Redefining Success and Building Balance in Real Estate with Kevin Kauffman

[0:00] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Matias, an agent and investor. And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let’s do it.

[0:24] Welcome back to the REI Agent, Matias here. I’m going to keep this intro really short because A, the guest is awesome and B, running into another podcast recording because the last guest was awesome and we spent extra time talking. But I just wanted to really highlight Kevin. Kevin Kaufman is the guest that we interviewed today. He was able to basically work nine to five, Monday through Friday, after his second year in the business. And he started in 2007. So put that all together. He started, he hired somebody from day one. He split an assistant with his partner and was able to immediately basically go to nine to five. And they were doing really well. So I just want to put that teaser out there and listen to this guy because, you know, it is a possible thing.

[1:23] You can really create your business how you want to. And I know a lot of people are out there grinding and working all different hours all the time, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And I think he was just very good at setting the boundaries and being very productive when he was on and setting clear boundaries with all his clients. So it is possible. I’m just going to leave this again short and sweet so that you can get right to that good content. Definitely give us a follow, like us, share us, favorite us, leave us a review and it really helps us grow so we can keep giving you guys this awesome guest, Kevin Kaufman. So without further ado, here’s Kevin.

[2:08] Welcome back to the REI agent. We’re here with Kevin Kaufman. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Hey, Kevin, you are coming out of the always sunny and beautiful Arizona Phoenix area, Tampa specifically, right? Yeah, it’s warm and toasty this time of year. You know, I think I had people, I had a family around Tucson and visited. And, you know, I found it, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. I thought the desert would be a lot more miserable than it is. And yeah, no, I can see why people want to be there. Why a lot of people move there, right? Yeah, to be honest, man, it’s great. About eight months out of the year, it’s amazing. Three to four months a year, it’s really tough.

[2:55] So I just try to get out of town during that time of year. But yeah, the desert’s great. I love it here. Snowbird to Minnesota. That’s my goal. That’s my goal, man. Be a snowbird. Anyway, Kevin, tell me about how you got into real estate to begin with. Yeah, I’ll give you, I’ll try to give you the short version of the long version, which is I was, I was going back to school. I never finished college, just had struggled with that as a young adult. But realized at a certain point in my career that I didn’t make a great employee and I was probably going to have to work for myself. I just didn’t know what, what that was going to be like. And so I was taking classes and I had this professor, and the reason I’m telling the story is because I always like to give him credit wherever I can.

[3:41] His name is professor Goodner. And what I came to learn about him is he really only taught to give back. He taught one or two classes a semester at this community college I happened to be going to in Phoenix, Arizona. And one day he walks in, he says, hey, we’re not going to talk about whatever the syllabus was. And it was a class on like business plans. So we’re today, we’re in time about real estate and money. And he sort of laid out this like game plan of wealth it through real estate. And I just had one of those like blow my mind moments. And I went up to him afterwards and I said, hey, can, can I buy you coffee or breakfast or something? And luckily he said yes. And we had a great talk one morning.

[4:25] And one of the great things that he said to me was like, hey, dude, you’re not going to just like become a real estate investor overnight. That’s not how this works. Even if you’re great at this, you’re working in your job for five more years. And so my bright idea was, well, if I’m going to work, maybe I should just work in real estate and I’ll get a job as a realtor. Having no idea what that meant. And that was really what led me into the idea of getting into real estate is I met this mentor and who taught me about real estate and money, kind of opened me up to the rich dad, poor dad model of things. And that was, that got me off and running into, into residential real estate. And then, I mean, there’s a whole lot of twists and turns from there, but that’s, that’s really what got me started.

[5:13] And to top it off, I got licensed in oh seven. And so I’ll let you do the math on what was going on in Arizona in oh seven. Sure. It’s really interesting that in college, like, so you, you got the, the poor dad teaching, even though it sounds like he was really more of the rich dad story. Right. And, and, but in the system, you were getting that, that rich dad lessons, which, you know, I think so many people talk about things like, you know, why don’t we learn how to pay our taxes instead of calculus or something like that in, in school. And, you know, that’s such a needed lesson. So that’s awesome. So was he a successful investor at that time? And then, and he said, he just taught one or two classes and he, he was mainly just out there, succeeded already, probably still investing in deals.

[6:04] That’s exactly what it was. He had had a successful corporate career, had retired from that based on his real estate investments and, and not just real estate. Like he truly lived that rich dad, poor dad model, if you’ve ever read that book. And he literally just taught because he saw it as a way to give back to, to the community and to your other people. Yeah. I think there’s like phases in life that, you know, that becomes more pronounced. I think there’s like the, the building of the empire phase that I think many of the people that I interview and myself are on. And then there’s, there’s definitely the legacy kind of, you know, other side of that, that probably has a lot to do with that giving back and, and, you know, making an impact on other people’s lives.

