Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Sherry Harris, owner of Life Source Water. As a
Speaker 2: new grandmother in lifelong Californian, I care about what's in
Speaker 2: the water my family uses every day. For over forty years,
Speaker 2: our whole house water system has protected Bay Area families
Speaker 2: with filtered water from every tap. Now we are offering
Speaker 2: a double dip in savings free basic installation plus an
Speaker 2: extra two hundred and fifty dollars off. That's up to
Speaker 2: twelve hundred dollars in savings. Call our factory at one
Speaker 2: eight hundred Water ninety nine or visit Life sourcewater dot com.
Speaker 2: Hurry offer in September thirty warranty limitations apply.
Speaker 3: Earns.
Speaker 4: It's twenty twenty one, the year of execution. In order
Speaker 4: to execute, we have to have information, and the number
Speaker 4: one place that get the information EYL University Shotty tell
Speaker 4: them what we bring in.
Speaker 5: Yes, EYL University has been reloaded. We already have one
Speaker 5: hundred passed webinars. We already have weekly webinars. We already
Speaker 5: have our private investment group on Facebook. We already have
Speaker 5: multi financial planning calls. We already have bi weekly real
Speaker 5: estate called. But what has been added to EYL University
Speaker 5: This year is access to MG the Mortgage Guys home
Speaker 5: Buyer's Blueprint, which walks you through the home buying process
Speaker 5: from A to Z and also has been added breaking
Speaker 5: News Alert. Everybody always has to be in our group
Speaker 5: chat and when we talk about all the investment plays
Speaker 5: that we are making. We are going to have investment
Speaker 5: calls group chat calls with me, Troy and the whole
Speaker 5: team and walk you through our plays that we're making
Speaker 5: and give you insight into our portfolios. All of that
Speaker 5: for seventy five percent off. That's right, we are doing
Speaker 5: a blowout sales seventy five percent off for a limited
Speaker 5: time only. Go to eyl University dot com right now
Speaker 5: and sign up.
Speaker 3: See you on the other side.
Speaker 6: My graduates from my school being.
Speaker 1: Forts back drop bag Drop, Mike drop back drop Drop.
Speaker 5: So you started a business the Erael Commerce. Can you
Speaker 5: talk about that?
Speaker 7: So basically none something else. I like to teach entrepreneurs,
Speaker 7: especially the ones that's coming out of the corporate world.
Speaker 6: Everybody feels like I.
Speaker 7: Got to create something new, Like I got to get
Speaker 7: into an industry that I see everybody else doing, right,
Speaker 7: But what I realized is like, man, if this company
Speaker 7: is paying me one hundred grand a year to do
Speaker 7: this job. There has to be a smaller business out
Speaker 7: there somewhere that needs these same services, need the same
Speaker 7: skill set, and I can just go out and provide
Speaker 7: the service for them, and instead of being their employee,
Speaker 7: I become their consultant. So that's what Erael commerces. I
Speaker 7: took all that experience I had, all those connections I
Speaker 7: had with the railroad, all these oil and gas companies,
Speaker 7: and I found all these smaller companies that need or
Speaker 7: want to get a contract with an Exxon. Because Exon
Speaker 7: has over ten thousand rail cars. Everyone of those cars
Speaker 7: has to be maintained, has to be repainted, has to
Speaker 7: be cleaned, that has to be maintenance done to them.
Speaker 7: They have to storm when they're not using, they got
Speaker 7: to park them somewhere. So what I do is I
Speaker 7: help all those companies that provide those services get in
Speaker 7: the door with Exon, get the contract, and then they
Speaker 7: perform all the work and I just get commissions off
Speaker 7: of the deals.
Speaker 5: Wow, so you get like the relationship man I am.
Speaker 7: I'm basically broker basically broker in and I have everything
Speaker 7: set up with with my clients to where whatever contract
Speaker 7: that helped them get I get paid.
Speaker 3: But so eraail is not the only.
Speaker 4: Form of consultation that you're providing, right, Don't you have
Speaker 4: a few other consultation things that you do well.
Speaker 7: I mean, in general, I just try to help entrepreneurs
Speaker 7: get started, you know, because I mean I was so
Speaker 7: lost when I was trying to get out out of
Speaker 7: the work world.
Speaker 6: I was like, man, nobody was really here to guide
Speaker 6: me and teach me.
Speaker 7: So I use my social media platform, and you know,
Speaker 7: I use that network and that audience as as my
Speaker 7: way to give.
Speaker 6: Back, you know.
Speaker 7: So anybody that has helped wants helped with it getting
Speaker 7: started entrepreneurship. I try to teach them the basis kind
Speaker 7: of stuff is we're talking about now, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. I get them as far as I can,
Speaker 7: and then I try to network with someone that's actually
Speaker 7: in their field and try to get them to get
Speaker 7: under that person.
