116. Pace Morby | Author of Wealth Without Cash

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better.

In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview author of Wealth Without Cash, Pace Morby. Pace is the host of A&E's TV show Triple Digit Flip and an expert on the Sub-2 strategy with more than a million followers across social media. Pace has used dozens of creative methods to acquire more than 1,000 doors nationwide and a real estate portfolio totaling well over $150 million in assets. He is an entrepreneur, investor, strategist, and someone who is striving to help other investors make a massive impact in their communities. In this episode, you'll learn all about why trading your time for money won't make you wealthy, about the number one life hack on success, how Pace went from fixing houses to creating million-dollar deals, and what bunnies have to do with real estate. Buckle up. Put on your thinking cap and get ready to listen to an episode packed with value. If you're ready to break free from trading your time for money, this is a great place to start. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Pace Morby.

Pace Morby, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you feeling today?

I'm feeling like I need a new backdrop after looking at your guys' backdrops.

We are the book guys, that is for sure. Well, I like your backdrop too. Before we kick things off and talk about your book, why don't you introduce yourself to everybody? Pretend nobody in the audience knows who you are, what you do, and why you wrote this book.

My name is Pace Morby. I am a host of Triple Digit Flip on A&E, which is pretty cool. I get a paycheck that says Disney at the top of it, which is very special. You never think that that's ever going to happen in your life. That TV show is all about real estate. I come from a family of 12 kids and grew up blue-collar, working my guts out, learning how to trade my time for money. And when I got into my late 20s, I finally had somebody stop me and tell me I should get into real estate. And I told them I didn't know how. And they forced me. They physically grabbed me and physically forced me to get into real estate. And fast forward 12 years, I now have 10,000 students all over the country. I've got 4 million views on my YouTube channel, just teaching people how to do the same thing. So, I'm just trying to change people's lives. And one thing we really enjoy doing is actually getting in our truck and driving around the country and meeting people that have never done a deal before and showing them how to get a real estate transaction done and start building that passive income. I'm all about like, how do I Work so hard that I never have to work again type of guy.

Yeah, I love that vibe. Because of BiggerPockets, who's your partner on this book, when I started listening to that show a few years ago and back as a recent college graduate, that platform is the reason that I invested in my first couple of properties.

Nice.

So, I'm in the game. I speak a little bit of this language, and I can't wait to share more. with you over the next half an hour. So, here's my first legit question. Your book kicks off with a line that I highlighted because it caught my attention. It says, when I was a kid, wealth didn't seem attainable. So, can you share a little bit more about that? I mean, one of 12 kids, blue-collar household, what made wealth seem unattainable to you?

Being a household of 14 people, mom, dad, 12 kids, everything was really about survival in the sense of my parents would have to buy 12 dozen eggs a week. They'd have to buy a dozen gallons of milk a week type of thing. And we always had to live in neighborhoods where the houses were really big. And so my dad would figure out how to use creative finance, which is what the book is about, is creative finance. He would use creative finance to buy these big houses because his credit and the cash he had coming in wouldn't warrant going to the bank. And so I always lived next to people that had way more money than us. And it was very much obvious that we were the only people in this neighborhood that did not belong. We were like square peg, round hole type of thing. And to add on top of it, every time we moved or my dad had a business that fell apart, or there was a big change, my dad would promise things to us all the time, every 2 to 3 years. Like, I'm going to buy quads and four-wheelers, and we're going to do all this cool stuff. this summertime. And those things never happened. And it was just a world of empty promises. But one thing my dad did really well was teach me how to work really, really hard. And our delicacies were gas station food. I was so excited to go and get gummy bears and soda from the gas station on our way to my dad's job site. And we would also work on other people's very expensive houses all the way from when I was 6, 7 years old. I would paint people's baseboards and clean up my dad's job sites and things of that nature. And so, it always felt like I was never meant to be somebody who had a big house and other people would work on my house. I always grew up thinking I would work on somebody else's house and that's how I was going to make my money.

How did you begin to change your mindset around that? I know it's been obviously a long journey for you, but Where was the starting point? How did you get to the point where you're like, I can do this?

I didn't. I had somebody else do it for me. And I realized at that time, and now I'm much older than when I figured that out, that is the number one life hack of all time. In fact, I was listening to MrBeast yesterday being interviewed by an unbelievable podcaster. You guys are probably big fans, Lex Fridman. One of the best interviews you'll ever hear. And it's not even about YouTube analytics and all that kind of stuff. It's really about how he came up in the game. And he says, the way I was successful is I hung out with other successful YouTubers and I, by de facto, became successful. And it wasn't for me, it wasn't the lack of desire. It was the lack of, I want to read a book hypothetically. Let's just say I want to read a book, but I had no ability to read. And nobody was there to teach me how to read. So, it's like I had the tools, I was on people's houses, I knew how to fix and flip houses for other people, but nobody taught me the bridge between like, how do you go from being a contractor to the person who hires the contractor to work on the house? And it wasn't until I met a lady named Bethany Willis, which I talk about in the first chapter of the book. This lady single-handedly, literally and figuratively, she single-handedly grabbed me. I still, every time I talk about this story, feel the talons in my right shoulder.

Wow.

from when she grabbed me by the right arm, my shoulder, my right shoulder, and she said, why aren't you in real estate? And it was her being a mother figure, being a mentor to me that gave me that learning by osmosis type of momentum. And luckily, I was able to keep her in my life for multiple years until she retired and moved to San Diego. But by that point, I then made new friends that were also doing bigger things than she was. And literally, every ounce of my success has come from the people I've met and I've kept around me, and that I just become as successful as they are by default.

