Building Enormous Wealth, Balance, and Purpose with Nick Waldner

[0:00] welcome back to the rei agent we are here with nick weldner nick thanks so much for joining us yeah no problem excited to be here and share some uh some thoughts uh yeah i’m excited too uh let’s just first of all get like a bird’s eye view of your world right now what’s your business look like um let’s see i mean first and foremost uh husband father three kids seven four and two so there’s a lot going on at our house at the same time running a real estate team we sell about 450 homes a year across the state of maryland um on top of that uh not only am i buying uh properties to hold or properties to flip i’m also teaching and getting my team involved in uh investing themselves so we we have i think 67 of our team has at least one rental property many of them have multiple rental properties partnered with me uh on their own so we are constantly looking at a way to build wealth through real estate that’s awesome that’s so cool i love it um tell me what part of maryland so you said you you all across the state you operate but are you close to the dc area yeah so we’re uh we’re pretty much the entire state of maryland except for if you go

[1:22] far to the east you get to ocean city far to the left you get deep creek lake everything else we cover there’s 23 agents on the team uh and we have two or three that live in just about every county so if you tell me where in maryland i’ll tell you exactly who to work with i’ve also got a great agent in northern virginia who uh he just sold an 8.75 million dollar home which is pretty awesome and then we step over the border in pennsylvania and delaware when needed but really that is within 30 minutes of the border sure okay that’s cool we’re uh not too far we’re um in harrisonburg virginia uh so yeah a little bit south of dc yeah but we’re your northern neighbors yeah yeah i love it um well i mean what what got you into this crazy world of real estate man real estate for me uh was just in my blood my mom was in real estate when i was a kid i was putting up signs by the time i was 16 and installing lock boxes and just i just saw that world of entrepreneurship from the very beginning i read rich dad poor dad and like probably a lot of the listeners thought oh this is awesome i’ll make 10 offers i’ll buy 10 properties and i’ll never work again and somehow it’s a little bit

[2:38] harder than the book made it out to be but i will give it credit for how it got me started and all that i mean there that book has changed so many people’s lives it really has um no i love it it’s um when so what age did you get licensed was that the first step or were you trying to invest first um no so when i was 18 i read the book and that’s when i decided all right i’m gonna buy property i started running a seasonal business in ocean city maryland during college a couple years after college and then i opened up a franchise with cold stone creamery so the ice cream franchise but we actually took on the franchisee where we were uh a franchisor where we had all the franchises in maryland delaware pennsylvania southern half of new jersey dc and we were opening like 50 some stores a year wow that was my main focus and then i decided to parlay all that and move from that completely get out of it in like 2002 or 2003 and move completely into residential real estate so that was a big leap of i understood the franchise world we did really really well um for some other reasons i decided to

[3:48] get out and jumped into residential man that’s that’s interesting not people people don’t normally go that way yeah i went i went i went the i’m not gonna go in real estate my mom sells real estate i’ll never do that and then i eventually came back to it and saw like this is a great opportunity to actually i came to my mom and i said mom i read the book a few years ago and it told me to make 10 offers on 10 properties at 50 of value i want you to write 10 offers for me and she rolled her eyes but supported me and said i will teach you how to write one offer and you can write 10 of them if you want so i wrote all 10 i sent them out guess how many houses i bought that day none not a single one but one of the houses i had saw that i had made an offer on i ran into a buddy and he said he was looking for a house and i said well i just saw one that was very similar to that i took him to go see it he liked it and i was like man this business is easy sold him the house made a commission and that was it i was like all right this is gonna be my business so are you working under your mom kind of at the beginning then

[4:56] um you know my mom did something really smart uh when we were kids uh she gave my brother and i a car that she paid five hundred dollars for and she said you have this as your car if you want a better car you got to go out and work and you got to earn it when i got into real estate she said i’m your mom i’m gonna teach you everything i know in real estate but you’re not gonna take a single one of my clients we’re not gonna partner you are gonna live or die completely on your own and honestly i thought yeah she’s probably gonna give me some business and to her true to her word she was cutthroat it was nothing she was the greatest mentor and teacher but it was you will live or die in this business based on your work and that was the best way to learn this business yeah no seriously i mean like you yes like learning from a seasoned person is is valuable and having that person you can go to all the time is so valuable uh but yeah if you don’t learn that you have to you know the outcomes are related to what you put in yeah exactly that’s great so so so you how long until you started this team yeah my uh my first year um i was like rookie of the year

