and you know I talked to him once on the phone and I was going to spend the summer with him and like two weeks later I got a phone call or my mom got a phone call he had passed away in a car accident and so wow yeah so unfortunately I never got to meet my real dad and I only had one conversation and I vaguely remember on the phone with him I do remember you know where I was at I was in California at the time and remember vaguely the the pay phone that I was on uh talking to him because that was you know back in the early 90s pay phones were still a thing and so you know I felt pretty heartbroke at a young age after my mom left you know my brother and sister’s dad had kind of a pretty rough childhood I’d say I was pretty underprivileged for the most part you know my mom was probably not the best example of a mother and you know did things for her own unique way and I can’t falter for it it’s not the way I would live my life but you know to be completely transparent she was an exotic dancer into drugs and The Nightlife and that sort of stuff and so that eventually caught up with her and my brothers and sisters and I which there’s five of us I’m the oldest of five we eventually got taken away by the state my brother and sister with her second marriage they actually went back out to California to live with their dad who’s in the Marine Corps and then me and my two youngest brother and sister we went to uh foster care which was a pretty pretty unique thing you know and and I kind of look at my childhood a lot as as an adventure and I’ve always kind of been a venturous Spirit of sorts you know I’ve always read books like Huck Finn and the other side of the mountain and all these books were like it’s just old school you know exploration and so I just always kind of looked at my life in the manner of like hey everything’s just a big you know a big adventure really
before I even one of my last memories before we got taken into State custody as children we were actually I didn’t
even realize it at the time because again I I just thought we were camping but we were homeless for about eight months me and you know my sister and my
brother was actually born in his first home was a tent in the middle of Woods
in Florida and so you know looking back on it now I know that was completely not normal but I just it was life back then
you know we’d go once a week and take showers at a local truck stop and keep
food and coolers and stuff like that so I just thought we were camping you know and I just always had like an affinity
for camping and being outside and so to me it was like no big deal and then looking back on it I’m like yeah that’s
probably not the best environment to keep children in and fortunately you know after spending about 18 months or
so in foster care my grandparents my mom’s mom and her stepdad adopted the
three of us from State custody so we got to go live with them in Texas and so I
pretty much grew up from sixth grade all the way until the time I was about 25 or
26 in Texas before I I ventured out and to a different state so so yeah my
childhood was kind of crazy kind of adventurous and I kind of looked back on it now and I’m just pretty thankful you
know I look and I I can say I’ve never really had anything just handed to me but at the same point in time like I’m
very thankful for the things that I do have because of of that now so yeah kind
of a crazy point and a bunch of little turns and twists and a lot of adversity early on yeah man that’s good stuff it’s
so many things to think about but biggest thing is just your perspective and your reality right it was just your reality and you just it’s how you lived
it it wasn’t didn’t seem any different it’s just fascinating the even like before you mentioned you where went to
the Sarah were taken in by the state that you were like you said you were camping and you were just excited to be camping and living it I mean yeah it’s
all your perspective you were happy you know and it’s it’s just fascinating so I’d love to keep Kia keep going with it man what uh
How family influences your future
like I know you were part of the you’ve served in the military and then kind of got into it from there but I’m curious
and I’m really excited how this all ties in and how you kind of draw from these experiences today yeah so you know after
my grandparents adopted us they were pretty blue-collar you know hard-working
people so my grandpa he he drove trucks most of his life and by the time we moved in you know with them he was uh he
dispatched trucks for a living so he worked for Goodyear and then they transitioned to a handful of other
companies throughout the years and that’s what he did and then my grandmother was a phlebotomist and she’s always super proud of being a
phlebotomist because she didn’t make super good grades in in high school but she set her mind to hey I’m gonna be a
phlebotomist I’m gonna have the best grades and I think you know she used to always tell me I did she that you know she only made A’s at phlebotomy school
and so I had kind of a strict upbringing with them you know one there are a couple Generations older than than me
and my siblings right right and so there’s usually a kind of a disconnect but even with that you know my grandpa
they were like on the tail end of the the Great Depression as kids so you know they looked at things a lot differently
than most people do today they didn’t really believe in credit or utilizing credit you know they knew it was
important to have good credit but like you couldn’t persuade on that credit cards were a good thing and they’re not
to a certain extent if you if you don’t use them wisely but um you know so I didn’t learn a lot of
things about financials and and money and stuff like that growing up much like
most people now yeah and so so many people out there in the world like that but yeah but keep going it sounds like
you changed yours so yeah they were super hard working they were pretty strict on me I had to I had to maintain
How growing up in a strict household led me to join the army
all A’s and B’s if I wanted to play sports or do any kind of academics in high school which you know it was tough
for me and looking back I went to a real small High School in my graduating class
I think was 31 people uh 31 kids and so just with that you know we didn’t have a
ton of opportunity these like kids who go to some of these larger schools do and but I was real focused and on
playing football and you know a couple other sports here and there I did track but again my grandparents were super
strict so there were times during you know my upbringing where I’m one of 17
kids on a football squad and I’m playing both sides of the ball and I made a c on
my report card so my grandparents would make me sit out for three weeks and and so it was really tough you know because
