’t, they’re not looking for jobs. Jobs. They’re not applying
Steve: for jobs.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] Right. Like I was, uh, we were going through this exercise like, okay, when’s the last time I updated my, my resume? So I was going through it. The last time I updated my resume was in 2012. And the reason why I was updating my resume in 2012 is cause I was applying for r e O accounts for Bank of America, Fannie Mae, these other things, right?
Steve: Yeah. Prior to applying for working for the banks, I was say 2009. 2009 was a rough time in real estate. 2009 I was applying for some jobs, right? That was the last time I updated my resume. Yeah. 14 years ago. Yep. Right. So if you’re looking to hire quality people, they don’t have updated resumes. They’re not on Monster or Indeed or Wise Hire.
Steve: They are working a job that they’re happy
Mike: with. Yep. And the last time they found a job, somebody found them and they didn’t need to update their resume. Yeah, you’re right. I think, gosh, that’s a good question. I probably updated mine. It’s probably been 2006 or seven. I don’t, I now, now I don’t have a resume.
Mike: I have a bio. Right,
Steve: right. Yeah. [00:19:00] Check
Mike: on my Instagram. Yeah, that’s right. Check me on, on social media. Yeah. Um, so, so, uh, let’s talk about the importance of process. Like, I think a lot of people when they are newer in the business or it’s just them, and you’ve alluded to, you know, Tracking KPIs, making sure you’re doing the activities to do things.
Mike: But, you know, I think that was a lesson for me. I mean, I had bought tons of houses, just hustling really hard by myself early on. But I’d never really thought of it as a process. I mean, I had a pitch, I had kind of a process I, I went through, but I didn’t think of it as a process. Right. So talk about that evolution for people that are trying to go from themselves to a team and the importance of relying on.
Mike: A systematic approach or a process to sales. Yeah. Versus just going out and hustling and knowing what to say. Right.
Steve: Yeah. So I think there’s a few different skills that are super, super paramount, right? When you’re building an organization and a, a lot of people that are listening are gonna be somewhere in one of these, you know, four or five stages.
Steve: I mean, step one marketing, right? Where do I find leads? That’s step one. And when you first [00:20:00] start, that’s freaking hard. After you’ve done this for a while, it’s freaking easy, right? It’s just copy and paste, right? What’s working for Mike? Okay, I’ll go do that. Right? It’s pretty simple after that. Uh, next thing is sales, which is something we teach, right?
Steve: How to sell effectively, how to talk to a homeowner effectively, and so on. I think that is a skill that, uh, requires mastery, but not everyone takes it as seriously. Uh, the third skill after that, I believe, is leading effectively and leading effectively. Is really caring about your people and doing what’s best for them.
Steve: And it’s, it’s the hardest skill because it requires you to be, uh, selfless. It requires you to lose more sleep. It requires more stress because when you’re a solopreneur and like you go, you know, zero two deals, zero four deals, one deal, three deals, whatever, right? You have a bad month. Okay, you’re out. 15 K, right?
Steve: Like 15 K in overhead in marketing, but that’s it, right? When you’re leading an [00:21:00] army, 20 people on payroll, like you’re going from like two deals to 13 deals to four deals, 12 deals, right? And you go through this rollercoaster and four deals doesn’t cut it cuz it doesn’t cut, doesn’t make overhead, right?
Steve: So you’ve got so much, um, Pressure, which I, I love cuz I love chaos, right? But you’ve got to be able to manage through the chaos. You’ve got to keep the people sane, you gotta keep them focused, uh, uh, on the target. And you got to be really, really good at finding the best talent. There’s two things that are simultaneously holding your company back.
Steve: First one’s the law of the lid. You can’t take the company further, then you can lead them, right? If you are the bottleneck and how far the company can go, the other restraint, you can’t go any further than your people who can carry you. Your people have to carry, your people have to support you, so you’ve got to have [00:22:00] world-class people and all these different seats.
Steve: So you’re trying to be best, a world-class leader, a world-class visionary, and you get to have world-class people. And if you’ve got, if you’re a world-class leader with B players, You’re not getting very far. If you are a B class leader and you get rock stars, they’re leaving you. That’s just the reality, right?
