37: Creative Real Estate Investing with Joe Bodek

SaCola (00:00:00) - Welcome to Work it, Live it, Own it!, a show that explores how to upgrade your lifestyle through life lessons, real estate and entrepreneurship. Here's your hostess SaCola Lehr. Hello everyone! Have you ever thought about all the different ways that you could generate revenue when it comes to real estate? And I'm not just talking about the typical buying and selling pieces of real estate. Today we're joined by a special guest, Joe Bodek, and his real estate journey stems all the way back to 1971. Now Joe and his partner Wallace Zhou, they're accomplished real estate investors and mentors. Now your portfolio, Joe, is pretty impressive. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for coming on and joining the work at Livonia Community today. Welcome.

Joe (00:00:56) - Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me.

SaCola (00:00:59) - Thank you. Now, do you want to explain a little bit more about your real estate journey? Because I read your bio is pretty impressive. You've managed over 10,000 homes.

Joe (00:01:10) - Well family built over 10,000 homes.

SaCola (00:01:12) - All your family has built over 10,000 homes.

SaCola (00:01:15) - Okay, so give us a little background in story about how you even got into the real estate journey and what led you into what you call real estate creative real estate strategies.

Joe (00:01:28) - Okay. Be happy to do that. SaCola. Well, I'm not the typical, uh, story that you see all the time. Um, uh, you know, I watched that TV at 3:00 in the morning, and the infomercial came on, and I bought the course, and the rest is history. Uh, that wasn't me. I'm the direct opposite. I'm actually third generation. My grandfather was a builder. Developer. My dad was one of the biggest, uh, single builder, single family homes out there in the in the 50s, 60s and 70s. So I'm third generation. As a matter of fact, if any of you out there live in or know what a split level home is that my dad's a guy who made him famous. He built thousands and thousands of them. And at any rate, I went into what most people associate with, uh, traditional real estate.

Joe (00:02:19) - Um, I, we had we built apartments, so I ran about 3000 apartments. I developed ground. My dad, he he was my first mentor. He taught me how to build houses and develop ground and all that stuff. And that's the traditional type of real estate. You know, you go to the bank, you buy the house, uh, you fix it up, you rent it out, and then 30 years later, you sell it and you make your, uh, you make your equity, uh, build out of it. That's creative real estate. But, uh, you were talking about a minute ago, SaCola. Well, what happened was, you know, I worked with them for about 20, 25 years, and he decided he wanted to retire, so he. So everything got sold off, and he moved on down to, uh, to, uh, Fisher Island down in Florida. And, um, I decided I didn't want to continue to build homes, uh, for a lot of reasons.

Joe (00:03:06) - The banks were getting a little iffy at the time, and, uh, they were calling loans, and I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be borrowing money from banks and being in in debt and having them, giving them the ability to call those loans and and make me poor. So, uh, I won't go into the whole thing of how it came about. But to make a long story short, I found some people that were doing quote unquote, creative real estate. Okay. Uh, which is a direct opposite of traditional real estate. And I started to learn how to do it. Um, I didn't think it would work, to be perfectly honest with you, because of my background in traditional real estate. But I did get involved. And 30 days from the day that I made my first offer, um, doing it creatively, something called a lease option. Uh, I wound up with a $10,000 check in my hand. I said, well, this obviously works okay.

Joe (00:03:57) - From that point on. I work with creative real estate methodologies. Uh, lease options would be one wholesale and, um, uh, and, um, sandwich lease options, um, fixing flip was in there, uh, where you purchase a house, you fix it and you flip it for a profit, uh, which is probably the biggest earner in terms of dollars per deal. Um, subject to that means you're buying a property subject to the mortgage. Um, uh, let's see what else would be included in there. Wholesaling, of course. Um, learned a little bit about funding. So there's about six different processes that my partner Wallace and I, um, are very good at and that we, we teach our students. And what makes it creative is that an owner financing, which is another biggie out there. Uh, what makes it creative is the ability for you to, uh, negotiate with a seller for the best deal that you can put together in a creative manner, whereas the opposite of that is you go to the bank, you borrow the money, you give the money to the owner, you own the house.

