Willie D sits down with real estate tycoon Chris Senegal as he discusses his journey, how he started out getting into real estate, buying the block, the value of ownership and asset retention, confronting Grant Cardone and much more. Tune in and join the conversation in the socials below.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Yep, yep, you know boys is back and reloaded all
in your mind. Yeah, now deep throating. This is going
the streets, the real the railroading, the distenfranchise, the truth, escapegoating,
and they ain't know where we speak the truth, so
they quoted because we wrote it the North South East Coaches.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The cheat be not for keeping your head, Bobby, it
ain't no.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Stopping and once to be drop said by and then
the system is so corrupt they threw the rock hot
their heads and then blame it on us. Don't get
it twisted on coding. We danced to put no butterment biscuits.
It's Willie d y'all reloaded with another episode of information
and instructions to help you navigate through this wild, crazy,
(00:44):
beautiful world. In the studio, Chris Senegal, what's up.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
King, appreciate the opportunity to be here, man, I'm good man.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
You know I think we might be relatives, man, you know, no, no, no,
I got some syentnagagues in my family. Yeah, my dad.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Probably sold in between I ten laft yet the Houston.
We all my dad seven siblings, so.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, we're a connected in some way. Yeah, man, So
let's get right to it. Bro, you you said that
you started flipping houses, now you buy the block. How'd
you get started?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Man?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
You know, when I was a teenage dad, I grew
up in Port Arthur, I'm the only sibling to even
graduate high school, went to college engineering, got the corporate job,
and hated it. So first year I started reading books.
Real estate just kept coming up over and over. It
is a way to create first generational wealth. So, you know,
I got into flipping houses when I moved to Houston
eight Then I realized, man, the people that taught me
(01:41):
how to do this don't look like me, and they
teaching me how to gentrify my own neighborhoods. So I
was like, man, let me hear resell on this. Let
me figure out a better way to do it. And
so I went from flipping houses literally to realizing there's
people that our grandparents built real estate rental property portfolios,
and they're passing them down to the next generation. Next
generation don't want them because they don't watch grandpa or
(02:03):
grandpa or mom and dad work too hard. So my
goal I go to them and be like, hey, I
want the whole portfolio. And so that's how I'm able
to continuously buy a whole blocks of property at once
instead of going mom in pop one by one.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
You know, you're going to the owners, yeah, family members
and say, hey, let me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Get inything you got yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And how is that not viewed as trying to take
advantage of somebody?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Because I'm making sure it's a win win for both
of us. I'm gonna keep Usually what I do is
sell the financing, which means I'm not going to the
bank to buy it at a low price. I'm saying, hey,
let me give you twenty ten percent or whatever you want,
and I'm gonna start making payments to you over time.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So now it's almost like you still.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Own the property like a landlord, but I'm taking all
the responsibility because I'm paying the taxes, I'm doing the repairs,
and I'm trying to figure.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Out what to do with the property afterwards.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Did the people who taught you that, I mean, did
the people who taught you chose that part of is
that something that you picked up later?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I picked it up later. They teach you how to
do that for a single house at a time. But
then I realized, well, man, if there's people that got
individual houses. There's got to be people that inherit to
more property, and you know, they just don't know what
to do with it. They're tired of it. And I
always want to focus on the neighborhoods where I know,
if I don't buy it somebody that don't look like us,
(03:24):
it's going to be the only person that traditional route
and buy it, which is, you know, go to a
bank and pay everybody off and kick everybody out.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Right. Yeah, are you a privy to the comments that
Grant Cardon made about how he recruit his customers and.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Customers man very much. So I had a conversation with
him on the clubhouse about that.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Is that right? He was talking about how he talks
in street terms two black folks. Was that offensive to you?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Very offensive? Because I know the people that he talks to,
the other successful black groups that he tapped their audiences
to get exposure with, those ain't no street people. Those
are very intelligent, successful black people. And he's talking about
me because I've been in those rooms listening. I'm not ignorant.
So he's a great marketer, you know. And I tell people, hey,
(04:11):
if you want to go learn something from him, learn
to take need from him, but don't let him ciphon
all the money out of our community, the wall we
could be using to do our own projects, investing our
own stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
When he's talking to you, was he using cold words
like brother? Oh?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
He was doing all that, man. He was trying to
flipping the capbacos. And I'm not mad at his marketing skills. Man,
But you know you can't. You can't fall victim to
it though.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
You know, I get very offended when I walk inside of, say,
for instance, a gas station, and some dude, you know
it's from the Middle East call me brother, Hey, what's up, brother?
But you know, he don't address other people like that.
(04:53):
He just addressed the blacks, like what's up, brother? You know,
I find it to be very condescending, Like, how do
you know that that's the way I speak? I don't
know that that's I'm cool with that. It's like calling
somebody the in word because they're black. It's even like
a black person calling somebody the inWORD because they're black
and thinking that's a sign of you know, of affection. Yeah,
(05:16):
I get offended by it.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, some of it.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I think it's just a lack of exposure to our culture.
They don't know how to approach us. So they think
they're doing the right thing. A lot of times they aren't.
So yeah, sometimes I'll just straight up tell them, man,
so can you ain't got to call me that man?
My name is Chris, right, Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
We got some commonalities here, man, because I say the
same thing I tell them.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Man.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You know my name is Willie. You call me Willie,
will mister Willing, mister d. Yeah, you can call me
Willie d Man, but do not call me right. Yeah,
let's take it back, man, let's go back poured Arthur. Yeah,
how did you get this spirit that you have to
help your people?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Man? I think it was always inherent in me to
do it.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I really don't know where it came from, but I
was always up for a challenge. I was always the
class clown and the smartest kid in the class. And
I think the motivation, the motivation didn't really come to
after having my son, and everybody counted me out at
that because we was like going out of ninth grade,
going to tenth grade.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
My girlfriend got pregnant. Everybody counted us out.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
How old were you?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I was fifteen?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
You had a kid at fifteen.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he just graduated college on full academic scholarship.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Though.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
WHOA, Now, when you had your kid at fifteen years old,
were you scared?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I was scared. I had a whole lot of stuff
going on. Man.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
My mom had a business, she had got in some trouble,
she had got locked up while they were doing investigation.
On that same time, I found out my.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Girlfriend was pregnant. So it was a lot going on.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
But you know, it's one of those things where you
can either take that stuff and let it be a
crutch or you can let it be motivation for you.
And so for me, it just became motivation. And so
I think after that, every time somebody told me I
couldn't do something, I was like, I'm gonna figure this.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I'mnna fged this shit out.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Now, where is your dad? Went on? And this is transparing.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
So actually, when my mom was incarcerated, my dad lived
in Lake Charles, So I did move back in with
my dad.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And we got another thing. My dad is from Lake Charles.
Is your dad from Lake Charles and you just lived there?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, so my grandfather's from Lafayette.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
My dad grew up in Cameron Louisiana, but moved to
Late Charles after the hurricane in what year?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Which he.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Audrey like, like, way way way back in the gap.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Okay, there's seventy what I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I ain't gonna lie, but it's about that long.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Cousins we gotta be, I'm telling you, man, I know
we're probably cousins. Yeah, probably like second third cousins or
something like that. So raised by who now that your
your dad is?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So when I was in put author, I was living
with my mom, Okay, moving back with my dad.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Junior senior year of high school.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Okay, so your mom goes to jail. How long is
your mom in jail?
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Just five or six months?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Five or six months? And you're are you at this
point you're staying with your dad, so you're being cared for.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You get information and instructions from your dad.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Now are you and your dad close? So did you
feel like he was a little hard on your What
he was? He was a hard worker. We weren't really close,
never had a good relationship. I say, we're closer now
than we were then. But he was a good provider.
He was a hard worker. Yeah, isn't that strange? Man?
How oftentimes, like, especially like back in the day when
we did have fathers in the house, most of them
(08:49):
were providers. They were focused on providing, but not necessarily providing,
and protecting but not necessarily being that a counsel and
teach and coach. Ye, and those things are very important
to a child's development, and we missed that a lot
of times because we be so focused on getting to
the bag and then we leave like children to their
(09:12):
own devices. Yeah, and so you're I want to go
back further than that. I want to go all the
way back to you five years old. Were you an
inquisitive kid?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Very much so?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, man, into everything like out in out in nature,
taking stuff apart, putting it back together. You know, my
mom was told me one time I bought a bucket
full of frogs in the house, Like I just all
kind of random stuff that kids do.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I mean, I didn't have a lot of opportunity to
travel a whole lot, so you know, you know how
it is you make fun in the neighborhood. Right, figured
out that we grew up kind of in the country
part of Lake Charles Waller casinos and everything are now,
but it wasn't much there when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
How did you play sports?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I did?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
I ran track, I did powerlifting, play football. You know,
so did a little about that stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Work weight class for powerlifting.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Man, I was in like the one, the one thirty
five way class, right, yeah, matter of fact, put out
the v I was the MVP ninth grade year.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
What powerlifting?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah so you got you got one of the big trophies,
Like yeah trophies.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean so, but you know, my
size helped me out. I stopped growing, so you know,
I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
The reason why I'm asking you these questions, man, because
I'm trying to figure out, like deep down, like what
it what it is that drives you, Like what that
comes from, because that don't come from anyway. You can
take five kids that live in the same household and
you know, four of them to decide that you know, hey,
you know, I don't really want to pursue anything great.
I don't want to really do anything to change the world.
(10:50):
I don't want to do anything to really contribute to
my community or whatever. And then at one say, you know,
this is what I want to do, Like it it
had to be something that sparked you somebody or something
that sparkd you. Did you get it from like watching television?
Did you dream? Were you a big dreamer?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Man? Let me say this part. I think part of
it was genetic.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I think I picked up when my dad left off,
because everybody told me stories of my dad when he
was fifteen or fourteen on his own business, Like he
worked at the grocery store, quit the job at the
grocery store, started doing accounting work, ended up being the
accountant for the owner of the grocery store. They had
a car wash, all kind of stuff in high school,
and then he went to college, got a business degree,
(11:35):
and just worked at the refinery for the rest of
his life. So I kind of feel like some of
it's inherit that from that side. But you know what
you said just now is powerful because my older brother
grew up in the same house as me early on,
moved with his dad when he turned fourteen, I was
like seven, and within a year he was in prison
for on robbery. He got out thirteen years later, went
(11:57):
right back to prison three months later for murder, and
even in prison since then.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And he's almost fifty now. Same household.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, do you keep in touch with him?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, we definitely keep in touch. We definitely keep in touch.
But it's kind of what you said, man, his level
of contentment with where he is. You know, it's crazy,
it's crazy, and I you know, I'm on the opposite
of the spectrum. If I'm not doing something that everybody
thinks is impossible, I get bored.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I get bored this.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, this, I love that.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Man.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
If I'm not doing something that everybody thinks is impossible,
I get bored. Yeah. I wouldn't quite frame it. I
would have not thought to frame it like that. But
I feel the same way. If I'm not doing something
that other people find very difficult to deal I get bored.
(12:54):
I have to constantly be working towards greatness, towards open
the doors and doing things that people would not expect
from me. And so so how do you do it?
I know, for me, the way I do it is
that I live each day like I'm open for whatever possibilities.
