#192: Buying Into The Real & Tangible World Of Property Investing with CJ Calio

Did you inherit $1 million from your grandparent or are you about to become wealthy from someone else's hard work? If you say yes to these questions, this show is not for you. You, the hard working, committed and ambitious professional who have a 9 to 5 corporate job or a 12 hour shift worker keeping the assembly line running. Perhaps you run your gig as a freelancer or maybe you run a small business. You are in the right place. Welcome to the Career Evangelist Podcast where you get your weekly tips, ideas, strategies and inspiration to find purpose in what you do so you can build a career you are passionate about and live a fulfilled life. Here is your host, Bola Alabi.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Career Evangelist Podcast. I'm so excited to have you guys join us here today and I'm happy because we have a guest in the house. We have C.J. kalio. So if you are looking to learn about real estate investing, CJ is the guy for you. CJ is a co founder of WNN Properties LLC and a full time investor in residential and commercial real estate. After raising millions of dollars since 2015 building its own residential and commercial portfolio, CJ is now here to help others become financially free. You know he's gonna teach you guys how to do just the same. Anyway, without keeping you guys waiting any further, I'm gonna bring in my guest, cj. Hey, cj, it's nice to have you here.

Yeah, Bola, thank you for having me on your show.

Welcome to the show. So to those that will not be seeing this, you know, for people that will be just be listening or podcast, I like your shirt. I have bought you. Brr.

Out.

Okay, I like that. So if you don't mind, can you tell us how you got into residential and commercial real estate investing?

Sure, Bola. So my story I've been told, it's very unique and it goes back to when I was working my W2 profession, which was a UPS driver for. So for those that are well aware, we're the brown guys, right in the suit. And, and there's that time of year during Christmas where we become the Santa Claus in the brown suit. It was a good paying job, had good benefits, had good retirement, had good medical, and it was something that I stepped into right out of high school to support my family and was satisfied there, you know, working the 9 to 5, which really wasn't as a UPS driver because we have no set finish time. And I was comfortable in this lifestyle up until I wasn't and it was around nine years ago. Ten years ago, where I was going through that peak season, that Christmas time of year where UPS drivers see more work, we had an uptick in volume of packages far beyond what we've seen in the past. And I found myself working seven days a week, 70, 80 hours plus, and not seeing my family for a very long period of time. It, this went on from October till February during that Christmas season. And during that time, all of a sudden this, this job that I loved and it was, it was something I was satisfied with, that paid well, had good benefits and, and retirement and vacation, all of a sudden it wasn't that appealing to me and I started being angry and frustrated and depressed at work, largely in part to me not being able to be with my loved ones during the most precious time of year, Christmas, you know, and so we should be able to be there with them and watch my kids watch open presence and sharing the joy of the season. And wasn't around, I wasn't around for five to six months. So with all that pent up frustration, anger, finding myself not seeing them for such a long period of time, came to the conclusion, I'm not willing to do this for the next 30, 40 years to retirement. Something's got to shift. So fast forward to when the season finally slowed down and I got back into what seemed to be somewhat of a routine. The first thing I did was I had a conversation with my wife. I was like, look, I'm not happy here this Christmas. I don't know if it's going to happen again. I'm not, I'm not wanting to take that chance. Would you support me in quitting? And she surprised me with this answer. Right. Wow. I shot her with that, that question. And she surprised me with her response. Her response was absolutely. I was thinking the same thing. Thing is, I didn't, she didn't like me not being home and with the kids. She asked me one pressing question though. Are you going to replace your income? I had no answer for it.

That's a good question.

Yeah, it was such a good question. And I wasn't prepared for it because I was so emotional and still caught up in the anger and the frustration and in everything that was going through during that season that I didn't have a solution. So she proposed one about real estate. Initially, I went from yes, my wife supported me to what the hell are you talking about? Real estate.

Yeah.