[6:49] And I think it’s good to have that balance and to, to, you know, try to have those mentors as well as along the way, if you are established. But yeah, it’s a, it’s fascinating.

[7:02] So you got your license at the best timing ever. Did you, did you catch any of the like frenzy before everything went Missed it all. Missed it all. My third transaction ever was a short sale. And then truthfully, like the next thousand of the next thousand, 980 of them were short sales. I mean, I did, you know, it wasn’t until I’d been in the business for probably five years before we even did double digit traditional sales in a year. It’s like, it took a while. So for the most part, I was, you know, right away, like I saw prices dropping. I like to say by the day, sometimes by the hour. How was, how was the, that market compared to the rest of the country? And I asked that because I have gotten the pulse that, that Phoenix is, is people I interviewed from that area seem to be a little bit more doom and gloom about the market than some other areas and Florida included.

[8:06] Was it a front runner at that time? Yeah, you know, it was from like a, from an impact when you just look at, let’s call it short sales foreclosures, it was, you know, Phoenix, Vegas, um, Florida, a couple of different cities in Florida. You know, we were like, we were in fact, like you just didn’t, if you didn’t, as a real, as a real estate professional, if you didn’t represent buyers or sellers for either REOs or short sales, you effectively didn’t sell real estate. Sure. That’s crazy. I mean, it was, it was massive. And honestly, it was like the best thing that ever happened to, to, to my business because I had to learn when it was quote unquote hard. Yeah. I didn’t have REO accounts, um, for, for a number of reasons, but it was, you know, it was a challenging time, but truthfully, I, I see it as it was my competitive advantage.

[9:03] Yeah. So I started in 2014. Um, so it was still very slow, um, in our area. It wasn’t like everybody was feeling that the sky was falling and it maybe felt like a little bit of traction was happening, but not, not really yet. And I, I’m thankful for that. I’m definitely thankful that I kind of had a gradual start to my career. And, uh, you know, I, I had to build the systems. I had to learn to do the things the right way. Is that kind of what you’re getting at there? Like, you know, having to, it’s not just like, you know, sales are just knocking down your door, uh, from the day one. You know, what it was is because the reason it was such a competitive advantage for me is because I was willing to argue with banks.

[9:47] I was willing to go fight and get short sales approved. And it kind of became our thing, right? Which actually made getting business easy. Because number one, we, we were happy to take the listings as a short sale. Number two, the average success rate for a short sale listing at that time in the, in the country was like 40%. And we were closing more than 90% of our short sale listings. Partially my business partner and I are both very hard headed, but, and stubborn. We like a good fight and we both have. Backgrounds working for banks and financial institutions, me specifically in a call center. So I understood the mentality of the people I was mostly talking to. And once I sort of figured out the puzzle that short sales were, they were still challenging, but they were, they were hard work, but they were very easy.

[10:41] If that makes sense. Sure. Yeah, no, definitely. That’s yeah, that’s really cool. I mean, that’s a challenge. Like I, yeah, I’ve, I’ve done short sales on the buyer side. No, no, I’ve done, I’ve done on a seller side. Nevermind. It’s just, that was like years ago. I don’t remember. Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s fun. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a challenge for sure, because you take a listing today and, you know, at the time it was like, oh, I might get paid in six months, nine months. Like, you know, yeah. And you’ve got to, but I was happy to do that. I mean, I remember that. So my first full year in real estate, which would have been oh, eight, I got licensed in the middle of oh seven, my business partner and I started working together February of oh eight.

[11:27] We closed 60 deals that year. Um, 40 of 40 of them closed in the fourth quarter. Just, just because of the, just because of the life cycle of, of a short sale. So we had the competitive advantage that we were willing to put off getting paid. We were willing to be told, no, hundreds of times in a lot of cases and have to fight and talk to people that, um, you know, that you would never really want to talk to on a regular basis. And then, you know, once we kind of figure it out, not only was that amazing because we were able to sell a lot of real estate and build the foundation for our businesses, then built our database for the, for the future, still living off of that today. Yeah. It’s amazing how that, yeah, that if you nurture your database, right.

