Creating Financial Freedom with Mike Swenson

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property. For panties on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson.

Hey real estate investors.

If you have ever wanted to dive into the sexy side of real estate and become a note investor. And not just somebody that owner finances properties or buys and sells on terms, but somebody who's actually buying debt from lenders, mortgage bankers, hedge funds on distressed real estate on both residential and commercial properties. Now is the perfect time. And guess what? We have our upcoming three day workshop here in just a few days on July 25th, 26th and 27th. That's right, that's a Friday. Saturday, Sunday. You can join me live on Zoom and our Note Buying for Dummies workshop. We'll go through the Fs of how to find fund and flip non performing notes at huge discounts without having to use your own money. And we'll show you all the different ways you can make money being a note investor. Day one's all about how we find these deals from banks, hedge funds and how you can automate the process of connecting with these people and get tapes and listen to you over and over again. Day two is all about raising capital and marketing. We'll show you how to tap into thousands of IRA investors who are looking for deals to fund and how to communicate and how to contact them and get them to fund your deals. And day three is all about the flip the exit strategies. Putting deals together. We'll mix in due diligence. We'll mix in the marketing side along with the structure side. So much stuff in three days live on Zoom with yours truly, the note guy, Scott Carson. Make sure you get signed up by going to Note buying for dummies.com or click on the three day workshop tab on our workshop. Get signed up today as we're still running discounts and you too can soon become a no buyer.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. Jacked up guys. To have this special episode with a buddy of mine who is setting the world on fire. He has just got an amazing heart for helping investors and people succeed and take that next step. And who am I talking about? Well, I'm talking a guy who comes from the land of the north, the land of the Vikings, the land of from the land of 10,000 lakes, my birth land, actually, most of them that. But this guy, if you don't know who he is, you soon will, before too long because he is just doing all sorts of amazing things. And this guy started off as a reluctant landlord, became an investor, has become a Realtor and is just absolutely doing some stuff that you're going to want to find out or hear about. He's been in the, he's been in the real estate industry in various forms, has became an accidental landlord back in 2010. So he's been investing for over 13 years. He serves as the founder and CEO of Elite Advantage Team, Investor Focused Real estate team serving Minnesota. In addition to that, he is also the host of the Real Freedom Podcast, that's rel Freedom Podcast, which I highly encourage you to check out. With a mission to help listeners build real estate leverage freedom of their time and finances through opportunities in the real estate industry. He also leads the Real Freedom Investors Agent Tribe, a membership community and mastermind group designed to help real estate agents build and grow their own investment portfolio. So and then outside of real estate, he is a huge sports enthusiast, for better or worse, for his beloved Minnesota sports teams. And he loves spending time with his wife and three boys. So we are honored to have the man, the Myth, the legend, Mr. Mike Swenson joining us today. What's going on, Mike?

Just excited to be able to be on the show and share. So, yeah, you mentioned, mentioned a lot of great things and yeah, just got done coaching baseball last night and we're going to to do more baseball. We got to do photos today and tomorrow we're doing a pitching and catching clinic. And so kids and sports and all of that stuff takes up the time outside of real estate.

Well, but you know what, it kind of falls in line if you're coaching kids. I can imagine, first of all, watching Little League or T ball or all that stuff is one of the funniest things you can ever watch. But it's also very interesting. But it also, if you're coaching kids, it's a lot like that when you're talking with new investors or new realtors that want to be investors too. Right. A lot of similarities.

Yeah. Because you know, and I also add to it, my wife is a therapist, so we talk a lot about kind of human behavior. And, and so she's always talked about. So she's a so kind of. This is a related story here, I promise. She is a therapist that works specializes in working with kids under the age of six and for A lot of people, they're like, I wouldn't touch working with kids with a 10 foot pole. I just don't have the patience for that. And her mindset is, you know, know, a lot of times therapists go into like marriage counseling and different things like that. And she's like, for them, a lot of times adults are really stuck in their ways and I'd rather work with kids who are more moldable and you can kind of teach some more of those life lessons. And so kind of going back to the example here of people who are older that are working on investing in real estate, there's a lot of baggage there. There's a lot of kind of ways that you were raised or ways that you thought about money, ways that you thought about income, building wealth, how to save for retire that you've got to work through and shake up to be able to take the steps that you need to move forward. I mean, same with you on the note side, right. There's people that, that come with all this, this mindset baggage that you've got to work through to be able to take the right actions.