So I got super defensive, I got angry and I actually turned away my greatest supporter, which was her. And I said, you know what, thank you. I don't know anything that is not my, my realm of, of capabilities. I'm, I don't understand it. You go do it. So I basically pushed her out the door and said, you go figure out a way to produce my, my paycheck. Instead, I went to what I thought I knew, which was creating startup businesses and doing things that I knew I personally could do, which, long story short, didn't pan out. All my startups failed and I found myself in just as much stress, just as much anger and frustration and more money out of my pocket than when I first started. So about six to nine months later, after failed startups, that's how quickly they went up and, and dissolved. I came back to her more humble because she was still in real estate, she was still looking into it. And I said, you know what, I don't understand it, but what I'm doing isn't working. So let me just get a hold of real estate and let me just try this thing out. So she invited me to a networking meetup and I was the husband in the background, arms crossed, super defensive, not approachable, basically pushing people towards her, saying she's all about real estate. I'm just here for support. And, and, and I started having transformation. The more I went to these networking events, having conversations with like minded people who were doing real estate and finding success in areas ensuring their failures. And all of a sudden my pride started to, to just drop and I became more open and willing to hear out opportunity and possibility. In a short period of time, I went from the guy in the back of the room, arms crossed, not approachable, to the one in front, walking and networking and looking for opportunity and deals. And we grew our portfolio and found financial freedom in five years through consistent, persistent effort. We learned a lot of lessons along the way and we're just excited to share with you. That's why our bio has that we are now a mentorship company because we feel like if I had guidance, I may have been able to reach it sooner. That's our story.

Okay. No, I like that C.J. and I like your story. There are quite a number of people out there that they may be frustrated with their situation, but most of the time they do nothing about it. You know, for you, you did something, you took that bold step. It's risky, I admit, but you took a step and that's very, very important. You did something, you learned about real it and you, you, you just said it. You, you gain network, you build your network, you work and talk with other people. So those are very Very essential. Now I must ask you, why are you interested in helping other people to learn and do the same thing that you have done?

So that's a great question, Bola. When I, when I, when I achieved that, that initial goal of financial independence and being able job realized very quickly, it wasn't about the money. It was about the freedom of time and getting into that position and seeing my fellow friends and co workers and family members who were still in the perceivable rich. Dad calls it rat race. Right in, in that wheel, never getting any real traction. It, it was like, you know what we got, we got to be able to help somebody. There must be others out there that are wanting to achieve this as well. And if I can do it, not the smartest guy in the room, not somebody that went through college or has some fancy degree, just putting in that hard, persistent effort and work and be open to learning something new that might be uncomfortable. You can achieve it if you'd stay true and trust the process, right? So that's where I found myself. Like, you know what? There's got to be others out there. And that was the thing. When I achieved it, others took notice, right? When you hit a level of success, people start to take notice in the beginning. They're like, there's no way you're going to be able to do this, cj. You're going to fail. And when I achieved it, like, you really did do this? Did you teach me? And that's what came into this mentorship is like, I get real fulfillment seeing other people achieve success far beyond what they thought they could when they first started.

So I'm personally very passionate about mentoring and I like the father you are mentoring people out there. You know what? Just last week, a friend of mine reached out to me and said, hey, Bola, I want to start investing in real estate in my own way. I just told him, hey, this may not be the right time. Interest rate is high, all the properties are high up there. But I also do know that people, the experts, they often say that the best time to invest is now. All you need to do is to go in at the right price, make sure you are cash positive. So I want to ask you, because to me, you are also an expert, cj, how can anyone get started in investing in real estate? What does it entail? What do I need to know? Because look at my advice to my friend. Maybe I misled him, but I want to hear from you, cj.