I always when I was younger I used to kind of lean on the fact like oh I’m not smart I can’t do this and I had kind of
a really shallow attitude about things as far as like what I was really capable
of now that I’ve been removed from school for you know going on 14 or 15 years outside of college
realized that maybe I was just disinterested in school and I was interested in other things and and so
it’s you know it wasn’t a lack of me being a smart guy it was just a lack of me having an interest in a lot of things
so that’s the way I kind of look at it now I do wish maybe I would have tried a little bit harder in high school but I
was really passionate about certain things and I can’t go back and change what I was passionate about
or the things that I didn’t enjoy so you know and going back to growing up you know I didn’t really know what exactly
it was that I was going to do because it was still at the point in time where like college was kind of the big thing
but like I just didn’t know how I was going to pay for college I didn’t know if I was smart enough to go to college
at the time and so my grandpa always told me because I used to be kind of Rowdy as a kid he’d say son if you want
to fight go join the Army and it just resonated with me and I had a good buddy of mine that growing up he and I were
actually looking at joining the Army on the Buddy program and his mom was not having it she was like no you’re not
going to the Army and this is kind of you know Iraq was still a thing and after Stan was a thing so for a lot of
folks it was still kind of like real fresh and kind of a scary thing and but I didn’t really know what else I would
do in life you know my my dad my biological father he was in the Army and
then hit my grandparents on that side my grandma and grandpa were both in the Air Force and you know I had a couple other
family members that had been in the military but really on my side of the family like nobody had ever done it so I
was like you know I’m just going to join the military so when I was a junior in high school there was a National Guard recruiter at my school and he was like
hey man you want to join the Army National Guard and I was like I don’t know man he’s like well we’re giving 20
000 sign on bonuses if you sign up and I said shoot sign me up man twenty
thousand dollars was a lot of money and you know still is today but you know so I signed up I had to have my
grandparents sign waivers for me and literally two weeks later I was at basic training in Fort Benning Georgia uh for
infantry basic training and man talk about scared because I’ve never really been outside of that small town in so
many years since I was 10 or 11 and then all of a sudden I’m getting on a plane and flying somewhere and I’m getting
yelled at by these guys you know that are drill sergeants and I was just super super scared but I came back and I
finished my my senior year because I did the basic training between my Junior and Senior year came back did my senior year
played football and that October my my grandma passed away kind of expectedly
and so you know it was kind of real tough on me you know I was doing real well in school I was super proud because
I was finally having all A’s and B’s on my report card and then when she passed away I just kind of lost motivation and
uh and so you know I was lucky to to be able to graduate with my class but I also you know I dropped the ball I was I
was pretty emotionally hurt when I lost her because that was my mother figure at that point in life so and my grandma and
I were so much alike that we used to just butt heads and we we were always competing against each other and like I
was you know I was a teenager so I was kind of a jerk you know like most teenage guys can be so anyways I was
really thankful that even before she passed away I’d seen her the night before and you know spent some time
loving up on her and and so I know that our relationship was in a really good place she passed away so again that was that
was just pretty tough for me to deal with but made it through my senior year ended up graduating like 28 out of 31
Deployed to Iraq
and and I was like man I I kind of feel like a big dummy but again it was just I
was so disinterested in so many things in school but I knew that I wanted something different in life and I didn’t
know what that meant but I wanted something different and so anyways I’ve I’ve you know spent the summer working
you know I worked for the school that I graduated from doing some maintenance and then also had a job you know I got
my first job when I was 16 at a local Sonic and and so I worked
there and I had two jobs over that summer before I went back and finished up some training for the Army and I got
back home from that training in October and I went into the office to turn in all my paperwork and they said hey
before you leave let me check something so I I go in the office and and I’m like okay sure and as I was getting ready to
leave the guy was like I hate to break it to you but you’re going to Iraq in two weeks and I was like I was like
you’re kidding me right he’s like uh no man you got to be in Fort Worth in two weeks or they’re gonna
send you back to Georgia and then then you’re gonna go you’re gonna do a little bit of train up and you’re gonna go to Iraq and I was like wow man I didn’t
think I was going to deploy you know this fast especially you know everybody tells you in the National Guard like oh they don’t deploy they don’t do anything
and that was so totally uh Against the Grain and again it happens so what year
was that that was in 2008 that I yeah I finished high school I graduated May of
08 and then by I want to say it was like a week or two weeks before Thanksgiving
of 08 I was in Iraq I remember eating Thanksgiving dinner by myself in a
foreign country and I was just like shell-shocked pretty much so so yeah
back back in uh 2008 wow man cool cool so yeah yeah keep
going with this so I’m curious like how the yeah how kind of carrying me through the being in the forces and then would
you start kind of getting into real estate but right after the you were in got out of that we got back to my record yeah um not not quite that early but uh
yeah I’ll kind of carry on with the story but so you know I go and I do my first deployment I come back you know I
think it was late September the following year in 2009. I kind of you
know my plan was to go to college because now I I had a way to pay for for college the VA was going to help pay
some of my way and college and I just really was the first time being out on my own uh in life and I had some buddies
that moved into an apartment and I was just kind of wild for about eight or nine months you know I did a lot of partying and and