Joe (00:05:07) - And that's that would be your traditional. So I think that's sort of explained a little bit of it to you did it.

SaCola (00:05:14) - It did. Um, I'm still used to the traditional methodologies as a real estate agent, so I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I'm familiar with some of the terms fix and flip, of course, and wholesaling. And there are different variations of lease options. But we're going to delve into this a little bit more, if you don't mind, Joe, because I have listeners who want to branch into real estate investing. One of my friends, who was an entrepreneur in London, met with a lady in the lady, bought a property investment property over lunch and came back and said, oh, I just bought an investment property. And she was like, look, I'm over here in London. But one day, what if I want to buy an investment property in the United States? So we're going to break this down for the listeners today. Now, you've also mentioned a term that I'm not even familiar with.

SaCola (00:06:08) - I've never. Before. And that is real estate transaction engineer. Joe, can you explain what does a real estate transaction engineer? What do they do?

Joe (00:06:22) - Absolutely. Um, what Wallace and I are teaching people, uh, is to become a real estate transaction engineer. And here's why. What most people that come into this business do, at least in my 50 years of experience, is they will come in normally, they'll come in wholesaling. That's where they usually begin. It's the easiest, it's the quickest. And for for our example, we use wholesaling and they'll come in and they'll be doing wholesaling. But what happens is, is that as they're getting their leads for wholesaling, you have to have an equity rich property in order to do that deal. That's the most important thing. Okay. And if it's not equity, equity rich, or there's not enough equity in the property to make it work as a wholesale, this option, what most investors do, including myself before I figured this out, we throw that lead in the trash.

Joe (00:07:16) - Made no sense. Well, one day I'm sitting here and I'm doing a bunch of wholesale deals, and I happen to look at my trash can, a pile next to my trash can, cause I never threw my needs away. But I kept him near the trash can. And I saw the pilot was about that big. And I said, wait a minute. Something's wrong here, okay? I'm throwing all this money in the trash can simply because I can only do wholesaling. Maybe we can do something different with those. So what I did was I started to investigate, fix and flip owner financing, all the things that I mentioned a little earlier. And I found that, yes, indeed, I could go. I had willing sellers. They just didn't want to take my low offer or they or there wasn't enough equity in the property to do a wholesale deal, but they wanted to move the property. So I would come back with them, uh, with owner financing or uh, subject to or lease option or whatever it was.

Joe (00:08:11) - And now I'm going to end up taking a bunch of those dead leads and turning them into cash deals. So a transaction engineer, the definition of a transaction engineer is, uh, an investor that can do more than one niche. That's what we consider a transaction engineer. Now, we teach them six and seven niches that they can do that we know how to do. But as long as they can do more than one, we consider them to be transaction engineers. So that's what that is.

SaCola (00:08:41) - Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:08:42) - Now, how much cash.

SaCola (00:08:44) - Flow does a transaction engineer need to start off with?

Joe (00:08:50) - Well, here's the beauty of the whole thing. When you're working in creative real estate. Uh uh, upfront money is not necessary in many, many, many, many of the cases. Uh, in wholesaling, we never use upfront money and lease options. We never use upfront money. Uh, I've been doing I've done hundreds of these option deals over the, over the past 30 years or so. I've never given anybody any money up front because in creative real estate, what most people are looking for is to get out from under a problem.

Joe (00:09:23) - They don't they're not worried about cash. For example, they bought another home. They can't get rid of this old one. They're paying two mortgages. It's choking them to death. They're more than happy to say, please take this house, even if there's equity in it. Take the house. I can't afford both mortgages. It's going to bankrupt. So they don't want money up front. And there's many other examples of why they wouldn't wouldn't want money up front, because what they're trying to do is take care. They're trying to get debt relief. They're trying to get out from under a problem. So it's very rare that you have to give money up front, uh, when you do have to give money up front, like, for example, if you're doing a owner financing and many owner financing deals, you'll find there's some cash that does change hands between buyer and seller, but it's very, very minimal. It's not like you have to come up with 100,000. You probably to get away with it for 5 or $10,000 as a goodwill gesture.

