Advanced Skills Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Learn with Nicole Purvy

Good morning and welcome, Wicked Smart listeners. Thanks for joining me this week. This is Chris Prefontaine with another awesome guest. So whether you're driving or sitting focused listening, I encourage you to literally listen for the nuggets, the possible action items. When you hear Nicole Purvey's story, my next guest, there are plenty of ahas, plenty of takeaways here. She started not too long ago before COVID and has done some absolutely amazing things, and she attributes it to some key factors. So once you listen in for those, Because they are actionable items. Remember, all of these are on YouTube and you can subscribe to the channel. The channel also has Q&A Thursdays, Motivational Mondays, and Deal Structure Sundays. We've been posting live deals showing our trademark payday, 3-payday system, gosh, since like late 2017, early 2018, maybe even earlier than that. Quick announcement about the upcoming events. We do have the In the Trenches boot camps that run depending on when you're going to hear this— July, August, October, November. That's where we bring in 5 or 5 to 20 private individuals into our office here. You could be one of them and you literally work in the trenches with the family certified coach and we are in the conference room with you getting deals done. The big flagship event is QLS Live. That's QLS Live and that's September 23rd and 24th. For a 50% off ticket, just go to smartrealestatecoach.com/QLSLive and use the coupon code PODCAST. That's podcast 50. All right. I want to introduce you to Nicole Purvey. Nicole is active in real estate, but as I said earlier, developing too and investing. And as I said to you earlier, you're going to hear the dates in her story, but it wasn't too, too long ago that she started. And she's going to share a story about one of our mentors who also has developed and/or completed up to almost $1 billion in real estate in short order. So hang tight here. She's actually purchased, developed, and holds over $5 million herself in real estate investments. She's also the co-owner of Heritage City Construction. It's a general contracting firm, and she focuses on the 1 to 4 units, and she usually focuses on full gut renovations. This is coming from no experience. She's the founder of Better Than Success Real Estate League. It's a national real estate club that I hope we can help and participate with and reciprocate with soon. So you may see us there. They educate new and experienced investors like a lot of the REITs around. So enjoy my chat with Nicole. I know you're going to get some cool things out of it, and I look forward to seeing you next week on the next Wicked Smart Masters Class. All right, guys, I want to make sure you remind you about our QLS Live event. We've been hosting this thing since 2016 in a basement, and now we have a brand new facility in Boston, Massachusetts. This year, 2024, it's going to be September 23rd and 24th. That's a Monday and a Tuesday. Makes it easy for travel. It is literally right next to the airport. Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/QLSLIVE and use the coupon code PODCAST50. That's going to give you 50% off. I'll see you there. All right, Nicole, with that as a little bit of a backdrop, welcome to the show. Appreciate having you on.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

You bet. Let's start the way I usually do and give these guys some context to what you have going on. Sort of take us by the green curtain and Give some context to them, the wicked smart listener, sort of the when, how, and why you get started investing in general, and then we'll kind of peel back some layers.

Okay. So I started investing, a backdrop, I always knew I wanted to invest in real estate ever since I was really young. When I became an entrepreneur, full-time entrepreneur in 2010, and then by like 2015, 2016, that's Started getting my legs up under me feeling like, okay, I got some money, I can invest in real estate now. And you then find out it's not as easy as it looks.

Really?

Really. Yeah. So then I said, at the time, my business, I had a digital marketing agency and a lot of our clients were entrepreneurs. So we were doing these entrepreneurship classes to drum up leads in person. And so I said, well, what I'll do is I'll do a similar class, but this one will be free because I'm not teaching it and I don't know anything about it. So, and then the reality is I would just open it up and I'll invite someone to come and educate me and whoever wants to join me, they can join. This is really for me, but you know, we'll use it as a marketing tool just to get the name out there or about the marketing business really. And so the first meeting we had 4 people and then the next meeting we had people literally spilling out the door. We had to grow from a small office to a huge 3,000-square-foot office space that we had for a very long time. And through this community that I created, I learned to invest in real estate. So I ended up buying my first property the top of 2017 and then just been going ever since.

