Podcast Transcription

Melina: Welcome to “Flippin’ Off,” a purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference.

Oscar: All right. Hey, good morning, everyone.

Tim: Good morning.

Oscar: We are here, we are the board of advisors for New Wealth Advisors Club. I got Tim on my left…

Tim: Hello.

Oscar: …and Frank on my right.

Frank: Frank.

Oscar: And…

Tim: John’s not here?

Oscar: …John is not here. I’m Oscar, so welcome, everybody, back to our podcast. Today I think that we’re gonna do something a little bit different in the sense that, selfishly, we’re gonna have some fun. All right?

Tim: Okay.

Frank: I like fun.

Oscar: Fun is good, fun is good.

Frank: Fun is my middle name.

Oscar: And so by fun I mean, though, that we’re gonna reminisce a little bit. We’re gonna go back in time, right?

Tim: Are we?

Oscar: And we’ll jump on to the real estate and personal development seminar time machine. How’s that?

Tim: Okay. It sounds good, I like it.

Frank: All right.

Oscar: Sound effects, please. No, just kidding. So as a group, right, we’ve all been through, or put ourselves through a lot of different things. A lot of seminars, webinars, training sessions, educational packages, what-have-you. And I know, personally, I’ve spent a lot of money, right, in these things and walked away with some frustrations and so forth. And there’s been some good things, too, right?

So I’m gonna turn it over to Frank, and if you could just kind of share your past experiences, and then we’ll kind of go around the room here and fill in some of those things.

Frank: Okay. Well, in the 90s…

Tim: Oh, wow.

Frank: In the 90s, I don’t know if I was ever aware of a literal seminar where you would go. But I know I ordered stuff off of late-night infomercials.

Tim: Were they tapes or CDs?

Frank: They were cassette tapes.

Tim: Wow.

Frank: Yeah. There was no CDs yet. It was that early in the 90s.

Oscar: Obviously, I started later than you because mine was CDs.

Frank: Oh, there you go.

Oscar: Even though I had some VHS.

Tim: I would have thought yours were 8-track, Oscar. Or vinyl, or something.

Frank: Ouch.

Oscar: Says the guy who has a collection of paper docs.

Frank: Ouch. Yeah, well, in the 90s, I don’t know how I stumbled upon it. If I was literally watching TV. But I ordered these series, cassette tapes, on how to make millions, or how to make your fortune in real estate. And I definitely got excited about it. You know, they pitched it pretty good on their TV thing, and when I got into it and started listening, it was just so obscure to me, not having any experience in real estate. Not knowing what a deed was, then you’ve gotta read the glossary. It came with a glossary. There was like a book, and there was this folder, album thing, of cassette tapes. And you know, there was no MP3, so you know, you’d have to listen to it at home on your… It was just not portable.

Oscar: In your car, buddy.

Frank: Yeah, you know. So I listened to probably the first one over and over again, I kind of got bored with it because it was just not tangible. I had no real estate experience, so I didn’t know what they were talking about. I don’t even remember if I even got to the part where you would find a lead, or a deal. So years later, I’m actually doing real estate deals. And it was definitely not the result of any seminar, or something that I listened to, or a webinar.

Oscar: You know, that reminds me. We probably ordered the same thing, but a different version because mine was on CDs, right? But I remember the commercial, actually, and I remember it vividly. And he’s in this clean little house, right? And he grabs his newspaper, and he heads over to the table. And he opens up his newspaper, going through the classifieds. And it’s so easy to post an ad. And he circles things, and he says, “Look, there’s a house right there for sale.” Right? “I think I’m gonna call that house now, and find out what’s going on with it. Dude, I’m in. Right? I want everything you’re selling. Just give it to me, right?

Then I get it, and I’m like, “Dude, I’m not gonna sit here and look through the classifieds. I don’t even want to listen to the CDs that I bought. I think they’re still sealed in the original wrapper, right?

Frank: I want them.