Joe (00:10:18) - So the answer to the question is, is that to do creative real estate, in many instances, you need no cash and credit to get the deal done. And in in a few, such as owner financing, you might come up with a little bit of money, but most of the people that I've dealt with over the years never asked me for any money. They were looking for debt relief. It's a different kind of a market than realtors deal with.

Speaker 3 (00:10:43) - Okay.

SaCola (00:10:44) - So what about those who may question the legitimacy of real estate transaction engineer from a legal and ethical standpoint, can you shed some light on the legitimacy of real estate transaction engineer, and are there any ethical considerations that may come with that role? Because, you know, with realtors, we're held up to a standard. If you're considered or call it a realtor, you have to go through a code of ethics course. Can you shed some light on that standpoint?

Joe (00:11:15) - Sure. Um, I would I would say that there's some shady people out there.

Joe (00:11:21) - I'm quite sure. Okay. Um, when we do a deal, we're more than happy to take it to your attorney. We don't have a problem with that. Okay? Um, we're not under a code of ethics as a realtor would be when they go to work as a realtor. Um, for us to cheat somebody. Word travels fast in this day and age, you're not going to last very long. It'll be a day or two, and they. Gotcha. Okay, so, um, that in and of itself, uh, keeps those of us that are saying that, you know, understand you can't with the internet, you just can't go ripping off people. Um, we don't have a problem with that. Are you going to find some people out there that will do it? Yeah. The cure for anybody listening. If you get into a creative real estate deal, go get your attorney. There's if you're if the person you're dealing with says, oh, no, you can't go to an attorney, you go walk away and go somewhere else, right? Uh, so there's no problem in checking what we're doing now.

Joe (00:12:21) - The only caveat I would give to that would be go to a real estate attorney. Somebody that deals with investors, knows how investors work now. And I was a realtor, okay? I trained realtors at one time. Okay. And, you know, we're not trained in creative real estate. That's just not what we're trained in. Realtors a salespeople that are very good at it. Okay. And, you know, they take it to the house to do paperwork to answer your questions. They get your financing. That's their job, okay? They're not trained in the kind of work that we do. Okay? So don't go to a realtor and say, can you help me out on this? Create a real estate deal, because they probably won't know what you're talking about, not because they're dumb or anything. They just aren't trained in doing it. Okay, go to a real estate attorney that deals with investors. I told you, if they do deal with investors, yes I do. Okay.

Joe (00:13:13) - And then whatever kind of deal you're doing, well, you're familiar with the lease option. Yes, I am okay. And that way you can make sure everything's going to be fine. On the whole I will say so. I haven't run into many people in the business like I am that deliberately cheat. I have run into those that don't know what they're doing and I've created problems. Okay? They didn't mean to do it. They just didn't know what they're doing. There's a lot of people out there that. So I don't think I haven't run into a big problem with, uh, uh, people cheating people on purpose. I'll put it to you that way.

SaCola (00:13:48) - Okay. So what? That. Okay. You brought up a great point, a few great points, actually. Have your real estate attorney to review the paperwork, first of all, for legitimacy and ethical purposes. And so if there are any red flags that may come up, a real estate attorney will identify those. But how can you identify someone who may not know what they're doing? How can you connect with people who actually know what they're doing versus those who don't?

Joe (00:14:19) - Uh, well, if you're talking, are you talking about, uh, real estate people like myself, how do you identify ones that know what they're doing? Well, what I always do, okay.

