Trading In The Pharmacy Coat—How This RE Investor Broke Free Of The 9-5

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.alaingeek.com. and today's guest is actually my neighbor. Like we're like, we probably run into each other all the time. But before we talk to our real estate guest expert, I'd be remiss I didn't properly introduce my co host, Six Sigma. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings. Postingdomination.com philanthropy Scott Todd. How are you?

Mark? I'm great. How are you?

Pulse is still normal, respiration is fine. Drinking a big coffee this morning.

It's a big one.

The big one. I'm not messing around. Highly caffeinated, very excited and I told for my listeners. Today's podcast is sponsored by GeekPay IO. The only way to automate your payments as a lender to your borrower. Notifications, collect, ACH fails, get the credit card payment. It's amazing. And there's no note. Set up fees. It is the best and least expensive solution on the market. Learn more go to GeekPay IO Get your first note free@thelandgeek.com GeekPay let's talk to our guest, Stuart Geffner. So if you don't know who Stuart is, he's actually in Scottsdale. He is a Arizona Real Estate Investor association instructor and he's been investing in real estate for 15 years. And this guy has done it all. He's purchased with cash. He's done traditional financing, he's done seller financing, he's done hard money lending, he's done lease options subject to deals, home feeling fix and flips. And his favorite is buy and holds. Why? Because that strategy really creates wealth as opposed to just the income. Stuart. Kathleen, how are you?

Hey, great to be here and thanks for having me guys.

Really glad you could be here. So Stuart, let's just rewind the tape and kind of tell us like how did you get involved in real estate?

You know it's funny, in my, in my previous life I'm a pharmacist and I used to own pharmacies here in town and I've always wanted to be a full time real estate investor. I growing up I used to watch these infomercials on television counting sheets. Dave Deldato so I'm showing my age and I had a chance. I was talking to one of our hospice nurses. I'm sure. You guys know what hospice is? And she said to me, do you know what the number one regrets of my patients are? And I said, probably spending too much time at the office. And she said, well, you think that, but that's not it. And I said, well, then what is it? She said, they live their life for someone else. And my dad was a pharmacist. My uncle Max was a pharmacist. My grandpa was a pharmacist. But I always wanted to do this real estate investing thing, so I had the opportunity to sell and I sold. And I've been doing this full time and I've been loving it. It's been great for me.

Awesome. Awesome.

Scott.

Ty, Is this our first pharmacist turned professional real estate investor?

I think so. I can't remember another one that was a pharmacist and turned. But, you know, it's crazy because you see, Mark, you see all these people that have like these professional jobs and they all find something in real estate that they don't find in their other jobs, and that's freedom. So it's really kind of cool to see, you know, like, you know, do you tell your kids to go become a doctor pharmacist? No, because they're going to end up in land anyway. Or real estate.

Real estate, yeah. So, Stuart, for you, what is your favorite thing about doing deals? Investing in real estate, and all the different ways that you invest in real estate, like what. What attracts you the most?

You know, I think Scott said it the boat, the best. And that is the freedom that it offers and it offers the flexibility. So someone might say, you know, what kind of investor are you? Do you do short sales, foreclosures? What do you focus on? And do you do fix and flip? Do you do buy and holds land wholesale? And the answer is we do everything. Sometimes you don't know what you're going to do with a property until you see the property or until you see what it's zoned. So from that instance, being able to do creatively different things with different sellers and not having to use banks and not having to worry about insurance company and drug companies capping your reimbursement, for me, that's a more pure capitalistic way to make a living.

And.

And it's a lot of fun.

Wow, that is true. So as far as all the different categories of real estate investing, why is buy and hold your favorite right now or has it changed?

You know, just like you, it migrates. So for a while it's buy and hold Especially when the market was down. But certainly there's a lot of opportunity in land right now, especially in the Southwest, especially as you look all over the country and the economy's booming, there's a lot of developing going on. So it just depends on where we're at in the marketplace. And that's something that I cannot control. I cannot control whether the market's going up or down. I can't control whether interest rates are going up or down. All I can try is to visualize where we are in this cycle and try to be ahead of the curve as to what's coming next and position myself so that you don't lose.

I love it. Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

Oh, what's coming next? What do you see is coming next?

