REI Freedom

Faith, Finance, and Real Estate: Guide to Building Long-Term Wealth with Dexter B. Jenkins

• Jeremy & Shelly Beland • Episode 61

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What if you could combine faith, financial literacy, and real estate to create a life of freedom? How do successful investors navigate the challenges and triumphs of the real estate market?

In this episode of the REI Freedom Podcast, host Jeremy Beland  sits down with Pastor Dexter B. Jenkins, a senior pastor, real estate investor, and financial literacy advocate based in Boston. Pastor Dexter shares his unique journey and insights into building wealth through real estate, emphasizing the importance of mentorship and taking decisive action.

Key Takeaways

  • Decide to Become Wealthy: Pastor Dexter stresses the importance of making a conscious decision to pursue wealth. Many people never make this decision and thus never fully commit to the journey.
  • Real Estate as a Wealth-Building Tool: Real estate is highlighted as a powerful and accessible means to build wealth. Pastor Dexter refers to it as the "lowest hanging fruit on the wealth creation tree."
  • Early Influences and House Hacking: Inspired by his father, who was a barber and real estate investor, Pastor Dexter learned the value of owning property early on. He and his wife started their real estate journey by house hacking a Triple Decker in Boston.
  • Mentorship is Crucial: Both Jeremy and Pastor Dexter agree that mentorship is essential for success in real estate. Investing in mentorship can significantly shorten the learning curve and help avoid costly mistakes.
  • Learning from Mistakes: Pastor Dexter shares his experiences with managing rehabs and the importance of understanding the capacity of contractors. Mistakes are inevitable, but they are also valuable learning opportunities.
  • The Power of Perseverance: Success in real estate, like any other endeavor, requires perseverance through challenges and setbacks. Pastor Dexter emphasizes that every adversity builds resilience and strength.
  • Upcoming Book: Pastor Dexter's book, "The Real Estate Wealth Creator Blueprint," is set to launch soon. The book aims to inspire readers to take action and leverage real estate for wealth creation.

Connect with Dexter: 

Be on the lookout for his new book "The Real Estate Wealth Creator Blueprint" - A comprehensive guide to building wealth through real estate, set to launch 1st of January 2025.

Are you ready to jumpstart your real estate career? Connect with Dexter  for insights or consider joining his team to learn from one of the best in the business.

For those interested in off-market deals, visit  https://reifreedom.com/apply/ for a discovery call with Jeremy and the team.

Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast for more insider tips and strategies in real estate investing!

Jeremy Beland: Hey Freedom Fighters, welcome to another weekly episode here at REI Freedom. I am Jeremy Beland. We have yet another great guest just like every single week for you guys We're going to be excited. We're going to talk a little bit about his story. He's got a new book coming out. All these hosts that I got, these guests I got on my podcast got all these books, got me wanting to write a book.

But this gentleman, I'm really excited about, he's very popular here in the New England area. I've been following him for a while. I've had the luxury of meeting him, once or twice, but, this is the guy who's like the real deal. not so much, and this isn't to take away from his success because he's been successful in real estate, but just the value that he brings to others.

Like, this is like the real deal guy who's truly. Trying to change people's lives, which I really love. If you guys don't know who he is, you will after today. If you're not following, you will after today. His name is quote, unquote, Pastor Dexter B. Jenkins.

Dexter B. Jenkins: That's who I am. Thank you for having me on Jeremy, but like as you are a fan of mine, I'm a fan of yours. I follow what you and your wife are doing for a long time. And so, and like you said, we met a couple of months ago at a meetup and you came over to me. So I've been following you on LinkedIn and I said, yeah, well I've been following you.

And so, it's cool to finally connect with people, you know?

Jeremy Beland: I love it. I love it. We just recently had another pastor on John Luker out of Maine. So I feel like I have all these pastor real estates coming on my podcast. I'm like, this is awesome, man. This is great. I love it. 

Dexter B. Jenkins: Right.