[12:17] And follow up with people, it’s just, yeah, that’s the holy grail. Um, so, so you were able then to eventually market to, uh, potential short sale listings, uh, that you have a much higher success rate than, you know, the average, right? I mean, I would imagine that was a compelling reason to work with you. Yeah. You know, what we started doing, it was early days of social media. So we’d post about it. Um, and then it was actually November of 2009. I don’t know if you, if you know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, but he wrote a book called crush it. That book came out in November of 2009. We instantly like that day we went and bought a camera. It’s called this Kodiak ZIA Kodak ZIA. We started filming blogs on short sales and the business came pouring in.

[13:07] I mean, I’m talking like an under a year. We had one point like 95 or so short sale listings, like if the business just came flying at us because we weren’t afraid to take them on and we were teaching other agents how to do them. And so what happened with that was the other agents would decide, I don’t want to do this. I’m just going to refer to them because I know what they’re doing. Or they would go, cool. I learned something. Now I’ll have a better chance of success. And then it also instilled, uh, again, going back to the thought of like only 40% or so of them were successful nationally. Buyers agents weren’t afraid to bring their buyers to our listings because they knew that we’d get the job done.

[13:52] You were the experts in the field and that, that niche. Yeah, that’s amazing. So was that going on YouTube then? Yeah. Early days of YouTube. I mean, early for me anyways. I don’t, I don’t remember when that was started. But it was, oh, nine is when we posted our November, November of 2009 is when we posted our first video and did them five days a week for a couple of years. You know, I think often, uh, the, the world of, of real estate sales can feel very cutthroat and doggy dog. And that’s an awesome example of, of how you were providing value for other agents that they could have been your competitors, et cetera, but it really made you more successful. Oh yeah. It was by far, I got, I got way more than that I could have ever given.

[14:37] Yeah, that’s such a, you know, I think it’s a good lesson. I think that honestly, I think oftentimes the investing world gets that more and it might be because like, you know, they’re, they’re maybe not working as much with other investors or I don’t have as many other investors in their area that they’re like, you know, collaborating with or whatever, but I think they’re very open to, to helping others. So, and that, you know, that might just be market specific, but, um, but yeah, anyway, so you, you were crushing it. Um, did you start investing in real estate as well then? You know, it’s funny that I didn’t, man, at some point what happened is I got in, I got really lucky, uh, met some amazing mentors and kind of got into rooms.

[15:21] I probably didn’t deserve to be in just because we were succeeding at this thing. That seemed hard to everybody called short sales. And I kind of fell in love with the business of selling real estate. I realized that I wasn’t a realtor, but I love to be a business owner. And, um, I got so focused. I got so narrowly focused on that, that I kind of forgot, not kind of, I forgot why I got into real estate in the first place. And it wasn’t until kind of a wake up. I had this moment, you know, probably six years ago or so where I was like, what am I doing? You know, um, and that’s when I really started to focus on the investment side. Okay. What, uh, what steps did you take then? Where, where did you start?

[16:09] You know, I think the steps I, what I realized is I had opportunities literally in my inbox all the time. It’s like I run a real estate team, you know, residential real estate team, and we get referrals. We have past clients. We have new, you know, new stuff coming up and all the time. And I just started, decided to like pay attention to what I was literally already looking at every day. Right. And just looked at my part. We got our listing referral one day. Well, let me, let me back up. First thing I did is I was like, we have a business, we’re paying rent. Let’s just go buy a commercial building to operate out of. So that was the first thing we did. And that, I guess that was a little longer ago.

[16:52] That was probably 2017 that we bought this building and it was just, you know, cool real estate appreciates over time. We’re paying rent anyways. Let’s just do that. And then a couple of years later, when I sort of had this aha moment, I just looked at my partner one day at this listing referral we had. I was like, what? This seems like a good deal. Maybe we should try to buy it. And that just got us like asking questions like, is this a good deal? What would this rent for crap? Do we have the money for it? You know, how much money would we need? And we ended up closing that. We ended up doing that deal. And that, that showed us like, oh, we could do this. This doesn’t have to be hard. I’ve got this main focus over here of my residential real estate business.

[17:38] And then I’ve got this like community business as well that I’ve, that I’ve built up. And, but I’m already, I’m looking at, I’m literally looking at listing handoffs every day from my real estate team. What if we just paid more attention to that? And that was really the thing that got me going. And I still don’t consider myself to be a great real estate investor. I just have been at it for a little while now. And I always like to say that this is true. I think both about real estate investing and being a real estate agent is the longer you do it, the smarter you look because time does all the heavy lifting in real. Yeah, it really does. And then you get the compound effect. Like if you, the more you have as well.