Steve: So you’ve got to be able to, to, to be an effective leader, you got to serve. You got to care. You have to be able solve the most difficult challenges. I kind of equate it like a heart surgeon, right? The most difficult problems you’ve got to be able to solve them. Simple problems, they can solve them. Heart surgeon problems, that’s you.
Steve: Right? So, uh, as far as the process goes, I mean the, the recruiting is one of the most challenging components, but it is the, uh, the moat that keeps the crazies out of your castle, right? You’ve got a building you’ve [00:23:00] gotta protect, you gotta company culture, you’ve got to lead. Um, and you gotta keep the crazies out.
Steve: And the way you keep the crazies out is through effective screening. Uh, having not just a couple of questions in interview, I feel good about this guy, bring him in. But like having a thorough screening interview, making sure they’re a core alignment fit, make sure they’re a behavioral fit, uh, make sure they got a reliable car.
Steve: Like there’s just so many things that go into Right. Uh, building a world-class company.
Mike: Yep. Yep. Steve, I think one thing that a lot of, uh, I think this, this hits real estate investors hard. I. Because they, a lot of ’em started as solopreneurs. They were probably the acquisitions manager in the business.
Mike: Mm-hmm. They know how they think. Cuz their goal wasn’t to be an acquisitions manager. It was that financial freedom. Right. So I think one of the beliefs that happens sometimes when they’re building out a sales team is people are afraid of, they’re almost sabotage themselves. They’re, they’re afraid of [00:24:00] finding really good salespeople cuz they think they’re just gonna train their future competition.
Mike: Like, what do you say to that? Yeah.
Steve: Uh, that’s the reality and, and deal with it. Like it, this is just the way it is, right? So, uh, the predictive index is something I absolutely love, right? It’s pi, it’s, it’s a more complex version of the DISC profile. If you look at the, the, the predictive index of a high quality salesperson, and you look at the predictive index of a business owner, a successful business owner, they’ve got a hundred percent overlap, right?
Steve: Right. Like, it’s not like, oh, you know, like if you’re talking about like a receptionist, an admin, uh, someone said recruiting, scheduling appointments, whatever, lead manager, lead, follow up, dispo guy, none of those profiles really line up with the traditional business owner. But the business owner and acquisition manager, like those profiles line up pretty strongly.
Steve: So all you can do is create a vision. An opportunity is so big [00:25:00] that they wanna stay and you have to care. About your people. Like you know, I’ve said before, there’s not a lot of people I could work for cuz their visions aren’t big enough. But Elon Musk, I could work for that guy. As a matter of fact, I was watching, um, I was reading an article.
Steve: Ron DeSantis right now is going to bill the largest door canvas convincing operation in the country. Bigger than Obama’s, right. I was like, that’s pretty cool. I wonder if I can volunteer there and talk to their door knockers and train them right. Like, that’s a vision I could be a part of, but has to be a huge vision that they can fit a part of.
Steve: So bringing in your sales people, you have to be, be able to build a large enough operation and vision and purpose for them that they can fit in. And if not, yeah. They, they will leave to compete against you.
Mike: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things that I’ve, that I’ve told people over, over the years, I didn’t always think this was, look.
Mike: Create an opportunity for people if they want to start their own business, that they [00:26:00] could be your partner. Like effectively they could go out on their own. And I did, I have done this in the past. I’m like, Hey, I can show you how to do the marketing. You can generate your own leads and, and I’ll be your main lender by the way.
Mike: Maybe you could assign your deals to me too. So create this opportunity right where they can go do their own business. Now the reality is, is the one person I did this with immediately realized he was in over his head with lead gen and marketing and you know, didn’t want to be partners anymore. Just wanted to handle acquisitions so they could.
Mike: Effectively have more of a W2 type job. Right. And so not, it’s not for everybody, but create a path for them to do that if that’s what they
Steve: want. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s definitely not for everybody. And you know, the one thing is looking back, and this is gonna sound totally, I don’t know, narcissistic, uh, but like everyone that’s left to compete against me has not really thrived, right?
Steve: So, like, this stuff’s hard, and everyone that’s listening knows how hard this is, right? So if you want to go off and compete against me, so be it. I’m not gonna hold you back. I’m not gonna be like a jerk about it. I’ve also accepted the fact that generally [00:27:00] speaking, you’ve probably peaked, uh, when you move on just because the, the, the challenges, the stress, the ego, all the things I wake up for and look forward to will break most people.
