Todd Fleming: If You Can't Cashflow After Listening to This We've Got Nothing For You

Todd Fleming is the founder of The Kingdom Real Estate and Power Of Finance. Todd's purpose in life is to end financial suffering for others by providing financial education and mindset training on creating wealth and building better habits in life. Todd is the #1 Real Estate Best selling author of "If You Can't Wholesale After This... I've Got Nothing for You." In 2013 Todd had nothing to his name and had to make the decision of making a life for himself or giving up and living within the rat race forever. He chose to make a difference and began flipping and investing in real estate until later founding a movement to help others create financial freedom.

If You Can't Cashflow After This is a step by step guide to building passive income without needing any of your own money or credit. It's the second book in the "I've Got Nothing For You" series. This series of books aims to guide you through the process of becoming financially free through real estate investing. If You Can't Cashflow After This was written for people who are fed up with the traditional "rat race" style of living and want to create a new way of living no matter if you have ever been involved in real estate or have any money of your own. This book will guide your mind and actions to building massive wealth step by step. Todd himself completed his first deal with only $11 in his checking account. He believes that anyone can build financial freedom by changing their mindsets and improving their daily habits. This book will change the way that you think about money and the way you think about the opportunity surrounding you each and every day. This book will inspire you to begin your own real estate business and provide a living for your family that you only dreamed of previously.

https://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Cashflow-After-This/dp/0578432471

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Real estate investors, entrepreneurs, and agents go in the right place, unlocking the secrets to real estate investing and entrepreneurship. Welcome to the titanium vault posted by RJ banks. But third, here's RJ.

Speaker 2: 0:25

What is up guys? Welcome to the titanium vault on your host, Rj Bates. It's been a couple of weeks since I've done the podcast thing, uh, took a little bit of a hiatus, had to focus on some things in the business and for those that haven't been following recently, um, I now have a new podcast slash, I guess we'll call it a TV show, a titanium Tuesdays. I'm propeller LTV. And so just kind of wanted to direct my attention to that for a while, make sure we, we got that tightened up and more we're putting out some good content, but excited to be back on the titanium vault. And I felt like there was no better way to get back into the swing of things. Then to bring on my good buddy the most listened to guest ever on the titanium vault. Todd Fleming. What's going on? Man? You're gonna. Make me blush. Thank you. So[inaudible] new book, new progress. Everything, yeah, so for those of y'all that don't know, and I, I'm, I'm, I'm almost positive that almost every listener of the titanium vault has listened to todd's original interview on here, which was focused around his first book. If you can't wholesale after this, I've got nothing for you. Um, he just recently on January first I'm released his second book in the series. If you can't cash flow after this, I've got nothing for you and that's really what we want to focus on today is kind of the, the thought process behind how he's coming up with these books and the topics and why he felt those were important. So would that being said, todd, I want to throw it to you and, and kind of explain your, your pattern there with the books and how you came up with the ideas.

Speaker 3: 2:10

Yeah, absolutely. First thing I got to do is thank everybody in the titanium vault because with the book getting to number one, which was an incredible feeling. The second book launching at Number One, which is truly humbling. I know a big piece of that is from the strong communities. There are guys like you build, so it's been incredible to see the feedback that everybody in the vault has given and the love and the support that's been shown. So I just want to thank everybody for that to start off with, but uh, the, the thinking behind the books and the reason that they're one written in a way that they are, the first half of the book is always some sort of mental foundation and moving you forward mentally building you up to a point where you actually can do the type of deal that we're talking about in the later steps in the book. And then the second half being literally a step by step guide. Like, go do this. Once you're done with this, go do this. This is what to expect. So don't be afraid when this happens. So that way when you're reading the book, whichever book you have to be reading, by the time, if you were taking the action alongside the steps in the book, by the time you've finished the book, you have actually completed a deal and you've probably changed your life one way or another because it goes from belief to real. And when your mind switches from belief to real, it's a big deal. It's a big momentum builder and we talk about that in the book obviously, but the reason that wrote the books and the order of right now, it's you know the first book is if you can't wholesale after this, I've got nothing for you. The second book is if you can't cash flow after this, the first book being more of the introduction, the person who's never done a deal, the person who might be interested in real estate, the person who doesn't know if they're interested in real estate, the person who's never even heard of real estate, the person who has no money, no credit and no experience, no mental resources. It is the foundation builder. That way it can get you moving. And then moving to the second book, if you can cashflow after this, the importance of that is that at some point you will realize that no matter how much you are making each month, if you are trading your time for that money, you can only scale so much. You can only make so much. You only have so much time in a day, so you have to learn the importance of repeat income, passive income, and month to month cashflow that you can count on. That way you can make super, super clear and concise decisions.