[18:24] $20 rent, $50 rent increases across 20 units. It looks a lot different than one. But yeah, no, that’s, that’s awesome. And I think that, you know, a lot of people they might be afraid of the headaches involved. I think they might be afraid or have, you know, seen having, you know, gone through those listings where the tenants absolutely destroyed the place. And, you know, they don’t really want to dive into it. I say this all the time, but I think, you know, a syndication is such a great opportunity for people like you were when you were just laser focused on what you do best in killing it, crushing it, you know, to take advantage of all the benefits of real estate ownership without having to really do too much, without having to really distract yourself too much.

[19:16] So that’s always a different path as well. Yeah. Owning your own building, you operate out of this. That’s awesome. Like you can pay yourself a rent, right? I mean, that’s another thing you can do, which is, which is great. So it sounds like you have your own brokerage. Is that, you said team, do you have your own brokerage as well? No, no. So we operate in a, in a brokerage. But, you know, just got a traditional real estate team. If you’re familiar with like millionaire real estate agent book, like we, we don’t run that model today. We did originally, but yeah. So we just run a real estate team inside of another broker inside of a brokerage. Okay. I was going to ask how the team started, what you started with a partner.

[20:01] So you guys kind of just each shared each deal. Did you like, yeah, man, we were just trying to like, we were both broke and had a lot of bills. We were just trying to, to make money. And so we decided to share the cost of an office, share the cost of a, of an assistant. We had actually both been using this, this assistant is actually my business partner’s brother at the time to help us with our, with our listings and our files. And so when we started working together, we just came up with a structure that worked for us, which was, it’s kind of funny because it was so one-sided. If you brought the deal in, you got paid 80% and the other person got paid 20. But all of our expenses were split 50 50.

[20:54] And that was because we had both come out of other business relationships where we both felt we were kind of left holding the bag and, and all of the responsibility. And so over time that changed, we became 50 50 partners and within like three years. Um, however, we didn’t, you know, we just didn’t start that way. We just, we started with like, let’s share the cost of an office and a person and let’s see what can happen. And then we started creating so much together because of what we were doing, like teaching the classes, having successes, success with getting short sales approved that we looked up one day and we’re like, oh, there’s, there’s actually this, there’s a business here. Yeah. Um, and that’s kind of crazy to me that at the time you started, you, uh, you, you already hired somebody, like when you just were brand new, that’s kind of unusual, right?

[21:46] Yeah. I like to, I joke now, like reflecting back, I like to say, um, I’m not sure if I’m lazy, but ambitious or if I’m, or if I’m ambitious, but lazy, but the thing is like, I’d rather pay someone to do the things I don’t want to do and pay them first. And then I’ll take what’s left then do things that I don’t want to do. I mean, it’s such a hard lesson for most people to learn. I think people usually take years to get there and then have hard times letting go of things. So that’s, I mean, that’s awesome that you did that from the beginning. What was your first or what was your next hire since your first hire was right away? What was your, or, or team, how have you structured things? Like what was your next move?

[22:30] I think I’m trying to remember who came next. What happened soonish after within, within six months is we hired really an actual, um, that’s the word I’m looking for operations person, uh, for the team. And she had run a brokerage, uh, done like all the financial stuff, cut the checks, uh, in for a brokerage and she’d approached us one time about, about, about us. And we hired her somewhere around the same time. We tried hiring buyers agents and we sucked at it. Yeah. Like, you know, we failed through that as well, but at some point, not too far in the future, we had two administrative people working for us, one full time, uh, and then one or two, I think it was actually, we started with two buyers agents, almost hired them both almost at the same time.

[23:24] Okay. And when you say hire them, were they getting paid hourly? And, uh, or were they getting like 50 50 commission splits? So what, what we did is, and we, again, then we didn’t know, we didn’t know anything. Um, we gave them basically our sign calls, any sort of buyer leads, like they, they got it all and just whatever they could make of it. Um, we split with them 50 50 or, you know, our administrative person would service everything. Uh, once, once it was under contract and that was it. You know, we kind of were, we’re off to the races. So, I mean, yeah, for them, like they get, uh, leads they have to basically follow up with, um, and try to get them to buy something. And then they’re basically done, right? I mean, they have the other transaction coordination happening in the background.

