the line we got my man mr. duggard death and today we're gonna make sure to we inspire like we always do but we gonna make sure we do some strategy some tactics and make sure that you leave out of here with a vision and it's going to be all around real estate today and I'm excited you guys know that I'm in real estate I love it so when I get another fellow entrepreneur that's in real estate that's crushing it on every single level I'm telling you this is gonna be fired so stay tuned stay locked in let's get right into it mr. Doug Depp you want to do me a favor and say what's up to dream nation what's up dream nation we're hearing Doug that live in effect let's get it man let's get it so hey I always like to start off by giving the right proper introduction to any of the guests and so I always like to think of us as entrepreneurs especially real estate entrepreneurs as superheroes why is because we're flying around we're wearing a lot of different capes and we're trying to solve a lot of different problems so before all of the fame before you add hundreds of properties of real estate before you've been able to teach hundreds of students how to be able to buy their own real estate and before all of the the business networking in the relationships let's go back so when you were just a young boy tell me who is gonna be dead all right so you know my name is Doug I was uh know born or see me I was my birthplace is Camden New Jersey I live in the suburbs of New Jersey uh Patel I was four we moved out to a place called Bluebell Pennsylvania which is just outside of Philadelphia and you know my parents were my dad was a CPA by nature and he was the president of a record company growing up he started his own business in the weight loss food he partnered with Dick Gregory years ago which was amazing you know just seeing all that transpired he did a multi-level company him in my mind that a multi-level company for about ten years of my life so they worked from home my mom on the other side financed so really understand the numbers and you know my parents even just watching them throughout you know just my childhood you know they played the stock market heavy they got caught up in the dock eris so i literally saw them have a million dollars they just got depleted basically wiped out the whole portfolio but I mean they were in there making you know thousands of dollars a day so that kind of fascinated me in the whole financial world the financial market and then in addition to that no we would go see open houses and so forth you know all throughout my childhood and you know that story is wild in itself you're already exposed to it from a very young age about financial literacy by all those things so talk to me about where did the love for real estate come from because of course we're exposed to a lot of things as kids ya know for you how did real estate become that one thing that you wanted to lock in on yeah yes that's a great no great question so kind of take it a step step back when I was in the safe third grade or so my brother was incarcerated so for every single Sunday we would actually have to drive to Graterford prison and we would literally take no food in to give him I would put money that I'll make on my birthday's I would put that actually on his books and I mean it was actually to a child it was very traumatizing I mean to the point where you know I'm getting patted down I got the weight standing there was a guard passed me down empty my pockets once that door behind me closes then I could proceed and go through the next door it was it was crazy and you know even going into like the the hall where they had these vending machines with the burgers with the you know vacuum sealed you would heat them up sound like man this is crazy but what my parents but what my parents did was they actually took me to an open house right after immediately after going to the prison and spending hours there they were taken to open houses and that's really where I believe my passion and excitement for real estate really began and I mean we would see the open houses I would get free cookies I'll get beverages like every basement I felt like had like a little toy mat where you could play with the cars and you know just bouncing around and so forth so you know every single week I would just look forward to seeing these open houses you know eating the food and just really just fantasizing that one day I wanted to own some real estate got it so you was dreaming already I love it love it early so then talk to me about when did you decide that you were first gonna get into real estate did it take you a while when was that first time that you had the opportunity to get into ruin capitalized on yeah so you know to take it back when I went to school I went to school with you know super wealthy kids like kids I'm getting the Range Rovers for the 16th birthday they're taking private jets PJ's to Australia during their birthdays and so forth but what I realized was that the parents they all had the commonality of owning real estate owning properties you know they would always talk about we have properties over here we have apartment buildings we have our second homes so I was like man this is this is interesting so something that again is the spark that no I want to I want to ventually own properties and be able to have my kids go to school and limos and so forth but the really changing point was um you know I've read the book you know richest man in Babylon my dad gave it to me I was in seventh grade so that kind of got me thinking about finances a little different differently you know I read the book Richie Rich Dad Poor Dad which was also amazing and so I knew right away you know reading those books that you know I wanted to get in the real estate and then I think we really pushed me over to the edge where it's like you know I gotta I gotta keep moving was when I invested and of course I don't even want to say his name almost embarrassed to say his name but it was Donald Trump's course I paid $3,000 for it and I remember sitting on the couch with my brother you know this was you know after he got out and I was just like contemplating I was walking back and forth and you know I was doing my research I said man I want to get this program and he's like well do you have the money I said yeah I had the money well he's like if you got it get it I said man I gotta get it so that when I when I wrote that check I mean I was the biggest check I've written outside of paying my way through school so I paid for it I did the program and then I knew that you know with having that money invested there's no turning back like no matter what I had to take the next