From UPS Driver to Real Estate Mogul with CJ Calio

Before we get going, make sure you're subscribed to the show on whatever audio platform you're using and jump over on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel, the Daily Real Estate Investor. We have shorts coming out daily as well as these podcast episodes on video. Welcome to the Daily Real Estate Investor Podcast. I'm your host, Josiah Smelser. The Daily Real Estate Investor Podcast is the shared journey of building a real estate investment property business from square one. Join me as we learn together how to conquer the real estate game to reach financial freedom. Together, we will learn from people in all areas of real estate and business in our personal trek towards escaping the rat race. Be you do the work you love, play the long game. I'm very excited today to have C.J. calio on the episode. C.J. welcome.

Yeah, just thanks for having me on your show.

Let's dive into your story. Tell us how you got started in real estate investing.

Yeah, I like to think I have a very interesting story because where I'm at today, sitting in front of you and your guest, I would have never thought that maybe eight or nine years ago when real estate first dropped on my radar. See, before this I worked a W2 job and I'm from Hawaii. So you know, it's very high cost of living and finding a good job with no formal education. I didn't go to college, I barely graduated high school. So I found myself in a beautiful opportunity to work for ups. Very well paid profession, good hours, good benefits, a lot of perks that come with putting in that physical labor. And I frankly, I enjoyed it in the beginning. The cool thing about UPS is that I, I was able to provide a very comfortable lifestyle in Hawaii for my family, for my wife and kids. And the, the funny thing about comfort is it, it's, it's good until it's not. And for, for me, there's this one time of year, I'm sure you and your guests may know where us UPS drivers would dawn on the brown Santa suit and we'd start to deliver those packages to Amazons, the gifts and so forth. And up until this Christmas it was a fun time of year. I enjoyed it. I had a fulfillment of delivering and packages and making people smile. Yet this Christmas was different. I call it the Christmas from hell. And the reason for that is we weren't prepared as a company or in Hawaii in particular, we were understaffed. We had more volume in packages needed to be delivered and it lasted a lot longer than it used to in the past. And I found myself working seven 70 hour plus work week, seven days a week, working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, you know, the time of year I'm supposed to be able to enjoy the holidays with my family after serving others, I should be able to have that, that gift of, of memories with my kids and my wife. And it was gone. It was taken away from me during that season. And I found myself depressed, angry, frustrated, questioning, am I, is this worth trading time for money? You know, I'm being paid extremely well, yet I'm missing out on six months of my family's life because of the requirements, the demand of the profession. Well, after the Christmas season was over, I got to sit down and have a real good, serious conversation with my wife. And I said to her, look, this Christmas really sucked. I can't picture myself doing this for the next 30 years. I want to quit. And to my surprise, she said, okay, you can quit. However, I got one question for you. How are you going to replace your income? Because we ain't compromising our lifestyle. We work too hard to get to where we're at today. And she stumped me with that question. I didn't have a clue. You know, I was so emotional in the time, so caught up with all the anger and frustration. I wasn't thinking clearly, I wasn't thinking beyond the obvious. I just didn't want to be there. So she proposed a solution. She's like, hey, you know, while you were doing this, I wasn't happy, the kids weren't happy. So I started researching and looking into options and, and I found that a lot of successful wealthy people have real estate in their portfolio. And I, I, I came across this thing called buy and hold rental properties. It doesn't work for us in Hawaii, but it does in the mainland. Would you be open to that? And I went from yay, my wife's on board, to what the hell are you talking about? I, I want no part of this. I don't understand real estate. I don't have a trade background. I'm barely educated. What, what is this real estate? It just sounds like a scab. So I went from getting support from my lovely wife to pushing her away. And I, quite frankly, threw it on her. I said, well, you want to do real estate, go do it on your own. Let me go figure out what I'm going to do to replace income, which is what I did. After that conversation, she continued on researching real estate, networking, going to those cult meetings, the REI meetups, and getting brainwashed is what I was thinking at the time. And I Went into what? What I only knew was, which is how do I create a business around what I'm capable of doing? I did a lot of startup businesses, and like most startups, they don't work. So six, nine months later, after several failed startups, found myself in more debt, more stress, more anger, more time spent with no return. So it was a humbling experience where I looked at my wife and I was like, you're still doing this. Maybe it's time for me to get on board with you. So I did. Right. Reluctantly, I joined her at those cult meetups. I went to the REI meetups. I was that husband in the back, crossed arms, not approachable, deflecting anybody who wanted to talk to me, to my wife, because she's the one writing the show. I'm just here for moral support. And the thing, the interesting thing that started to happen as I attended more and more of these meetups with her is I started to, to lower my pride. I started to make myself open to possibility. I, I, I heard these speakers and I heard their, their testimonies around the things that worked and the things that didn't, and their commitment to seeing it through even in the midst of challenges and opportunities. And it gave me a little bit more confidence, like, well, if they're able to go through this and perceivably fail at it and still want to do more of it and find success beyond failure, maybe I can too. So the, the shift in my mindset started to happen by being amongst the people who were doing what we wanted to do and had what we wanted to have, and, and eventually we pulled the trigger and bought our first rental property out in the Midwest from a reference in one of these REI meetups. And it was a turnkey property. It wasn't anything special, but it got us started. And from there, it was like we got bit by the bug. We drank the Kool Aid. I was on board 100%, and I saw that this concept could get us to our goal, which at that time, after our first property, our vision plan was to shorten my retirement by five years. So instead of 30, it was 25 years. I'd get out. We buy one property a year, we'd get there eventually. We pay down the debt, we get financial freedom in 25 years. The cool thing is, is that opportunity. And after opportunity presented itself, we learned, we grew, we challenged our mindset, and we went from one to 90 in less than four years. And we're able to reach financial freedom through real estate far quicker than we ever Thought we could. And a large part was in investing in network and mindset.