Joe (00:14:29) - When I'm talking, because we get people that want a joint venture, deals and stuff like that, we just go back to their history and, you know, show me some deals. Let me see what you've done, show me the paperwork and if they want, they we all have it. Trust me. We all save our paperwork. Okay? If I say I don't have any runaway? Okay, um, let me see the deals that you've done. So I know what you're doing. Give me some sort. Just, you know, give me a bio. I want to know who you are and what you're doing. So all you got to do, if they can't provide one, it makes sense. Walk away.

SaCola (00:15:01) - Okay, so one, have a real estate attorney in your back pocket to ask for any previous deals. Just like asking for references, right? When someone is looking for a job, check out those references. If they can't provide you with legitimate references more than one reference, I would recommend because if you think about it, when you're applying for a job, you at least have three references that they ask for and get those references.

SaCola (00:15:27) - If they only provide you with one, ask for some more. I like that, thank you so much. So say for example, Joe, let's let's do a scenario here. I'm a realtor, right? I come to you, I may say I want to get more versed and know about more creative real estate strategies or become. I guess you would call it a RETE. Not quite a REIT, but a r-e-t-e. A real estate transaction engineer. Can a real estate agent actually participate in those things? Because I know some firms are. Brokerages won't allow a realtor to do that. Is there a way for. Someone, even a real estate agent like myself, to become a real estate transaction engineer.

Speaker 3 (00:16:10) - Yeah.

Joe (00:16:11) - Well, by law, a realtor can't stop you. Now he owns his own office. If he is determined to keep you from doing this. Go find another realtor. Okay, that's what I would do. But by law, there's no way he can stop you.

Joe (00:16:24) - Okay? You are allowed to be an investor as well as a realtor. Now, the only thing you have to do as a realtor, if you're doing your own deal, you've got to identify yourself as a realtor. But I'm not acting as a realtor. I'm acting as an investor. That's what you have to tell your, uh, your buyer or your seller, whoever you're talking to. Okay, I'm a realtor. I'm not my my capacity. And this deal is not a realtor. I'm acting on my own as an investor. Okay? Now, if you have, uh, you know, brokers, and I'm not going to badmouth brokers, but I will say, you know, everybody works on commission. They're very, uh, they hover over their people, you know, they want their money. I mean, that's how I understand that I'm not badmouthing them. You know, they want their money. So many of them don't want you going out on your own to make your money.

Joe (00:17:15) - For example, my partner. Um. Um. Wallace, you'll like this if you're a real search. His first year in business. Now, remember, he came over from China, had to learn the language. I mean, you know, work menial jobs until he finally walked into real estate. Couldn't speak English. Great, but good enough to get by. He did. He did almost $200,000 in income in his first year as a realtor, and he could hardly speak English. Mm. That's a guy that applies himself, you know what I mean? Right. Right now, what he did was he he lasted almost two years as a realtor. Why? He didn't like the fact that his, his broker was taking 30% of what he was making on these deals. He didn't like it at all. Okay. And he told the broker, look, I'm making a lot here. I'll give you a little bit, but you can't have 30%. Okay? Broker said no. He left. Became a multimillionaire very shortly thereafter.

Joe (00:18:13) - Um, if your broker wants little peace and you don't feel like looking for another game, a little piece of what you're doing on the side. I wouldn't list the property with him and all that stuff, you know? I'll give you a piece of my action, whatever you're comfortable with. If he won't let you do it, he says, no, we don't allow that in this office. 1 or 2 things. You can leave the office or you can do what I did. I never told him. I did deal after deal after deal. He had no idea what I was doing. So, you know. And I didn't care if you fired me because I was making way more money working as an investor than I was as a realtor, so I just never told him and nothing never happened. I just obviously left because I was making a lot more money. So it's not against the law for you to. As a matter of fact, to be a realtor and an investor is good because you get much more credibility as a realtor.

Joe (00:19:05) - Okay? Even though it doesn't really matter if there's Realtors aren't trained in what we do just because you're a realtor, it goes right into your people's brain saying, oh yeah, he's a realtor. He must know everything. So being a realtor and an investor is a good thing, not a bad thing. Okay, but if he broke a loan, let you do it. Don't tell him. Or just go get a finance broker's out there to let you do it. Just gotta find it. Okay? Hope that answered that for you.