No, I, I think you gave him some very sound advice. And what we what we, me and my wife tend to do with new investors that approach us, asking us, you know, how do I get started? Our first question is why real estate? So we actually take it prior to the, the vehicle. We call real estate a vehicle. We want to know why you're getting into the vehicle. There's got to be a reason. So if it goes back to my story, my why was I wanted my time freedom. I wanted to be able to replace my income. And, and that helped me figure out the best receivable strategy that I could find, which is buy and hold investment properties that produce cash flow. Now, there's so many other ways to invest in real estate to achieve the same goal, financial independence. I specifically chose cash flow. So when we asked them why some people would just want to invest in real estate to have a secondary stream of income or to make a lot of money really quick, which would be flipping or wholesaling, right? And we, we were able from that why to then direct them because we don't believe we're, we're the mentors for everybod. We believe we work with specific people who want to do what we do to have what we have. If you can answer both of those questions with a mentor and say yes to both, you probably found the right one. But if I'm in buying holding cash flow and you're looking to flip, I'm not your guy. However, I do have a network where I can redirect. So if Bola is now into flipping and able to guide you, I'm going to send them to Bola because now I know and trust him through the network that he'll take good care of those that I passed on to him. And so we take it straight to the why. If you don't have a why, that's the opportunity. The initial opportunity, I think, for investors to start with is what why real estate? There's so many ways to achieve financial independence. Real estate is just one of them. And that one piece is a big pie that can be cut into a million different slivers. Pick your slice.

Now that's you ask them the why question. You want to know what motivates them, right? So after knowing what motivate them, let's say they are also in a similar shoe as yourself many years back. What's the next step? Now that let's say I came to you, I want to get into real estate investment, right? Let's say I'm just looking for ways to quickly get out of that rat race. What would be the Next step.

The next step would be simply finding and surrounding yourself with like minded people. What is the saying? Your net work is your net worth equals your net worth. That's what shifted for me. I went from somebody who was against real estate to a believer and promoter of real estate purely by staying in the space enough and be open is to be open to seeing different perspectives. I came in defensive, closed off. This is a scam that I don't know anything. There's no way I can make money in this. In real estate business, I'm not an agent, blah blah, all these excuses. Until I started opening my mind to other people's perspective on how real estate could get me to my goal. And that came because I put myself in opportunity networking with like minded people who were doing what I wanted to do, which was invest in real estate, buy and hold out of state.

So CJ I don't know where are you located?

Currently I'm in Reno, Nevada. However, when we started, I'm born and raised in Hawaii and I just moved here about 18 months ago.

And the reason why I asked that question was that I want to hear from you. Do you only invest in your local market or you do all over the country?

That's a good question. Bola. I choose not to invest where I'm at purely because I have this fear and thinking I'm going to want to step in at some point and take charge of things. Because that's in my nature. Right. That's what I chose to do when I was looking to pass on real estate. I wanted to things I could do, I could do this, I could do that. So I chose to check myself and create a buffer where I get to invest thousands of miles away, where I entrust into experts, people who are smarter than I am, who are more capable and vast in experience in areas that I'm not an expert in. But I'm good at networking. So what I found is having that skill set of creating relationships, networking. I can create teams in markets and build portfolios of investments with other people, not me being there physically. So I choose not to invest in my, in my backyard.

Okay, awesome. So when is the right time to invest?

Oh, what is the saying? Best time to invest in real estate was 20 years ago. Next best time is now.

Right now.

Yeah, there's, there's opportunity even in the midst of interest rates going up and market corrections. It's like you said, what's your strategy and how are you running your numbers? We're in the business of making money. What was Warren Buffett's rule. Rule number one, don't lose money.

Yeah.

Rule number two at rule number one. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So for me, personally, I'm a student of studying mindsets, and I know that for success you need to have the right mindsets. In your opinion, C.J. what kind of mentality or mindset is required to be successful in real estate investing? Because we really need to teach people to have that mindset so that they can be positioned for success.

