Well Finally!  Welcome to our first episode of Real Estate Investing Mastery!  This has been a much bigger task than I had imagined.  We already have 8 great episodes ready to go.  This is only the first of many!  We will be releasing a bunch at first, and then one episode a week.

In this episode, I will be interviewing Alex Joungblood and finding out a little more about how he operates his business.  I have known Alex for a long time.  He is the real deal.  I trust him & his business ethics.

Enjoy!  And feel free to leave any comments below.

Some of my favorite coaching clients that I’ve ever had talked to Gavin and me about how their business is going through the pandemic. Steve, a self-described technophobe, talks about the learning curve for using REI Simple, and how he and Coco work together as a team.
Guys, this business isn’t rocket science. You just get on the phone and talk to people. Steve’s version for breaking the ice is a little unusual. He calls someone up and when they ask about his offer he says, “I’ve got a free coupon for a Subway sandwich, twelve inches. Whatever you want. Are you interested?” Then when they laugh, he can slide right in and have a great conversation with them.
Coco and Steve make a great team because they each focus on the area they’re good at. Steve talks to people and Coco makes sure everything is running smoothly on the back end. They work with a VA from the Philippines who keeps them on task. One of their favorite parts about our coaching programs is that we train their VA for them, so he’s really able to support them with what they do best: make deals and follow up.
Not even remotely interested in computer tasks, Steve is proof that with a little coaching and support, anyone at any age can learn some new skills. The possibilities of expansion into new markets and virtual deals keep him excited about their real estate business. Steve’s enthusiasm for the work is contagious and fun, and we love working with them.
If you’d be interested in some support during your real estate journey, contact Gavin and myself today to see if we’d be a good fit.
What’s Inside:
—99% of Steve and Coco’s deals come from follow up.
—Steve likes to talk, but having easy phone conversations took some coaching from us.
—How Coco uses REI Simple to keep the team on task.
—Coco and Steve send their VA from the Philippines to our trainings.

I teach people interested in pre-foreclosures to go in and offer cash. Frans Calderon answered a call I put out on social media to find people doing lease options who might want to appear on my show.
When I learned what Frans does in the pre-foreclosure space, I jumped at the opportunity to interview him. His approach is so totally contrary to my thinking that I had to have him explain.
Frans is originally from Colombia, and now lives in Charleston, SC, which he loves. He was a police officer in his home country… a dangerous job. In 2003, he read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and got the message that it was time to make a change.
The message was financial freedom. At one point, the book suggested making a list of assets. Frans made a list of his and realized he had no financial assets, only his belongings like clothes and furniture.
He purchased his first property in 2009. The process was a bit strange, but you’ll hear how the strangeness benefited Frans. He rented the house out for 2 years; then moved into it himself.
He got a HELOC on that house and used the proceeds to buy more. He also continued learning about real estate and started practicing new strategies like subject to, lease options and wholesaling.
Frans spent 10 years working at Boeing in Charleston area while he continued to buy properties to rehab and rent. Two years ago, when his passive income equaled his salary, he quit his job.
He estimates his strategy is 60% flips, some holds and some lease options. Frans has found that networking pays off… so much so that he is now president of a new Charleston REIA.
Frans recently met a seller who was very near foreclosure. She was a single mother and sick; a woman that had hit a real rough patch. Frans wanted to keep her from ruining her credit.
It took $20,000 to reinstate her loan. Frans had a retail buyer who wanted to buy from him, but had a credit issue because he was a self-employed house painter. This is the model tenant buyer for a sandwich lease option.
That buyer met Frans to see the house. He wanted to buy the house before Frans put it on the market. Even though he had no credit, the buyer was able to put $40,000 down on the house.
Since the buyer knows people in construction, the home has been remodeled and looks great. He and his family are very happy there. Frans made a good profit while doing good for the seller and the buyer.

Marco Santarelli, who has a podcast about passive real estate investing, is my guest. You’re going to enjoy learning from him today.
It’s good to have passive streams of income coming from real estate even if you generally wholesale for quick cash. Marco started investing when he was 18 with his 1st rental property…

In this episode, you will be joining me on a coaching call with Melissa Dodson. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and has been our boots on the ground in small markets in Alabama and Mississippi, where we’ve been having great success lately. My partner Gavin and I have been working on perfecting the auto-dialer cold […]

Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Glad you’re here. Please check out the Real Estate Investing Master website. You can download all sorts of free items that can help your business. And, you’ll have access to all the podcasts since Joe started recording them in 2011. This podcast is brought to you by […]

So, I’m driving around St. Louis, and I want to tell you what we’re doing… In the past 4 months, we’ve made 21 deals and grossed about $100,000. Some deals made only $300. You’ve had those, right? Sometimes we see this coming, but generally don’t renegotiate. My business partner, Gavin, is involved. He started in […]

At about 60,000 postcards a month, Don Costa from the Flip Talk podcast has dialed in on a system that works for him. He holds nothing back today, sharing the tools he uses, the conversations that work with sellers, and how he’s organized his team.