Jeremy Beland: so for, people who don't know who you are, Dexter, can you provide us a little insight of who you are, how you got into real estate, tell us a little bit about your journey.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, just as you guys have heard here, my name is Dexter B. Jenkins. I flow, and really at the intersection of what I call faith, finance and business. so I'm a senior pastor of a church in Boston. my wife and I, are real estate investors, and then I also run a financial literacy company.

And so really I tell people, if you're looking for me, you'll find me at that intersection. And I've just always, been very fascinated. By all three of those, you know, I grew up in a house where faith was very important for my mom's side. On my dad's side, he was a barber and a, real estate investor.

And so I've always just sort of grown up with that and then in my twenties, when I came to Boston on a basketball scholarship, for 1987, 1991, long time ago. And then, after that I sold life insurance and investments for about, part time for about 15 or 20 years or so. I've always had my hand and sold in that money, business, finance.

And so, pretty much that's who I am.

Jeremy Beland: That's awesome. That's awesome. So, who was the college you were going to play for?

Dexter B. Jenkins: Well, played for Northeastern University, so

Jeremy Beland: did you really?

Dexter B. Jenkins: yeah, from 19 87, 19 91, I was after, you know this, dating myself a little bit, there was a guy by named Reggie Lewis. You know, so you didn't really

Jeremy Beland: Oh,

Dexter B. Jenkins: Old school to know who Reggie Lewis

Jeremy Beland: Yeah. Yeah.

Dexter B. Jenkins: I went to his school and so I was, when he was a rookie with the Celtics in 1991.

I was actually, I guess that'd be 1987. NowI was a freshman at Northeastern. And so that's how I got to the city of Boston and have been and been there ever since. Yeah.

Jeremy Beland: I don't care how good of a talent you are, you have to be very smart to get in that school. So that says a lot about who you're listening to right now.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah. It's a great school, where you were able to obviously get the academic side, but then the athletic side. So it was a good fit for me.

Jeremy Beland: So how did you become, a college, recruited basketball player to somebody who became a real estate investor? How did that journey happen?

Dexter B. Jenkins: That journey, Jeremy, it started my go back to my father. My father was always someone who said, wherever your business is, make sure you own the property. And so I just grew up with that. So my, I'm originally from New Haven, Connecticut. So my dad, I grew up in a, so what we call house hacking.

Now, my dad did that, for those people who don't know what house hacking is actually when you buy a piece of property and you live in it and you ran out. So when it's a room on floor, so my dad was house hacking before I even knew what house hacking was. And then he went and bought a commercial property.

So Jeremy, what he did was he ran his barbershop out of the first floor, but off of that he had two other units and then he had four garages. And so I watched my dad do that. And so when my wife and I bought our first, oh my God, triple decker in Boston back when I was like in my twenties, late twenties, early thirties.

we bought a three family and so we've been rocking and rolling ever since with this real estate thing. So it really was my first, our first triple decker was where we lived at. And then really around 2016, 2017 is when, we really got serious on the investing side. So we, since 2016, 2017, I mean, we fixed and flip, we bought and hold, we've project managed, we've consulted, so we've had our hands in a number of different aspects of real estate.

And then, like I said, we'll talk about in a second, but then I wrote a book on it because really what I'm trying to get people to do is, and you're not talking about offline, is people really have to decide that they're going to be wealthy. Right. And I think a lot of people never make that decision.They sort of play around with it. And then the second thing you really got to do is recognize that real estate is a phenomenal tool to build wealth with.

Jeremy Beland: Sure is. So speaking of which, I can't imagine anybody house hacking a triple decker in Boston doing okay financially after making that decision. You get any equity in that property?

Dexter B. Jenkins: The mistake that we made, Jeremy, was this, that's coming up in my book. And I'm like, yeah, I've made some mistakes and questions. You can tell what's the mistakes you've made as well. if you've done this business, Long, you know, more than two weeks. All of us have some, Oh God, I wish I would have done this differently, but we, but because of where we were at the time we sold it, they made a different profit.

But man, that same house Jeremy that we bought for about $200, 000. The last time I checked it out, it's like one is worth 1. 2 million. 

Jeremy Beland: Yeah, and like a little more than a decade.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah. A little more than a decade. So, so is this thing of, if you understand the power of appreciation, both forced appreciation as well as match natural appreciation.

