May 27, 2025 • 47 mins
From first-time buyer at 18 to running a multi-million dollar real estate operation—Mike Boyea’s journey is packed with hard-earned lessons, practical insights, and real talk on what it takes to make it in this business. In this episode, Mike breaks down exactly how he went from buying a distressed duplex in 2003 to managing over 50 rental doors, flipping 60–70 properties a year, and building ground-up construction—all without a college degree.
Mike opens up about the reality of nearly losing it all during the 2008 market crash and how he rebuilt through persistence, networking, and strategic thinking. We dive deep into his financing game—how he leverages private money, portfolio-backed lines of credit, institutional capital, and local banks to move fast and stay competitive. He explains why he’s willing to pay higher rates for private money in exchange for speed, flexibility, and fewer headaches—and how that mindset helped him lock in deals others missed.
This episode is loaded with real estate gold for investors at every level. Mike shares how he saves thousands on commissions by running an in-house sales system, how he builds lender trust with detailed proposal folders and personal financial statements, and how he scaled from a solo operator to a team leader. We also talk about the importance of staying in touch with lenders, adapting to shifting bank appetites, and using multiple financing sources as tools—not crutches.
Whether you're a new investor trying to land your first deal or a seasoned pro looking to level up, Mike's story is proof that with the right mindset, strong relationships, and a willingness to learn from failure, you can build a business that lasts. This is one of the most practical, no-fluff real estate conversations we’ve had—don’t miss it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
the Wisconsin Investor, andtoday, as usual, I have another
awesome guest for you guys.
Today's guest is pretty specialto me and I'll tell you why
here in a few minutes, butbefore I do that, as I do always
, I want to give you a littlecommercial for our sponsor,
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(00:27):
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(00:50):
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(01:11):
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our team will reach out to youand have a conversation With
that.
Let's get into today's episode.
So the gentleman that I'mbringing to you guys today was a
(01:33):
key part of Carrie and I'sjourney of getting started in
real estate investing.
So Mike's got a special placein my heart for everything that
the relationship that we've hadover the years and continue to
have to this day I think we gotstarted in 2016 is when I met
Mike and met him through aCraigslist ad, actually for a
(01:54):
duplex that he was selling ofhis own at that point and that
just blossomed into a friendshipand to so many different things
that we've done and Mike's gotsuch a great depth of experience
in the real estate industry andall facets.
So I am super excited to bebringing you today Mike Boyer.
Mike, what's going on, brother,how's?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
it going.
I'm doing great.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Good, good, good.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Having a good little sun enjoying the Wisconsin
weather.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, let's get into today'sepisode.
So I wanted to bring you on.
I guess first of all, you'vebeen in real estate longer than
I have, so I want you just tokind of tell everybody in the
audience your background and howyou got started in this game,
how long you've been in it, andwe'll start there.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, background actually started fresh out of
moving out of my parents' houseafter high school.
Okay, I moved into an apartmentbuilding.
I realized right off the batthat apartment living was not
for me.
Plus, being an 18-year-old andpeople telling me I have to be
(02:52):
quiet and everything I was likewell, maybe I should buy my own
place.
So my first journey it startedoff trying to buy a distressed
mobile home.
Okay, I was unable to getfinancing for a distressed
mobile home.
Okay, I was unable to getfinancing for a distressed
mobile home.
Yeah, 18 years old.
Everybody's like that'sactually basically the same as a
car Tried all the institutionsand finally my father said well,
(03:18):
why don't you go meet with arealtor?
And the realtor put me in touchwith a lender to buy this
mobile home.
The lender's like you're notbuying this mobile home, but why
don't we pre-approve you for ahouse?
So the first property I boughtwas actually a side-by-side
duplex, distressed Porterhouse.
(03:41):
It was a great investment, itwas amazing and that helped
launch my career into realestate.
Okay, Was this in?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
08 when you bought it .
07?
No, this was in 03.
03.
Oh, that's right, we're likethe same age, so I'm trying to
figure out math-wise.
But yes, college, and thenbefore that, okay, so, wow, so
you've been in this for over 20years.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Instead of college, I had a party house.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Hey, it worked out pretty well for you, I think.
I think that was probably agood decision.
So you mean, you got into realestate investing and you didn't
go to college for this, mike,you, yes, oh, wow, okay, yeah,
that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
It started off.
I just started reading books.
I went to Barnes Noble and realestate really piqued my
interest.
So I picked up a book I can'teven remember the name of it
like how to Get Rich with RealEstate Investing Rich Dad, poor
Dad.
And I just started goingthrough books and kind of I
don't want to say fantasizing,but imagining houses, like I
(04:48):
would look at these houses inmagazines and I'm like God, I
you know one day, and I juststarted trying to trying to
learn how how to get there.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, so you?
You put the big vision out infront of yourself and then you
started to like work itbackwards into steps that you
need to go through today.
I think that's such a good pointfor the audience out there.
A lot of times if I'm doing acoaching call with somebody on
our team or somebody who'sinterested in getting into real
estate, that's one of the thingsI want to know.
It's like why do you want to dothis?
Because it's not easy, right,mike?
I mean, it looks easy after youdo it all.
(05:17):
Once you're in it for twodecades, like yourself, you kind
of forget maybe some of thestuff that you had to go through
to get yourself in a positionwhere you are now where you can
just turn and burn deals nothaving to think about it.
But you had to have that bigvision originally to to push
through all that tough stuff,right?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
And speaking of pushing, Iremember one of my my visions
was never to work for anybodyand to push a lawnmower around
at my properties.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
To this day I do not push a lawnmower around, but I
was going to say how, yeah, how,how, how many lawns did you
push that lawnmower around at Atwhen I was younger?
All of them, okay.
So you did do it for a while,okay, okay.
Yeah, you were in the hustlegrind phase, right?
Yeah, originally.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So over the two decades, youalso became a real estate agent.
(06:15):
When did that happen?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes, I actually became a real estate agent
shortly after buying my firstcouple of properties.
I looked at that as anopportunity to come across more
properties and to meet otherindividuals in the industry that
were doing it, and that's if Igive any advice to anybody.
It's not necessarily get a realestate license, it's surround
(06:37):
yourself with people that are inthe industry, whatever industry
that may be real estate orotherwise, or whatever facet of
real estate that you want to bein.
Surround yourself with peoplethat are doing it, because
they're going to give you moreadvice and they're going to
shorten your knowledge, the timegap for your knowledge.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
For sure, yeah, and we talk about that pretty much
every episode.
So those of you that listen toevery episode, network, right,
your net worth is your networkor your net?
I always get it mixed up.
I really should figure outwhich way it's supposed to be
said, because I always mix it up, but you get the idea.
Surround yourself with a lot ofpeople.
But I guess I want to ask youthat question, mike, in your
opinion now?
So if I'm new to the realestate industry or I've done a
(07:16):
few deals, do you think it'shelpful to get your real estate
license for some people, or doyou think it's more of a
distraction?
What is your viewpoint?
If their goal is, if their goalis investing, let me, let me
paraphrase, let me preferencethat I?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I'm really indifferent.
Um, in the beginning of mycareer I utilized my real estate
license a lot more.
It allowed me the opportunityto access individuals and talk
about real estate.
It wasn't like I was making alot of money doing it, but I got
to meet a lot of people Goingback to Rich Dad, poor Dad, you
go get a job where you're theintern somewhere, just so you
(07:53):
can gain knowledge.
I look at the real estatelicense similar to that, but
that doesn't mean you need areal estate license to surround
yourself with other individuals.
Good distinction Early in thecareer.
Yes, I utilized it quite a bit.
Now later, you know, afterdoing it for so many years, I
don't really utilize my realestate license in a traditional
(08:14):
manner.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Okay, got it.
Yeah, and I think your answeris spot on, because I get asked
that a lot and I always tellthem well, it depends, what do
you want to do?
You know and I've seen it, I'veseen it work really slow people
down who were really hot oninvesting and then they get
caught up in becoming a buyer'sagent or trying to understand
all the laws and the rules andall this kind of stuff, where if
they would have just stayed inthe investing lane and just
(08:36):
focused on investing and becamereally good at that, they
probably would have been able toget to the goal a lot faster.
But then again, who knows,Everybody's journey is a little
bit different right.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Maybe they had to go that way in order to learn
something that was going to helpthem down the road.
I don't know.
And I will say this I lostalmost everything during the
market crash and some of it wasdue to my fault.
Some of it was due to just badtiming, just bad.
I made poor decisionsing a guyon land contract and he
foreclosed on it.
I'm like, oh, what do I do withthis property?
I had arson, I had a couple ofthings that had happened, and
(09:14):
having a real estate licenseallowed me to generate income
while still working on somethingthat I really enjoyed yet.
So for me that was part of itas well.
I wasn't going to go get a jobas like a handyman or anything
like that.
I was like, well, what can I dothat?
Still, it still allows me to to, you know, run deals.
(09:34):
It might be for other people,but at least then I can still
run numbers, I can still rundeals, I can still look at these
properties.
Um, even though I wasn't ableto purchase them at the time,
and that was also a limitingbelief I probably could have
bought more houses than I evercould use or turn at that time,
but that was a limiting belief Ihad at that time.
(09:54):
But I still worked in realestate.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, and what's interesting, I don't know if I
knew you at this point.
I wanted to get into realestate investing and I don't
remember if we had alreadystarted or not.
I think it was before we reallygot into it.
It was it was before we gotinto real estate investing, but
I was hanging out with TonyBreuer from good faith funding.
Uh, I got to know him through anetworking group that I belong
to for a fitness company that Ihad started and, uh, I remember
(10:20):
like I was just exactly what yousaid.
I'm like I need to be aroundpeople who are doing this, Like
I need to just suck theirknowledge in and just sponge it
in and I don't care what I'mdoing as long as I'm around
these people all day long.
And he was like my idol at thetime.
He had like 50 doors orsomething.
I was like, oh my gosh, I couldI can't even imagine 50 doors.
But I got to figure out how doyou do this?
I got licensed to be a mortgagebroker so I went through part
(10:43):
time, like I was working fulltime and I was doing this like
part time getting licensed.
And then I remember I went outwith him and the company he
worked for at the time doingstandard mortgages before he
went big into the hard moneystuff and I went through this
whole training thing, thisweekend thing, it was great.