step own real-estate you know start collecting rents and cashflow and so forth no I love it and it's kind of like obviously a good friend of ours that a mutual connection Neal it talks about you know if you don't pay you don't pay attention ruddy you know obviously if there's no transaction there's no transformation those things all the time and seller or somebody like you and you paid that money and how old were you at this time I'm at this time I was uh I was writing college about twenty years old so imagine being twenty years old dropping three thousand dollars you know on a real estate investing course right that's the you know it's thirty hundred dollar bills you know that seems like that seems like a million dollars a time and so talk to me what did that course was that of course the course that propelled you or would you say to that course it didn't really do what it needed to but at least got you in the right direction I think that course for me it really got me in the right direction it scratched the surface right so once we you know that's that was me taking that first step and then you know gave me some tools that I could use but really was taking action so and I didn't really start taking action until you know a couple years later when I graduated college you know I got my first job at Bank of America and was working in when I started Bank of America is a crazy story but as I'm going in I was in his leadership rotational program they call it the F Maps they pick like five people from University Delaware so I was selected but long story short as I'm walking in with HR there's these people that walk into the elevator and they're in tears they're crying they're holding these boxes and I asked HR like dozens of the sudden hey what's going on and they said well oh yeah we just had mass layoffs you know some of the senior guys you know we're just laying them off but just you know making room for you guys to come in this was during a nationalization scary you know I was paying attention to the news I was reading Wall Street Journal and so forth and the banks were basically about to get nationalized and this was a huge deal I mean Bank of America stock went from $60 to $5 but but something struck me like a meat like these people are in tears and I mean they had mortgages they had kids in college they getting ready for retirement and now in the rope and just pulled right on therefore you know from underneath their feet and I'm like man I was like I never want this to happen to me so that that even pushed me even further the exam but you know remember that class I invested in you know a couple years back like I have to get real estate that was just just more confirmation right there that no real estate was going to be the answer for me I love it man and so here's what I know as well working in corporate America for a short amount of time you know it just feels like that everybody could tell you know but nobody could tell you yes right right and so that was the thing that you were exposed to and you still took action on it so did you just leave the job and then you know go full-time real estate or did you allow it to build up and then you let the job because that nothing that a lot of people struggle with it's like when should I leave right right absolutely a lot of people want to just know quit and get out of the work place you know as soon as possible but I took kind of a different approach I was gonna leverage my job leverage my nine-to-five so that way I can aggressively save a lot of money so that way I keep dumping it into real estate and then I was making this so my job to me was a huge sacrifice cuz like you know I could have left years ago but I decided to ride it out and I was working on me long hours I was putting in 6070 hours every single week you know day in and day out just to when it came time to a year and review I get there I'm sit down with my boss they say Doug you know thank you for your hard work however we're expecting more out of you I'm like more out what do you mean I gave you 70 hours every single week and when you're on salary you know you expect to only work 40 hours and then for them to say that there's no bonus dollars for you just because you're Amit's meets you know that's like devastating but no you yeah well year after year after year I was hearing the same thing over and over again so in my free time I was at work and my lunch breaks I'm looking at real estate and I'm making transactions I'm buying up properties and I'm collecting the cash flow so so that actually helped helped me to stay down that helped me just to stay focused so like no matter what was going on that Bank of America at the job with just saying this and that I knew that I had a plan so at the end of the day I knew that I was gonna get the last laugh but you know how is this a humble guy just staying focused not really telling too many people what I was doing but I was still you know let him know that hey this is just this is just temporary a lot of people they want to know how they can get into real estate right that's the big thing because we know that real estate is tried and true right it's the thing that's creating the most millionaires or somebody that comes to you and they say Doug you know what I'm looking to get into real estate I want to get my next property or my first property in the next 30 days what's the first thing that you're always telling them that they got to do I think first they really have to look at their finances right because so so often people just want to know go ahead and do no investments and such but they really have to look at their financial picture and they have to you know trim the fat what I mean by trim the fat is looking at their expenses where where is your money going is there any way to save or to eliminate certain things like for instance some people I know pay $60 a haircut you know I pay $8 a haircut so right there is a small transaction as you could trim a lot of monies imagine saving $40 per haircut most people get to every month so that's $80 in the monthly meeting times that by 12 so that's additional savings there what if you cut the cable bill and also is there any ways where you can earn additional funds but one way that I would recommend for anyone that doesn't have any property definitely see about the first-time homebuyer or just the FHA program simply because it's not that cash intense right you can put down three and a half percent and you can choir up to you know $800,000 property depending on what area you're in so if you're working a nine-to-five you're good with your money you can put down a small amount of money you buy a 1 unit 2 unit 3 unit 4 units that