Jeremy Beland: Oh my God. And then you couldn't, like you said, we could have took the equity out of that and been really rock and roll, but there was no one like you or no one like me in my life saying, Hey, Dexter. Take this, hang out there for a little bit, take that equity, roll it over and something else. And, so that's why I'm, such an advocate for mentorship and education because, we would have been, I mean, we doing pretty well now. We'd have been really doing well then just based off some of the things I know now, Yeah, for sure. And I agree. I'm big into mentorship and education myself. Not only do we provide that, but we're also students ourselves and you don't get to this level without being a student. So let's talk about your book. So, your book is coming out in about a month. So maybe by the time this is, uh, aired that just have come out, it's called real estate wealth creator blueprint book. Tell us a little bit about that book.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah,it really is about my journey, but really, as I said, a second ago, I'm really trying to, it's my written exhortation. I'm pushing, Hey, hello, you have got to decide that you are going to become wealthy. now you, now wealth means different things to different people because it's sort of relative, but you know, whatever your definition is.

You really have to decide that. and then the secondly, I was talking about in the book, we talk about what we've already talked about are really ready is that I really believe that real estate is the, what I call the lowest hanging fruit on a wealth creation tree. Meaning if there was a tree that said wealth creation, I believe real estate would be at the bottom of that because I think You really don't have to know a lot, just know some key principles.

And if you do certain things, like we talked about, buy right, let it appreciate, you will become wealthy. Not even talking about the tactics that you teach and some things that I know, but just buying good properties and just holding them for cash from appreciation, and it will change your life, And so that's what that book is really about.

Jeremy Beland: Well, you just talked, gave a great example about your property that you bought in Boston, right? So you talk about holding that for about 12 years and generating almost a million dollars in equity. Where else can you do that in corporate America or W 2 or investing, right? Real estate is a catalyst for that.

Obviously the Boston market is highly appreciating. Not all markets around the country are that way, but you know, if you don't know about that stuff, you'll never know. So, you need to understand all that stuff, which is great. And, I love that you're having a book that is providing that information out there because you're right.

If we knew all this stuff many years ago, we would have been in a very different situation. And as we talked a little bit offline, like it's going to get more and more difficult for people, I think going forward. Right. So, If you want to get successful, there's different ways you can do it.

Right? I mean, you can strike, do scratch tickets or lottery tickets. Maybe that'll work for you, but, you can buy and build businesses that are, and that is very hard, especially to do it at a point where you're going to generate a good amount of wealth from it. And then, there's real estate or you can create something like, software, that sell something like that, but those things are really high too.

So, real estate is a great catalyst to get in this. I got in from 11, 000 investment. Teaching me 5, 000 went to a coaching program, 6, 000 went into marketing. That set me on the path to success, right? So we all have to start somewhere. It doesn't always just start with zero. Some people start with zero.

Some people start with little, but it can change your life. But as we were talking about offline, like we feel like, In years to come, it's going to be either you're rich or you're poor. There's probably going to be no middle ground anymore. The middle class might be gone regardless of who's in office and who's in power and that stuff. It's just, I think it's just the way this world's going. With inflation and costs and everything else. so you want to get into real estate now and don't wait because the longer you wait, the harder it's going to get.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Correct. And I think that's the message, that I try to share in that book and just anybody I talk to. So, as you and I talk about offline, we do a meetup once a month. and really the biggest hurdle I find Jeremy is this people never get started. I don't know how many people and yeah, you probably experienced it.

How many times have you run into somebody? I've always wanted to get started. I've always been in this like five years and 10 years and 20 years. I was just at a conference in Texas over the weekend. my wife and I, by the time this airs, it probably a little bit later, but this is where and what first week of November.

So I'm at my friend's conference, Tommy Jones, a good friend of mine who does big things in Texas. And so my wife and I spoke on stage about, working as a team and how we do that in ministry and in business and in real estate. and I was able to just sort of hang around his students a little bit.