Came back I got like officiallylicensed and I went in for like
my first day of like being likea mortgage broker and I
(11:04):
remember like I put somebody'syou know information in to fill
out their app and stuff likethat and it like denied them and
I was like I just spent howmuch time getting this person to
fill this stuff out.
And I can't even get them alone.
And they're like, yeah, and Iwas like how much would I have
made on this?
And I don't remember what theamount was, but it wasn't enough
for the amount of work that Ihad to go through to try to get
this person approved.
(11:25):
And I'm like you know what, Tony, I don't think this is for me.
So literally I worked with themfor like three hours and I was
like, all right, I'm out of here, I got to go, I got to do
something else.
So I was I went through thewhole licensing thing and
everything else to use it forthree hours.
So, but the idea is the same.
I want, I wanted so badly to bein this that I was willing to
go through and get licensed as amortgage broker just to be able
(11:46):
to sit next to him to learnfrom him anything I could about
real estate.
So, even though it didn't workout the way we thought, I still
learned a lot of stuff from himafter that it actually worked
out better.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
You realized what you didn't want to do Exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I also did the same thing in commercial insurance
too.
Just a year prior to that, Iwent and got licensed for
commercial insurance.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So I was just getting licensed for all this crap and
never used it.
But anyway I was licensed forprime America selling insurance.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, classic.
What is the?
What does the real estatebusiness look like now?
Like it?
Do you have a rental portfolio?
How many units you know howmany, how many flips you do in a
year?
Like, tell us a little bitabout new construction.
You're kind of in a lot ofdifferent things, so tell the
audience a little bit about whatis Mike, two decades after that
first side-by-side duplex, looklike at his business.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
So currently the rental portfolio consists of
just over 50 doors.
It's a mixture of midterm,short-term and long-term rentals
.
Mixture of midterm, short-termand long-term rentals.
A couple small apartmentbuildings and then with the fix
(12:51):
and flip, we did 43 fix andflips last year Wow.
This year we're probably goingto do north of 60, probably 70
fix and flips this year Wow.
And then for the newconstruction, the goal is eight
new construction.
So I'm going to try for 10, butthe goal is eight Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's incredible, dude.
You're killing it.
That's more than I realizeyou've been doing, so that's
awesome.
How do you go from buying aside-by-side duplex to doing 60
flips a year and newconstruction and 50 doors like,
how does somebody listen to this?
That's just getting started.
How do they?
What are the steps or what arethe things that had to happen in
order for you to be able to getto this point?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
um early on a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, I had to.
I had to fail myself forward.
Uh quite often humble myselfquite often um lights turned off
, uh, not due to like not payingwps, just just, yeah, just uh
very.
Look back very uh uh poordecisions okay okay but what
(14:02):
that did was it taught me what Ididn't want to do anymore.
It taught me a lot of valuablelife lessons.
It taught me what type oftenants do I want.
It taught me what type ofproperties do I want to buy.
What type of people do I wantto hang out with that are going
to help grow your mind and growyou as a person, that are going
(14:25):
to help grow your mind and growyou as a person.
I attribute quite a bit of myreal estate career to actually
working with you and watchingwhat you had done and being by
your side during a lot of thebeginning phases of your
business.
I think it was just you myselfand Carrie I don't even know if
(14:45):
Jessica was on the team yet yeah, when we started working
together.
So like watching that grow overthe course of years and you
really forced me to mature as aperson.
Mm-hmm, in that regard, thattough love, that tough love and
(15:08):
the.
It wasn't necessarily forcing.
I wanted.
I was very open to to everythingand it was.
It was just like okay, how muchtime are you spending to better
yourself?
How much time are you spendingto better your business?
How much time are you spending?
And it's allotting that timeand then also making sure you're
nurturing friendships and doinguh, nurturing family friends
(15:31):
and and a lot of that.
With that.
That taught me was that I couldbecause I was very scared to to
uh to get back deep into realestate investing after losing
everything okay and what thatdid was that actually pushed me
to be successful, because I'mlike, well, you know, corey's
right here.
(15:51):
I don't want to say holding myhand, but holding my hand and
getting ready to push me off abridge, let's go, let's go.
And and uh, like I, I had faithin what, what we were doing and
what that did with that.
That allowed me to take theleap.
Maybe it was on my own, maybenot, but I know there was
(16:13):
definitely a healthy, healthyshove.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I see, and I don't even remember shoving you any to
at any point, but I know we hadgood conversations, but because
you told me you're like whatthe hell, why are you not?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
You know I would go on acquisition appointments for
you and then I wouldn't evenbeen on the property and I know
the most about the property,more than anybody else.
Yeah, been on the property, Iknow everything about it.
And you're like you're in realestate.
You know all the contractors,right, like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And I contractors right, like what are you doing?
And uh, yeah, it was.
It was like what are you doing?
Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, and I think to to kind ofgo back to the networking piece
of this.
Right, it's like get aroundpeople who are are pushing you
right and are gonna gonna forceyou to be better, because
there's you can get in your ownhead real easy in this game.
You know, you start looking atsome of the numbers and it can
become overwhelming.
And I remember my first deal,mike, uh it was I think we got
(17:09):
it off market.
So it was before we gotinvolved with you.
But you kind of you kind ofspurred us into it.
Like you started looking atstuff right around that same
timeframe.
We went and looked at yourduplex and all that.
But we, uh, we had an offmarket deal and I remember I
like market deal and I rememberlike I wanted to close in like
(17:29):
two weeks and I was like, oh mygosh, like I wanted to like
sabotage the deal because I Iwas, I was freaking out like I'm
like what if the numbers don'twork, I'm gonna be poor, I'm
gonna be living under a bridge,like, oh my gosh, my kids are
gonna be, they're not gonna beable to eat, and I mean just the
amount of negative chatter thatcan enter your brain.
But being around people who havedone it, like then going back
to tony, I'm like I call tony upand who cares?
Like then go do another dealand make, make the money up,
(17:52):
it's easy.
And I'm like, oh okay, thanks,tony, you know.
Then I go back.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Go back to go back to do it.
Okay, I'm off the ledge now.
All right, I can, I can moveforward with this thing but it's
easy to talk yourself out ofthis game too Real.
I thought you made like fivegrand on it and it was like I
think it's if it's that same onethat I'm thinking of.
Well, we did a couple right ina row.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
So we it went like we did no deal, no deal, no deal
for like four months likenothing crickets.
And then all of a sudden we didwe bought a duplex wholesale.
The deal did a seller did ourold house as a land contract or
a rent to own with a dude andthen I think we did a JV.
We did some kind of JV likeseller financing thing with
somebody else that was in one ofthe RIA groups and yeah, it was
(18:39):
kind of like we started doingthe buffet of real estate within
like two months.
And then all of a sudden, likeyou were in the mix, like
helping us find our next deal,and that's when we found we
found a fourplex.
You found us a fourplex thatwas in foreclosure, which that
doesn't happen very much anymore, and then we flipped that one
(18:59):
and I think we made like $25,000on that thing, and then we kind
of were like why aren't weflipping more properties?
I could get out of my job wayquicker.
You know, that was my goal whenI started, was to get out of my
job, so yeah.
So it was kind of a wild firstyear in real estate.
We just kind of did a wholebunch of stuff Got to taste,
test, everything you know inthat.
Dope right in, dope right in man, dope right in.
(19:20):
What are some of the challengesnow?
You're running a pretty bigoperation now, doing 60 flips a
year, some new construction.
You got a lot of differentthings happening.
How are you managing all thatstuff and like what are some of
the biggest challenges as youtry to continue to grow and
scale in this currentenvironment that we're in?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I'd say the biggest challenge currently is people.
Um, whether it's staff, whetherit's contractors, uh, that, I
find, is the biggest challengeand optical obstacle to overcome
, along with um stayingenergized, I know sometimes
(20:01):
there's like weeks where youjust grind real hard and it's
like you have to turn yourselfoff for a little bit to get away
and like you have to rechargebecause it's like it is.
It is very extensive andthere's a lot going on.
But by putting right people inplace, what I'm learning is the
more right people I put in place, the more that they can do it
(20:25):
better than I can, yeah, andeven if they did it at 75%,
they're 100% of their effortsgoing to it, whereas a smaller
portion of my efforts able to goto that, yeah.
So, when it comes to the people, it's surrounding yourself with
really good people once again.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, when did you make your first hire, mike?
Do you remember when that wasmy?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
first hire was Haley and that was 20.
My first hire in real estate.
I had other employees in otherbusinesses, I had ran, but my
first employee in real estate, Ibelieve, was 2018.
Okay, 2017.
2017.
(21:06):
Okay, I think.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I remember that.
Yeah, what was, what was someof the things that pushed you to
make that first hire, and thenwhat were some of the things
that held you from hiringanybody in real estate until
gosh that's 15 years after youstarted, pretty much.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
What had held me back was just the mindset, the
limiting belief of do I haveenough work for this person?
What can this person do?
Belief of do I have enough workfor this person?
What can this person do?
And after hiring, I realizedthat I probably should have done
it years prior, because thenwhat that allows you to do is to
(21:42):
do what you enjoy Right and,and even to this day, you know,
as you grow, you start learning,like you get into real estate
investing because you're like oh, I want to be a real estate
investor.
At this stage in my career, I'mempowering others and teaching
others and trying to help others.
It's a lot less of doing theactual.
(22:06):
I don't even go to a lot ofthese properties.
I'm not involved at all in theproperties, but what I am doing
is I'm empowering people, oreven if it's individuals that
are coming to me that are askingquestions and want to learn.
I'm an open book.
I'd rather help people and helpthem succeed in real estate or
(22:31):
in any type of business.
I mean, people come to me foradvice and a lot of things, and
however I can help them, I Iwant to give back as much as
possible.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah Well, I think that's something you see across
some of the people who, in theeyes of somebody just starting,
are maybe the most successful inthis business or any business.
So people who are constantlyjust giving right.
And it's you got to protectyour time.
So there's a balance right.
As you get, as you start to getyour name out there, more
people start to find out morelike, oh my gosh, this person's
doing this, this, this.
Everybody wants to pick yourbrain or take you to lunch or do
(23:01):
these types of things, which isgreat, it's awesome.
And we, when I started, I didthe same thing.
I was.
It's not that they don't wantto help, it's just they got to
protect their time.
But you're always finding waysto give and I think that's
what's made you so successful.