is basically like a mini apartment building and what I recommend is cutting your living costs down as close to zero as possible right because when I cut my living costs down then that'll for more money to invest in when you look at someone's finding into a picture the majority of their funds is going to just keeping a roof over their head so if you can eliminate that net that large cost and live for free or close to it then you're in a position where you're gonna have an abundance of cash flow but you have to give me a different way because somebody listen at this right now and they love it yeah okay I think I could do that right but what's one of those ways that you've taught someone or you see a lot of people you know that they could cut just one or two expenses to see that it's possible cuz you said about living with you know you're really trying to use your money you keep that roof over your head yeah but some ways then we can cut that down all right so one way if you have a three bedroom apartment or house if you if one room is open you can rent that room out get some extra cash flow coming coming in right the cable bill most people are switching over to streaming you know there's netflix there's hulu there's there's so many different platforms IG TV there's other source to entertain yourself and really truthfully I would just recommend cutting cable completely I don't even have cable to this day I don't either right so it's something where you know people are spending hours watching TV shows I mean hours they'll go home they'll work and they'll watch three to five hours worth of TV so imagine if you cut that cable bill completely so there's no three to five hours of TV that you can watch and you focus them and you locked in on if it's real estate if it's whatever your passion is that you want to learn you can really devote that time into building your business building your knowledge getting that information because information is key information changes the situation so now the more information you have now you're able to elevate faster than just sitting down watching the TV and getting sold by a commercial after commercial like a commercial hitting you on top of the head I love it what's one thing that you've seen that most real estate brand new real estate investors when they first get in where do is one thing that they always fall short on because somebody right now they're listening at this and they're saying you know what I'm gonna go home tonight I'm gonna check out my finances I'm gonna maybe talk to my partner we're gonna see what type of money that we got but then when they go to jumping in reason why some people don't get started I would say is because they hear about these horror stories and so we're trying to help somebody out like what's one way in the beginning that somebody can make sure that they don't lose on their first property yeah I wish for me I wish that I reached out and got like an actual mentor someone to kind of coach me through step by step I'm more of a risk-taker sounds like hey I'm just gonna learn on the way so I made a lot of mistakes throughout those know eight to ten years to break everything down for me also making sure that you know how to analyze a deal know me being a financial analyst it helped being able to know the numbers right but most people just buy a deal just to say that they own real estate but if you just own a property just on real estate but you look at it by the time you do the numbers collect your rents and look at your expenses and if you're in a negative cash flow position then there's no point in owning that piece of real estate you should have one with another option but you don't know that if you don't know how to analyze the deal and know the numbers I love it the first thing I got out of this is you need some type of community support right you a mentor is gonna be great right a coach is gonna be great but analyze where that person is and they might be too high up on the ladder for you to be able to afford that person right so be able to just find somebody that's a couple steps ahead that's more importantly accessible you want the information but you want the access so I love that you said that but then the second part of it is you're talking about analyzing a deal and that's something that we all need to be able to know how to do talk to me about is there a couple one or two things that people can do to be able to know how to analyze a deal right but how does that come yes I mean I put together a whole deal analytical calculator but one of the key strategies and how I invest now and just to kind of take a step back I'm looking for undervalued assets that I that I rehab I rent them out you know I get sent no nice rents because I fix these properties up high in and then I just go ahead and refinance I be put a new mortgage on the property to get rid of my short-term financing put a new mortgage on the property and then I keep doing that process over and over again so when it comes to analyzing a deal I use something called the 65% rule so the 65% were well that's a rule that keeps me safe when it comes to looking at a deal so simply put let's say when we looking at the 65% rule that means you don't want to be in a project any more than 65% on the purchase as well as the rehab so what that means is let's say if we have a property that's valued at $100,000 for the purchase of rehab should not exceed any more than 65% of that set $65,000 so I have to be within $65,000 on the purchase and Rehab but when I stay within that rule what that allows me to do is that allows me to get into the project and get funding but also on the back end is once I have it rented and stabilized now I'm able to do what we call a cash down reef is 75% so you notice there's a that 10% gap that's gonna allow me to get all of my initial cash back right right in my pocket and what's then I can use that cash to do that whole process again and so every time I do that process I'm spitting out $700 a month of cash flow $1,000 a month in cash flow but I'm using that same capital and just watching it over and over again and accumulating more and more bricks so that's the name of the game but but it all starts with analyzing that deal and knowing where the values come in it and that's what that's what I perfect I love that so talk to me for a lot of people that hearing it and they say okay I do want to get property I want to be able to learn and have to learn how to analyze a deal but where do I find these deals what do you always tell your Beach Boys they're one or two places that you think is a go-to place to be able to find a good deal yeah yeah I mean I mean these deals are everywhere