Latest / Financial Survival Network / From Handyman to Real Estate Investor - Mark Farnsworth #5976

Transcript

From Handyman to Real Estate Investor - Mark Farnsworth #5976 · Financial Survival Network

• 0:00
  So I didn't work around other people's time schedules and you know, just win
• 0:04
  and get it done. And yeah, so we flipped about five or six
• 0:07
  homes and you know that was really satisfying too. You were listening to Carrie
• 0:12
  Letz's Financial Survival Network where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else
• 0:19
  to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival Network now more
• 0:24
  than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your free newsletter and
• 0:30
  gift. Financial Survival Network now more than ever. And welcome. You are
• 0:39
  listening to watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie lot Say.
• 0:44
  It's twelve twelve, twenty three. Now. A few weeks ago we
• 0:48
  had a special lot I was talking with John Rabino and we jokingly said we
• 0:53
  were going to start Handyman Academy or Handyman University. And sure enough, a
• 1:00
  long term, long time of FS and community member wrote to me telling me
• 1:07
  his success story that began as a handyman. And Mark f is here.
• 1:15
  We have been corresponding Mark since you told me twenty fourteen. My email goes
• 1:21
  back to twenty seventeen. That's almost ten years we've been friends. We never
• 1:26
  met, we never spoke, we just corresponded. So it's really great to
• 1:30
  connect with you. And hey, so you were a handyman at one time.
• 1:37
  Actually, if I remember your email, correct, you started as a
• 1:40
  realtor and then you were fixing stuff up, fixing places to sell and all
• 1:46
  that, and then other people asked you to do it. The next thing
• 1:49
  you knew you had like a handyman business. Do I have that right?
• 1:53
  That's correct? Well, originally I dropped out of college after the first semester
• 1:57
  and my father can guessed that I learned trade and he said, you know,
• 2:01
  if you're not going to call and learn a trade, So I learned
• 2:04
  the carpet installation and so I was a carpet layer. And then you know,
• 2:08
  life went on and I worked some different jobs and then selling real estate.
• 2:14
  They also managed the properties and they said, hey, can you run
• 2:16
  over and check this? Can you can you fix this breaker? Well,
• 2:20
  pretty soon they discovered my talent and uh, in the property management, they
• 2:25
  you know, I next thing I know. I mean, I'm a handy
• 2:30
  man. I've got a truck, I'm uh, I'm doing lawn care,
• 2:32
  I'm doing snowblowing. You know, it's like, uh, look at the
• 2:37
  entrepreneur thing. You see you need and you fill it and then you monetize
• 2:40
  it and brilliant. But like when you were growing up as a kid,
• 2:46
  you never said, Daddy, I want to be a handy man when I
• 2:49
  grow up. Right, No, that that wasn't That wasn't in my goals.
• 2:54
  My father was a food My father was a food broker, and uh
• 2:59
  so I was always located with food. I went to school to culinary art.
• 3:01
  Well, I thought I wanted to be a chef. And at the
• 3:06
  chefs they worked the nights, the weekends, the holidays. So I thought,
• 3:09
  well, yeah, this isn't for me. And so you know,
• 3:13
  I branched out and tried several different, subtle, different things. And during
• 3:17
  the redate boom, you know, it was like, oh, they're the
• 3:21
  need, there's the need for repairs. And then you have like a bunch
• 3:24
  of people working for you too, right doing the repairs. Well, I
• 3:28
  had my nephew would help and then some of his practice. He was about
• 3:31
  eight years younger than me, so I had some younger guys that you know,
• 3:36
  and there would be some projects like for a house to pass an inspection,
• 3:40
  it had to have an eight inch call space and it was only fourteen.
• 3:44
  So we would have to dig four inches of call space out from under
• 3:46
  a house. So I'd get these young guys and we'd get into there and
• 3:51
  we'd dig, and then we'd have to put down the plastic and it was
• 3:53
  terrible work. So we did it really high. We don't want this job.
• 3:57
  We're going to bid it really high. Well, and behold we were
• 4:00
  the only bish, you know, so then we that might start. I
• 4:05
  definitely don't want to do it. Price right, Yeah, exactly, I
• 4:10
  don't want to do it. And you know, sometimes you just give people
• 4:14
  a bad price, and what happens, it's the only price because no one
• 4:19
  else wants to do it. You wind up you wind up doing it anyway.