That's awesome. You said full-time entrepreneur, so that was the digital marketing. And then the real estate was what year?

2018, 2017, the top of 2017.

And would you get to that full-time then or no?

Like what? Actually, no. Let me tell you, it was the top of 2018 is when I bought my first property. And then I didn't go full-time. I mean, I've been an entrepreneur for a long time, so it's kind of a loaded question or fuzzy question.

Yeah.

But I didn't close my digital marketing agency. I closed the doors to my digital marketing agency around Late 2018.

Got it. Got it. Okay, so let's go deeper into the real estate now because obviously we're broad. What was your first property? Let's go there first, actually.

So my first property actually was a group of members. So at this point, our membership was growing and I was completely honest with everyone like, listen, I have not done a deal yet. Thinking that people would be like, no. They're like, okay, you seem to be smart. Well, come on, we'll figure it out with you. So a couple of members kept saying, let's pull our money together and do a deal. And I really did not want to do it. I kept coming up with a bunch of excuses to the point where we hired a lawyer and I thought the lawyer was going to come in and be like, nah, y'all can't do it. It's too much legal tape. Y'all can't do it. So I literally brought the lawyer in and she was like, Yeah, you can do it. It's going to be crazy. It's going to be a lot of paperwork as long as you guys agree and this is the terms. We had this whole voting system and they were like, you guys could do it. And I'm just like, so we did it. What did you open up? Huh?

I said, what did I open up for a can of worms, right?

Right. So we did the deal. It actually worked out really, really well. We learned a lot. It was probably, it was like maybe 10 of us on this one small baby deal. I mean, when we sold the property, I think it sold for like $200,000, maybe $220,000.

What kind of pro— what kind of like, how'd you enter the deal? What kind of—

What we did was, so the goal was because we were all newbies educating ourselves through just quick speakers coming in and teaching us about stuff, we, what they were trying to do was learn with minimal risk. So I think the pot, we leveraged it with hard money. I think the pot that we put together was, I cannot remember, maybe it was like $50,000. Some people put in 2, some people put in 10. And then we took that money, leveraged it with hard money, bought a rehab, a bando, rehabbed it and flipped it. So at the end of the day, our return on it, we were only in the deal for maybe like 8 or 9 months. Our return was 40%. Everybody got 40% return on their money.

Not a bad start.

It's not a bad start. We had the part that made it tricky was the rules had to be agreed upon. Like, yeah, we're not being petty about who's involved, who's not involved. Here are the decision makers. These are the types of decisions we have to vote on, so on and so forth. So it was good. It got me, you know, I felt way more comfortable going through the process. And I think I put in, I put in minimal. And is that you or me?

Uh, that's you. That's okay. They can edit. We'll do a little pause.

Sorry. My son is in Hawaii with his dad. And then for whatever reason, they're trying to FaceTime me. Um, so yeah, that's how we, that's, that's That's how we did the deal. I think I may have put in a minimal of 20%, I mean $2,000, not 20%. I may have put in a minimal of $2,000. I think I might have put in $4,000. And then everybody got 40% return on their money.

And is that group, I have a few questions. Is that group still together, the exact group or no?

No. So the way that the lawyer advised us to do it was the LLC is just for the single property. I didn't want, I intentionally didn't make it so that, oh, you're in this deal, let's go to the next deal because I didn't want to start an investment fund. Like, this is not the business I'm in.

Right.