Yeah, that is so true. Your mindset is the number one key to success in anything out there, especially real estate. What with, with you working with, with investors and then, I mean, also with Realtors with what you're doing, you're going to work with people outside of Minnesota. Just so you know, you work with folks because we have a nationwide audience and we've got quite a few realtors and brokers that listen to the show. You know, what are some of the biggest myths or misconceptions that you've had to overcome or teach that really kind of stand out to you? Mike, from, from realtors that are wanting to take that next step or new investors want to take that first step as an investor.

Yeah. For, for anybody that hasn't gotten started, usually it's I don't have the money. That's the first thing. Right. And so what we're doing by saying I don't have the money is we're selling ourselves short. We're selling our financial future short. And it's an easy excuse. Right. Well, what do I need to buy a property? You know, let's figure it out. It's X amount of down payment. Well, I don't have that now. Okay, done. Not going to consider investing in real estate. Well, what if you could figure that out? And so I use a, I use an example here. For a lot of people, kind of the challenge here is it is Delayed gratification. It's a little bit more of the long game. So let's just take a property that is a $300,000 property, right? And if we do good, good rough numbers here, 25% down, that's $75,000. So number one, they say, I don't have the $75,000, I'm not going to consider it. What if we had 7% appreciation on that property? 7% appreciation is $21,000 in a year. So if I found $75,000, I could potentially make $21,000 on that money in one year, which is a 28% return. And the example that I always say is, and this is the beauty of leverage from a bank or from a lending institution, I put down 25%, I get 100% of the appreciation. The bank's not going to come to me and be like, well, actually we own 75% of that property, so we're going to take 75% of that appreciation. So 75,000 becomes 21,000. And that's just appreciation. There's all these other things that you can make money on. So if I could make a 28% return, would I be more excited to go find that $75,000 if I don't have it? What if I had half of that and I go find friends, family and investor, somebody to help with the other half? I'm still making a great return. And that's the hard thing about real estate, is the numbers aren't as clear. You're dealing with projections, and people don't realize the urgency that they should approach this with. They just wait a year, a two or five, and then all of a sudden you're 10 years down the road and you're no closer to your financial goals because of, I don't have enough money. And that sits in the way that I don't, I don't have enough money just kills dreams. Financial dreams. Right?

Yeah, I mean, I deal with that as well, too. We see that on our side. Don't have the money. Well, you don't need your own money. There's other places out there to get it. There's investors that will stroke you a check or making zero or negative right now that want to help you out or they, you know, it's the same thing. Well, I want, I want to pay all cash. Like that's the stupidest thing you could do is pay all cash for an asset and not using the leverage that's available out there. In a lot of cases, I was dealing that With a family member. Oh, we need to, we want to save. Well, wait till we save 80 grand. I was like, well if it takes you five years to save 80 grand, in five years, that 80 grand house not gonna be worth 160 grand. You know what I mean? It's gonna go up. You gotta act now while you an opportunity and use some of the tools that are available for people out there. Right?

Yeah. Well into going back to that $300,000 example. If I paid cash for that property now that 7% appreciation is only a 7% return instead of a 28% return. That's the value of leverage. Having somebody else help cover that. I could go buy four properties now, get that 28% appreciation or 20% return on my money for versus buying one property cash. $300,000 and only making 7%.

Yeah, that's. It's such a great, great way to look at it and it should put things in the right perspective for people versus just that whole black and white. I'm buying it and paying cash and going from the or. The thing that always cracks me up now being in the mortgage industry and lending is people complaining about interest rates right now. And I'm still, I still chuckle. Cause I, you know, going thinking back to 2006, 7 and 8, when interest rates were about the same, I might, I remember people doing investment financing at 12 and they were happy about it. I'm like, you know, you, you, if you made it work then, you know, 10 years ago, what's wrong with making it work now? If you can get into something and hold on to it for a while, you'll appreciate. And then it can refinance in a few years when rates are better, right? Yep. Now one of the things that you do really, really well is, is, is besides sitting down with people and talk about that, it's kind of under covering, asking them what their long term goals are, you know, because that's one thing that you guys, when you and your wife were sitting there talking about things, what you want to accomplish. Can you kind of walk through that process or kind of walk what you were thinking when you first got started?