I mean they're right outside by you walk your neighborhood and you can find houses that are dilapidated falling apart find out who owns them get in contact with them and and start you know start doing in action that's one way but right on the MLS and that's the Multiple Listing source service where you can go on Zillow com Redfin calm you network with different realtors people selling deals there's something called whole sellers which you can go you know and get whole sellers people that are their whole job is just finding deals locking up a contract and then they look to sell you that contract and then they make whatever in the middle um so you know you want to network with all these whole sellers and you just constantly want to get on it as many mailing lists as possible and just have people flowing you deal after deal after deal because you know I have you know if you look at my email box I'm getting there like 40 to 50 deals if not more every single day and I'm looking at these deals every single day I'm getting up at 3:30 in the morning just to look at these deals before I go to work out so you got to keep that consistency and persistency this over and over and over again if you want to you know have longevity in this game if you want to improve in this game and you just have to have that the attitude that you want to get better and you have to have that why right my why was to get out of corporate America but now you know I was out of corporate America but now this light is no snow point of me doing what I want to do building my future and my wife's still checking in with the man you know every single day you know three times a day cuz she's a nurse on her feet for 12 hours and then it's like man my goal has to be bigger than me I can get my wife out of there too so now she's able to work on the business with us she's out now and I'm now I'm working on the future getting my kids situated which I don't even have yet but it's just you know you have to keep that ye have to keep that hunger so you can keep going keep adding properties each and every day and all is going to do is provide that freedom and mobility so that's really what I'm excited about just having more freedom more mobility and changing the neighborhoods right I mean we're we're going into these dilapidated houses we're making them pristine you know immaculate we're putting families in I mean these families are getting the keys and they're ecstatic they want to stay forever so it's just it's just a win-win all the way around absolutely real estate changes everything and it's so beautiful for the economy talk to me about was there ever one property that was an aha moment for you that you was like yo I'm never getting out of real estate and him so talk to me about what that deal look like oh man so I'm gonna tell you the real deal that basically changed my life forever right yeah so early on when I bought my first collection of properties I was putting 20% down and I was collecting it you know it's collected a nice return on that 20% down I was assuming return on my money anywhere between 55 to 85 percent return which I thought was no fantastic so so you know but the only problem was while working at the job you know if you buy something for a hundred thousand you got put 20% down you know that's $20,000 boom out about the door so I was only limiting myself to two or three deals a year because I'm spending no $60,000 on a year he'll just buying investment properties but the one property that changed my mind was when I said you know what I came to Philadelphia and I said you don't want to buy all in these shells the people do not I keep hearing so much about shells I'm gonna buy a shell I want to fix it up and here's a shell for people that don't know and right so people that don't know basically a shell as the house dead is basically just you got the brick walls and that's it or something you have to completely rip everything in the inside out and put it back together so that's the show so I went against my grain I paid twenty five thousand dollars for showing that this is just straight cash and the contractor at the time was like hey man the budgets gonna be seventy-five thousand but I recommend just don't just do this whole deal cash you know don't even worry about the banks this used cash and I was looking at my account I had I had the cash available so I went in both the house cash you know we got title insurance of course but then I was paying for the construction to get done and I mean these guys came and they blitz through the rehab they blitz through the demo that's when they took all of it all you know all the plaster off the walls they they took all the interior walls out the property basically a full gut is what we call it I mean this house was terrible the roof was caving in the the first floor was just in the basement so it was terrible we had to redo the whole front wall so with that property out lady you know a masters amounts of cash in the construction because these guys are rolling they're hyping me up they're like man you know all of these is just some more funds we're gonna run to this product run to this project so before you know it I'm like 75 grand in and all I have is just a property framed up but then things started slowing down they started slowing down bad like I was in that project for a total of two years and I was hearing all type of excuses I mean it was so him so his birthday it was the Pope was in town there was big tank week and I'm like who the heck is big tank and what does he have to do with my project so so so with that I was like man you know what I'm never ever giving this much control to someone today you know of my money and my project so eventually the way I way I got out of that situation is I ended up completing that project myself I say you know what you got it this far I'm gonna go ahead and get some guys in here and put the play together to finish it off so thankfully the contract did give me a check back on later on once I got it complete but the beautiful thing about real estate even though you think that it's a loss I mean during that two years I'm like man like this is crazy like what am I gonna do and I had to find other ways to go about getting funding that's when I started developing my credit-card strategies my balance transfer strategies my business credit strategies but in real estate you never really lose and what I mean by that is even after all that I went through them for two years I took the property to the bank they appraised it for a hundred and fifty thousand I got my 100 grand right back so I got to the table and the bank gave me a check and I was able to put that hundred grand