[24:17] Yeah. I mean, and again, we were terrible at it. What, you know, our, our business evolved so much over the years, but you know, that, that was that early version of it was just like that. Where, where are you all now? I mean, how, what’s your team size? Um, and what’s that look like? We are up to about 15 agents in Phoenix. Um, I say that because we’ve also sold real estate in Denver since 2014. Okay. Um, but our main focus now is just Phoenix. So we’re at 15 agents, uh, gosh, two of them are new this month. Three of them are new this year. Um, there was, we had a long stretch of time where we’ve got a lot of tenure on our team. Now, a lot of agents been with us for six, seven, eight, 10 years. And to be honest, like, it just didn’t require that much, um, leadership and management. And so we kind of, we, we coasted on it for a long time, for years. And then earlier this year decided to sort of get back into the day to day of the real estate team. And which has actually been a lot of fun. So we’ve been hiring agents again and onboarding and, you know, training, coaching people up and helping

[25:33] them get their businesses started. Sure. And so are these agents just kind of operating their own, um, their own businesses within the team structure, or do you have like designation with buyers, seller agents, that kind of stuff? No, they all, they work buyers and sellers. Um, I like to look at my business of the team as the platform for the agents on the team to run their business. Yes, it’s all under our brand. Um, and that, but it’s a, my business is truly supporting their business. So from the administrative staff to the coaching, to the training, to the technology, the lead generation, all of that stuff that goes into that. Um, I like to think of it as it’s their business that we’re supporting. Okay, cool. Yeah. No, it seems like, um, I could see it being a hard sell for a lot of people to, uh, be restricted to just being a buyer’s agent, for example, or I remember when I made that change, man, it was, it was 2014, it was July of 2014. I had a conversation with, with a buddy of mine and I just said, Hey, sell me on your model. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, I can tell that like

[26:46] your agents take buyers and sellers. Mine just take one or the other. Um, why? And he drew it for me on a piece of paper. And I remember I went to my business partner later that afternoon. I was like, look at this. This is, I think this is what we’re looking for. And then I started doing more homework. And what I realized is I was pretty, pretty connected through some masterminds, uh, with some of the top agents in the entire industry around the country. So started making phone calls and asking them. And what I realized is most of the agents that were selling more real estate than I was, they were running a similar model. And so we, we made that switch. Um, it was July of 2014. I remember very specifically where we started to, we, we started using the term sales agents instead of buyers agents or listing agents. Okay. Cool. Yeah. And, uh, it makes sense.

[27:37] I think, I think somebody could be a lot more excited about that. And even if they’re, you know, the natural progression for people typically is that they are going to have more buyers to start with than, than sellers for a while, but for sure. But yeah, that’s a good way to kind of, yeah, learn the, learn the trade. And then you actually have a lot more support within the team to, uh, take on a listing of it comes up as well. Yeah. No, that’s awesome. Um, are you all CRM wizards then? No, I mean, I remember the last year, like that I was truly in production, my business, we were using a CRM called infusion soft, which is not called keep. It’s like a marketer CRM. Like it’s not even like tied to a website or anything. Like there’s no, there’s no website that goes with it. Like I just need something that will let me email from text from and set tasks for that’s it. Cause I’m just like a, I’m a followup machine. Like I will just, I’ll just beat you in the long game. And, um, and so, I mean, we have a great CR, we have an amazing CRM now. Like I look at the technology, good friend of mine built it, uh, and it’s called

[28:51] brevity. We love it. And it’s so far advanced over what I could even possibly get out. I bet you, you know, I probably use 25% of it. We really try to try to use more and more of the features with the, and I’m sure the agents on the team that are transacting with buyers and sellers, I know that they use a lot more of the features say than I do, but like, you know, I use it for my recruiting for the team, as well as my, my sphere and database. Um, and I’m kind of a, you know, minimalist when it comes to that, but I know we’ve got some pretty, pretty cool technology these days. Yeah. No, I think people get a little, it can, it’s, it’s tempting to go down the rabbit hole of the, the really fancy software, but at the end of the day, like you can do everything through Outlook. Um, you can do everything. You don’t even need Outlook. Outlook is pretty robust actually. Um, but yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how it got started. Um, tried a bunch of different CRMs or a couple and just kind of stopped using and didn’t really, didn’t really use them, but and building one now for the team. Um, that is, is yeah, it’s, it’s amazing that technology and

[29:59] the possibilities, I don’t know if I want to use all of them. Like, I don’t know if I want AI agents, um, on the phones and chat box, maybe if it’s transparent, that is just in the server purpose, like scheduling an appointment or something. But yeah, I don’t know if I want to go that far because I feel like this is a personal business here. You’re building personal relationships with people and I think that’s, you don’t want to lose sight of that. But yeah, um, that’s awesome. Um, so, so how do you, how do you see, how do you help guide your agents through potentially, you know, changing markets, that kind of stuff you’ve been through it before? Um, is there a lot of fear in your team at the moment or what are they looking at?