Well, you know, we've had a lot of appreciation of land and a lot of appreciation of real estate in general. And for the all accounts of recorded history, after things go up for a while, you know what they do, they tend to go down. And then they go down for a little bit, and then you know what they do, they tend to go up. Everything goes in a cycle. So we've been at a, at a high in our cycle for a very long time. When it's going to start going down, Honestly, I have no idea. But the economy seems to be thriving. I mean, unemployment is below 4%. I don't think it's ever been below 4% in my lifetime. So jobs are good, the economy is good. And so I see things staying steady for the time to come. You know, as interest rates go up, housing becomes less affordable. So we'll see what happens. The Fed did not raise this last quarter, but we'll see what happens over the long term. But as far as what's next, you know, looking at opportunities in land, being in the path of progress, I think you can't go wrong.

So, you know, as far as, you know, a healthy market. Right. You know, Scott and I a lot of times talk about equilibrium. So sometimes in the cycle it's really easy to buy, it's tougher to sell, and then sometimes it's really, really hard to buy because sellers are waiting for that top dollar price. They don't need the money because things are going well and the economy's, you know, soaring, and then it's tougher to buy. But it's super easy to sell because investors have money, they feel flush. Where would you say we're at right now in the cycle?

From my opinion, I think that it depends. Throw this away. It depends where you are in the country. If you take a look at where we are, we're in Arizona. I think that it's a seller's market right here in the price point of maybe 400,000 and below. So there is an opportunity for sellers to try to get top dollar because the economy is good, the weather here is fantastic. People keep moving here. Other parts of the country, you know, for example, in Indianapolis, in Alabama, certain others, still is a good opportunity to buy, because if you're going to do a buy and hold, your rents far exceed the 1% to 2% rule.

Okay, and then for our listeners, can you explain the 1 to 2% rule?

So it's a, it's a rule that's not really a rule because it doesn't really work all the time. What it is is if you buy something for 100,000, you'd like to rent it for a thousand bucks a month. If you buy it for 120,000, you like to rent it for 1200amonth. However, it doesn't always work like that, especially when you get up to the higher price points. So you need some diversification in your portfolio. And that's, that's exactly what we have as well, to kind of balance out and make sure that you don't get stuck too high or too low.

Interesting, Interesting. Stuart, how do you get your deal flow? What's your favorite method of acquisition?

For us, we do a lot of direct mail. We drop about 10,000 pieces a month. And then I, as an instructor, I give a lot of presentations, not just to the local ria, the as ria. We're in Arizona. I teach online for the national ria, and I'm also on staff here in Phoenix at the Commercial Real Estate Institute. So having that exposure really gives me an opportunity to find not just deals, but investors as well. Because at some point, as I'm sure you can appreciate, self funding kind of wears itself out.

No, absolutely. And the old saying in real estate is always opm, other people's money. And how you get that is, you know, you can be. I mean, that's really one of the huge advantages of real estate is how creative you can be. So, Stuart, as we look at creativity and, you know, if you're a listener and you want to do like, let's say your first fix and flip, how would you recommend somebody going and securing creative financing for that deal?

So every deal, you know, whether you like it, Mark, and I'm sure Scott as well, every deal doesn't matter what you're talking about, whether it's buying a business or negotiating with whomever always hinges on financing. Financing the most is the most important piece of any transaction. And so with a fix and flip opportunity, you're probably going to have your best success with what we would call a hard money lender. Someone who's an asset based lender who's going to lend on the asset as opposed to your credit or as opposed to your experience or your job. How much money you have in the bank, they're going to lend on the asset. So a true asset based lender would be a place where somebody wants to start fixing, flipping would start. I'll add this though, if they're just starting fixing, flipping, or they're starting anything, they probably don't want to go at it alone. They probably want the help of someone that has some experience, a little gray hair, some wisdom. Because trust me, you're going to make plenty of mistakes. You don't need to make the same mistakes I've made or that you've made because you'll probably teach them, don't make this mistake. So there's not enough time to make all the mistakes there are. So probably having someone hold your hand a little bit, a mentor advisor would be the right place to start. It'll save you a lot of money and take years off your learning experience.

Yeah, I mean, Scott, Todd, why doesn't everybody hire a Sherpa in real estate? What do you think, stopping people?

I think a lot of times people, the money, money stops people from doing stuff.

Right.

Like, it's amazing.

Mark.