So like, I'm not about to be out here working for y'all because the reality is I'm the way that we did it. I took on more risk and more responsibility and I, because I am then that my family calls me the director. I am, I am, I, that's just my personality. I ended up doing most of the work. Which is cool because I'm running this community, you know, end up doing more. Not that I was doing all of it, but I did the majority of it. So we did kind of like cohorts and the goal was you do this one and then you graduate and you do your own. Because I'm not trying to, again, I didn't want to run a fund. This is a place for you to learn how to do your own investing. So we did one cohort, it went really well. The second cohort, it went okay. And by okay, it meant It went like it was just a lot of friction. And then the third one, it was too much friction. I said, we're not doing this anymore. Everybody got out whole, but it just wasn't enough benefit for the group.

Yeah, a lot of moving parts.

Yeah, a lot of moving parts. So that was my first deal and it helped me to get my whistle wet. The next deal I did a flip with my mom and then after that, I just started doing my own and just like, now I know what to do. I know what to expect. I started doing my own and we just— I just kept going.

So 2 offshoots to that. One is— then I'm going to go backwards. One is what if you fast forward to today? What's today look like for deals and what's like get you excited? And then based on that, go back to that first deal. Was there anything obvious that you made mistakes on that you would have corrected?

So today I own a portfolio of 20-something units right now. I just sold a couple, got a couple on the market. I'm actually selling my portfolio because I want to do larger deals. It takes a while to scale up to the point where you don't have to worry about tenants. I don't want to talk to tenants anymore. So I'm just focusing on doing larger deals, apartment deals, But I'm liquidating some right now. In terms of my lessons from the first deal to this deal, I would say that you're— just make sure you vet your contractors. The contractor came very highly recommended, but with any other thing, you could say, hey, who do you recommend? Your best friend, you could be like, oh, This person recommend, you can just blindly do it. You can't do that with real estate because the way that a contractor behaves with one person is not the same way they're going to behave with everyone. And so we had this contractor work on this deal and he was great. He was smart and he literally got us to 90% of the finish line. When the appraiser or the inspection came back, there was something that needed to be done with the roof and a couple of small things and he literally was gone. And so we're under contract on this deal. And first of all, we paid for a roof. Why is there a roofing issue? Couldn't get in contact with him. And then all these small things that needed to be buttoned up within the 30-day window to get to closing, we couldn't get in contact with them. So we had to find somebody else. And so what ended up happening, that made the buyer get the skeevies.

Yeah, of course.

And the day before, The day of closing, I'll never forget it. I lived in a condo at the time. I'm leaving to going downstairs from my condo, going. I had a whole bunch of stuff to do that day, so I was like, "I'm gonna Uber. I don't feel like driving." One of the things was going to closing, and this condo was really nice, marble-ish inspired floors. So I got my heels on because of course I want to do social media when I go to closing on my first deal. So I'm click click click click click. I'm just like, across the floor. And then one of the partners calls me, my phone goes off, and I'm like, hello? And he's like, did you see your email? I'm like, what's up?

No.

He's like, yeah, they're backing out of the deal. They don't care about their earnest money deposit. They're backing out of the deal. I'm dressed. What do you mean? We have a closing today.

You looked a bounce out of your step on that one.

No, no, of course you're— this is your first time. You're terrified. I remember I had a meeting with One of the top brokers in the city. She just wanted to get to know me and we had a meeting. And so now I'm all excited about meeting this woman and just sitting down with her. And I sit down, I had to go to that lunch and I go to her office and I'm just like, I can't even focus on like the networking that I'm doing.

Yeah.

But you know, You live and you learn and you realize that it's not that serious. We found another buyer immediately. I think we went to closing in less than 2 weeks. We didn't have to wait that long. And the market was like, everybody was happy in 2018. Buyers, sellers, everything was popping in 2018. Right. Yeah. So it just wasn't that serious. But that first time you just, Panic over nothing.

Yeah. Been there.

Yep. So, and at the end of the day, that buyer backed out of the deal because of all the changes we went through with fulfilling the requests from, or the suggestions from the inspection. And because that contractor was just who he was, it just wasn't a smooth process. Of fixing those small changes.