Yeah, mindset is key. Mindset is what separates the best from the rest. So with that being said, redefining failure is one of my key mindset shifts that I chose to make. Where, okay, failure is not failure unless I quit. It can be a lesson, and it's tuition to an investment towards my future growth. And as soon as I shifted what people may call failure to this is an investment, I started making headway and growth because it wasn't like I failed. It's. I learned something new. I don't know what. I don't know a lot of what we do, we, we don't control majority of what we do. In real estate, you don't control the interest rates, you don't control the market, you don't control who rents it. To an extent, you don't control all these things. You get to accept that can control very limited things. But the things that I control can still make and achieve my goal. And that comes from having a good mind. And it requires practice. It's a muscle. We get to consistently work on it. I'm a forever student of mindset as well. I'm always looking and investing in other programs and mentorships that will increase and stretch my comfort zone. That's where I grow.

So it's funny that you mentioned failure. You know, if we talk about real estate investing, people would think that it's all rosy, all sweets. Let's, let's talk about some challenges so that people can prepare their mind. So maybe do you want to share with us one or two challenges that you have encountered personally in your journey?

CJ yeah, 100%. So transport verify is something we talk a lot about in our, in our mentorship and in our community because it was one of our biggest early lessons. Early on, we started with turnkey. We didn't have the experience, understanding, or team in place. So we found through the network that we can get started quickly by going to a turnkey company. And that's what we did. We bought our first property, actually our first handful of properties, turnkey. And what we Found was the first deal was a great deal. It worked out extremely well. We call it luck because we weren't intentional about it. It was just, we happen to buy the right property at the right time at the right tenant from the right company. When we went to other companies, we took that mentality that it's going to repeat itself because it happened the first time. So we didn't verify. We didn't do background checks, we didn't check if the tenant was qualified and all these other things prior to closing. And we found ourselves with our, our second turnkey property where we bought it from a company, didn't verify anything, found out after close that they put in a homeless person that was willing to sign a forgin a fake lease above market rent, where we had a fun eviction during winter, which is why the guy probably offered to sign a fake lease because he didn't want to be on the streets during the cold. And, and the rehab was done so poor that the sewer line wasn't connected to the sewer main. We had a cesspool build up in our front yard, and that was an additional $10,000 fixed on top of our deposit down payment. Excuse me, our down payment on top of the eviction and on top of the redoing of some of the rehab work that was already done. So we forgo, we forwent inspections, which was our biggest mistake. And we didn't verify tenant income and the, you know, the whole nine yards that you want to do with somebody who's going to rent your property. And that's why trust but verify, in our opinion, is very important to do.

No, that's so good inspection. I completely get that, at least from my own experience as well. And you said tenant verification. You got to make sure that your tenants can pay your rent for a very, very long time. So that's very good for to, to share with us. CJ so now let's talk about your mentoring program, because I know some of my listeners out there that will be listening to this. They may want to reach out, connect with you and learn how they can also start their own real estate investing journey. Tell us, maybe you can give us some, some kind of overview of your mentoring program. Let's say I'm coming to you today. How do you take me in and start helping me to build my own portfolio?

Understood? Bola yeah. So one of the things we do is we like to do an interview because like I said in the beginning, if I'm doing what you want to do and I have what you want to have I may be a good fit for you and we're going to qualify you. So having a conversation with one of our advisors which are basically past students who are successful and continue to do what we taught, there are testimony, they'll interview you in the process and then they'll offer you an opportunity to come in the space for a year. And when you come into the space for a year, why a year? We're firm believers of the acronym focus. We call it follow one course until successful and give us a year. What I've seen in the past working with new investors is that they quit far too early. Like think and grow rich, Napoleon Hill, that one gentleman who is three feet from gold.

Oh I know that.

That's, that's the concept around give us a year to help you start building. Now we don't guarantee you're going to get anything because it's a lot of it is on you. I can't make you do what you say you're going to do however we hold you accountable. And secondly, you're in a community of like minded investors that are very focused and specific to the same strategy and they're at all different levels that you get to network with. And with that paired with mentorship seems to be a very good recipe through the last five years of success where people get to their goals far sooner than they think they could.