Speaker 2: 4:30

So one of the questions I get all the time from people that want to get into this or just getting into real estate investing is, is what strategy do you recommend I start with? Because you wrote these books in this order. Do you recommend people start with wholesaling or in certain situations, do you think it's acceptable to jump straight into creating passive income with rentals and owner financing and things like that?

Speaker 3: 4:56

I do believe that there are times in which it makes sense for people to move directly into holding assets or creating some sort of repeat income and those people, I, I'm typically looking at and speaking with that already have a success, successful businesses and have the capital, the resources and the time to put into actually understanding and learning and networking and possibly partnering with people who are already doing it that way they're actually moving out of their traditional business because they're starting to create a retirement plan, if you want to call it that, be um, longterm wealth building. See Generational wealth building. So these people typically have the ability to do that because they already have something that is sustained and successful enough that their paycheck is already good. Uh, when people come to me and they want to get super, super financially free, and the first thing they want to do is buy a rental. It's, I, I don't recommend it because it will change your life. Like you go buy a rental, it'll change your life one way or another. You're going to learn from it. Not Everything is going to go good, don't get me wrong. I shared a lot of that in the book. There's going to be a lot of mishaps, but you're going to learn a lot from it and in the end that's going to be super, super valuable to you, the education, and it's going to be more valuable than like the first couple of hundred dollars a month that you make. The reason that I typically recommend that people start with wholesaling is because when they first start, they have no network. They have no knowledge, they have an inability to. I speak with people correctly, they're nervous and they don't actually know what they want. They might not even want to be involved in real estate. Right, and a big piece of real estate is getting to know the people around you. Becoming a pillar in the community, becoming somebody who is trusted, becoming somebody who has credibility and has the ability to perform. That's such a big piece for what your business will be growing into that when you start with wholesaling, it's minimal risk and you get to network with everybody and you get to create value in other people's businesses, which in turn creates a big, a large amount of credibility within you and it builds a reputation of you as a performer and people want to help you when people want to help you. You have the ability to start buying properties that better discounts, which in turn will become no more profitable monthly on a cashflow basis in the future.

Speaker 2: 7:27

Yeah. We, so probably mid summer last year I had a guest on Michael Zuber, um, and, and he has a youtube channel that he's creating. He's actually about to release his first book and his whole thing is one rental at a time and over the course of 15 years he created enough passive income to where he was able to retire from his job. Um, but what he did was, is he maintained his corporate job for 15 years and every morning he woke up and from six to 8:00 AM, he searched for properties. And he literally did it one rental at a time and now he's been able to retire now. That's one way of doing things and I admire him for what he's been able to do. That being said, for me, I look at wholesaling as opening up those opportunities you brought up like partnering with other people. When you wholesale, you find the people in your market or doing the strategies that you're looking for and you're able to bring value to them by wholesaling them properties and in return you find people that are likeminded people that you enjoy doing business with and that can essentially escalate your business to doing bigger and better things, whether it be fix and flips or buying holds or even moving into light multifamily and commercial spaces. And so to me, I always recommend start with wholesaling because like you said, minimal risk, but also wholesaling can essentially be your businesses cashflow to find rental properties, owner finance, whatever it is, the assets that you're gonna create cashflow and passive income. It's almost weird because it's like wholesaling is your cash flow for your rental business. That's how I view it with titanium and so you kind of have a similar thought pattern there because I know you have. You've wholesaled plenty. Do you kind of viewed that as your cash flow for your business and your rentals or like your cashflow, your passive income for the end game?

Speaker 3: 9:38

Yeah, I totally agree. Absolutely because upfront in the beginning most people don't have a lot of money or credit or mental aptitude to understanding where they actually needed to go. So what wholesaling does on an even deeper level, and this is this is something that not many people look at in the correct way and my personal opinion is if you don't even look at it from a business side, if you look at it from just a personal side and your growth, you are actually getting paid to be mentored like a good way of saying that thing. Think of that you are being paid to be mentored. If you locate a property at a discount and you are able to turn that contract over to somebody that is reliable and experienced, you are going to learn so much from that person that you are going to be able to plug in not only their business, but you're going to be able to plug in rental properties in your future business at a much higher rate and two at a much more successful rate right off the bat because you're going to remember, oh, so and so did this. I should probably do that because he said this is he or she said, this is why this becomes successful or why this is important. You would have never had that before. You're going to avoid so much growing pains and so they are teaching you the most important pieces of rental properties and they're paying you to learn. Yup. Like there is no better combination of that

