What Would You Do If Money Didn't Matter?

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Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest. He is a dad. He is a real estate investor. He's traveled the US in an rv. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, the brain, the professor, Six Sigma. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com TheLand Geek Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great, I'm great. I'm excited about our guest. He's kind of like one of us.

Just one of us.

Yeah, he's a dad. He loves cash flow. So this is Ryan Enck and, and if you don't know Ryan, he's built two million dollar indoor sports arenas in the New Orleans area. He was able to quit his job as a corporate drone of passive income real estate. It took him about two years to figure out what he wanted to do with his life and hasn't looked back since. And now he helps people get to six figures in passive income and he's kind of given back and he's got five kids. Ryan. Hank, how are you?

Hey, pleasure to be here. Thank you for, thank you for welcoming me on your show.

Yeah, yeah, no, no worries. So you've done a lot of stuff. Let's just rewind the tape and kind of give us a little bit background how you got out of your corporate drone job and started creating this passive income in real estate. And so let's just see where it takes us.

Yeah, cool, cool. Well, I started like most people out of college and I subscribe to the common formula that you go to college, you get a degree. And this is supposed to, this piece of paper is supposed to guarantee you some sort of way that you have a good income coming in. And of course, it's never the way in real life the way it's articulated to you by college professors or even your parents. So I got this degree. And what do you do when you pay $20,000 a year for college education? Well, if you were Me, you would have gotten a job as a teacher making $24,500 a year. So not exactly a great return on investment of that education. But I was living in the New Orleans area at the time. There was a girl I was dating that I married the next year. And I began to seek other paychecks because 24,500 just wasn't. Wasn't enough for me to live on, much less the spouse I was about to have, much less the amount of kids that we wanted to have. We have five kids now. And so I got a job also driving the bus, coaching two sports. I got a job as a youth pastor and a music minister. And I got my real estate license on the side, thinking that maybe I would get some commission with real estate as well. And so I had like, five different paychecks that I thought that was going to come in that I was just spending 60 hours a week on. Well, then, if you remember, Hurricane Katrina blows through New Orleans. And I was living in New Orleans at the time. We had just bought our first house. And that kind of wiped out all the previous formulas that I thought I had. I thought I had. Well, Maybe I'm making 24,500 a year, but at least I've got a 401k. I've got benefits. I got job security. Well, the school where I was teaching was six feet underwater. And so there went that job. And then we were basically displaced for a while. Was actually not technically. Well, technically, I was homeless for a few days. I didn't have a place to go. You couldn't get back into New Orleans for about three weeks. And so I remember being at this point where my wife was eight months pregnant. We have no place to live. We're staying at her little brother's college apartment at LSU. And she is the oldest of 11 kids, so it was her entire family that was staying over there. There was no place for me to sleep, and I actually had, like, my head out the window trying to breathe, because inside the car, we were rationing gasoline. I had like six gas cans around me. I was trying not to inhale the fumes. So this put me on this binge of, like, kind of in survival mode, you know. Like a lot of people, you know, they, you know, might not be that drastic where hurricane comes in and wipes things out, but everybody's got, you know, situations or tragedies that. That have happened in their life that kind of put this. Them in this mode of, all right, I got to survive now. And so I was in survival mode. And there was two things in that year that I was really good at. The first was getting told no for jobs that I applied for. And the second was, you know, since everybody was telling me no, I decided I've got to hire myself. So the second was actually just failing miserably at trying to start my own business. I actually had, like, a drug addict that I hired that stole $4,000 from me and went to Australia with it. But at any rate, I finally got a job selling copiers, which was great experience, but it was just. Just the most miserable job ever. So it was that typical corporate job. You're driving to work every day, you're punching a clock, you're working more than 40 hours. If you want to make your commissions, you're working a little extra. And I'm just doing something every day that I hated doing. I felt like I wasn't contributing to the world. I felt like I had a lot of gifts and talents that I wasn't really using. And the rubber hit the road for me when I was driving across the causeway of New Orleans, which is. They say it's the longest bridge over water in the world. And I had just gotten my butt chewed out by a Catholic monk who I just sold a copier to. And, you know, the copier world, there's like 34 people involved in transaction. All of them can screw up at you, but you're the one that gets the brunt of it. So I just got finished getting chewed out, and I thought to myself, wow, this is as bad as it gets because I'm just over broke. I can barely afford my family as it is. I hate what I do. I'm waking up every day with anxiety. And I asked this one question that really changed my life. It was a huge game changer and everything I did subsequently. And I said, what would I do if money didn't matter? Say I had a million or $2 million in my bank account. What would I be doing right now? And I thought to myself, well, if money didn't matter, then I would maybe open up an indoor sports arena, or I would play music or something. And my wife, who I never had this conversation with before, I called her and I said, hey, babe, you know, obviously I'm miserable. We're broke. I'm supposed to be, you know, providing with this job. I'm not even providing with it. What could you see me doing if, you know, we had a million dollars and money didn't matter? She said, I don't know, maybe opening up an Indoor sports arena or something like that, or playing music. We had never had this conversation anymore. So I was like, well, remember, it was your idea first. So I just started pursuing it. But one of the things that got me there, I said to myself, I've got this working hard formula down, and I've been taught all my life that working hard equals success. But if that were true, then coal miners would be millionaires. Working hard is not really doing it for me at this phase of my life. So I got to start working smart. So I started reading books, financial books, all kinds of other books. And I stumbled across Robert Kiyosaki's Rich dad, Poor Dad.