That's good. So I know you will not want to give us any specific amount to start with but I'm going to ask this question this way for those people out there that may have little to no money to start. Maybe just a guy on fifty thousand dollar annual income and he wants to start building his own real estate portfolio. How can this person start? Because for most people they always when it comes to real estate you are thinking about hey I need 20 down payment and that's often scare people away. Are there other ways that people can get in even with little to no money?

100% it and one of the the things that we like to leverage in our community and we teach and it's all based on your ability to step into the uncomfortable. We like to say get comfortable being uncomfortable because that's where you grow, right? Shifting the mindset around. Well I don't have the money to how can I create opportunity to get money right. Shifting the way you say things helps you in that process. So with somebody with no money we have a lot of people in our community that have no tangible cash to their name right now. However they're willing to Go out and put in the work. And I'm sure your listeners have heard of private money or other people's money, opm. Put yourself out there and find others who might be interested in working with you, creating those partnerships and relationships to satisfy somebody's desire and need to create income this way that supports the way you're wanting to create income. And that's just one of the examples that we get into, into depth in our mentorship program.

Oh, that's good. So, you know, there are different forms of investment. There is the stock market, there's gold there. Why real estate?

My wife did a lot of research, like I said, when I was going through that season, and one of the most common things she found about among the ultra rich and the ultra successful is that they have some level of real estate portfolio in their investment port.

That's correct.

And it's a tangible asset. I, I like to, I like to believe that it's going to be really hard for me to lose all my money in real estate because it's tangible. Right. Land is worth something. Property is worth something. So even if I mess up royally, I'm never losing 100% of it for the most part. There are some special exceptions where somebody could take your land. However, you got to be doing something really bad, shady, legal, for that to even be an opportunity. Opportunity for it to happen. So I find that it's a safe, secure investment that can be generational wealth for my family.

Okay. No, that's good. So what are some maybe recent deals that you, that you've made maybe this year that you want to let us know about?

Yeah, the most recent one is like, like you said in our, our bio, we do residential commercial. So we've been in the commercial realm for like the last four years or so. And our most recent Transaction was a 13,000 square foot vacant building that was distressed. And we were able to come in all cash and buy it and in a matter of 12 months lease it up to a university that is now going to pay really good rental income. And we've essentially doubled the value of the asset in 12 months.

Oh, wow, that's awesome. That's a great one, CJ. You know, that's, that's a good one. Thank you for sharing that. Now, as we are wrapping up, where can my audience, my listeners, where can they find you, you know, so that they can be part of your journey?

Yeah, thanks, Bolo, for the opportunity. If you guys want to follow us on Instagram, it's @WNN properties. And if Like Bola was saying, if I have something that you're looking to do and, and have what you want to have and you want more information about our investment strategies, I'd like to give you a free gift. If you go to why not now in realestate.com you can download your free PDF.

Oh, awesome. One other thing that I always like to give my listeners is to motivate them so that they can take that step, so that they can act. Not only for people to listen and just, you know, kick down the can down the road. Right. I want people to act. So in a minute or so, you are going to be a motivational speaker, CJ So please motivate my listeners. Tell them that they can do it if you can do it, CJ Let them know that they can do it as well.

Yeah, I mean, like, like Bola said, if I can do it, you can do it as well. And just taking on the little things. Ed Millette's quote, people don't decide their future. They decide their habits. Your habits decide their future. So if anything, if you're making small incremental shifts in your daily habits today, the little things add up to the big. Start working on and identifying just subtle shifts in your life and see within a short period of time, let's just say a year, how much you transform who you are and what you're capable of doing, because you're far more capable than you know.

Oh, wow. I like that, C.J. you know, you talked about habits. You know, people need to get on the right track by taking on the right habits. So thank you very much. And you said a little change can lead to a big improvement. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. And that's where we are going to wrap it up today. I've enjoyed this conversation. I'm also going to check out your property because I also want to, you know, why not Now I want to learn about really real estate investing. So you are going to be hearing from acj. Thank you very much for joining us today. We appreciate your time.

Thanks, Paul. It was a pleasure.

All right.