Speaker 2: 11:04

and one more thing on that. Be Open to the advice that they're giving you. So often I have a newer wholesaler send me a property and I take the time to either write a text message, a facebook message, an email response, or even a phone call and I say, this is why this property does not work for me, and I break things down either where it's the[inaudible] off the rehabs, not there's not enough spread, it doesn't cashflow. Do not be one of those wholesalers that responds with, well, there's other investors out there that will buy this deal, or I know people that think this is a good deal. Be Open to listening to the advice of others. Be Humble enough to take that and better yourself and try to better their business because think that's one of the. I've seen so many people that have elevated themselves because they've essentially latched onto someone more experienced and in turn they have, like you said, essentially been paid to be mentored by that person. So that's an amazing point. Moving away from wholesaling and onto the book and the cash flow side of things. One of the things that you wrote in the book that I literally felt like you were speaking directly to me, you talked about every time you do something in your business, say I'm going to buy a rental property. I need to pretend and ask myself if I were to do this times 50, if I were to have 50 of these, how would I set that up? Okay. That that to me was just so amazing and I felt like you were talking directly to me because sometimes I'm so gogo and my business, I don't stop to think about, hey, how's this going to look in five years from now? Or using your analogy of if I had 50 rental properties, what would I need to have set up that's coming from a very wise spot where you're coming, you're, you're speaking wisdom there because you're essentially saying, think about where you want to be in the end of this and is that from experience? Is that just. Was that you putting your author hat on? I mean, how did. How did you come up with that?

Speaker 3: 13:21

That is from experience and being taught by people much wiser and much more skilled than I am in the most humblest way is the number one lesson in all of this is needed to be radically openminded and radically transparent. And when you have that mindset and when you think of everything that I do has to be able to be scalable or it's actually useless to me. Yup. So when I asked myself if I had 50 more of these, whatever's happening, it doesn't matter what it is. If you asked yourself the question, if I had 50 more of these, what would my life look like? And if the answer is anything but amazing anything but like way, way better than what it is right now. You know you have a problem and you know you have something that you actually need to solve. Having 10 rental properties can be extremely deceiving as this great thing, or it can be the absolute devil and bane of your existence because you don't have any systems in place and you spend half of your month collecting rent checks because you're making the mistake of going and collecting them yourself, so you got to run down late people and because you don't have anything set up, so if you buy your first rental property and there was a problem or even if you're collecting rent, even if you go collect rent and you have to be able to ask yourself during every action throughout the day, if I had 50 more of these, what would my life look like? And if it's anything but good, you actually have a problem because if you scale a problem by 50, you're life is not in good shape. You're not in good.

Speaker 2: 14:51

Well, what ends up happening is is that you end up neglecting certain parts of your business. I mean, if you look at it and you're like, you're using that analogy of you're driving around and you're collecting 50 rent checks. I mean, it's just not gonna happen. I mean, that's a, that's a fact. I mean, nobody has enough time to drive around and collect that many without neglecting either growing your business, finding future properties, um, you know, just all the things that you have to do besides doing that. And so it was a beautiful point because they're so often when you do one off scenarios, it is very easy. Like if you have one rental property, it's very easy to go collect that one check. Um, and, and the new thing that I've started saying to everybody is, is wherever you are in your business today, everything that you do, you need to build for where you want your business to be in five years from now. Um, because where I'm at essentially is, is we're at the six year mark of our business and I'm like, I wish they won. I had started building things, systems, processes, people for where I am today, not where I was back then. And that's the, that was one of the moments that really just stood out to me the most in the book. I, I, I had the blessing and the extreme honor to read the book before it was released and in todd sent it to me and as I was reading it I was just, I was just blown away because there were so many things in there that you wrote that where I'm at in my career and in my business of trying to create passive income and we're just so pertinent and, and just profound to me. And so if you haven't checked it out, um, it was, it came out as the number one book in investing, uh, the day at released, correct

Speaker 3: 16:52

yet released it number one, which was awesome. And it was on the overall bestseller list. It was 1100 out of over 8 million bucks on Amazon, which is