And that the number one thing I hear all the time is I just, I've always wanted to do it. And so procrastination kicks in with people and they just never get out the gate. And so, you know, part of what I believe is, and this is one of my fundamental rules on real estate investing. The only mistake that you cannot overcome is the mistake of not getting started.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Every other mistake you can overcome. So people have lost portfolios, have lost money, lost money on flips, went bankrupt, but because they got started and kept going, success became theirs. And so,  you can't have success with something you've never started.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah. And I think, a lot of people are afraid of, what A mistake may be right is if I make a mistake, how's that going to affect me? Am I going to lose everything? And what's the ramifications of that? And, then there's the other people that think, real estate is always up until the right.

And there's, you'll never make a mistake. You're just going to be driving around a Lamborghini and having private jets and no time. Right. but the reality is like, you can achieve a lot of wealth and success in it, but it is not easy. You are going to have setbacks. You're going to have. Failures. You are going to make mistakes.

You know, we both talked about the many mistakes we've made, but I think real estate is forgiving

Dexter B. Jenkins: Very forgiving. Very forgiving,  cause Every mistake that we've made in our business, we've learned from, and matter of fact, I believe we've learned more from our mistakes than we did from our successes. Because what a mistake does is wakes you up. You're like, hold up.

If I continue to do this, I'm not going to be in business very long. And so, success is a great teacher, but I believe failure is even a better teacher because it makes you pay attention more. You know what I mean?

Jeremy Beland: Yeah, I agree. Success can get you complacent. failure and hard times is really where you're going to hone your skills to get better because it's adversity that teaches us to persevere. And one of the things that we typically, we say in my business, and I always try to tell this to everybody else is when I feel with real estate investing, it's like those who survive will thrive.

So you need to understand it's going to be a journey. It's going to be some roadblocks and obstacles and sleepless nights, but if you can overcome all that, which you can, you'll thrive. you just gotta keep going.

No. 

Dexter B. Jenkins: There's nothing that you've ever accomplished in life that was worthwhile. That was, there was no adversity. I don't care what it is, whether it's your marriage, raising your children, starting a business, starting a church, in anybody who says that there wasn't, like you said, some sleepless nights, some adversity, some things that you thought were going to go left that went right.

mean, that's just, that's just the way it is. And so I think it comes down to people really having to decide, what do I want real estate to provide for me? And when I do that, now I can, and keep that in front of me, now I can persevere through the tough time. I mean, I've heard this story about, Hey, look, you said again, I, matter of fact, I think you said you sold your house to get started and then you went into an apartment and then, so, you know, see people look at you rolling now, but they don't, if they don't know the backstory of the things you had to go through in order to get to where you are right now, and now, and this, and I know this, every at mercy builds a muscle.

so now I'm stronger than I was before because now if I come against that obstacle again, dude, I'm good because I've faced this, and so every adversity, if we're smart enough, will help us to get better for the next time.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah, for sure. even as somebody who's done over 450 transactions, in less than eight years, I still have my issues and problems now. Like, we have a flip that we're probably going to lose money on because it's just not selling. We have another one. We're going to probably break even on that.

And we don't know why that's happening. Eventually it will come to us and we'll learn from those mistakes of why these two didn't sell as opposed to all the other ones that are selling. sometimes, right now the market's a little slow, lead gen's a little slow. We think because it's probably just an election, things are just slow.

We have to navigate that as well. Just like anything else. If, Real estate is no different than any other business, right? We think of like, businesses have slow times and good times and they have these times they have to overcome cash flow issues. I look very successful and I am successful on social media and everything else, but behind the scenes, I'm still battling struggles daily, just like anybody else, just at a different level.

Dexter B. Jenkins: And I think that is. Part of the reason why some people struggle is because they look at anybody, people on social media, and I'm like, well, social media isn't even real.

Jeremy Beland: It isn't, no. It's 

Dexter B. Jenkins: You know, a couple of minutes, a lot of it is smoky mirrors. And so, and then you're comparing where you are to someone's maybe best day or supposed best day.

And so, one of the things that one of my pastors said years ago, he said there, he said, don't fall victim to the sin of comparison.

Meaning you're comparing your journey to somebody else's journey, to my journey or vice versa. And it's like, all of us have an individual journey in an individual race that we're running.