Following up on warm leads are where people are too often dropping the ball. 80% of Don’s January contracts were from following up. 80%! Some of his current follow up tools that are working are:

—Ringless Voice Mail (RVM)

—Cold calling databases

—Emails and texts from a CRM

—Personal phone calls

I used to use those yellow legal pads to keep track of all of my leads when I first started out, but it was so hard to keep track of warm, cold, or hot leads. Don jumped right into using a couple of different CRMS, and he talks about the different advantages of some of them. He warns that you shouldn’t get caught up on the perfect business card, the perfect postcard, the perfect website, or the perfect business name. Just get started.

Don’s detailed tracking system from his postcards helps him plug numbers into Slack and keep everyone on his team on the same page. He emphasizes that the key to the direct mail marketing channel is consistency, followed quickly by answering the phone live.

There’s an ebb and flow in the direct marketing world. Sometimes it works great, and then everyone else sees that and jumps into that marketing stream. Then it becomes the law of diminishing returns. He shares how he balances that trend in his own business.

I’ve been seeing a lot more success with wholesaling in small-town markets, so Don shares his own experience with that too. He talks about how to find the seller’s pain points by asking questions, and why it’s important for the seller to name a price for their house first.

What’s Inside:

—How Don structures his office following CA labor laws.

—The tools Don uses to keep his team on the same page.

—Don’s 5 step method he walks his leads through.

—How to find a seller’s pain point.

—Don’s tracking system for direct mail marketing.

—CallRail versus SMARTPHONE, which one wins?

If you come across a seller that absolutely has to sell because of a job transfer or divorce, but they don’t have any equity in their house, what kind of options do they really have? If they sold the house outright, they’d still have to bring some cash to the table to get rid of it, and they don’t want to be a long-distance landlord.

There are a lot of different ways to make lease options work for you. Depending on how you structure the deal, you can get all of the benefits of owning an investment property without actually getting a loan or a mortgage.

I explain the sandwich lease option, where you pay the seller’s mortgage for him and then rent his house out to a tenant buyer. It’s like cash now, cash flow, and cash later model.

If there’s not only no cash flow, but no equity, what can you do then? That’s a great time to use an assignment deal, where the money you make is from the assignment fee the buyer pays you.

Even when you find a seller that refuses to sell to you because they think you’re going to make too much money off of them, there’s still a way to make a little money. You can hire yourself out as a consultant to them, and teach them how to create their own lease option for their property.

The beauty of all of these different kinds of lease options is this: you’re going to find a seller that’s stuck on the terms or the price. Either one is so important to them that they can’t see themselves to a deal. So you can put together all of these options, and give them some choices. They can pick one, and then BAM. You have a deal.

If you’re interested in learning more about lease options, you should check out my webinar class.

What’s Inside:

—How to structure a lease option deal when there’s no equity.

—I talk about the different circumstances you might want to use a lease option.

—What to do when the seller doesn’t want to budge on the price.

—The three profit centers in a sandwich lease option deal.

—How to make money on a deal when there’s no cash flow.

The topic of apartment investing scares some people, but please stay with this episode because you will learn how an easygoing guy, Tim Bratz, approaches this lucrative business.
Listeners can ask Tim questions during the show and we’ll get to as many as we can…

Okay, this is going to be a quick one. I want to remind you about something today… Let’s talk about rejection, something you probably don’t need a reminder about. I do not like rejection. Really, who does? It took some real effort for me to even pick up the phone when I first started in […]

Lou Brown is a highly influential figure in the real estate investing industry, as well as founding president of the National Real Estate Investors Association. Since dropping out of college and buying his first house at 18, Lou has been determined to succeed as a real estate investor through economic shifts and crashes by “becoming the bank.”

In this podcast, Lou explains how, in 2009, following the recession, he decided he needed to change the way he did business if he wanted to survive the tumultuous economy. He decided the seller should become the bank and maintain control over their entire future and that they should go out and finding the buyers first and resource a property for them. This way, he wouldn’t have to rely on banks or qualify for loans and his finances would remain much more stable, and he recommends that you become your own bank as well.