That's an incredible story. There's a lot to unpack there. But I want to go back to you delivering packages at ups. You're overwhelmed with your work and you're thinking to yourself, why am I trading my time for money? And this is a point at which almost every financially free real estate investor has also come to in their past and their story. Same thing for me. You, you eventually realize at some point the most valuable thing I have is my time.

Yes.

And I'm trading that for whatever you're making an hour. And typically you're not happy with that. Right. You're like, my time is very valuable. Why, why am I giving it away at this cheap rate? Right, exactly. So the, I think it's like the, to use it, to borrow a phrase from Dave Ramsey, it's the I've had it moment. Right. Where you're like, I can't spend my whole Christmas delivering packages and miss time with my family. Right. I got to make a change in my life.

Right.

And that's a point at which a lot of people have to get to before they take this jump. And you know, you can do it a number of different ways. You can go all in, burn the boats, quit the job, do full time real estate. And it's, and it's, it has its own challenges. The other way is to keep your W2 job to save money, put a little money aside, try to buy stuff that has its challenges as well. Right. Because you don't get the focus that you, that you're able to get if you do it full time. So you said you've, you're, now you've, you've got 90 properties, is that right?

That was at the four year mark. We've been investing for nine, almost nine years now and we've, we've scaled up quite a bit since then.

Gotcha. Is it 90 doors? Is it 90 single families or do you have multifamily or how did you get to 90?

Yeah, it was a combination. A lot of it was singles and we did some small multi, so four units and under. I love duplexes. They were my, my bread and butter for a good season and getting to 90 doors is great. And the realization of how, how much work it takes to stabilize and manage a 90 door portfolio. Even though we outsource it to property management, you still are a very active person maintaining the conversations around why is this vacant? Are we having an eviction? Did we collect rent? If it's late. Where is the late fees coming from? You know, all the other behind us, the not so glorious real estate investing stuff, frankly, kind of boring. That's when my wife does it. I appreciate her for it. But there's a lot of work that goes into that which then we, we really challenged our thinking. Like, is the 90 doors not worth our time? You know, it was, it got us to our goal. We got our financial independence and from there, now we found that, okay, now it's not worth our time to focus on 90 doors, which is what we shifted to next. Now we invest a large part of our investments are in commercial real estate assets. So traditional commercial, not large, multi or buying strip malls, retail centers, government buildings, offices, medical buildings, that type of things. And really taking those, I like to use the monopoly analogy, taking those green houses and trading them in for the red hotel.