[6:14] feeling all cocky and confident by my third or fourth year i was like number three in the office and again i’m feeling all about myself and i can remember having this girlfriend and uh we got into i would call it a heated discussion and that’s where she told me uh you work too much all you do is work all you care about is work you’re gonna be uh you’re a terrible boyfriend you’re gonna be a terrible husband and she slammed the door in my face and i thought at 25 26 years old i thought she’s crazy so then next girlfriend fast forward a while we get into a heated discussion she goes stomping off to the door stops at the door turns around and she says you’re a terrible boyfriend all you do is work all you care about is work you’re gonna make a terrible husband and she slams the door and she’s gone and i thought she’s crazy my third girlfriend this is where i’m not that smart it takes me a while to pick up she’s storming off towards the door and i am in my head thinking wait wait before you go let me give your script i already know what you’re gonna say let me get you prepared and she said you’re a terrible

[7:27] boyfriend all you do is work all you care about is work you’re gonna be a terrible husband and you’re gonna be a terrible father and she slammed the door and i remember in that moment i was sitting there i’m now 100 single there’s no there’s no thoughts of marriage or kids or anything like that and i realized at that moment if i continue running my business as a single agent trying to do everything i am going to be a terrible father i am going to be a terrible husband i’m not going to be around for my family and i couldn’t bear to think about that i had a father who wasn’t around a lot and i knew that kind of pain and i was like that will not be me and that was the instant where i was like i’m hiring i’m going to bring in some admin help i’m going to bring in some marketing support eventually i started bringing in agents but i was very clear from that exact moment you know 26 years old 100 single and now everything i’m building is to be a great father oh wow that’s amazing uh and like you said at the very beginning when i said bird’s eye view you mentioned husband father first and if you look at

[8:39] if you’re watching this you can see that underneath he has it in that order as well so it was a very clear uh line in the sand you drew that that was your priorities and i one of the things i talk about all the time is if you don’t you know plan if you don’t if you don’t have the vision of what you want your life to be if you don’t orchestrate if you don’t you know intentionally live in a certain way it will happen life will just happen to you and in this business it’s going to be exactly like you talked about i mean you can just be consumed by constantly working yeah and it was there was a drive to be number one to high have the highest gci to beat everybody else to work like nobody else and i used to wear that like a badge of honor and i remember one of my mentors telling me you’re an idiot if you think the harder you work is how you make more money i was like uh okay tell me more so in the hiring process uh you did you get somebody full-time right away then uh like admin or yep hired my first admin right away i went out sold a bunch of real estate i came back and i said what have you done and she said no nothing and i said this isn’t working and you’re fired and then i

[9:49] hired a second full-time admin and i ran out and i sold a bunch of houses and i came back and said what did you do and she said i uh kind of not really that much i said you’re fired what is this i can’t find good help and then i hired my third admin and i went out and sold a bunch of houses and i came back and i said what did you do and she looked at me and she said what have you taught me to do what do you want me to do what are the jobs you want and i was like my eyes were this big and i was like wow so maybe those first two hires were actually really good and it was me and again you know i’m not i’m pretty slow it takes me a little while to pick up on things so that hire we built our systems we built the team we built everything she’s still with me today in her uh in her vision her and her husband wanted to move to florida and there was a certain area and they wanted to be able to walk the beach every morning and they love sea turtles i mean it was we blew the vision out i knew exactly what she wanted and and the timeline and all that and we actually helped her move to florida five years