Speaker 4: So you're providing the mentorship by consulting, right, Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 5: Consulting is something that we also haven't spoken about yet
Speaker 5: in this podcast, but it's extremely important and it's a
Speaker 5: very profitable business as well. Consultants you have can resultants
Speaker 5: in school industry, you have consultants in political industry, you
Speaker 5: have consultants in all kinds of stuff, right, can you
Speaker 5: explain the importance a lot of times, especially for small
Speaker 5: business owners. This is the problem with small business owners
Speaker 5: us compare the business big business. They have a small
Speaker 5: way of thinking. They understand the power of consulting. They
Speaker 5: don't understand the power of marketing. They don't understand They
Speaker 5: just want to just do the work. It's like running
Speaker 5: on the tread, but you can only get so far. Right,
Speaker 5: when you get enough win behind you know, you can
Speaker 5: start to fly. So when you talking about the power
Speaker 5: of consulting, like what can somebody get value out of
Speaker 5: hiring the right consultant.
Speaker 6: So there's only two ways you're gonna learn.
Speaker 7: You either gonna bump your head and you're gonna lose
Speaker 7: time and money, or you're gonna pay for the knowledge.
Speaker 6: Period. There's no other way you're gonna learn. Right, So
Speaker 6: you hire a consultant.
Speaker 7: A consultant as someone that's an expert in that field,
Speaker 7: that has already got experience doing what you're trying to do,
Speaker 7: or they can help you with a particular area of
Speaker 7: the business that you can't fulfill, Like if you have
Speaker 7: a great product, but you don't know how to get
Speaker 7: it in front of enough people. You need a marketing
Speaker 7: consultant to come in and help you get it in
Speaker 7: front of the right people. And so it's basically a
Speaker 7: way for you to you can add a whole department
Speaker 7: to your business without actually having a hire an employee.
Speaker 6: It's a consultant. You know.
Speaker 7: That consultant can neither be somebody that's paid by the hour,
Speaker 7: or it could be somebody that I always recommend you
Speaker 7: get performance based consultants, which means they work off a commission.
Speaker 6: So if they don't produce.
Speaker 7: For you, they don't make any money, right, so that
Speaker 7: gives them a vested reason to get in there and
Speaker 7: work hard and get something done. And on the flip
Speaker 7: side of that that, like you said, that's a very
Speaker 7: lucrative business too, because it's a business where it doesn't
Speaker 7: require you have to invest a lot. You can work
Speaker 7: from home and be a consultant and people actually paying
Speaker 7: you just for the knowledge that you already have. You know,
Speaker 7: so you can take that corporate experience.
Speaker 6: You could.
Speaker 7: Man, you could have been flipping burgers at McDonald's for
Speaker 7: five years. But guess what skill set you got, you
Speaker 7: know what it takes to onboard a new employee. So
Speaker 7: you can go to other small restaurants and say, here's
Speaker 7: the McDonald's model. I'm gonna teach you how to run
Speaker 7: the McDonald's model for your restaurant.
Speaker 3: And that's something that anybody can do.
Speaker 4: Like, as you're saying it, I'm thinking of like especially
Speaker 4: in the education field, and especially in the restaurant field
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: It's like people always try to figure out how.
Speaker 4: Can they make passive income, right, and they don't realize
Speaker 4: that they have a skill set already. They're just overlooking it, right,
Speaker 4: they're not maximizing their potential.
Speaker 5: Well, this is one of the things you talk about
Speaker 5: multiple streams of income. That is that the average millionaire
Speaker 5: has seven streams of income. That doesn't mean they has
Speaker 5: seven jobs or even seven businesses. Is that they're maximizing
Speaker 5: their skills maybe one or two businesses. So, as you said,
Speaker 5: you can be a teacher, right, but you're an expert
Speaker 5: in that field. If you're a really good teacher, now
Speaker 5: you can be a consultant to school districts, right, curriculum
Speaker 5: things of that nature. Right, And that's something that anybody
Speaker 5: can do. As Choice said, even if you're still an employee,
Speaker 5: you can be an entrepreneur and create your own consulting business.
Speaker 4: And the amount of time it doesn't require as much,
Speaker 4: right they say, these are my hours.
Speaker 3: You dictate the hours, and you dictate the fees, and a.
Speaker 7: Lot of time you're helping different customers and clients with
Speaker 7: the same problem exactly, so you.
Speaker 6: Already know it like in and out.
Speaker 5: You know, for your for your consulting business, how did
Speaker 5: you market yourself to to your customers and clients?
Speaker 7: How do you man The most powerful tool I use
Speaker 7: is linked in, Okay, And what I liked about LinkedIn
Speaker 7: is because when when you put yourself on there as
Speaker 7: a business owner, you give yourself whatever title you want,
Speaker 7: you know, So I gave my it's just it's me
Speaker 7: and one partner, but my title is executive VP. So
Speaker 7: that puts you in a whole different arena. They look
Speaker 7: at you like, it's all perception. It's all perceptions. So
Speaker 7: then when I go to when I see a company
Speaker 7: that I'm trying to get a connection with, and I
Speaker 7: go to the CEO and request to connect with them,
Speaker 7: they were like, oh, it's another executive that wants to connected.