Steve: You know, I was, uh, I was mentoring somebody, uh, a few days, uh, a few weeks ago over lunch, and he was like, why? Why, like, why, why don’t more people try to do what we do? And I was like, because it breaks most people. He just, he, he was like, but this is fun. I was like, it is fun for us, but we’re broken. Like we’re, we’re we’re the weird ones, right?
Steve: We’re the ones that don’t fit. Yeah. Right. It’s like, you know, that whole, uh, apple ad, right? Like to the ones that, um, So the crazy ones who, who thought that they could dead the universe, right? Like right, that’s us. We’re insane. Yep,
Mike: yep, yep. No doubt. So Steve, uh, one more question for you. So this new market we’re in, obviously there’s been a shift over the past year mm-hmm.
Mike: Or so. Um, [00:28:00] how has, what, what are the, you know, I guess two part question. If you’re managing salespeople, what do you need to do differently to effectively manage them? Mm-hmm. And if you’re a solopreneur or you’re doing all the sales, What techniques or tactics or uh, whatever has kind of changed in this new market?
Steve: Uh, so from what we’re seeing, uh, the market has went, you know, had this bit of a nose dive and now it’s kind of like we’ve already cleared, uh, this, this downturn. It appears, uh, based off the sentiment and the conversations I’ve had. So as a business owner, it seems like, uh, if you survived this little bit of nuclear winter, we went through.
Steve: You’re in a really good spot cuz a lot of your competitors are gone and you had to batten down the hatches. You had to tighten down operations. You cut all the, all the bucket leaks in your organization. I would say as a business owner right now, now is, now is the time to feast. [00:29:00] Now is the time to just enjoy all that sacrifice you’ve done, you’ve gone through in the last, uh, nine to 15 months.
Steve: Now it’s the time to feast. It’s great. Um, if you’re a solopreneur, uh, I would look at this as opportunity because even though you don’t have the operations, everything isn’t buttoned in, a lot of your competitors are gone. Right? So like I’ll speak at, uh, I’ll speak on this topic for the, for the solopreneurs, uh, from the private conversations I’ve had with other service providers, right?
Steve: A lot of the people that were buying. Leads, buying data, buying phone numbers, buying services like mine, half of those people are gone. Right. And again, not citing any names here, but fortunately the, the reach we have is we get to talk to all the other service providers. Half of the people are gone. So as a solopreneur, I see nothing but upside.
Steve: Uh, be excited to, to take advantage [00:30:00] of the opportunity you jumped in. At a great, great time if you’re starting now as far as the, the skills you need, um, I personally believe leadership is the single most important skill. Um, I think finances is another skill that is absolutely tantamount cuz it, it determines whether you’re wealthy or not.
Steve: Doesn’t need to be learned today. But that’s mostly better learned in the next three to five years. Today, if you can’t close at, at a high enough clip, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. And the things I’ve learned in the last few years is that cash is the, is is the fuel for your company. If you don’t have cash in the bank, you are driving with like sugar in your gas tank, right?
Steve: Um, you need cash. So, uh, the best way to get cash is to get really good at sales.
Mike: Awesome. Good stuff Steve. Thanks for sharing with us today. Great, great stuff. Always good to see you, my friend.
Steve: Same here. As always, always, my honor. Uh, I look [00:31:00] forward always to, to spending time with you.
Mike: Yeah. Thank you buddy.
Mike: I, I appreciate that. I feel the same way. Hey, if folks wanna connect with you, you’ve got podcasts, you’ve got sales training, you’ve got all sorts of stuff. Give, share some links here where folks can go connect with you or learn more.
Steve: Yeah, so for sure. I, I think the biggest thing, real estate disruptors, whether on YouTube, iTunes or Spotify, is the best way to, to, uh, listen to the materials that, uh, we put out there.
Steve: Uh, as far as connecting with us, uh, on Instagram at Steve dot t Trang, uh, we do have, uh, sales [email protected]. That’s our community. And then we also have, uh, our sales leadership program. If you text leaders to 3 3, 7, 7, 7, 3, 3, 7, 7, 7 leaders, uh, you’ll get more information about our leadership training and the leadership training.