Speaker 2: 17:05

so now when I called todd, I, I asked if I could speak to the internationally bestselling author, Mr Todd, Mr Fleming, which by the way, if you search for it, make sure you put that in there. You might find something else that you're not necessarily looking for. Sure. To send the direct link of the book to people. So tell us a little bit more about the book and, and what people can expect if they pick that up from Amazon.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Yeah. And, and just to finish off your point from a moment ago when you're thinking, when you're thinking longterm, and we talked about this a lot in the book of shifting your perspective from short term to long term. I even give little quizzes and tests that you can ask yourself every day and it'll allow you to realize whether you are a thinking short term or longterm and it'll give you little cues and triggers because if you aren't thinking long term, you're going to be coming. You're going to become a promoter and a manager. And if you become a promoter and a manager, you never become an operator. And the only way you can scale is by becoming an operator. So if you are managing your managing, your, uh, your business, you can't create, right? You don't, you know, I'm gonna have time to create and what you need to be doing in your business. If you own a business, if you own a rental property, if you own real estate business. I don't care what business you own, if you're trying to scale, you have to be the creator or you have to hire someone to be the creator, right? So they have to look at someone who's going to be a manager for you. So that is just to finish off your last point of thinking longterm and understanding like, Hey, I'm in year six or seven and I wish I would have thought about this year one because right now you might be doing some managing versus creating and now you're trying to put those pieces in place. That way you can continue to create because you hit a certain threshold where, or a ceiling in which you realized that you don't have the right pieces in place. And that, and that's probably gonna happen naturally. I think everybody runs into that. I've certainly run into that. That's how you realize that you have to do things differently. And uh, just be aware for anybody listening to this, be aware of that. And at the same time, if you do run into that, just realize that

Speaker 2: 19:16

for you to complete the goals that you set for yourself, you just have to be the person that achieves those goals. You can literally make it that simple if you aren't where you want to be today, you've just done the wrong things. So it's simple. Just do different things, right? It's, this is, uh, you know, creating wealth is by doing certain things a certain way. It's funny you bring that up like, let's use this for an example. Say, you know, we have people that are listening today that might be super successful as a wholesaler and, and using the transition of your books. Say now they look at this and they're like, Hey, I've got a well oiled machine over here, wholesaling, but I, I don't have any cash flow, I don't have any passive income. And I need to transition and add that, um, aspect to my business. What are some of your tips without giving too much from the book, but what are some of your tips to transitioning from just wholesaling to now creating cashflow in your life

Speaker 3: 20:16

pieces, the catalyst, the catalyst for change, big sexy checks or big sexy checks, right? Everybody loves her big sexy check. If you show me a check for 80 grand and then check for 800, like which one do you want? You want the 80 grand or. But in reality when you shift your perspective for longterm, if that$800 happens to be every month for you know, a few decades, I would rather have that, but it's not as sexy upfront. So it's really. There's obviously a process to this in which there are mechanics and business systems to understand, but none of these processes matter without the correct mental foundation. So my big advice is if you are switching from whether you have another business or whether you're wholesaling, what whatever you're trading your time for right now, if you're trying to transition to cashflow, one, you're going to have to adopt discomfort before comfort because you're going to have to make changes and the biggest piece is that it's going to be the mental changes because you have to start literally thinking differently. You have to understand and have the mental willpower to turn away a single lump sum check for a much smaller, much smaller monthly check. And what you'll realize is that the first one is the most difficult. The second one becomes a little bit easier and then you'll start seeing them come in every month, and I might be seeing this just$500,$500 a month, and you've turned away 25 grand. It's going to be really uncomfortable. It's going to be difficult. What were you going to realize is month three, four, five. You're going to start counting on that five, six,$700 and then you're gonna. Realize that you've done it two more times and now it's 1500 and then it gets exciting. How many times can I do this? Right? But what if I had 50 more of these? Now it's really exciting. Now my life is way better now. I'm going to go after those. Then you get up in the 20 slash 30 slash 40 slash$50,000 a month range and repeat income. And that's when things get really exciting.

Speaker 2: 22:14

So I, I like to kind of talk about taboo topics every now and then because they, they occur, they happened, you know, and, and I don't think enough people actually like to talk about it. Um, so what are your thoughts to an investor who has been wholesaling properties and they were used to, let's just say they have an average wholesale fee of$10,000. Okay. And they start locking up rental properties and instead of wholesaling them to other people, they wholesale them to themselves and are still taking the$10,000 fee, but are then also creating cashflow on the back end, but not necessarily as much cash flow as they could if they weren't taking that wholesale fee off the top. What are your thoughts about people that kind of come up, push the boundaries and do something that might not be what is taught in the books, but get a little bit creative on the back end?

Speaker 3: 23:17

Yeah, it's, in my opinion, it comes down to what is the reasoning for say the five or 10 grand up front,

Speaker 2: 23:27

what you're talking about. It's the mental foundation for a lot of people. They can't get away from the fact that, hey, I just locked this down and my average cost per deal is$3,000. I, I have to make my wholesale fee. They can't wrap their head around getting away from what they've built their whole business on. So they, they get that that is

Speaker 3: 23:53

referring back to you have to adopt discomfort before you have comfort. So there's multiple levels of consequences to things and cause and effect. So if you are somebody that is struggling to overcome what you're talking about here and that, that one single along some, at some point, if five or$10,000 check is no longer going to change your business or your life in the very beginning, you should take the five or$10,000 check probably because you probably don't have any money, um, and that's going to be a good way to eat or provide marketing for the next deal and your learning and your education and investing in yourself, which is always going to be the best investment you can make. And, but it's at some point you're going to become in your idea of fulfilling that comfort up front with that check. You're actually going to be limiting yourself in the long run, uh, because you're going to constantly be feeling like you need that to fulfill you. When in reality it's not fulfilling you. It's just a habit. So you just have to create a new habit.