I'm always open. I don't know what I'm going to
(13:16):
be doing next year. I don't know what I'm gonna
do before the end of this year. I just put
myself out that. Just like when I ran for city council,
I didn't know going into that year that I was
going to run for city. I never even thought about
it ever being a city councilor I just decided that
year when I saw the landscape and I saw it
how everybody was talking, I heard their platforms, and I
was like, I'm better than that. I could do that,
(13:37):
you know, And I ran, yeah, you know, so what's
your method?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
It's kind of alone those same lines.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I'm always looking for the right opportunity to do something
that I know I've heard before people say you can't do.
And so I got this little success triangle I figured out. Right,
So you need three things to be successful at whatever
you do in life. Number one, you need knowledge and expertsperience.
Number two, you need the right opportunity, and number three
you need the money. The cheat code is to come
(14:06):
to the table with one and partner with people that
got the other two. We all taught in our heads
or school tars. You got to you know, you gotta study,
you gotta figure it out all lout. You gotta save
the money, you gotta do everything yourself. So for me,
I'm always networking, having conversations, and when I hear something
come come across you know, my convos that it's like, oh,
I want to pursue that. Immediately I go, okay, that's
(14:27):
the opportunity to let me go find somebody who can
help me execute on that.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And so that's how I've.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Gone from buying that first block on Liberty Road at
fifty nine, doing all new construction houses on it, and
all my buyers ended up being young, black working professionals,
and everybody thought I was gonna gentrify the neighborhood to
find another opportunity to buy another block.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
That family had.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Raise over a million dollars just from people putting in
two hundred and fifty five hundred dollars just offer social media,
no marketing ads, nothing, and being able to say, hey,
we're gonna buy this block and we're gonna leave all
the residents there, keep all the residents there, and then
find something to do to make money, like short term
event space stuff like that. So that's that was my
second project. A third project that's really big is that
(15:12):
big Pleasant Grove church site.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
You know, they came to me asked me if I
could do something with it.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I was like I've never done a project this big,
but now I got the opportunity to limit go see
if I can find the knowledge and experience to partner with.
So I had to go to the Atlanta find some
brothers that have done projects that big, and now we're
working on a three hundred and forty year The department
complex on the site with the Housing Authority.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Is Pleasant Grove. Still there, is it shut down?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
They're still there. They're still there. I had no reason
not to do it.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Still they are they still You're gonna knock down the
whole building.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
We're gonna have to. We're gonna have to knock down
the building.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
But they're taking the proceeds from the sale and they're
building another campus cash so they won't have any any
debt or anything.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And what are y'all gonna do with that property? Like
right across the street from that little stretch of property,
it's like, uh, it runs. It's it's like a wreck tangle.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You know what. Another developed already bought that. Frank Lou
the agent say, I'm.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Kind of high at Pleasant really on the cool man
because I tried to buy that land from them about
twenty years ago and they wouldn't sell it to me.
I was gonna give them good money for that land. Man,
oh man, my dad don't want to sell it. Yeah,
I was hot, and you know, but I'm glad that,
you know, I'm glad somebody got the big part because
(16:29):
that's the big cheese with y'all. That's that's the land
right there, that's the big spot, you know. So you're
gonna build a multi a multi unit complex.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, a big apartment complex.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Over half of it to be affordable for the community
because that whole you know, that East River, everything going
on over there, gentrification, It ain't a lot of opportunities
for us to have new housing options for people that
are from the community. Or My bigger focus is I
want the kids that go to Common and get that
starter job somewhere in the city. I want them to
be able to move back to the neighborhood too, instead
(17:04):
of having to go to Katie a sugarland of Humble,
you know. So vide opportunities for them to be in
the mix in the city and something that we can
say we developed collectively. Because when I bought it, all
the investors put up put up the money as black
you know.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Now, how do you control the cash flow like that
with with the type of people coming in and that
are able to buy. Obviously you want to see people
that look like you in those shoeunits. But you can't
just say hey, this.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Is for the blacks. No you can't, you can't. That's
that's illegal.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So how so how do you to depend on the.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Community awareness and conversations on the front end long before
it's time for me to start selling or leasing anything.
I want everybody to know, Hey, this is what I'm
about to do. If you're interested, get in line, let
me inside, inside track.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
There you go, got you.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
That's how ever, that's how every community does it, you know,
that's right?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, Godleys reloaded podcasts you right back after the sport.
Are you familiar with that Asian Asian complex apartment complex
that was built in Katie and they said it was
(18:15):
just for Asians. Black people try to buy in there
and they.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Were like no, no, no, no, no, yep, I saw
that story.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Are you familiar with dot Com?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
No, I'm not. No, update, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
But to me, that concept is so crazy. Why force
your way into somewhere that they don't want you at.
You know, it's like Okay, yeah, you can prove that
you can be there, but what does that really do
for you? And you're going to have a horrible experience
living over therrible experience.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
They're going to try to run you off. They one
thing about it. They will stick together, yeah, and push
you up out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
I don't know if you know this, but if you
study doctor King, everybody knows I have a dream. His
last two speeches, his whole message changed. He's like, man,
I messed up. It's like I started off pushing for equality.
That turned into us pushing for acceptance, and then once
desegregation happened, we forced our way into everybody's community and
we abandoned our own communities. And so his last message,
(19:10):
he was like, hey, we collectively put our money together,
we'd be like the ninth largest country in the world.
Take your money out of this bank, put it over here,
get this insurance company that's black on.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Twelve hours later he was assassinated. So that's a powerful message.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
My kids, Mom tried to get me to purchase lots
in fifth Ward when those lots were fifteen hundred dollars,
and I couldn't see it. Man, I did not see it.
I was like, who's what am I going to be
on here? And who's going to buy it? You know
it's the hood, right Who's gonna buy this stuff? She
(19:45):
tried to get me to do. She had the vision, brother,
and I could not see it. I'm talking those same
lots are running two three, four hundred thousand dollars now, yep,
I could not see it. There are others available in
black communities around this country right now, and black people
(20:06):
don't have the vision. There are black people who don't
see the vision right now? How do you convince them
to invest in the future.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I tell them to go look at the real past.
Let's not talk about civil rights movement to now. Let's
talk about emancipation to civil rights movement. From eighteen sixties
to the nineteen fifties, you had actual slaves that been
on a plantationalary likefe couldn't read the right building cities
everywhere because we couldn't go to no white cities right
(20:37):
every ward. In Houston was a small black settlement at
one point in time, so we built all the commercial buildings.
We had more black banks, more black business owners, more
black everything. The houses that was built that was before
there was a family made loan, a government back loan.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
They had to save up money and build out that stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
We got to take more pride in saying, hey, they
want to see us do that again, you know, and
while the property is so cheap, it's a lot easier
for us to make that move. Usually what happens is
we get mad when everything's really expensive, which means somebody
else has seen that vision, taken advantage of it, moved
into that neighborhood, and they like the neighborhood so much
that they outbidding each other for the prices.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
That's how the house values go up. That's how all
the real estate values go up.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
All we got to do is take that same blueprint
and implement it for ourselves in our own communities, and
we don't have to worry about You see on social
media people talking about let's go buy some land in
the middle of nowhere and start from scratch. Why we
got whole communities that sitting idle that we could just
take back over already, got city infrastructure, got running water,
got sewer lines, got everything. We could just rebuild our
own communities right here in every city. And so that's
(21:41):
been my message, and it does make it easier. When
you find out something else is going on, a new
stadium coming, usually we get mad and want to protest.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
To now go buy everything up because the value is
going to go up.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So that's what I'm doing now. I'm buying land, and
I'm instructing my children not to sell, like never ever
ever sell.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Lease. That's it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Because there's a stretch of land like in the Gallery area,
you can't buy anything. The same family owns everything. You
can't buy nothing, you can only lease it. So all
of those buildings, I don't care if you build a
five million dollar building on there. Yeah, a default on
that thing and you out of here.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So I think that for long term generational wealth, leasing
is the way to go. But there are sometimes situations
where selling makes more sense.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Can you explain that if you have an opportunity to
go take the profits from something and you have a
better use for that money. Let's say you own something
and you can make fifty thousand on it right now,
but then you could go to the north end of
the fifth Ward and buy some cheap lots, which one
of those lots may be worth two hundred thousand in
four five years. You can take that fifty and flip
(23:02):
it into something that may be worth a million dollars
in twenty thirty years and still own that land instead
of owning that one par so that you had that
had the fifty thousand equity in it. And to take
your conversation a little deeper, the original wealth built on
this planet was land. That's what a kingdom was. The
king owned all the land. A lord was literally a
(23:23):
landlord collecting tarifts from everybody. And now that's only evolved
into the government collecting taxes. So that's the true generational
wealth is owning land and making everybody that inhabits that
land or lives on that land pay you for as
long term as possible. And yeah, but like you said,
sometimes when there's a bigger opportunity to grow what you've
(23:47):
invested in by taking some of the profits out of
it and putting in somewhere else, that's the only time
you should really sell.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Is it best to buy or sell? I mean buy
our rent? Is it best to buy a rent?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Oh? This is what I tell people.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
The house you live in, It's okay to rent because
if something breaks, somebody else gonna fix it, right, But
you should take all the rest of your money and
buy a real estate that's gonna pay you.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So you actually are buying income.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Right when you buy a rental property, you could buy
a house, it's gonna let's say your mortgage plament is
fifteen hundred, that you can rent it out for two thousand.
Now you got five hundred dollars a month. That's not
tied to you working at all. If you sleep all day,
you're gonna make that five hundred every month. If you
bought it in the right area, the property value is
gonna go up too. So now your household net worth
goes up too. You know how they say the average
(24:40):
household network of a black family gonna go to zero
by twenty fifty. Well, if we start buying real estate
in our own communities when it's starting that gentrification process,
we can reverse that trend on our own. Now, when
you rent your primary and you own a rental property,
you still get out and benefits everybody tell you about.
You still get the tax right offs, you know, write
off the interest, the taxes, the repairs, you can still
(25:02):
write all that stuff off.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You still get the value appreciation.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
But like I said, when you go home at night,
the garbagere supposed to go out, you can cause somebody
to go fix it, So I'm not opposed to either one.
And then if you want to go buy your dream
home later, let's say you got four or five rental
properties each giving you five hundred a month. Right now,
you got the extra two thousand a month that the
bank is gonna look at and say, Okay, you qualify
for a bigger mortgage for your primary residence. Whereas if
(25:25):
you do it the other way, you got you on
your primary house first, the bank is gonna say, oh,
you don't even have enough extra income to afford this
rental property, or something goes wrong, so we're not going
to prove you forne So we got to think about
it in the reverse of the way that most people
will tell us to do it. But it makes a
lot more sense that way.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
How do you buy a house with a credit card?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Well, that's not something I really would recommend, but and
why not because you might overleverage, which means if you
can't afford all your bills right now and you haven't
been able to say both for enough money to a
least have down payment, you probably aren't in a financial
position or financially responsible.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Enough to leverage credit to go get a house. But
you can.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Maybe there's a reason why you know your income is
about to go up, or you have to you don't
want to use your cash because you want to do
something else with it.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That makes sense, But I mean you can.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
There's there's ways to process payments and take the proceeds.
Let's say, if you have an LLC or you have
some bets at LLC, they can send the payment to
that entity and then reimburse you and give you the cash.
Some lenders that are more asset based lenders, which means
(26:41):
that they're looking at the property yourself and not really
looking at what your income is personally, and they're more
investor friendly.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Some of them may let you do that.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
You know, like they don't care where twenty percent comes from,
if it's come from a credit card or whatever. That's
on you if you default on that. But yeah, I
mean it is possible. But like I said, if I'm
advising somebody, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Tell them to do that.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
How do you buy a house with no money?