Jeremy Beland: And if I can stay fixed and focused on getting on mine and continue to get better at it, I'll win. Yeah. You know, and honestly, that has been one of my struggles in my journey in real estate. I'm very competitive and I compare myself a lot of times to other people and I see their journey, but what I'm seeing isn't necessarily reality. It's what I perceive as reality, right? I can even be more successful for them, but they appear more successful for the me.

And it wasn't until really like the last year, and a half, as I started talking to people, Much on a national level that have gone through the challenges of the interest rates have Really weakened out a lot of people. Some people came and gone and stuff like that. People were just much more humble and they would say, yeah, man, I was crushing it because the world allowed me to, but then I had to lay everybody off or man, we've scaled back to everything.

Like just really people just being vulnerable and you don't always get to see that on social media. And I think of like the family pictures that you see, right? You see this family picture, everybody's smiling, but 10 minutes before that family picture, everybody's fighting and arguing,

Dexter B. Jenkins: They're fighting behind the scenes and did, but okay. Picture time click. it's like, and so you, really have to be, in many respects, patient with yourself, give yourself a lot of grace. be content in some respect, not complacent, but I'm recognizing, Hey, this is where I'm at right now.

And if I can continue to get better, like you said, and persevere through, the tough times, you'll make it. I mean, we're in the middle of the same thing. We had a project that we were doing a West Bridgewater mass that we had a tough time with the town, the commissioner was just giving us.

And so, and then we had, contractor issues. And so a project that should have took six months, Jeremy has taken us 18 months. And you know, anything else about this business? It's about flips, flips need to do come fast, So if it's on a market now, we just got under agreement, but you know, to your point, we'll probably either just break even or even lose money on it.

So

Jeremy Beland: right. But you're gonna learn and you'll get better. Right. We celebrate our wins, but we, need to understand, we learn from our failures and mistakes and they're inevitable. If you're going to do this business, they're inevitable. And I'm sure, like, listen, I know you're obviously a gifted basketball player to get a college recruited, but I'm sure you made mistakes and had to persevere a lot to achieve that level of excellence to get to there.

Right.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah. Well, and, think about this cause I was talking to someone the other day about, how our schools have conditioned us to be afraid of failure.

so if you take a 10 question quiz and you get five of them wrong, you failed well in life and any other thing that if you get half of it, right, you're successful.

Think about baseball. Baseball players get three out of 10. Yeah. if you're three out of 10, you're a Hall of Famer and a multi manager. So the thing becomes this, okay, if he only got three hits and he was up 10 times, that means he struck out, he flied out, he grounded out, whatever happened, he didn't get on base. So we, we have to shift our mindset around what failure is, what it looks like, in order to win.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah. I agree. I don't think you can have winning without failure.

Dexter B. Jenkins: no. and how many people are afraid to fail? I was just at the conference again the other day, we were talking about public speaking and a young lady got up, said, I hate to, I, and she said, I hate to speak publicly. And I really didn't know. So I really didn't wanna get in the conversation, but my wife and I were talking about the fact that if you're gonna succeed, you have to learn how to speak one to many.

Jeremy Beland: Yep.

Dexter B. Jenkins: this, I mean, this, what this podcast is about, you're speaking one to many. So how many people listen to this or when you go do meetups, you're speaking one to many because it's a success skill that you can speak one to many. Now you are multiplying your chances for success, but if you're only speaking one to one, the people, man, come on, it'll take you forever to get there.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah. and listen, and obviously I'm not a great speaker. I do a great job presenting, but I can't pronounce half the words that are in the vocabulary. I can't spell them. I don't know what they mean. I had a learning disability growing up, right? I have a thick Boston accent, right? So I can't even get the captions on my, caption app to understand the words I'm

trying to say? in a video. If I could do it, anybody could do it, but you just got to just take massive and perfect

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah. 

Yeah, exactly. just being, I mean, that, I mean, that's all, just getting the game because you learn more or you learn more on the move than you do seated at that. That's just how this goes. And so, that's one of my principles. So when we started our church 12 years ago, when we started the real estate business, six years ago, we started the finance literacy company.