back in my back in my pocket like what type of education are you able to go through and get that money right back yes it took to take two years and what I lost was the opportunity costs right because I could have been taking that hundred grand at least buying three four more properties doing my old style of investing but I was thankful because that was the cost of my education got it man that's beautiful yeah and I've had so many deals like that as well where it's looked like that on the front end you're gonna lose a lot right because there's so many things that are always the unknown but the fact that you went through it that's amazing I love it now talk to me about you said that in the beginning you were using a lot of your own money now the big thing nowadays especially when people for those who don't know kind of what the strategies that you're describing which is something I do heavily as well and that's how I got started was on the Burj Mataji right and it's a lot less money that you have to come out of pocket and basically you're financing on the back end but talk to me about when you started looking for private money or hard money or business credit like how did you develop that strategy was there somewhere that like you're like man I'm so glad I found this company or how how did how did someone look at a private money lender or a hard money lender or even business credit yeah yup not very good very good I've always been a big component of credit cards and having access to capital even when I didn't need it so I was just spending now I'll just have fun on the weekends like man how much right there yeah having access to the capital even when you don't need it because especially like the time that we're going through right now yeah well it looks like everything's being shut down do you have access to the capital if you need it so I just hope that people take either that's major that's major so so you know think of a hundred grand just tied up over here so I had to luckily I was able to build up these credit cards and so forth so I'm sitting on the couch one day and I get this balance transfer check you know write in my mail for those that don't know what a balance transfer check is this is a blank check that's coming from your credit card company and the intention of having a balance transfer is let's say we got chase we've got Bank of America and Bank of America wants to win Chase's customers want to pull him over to Bank of America and put their loans with Bank of America because they're going to get interest right so one way that they do this is they'll send me chase customers these balance transfers say hey transfer your balance at 0% interest for 18 months right so what they expect you to do is you write the check out you put the money in your account and then you go ahead and pay off your your Chase all right so now you had no interest for those 18 months but then after 18 months hits now you're paying those 14 percent 20 percent 25 percent of interest to Bank of America so now chase lost that customer lost that balance but that's what a balance transfer is not and always and I worked in the banking industry so I know this the bowels and the credit card division I was on the controller team the risk management risk mitigation all back office finance stuff but with that balance transfer I was like you know what one day I want to purchase a property using these balance transfer checks so that was one of my creative ways of purchasing a property on Coatesville I picked it up for 27,000 so I wrote a check for 30,000 from the balance transfer I dropped it in my account and then the rehab was very light it was like think about $20,000 so I had another balance change to check route that into my account in two to three days that money was there and that's what I used to fix up the property so now I got the property rented and then I say you know what there's a local bank right here in coach little Coatesville Savings Bank let me bring them this property I have the tenant I'm writing it out section eight so they say it does is a great deal on properties worth $80,000 so they were able to cut me a check I think it was for like 65 grand or so he cut me a check back I paid off the balance transfers but then I had a surplus of cash I had a extra eighteen twenty thousand dollars in cash which I then was able to use that to open up a bedbug business a pest control company so now that I was out you know I got the truck got the logo to the website you know I put my brother who was on the couch I put him into a manager position where he's fighting bedbugs for me while I'm working the nine-to-five and owning real estate so I was able to do all of that with those balance transfer checks OPM other people's money right so with doing that did I said man I got this bedbug company why don't I take that business plan to the bank and I got a business line of credit through the bedbug company now I'll sit with thousands of dollars there what just more money actives dumped back in the real estate and run them run the whole place that was really like my true introduction besides you know that Philly rental where I had 100 grand tied up where I was like oh okay this is how it works and things started to click even without me even hearing all this terminology birth strategy I was like hey this is a way to use other people's money get the property situated that's before I do about the 65% revised in my numbers I hate my goal is just get my money back and there's no you're gonna get me you need my money back and then some so there's like oh I see how this work so that's one that I hide moment kicked in now my man that's the play now I love it and I'm sure there's somebody listening at this right now that they're like man I'm about to look into business credit balance transfer checks but what's one of the lessons that you learned with doing that because obviously with every good there's a bad right so talk about was there what's a lesson that somebody needs to learn because if we get out there and they're like yo I charges fellas transfer and then all of a sudden they lost 40 grand on the deal they gonna come back and they're gonna be like weird uh get right right he's right this one one thing on that one thing is is know your values right know where the value of that property that you're looking to purchase is going to be once you fix it up and then staying at that sixty-five percent rule is going to keep you safe because those lenders out there that'll cast you out at seventy five to eighty percent so that's gonna give you enough cushion if things go wrong right so a worst case scenario you get all your money back but even you know take