[10:52] earlier than her planned timeline now she was like i’m not retiring i want to stay on and i was like great i trust you she lives down there she’s been working with for me remotely for you know probably six years at this point she’s amazing and every morning she sends me a picture of her walking on the beach and whatever’s going on down there it is it’s awesome it’s she gets to live her dream too i love that um it sounds like you’ve learned a lot of lessons a lot of a lot of three peats like i’ve screwed up a lot a lot uh if you could go back and talk to yourself um you know when he started what what would you do differently um i think i would i would be okay with the boredom of success i think we’re so fast to look for the next shiny object to watch the next thing on youtube to follow the next hot book that just got released or the hot new uh speaker that just came on the scene and we’re constantly chasing and running after what’s new because we’re bored and we want some new excitement and the reality is if you can get comfortable in the boredom that’s how you become a master when i look at everything i’ve built in my life it was time that made me look like the genius

[12:15] if i did it long enough over time eventually i look like a genius and every hot shot thing every single you know tech thing i bought all this other crap that i stuck on my business two three years later i’m like what am i paying for this is such a waste of money and it was all not just a waste of money it was a waste of time i spent way too much time focused on that dumb stuff when i could just do the fundamentals and the basics better than anyone and make more money than anyone yeah yeah that makes sense that makes a ton of sense um so so now now that you’re more balanced and you have help and all that stuff how are you able to live better with your family and for your personal health uh because of these systems and and people that you’ve brought in yeah i’m glad you said your personal health because i think that’s what we all think like well you know they’re a celebrity so they have you know i’m thinking of hollywood stars and they have you know a personal trainer who comes to their house and they have a chef who’s there on site making all their meals and they have this and they have that and

[13:22] their life is so easy and the reality is like none of us are getting to that level none of us are having that type of atmosphere where we’re going to shoot a movie for four weeks to make 12 million dollars and then we have the rest of the year to do whatever in our world like you have to figure out what works so like for my health you know i’m 46 uh right now and my um my whoop tells me i’m 40 which is pretty awesome so my biological age versus my chronological age yeah exactly and it’s all because of sleep it’s all because of stress it’s all because of the way i eat the way i work out all those things i’m a 5 a.m guy every single day which means i’m in bed and trying to be asleep between 9 30 and 10 i wake up at 5 i go to do my workout from 5 30 to 6 30 because i know no one in my family gets up to around 6 45 so if i’m back by 6 42 my first son wakes up at 6 43 like on the dot my next son wakes up 10 minutes later my daughter wakes up 20 minutes later my job is the morning routine getting them up dressed teeth brushed get them fed and i look at that as like hey the first hour and a half of my day is for

[14:36] me my health all of my supplements everything i do for me personally and then the next hour hour and a half is for my kids this is not i have to get them ready for school but like this is my moment like this is once they’re off to school i don’t get to see them the rest of the day but now i get to be that present father that figures out what do you guys want to make okay do you want sprinkles and and whipped cream on your pancake today like all the silly stuff that i get to be a father and then at eight o’clock my day starts i’m off i’ve got an 8 15 leadership meeting an 8 30 all team meeting and like my day is structured and set and then by 5 5 30 i’m done i’m coming home i’m sitting down with the family it’s dinner time there’s no phones there’s none of that i’m spending time with them maybe we’ve got for lacrosse ball maybe we’ve got to shoot baskets and then like 7 30 8 o’clock they’re going down i’m putting them down for bed and now it’s time to okay what did i miss what do i need to answer what do i need to respond to like just little things while i’m doing whatever like while i’m just kind of calming down 9 30 bed start all over again it feels i guess when i say

[15:48] like that it feels so regimented it’s like oh i wouldn’t enjoy that but i love the time i get with my with my kids i love the guys and the girls i go to the gym with every morning and we have kind of like a cult because how many people get up and go to the gym at 5 15 in the morning so those people get really close to and yeah the people i work with all day and like all of a sudden like it’s a planned life that i enjoy all the parts of it yeah well i mean jocko says discipline equals freedom right so i mean it’s so true that if you don’t discipline yourself and don’t regiment yourself in certain ways it life just happens to you and so like you feel like you don’t have time to work out you don’t and then you’re not present with your family because you like haven’t set time to do the emails or whatever you need to um so it’s great wait so this is how crazy i am so jocko with the navy seal guy yep same guy he wrote a children’s book and it’s called the way of the warrior kid and i have read it with my son i want to say 900 times and i’m telling you it is written for a child and they truly understand it and not when i say uh discipline equals my both my boys yell

