Joe:  Hey guys, how are you doing? Joe here. Welcome to REI In Your Car Podcast.

Joe:  It's been a little while. Today I'm going to talk about why real estate is hard. This is an encouraging, exciting topic. Yeah, if you didn't know already, you're going to figure this out soon enough. Real estate is hard and it's not as easy as you might think it is or as some of the gurus might tell you it is. And I say that tongue in cheek because yeah, I kind of am a guru, I guess, but I've always tried to be honest and to not sugarcoat anything, not lie. It is hard, you need to do the work. And in fact, many times when I do a sales presentation, I actually say these words. Most of you listening to this right now will not make any money in real estate. Most people fail and it's harder than you think. So don't take anything I say as a guarantee or a promise that you're going to make money. If you want to just sit in your parents' basement in your underwear while you're playing video games and push the easy button and money falls from the sky, you're smoking pie. That's never going to happen to you, all right? Any kind of business make money from home opportunity, it takes work. And the people that you see succeed are the ones that have been willing to put in the work. Now it does work. And that's why I love this business is why I can sell my programs, I can tell training, I can solve software, I can some done for you marketing services, I can sale leads and money and all the stuff that we have, I feel with integrity because I know that this business works. I know you can make a lot of money in it, but it takes effort. It takes consistency. It takes persistence. When you wanna quit, you can't, you gotta keep on going. So I'm gonna talk about in this podcast why real estate investing is hard.

Data, not drama. Data beats drama every single time. Stop looking at your emotions. If you are worried because you feel like, oh, it's not working, look at the data. How many offers have you actually made? Maybe you've only made 10 offers. Maybe the first 10 sellers you talked to said no. Maybe the 1st 10 sellers you talked you got mad at you and yelled at you. Well, look at the numbers. Ignore the drama because the drama is gonna get you discouraged. But if you look at the numbers and you know, all right, well, I gotta get 30 nosto get one yes. Great, congratulations. You just got your 1st ten nos, your 10 nos closer to your first yes, right? And this is something you've got to believe in your mind. And this was, I think, one of the reasons why I've had success in this business is I believe that there are deals out there. One of my first coaches said there is a million dollar deal every day. So if you miss one, that's all right. Shake the dust off. Pull up your big boy pants. There's going to be another million dollar deal tomorrow. So you've got to believe that there are deals out there. One time, I remember I was complaining that the market's not working and then sometimes negativity attracts negativity. I had a client in Denver call me and say, man, there's no sellers here. There are tons of buyers, no sellers. The next day, another client from Denver called and said, there are tons of buyers here, no sellers. And I'm like, wait a minute, could it be it'sactually perspective? And then I looked at it, I said, oh, well, let's look. And I actually went into, at the time it was ListSource, I said wait a second, is there anybody doing deals here at all? And I went into ListSourse and I looked at the investor transactions in the last six months. And you know what, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. Somebody's doing these deals. Who is that and how are they doing it? So then I put one client that said there was no sellers And the other one that said he has tons of sellers and one that said, you know, no buyers, tons of buyers. I put them together. I said, do you guys need to talk? The deals are happening out there right now. And investors are doing deals. Just the other day was looking at some markets in a certain state for flipping land. I just went to Redfin and I said all right, show me all the sold in the last three months and boom there it was you could see the clusters and I find the markets where there is activity and in every state there are places where investors right now are buying houses. They're buying land. Well, guess who's finding those deals? Somebody is, they're wholesalers. They are the guys who are more concerned about the data, not the drama. They're consistently out there marketing. They're constantly out there making offers and they're finding these deals.