Speaker 3: We got an EXECU that wants to meet you.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And that's all it is is positioning, and it's
Speaker 7: it's all about you know what you post.
Speaker 6: I post.
Speaker 7: I repost a lot of Wall Street Journal type articles
Speaker 7: that are related to the industry. Any type of insight
Speaker 7: that I get from anybody else that's in the industry,
Speaker 7: I'll make a post about that. So then you kind
Speaker 7: of position yourself as a subject matter expert. So then
Speaker 7: a lot what happens is eventually enough people are watching
Speaker 7: your posts to where when they have a problem, they
Speaker 7: come to you instead of you having to go out
Speaker 7: and ask for business. And another great thing I like
Speaker 7: about LinkedIn is because you can type in any job
Speaker 7: title you want. So I'm in a supply chain, right,
Speaker 7: I type in direct a supply chain.
Speaker 6: LinkedIn is going to give me a list of people
Speaker 6: with that title. So all I do is go connect
Speaker 6: connect connect connect connect connect.
Speaker 7: You know, and then that builds your audience because people
Speaker 7: go to check you out to see who is this
Speaker 7: that's asking the link with me? And then like my
Speaker 7: network on LinkedIn is like seventeen thousand, it's all industrial products,
Speaker 7: supply chain people from all these big companies.
Speaker 5: That's a lot of that's a lot. But LinkedIn you
Speaker 5: got to accept every single person, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well yeah, the person has the person has to
Speaker 7: approve the connection. But if your page is set up
Speaker 7: to where it looks like, oh, this is somebody that
Speaker 7: I might want in my network, then you're good. And
Speaker 7: that's the whole purpose of you know, making sure that
Speaker 7: you set yourself up right on there with the right titles.
Speaker 5: You send and you with it in mail, right, they
Speaker 5: send you in mail, so you could both.
Speaker 6: I guess I'm both. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I met with a guy matter of fact, he flew
Speaker 7: in from Arkansas last week because he's working with a
Speaker 7: private development group that does industrial development and they're looking
Speaker 7: for new locations to build new rail terminals. And that's
Speaker 7: part of my job when I working the railroad, so
Speaker 7: that's part of my consulting too. So he literally reached
Speaker 7: out to me because he had been seeing me make
Speaker 7: these posts on LinkedIn about railroad development and railroad terminals.
Speaker 7: So he this gout literally flu in for the day
Speaker 7: just for that meeting.
Speaker 4: You are using your resources efficiently, and a lot of
Speaker 4: times people don't realize that, like they're just on LinkedIn
Speaker 4: or they're just on Facebook just to put pictures up,
Speaker 4: not networking, and not realizing how powerful a tool they
Speaker 4: have at their fingertips.
Speaker 5: Well, LinkedIn is only for networking. But I got to
Speaker 5: get a better I gotually got to do a better
Speaker 5: job on LinkedIn because I don't know, I just don't
Speaker 5: feel too comfortable with it. I feel like it's some
Speaker 5: kind of boring.
Speaker 7: It is boring, but it's like Facebook, but it's for
Speaker 7: business only. Yeah, it's powerful, Yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 7: I mean you can you would be surprised that people
Speaker 7: that don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers that are
Speaker 7: like powerful people like I mean like producers, executive producers
Speaker 7: at these big stations. They may have five hundred, one
Speaker 7: thousand connections and you go requested and it's approved the
Speaker 7: next day.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: But it's like it's like it's like a back door
Speaker 7: to get the connection that usually you have to call
Speaker 7: a corporate headquarters and talk to administrative person and ask
Speaker 7: the schedule time to meet this person.
Speaker 6: You just go LinkedIn and find them so.
Speaker 4: When you need it's like getting you past all those
Speaker 4: things exactly, like all the gatekeepers, Yeah, pass all the gatekeepers.
Speaker 3: If the person's on LinkedIn if they're on that.
Speaker 5: But every everybody's on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is one is
Speaker 5: the most powerful search thing too, because like so when
Speaker 5: you search somebody's name on Google, the first thing that
Speaker 5: comes up is LinkedIn. That's like the first thing. It's
Speaker 5: like it's like your online resume pretty much it is.
Speaker 5: And so I don't know how they how they work
Speaker 5: that with the algorithm, but they always are on the
Speaker 5: top of your thing. So you kind of have to
Speaker 5: have a LinkedIn page if you're doing anything in business.
Speaker 5: It's like almost mandatory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I got up done, man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, So that was good for So now
Speaker 5: in the last time we want going to real estate,
Speaker 5: we're gonna talk all sting real estate.
Speaker 3: That's things going on, that's what you're focused.