Yeah, so when we first got started, like you'd kind of mentioned at the beginning, we were accidental landlords and it was kind of by choice because we could have just lived in the property ourselves. So the, the quick story there is we bought our property in 2006. We watched the value drop into half at 2010. Now we've been married for four years. We're looking to start a family, you know, we could decide to stay in that townhouse. And I said, you know, if there's a way where we could afford a house, that would be awesome. And so I talked to a lender and said, you know, is there any way to make this work? I was working at a nonprofit. My wife was still getting her master's degree, and so she was nanning full time. And he said, you know what? The numbers are just close enough where we can make that work. And so we bought a short sale and then we had a relative or coworker of my wife's had rented out our townhouse. And so that was the leap that we made. So we did have to take that risk. But that investment property had turned out well for us. We had, I think the last tenant we had stayed there for seven years. And so that was fantastic. Kind of. Another funny story is I had a Elvis impersonate was one of the tenants. And it was a two bedroom property and the second bedroom was literally all of his clothes for his Elvis impersonations. I had to go there. I think I went there one time for something and the whole room was full of all of his Elvis costumes. And he was really good too. He was a really legit Elvis impersonator. But. But yeah, we held that property and, and it worked out great. And then over time, we did another flip. Kind of bought another property at the bottom for $36,000. We fixed it up and that money helped to pay off my college loans. And so that was really nice to, you know, real estate helped get me out of college debt. And this was before I was in real estate full time. And so then we, because I had skills, I worked for a construction company for a couple years in college. So I picked up some skills there. And I will say, before I got out of high school, I had no construction skills. My dad was the same way, you know, would. Would hire out anything that we would need to do. So I walked into working my first construction job with no legit construction skills. And I realized I liked it. I liked working with my hands, I like being outside. I like trying different things. And so then we kind of did the house hack strategy too, where we bought up that short sale, we fixed it up and, and sold that for a profit. We bought the next house, fixed it up, sold out for a profit. As we were living it, it wasn't a, you know, a flip. Let's just turn this six months, but a year, two or three. We did that a couple of times. And now, now we're in the house that we're at today. And then I looked up and I said, okay, I have skills as a realtor, I'm in the MLS all day long. I can analyze deals. And so what if I could take that and use that to my advantage? And so we slowly started working with investor clients. And then that opened up more opportunities for us to the point where we now own a 25 unit apartment building with some partners. So it's not just us, but at the same time that came from a deal that we found because we're in the investment space all the time, we're working with investors. There's two things, right? It's, it's deals and dollars. Those are the two things that we need. We got to go find deals and we need to find dollars and then we're just matching them up. And it might be that that investor, you know, has their own dollars and they want to buy a property. While we're an agent, we will help them out and maybe there's an opportunity there where we can partner with somebody that sees value in us taking some things off of their plate. Helping to manage the property. Now I say helping to manage the property. I'm not the property manager, but I'm the, the kind of the gatekeeper working with the property manager for our investor as well. So that was part of what we were able to offer here on this 25 unit is I meet with the property manager every week. We go through stuff, I do the, the call once a month to update our investor. Here's where we're at, here's what we're working on, here's the financials, here's the strategy. Do we want to adjust that? And so that's a value that I can offer. Having worked with other investors, helping them buy properties, helping to analyze deals. And so now we're looking at getting into the short term rental market, looking for opportunities outside of Minnesota where it might make sense to do that. And so we're kind of going a couple of contradictory strategies with apartment complexes and short term rentals is really where we're looking. Short term rentals can offer great cash flow. The, the large scale apartments can offer some economies of scale. So we're kind of diversifying through those two strategies.

There are any specific markets with the short term rentals that you have identified that you're looking for? Are you still in the initial process of uncovering?

Still, still working through that? That's kind of, I mean, I would say probably the next one to two months. That's a lot of where I'm spend. Tom, I will say this. We are looking for someplace warmer than Minnesota because we, well, it may not necessarily be a vacation spot for us depending on the market we choose. We want that opportunity where, hey, worst case scenario, if we wanted to get away for a week, we could go stay in our short term rental in the winter. This month or this past winter in Minnesota was brutal for snow. And so, Tom, I'm not interested in investing in a short term rental in a snowy, snowier state right now. I want to go somewhere warm. So, so that's where we're looking is pretty much south half of the US and we're determining whether it's going to be, you know, kind of a, you know, vacation community, whether it's just going to be a, a good larger city that's got a great opportunity, whether it's going to be, you know, maybe someplace more remote by state parks. You know, a lot of people like to invest there. There's some opportunities. So we're kind of looking at what are we, what's out there and then what are, what risks are we interested in taking. And because I have a business partner that we're working with together, we're kind of talking through those things together.