It was like, okay, you know what? This is what I know I can do. Let me move forward with that. And then what will happen is as I move forward, people that I need to meet resources will come, education will come, but it, but if you're sitting here and listen to us expecting everything to come to you up front, it never happens that way.

Jeremy Beland: No, go get it. And, what I'd love to say too, is like, education's great. And we're both big believers in education, but taking action trumps

Dexter B. Jenkins: Oh, 100%, 100 percent because your education only becomes live and real until as you're doing it, it's concepts. when you read a book or whatever else you can do up, but let's do a podcast. you sit in a mastermind and then when somebody like you or someone like me said, okay, make a phone call to a buyer or go talk to an agent or go walk a house.

And now you say, Oh, that's what Jeremy was talking about because now they're out there in the field with their hands on. And so, this is my, one of my favorite saying Jeremy, I say this information, What I imitation brings frustration.

Jeremy Beland: love that. I love that. What a great quote. That's so true. So true. 

Yeah, man. so so it's got to be some, it's got to be some action behind this thing. So for people who are, just getting started and want to take action, what would you give them for advice at this point?

Dexter B. Jenkins: would tell them to get mentorship right off the bat, 

get mentorship right off the bat. So, whether it's paid mentorship, I mean, I invested in a paid mentorship. Oh my God. My wife and I invested probably in 2017 because I thought that was the fastest way to, to really cut down the cut, to get my 

success moving. Yeah. so, so, so we bought into a program you did too, but you know, even if you meet me, even if you don't have a lot of money, well, I would say find your local rear. And there's a lot, of good people in there who will mentor you for, for a small amount of money, And so I believe mentorship is the key.

I mean, that's like my third rule of real estate investing. I always say number one, that real estate is the lowest hanging fruit on a wealth creation tree. I talked about that earlier. Then I talked about the fact that, the only thing, the only mistake you cannot overcome is the mistake of not getting started.

And the third thing I always talk about is, I've just found that people who succeed have mentorship. They just do, and people hesitate on that and I'm like, don't hesitate on that. I was talking to a young man who are somewhat mentor and he graduated from the University of Rhode Island.

And I said, well, every semester I said, you, you pay for books in order to take a class. And so he was talking about, he was on the fence about actually, I was talking about, he's on the fence about, should he invest in another program? I said, well, it's probably time for you to have another semester. And get another teacher.

You know what? People are just very hesitant to invest in themselves. Well, I'm like, well, you spent 80, 90, a couple hundred thousand dollars for college. Well, this mentorship is maybe 7, 000, 8, 000, 9, 000, sometimes a little bit higher than that. it's an investment in yourself.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah. Raphael and we're already, getting him up and running and things and things. Yeah. He's a good kid.

He's going to do a lot of Good things. Hard worker. he's just, he needs the right direction. And I agree with the mentorship. it's crazy because there are people that secede without it, right?

There's YouTube university and, but you know, those are the few, not the many. And now that I've come in on a decade in this industry. 98, 99 percent of the people who've done. Success at a large scale, say, five years or longer, I've had mentorship. I've had guidance, had coaching, whether it's masterminds one on one coaching, bought into coaching programs.

I mean, Shelley and I, between us with masterminds, ongoing coaching, and what we invested in coaching for our team members. I mean, you're talking north of 350, 000 and that's what it takes to do 450 off market deals. I, you know, I didn't just say. I spent 5, 000 on a course. I guess I'm rich for 

the rest of my life. Awesome. I wish 

Dexter B. Jenkins: I'm good. 

Jeremy Beland: easy.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah.I mean, we, we haven't spent as much as that, but we're probably upper six figures as well, between the masterminds and books and. things that we've gone through. And so anyone who doesn't invest in themselves, is really doing themself disservice.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah. And you're going to spend the money one way or another. You can spend it finding out the hard way, or you can spend it having somebody teach you, get there much quicker. Right. One of the, so as we wrap this up, what do you think is one lesson that you've learned in your real estate career that you could provide to somebody to help them, from that, a lesson that you've learned or mistakes that you've learned?