[17:00] freedom like they get it okay but it is also pouring into me every time i read it with them it’s reminding me of those little fundamentals it’s a great book i know that sounds silly because it’s a kid’s book but if you have a little boy or a little girl i would say age four till probably 12 go out and get it there’s three different uh three different versions of it and it’s like when they’re really small they’re a little bit older now they’re in middle school it is an awesome book to teach those fundamentals i’m 100 i’ve never heard of that it’s amazing it’s it’s fantastic uh yeah there’s been so many of these like i i so i worked as a behavior specialist in the school system before i got into real estate and um i did a lot of work with kids with with like things like you know the seven habits of highly effective people and all that kind of stuff they have a teen version of that that i actually found like i could relate to better yeah exactly exactly it’s crazy how good it is like i could tell you the characters and i’ll say to my son like you know just the little stories and the fables that are

[18:07] in there that that make you understand it and i’ll say you know well should mark gotten in trouble for that well yeah you got to take ownership it’s 100 on you you’ve got to take responsibility for everything well is it okay that mark did that because nathan was being a jerk no mark still has to control his emotions and i i’m telling you we use it all the time all right yeah now i’ve got a three-year-old a five-year-old and eight-year-old so you’re in you are in your eight-year-old is gonna love it and your three-year-old is gonna slowly start to get it your five-year-old is gonna be good too sure uh that’s amazing um i feel like there’s a lot more uh like parenting things we could talk about but i also wanted to get into your investing yeah i love the idea that you are helping your team also invest so i guess maybe start off with where after you failed 10 offers like where did you start actually picking up property and what strategy strategies have you used yeah for anybody who’s in the younger demographic listening i started with house hacking before it had a really cool name back in the day it was buy a house and throw your friends in it and that’s what i did i bought a house

[19:19] i had two guys in the other two bedrooms and a third guy in the basement and my rent which is basically all of them paying rent minus my mortgage was like 110 so i’m saving money every month like all right what’s my next property going to be when i finally bought my second one i replaced myself with another uh another uh tenant so now my house is still full and then my buddies were all like wait a minute we should buy houses too and i’m like great idea so i sold each of them a house and then put new tenants in and then my next house i had two roommates living with me and like you can continue doing the house hacking and for me until you get that significant other that’s like hey i don’t want to live in a frat house anymore right and that’s when you know that’s when the life ends you’re like all right all right that strategy was awesome for that age yeah i ended up with two properties for that i still own them to this day and then it started being when i found the home runs i would go out and look at properties i’d go out and meet with listings i would hear about this i would hear about that and anytime it was a home run it was all right how do you find the cash how do you scrape

[20:29] it together and i was probably on a pace of buying about one a year it wasn’t crazy it wasn’t wild i wasn’t picking up five nothing like that but four five six seven ten years later all of a sudden not only do i have 10 or 12 properties in my portfolio but the ones i bought 10 years ago are now worth a hell of a lot more than i paid for and time just keeps making you smarter and smarter and smarter and you know i had a buddy i just saw him the other day no offense to anybody who likes this but he showed up in his porsche gt3 something or other i don’t know all the details and he was like yeah i’ve got this one i’ve got another one i’ve got a third one and i’m thinking you’ve got three porsches how many rental properties do you have how many how many business do you own how what where do you put all your money and apparently it’s all in porsches right and that’s what he likes and i’ve got no problem with that but i knew from rich dad poor dad my long-term vision did not include three old porsches it included you know 35 houses that were paying my bills and that’s the only way to do that is to

[21:43] start buying one a year one year one year and then all of a sudden you’re buying two a year then we got it then i got into multifamily and i started with buying it with um with others and then you know just as an lp a limited partner and then it was okay now what about shopping centers and we bought our first shopping center year and a half ago in indiana we’re talking like big best buy target and like all that kind of stuff and now we’re looking for the next one of those and like it’s monopoly that’s all it is i started buying one house that i lived in personally that i filled with a bunch of my buddies to buying you know to having conversations with best buy about right sizing their store so that we can make room to put an ulta in there that’s amazing i um like your your story is like literally my book it’s it’s exactly what i preach it’s it’s perfect i mean it’s it is a hundred percent like when you’re when you’re young and flexible you know buying one at a time you get the lower down payment you know and one of the things i think i i talk about in the book too is to consider is that when you’re getting into real estate there is the burn the fleet model and there