Speaker 5: So yeah, for sure. All right, So in the last time,
Speaker 5: we're gonna talk about real estate, right, So, okay, what
Speaker 5: made you go into real estate first and foremost.
Speaker 7: Like I said, I kind of fell into it with
Speaker 7: the court, with the with the corporate job and leaving
Speaker 7: and I had bought a house at the first gig
Speaker 7: and when I moved back to Houston, I couldn't sell it.
Speaker 7: So I had to get a property manager. Property manageer
Speaker 7: rented out. I was making like four hundred bucks a
Speaker 7: month and I wasn't working at all for it. I
Speaker 7: was like, this is this seems like something lucrative. And
Speaker 7: you know, the more you research real estate, it's like
Speaker 7: eighty percent of the first time millionaires are made in
Speaker 7: real estate.
Speaker 4: But this is at a relatively young age, right, Like
Speaker 4: your first property was at twenty two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twenty two, that's pretty young.
Speaker 7: Yeah, twenty man, So that was that was kind of
Speaker 7: a blessing through having worked with the railroad while I
Speaker 7: was in school, I had a no tenure with them
Speaker 7: to actually qualify for a moving package. So when you
Speaker 7: work with a corporate company, when they move you, they
Speaker 7: either give you a stipend or they give you like
Speaker 7: a down payment towards the house. Yeah, and so they
Speaker 7: gave me the down payment and instead of meeting apartment
Speaker 7: and pocketing the money, just had to get a house.
Speaker 4: But you could have took the stipend, I could have
Speaker 4: took the type he took the long term place. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean you're not an engineered by mistake. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: So all right, so then how did that transition to
Speaker 5: you doing what you're now as far as you're developing.
Speaker 6: So okay.
Speaker 7: So when I moved to Houston, I decided I wanted
Speaker 7: to go really hard on the in the real estate game.
Speaker 7: And so one of my line brothers, my fright brother,
Speaker 7: worked for home Vestors that we buy ugly houses people,
Speaker 7: and he was their property manager in the hood, and
Speaker 7: so I kind of told him what I wanted to do,
Speaker 7: and so he ended up plugging me with one of
Speaker 7: the contractors that home Vestors us. And this guy was
Speaker 7: flipping twenty thirty houses a month for them, doing actual
Speaker 7: rehab work, and so he kind of became my mentor
Speaker 7: and we would pick houses, I would flip them. Of
Speaker 7: course he would make money off the rehabs. And so
Speaker 7: that's how I kind of got into the real estate game.
Speaker 7: In two thousand and nine. I would sell some of them,
Speaker 7: I kept some of them for rentals, and I was
Speaker 7: doing that for about five years.
Speaker 3: But then I got.
Speaker 6: Tired of having rental property.
Speaker 7: I mean, I know everybody says that that's supposed to
Speaker 7: be supposed to buy a home and live in and
Speaker 7: have rental property, but man on.
Speaker 6: The rentals sucks.
Speaker 7: The downfalls Okay, So a lot of people, it's a
Speaker 7: good profit margin on a rental properties three or four
Speaker 7: hundred bucks a month, right, but you have one month,
Speaker 7: say like a tenant moves out, and then it takes
Speaker 7: you a month to find another tenant's And if your
Speaker 7: mortgage payment is twelve hundred dollars, that's literally three months
Speaker 7: of your profit gone.
Speaker 6: If you got to make a repair that repairs.
Speaker 7: One thousand dollars, that's another two and a half months
Speaker 7: of profit gone, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 7: for me, it was like and then you have this debt.
Speaker 7: I was own like one hundred, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 7: on each house, and so now you got debt and
Speaker 7: you got these small profit margins, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 7: I could see how long term I can continue to
Speaker 7: do this and make money slowly. But dealing with tenants, tennants,
Speaker 7: tearing stuff up, you know, it just wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 7: something that I enjoyed doing.
Speaker 4: What type of properties were you looking for? Was it
Speaker 4: single family homes or family or property?
Speaker 7: Yeah, at that point in time, I didn't qualify for
Speaker 7: anything like extravagant, So was just buying a little single
Speaker 7: family homes and I'm saying, there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 7: You know, everybody can make money in any industry, but
Speaker 7: for me, it's just like I want to do something bigger,
Speaker 7: and so I guess I continued to flip. I started realizing.
Speaker 7: You know, this narrative about gentrification happens over.
Speaker 4: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
Speaker 4: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring,
Speaker 4: and sure they definitely can be, but understanding a professionals
Speaker 4: routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little,
Speaker 4: day after day.
Speaker 3: It's like banking with P and C Bank.
Speaker 4: It might seem boring to safe plan and make calculated
Speaker 4: decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is
Speaker 4: what helps you live or more happily fulfilled life. P
Speaker 4: and C Bank Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly
Speaker 4: Boring since eighteen sixty five is a service mark of
Speaker 4: the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. P and C Bank
Speaker 4: National Association Member FDIC.
Speaker 6: Ernerds.
Speaker 3: What's up?