I mean, I remember that was thething when we started with you.
It was always like Mike, whatdo you think of this?
(23:22):
Like, what do we do about this?
Like we're always leaning onyou because you had all this
experience and we learned so aswe got started in it.
And again, it's kind of goingback.
We just keep beating this drumof that network.
Find people who are willing togive back.
I remember Caleb Hayes, anotherone who runs the Keller
Williams branch that you're at.
Huge giver, I mean, gave us wewould meet with him monthly for
(23:46):
like a year, and he never askedfor anything.
He didn't ask us to join hisnothing, just coached us for
free.
I was like this is insane.
I don't think he's still doingthat, but who knows, I don't
know it was.
It was wild to me, but italways came back around Like I
was always thinking if he'd like.
When we come up with the, I'mlike, oh my gosh, I wonder if
Caleb would want this deal.
(24:16):
No-transcript on here.
That's one that we run in greenBay.
There's caffeine and cashflowacross the across the state.
There's a RIA groups across thestate.
Like, get involved in those Ifyou, if you're looking for a
network, and be intentional whenyou go to those and find some
people that you can learn fromand grow with and that are
willing to help you out.
(24:36):
And in real estate it's a smallworld man, everybody knows
everybody and deals get done allthe time from just networking.
I might have money that I wantto lend right now.
You might call me and say,corey, I'm strapped.
I got 60 flips going.
You got some cash you can lendme on the 61st one I need.
And because of the relationship, no problem, mike, here you go.
(24:59):
Right, let's go to a bank,let's deal with that?
Hey, I need an electrician.
Who do you work with?
We always pass stuff back andforth, and we've done that for
years, so I think that's aimportant point to get across
here.
Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
How is?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
speaking of financing stuff, mike, how are you
financing all these deals?
What's the cause?
I imagine you got to have somepretty good relationships,
either some private money orsome banks, or how is that
happening that you're able tokeep, you know, have all of
these properties kind of goingsimultaneously and be able to
fund them?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So a couple of things .
Having the rental portfolioallowed me to open up a line of
credit, so that's my first linethat I will use when the line of
credit is is exhausted.
Then I have I have about ahandful of of hard money,
(25:51):
lenders, private private funding, and then after that I still
have some local banks that Ideal with.
I actually for all the banksout there.
Sorry, but I usually like to goprivate before I go to a bank.
Oh, they understand the bank'sat seven, seven and a half,
maybe eight, whereas I'd ratherpay a little bit more and not
(26:16):
deal with the appraisals and I'drather a quick, close and easy,
yes, the easy button.
Just let me have.
Smack that, yeah, yeah, thenI'll go to the banks and then
after that I have someinstitutional money that's right
around the same price as, uh,the hard money, but it's going
through the same hoops as thebanks essentially Okay.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
When you say institutional money, what do you
mean by that?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
There's larger funds out there, like one of them that
I use, is dominion.
What they do is they'll it'shard money pricing with the BS
fees, that that the banks charge.
Yeah, yeah, so it's.
I mean, I'll use it in a pinchif you get a good enough deal.
It doesn't matter what you'repaying for your money, right,
(27:01):
exactly?
Speaker 1 (27:02):
yeah, there's several out there, and that's something
I always talk about too ishaving different buckets of
money, right.
So you, what you've done, hasdone the same thing.
You've got your private money.
You've got your commercialbanks or community banks is this
is what I sometimes refer tothem as your private money, hard
money, community bank You'vegot the institutional or the
national lenders, so you've gotseveral options, one of the
things I talk to people aboutall the time.
(27:22):
You never want to pass on agood deal just because you don't
have financing set up.
So get a bunch of differentoptions, get a bunch of lines in
the water, be ready to pullfrom whatever bucket you can or
need to.
The HELOC is my favorite tool inreal estate, and being able to
use it on investment propertiesis just such a powerful,
(27:42):
powerful tool.
I mean it's incredible how muchthat can unlock for people to
be able to use it.
What you could do is you couldtake that HELOC.
You could pair that withcommunity banks right, and they
might want 20% down.
Well, there you go.
You take the 20% from yourHELOC.
Boom, there's your 20% down,plus, you got your rehab from
your HELOC.
There you go, you're coveredand off you go Right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And there's friends, and families, helocs also.
Friends and families, helocs,friends and families that have
paid off properties and they'renot accruing any wealth from
their properties.
Would you like to make anywherefrom 8% to 12% on this?
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah, what are you typically paying?
What do you find in privatelenders are willing to take
right now?
What is their Between 8% and?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
12%.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's like a sweetheart deal that they don't
have very much that they canborrow, but when they do, it's
at 8%.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Sure, yeah.
So somebody who's got a littlebit more capital, you're willing
to pay a little bit more forthat ease of not having to just
use a little chunk of it, kindof a thing.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That makes sense.
And what I found too, mike, Ijust started to realize this
because we don't do a ton offlips.
We're starting to do a lot morethat we're taking down and
enlisting now.
But what I found is, like someof the commercial banks that I
(28:50):
love working with them becausewe have great relationships.
But when I look at the closingstatement, all of a sudden I've
got a $1,500 origination fee,I've got this fee, I've got a
lender policy, I've got all thisother stuff, and when I add it
up, I'm like it's about the sameas if I just paid somebody 10%
or 12% flat, or even if you paypoints on top of it.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
When you run the numbers for the ease, what's
that ease worth?
Is it?
You're buying a $200,000property.
Let's just say you have to paya couple of points.
Well, you're going to pay thepoints to the community bank
anyway.
The community bank ended uppushing your closing out 45,
maybe 60 days.
So now you lost thatopportunity potentially to do
the property during prime realestate.
Right now is a prime time toget a property listed.
Property during prime realestate.
Like, right now is a prime timeto get a property listed.
(29:32):
Yep, and now you could,potentially you could miss out
on the market that you want tobe in.
Yeah, and you could.
Just because you're trying tosave a couple thousand dollars,
it doesn't, you know, at the endof the day it doesn't make any
sense Exactly.
Yeah, as you're talking aboutthis I have a deal right now
that.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I'm like I should just talk to some of the private
lender people I know and justinstead of I would keep going
through these community banks.
But they want to do exactlythat.
They want to move the closingback 15 days.
They got to get appraisal, theygot to do all this other stuff
and it's a smoking deal.
It's like this should just becommon sense Yep, here's your
money, you know, there you go.
So that's, that's so good, bigstruggles.
(30:15):
Now you said people, okay, what, what about you as a leader?
How's that become?
Because when you started outyou were a one-man band running,
just running, running andgunning.
Classic entrepreneur, maverickstyle sales guy yeah, just
nobody to answer to, nobody toworry about, just going out and
making stuff happen.
Right now you start bringingpeople on your team and now you
have to grow as a leader.
Like, what are some of thechallenges with that?
Because I think that could beanother limiting belief.
(30:36):
I know for me, I still strugglewith that, sometimes with our
team, is like am I really worthyenough to?
Be running a team of 15, 20people, like you know all that
kind of stuff.
So how, how have you juggledthat?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
And what are what have been some of the challenges
as you've kind of grown intobeing the leader of this
organization now A lot ofreading and going back to the
networking, talking to otherpeople that are doing it at a
high level.
What should I do?
Asking questions, what do youdo about this situation?
What do you do about thatsituation?
And some of the people in mysphere they might not run their
own business.
Maybe they're.
They're a manager of another,of a division at another company
(31:15):
, but they still they haveleadership training and since I,
I, I pay for some trainingwhich helps me, but some of
their training, you know, theymight go to spend a week at
disney on management trainingand I'm like I don't know what
that costs, but I hear it's oneof the best training for for
(31:35):
employees as a manager that youcan go to.
Okay, so like I can pick theirbrain and they went to the, to
these events and then pickingtheir brains, yeah, it's also
it's leaning on friends andfamily and hey, what would you
do in this situation?
Am I, am I being unreasonable,unfair?
(31:55):
Am I in the right?
Am I in the wrong?
And then also trying tomaintain a level of they won't.
They don't see what's happeningon the background, in the
background.
They don't see, you know, merunning deals at night when
they're getting dinner.
They don't see me running dealsat night when they're getting
dinner.
They don't see me getting upearly so I can do stuff.
(32:16):
So it's like trying to createenough of a presence to keep it
motivating, then also trying totake time for myself, so
juggling.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
So you're trying to be the leader out there and lead
by example, but then alsoyou're trying to, like you said,
it can be an energy suck aftera while, right, so you got to
unplug a little bit and regroundand re-energize and, yeah, I
think what's interesting likeCarrie and I go on, we try to
travel quite a bit and we try totravel without the kids at
least a few times a year, justher and I, and it's always
(32:48):
interesting.
Like we go on these littlegetaways.
Or like we went to Kohler acouple a couple of months ago
and just did like a weekend atKohler and you know totally,
just you know, like relaxing spadinners, that kind of thing.
But we had so much clarity,like just being able to step
away once in a while and just beable to talk without kids
interrupting every five seconds,and you know we get such
(33:10):
clarity goes back to again.
You get re-energized by thatbig vision.
Again.
You go back to like, hey, whyare we doing this?
What are we looking for?
What's that struggles, what?
Let's look at the big visionand then you can push through
some of those day-to-daychallenges.
I feel like once you've had thatreset and you go, oh yeah,
that's why I'm doing this.
You gotta get back to your yourwhy again?
Yeah, right that unplugging,and you get to do that now too.
(33:30):
So you, you and I both spentsome time down in Florida.
Mike, talk a little bit aboutthat.
How's that?
How's that snowboarding thingbeen for you?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
okay, um, it's just getting down there, it's getting
away, it's uh, just turning thebrain off and being able to
just just relax.
Yeah, which is really big forme.
Um, yeah, I love having a placedown in florida.
It's, it's so, so convenient.
I basically have a private jetat allegiant airport.
I mean, I just fly with a bunchof random people, I don't know,
but it's, you know, it's adirect flight.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much, pretty much the same thing
.
If they had a point systemthere, I mean, good Lord, you'd
be a, you'd be number onemedallion, or whatever.
It is right, yes.
Gold, platinum, silver, allwrapped up in one, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So, yeah, that's, it's really nice.
Um, bring my son down there orI'll go down there just to relax
myself, and I use that as a wayto recharge.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, that's awesome, man, and what Mike's describing
.