Because in flight school I talk a lot about like, you know, building a VA team or going and doing something like, you don't have to do this yourself. And I even show them, like when I got started, you know, one of the things that I did was like, I did, I didn't want to spend the money. Like I would do the screen scraping, the, you know, the data scraping, data mining off of websites. And then one day I'm like, this is ridiculous. I'm not doing this anymore. It took me 21 days to come to that, to that point. And I started like, I'm like, okay, I'm going to go find somebody to do this. But then it scared me because I didn't want to spend the money. And then I realized, like, I'm talking about $9 here, $9 to give me a hundred names, 100 names gonna produce one deal. I'm gonna make thousands on that one deal and it's gonna cost me $9. That's kind of insane.

Right?

And so I think that a lot of people, they stop, they stop to pick up the pennies and they're not seeing the flow of the dollars that just by spending a little bit of dollars will bring back to them. So I think it, I think it all comes down to a mindset issue of money.

Yes, Stuart, how do you help people look at money, which is what all it is, is simply a tool and get their emotional sort of baggage with money and that parental whisper out of their head about, hey, money doesn't grow on trees.

Dude, that's a great question. And I think that everybody has some issue when they start out with money and their mindset. And many times when we start out, our mindset is in scarcity mode. Because at some point, whether we were in college or we left high school and took a job, we were in scarcity. We were eating top ramen or finding the deals at Circle K or Burger King or what have you. And as we've accumulated over time, we don't have anyone teaching us how to change our mindset. So mindset is so important and your attitude is so important. So when you say to me, how do we teach someone, how do we coach someone from that perspective to change? We start with where they're at now and we take a look backwards as to where they've been. And most folks have come some distance from where they've been. And so as we head on that path, we want to educate them. And this is a tough one for some people. And I just learned this a little while ago myself, that there's enough for everybody. And in order for me to have more does not mean that someone else has to have less. And so since there's world is full of abundance and it's just a change in mindset and to catch those weeds that self talk, when you hear that little devil speak out, oh, you can't do this, or you're not worthy or you're not good enough, we have to pull those weeds and be mindful that we have those thoughts and to flush them and to keep the positive and prosperous thoughts in our mind. And I appreciate it's not easy, but once you do something for a period of time, it becomes a habit. And then the proof is in the pudding. When the results come, that's when people start relaxing and embracing that abundance mindset.

Can you describe a time, Stuart, when you didn't have abundance mindset and you were able to make that transition and how did you make it?

That's a great question. You Know, when I own pharmacies and being an independent pharmacist in a world of the Walgreens and the CVS's of the Fry's of the world, I didn't realize there was enough for everybody. And I was very aggressive and assertive in my marketing, probably almost to the point of being abrasive. And I'm from Chicago, and I don't find that abrasive. I find that aggressive and assertive. But certainly here in the Valley, it was found to be abrasive. And it was more of a turn off than it was embracing, but I didn't notice that. And then I had a business coach that helped me create the awareness of the mindset and the shift. And when I made the shift and when I, you know, what do you have to lose? You might as well try it. Maybe things aren't working perfectly the way that they are. And so when I tried it and relaxed and took the load off a little bit and slowed down and tried to get to know people more and build more intimate relationships, that was the proof for me, because that's really when the abundance started to occur.

Yeah, that's a great story, Scott. Todd, do you remember any time, like, how you sort of were able to shift from scarcity mentality to abundance mentality? I guess it was an elite weekend in Newport.

I'm trying to think, like, you know, like, I think it. I don't think that there was like this one snap, right? Like, I think it came over time. I think what happened was, you know, like, I was put in a position that made me, like that, challenged that. And I mean, like, I'll never forget Mark. Like, we had a coaching student. I was coaching them. A coaching student and very nice guy. I really liked him a lot. And I was on a coaching call with him, and he said, hey, listen, I've mailed to this one area and I got some accepted offers out of that. And, you know, he starts to explain to me and he tells me the area, and I broke out into a sweat on the call. I break out into a sweat because that was like my little secret area. Like, it was mine. And I felt uncomfortable. And I'm like, okay, man, you know, like, it's. And I just told myself, like, it's all gonna be okay, right? Like, it's all gonna be okay. And you know what? It was. And so, like, that was a pivotal moment. Another pivotal moment for me was at the first boot camp that I went to, and you told me, you said, hey, I just recorded a Podcast with Jay Massey. And I'm like, jay Massey's huge. I'm like, oh, my gosh, the secret's gonna get out. And you told me that. I'm, like, breaking out into a sweat. Like, is this too late? Am I too late? You know, like, is this. Is it over? And I remember looking at the Facebook mastermind group with the 35 people in that group wondering, like, is this too late? Today, that mastermind group has, like, 300 people in there or more. And, you know, what's happened to my business? It's, like, blown up. Like, I can't explain it, right? Like, I think that once you start to just accept the fact that there's more than enough, more than enough for all of us, and that's a transformation that took me a while to make, but it was one that I did by just seeing the results that, you know, it's okay. It'll be okay. It will always be okay.