you know a lot of dumb things but you know it is what it is and I made some kind of poor financial decisions and
stuff like that so you know around early 2010 I was like oh I’m not only now have
to be a college student but I have to go to work because I’m broke and so I got a job working at Lowe’s and and then I’m
A new chapter in life
meeting the the guy who kind of got me he ended up eventually getting me into real estate so I I was always curious
about real estate in 2012 I got my real estate license and I thought I was going
to be an agent and you know go go that route and and I was kind of excited but
I was also really scared because I was broke and at that point in time you know uh my wife and I had like no money we
lived out in East Texas and she worked at a Family Dollar and I was working at like a TCBY ice cream store and and I
was a licensed agent but I was afraid to commit to being an agent because like I
don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills if I’m not you know working every day and I just didn’t understand it was
ultimately going to take to hustle and go out and build relationships and do what successful agents uh you know are
capable of and and so anyways I had my real estate license and that was 2012
and then in 2013. I love the deploying again but to Afghanistan this time and
so I go to Afghanistan and it was as well more life-changing events in my
life because you know there was some time that you know I saw just a lot of different things you know Afghanistan is
actually a really beautiful country in some places but you know it’s just overshadowed by by all the violence
there and so you know I saw a lot of things the people are incredible over there and puts a lot of things into
perspective of how fortunate and really how wealthy like even some of the
poorest people are in our country compared to people in other countries you know I I’ve seen you know people in
Afghanistan cut you know hundreds or thousands of Acres a week by hand and
you know sift out the seeds you know in a very traditional matter of like throwing the seeds up in the air the
wind blows all the you know the the husk and stuff away and the seeds just fall on the ground and they bag the seeds up
and then take them to go grind them and that’s pretty primitive if you if you think about it and you know I saw
probably an 80 year old woman walking across you know pretty much a an open
Barren land carrying you know five gallon jugs of water on her on her
shoulders and I’m just thinking like man these people really still live in you know the way
they did in biblical times like nothing has changed for the most part and so that kind of starts building some
perspective and really it was on that deployment where I had a lieutenant who
he was with us and you know some of my some my other leadership they were like hey yeah uh Corey Vines he uh he’s
making 30 40 50 Grand a month and I was like no way like that does not happen
there’s there’s just no way he’s doing that and they’re like yeah go talk to him and uh I go talk to him like Hey sir
you know some of the other guys are saying that you’re making 30 40 50 Grand a month and frankly I just don’t believe
it
like he’s super humble about it and so we started talking and he was like well
you have your real estate license right and I was like yeah I do and he was like man when we get home from Afghanistan
you should come work for the company that that I’m working with and I’m not going to name their name but they’re a
pretty pretty large uh National Wholesale Company and they’ve got offices everywhere but the one that I
was working out of uh eventually was in Dallas and so anyways he uh he was
working there and ended up when we got home he took over an office in Fort Worth and and so I went to go work for
that company and and it’s just straight hustle and grind man this is back in you
know I got home Valentine’s Day of 2014 and I think I went to work for them in
like March or April of 2014. and so like basically you show up and they kind of
hold on I only got later up but I want to hear it but uh and we can cut this but was it new Western no it was it was Nick oh what’s that or net worth Realty
oh net worth okay gotcha I knew the guys in Dallas Fort Worth and and uh they did they were oh shoot I just lost the name
new yeah I knew the new Western guys but yeah I didn’t know the name keep going though all right yeah yeah but yeah basically working for those guys we can
cut that if you want yeah it’s all good so anyways I started working at the Dallas office and my buddy uh he went
over to basically be the manager for the Fort Worth branch and then he ultimately
ended up going from Fort Worth to opening his own I guess franchise or
office in San Diego so anyways I I was kind of exposed to wholesaling in in
that manner on a very large corporate scale and yeah at the end of the day you
know I said earlier I was a small town kid and it grew up in a town of like 700
people and a real small school and just being in Dallas and being in that kind of environment for the first time in my
life was very fast fast-paced and the culture was a lot different you know
just for me you know like I said I was just a simple small town kid and I really didn’t really didn’t have the
mindset back then to really understand like how Monumental of an opportunity opportunity it was and ultimately I was
in the hiring process for for a firefighting position in Mesquite Texas and I thought I’d gotten a job so like
the day of the final interview I’d gone into the office there and I told him I was like hey I don’t know if I’m a good
fit to work with you guys or not um I think I’m just gonna leave the office and and just cut ties with you
guys so I did and I was kind of thinking I was going to be a firefighter and all of a sudden the job was down between me
and one other guy for the firefighting position and they hired somebody else and I was like dang now I don’t have a
Overcoming tough situations
job and I don’t have any good prospects and so I went to work for a construction company doing commercial construction
and it was kind of tough because kind of in that same time frame I was still in
the Army National Guard so I was doing a lot of my you know military commitment on the weekends and I entered into this
competition called the NCO or non-commissioned officer of the year competition so basically just every
month it’s this big competition and there’s all these events and you’ll go Rook March you know eight to 12 miles
you’ll go and and do runs you’ll do these obstacle courses you’ll take weapons apart put them together so you
can do that in the fastest there’s you know oral boards where you’re gonna sit before a bunch of you know first