So we bought a place down nearuh, down by Tampa area a few,
probably back in 2020, I thinkwe bought it right before COVID
happened and then it was likeall of all of these other people
saw what we were doing.
They're like wait a minute, Ican Airbnb this thing when I'm
not there and it pays for itself, and then when I want to use it
, I can use it.
(34:58):
And now we have like I was justjoking because somebody else
was texting me this morningabout how they're looking for a
place right by us, mike, and I'mlike well, you're going to join
the Wisconsin real estateinvestor little hub down in
Florida now, because we've got anice little tribe of people
that have all either bought oneor some people bought multiple
places down there now and it'spretty fun to get down there and
sometimes, sometimes I see youmore in Florida than I do in
(35:20):
Wisconsin.
Yeah, so that's great, man, andthat's what real estate can do,
guys.
It's so much fun.
There's so many different toolsthat you can.
You can pull, so many leversyou can pull and all that sort
of stuff.
So that's super exciting.
Mike, before we wrap here.
Tell us I'm interested to hearyour best deal ever and your
worst deal ever.
I know I didn't prepare you.
(35:41):
I should have prepared you forthis.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
No, I don't need to.
I didn't know.
I was going to ask you this,mike, my best deal ever, the
easiest deal that I consider mybest deal was it was a six unit
that I talked to.
(36:02):
He was a wishy washy and thenfinally he evicted a tenant and
I turned around, I bought it for400 and sold it for 550.
Um, and I did owner financingwhen I sold it to somebody for
75,000 with interest, and sothat deal is still paying me to
(36:24):
this day.
Oh, I love that.
Um, the worst deal I did Ibought a property.
Um, the worst deal I did.
I bought a property, bigproperty, indian trails, just
real nice property flipped itmade it beautiful yeah,
beautiful property.
I didn't have all my numbers inthe project manager or the
(36:44):
gentleman that was helping meout manage the project didn't
have all the invoices submitted.
So when we went to list itwe're like, oh, we only have
this much in it in a biggerproject.
You know it's, it's, we stillhad enough in it, it.
I think the sheet said we hadlike 60 in it and it ended up
being I don't know 80 or 90 okay, well, and then it was.
(37:06):
Just there was yeah, there was alot of stuff.
The tree trimmer went there andcut down all the trees after we
had sold the property, so Iended up having to pay for tree
removal and all this stuff.
But I ended up losing close to$20,000 on that deal by not
having all my paperwork together.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Well, dude, if $20,000 is your worst deal ever,
good Lord, Mike, you're doingsomething right.
That's amazing.
After two decades, totally lose20 Gs in one deal, that's
pretty good.
If that's your worst one man,yeah, that's the worst one.
Oh, that's amazing.
How do you keep hitting basehits and home runs and not have
these monster losses?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
To all the realtors out there I don't pay very much
for commission.
Okay, I don't pay very much forcommission.
Okay, I am a very yeah,realtors aren't going to like to
hear this, but I don't pay muchfor commission.
I have a real estate license,so that saves me on the sales
side and then on the buy side,if I can sell it myself, I don't
(38:06):
charge myself commission either, or I do a reduced, I do
reduced on the side, like ifit's my team selling it.
Um, I work my split back intothe deal.
So that helps out tremendouslyand that goes back to like the
new constructions.
You, if you, if you're payingfour percent to sell a property,
(38:27):
that's $600,000, that's $24,000.
Me, as an investor, I'mtypically only making between
$50,000 and $75,000.
I mean I've done better deals,but so it's like well to know.
Half the money that I wouldmake I have to pay a realtor to
open a door on a new house thatwe're not really even
(38:47):
negotiating with.
It's just literally.
You know, the realtors outthere are probably going to get
mad at me, but Well, theyprobably don't listen to this
podcast.
It.
Uh, that's one of the ways thatI've been able to not lose a
lot of money and a lot of deals.
Okay, so eliminate thecommission.
Even if I did not have a realestate license, I would
(39:11):
recommend talking to people.
If you're doing volume, whatcan you negotiate?
This is no different thanmeeting with a seller or meeting
with anybody else.
You should be doing this withyour bank.
You should be doing this withyour insurance agency.
You should be doing this whenyou book a flight.
Maybe not if it's online, butyou should always be asking what
(39:31):
can you do?
And when you do volume, youshould be able to get a discount
.
You should be able to negotiatehey, if you find me this house,
I'll list it with you.
You know to reduce price, or Imean just, you want to give back
.
You don't want to be cheap.
You don't want to be to thepoint where you're not, um,
providing value for them orbeing a pain in their butt.
(39:52):
But it's that you know what canyou do, like, if you're doing
five deals a year, the averagereal estate agent probably only
sells 20.
That would be 25% of theirentire business, so they should
take a discount on it.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, exactly, and that's such a great point, mike,
for investors out there.
Again, agents aren't going tolove it.
But again, you should love itif you're an agent, because
you're getting volume and youdon't have to do anything.
You don't have no marketingdollars into it, you have
nothing into it, you're justgetting spoon-fed a listing like
this here's a fixed up property, can you please go list this
for me?
Or a brand new construction.
Please go put this on themarket for me.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
That's like cake, right, it's actually a gift and
one of the things with havingextensive retail real estate
background.
Every listing should give youtwo deals.
It should give you the listingitself and it should also give
you another deal.
Whether it's a neighbor thatyou door knock, whether it's
somebody drove by and got yourinformation from the sign
Minimum, you should get anotherdeal from that.
(40:49):
So, yeah, yeah, you might takea reduced commission on a house
that's two, three hundredthousand dollars, but maybe you
turn around and you tack on theneighbor wants to sell their
house and you pick up a buyer.
Well, now you just picked uptwo more deals and now those two
deals are going to blossom intomore deals right so essentially
that one listing could catapultyou.
You know a business for anentire quarter or a year for you
(41:12):
.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, that's such a good point.
What do you?
So you said you don't when youlist them, are you not listing
them yourself, the newconstructions or the flips that
you're doing?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
My team lists them, but I don't charge myself.
I'll be honest I charge myself$1,500, which is roughly the
cost of doing business payingfor the professional photos,
paying a transaction coordinator, paying fees and blah, blah,
blah.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And then are you offering a buyer side commission
?
Then yes, so is the buyer sidegetting usually 2%-ish?
Yes, I do.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, that makes a bigdifference, especially you start
getting up in, like you said, a$600,000 house, you imagine.
Now, instead of paying, you'repaying 2%, really, plus 1500
bucks.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
And even that I actually pay less money on the
new constructions.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Okay, wow.
To the buyer side you mean yes,okay, wow.
So there's even bigger spreadthere than what you can.
So, guys, if you're runningyour numbers and you're using a
full 6% this is what I wastalking about in the commercial
at the start of this thing.
I see this all the time.
People will come to us and,like man, I can't make the
numbers work.
And we look at the numbers andwe see, like their closing costs
there they got $8,000 in forclosing costs.
(42:23):
They got, you know, the full 6%in for realtor commissions for
when they sell it, you know, andit's like just overinflated.
And I understand, I'm, I'm a hey, be conservative, you're not
comfortable, but don't be, don'tbe foolish, right, and so if
you're paying over 4% I'm seeingnow you're paying over 4% and
you're an investor and you'redoing some volume, that's
probably you're paying too much,most likely for these flips.
(42:44):
So, and what Mike's justtalking about here, you know,
negotiate.
There's people, I know there'sagents out there that'll do it
for less because they get it.
Like mike's saying, you'regetting, they're getting the
volume game, they're going toget other business from that.
So such good stuff in heretoday, mike, we always end with
one question here.
I know you got to get out ofhere, go do some deals around
the team, so favorite wisconsintradition or place to visit.
And the reason that we ask thisquestion is we have people out
(43:06):
of state that listen to this,and so so we're.
They might want to invest herein Wisconsin, and so we just got
to let them know a little bitabout the state and what this
place is all about.
Man.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I would say my favorite thing to do in
Wisconsin is to be on the water.
Oh yeah, in the summer, summerin Wisconsin, on the water is
it's a, it's wonderful, it isFlorida is beautiful, but it
it's different.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Not in the summer.
It's not beautiful.
It is Florida's beautiful, butit's different.
The summer is not beautiful.
The summer is awful.
It's so hot.
It is so hot.
Yeah, I guess I took it forgranted.
I didn't travel at all as a kid.
We went up north once a year.
That was like our travel.
And then when we guys startedgoing out of Florida and stuff,
we have some neighbors fromGeorgia and I'm like, oh, do you
(43:53):
guys ever go out like on theboat, wakeboard and ski and all
that kind of stuff to like, yeah, if you want snake bites and
alligators, then you do.
And I'm like you guys likethey're everywhere, they're
everywhere.
Dude, you don't swim or do anyof that stuff down there.
I'm like, oh, that's crazy uphere.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
We just jumpech.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Maybe a leech Might get a leech on you at the end of
the world, right, yeah, we'repretty fortunate here in Wisco,
so I agree with you it'sbecoming that time of year to
start getting back on the waterand get out there, so it's a
great time to be in Wisconsin.
So, guys, this has been anawesome episode If you guys got
some value out of this.
Again, this is the conversationfor people that could get them
(44:30):
started in this game and changethem and their family's
trajectory forever.
So please share the episode.
Let's help people get the wordout there.
And not only that.
This can also benefit you.
If you're sharing this, peopleare going to know you're into
real estate.
So, as Mike talked about this,you sharing this, you could care
less about anybody else gettingvalue out of this, but for you,
selfishly, you can get a coupledeals from this, from people
(44:51):
knowing that you're into thereal estate investing game.
So please share this episode.
Mike.
If anybody wants to get intouch with you and talk to you
about any of this stuff relatedto real estate and they need a
hand up, what's the best way forthem to get in touch with you?
Man?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Best way would be reaching out to me at
mikeateasyhomesalecom that's.
I have somebody that myassistant goes through my emails
.
You might try to call me, youmight try to text me.
I might get to it.
I might not see it, it might gothrough, whereas the email it's
(45:23):
got another set of eyesactually looking at it.
Yeah perfect.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Awesome, so we'll get that added in the show notes.
Mike at EasySalecom.
Easy Homesale EasyH.
Awesome, so we'll get thatadded in the show notes.
Mike at easy salecom.