Yeah, that. That, you know, fighting for that abundance mentality is like a. Like a daily sort of battle for a lot of people. And I. And there's. You know what? I go through it too, sometimes, you know, tough month, and I'm like, oh, what can I cut? Like, what cut? That's not the right way to think about it.

What can I think could happen is. I think what happens is along the way, people get. They get. I mean, maybe you want to call it shiny object syndrome, right? And, you know, we think of shiny object syndrome is like, oh, look, ATM investing, right? So let me go over there. But I think that. I think that this happens at another broad level that we don't really think about. And that's like, oh, someone. It's like the fishing story, right? Like, you're out there fishing, you're fishing, you're fishing, and, like, you're not catching anything, right? Or maybe one or two. And then you see these guys over here on the boat, and they're like, yeah, we got another one. And they're bigger. And you're like, I just want to go over there by them. And so then what do you do? You pick up the anchor, you move over, and, like, you're still thrown out. And you're like, I'm not getting anything now, or I'm getting less, or I'm still not getting the big ones.

Like, they are.

Why them and not me? And what it comes down to is, like, just, you may not have the right tools, right? Like, you may not have the right bait to get the big fish. It's just not it's not the spot. It's, like, the whole thing. And that's what you got to, like, look at and figure out, like, why are they getting the big fish?

You know? That leads me to. Stuart, a good question for you, especially being an instructor in the RIAs. Right. What's some of the worst advice you hear given your area of expertise? Because I can imagine you've got a lot of speakers come in. You hear a lot of it.

You bet. Another. Another great question, and here's one that I hear all the time. Oh, the market's too competitive. There's not enough deals. There's too many people marketing for the same thing I'm looking for. Just like Scott was saying how he thought someone had started marketing in his backyard in his sandbox. They were playing in his sandbox, and it's his sandbox. So. Oh, it's too competitive. There's not any deals. And I got to be honest with you, we're slammed. I have to. I hired an intern to come in to help me evaluate some property and help write some offers, because we're just not getting to them all. So there's always distress property. There's always distress situation. There's always distressed sellers. But some people just have this mindset, and I agree with Scott, they get distracted, they get discouraged because they're not seeing results with what they're trying to do at hand. So they look to the next new shiny thing as maybe that's the opportunity. But, yeah, that's the worst advice I ever heard is that it's too competitive. There's not enough.

Yeah, yeah.

And that, you know, we were talking before the podcast, and, you know, you're like this sort of continual learner and grower, and you're constantly educating yourself, and you're listening to other people's podcasts and, you know, like, just constantly learning and growing. And so if you could have, let's say, a dinner party in Scottsdale and you could invite three mentors to dinner, whom would you invite? And what's the one question you would ask them?

Another great question. I would invite. God, what a great question. I would invite. There's a gentleman here in town. His name is Summers White. He's the youngest senator. He was youngest bank president in the country. He's a professional speaker, spoken on all six continents. He would be one person that I would absolutely want to mentor with and learn from. So Summers White, the gentleman who started Tesla, I would embrace him as well and invite him, Ian, to come on to dinner with me and probably think the gentleman that could they be living or dead?

Living.

They have to be living. Okay, over to.

Since you're down the block.

I would probably invite the NFL commissioner, the commissioner of the National Football League because he has a lot of wisdom and experience as well in, in startups and markets and marketing, in people management. And the one question I would probably ask them or would I like some insight on is how they learn how to scale what they did, how they learn how to scale their banking, how they learn how to scale their automotive and how they learned how to scale and how they funded for the different, for their different leagues and competition and such. Because I think when we, when we start out, we do everything ourselves in our own business. We answer the phone, we take out the garbage, we raise the capital, we find the property, we do everything ourselves. And as we grow, we're supposed to learn to lean on others and sometimes that's tougher people to do, but at some point in time we grow so much and that we really need to have a different business model of scaling. And that's where I would probably go with that. And, and you would absolutely be invited, Mark and Scott as well. You're both welcome to attend.