Speaker 2: 24:53

You have to replace it. The other part about it is is you're not actually giving a fair opportunity to the new strategy. Exactly. You're actually hindering it because you're taking money up front. You're, you're actually hurting yourself. I see people do this with flips. I see people do this with rentals and what it ends up doing is it can cripple a business because you're not actually giving the flip a fair opportunity. You're not giving the rental a fair opportunity. You locked it up at a better, a better numbers and then you hurt yourself by taking money up front. And so I just kinda wanted to bring that up because so often people don't actually talk about it and I know it frequently happens. I'm sure there's people listening right now. They're like, yeah, I've done that before. You're actually robbing you

Speaker 3: 25:39

yourself and that you are imagined owning your grocery store or any sort of retail store. I'm actually one of the best books I've ever read Sam Walton's made in America and he actually talks about, his wife actually talks about how

Speaker 2: 25:57

okay,

Speaker 3: 25:57

uh, Shit. In the beginning she would just walk in and grab clothes and walk out and it created a problem, right? Because they're actually robbing from themselves and they made a big time, effort, never actually take from Walmart. Um, they did a lot of, a lot of giving. People have their opinions of Walmart today. Obviously it's changed a lot, but when Walmart first started, you'd be amazed, you know, what, what actually created a highly recommend that book, but, um, imagined owning your grocery store and you have to turn over seven cans of peas, right? Or the entire road apiece to break even if you walk in because you're hungry and grab a canopies, you're robbing from yourself.

Speaker 2: 26:37

So in the long run you will actually bankrupt your business. Absolutely. And that's why I wanted bring that up because I'm sure there's people out there that are doing this and are struggling to get away from it. And part of the reason why you're probably struggling to get away from it is because you're doing it. So they just got to stop it

Speaker 3: 26:57

and, and, and you'll be able to. Here's the, here's the bad part about that is, this is similar to my background was originally before real estate was trading stocks. If you made money on a bad trade, that was worse than losing money on a bad trade because you reinforced a bad practice, right? Right. Now, if you are doing that and you're surviving, it's just because you haven't had a problem large enough with one of the rental properties to bankrupt you, right? Which, that problem is rapidly coming. It is coming in, it's coming up in your rear view mirror like problems happen. So when people look at their spreadsheets and they go, I'm going to make this because it has this many units and this is what it rents for. It just doesn't work out like that. Those are the spreadsheet warriors of the world.

Speaker 2: 27:41

So now you know, you have your books, you're also a part of the kingdom, um, and y'all preach, finding freedom and what freedom means. And so talk real quick about, you know, for someone who, you know, like you said, has a successful business, neither wholesale or another business and they're now wanting to create cash flow. How do you recommend setting goals for yourself and, and what that actually means? Like I don't think often enough people, you know, actually sit down and think about what do I actually need to achieve by buying rentals or owner finances or whatever the asset is that creates that cashflow in that passive income. For you, what do you recommend for that?

Speaker 3: 28:28

Creating targets in their actual identity. I think too many people left, so I don't, a lot of people know my criteria for what, like what I'm looking to purchase, but I don't put out. I try not to put out, uh, the education in a way like, this is what you should follow. Like I give you the facts of what can be more profitable and where issues lie. But I think too many people will latch on to someone else's criteria or investor identity and they'll try to make it their own. When in reality they need to look at their own lives and they need to go, okay. They might be somebody that they're like, look, I need a million dollars a month and repeat income to be fulfilled and live the crazy life that I want to live. Awesome. That's fantastic. You probably shouldn't follow the guy. That's his goal is$5,000 a month because he wants 99 percent of his day to be free to live with his friends and family. Right. And not worry about anything. Um, those two people look very, very different. So I think looking within themselves intrinsically and then finding a community to be a part of that's always pushing them forward and raising the bar for them, but allows them the space and the freedom to do what works for them versus just following ABC criteria.