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There are downpayment assistance programs that will give you up
to thirty thousand dollars towards the purchase of a house.
They usually have some type of restriction on them, like income,
like you can't make over a certain amount of money,
or it has to be in a certain.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Area of the city.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
But a couple of uh, well, like yeah, most of
the black neighbors in Houston, right, neighborhoods in Houston right now,
I would say Sunnyside for sure. No, the programs, oh,
some of the programs, No, I don't. I couldn't tell
you the name of any of them right now top
of my head. The KNAKA is one program that gives
(27:47):
you almost like one hundred percent financing in ACA.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, yeah, I can vouch for NACA.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Business and a lot of them. They're just the local
city programs or county programs.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Now.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Me being more of a real estate investor and developer,
that's not really what I do, but real estate agents
that help people actually buy primary homes and residences. The
good ones that are that know the market that they're
in well will know all those different relationships. And a
lot of the mortgage lenders too, will will know what
programs are out there that they work with.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
As far as down payment assistance.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, okay, let's say I got ten thousand dollars. I
want to build a real estate empire. Where do I start?
Speaker 3 (28:28):
What I recommend is take that ten thousand dollars and
invest it with somebody that's already successful doing it, and
not somebody talking on social media, somebody where they can
show you, hey, look, I bought this for this. Here's
my closing statement, here's my documents, here's the wire that
went to my bank account. I actually made some profit.
I'm about to do this again with my same team.
If you put this ten thousand and I'll give you
(28:49):
twelve or fifteen thousand back at the end. Now you're
going to increase that ten and you're going to learn
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
What to do right.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Most of us want to try to go find a
deal to do it ourselves, and most people fail that way.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It's okay to be a copy cat. You just got
to be copying the right cat, so you know.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, copy off somebody and
give them an incentive to show you what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Because you putting money in.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Now they say you got to invested interest and you
decreasing your risk of losing your money because you're working
with somebody's got to proven track record. You do that
once or twice, maybe you go do your own, or
maybe you go bring somebody else in and y'll pull
you all money together and do it collectively. And it
ain't get rich quick scheme, but that's a sure fire
way to be able to get to the next level.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
And just you know, you keep doing it over and
over and don't stop. That's the thing. You got to
keep reinvesting the money. That's the only way money grows.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You know, when you stop reinvesting it, it becomes stagnant
or you become complacent, and then next thing you know,
you're missing out of other opportunities.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
If a person's ultimate goal is to invest, is it
smart for them to pay money to go to real
estate school. No.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
No, real estate school is for somebody that wants to
help people do transactions.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
So well, let me say that two ways.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
If your only goal is to learn how investing works, no, However,
if you feel like you have the time to help
people do regular transactions buy houses, sell houses, rents, and
you want to take that commission from that and build
your pot of money up to then go and invest
that is a good way to do it. And if
you want to take that step further, then you could
(30:34):
be a real estate agent that only works with investors,
so you can watch investors do transactions and then you're
making money in the process. So you're helping them buy
houses after they flip it, and you're helping them sell it.
You know, you're helping them rent it out. You know,
that could be a good way to get started too.
Or you're watching somebody build a multifamily and then you
help them lease it up. Then you can learn that way,
(30:55):
but you don't have to do that if you want
to invest. You just want to find people that are
investing and make sure that you can see that they
are successful and then start putting some money over there
with them.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And how do you turn your money into passive income?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
So understand that the passive income strategy in real estate
investing is not going to give you the big bag
like flipping houses is. But that's more active income because
you're actively managing projects. After you finish that project, you
have to find another project. Right However, when you passively invest,
you're buying rental properties. And I always want to talk
(31:35):
to especially people that get to our level. We only
think about houses, but every other building you pass when
you leave here, that's not a house. Somebody owns it,
and those businesses are the tenants, and those businesses are
paying rent every month too. So you buy buildings that
you can lease out to other people, or create other
ways to make money off from, like event spaces, those
(31:57):
types of things that generate cash flow. And then every
month that tenant makes you their first business partner. They
don't even realize it when you The first person you
pay every month is your landlord. So they do all
the work every month, they generate the revenue for their business,
and then they pay you first every month, and after
(32:17):
you pay all your expenses, whatever's left that's passive income
for you. You know, you can even hire property management
to be in the middle to where you don't have
to talk to nobody. The tenants all deal with the
property management director don't have to deal with you. So
that's that's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Go to boys.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Reloaded podcasts will be right back after this week. I
have to assume that with you making the moves that
you're making in Fifth Ward in particular, and even other
surrounding areas in Houston. I have to assume that you
(32:55):
have your fast share of haters, especially the institutional tradition haters.
They got to be saying, like this guy, he's not
even turning the major profits. You know. It's like getting
the flax or letting them come stay amongst us, and
we're trying to make this money that they ever came
to you and tried to buy you, Like, hey, come
(33:17):
work with us, man, come get on our side, you know.
Oh yeah, be that alone. Man. It's a bigger bag
over here, baby.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, and they have a
lot more resources too. They'll lay that big bag on
the table and say, hey, you come do this. We
like your brand, we like your reach. We'll give you
twenty five percent of the deal and you don't have
to put up no money. But then I'm losing control,
you know, and for me, it's not worth that I
recently had that happen. It happens often, honestly. And then
(33:44):
or you have these investors or lenders where when you
start doing bigger projects, they'll give you all the money,
but then they want to make profit first.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So it's called preferred equity. That means we're gonna give
you all the money.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
We want to make all our money back first, and
we want to make this certain percentage of profits before
we even let you start making any money at all.
So if you calculate anything wrong, any hiccups, you can
mess around and being a deal with somebody else put up.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
All of money.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
You're doing all the work and you're not getting none
of the profits. So there are a lot of.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
People out there that structure deals that way, and they
do take advantage of a lot of us.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Honestly, is lending for black people getting any easier than
it was in the past.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
No, until until we are the ones actually making the
decisions on the loans, it's never going to really get easier.
I mean, you have certain programs out there where the
government is subsidizing or telling telling the lender the mortgage company, hey,
if you lend to them in a default, will reimburse you.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
That helps us a little bit.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And why would the government do that? Because they hate
us too.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
You know, they have certain incentives. I mean, it's all politics,
you know.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
They have to they have to do a certain amount
to appease the population, you know, so they're going to
what they can or what they need to do to
meet those requirements.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
And banks have the same thing.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
They have these community reinvestment at credits, what they have
to lend a certain percentage of what they manage in
their portfolio two projects in our communities.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
And I'm familiar with that. Why is it that so
much of that money remains on the table. We're not
getting to those funds And I personally believe that people
are not informed. Yeah, they don't know that that money
is there for them. Yeah, and why is it? Why
is that happening? And why aren't we doing a better
(35:37):
job at getting the word out.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I think it's just a lack of communication amongst us
and a lack of outreach from those groups that are
required to do it. Now, I'll take it a level
simpler and take it down to the person, the individual
person that works at a bank that's not wanting to
take a risk, right, that's their job, that's their salaries,
(36:01):
how they feed their family. And they're not really familiar
with us, you know that we don't look like them,
and then we're asking them for loans. They're scared. They're like, well,
what if I make a bad decision? So I'm really
going to judge this African American twice as hard because
from what I know about African Americans, they mismanaged money,
you know, and it could be completely wrong. It could
(36:22):
be it could be nothing prejudiced about that thought process.
But until we have more examples in front of them
of us being successful with it, it's always going to
be harder for them to make a decision to want
to help us or land at the same rate they
will land to one of their friends.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Well, there's always going to be a level of implicit
bias when you're dealing with these people, because it's like
you say, they have their preconceived notions of who we are,
the way we behave and they have no clue because
most of them don't even have black friends, right, And
so you walk into the bank, we got one. You know,
(37:02):
this is like a it's a huge problem, and I
just I don't understand why, like the people that are
in the space like that are in like that banking community,
the people that are in finance, you know, why don't
they do a better job of getting the message out?
Are they doing a good job? But it's just that
people are resistant.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
It's a little bit of both and I realized this too,
especially during that whole clubhouse era, just listening to all
the black rooms with people that work in banking and
commercial lending. It's no different in prison. They are institutionalized.
The institution has taught them, don't do this, take this risk,
tell that person this. They got to work twice as hard,
(37:44):
they got to come back to the table with this,
and then they start regurgitating that, and that's what's circulated.
And then when it comes time for one of us
to walk in, they automatically think, oh, I got to
be more strict on this because they're institutionalized in a
different way.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So we got to break that, have it.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
We need more independently owned institutions where we are in
control of the money, taking risk on our own communities.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
That's really the only way it's gonna change.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, how many kids do you have?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Men too?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Too? And again tell me what what the what they're doing?
So my son is son, just got a degree.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Just graduated with the Green Business, getting ready to go
back for NBA and entrepreneurship. And then my daughter's four. Okay, yeah,
so you know she's in preschool law, she might be,
she might be. We got her in the English Spanish
Emerging program. She does half day niggas haf a day Spanish,
so well, she'll be bilingual. She'll know more than me
by the time she's five.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Right, ye, right, Are you afraid for her, like with
the climate of all of this violence and racial hatred
that's going on in America?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Not not, No, I'm not afraid.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I'm just gonna make sure she's well prepared, you know,
and make sure I put all safeguards I can in
place to make sure that you know, she can navigate
through it.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
This for the benefit of people who don't know what
that you know, what to do. What are some of
the things that you're doing. The safeguard he.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Setting up.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Financial structures like trusts, any things like that, so she
has a safety net of money, you know, and starting early,
because you can start investing small amounts now, and by
the time a kid is eighteen twenty two whatever, you know,
they have a good cushion to be able to live
off of. And also trying to nurture whatever they want
(39:33):
to do. Oftentimes, what we believe we should do is
try to force our kids to do well we think
they should do, or do what we're doing and that
shouldn't be your goal. Your goal should be to create
an environment where they can have whatever opportunity they want
at whatever pace they want. A lot of times we
push our kids out the house too fast. Other culture
let the kids stay in the house of they're thirty,
(39:55):
you know, and they end up being worth forty or fifty.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So those are the kind of safeguards
I'm speaking of.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And then also my goal is to set up my
businesses to where my kids can inherit atm machines.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
So maybe they don't want to work, maybe they want
to travel. I want to have.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Decision makers in my business that will run the business
without my kid having to step.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
In and do the work. And how do you do that.
You put it in the trust.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, you can put it in trust, or it could
be any type of corporation. I mean, any normal business.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
You should have.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
A few people under you doing the work so that
you are not the sole reason that the business is successful. Right,
And that should be everybody's goal. And that's what I
tell entrepreneurs all the time. Stop bashing people that got
jobs because.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
You need them.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
You need good people that want to come and work
for somebody. And perform so that your business can grow,
so you don't have to be the one stressing every night,
you know, with the headaches. But when you ask what's
the structure, it could be any structure. It could be
a LLC, it could be a c corp, it could
be an escort. That's just more how you handle the
financial set of it, or how you protect the financial
(41:03):
side of it. But the goal is to have an
actual successful business in the process. You can have all
these LLCs and trusts and all this other kind of stuff,
but if it's not really making no money, what's it
there for. It's just useless pieces of paper.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Earlier, you alluded to the incompetency of some of the
people that are in the real estate space on the internet.
Are they doing more good or harm for the masses?