Isn't that funny that that is the book it's such a catalyst for so many people on and start buying assets and building passive income.

Exactly. I mean, it really shifted my mind frame. It shifted all the previous formulas that I had been taught. And a lot of people are like, where do you start? And they want to know exactly what to do. That book doesn't really show you what to do, but it's completely shifts your mindset on how you should approach things. And I'm very grateful for that. And so I decided real estate is going to be my vehicle. I'm going to use real estate as a way to make passive income. And it was a long period of discovery on strategy, because if, you know, as, you know, if you get started in real estate and you're just like, I'm starting from scratch, where do I go? There's thousands of things out there on what to do. And it's like trying to put all the pieces together on the exact things you should do right now. And I did a lot of things and lost money on them, and some things I made money on. But basically I broke it down into one specific strategy. And once I nailed this strategy, I was able to create enough passive income to replace my working income. So not only did I replace my working income, I didn't have to work anymore, but I replaced my wife's working income so she didn't have to work anymore. And I grew our net worth to over a million dollars in one year. Now, keep in mind, I was pretty desperate and I was really aggressive with it. And then a year later, I opened up my indoor sports arena. And a year after that, I opened a second one up on the south shore of New Orleans, and that was all she wrote.

Wow. Scott Todd, what are your thoughts?

I got lots of thoughts here. First, it's amazing what you can do when you start to ask the Right. Questions. Right. It's funny because when you're going through life and you're just going through the routine, like what you said, you're driving over the bridge and you just ask yourself a question. It's a very simple question that you probably have heard people say or refer to that multiple times. It's not like you just came up with this new question in the world, but you asked yourself a question, and then it took you down a path of discovery. And it's always amazing to me, like, when people are struggling, it's just like, literally, it comes down to, like, one question or one moment. And, like, I've had scenarios where I've struggled, like what you're saying, and you're like, you just. I hate my job. What am I supposed to do here? Something's wrong. You know, it's not right. And then all of a sudden, you just. Just one little question, it's like it gets your brain thinking in a different avenue. And then the other thing is that, you know, Ryan, I think that one of the cool things about your story, and I mean, we didn't go. We didn't go into that, like, how do you go from where you are to getting an indoor sports arena? Right. That's a whole story in and of itself, which I'd love to know. But what I know for a fact is that there's no way that you knew all of the answers to go from where you were to achieving that goal before you started. The reality is, is that I'm sure along that path, you. You kind of had like, okay, well, maybe here's the first two steps. One, two. And then you started down the path. And then like, three, four, five opens up. And the next thing you know, you're at step, what, 10,000. Whatever it takes to do that. And it's so simple to sit there and tell yourself, man, I need to know how this whole thing is going to work before I go down the path. And you can't do it. There's no way.

Exactly. I call it the ready, fire, aim process. You get ready, you learn a piece of knowledge, you fire, and then you either hit the bullseye or you completely miss. But you know how to adjust it after you miss if you do. And that's. That's the exact process that I went through, a constant ready, fire, aim type process.

So, Ryan, walk us through your unique real estate strategy.