Speaker 4: You ever walk into a small business and everything just
Speaker 4: works like, the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital.
Speaker 4: Tipping is a breeze and you're out the door before
Speaker 4: the line even builds odds are they're using Square. We
Speaker 4: love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just
Speaker 4: feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor
Speaker 4: at a pop up market, or even one of our
Speaker 4: merch partners, Square makes it easy for them to take payments,
Speaker 4: manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from
Speaker 4: one simple system. If you're a business owner or even
Speaker 4: just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down
Speaker 4: one of the best tools out there to help you start,
Speaker 4: run and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about
Speaker 4: giving you time back so you can focus on.
Speaker 3: What matters most ready.
Speaker 4: To see how Square can transform your business, visit Square
Speaker 4: dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn more that
Speaker 4: Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait, don't hesitate.
Speaker 4: Let's Square handle the back end so you can keep
Speaker 4: pushing your vision forward.
Speaker 8: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
Speaker 8: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
Speaker 8: accused of murdering a Texas. Man of Venezuelan charged with
Speaker 8: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
Speaker 8: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
Speaker 8: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the United States
Speaker 8: Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border
Speaker 8: crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over
Speaker 8: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you
Speaker 8: are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly
Speaker 8: one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and deported, you will
Speaker 8: never return. But if you register using our CBP home
Speaker 8: app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Speaker 8: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws,
Speaker 8: border and families will be protected.
Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security, and.
Speaker 7: Over and over, and I was like, man, I know
Speaker 7: a few of us that are flipping. I don't know
Speaker 7: anybody that's really trying to get into the development game
Speaker 7: and you know, kind of change the narrative so we
Speaker 7: have some control over that. So twenty thirteen, that's when
Speaker 7: I decided to kind of get off into that. So
Speaker 7: with you buying land in twenty thirteen, was that the
Speaker 7: next step. I didn't know what I was going to buy.
Speaker 7: I just knew what I was gonna do is stop
Speaker 7: flipping and try to figure it out. Okay, So I
Speaker 7: just started talking about it, and man, it came full circle.
Speaker 7: That same my same line brother that helped me get
Speaker 7: into the game. He had an old tenant reach out
Speaker 7: to him that used to be in one of the
Speaker 7: properties and say, hey, I'm over here in fifth Ward
Speaker 7: and the landlord over here is taking care of the property.
Speaker 7: I think he's on drugs, and so you know, what
Speaker 7: he heard was opportunity. So he reached out to me
Speaker 7: and he's like, man, I think we got opportunity to
Speaker 7: go pick up a few houses over here. So I
Speaker 7: went to go meet with the guy. Ended up being
Speaker 7: a whole block, got a grocery store on it. Okay,
Speaker 7: true story. At the time this was in the hood,
Speaker 7: it wasn't worth nothing. It was probably worth three hundred thousand.
Speaker 7: The whole block.
Speaker 6: Everything was kind of run down.
Speaker 7: But it's in the area where you tell somebody I'm
Speaker 7: about to go spend three hundred thousand, They're like, man.
Speaker 6: Are you crazy.
Speaker 7: It's the hood, nothing but drugs and prostitution over there.
Speaker 7: You're gonna waste your money, you know. So what I
Speaker 7: ended up doing to talk him in doing the deal,
Speaker 7: I offered him four hundred thousand for it. So but
Speaker 7: of course I didn't have the cash to pay four
Speaker 7: hundred thousand. So he actually had inherited the property from
Speaker 7: his dad. His dad was like a real estate taccoon,
Speaker 7: had like twenty.
Speaker 3: Six blocks over there, twenty six block, twenty six.
Speaker 7: Blocks, twenty six blocks, and this block happened to be
Speaker 7: the one that they gave this this this kid, and
Speaker 7: he was like the horrible kid, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: He watched it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, So so this was the one he had,
Speaker 7: and he still wasn't taking care of it.
Speaker 6: So I offered him on owner finance scenario where it's like,
Speaker 6: I gave.
Speaker 7: You ten percent now with all the fars. So that's
Speaker 7: when the instead of you, instead of going to the bank,
Speaker 7: the owner that actually doesn't have any debt on the
Speaker 7: property will let you make payments over time to buy
Speaker 7: the property from them. So I gave him ten percent
Speaker 7: of what we agreed to the four hundred thousands, so
Speaker 7: forty thousand dollars which came from me selling one of
Speaker 7: my rental properties.
Speaker 6: And then that allowed me now.
Speaker 7: To control that whole block of property, and it had
Speaker 7: the grocery store on it and then had the houses,
Speaker 7: but everything was really run down. So instead of fixing
Speaker 7: it up, what I decided to do was do parole
Speaker 7: lee housing for felons because it's really hard for.
Speaker 6: Him to find anywhere to live.