Well, that's good. I mean it's a smart thing. You're not doing it all by yourself. You're leveraging relationships and that way you've got multiple eyes looking at assets maybe and cover and accomplish your goals twice as fast as the, versus the lone wolf trying to do all themselves. Right?

Yeah. And I think the key then is recognizing that with investors I can scale faster. You know, I, I kind of tell people there's, I, I think about it like a triangle. There's time, money and expertise are kind of the three things that I look at. What can I offer? I can offer expertise because I work with investors in real estate all day. Time, I have some time available. So like the, the, the 25 unit apartment building, like I'm taking some of my time to help kind of manage that asset and, and, and move it along and move it forward. But I'm not going to be a property manager and take up all of my time to do that. Right. So time is kind of in the middle and money, I can choose to invest my money, but I can also grow a lot faster if I partner with other people. And so, so the people that I'm looking to partner, that makes it a great fit. They have the money, they probably don't have as much Time because they're busy professionals in whatever industry they're in. And then they don't have the expertise because they're not in real estate. And so I'm looking for that win win scenario where kind of it's, it's the yin and the yang, right? Like, what I offer is what they're looking for. What they have is what I'm offering, you know, and so that's where you can create a win win scenario. And so we can go scale larger by finding those people, those investors that are that right fit. And so that's what we're looking to do for our growth.

Very nice. Good stuff there. And I'm sure you're definitely going to knock it out of the park like you do with everything else. For you. Mike, let me ask you a question here. What's always funny is when I speak to different realtors, when I mentioned I'm an investor, you all, you often have two parties. It's either hot or cold. People love working with investors. Or realtors are like, oh, my God, I don't want to deal with investors. Have you dealt with that? You're smiling on there. If you're listening, you can't see Mike smiling from here to here about that. Have you heard that and had to overcome any objections about that from any of your colleagues, fellow Realtors?

Yeah, I mean, I think the, the approach that we're taking is we love investors and we embrace investors, mainly because that's. That's where I want to go. I can double dip my time working with an investor and looking at investment opportunities myself and even education. Right. Me analyzing deals that are not in the buy box that I'm looking for still helps me get better, still helps me to understand the market. And then as I'm helping those investors buy property, I think about it like a catalog, right? Investors, you know, everybody's got different preferences. And so just because I have a certain preference of what I'm looking for doesn't mean that investors want to do that. You know, as one example, kind of Section 8 housing is a little bit more of a divisive thing where some people, you know, I talk with investors and they say, I really, you know, I really don't know if I'm comfortable with that. I've heard there's more wear and tear on the properties. I've heard that, you know, you might have more headaches with tenants. Sometimes there might be some more turnover. And then I have other investors that are like, yep, guaranteed check every month. I love it. And so Everybody's different. And so that's where for me, I love working with investors. I also love the fact it's a little bit more nine to five business hours. An investor is not necessarily going to tom expect that I'm dropping everything at night to go help them. Now I'll go do showings. They seem to be thankful and appreciative when I do that or on the weekends. You know, typically I don't spend much of my time working with investors on the weekends, but I might grab a Saturday morning and go look at some properties if it makes sense, or, or maybe on a Sunday. But I can work around my life schedule that way because there's less emotion tied to it. Right. If, if, if my residential couple or, or family is looking for their next house that they're going to live in for the next 10 years and that property comes on the market Friday afternoon, if they don't jump by Friday night, it could be gone by Saturday. And so now I've got to throw away my Friday night to go work with residential people. If I want to make that happen and I want to provide them good service, right. I'm not going to be like, sorry, I can't. I recognize time really matters and it matters on the investment side, but to a lesser degree also, it's a little bit less emotional because of that whole piece, right? It's, does the numbers work or don't the numbers work? Now that can kind of be a negative sometimes too, because they're not invested in that property. And if it gets to a point in the negotiations, you've, you've spent a lot of time trying to baby that thing along, trying to get it to a spot where you get it under contract. And all sudden the numbers aren't what they want to hit. Nope. Let's go look at another one, you know, and so, but, but for me, I appreciate the investor profile and it's something that's worked out really well for, for me personally, what I'm looking for and for my lifestyle where, yeah, a lot of people will say no. Investors, you know, they just lowball everything. They just lowball everything. And it's not, it's a waste of my time. Well, you got to find the right investor, right? And so it's, you know, just like I can decide not to work with the residential client, I can decide not to work with an investor too. If, if they're profile doesn't fit where I feel like I can add value. I want somebody that appreciates me and appreciates my Time too.