Speaker 2: 29:45

Yeah, I mean, I thought about my goals Zuber earlier. His goal was he had a, he had a well paying job. He needed to replace that salary with passive income. That's all he needed. And then as soon as he got that, he quote unquote retired because he's now making the exact same amount of money he was making from his rental properties. Now moving forward, he's going to continue to add more rental properties and grow that over the course of time, but that that's what his goal was and I think everybody needs to sit down and as you get into this, really set some kind of an obtainable goal and vision for what you're trying to create. Because so often I see people that go from buying one rental to two rentals to hey, I want to get into multifamily and I want to get into commercial and this and that. And it becomes convoluted where you're. You don't have a vision for what you're trying to create. Or the other thing that I think is a problem is where you buy a rental and then you owner finance the next property and then the next one's going to be an airbnb and then you're trying to go to multiple markets. It's like have a focused vision on what you're trying to create as far as cashflow and passive income. Is related to,

Speaker 3: 31:05

yeah, lack of clarity is the number one killer.

Speaker 2: 31:09

Yup. And, and again, this all goes back to what your needs are and what your vision is and if you have 50 of them, what does your life look like? You know, I mean that's why it spoke so strongly to me because for, for so long we just, we would do whatever was necessary and whatever's necessary is not necessarily getting you towards your, your goal, your vision, what makes you comfortable and, and so for, for me, you know, the first time you were on the titanium vault, we talked about how you were actually creating notes for your wholesale fees.

Speaker 3: 31:51

Yeah. That's how it, that's how I transitioned. That's how I transitioned my mind and I really how I transitioned my wife's mind, she was, she was, she was so traditional when we first got together, she was just terrified. Like literally he would speak about owning a property other than a house that you live in or creating a business and she would shake with anxiety. I think it was that bad. So I know if she can change, anybody can change.

Speaker 2: 32:15

So now where you are as far as your business is, are you already at the point where you've achieved your goals or are you creating bigger goals as far as real estate goes?

Speaker 3: 32:29

Yeah, we're creating larger targets at this point. So our goal this year is to take down 51st 50 single family houses. I do primarily single family homes right now. And that goes back to the clarity of what you're talking about. That's how our systems are set up. Um, I understand. I have friends with very large apartment complexes. I understand the work that has to go into them. I understand the team that has to go into them in the mindset and with where we're at and our team right now in our business, uh, which we have multiple people that are full time and you know, we're creating a lot of opportunities for a lot of families, which is awesome. Uh, we have fulltime renovation guys were always buying new projects, which is really cool to provide, um, but with where our minds are at right now and we understand the single family game really, really well and what criteria fits us really, really well and we have the ability to purchase a property, turn it around, stabilize it, and have it become a really a high, a high cash flowing asset for us very, very quickly at this point. Um, so when I asked myself if I had 50 more of those, what my life looks like really, really good. So that's that. That continues to be our focus right now. So our goal this year is to take down 50 more a single family houses and then I just think about the future is the future, uh, does it hold commercial and apartment buildings? I'm sure. I'm absolutely sure of it. Uh, but right now we're focused on that and I also know some guys that have, you know, a couple hundred units and apartment buildings that are break even and if they had 50 more of those, what would their lives look like? Not very good. So, uh, it's more of like what you mentioned, having clarity in what's working for you right now and where do you want to go and I'm interested to see where the market's headed and I'm interested to see where the guys that are really, really heavily leveraged, um, what that looks like a because the guys that I am very, very close with, including my mentor who owns hundreds of units, um, the only reason they were able to get through the last recession was because they didn't have a bunch of debt and they had to really restructure a lot of things. So I'm interested to see where that stuff goes and, and continuing to buy a lot of equity and continue building our asset list along with our other businesses. On the 50 properties that you want to take down this year, are those going to be held as rentals? Do you lease options are a thing in Ohio or not, but these options or owner finance, do you do any of that? Or is it just rentals? A, we do straight rental, so we look for properties and problems to solve. We actually have a really unique niche, which I'll tell you about here in a second. Um, but we, uh, another thing is that is unique to us is we don't hold a lot of debts. Um, we have, we own probably 80 percent of our properties free and clear. Um, we use a lot of our own capital because we believe in what we're doing, which by the way, if you want to be able to raise private funds, go ahead and let somebody know how much of your own money you have in your deals. It's much easier to see how much easier it is to share the wealth, right? Because they understand that you believe in what you're doing and that you have the experience and the knowhow and the systems and the people in place to do it. Um, so we have been raising more money recently, uh, obviously since we're looking to scale quite a bit and because we're, we've been really focused on building that foundation. So one thing we're actually looking to do right now, and we're just putting in place, I just took down a, our second squatter house. So most people would run away from squatters. I actually have a story about a squatter in my second book cash flow book and once you realize that that is just another problem that you can solve. I just purchased a house. Uh, my son bought it. My son is two years old. Nice. And he bought it for$1. So my son bought a house for$1 because the family had a house that they had purchased like 15 years ago and they moved out of it because they moved into a nicer house, got married and they were selling this, this property that I purchased and about a year ago, squatters moved in. They couldn't get them out and they didn't understand the process. So actually a day before closing, uh, we found out there was a$30,000 mortgage on the house and this seller actually came to closing with a$33,000 check, paid the house off and thanked us. Wow. For us to take the house, that is problem solving one on one. That is the ultimate example of when the problem is large enough, the numbers go away. So if you were looking for problems to solve and you have the ability to solve those, you can take down deals like this. We bought a house for$1, which is, well, I just had the eviction hearing this past week and there'll be out next week and we will have a house for a buck. The house is probably worth anywhere from 45 to$60,000 when it's done up. We might have to put 20 or 25 grand in it, don't get me wrong. Um, but at that point we are fifty cents on the dollar and we have a house that will rent for anywhere from 800 to a thousand bucks a month. And that's amazing. So how many times can you, if I had 50 more of that because they have the team that I have placed. Well, my life look like it looks just fine. So. So let's talk about that real quick. How did you negotiate the deal and what was your involvement during those negotiations? So this is, you're gonna, you're gonna love this. This is a prime example of building your business out. I'd never met the seller, I never had to raise funding while it was a dollar. So I guess I never had to raise funds. My son never had to raise fund theory, had a dollar. Um, I didn't have to go to the title company to close the deal. I signed a document signed and all the negotiating was done by my network. So the deal came to me because my friend and mentor, um, I was contacted by a wholesaler who had put the house under contract, was asking my friend if he wanted to buy it, he didn't want to buy it wholesale. Instead they're squatters in it. And that's when my friend let him know, hey, I have somebody that can definitely handle that. He's done it. Both done it before. And so they actually talked back and forth. I just told my friend if it's, if it's in the condition