I love that. Yeah, it. So, okay, so let's break down what you own just so we can break down the steps you took to get to where you are. How many single families and then how many duplexes to fourplexes and then what do you own that's commercial right now?

Gosh, I can't quite remember the exact door count, but I mean that's a.

Good place to be, right? When you can't remember.

Yeah, I was in acquisition mode for the longest part. As soon as I got on board with process.

I have been there, man. I, there was, there was multiple times that people would ask me what I owned and I would have to sit there and like count, try to count it up and think, oh, we sold that. Now we got this and it's, it's a bless, it's a blessed place to be, you know, to, to. Not really exactly know, but well. So how many single families did you do before you started doing commercial?

Well, we got our portfolio.

How are you buying these single families by the way?

Oh, well, we started off turnkey, right. So using our own money, the traditional method. We didn't know. We didn't know and we, we did. Well, we leveraged. Like you said, staying in your W2 has its benefits. Being in a high paying profession, both me and my wife, we were able to leverage our W2 to get qualified for investor mortgages and we were able to grow our portfolio to a certain size. Around door six we were capped, which is interesting, right, because you would think standard thing out there is 10 doors per person, nine if you're married and you carry under your, your, your wife in your primary. So we got capped at six and a large part of it was due to the high cost of living in property in Hawaii. We owned our home at that time and that debt caused us to go over to DTI debt to income and not qualify for us, which was our first obstacle. Our obstacle was we don't qualify, how do we continue to grow? What do we do next? And that shift went from okay, well we are out of our own money, we don't qualify for mortgages, how do we continue growing? And I started to look into other avenues and one of the avenues we fell in love with was raising private money and the BRRRR strategy. So buy, rehab, rent, refinance and repeat allowed us to take other people's money, money opm, place it in an asset, all cash, do the work, turn around and refinance it out. And we were doing non traditional lending at that time. So like a form of a DSCR loan or a commercial product that allows to do portfolio to get that equity out to then rinse and repeat over and over again.

Love it. That's exactly what I did. Exactly. So on the private money side, let's talk about, because a lot of people ask me about this, how did you find the private money? How did you structure those loans with that private money lender? When you were doing the Burr strategy on your deals and were you using private money to buy the entire deal? Were you using hard money and then private money for the equity? We're using private money and bank financing. I know you said dscr. Let's talk about how you structured those loans for those that have hit their ceiling on the number they can do with what they have and they're also needing to do this strategy.

Yeah, it's a, it's a good topic that I get asked quite often, you know, how do I do the private money thing and for me, where I come from and what I choose to believe I found success in was creating organic relationship. I'm not here to ask for money, I'm not here to, to demand money. I'm here to provide an opportunity and I start with those that I, I know that I have a relationship with pre existing and I present opportunity and in large part is it's based off of a result that I've already created. So I, I had a portfolio of six doors I can reference that I'm already doing this and I'm successful at it. Would you be interested in coming into another deal with me? Because the thing is is that you know, it's not as easy as what people make it out to be right. So if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. It's not. I'm active, you're passive. How do we create that relationship where I can get you a return you're not able to get outside of doing what I do in exchange for me to leverage your capital to go build what I want to build. And that's how I started off hard money. And I did a lot of things wrong, I said a lot of things differently. I over presented, I called it vomiting of information onto my potential lenders because I didn't know what I didn't know. And, and it was through the reps. So everything I, I, I talk about with, with investors is reps. You want to get reps, you want to get results from results. You can then debrief what worked, what didn't and what you could do differently moving forward. And that's what I did. So the first go around, obviously I did the whole formal thing because that's what I was told to do from real estate meetups. Oh well, in order to raise private money, you need to have a packet. Well, I found that it didn't work for those that don't even know anything about real estate. If anything it cause and task way more questions that I was capable of answering or I'm not specialized to answer like legal or tax advice, which are things that I deflect out. Hey, you have questions on that, I'd advise you. I'd suggest that you talk to your professional. I am not licensed or skilled in this, so I can't speak on this. However, this is what the opportunity looks like. And whatever it needed to look like in the beginning to get a result is what I created. So I, I was willing and open to work with small amounts of money or large amounts of money. I was willing to find ways to put in my own capital or to have it fully funded with them 100% depending on their risk tolerance. And that's where I found success. Private money.

