100 Rentals, Success Or Fraud?
Not sure how we end up where we do, but in 2009 I found myself firmly on my way to shaking hands with the ‘American Dream’. My parents were so proud, I was a college grad and working as an engineer for Chevron. Tasked with simplifying complex data, I spent the next 9 years working crazy hours for the company. Like all the other little worker-bees around me, I thought working my *** off would make me “successful”. And it did, well sort of. Along came pay raises and promotions, awards and acclamations, but none of it managed to satisfy the ‘success’ I had imagined.
One rainy day in 2016, I was busy at my desk when something snapped with the sound of logic breaking and falling into place all at once. When the ringing faded, gone was the droning of office noises, of progress reports, and quarterly goals. In truth, I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. I looked around at the buzz of suites dancing their office lingo, and realized that sweating away the next 30 years for a corporation was never going to bring true success. So, while still working my 9-5, I began to fill my evenings and weekends in the pursuit of real estate.
Being a data geek, I had a plan. A plan so ingeniously simple it couldn't fail. I would use ‘big data' to find a new spin on an age old industry and give me an edge over the competition. How hard could it be? Very hard, as it turned out. It took a lot of research and a bit of luck, but I eventually landed on two seperate words that changed everything: wholetailing (purchasing a property off market at a discount in order to sell it as-is on the market/MLS) and PPC (paid advertising on sites like Google). True, there was nothing new or magical about either, but that suited me just fine. The goal wasn't to reinvent the wheel, only improve on it. And that's exactly what I did.
I’d figured out a pretty amazing secret. By geofencing the entire country, my keywords could get clicks in major cities for pennies instead of the hundreds of dollars it was costing my competition to target those specific locations. Once I figured that out, I was able to analyze the data and discover a dozen other little tricks. Before long, I was receiving scores of leads a day on a $20 daily budget. I had hit the motherload!
Pretty soon I had to hire a lead manager to assist with the volume. Within a month they were qualifying and processing all the leads for me. I would personally put the quality leads under contract before handing it off to my transaction coordinator. Mind you, this was all being accomplished virtually, and I never had to leave the comfort of my air-conditioned home office. Next, my transaction coordinator would schedule a BPO, inspection, and (on rare occasions) an appraisal. Once I knew the deal was solid, I’d raise private money for the purchase. Before closing, a local realtor would be hired to market and re-sale the property at full market value. This strategy worked great, and within six months I had purchased homes in over 30 states. I had done it! The money was flowing in and I was finally a success. Or so I thought.
The start of 2017 brought changes, and not the kind you share with your In-Laws at Thanksgiving. Google decided to change its PPC algorithm, and my leads began to dry up. Coinciding with this downturn, I had borrowed funds for a few investments that were lingering on the market. The combination felt like a one-two combo to the nuts, and all I could do was watch as the results of almost a year of sleepless nights and time away from my family began circling the drain.
With loans to pay back, I had to figure out something new, and fast. I was still working my corporate job and giving up on real estate had never felt more appealing or easy. I could slink back to the hive, with no one the wiser. Instead, with bull-headed stubbornness, I decided to give real estate one more push.
Success was waiting for me, I just had to keep trying. PPC wasn’t working anymore, so I decided to focus on one city in which to develop a rental portfolio. I went back to the data, and after some lengthy analysis, I chose a city I’d never been to before: Omaha, Nebraska. Folks thoughts I was crazy, but the data was like a flashing arrow pointing to America’s Heartland.
I took all the money I had left and set up shop in Omaha (virtually) in July of 2017, with the goal of buying 100 long-term properties and retiring. Five months later, with 2018 looming large, I abandoned the safety of the corporate hive and delved completely into real estate. For a third time, I returned to the data. This time, I used mass data to develop a software that not only simplified everything but took the guesswork out of finding leads. The software allowed me to obtain deals for hundreds of dollars while my competitors were spending thousands.
The plan was simple: run my marketing software, purchase everything that I could at 70% or less of fair market value, keep the great stuff, wholetail the middle stuff, and wholesale the rest. The wholesale and the wholetail provided the cash I needed for the down payment and rehabs of my rentals. Nothing comes easy though, and for every two steps forward I was forced to take one step back.
I hired a contractor who ended up being a drug addict. He stole all my equipment and supplies. I had a nationwide money lender charge me an extra $18k the day before we were supposed to close because they knew how desperately I needed to close on the deal. I had a property manager embezzle rent money. I had vendors gouge me, houses broken into and vandalized, tenants from hell, houses flood, and issues with local government. I kept waiting for things to get easy, for things to run smoothly. Of course, they never did.
I pushed on despite all the setbacks, and in May of 2019 I proudly reached my goal of 100 amazing cash flowing units. This was it, I would never have to work again. I stopped advertising, sold my remaining wholetail properties, purchased a nice home by the beach and waited for the feeling of success to settle in. But when I took a peek, I found that my definition of success had changed somewhere along the journey. Success had started out as making a lot of money. And why not? After 2018 though, I realized that money was a two-edged sword. What I truly craved was the time and freedom to do what I wanted. Money was just the means to that end. In May though, having achieved my desire, I also achieved emptiness. Don’t get me wrong, money, time, and freedom are wonderful, but I came to understand that true success is something different altogether. If you make success about yourself, you’ll never achieve it. True success is being able to take the lessons life has taught you and use it to help others achieve the success they crave. Throughout my journey, the one constant that always made me feel good was helping buyers, sellers, and most importantly other investors.
The main reason for writing all this was not to share the good things that happened but rather to share some of the lessons I learned, and hopefully help you out on your journey.
My company's core value was: “To make every interaction a success for everyone.” I love the phrase but deep in my heart I never felt that buying a house for $30,000 and selling it the next day for $60,000 was really benefiting the seller. True, the seller always had a pain point that we were able to help them with, but I never woke up in the morning thinking about how awesome a company I had built. I was using my marketing software to purchase lots of discounted properties instead of really figuring out how to truly help the sellers.
Lesson Learned: I learned the hard way that your mission statement shouldn’t be a plack on the wall, it should be the blood that moves your company.
Over the course of 3 years I might have talked with 2 sellers total. I just don’t like negotiating, and so delegated that task from day one. I justified this at the beginning because I had a full-time job. In hindsight, I should have mastered each skill personally before delegating it. Of course, it’s neither necessary or practical to master every skill (like designing the company website), but I should have mastered the key roles before hiring them out. Only then can you set realistic expectations for your employees.
Lesson Learned: Have the process nailed down and clearly written out in an SOP before hiring someone to perform it for you.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). I’m a data guy, and built an entire software to find amazing leads, and still failed to have KPIs in every aspect of my business. I was making money so what did I care if things slipped a little. Looking back I could have easily ended with 20-30% more money in my bank account if I had been living by numbers daily.
Lesson Learned: Daily update and review KPIs
Don’t overextend. At one point, I was simultaneously flipping homes, doing lease options, wholesaling, wholetailing, buying rentals, buying land, managing properties, hard money lending, and a few other things. Focus on one thing and become the master of it.
Lesson Learned: Master each niche before trying to take on the next.
I’ve enjoyed these past months off work because it has taught me something incredibly valuable. Success, fulfillment, and satisfaction don’t come from sitting on the beach, but by helping others. My new mission in life is to help as many individuals as possible to find their own true success. Real estate is where I succeeded financially and it is where I believe that I can help others the most. Real estate investing is hard work and it’s definitely not for everyone, but if you work smart it can prove the most rewarding thing you ever do.