Easy home sale.
Easy home salecom.
I am sorry about that, mike.
Good thing you corrected methere.
Ai will pick that up and putthe wrong thing in the show
notes here.
No-transcript.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
the Wisconsin Investor, andtoday, as usual, I have another
awesome guest for you guys.
Today's guest is pretty specialto me and I'll tell you why
here in a few minutes, butbefore I do that, as I do always
, I want to give you a littlecommercial for our sponsor,
wisconsin Discount Properties.
We put out deals every singleweek to your inbox 6 am,
(00:27):
anywhere from one to six deals aweek.
And uh, these are not justdeals that we're putting out
there that you can't make moneyon.
We don't put it out to thebuyers.
Listen to this.
There's a way to make somemoney on this thing.
And so if you're interested ingetting off market deals and
you're like, gosh, I can't finda deal where I, you know I want
to do deals, I just cannot finda deal that works.
Check out the list.
And what I would encourage youto do is something we're doing
with a lot of people now thatare not able to make the numbers
(00:50):
work on these is we are settingup free coaching calls to go
through your numbers with you,because people are buying these
deals and that means that ifyou're not buying these deals,
they're making money, and you'renot, and so let's figure out
what are the things holding youback from being able to get
deals.
So if you want to get in onsome deals, some off-market
deals, go towisconsindiscountpropertiescom.
If you want to be on the buyerslist and you're not yet, you
(01:11):
just put your information inright on the homepage.
If you're not ready to startgetting deals yet, you just are
in that beginning phase and youjust want to talk to some,
contact us and just fill out theform there and somebody from
our team will reach out to youand have a conversation With
that.
Let's get into today's episode.
So the gentleman that I'mbringing to you guys today was a
(01:33):
key part of Carrie and I'sjourney of getting started in
real estate investing.
So Mike's got a special placein my heart for everything that
the relationship that we've hadover the years and continue to
have to this day I think we gotstarted in 2016 is when I met
Mike and met him through aCraigslist ad, actually for a
(01:54):
duplex that he was selling ofhis own at that point and that
just blossomed into a friendshipand to so many different things
that we've done and Mike's gotsuch a great depth of experience
in the real estate industry andall facets.
So I am super excited to bebringing you today Mike Boyer.
Mike, what's going on, brother,how's?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
it going.
I'm doing great.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Good, good, good.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Having a good little sun enjoying the Wisconsin
weather.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, let's get into today'sepisode.
So I wanted to bring you on.
I guess first of all, you'vebeen in real estate longer than
I have, so I want you just tokind of tell everybody in the
audience your background and howyou got started in this game,
how long you've been in it, andwe'll start there.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, background actually started fresh out of
moving out of my parents' houseafter high school.
Okay, I moved into an apartmentbuilding.
I realized right off the batthat apartment living was not
for me.
Plus, being an 18-year-old andpeople telling me I have to be
(02:52):
quiet and everything I was likewell, maybe I should buy my own
place.
So my first journey it startedoff trying to buy a distressed
mobile home.
Okay, I was unable to getfinancing for a distressed
mobile home.
Okay, I was unable to getfinancing for a distressed
mobile home.
Yeah, 18 years old.
Everybody's like that'sactually basically the same as a
car Tried all the institutionsand finally my father said well,
(03:18):
why don't you go meet with arealtor?
And the realtor put me in touchwith a lender to buy this
mobile home.
The lender's like you're notbuying this mobile home, but why
don't we pre-approve you for ahouse?
So the first property I boughtwas actually a side-by-side
duplex, distressed Porterhouse.
(03:41):
It was a great investment, itwas amazing and that helped
launch my career into realestate.
Okay, Was this in?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
08 when you bought it .
07?
No, this was in 03.
03.
Oh, that's right, we're likethe same age, so I'm trying to
figure out math-wise.
But yes, college, and thenbefore that, okay, so, wow, so
you've been in this for over 20years.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Instead of college, I had a party house.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Hey, it worked out pretty well for you, I think.
I think that was probably agood decision.
So you mean, you got into realestate investing and you didn't
go to college for this, mike,you, yes, oh, wow, okay, yeah,
that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
It started off.
I just started reading books.
I went to Barnes Noble and realestate really piqued my
interest.
So I picked up a book I can'teven remember the name of it
like how to Get Rich with RealEstate Investing Rich Dad, poor
Dad.
And I just started goingthrough books and kind of I
don't want to say fantasizing,but imagining houses, like I
(04:48):
would look at these houses inmagazines and I'm like God, I
you know one day, and I juststarted trying to trying to
learn how how to get there.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, so you?
You put the big vision out infront of yourself and then you
started to like work itbackwards into steps that you
need to go through today.
I think that's such a good pointfor the audience out there.
A lot of times if I'm doing acoaching call with somebody on
our team or somebody who'sinterested in getting into real
estate, that's one of the thingsI want to know.
It's like why do you want to dothis?
Because it's not easy, right,mike?
I mean, it looks easy after youdo it all.
(05:17):
Once you're in it for twodecades, like yourself, you kind
of forget maybe some of thestuff that you had to go through
to get yourself in a positionwhere you are now where you can
just turn and burn deals nothaving to think about it.
But you had to have that bigvision originally to to push
through all that tough stuff,right?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
And speaking of pushing, Iremember one of my my visions
was never to work for anybodyand to push a lawnmower around
at my properties.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
To this day I do not push a lawnmower around, but I
was going to say how, yeah, how,how, how many lawns did you
push that lawnmower around at Atwhen I was younger?
All of them, okay.
So you did do it for a while,okay, okay.
Yeah, you were in the hustlegrind phase, right?
Yeah, originally.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So over the two decades, youalso became a real estate agent.
(06:15):
When did that happen?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes, I actually became a real estate agent
shortly after buying my firstcouple of properties.
I looked at that as anopportunity to come across more
properties and to meet otherindividuals in the industry that
were doing it, and that's if Igive any advice to anybody.
It's not necessarily get a realestate license, it's surround
(06:37):
yourself with people that are inthe industry, whatever industry
that may be real estate orotherwise, or whatever facet of
real estate that you want to bein.
Surround yourself with peoplethat are doing it, because
they're going to give you moreadvice and they're going to
shorten your knowledge, the timegap for your knowledge.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
For sure, yeah, and we talk about that pretty much
every episode.
So those of you that listen toevery episode, network, right,
your net worth is your networkor your net?
I always get it mixed up.
I really should figure outwhich way it's supposed to be
said, because I always mix it up, but you get the idea.
Surround yourself with a lot ofpeople.
But I guess I want to ask youthat question, mike, in your
opinion now?
So if I'm new to the realestate industry or I've done a
(07:16):
few deals, do you think it'shelpful to get your real estate
license for some people, or doyou think it's more of a
distraction?
What is your viewpoint?
If their goal is, if their goalis investing, let me, let me
paraphrase, let me preferencethat I?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I'm really indifferent.
Um, in the beginning of mycareer I utilized my real estate
license a lot more.
It allowed me the opportunityto access individuals and talk
about real estate.
It wasn't like I was making alot of money doing it, but I got
to meet a lot of people Goingback to Rich Dad, poor Dad, you
go get a job where you're theintern somewhere, just so you
(07:53):
can gain knowledge.
I look at the real estatelicense similar to that, but
that doesn't mean you need areal estate license to surround
yourself with other individuals.
Good distinction Early in thecareer.
Yes, I utilized it quite a bit.
Now later, you know, afterdoing it for so many years, I
don't really utilize my realestate license in a traditional
(08:14):
manner.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Okay, got it.
Yeah, and I think your answeris spot on, because I get asked
that a lot and I always tellthem well, it depends, what do
you want to do?
You know and I've seen it, I'veseen it work really slow people
down who were really hot oninvesting and then they get
caught up in becoming a buyer'sagent or trying to understand
all the laws and the rules andall this kind of stuff, where if
they would have just stayed inthe investing lane and just
(08:36):
focused on investing and becamereally good at that, they
probably would have been able toget to the goal a lot faster.
But then again, who knows,Everybody's journey is a little
bit different right.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Maybe they had to go that way in order to learn
something that was going to helpthem down the road.
I don't know.
And I will say this I lostalmost everything during the
market crash and some of it wasdue to my fault.
Some of it was due to just badtiming, just bad.
I made poor decisionsing a guyon land contract and he
foreclosed on it.
I'm like, oh, what do I do withthis property?
I had arson, I had a couple ofthings that had happened, and
(09:14):
having a real estate licenseallowed me to generate income
while still working on somethingthat I really enjoyed yet.
So for me that was part of itas well.
I wasn't going to go get a jobas like a handyman or anything
like that.
I was like, well, what can I dothat?
Still, it still allows me to to, you know, run deals.
(09:34):
It might be for other people,but at least then I can still
run numbers, I can still rundeals, I can still look at these
properties.
Um, even though I wasn't ableto purchase them at the time,
and that was also a limitingbelief I probably could have
bought more houses than I evercould use or turn at that time,
but that was a limiting belief Ihad at that time.
(09:54):
But I still worked in realestate.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, and what's interesting, I don't know if I
knew you at this point.
I wanted to get into realestate investing and I don't
remember if we had alreadystarted or not.
I think it was before we reallygot into it.
It was it was before we gotinto real estate investing, but
I was hanging out with TonyBreuer from good faith funding.
Uh, I got to know him through anetworking group that I belong
to for a fitness company that Ihad started and, uh, I remember
(10:20):
like I was just exactly what yousaid.
I'm like I need to be aroundpeople who are doing this, Like
I need to just suck theirknowledge in and just sponge it
in and I don't care what I'mdoing as long as I'm around
these people all day long.
And he was like my idol at thetime.
He had like 50 doors orsomething.
I was like, oh my gosh, I couldI can't even imagine 50 doors.
But I got to figure out how doyou do this?
I got licensed to be a mortgagebroker so I went through part
(10:43):
time, like I was working fulltime and I was doing this like
part time getting licensed.
And then I remember I went outwith him and the company he
worked for at the time doingstandard mortgages before he
went big into the hard moneystuff and I went through this
whole training thing, thisweekend thing, it was great.
Came back I got like officiallylicensed and I went in for like
my first day of like being likea mortgage broker and I
(11:04):
remember like I put somebody'syou know information in to fill
out their app and stuff likethat and it like denied them and
I was like I just spent howmuch time getting this person to
fill this stuff out.