That's so true. And I'm always laughing when I being just around as long as I have been. It's hard to say that but seeing some people like, oh, get you an agent to write 20 offers, 20 lowball offers are just mass spam, all these things, that's not an effective strategy like they used to do back in the day. And I know there's some Realtors have been, you know, have been bloodied up from doing that and that's not the thing to do. But where do you see the biggest opportunity? Especially since you have the mlsx, Is there anything that you use the MLS for to find deals that you see a lot of other Realtors missing the ball on?

Yeah. So I think number one, the fact that, that I am open to using the mls, there's a lot of people out there, they're like, oh, I'm not going to get a good deal on the mls so I'm not even going to consider it. Most, most of our closings are on the MLS, more than 50% for sure. And so what I love about deals on the MLS is the information is easily available where I don't have to hunt as much. So if I'm somebody, you know, last year we added it up as a team and estimated that we probably looked at 3,500 deals. Well, when I go on the MLS, I can quickly see are the numbers going to make sense or not. I've got photos, most likely now there's sometimes they're not the best photos and I probably have some financials because that seller has said I want to sell. Here's the financials. And, and so now not every investor or every seller has that readily available but the information is there. And then if I have a question, I reach out to the listing agent. The listing agents incentivized to get back to me because they want to make a sale. So oftentimes the on market stuff I can quickly like I'm just looking at it as like my, my sifting and sorting. Right. Am I going to spend more time on it or not? And with the mls I can quickly decide if I'm going to spend more time on it or not. Some of these off market deals you got to dig a little bit more. There's, there's kind of some, some red flags or some landmines that might be out there. And then two, it might be that the seller doesn't want the tenants to know that they're selling. So if I, I would love to be able to look at a property before I advise my investor to buy that property. Sometimes they're like, well, we don't really want to do showings. How can I feel good as a, as an agent to my investor representing their best interest if I haven't seen the property? So sometimes I've done a tour, you know, under the guise of hey, the insurance inspection is coming up and we're just doing a pre inspection to check it out, you know, or something like that. So it's a little tougher to get information. It's a little tougher to sometimes maybe get financials. Sometimes people might be hiding behind some information. So it's a little bit tougher to find those where what we find on the MLS tends to be a little bit more in the light and on the up and up.

Totally agree to that. I mean that's. We had John Burley on a few weeks ago on a podcast. He's one of the original guys that was with written about rich dad, poor dad back in the day. One of the six or seven guys it was originally based on and he was talking about 80% of the deals are on the MLS. You choosing not to buy MLS deals is you eliminating 80% of the potential deals out there. And what I love the fact is like listen, you can go on there and really see how far something's been on there, how long it's been around. Kind of the quick condition based on photos, hopefully if it's not from a bad selfie, you know what I mean? Some of these, they just don't know how to take photos. But looking at those things and looking to distress stuff and seeing stuff on there. Yeah it's a, it's a very quick way to identify like you said, run numbers and see things as things are more up and up because it's listed on the MLS versus oh, we're not.

Going to close at a title company.

Or hey, you got to go through this other person, you know. Yeah, you always want to do it. And that's why I like about that. I think you hit the nail on the head there perfectly well.

And then too I was just going to quick mention like, you know, if somebody is interested in a short term rental, that's, that's going to be a property that unless you're going to put a lot of money into it, fix it up and turn it into a short term rental, it might be something that's a little bit more turnkey and we have investors too that like stuff that's a little bit more turnkey. So as I'm analyzing short term rental opportunities for somebody, the MLS is a great spot to start too because you're looking for something that's a higher, nicer quality finishing that somebody is going to want to rent out in a short term basis. And even like a midterm rental, a 30 day plus model, people want to find stuff that's going to be in good shape. And so you can find that stuff on the MLS too.