Speaker 2: 38:36

that we're saying and it has a good roof, the foundation looks good. The outside of the house looks fine. Uh, but there's, the people are inside of it. The best thing for him to do for that family to do is to give me the house because I'll clean up the area and we know there's going to have to be an investment on the backend so I'm not going to pay for five, 10 grand for the house if you want to give it to me, I'll take the problem and I'll solve it and that's what they did. They accepted it. So I never met the seller. I never talked to anybody in my. My level of negotiation was telling them that I would accept the problem if they were willing to give it to me. That's amazing and, and honestly what you just told me was, is not only did you not pay for the house, but you were also not paying for the Labor that did all the negotiations for you. Those are just people inside your network, not even employees.

Speaker 3: 39:20

Bingo. And you want to know why is because I built a reputation of being able to being able to perform in that situation because I had already done it, which I told people that I had done it, so therefore they were open to giving it to me.

Speaker 2: 39:32

So you let people know what you do? Yep. Very important. You know, I thought about all done. I'm like never heard of that. Sometimes they don't talk about what they do enough. It's like they want to keep it as a secret and it's like sometimes you, you just let everybody know what it is that you do, how you can solve problems. You never know who or what is going to be brought, you know, but just dropped in your lap and in an opportunity where you just acquired a property for$1. It's amazing.

Speaker 3: 40:07

Yep. So the return on investment on there, it should be pretty good. That's how we have all our properties. Free and clear by him for a buck. Yeah. No wonder you have them free and clear. My attorney at the eviction, he was laughing about it. I said, you're literally 600 times more expensive than our, than this property was.