Yeah, big lesson and big lesson you can share with others, right? Which you just did. So let's go with— so that was an experience. Let's go with your biggest win, and then I'd love to hear your biggest lesson, unless that was it. So what was your biggest win so far? What would you consider it to be and why?

My biggest win, I did a rehab, a single-family, large single-family home, and I Nice.

I bought it.

So my biggest win, I think I just did everything right with this property. When, so I bought it in 2019. Everything is perfect before COVID right? Real estate is doing its thing and it was a single family, but it was zoned multifamily. And I remember one of my really good friends, he's a wholesaler, so he's bringing me deals all the time and he's like, They're offering it. You're gonna trip when you hear this number. They're offering it for $45,000, and he's like, counter them for $40,000. I'm like, no, I'm not. There's a time to negotiate and there's a time not. This deal is so sweet. Why would I risk them saying, no, I got somebody else at $42,000? We're talking about pennies here, okay?

Yeah.

It doesn't make any sense. So my initial response to him was, I remember like it was yesterday, no, offer them what they're asking. I want this property. Scooped it up at 45. Now, while I'm going through it, I'm pregnant and COVID happens. So the shutdown, all the bad things happen while I'm rehabbing this property. And the win was because it took Literally double the amount of time. It took 2 years to rehab this property. It was just a property I was supposed to be in for a year, but because of COVID it was just everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. But the deal was so sweet that there was so much juice in it that it was fine.

But did you condoize those? Is that what you did with the 4 units or you just fixed it up as a multi?

Just as a multi.

Got it.

Cashed out. Did good when I cashed out, when I finally rehabbed it, and then I just recently sold it.

Ah, nice.

Yeah.

I asked you at the right time. Good start. Good start. So you actually had lessons in there too. Interesting. So what does your day look like now, Nicole? Meaning, it sounds like you got this firing on all cylinders. What's your day look like? What's the day for you?

Actually, I'm not even focused on real estate itself right now. I'm focused on liquidating. And once I get my pot together, then I'll be looking for some apartment deals. But my main day-to-day right now is I am doing something completely different. I'm forming partnerships because I still have my real estate club. So I've just been forming strategic partnerships for all the aspects of it. In terms of running it, running our events, our sales funnels, I literally have brought on a partner for every aspect of it so that I can focus on a— I started a production company, but my production company focuses on creating content for real estate investors and entrepreneurs. So I'm not completely left, but so my day-to-day is just really Making sure everything is up and running. And it's been a challenge so that I can spend most of my time on my production company, which I have a partner in that. So long story short, the season— and it's funny because I was just thinking about this— the season that I'm in right now is I don't do anything alone. I partner on everything. If it's like a heavy lift, I have to have a partner. I cannot do anything alone.

So since you're making this pivot, a different question then. What if you had 3 things, let's say 3 productive things you do daily to be the very best, like at all these partnerships and etc.? Or daily rituals? What are they? 2, 3? I'm saying 3, but whatever comes to mind.

So it's funny because I just did a YouTube video. So I'm focused on my YouTube on productivity. I just did a YouTube video about this new system that I Started doing where I spend the first 2 to 3 hours of my day doing what are called dailies. Dailies are a series of 10, 20, maybe 30 tasks that you do that go from 30 seconds up to 20 minutes, no more than 20 minutes each. So just making sure I'm staying focused on my dailies and having a morning routine that's like a machine. Then after that, I work out. I spend a good amount of time in the gym. After my dailies, take my son to school, work out, and then after that, it's all— it's just fair game. Whatever big projects I can get done and lock in on, but I got to do my dailies. My dailies, it is some pretty intense stuff in here. I spend a good amount of time writing. Writing has been very helpful for me as an entrepreneur 'cause it just makes me a better communicator. So I spend a good amount of time writing, sending out marketing emails. I got a whole list of things that I do, but it's a combination of things that just like gets me in my optimal state for being productive so that I can set the tone for the day.