[22:55] is advantages to just jumping full in but you’re not going to qualify for a mortgage for two years if you do that so maybe consider uh you know keeping a w-2 a little bit as you’re kind of starting and getting your feelers out buying your first house and then maybe then jump in and definitely yeah fill it fill it up so you’re not worried about the mortgage payment because also not having expenses uh or as little as expenses as possible when you’re starting out it’s great because you’d never know when the next paycheck is going to come um until you get you know more more busy but i love living with my buddies i thought that was awesome yeah one of my buddies i still golf with him he lives right down the street we’re at the same country club and we joke about that and he tells the story he’s like 25 years ago i lived in his basement yeah no it’s great and you know and then on top of that you mentioned having you know like the the whole porsche thing like i think that’s another stigma or think the thing that people think they need to have a fancy car when they start this business and i think like really if you’re providing good value they don’t care if

[23:54] you show up in like an old corolla or something it doesn’t matter it’s who you show up as if you show up and i look at you and you are young hungry and a hustler and you’re gonna go out and work harder than anybody else i’ll take you over the guy in the three-piece suit who shows up who looks like i’m not interested in doing a day’s work i’m just i look really good and i’ve done this for a long time so you just need to believe in me nah give me the kid who’s gonna work their ass off yeah 100 percent and then and then you know i like you like you said like some people are car people and that’s nothing necessarily wrong with it uh but keep your lifestyle low like build up that passive income to pay for that stuff later and you’ll be so thankful you did well the the difference is like for me i would always this is not advice don’t take this as sound uh fundamental advice but this is what i would do i would work work work work work work work i’d be depositing commission checks left and right and then i would look up and i’d have a bank account that would tell me hey things are pretty good

[25:02] right now you can relax a little bit and i did not like that so i would immediately be like oh my god i have sixty thousand dollars in my checking account i gotta go buy something and i would go buy a house and i go find a house for three hundred thousand and i put down the 60 grand and i would be dead broke again and then i was like oh god i’m broke i need to go out i need to work i need to work and i go out and sell a bunch more houses and then i’d look up and i’d have 75 000 in my account i’d be like oh i could probably take a vacation nope nope gotta buy something and i kept buying things to keep money out of my bank account so i never felt like i could relax i think the more successful you get it tends to make us feel more and more comfortable and when you become comfortable you don’t push you don’t make that extra phone call you don’t drive that extra mile you sit back a little bit because you can and that is the enemy of how to get to the big big big levels yeah and then i want to highlight more about your story too about how you know picking up these properties and holding them

[26:07] for a while how they increase in value uh you mentioned uh being an lp in a syndication which is amazing as a real estate professional you get great tax benefits um it can be a really good very passive thing um but if you’re not making 200 or 300 000 a year but you have a million in net worth because of all these rentals you picked up over the over this time you now are able to invest in things like this slash you are now going to be sitting on potential capital to go into something crazy like a shopping center with a best buy yep exactly and what i would say i think when i look back to syndications um i got really i got a poor education in syndications and when i say that what i mean by is i invested in a syndication with a couple of uh with a group that i was introduced to we had great results then we bought another another another another all great results great results as a terrible teacher yeah because now i believe that all syndications are created equal and anytime somebody gives me a prospectus well yeah those numbers must be pretty accurate and i had to learn really quick because now i have a long list of failures on my resume i have um everything from like not as big as

[27:26] the bernie made off but scandals like that where they were you know taking money here and paying off here and that pyramid and all i’ve you name it i’ve been involved in a little bit of all of it because i got that poor education that told me these are all working they’re all doing well i’m making money on all of them just keep putting money in and that one original company i still have deals with we still do deals together and we’ve won 80 of the time but then every time i got outside of my my education i’m like oh i’m gonna invest in this atm deal i’m gonna invest in this you know stock deal i’m gonna invest in this all the industries that i don’t really know a lot about almost all of them came back to bite me in the butt and lost money or failed on this one or you know this guy went under so you want to make sure that gp your general partner has a track record can show you that they’ve done this over and over and over again and the success and failure if they’ve never had a failure i’d avoid them too they should have successes and failures and be able to show you all of them and i want to see