sergeants and sergeants major and uh they’re basically it’s just like a big interview and they’re gonna Grill you
and you’re gonna mess up and anyways it’s like month after month of doing that and I want to say it was like a
three or four month process well I I made it to the state level of
competition which in the state of Texas it’s like 20 at the time it was like 20 000 you know service members in the
National Guard and that also included the National Guard and so I ended up finishing second out of you know
everybody in the state which is a cool accomplishment but I was like I was really defeated because I I made some
mental mistakes that cost me and I should have won and um so I was kind of like I was not in a good place like
mentally for a little bit and then like right after that happened I ended up just all the you know the wear and tear
and The Rook marching and the high impact of carrying that you know the heavy pack on your back I ended up
herniating a couple of discs in my lower back and so like I was super depressed and I just didn’t know what I was going
to do and I was working that construction job and you know there were days that I couldn’t even move by the time I would
get home my body hurts so bad and a lot of it just had to do with my my lower back being in so much pain so you know
fast forward a little bit uh that company I really liked that you know I like the people in that company but it
was a small commercial construction company and like there was going to be room for advancement if I would have
stayed there would be times where there were you know money issues and we we took on a couple bad jobs and it looked
as if they were going to close the company down and so I I got kind of nervous and we just ended up saving for
three or four months in a row and we just said hey we’re gonna move somewhere different and we had some family in
Springfield Missouri area but we’re also looking at call we love going out to the mountains and
and you know fly fishing and just kind of being outdoors so we went to Colorado and it was just as expensive as Dallas
and it just didn’t feel right and so we said well let’s just move to Springfield Missouri and we did that in 2016 and
then 2017 I deployed again for a third time so I was still in the Texas
National Guard but I was traveling from Springfield Missouri back to the Dallas
Fort Worth area uh every month and ended up going to Africa this time so we went
to Djibouti Africa which controls a pretty important port you know on the Eastern uh Horn of Africa and I was
Getting into Real Estate
fortunate because I got to spend a month in Uganda kind of training some Ugandan soldiers which is really an incredible
experience but that whole year I’m kind of going into that deployment I was just real tired and I was like I don’t know
you know I was questioning God I was like God why why am I deploying just real tired I just wanted to be home with
family and so I was kind of bitter about it and I wasn’t really in a good mindset and I’ve made a goal to read more books
and one of the books that I I downloaded on my audible was Rich Dad Poor Dad well
I hadn’t read it at all during the train up and then you know of course flying overseas you have like a 17 to 20 hour
flight and I said well I’m just going to listen to this book on the way there and I’m pretty sure I finished the book by
the time we made it to Germany or yeah I think by the time we made it to Germany for our our stop overseas and I said to
myself I said wow I said I haven’t really been listening to what God has been trying to tell me but now I know
why I’m on why why I’m coming on this deployment because ultimately I was I was a photographer kind of in my you
know in between that job and everything else I was just kind of really making money as a side hustle with photography
and I and I enjoyed it but I I said man I can’t earn a really sustainable living just doing that without you know
seriously growing and really marketing myself just a ton more so I listened to that book and I said said okay I just
need to find a way to get back into real estate so that whole year I was gone I
probably listened to 400 hours of Bigger Pockets episodes at least and then I was
listening to other you know real estate investing podcasts and I was listening to financial type podcasts I was just
really really big into it I was downloading a bunch of books you know I know Brandon Turner has the book on
rental property investing in Iran and like how to be a landlord and I talked
to my wife and I said hey I think instead of us buying a house because we had just gotten pre-approved to buy a
home I said I think we should buy a duplex nice work so you got her bought in got
to read the book yep that’s D is getting the buy-in from the partner yeah and I think one of the biggest things is that
she’s been very gracious to always follow my lead and that’s a hard thing
to do and and it’s something I don’t see as common today just where traditional
marriage is you know a 50 50 partnership right but it she has always allowed me
the flexibility to take these ideas and just run with them so we end up closing on our first duplex probably a month and
a half before I got home from that deployment so you know she was tasked with all the you know getting it ready
and getting floors laid in and painting it and we had a tenant on the other side and kind of you know just doing all the
all these things that you would do as a first-time investor and so we lived in in that and before I got
home I had met who I had thought was wholesaling at the time because you know after
everything I was like well I think I want to try wholesale you and anyways I messaged him and uh his name is Andrew
Newland he’s actually a premier member and so I messaged him and he’s told me
that he said yeah we’ll grab coffee and then he just kind of blew me off and whenever I got home I hit him up again I
said hey man let’s go have coffee and he didn’t respond to me and I I hit him again and I said hey let’s go get coffee
and he finally he said he said okay we’ll go grab coffee and and so I sat with him and didn’t really understand at
the point that he was going to be interviewing me but you know he just talked to me and you know I went home and you know he was like well what are
you doing and I was like well I hand wrote 150 letters that I sent out he’s like really
he’s like good on you man he’s like well what list did you target I’m like I don’t know man I’ve just uh I found some
absentee owners and I just like sent them some mail and he’s like oh so you don’t really have a plan of attack on
it not a clue man I’m just trying to do what everybody says to do and so so you
know it was like a day or two later he actually called me up and he’s like hey man what would you say if I offered you