I love the story that you tell about Bethany and Janny in the beginning of the book. So, could you tell that story and kind of the surprise ending, if you will? Because I think it's a really fun way to understand what you're trying to teach in this book.

Yeah. So, here's where this came from. Bethany Willis was a client of mine. I was a contractor. I was doing a lot of renovations for Opendoor, which is massive, massive iBuyers, what we call them. They buy tons of houses, thousands. And I was their number one contractor. I was Opendoor, Offerpad, and Zillow's number one contractor for a couple of years. So it's not that I wasn't working hard and I wasn't building a business. It was that I didn't know how to get into real estate myself. And so I get hired by Bethany Willis because I had a good reputation in town. And she has me do 2 flips for her. And I do them on time, on budget. So, she hires me for a 3rd flip. And the day I show up for the estimate, I'm there like 20, 30 minutes early catching up with text messages. And all of a sudden, knock, knock, knock, knock on my glass as I'm sitting in my truck. And I look to my left and there she is. She's like, get out of your truck. And it was Bethany Willis. She says, get on the back of the truck. She goes over, opens the tailgate. She slams down on the tailgate and says, sit down. We need to have a conversation. And she asked me that question. She grabs me by my right shoulder and she says, why aren't you in real estate? I go, I am in real estate. What are you talking about? I am in real estate. Look at all these houses I'm flipping. She's like, no, you are not in real estate. I'm in real estate and you're a service provider. In fact, you're as replaceable as a mobile notary. And if you guys are in real estate, you know that that's like the most replaceable person ever. And she says, you are a simple Google search away from being replaced. You don't own your business. I own your business. If I'm not buying houses, you don't have a job. So, do you really own your business? And she just like took all the blood out of my body, man. She just was like a vampire, sucked all my energy out. But I needed that and I needed that shock because here's what ends up happening. She says, pull out your phone. I'm going to show you how to send out your first bundle of postcards. And I'm like, well, what do you mean? I'm going to send out postcards? I don't know. And she calls me an asshole, which is something I don't talk about in the book, but she calls me an asshole. She's like, stop asking questions. You don't need to know all the answers. You just need to take action. I was like, okay. So, I pull out my phone. She tells me who to call. I call a postcard company. I go, hi, my name's Pace Morby. This lady's telling me I need to send postcards. I don't know what to do. And he goes, oh, no problem. We know where to send them, what color they should be, what size they should be, how many you should send, how frequently you should send them in order to get your phone ringing. I'm like, holy crap. That little piece of information and that one contact set me on my way. So I paid them money to send out 10,000 postcards. Now, This is also a part of the story I can't tell in the book because I could do a whole 7,000-page book if I had the ability to just tell everybody every word. But a couple days later, these postcards go out to homeowners saying, hey, I'll buy your house for cash. Call me. My name is Pace Morby. That's essentially what these postcards were. And they sent them to people who were in Distress or houses that were falling apart or haven't been renovated in a long time. And don't ask me how this postcard company knows all this stuff, but they do. And they've known it for 30 years, right? Public data is pretty powerful. So, I make it so my postcard forwards to my cell phone. And when it forwards to my cell phone, it says postcard lead, right? So, I know that I'm getting a lead from my postcards. And so, Bethany gave me some scripts. She told me what to say, what to do, all that. Well, guess what? I missed my first 2 phone calls. And the reason I missed my first 2 phone calls is because my phone was in my back pocket as I was installing a toilet at somebody else's house. So literally, opportunity is calling me and I've got my phone in my back pocket installing a toilet at somebody else's real estate project. Like, I was just so addicted to being hands-on, Trading time for money, like most people, right? Like 99% of people, this is what they do. They go exchange time for money. I didn't really realize that, but then I get home that night and my wife says, hey, did you get any leads yet? I go, yeah, I got 2 today, but I haven't called them back. I'll call them tomorrow. And my wife is like, are you dumb? Like, dude, you won't wait 5 minutes for a restaurant reservation. Do you think these homeowners who called you off of a postcard are going to be okay with waiting for you to call them back tomorrow? Or do you think they're going to call the other 15 postcards sitting on their counter? And she was right. So, I pull out my phone and I go to call one of these other, these first 2 leads, and I get a 3rd phone call, calls in right when I'm about to call one of the other leads. And it ends up being Janie Munson. And Janie Munson is the first person I bought my first deal from. And this whole entire learning experience changed my life because I realized Everything about real estate came down to just taking action and not knowing anything. Literally, you don't need to know anything. In fact, in a lot of ways, it's preferred that you don't know anything. Just go out and learn it. And so, I get on the phone with Janie. Janie's like, all right, so what do we do? And I go, I don't know. This is how little I knew about real estate. So, I go, can you wait a minute? I'm going to call somebody and I'll find out. Called Bethany Willis on the other line. And I said, hey, I've got a lead on the other line. What do I do? And she's like, are you dumb? Go on the appointment and see her house. Like, what are you doing? And I just, you know, I was unsure of myself. I was unsure of what to do and how to go about it. So, I get on the other line. I set an appointment with Janie for the following day. And on my drive up to her house the next day, I then am like, oh wait, I got multiple problems. One, I don't know, even if I buy the house, how