Oscar: But it’s interesting that you share that, right? Because late-night TV, right? We all go through our phases of late-night TV. And you see all these infomercials and stuff. And obviously they’re way more sophisticated today than they were back then. But I do definitely remember the one little guy who was in front of a mansion, kind of leaning on a Rolls. And then he’s with a bunch of bikini-clad girls on a yacht. And he’s like, “You could live the life.” Right? And I’m like, “Dude, no. That doesn’t even make any sense right now to me.” Right? But I’ve talked to people that have bought that stuff. And it’s always in search of “the dream,” I guess is the best way to put it, right? The money, the dream, the life, the lifestyle, the house, the mansion, the cars, the jets, all that stuff, right?

And the reality is that, like you, Frank, been through a lot. Been through a lot of seminars. And through time, I agree with you that it had nothing to do with the seminars that I attended, the success that I have today. More so, I learned a lot about what not to do through those seminars. So I don’t know, Tim, what’s your experience been?

Tim: Well, if we’re going back to the time machine, for a long time, I was in… I refused to spend money on anything.

Frank: No way.

Tim: So I never bought the program. I’m pretty sure I remember the program you guys are talking about. I never bought it. I did buy a late-night infomercial, but it was a $25 book. Because I was more of the, “I can just figure this stuff out. I’m gonna read this stuff.” And this was 90s, before the internet was as robust as it is now with information. And I just read and read and read books.

And it wasn’t… my first type of real education was more on the personal development side. My very first thing that I invested in was in a personal coach. I invested in a life coach, I spent something like $5,000 for… it was 10 weeks. I’m sorry, it was 10 calls over the course of 20 weeks. So it was every two weeks I had a 30-minute phone call with someone, and I spent like five grand for it.

So here’s the thing, in that conversation, though, with him, is when I really started focusing on real estate as the one direction that I wanted to go in. And, of course, I stayed in the, “I’m gonna read and read and read and read” mindset for a little while. But that $5,000 is definitely what has me where I’m at today. That was that first thing that I ever bought, which was actually talking to somebody who ran businesses. And things that I never even considered possible for myself.

Oscar: Okay, got it. So very diverse backgrounds and experiences. One of the things that stands out to me, though, is that, ultimately, we were all looking for something, right? And we were looking to improve, whether it’s our lifestyle, our bank accounts, whatever it was. We were seeking some type of improvement.

So what that all lead to, I believe, and I think, Frank, I think we’re all in agreement here, is that we learned a lot of what not to do. There was some cool information. Truth be told, a lot of information that we could probably just go to Barnes and Nobles, sit down, read a book, get some audible books. Something of that sort, in today’s era, right? Definitely not in the 90s.

Frank: YouTube.

Oscar: YouTube it, yep. You can YouTube anything, right?

Frank: Yep.

Oscar: But that’s really been a lot of the driving factor behind what we do now, right? So, Frank, why don’t you expand a little bit on what that looked like for you, and then where we’re going with things.

Frank: Well, this board of advisor, Dave and Melina, back in 2011, we sat down and we compared notes on all of our experiences. What was missing from all the different real estate training we went to, whether it was a seminar, or it was a cassette tape. And we know, what was missing, was a real in-the-flesh relationship with this seminar guru, or person talking on the tape. There was no specialized knowledge on an actual transaction. Because what we also know and teach is that every transaction is different. Every seller’s different. Every need that they have.

So you can’t listen to a cassette tape. I mean, you can definitely come up with some numbers, right? It needs to be a percentage off of this and this. But what about that seller? What do they need? And how do we know what the ARV is if you’re not working with somebody who has experience on determining that? So you’re gonna be pretty arbitrary if you’re somebody just listening to a cassette, or a CD, or seminar and trying to implement that stuff. So we sat down and we compared notes and we came up with a very similar experience, as far as what was missing.

I know that’s what got me started in working with Dave and Melina, to be able to close my first few deals. I literally didn’t know what was happening. I just knew that they told me to find a motivated seller, and they would help me with the rest. So we as coaches, that’s what we do for our students now. Find a motivated seller, or a potentially motivated seller, and we can find out, and we can come alongside to help you. But that’s what’s missing.