[30:43] You know, there’s really no fear in our team. The reality is, is

[30:50] like, this isn’t, if you can’t make money in this market, like there’s always challenges, right? Yeah. There’s just that you can make money in any single market. It’s a matter of like, what skillset do you need to flex a little bit more, get better on, uh, what, you know, what’s your strategy? All markets are easy to, you know, that you can make money, you can make a living in. And so we just try to talk, we, we talk about the basics, man. We, we really talk about the basics. We stay on top of things. So we’re not, you know, uh, lying to ourselves about what the market’s really doing because really the market is just going to dictate our strategy, the convert, the types of conversations we have and, and that’s it.

[31:30] And it’s not, it, it’s, it’s nothing to be scared of, in my opinion. Yeah. That’s a really good outlook. And obviously you, uh, made a, a killing, uh, with the, the last big downturn, uh, which I’m guessing won’t be the same as this year at all, or as, as this market at all. Um, when I was talking to, I was talking to Joshua Smith, he’s out of Phoenix, right? Yeah. He’s a buddy of mine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he’s, he’s definitely like kind of battling or batting down the hatches for Josh. I love Josh and he’s so smart, but he’s the most doom and gloom guy I know. Uh, I love that guy. Uh, I genuinely love him and, uh, he’s got the most dark view on the world of almost anybody I know. Uh, I’m a little more optimistic than Josh and you know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the answer’s probably somewhere in the middle. Right. And I think that as long as you are paying attention to what is actually happening and then acting appropriately for that, like you’re going to be okay. Yeah. He was definitely, um, a similar kind of, I mean, yes, more gloom outlook, but a similar kind of strategy basically, like, you know, there’s a, there’s opportunities in every market and

[32:53] you just got to keep a, keep a pulse on it and figure out where that opportunity is. So that, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Um, in, in Florida, it’s a little bit different. I mean, it sounds like I can’t imagine having to pay that much for insurance. Um, I, it’s just, it’s just crazy what’s happening over there with insurance. And there’s also probably some overdevelopment in some areas, but so, yeah, it’s just interesting how different pockets, the vibe you get when you talk to people is different. No doubt. Yeah. No doubt. Um, but it’s, it’s nice to hear you and, and you have a big smile on your face and you guys aren’t worried and you’re going to keep not, not putting your head in the sand, but you’re going to keep, uh, you know, pulse on the market and keep going. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s all you can do, right? Like if, um, if things get really bad, all you can really do is the next right thing. If things are really good, you should just keep doing the next right thing. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you’re going to be happier if you don’t focus on all the negative, all the bad. Yeah. Cause it’s like, here’s the

[33:59] deal. If the worst case scenario comes true, like you’re going to have much bigger problems anyways. And then if it doesn’t come true, like why’d you spend all the time worrying about it? Yeah, a hundred percent. I was, I was trying to, there’s a, you know, the song, the don’t worry song, uh, about a thing. Everything’s going to be all right. Yeah. There, there’s a line in there about, um, I was playing it to my kids at on vacation because there was a lot of whining, a lot of worrying, a lot of all the stuff coming from them. And I was, I was just start playing that as like every time I was coming up, I just start playing it. Um, and you know, it’s something like something, there will be troubles in this life. You can count on them or something like that. If you worry about it, it just makes them double. And it’s like, yeah, that’s a really simple, easy thing to like try to start getting that message into their, into their heads.

[34:45] Yeah. Um, I guess before we start asking the golden nugget questions and stuff, I want, I’m curious if through all this, um, obviously you’ve had very busy, uh, even if you’ve hired immediately, you sound like you’ve been very busy throughout your career. Um, how do you try to maintain yourself, your mental health, your, you know, your physical health, whatever are you, are you, do you have any rituals, anything that you have to do to keep your mind right? You know, I think number one thing is like, like I go home, like I don’t work, I don’t, I don’t work 80 hours a week. I work nine to five. I basically work nine to five. And if I say five, like some days I stayed till five. Um, because here’s the deal. I got really good. I had a mentor kind of instilling me earlier on, like you have to work from, you have to work from a sense of priority. What, not everything is the most important. Yeah. And also, so when you tackle the most important thing early in the day, every day, just go home. Like you’re always going to have more work to do tomorrow anyways, whether you leave at five or 10 30. So just go home,

[35:50] go enjoy your family. So like I’ve got young kids, I’ve got a 10 year old and a 12 year old and a wife, and I want to go home and be with my family. I don’t work weekends. I haven’t worked weekends since my first year in real estate. I, you know, I just don’t, I just have, I’ve got bound, I’ve got clear boundaries and yes, I, you know, I do all the stuff like, you know, like when I leave today, I’m going to go work out today at four o’clock. Um, so, you know, I do stuff like that. Don’t get me wrong, but the most important thing is like, I’m just, I’m leaving work and I’ll be done with work until I’ll open my computer again tomorrow morning when I get here. Um, and if you’re doing the right things, you’re never worried about if you’re, if you’re always work on the right things every day, maybe not, not always. No one’s ever going to be perfect. Sure. You’re always going to have enough business. You’re never going to be worried about one deal falling apart.