do I know what to buy the house for? That's number one. Number 2, where does the money come from if I actually get a contract with her? And oh my gosh, speaking of contracts, how do you fill out a contract and what kind of contract do you use? So I call Bethany. I'm like, I'm on my way there. And I ask her these 3 questions. She's like, first off, you are an askhole. All you do is ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. I will tell you as you need to know them. Go take action. The one thing you need to know right now is that you cannot offer over $150,000 on this purchase. I'm like, okay. What about the contract? She goes, no, no, you're not asking that question. Where do I get the money? No, you do not need to know this. $150,000, that's what you buy the house for. That's all you need to know. Go to the appointment. So I'm like, all right. Pulled up to the house. Janie welcomes me into the property. We automatically migrate to the kitchen, which is what I think humans just do because we're all just a bunch of hungry animals, I guess. But we go into the kitchen and I noticed something. On the countertop, 2 stacks, one stack of business cards from licensed real estate agents who have been to the house, obviously, and another stack of postcards, people that were doing the same thing I was doing. So, I recognized right there that there's always going to be competition in any business you do, right there in the first thing. And then number 2, I realized I was way in over my own depths. Like, I was in the deep end and I didn't even know how to swim. But I asked a really good quality question. And I said, what has kept you from selling the house so far? And she says, well, I've got a big problem. My problem is that I'm a retiring schoolteacher. This is my only asset. And I need as much money as I can possibly get. And somebody else has already offered me $165,000. And I need more than that. I need as much as I can get. So I go, in my mind, I'm like, crap, what do I do? And so I then just was really honest with her and I said, I'm sorry, I probably can't help you. I'm probably not a good buyer for you. And I physically stepped backwards. I stepped backwards. I go, I'm probably not a good buyer for you. She says, is this a sales strategy? I go, no. If you knew me, you would know I don't even know what sales strategy is. I'm just a bonehead that just wants to install toilets, basically. So she says, well, what would your offer be? And I go, I'm embarrassed to even tell you. I can't tell you. I'm embarrassed to tell you. She goes, okay. Well then what do we do next? You can't offer as much as I need and you don't want to tell me your number. So what do we do now? And I go, well, I guess I should leave. So on my way out of the house, we'd already built rapport. I talked about why she was moving to Oregon. I talked about all these amazing things. I was in her house for probably 25 minutes and talked about everything you could imagine about her life and what she liked about being a schoolteacher. I built rapport because I, at least, am a somewhat decent human being. And I realized through this, as I'm walking to the front door, that she has nobody else to help her. So, even if she sells her house to the person that offered $165,000, like, who's going to help this lady? She lives by herself with her granddaughter and nobody to physically help her. And she's well past retirement years. So, I am about to walk out the front door and I turned to her and I say, hey, is there anything I can do to help you? And she says, wait, what? You don't want to buy my house, but you want to help me? Like, what are you, a Boy Scout? And I'm like, in my mind, anybody that knows my mom, my mom would not let me drive a car or date a girl unless I got my Eagle Scout before I was 16 years old. And I was always groveling about that, upset about that when I was younger. Like, why do I have to get my Eagle Scout and go do all these merit badges and these scout camps and all these things? Like, when am I going to need to learn to tie a knot? And my mom says, there will come a day where somebody will ask you, are you a scout? And your answer is going to be very proudly, yes, I am an Eagle Scout. And all of a sudden, at the age of 28, my mom was right. I was so proud when Beth— when Janie says, what are you, a Scout? I said, yes, I'm an Eagle Scout. And I like kind of blurted it out almost in a way that hopefully my mom would hear me, kind of a weird thing. And she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So, you're serious? You really want to help me? I go, yeah. I mean, if I can't buy the house, I've got crews. I do construction. I own a construction company. Maybe I can help you load up your truck. Maybe I can help you load up boxes. Maybe I can help clean up stuff around the house after you move out. Whatever you need help with, I'm here to serve. And coming from a house of 12 kids, that's all you do. You're doing dishes. Like, my mom and dad could not physically do all the chores around the house, so the kids all had split roles and we're constantly always serving each other. And that's just become part of our DNA. So, she says, okay, if you want to help me, I will absolutely show you what my biggest problem is, but you got to promise not to laugh at me. And I'm like, okay, what the freak is this going to be? Like, is she going to— like, I don't— what could this be? And she says, come to my backyard. So, we leave the front door, go towards her back door. We walk through the house and we go to the sliding glass door. And just to give you an understanding of how her house was, Her sliding glass door, like the rollers on the bottom had been broken for so long that like she couldn't even open up the sliding glass doors. Like da da da da da da da da da da. When she was opening up the door, she you know the house hadn't been renovated. So this is why she couldn't sell it on the open market. She had to every agent that came to the house told her you had to renovate this before I put it on the market. Now I'm thinking she's going to show me all these bad things about the house and all the repairs that need to be done. But no. We open up the back door, I walk out into the backyard, and she shows me 3 Flemish bunnies. Now, if you Google what a Flemish bunny is, I challenge you to do it right now, and you will see that a Flemish bunny is the size of a 4-year-old