So the morning is super important, clearly. I mean, I'm the same way, so that's why, yeah. It doesn't— whatever. You can even shift your activities, but the morning is yours.

Yeah, I tried. It's funny because I tried to do something that I normally do in the morning and afternoon yesterday, and I felt so off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I'm with you. I'm with you. I have an issue about mentors. Like, so this whole process when you pivoted and then you pivoted again recently and you get the partnership, any, any mentors in that process? And what if yes?

So because I run my— because I have this real estate club, A lot of my mentors are people who don't even have programs. So I started this club and just brought and just networked with people who already were doing deals and big deals in real estate. So if I had to narrow it down to a few people that I really leaned on, I would have to say it was my friend Jabar Fairweather. That's the wholesaler who sold me that deal, tried to tell me to negotiate, but definitely Jabbar. A woman by the name of Carrie Fakes, she runs a huge fund, hundreds of million dollars fund with her partner Steve Lloyd called StoneBay. I think it's called StoneBay. Pretty sure it's called Stone Bay. I would say Leslie Smallwood Lewis. She is a large billion-dollar developer out of Philadelphia. I live in California now, but I'm originally from Philadelphia. She's a Black woman and she is amazing. First time, so I do large conferences. My Second Women in Real Estate Summit, I interviewed Leslie on stage. And at that time she had only done $10 million in investments in development. I interviewed her again at my last Women in Real Estate Summit in December. She would not, when I tallied up her, keep in mind this, we're going from 2018 to 2023, 5 years. When I went on her website and tallied up just a rough draft number, I got to $1 billion in development. She said she calculated it was nearly a billion, so she wouldn't let me say $1 billion, but she's like, you can say nearly a billion. You can imagine that was 6 months ago. She's working on the Sixers' new stadium.

That's good.

She's working, or their practice facility, I think it is. I'm not a sports person, so please don't hold that against me. But her name is Leslie Smallwood Lewis, Mosaic Development. You can Google and go to their projects page and you'll see.

Okay.

And so she has helped me out a lot. And another mentor that I had is a guy by the name of Bart Blatstein, another billionaire developer. He really took me under his wing. He owns the Showboat Casino. He's doing a $4 billion project in Atlantic City right now. Amazing, amazing dude. So I'm really grateful for these guys. Oh, and one other person. If they heard this and said that I didn't say anything, I would get punched in the mouth. Another good mentor of mine is a guy by the name of Ryan Boyer. He runs the labor unions. in Philadelphia. He's had various leadership roles. Right now he's like a big deal and he has helped me pull off a lot of stuff that I would've never thought I would've been able to pull off with real estate just because he just took favorship and just helped me out for no reason.

So you got a boatload of mentors and clearly proximity to them has helped you probably think bigger, earn more, do more. And yeah. Yeah, super good answer. And I hope you gave all the credits because once you start more than 2, then you got to give everybody. No, that's awesome. Okay. Before I ask sort of my last question, I've got a couple of options with that streaming through my head. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you'd love to share? A nugget or 2? Because I know I'm on a lot of shows too, and I'll get off going, oh man, I wish I said such and such. Anything come to mind? Like what? Knee-jerk?

Um, I would tell people right now, just be really, really careful. The market is doing a thing that we probably haven't seen before, and I think people should just be really, really mindful and just run really tight numbers. I came along during a time, and I was very aware of this, from 20— probably from like 2016 to 2022. And I told everybody this at the time, the barrier to entry in real estate has never been lower. It's never been like that where access to money was easy. It was cheap to get in. Labor was cheap. Materials were cheap, relatively speaking. And I told everybody the window was going to close and it's starting to close. It's not closed yet. It's starting to close. So I would recommend anybody who's getting in, hurry up. Not saying that you're never going to be able to invest in real estate, but the barrier will be higher.

Yeah, no, good message. Yeah.

So, you know, just get in while you can.