And in speaking with club members, especially the newer ones, I really believe that the seminars, and different things, they want to give you all the information, right? They want you to be successful. But at the end of the day, the amount of people they serve on a nationwide scale, they can’t provide the support that’s necessary, the hand-holding that’s necessary. But we can do that here locally for sure.

So that’s one of the reasons why we’re locally-based. We’re not trying to do stuff in Florida. That’s not to say that a student can’t transplant to another place and create something like we have here. But I know that the value is in the relationship. Where I’m gonna make money with my student. So their success… I have a vested interest in their success. Because if they’re not succeeding in closing a real estate deal, or I’m not closing with them, we’ve wasted both of our time.

Oscar: Right.

Frank: Right? So I want to pour into them, give them the knowledge, experience, and the mindset. And the mindset is the biggest thing that you can’t get from just attending a seminar, which is why we brought different elements to the club. The personal development side at the club, the information, the hand-holding that’s available, the personal interaction. Having our cell phones. It’s completely different than any seminar that any of us have ever attended. And it’s intentionally that way because all of our experience, we sat down, we compared notes, we said, “What’s missing? Let’s create that.” And we have.

Tim: Right, yeah.

Oscar: And it’s something that continues to grow, right? Because as time goes, and I think the best way to put it is kind of like computers, right? You can’t let everybody have everything all at once because they wouldn’t know what to do with the technology, right? So we have to ease people into the information, the tactics, the strategies and all that in the club as well. There’s enough information overload if you just attend our training.

And then, as you start applying that training, then we can release little other things to you, and get you through that next process. And it’s a constant learning cycle, it’s something that we always are working on as individuals. As coaches, we continue to do that, right? So I’ve gone to things here recently that actually had some value. And had nothing to do with real estate investing, per se, it was more focused on real estate agents. But the thing that was interesting about that particular seminar, it was a two-day thing, and it was more about how to be successful in business in general, not so much just real estate. And there was so many good things to take away from that, right? That it was like, “Man, this is valuable, I can use this in my coaching, I can use this in continuing to develop my business as well.”

So I’m not saying that every seminar is bad. I’m not saying that education is not good anywhere, or any of that. What we are saying, though, is that there’s some very personal things that are missing. To your point, Frank, the hand-holding, the being by your side, the walking you through the opportunities. Being able to coach you there on the spot. Having a direct link to me via my cell phone. All those things are important and are always missing. Always, always, always missing from everywhere that you go.

Even this last one that I went to. Great information, lot of actionable things. But I don’t have the guy’s phone number.

Tim: Right.

Oscar: Right? I might be able to Instagram him, and he may answer. But that’s where it goes, right? So there’s a lot of things going on there.

Tim: Right. I think one of the things that you said, as far as that the club has constantly grown. And for me, it’s constantly grown and shifted in ways that, when this thing was put together, I wasn’t part of that initial conversation of the board of advisors at that time. But I’m clear that what was missing for me wasn’t exactly the same as what was missing for the four or five of you at that time.

So as we have more and more club members come to the table, we see from month-to-month, from year-to-year, “Oh, that’s missing.” That’s why we implement things like 12:12. That’s why we’re implementing things like bi-weekly coaching group-type conversations. Because we’re constantly seeing, like, “Oh, you know what? We didn’t realize it before, but that’s missing. So we’re gonna implement that.” So we’re constantly making this better, and filling all of the wholes that we see, even in what we’re putting together, you know?

We put the “Mastering the Mindset” meetings together because we realized that people… they need more than just an education on how to swing a hammer and take a kitchen apart and put it back together with Home Depot stuff. You need more than that amount of knowledge. You need a mindset.
You need… one of the things that I struggled with the biggest was, I had read so much about real estate that, frankly, I thought I knew everything I needed to know. And I still couldn’t make myself go have success in the business. And probably the biggest aha moment was when I realized that, “Oh, now I have to learn how to actually run a business.”