child. They are so big. And her granddaughter had won them in some sort of contest, and they brought them home, started raising them, thinking they were regular little Bunnies. And they turn out to be so massive, they actually eat more food than the humans do in the house. So, she's like, I basically have 3 additional humans that are living off my pension for the food and all these kinds of things. And this is what's kept me from selling the house. And I was like, this? This is what's been keeping you from selling the house? She's like, yeah. Nobody has had a solution for this. I'm like, I got a solution for this. So, I call my mom, literally throw my mom on speakerphone. I say, hey, Mom, I'm here with Jeanie Munson. And Janie has a problem. I tell my mom. 40 minutes later, 45 minutes later, my mom shows up in a red truck that I've never seen before in my life. I don't know where this truck came from. My mom just comes in all whimsical. Oh my gosh, this is so great. Let me take these bunnies. And the reason Janie let my mom take the bunnies is because my mom has 2 acres. They have goats, they have chickens. And so my mom's like, I'll put them on our little mini ranch and we'll take care of these bunnies. And if I ever decide I don't want them either, I'll find somebody that goes to my church that will take care of them. And I promise you, you have my word, I'll take care of these bunnies. So, Janie's just like in tears. I can't believe somebody actually stepped up to the plate. And as my mom leaves, Janie looks at me and she's like, you don't want to buy my house? Is this all a tactic to just get me to sell it? I go, no, I can't offer you anything. My offer's too low. I truly just want to help you. And so I leave and I said, let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you. And she's like, wow, you're seriously asking if there's more? Who the freak are you? Well, 2 weeks later, I get a call from Janie. And Janie says, Pace, as you know, I'm a school teacher. I gave myself homework, just like I gave my school kids homework. And today on my calendar, it says my homework is due. And the homework I gave myself was to make a decision on who I'm selling the house to. And that decision is selling the house to you. And I'm like, whoa, what? And of course, then I had to jump back in like, Janie, I told you I can't buy the house. You got way too high of an offer. And she says, Pace, I had 15 people meet me at my home before you came and 15 people meet me at my home after you came. And out of 31 people that I've met, 15 before, 15 after, and you in the middle, All of them came in and criticized my house, my single-pane windows, my roof that needed to be repaired, my hot water heater that was basically hanging on by its last thread of duct tape. You were the only person that was polite. You gave me compliments. You told me how much you loved your teachers. And you then asked me how you could help me, even when you didn't want to give me an offer on my house. You stood to gain nothing She says, whatever your offer is, I'm sure it's an honest one. And I'd like to sell my house to you. There's nobody else I'd rather do business with than you. And I'm just like, wow. So, of course, I then set an appointment to go see her at the house, but I don't know how to fill out paperwork. And I don't know where the money's coming from. So, I call Bethany and I say, dude, Janie's going to sell the house to me. And she's like, wow, okay, tell me what happened. And I told her about the bunnies. And she said, you literally just learned the most important lesson in all of real estate. Every property you buy on a discount or with creative finance, you will have to solve a seller's problem that is hard for the naked eye to see. You have to get deep in what's going on in their lives, whether it's a divorce or probate or an inheritance or people fighting and bickering or a tax lien or something bad is going on. It's so funny that you got so lucky on your first deal that you actually were presented bunnies as the problem. And she said, Pace, on every deal going forward, if you can just remember to find the seller's bunnies, you will buy more houses and be happier than any other real estate investor on the planet. So, of course, I don't know how to fill out the paperwork. So, Bethany says, Congratulations. Come pick me up. Let's go up to the appointment together. And so, we go up there, Bethany helps me fill out the paperwork. We buy the property for $150,000. And we walk out of the house and I'm talking to Bethany and I go, Dude, how am I going to— what should I do with this house at $150,000? She goes, You're not doing anything at this house. You're selling the house to me and I'm going to buy it from you for $175,000. And I'm going to give you a $25,000 finder's fee. And I'm like, what the heck? Why did you tell me to buy it at $150,000 when you could have bought it at $175,000? And she said, Pace, there's probably 50 lessons you learned in this whole practice that you're not mature enough to even understand. When you get further in this business, you'll understand why I did what I did when I did it. And she was right. Here I am now, 10 years later, and I'm still obsessed with that whole learning lesson of everything I learned. And truly, every seller I've bought a house from, we have 1,800 doors in our portfolio. There's not a single seller that I couldn't tell you what their bunnies were. Now, none of them have ever had literal bunnies since then, but they've all had other figurative bunnies, like a death in the family, or I just bought a 43-unit multifamily in San Angelo, Texas. And the seller, Mario, this is— here's his bunnies. He says, I want to retire and I want to be done with being a landlord. That's what he said his bunnies were, but that's not what his bunnies were. What really, if you can dig a little bit deeper, what Mario's bunnies actually were is his 12-year-old son, for his birthday, asked his mom. He said, is there any way you can convince dad To love me as much as he loves his tenants. That's what a 12-year-old kid asked his mom for his birthday. And what that means is that Mario, the owner of the property, had a 12-year-old son who was not seeing him. Mario's over at the property picking up rent checks and fixing things and being a landlord and being so busy in the business that he wasn't paying attention to the most important thing, which is his kid.