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Harm? A lot of harm, a lot of harm. Let's
go back to Grand car Dome.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
One thing he preaches all the time is don't buy
your primary residence at all. Now I'm completely against that
because if you buy a house in the right area,
it really can be your biggest investment. For instance, my
house is on Liberty Road that I built. All most
of my buyers they just have regular jobs. None of
(41:56):
them wanted to be investors. But they have over one
hundred thousand dollarsand equity in their house just because it's
in the right location. That's definitely a return on the investment.
But you know, it's it's it's that that's just the
base case of bad advice. Everybody telling everybody to do
short term rentals and airbnbs and all that kind of stuff.
A lot of markets, the market is saturated. There's not
(42:17):
a big demand for rentals over there right now. For
short term hotels are fighting back against all that, you know,
because they're losing market share. So it's so much misinformation
out there that people think because somebody is doing lifestyle
marketing with a rented Lamborghini and a fake Rolex, but
(42:37):
you can't tell from from the videos that they know
what they're talking about. Now, you're taking bad advice from
somebody who really is only making money off of selling
you bad information. They're not even really successful in their
own business.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
All their paper coming from that side, right membership, Right, Yeah, Yeah,
So you mentioned that you owned you bought the property
on Liberty Road. Is that the property that is southeast
of Liberty.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
North northeast where Lucy's grocery store used to be. Okay, yeah,
it's townhouses there now, right.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I guess you know a lot of times, man, I'd
be driving, man, and I was just in Fifth Ward
Saturday for the Bottom reunion. I don't be paying attention, man,
I just be just driving. Yeah yeah, looking at the phone.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Now that the property on the south side used to
be a church, but somebody, uh swing the pastor out
of it and it's tied up in litigations.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
But I'm trying to get that one too.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I just said that. I'd
be driving looking at the phone. Somebody like you gonna
kill somebody?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
You don't kill somebody.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
See that. They always be trying to find you find
something that attack you. Well, you know, they don't even
listen to the information and instructions. They just gloss over
that and go like, what's up with that shirt?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Anything to deflect. Yeah, So what is the best place
to buy?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Is it the suburbs or is it the hood.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I'm going to say you need to buy wherever you
see the neighborhood starting to change.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
If it all looks nice already, it's too late.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
It's too late because especially well, let me clarify that
if you are buying just for the convenience of where
you want to live, then none of this matters what
I'm about to say. But if you are buying because
you want to say, I'm making a decision that's going
to pay me or return and put me in a
better financial position, then you want to be somewhere. That's
(44:37):
what we call merging. So turning over, you can see
some new construction happening. You can see somebody buying old
properties and fixing them up. You know something is coming
in the area. Like I said, it could be a
new school, it could be anything like that, and that
could be in the suburbs, or that could be in
the city. It really depends on what market shaan. But
whenever you do that, you almost guarantee that whatever you
(44:57):
buy is gonna be worth more next year more of
a year after that. And so that's what always suggests
people look and you can do things like just type
in whatever city you're in and type in the planning department,
the Housing and Urban Planning department, or you can type
in city council meeting minutes and look for the things
to talk about development, real estate, housing, all those those
(45:20):
those are going to be indicators. All this stuff is
public record, public information. They'll tell you where the city
wants to go. The city council meetings will tell you
where the developers are asking for permission to do projects,
and those how you that's how you should be picking
the errors to move to, especially if it's our historically
black neighborhoods, because we usually miss all that and like
I said, other people buy it up. By the time,
by the time you actually see the activity, somebody's already
(45:42):
bought it.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, you are very good at connecting and networking. You
ever thought about running for office?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
And that is the furthest thing from my mind. I
feel like we too much of our.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Of our community leadership goes to the political side, and
we need more of it to stay on the private side. Yeah,
because that's that's what we have a deficit. You know,
we had a lot of strong politicians, but we need
like we're talking about earlier, we need more people like
me doing developments, doing the entire neighborhoods and entire communities
for us. We need more people starting banks, you know,
(46:22):
starting businesses that are going to benefit the community.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
We need, I mean simple things.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
We all know how bad we get racially profile for appraisals.
We need more appraisal companies. We need all these things,
but we complain about all the time. We just need
more people that are that are running the businesses from
our communities, helping us make.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
The right decisions.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, program, we need that. Yeah. I'm just sitting here thinking, man,
that you're a very valuable asset to our community. And
you hit the nail on the head, man. We do
we need because we need more people that do things
(47:01):
outside of politics. We need more king makers than kings,
more queen makers than queens. And because that's who really
run it if you really think it, you think about it,
the politicians and the business people, that's who run the world. Yeah,
(47:21):
but it is the business people that the politicians must
acquiesce yes other ones. Yeah, who you know who really
call the shots?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah, so you know, and we always talk about voting,
but what we don't really talk about is those those
lobbyists and those super packs that are the ones that
really get behind the politicians.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Like you said, they're the biggest donors.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
When you know, when these when these bills hit the
floor of Congress, and they five six hundred pages.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
And politicians ain't writing all that those lottery either.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Those lobby groups are the ones putting all that together
and given it to them to put into the bill.
That's how legislation has really made it passed. But we
don't talk about that side of it, and that's what
we lack. We're heavy on the voting, heavy on the politics.
But if we pulled our money and formed these super
packs and these lobbies to push for our issues we get,
we'll get a lot further.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, let's let's talk about putting together a superpack. You know,
what would you start?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Man?
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Everybody is everybody that's got money. I mean, it's really
really that simple. And I know some some black lobbyists,
but they work for other firms that have other initiatives,
saving alligators or some random stuff, you know, but they
should be focused on our black community. The average lobbyists
starting salaries like four hundred thousand dollars a year. So
(48:49):
we thirty or forty of us, maybe one hundred of
us all decided, hey, we're gonna put in ten thousand
a year, you know, to hire a few lobbyists, you know,
to go maybe start the state level and the lobby
for certain things that we want to see locally and
in our county and our state, and then we grow
that to go national with it. You know, focus on
(49:10):
specific topics and maybe find the business owners that are
in that specific sector that have a vested interest in
seeing it be successful. Then you know, we can move
forward that way. For instance, we talked I talked earlier
about the airbnbs. The lobby packs for the Airbnbs are
mainly hotels. Hotel owners, right, because they're going to put
(49:32):
money behind hiring these lobbyists to change the laws to
make it harder for people to own airbnbs. So it's
not as complex of a concept as we think it is.
We just have to start implementing it.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Let's say I wanted to get started in real estate,
but I don't know what to do. I reach out
to Chris Seneg I want to join his real estate
school for dummish. You know, what's the first step do
I do I take? And what and what comfortable? What
(50:06):
do I get from my membership? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Okay, so I got I got the base level, which
is the real estate blueprint, which exposes you to all
different areas of real estate.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Some people may not have money, but they have time.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
So there's certain things you can do to go out
and source deals and opportunities called whole selling or taking
the time to become a licensed agent, and you can
learn that way. Other people have money capital, they want
to invest, Okay, so then I'm gonna show them a
different a completely different route. You can pool money and
do crowdfunding type deals, or you can partner with an
(50:44):
existing investor. And so I have this self paced online
membership where you can go through that stuff and read
through all different things and figure out what what what
suits you best.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
And it goes even further.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
I mean there's other areas of real estate where you
can make money like appraisals, inspections only title companies, and
most people think I don't want to actually do the work.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
You don't have to.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
You start the business and then hire people to do
the actual work. And so it's so many different sectors
you can go into and learn more about real estate.
And then after you start reading that and you find
something that you identify with, then you can hone in
and say, okay, well Chris, I want to know specifically
about this. How do I do new construction, so then
I have training material to teach you how to do
new constructions specifically.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
And then.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
From there, the people that say, Okay, I'm really ready
to go, Chris, I want some one on one mentorship.
I only take people that have gone through at least
the curriculum first, so that I'm not starting from scratch
teaching you how to do everything. And then what I
do from there is I'll do some of the work,
but I'm gonna leverage my network, my vetted people that
I've already known to have done good business with other
(51:56):
people or have done business with me directly, and I'm
gonna put you in their hand and let them help
you go through the process. But I always teach we
got to use the undercover boss undercover boss approach. If
you ever watched the show, the CEO never really knows.
Everybody does their job. Your job is to pick the
right people and assemble the right team around you of experts,
and then that's that's your shortcut to success, that which
(52:19):
goes back to that success try and go.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
You're going to find the knowledge and experience to work with,
and so I teach all.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Of that in my in my curriculums, and what does
this curriculum cost? What kind of money I'm looking?
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Okay, so the base one is only forty seven dollars
a month, and it's it's at your own pace, you know,
and I'll upload and add material to it whenever I
may go speak at an event and I get some
good good footage, or I might find a good article
or something, I'll add that to there. And then the courses,
they're like, I keep them under five hundred dollars a piece,
(52:54):
you know, and those are self paced too.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Is that a month?
Speaker 2 (52:57):
No one time? One time, one time? And then for
the one on one mentorship it's five hundred. Man.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
I know, some of those courses be like ten thousand dollars.
If you're going to pay one time, it's ten thousand.
You're going to pay monthly, it's like fifteen hundred, two
thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
My goal isn't to get rich off of selling the information,
you know. My goal is to at least somebody feel like, Okay,
I've spent some money on this, so you know, people
treat that with a little bit more respect and regard
than something that's free.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
But I also don't want to price everybody out of.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
It, because I remember trying to get out of flipping
houses into new construction, and even the brothers that were
successful in the city, nobody really wanted to give me
exposure to all the information. So my goal now is
to make sure I can provide that information as many
people as possible that want it. And you know, if
they want to go past that level and get more serious,
then they can pay five to ten thousand for the
(53:52):
one on one mentorship. Right, they get me a couple
of people from my team, but all my resources too.
So and my ass three students have made over one
hundred thousand dollars and when they finished their first project,
so like equity and a deal.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, you mentioned I think I read on your website
where you the first deal that you get a new
construction deal you did, you lost forty thousand dollars and
from that point on you made a point to share
the information so that nobody else could lose that kind
of money on their first DEALEP yep. Usually the first
(54:32):
thing somebody's thinking, like, how can I make sure that
I don't lose any more money? Yeah, you're already thinking
about other people. You're trying to go to heaven us sun.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
I'm hoping on the short list.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
H You alright, man, you're a good dude.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Bro.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
You're a good dude man, and uh you know, I
wish you, you know, all the best man and we
go we gotta do business together, definitely, uh shit, even
if we don't even do business together. Man, you know,
I think it would just be good to, you know,
have a cat like you in the circle. You know,
I'm in a circle of a lot of really really strong,
influential guys, and you know, we're all on the same
(55:12):
page as far as like trying to help each other
and help our people. So we definitely got to keep
continue to discussion.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Definitely, definitely welcome service. Yes, sir, I appreciate it. Appreciate
the opportunity. I appreciate you sharing the platform so that
I can get this message in front of more people.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
You know, absolutely, it's it's a.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Lifetime achievement for you. So I wanted just to be
in the room.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
You know, I appreciate it. So how can the people
reach out to you?
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Man?