[28:34] introduce me to five people who’ve invested in 10 or more of your projects if they don’t have investors to keep coming back back back back stay away it’s really good advice that’s really good advice and i think that is that only cost me about half a million dollars so you’re welcome i’ll cut you a check after the show uh no that that uh that’s very true and and i think you know it’s easy to have the rose colored glasses on things like that because it’s easy passive money it’s you know all this stuff and but yeah there is risk there’s definitely risk involved and i’ve definitely heard of people and sometimes the bigger names that are out there are ones that are not focused on uh the business and and like actually making it successful like sometimes there is a the industry gets them to get a new deal to be able to get that payment within the structure so to keep the lights on to keep going and they might take a deal that doesn’t make near as much sense in order to do that so you yeah 100 those are really good tips for anybody considering this space but the point of it all too is that you have those options because you did things like buying uh these properties and building

[29:48] your wealth and and building up your team and building up your your yeah your business in general so you can make these decisions and you know hopefully you’ve made more than the 500 000 you’ve lost and so it’s been worth luckily in the end um but yeah i mean like that’s that’s the thing too like it’s um you know when people like think about getting into a flip or something like that there’s it often feels like a zero-sum game where oh my gosh i’m gonna be investing two hundred thousand dollars into this deal and it could all go belly up i’m gonna lose everything um and even if you did which is i don’t really think it’s possible to lose everything i was just gonna say it’s not possible to lose at all because you’re gonna have some leverage there you’re gonna have that but like you could put two hundred thousand dollars in a syndication and literally lose everything yeah like nothing yeah yeah but in this in this circumstance i’m just saying like you know the lesson learned um the getting in and getting started is worth it and usually with like a flip uh type scenario like the worst case is like you you

[30:52] pay a little bit or maybe you break even um it wasn’t really worth it it’s if you do your calculations right you can’t just go and throw a dart at the mls you know that goes back to my team like when i’m teaching this and i’m sharing this and i’m telling them my successes and failures there’s a hesitation to jump in so i immediately said if you were on my team and you bring me any deal and we work it together i will go in 50 50 partners with anyone and if i’m putting in my money we’re going to sit down and i’m going to teach you and we’re going to do the research and we’re going to understand the numbers and we’re going to go through everything together and even if that just got them to buy their first one and then they buy their second third fourth fifth all without me i’m fine with that because he got them off the fence and got their first one and i have several that we’ve bought four or five together and that’s fine too i want them to get comfortable enough to be willing to do it themselves i’ll partner with anybody on my team for as long as it takes them until they’re comfortable

[31:53] to be able to do it on their own because i think long term they’re going to look back and be like man thank god he got me to do that first one or that second or third one yeah totally and it does often take uh somebody else to feel comfortable doing it um so yeah i was going to ask you then too how how that all has started or how that that works in your team so you’re obviously talking about your wins and your failures and stuff with your team actively and when you’re picking up deals if they’re going out and finding them so it sounds like that’s a key piece there is that they have to bring you deal you’re not out there finding deals for them no uh which makes sense uh you know you gotta put some in the game yeah and the reality is they’re you know they might be bird dogging and looking for deals but we might only buy one in every 20 deals they bring which means they’re getting education on the analysis 19 times before we buy that one and that means that may be 19 mistakes that they would have made if we weren’t partners when we weren’t doing they were just going to do it on their own

[32:57] yeah i love that um and so are these then any kind of deal are you targeting burrs fix and flips yeah i it’s it depends on the deal we look at it for buy and hold is our number one priority because that’s how you build wealth right doesn’t work for that you know can we uh can we flip it and what do the numbers look like there um so that’s really why we’re looking back and forth and it’s funny because i’m always a teacher but i’m always a student so when i bought that first shopping center who did i buy it with i bought it in a partnership with four other guys where one guy has you know 12 of these and he’s been doing this for 20 years so i went in as a partner with him knowing all right i got a million questions teach me to show me this why do we like this and you know we’ve been analyzing deals every week for the last probably two years and now i’m understanding so much more because of my conversations with him where i don’t mind partnering one on the deals because i’m learning so much like it’s worth it for me then go to take that risk alone and not sure what i’m exactly doing no 100 that