Steve: The difference between a, an average operation, Yeah. And a highly profitable operation is the caliber of their salespeople because marketing, [00:32:00] marketing’s marketing. Everyone’s doing it.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, good stuff. We’ll add all these links down below in the show notes here. For those of you who’re listening, if you’re driving and you almost got an accident, writing that down, don’t do it.
Mike: Just go check it out in the show notes. Uh, Steve, thanks again for joining me today, buddy. Great to see you.
Steve: Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. I’m glad to finally be on Flip Nerd. I’m gonna put that, put that ribbon long, long overdue on
my
Mike: Instagram. It’s long overdue and everybody, hope you got some great value from today.
Mike: If you did, please share the show with, uh, some friends. Don’t share it with your competitors. You don’t have to. Uh, but just share it with somebody that you care about, share for us if you got some value. We’d appreciate that. So, uh, thanks for joining us today, and we’ll see you on the next show. Take care.
Mike: Thanks for listening to today’s show. There are three ways I can help you start or grow your real estate investing business if you’re a new investor. In just getting started, the Flip Nerd Investor Coaching Program is the most effective program in America. I’ve been coaching and mentoring new real [00:33:00] estate investors for 10 years, and my students have literally purchased thousands and thousands of properties.
Mike: Many of them started with little to no experience at all. Our program is a Paint by Numbers program where we tell you exactly what to do week by week to make sure that you don’t get distracted on your way to results. We show you how to build a real. Business, not just create another job for yourself.
Mike: New memberships are limited. You can learn more and apply or schedule a call with me and my team at Flip nerd.com/coaching. If you’re an experienced investor doing a minimum of 10 deals a year, a up to 500 deals a year or more, or have a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio already, you should check out our powerful Investor Fuel Real Estate investor Mastermind.
Mike: Over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors are members, and it’s not uncommon for our members. To two to five x their business just from getting around [00:34:00] other members. At Investor Fuel. At Investor Fuel, each of us are business advisors to one another’s businesses, but we don’t stop at business.
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Mike: Facebook group by visiting flip nerd.com/facebook. New members get access to free training from us right [email protected], and it’s a community to safely ask your questions, a great place to get started, simply go to flip nerd.com/facebook to request your access today.[00:35:00]
Source: flipnerd.com
In my last post, I explained why your financial time horizon may be longer than you think, since you may be investing well into your 90s. The discussion was in the context of retirement, but in response to the article, reader kk brought up some excellent points, which I’ll summarize thusly:
What if you scrimp and save your whole life and then die in your 50s or 60s (as happened to kk’s parents)? Plus, retirement isn’t the only financial goal, especially since “retirement” will mean different things to different people.
These are all very important ponderables. In fact, even though I’m the retirement-planning guy at The Motley Fool, I have a confession to make: I don’t plan to retire. I think I would be like many of the ex-retirees I’ve met through the years; I’d find unlimited free time fun for a while, but after a while, I’d get kinda bored.
Here’s what Mitch Anthony, author of The New Retirementality, told me a few years back:
Disillusionment rates are sky-high for retirees. According to one survey, 41% say retirement was the most difficult adjustment of their life and most still struggle with the monotony, boredom, lack of purpose, and lack of intellectual stimulation that traditional retirement offers. There is a good reason these retirees are not happy — retirement is an unnatural idea. The concept runs contrary to the preservation of the human spirit.
Reasons to Save
So if I don’t plan to retire, why have I been shoveling money in IRAs and 401(k)s ever since I was 25 (and back then, I was just making $20,000 a year as a teacher)? Here are seven reasons why I continue to delay gratification:
But What About Now?
In her response to my last column, kk brought up a difficult issue: How much do you sacrifice today for a goal decades from now, when you may not even be around to enjoy it? That’s a toughie.
I’ll start by being the good financial planner and point out that contributing to IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and so on do provide advantages today in the form of tax breaks. But that’s pretty boring.
The truth is, you have to do a little of both — enjoy today, plan for tomorrow — and the exact balance will change throughout your life. I certainly hope I don’t have to wait 20 years to take my next international vacation, but with four kids and a Washington, D.C.-area mortgage, I have other priorities right now.
So much about financial planning is about how you want to spend your time as much as it is about how you spend your money. If you want to retire as soon as possible — I know people who’ve retired by their early 40s — then you have to do things very differently from someone like me who plans to work forever.
Source: getrichslowly.org