it on another worst-case scenario even if you don't get all your money back you might leave $5,000 in the deal but that might still be equate to no 2% down in the deal and remember I came in this game paying 20% down in the deal so now I have all this extra cushion to even if things don't go as I as I please I'm still in a good a good position to own real estate and I know I'm gonna get that money back right through the cash flow but the beautiful thing is if you are able to position it to get all your money back now you're playing with house money and what's the return on house money Anthony because before I was excited about getting net that 75% return on my money you know you look at the bank you know you put money in a savings account you get a 1% return if that I mean now you probably only get point zero zero zero zero two percent with the way the economy is going but you know getting the 80 percent double-digit return on your money that's like huge so even put 20% down and still getting a return is crazy you know you might break even back then when I was investments 1.2 years I was getting all my money back and then after that it was just free money coming in but now I was able to shorten that down even more and able to get all of my initial cash cash back within three months and then I figured out hey it doesn't have to be my cash it could be cash coming from somebody else OPM through the business cards the balance transfers and so forth so now I'm like man I keep getting infinite returns because there's not my money I'm getting a return on it's somebody else's money and I'm getting returned on man I love it and so for somebody again that's listening understand that even if you're gonna go buy your primary home whatever you're gonna buy you're always gonna have to leverage other people's money if you're doing your primary home and you're doing a three and a half percent down understand that that other ninety six and a half percent you're still leveraging OPM so you can leverage to the front side and leverage the back side you're winning all day and just like you said if you know your numbers and you know your value it's very hard for you to lose but another key point that I love that you brought it up and this is something I tell people all the time let's say you don't get all of your money back out of the deal right if you had to go buy a regular conventional property with the conventional loan you're in for twenty to twenty five percent like you said let's say you only still gotta keep five thousand dollars in the deal that might only be two to three percent right sir man that's so clutch that you said that and I love it what's been for you over the last year and a half because now you scaled you got your wife out of the job you're out of the job you're traveling you're teaching other people what's been the biggest lesson though that biggest aha moment for you that you've had to learn over this last yeah I mean I think the biggest was delegation right delegating delegating delegating so basically being okay being comfortable letting other people hand different areas of the business I mean for about seven years of the business I was doing everything you know I was running the wire I was doing plumbing I was doing the maintenance I was you know showing tennis properties I was collecting rent and I was doing it all and there's nothing with in real estate that I can't do right so once I started to build my team you know we got two virtual assistants in the Philippines right now they're taking care of all the paperwork you know the books tape the expenses they even answering calls on the property management side and really starting to build that team I even have my mom my mom was sitting retired she wanted something to do I said you know what mom how do we make you the leasing agent it's very easy you know people are going to call you you just post some some of the pictures right on the line and people gonna call you screening you just go out to the property you take a look at it but you know when someone wants the property we screen them everything looks good and I'll just cut you the first month's check so she's like you don't give me $1,200 just for doing that so now she could be leasing up you know three four properties every single month so now my mom is getting the extra four or five grand of cash right in their hands just for helping her son out and while she's kicking back watching and watching the stories I love that that's what it means to truly put your family on yeah you learn you earn but then you get back and you help other people so I love that you part at that point here's one other thing though and this is something that I've been very intrigued about I know a lot of other people are intrigued about you teach a lot of your students about how they can get paid as their own GCO you do and that's that's a hack right there man so that's a baby major hack so hope people are listening to me about that like how do you get paid as your own GC oh man oh man it's might be too many jewels maybe my badges in the in this podcast there's too much Jack should I keep going so I keep going all right so so real quick so they'll take you back to that story where I had 100 grand tied up for two years and I said a conscious decision like you know I'm never gonna have another person being control of my project again so that forced me just seeing that whole process of putting that house back together I was like man this is nothing I can't do you know these GCS and these people are no smarter than I am so I said so I started figuring out a way how to put my own projects together then in addition to put my own projects together when I went to the lender I was like you know I'm gonna be the GC on this project you know I got my license I got all the insurances I got all the waivers signed and so forth you ain't got your GC license you didn't just like throw it in there no no I got my license and it's the easy thing to do so I grabbed the GC license and then when I when I did a project I was like you know they're like you can charge a true cost but I'm like why would I charge a true cost when I can charge exactly what did GC will charge what I'll be able to make that margin it because now I'm not working for free we're not just putting these houses together running around I could be focusing on something else then and had a higher GC for all that but now yeah so true cost is for the to cost for labor and materials so the actual cost for those things and then what a GC does is they mark it up and the mark-up is let's say for instance you have this pin for a dollar and let's say I mark it up 25% so you take this pin for a