I love it. Yeah, you have to create the track record first to then sell yourself to a private money lender. And you don't really even have to sell yourself. The track record will do that for you. If you're trying to find private money and you don't have the track record, that'd be like, you know, I mean put yourself in the lender situation. Someone that doesn't know what they're doing yet is asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars from you, you view them as a high risk that you're not going to get all your money back. Right. So as a private money lender, you want to know that this person knows what they're doing. They can do this in their sleep kind of thing. This is a plug and play for me. And I can make a higher rate of return for the risk I'm incurring than I could if I went and took this less risky option. They don't want to make the same return as they do on an index fund. They want to make more. So they're incurring more risk on you. And to mitigate that risk, they want to know that you're a safe investment for them. So the track record is the first thing, which you got the track record. And I didn't even, you know, when I raised private money, I didn't ever create a packet. The private money lenders were asking me if I needed money. So. And I'm sure you've experienced the same thing now, people know what you're doing. That's why social media is so powerful. You get on here, you establish trust, you let people know your story. They can, over time, gain a sense of trust, and you have credibility with them. Then they know I don't need a packet from this person because I already kind of know what they're doing, and I have a sense that they will pay me back. And also, when you pay people back, those people share that information with others. Those people are going to tell, hey, I lent C.J. this money. He paid me back, and I made this on it. And I'm doing more as much of that as I can. And then you can also tell, hey, go talk to this private money lender. I worked with him, and he'll give you my references and stuff. So for people looking for private money, that's the key is establish a track record, establish trust. And then it's not. You're not necessarily selling yourself. It's more of. You'll have people come to you. And if you are out there trying to find private money and you do have the track record, it's so much easier to do that. So let's talk about now how you were layering and structuring those deals with that private money.

Yeah, it really depend on the person I was speaking to. So interest rates and my. My thing in there, out. Out in the real estate world is I feel like there's this standard. You got to structure your deals that way. I came from a space of. I wanted to know what they wanted, right? What my other. Other person that I was talking to, presenting opportunity to really wanted. Did they want to lend for a year? No. Okay, what are you comfortable lending? Six months. Great. Let me structure it this way. Based off of your, your six month lend, I'm willing to work with people based on what they want to find a way to create that result. Because like you were saying, once they got that, that proof of concept that I paid them back plus the interest I promised them, they're more inclined to want to continue doing this and now become my advocate for others out there that I may present it to that didn't quite see opportunity at the time. The structure wise, my advice to, to everybody out there is to create what's in it for them. Really be intentional around listening to what they want. What I've seen not work for me in the past. Where I, where I met resistance, where I met failure was me wanting to push my agenda on my lender. That did not serve. So coming from a space of asking questions and really getting clear around what's the reason why you want to return? What are you currently investing in? Like these simple questions reveal a lot to you because they want to tell you, they genuinely want to tell you they don't know or understand real estate. They're not your expert, if not they'd be in your shoes, presenting to you. So really paying attention to them. Help me structure deals that I got lens in for three months, I got lens in for two years, I have one Len right now that's five years out based off of what they want and structuring it for a way that makes sense. Now interest rate is where I see a lot of people get hung up on. Well, you know, you can, you can make 10 or 12% if you go with a flipper and this and this. Great. And doesn't mean you have to structure it that way because if somebody's not investing at all, what is a savings account creating for them? Nothing. So if I offer you 2%, that's 2% more than what you're making now. That's a good return for them and I want to educate them. But educating somebody who's not ready for it may kill the deal. Another example of what didn't work for me was over educating, which created fear they weren't ready. So my, my, my proof of concept for them is getting that initial result. How did you like it? Did you like the return? Is this something you're interested in doing moving forward? If so, what if I were to increase your interest and it's a steady growth because there's limitations to thinking around Financial increase when you're not taught it right. I had to go through that. From my journey from UPS to residential to commercial is there's capable returns far greater than what I knew five years ago that I'm realizing today that I don't know what's out there five years from now until I'm ready to receive it. And that's how I work. A lot of my private money structure deals. There is no standard. It's, it's. My answer is always. It depends on the person I'm sitting across.