I think the other important thing to remember is you gotta stop blaming. Stop blaming the market, right? Every market cycle has winners. When the market is going south, I remember we've been through, personally me, I've been to two or three recessions and one of the important things I learned early on is that wealth doesn't disappear. Money doesn't disappear, it transfers. It goes from somewhere to somewhere else. And so the key to being successful in business is knowing where the cheese is going. Knowing it's not here, it's moving, it is going over there now. So you find new opportunity. There's always going to be opportunity. And in real estate, maybe it goes from being a seller's market to being a buyer's market. If you're a wholesaler, maybe from wholesaling deals to new home builders to wholesaling deals to retail buyers, recreational buyers, people who are doing subdivides or whatever. Or maybe in houses it goes from wholesaling fix and flips in the upper, higher, more expensive properties to wholesaling little landlord rental properties, you know, that cash flow. So you're wholesaling, fix and flips or you're wholesale landlord properties.

You need to find where the market is going. And I remember when the recession in 2006, seven and eight, nine or whatever, the people that were still wholesaling a lot of deals and making a lot money were the ones that got creative and saw where the cheese was moving. And so they realized, oh, the buyers that are buying properties right now, and there are some that are buying, they went to go see where they were. One of their biggest problems is they don't have financing. Their sources of funding has dried up. So they would go and find the local regional banks and credit unions and say, hey, do you still lend on rehab, fix and flip properties or rental properties? And they would find the ones that said yes. And even back then, when the market was completely collapsed, there were still local banks that wanted to lend money to qualified people. So what these wholesalers would go find the banks that were lending money, and they say, okay, so if you would lend on this deal, what are your requirements? And they would find out, okay, well, the borrower has to have this credit score, they have to have to this amount of money down, they need to have these amount of money in reserves or in the bank. So they'd figure these things out. And then they would market these properties to all of the investors out there, the local real estate clubs, buy direct mail, phone call, whatever, Facebook. And then, they would say, hey, here's a deal, they'd show the numbers, and say financing available to qualified buyers. And so they would bring these deals as a package. So today maybe where it's like, hey, I can just wholesale deals, just put it out there and people buy them. They have their own financing. If things get rough again, you need to think about putting these deals together as a package and then offering them to investors. Okay. So stop blaming the market. Every market cycle has winners. Wealth doesn't disappear transfer. So you need a look at the market what's going on now. Where's the need? Where's the demand? How can I fill that met demand? And that's really important to understand.

The other thing you need to stop blaming is you've got to stop blaming the competition. I love competition. Competition is proof to me that demand exists. It's telling me, yeah, you know what, there are people that want this, that are doing this, that are making money right now. So why can't I be one of them? So I love competition, because it's telling me, hey, this is a good market. It is a good time to be in the market. I'm going to go see what these guys are doing and model, not copy. I want to model what they're doing in my own market in my own niche. So stop blaming the gurus also. They're the easiest guys to blame. I thank God for gurus because if it wasn't for them that taught me what I did, if it was for the Carlton Sheets who taught Robert Allen, maybe it was Robert Allen who taught Carlton's Sheets, one of those two guys, but before them there was somebody that taught them. The Carlton sheets, the Robert Allens, the Ron the Grands and Lou Browns, and there's a bunch of them and I'm missing a bunch, but like those guys that were out there teaching their stuff and selling their things and making a ton of money, making a fool out of themselves, some of them, you know. But thank God they that because the guy that I learned real estate from learned it from that guy who learned it from that guy and they were able to sell their knowledge to eventually me. Now, there's a lot of shysters and bad gurus out there, but for heaven's sake, stop blaming them for your problems, not their fault. Education is a tool, not the problem. And thank God for education. I thank God that there are people out there selling their knowledge because otherwise, how would we learn it? Now we could like do trial and error, but I like shortcuts. I like to pay somebody a lot of money to learn their mistakes. So I don't have to make the same mistakes. Does that make sense? So if you think education is expensive, try ignorance, try making mistakes, try losing a deal, try only making $3,000 on a deal when you could have made $30,000 on a deal. So stop blaming other things. The market, the competition, the gurus… Take responsibility. Ownership is the starting point of success. Okay, write that one down.