Speaker 7: So I would rent them out a single room in
Speaker 7: each one of the houses, charging three to fifty a
Speaker 7: month or something that they could afford because the type
Speaker 7: of job they could get, you know, they didn't have
Speaker 7: much income, or they like a halfway house pretty much
Speaker 7: like a halfway house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they call them sroro houses. And then so the
Speaker 5: state paid you that right.
Speaker 7: Sometimes sometimes if it depends on what program they're in,
Speaker 7: they get some type of housing assistance. But most of
Speaker 7: the time, no, they had to go get a job.
Speaker 7: So that's what made it really good, because you talk
Speaker 7: about a low risk tenant, you got somebody that's happy
Speaker 7: to be out of prison.
Speaker 6: They was in prison for non violent offense. I didn't
Speaker 6: do violent people.
Speaker 7: They had to keep a job and they had to
Speaker 7: keep somewhere to stay, and ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 7: places wouldn't even allow them to live there, so they
Speaker 7: were like they were like built in good high revenue
Speaker 7: for me, you know what I mean as collectively in
Speaker 7: each house. Whereas I could have rented that whole house
Speaker 7: for five hundred dollars to a regular family, now I'm
Speaker 7: making eleven twelve hundred dollars off that same house, you know,
Speaker 7: with this program. And because you were renting the rooms,
Speaker 7: them individual rooms, and most of them had trades, so
Speaker 7: they were like carpenters, electricians, plumbers. They all earned their
Speaker 7: trades in prison. So anything went wrong, I just dropped
Speaker 7: off materials they built in and they were just happy
Speaker 7: to have somewhere to live, you know. So yeah, so
Speaker 7: that worked out. That was a win win man, And
Speaker 7: then that was twenty thirteen, fourteen fifteen. I did that
Speaker 7: in twenty sixteen. Redevelopment kind of started in the area
Speaker 7: that I was in. Something else that I always watched too,
Speaker 7: even when I was flipping, is what the city's plans were.
Speaker 6: And you can go to.
Speaker 7: The planning Department's website and it'll tell you what their
Speaker 7: plan to do five years, ten years down the road.
Speaker 7: And that's a lot of the game that we don't
Speaker 7: pay attention to, but you know, the other groups pay attention.
Speaker 5: Where can you find that information that?
Speaker 7: Usually you can just google it, like Planning and Development
Speaker 7: Department or Urban Planning for whatever city you're in, and
Speaker 7: it'll pull up on the website. You know, it's usually
Speaker 7: a dot gov type website, and it'll have all their information.
Speaker 7: A lot of us talked about the city council meetings,
Speaker 7: so you can look up city council meeting minutes and
Speaker 7: they'll tell you about anything big, any developer that's proposed
Speaker 7: to do something in a certain area.
Speaker 6: All that has to be public publicly.
Speaker 7: So but what I noticed about Houston was like everything
Speaker 7: was going to counterclockwise around downtown. And the fifth one
Speaker 7: neighbor that I was buying it was the last quadrant.
Speaker 7: So I knew eventually it was gonna come. I just
Speaker 7: didn't win, you know. And so yeah, so that's how
Speaker 7: I got into it. And twenty sixteen is another guy
Speaker 7: started building. So then I figured it was time for
Speaker 7: me to try to figure out how to get it done.
Speaker 5: So what is your all? Right, So what's your philosophy
Speaker 5: on gentrification? What's your how do you feel about that?
Speaker 7: So gentrification has a very negative connotation in our community
Speaker 7: because we are never the ones revitalizing that neighborhood. And
Speaker 7: what happens is the people that are revitalizing are looking
Speaker 7: out for themselves or their own groups. It's not that
Speaker 7: they don't care about us, is that they have their
Speaker 7: own personal agendas that that that they're moving forward.
Speaker 6: And so we can either.
Speaker 7: Continue to watch it happen, or we can participate, right
Speaker 7: and we can participate in the way that we kind
Speaker 7: of control the narrative of what's being built, who's being
Speaker 7: built for, and what happens to the around the community
Speaker 7: that we're building in.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: So my goal with my project is, you know, most
Speaker 7: of the time when you hear about black builders in
Speaker 7: black neighborhoods, it's low income stuff, and I feel like
Speaker 7: that's great, Like we do need to look out for
Speaker 7: the low income people, but we got to attract the
Speaker 7: people that were successful to the people that made it
Speaker 7: out those neighborhoods to back to those neighborhoods because we
Speaker 7: need that income, we need that demographic. If we ever
Speaker 7: want a grocery store to come back. We can't sit
Speaker 7: and depend on the government to do that. And right now,
Speaker 7: what happens is the people that are successful, they go
Speaker 7: and buy houses in the suburbs. Right, It's not because
Speaker 7: they don't want to move back, it's because they have
Speaker 7: no options. So my focus is, well, let me start
Speaker 7: building some market rate stuff, not low income houses and stuff,
Speaker 7: but try to attract these working professionals back to the
Speaker 7: neighborhoods with a high quality product that they know they're
Speaker 7: gonna pay the same price they're paying in the suburbs
Speaker 7: and in the city.