a position to come work for us and I said I’d be interested you know just I need to figure out if it’s you know the
right fit and you know I’d love to meet up with you and your business partner again and see you know really what it
looks like and and yeah I mean I don’t have anything to lose and I had saved up a bunch of money and due to house
hacking now like I had a pretty low cost of living and so I figured I was like
well if I’m going to do it like there’s no better time than now to take on you know hey you know commission type
position so I met with them and we all mutually agreed that I was gonna go work
for them in Springfield Missouri and I came on as their Acquisitions guy and so they put me through all the sales
training you know I did the John Martinez sales training and you know we’re a small team at the at that point
in time there were I think four of us or three of us now there were four of us there was the two owners and then there
was a lead manager and then there was me and so I was going out and doing a lot of um
you know a lot of the appointments and stuff wow so they were set up okay so you said they’re two owners how do they
work did they do acquisition and then dispositions or how do they split up their company yeah so at that point in
time Andrew was doing a lot of the acquisition side of things and his partner at the time they’re no longer
together but his partner at the time was doing a lot of the project management he was also doing you know a lot of the
dispositions and then the girl there uh that they had she was basically just the lead manager and it really gave me a
unique opportunity to look into their business and again they were both uh and
Andrew is still a premier a collective genius Premier member and so it really gave me an opportunity to look in their
business and say understand every position within the company and at one point in time I think they had fired the
girl who was the lead manager and they they told me they said they took me out
to dinner one evening they said hey we need you to start uh doing some leap management right now until we can get
somebody else hired and so all of a sudden I become you know lead manager on Fielding calls I’m
scheduling my own appointments I’m going on appointments I’m getting deals locked up I’m doing everything shy of
dispositions for the most part and then even then I would meet to do some dyspo
just depending but uh for the most part that was handled you know by uh by
Andrew and his partner so Andrew really kind of took on that the operations uh
role and and marketing role in the company and and I was just pretty much doing most all acquisitions and and then
Balancing multiple jobs while learning about Real Estate
his partner was doing the you know the project management and this post stuff so we had a pretty good system going for
a small team but now I think I think his team has built out to like 20 people but
they also do have another location I think they invest in Lubbock they have a partner in Lubbock and then also you
know primarily in Springfield and around that area so so yeah it gave me a unique perspective to be able to see how a you
know how a professional wholesale company should operate even on a smaller level so wow so that’s cool so I love it
you because we talk a lot about like how do you hey how do you get into real estate but how do you like work jobs or
get experiences through where you can get the experience and not necessarily have to do all the risk yourself and go
start your own company or or people do sometimes people do it have a W-2 job and do a side Hustle but also love the
people that like find certain roles and certain jobs where they like learn the skills while they’re getting paid and
then they’re literally learning the skills of how to do it so you you did several things you worked for a wholesaling company well multiple ones
you work for one in Texas then you also started to work construction and then it sounds like then you went to another one that was a little bit more kind of a
smaller not a well there’s a big company now but like a smaller more smaller size company to where you were you were doing
Acquisitions you got to do lead management so you you kind of had all the tools huh you were really learning the whole the whole process yeah and so
you know kind of fast forward I kind of sensed that there was a little bit of I
don’t want to call it hostility but there I could feel that there was tension within the company and that
tension kind of put some pressure on me and then you know really one of the biggest factors I left is kind of get a
little vulnerable again but while I was gone on that last deployment my wife started having a lot of Health issues
really yeah she was having and she had a lot of stress on her man she was a full-time college student she was
working full-time for another company and then you know she was running the house and and uh you know taking care of
our animals and she was just really busy and had a lot on her plate and she she
started having issues where she would start like passing out and stuff like that and I kind of got scared and I
didn’t know if I was going to have to come home early but you know she was having these issues and and just like
low blood pressure at times and anyways we didn’t really know what was going on
but come to find out she had actually gone into menopause like super early I
think she was 26 25 26 and she was pre or she was already in menopause at that
age and which is super rare and along with the the menopause she was diagnosed with pre uh premature ovarian failure so
basically what that meant was that you know it was going to be a challenge to
try to have children so these were a lot of things that we were figuring out after I had gotten home and so we
started looking at really what’s the what’s the best way if we want to start a family and we decided that uh you know
like really our our one of our only options was to do IVF or in vitro fertilization but at that point it was
it was so expensive we had gone to a clinic in St Louis at the time and it
was like I don’t know it was going to be like 30 or 35 000 at and you know of
course they had that you know they’ve got loans and stuff that you can do but it’s still a big commitment you know and
it’s not like I had a ton of money to go and say well we’re just going to throw 35 Grand at this and yeah and so the you
know us wanting to do the the IVF process and then also that I had felt while I was at at that
come and not it wasn’t from Andrew like I wasn’t getting any pressure from Andrew at all
um but a lot of that it just weighed on me and I said I I just asked Ashley I
said well what do you think if I join active you know because I was still in the National Guard and so she said