Yes, definitely. Okay, so you had the private money. Were you using another resource for financing or were you buying these deals in all private money, doing your value add in private money and then doing the refi, paying them back, or how were you doing that part?

So in the beginning, with no real track record with private money, I found ways to get creative around funding part of the deal so that there was always skin in the game for me. Right. I want my lenders to know that I have risk too involved. Because my number one rule that I promote to anybody that talks about private money is always pay back your lender at all costs. It doesn't matter if you have to go back to work. It doesn't matter if you have to work a second job. I personally had to sell a vehicle to pay off a lender that I missed on my numbers. It's not their fault. Even though people like to say out out in the world that, hey, there's risk in everything I choose to come from, I'm going to honor my word. Because if I can honor my word with this, people would then know and trust me and respect me that CJ is good for it with his word. And that's what I'm really presenting the opportunity is I will keep my word. And when I do that now, I get success. So in the beginning, pair it with my capital. However, we ran out of capital. So what we found was lines of credit. What we found was carrying zero balance, zero interest, credit carded cash advancements if necessary. Any way I could fund the deal, I found a way to. It's not the, the limitations of, of of resources is the lack of your resourcefulness, right? So I got very resourceful in those times where I had no cash in my bank. But I found equity. I found lines of credit, I found credit cards that I could get difference. And the cool thing is is these lenders started to see that I'm consistent with my word. I started to put in less and less of my money, which then allowed that money to go to more deals. And that's how I, I scaled quickly.

That makes sense. Yeah, it, I have also done the very same of using zero interest credit cards to fund a deal. And, you know, I know that'd make Dave Ramsey roll in his grave, Right? Well, he's not dead, but in the future, Dave Ramsey. But yeah, I mean, using credit cards, a lot of investors, successful investors that I know have done the very same thing. It's too tempting, right? When you need money and you got this credit card offer and they're saying, hey, we'll give you a cash advance of 15,000. And there's like, it's 0% and there's like a very small cash advance fee on there. And you're looking at this deal where you're going to make 25% cash on cash return. You're like, okay, you do it. Get your value add done, do the refi, pay the credit card off. You got a, basically a zero interest loan with, you know, one point up front or whatever, and you've got a property because you were willing to be creative and look at other resources for your money, not just your savings. Right? And this is something I, I was at Ryan Pineda's wealthcon last week, and something he said there stuck with me. He said, most real estate investors don't have a lot of cash because it's all in their properties. Right? And, and that's, I resonate with that. Like, my properties are cash flowing great. I've got millions of dollars in real estate, but I don't, I don't keep a ton of cash. I have reserves, but I don't. I mean, people think real estate investors that have millions in real estate are just sitting on 5 million bucks in cash in the bank. No, we don't want to do that because that cash is going down in value because of inflation, right? You're losing purchasing power the longer it sits there. So you want to put that cash to work and get that return rolling in. So while we have access to cash and our cash is making cash, our cash is at work making us cash. Most real estate investors don't keep an insane amount of money. Now, in a time like this, where the risk in the overall market has gone up, you want to have more reserves on hand, right? So I'm not telling you, I'm not telling anyone not to have reserves. You want to have reserves. I'm just saying this idea that you're always just flush with massive amounts of cash as an investor, that's not how Investors got to where they are, they put their cash to work and deals. And what you're saying is, you know, when you ran out of your own cash, you got creative on finding that cash and still kept moving. And that is a very high, a very highly correlating factor with almost every investor I've interviewed on here is that they kept going and they figured it out no matter what. Right. They didn't stop because they ran out of their own money. They didn't stop because they didn't have enough time when they were in their UPS job. They didn't stop because their neighbor told them it's a bad time to invest in the market, it's overheated. They didn't stop because of this and that, and they didn't stop because they retired. They didn't stop because it's like they kept going. They figured it out. And I'm buying a deal right now, owner financing, seller financing with 0% from the seller on their equity. And it's kind of a special deal. It's someone I know. So, you know, it's, it's something that we're working out. We believe it's a win, win. But I'm still buying right now. And I know it's risky. I know it's a riskier time to buy. But I also believe that if you buy in times like this, there's some things that can work in your favor as well. Whereas you're buying in 2020, 2021. The market's overheated and everybody's fighting over everything. There's always positives and negatives to every market environment you're going to be in. So I want to talk about the current market we're in. C.J. and I want you to tell me what your thoughts are on where the, the residential market. We'll start with that. And the commercial market are going and how you're positioning yourself as an investor.