SaCola (00:19:30) - Yes, because I do have other realtors who listen to this podcast. And so we're always looking for ways to diversify our portfolio, to grow, to build generational wealth. And sometimes you can't always do that when there are fees, numerous fees, when you're a realtor that people don't realize. So to break down the actual transaction piece, can you elaborate for us on the different parties involved in the real estate transaction or the creative real estate strategy transaction, and how each one stands to make money in the transaction?

Joe (00:20:06) - Well, there's really only two people, okay.

Joe (00:20:08) - And most of them, right. For example, a lease option. Now a lease option. I'm going to make it real simple for you. It's it's a lease with the right to sublet. Sublet the property. That's basically what it is. You lease the property from this person and then you have the right to put a tenant buyer in the house. And that tenant buyer has the right to purchase that house. Um, whatever you agree upon, a year or two years down the road at a set price that you set up front, you know what it is. I'm sure you guys probably know how to lease a car. It's the same thing. You just plug a house in, you lease the car for you. You know, you give them X amount of dollars up front. You lease the, um, the the car, and then at the end of the lease, you can buy it or you can give it back to him. And the price that you would pay when you bought it is given to you.

Joe (00:21:01) - When you first lease the car, they're going to tell you if in three years you want to buy it, here's what it's going to cost you. Substitute a house. That's what it is in these cases. Um, and that's pretty much the same with subject to and owner financing. All of those really the only two people involved is going to be you. Well, it would be you would be three people you the seller and the buyer. And then, of course, if you have an attorney involved, okay, um, the attorney makes money if somebody's paying them, obviously, um, you're going to make money. Well, I'll give you an example. Let's say you're working with a, uh, a, um, sandwich lease option. Here's how you make money, cause everyone is different. That's why I'm trying to give you one that, uh, be a good example. Okay. Um, okay. So what happens is, is that, um, Sokolow wants to buy this house.

Joe (00:21:53) - You're going to lease option this house from me. Okay. So what I'm going to do, let's say it's $100,000. I have it under contract for $100,000 to purchase it from the owner. Okay, I bumped the price to $120,000. The house is now for sale for $120,000. Okay, so there's a $20,000 spread between what the owner is getting okay, and what the house is going to sell for. That's my money. Okay. And here's how you get it. And you're going to take what's called an option consideration. That means upfront money in a lease option. So SaCola is going to pay me, let's say $10,000 to move into the house. That's called an option consideration. That is a nonrefundable down payment. The only way she can get that back is if I can't deliver the house for some reason, then she gets that back. Okay. If she decides she doesn't want to buy it, she loses that money. It's gone. Okay? Just like when your lease a car, you can't get that upfront money back.

Joe (00:22:57) - It's gone no matter what you do. Okay, um, it will count, okay. Towards the sale price of the property. So she gets it counts for her. Okay, so now I have $10,000 of upfront money. The option consideration that comes to me, she moves in the rent to my owner is $1,000. I'm charging for $500 because I'm her landlord. Not not the owner. I'm her landlord. Okay? Because I'm subleasing it. So I'm making a $500 spread every month, okay. In rent money because she's paying me 1500 and every month I pay a thousand to the owner. So I'm making a spread of $500. Okay. I make that every month. Then at the end, let's say a year down the road, she says, I'm ready to buy. She got her financing ready. She's ready to go. Okay. When we go to settlement, I'm going to get that other 10,000, because remember we had 20. We had a $20,000 spread between what the owner signed an agreement with me for.