I ask Lou a range of questions about best practices for financing, wholesaling REO properties, subject to’s, trusts, and more, and he provides insightful answers as a veteran of the industry, having been a real estate investor for over 40 years and dealing with all of these issues. Lou talks about his certified affordable housing initiative, which gives people from all different backgrounds the opportunity to become a Certified Affordable Housing Provider through his training workshop. Lou discusses the weight of that title and the doors it will open for you in the real estate industry.

If you want to become a Certified Affordable Housing Provider and take your business to the next level, or take control of your life, time, and money, Lou Brown’s training courses will bring countless benefits to your real estate career. He is also giving away his new book for free! Doing Good While Doing Well details how to help families achieve their home ownership dreams while simultaneously building independence and wealth.

What’s inside:

—Lou recounts his journey in the real estate industry, from buying his first house at 18 to becoming the founding president of the National Real Estate Investors Association and a successful and influential real estate investor

—Lou and I discuss best practices for financing, wholesaling REO properties, subject to’s, trusts, and more.

—I ask Lou about his certified affordable housing initiative and how you can have the opportunity to become a Certified Affordable Housing Provider.

So, in this episode, I’m just leaving the monthly St. Louis Mastermind meeting. At every meeting, we find ways to partner on deals. I strongly recommend that you participate in a Mastermind group. Networking with other investors, Realtors or property managers is the best way to grow your business. Two of my students attended this […]

Gavin and I are letting you listen to a coaching call with Gary Proctor. He’s just attended a Mastermind gathering for students who completed the Implementation Workshop a couple of months ago.
Gary started real estate investing in 2004 in a small town in western New York. He acquired 80 houses and decided he really hated being a landlord. When he sold those properties, he moved to Buffalo…

Hey guys. I am so excited… I’ve got a client I’m doing lease options with in southern California, and it looks like we’re going to have real success with this endeavor. We’re getting responses to our texts at a rate of 7 to 8%. Even if the response is no, that’s a huge response rate. […]

Ester Telles makes our coaching job very, very easy. She does exactly what Gavin tells her to do, and her business is blowing up. This month she grossed $32,000, even during the shutdown. The dedication and grit she puts into this business is reaping dividends daily.
Before coaching, Ester had been in this business for three years, but she wasn’t even paying herself a profit. She talks about her pivotal conversation with Gavin, and some of the changes she’s made to her business model to make herself more profitable.
Because Ester already had a system in place, we wanted her to work with what she had, and focus on what she’s good at. Ester’s marketing is all cold calling absentee owners, and although she has two VAs making calls for her, she also makes a lot of calls herself. She says that you just need to have a conversation with them. She never focuses on the hard sell, and she wins over a lot of tired landlords that way.
I love talking to tired landlords because they’re easier than a homeowner. They understand that you’re an investor and they get that this is a business transaction.
When Ester met with Gavin, she was doing a little bit of this in El Paso, and a little bit of that in Alabama. It was splitting her focus. Gavin told her that if she wanted to dominate the market, then it didn’t matter what everyone else was doing. She just needed to be the best at it. That’s why cold calling and El Paso became her focus.
Ester’s network is huge. She’s even got wholesalers bringing her deals because she’s made herself THE person to talk to in El Paso if you want to buy or sell a house. If you want to do deals with Ester, you can contact her at (915) 320-6774.
What’s Inside:
—This is a follow-up business. “No” means “Not now”.
—Ester’s in a niche market because she can speak Spanish and English.
—Wholesalers are bringing their deals to Ester because of her network.
—How paying herself first completely changed Ester’s business.
—Why you have to run a business to make money.

Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast.
Today I’m on both audio and video, and I’m excited about talking to Dixie Decker. I met her recently at a national investor meeting.
Go to my website for show notes, a transcript or simply to listen to a podcast again. You can search my podcasts by subject or by guest’s name…

Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Please leave a review of the podcast. You can review us on any platform you use to listen. Chris Prefontaine is my guest. He’s a creative investor who lives in Newport, Rhode Island. Chris had to start over after 2008. He had so many projects going then […]

Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Please leave reviews of my podcasts wherever you listen to them. You might enjoy reading the reviews, too. I know I do. Peter Conti is my guest today. This is the first time he’s been on the show. He’s writes books, he’s coaches, he uses creative financing […]