Yeah, it's a question I seem to be getting asked a lot lately. And it really comes down to knowing your specific market. So, you know, the macro scene has its own flavor and, and fear that's being driven, however, in a, in real estate investing, it's really a micro focus. Where are you investing? If I'm investing in Hawaii, which I'm not, my numbers look a whole lot different than investing in the Midwest because what 10% drop in, in, in home values in Hawaii is a hundred thousand dollars versus in the Midwest is ten thousand. So knowing your numbers, knowing your market is the first step to knowing how to Adjust and pivot and move. See, the thing is, is you got to learn to control what you can control and let go of the rest. You're doing deals, I'm doing deals in today's market while everybody else is. It's kind of questioning if now's the right time. When is it ever the right time. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And you can only go based off of what you've seen yesterday. However, there's opportunity everywhere. It's whether or not you can see it. So I like to look at residential and commercial in today's market as micro in my market. What is my market doing? What are the trends? So if everybody is now fearful of buying deals because rates are high, how do I become an attractive buyer? For me, it's cash. Cash is king. If I can come in cash, I can close quick. There's no financing contingencies. There's no interest rates I gotta prepare for. It's here's what I structured, here's my capital. Are you in yes or no seller and do deals that way? Another way is doing creative deals. Like you were saying, how do you find ways to structure a deal that makes sense for both the seller and you? Where you might assume a mortgage a subject to you might do some sort of seller financing because they own it free and clear. And it takes me back to private money. What does the seller want? What's their objective? And what I see in the market today is that a lot of sellers are, are more motivated than they were during COVID because Covid you could list anything and it sell way over asking. Nobody questioned it. But with the rates being the way they are today, that's opportunity for me at least. I see opportunity where there's less people that are coming up with creative solutions. So why not I present one or two? So my typical offer structures, whether it's residential or commercial, is two offers. There's a financed offer and there's a cash offer. And depending on how they respond, I may adjust and or throw in a seller finance offer based on what they want. And really it's just wanting to have that open conversation. In today's market, sellers seem to be more open to having that conversation because they're not selling as quickly as it used to.

I love that. Yeah, I love that concept of presenting multiple offers when you go to a seller. Let's talk. Let's run through an example. Right? Say you're approaching what are you currently buying or are you currently, say, commercial? What kind of commercial Properties are you currently looking at?

Yes, I just recently closed on a deal. It's a 100% vacant office space, 12,500 square feet single use. I just recently closed on that and I believe it was listed at 1.4. So when I came in, I ran my numbers. Like you do with anything, you always stay true to your numbers. It works for you or it doesn't. And you got to be willing to put in the work to find creativity if, if it's a deal you really want. So it's a deal I really wanted. I want 100 vacant. That's the value add in commercial for me is to reposition an asset from non performing to performing. Similar like residential but not necessarily rehab. So this particular asset was ready to be rented, it was just vacant. And because it's vacant in the commercial space, it makes it very hard to qualify for lending. Financing is tight on vacant spaces. So I did my offers, I did two, I did one financed with contingencies around a lot of things because hey, it's a hundred percent vacant, I might need this, this or this. Take this offer. It's a higher offer, but it's financed with a lot more red tape versus a cash offer. And I came in cash and I want to say my offer was 1.2, financed 1 million cash. And the seller took the cash offer because they knew, they understood. That's another part I like about commercial is I have a higher success rate with sellers because they're usually investors themselves. So they understand I'm not looking to jerk them around. Here's my research, here's my homework. This is why it's probably not going to qualify for financing. And this is why I have all my contingencies in here. However, here's a solution to that problem. It gets to come in cash, but I need a reduction because I have holding costs, I have time frames, I get to reposition the asset, I have some overhead. Whatever I need to do to reposition it, I need to build in that in my offer price and they accept it. And it was something that we were able to find solution in a time where rates were going from 4 to 8% in commercial.

I love it. So you got little under 20% discount on that deal just for going to them in cash. And I'm assuming that you're using private money for the cash, is that correct?