well yeah let’s do it if that’s going to help us get this procedure done so in
September of 2019 I joined active duty Army and we had to move our life again
so you know we kept our duplex there I had to leave um I believe that Andrew’s company and I
was pretty sad because ultimately it gave me a lot of flexibility in my life and I loved the culture for the most
part there and Andrew was somebody even today who’s like pretty instrumental in what it is that uh that we do and you
know I feel stuck on I can always go to him and uh you know talk to him and get his
his outlook on stuff so anyways I we ended up moving to Clarksville Tennessee in 2019 and immediately I got deployed
again and I’m I was fortunate that it wasn’t overseas my unit got sent to the
southern Border in Texas so I spent some time in Zapata Texas which is outside of
Laredo and yep we basically ran operations down there you know for the
uh we we just made operations down there to help secure the border so there was a chance that I was going to get to come
home a little early and all of a sudden you know covid become a thing and I
literally got home March 15th and that’s kind of the day that like the world shut down and so I
flew home and uh and I knew at that point that I’d have a really good opportunity because I was going to be in
charge of the people who stayed back who didn’t go uh to the border which was like 15 people so I knew I was gonna
have a really good opportunity that if I wanted to I could start my business so the whole time I was at the Border in my
spare time I was you know creating llc’s and I was I was Consulting people about
how to to best you know approach my company and how I was going to Market and how I was going to do these things
and where to pull a list from and and all these different things right how to skip Trace some stuff so ultimately I
Taking risks and exploring new opportunities
came back and I kind of had this plan in place and all of a sudden covet hit something like man I don’t even know if
I’m going to be able to to be successful with my business and but I said I’m
going to try it and you know I didn’t have a ton of extra money but I’ll Max this credit card out and it’s it’s the
worst thing that happens is i max out 8 500 then I know I’ve got a job that I can pay and on top of that we had just
taken that loan you know for the IVF procedure and ultimately that procedure failed so now we have this debt
debt you know close to thirty thousand dollars and you know it’s at like a 22
interest rate and just crazy right so I was really at the point I said I need to
try to do some wholesale deals to get some extra income into our house
so but I so I was committed enough where I said okay I’ll max out my credit card if that’s what I have to do and so
um I started real early we started with text blasting and you know I think in
total between text blasting and we did a lot of driving for dollars that’s where a lot of our first deals came from and I
want to say the first deal that we got we wholesold and made sixty five hundred
dollars but I spent like spent like forty two hundred dollars in marketing and texting and all these other things
right so so our net basically on that was like 2500 bucks or 20 you know two
thousand bucks it wasn’t a whole lot of money but we knew that we could we had proof of concept right and I remember
getting that first check and even though it was not a huge amount of money I I
cried like we stepped out of the title company I just was solving because it was there was a lot of emotions that
just kind of come to you know ahead and I I was I was grateful and I just said
well I’ve got what it takes to do induce right you know follow on to our next deal we were just driving for dollars
and I found this property and I called the guy and he’s like I don’t think the house is worth anything but if you want
to buy it for the price of the land you can and I asked what do you think would be a fair price for the land and he said
I don’t know maybe 20 or 25 000 and and um so anyways I put it under contract
for twenty four thousand dollars after uh kind of going back and forth with him and I walked into the house I said hey
would you mind if I walked in the house he’s like no and I realized that the house was actually in a really good spot between here and Nashville where home
prices were just skyrocketing and then also the house is really in pretty good condition you know a few minor or a few
major things but like you know a new roof and and some other things and so I said well I was really confident that I
could wholesale the more I started looking at it the more I said man I bet I could wholesale
this thing for a hundred thousand dollars if I wanted to and you know I had a couple of other companies come out
and look at it because I thought I was just getting like wholesale it to like another big big company and they like
low balled me really bad and then I had another guy who was an investor here uh in Clarksville he was also in the Army
and I said hey man you know you’ve been investing a little bit longer than I have would you want to come walk this
First check from real estate
deal and just tell me what you think so we walked the deal and by the time we get done he was like well how much do
you want for this and I really had no intention of selling him the property I really just wanted to get his feedback and he said he said what do you want for
it and said well would you do 85 000 and he said he said yes and I was like crap
I should I should have put it out for her so you know our second deal you know netted us like 62 000 and that really
kind of propelled us into being able to do more marketing and you know just try things and figure out what we were good
at in you know our first year I think we closed seven deals and and it grossed
like a hundred and four thousand dollars and I was like holy crap we’re rich you know I just had really no sense of really how
big it could be and then I was still in the Army full time so like I was doing this as basically a side hustle and and
then I I said well if I want to be really successful at this I don’t know that I can split my time between the
Army and doing this so I just uh I started to think like what would it look
like if I got out of the army and I lost my income because I was making about two thousand dollars a month to it was
pretty decent you know for a W-2 job and I said well how do I replace that and I said well now that I’ve got a little
cash maybe I I stop uh wholesaling and I start keeping something and so I kept I
think four properties in 2021 and you know I still did some wholesale deals but I burned those properties and I was
able to buy them really cheap and you know most of them are you know refinanced now and I was able to pull a