Well, it's also too, when you're an agent reaching out to another agent, I think it's an easier conversation when it's basically out of market. You know, hey, I'm an agent here in Minnesota. I'm looking for some stuff there. Can you give some insight? So there's an instant credibility and respect, I think that pops up with that conversation too, as you're, as you're doing stuff outside of your own home market.

Yeah, yeah, we, we have a deal that, that ended up not coming through. We had a seller that backed out during the inspection period and now there's a conversation about the earnest money, you know, that's out there. And this wasn't somebody that was represented by an agent. And so now you've got, it's a, it's a little bit tougher, it takes a little bit more time. And, and like I would tell back when I was on the residential side, we would always tell our agents, you know, 80%, 90% of deals, maybe more than that go just great. It's the one that takes up all your time, that just slows production to a halt. So now in a case like this, when you've got something that's come up, it sucks up a lot more of your time that you can't necessarily spend going and finding more clients or going and finding more deals.

Yeah, that's, that's so true there. Now you have been doing something here recently too that had the good fortune to watch is your mastermind and the stuff that you're doing. Can you share with our audience a little bit what you're doing with that?

Yeah. So because I see so many agents out there that don't necessarily know the next step to take to, to start as faster or maybe they've got a property or two and they're maybe looking at how do I scale this? And then two, maybe it's. I'm a residential agent and I'm curious to work with investors, but I don't know if I want to do that because of some of those, you know, mindset or barriers we talked about earlier. So I'm creating, or I created a mastermind group of, of people that are looking, so primarily agents here looking to grow as an investor and then also looking to maybe grow, working with investors. And the goal here is really to be a community to help each other because there's, there's not a lot of them out there now. There, there is a lot out there but like in your local market you may not be rubbing shoulders with the investor agent as much or there, there's not as many as there are residential agents because if you probably stand in a crowd and reach out, you could touch 10 residential agents. There's so many out there. So, so this is an opportunity to be able to learn, increase your knowledge base, but then to be able to connect with other people like you to figure out best practices, what's working, what can I be doing, how can I be growing my business? And then two, I see this as such an awesome playground to be able to share deals back and forth, you know, maybe an investor I'm working with, my market no longer is a great fit for that opportunity. And what they're looking for, well now I can refer you to somebody else maybe for just that one property and then they're going to come back and invest with you again. Or potential partnership deals where you could go explore some other markets, you could explore some partnerships together. And so maybe it's vendors, you know, there's, there's some great commercial lenders that I didn't know about that maybe I could learn from another agent. So it's really just sharing best practices together about becoming a better investor yourself and becoming a better agent, working with investors. And so we've got kind of a information, videos, content to help kind of raise your learning curve. And then we also have a mastermind group that meets together and then there's an opportunity to do one on one calls with me to really help you discover your goals, where you want to go and to put a plan together so that you're not that agent. That's like, oh shoot, I got busy and I'm two years, two years down the road and no closer to my investing goals. And so it's really to help create that accountability. And it's a challenge, right? Me, I'm not gonna, right now, I'm not buying a property a week, you know, so if I'm getting together, it's not like, hey, I just bought this property last week, now I'm looking for my next property. It might be, hey, my goal is to acquire a property between now and the end of the year. And so the challenge is, am I willing to invest that time to learn and get the best deal between now and December, or am I just gonna stay so busy with my real estate business and wake up Thanksgiving and hope that a good deal pops up so I can hit my goal to have that property by the end of the year? And so it's prior, prioritizing yourself, prioritizing your own financial future so that you can be where you want to be a couple years from now versus not having a plan in place and then you're no closer to your goals.

Well, and that's, I'm so glad you said, because it's, it's so important. I mean, you see that happen. A lot of people, people are, you're, they're helping people buy other, buy their dreams, making their dreams come true. And they're not taking the opportunity because they do have that limiting mindset. They don't have the money. They, you know, they don't know the opportunities. They're used to doing just a normal listings Buyers and sellers, they're not going out and spending extra time for themselves or they're spending all their free time running around showing houses, trying to make things happen without investing a little bit of their own time and money into finding something for themselves in the long run. Right?