And I can't even get them alone.
And they're like, yeah, and Iwas like how much would I have
made on this?
And I don't remember what theamount was, but it wasn't enough
for the amount of work that Ihad to go through to try to get
this person approved.
(11:25):
And I'm like you know what, Tony, I don't think this is for me.
So literally I worked with themfor like three hours and I was
like, all right, I'm out of here, I got to go, I got to do
something else.
So I was I went through thewhole licensing thing and
everything else to use it forthree hours.
So, but the idea is the same.
I want, I wanted so badly to bein this that I was willing to
go through and get licensed as amortgage broker just to be able
(11:46):
to sit next to him to learnfrom him anything I could about
real estate.
So, even though it didn't workout the way we thought, I still
learned a lot of stuff from himafter that it actually worked
out better.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
You realized what you didn't want to do Exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I also did the same thing in commercial insurance
too.
Just a year prior to that, Iwent and got licensed for
commercial insurance.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So I was just getting licensed for all this crap and
never used it.
But anyway I was licensed forprime America selling insurance.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, classic.
What is the?
What does the real estatebusiness look like now?
Like it?
Do you have a rental portfolio?
How many units you know howmany, how many flips you do in a
year?
Like, tell us a little bitabout new construction.
You're kind of in a lot ofdifferent things, so tell the
audience a little bit about whatis Mike, two decades after that
first side-by-side duplex, looklike at his business.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
So currently the rental portfolio consists of
just over 50 doors.
It's a mixture of midterm,short-term and long-term rentals
.
Mixture of midterm, short-termand long-term rentals.
A couple small apartmentbuildings and then with the fix
(12:51):
and flip, we did 43 fix andflips last year Wow.
This year we're probably goingto do north of 60, probably 70
fix and flips this year Wow.
And then for the newconstruction, the goal is eight
new construction.
So I'm going to try for 10, butthe goal is eight Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's incredible, dude.
You're killing it.
That's more than I realizeyou've been doing, so that's
awesome.
How do you go from buying aside-by-side duplex to doing 60
flips a year and newconstruction and 50 doors like,
how does somebody listen to this?
That's just getting started.
How do they?
What are the steps or what arethe things that had to happen in
order for you to be able to getto this point?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
um early on a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, I had to.
I had to fail myself forward.
Uh quite often humble myselfquite often um lights turned off
, uh, not due to like not payingwps, just just, yeah, just uh
very.
Look back very uh uh poordecisions okay okay but what
(14:02):
that did was it taught me what Ididn't want to do anymore.
It taught me a lot of valuablelife lessons.
It taught me what type oftenants do I want.
It taught me what type ofproperties do I want to buy.
What type of people do I wantto hang out with that are going
to help grow your mind and growyou as a person, that are going
(14:25):
to help grow your mind and growyou as a person.
I attribute quite a bit of myreal estate career to actually
working with you and watchingwhat you had done and being by
your side during a lot of thebeginning phases of your
business.
I think it was just you myselfand Carrie I don't even know if
(14:45):
Jessica was on the team yet yeah, when we started working
together.
So like watching that grow overthe course of years and you
really forced me to mature as aperson.
Mm-hmm, in that regard, thattough love, that tough love and
(15:08):
the.
It wasn't necessarily forcing.
I wanted.
I was very open to to everythingand it was.
It was just like okay, how muchtime are you spending to better
yourself?
How much time are you spendingto better your business?
How much time are you spending?
And it's allotting that timeand then also making sure you're
nurturing friendships and doinguh, nurturing family friends
(15:31):
and and a lot of that.
With that.
That taught me was that I couldbecause I was very scared to to
uh to get back deep into realestate investing after losing
everything okay and what thatdid was that actually pushed me
to be successful, because I'mlike, well, you know, corey's
right here.
(15:51):
I don't want to say holding myhand, but holding my hand and
getting ready to push me off abridge, let's go, let's go.
And and uh, like I, I had faithin what, what we were doing and
what that did with that.
That allowed me to take theleap.
Maybe it was on my own, maybenot, but I know there was
(16:13):
definitely a healthy, healthyshove.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I see, and I don't even remember shoving you any to
at any point, but I know we hadgood conversations, but because
you told me you're like whatthe hell, why are you not?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
You know I would go on acquisition appointments for
you and then I wouldn't evenbeen on the property and I know
the most about the property,more than anybody else.
Yeah, been on the property, Iknow everything about it.
And you're like you're in realestate.
You know all the contractors,right, like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And I contractors right, like what are you doing?
And uh, yeah, it was.
It was like what are you doing?
Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, and I think to to kind ofgo back to the networking piece
of this.
Right, it's like get aroundpeople who are are pushing you
right and are gonna gonna forceyou to be better, because
there's you can get in your ownhead real easy in this game.
You know, you start looking atsome of the numbers and it can
become overwhelming.
And I remember my first deal,mike, uh it was I think we got
(17:09):
it off market.
So it was before we gotinvolved with you.
But you kind of you kind ofspurred us into it.
Like you started looking atstuff right around that same
timeframe.
We went and looked at yourduplex and all that.
But we, uh, we had an offmarket deal and I remember I
like market deal and I rememberlike I wanted to close in like
(17:29):
two weeks and I was like, oh mygosh, like I wanted to like
sabotage the deal because I Iwas, I was freaking out like I'm
like what if the numbers don'twork, I'm gonna be poor, I'm
gonna be living under a bridge,like, oh my gosh, my kids are
gonna be, they're not gonna beable to eat, and I mean just the
amount of negative chatter thatcan enter your brain.
But being around people who havedone it, like then going back
to tony, I'm like I call tony upand who cares?
Like then go do another dealand make, make the money up,
(17:52):
it's easy.
And I'm like, oh okay, thanks,tony, you know.
Then I go back.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Go back to go back to do it.
Okay, I'm off the ledge now.
All right, I can, I can moveforward with this thing but it's
easy to talk yourself out ofthis game too Real.
I thought you made like fivegrand on it and it was like I
think it's if it's that same onethat I'm thinking of.
Well, we did a couple right ina row.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
So we it went like we did no deal, no deal, no deal
for like four months likenothing crickets.
And then all of a sudden we didwe bought a duplex wholesale.
The deal did a seller did ourold house as a land contract or
a rent to own with a dude andthen I think we did a JV.
We did some kind of JV likeseller financing thing with
somebody else that was in one ofthe RIA groups and yeah, it was
(18:39):
kind of like we started doingthe buffet of real estate within
like two months.
And then all of a sudden, likeyou were in the mix, like
helping us find our next deal,and that's when we found we
found a fourplex.
You found us a fourplex thatwas in foreclosure, which that
doesn't happen very much anymore, and then we flipped that one
(18:59):
and I think we made like $25,000on that thing, and then we kind
of were like why aren't weflipping more properties?
I could get out of my job wayquicker.
You know, that was my goal whenI started, was to get out of my
job, so yeah.
So it was kind of a wild firstyear in real estate.
We just kind of did a wholebunch of stuff Got to taste,
test, everything you know inthat.
Dope right in, dope right in man, dope right in.
(19:20):
What are some of the challengesnow?
You're running a pretty bigoperation now, doing 60 flips a
year, some new construction.
You got a lot of differentthings happening.
How are you managing all thatstuff and like what are some of
the biggest challenges as youtry to continue to grow and
scale in this currentenvironment that we're in?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I'd say the biggest challenge currently is people.
Um, whether it's staff, whetherit's contractors, uh, that, I
find, is the biggest challengeand optical obstacle to overcome
, along with um stayingenergized, I know sometimes
(20:01):
there's like weeks where youjust grind real hard and it's
like you have to turn yourselfoff for a little bit to get away
and like you have to rechargebecause it's like it is.
It is very extensive andthere's a lot going on.
But by putting right people inplace, what I'm learning is the
more right people I put in place, the more that they can do it
(20:25):
better than I can, yeah, andeven if they did it at 75%,
they're 100% of their effortsgoing to it, whereas a smaller
portion of my efforts able to goto that, yeah.
So, when it comes to the people, it's surrounding yourself with
really good people once again.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, when did you make your first hire, mike?
Do you remember when that wasmy?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
first hire was Haley and that was 20.
My first hire in real estate.
I had other employees in otherbusinesses, I had ran, but my
first employee in real estate, Ibelieve, was 2018.
Okay, 2017.
2017.
(21:06):
Okay, I think.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I remember that.
Yeah, what was, what was someof the things that pushed you to
make that first hire, and thenwhat were some of the things
that held you from hiringanybody in real estate until
gosh that's 15 years after youstarted, pretty much.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
What had held me back was just the mindset, the
limiting belief of do I haveenough work for this person?
What can this person do?
Belief of do I have enough workfor this person?
What can this person do?
And after hiring, I realizedthat I probably should have done
it years prior, because thenwhat that allows you to do is to
(21:42):
do what you enjoy Right and,and even to this day, you know,
as you grow, you start learning,like you get into real estate
investing because you're like oh, I want to be a real estate
investor.
At this stage in my career, I'mempowering others and teaching
others and trying to help others.
It's a lot less of doing theactual.
(22:06):
I don't even go to a lot ofthese properties.
I'm not involved at all in theproperties, but what I am doing
is I'm empowering people, oreven if it's individuals that
are coming to me that are askingquestions and want to learn.
I'm an open book.
I'd rather help people and helpthem succeed in real estate or
(22:31):
in any type of business.
I mean, people come to me foradvice and a lot of things, and
however I can help them, I Iwant to give back as much as
possible.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah Well, I think that's something you see across
some of the people who, in theeyes of somebody just starting,
are maybe the most successful inthis business or any business.
So people who are constantlyjust giving right.
And it's you got to protectyour time.
So there's a balance right.
As you get, as you start to getyour name out there, more
people start to find out morelike, oh my gosh, this person's
doing this, this, this.
Everybody wants to pick yourbrain or take you to lunch or do
(23:01):
these types of things, which isgreat, it's awesome.
And we, when I started, I didthe same thing.
I was.
It's not that they don't wantto help, it's just they got to
protect their time.
But you're always finding waysto give and I think that's
what's made you so successful.
I mean, I remember that was thething when we started with you.
It was always like Mike, whatdo you think of this?
(23:22):
Like, what do we do about this?