I say that about almost every niche. So I agree with you because even in our world with creative where we don't bring in banks, there's a lot more people doing creative now. So now is better than 6 months. I agree. I agree. Okay, I got a different question to wrap up then, Nicole. If I knew you when you were, I'll bring up a number here, say 15 years old, would there be anything that I would've seen, sensed, anything that would've screamed out that you were gonna be successful?

I guess I was the outspoken, straight-A, Student, yes. I think back on some of the clues about some of the times that I did get in trouble, the reasons why I got in trouble. There were just big giant clues. I'm very much so a— I don't even know what the word is, but I'm just that person that I hate when people say this. I just like to help people because that just sounds so like we all do. Who doesn't? You get like a whole hormonal thing happening in your brain when you help people. But like, I'm just the type of person that I like to— I find a fire and I'm the first person to run back to the camp like, look, I made pie. Like, that's me. Like, anytime I've ever got in trouble in school, I lie to you not, it's because either I was like letting someone cheat off of me, I'm like going out my way to share some homework. I remember one time, my mom loves telling this story because like I would let this girl share my homework. She took too long to get back to me so I can turn it in for school. And when she took too long, I'm yelling at her. Another teacher comes out and I tell the teacher, mind your effing business. And so my mom was like, she needed to mind her business. What age?

What age?

I was 15 at the time.

I'm glad I used 15.

You already do. So I say all this to say, doing what I do now is so in my personality. I've always been this kid ever since I was like 5. Like, I'm okay, I get it. I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you. Even if I get in trouble for helping you, I'm going to help you. So I'm just really grateful that I get to do what I do, what I love to do.

Well, clearly that— okay, so you're in the zone because everything you just said, you're helping people constantly. You got the clubs going on, you got all kinds of partnerships going on. That fits what everything you just said growing up. So that's pretty cool. Um, Nicole, before we jump, what— how can they reach you? Share any social media, phone, email, whatever you want to do, and be—

and we'll wrap. Um, @NicolePurvey, um, on Instagram. My YouTube channel, go to my YouTube channel, The Nicole Purvey Experience. I got a ton of real estate videos. Also, we're going to be cranking out a lot of productivity content that you are going to absolutely love, everyone here. And last but not least, actually, I'm in the middle of redoing my nicolepurvey.com website. So by the time this airs, I'll have some goodies, free real estate one-on-one course. I got so much goodies, it don't even make no sense. So they'll be all up on the website as well, nicolepurvey.com.

Awesome. And that's N-I-C-O-L-E, just so they don't get that wrong. And Purvey is U-R, not E-R, correct?

P-U-R-V-Y.

Yes. Awesome having you on, Nicole. Good chat. And it sounds like our paths may cross, whether it be with the club or whatever, with one of our family members or myself. So pleasure chatting with you today.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, Wicked Smart listeners, that wraps up our time together today with Nicole. If you enjoyed the show at any level, just take a few seconds. I invite you to do that and I appreciate it, to rate and review it and then share it with others. Just take a few seconds now and share it with at least one person. Nicole will touch a chord with someone, I guarantee you. And when you do, email me and let me know your biggest takeaway. We're always trying to improve these episodes. You can email me chris@smartrealestatecoach.com. And as a thank you, I want to give you a free strategy call for doing that. Just go to smartrealestatecoach.com/chrisprecall and I'll go ahead and get you in my schedule. I can't wait to do that. When you come on the call, here's the one focus that you can prep for. I just want to know where you are today. It doesn't even matter where you want to be. And then we'll tear apart the obstacles in there that might be getting in the way and/or I'll send you to some of our dream team members or resources to help you do that. So as a reminder, QLS Live, September 23rd and 24th. I hope to see you there in Boston, Mass. Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/QLSLive and use the coupon code PODCAST50. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you're ready to invest in yourself and take your investing to the next level, Check out our 90-day Jumpstart Program by going to smartrealestatecoach.com/jump. That's smartrealestatecoach.com/jump, because now is the time to act boldly in this unprecedented market shift.