Speaker 2: 40:26

That's funny. So since todd's on the show, um, I, I want to make an announcement and I'm sure some of you all have seen me talk about it previously, but I'm. Todd and Jordan have been a nothing short of just amazing guys to get to know. Um, they gave me the, the ability and the opportunity to speak to the kingdom. One night I'm in the closed forum that they have for the group and uh, I jumped on, it was a zoom call remote and Jordan and I just basically talked about titanium investments and what we're trying to accomplish as a company. And uh, one of their members, John Brown was on the call and after the call John reached out to me and he said, hey man, I just really felt like you were speaking to me, which, if you, if you don't know who John Brown is, he has one of the most epic beards of all time. And, uh, I just told them it must have been because we're, we're bearded brothers together. And, uh, we, we really hit it off and recently John has moved from spokane, Washington, all the way to Akron, Ohio, and we are going to be opening up titanium investments of Ohio together and uh, we look forward to working with todd and his company and in helping him achieve those 50 properties this year and even growing his big his business further. Uh, but, you know, it's just amazing that the network that you can have a since this is the second time that todd has been on the titanium vault a this morning as we were about to jump on the call together, I saw that the last time we spoke on here, uh, which we use skype for the, for the recording was nine months ago. And so since nine months ago when I had never spoken to todd except for a couple of text messages, we've gotten to know each other. Um, I'm speaking at the kingdom connect event here in Dallas. I'm in February. Uh, please, if you don't know what that is, check it out. Go on facebook, just search the kingdom, connect Dallas. Um, it's going to be an amazing event here and just a, it's an event, it's not a mastermind a, but it's an amazing opportunity for anybody in any sort of business to come be around like minded people that their goal is to find freedom and whether that's financial freedom, freedom from her job, whatever it is, um, there's people there that are going to speak and help you. Um, myself and Cassie, the hos are going to be speaking at it as well as several other people, several people I've had on the podcast, Quintin Flores, um, and just a couple of other people, Jordan and todd will be there as well as a Ed, Ed pugh and just a ton of great people. So, uh, todd, I'm just so thankful that I'm a part of your network and that you have helped us grow as a company. Look forward to the opening up titanium investments of Ohio with John Brown and that wouldn't have been possible without the network and the community that you've created with the kingdom. So thank you for helping us grow as a company. Oh, the honor's all mine. I appreciate that. Truly humbling and I am radically open to buying all 50 properties off of you this year. We'll be open to that. We'll see what, what, uh, John can do. Uh, and, and hopefully, I don't know if we can get you properties for a dollar. You can mark it up 100 percent if you want, I'll pay you two. We might have a little bit higher of a wholesale fee. We have a little bit higher standards, but, uh, but, uh, man, uh, you know, just thankful to get to know you and uh, you know it for everybody that hasn't checked it out. Go on Amazon and search if you can't cash flow after this, I've got for you. I'm really, uh, you know, I was such a huge advocate for, for the first book, you know, if you can't wholesale. And uh, I, I did not think that it could get any better, but the second one blew my mind. Um, I, I read it all in one night and a couple of hours just sitting down on my couch. Uh, I was, I thought I was too tired to even read and I ended up getting hooked in. I read the whole thing that night and um, just so thankful to have you in my network and, and just the things that you, you know, give back to the real estate investing community. Um, you're really truly one of the great guys in this industry. So thank you for all you do and thank you for coming onto the titanium vault for a second time.

Speaker 3: 45:20

Absolutely. Yeah, it was a, it was a lot of fun. I will come back anytime. I appreciate the love my man. I bet you'll come back and about a year we got nine months to a year. Comes out months to a year

Speaker 2: 45:33

and just as a teaser, go ahead and let everybody know, uh, what's that one going to be about?

Speaker 3: 45:41

So that one is looking like it's going to be about the larger projects that we were just talking about, the apartment buildings, the, the real, real high end scale of what's possible through commercial apartment buildings, a business scaling the whole nine yards.

Speaker 2: 45:59

And if you're super creative and something just popped into your head, you can probably send todd at facebook message where if you can come up with one word that properly describes that and it fits with, if you can't blank, I've gotten nothing for you. Send that to todd and he might even send you a signed copy of that

Speaker 3: 46:19

look when he comes out there may not be trying to figure out a name for that. Yeah. If you

Speaker 2: 46:25

can't do really big projects. Uh, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 46:31

Figure something out. Yeah. The first two are really easy to name the, uh, and again, like kind of like what we mentioned before, signing on here was if it was a fix and flip book, the only that'd be easy to name to. But this one, this is supposed to be the one that when you finish out the series and you read through it and you put in the action, you realize that in 10 years, 10 years down the road, and you look back on reading that book you go. That was hugely influential in getting to me, getting me to where I am right now. Which is wherever it is that you dream of being, because no matter where you're at right now, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where you start, it only matters where you're going and where you go is what you're is because of the actions that you put in day to day. So in realizing that, um, you realize that your potential is really endless, which is really exciting.

Speaker 2: 47:24

There you go. Well that ladies and gentlemen, that's our episode today. Um, I do not do a good enough job of this. And so during my recent hiatus, I have decided I am going to force myself to be better, but I would love for everyone who listened today, please do leave a review for the titanium vault. For those of you that don't know, that's how we get this show in front of more people. Got To play that algorithm game. So if you could please help me out, drop five star review so we can get the word out about the titanium vault and about guests like Todd Fleming. And they're amazing books and things along those lines. Uh, can't wait to bring more content to you for the, for 2019, uh, looking forward to having some great guests on here, but, uh, had to bring on the top guests of all time again, Mr Todd Fleming. Todd, buddy, thank you for being on here. And, uh, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you my man. It means the world.

Speaker 1: 48:22

Thanks so much for listening to the titanium vault with your host Rj. Third. For more info and to stay up to date, visit www.podcast.thetitaniumvault.com. And on facebook.com/for titanium vaults. If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review and we'll catch you next time.