Speaker 3 (55:39):
My social media Instagram is the easiest way. It's just
my name C H R I. S. S. E. N.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
E G. A L.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
I have links to everything I have going on, all
my announcements for wherever be speaking at, or any new
courses or projects I have coming up. You know, that's
my outlet right there to get started. And if you
just google my name, it'll pull up all my links.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Senegal, No More Talk. This episode
was produced by A King and brought to you by
the Black Effect Podcast Network at iHeartRadio
Yep, yep, you know boys is back and reloaded all
in your mind. Yeah, now deep throating. This is going
the streets, the real the railroading, the distenfranchise, the truth, escapegoating,
and they ain't know where we speak the truth, so
they quoted because we wrote it the North South East Coaches.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The cheat be not for keeping your head, Bobby, it
ain't no.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Stopping and once to be drop said by and then
the system is so corrupt they threw the rock hot
their heads and then blame it on us. Don't get
it twisted on coding. We danced to put no butterment biscuits.
It's Willie d y'all reloaded with another episode of information
and instructions to help you navigate through this wild, crazy,
(00:44):
beautiful world. In the studio, Chris Senegal, what's up.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
King, appreciate the opportunity to be here, man, I'm good man.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
You know I think we might be relatives, man, you know, no, no, no,
I got some syentnagagues in my family. Yeah, my dad.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Probably sold in between I ten laft yet the Houston.
We all my dad seven siblings, so.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, we're a connected in some way. Yeah, man, So
let's get right to it. Bro, you you said that
you started flipping houses, now you buy the block. How'd
you get started?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Man?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
You know, when I was a teenage dad, I grew
up in Port Arthur, I'm the only sibling to even
graduate high school, went to college engineering, got the corporate job,
and hated it. So first year I started reading books.
Real estate just kept coming up over and over. It
is a way to create first generational wealth. So, you know,
I got into flipping houses when I moved to Houston
eight Then I realized, man, the people that taught me
(01:41):
how to do this don't look like me, and they
teaching me how to gentrify my own neighborhoods. So I
was like, man, let me hear resell on this. Let
me figure out a better way to do it. And
so I went from flipping houses literally to realizing there's
people that our grandparents built real estate rental property portfolios,
and they're passing them down to the next generation. Next
generation don't want them because they don't watch grandpa or
(02:03):
grandpa or mom and dad work too hard. So my
goal I go to them and be like, hey, I
want the whole portfolio. And so that's how I'm able
to continuously buy a whole blocks of property at once
instead of going mom in pop one by one.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
You know, you're going to the owners, yeah, family members
and say, hey, let me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Get inything you got yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And how is that not viewed as trying to take
advantage of somebody?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Because I'm making sure it's a win win for both
of us. I'm gonna keep Usually what I do is
sell the financing, which means I'm not going to the
bank to buy it at a low price. I'm saying, hey,
let me give you twenty ten percent or whatever you want,
and I'm gonna start making payments to you over time.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So now it's almost like you still.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Own the property like a landlord, but I'm taking all
the responsibility because I'm paying the taxes, I'm doing the repairs,
and I'm trying to figure.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Out what to do with the property afterwards.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Did the people who taught you that, I mean, did
the people who taught you chose that part of is
that something that you picked up later?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I picked it up later. They teach you how to
do that for a single house at a time. But
then I realized, well, man, if there's people that got
individual houses. There's got to be people that inherit to
more property, and you know, they just don't know what
to do with it. They're tired of it. And I
always want to focus on the neighborhoods where I know,
if I don't buy it somebody that don't look like us,
(03:24):
it's going to be the only person that traditional route
and buy it, which is, you know, go to a
bank and pay everybody off and kick everybody out.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Right. Yeah, are you a privy to the comments that
Grant Cardon made about how he recruit his customers and.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Customers man very much. So I had a conversation with
him on the clubhouse about that.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Is that right? He was talking about how he talks
in street terms two black folks. Was that offensive to you?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Very offensive? Because I know the people that he talks to,
the other successful black groups that he tapped their audiences
to get exposure with, those ain't no street people. Those
are very intelligent, successful black people. And he's talking about
me because I've been in those rooms listening. I'm not ignorant.
So he's a great marketer, you know. And I tell people, hey,
(04:11):
if you want to go learn something from him, learn
to take need from him, but don't let him ciphon
all the money out of our community, the wall we
could be using to do our own projects, investing our
own stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
When he's talking to you, was he using cold words
like brother? Oh?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
He was doing all that, man. He was trying to
flipping the capbacos. And I'm not mad at his marketing skills. Man,
But you know you can't. You can't fall victim to
it though.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
You know, I get very offended when I walk inside of, say,
for instance, a gas station, and some dude, you know
it's from the Middle East call me brother, Hey, what's up, brother?
But you know, he don't address other people like that.
(04:53):
He just addressed the blacks, like what's up, brother? You know,
I find it to be very condescending, Like, how do
you know that that's the way I speak? I don't
know that that's I'm cool with that. It's like calling
somebody the in word because they're black. It's even like
a black person calling somebody the inWORD because they're black
and thinking that's a sign of you know, of affection. Yeah,
(05:16):
I get offended by it.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, some of it.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I think it's just a lack of exposure to our culture.
They don't know how to approach us. So they think
they're doing the right thing. A lot of times they aren't.
So yeah, sometimes I'll just straight up tell them, man,
so can you ain't got to call me that man?
My name is Chris, right, Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
We got some commonalities here, man, because I say the
same thing I tell them.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Man.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You know my name is Willie. You call me Willie,
will mister Willing, mister d. Yeah, you can call me
Willie d Man, but do not call me right. Yeah,
let's take it back, man, let's go back poured Arthur. Yeah,
how did you get this spirit that you have to
help your people?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Man? I think it was always inherent in me to
do it.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I really don't know where it came from, but I
was always up for a challenge. I was always the
class clown and the smartest kid in the class. And
I think the motivation, the motivation didn't really come to
after having my son, and everybody counted me out at
that because we was like going out of ninth grade,
going to tenth grade.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
My girlfriend got pregnant. Everybody counted us out.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
How old were you?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I was fifteen?
Speaker 1 (06:29):
You had a kid at fifteen.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he just graduated college on full academic scholarship.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Though.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
WHOA, Now, when you had your kid at fifteen years old,
were you scared?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I was scared. I had a whole lot of stuff
going on. Man.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
My mom had a business, she had got in some trouble,
she had got locked up while they were doing investigation.
On that same time, I found out my.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Girlfriend was pregnant. So it was a lot going on.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
But you know, it's one of those things where you
can either take that stuff and let it be a
crutch or you can let it be motivation for you.
And so for me, it just became motivation. And so
I think after that, every time somebody told me I
couldn't do something, I was like, I'm gonna figure this.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I'mnna fged this shit out.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Now, where is your dad? Went on? And this is transparing.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
So actually, when my mom was incarcerated, my dad lived
in Lake Charles, So I did move back in with
my dad.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And we got another thing. My dad is from Lake Charles.
Is your dad from Lake Charles and you just lived there?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, so my grandfather's from Lafayette.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
My dad grew up in Cameron Louisiana, but moved to
Late Charles after the hurricane in what year?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Which he.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Audrey like, like, way way way back in the gap.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Okay, there's seventy what I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I ain't gonna lie, but it's about that long.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Cousins we gotta be, I'm telling you, man, I know
we're probably cousins. Yeah, probably like second third cousins or
something like that. So raised by who now that your
your dad is?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So when I was in put author, I was living
with my mom, Okay, moving back with my dad.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Junior senior year of high school.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Okay, so your mom goes to jail. How long is
your mom in jail?
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Just five or six months?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Five or six months? And you're are you at this
point you're staying with your dad, so you're being cared for.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You get information and instructions from your dad.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Now are you and your dad close? So did you
feel like he was a little hard on your What
he was? He was a hard worker. We weren't really close,
never had a good relationship. I say, we're closer now
than we were then. But he was a good provider.
He was a hard worker. Yeah, isn't that strange? Man?
How oftentimes, like, especially like back in the day when
we did have fathers in the house, most of them
(08:49):
were providers. They were focused on providing, but not necessarily providing,
and protecting but not necessarily being that a counsel and
teach and coach. Ye, and those things are very important
to a child's development, and we missed that a lot
of times because we be so focused on getting to
the bag and then we leave like children to their
(09:12):
own devices. Yeah, and so you're I want to go
back further than that. I want to go all the
way back to you five years old. Were you an
inquisitive kid?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Very much so?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, man, into everything like out in out in nature,
taking stuff apart, putting it back together. You know, my
mom was told me one time I bought a bucket
full of frogs in the house, Like I just all
kind of random stuff that kids do.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I mean, I didn't have a lot of opportunity to
travel a whole lot, so you know, you know how
it is you make fun in the neighborhood. Right, figured
out that we grew up kind of in the country
part of Lake Charles Waller casinos and everything are now,
but it wasn't much there when I was growing up.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
How did you play sports?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I did?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
I ran track, I did powerlifting, play football. You know,
so did a little about that stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Work weight class for powerlifting.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Man, I was in like the one, the one thirty
five way class, right, yeah, matter of fact, put out
the v I was the MVP ninth grade year.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
What powerlifting?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah so you got you got one of the big trophies,
Like yeah trophies.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean so, but you know, my
size helped me out. I stopped growing, so you know,
I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
The reason why I'm asking you these questions, man, because
I'm trying to figure out, like deep down, like what
it what it is that drives you, Like what that
comes from, because that don't come from anyway. You can
take five kids that live in the same household and
you know, four of them to decide that you know, hey,
you know, I don't really want to pursue anything great.
I don't want to really do anything to change the world.
(10:50):
I don't want to do anything to really contribute to
my community or whatever. And then at one say, you know,
this is what I want to do, Like it it
had to be something that sparked you somebody or something
that sparkd you. Did you get it from like watching television?
Did you dream? Were you a big dreamer?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Man? Let me say this part. I think part of
it was genetic.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I think I picked up when my dad left off,
because everybody told me stories of my dad when he
was fifteen or fourteen on his own business, Like he
worked at the grocery store, quit the job at the
grocery store, started doing accounting work, ended up being the
accountant for the owner of the grocery store. They had
a car wash, all kind of stuff in high school,
and then he went to college, got a business degree,
(11:35):
and just worked at the refinery for the rest of
his life. So I kind of feel like some of
it's inherit that from that side. But you know what
you said just now is powerful because my older brother
grew up in the same house as me early on,
moved with his dad when he turned fourteen, I was
like seven, and within a year he was in prison
for on robbery. He got out thirteen years later, went
(11:57):
right back to prison three months later for murder, and
even in prison since then.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And he's almost fifty now. Same household.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, do you keep in touch with him?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, we definitely keep in touch. We definitely keep in touch.
But it's kind of what you said, man, his level
of contentment with where he is. You know, it's crazy,
it's crazy, and I you know, I'm on the opposite
of the spectrum. If I'm not doing something that everybody
thinks is impossible, I get bored.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I get bored this.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, this, I love that.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Man.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
If I'm not doing something that everybody thinks is impossible,
I get bored. Yeah. I wouldn't quite frame it. I
would have not thought to frame it like that. But
I feel the same way. If I'm not doing something
that other people find very difficult to deal I get bored.
(12:54):
I have to constantly be working towards greatness, towards open
the doors and doing things that people would not expect
from me. And so so how do you do it?
I know, for me, the way I do it is
that I live each day like I'm open for whatever possibilities.
I'm always open. I don't know what I'm going to
(13:16):
be doing next year. I don't know what I'm gonna
do before the end of this year. I just put
myself out that. Just like when I ran for city council,
I didn't know going into that year that I was
going to run for city. I never even thought about
it ever being a city councilor I just decided that
year when I saw the landscape and I saw it
how everybody was talking, I heard their platforms, and I
was like, I'm better than that. I could do that,
(13:37):
you know, And I ran, yeah, you know, so what's
your method?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
It's kind of alone those same lines.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I'm always looking for the right opportunity to do something
that I know I've heard before people say you can't do.