Thank you. Thank you. I, I got a lot to ask. Elon Musk for sure. So stor, we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to put you on the spot and ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

So for the tip of the week, Mark and Scott, I would say for most people, they need to be consistent. They try something for a little bit, it doesn't work and they don't tweak. They don't realize that in the, in the scope of a business model that a business in and of itself has a cycle, just like any, any product has a cycle. When I was a kid growing up, there were candy bars that aren't around today because they fizzled. On cycle tab is a drink that's no longer around or not as popular. So being consistent with passion, you have to be passionate about with what you're doing and really being able to put the time, effort and energy into it. And so I'm reminded of a story about a gal that hired me as a coach because I do real estate, as you know, and she was actually a realtor. And she said to me, I need to make X number of dollars by the end of this year. And I said to her, okay, what's the motivation? And she's. Because I hate what I do. And as soon as I make that money, I can quit and go do something else. And so for her, her passion is not in the right neighborhood. So consistency with passion is what I would say my tip of the week is. Favorite book. Dude, I got a couple. One is going to be the Four Agreements by Don.

Love that book.

Yeah, that's a great book. And we do that in our Monday morning staff meeting. We get the little flashcards and we talk about always doing our best and not taking anything personally. And sometimes that's very hard to do. I also love another book called Illusions by Richard Bach, and it's called the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. And for me, that was a game changer. For me, it's an older book, but I think if you had a chance to read it, that you get a lot of good tips on perspective and life and on business as well.

Awesome. Great tips, Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

All right, Mark, do you know what a OKR is?

Okr?

No idea.

All right.

An OKR is objectives and key results. And it has taken, like, these tech companies that a lot of people may not have heard of and grown them into, like, monsters. Like, a little website that you may have heard of called Google. Google implemented okrs. And the guy that brought them to these tech companies is a venture capitalist. His name is John Doerr. And guess what?

I knew John Doerr really well.

He wrote personally.

But, you know, Orey, my mentor, works with John Doar at Klein Perk.

Yeah. So he wrote a book, and it's called Measure what Matters How Google, Beano, and Gates Foundations Rock the World with okrs. Check it out.

Wow. I mean, this guy's a billionaire.

Yeah. Let's see.

He's one of the biggest guys, or not the biggest in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, he's like the real deal, man. And he's, you know, to me, it's always amazing, like, especially when you look at a book or look at the reviews, right? And then the people, like, it's so easy to, like. I mean, like, I work for a big company and, like, people bring their stuff to the big company, you're like, garbage. Right? You know, like, this is garbage. But then when someone actually goes into the review and they write out the fact that, hey, I worked at Google for 11 years and I've seen firsthand the impact of okrs had on our company, and this is the guy responsible for it, you know, this is gonna be a good book.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It must have just come out. There's like only 10 reviews on Amazon. They're all five star.

Well, we're recording this. It's. It is. It's within a few weeks, but by the time this comes out. Have probably.

Has it not come out yet?

Well, no, it's out now, but by the time our podcast comes out.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Well, with Scott's endorsement, it'll probably be a national bestseller shortly.

I don't know about that. I don't know.

It's already a. It's already a bestseller.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah. And it's the New York Times bestseller. And it's in. It's. Larry Page from Google wrote the forward. This guy's. Yeah, I'm sure that.

I'm sure that this is handed out to like every Google employee at this point.

Yeah. Wow. Okrs. All right. I'm buying it now. Fantastic. Well, I want to just thank the listeners and remind them the only way, the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like Stuart Geffner is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review. To support thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. And by the way, not to one up Stuart and Scott, but my tip of the week is learn more about Stuart Gethner at the very clever contactstuart.com contactstuart.com and learn all about what he's got going on as far as real estate investing and teaching and coaching and lots of good stuff. So you can go to stuartgathern.com or contact stewart.com I've links to both. And yeah, I thought this was great. Scott, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

Stuart, are we good?

Been a pleasure to be on your podcast, one of the more educational and informative ones on itunes. So thank you for having me as your guest. Sincerely appreciate it, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. And again, listeners, Please check out GeekPay IE, the only set it and forget it system. Scott, are we just going to.

We're done.

We're done with it. All right, thanks, listeners, and we'll see everybody next week.