And I never got “how to run a business” at a real estate seminar, you know? So I had to go and learn that. And that’s why we have, working with somebody like Oscar and Dave and Frank, who have successful businesses, and who can answer questions about like, “This is what I’m struggling with. What am I missing?” Not necessarily in this real estate transaction, or with this homeowner, but in this business, what’s missing there.

Oscar: Yeah. You know, it reminds of a few weeks ago, we were on with Ameer. He was talking about all the seminars that he had gone to, and all the time and money that he had invested into those things, right? Because he was eager to learn and how to really get this done. And I think he said that… what did he say? Oh, “I ended up making a phone call, and it was to Utah.” So there was something weird there for him, right? Because he’s sitting in California. And then I think he said the secretary… I won’t go into what he said about it, but just listen to that podcast about it. But essentially didn’t understand anything about the real estate aspects of it, so he was left, again, high-and-dry, without the information that he really needed. Or the answers, anyways, to the questions that he had.

And you’re right. We continually expand what we do and how we do it, and it goes back to the effort that we put in to developing more material, more content, and more ways of being able to enhance people’s skills, goes right back to what Frank was talking about, which is we want people to close real estate.

Tim: Right.

Oscar: Right? Education is necessary, that’s a given. You need to learn the language, you need to understand the topics, the strategies. You need to build relationships. All that stuff stays there. And you know what? You have to invest in yourself to do that, right? There’s money that you need to put in to be able to increase your capabilities and abilities.

But at the end of it all, for us it’s about the real estate transaction. It’s about getting that next transaction, and helping that student get there so that they can now feel empowered. Because, “Man, I can do this.” Right? Because we can tell them all day long, like Ameer, right? “You can do this, man. We know you can. You have the skill set.” But until they live it, right?

We just had a coaching call, not too long ago, where people were hung up on, “But I did this, and they didn’t accept my offer.” But… yeah. And it was great when somebody else says, “Dude, you submitted a couple of offers. I haven’t even gotten there yet.”

Tim: Right.

Oscar: Right? So our perspective is our reality, right? So you have somebody hung up on, “My offers didn’t get accepted,” whereas somebody else is like, “I wish I could submit offers.” So the things that we’re doing, I think, are great. We’re implementing things that we see, like you said, Tim, are missing, or can be enhanced. But ultimately, that all comes from the fact that we are all actively buying and selling houses in today’s market, right?

It’s not something that we learned in a seminar 10 years ago, or in the 90s, right? And now we’re kind of reinventing, repackaging that. That doesn’t exist for us. We’re actually in the middle of transactions, right? We just closed off on a thing that we did out in Pomona. We have one here in Riverside that we’re working on. Frank, you just acquired another property, right?

Frank: Yeah. I just bought one right here in Riverside. It’s a duplex. Started demo, I think it’s Adrian’s second deal? I think it’s Adrian’s second or third deal, I’m not sure. But she’s super-excited. She keeps sending me messages, and it’s gonna go really good. We’re closing on another… we just closed on another short-sale in Fontana.

I remember the first year in this business, coming out of just having seminar training, and then working with Dave and Melina. And always being surprised when we closed a deal, and feeling like it was just luck, you know? And it might have been a little bit of that. But then having the confidence, and then even starting to understand what Dave and Melina were talking about by getting into deals. Because some of it was, you know, they’re saying something, but until you experienced it, or lived it, it’s just like pie in the sky, or it’s just not real for you until you start getting checks, and you start seeing money in your recently-opened business banking account, right?

And for my students, they’re so much better at expressing how happy they are. So me and myself, just that journey of personal development, everything that we’ve implemented being around you guys, and the core, the nucleus group there. We just feed each other so well. And our students get to enjoy the fruit of all of our conversations, and they get to experience that as we see… like a mirror was on here, and Danielle and Monique, those students of mine that I’ve been working with. And then somebody that they were working with, Joe. And it just keeps getting deeper, and bigger, and the successes keep happening more and more.