Yeah, so my strategy, it starts with understanding the two different strategies involved in real estate. So there's basically, when you strip everything away, everything can Be fit into two categories. There's what I call quick nickel and there's slow dime. Quick nickel is flipping like wholesaling and, you know, just buying, rehabbing what you guys do with land, you know, that that's a quick nickel strategy. And then there's slow dime. And there's a way to make those passive income by automating the process and whatnot. And then there's slow dime, which is simply, you know, you buy something and you rent it out. And when I was first getting started, I was. Because I didn't have money to start with, I was trying to buy things with owner financing and creative financing. So I would basically get the owner to become the bank. To me, well, after doing one of these deals where I basically took out a home equity line of credit, and I used that as a down payment to this guy for his house, I thought to myself, wow, this guy's got a pretty great deal because he got $34,000. He doesn't have to go out and talk to tenants or fix pipes or anything else like that. He doesn't have to cover the taxes. If anything, you know, hurricane blows through again, I'm responsible for the insurance claims like I was responsible for everything. So it basically took that asset that was, even with the property manager, not entirely passive. And it made it entirely passive. And so I thought to myself, well, this is basically the strategy of the banks. Like Wells Fargo isn't going out to fix pipes. Wells Fargo isn't getting phone calls saying, hey, I might not be able to make it this month. So I thought to myself, well, why don't I focus on acquiring real estate assets however I acquire them, be it a private money lender or a cash investor, home equity, line of credit, whatever it is that I use, I've even put credit cards together, business lines of credit. I put enough together to buy something at a foreclosure sale and then turn around and refinance that with the bank. But I thought, why don't I just acquire the assets? However, I've been trained to acquire them and then turn around and instead of flipping the house where I might make 10,000 to $60,000, and instead of becoming a landlord where I might make 200 to $1,000 in passive income, why don't I become the bank to other people? So in that way, I can get 10 to 60 thousand dollars as a down payment or an option payment on the house, and then I can create a lease where I'm getting 200 to $1,000 per month in passive Income. And that way I'm both making the quick nickel and I'm making the slow dime.

So you're essentially the bank. Right. So Scott wants to buy your house. Right. That you bought, let's say 80 cents on the dollar. You sell it to Scott for 100 cents on the dollar.

Exactly.

Gives you the down payment. And then you owner finance him and he owns that house at the end of that note, correct?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Then you deed the property. Now, with Dodd Frank, doesn't that limit you? Because now you can only do this so many times before you are a mortgage originator.

Well, there's all kinds of ways to go through that. I mean, there's different instruments that you could use to own or finance something, and it's a technicality, but it's a way to do it to avoid Dodd Frank. I mean, there's bond for deeds. There's deeds and loos. There's credit sales, there's land contracts. The way to do it is to basically get an option, and that is separate from a lease. You can option as many properties as you want with a lease, and that's the way to avoid some of those stipulations.

Scott Todd, this is very similar to the Mitch Stephens model. What do you think it is?

But, I mean, that's what I was thinking. But like, Ryan, are you taking, like, rundown homes or is it. And not putting money into them, or are these things truly livable and the margins are tighter?

It's kind of both. You know, the majority of my houses are bought from motivated sellers, but a lot of them are foreclosure situations as well. So there's typically. Not all the time, but most of the time there is a little repair that's needed in the houses.

Okay, great, great. And then if they don't pay, big deal. There's. If you're doing a land contract, there's no cost of foreclosure. You just get another down payment and resell it again. How often does that actually? What's your default rate?

Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, I like doing this because you get to help people become homeowners again that didn't have the chance to become a homeowner through the bank. So one of the first people that I did it with, they were a new couple. They had bad credit in the past because they made some foolish mistakes. They had a new baby and they had some medical debt. So their credit wasn't great, but their income was great. And they had a down payment that they could give me and it made me feel really good a couple years later for them to be able to become homeowners and to be able to create wealth in their new life. That's 50% of them, in my experience, is 50, 50. Other people have said 80, 20. Some people have even said 90, 10. But in my experience, it's been 50, 50. And it might be the way that I'm doing it, but the other 50% of them, they do default on it. And it's actually. You might think that that's a bad thing. Actually, financially, it's the best thing. I've had a house where I've gotten $20,000 the first time, $30,000 a second time, and $40,000 the third time on one house. And it's always a situation. People think, well, you know, these people must have been, you know, pissed when you kicked them out. Well, I never kicked them out. So the first guy, he had an argument with this girl that, you know, he said was, like, his daughter. I guess it was. It was just a weird situation. She was supposed to take over the rent payments. She never did. She moved out. He didn't need the house anymore. And he said, well, what are my options? I said, well, based on our contract, you can sell the property. You've got equitable interest in the property. You can go ahead and sell it, put it on the market. So he cleaned everything up. He painted everything. Everything was better than how I left it. And the house was completely vacant because he was putting it on the market. Well, he asked about 30 grand more than what the house was worth, and it didn't sell. And so after 30 days, he's like, I can't keep on paying this note. I just got to give it back to you. So he just gave it back to me in pristine condition. The second and third couple, they were just divorced, and I gave them the same option. Look, you could sell this. Why don't you sell it? But you have to honor your agreement with me in the meantime. And because they were just both getting divorced, they're like, we just want to be done with it. And so it's. In my experience, it's never been unpleasant having to remove somebody from that situation. It's just a nice chunk of cash down that they're ready to move on from.