Dexter B. Jenkins: think probably the biggest mistake, and this is more on the fix and flip side, which you've done some is, you have to manage the rehab correctly that was one of the biggest mistakes that we made,from a standpoint of, Come on, we've managed several rehabs, but 1, this 1, we were more hands on.

I normal GC moved away. And so we were really more project managing and GC, and then time passed and some things. 1 of the mistakes we made is that we didn't look at the capacity of the people we were hiring. So, I'm hiring, I'm thinking about our, carpenter. Well, it was just him and one other guy.

And then they had to do a whole bunch of framing. Well, because of it was only, they didn't have enough people on, their staff. it took months for them to frame the house, and so, 

Jeremy Beland: So you think you save your 

Dexter B. Jenkins: the 

Jeremy Beland: the time costs you the money.

Dexter B. Jenkins: top to do the time kill. I'm going to say kill.

I'm going to use that word. it, it hurt us severely, And so that, that would be one of the mistakes because after you find the deals, which you're a master showing people do that now and you fund the deal. Now I've got to manage, that's if I'm going to rehab and I've got to manage a rehab, right.

So that I can get it to market as soon as possible. And so every day that I don't have that listed, that self for self sign up, it's costing me money, 

Jeremy Beland: And I will say it's a lot harder to manage a rehab than people think.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Oh, 100%. in some respects, it's like herding cats because you're working with, five or six or seven different trades and then you're dealing with it. You're dealing with,inspectors and all that. And so, you're trying to manage all of that, and so it can be very challenging.

Jeremy Beland: Yeah, I'm very stressful. Awesome. All right. So last question here, well, two, two questions, but this one, I always like to ask our guests, we, we call this podcast, REI freedom through real estate investing. That means different things to different people. However, freedom looks for them through real estate investing.

I really want to know Dexter, like what is REI freedom mean to you?

Dexter B. Jenkins: It means Jeremy, for me, The ability to live life on my terms. I'm, 56 years old. My wife and I talk about this all the time is that we want a bunch of free time and a bunch of money to enjoy it. And real estate is a phenomenal tool to be able to give you the money you want in the time you want.

Jeremy Beland: And if you guys have met Dexter, he's 56, but he actually looks like he's 36. So I think he might be, he's a pass. He's probably not lying, but he could be lying. He looks so, so young.

Dexter B. Jenkins: I'm not lying guys.

Jeremy Beland: So Dexter, if people want to learn, it looks like you have a coaching program as well where you mentor some other people.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. we have our coaching program. If, people want to stay in contact with me, just in general, they go to Dexter B. Jenkins. com, Dexter B. Jenkins. com. They'll find all my stuff there. And then if you want to follow me on social media, I'm Dexter B. Jenkins across everything, LinkedIn, Facebook.

I probably hang out on LinkedIn more than anything else, but you know, if you want to go on Instagram, whatever else I'm there, but Dexter B. Jenkins across the board, social media, and they can stay in contact with me that way.

Jeremy Beland: I love it. And guys, that book is going to be coming out. It's called the real estate wealth creative blueprint book. it's coming out soon. Again, this is, it's going to be, faith, real estate and financial literacy, right? These are three powerful components of your life that if you can dial in, it can be, make you very successful.

Obviously, if you take action, so take action, read his book, go follow him. he's a very inspirational person. You won't be sorry. Dexter, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Dexter B. Jenkins: Ah, man, it's a pleasure to be hanging out with you and your tribe.

Jeremy Beland: I love it, brother. All right, guys, that's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. we really appreciate all the support here at the REI Freedom Podcast. We hope to bring tons of great value. Dexter definitely did that today. I'm super excited about his book. Soon as it's out, I will be. Ordering it and reading it.

I can't wait. And if you guys want to learn what it takes to acquire off market property, so you can build a life of freedom like Dexter and I are working so hard to do each and every day, well then go to REIFreedom. com forward slash apply, book a discovery call with me. See if we are the right coaching program for you.

See if you're the right student for us. And if we are, let's go build a life or freedom through real estate investing. And until next week, guys, enjoy your week.