Joe (00:24:02) - That was 100,000. And what I signed an agreement for with SaCola, it was 20,000. I took ten up front. That other ten comes to me at settlement when they purchased the home. Okay, so there's three paydays in the sandwich lease option. Okay, it's a little confusing, but they all have different type of paydays, you know, um, a subject two, you'll make up front money like we were talking about here, but the rest of your money is going to come when the house is okay, however long that takes. Okay. Um, owner financing. Man, that could. You can do so many different things in owner financing. I'd be here all day telling you all in different combinations. Okay, so that's a whole different thing. Fix and flip. Obviously you purchased the home. Fix it. You get paid at the end. Okay, so basically the people that make the money are the buyer, the people that are involved. Uh, which would be the buyer? He's going to make something I mean, the seller, he's going to make something.

Joe (00:25:06) - Obviously, me, the investor is going to make something, obviously. And if you have a lawyer or something like that, or if you're doing a fix and flip, the crews that are fixing the house are going to make money as well. So that's pretty much who makes money.

SaCola (00:25:18) - Okay. So I'm glad you explained that. So basically you're getting if the deal closes and everything's successful, you've made money upfront during the process while the buyer is the potential buyer is renting. And then when it's time to close everything, of course the real estate attorney is going to get money, the seller, and then you would get the remaining $10,000 that's owed to you. Okay. So doing this process, though, if something happens to the home and there's maintenance that needs to be done, who's responsible for the maintenance. Is it you, the investor or the seller?

Joe (00:25:56) - Great question, great question. Uh, the way the contracts are drawn, the tenant buyer is going to take care of all the regular maintenance, removing the snow, uh, cutting the lawn, uh, fixing a leak in the sink.

Joe (00:26:10) - Um, you know, it's the kids come home and flush everything down the toilet. He's going to call the plumber to get it fixed. Now, if the heater blows up because it's old, the the owner is going to take care of that. If the roof starts leaking like crazy, the owner is going to take care of that. The driveway gets huge potholes in it. Anything that the tenant didn't do or wasn't below a certain amount that you set in the contract, and I usually set it at $1,000. Okay, the owner is going to take care of anything over and above that. He's going to take care of anything below it. The the buyer is going to take care of. So there's a division of who's going to take care of what.

SaCola (00:26:52) - Okay. So everything's outlined in the contract. That's why you really need a real estate attorney involved to make sure everybody knows who's what's responsible.

Joe (00:27:01) - Nothing wrong with that. Everything in the deals that we do. I don't know about anybody else. I can't speak for anybody else but anybody, anything that we do, everything is mentioned in that contract, everything that you know, we can think of.

Joe (00:27:17) - And if they think of something else they want in there, if it's okay, we'll put it in.

SaCola (00:27:21) - All right. Thank you. I like that. Thank you for giving us a real time example. So for someone who is aspiring to become a real estate transaction engineer, are there any skills, knowledge, or areas of expertise that you would recommend in order for them to develop or even excel in this field?

Joe (00:27:45) - Well, I'm. I'm not what you would call the brightest bulb in the pack. So you don't need much to do this. You really don't. Um, the first thing I will tell you, um, is that I recommend to everybody, uh, that they get a, they get a mentor to get mentor coaches. Okay. Right from the beginning, I've been in this business 30 years. I still have them because I'm always learning something. I see something I don't know if I don't have another example about, um. Uh, my partner Wallace, how he became a multimillionaire was because every time he ran into a deal that he didn't know how to do, he would hire a, uh, mentor to teach him how to do it.

Joe (00:28:26) - That's how he met me. He wanted to learn how to do these options, which is one of my specialties. And that's how we met. And he. He had these lease option deals. He didn't know how to do them. So I went to him and showed him how to do them. And that's how he became a transaction engineer. And as well I did two anything that we didn't know how to do, we would go find out how to do it, because it's kind of stupid to be out in the market and be throwing deals in the trash, simply because you don't know how to do them. It's just to me. The one thing my father taught me who was a very wealthy, smart man. Okay. Never leave money on the table. Period. Never, ever. Because if you do that, you just. You don't know what you're doing. So the first thing would be to get a mentor coach. Um, the other thing I would say is to understand that Rome wasn't built in a day, so it takes some time to learn these things.