And so I got this little success triangle I figured out. Right,
So you need three things to be successful at whatever
you do in life. Number one, you need knowledge and expertsperience.
Number two, you need the right opportunity, and number three
you need the money. The cheat code is to come
(14:06):
to the table with one and partner with people that
got the other two. We all taught in our heads
or school tars. You got to you know, you gotta study,
you gotta figure it out all lout. You gotta save
the money, you gotta do everything yourself. So for me,
I'm always networking, having conversations, and when I hear something
come come across you know, my convos that it's like, oh,
I want to pursue that. Immediately I go, okay, that's
(14:27):
the opportunity to let me go find somebody who can
help me execute on that.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And so that's how I've.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Gone from buying that first block on Liberty Road at
fifty nine, doing all new construction houses on it, and
all my buyers ended up being young, black working professionals,
and everybody thought I was gonna gentrify the neighborhood to
find another opportunity to buy another block.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
That family had.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Raise over a million dollars just from people putting in
two hundred and fifty five hundred dollars just offer social media,
no marketing ads, nothing, and being able to say, hey,
we're gonna buy this block and we're gonna leave all
the residents there, keep all the residents there, and then
find something to do to make money, like short term
event space stuff like that. So that's that was my
second project. A third project that's really big is that
(15:12):
big Pleasant Grove church site.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
You know, they came to me asked me if I
could do something with it.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I was like I've never done a project this big,
but now I got the opportunity to limit go see
if I can find the knowledge and experience to partner with.
So I had to go to the Atlanta find some
brothers that have done projects that big, and now we're
working on a three hundred and forty year The department
complex on the site with the Housing Authority.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Is Pleasant Grove. Still there, is it shut down?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
They're still there. They're still there. I had no reason
not to do it.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Still they are they still You're gonna knock down the
whole building.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
We're gonna have to. We're gonna have to knock down
the building.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
But they're taking the proceeds from the sale and they're
building another campus cash so they won't have any any
debt or anything.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And what are y'all gonna do with that property? Like
right across the street from that little stretch of property,
it's like, uh, it runs. It's it's like a wreck tangle.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You know what. Another developed already bought that. Frank Lou
the agent say, I'm.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Kind of high at Pleasant really on the cool man
because I tried to buy that land from them about
twenty years ago and they wouldn't sell it to me.
I was gonna give them good money for that land. Man,
oh man, my dad don't want to sell it. Yeah,
I was hot, and you know, but I'm glad that,
you know, I'm glad somebody got the big part because
(16:29):
that's the big cheese with y'all. That's that's the land
right there, that's the big spot, you know. So you're
gonna build a multi a multi unit complex.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, a big apartment complex.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Over half of it to be affordable for the community
because that whole you know, that East River, everything going
on over there, gentrification, It ain't a lot of opportunities
for us to have new housing options for people that
are from the community. Or My bigger focus is I
want the kids that go to Common and get that
starter job somewhere in the city. I want them to
be able to move back to the neighborhood too, instead
(17:04):
of having to go to Katie a sugarland of Humble,
you know. So vide opportunities for them to be in
the mix in the city and something that we can
say we developed collectively. Because when I bought it, all
the investors put up put up the money as black
you know.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Now, how do you control the cash flow like that
with with the type of people coming in and that
are able to buy. Obviously you want to see people
that look like you in those shoeunits. But you can't
just say hey, this.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Is for the blacks. No you can't, you can't. That's
that's illegal.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So how so how do you to depend on the.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Community awareness and conversations on the front end long before
it's time for me to start selling or leasing anything.
I want everybody to know, Hey, this is what I'm
about to do. If you're interested, get in line, let
me inside, inside track.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
There you go, got you.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
That's how ever, that's how every community does it, you know,
that's right?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, Godleys reloaded podcasts you right back after the sport.
Are you familiar with that Asian Asian complex apartment complex
that was built in Katie and they said it was
(18:15):
just for Asians. Black people try to buy in there
and they.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Were like no, no, no, no, no, yep, I saw
that story.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Are you familiar with dot Com?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
No, I'm not. No, update, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
But to me, that concept is so crazy. Why force
your way into somewhere that they don't want you at.
You know, it's like Okay, yeah, you can prove that
you can be there, but what does that really do
for you? And you're going to have a horrible experience
living over therrible experience.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
They're going to try to run you off. They one
thing about it. They will stick together, yeah, and push
you up out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
I don't know if you know this, but if you
study doctor King, everybody knows I have a dream. His
last two speeches, his whole message changed. He's like, man,
I messed up. It's like I started off pushing for equality.
That turned into us pushing for acceptance, and then once
desegregation happened, we forced our way into everybody's community and
we abandoned our own communities. And so his last message,
(19:10):
he was like, hey, we collectively put our money together,
we'd be like the ninth largest country in the world.
Take your money out of this bank, put it over here,
get this insurance company that's black on.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Twelve hours later he was assassinated. So that's a powerful message.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
My kids, Mom tried to get me to purchase lots
in fifth Ward when those lots were fifteen hundred dollars,
and I couldn't see it. Man, I did not see it.
I was like, who's what am I going to be
on here? And who's going to buy it? You know
it's the hood, right Who's gonna buy this stuff? She
(19:45):
tried to get me to do. She had the vision, brother,
and I could not see it. I'm talking those same
lots are running two three, four hundred thousand dollars now, yep,
I could not see it. There are others available in
black communities around this country right now, and black people
(20:06):
don't have the vision. There are black people who don't
see the vision right now? How do you convince them
to invest in the future.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
I tell them to go look at the real past.
Let's not talk about civil rights movement to now. Let's
talk about emancipation to civil rights movement. From eighteen sixties
to the nineteen fifties, you had actual slaves that been
on a plantationalary likefe couldn't read the right building cities
everywhere because we couldn't go to no white cities right
(20:37):
every ward. In Houston was a small black settlement at
one point in time, so we built all the commercial buildings.
We had more black banks, more black business owners, more
black everything. The houses that was built that was before
there was a family made loan, a government back loan.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
They had to save up money and build out that stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
We got to take more pride in saying, hey, they
want to see us do that again, you know, and
while the property is so cheap, it's a lot easier
for us to make that move. Usually what happens is
we get mad when everything's really expensive, which means somebody
else has seen that vision, taken advantage of it, moved
into that neighborhood, and they like the neighborhood so much
that they outbidding each other for the prices.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
That's how the house values go up. That's how all
the real estate values go up.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
All we got to do is take that same blueprint
and implement it for ourselves in our own communities, and
we don't have to worry about You see on social
media people talking about let's go buy some land in
the middle of nowhere and start from scratch. Why we
got whole communities that sitting idle that we could just
take back over already, got city infrastructure, got running water,
got sewer lines, got everything. We could just rebuild our
own communities right here in every city. And so that's
(21:41):
been my message, and it does make it easier. When
you find out something else is going on, a new
stadium coming, usually we get mad and want to protest.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
To now go buy everything up because the value is
going to go up.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So that's what I'm doing now. I'm buying land, and
I'm instructing my children not to sell, like never ever
ever sell.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Lease. That's it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Because there's a stretch of land like in the Gallery area,
you can't buy anything. The same family owns everything. You
can't buy nothing, you can only lease it. So all
of those buildings, I don't care if you build a
five million dollar building on there. Yeah, a default on
that thing and you out of here.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So I think that for long term generational wealth, leasing
is the way to go. But there are sometimes situations
where selling makes more sense.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Can you explain that if you have an opportunity to
go take the profits from something and you have a
better use for that money. Let's say you own something
and you can make fifty thousand on it right now,
but then you could go to the north end of
the fifth Ward and buy some cheap lots, which one
of those lots may be worth two hundred thousand in
four five years. You can take that fifty and flip
(23:02):
it into something that may be worth a million dollars
in twenty thirty years and still own that land instead
of owning that one par so that you had that
had the fifty thousand equity in it. And to take
your conversation a little deeper, the original wealth built on
this planet was land. That's what a kingdom was. The
king owned all the land. A lord was literally a
(23:23):
landlord collecting tarifts from everybody. And now that's only evolved
into the government collecting taxes. So that's the true generational
wealth is owning land and making everybody that inhabits that
land or lives on that land pay you for as
long term as possible. And yeah, but like you said,
sometimes when there's a bigger opportunity to grow what you've
(23:47):
invested in by taking some of the profits out of
it and putting in somewhere else, that's the only time
you should really sell.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Is it best to buy or sell? I mean buy
our rent? Is it best to buy a rent?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Oh? This is what I tell people.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
The house you live in, It's okay to rent because
if something breaks, somebody else gonna fix it, right, But
you should take all the rest of your money and
buy a real estate that's gonna pay you.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So you actually are buying income.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Right when you buy a rental property, you could buy
a house, it's gonna let's say your mortgage plament is
fifteen hundred, that you can rent it out for two thousand.
Now you got five hundred dollars a month. That's not
tied to you working at all. If you sleep all day,
you're gonna make that five hundred every month. If you
bought it in the right area, the property value is
gonna go up too. So now your household net worth
goes up too. You know how they say the average
(24:40):
household network of a black family gonna go to zero
by twenty fifty. Well, if we start buying real estate
in our own communities when it's starting that gentrification process,
we can reverse that trend on our own. Now, when
you rent your primary and you own a rental property,
you still get out and benefits everybody tell you about.
You still get the tax right offs, you know, write
off the interest, the taxes, the repairs, you can still
(25:02):
write all that stuff off.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You still get the value appreciation.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
But like I said, when you go home at night,
the garbagere supposed to go out, you can cause somebody
to go fix it, So I'm not opposed to either one.
And then if you want to go buy your dream
home later, let's say you got four or five rental
properties each giving you five hundred a month. Right now,
you got the extra two thousand a month that the
bank is gonna look at and say, Okay, you qualify
for a bigger mortgage for your primary residence. Whereas if
(25:25):
you do it the other way, you got you on
your primary house first, the bank is gonna say, oh,
you don't even have enough extra income to afford this
rental property, or something goes wrong, so we're not going
to prove you forne So we got to think about
it in the reverse of the way that most people
will tell us to do it. But it makes a
lot more sense that way.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
How do you buy a house with a credit card?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Well, that's not something I really would recommend, but and
why not because you might overleverage, which means if you
can't afford all your bills right now and you haven't
been able to say both for enough money to a
least have down payment, you probably aren't in a financial
position or financially responsible.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Enough to leverage credit to go get a house. But
you can.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Maybe there's a reason why you know your income is
about to go up, or you have to you don't
want to use your cash because you want to do
something else with it.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That makes sense, But I mean you can.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
There's there's ways to process payments and take the proceeds.
Let's say, if you have an LLC or you have
some bets at LLC, they can send the payment to
that entity and then reimburse you and give you the cash.
Some lenders that are more asset based lenders, which means
(26:41):
that they're looking at the property yourself and not really
looking at what your income is personally, and they're more
investor friendly.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Some of them may let you do that.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
You know, like they don't care where twenty percent comes from,
if it's come from a credit card or whatever. That's
on you if you default on that. But yeah, I
mean it is possible. But like I said, if I'm
advising somebody, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Tell them to do that.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
How do you buy a house with no money?