wholesale fee basically out of the backside of it and then I think their leverage point is only you know 50 of
arv even right now so you know the cash flow super well you know I’m not over
leveraged on any of them and I was still able to to bur them and pull out some money um to pay myself so really uh really a
great experience and it taught me a lot about managing projects what it was going to really take you know and it
Managing a team
helped me button up my you know whenever I went into a house for a wholesale what it was going to cost to truly fix
something which I think is a really underrated skill for a lot of of wholesalers who just don’t know what
things are going to cost so it gave me a really good opportunity to learn just the craft of investing in
real estate in general man that’s good stuff yeah I love how you you got into it started taking down deals I mean
you’re like you just said when you got into like how you like that first check I think there’s a lot of people could relate to that like your back a little
bit was against the wall right you’re like hey I kind of went all in I went all into my credit card I already had
you already had some other debt and you’re just and you were coming in upright on covet and a lot of uncertainty in the world at that time
right but you’re just you went forward I mean what gave you the confidence to just go forward and pull the trigger
yeah yeah the biggest thing I would say is that I knew I had the ability to go
into a house and be a high functioning individual with sales on the sell side
so I knew based on my experience with you know working uh for Andrew’s company
that I could go in and I was more than capable of going and have those sales conversations and close deals I also was
very confident because I had the experience of answering phones and scheduling appointments as well of doing
those same things so it wasn’t anything that that I hadn’t done before so I knew
that as long as I could Market correctly and I could go out and just hustle
um I was confident in my skill set the rest of the way to be able to go out and you know put deals under contract and
negotiate good prices on them and so for me it was like I just didn’t feel like there was any other option at that point
like I I had to succeed and that’s kind of goes back to a lot of my military career you’re like I’ve never looked at
my military career and been like oh I can’t do this I’ve always gone into it with like hey this is a no fail
situation so I I have to be able to to go into that situation and just like just be successful or really just like
failure is just not being an option so it was one of those things I just knew my skill set matched up well and I had
done it before I just hadn’t done it for myself self so that’s kind of what really propelled me into you know 2020
2021 and then you know started doing some flips ultimately found my way into
you know into the the collective genius select group that where I met you guys at and you know that’s even helped our
business tremendously since uh since joining last May so we did pretty decent
last year I think we our goal was to do 35 deals and relatively in our Market I
think our county has 188 ish and I really only try to run
appointments within 35 to 40 minutes of my house that may change once I get some more people on the team but for me to be
as efficient with my time I know really what my buy box is and I know how far I
need to go out so with that being said you know we felt a little short of our goal last year I think we ended up doing
20 deals but every year we’ve been in business we’ve almost doubled in our gross revenue and so really this year my
goal is to get to 40 deals and that’s bigger than last year’s goal but things that have changed as we hired a lead
manager so she uh you know CG like I did you know I was getting to a point where I was doing everything with uh with our
income as far as operating expenses and you know flipping houses and so like really eight into our operating expenses
and our inbound cash flow well I you know went and opened several helocs and
now I’ve got the flexibility to work projects out of those helocs turn around and either sell sell them or refinance
them and pay pay that HELOC back down and that’s something that I wouldn’t have known really to pursue without the
community of the collective genius so there’s a there’s a ton of things that you know I’ve learned and I feel like
we’re really just set up this year to Skyrocket and I’m super excited I’m
learning how to grow a team and be be a leader outside of the army which is a different because being a leader in the
Army is a little bit different than being a leader leader young organization so those are things that I’m really focused on
growing the team uh you know just all these things that a healthy professional mature business you know needs to do and
kind of where everybody strives to be and get to so cool cool so yeah to kind of kind of
maybe wrap up and kind of Go full circle on this if you talked about your journey how you got there hey how you diff work
different jobs to kind of get some of the experience and get kind of the Reps while you’re working for other people then you had a chance to go do it
yourself and then you surrounded yourself with masterminds other people who knew way more than you so always always leveraging your resources and
other people but what do you what would you say today so today as you kind of move forward knowing all the things you
went through kind of growing up like how does that kind of shape how you how you really show up every day and really how
you probably take resilience into into real estate every day yeah I look at it this way right because there’s a ton of
Resilience, quitting is easy, and changing your mindset
challenges on a daily basis with any business right but especially this one because you’re not only trying to solve
the problems within your organization but when you’re working with home sellers you’re really trying to help solve you know help them solve their
problems too and so I think uh one of the things I’ve really learned and
relied on is one just being a complex Problem Solver but also even past that I
would just say having having a never quit attitude like quitting is so easy and it crosses my mind right I know it
crosses everybody’s mind but at the end of the day it’s like quitting is easy and I look at it I’m like just where we
are you know or over our short uh almost three year period is like would would me
in 2020 would I be proud to be in the position I am today or would would
quitting be the better option what would I think of myself if I made it this far really just taking massive consistent
action and I think a lot of times I have to look at it and just say hey it’s not about the destination but it’s more