Joe (00:29:24) - Now, having said that, okay, I did my first deal in in 31 days. Yes, I had a background, but it was in traditional real estate, the complete opposite for me. It was bad because I had to relearn everything. Okay, because you don't do anything in creative real estate the way you do it in traditional, um, for new people, which is great. You're learning creative real estate quickly because you don't have to worry about all this traditional stuff. Okay, so you want to get a mentor, you want to understand that it doesn't necessarily happen in one day. Uh, however, um, I've had students that have come in here. I had a Susan comes to mind. She did her first lease option, got a $10,000 check in 30 days. If she did that deal. I mean, she I walked her through it, but she found the property. She talked to the seller. She talked to the buyer. She, you know, used me as a coach to make sure she was telling them what exactly what to do.

Joe (00:30:25) - And I've had more than one student do that. So if you apply yourself. You can go very quickly. There are to me, there are no special traits that an individual has that makes them excel in this, in this business, I mean. Um, there are some things you have to do. I mean, if you don't like talking to people, you'll have to cure that. Okay. Because you got to talk to people. If you don't like talking on a phone, you're going to have to cure that, okay? Because I get students, for example, that want to do their whole business through email and text. You can't do that. You're talking about a person's house, okay? They don't know you. They they're not certainly not going to trust them if you won't talk to them. Okay. They find out soon enough that that won't work. Okay. So there are things that you have to do that you may not do now. Like talk to sellers, talk to buyers.

Joe (00:31:22) - You're going to have to find your buyers, uh, using, uh, various different methodologies. Uh, everything from, uh, posting on to um, uh, social media, uh, to I have a program that I invented called the Ultimate Automated Lead Machine, which briefly, um, wholesalers, as we've already talked about, throw out a lot of leads. They don't know how to work with those leads. So what I do is I teach my students how to get with those wholesalers and say, hey, man, you're throwing all this stuff out. How would you like to make some money? Let's let's do these leads together. We can joint venture them or I'll give you X amount of money for them. And if I close them, you're going to make money on something you were throwing away. It's probably the greatest lead source that I've seen out there today. So I'm going to take a little credit for that. But um, so there's some things you'll, you'll learn. But no, you don't have to have any skills to do this business.

Joe (00:32:25) - You really don't.

SaCola (00:32:26) - Okay. Would you recommend someone who is going to get into this when you are mentoring and you're doing your coaching to actually set up an LLC, things of that nature to get your business side set up. First your back office part set up for so you are a legitimate business. Correct. That's what. Yeah.

Joe (00:32:47) - But but I have a caveat to that, SaCola. What happens is people come in. But you can tell the serious from the not serious. Okay. They're not serious, are what I call minutia junkies. They're going to get their business card. They're going to find the place in their house where their office is. They're going to they're going to print out their flyers. They're going you name it, they're going to do anything they can do to keep from doing the work they're supposed to do. Okay. And yes, you I definitely you should have an LLC. There's no question about that. You should have yourself protected legally. Yes. But I always tell my students, look, go out and start doing a deal while you're getting your LLC.

Joe (00:33:35) - Don't be sitting here on wait for my LLC. It takes three weeks. No, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. So that's the most important thing to me would be the LLC. Anything over and above that, I guess your attorney could tell you if you wanted you to do it. That's really all I have is my protection is my LLC. But what you don't want to do is become a minutia queen or a minutia king and do all this nonsense that you you've got to be doing stuff that'll make you money. That's right. If you're not doing that, you're not going to make any money. Right. And that that is basically, you know, this this business is really the marketing business. So it's really not the real estate business. You know that as a realtor you got nobody to talk to. You can't make any money. Simple as that. And the only way you can make any money is to market and let them know you're out there. There's nothing else you can do.

Joe (00:34:26) - Okay, so it's really the marketing business. And if you don't like talking to people or things like that, you're going to have to change that because you that you got to do a lot of that. Okay.