Yes, sir, 100%.

So you gotta, you know, you gotta think about that. You borrow money from a private money lender at. Do you mind sharing what rate you borrowed it at?

I got four different lenders tied to it at four different rates.

So, okay, what would you get? What would you guess a blended rate is?

Sub 6%.

See, that's amazing. That's an amazing rate. Okay, so we'll say sub 6%. You borrow the money at sub 6%. You go take down a deal and get nearly a 20% discount on it with sub 6% money. I mean, that, that is, that is how you win in real estate right there. And he's able to buy a deal with none of his own money. So you got to think creatively. The more creative you get in real estate, the more wide open your. Your playing field is. Right. So let's talk about what your strategy is with this property. So this is 100% vacant. This is office, which is getting a lot of headlines right now. What are you going to do and what, what market is this in, by the way?

That's in Kansas City.

Okay, so what are you going to do with this property to get it leased up? What kind of value add are you going to do and what do you think it will be worth?

I. The funny thing is, is this all happened this year. So I closed on it in the beginning of the year. I repositioned it. We got it up for leasing. I put in a little bit of. Of tenant improvements. They call it TI in commercial. I put in just enough to get that the person that was interested in renting the space, which ended up being a university, and this university came in and is now a tenant in our building for the last three months. So it took about six months to reposition. However, I was prepared to hold for 24 months vacant because commercial usually moves slowly for some reason. This one just. It hit. It hit real good. And it hit, it hit well really nicely.

Who.

I'm so excited. It hit really nicely. So we bought it at a mill where maybe all in 1.1. And it's now being appraised. And our appraisal just came back at 1.8, man.

So you're. When it appraised at 1.8, did you pay all your private money off and you got them out?

Yes, sir.

That's sweet, man. That is the Burr strategy on commercial right there. That's. That's a textbook, textbook Burr deal on commercial. What were you gonna say? Did you have something else to add to it?

No, it's just okay for your listeners, I guess you know that this success story is amazing and just know that it's been years in the making and a lot of opportunities of Learning and growing and leaving money in deals to figure out creat of ways to find and create the great deals. It's, it's not necessarily. I found it, it fell in my lab. I, I created it. We, we as seasoned successful investors create great deals. We don't just find them on the open market.

Yeah. And this is something else I want the listeners to really track with. This wasn't your first deal. You, you've got 90 doors at this point. You started off doing things like you said. You didn't know what you didn't know. You made a lot of mistakes. You learned a lot from all these deals to get to this point. So don't think that your first deal is going to be buying something for a million and refine at 1.8. It could happen. It's not without, you know, it's. It's within the realm of possibility. But you gotta learn how to do these things to get to the point where you can do this kind of stuff. And it takes making mistakes, it takes having the wins and learning how to be a good investor and how to leverage other people's money, Private money, hard money, bank money, your own money, you know, any, any resource to get the deal done. The. You need got to figure out what value add to do in your deal to position it to get the tenant. That's another piece. You got to get the tenant like you can fix the place up, but if you can't get it rented, there's no income stream and you can't sell it right if you're, if you wanted to. So getting that tenant is another piece of this. That, that, that's not as easy as it sounds. You hear it on a podcast you like. Well, we bought it. We, we did the, the rehab and then we got the tenant and then we, you know. Well, all those pieces are difficult. So it's challenging to get a good tenant. It's challenging to get the right rehab stuff done. It's challenging to get the private money to go find the deal. It's challenging to find the deal. But you did all those things. You walked into $700,000 of equity and 200,000 of that was, that was earned in that cash offer you made, which is not lost on me either. That's, that's amazing. I love that story. So let's, let's transition this into. What advice do you have for the UPS worker right now that's going into the holiday season that's getting their butt kicked by their 9 to 5 that wants to get into Real estate that's seeing this insane stuff with the real estate market, with the housing market, with the commercial market, they're dying. They're itching to get into real estate, but they feel like the market has closed on them, this isn't the right time, and they feel stuck in their job.