Yeah. Scott, doesn't this sound familiar?

I'm sitting here thinking, like, of all the people that I've taken land back from, Mark, I've never had anybody, like, lash out at me, because, you know, like, they're like. Even when they have stopped paying. I mean, I've had people that are just like, I don't want it anymore. I can't afford anymore, whatever. But of all the people that I've, like, told them, like, hey, our deal is over, right? Like, send them a notice of termination. Like, it's over because you didn't make the payments. I've never had anybody, like, lash out at me and call me a slime bag or anything, Knock on wood. But the reality is, it's like they know. Like, they know that they and I had one guy, Mark, that we gave them. I think we actually gave him, like, 90 days. And then we turned around, we sold the property. Like, we took it back. We gave him an extra 30 days. We took it back, and then we literally sold it, like, two days later. And then about a week later, he calls up, he's like, I want. I got the money.

I want to pay.

And we're like, we already sold the property, man. And he's like, okay, I understand. And then, like, I had another guy call me up. I don't know, six months later, he's like, hey, Ken, I know this is not. It's not fair to ask you this, but I'm gonna ask anyway. But, you know, like, I paid you all this money. Can I at least get a credit to apply to another property? And we're like, yeah, no problem. And so, like, he started paying us again. It's amazing.

Yeah. Ryan, your model is very similar to our model in land. We do owner financing, we do land contracts, and it's just volume and just play the game. Can we create enough of these notes where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses? There's no cost, foreclosure. We don't have to worry about Dodd Frank. We don't have a tenant, and it's pretty amazing. So my question is, why doesn't everybody do this? You know, you go to a REIA meeting, right? And there's going to be a hundred people in that room. 99 are going to be house flippers, wholesalers, or landlords. Ryan, why are you going to be the only person kind of doing this model like this?

That's a great question that goes back to Scott's original point is you've got to ask the right questions. And that's a very good question that your listeners should pay attention to. Why isn't everybody doing this? And my answer to that is, it's got to be fears. You know, people have perceived fears, fears of what that situation is going to look like. Like, you just Confirmed. And in my experience, like, it's never been a problem to take back a property that someone put $40,000 down on. Just the way it pans out. If you go visit the pre foreclosure sales, go visit people going through pre foreclosure, they abandon the properties, they leave them, they don't care anymore, they have moved on in their life, they've accepted a loss. Whatever's going on psychologically with them, it's never an issue. And with you guys, it's never been an issue. And it's just one of those things that people perceive that it's going to be a certain way that it's actually not. So I think it's just kind of following your barriers down that rabbit hole and say, well, all right, let me not just say no to this strategy because I perceive this fear. Let me actually look into this and figure out how this is really going to pan out.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. So what's some of the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise?

Well, you know, I think if I could speak in general to real estate, I think that the biggest problem out there is a lot of people understand that real estate is this great mechanism for developing wealth. And people understand that this could be the vehicle, like I understood when I really didn't know anything about it. This could be the vehicle that, that gets you from point A to point B. I think the problem is that there's a lot of gurus out there that are just pushing one strategy. And so a lot of people just go into it to try to create passive income financial freedom from themselves, but what they end up doing is they end up in a strategy that is just another job. So if you solely focus, for example, on wholesaling or rehabbing or flipping, that's going to be your job for the rest of your life. Unless you combine those strategies some sort of way with a passive income creating strategy, then, you know, then you got into it for a certain reason, but you ended up with the same result.

Yeah, I mean, we see that all the time. Just even people that buy their own business or start their own business, they think, oh, this is going to be my path of freedom, and they become slaves to that. So, Ryan, we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to put you on the spot, ask you for your tip of the week, a website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got.

Well, you're actually asking me this at a good time because just yesterday I finished recording the audio version of my book, and so today it's actually released. And the concept of this book is, and I'm sure you guys get asked this all the time, where do you start? Where do you start? In real estate? And you're like, well, you know, it's hard to answer that question. Do you have any money? How's your credit? You know, what was your risk tolerance? And so I was actually watching this show on TV called Alone My kids. We had a, you know, another hurricane, that hurricane threat. So the kids were off of school and they're begging me, watch this show alone. Have you ever seen that show alone or heard of it?