about the Journey of um of the things that I have to do to get there and and I know that as long as
I do the same amount of consistent action that has got me to this point
um you know that some of the things are going to change uh along the way but as long as I’m taking action I’m consistent
I’m going to continue to blow past these these targets that I’ve I’ve got and it
may not seem like it they’re attainable right now but I mean if you do something for 10 years man you can be an expert in
that industry in 10 years time so it’s just about getting to a point where you
can finally be an expert and then still evolving and continuing and continuing to grow and understanding that like hey
I’m just not going to quit and being uh you know being relentless in that Pursuit man that’s good stuff I think
it’s it’s inspirational I think it’s for anybody to hear that whether they are like want to get started in real estate
and haven’t started or whether they’re maybe in the middle of it or maybe they’re like struggling right now because of what’s uh because of what’s
Tips on leveraging resources for success
happening with interest rates and maybe in the market and they’re thinking hey maybe maybe I should get this up but I think you’re like you’re resilience and
your story should be inspiration for those people thanks really cool snuff Anthony thank you
yeah man well that’s yeah we’ll kind of wrap it up any other kind of thoughts we typically go about an hour man but
you’ve been giving us really really good perspective and just just a neat story anything else you would kind of want to share with people about yeah about any
of the anything you want to add to all that yeah I mean I think to to sum it up
is like if you’re interested in in what it takes to to you know do wholesale and there’s a ton of there’s a ton of
resources out there a ton of free resources I would just say like latch onto the one or two things that uh that
you can uh focus on and really utilize and and just don’t try to reach for too
many things focus on one to two things and be good at least one to two things and and just know that uh there’s plenty
of people out there who will help you and maybe you know you’re not going to be able to start your own your own
wholesale company maybe you can but a good you know a good entry point is to
find somebody doing deals and see what they need and help them do deals you
know and that’s a really good entry point and it’s a really good way to learn and it’s a really good way to
leverage somebody else’s experience for your time which is always going to be the biggest struggle is balancing your
time versus experience so if you can leverage uh you know somebody else else
out but you’re also benefiting them that’s a really really great way to get into the business in general so past
that you know I’ve got a point to speak at you know five uh local real estate
investing groups I’ve already got one on the board and then another goal was to do 10 podcasts so if anybody else sees
this and they want to connect and they have a podcast I’d love to hop on their
Let’s connect!
podcast as well so this is one out of ten so I’ve got nine more that I want to
knock out this year so that is something that I’m looking to do I’m trying to make a better point to be more
consistent on social media so you can follow me at Anthony Warren on Facebook or uh on Instagram I’ve got a handle I
think it’s uh doors underscore the number two underscore freedom and uh you
can connect with me on there I need to do better about posting on on it’s just uh you know there’s only so
many hours in the day but uh yeah I’m gonna make it a bigger Point moving forward to really step up my my presence
and I really want to help people and and grow people because I I just see so much value and freedom you know the
possibility of having you know Financial Freedom and if I can do it and I can beat a lot of odds statistics that I
face in my life because statistically based on a lot of my experiences I should and not to sound morbid I should
be dead or in prison and that’s just like a stat you know based on a lot of people who enter you know you know a
state uh program like foster care or whatever and then also all the deployments and all these things opposed
to like I’m fighting against a lot of odds and so if I can do it anybody can
do it it just it takes some grit it takes being determined and again just not quitting but I love to talk to
people and so if somebody wants to reach out and connect like feel free I’d love to take that time and maybe you can help
me out with something or maybe I can help you get started whatever that looks like I’m I’m happy to connect with
people man that’s good stuff Anthony I was about to ask where people can find you so thanks for answering that and um
yeah man I hope I hope you inspire other people too that maybe it had a similar situation or maybe they’re in a similar
situation listening to a podcast and can get inspiration to to push through and and as you said like a lot of reasons
why a lot of ton of reasons why you shouldn’t be where you’re at today but you’ve worked through those persevered and it’s cool stuff man I think it’s
inspired awesome well I appreciate that again thank you guys so much for
allowing me to share my story and kind of where I started out and and where I’m
I’m at today and and again you know I don’t never know that I’ll get to this
this ultimate goal of success but I I will if I just keep working right so I don’t know what what my ultimate
definition is um I think it’s just always going to be this moving Target but like Define what that looks like for you and just enjoy
the process you know so but yeah I appreciate you you guys uh have me on and I’m super excited for the
opportunity yeah very welcome we appreciate you coming on and uh yeah that’s a great little tidbit a little
bit advice for people to take that next step and go for it love it well cool Anthony thanks for coming on yep
absolutely as you may have learned by tuning in to this episode of Gregor sense the easiest way to make real estate investing hard is by going at it
alone so as you continue learning and seeking knowledge of the industry I want to encourage you to build relationships
with other professionals who are passionate about real estate whether that’s an agent a business owner or a
managing investor like myself there are Pros that want to see you succeed and are willing to help you by sharing their
experience you can always reach me by visiting caseygregerson.com and scheduling a call I look forward to
connecting with you and continuing to share my experience with you here on Gregor since mobile until next time I’m Casey Gregerson thanks for tuning in
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