Right. That question, it always brings me back to the why. If your why is strong enough, nobody will talk you out of it. And when I. When I speak to newer investors that approach me on, you know, when should I take my first step, I draw it back. Why are you looking into real estate? Real estate is one vehicle to get you to financial independence. And if you don't want real estate, go find something that you do want to invest in. So if you do find real estate as your why, then really start taking action. Like, for me, it was a hesitation that cost me time. That was the. The price that I paid in the beginning was nine months of trying and failing in something that wasn't maybe something I really wanted to be a part of because my spouse was on board here. Why am I resisting her and doing this over here? So my investment of that nine months is my motivator now to make the biggest return off of it. Right. Take action. Get immersed in. In groups. Go to networking events. Find those who have what you want to have and are doing what you want to do. And if you can answer those two questions, you're in the right space. If you only can answer one, you want a question, are you in the right space? And if you can answer zero, you're in the wrong space. Get out. Find a new group.

Love it. CJ what is your why? What motivated you to do this?

Originally in my why and what I thought my why was, which I wasn't clear in the beginning because I didn't have any. Any, I guess, guidance around mindset. I thought it was money, and it really wasn't until I understood that, you know, time was what I wanted. I wanted my time. And as soon as I found my time, the next thing I wanted was the freedom, which then led to purpose. And right now I'm working on purpose, and that's working with other investors and getting them started, working them through the vehicle that we found success in. We're not here to. To guide and lead people in things I've never done. So our motto is, we are active real estate investors who lead through action, then hold you accountable to achieve your goals. If I'm not doing what you're wanting to do or have what you want to have, don't take advice from me. I'm not the right guy. Go find the one that does. So that's what we. What I'm working on now is more purpose driven.

Why I love it. Yeah. I believe so strongly that your purpose can be the most exhilarating and motivating thing in your life when you're working towards the goal. So, you know, when you're. When you're broke, you just need money, right? You need money to pay your bills. You love to take a vacation with your family. You want to pay that car debt off, you want to pay. You want to get a nicer house, you want to get your kids in a better school, you want to get in a less dangerous neighborhood. You. You want to put food on the table, right? You got to have enough money to live. But once you get to that point where you're able to kind of upgrade a little bit and get those things that put you in a safer position in life, then you start looking at your purpose, right? And your purpose. I try to harp on this on my channel a lot. Your purpose is very important. Like, your life is going to end at some point and all that money is going to go to somebody else, whether it's your family or charity or whatever it is. So what are you going to do with your time to make a difference in the world that's so important? It's so important whether it's pouring into other people that are trying to invest in real estate or a charity or your church or whatever it is. It's like, figure out your purpose as soon as you can. It would have helped me in my own life if I had figured this out a lot earlier, because then I could have. I could have lined up my intentions with my purpose better instead of, like, bouncing from this job that I wasn't happy with to that job that I wasn't happy with, to that one. To that one, you know? And eventually I got so frustrated with my 9 to 5 stuff, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I got to work for myself and I got to do this real estate thing because I need the financial freedom to pour into my purpose more. And I'm hearing that you're doing the same thing, and I love that.

Yes.

So, cj, where can people find out more about you?

Yeah, you can follow us on our Instagram @wn properties. It's on below, and we'd love to connect with people who are looking to do what we do to have what we have.

That's awesome. Well, hey, this has been a blessing. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story. I'm. I know that you have a lot of bright things in your future. If there's any way that I can help you, just reach out. And if you have anything else to say, feel free to chime in. Otherwise, we'll wrap this thing up.

Josiah, thank you again for the opportunity. And likewise, you know, we know how to add value to one another, and I'm more than happy to support you in whatever manner that needs to look like.

I love it. I love it. That's. That's what it's all about. We. We're all moving the same direction. Real estate investing is not a zero sum game. Everybody can win at this. You getting that deal doesn't mean I can't get a deal. That's just how it works. And I'm elated when I see my friends and even my cohorts that I'm not friends with being successful in real estate investing because it's changing their lives and it's changing their families. And I want that for all my listeners right now that are listening in. You guys can do this stuff, too. This isn't magic. We're not special. We just work hard, we apply ourselves, and we get creative when we have to get creative. So until next time, guys, thanks for tuning in. Hit the like on this episode, if you don't mind. If you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. I'll. I'll link to CJ's information in the show notes and I love you guys and I'll catch you on the next episode.