[34:09] makes a ton of sense um i had a follow-up question there um it’s probably a good one

[34:19] that’s why i can’t remember it but um so yeah that’s really cool that the team uh is involved and and oh yeah i know i was gonna ask it was about um how do you teach your team to walk the line of you know finding a deal sometimes i’m assuming they’re going to be off market um and and talking to sellers as a licensee like you know how do you walk that line of like you know if you put on the market you could get x y and z and if you if you go with me i can close in two weeks and all right yeah tell me how you you approach that i love that because i think that this gets lost in the highlight reel of youtube where everybody’s like oh i found this deal i made 85 000 85 000 we probably stole it from some old lady like if their kids find out they’re going to be pretty upset like that’s not the business that i ever want to run so when we go and we sit down with a seller and we’re looking at those especially the really terrible the horrible houses that you buy that are probably the best buys to turn around and make money on right those are the ones where we sit down and up front it is hey we’re a licensed real estate company this is what we do we’re going to give

[35:30] you three different options and you’re going to be able to make the best decision for you the first option is convenience easy you pick the close date you don’t have to take anything with you there’s nothing simpler no repairs no appraisers nothing it’s a cash offer the downside is it’s going to be the least financial but it’s going to be the least work that’s one option the next option is to sell it as is on the market this is where we’re going to put it on the market you could have inspections you’re going to have buyers coming through you know we’re going to ask you to do certain things to clean up the house and make it safe to get in and out of and then our third option is we will partner with you we’ll renovate the entire process together you put money in we put money in and we sell the renovated property and this is what you can obtain in the market once all that’s done now if i’m buying it cash i want you to know that i’m going to put all the money in myself and this is what we’re aiming for there’s no guarantee we’re going to get there but that would be our goal if we put it as is maybe you only need to spend ten thousand dollars getting stuff

[36:33] cleared out and doing this and doing that and getting it on the market and then obviously if you want to put the money in to renovate it we’ll help you with contractors and all that and it’s going to be approximately this amount of money what sounds the what sounds like the best option for you and we find that a lot of people in that scenario where their house is just awful they just want out they just want to walk away hit the restart button kind of yeah and i and i tell people all the time there’s nothing wrong with that um it’s almost like if you’ve ever sold your car and you’re going to buy a new car and the dealer says look i’ll give you 10 grand for that and you’re like man i could probably put it online and get somebody give me 11 and then i got to take it to the d to the dmv and get the title transferred and i got to get the money from them and i got to get it inspected you know what just give me the 10 grand it’s not worth 11.5 and going through all that hassle now if the dealer says i’ll give you five and i can get 11.5 uh if i sold it myself all right my next move i’m going to carmax

[37:36] what will you give me and i’m going to try to figure out the best scenario for me that causes either the most money in my pocket or the least time and effort out of my uh out of my debt whatever is most important to me that’s where i’m going to lean so we get really clear and we show them everything here are the comps of why your cash offer is here here are your comps if it’s after renovation and what that would look like you know and we just have them initial each page that we reviewed it we shared it and they get to pick i don’t want to make my wealth off of the backs of anybody i want to be really open i want to be really clear and we have people that are like man i didn’t know i could get that yeah i’ve got some savings i would let’s put money into it and we’re like great no problem let’s help you yeah i love that that’s perfect and i think uh you know people may also think when they’re in this kind of scenario if they’re not having thought through everything like you that uh it’s like you’re not going to want to tell them that you’re going to get a profit for like taking on the risk and putting your capital into it and renovating it of course you’re going to get a

[38:39] profit for doing this it’s not like you’re going to do that to break even yeah and you are not a charity and no one thinks you’re doing it for the good in your heart i think the more honest you are with people the more clear you’re what you’re doing and why you’re doing it hey i can respect that i don’t expect you to work for free okay you buy it for this and sell it for this and you take that profit i’m okay with that because i don’t have any risk i can just walk away all right that’s fair to all of us and that’s what people want they want a fair deal for everybody and you’re going to build the trust and you’re not going to ruin your reputation by um and i love that you have them initial the three different options that you reviewed it that makes a lot of sense um man we i need to have like a part two of this podcast we flew through 39 minutes this has been wonderful i do need to move it into the uh golden nuggets uh but there’s been a million already but do you have any golden nuggets for the listeners um yeah my golden nugget is find a mentor whatever age you are whatever stage you are in business like you have to become a student always so