I haven't, no.

It was a History Channel show. And the whole concept is they take 10 guys and they drop them off by airplane or boat on Vancouver island in Canada.

Oh, yeah, now I know that. I know that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the whole concept is they've got one backpack that they can fill whatever they want in it. They got one backpack, and the person who survives the longest wins a half a million dollars. And as I'm watching the show, I ended up binging it like crazy. But as I'm watching this show, I'm thinking, this is a lot like real estate, because real estate is just a game of mindset, skills and strategy, and that's all that this show is about. So I was really inspired by the show. So I thought to myself, if I lost everything, which I did in Hurricane Katrina, but if I lost everything, had to start all over. I had no money, I had no credit to borrow on. I had no experience. I was just in a random town in the world and I had creditors knocking at my door. I had bills stacked up this high. I had a family that I provide for. What would I do to make $10,000 this month? And so the name of the book is called the Seven Day Real Estate Survival Blueprint. How to create $10,000 out of nothing in Less than a month. So what I go over is I basically pack 15 days worth of my real estate experience into a seven day step by step battle plan by the hour of exactly what I would do, who I would talk to. And I talk about two different strategies that I would use, because you can't use banks in that situation. And so, you know, for your listeners, I'd love to be able to give them an offer for the book. If they could just cover the shipping cost. I'll send them the book for free. And that link would be. Cashflowdadlife.com landgeek all right, we'll have a link for sure.

That's really generous of you. Cashflowdadlife.com Landgeek Easy. So phenomenal. Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark, I know you have moved on from email like you're working to break your email addiction, right?

Yeah. I'll tell you what, by the way, I'm on week four, have not checked my email more than twice a week. Same thing with social media. No more than. I mean, not twice a week, twice a day, same thing with social media. And then just typical, you know, other things. I think. I think I'm not ready to put the mission accomplished banner up yet, but it's getting close.

All right, all right.

Well, for those of us that are, like, still, like, working in our email, check out KanbanMail app. KanbanMail. So k a N B A N mail app. And it's very, very similar to, like, Trello. So you take Trello, you combine it with your mail. It all comes up on the left side. You can say, like, this is to do. This is being done today. This is in progress, or this is done. And like, you literally drag your mail through. Because most people end up working out of their email. We know that. Right. Like, email has transformed from a method to communicate to a method to keep track of the work that we have to do. So why not think about it in a different aspect? So if you like the idea of thinking of your email kind of in a modular format so that you can keep track of what's happening, check out this app website.

Wow. Have you done it yet?

I did. I did. It's pretty cool. It's kind of like, it's one of those situations where I do like seeing the email this way. I do like the way that some of the tools that Gmail actually has too. But, you know, you kind of, kind of got a balance it. But if you're. If you're a person that works out of your email, you really need to look at this app. I love it.

I love it. I don't know if it's necessarily for me because I do love my snooze on Gmail.

And that's. That's kind of what some of the things that you give up. But, you know, and I kind of have some integrations built into my Gmail. So, like, I've got some app set up that say, like, okay, if. If I tag this record as, like, accounting, it automatically sends it to my, to my bookkeeper or you know, so like there so I don't have to then go and forward the email. I just tag it. It goes into that label on the left hand side and goes. So this isn't for everybody, but if you're struggling with the way that you work in email, check it out.

I love it. I love it. And of course, my tip of the week is going to be learn more about ryan enck@cashflowdadlife.com cashflow dadlife.com Ryan, are we good?

Yeah. That was fun. Thank you so much.

Well, thanks so much for coming. Scott, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right. I want to remind the listeners the only way, the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like Orion Enck from cashflowdadlife.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate and review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch Kit. So please do that. Today's podcast is sponsored by Geek Pay IO. Ryan, you should check it out. It's working great for you. Get those monthly payments on an automated basis via ach. The it'll charge a credit card on file. It'll do the amortization will do all the notes. Never do you have to pick up the phone again and talk to a borrower, say, hey, what's my current balance? They can log in and see it. It does all the notifications. You can always make more money. You can't get more time. Check out Geek Pay IO. Anyways, I want to thank all the listeners and of course, let freedom. Thanks everybody.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income Podcast. Start your journey at www.thelandgate.com and www.scotttogg.net. rate and review the podcast and email support. The landgeek.com your screenshot for a free passive income launch kit.