• 4:25
  But I guess you made a good good amount of money on it.
• 4:27
  So so life is a handyman. What was that guy Schneider? I can't
• 4:31
  remember the the show. One day was one day at a time, Like
• 4:36
  he was the handyman, right, So you were a chnier, you know.
• 4:45
  If I had an old building that we property managed, and so I
• 4:49
  would go in and take care of the laundry room and empty the coin up
• 4:53
  and off the floors and and that kind of thing. And at that time
• 4:58
  there were a lot of Bosnian you jeeves coming in put the Twin Paul area,
• 5:03
  and so the uh, well, I had a lot of language trouble
• 5:08
  communicating and trying to take care of I believe there was about twenty four partners
• 5:13
  in that building. But it was you know, it was really interesting to
• 5:15
  meet, you know, so many different people and you know, to be
• 5:18
  their hero. So they're probably to fix their drain, to fix their lights.
• 5:23
  You know. I got a lot of satisfaction from being able to do
• 5:26
  those things. And then of course other real estate officers learned of it and
• 5:30
  and prasers said, well, you know the to me said you might give
• 5:32
  Mark halls. So the business just grew by word of mouth, right,
• 5:38
  gotcha. So from being a handyman, then you wound up doing flips of
• 5:44
  buying places, fixer uppers, that type of thing I did. Yeah,
• 5:46
  being in the real estate business, you see, you know, you see
• 5:49
  the deals or anyone else does. And then I would use my commission for
• 5:54
  my down payment. And so my wife was really good with interior decorating,
• 5:59
  and of course I had the floor recovery. We would we would buy homes
• 6:02
  and then and flip them and you know, decorate them up. You know,
• 6:06
  a lot of my benefit was knowing how to do all that. So
• 6:10
  a lot of flippers having to hire a or a sider and a guy to
• 6:13
  put in windows, and where I had the experience to do that, I
• 6:15
  was able to do all the repairs myselves, you know, so I didn't
• 6:18
  work around other people's time schedules and you know, just go in and get
• 6:23
  it done. And yeah, so we we flipped about five or six homes
• 6:27
  and uh, you know, and that was really satisfying too. We have
• 6:29
  a lot of satisfaction to you know, fixing things, painting them up,
• 6:33
  making them look good, making them livable. Sure, yeah, it's very
• 6:38
  Uh, I find that very satisfying. It's like an art of creating,
• 6:43
  right. Yeah. You know, I really like being able to do that,
• 6:48
  to take a place that's like a total fit and turn it into a
• 6:53
  place where people actually want to live. You know, there's a satisfaction and
• 6:58
  it can be highly profit sitable as long as you're on the right time in
• 7:01
  the cycle, right exactly. Yeah, And the flexibility was good. You
• 7:06
  know, I had two little girls until I could get take off and go
• 7:10
  to their school plays and you know, pick them up after school. And
• 7:12
  the flexibility was really handy. You know, need to be my own boss
• 7:17
  and set my own schedule. Well, there you have it. So I
• 7:23
  think there needs to be a handyman handyman University. Don't you think it?
• 7:29
  Not enough people knew how to do these skills in this day and age.
• 7:33
  I mean here in Palm Beach County, Mark a good handyman gives forty to
• 7:39
  fifty bucks an hour. That here too. I called the handyman that's working
• 7:44
  up the street yesterday and I said, well, what's your basic He goes,
• 7:46
  well, we started fifty dollars an hour and then you know, we
• 7:49
  like to did the job. But so basic it's it's fifty dollars an hours.
• 7:54
  So and now there's the benefit of YouTube, so you can learn.
• 8:00
  At the time when I started, there were you know, trifle pamphlets from
• 8:03
  the local HeartWare. Yeah, and the home depot guy. Well, you
• 8:07
  probably didn't have home depot when you started, but the home depot guy could
• 8:11
  tell you how to do it. I gotta tell you a funny story.
• 8:13
  So I watched some youtubes because I got this toilet. That's phantom flushing,
• 8:18
  right, which means like magically the toilet just flushes every couple of hours.