Okay.

And his kid then starts asking for those types of things. And that was the reason. And so, I focused on, hey, Mario, how about you sell this 43-unit multifamily to me, this apartment complex? And instead of me going out and getting a bank loan to give you the money, how about you and I just work out a monthly arrangement where I collect 30 grand a month from the tenants and I'll pay you $11,000 for the next 50 years and you become my bank and that payment to you is for the bank? And he goes, 50 years? Why would I want to do that? And I said, because think about your 12-year-old son. He gets to collect those $11,000 payments for the next 50 years as well as a legacy. And when he's 62 years old, you'll be long gone. And even when he's 62 years old and he still gets that last check, he'll remember how much his dad loved him every single month he receives that check. Guys, that's bunnies, right? That's solving bunnies. And Finding bunnies. And if you understand that about real estate, it's never— this is what Bethany said as I'm leaving the house with Janie Munson. Okay? I'm leaving the house from Janie Munson with Bethany. And so, we get in the car and she says, I'm going to buy the house from you at $175,000. I'm like, wow, this is insane. She goes, I want you to remember this. You found the bunnies. While everybody else was surface level with her, you asked her a couple of questions and you got behind the wall. You got behind the curtain. You figured out what was really going on. And you will always have to remember this. I want you to write this down. And she made me write this down. I remember it. It's just a short little phrase. She says, it's never about the house. That's it. That's the most simple advice I could give you in real estate. It's never about the house. It's always finding the pain, the motivation. How can you help these people change their lives, move to the next chapter of their lives? Now, last part of this story, which there's so much of this I can't put in the book because My gosh. I can only do a 200-page book. I can't do a 17,000-page book. So, last part of this is I'm so excited because I got $25,000 for literally 3 hours' worth of work. Bethany says, I'm going to go and fix and flip the property myself because it's probably worth $400,000 after it's all renovated. And I'm like, yes, this is exciting. I get to make money twice on this deal. And she's like, what are you talking about? I go, well, I got the $25,000 finder's fee that you gave me, but now I get to be your contractor on the project and make money there too. And she says, wow, how poisoned is your brain? That you just learned how to make $25,000 in a three-hour time frame, and you still want to install my toilets. Man, that that was that was such a smack in the face. And this is I'm not smart. I I really needed smarter people around me. Bethany Willis. And now here's what here's what ended up happening, and this ties into the book. The um. I learned this lesson of it's all about the bunnies. Go find the bunnies, go find what their motivation is. And I could tell you 1,000 stories about 1,000 deals. Every single one of them, there's— you'll— like that Mario story could almost bring a tear to your eye. Almost every property I've bought is because of stuff like that. And I've just gotten really good at finding people's bunnies and rehoming them. Right. So, Here's what happens in that first 30 days. Okay? That first 30 days, I start generating a ton of leads, all from these postcards. And I get 3 contracts within like that first week. And now I'm off to the races. And I take these contracts. And in order to start a real estate transaction, you have to go to what we call a title company. And the title company does all the paperwork and they switch one owner to the next owner, and they make sure the money exchanges hands, all that kind of stuff. And I go meet this lady named Eileen Brown. And I go in and I drop 3 contracts on her desk and I go, I'd like to open escrow on these 3 contracts. I'm buying, blah, blah, blah. She goes, I've never seen you before. And you just start, you just come in here with 3 contracts? Who are you? I've been in this business 42 years, 40 years at this point. I don't know who you are. Who are you? And I tell her, then I tell her about Bethany, then I tell her about the postcards, and I tell her about Janie Munson, and I tell her about the bunnies. And she says, oh my gosh, Pace, you figured out the number one skill in real estate is figuring out this bunny thing. This is so cool. So, how is it going so far? And I go, I got 3 contracts. She says, how many leads though? And I said, I have about 50 leads. And she's like, okay, think about this, Pace. You have 50 leads. What happened to the other 47?