Yeah. And it's no different than, you know, for, for me, it's investment properties. For you, it's notes. It might be mobile home parks, it might be self storage, you know, like whatever is kind of in that real estate space. There's a ton of opportunities. You got to take the time to learn more about it, to understand it as well. And so, you know, investing in your education is really important, you know, growing your learning curve. And yeah, you're gonna move along the way. I mean, I've moved from working in residential to now learning about more about the investing space in addition to kind of what I had done personally, to learning more about wholesaling opportunities, off market opportunities, to learning about, you know, commercial apartment building investing, to learning about short term rentals. All that's happened the last couple years because I've been willing to take the time and learn and have that learning mindset so that I can help more investors but also help myself along the way.

Has there been a mentor or somebody out there that you've, I won't say idolized, but really relied on, who's helped pave your path or helped guide you along the way?

I would say because I'm learning in a Lot of different areas. I'm, I've kind of learned, kind of watched a lot of videos, I've paid for some course materials in some different areas. And partly for me, because I, I'm still working on kind of where my path is going to be. I've, I've definitely learned from a ton of people. I mean, there's a dozen of people that have kind of helped me plant different seeds of different ways to think about it. So even like the, the, the apartment multifamily combination, I met with somebody just in like a, you know, 30 minute networking conversation where it's like, hey, what are you doing? And he was like, you know, I make more money from my short term rentals than I do from the thousand apartment units that I own, but yet at the same time, when I'm helping doing real estate syndications, I want to be a part of that. And so that helped me think like, oh, this might be a good combination together. So there's a lot of people along the way. But then even two just talking about, you know, creating content and documenting. Right? There's a, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk's an example of that. So there's people even outside of real estate that have helped me make good business decisions. But yeah, I'm a huge Gary Vee fan and love him. And then even to going back to podcasting, there's people that I, you know, had listened to in the past about like, should I start a podcast or not? And helped me realize the value of networking through a podcast. And even to something as simple as, you know, when I, when I die, sometime down the road, there's all this content that, you know, kids, grandkids, future family could watch about. There's dad, there's what dad did, you know, when he was trying to figure out how to find a short term rental. There's dad. And so stuff like that, you know, has even been meaningful for me.

Exactly. Now, how do folks, and I'm not, we're not done. I just want to go. This is taking my scroll. What's the best way for folks to find out more about that mastermind you're talking about? Is it just exclusive to realtors or can other investors get involved in that too? Mike?

Yeah, so for sure, anybody that wants to learn about investing can be involved in that. We will talk a little bit too about like as an agent working with investors. So there's a piece of that. But at the same time, you still got to learn all the basics, right? And so yeah, the, the Website for that is agent investor mastermind.com so agent investor mastermind.com that'll point you there. So, so that, yeah, you can, you can see we, we do have, you know, if you didn't want to do the meetings or you couldn't make the meetings, there is a ton of content out there from deal calculators, different investing strategy, how to analyze deals, how to find deals, all that stuff that you can just go watch on your own too as well.

Good stuff, good stuff there. Now when you're talking or raising capital, I know folks, that's always one of the biggest questions. Is there a tip or tool or something you really like to focus on that helps you raise more private capital from investors strategy or anything?

Yeah, so, well I, I think for me where I'm at, understanding what your investor wants. Right. And so because there's a, because investors have different goals, if you're going to raise capital, you've got to really understand what your investors are looking for, what are they looking to get out of it. And so do they want to be more active in a deal? They want to be more passive in a deal. What are the numbers that they want to hit? You know, for syndications? Kind of one of the, the top things is double your money in five years, you know, and so we're looking for opportunities where I could confidently tell an investor, we want to help you double your money. We're going to, we're going to help you double your money in five years. And here's how we're going to do it. Some of the deals that we thought were good were a shade under that. And so that's something that people are looking for, the value add piece, being able to do some sort of cash out refi on the back end versus maybe more of a cash flow play. And so I would say, yeah, understanding. So what we're doing now is either finding deals that fit that or going and finding investors that are looking for the other types of deals that we're looking for, you know, for us. Because a lot of our past investors invest in other states and like being hands on kind of that opportunity for, for us to insert ourselves and add value. There's a lot of people that are like, well, but that's what I really like doing. And so now it's going and growing more of the database of more of the passive profile investor where they're like, hey, I don't think about real estate, but I want to, I want to follow somebody that I trust and here's my Money and let's go build something big together. So we're working on adding to that piece of our database. And so, yeah, I would say understand your audience to understand what they're looking for so that you can find the deals that they are going to want to invest in. And yeah, if it's a partnership opportunity, you got to find the people that are going to value that. Like I said that that triangle, that's where that. That's been really important to me to help me understand, like, okay, so where am I on the triangle? And then go find the people that are those missing pieces that value what you come to offer so you can do more deals together.