[39:53] if i’m looking at my mentors and you know one of them is a billionaire and he’s at such a higher level than where i am and where you know and i watch his life and i see what he does and i can see where his focus has moved away from you know money and trying to get as much as possible and it’s much more about his life and his enjoyment and his family and his health and his time and like i see that end game and it allows me to cheat the system and i don’t have to kill myself for 70 years before i realize man maybe i should care about my health my family my relationships like stuff like that so i think go out and find a mentor there’s a there was a book i don’t remember the name of it but it talked about a mentor lunch find somebody that you respect you take them to lunch go ask them if they’ll have lunch with you and have five questions and ask those five questions to every single person you take to lunch that way and once a month you have a mentor lunch where you find somebody that you respect ask them a lunch see how it goes and it could result in a relationship where they become a mentor for years

[41:01] to come it could be just that one lunch but you should always be looking for those successful people because to be honest they’re at a point of success where they want to give back they want to share their kids don’t want to want don’t want their company their wife doesn’t want to hear about their business like nobody cares you show up and you’re like tell me everything you did and they’re like really you want to know yeah and they’re almost dying to give you that information so go out and find a mentor and make sure you’re being a mentor to somebody else yeah i love that and and just the the who you are surrounding yourself with is so important and you know like trying to like you said if you can give back yourself um have a percentage of your time allocated to that if you can be around peers that are kind of in the same world the kind of the same mindset that bringing raising you up not bringing you down um that’s great to spend a good amount of time with people like that but then i’ll definitely find those people that are ahead of you um is so so critical i love that yeah love it um so we we

[42:03] talked about robert kiyosaki but is there and and jaco what is the book we got it the five types of wealth by uh sahil bloom okay and there’s five types of wealth i love how he breaks this down so sahil great writer spent some time with her with him really good guy family person like this is more of a compilation of five or six different books all put into one that teaches all the lessons you would learn after reading all these other books but it’s in one it’s well written it’s easy to follow it’s got some good stories but it talks about how we measure our success on our bank account only and financial wealth is important i’m not saying go live in a yurt and never worry about money but it’s not the only thing because there’s plenty of ceos that are on their third marriage and their kids don’t talk to them and their health is so poor who knows how long they have left and all of a sudden when you start looking at the different categories of your financial wealth your physical wealth your mental wealth your social wealth your relationships and your time wealth when you start looking at all those things and

[43:17] then you start putting purposeful time into each gosh i want to make sure i’m healthy so i’m watching what i eat i’m working out and i’m doing the right things there and man i know that no matter how successful i am if i don’t have great relationships if i don’t have a relationship with my kids or my parents or my friends or whatever that social circle is how am i going to enjoy my success anyway so i’ve got to put time in there and then when i talk about the mental side and how stress kills and what you need to do there like it is encompassing in our entire world of how to approach this life and still go after the highest levels of success but without giving up on all the other areas that are important too i love it i mean that’s exactly what the show is about so that’s that’s perfect there you go five types of wealth sahil bloom um and then if people are interested in uh yeah following you on any social media or anything like that where can they find you yeah you can find me i think facebook it’s walden or nick at walden or nick uh instagram is at nick walden or you can go to nick nick

[44:23] walden or.com you can go to the walden or winners team.com if you send an email i’ll actually answer it if you send a dm i’m not i’m not somebody who has assistance running all that like it’s just me responding so if you see any of this you want to reach out grab any one of those send me a dm or send me a message i’m happy to to share and to give ideas or thoughts or if something piqued your interest ask a follow-up question i’m there i love it nick thank you so much for your time this has been a wonderful conversation yeah i appreciate you guys having me thanks for listening to the rei agent if you enjoyed this episode hit subscribe to catch new shows every week visit rei agent.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