Like we're always leaning onyou because you had all this
experience and we learned so aswe got started in it.
And again, it's kind of goingback.
We just keep beating this drumof that network.
Find people who are willing togive back.
I remember Caleb Hayes, anotherone who runs the Keller
Williams branch that you're at.
Huge giver, I mean, gave us wewould meet with him monthly for
(23:46):
like a year, and he never askedfor anything.
He didn't ask us to join hisnothing, just coached us for
free.
I was like this is insane.
I don't think he's still doingthat, but who knows, I don't
know it was.
It was wild to me, but italways came back around Like I
was always thinking if he'd like.
When we come up with the, I'mlike, oh my gosh, I wonder if
Caleb would want this deal.
(24:16):
No-transcript on here.
That's one that we run in greenBay.
There's caffeine and cashflowacross the across the state.
There's a RIA groups across thestate.
Like, get involved in those Ifyou, if you're looking for a
network, and be intentional whenyou go to those and find some
people that you can learn fromand grow with and that are
willing to help you out.
(24:36):
And in real estate it's a smallworld man, everybody knows
everybody and deals get done allthe time from just networking.
I might have money that I wantto lend right now.
You might call me and say,corey, I'm strapped.
I got 60 flips going.
You got some cash you can lendme on the 61st one I need.
And because of the relationship, no problem, mike, here you go.
(24:59):
Right, let's go to a bank,let's deal with that?
Hey, I need an electrician.
Who do you work with?
We always pass stuff back andforth, and we've done that for
years, so I think that's aimportant point to get across
here.
Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
How is?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
speaking of financing stuff, mike, how are you
financing all these deals?
What's the cause?
I imagine you got to have somepretty good relationships,
either some private money orsome banks, or how is that
happening that you're able tokeep, you know, have all of
these properties kind of goingsimultaneously and be able to
fund them?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So a couple of things .
Having the rental portfolioallowed me to open up a line of
credit, so that's my first linethat I will use when the line of
credit is is exhausted.
Then I have I have about ahandful of of hard money,
(25:51):
lenders, private private funding, and then after that I still
have some local banks that Ideal with.
I actually for all the banksout there.
Sorry, but I usually like to goprivate before I go to a bank.
Oh, they understand the bank'sat seven, seven and a half,
maybe eight, whereas I'd ratherpay a little bit more and not
(26:16):
deal with the appraisals and I'drather a quick, close and easy,
yes, the easy button.
Just let me have.
Smack that, yeah, yeah, thenI'll go to the banks and then
after that I have someinstitutional money that's right
around the same price as, uh,the hard money, but it's going
through the same hoops as thebanks essentially Okay.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
When you say institutional money, what do you
mean by that?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
There's larger funds out there, like one of them that
I use, is dominion.
What they do is they'll it'shard money pricing with the BS
fees, that that the banks charge.
Yeah, yeah, so it's.
I mean, I'll use it in a pinchif you get a good enough deal.
It doesn't matter what you'repaying for your money, right,
(27:01):
exactly?
Speaker 1 (27:02):
yeah, there's several out there, and that's something
I always talk about too ishaving different buckets of
money, right.
So you, what you've done, hasdone the same thing.
You've got your private money.
You've got your commercialbanks or community banks is this
is what I sometimes refer tothem as your private money, hard
money, community bank You'vegot the institutional or the
national lenders, so you've gotseveral options, one of the
things I talk to people aboutall the time.
(27:22):
You never want to pass on agood deal just because you don't
have financing set up.
So get a bunch of differentoptions, get a bunch of lines in
the water, be ready to pullfrom whatever bucket you can or
need to.
The HELOC is my favorite tool inreal estate, and being able to
use it on investment propertiesis just such a powerful,
(27:42):
powerful tool.
I mean it's incredible how muchthat can unlock for people to
be able to use it.
What you could do is you couldtake that HELOC.
You could pair that withcommunity banks right, and they
might want 20% down.
Well, there you go.
You take the 20% from yourHELOC.
Boom, there's your 20% down,plus, you got your rehab from
your HELOC.
There you go, you're coveredand off you go Right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And there's friends, and families, helocs also.
Friends and families, helocs,friends and families that have
paid off properties and they'renot accruing any wealth from
their properties.
Would you like to make anywherefrom 8% to 12% on this?
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah, what are you typically paying?
What do you find in privatelenders are willing to take
right now?
What is their Between 8% and?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
12%.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's like a sweetheart deal that they don't
have very much that they canborrow, but when they do, it's
at 8%.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Sure, yeah.
So somebody who's got a littlebit more capital, you're willing
to pay a little bit more forthat ease of not having to just
use a little chunk of it, kindof a thing.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That makes sense.
And what I found too, mike, Ijust started to realize this
because we don't do a ton offlips.
We're starting to do a lot morethat we're taking down and
enlisting now.
But what I found is, like someof the commercial banks that I
(28:50):
love working with them becausewe have great relationships.
But when I look at the closingstatement, all of a sudden I've
got a $1,500 origination fee,I've got this fee, I've got a
lender policy, I've got all thisother stuff, and when I add it
up, I'm like it's about the sameas if I just paid somebody 10%
or 12% flat, or even if you paypoints on top of it.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
When you run the numbers for the ease, what's
that ease worth?
Is it?
You're buying a $200,000property.
Let's just say you have to paya couple of points.
Well, you're going to pay thepoints to the community bank
anyway.
The community bank ended uppushing your closing out 45,
maybe 60 days.
So now you lost thatopportunity potentially to do
the property during prime realestate.
Right now is a prime time toget a property listed.
Property during prime realestate.
Like, right now is a prime timeto get a property listed.
(29:32):
Yep, and now you could,potentially you could miss out
on the market that you want tobe in.
Yeah, and you could.
Just because you're trying tosave a couple thousand dollars,
it doesn't, you know, at the endof the day it doesn't make any
sense Exactly.
Yeah, as you're talking aboutthis I have a deal right now
that.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I'm like I should just talk to some of the private
lender people I know and justinstead of I would keep going
through these community banks.
But they want to do exactlythat.
They want to move the closingback 15 days.
They got to get appraisal, theygot to do all this other stuff
and it's a smoking deal.
It's like this should just becommon sense Yep, here's your
money, you know, there you go.
So that's, that's so good, bigstruggles.
(30:15):
Now you said people, okay, what, what about you as a leader?
How's that become?
Because when you started outyou were a one-man band running,
just running, running andgunning.
Classic entrepreneur, maverickstyle sales guy yeah, just
nobody to answer to, nobody toworry about, just going out and
making stuff happen.
Right now you start bringingpeople on your team and now you
have to grow as a leader.
Like, what are some of thechallenges with that?
Because I think that could beanother limiting belief.
(30:36):
I know for me, I still strugglewith that, sometimes with our
team, is like am I really worthyenough to?
Be running a team of 15, 20people, like you know all that
kind of stuff.
So how, how have you juggledthat?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
And what are what have been some of the challenges
as you've kind of grown intobeing the leader of this
organization now A lot ofreading and going back to the
networking, talking to otherpeople that are doing it at a
high level.
What should I do?
Asking questions, what do youdo about this situation?
What do you do about thatsituation?
And some of the people in mysphere they might not run their
own business.
Maybe they're.
They're a manager of another,of a division at another company
(31:15):
, but they still they haveleadership training and since I,
I, I pay for some trainingwhich helps me, but some of
their training, you know, theymight go to spend a week at
disney on management trainingand I'm like I don't know what
that costs, but I hear it's oneof the best training for for
(31:35):
employees as a manager that youcan go to.
Okay, so like I can pick theirbrain and they went to the, to
these events and then pickingtheir brains, yeah, it's also
it's leaning on friends andfamily and hey, what would you
do in this situation?
Am I, am I being unreasonable,unfair?
(31:55):
Am I in the right?
Am I in the wrong?
And then also trying tomaintain a level of they won't.
They don't see what's happeningon the background, in the
background.
They don't see, you know, merunning deals at night when
they're getting dinner.
They don't see me running dealsat night when they're getting
dinner.
They don't see me getting upearly so I can do stuff.
(32:16):
So it's like trying to createenough of a presence to keep it
motivating, then also trying totake time for myself, so
juggling.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
So you're trying to be the leader out there and lead
by example, but then alsoyou're trying to, like you said,
it can be an energy suck aftera while, right, so you got to
unplug a little bit and regroundand re-energize and, yeah, I
think what's interesting likeCarrie and I go on, we try to
travel quite a bit and we try totravel without the kids at
least a few times a year, justher and I, and it's always
(32:48):
interesting.
Like we go on these littlegetaways.
Or like we went to Kohler acouple a couple of months ago
and just did like a weekend atKohler and you know totally,
just you know, like relaxing spadinners, that kind of thing.
But we had so much clarity,like just being able to step
away once in a while and just beable to talk without kids
interrupting every five seconds,and you know we get such
(33:10):
clarity goes back to again.
You get re-energized by thatbig vision.
Again.
You go back to like, hey, whyare we doing this?
What are we looking for?
What's that struggles, what?
Let's look at the big visionand then you can push through
some of those day-to-daychallenges.
I feel like once you've had thatreset and you go, oh yeah,
that's why I'm doing this.
You gotta get back to your yourwhy again?
Yeah, right that unplugging,and you get to do that now too.
(33:30):
So you, you and I both spentsome time down in Florida.
Mike, talk a little bit aboutthat.
How's that?
How's that snowboarding thingbeen for you?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
okay, um, it's just getting down there, it's getting
away, it's uh, just turning thebrain off and being able to
just just relax.
Yeah, which is really big forme.
Um, yeah, I love having a placedown in florida.
It's, it's so, so convenient.
I basically have a private jetat allegiant airport.
I mean, I just fly with a bunchof random people, I don't know,
but it's, you know, it's adirect flight.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much, pretty much the same thing
.
If they had a point systemthere, I mean, good Lord, you'd
be a, you'd be number onemedallion, or whatever.
It is right, yes.
Gold, platinum, silver, allwrapped up in one, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
So, yeah, that's, it's really nice.
Um, bring my son down there orI'll go down there just to relax
myself, and I use that as a wayto recharge.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, that's awesome, man, and what Mike's describing
.
So we bought a place down nearuh, down by Tampa area a few,
probably back in 2020, I thinkwe bought it right before COVID
happened and then it was likeall of all of these other people
saw what we were doing.