Speaker 3 (27:11):
There are downpayment assistance programs that will give you up
to thirty thousand dollars towards the purchase of a house.
They usually have some type of restriction on them, like income,
like you can't make over a certain amount of money,
or it has to be in a certain.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Area of the city.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
But a couple of uh, well, like yeah, most of
the black neighbors in Houston, right, neighborhoods in Houston right now,
I would say Sunnyside for sure. No, the programs, oh,
some of the programs, No, I don't. I couldn't tell
you the name of any of them right now top
of my head. The KNAKA is one program that gives
(27:47):
you almost like one hundred percent financing in ACA.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, yeah, I can vouch for NACA.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Business and a lot of them. They're just the local
city programs or county programs.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Now.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Me being more of a real estate investor and developer,
that's not really what I do, but real estate agents
that help people actually buy primary homes and residences. The
good ones that are that know the market that they're
in well will know all those different relationships. And a
lot of the mortgage lenders too, will will know what
programs are out there that they work with.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
As far as down payment assistance.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, okay, let's say I got ten thousand dollars. I
want to build a real estate empire. Where do I start?
Speaker 3 (28:28):
What I recommend is take that ten thousand dollars and
invest it with somebody that's already successful doing it, and
not somebody talking on social media, somebody where they can
show you, hey, look, I bought this for this. Here's
my closing statement, here's my documents, here's the wire that
went to my bank account. I actually made some profit.
I'm about to do this again with my same team.
If you put this ten thousand and I'll give you
(28:49):
twelve or fifteen thousand back at the end. Now you're
going to increase that ten and you're going to learn
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
What to do right.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Most of us want to try to go find a
deal to do it ourselves, and most people fail that way.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It's okay to be a copy cat. You just got
to be copying the right cat, so you know.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, copy off somebody and
give them an incentive to show you what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Because you putting money in.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Now they say you got to invested interest and you
decreasing your risk of losing your money because you're working
with somebody's got to proven track record. You do that
once or twice, maybe you go do your own, or
maybe you go bring somebody else in and y'll pull
you all money together and do it collectively. And it
ain't get rich quick scheme, but that's a sure fire
way to be able to get to the next level.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
And just you know, you keep doing it over and
over and don't stop. That's the thing. You got to
keep reinvesting the money. That's the only way money grows.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
You know, when you stop reinvesting it, it becomes stagnant
or you become complacent, and then next thing you know,
you're missing out of other opportunities.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
If a person's ultimate goal is to invest, is it
smart for them to pay money to go to real
estate school. No.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
No, real estate school is for somebody that wants to
help people do transactions.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
So well, let me say that two ways.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
If your only goal is to learn how investing works, no, However,
if you feel like you have the time to help
people do regular transactions buy houses, sell houses, rents, and
you want to take that commission from that and build
your pot of money up to then go and invest
that is a good way to do it. And if
you want to take that step further, then you could
(30:34):
be a real estate agent that only works with investors,
so you can watch investors do transactions and then you're
making money in the process. So you're helping them buy
houses after they flip it, and you're helping them sell it.
You know, you're helping them rent it out. You know,
that could be a good way to get started too.
Or you're watching somebody build a multifamily and then you
help them lease it up. Then you can learn that way,
(30:55):
but you don't have to do that if you want
to invest. You just want to find people that are
investing and make sure that you can see that they
are successful and then start putting some money over there
with them.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And how do you turn your money into passive income?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
So understand that the passive income strategy in real estate
investing is not going to give you the big bag
like flipping houses is. But that's more active income because
you're actively managing projects. After you finish that project, you
have to find another project. Right However, when you passively invest,
you're buying rental properties. And I always want to talk
(31:35):
to especially people that get to our level. We only
think about houses, but every other building you pass when
you leave here, that's not a house. Somebody owns it,
and those businesses are the tenants, and those businesses are
paying rent every month too. So you buy buildings that
you can lease out to other people, or create other
ways to make money off from, like event spaces, those
(31:57):
types of things that generate cash flow. And then every
month that tenant makes you their first business partner. They
don't even realize it when you The first person you
pay every month is your landlord. So they do all
the work every month, they generate the revenue for their business,
and then they pay you first every month, and after
(32:17):
you pay all your expenses, whatever's left that's passive income
for you. You know, you can even hire property management
to be in the middle to where you don't have
to talk to nobody. The tenants all deal with the
property management director don't have to deal with you. So
that's that's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Go to boys.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Reloaded podcasts will be right back after this week. I
have to assume that with you making the moves that
you're making in Fifth Ward in particular, and even other
surrounding areas in Houston. I have to assume that you
(32:55):
have your fast share of haters, especially the institutional tradition haters.
They got to be saying, like this guy, he's not
even turning the major profits. You know. It's like getting
the flax or letting them come stay amongst us, and
we're trying to make this money that they ever came
to you and tried to buy you, Like, hey, come
(33:17):
work with us, man, come get on our side, you know.
Oh yeah, be that alone. Man. It's a bigger bag
over here, baby.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, and they have a
lot more resources too. They'll lay that big bag on
the table and say, hey, you come do this. We
like your brand, we like your reach. We'll give you
twenty five percent of the deal and you don't have
to put up no money. But then I'm losing control,
you know, and for me, it's not worth that I
recently had that happen. It happens often, honestly. And then
(33:44):
or you have these investors or lenders where when you
start doing bigger projects, they'll give you all the money,
but then they want to make profit first.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
So it's called preferred equity. That means we're gonna give
you all the money.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
We want to make all our money back first, and
we want to make this certain percentage of profits before
we even let you start making any money at all.
So if you calculate anything wrong, any hiccups, you can
mess around and being a deal with somebody else put up.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
All of money.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
You're doing all the work and you're not getting none
of the profits. So there are a lot of.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
People out there that structure deals that way, and they
do take advantage of a lot of us.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Honestly, is lending for black people getting any easier than
it was in the past.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
No, until until we are the ones actually making the
decisions on the loans, it's never going to really get easier.
I mean, you have certain programs out there where the
government is subsidizing or telling telling the lender the mortgage company, hey,
if you lend to them in a default, will reimburse you.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
That helps us a little bit.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And why would the government do that? Because they hate
us too.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
You know, they have certain incentives. I mean, it's all politics,
you know.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
They have to they have to do a certain amount
to appease the population, you know, so they're going to
what they can or what they need to do to
meet those requirements.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
And banks have the same thing.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
They have these community reinvestment at credits, what they have
to lend a certain percentage of what they manage in
their portfolio two projects in our communities.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
And I'm familiar with that. Why is it that so
much of that money remains on the table. We're not
getting to those funds And I personally believe that people
are not informed. Yeah, they don't know that that money
is there for them. Yeah, and why is it? Why
is that happening? And why aren't we doing a better
(35:37):
job at getting the word out.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I think it's just a lack of communication amongst us
and a lack of outreach from those groups that are
required to do it. Now, I'll take it a level
simpler and take it down to the person, the individual
person that works at a bank that's not wanting to
take a risk, right, that's their job, that's their salaries,
(36:01):
how they feed their family. And they're not really familiar
with us, you know that we don't look like them,
and then we're asking them for loans. They're scared. They're like, well,
what if I make a bad decision? So I'm really
going to judge this African American twice as hard because
from what I know about African Americans, they mismanaged money,
you know, and it could be completely wrong. It could
(36:22):
be it could be nothing prejudiced about that thought process.
But until we have more examples in front of them
of us being successful with it, it's always going to
be harder for them to make a decision to want
to help us or land at the same rate they
will land to one of their friends.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Well, there's always going to be a level of implicit
bias when you're dealing with these people, because it's like
you say, they have their preconceived notions of who we are,
the way we behave and they have no clue because
most of them don't even have black friends, right, And
so you walk into the bank, we got one. You know,
(37:02):
this is like a it's a huge problem, and I
just I don't understand why, like the people that are
in the space like that are in like that banking community,
the people that are in finance, you know, why don't
they do a better job of getting the message out?
Are they doing a good job? But it's just that
people are resistant.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
It's a little bit of both and I realized this too,
especially during that whole clubhouse era, just listening to all
the black rooms with people that work in banking and
commercial lending. It's no different in prison. They are institutionalized.
The institution has taught them, don't do this, take this risk,
tell that person this. They got to work twice as hard,
(37:44):
they got to come back to the table with this,
and then they start regurgitating that, and that's what's circulated.
And then when it comes time for one of us
to walk in, they automatically think, oh, I got to
be more strict on this because they're institutionalized in a
different way.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So we got to break that, have it.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
We need more independently owned institutions where we are in
control of the money, taking risk on our own communities.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
That's really the only way it's gonna change.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, how many kids do you have?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Men too?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Too? And again tell me what what the what they're doing?
So my son is son, just got a degree.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Just graduated with the Green Business, getting ready to go
back for NBA and entrepreneurship. And then my daughter's four. Okay, yeah,
so you know she's in preschool law, she might be,
she might be. We got her in the English Spanish
Emerging program. She does half day niggas haf a day Spanish,
so well, she'll be bilingual. She'll know more than me
by the time she's five.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Right, ye, right, Are you afraid for her, like with
the climate of all of this violence and racial hatred
that's going on in America?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Not not, No, I'm not afraid.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
I'm just gonna make sure she's well prepared, you know,
and make sure I put all safeguards I can in
place to make sure that you know, she can navigate
through it.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
This for the benefit of people who don't know what
that you know, what to do. What are some of
the things that you're doing. The safeguard he.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Setting up.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Financial structures like trusts, any things like that, so she
has a safety net of money, you know, and starting early,
because you can start investing small amounts now, and by
the time a kid is eighteen twenty two whatever, you know,
they have a good cushion to be able to live
off of. And also trying to nurture whatever they want
(39:33):
to do. Oftentimes, what we believe we should do is
try to force our kids to do well we think
they should do, or do what we're doing and that
shouldn't be your goal. Your goal should be to create
an environment where they can have whatever opportunity they want
at whatever pace they want. A lot of times we
push our kids out the house too fast. Other culture
let the kids stay in the house of they're thirty,
(39:55):
you know, and they end up being worth forty or fifty.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So those are the kind of safeguards
I'm speaking of.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
And then also my goal is to set up my
businesses to where my kids can inherit atm machines.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
So maybe they don't want to work, maybe they want
to travel. I want to have.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Decision makers in my business that will run the business
without my kid having to step.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
In and do the work. And how do you do that.
You put it in the trust.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, you can put it in trust, or it could
be any type of corporation. I mean, any normal business.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
You should have.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
A few people under you doing the work so that
you are not the sole reason that the business is successful. Right,
And that should be everybody's goal. And that's what I
tell entrepreneurs all the time. Stop bashing people that got
jobs because.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
You need them.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
You need good people that want to come and work
for somebody. And perform so that your business can grow,
so you don't have to be the one stressing every night,
you know, with the headaches. But when you ask what's
the structure, it could be any structure. It could be
a LLC, it could be a c corp, it could
be an escort. That's just more how you handle the
financial set of it, or how you protect the financial
(41:03):
side of it. But the goal is to have an
actual successful business in the process. You can have all
these LLCs and trusts and all this other kind of stuff,
but if it's not really making no money, what's it
there for. It's just useless pieces of paper.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Earlier, you alluded to the incompetency of some of the
people that are in the real estate space on the internet.
Are they doing more good or harm for the masses?