dollar times it by a 1.25 so the pin is no longer a dollar I'm gonna sell it to you for a dollar 25 and I'm gonna make that 25 cents right so now let's say let's take it to a budget if this budget you just put together this house is up I put the budget in at $100,000 but you know I mark it up 25 percent or you know 25 percent give or take so the true cost might be 75 thousand but I told the bank I need a hundred so just for doing property I'm getting actually $25,000 in my pocket but when I run my numbers I'm still analyzing the deal with the GC fee at 65% that the 65% rule so now I'm not figured out a way how to get paid all throughout the project I'm getting my money back when I cash out and then there's going to be nine times out of ten there's gonna be some money left over on the cash out because there's such a such a nice margin in that property and I'm always looking at the cash flow - we're not doing all this with no cash flow again we gotta make sure we have cash flow with you know debt coverage ratio of over no 1.25 is what the banks want to see but on my debt the coverage ratio exceeds like 1.75 almost on every deal the cash flow - because you want to make sure when you're doing these types of deals that once you do the refi you still have enough cash flow in there so I'm glad that you brought that part up that was a major hack and I appreciate you sharing um man this is best so far talk to me about what do you feel like is where do you feel like the economy is going like should people be looking at buying real estate right now should people be looking at you know 6 to 12 months saving up like what's their emergency or the need to buy real estate right now if there is one yeah I would say the time is now to buy real estate interest rates are as low as they ever been and I still and I feel that they even drop it even lower so they're making the price of entry you know very affordable from you know if you want to get FHA loans but even with hard money lenders those rates are coming down as well so for those that know how to fish and find properties they're gonna be in a fantastic position because they know how to take something that looks crazy and actually turned it into money basically ton of bricks into to cash so knowing that skill and having that skill you're gonna be unstoppable and what I like about my strategy is I'm not going after these four thousand a month rents $5,000 a month rents I'm going after that nice affordable rent range of a thousands of $1500 a month and the way I fixed up these properties even in even in a down market those people paying that two thousand three thousand dollars in rent they're going to gravitate toward the properties that I'm putting on the market simply because they're a great price point and there's not going to be that much supply at that price point so now there's gonna be a higher demand for my style of properties in the neighborhoods that they're in so my friends actually might go up in the situation of a downturn I love it and your focus again is always making sure that you can buy right if you stay up to that 65% you make sure you have the cash flow so is that is your cash Glover is your rent price one of the first things that you determine to say like okay yo this is a $1,500 neighborhood that I can rinse it you know if I can get it under this price right then I should be good because I know that I can increase the rent to twelve to thirteen yeah even at worse you know where I'm if I can't be as competitive I'm at 1500 exactly exactly so so the beautiful thing is when you have control my biggest thing is controlled by I played I played the stock market over the course of my life and even watch what my parents lose a million dollars in the stock market I knew that they really didn't have control but when I look at real estate I have more control simply because in a down economy even if I want to lower the rents let's say my monthly expenses on the house is five hundred bucks and I'm used to receiving twelve hundred bucks right but now I can lower my rents all the way down on a four-bedroom house all the way down to six hundred dollars and still be good where I could rent out each individual room of that property because people are now scrambling by hey man just give me $200 for the month two times four is eight hundred bucks I'm still covering my $600 so you know you have options that you're not gonna you're not gonna be stuffing real estate and also with the way I'm investing you know using the bird strategy and so forth your cash doesn't get completely depleted so that's a very important key you've got to have some cash in this game so now you're able to shoot when you see opportunities because your cash never gets depleted back when I was investing by the time I bought three properties I'm already depleted $60,000 now I gotta wait for that $60,000 to build back for me to buy another set of three properties I love that are you doing tight do you do your own property management then because I heard you say you add the property management company do you know your own property absolutely so so yeah we got property management in-house like I said I'm a frugal guy so we're being a frugal me cutting that eight to ten percent check is extremely hard especially when most of my rents you know good portion of my rents are coming in section eight at least half my portfolio is coming in section eight through the government so is like it's not really that hard to manage those the money is coming in like clockwork man I love it talk to me what's your favorite heavy what you already mentioned kind of one earlier which was Rich Dad Poor Dad but other than that do you have a favorite real estate book or a book that has taught you with ton yeah I mean it's hard it's hard to grasp exactly you know which which book per se I mean the automatic millionaire was a good book and I basically taught me when I never read yeah automatic millionaire was good and that was great for just teaching me how to set things up automatically that's basically what I got out of it so I mean have my credit card payments automatic my mortgage payments automatic even my savings account automatic my investments accounts automatic because it's hard and people get sloppy when let's say you got you know 30 mortgages out there you got 30 tax bills 31 or bills if I have to sit down every single month personally and actually write a check for each one of these you know bills you know I'll be there for four hours four to eight hours a day just writing bills and doing all this foolishness where when you set up automatic deals yeah right I could be analyzing deals exactly or pay a v8 to do that now so it's just a