Speaker 6: Your value is.
Speaker 7: Going to appreciate a whole lot more, especially when that
Speaker 7: neighborhood starts to revitalize.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of what you've done with.
Speaker 4: You know, the land that you bought in twenty thirteen, right,
Speaker 4: which is your the most recent development that you worked
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 3: So fourteen it's fourteen Yeah.
Speaker 6: Fourteen units individual house townhouses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you want to talk me about that. How that
Speaker 3: came about.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So it's the same property that I bought with
Speaker 7: the grocery store and everything. So twenty sixteen I decided
Speaker 7: to just tear everything down when I saw there was
Speaker 7: another developer that was building houses deep in the neighborhood
Speaker 7: and he was selling them for two fifty.
Speaker 6: Before they were complete. He wasn't even listening them on mls.
Speaker 7: So I'm like, so that tells me that there's a mindset,
Speaker 7: there's enough people out there are willing to save one
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars because everything else inside the city loop
Speaker 7: was like ENTI sixteen, Loop was two three fifty or
Speaker 7: more so, but people would rather save that money and
Speaker 7: live in a neighborhood that was still pretty rough. So
Speaker 7: I was like, well, if he can do this deep
Speaker 7: in the neighborhood, I'm right on the feeder to the highway,
Speaker 7: you know, I got a view of downtown. I should
Speaker 7: be able to do something with my property too. And
Speaker 7: so that's when I decided I'm gonna move forward with
Speaker 7: this initiative to try to build these townhouses. And it
Speaker 7: took a lot of work. It took me building the
Speaker 7: right teams. I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 7: Goes back to what you were talking about earlier with
Speaker 7: the consultant. I'd had to find the right team, the
Speaker 7: right I had to find a builder that had enough
Speaker 7: experience that was willing to kind of lend his knowledge
Speaker 7: and time to me, of course for a fee, you know,
Speaker 7: had to pay him to be my consultant, basically teach
Speaker 7: me how to do the first project, but that's what
Speaker 7: I did.
Speaker 5: So what's the what's your plans now as far as
Speaker 5: how many projects are you are you working on? Like
Speaker 5: what's your what's your vision look like for the next
Speaker 5: five years?
Speaker 7: Next five years, I want to finish this project, which
Speaker 7: you're probably finished next year, and I want to continue
Speaker 7: to build the same model in the same neighborhood. I
Speaker 7: kind of want to make this like a real world
Speaker 7: example that can be duplicated in other cities, like we
Speaker 7: can go in, we can buy the land. And I
Speaker 7: didn't mentioned my entire team is from the community too,
Speaker 7: so like my my builders, my real estate brokers, my
Speaker 7: insurance brokers.
Speaker 6: Everybody, the contractors as well contractors as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm working with a black builders.
Speaker 7: So and it's not just anybody's people that got good reputations,
Speaker 7: but we kind of always silo ourselves and we never.
Speaker 6: Really collectively work together on stuff.
Speaker 7: So yeah, And the goal and the most important part
Speaker 7: of all of this, whether you're flipping another industry a
Speaker 7: lot of people and it's whole selling or building new construction,
Speaker 7: is ensuring that you put.
Speaker 6: The product in front of the right end buyer.
Speaker 7: Because if you're flipping, you call yourself buying the block,
Speaker 7: But if you're not watching who you're selling to on
Speaker 7: the back end, you're still gentrifying the neighborhood. So my
Speaker 7: goal is really to educate us on like, like I said,
Speaker 7: the working professional, on why it's better for you to
Speaker 7: buy over here. So I'm building the first three now,
Speaker 7: got contracts on two of them. Both of them are young,
Speaker 7: young black professionals, basically all in gas professionals. The townhouses, yeah,
Speaker 7: I got a dentist, a black dennist from Dallas that's.
Speaker 6: Looking at buying one, you know.
Speaker 7: So it's all about making sure that we create that
Speaker 7: model because right now that gentrification narrative is the only
Speaker 7: thing that's real and for our people, we do better
Speaker 7: when we see examples of something that's actually working. And
Speaker 7: so when this is complete, I want to make sure
Speaker 7: that this model is as much exposed as possible. It's
Speaker 7: not about me making all the money. I want people
Speaker 7: in other cities to do the same thing, know, to
Speaker 7: say it's possible, we really can't do this.
Speaker 6: And this is the example.
Speaker 5: How do you evaluate, like what area you want to
Speaker 5: I know you say you look at it like the
Speaker 5: city plans but do you have like a set formula.
Speaker 5: It's just kind of like you just know the area
Speaker 5: and you just kind of have a good feeling because
Speaker 5: you can't buy in some bad neighborhoods and they don't
Speaker 5: get better, right, So it's like, I mean, how do
Speaker 5: you know like this is this is probably going to
Speaker 5: get better.