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Harm? A lot of harm, a lot of harm. Let's
go back to Grand car Dome.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
One thing he preaches all the time is don't buy
your primary residence at all. Now I'm completely against that
because if you buy a house in the right area,
it really can be your biggest investment. For instance, my
house is on Liberty Road that I built. All most
of my buyers they just have regular jobs. None of
(41:56):
them wanted to be investors. But they have over one
hundred thousand dollarsand equity in their house just because it's
in the right location. That's definitely a return on the investment.
But you know, it's it's it's that that's just the
base case of bad advice. Everybody telling everybody to do
short term rentals and airbnbs and all that kind of stuff.
A lot of markets, the market is saturated. There's not
(42:17):
a big demand for rentals over there right now. For
short term hotels are fighting back against all that, you know,
because they're losing market share. So it's so much misinformation
out there that people think because somebody is doing lifestyle
marketing with a rented Lamborghini and a fake Rolex, but
(42:37):
you can't tell from from the videos that they know
what they're talking about. Now, you're taking bad advice from
somebody who really is only making money off of selling
you bad information. They're not even really successful in their
own business.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
All their paper coming from that side, right membership, Right, Yeah, Yeah,
So you mentioned that you owned you bought the property
on Liberty Road. Is that the property that is southeast
of Liberty.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
North northeast where Lucy's grocery store used to be. Okay, yeah,
it's townhouses there now, right.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I guess you know a lot of times, man, I'd
be driving, man, and I was just in Fifth Ward
Saturday for the Bottom reunion. I don't be paying attention, man,
I just be just driving. Yeah yeah, looking at the phone.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Now that the property on the south side used to
be a church, but somebody, uh swing the pastor out
of it and it's tied up in litigations.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
But I'm trying to get that one too.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I just said that. I'd
be driving looking at the phone. Somebody like you gonna
kill somebody?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
You don't kill somebody.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
See that. They always be trying to find you find
something that attack you. Well, you know, they don't even
listen to the information and instructions. They just gloss over
that and go like, what's up with that shirt?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Anything to deflect. Yeah, So what is the best place
to buy?
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Is it the suburbs or is it the hood.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I'm going to say you need to buy wherever you
see the neighborhood starting to change.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
If it all looks nice already, it's too late.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
It's too late because especially well, let me clarify that
if you are buying just for the convenience of where
you want to live, then none of this matters what
I'm about to say. But if you are buying because
you want to say, I'm making a decision that's going
to pay me or return and put me in a
better financial position, then you want to be somewhere. That's
(44:37):
what we call merging. So turning over, you can see
some new construction happening. You can see somebody buying old
properties and fixing them up. You know something is coming
in the area. Like I said, it could be a
new school, it could be anything like that, and that
could be in the suburbs, or that could be in
the city. It really depends on what market shaan. But
whenever you do that, you almost guarantee that whatever you
(44:57):
buy is gonna be worth more next year more of
a year after that. And so that's what always suggests
people look and you can do things like just type
in whatever city you're in and type in the planning department,
the Housing and Urban Planning department, or you can type
in city council meeting minutes and look for the things
to talk about development, real estate, housing, all those those
(45:20):
those are going to be indicators. All this stuff is
public record, public information. They'll tell you where the city
wants to go. The city council meetings will tell you
where the developers are asking for permission to do projects,
and those how you that's how you should be picking
the errors to move to, especially if it's our historically
black neighborhoods, because we usually miss all that and like
I said, other people buy it up. By the time,
by the time you actually see the activity, somebody's already
(45:42):
bought it.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, you are very good at connecting and networking. You
ever thought about running for office?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
And that is the furthest thing from my mind. I
feel like we too much of our.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Of our community leadership goes to the political side, and
we need more of it to stay on the private side. Yeah,
because that's that's what we have a deficit. You know,
we had a lot of strong politicians, but we need
like we're talking about earlier, we need more people like
me doing developments, doing the entire neighborhoods and entire communities
for us. We need more people starting banks, you know,
(46:22):
starting businesses that are going to benefit the community.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
We need, I mean simple things.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
We all know how bad we get racially profile for appraisals.
We need more appraisal companies. We need all these things,
but we complain about all the time. We just need
more people that are that are running the businesses from
our communities, helping us make.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
The right decisions.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, program, we need that. Yeah. I'm just sitting here thinking, man,
that you're a very valuable asset to our community. And
you hit the nail on the head, man. We do
we need because we need more people that do things
(47:01):
outside of politics. We need more king makers than kings,
more queen makers than queens. And because that's who really
run it if you really think it, you think about it,
the politicians and the business people, that's who run the world. Yeah,
(47:21):
but it is the business people that the politicians must
acquiesce yes other ones. Yeah, who you know who really
call the shots?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah, so you know, and we always talk about voting,
but what we don't really talk about is those those
lobbyists and those super packs that are the ones that
really get behind the politicians.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Like you said, they're the biggest donors.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
When you know, when these when these bills hit the
floor of Congress, and they five six hundred pages.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
And politicians ain't writing all that those lottery either.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Those lobby groups are the ones putting all that together
and given it to them to put into the bill.
That's how legislation has really made it passed. But we
don't talk about that side of it, and that's what
we lack. We're heavy on the voting, heavy on the politics.
But if we pulled our money and formed these super
packs and these lobbies to push for our issues we get,
we'll get a lot further.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, let's let's talk about putting together a superpack. You know,
what would you start?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Man?
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Everybody is everybody that's got money. I mean, it's really
really that simple. And I know some some black lobbyists,
but they work for other firms that have other initiatives,
saving alligators or some random stuff, you know, but they
should be focused on our black community. The average lobbyists
starting salaries like four hundred thousand dollars a year. So
(48:49):
we thirty or forty of us, maybe one hundred of
us all decided, hey, we're gonna put in ten thousand
a year, you know, to hire a few lobbyists, you know,
to go maybe start the state level and the lobby
for certain things that we want to see locally and
in our county and our state, and then we grow
that to go national with it. You know, focus on
(49:10):
specific topics and maybe find the business owners that are
in that specific sector that have a vested interest in
seeing it be successful. Then you know, we can move
forward that way. For instance, we talked I talked earlier
about the airbnbs. The lobby packs for the Airbnbs are
mainly hotels. Hotel owners, right, because they're going to put
(49:32):
money behind hiring these lobbyists to change the laws to
make it harder for people to own airbnbs. So it's
not as complex of a concept as we think it is.
We just have to start implementing it.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Let's say I wanted to get started in real estate,
but I don't know what to do. I reach out
to Chris Seneg I want to join his real estate
school for dummish. You know, what's the first step do
I do I take? And what and what comfortable? What
(50:06):
do I get from my membership? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Okay, so I got I got the base level, which
is the real estate blueprint, which exposes you to all
different areas of real estate.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Some people may not have money, but they have time.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
So there's certain things you can do to go out
and source deals and opportunities called whole selling or taking
the time to become a licensed agent, and you can
learn that way. Other people have money capital, they want
to invest, Okay, so then I'm gonna show them a
different a completely different route. You can pool money and
do crowdfunding type deals, or you can partner with an
(50:44):
existing investor. And so I have this self paced online
membership where you can go through that stuff and read
through all different things and figure out what what what
suits you best.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
And it goes even further.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
I mean there's other areas of real estate where you
can make money like appraisals, inspections only title companies, and
most people think I don't want to actually do the work.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
You don't have to.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
You start the business and then hire people to do
the actual work. And so it's so many different sectors
you can go into and learn more about real estate.
And then after you start reading that and you find
something that you identify with, then you can hone in
and say, okay, well Chris, I want to know specifically
about this. How do I do new construction, so then
I have training material to teach you how to do
new constructions specifically.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
And then.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
From there, the people that say, Okay, I'm really ready
to go, Chris, I want some one on one mentorship.
I only take people that have gone through at least
the curriculum first, so that I'm not starting from scratch
teaching you how to do everything. And then what I
do from there is I'll do some of the work,
but I'm gonna leverage my network, my vetted people that
I've already known to have done good business with other
(51:56):
people or have done business with me directly, and I'm
gonna put you in their hand and let them help
you go through the process. But I always teach we
got to use the undercover boss undercover boss approach. If
you ever watched the show, the CEO never really knows.
Everybody does their job. Your job is to pick the
right people and assemble the right team around you of experts,
and then that's that's your shortcut to success, that which
(52:19):
goes back to that success try and go.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
You're going to find the knowledge and experience to work with,
and so I teach all.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
Of that in my in my curriculums, and what does
this curriculum cost? What kind of money I'm looking?
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Okay, so the base one is only forty seven dollars
a month, and it's it's at your own pace, you know,
and I'll upload and add material to it whenever I
may go speak at an event and I get some
good good footage, or I might find a good article
or something, I'll add that to there. And then the courses,
they're like, I keep them under five hundred dollars a piece,
(52:54):
you know, and those are self paced too.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Is that a month?
Speaker 2 (52:57):
No one time? One time, one time? And then for
the one on one mentorship it's five hundred. Man.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
I know, some of those courses be like ten thousand dollars.
If you're going to pay one time, it's ten thousand.
You're going to pay monthly, it's like fifteen hundred, two
thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
My goal isn't to get rich off of selling the information,
you know. My goal is to at least somebody feel like, Okay,
I've spent some money on this, so you know, people
treat that with a little bit more respect and regard
than something that's free.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
But I also don't want to price everybody out of.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
It, because I remember trying to get out of flipping
houses into new construction, and even the brothers that were
successful in the city, nobody really wanted to give me
exposure to all the information. So my goal now is
to make sure I can provide that information as many
people as possible that want it. And you know, if
they want to go past that level and get more serious,
then they can pay five to ten thousand for the
(53:52):
one on one mentorship. Right, they get me a couple
of people from my team, but all my resources too.
So and my ass three students have made over one
hundred thousand dollars and when they finished their first project,
so like equity and a deal.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, you mentioned I think I read on your website
where you the first deal that you get a new
construction deal you did, you lost forty thousand dollars and
from that point on you made a point to share
the information so that nobody else could lose that kind
of money on their first DEALEP yep. Usually the first
(54:32):
thing somebody's thinking, like, how can I make sure that
I don't lose any more money? Yeah, you're already thinking
about other people. You're trying to go to heaven us sun.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
I'm hoping on the short list.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
H You alright, man, you're a good dude.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Bro.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
You're a good dude man, and uh you know, I
wish you, you know, all the best man and we
go we gotta do business together, definitely, uh shit, even
if we don't even do business together. Man, you know,
I think it would just be good to, you know,
have a cat like you in the circle. You know,
I'm in a circle of a lot of really really strong,
influential guys, and you know, we're all on the same
(55:12):
page as far as like trying to help each other
and help our people. So we definitely got to keep
continue to discussion.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Definitely, definitely welcome service. Yes, sir, I appreciate it. Appreciate
the opportunity. I appreciate you sharing the platform so that
I can get this message in front of more people.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
You know, absolutely, it's it's a.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Lifetime achievement for you. So I wanted just to be
in the room.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
You know, I appreciate it. So how can the people
reach out to you?
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Man?
Speaker 3 (55:39):
My social media Instagram is the easiest way. It's just
my name C H R I. S. S. E. N.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
E G. A L.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
I have links to everything I have going on, all
my announcements for wherever be speaking at, or any new
courses or projects I have coming up. You know, that's
my outlet right there to get started. And if you
just google my name, it'll pull up all my links.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Senegal, No More Talk. This episode
was produced by A King and brought to you by
the Black Effect Podcast Network at iHeartRadio
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