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She says, I can almost guarantee you that it's one of two things happening and why you didn't buy those other 47 houses. Those people called you, right? They wanted an offer on their house, right? They obviously had a very significant amount of motivation that they would see your postcard, Pull out their phone, dial the number, and call you out of the blue. They had motivation, yet you didn't buy their house. Why do you think you didn't buy their house? And I go, I don't know. I think it's because they didn't have a lot of equity. Like, they didn't— there wasn't enough meat on the bone for me to make money. And also, some of these sellers really want too much money for their properties. Then they're just kind of belligerent. And she says, those are just a different colored bunny. And you haven't figured out how to rehome those bunnies. And I'm like, what? How do I make money when a seller wants too much money? And how do I make money when a seller has no equity? And she says, it's called subject-to and it's called seller finance. And I have no idea what this means. So, she explains to me, I can wholesale, I can fix and flip, and I can buy and hold, build my portfolio by Having sellers let me make payments to them instead of just one chunk of money upfront. And essentially, it'd be like if one of you guys wanted to buy my iPhone and I go, yeah, I'll sell it to you for $1,000. And you go, well, I don't have $1,000. Okay. Okay. Give me $50 a month for the next 20 months. That's seller finance. That's it. That's how simple it is. And you can do that with houses. You can do it with cars. And so, Eileen Brown whiteboards this all out. I laid down on her carpet because I'm basically out of breath. My heart is pounding. And I'm thinking about the 47 other people that told me they didn't have equity, but they were going to lose their house to foreclosure. And other homeowners that are like, we want to sell our house, but we're not going to go below this number. And I had no solution to provide. I had no ability to take those bunnies and solve those bunnies and rehome those bunnies until Eileen Brown told me how to solve it. So, she said, go back to your leads. And tell them that you could take over their existing payments, or you could make monthly payments to them and they could become the bank. You could upgrade them from the landlord to the lender. I was like, is it really that simple? She's like, yeah, it's really that simple. You're going to try and overcomplicate it, but think about it. If I wanted to buy your iPhone and I didn't have any money, would you let me make monthly payments to you? And I go, yeah, if the price was right. She goes, there you go. There you go. And I go, but how do I make money? She says, you rent it out, dummy. You put a tenant in there. The tenant pays the payment for you and you keep the cash flow, the difference between what the tenant's paying you. I'm like, oh my gosh, it truly is that simple. Oh my gosh, this is crazy. And so, I went out and I went to those 47 leads and I went and got 3 sub-2 contracts, meaning I took over some of these existing payments and their existing mortgage. No credit check, no credentials, nobody asked for my tax history. And I'm like, holy crap, I just doubled my conversion rate in like my first month off knowing Creative Finance. So, I dropped those contracts on Eileen's desk and I'm so proud about it. Like, here you go, I just did my first couple of deals. So, as I walk out, check this out, this is the final button to this story. As I walk out of Eileen's office that day and I'm about to get in my little Prius, I get a call from my dad who rarely calls me, right? Like, you know, I have a great relationship with him, but my dad is like, he's working his guts out. Guess what he's doing? He's a contractor. So, he's installing toilets too. So, he calls me out of the blue and he goes, hey, man, your mom just told me about this bunny thing. Like, she helped out with some bunnies. What the freak is going on, man? And I tell him my journey, postcards, Janie Munson, bunnies, Eileen Brown, creative finance. I go, have you ever known about subject-to and seller finance? And he says, Yes. Every home that you ever lived in from the day you were born until you were 19 was purchased through subject-to or seller finance, because I couldn't go out and get a bank loan because I was taking under-the-table money as a contractor. And I obviously knew how it benefited sellers, but now I understood how it benefited buyers to buy properties without cash credentials, Or credit checks. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to focus on this until the day I become a billionaire. This is a billion-dollar business. And my dad, every house he bought was with working out terms with the seller. How much do you want for your house, seller? Well, we want $400,000, but the offers we're getting are $340,000. My dad would say, well, if I could do $400,000, would you let me give you a small down payment and then make monthly payments to you? Seller says, sure, no problem. That's as simple as this gets. So, it's like I've got a deal right now that I just bought. And by the way, over my left shoulder, do you guys know who this is? This is Big Boi from OutKast. You guys might be a little bit too young for that. OutKast rap group, right? So, they did Hey Ma, they did all the great, like some of the greatest songs of all time in rap. So, I own real estate with Big Boy now. And the reason I have Big Boy over my left shoulder is to remind me my job is to tell stories all day long to get people to understand. This is what rap is. Rap is just a collective group of stories that you put music to. And man, I start going off. I just start going off, just buying real estate all over the country, start dominating, start meeting other people that are trying to get into real estate. And I get to use the cheat code to get into real estate, which is No cash, no credit, no credentials. And man, like today, I just bought a 10-unit multifamily in Atlanta. Seller wants $1 million. The property's probably worth $925,000. So, I told the seller, I go, I'll give you $1 million, but you got to make sure that I have no down payment and I can make a payment to you every month that is less money than what I can collect in rents. And he goes, well, the rents are $11,500. How much can you pay me? I go, I can pay you $6,000 a month out of that. Okay. So I got $11,500 on a 10-plex in Atlanta. Guess who's going to own that with me? Big Boi from OutKast. I'll buy it for $1 million, no down payment. I'll start making monthly payments to you next month for $6,500. And I'll go collect $11,500. So I got a $5,000 spread after taxes and insurance and little repairs and vacancy. I'll make like 3 grand a month off one deal that I've never physically been to. I didn't have to get a credit check. I didn't walk into a bank. Nobody asked for my tax history. Nobody asked for my bank, like nothing. And I can go buy $1 million a day of real estate. And it was unbelievable that all of that came from understanding how to find bunnies. And in that situation, everybody's bunnies are different. The bunnies for the seller on the 10-plex that I bought today, He just, in his mind, he's like, I have owned these properties for 15 years. I always told myself I'd sell these for $1 million. And every offer I'm getting is $925,000, and I'm not going to sell for anything less than $1 million. I go, no problem. I'll be the guy that gives you $1 million, but you got to be the guy that lets me make payments against that $1 million and allow me to cash flow every single month. And he, no problem. It's insane what you can do. And so, I'm just so excited that The book will not give everybody everything about the business, but it's surface level enough that people will go out and be able to take action.

Well, Pace, I want to add one thing. This isn't a question, Luke, so I'm not stealing your show here. This book has 17 chapters and an introduction, and everything that you just taught the audience comes out of the introduction and part of chapter 1. So, our show is a preview. Everybody listening today wants to know more about you and the book. This is everything you just taught us is just a fraction of what you can learn in this book. So, I'll shut up there. But man, you are an amazing storyteller. That's like mic drop after mic drop. All right, Luke, what's up?

I was going to ask about your storytelling skills. I have a lot of questions about the real estate stuff too. But were you always a good storyteller?

No.

What have you done to cultivate that in your life?

Looking at people's faces when I speak and watching how they react and listening to a lot of rap music and seeing the stories I like. I find that the rap music I like the most, or music in general, is telling a story instead of it just being a loop about whatever the lyric is. It's like, I want to see from the very beginning, okay, we got a character and the character's doing this. It's like Ice Cube's Today Was a Good Day. You guys remember that song? Go back and relisten to that song. It's like, I woke up, and then all the way until he went to bed, he tells the whole story of his entire day. And I'm like, that is storytelling. And that's the kind of stuff that I just gravitated to, and I just brought it into my storytelling ability. And then when I'm on stage or I'm on a podcast, you just get a little bit better over time by doing it over and over and over. It's very similar to what I said in the book. You will literally learn nothing by learning. You have to learn it all by doing. It's the same thing with you, Nicholas. When you bought your properties, you were like, man, I learned more in buying these properties than I did in 2 years of listening to other podcasts about buying properties. You just got to get out and do it.