[36:45] Yeah. Everybody you heard it here as possible. You can work a nine to five hundred percent. I, you know, even when I was in heavy production and taking a lot of listings, I didn’t work on the weekends. And that was simply because I got my, I talked to the sellers ahead of time about not responding to offers on the weekends, which I know pissed off other agents, but I didn’t want to work on the weekends just cause they do. It doesn’t mean that I should have to. And so I’m like, I focused on taking more listings. So I didn’t have to show buyers homes on the weekends. And you, sorry, keep going. You know, it’s, it really was just a decision and then a boundary set. And then I followed it. Did you, uh, implement listings going live on Mondays as opposed to Thursdays or Fridays?

[37:34] Actually Thursdays. Okay. But then you just didn’t respond to anything until like, I mean, directions were very clear in the MLS that we would respond on Monday. Sellers all signed off on it. They all knew it was part of my listing consult. It’s just the way I like, and I’m not here to tell other people that’s what they should do. And I think there’s a, there’s a time for everyone in their business where they have to do things that maybe they don’t want to do and more and more of it. And if you use that time wisely, that doesn’t have to be a years and years that could be a year or two as you’re building a foundation. And then it’s just a matter of setting boundaries. But also if you’re going to set boundaries like that, then you like, you got to do what you got to do during the time you’re doing it. Right. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. I love it. Yeah. That’s, that’s amazing advice.

[38:26] I’ve heard it described. Is it, is it eat the frog? Is that the analogy of like, take the, you know, take the worst thing and do it first. But yeah, anyway, I love it. So let’s, let’s transition into the, the golden nugget question. If you have anything that you think is fundamental for people that they should know, or just some really good advice in this crazy world of real estate, what would that be? I’ll share with you. I referenced it earlier where I kind of had this moment in my career. I was like, damn, I got into real estate because I was excited about investing. I’d forgotten why, but I’ve got a Facebook group of real estate agents, called next level agents. And there was a thread going on about investing and somebody just simply had typed the comment, like, you know, my mentor taught me that you don’t get rich selling real estate. You get rich by buying real estate. And for whatever reason, at that moment in time, that hit me like a ton of bricks. And it really caused me to think like, that was what led me to, it was probably within a week or two of that, that we put together that first, first deal of

[39:33] that rental that my, my business partner and I still own. And that was kind of like the first domino for us. And so just remembering that like, Hey, your business is like a, it’s like a machine to generate money. And a certain percentage of that money really should be set aside to investing. And the way one of my kind of my main mentor and friends has taught me is like, when you’ve got that, you’ve got that chunk of money, and then there’s different buckets within that money. And a big chunk of that, like 20% of that should be for real estate specific investing. And so that’s what, you know, that’s what I did. And so I look at my real estate business as it creates an income for me. And then from that income from those profits, I got money to live on, and I’ve got money to invest and do all the things I’ve got to do. And real estate investing is just the top of that list. Yeah, I’m not gonna say that, you know, put all your eggs in one basket by any means, but I think it is really, I think if you think about understanding an index 500, that all the businesses in an index 500 versus understanding your own market, and if you’re gonna invest in

[40:53] your own market, understand, you know, the product, you’re a realtor, like you, you understand that house, that townhouse on Main Street, way better than you’re gonna understand anything that’s happening on, you know, in an index 500. Again, so like, not to say put all your eggs in one basket, but just makes a ton of sense that you’re an expert in this, that you would invest in this as well. And 100%. Like, I mean, yeah, I mean, my net worth is from equity. Yeah. Like, there’s, there’s some other stuff in there. But I mean, it is from equity. So it’s, it’s definitely, definitely true. It’s really good advice. Yeah, it’s, I’m also not like, you should only invest in real estate, like, I’ve got plenty of friends, like, they only invest in real estate. My other friends, they only invest in like, stock market and equities. And they’re really rich and really smart. I would never tell them, tell them that they’re wrong. For me, what feels right is I do have a specialized knowledge in residential real estate. So I invest in that.