They're like wait a minute, Ican Airbnb this thing when I'm
not there and it pays for itself, and then when I want to use it
, I can use it.
(34:58):
And now we have like I was justjoking because somebody else
was texting me this morningabout how they're looking for a
place right by us, mike, and I'mlike well, you're going to join
the Wisconsin real estateinvestor little hub down in
Florida now, because we've got anice little tribe of people
that have all either bought oneor some people bought multiple
places down there now and it'spretty fun to get down there and
sometimes, sometimes I see youmore in Florida than I do in
(35:20):
Wisconsin.
Yeah, so that's great, man, andthat's what real estate can do,
guys.
It's so much fun.
There's so many different toolsthat you can.
You can pull, so many leversyou can pull and all that sort
of stuff.
So that's super exciting.
Mike, before we wrap here.
Tell us I'm interested to hearyour best deal ever and your
worst deal ever.
I know I didn't prepare you.
(35:41):
I should have prepared you forthis.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
No, I don't need to.
I didn't know.
I was going to ask you this,mike, my best deal ever, the
easiest deal that I consider mybest deal was it was a six unit
that I talked to.
(36:02):
He was a wishy washy and thenfinally he evicted a tenant and
I turned around, I bought it for400 and sold it for 550.
Um, and I did owner financingwhen I sold it to somebody for
75,000 with interest, and sothat deal is still paying me to
(36:24):
this day.
Oh, I love that.
Um, the worst deal I did Ibought a property.
Um, the worst deal I did.
I bought a property, bigproperty, indian trails, just
real nice property flipped itmade it beautiful yeah,
beautiful property.
I didn't have all my numbers inthe project manager or the
(36:44):
gentleman that was helping meout manage the project didn't
have all the invoices submitted.
So when we went to list itwe're like, oh, we only have
this much in it in a biggerproject.
You know it's, it's, we stillhad enough in it, it.
I think the sheet said we hadlike 60 in it and it ended up
being I don't know 80 or 90 okay, well, and then it was.
(37:06):
Just there was yeah, there was alot of stuff.
The tree trimmer went there andcut down all the trees after we
had sold the property, so Iended up having to pay for tree
removal and all this stuff.
But I ended up losing close to$20,000 on that deal by not
having all my paperwork together.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Well, dude, if $20,000 is your worst deal ever,
good Lord, Mike, you're doingsomething right.
That's amazing.
After two decades, totally lose20 Gs in one deal, that's
pretty good.
If that's your worst one man,yeah, that's the worst one.
Oh, that's amazing.
How do you keep hitting basehits and home runs and not have
these monster losses?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
To all the realtors out there I don't pay very much
for commission.
Okay, I don't pay very much forcommission.
Okay, I am a very yeah,realtors aren't going to like to
hear this, but I don't pay muchfor commission.
I have a real estate license,so that saves me on the sales
side and then on the buy side,if I can sell it myself, I don't
(38:06):
charge myself commission either, or I do a reduced, I do
reduced on the side, like ifit's my team selling it.
Um, I work my split back intothe deal.
So that helps out tremendouslyand that goes back to like the
new constructions.
You, if you, if you're payingfour percent to sell a property,
(38:27):
that's $600,000, that's $24,000.
Me, as an investor, I'mtypically only making between
$50,000 and $75,000.
I mean I've done better deals,but so it's like well to know.
Half the money that I wouldmake I have to pay a realtor to
open a door on a new house thatwe're not really even
(38:47):
negotiating with.
It's just literally.
You know, the realtors outthere are probably going to get
mad at me, but Well, theyprobably don't listen to this
podcast.
It.
Uh, that's one of the ways thatI've been able to not lose a
lot of money and a lot of deals.
Okay, so eliminate thecommission.
Even if I did not have a realestate license, I would
(39:11):
recommend talking to people.
If you're doing volume, whatcan you negotiate?
This is no different thanmeeting with a seller or meeting
with anybody else.
You should be doing this withyour bank.
You should be doing this withyour insurance agency.
You should be doing this whenyou book a flight.
Maybe not if it's online, butyou should always be asking what
(39:31):
can you do?
And when you do volume, youshould be able to get a discount
.
You should be able to negotiatehey, if you find me this house,
I'll list it with you.
You know to reduce price, or Imean just, you want to give back
.
You don't want to be cheap.
You don't want to be to thepoint where you're not, um,
providing value for them orbeing a pain in their butt.
(39:52):
But it's that you know what canyou do, like, if you're doing
five deals a year, the averagereal estate agent probably only
sells 20.
That would be 25% of theirentire business, so they should
take a discount on it.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, exactly, and that's such a great point, mike,
for investors out there.
Again, agents aren't going tolove it.
But again, you should love itif you're an agent, because
you're getting volume and youdon't have to do anything.
You don't have no marketingdollars into it, you have
nothing into it, you're justgetting spoon-fed a listing like
this here's a fixed up property, can you please go list this
for me?
Or a brand new construction.
Please go put this on themarket for me.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
That's like cake, right, it's actually a gift and
one of the things with havingextensive retail real estate
background.
Every listing should give youtwo deals.
It should give you the listingitself and it should also give
you another deal.
Whether it's a neighbor thatyou door knock, whether it's
somebody drove by and got yourinformation from the sign
Minimum, you should get anotherdeal from that.
(40:49):
So, yeah, yeah, you might takea reduced commission on a house
that's two, three hundredthousand dollars, but maybe you
turn around and you tack on theneighbor wants to sell their
house and you pick up a buyer.
Well, now you just picked uptwo more deals and now those two
deals are going to blossom intomore deals right so essentially
that one listing could catapultyou.
You know a business for anentire quarter or a year for you
(41:12):
.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, that's such a good point.
What do you?
So you said you don't when youlist them, are you not listing
them yourself, the newconstructions or the flips that
you're doing?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
My team lists them, but I don't charge myself.
I'll be honest I charge myself$1,500, which is roughly the
cost of doing business payingfor the professional photos,
paying a transaction coordinator, paying fees and blah, blah,
blah.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And then are you offering a buyer side commission
?
Then yes, so is the buyer sidegetting usually 2%-ish?
Yes, I do.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, that makes a bigdifference, especially you start
getting up in, like you said, a$600,000 house, you imagine.
Now, instead of paying, you'repaying 2%, really, plus 1500
bucks.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
And even that I actually pay less money on the
new constructions.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Okay, wow.
To the buyer side you mean yes,okay, wow.
So there's even bigger spreadthere than what you can.
So, guys, if you're runningyour numbers and you're using a
full 6% this is what I wastalking about in the commercial
at the start of this thing.
I see this all the time.
People will come to us and,like man, I can't make the
numbers work.
And we look at the numbers andwe see, like their closing costs
there they got $8,000 in forclosing costs.
(42:23):
They got, you know, the full 6%in for realtor commissions for
when they sell it, you know, andit's like just overinflated.
And I understand, I'm, I'm a hey, be conservative, you're not
comfortable, but don't be, don'tbe foolish, right, and so if
you're paying over 4% I'm seeingnow you're paying over 4% and
you're an investor and you'redoing some volume, that's
probably you're paying too much,most likely for these flips.
(42:44):
So, and what Mike's justtalking about here, you know,
negotiate.
There's people, I know there'sagents out there that'll do it
for less because they get it.
Like mike's saying, you'regetting, they're getting the
volume game, they're going toget other business from that.
So such good stuff in heretoday, mike, we always end with
one question here.
I know you got to get out ofhere, go do some deals around
the team, so favorite wisconsintradition or place to visit.
And the reason that we ask thisquestion is we have people out
(43:06):
of state that listen to this,and so so we're.
They might want to invest herein Wisconsin, and so we just got
to let them know a little bitabout the state and what this
place is all about.
Man.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I would say my favorite thing to do in
Wisconsin is to be on the water.
Oh yeah, in the summer, summerin Wisconsin, on the water is
it's a, it's wonderful, it isFlorida is beautiful, but it
it's different.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Not in the summer.
It's not beautiful.
It is Florida's beautiful, butit's different.
The summer is not beautiful.
The summer is awful.
It's so hot.
It is so hot.
Yeah, I guess I took it forgranted.
I didn't travel at all as a kid.
We went up north once a year.
That was like our travel.
And then when we guys startedgoing out of Florida and stuff,
we have some neighbors fromGeorgia and I'm like, oh, do you
(43:53):
guys ever go out like on theboat, wakeboard and ski and all
that kind of stuff to like, yeah, if you want snake bites and
alligators, then you do.
And I'm like you guys likethey're everywhere, they're
everywhere.
Dude, you don't swim or do anyof that stuff down there.
I'm like, oh, that's crazy uphere.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
We just jumpech.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Maybe a leech Might get a leech on you at the end of
the world, right, yeah, we'repretty fortunate here in Wisco,
so I agree with you it'sbecoming that time of year to
start getting back on the waterand get out there, so it's a
great time to be in Wisconsin.
So, guys, this has been anawesome episode If you guys got
some value out of this.
Again, this is the conversationfor people that could get them
(44:30):
started in this game and changethem and their family's
trajectory forever.
So please share the episode.
Let's help people get the wordout there.
And not only that.
This can also benefit you.
If you're sharing this, peopleare going to know you're into
real estate.
So, as Mike talked about this,you sharing this, you could care
less about anybody else gettingvalue out of this, but for you,
selfishly, you can get a coupledeals from this, from people
(44:51):
knowing that you're into thereal estate investing game.
So please share this episode.
Mike.
If anybody wants to get intouch with you and talk to you
about any of this stuff relatedto real estate and they need a
hand up, what's the best way forthem to get in touch with you?
Man?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Best way would be reaching out to me at
mikeateasyhomesalecom that's.
I have somebody that myassistant goes through my emails
.
You might try to call me, youmight try to text me.
I might get to it.
I might not see it, it might gothrough, whereas the email it's
(45:23):
got another set of eyesactually looking at it.
Yeah perfect.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Awesome, so we'll get that added in the show notes.
Mike at EasySalecom.
Easy Homesale EasyH.
Awesome, so we'll get thatadded in the show notes.
Mike at easy salecom.
Easy home sale.
Easy home salecom.
I am sorry about that, mike.
Good thing you corrected methere.
Ai will pick that up and putthe wrong thing in the show
notes here.
No-transcript.
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