Yeah. It's very true. And in the book, you list kind of like, I think you said this off my memory, but like the 5 reasons to buy real estate. But you list a little bonus one, which is to tell stories. And I think the properties that I've invested in, the number one, like, form of ROI that I've been given is the ability to network as a real estate investor, tell stories, and communicate, connect with other people that have also invested. Like, by far, it's opened so many doors worth a lot more than the passive income that I collect quarterly.

So, it's—

Yeah. It's pretty fantastic. And man, we just went 45.

That's interesting.

That's like the people that have tattoos. You ever go to meetups or you ever go to things and you see people that have tattoos talk to each other about their tattoos?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. You got tattoos. It's so funny because real estate investors are the same way. It's like we're trading war stories and we're trading mental tattoos that we have about these houses that we've bought. And it's just interesting. You want to become friends with real estate investors? Go buy one house and then you got a war story to tell them. Yeah.

You want to be friends with podcasters? Host a podcast, write a book. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I totally get that. That's a really cool lesson. And man, we wrote out a ton of questions related to your book, but we already went 45 minutes. I think that just shows how great of a storyteller you are. And every single piece of that story that you told for 30 minutes straight, there's a piece of actionable value or like a potential aha moment. At every step of the way, every minute or two. So, keep doing what you're doing. I mean, that was amazing.

Thank you, bro.

Yeah.

One day, I'll be as good as Alex Hormozi, but I'll be like 75 years old by that point. So, have me come back when I'm 75.

We will.

You know, we've had over 100 authors on this podcast, and something that we found with Alex was we kept saying, no, let's go back to the book. Let's go back to the book. But he would just keep telling these stories and stories and stories. So, in an hour, we didn't even get to $100 Million Offers at All. Now, we got to the introduction of your book, but you guys are very similar in terms of your ability to tell stories and communicate and just kind of like absorb the attention, which is a positive thing. So, that's awesome.

Thank you, bro. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. And, you know, I think you're way smarter than you give yourself credit for. It's like the simple ability to be okay with being stupid and asking questions is so hard for so many people, including myself. Like, I struggle with asking for help and asking questions because I feel like, oh, people are going to look at me like I'm stupid. But what I have found is that the smart people, the really smart people, are okay with asking questions and looking stupid and feeling dumb. So I just, I just wanted to comment on that and say that you're way smarter than you give yourself credit for. And keep doing what you're doing because obviously, obviously it's working. Um, one question, I don't, I don't know if you have a hard stop, but, um, I kind of wanted to, to get a little bit into, and maybe we can just do something quick on this. I wanted to get a little bit into how you got into coaching and teaching and why you went down that route instead of just staying in the real estate.

This is such a— man, I could tell you about this for an hour. Okay. So, about 6 years ago, I was 4 or 5 years into my journey, and I really felt like I was perfecting some processes, and I would want to collaborate with other people in town like, hey, let's go on appointments. I want to see how you talk to sellers. how you find the bunnies. I want to see how you solve people's problems. And there was just a lack of collaboration in the real estate market. And I think it was, you know, BiggerPockets was starting to become really popular at this time, but had not quite reached its pinnacle. And so, you were very kind of solo dolo, like you kind of ran around town and just did things on your own. And you'd go to real estate meetups, but then people would kind of Act like I've been in business for 15 years. Why should I help you? It's just very stuffy. So one day I decided I'm going to go on my Instagram stories and I'm just going to go, who wants to go on appointments with me? And I told people, meet me at Circle K Saturday morning at 6:00 AM and I'll spend the whole day with you. Zero people showed up the first time I did that. Zero, literally zero. But that didn't stop me from faking it till I made it. So what I did is I then went throughout my day acting as if people were with me in the car. I'd be like, oh, I'd do a selfie like, oh, look, the people in this car right here are getting so much value. And it was just an exterior shot of the car. So, you couldn't see that nobody was in the car. And I would do that throughout my day. And then guess what? Next week, I said, hey, whoever wants to come on the ride-along with me, I'm doing it again. 6 o'clock, Circle K, Tempe, Arizona. See you guys there. 3 people show up, which is perfect because that's all I have for my Prius. I have 3 seats besides myself. And I now have real, like, tangible people, physical people in my car with me. So, I start doing stories and, hey, what did you learn, Debbie? What did you learn, Tom? And Debbie ended up becoming one of my private money lenders. She loans money to me on projects when I need them now, which is so funny. Like, the more you teach people, the more they become successful, and then they want to do deals with you. I started learning. And I do this again. Okay? Now, I've got people on my Instagram stories that are showing proof that I have real people in my cars. And people are like, whoa, he's not full of crap. He's really helping people. So, I do this again the 3rd week in a row. 3rd week, how many people showed up? Got a guess?