situation and the virtual system is three dollars an hour so you got two virtual systems for six dollars an hour so it's just crazy how you can just leverage your time in a way where you'd be more productive and pass that off to other other things not like I'm actually thinking about having the VA just analyze deals to like I said I'm getting 50 to 100 deals a day hey here's here's all the deals running through my calculator and spit back the ones that make sense what's one thing that you wish she would have known sooner that you know now when it comes to investing or just running a profitable business so say that one more time let me just make sure what there's one thing that you wish you would have learned sooner that you know now that you're suppose to real estate investing or even just running a profitable business absolutely absolutely I say I say one thing I already touched on a delegation building you're building your relationships your financial relationships right so you have to be able to pick up the phone and say hey you know John I have a deal we need to get funded you know we're gonna close and I gotta close in a week and a half like for instance I bought two deals back-to-back was apartment building and one of the properties that I actually I fixed up and my parents live in but I had to close like immediately so I went to my guy Ken Weinstein with a JumpStart Germantown I say our ranch was officer hey Ken I need funding for this deal we gotta make it a private money part yeah you probably money hard money lender of the neighborhood of a Germantown non dairy section of Philadelphia so I ran to him I said yo kiddin he got to get this deal done it's a great deal the ARV is you know 375 the purchase price is 125 I can get the deal done for 60 grand of construction you know but we got to pull the trigger cuz all right send me all the numbers and long story short we were to close that deal in a week and a half but having those relationships that is very important especially in this business I mean it's a relationship business and the day you have to be somebody that's likable have to be able to communicate with people you have to be able to negotiate with people so negotiations is amazing how much money you can say simply by saying you know it was that your best price you know I need to get that number down there's gonna be a lot of repeat business and you have the Sheree will share with people that work for you the dream right it's not just one house so you're not going to get rich off of me with this one house you're gonna get rich off me by doing multiple deals multiple properties I will keep you busy I'm keep your guys busy I'm keeping food on your table in the way so you just got to sell that vision and now you're able to get people to work for you move for you in different kind of ways that are going to be advantageous for you as well as them so it's a win-win situation man there it is right there that's what I was hoping to get into is the relationships part everybody who knows me knows that I'm all about it and that's how Duncan I was able to get on this car together it's because of a mutual relationship and man I just hope that people take action off of this now Doug there's somebody out there that's listen at this that they're inspired they're ready to go out there learn some more about real estate get their first property under contract or get their next profitable deal under contract but they got that little voice in their head and a little voice in their head says that they're not strong enough they're not smart enough they don't have enough resources what's one thing that you saw that person to get them to just take action hey you got to take action and it really comes down to confidence right so so confidence is lack of confidence is what's keeping a lot of people back and what I notice is the more knowledge you have the more confidence yes there's a lot of things it's fear that's that's that that's the little voice like hey you don't know enough you can't do it well as you start to one thing as you start to get small wins right and a small one is simply going into going into the store and asking for a discount and they say yes you know going in and waking up this morning is a small win right but is a huge win but as you start to calculate and look at all the different wins that that hit your life you know every single minute now you start to build up your confidence like hey I can do it and now also you have to look at like where did you come from you know you're here at this point right now you know based and you've probably had some trials and tribulations through that time and you in you're alive right you're here you're here today you're breathing so what I recommend is you know obtaining the knowledge but knowledge is just not enough you have to put the action behind the knowledge and you have to have confidence in yourself that no matter what happens you're smart enough to figure it out and I had that confidence in myself and I took those steps and I keep taking those steps even though they were hard I was tired you know they hurt but I kept moving forward no matter what and I think that's what propelled me to where I am today by just continue to move forward I got the knowledge that obtain the knowledge and I was willing to not give up so if you give up you're done you know if you stop learning you're done if you stop changing you're done I hope somebody takes heed to that advice this has been amazing my brother you dropped so many jewels and I can't wait to hear the feedback last thing for anybody who wants to stay in touch with you where can they find you it they can go to dug depth on Instagram do you G DEP te and also if you are an investor looking for safe funding we do have access to funding where my wife Larisa actually manages that department so there's a couple different things we got going on here but you can go right to loans at acquisition dot capital acquisitions dot capital loans and acquisitions dot capital yeah well drop that in the show notes as well so you'll be able to click on the link in the show notes yeah but yeah man has been a phenomenal time I appreciate you my brother I can't wait to have you back on so you could drop some more jewels I'm sure that we'll be able to do something in person as well real estate is the key to generational wealth I'm glad to see your building I'm glad to see you're teaching other people how to build it and man we just appreciate you coming on and dropping all these jewels absolutely absolutely thanks for having me I appreciate you no doubt what man we'll talk soon all right you got it our bro one second let me see this love log-off