And you were talking about Ameer having this giant momentum behind him. And that’s only possible because of the giant momentum that we’ve created together by speaking about all of these topics and creating synergy from all of our experience on actual deals, and then pouring that into our students. So they’re gonna start experiencing that momentum.

To me it’s just infectious. When you’re around the right people that are doing what you want to do, there’s no other result but you’re gonna start doing it, too, because you’re gonna start believing it. You know, you see somebody like myself, kind of quiet, nothing special. And they’re like, “You’ve done how many deals this year?” Like this year, I’ve literally lost count. It’s like twenty-something deals.

And I remember from the first year, I was just lucky to get that one deal, or that second deal, right? And over time it’s like, “Wow.” I’ve really grown to accept that I can be successful doing this. And that belief that I have, I can now impart to my students. And that’s my favorite part about what we do.

Oscar: Yeah, you know, I appreciate that. And one of the things you’ll here in Frank’s language, he talks about students quite a bit, right? And I know that there’s some folks that are thinking, “Oh, it’s another education thing.” Here’s why we call people students, is because we’re students ourselves. Because we’re constantly learning. We’re never gonna be the masters, right? We just happened to find this opportunity before the other person. And we’ve gotten better at it because of that. We’ve spent some time in it.

But we are all students in everything that we do, so we are continually learning. And the folks that we work with are students. They’re learning from our training, they’re learning from our coaching. They’re learning from the things that we set the example with. And like you said, Frank, we are really, right now, I’d like to refer to it as a very well-oiled machine that is firing off on all cylinders.

And the collaboration between the board of advisors and some of the other folks that are helping us with things is phenomenal, right? I think it’s something that we haven’t seen over time. It’s something that’s built up to where it is today. And super-excited, right, of what’s to come. And the things… just the groundwork that we’re laying right now to really just focus on people getting to their deals. Getting to those transactions. Being creative. We’re in one where we’re joint-venturing with a homeowner out here in the Riverside County area. And it’s a great story behind that on what we’re doing for her, and how we’re gonna all… It’s a win-win, all the way across the board.

So I guess the thing to take away from all of this, right, for the folks listening, is that you’re only gonna be as successful as the people you surround yourself with. Which is really what you were talking about, Frank. So I encourage people to really dive into who we are, what we stand for, and what we do. And really take a good look. And then if that’s not good enough for you, go look elsewhere. See what other people are doing. See what people are saying, and how they operate, and you will absolutely, without a doubt, understand the difference behind who we are, how we show up for everybody that we associate with, homeowners and students, and the value that we bring as a group. Not me as an individual, but as a group, right? Because there’s power in numbers in what we do. So, Tim, anything else?

Tim: No. You just said it all.

Oscar: Very cool. So I’m there, man. That’s really what you’re hearing now, is just I’m so totally sold out for who you guys are, and who you guys are showing up to be, and what we’re all about in this group and in this club. That if you’re listening to this, reach out, have a conversation with us. If you’re already a member, reach out, have a conversation with us.

Tim: Right.

Oscar: If you’re not a member, reach out, have a conversation with us. Because we’re gonna help you get to that next level. And if you doubt it, you don’t know until you know, right? And we’ve all been in that spot of going to other things, and all that, and I just, “Ah.” Just, man, this is so awesome.

Tim: Awesome.

Frank: Nice. I’m sorry guys, are we just speechless?

Tim: Yeah, you did. I’m like, “You just said everything.” I’ve got nothing else to say, it’s perfect.

Oscar: Awesome. Well everybody, thanks again. Just tune in. We’re gonna keep this going, we’re gonna keep it moving. Tune in to our Facebook Live, tune into our podcasts. Check us out, get a closer look at who we are and what we’re all about. The charity work that we do, the things that we contribute to the community. All that stuff is just things that have to resonate with you to be a part of what we do. So take care, we’ll talk again soon.

Tim: Thank you.