Love it, love it, love it, love it. Now, you're also the host of the Real Freedom Podcast. The Real Freedom Podcast. Share with our audience a little about that. What made you start that podcast?

Yeah, so I remember telling somebody, I'm not going to be that guy that just starts a podcast because they want to start a podcast. And funny enough, I ended up starting a podcast. And. And the original idea was I wanted to. Because I was passionate about helping people pursue financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I wanted to inspire people where they would learn about some of these stories of people that are doing different things in real estate, pursuing financial freedom. And because everybody's wired differently, everybody has different skills and abilities and passions and paths they want to take, I really wanted to highlight different paths, different skills and abilities that people brought that they were able to utilize to go find financial freedom. Where somebody could say, you know what? Just because so and so is in my industry and they're doing it that way, maybe I want to do it a different way. And so it was. It was really. That was the reason why I wanted to start something. And so what I was going to do is record videos and YouTube content. And that's when I told somebody, like, I'm not going to make it a podcast just because everybody else is doing a podcast and this is 2020. And then I found out about a tool where I can just upload the video and it turns it into a podcast. And I was like, oh, so I can do the same work. I just have to upload this one video and it syndicates out. Because I didn't realize that's how podcasts work. I thought I'd have to, like, do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and all. It's going to be so much extra work. And so I was like, wait, I'll just take the video file and throw it up. And now it's a podcast. So I saw that and then two. Kind of my example in the past, this guy Pat Flynn, talking about, like, creating a legacy and creating. Being able to get your story out there. And so Pat Flynn was somebody that I had followed for a long time. And so I was like, yeah, let's do this and be a podcast. Probably the week after, I said, I'm never gonna. I'm not gonna have this be a podcast just like anybody else. But I saw the value, the. The leverage, right? The leverage of. Of doing that. And so then over the past two and a half years now, I've just enjoyed meeting people. I've enjoyed highlighting their stories, sharing a little bit of our journey along the way, too, and just creating content that hopefully people want to listen to and that they find some stories or they find some nuggets of wisdom out of everybody that's been on the podcast and to be able to apply to. To their journey.

Yeah, Amen to that. Pat's a great guy. Had a chance to speak with him and hang out with him a little bit at PodFest. PodFest and podcast movement in the past and a few other spots out there. And we share the fact that we're both Back to the Future fans. He's the world's biggest Back to the Future fan, if you didn't know that already. What's the best way for our listeners and audience out there, investors or people looking to learn more about investing? What's the best way for people to track you down or connect with you? Mike?

Yeah, so. So Real freedom dot com. So that's R el Freedom is the website where we're posting. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, podcasts, we do put our podcast episodes on there. We've got show notes, so that would be a great spot to check that out. We've got other real estate investing content, but as a real estate person, like, right, your job is people can find you easily. So my email is just mike@realfreedom.com so R E L freedom.com and then my phone number is 612-978-4485. And if you Googled me, you'd be able to find that anyhow. So, you know, as somebody that wanted to be more private in the past, and then I got into real estate, I was like, hey, people got to be able to know to get a hold of me. And so, yeah, it means there's more spam calls coming in, but at the same time, if people want to work with me, they've got to be able to find me. So that's been helpful for me as I'm networking with other people. You can't be a secret agent. People have got to be able to find your contact information. And so it is what it is when you're in real estate. So people can find me.

Exactly. For every five Medicare phone call I've gotten the last day, there's always one person who's actually doing something else. So it's important to you with the the auto dollars out there. So this has been a fun episode. Mike, thank you so much for coming on the Nooklust show, sharing your knowledge and your story and your passion for helping people.

Thank you. I'm excited to have been able to share, so thanks for having me, Scott.

Anytime, buddy. All right, guys, you heard it here first. Check it out. The Real Freedom podcast out there. Mike does a great job out there with his podcast, his guests and sharing his journey and story along the way. Like he said, if you're looking to get more information looking at started as a investor, check out his mastermind as well. We'll have all those links below in the show, notes in the description. So go out, take some action everybody, and we'll see you all at the time.

Thanks.

Sam Sat.