Speaker 7: It's all about your network because you got to be
Speaker 7: talking to people in the industry.
Speaker 6: So a lot.
Speaker 7: Of the realtors that I work with, they work with builders,
Speaker 7: and you know, you gotta have a network of commercial
Speaker 7: realtors around you too, because they know where the commercial
Speaker 7: developers are looking at, what areas are looking at. So
Speaker 7: it's a lot of it's word of mouth in addition
Speaker 7: to what you see on the city plans, you know.
Speaker 7: But yeah, you gotta have your foot in the door.
Speaker 7: You got to be on the inside understanding where they're
Speaker 7: moving and you just kind of ride that wave along
Speaker 7: with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a few years ago, you had one of the
Speaker 4: most horrific hurricanes in United States history. What impact have
Speaker 4: you seen since then on the real estate in Houston?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 7: You know, for it was a period of time where
Speaker 7: the houses in the areas that did not get flooded,
Speaker 7: the values went up tremendously or they were getting bought
Speaker 7: up really really quickly. I didn't see too much of
Speaker 7: a negative impact. The only thing that I did see
Speaker 7: is a shift in ownership where the people that didn't
Speaker 7: have the proper flood insurance who lost their homes had
Speaker 7: to become renters for a while, right. But at the
Speaker 7: same time, the investors who had the cash on the
Speaker 7: table were able to pick up a whole bunch of
Speaker 7: properties for a lot less than what the values were.
Speaker 7: Anything under like two hundred thousand dollars was still selling
Speaker 7: as it was rehabbed, but anything above that two hundred
Speaker 7: thousand dollars mark, a lot of it sat on the market,
Speaker 7: a lot of it's still here now. We had a
Speaker 7: lot of out of town investors that bought that thought
Speaker 7: that they could buy these flood houses and flip them
Speaker 7: and sell them really quickly. But the people in those
Speaker 7: price points were not comfortable, you know, setting up their
Speaker 7: homestead again in an area that just flooded like that.
Speaker 5: So so, what is what's your outlook for for for Houston?
Speaker 5: For anybody that's interested in and maybe coming in and
Speaker 5: investing Optimistic for.
Speaker 6: The city very optimistic man Houston.
Speaker 7: On the next census, they're gonna announce that Houston is
Speaker 7: now larger than Chicago, so it's gonna be the.
Speaker 6: Number three, it's gonna be the third largest city.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and Houston was least hit by the recession because
Speaker 7: we didn't have the big inflation and home prices that
Speaker 7: other markets had. When you look at like international investment
Speaker 7: as far as real estate in the United States, Houston
Speaker 7: is number one where it's coming from.
Speaker 6: China, Australia, Nigeria, anywhere.
Speaker 7: Basically they invest here because if you're looking at the
Speaker 7: three or four biggest cities, the real estate is still
Speaker 7: cheaper here, like I said, and the economy was not
Speaker 7: hurt as much as the other big markets by the recession,
Speaker 7: so it's the safest bet.
Speaker 6: Not only that, but you got more people moving to.
Speaker 7: Texas every year, and like I said, Houston is rapidly growing,
Speaker 7: so that the real estate.
Speaker 6: Outlook is strong for this market.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's two things that I believe are kind
Speaker 7: of the wave of the future for investment.
Speaker 6: It's either tech or is real estate.
Speaker 7: Because no matter how as technology will advance and replace
Speaker 7: people in jobs, but people always have to have a.
Speaker 6: Place to live. I mean, it's never gonna change.
Speaker 5: And I think it's the biggest city land wise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a lot more room for it to be developed.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 7: It is, And what it is is like as it's
Speaker 7: spreading out and it's consuming all the smaller towns around
Speaker 7: it and they're all merging into one big municipality.
Speaker 4: You think part of that that population increase is due
Speaker 4: to the influx of people who were misplaced after Hurricane
Speaker 4: Katrina or.
Speaker 6: I mean we saw a wave of that, but I
Speaker 6: mean a lot of it. No, it's just business. It's
Speaker 6: just it's just it's attractive.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: You got a lot of people that move from high
Speaker 7: high real estate markets like California. They're the o their
Speaker 7: house out here, and you know, it could be a regular,
Speaker 7: regular eighteen hundred square foot house in California, they sell
Speaker 7: it for one point two million, come out here and
Speaker 7: by a mansion.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: So a lot of people transition down here because just
Speaker 7: the cost of living is cheaper.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Sure, So, thank you man, thank you for rocking with us.
Speaker 6: My graduates from my school being forced.
Speaker 1: Bad drop bag, drop my drop bag, drop bag drops.
Speaker 9: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 9: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 9: Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other
Speaker 9: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 9: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 9: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 9: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 9: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 9: any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 9: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 9: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 9: at indeed dot com slash p o d k A
Speaker 9: t z thirteen. Just go to indeed dot com slash
Speaker 9: p O d k A t z thirteen right now
Speaker 9: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 9: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 9: all you need