The other thing too is entrepreneurship is not for everyone. You know, business is hard. You're going to face discouragement often. If you want stability, if you want safety, go get a job, go get a nine to five. Real estate rewards the risk takers. And I get it. Entrepreneurship is not for everybody. It's hard. It is one of the hardest things to do in professional life. I think the other hardest thing to do is to be a husband and a dad. It's awesome. It's rewarding. And I never regret a single day of it, but like it's hard and not everybody can do it. The rewards are great though. This is why entrepreneurship is so, it's either like you make a ton of money or you don't make any money at all. It's very risky. That's why again, education is so important. So if you want stability, that's great. Entrepreneurship is not for everybody. That's why most people who buy any education program like mine or anybody's, most people fails because they're just realizing, ah, you know what? Entrepreneurship is not, for me, I can't do this. They want the comfortable. They do not want to step out of their comfort zone. So success requires discomfort. Success requires you step out of your comfort zone, that wherethe growth happens. I'm looking outside, it's in the winter. These trees look like they're dead, right? They look dead. That it looked like there's nothing going on, but it's during the winter time that they're actually growing their roots deeper into the ground. So if you wanna succeed, you need to get out of your comfort zone. You need to push yourself every day. Talk to one more seller, make one more offer, make one cold call, whatever it is for you, right? Go look at one more house. This applies to whatever you're doing. It's just a matter of suck it up, buttercup, let's go, let's get uncomfortable.

Real estate is hard, and you gotta do what others don't wanna do if you want to succeed. I knew when I was in my corporate job, It was a good job. No complaints. I got paid very well. Very grateful for my employers. But I was frustrated because I knew I was one paycheck away from bankruptcy. So if one of them decided to let me go or fire me, I worked for three different companies after college. If they wanted to fire me tomorrow, I'd be gone, right? Maybe I'd get a couple weeks severance package. I knew I could find another job if I was willing to travel anywhere, you know. But yeah, it sucked. I did not like the freedom that no matter how hard I worked, I got paid the same every single two weeks, right? And I had to ask for time off. Now, I'm not complaining. That's just the way it is sometimes. I get it. And I have to pay my dues. But I thought, man, wouldn't it be nice if I could just work wherever I want, whenever I want. I was so tired of like counting how many PTO days I had left or how many vacation days and planning my vacations for the whole year. I felt at the time, I remember the thinking this so clearly, it's more risky to stay in my job and to keep this job. There's more risk in doing that than there is in starting my entrepreneurship journey and start building businesses. And so I said, all right, I'm gonna learn this stuff. And my goal was to start doing real estate and making money part-time on the side while I kept my full-time job. And my goal was to get at least six months in reserves before I quit my job, but that was just too hard to do because I couldn't put enough time into the real estate business. But I put in the work, I refused to quit. I stopped blaming other people, other things, the gurus, the market and whatever. And I said I'm going to figure this out. And I realized the cheese was moving. And so cash deals weren't working as easily back then. So I started doing creative deals, like lease options and stuff like that. And I found a niche that worked and I dug deep into it and I focused on that. I stopped trying to do multiple things. I worked hard and I stopped complaining and I put in the work and I did a lot of marketing. I did lot of offers and pretty soon, three months in a row, I was making more money doing real estate than I was in my full-time job. That's when I quit my job. I didn't have the reserves that I'd hoped to have but I knew if I could do this amount of money part-time, how much more money could I make doing it full-time? So I really, really started working hard. Made a ton of mistakes, right? I've learned a lot of incredible valuable lessons over the years from the mistakes. I just want to encourage you and I'll do another podcast talking about those 10 specific things that you need to do, but I want to encourage you to stay focused, stay consistent, stay committed. If you really do want to work for yourself and call your own shots and you want to get on this entrepreneur journey, be ready to, to work hard, be ready to work your butt off and you can't be afraid of failure yet. You gotta embrace failure. You got to embrace massive imperfect action. And if you put in the work, you will succeed. All right, so I hope that encourages you. Take care, talk to you later, bye-bye.