A real estate investor built a multibillion-dollar portfolio starting in 1994 with no money by founding a mortgage company and doing all the work himself: plumbing, electrical, roofing. He leveraged farm skills to direct laborers and secure owner-financed deals, then scaled by proving one deal worked.
How did you make your billions of dollars?
Real estate investing.
Flipping?
Yes. So we started the company in 1994 as a mortgage company, and at that time was doing buying houses, renovating, and doing owner finance.
So you're doing the general contracting, you're doing everything yourself?
That's correct. That's correct.
Jack of all trades at that time.
Grew up on a ranch, grew up on a dairy farm. So really, you learned how to use your hands and learn how to— well, you weren't actually doing the plumbing, you weren't actually doing the carpentry.
You were?
Yes, sir.
Wow. Yeah, I can understand. I can understand. Yeah, doing some of it if it's in your wheelhouse, but I mean, just be able to walk the property and understand what everybody else is supposed to be doing, uh, that's a tremendous advantage you have of almost all other flippers.
So when we started in '94, we didn't have any money. So when we started this company, we had to do it on a shoestring budget and self-teach, self-taught. So yes, we did the plumbing, we did the foundation, we did electrical, we did the roof, we did everything, uh, myself. And then I had hired, uh, laborers and guided and directed them through that.
But you're also doing the financing?
That at that time, yes.
How do you do the financing if you have no money?
So we had the ability through our banks that we had alliances with to be able to get the loans through. So it's all smoke and mirrors. It was. You can cut that part out. But wait a second, you had no—
I'm not a magician. Wait, wait, you had no money. Yeah. But you got the banks to back your play. Yeah. You couldn't afford a general contractor to do the jobs or independent carpenter to hang the sheetrock. Yep. So you're doing all that. I'd say that's smoke and mirrors.
Well, hard work, you, you could call it smoke and mirrors. It was being able to convince somebody we had a clue what we're doing enough to do it once, and then it was easy to do it 100 times, right?
Yeah, rotate one.
I had to find somebody that believed in me for one deal.
Okay.
And once we did the one and showed them the profitability and the success, then it was Katy bar the door after that.
All right, so would you buy land or if