I don't know. 3? Was it still—

No. I had 63 people show up at Circle K at 6 o'clock in the morning the following week. 63 people. Circle K called the police on me because they thought we were doing a fight or there's going to be a freaking whatever, a battle. And we're like, no, this is a real estate thing. And everybody's going to come in my Prius. And the guy that— the manager of the Circle K was like, are you freaking joking me at 6 o'clock in the morning? What the hell are you doing with your life, dude? And I remember one lady in the audience, or not the audience, but the group, she was like, he's changing people's lives. And I was like, wow, this lady just stood up for me to the Circle K guy. And this is so cool. So, I spent the whole day taking people around. I was like, all right, get in your cars. Let's go drive to this house and let's drive to this and let's drive to this. And I just showed people the business. And I'm still, what's funny is I'm still doing deals with those people from 6 years ago that I used to go around in ride-alongs. And we amplified it. We then went from that to, of course, Circle K is not going to have me do that anymore, to letting people come into my office. And we just whiteboarded every Friday from noon to 6:00, I would just whiteboard people's questions and their answers. And we would order taco trucks every Friday. And then I realized, holy crap, I just made $200,000 this month by doing deals with people that came to my free hangouts. Crazy. And then for 3 years, I was like anti-coach. I was like, I'll do this all for free. And then I had a business partner came to me. His name's Josiah. And he said, the only way to take this nationwide is to create a program, a mentorship, and then I'll help you scale it. And I go, I don't want to make money as a coach. It's not what I want to do. I just kind of felt icky about it. And he said, let me make all the money and you can just buy all the real estate. And I go, really? That'd be great. And so, that's literally what we did. We formed a partnership where he makes the money from the mentorship. He runs the employees and the vision and everything else. And I get to buy real estate with my community is what I call them. If you look at my whiteboard right here, that's to my side, I'd say 40% of the deals that I buy on a yearly basis now come from people that I teach how to do this. And then we do deals together. And I realized that that is the ultimate hack. Go teach other people how to be successful and then do those deals with them. It wasn't like that in construction. Like when I was a contractor, it was either me or the other contractor were going to get the job. It wasn't both of us. But in real estate, it is one of these industries that multiple people can make money on the same transaction based on the way you structure it. And I realized the more people that know what I'm doing, the more deals that I'll buy, the more bunnies I'll be able to find, and the more real estate I'll be able to own and more lives I'll be able to impact. So, that's why we went that direction. We went nationwide. Now, we have 10,000 students in all 50 states.

You said you're going to ride this strategy all the way to $1 billion. When do you think that'll be?

I think in the next 10 years. I think we're acquiring a lot more larger assets. And so you let those assets appreciate and you let those assets get paid down by your tenants and you create a pretty large delta the more that compounds and compounds and compounds. And you just keep buying and you keep buying and you keep buying. The great thing about real estate is that it ages like a fine wine. I remember, probably you guys too, you remember when you rented your first spot, And you look back on that thing off Zillow, like I'm older than both of you guys, but I just went running 3 days ago and I was running and I'm training for a Spartan Race. And I ran by this house that I rented like 8 years ago. And I rented that house because that's what I did. I was renting. And now I look back on it and I'm like, that one house appreciated $400,000 in 8 years. That one house. So, think about thousands of those all over the country, and then multifamily properties all over the country, compounding and compounding and compounding and compounding. You add that up, I think it's 10, maybe 12 years max, I'll hit $1 billion.

Wow. You're on an amazing journey. I'm so happy we had you on the show today. Luke always wraps up with his favorite question. So, Luke, you wanted to hit pace with that? And then, I mean, we went a little bit longer today, but I think there was so much value.

Thank you for having me, guys.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, this has been a— this has been a blast. You've certainly inspired me. So, thank you. Yeah. So, I always like to wrap up the show with this question, which is really simple. Pass away, all the information that you've put out, everything that you've written, everything you've done goes away, but you're allowed to leave the world with one piece of advice. What would it be?

Without trying to be lengthy in my words, or wordy. I would just say, make friends that make you better. Because every single positive thing in my life outside of my wife, who also is a friend that makes me better, every single positive thing that's happened to me in my life came from a positive person coming into my life and either bringing the idea or bringing the idea to life. And it was always 100% of my success has been reliant on quality human beings coming into my life. None of it was strategy. None of it was technique. It was literally quality human beings bringing quality ideas and quality traction in business. Now, I've got all these great business partners. We have 700 employees between all of our businesses. And I pinch myself every day. And none of it was technique. It was all based on relationships.

And I think that it's important for people to realize that none of this started until you were 28 and you had that realization. I mean, you were already building a successful Successful business, but it's changed and now you have more leverage. Yeah.

And Bethany Willis would argue that I did not have a business. She would argue that I had a hobby and that she owned my business. And I didn't— again, quality human being came into my life, smacked me around a little bit and readjusted. So, what she told me, she said, the most important thing you should learn in your 20s, Pace, is how to unlearn everything you learned before your 20s. And I was like, wow, I have to unlearn. And she would break all that stuff down. So again, quality human beings. And I'm really grateful for our new collaboration and our new friendship. I appreciate you guys. And I'm fans of your guys'. And now I feel like I got to tear down my whole studio and go buy 1,000 books.

Moral of the story. Yeah. And that was one of the— I mean, we'll wrap up here, but I'll add a comment, which is that When I saw you have some qualms with the traditional education system, so do I, so does Luke, and that could have been a fun point of conversation. So maybe during our next podcast, we'll talk a little bit about how we could improve that system and what's wrong with it.

Love it.

All right, cool, Pace. Thank you so much for the conversation today. For those in the audience that want to learn more about you and your book and your business, maybe even collaborate a little bit, Where should they go? What should they do?

If you guys want to buy the book, we should give you a link or something. But guys, I'm so in love with the communication of people that have questions on Instagram DMs. If you guys want to talk to me, I voice memo probably 300 people a day as I'm driving around or in between a meeting or whatever else. So if you have a question, DM me on Instagram. Our YouTube is Has been blown up. I'm proud of what we have. We have about 180,000 subscribers and we get about 4 million views a month. And it's all around creative finance. And I walk through real houses. I give you real addresses. I buy usually 1 to 2 properties every day. And I fly all over the country, show you guys those houses, break down the numbers, really make it digestible. And so, go subscribe on the YouTube channel and hopefully, we can buy some real estate together.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.