[41:56] And then I’ve also got money into other things, into other arenas. And I, for me, that’s just the best way to go. And I’m a believer in like, when you, when you do that, when you make money, whether that’s like through the cash flows, or, you know, different events from investments, you take that to then go buy more investments, and hopefully spread that out amongst, you know, other things like I look at it as buckets, five different buckets. And, you know, however it is that you view it, that’s fine. And I don’t think it’s right or wrong to be all real estate or Yeah, all one way or the other way. But we are we are or theoretically should be experts in residential real estate. So to not be invested in that somewhat to me is, is foolish.

[42:46] Yeah, 100%. And I, you know, I was, I did, I did some math. So I did a lot of, I basically first house, turned into a rental. And then for through that equity and through the equity of the new house that I bought, you know, open equity lines to start doing bird deals where I’m, you know, buying rundown places, rehabbing them, instead of selling them, I’m doing a refinance and keeping them as a rental, and getting all my cash back. And I, and I like, kind of did some calculations as to like, you know, what my my return was on my real estate investments, because I had spent too much time in like, 2021 on some crypto rabbit rabbit holes. I’m not saying I hate it, or I’m not dissing completely by any means, I think there’s some interesting stuff there. But when I like sat down and thought, like, my rate of return there is my rate of return in real estate. And I was like, what am I doing? I should be focusing so much more on trying to pick up more bird deals or Yeah. And that’s simply because you’re an expert in real, by the way, I know guys that have killed it in crypto. And that’s part of my portfolio as well. And I’m like, I kind of approach crypto

[43:59] and stocks and real estate very similar, which is like, I want to have to not think about it, I want to do the easiest thing. And what makes sense in the long run. And, but the reality is, is when you have specialized knowledge, like in real estate, or in crypto, or say stocks or whatever, like, you can actually take bigger risks and have bigger, you should have bigger gains from that area, simply because of your knowledge. Yeah. And, and so it’s, yeah, all that to say that that’s what jumped out at me is like, of course, you have better returns in real estate, you’re an expert in real estate. If I showed you my network statement right now, too, and it’d be same way, like, there’s, like, there’s a lot of equity built up. And that’s partially because like, it was like, hey, that’s a good deal. Like, that’s a decent deal. Even I can do the math on that one. Right. Yeah, I think I was like, when I calculated, it was like 700% or something was like my right, because, you know, I basically took a low down payment, and then, or two low down payments, and then created, like, you know, multiple rentals from it, because I was able to

[45:09] get all the money out that I put in to the renovations, etc. in a refinance. So I was like, I should just keep doing this. It’s harder now. But I guess you you have any books that you would recommend, favorite books, fundamental books, you think everybody should read, or just kind of ones that you currently enjoy? Yeah, you know, my favorite one of my my favorite business book of all time that I go back to, at least once a year now, if not twice, is The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. I don’t think there’s a business better business book out there. He’s actually Rich Dad. Like Rich Dad is based on him. Okay, he is Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad was actually two people. It’s mostly based on on Keith Cunningham, The Road Less Stupid. One of my favorite books, of course, Rich Dad Poor Dad, when it comes to money. I love the book Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. And those are some of those. Yeah, and that’s that’s newer. And then one of my more recent reads, although I don’t think it’s a new book. It’s called The Banker’s Code. And so let private lending has become a bigger part of my overall investment allocation over the last

[46:19] probably 18, 24 months. And Banker’s Code is a very simple, easy read, similar to Rich Dad Poor Dad. And the fact like it almost looks janky, like it almost looks like they just printed it when you ordered it. And it’s like told in story format. Okay, but it taught me another, like another viewpoint of real estate. And so that’s, that’s been a, that’s been a cool one that I really like. So those are those are the four I would say. Those are some. Yeah, you gave me a couple new ones to read. I got my list gets longer and longer all the time. Of what I need to read. Finally, is there a place if people are interested in following you on social media? What if you have anything you can share? I think you have a podcast as well, right? Yeah, I’ve got a real estate podcast. It’s really aimed at like residential real estate agents called the next level agents or the next level agents podcast, where it’s mostly me interviewing other people. I’ve got a few co-hosts now that have joined me in the last few months after the first 500 or so episodes, where they’re also interviewing other people. Sometimes I’ll just share

[47:31] thoughts that I have, but it’s mostly interviews. I enjoy learning from people. So that tends to be what my podcast is about. And then with the same name, next level agents, I’ve got a Facebook group in there and you can, you can find me in there. That’s I don’t know, 25, 27,000 people or so. It’s not as active as it once was, but there’s a lot of great people in there that are real estate agents at all levels that are just trying to get better. Awesome. I love it. Hey, Kevin, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for being on the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the REIAgent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week. Visit REIAgent.com for more content. Until next time, keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.