SaCola (00:34:37) - And also remember that this is someone's home that you're talking to. It could be a family member's home that they need to release that debt burden off of their shoulders, or they may be behind or arrears in their taxes. Right. There's so many different scenarios. So when you are talking to them, they are human. They have feelings. So just keep that in mind as well I like that. And but also holding their feet to the fire, making sure that, hey, you can look glossy and glamorous out there, but we gotta let the rubber meet the road and let's get going. Let's get some traction going. So I appreciate you saying that, and thank you so much for actually sharing these scenarios with us today to give some real life examples. Now, your mentoring program, you said that you used to mentor realtors.

SaCola (00:35:26) - Do you still mentor realtors as well as people who are not familiar with the real estate industry?

Joe (00:35:32) - No. We mentor, look, we'll mentor anybody that's into real estate. Whether you're a realtor, you're not a realtor. We don't care. Beginner. Um, we deal with a lot of people, uh, we deal with beginners that know nothing about the business. We deal with, uh, people that are, um, seasoned pros. Uh, but they only know how to do 1 or 2 different niches. So we teach them how to do the others. Uh, we deal with realtors, of course. Personally, to be honest with you, you realtors, I mean, you're in the thick of it. 90% of all the properties that are sold in this company in this country goes through realtors. So why all of you are not investors? I can't figure out, okay. Because you got you got all the properties right in front of you. You know what I mean? Uh, so we'll we will coach and mentor anyone that, uh, requires our services.

Joe (00:36:23) - We're happy to.

Speaker 3 (00:36:24) - Well, Joe.

SaCola (00:36:25) - I'm definitely glad I met you. Because if there are realtors and there are some realtors out there who want to focus and be niche focus by working with just investors or they don't know how to get started to become an investor themselves. They think, okay, I could just buy properties and take out a mortgage and do some financing and do long term lease options or buy Airbnb. But to actually think outside of the box and think of other ways to be that middleman or that go between or that facilitator to bring a seller or a buyer together, like you just mentioned, a potential buyer together. There are so many different ways to do real estate. So I want to thank you for coming on, taking your time today to actually share your expertise, your. Well over 50 years of expertise. You and Wallace combined together. So thank you so much for shedding light on creative real estate strategies. And so I have some rapid fire questions for you, Joe, to share today.

SaCola (00:37:31) - Have you had a chance to sit down and have dinner with a historical figure? Who would it be?

Joe (00:37:38) - A historical figure. Who would it be? Oh, my God, this is tough. This is really tough. Um. Uh, I'm. I'm kind of an old guy. I probably want to sit with John F Kennedy. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:37:52) - Okay.

SaCola (00:37:53) - Nothing wrong with.

Joe (00:37:54) - There's always, always been somebody that if I could sit in the room with him for a couple of minutes, that would be great.

SaCola (00:38:01) - I think that's a good historical figure. Now, if. Is there anything? I know we've talked about various stages in real estate, but is there anything that you've wanted to do in life that you haven't tried yet?

Joe (00:38:14) - Okay. Let's see. The only thing that I haven't been able to do in life that I would like to try, um, would be to probably be on stage with some of the best guitar players out there in a big concert going to town. That would be what I'd want to do.

Joe (00:38:30) - That being what I want.

SaCola (00:38:30) - And I see the guitars in your background.

Joe (00:38:34) - That would be wonderful.

Speaker 3 (00:38:35) - I love it.

SaCola (00:38:36) - Awesome. So thank you, Joe. If I'm going to leave all of Joe's information in the show notes also on the blog and workitliveitownit.com, so be sure to check out Joe's mentoring program that he runs with Wallace. And if you have any further questions, we would love to hear from you about how to get started in real estate creative strategies. And if you've learned of any other real estate strategies that you didn't hear Joe mentioned today, I would love to also hear those comment below and also leave me a message at info@workitliveitownit.com. But most importantly, keep dreaming, keep pursuing, and don't forget to work at living on it in your everyday lives. Take care guys.