• 8:24
  It's really annoying. It means your flapper was leaking right exactly. So the
• 8:30
  flapper is bad. So I said, you know, I'm just going to
• 8:33
  replace all the flappers because they're probably the same age. And I go to
• 8:37
  home deepen by them. I said, universal flapper. Well, evidently there's
• 8:41
  two universal flappers, and I got the wrong one. It was toopid pack
• 8:46
  to home depot, take it back, all right. I proceed to put
• 8:52
  the flapper in, and you know, like modern toilets, they no longer
• 8:56
  have the float with the brass rail the brass arm. Now it's like a
• 9:01
  built in a vertical float. So, and there's a hose that goes in
• 9:05
  there, and I accidentally knocked the hose out of there. While I'm putting
• 9:09
  the flapper in, water shoots all over the place. I'm soaking that,
• 9:15
  cursing my brains out. Finally I reach under and I turned the water off.
• 9:20
  I said, oh my god, I hope I don't have to call
• 9:24
  a plumber. Now it's gonna be like he's gonna laugh at me and he'll
• 9:28
  charge me extra for being stupid. Luckily, I figured out where the hose
• 9:33
  went, flicked it back at checks the flapper, and no more phantom flushing.
• 9:39
  So yeah, then, you know, like while I'm doing that,
• 9:43
  the handle breaks off. You know, it just broke off. It was
• 9:46
  ready to go, and it wasn't anything I did. It was just corroded
• 9:50
  back to home depot. This time, I get it. But it took
• 9:54
  me like a day or two to adjust the chain to the proper length.
• 9:58
  So yeah, blush properly and shut off properly. So hey, I guess
• 10:03
  I should have watched the YouTube video a few more times before I embarked upon
• 10:07
  this adventure. You know, yeah, snap a picture of the old slapper
• 10:13
  when you go into home Depot to show the guy my phone is still a
• 10:18
  picture of those you know album projects that need to be finished. Well,
• 10:22
  my next project is I really need to to replace the wax seal there.
• 10:31
  You know that's a messy job, and that he want Brendon to help.
• 10:35
  I don't want to do this one on my own. Yeah, yeah,
• 10:39
  yeah, rubber gloves, rubber gloves and like you stick a rag in the
• 10:45
  rain and yeah, all that good stuff. But but you know, it's
• 10:48
  probably cost me a couple hundred bucks to get a plumber to do it,
• 10:52
  if you can even get one. Yeah, yeah, if you can get
• 10:56
  one, schedule right, So just do it myself and to get it done.
• 11:01
  Hey, you know that's one of the things. Never before has the
• 11:05
  information been so readily available so that you can handle most household repairs from Look,
• 11:11
  I wouldn't I wouldn't attempt to put a circuit breaker in the breaker box
• 11:16
  or screw around there, because my feeling is that's just way too much above
• 11:22
  my pay grade. But putting in an outlet, putting in a switch,
• 11:28
  you know, even doing a little wiring, I have no problem with that,
• 11:33
  And it saves your money and you feel good after you do a job
• 11:37
  that you would have paid somebody to do, assuming you have the time to
• 11:41
  do it, you know. Yeah. A lot of the skill of a
• 11:45
  good handy man is to know when to call in the professionals. Yeah,
• 11:48
  know, when you're over your head and call the call in the professionals,
• 11:52
  because you know, a lot of it is, you know, simple stuff,
• 11:56
  but you don't. You don't want to get in over your head and
• 12:00
  have a problem because the edd of the bus if you double what it would
• 12:03
  have cost you all the professional in first place. Mark, you're retired,
• 12:09
  Now what are you doing with yourself? I'm a retail sales manager for a
• 12:13
  frozen dough company and so roads bread and so I call on grocery stores and
• 12:20
  me and yeah, I'm you know, I'm a couple of years from retirement.
• 12:24
  Still. My father's doing what I'm doing when he was ninety, and
• 12:28
  my brother's doing that since. So. You know, when you love what
• 12:33
  you do, it's not really a job, you know, it's you get
• 12:37
  out and visit with people every day and travel around. It's so do so.
• 12:41
  Look, if somebody wanted to become a handyman, all right, besides
• 12:46
  watching YouTube videos, there's other schools, trade schools, vocational schools. You're
• 12:52
  going to make fifty bucks an hour, fifty bucks an hour if you can
• 12:56
  build thirty bucks a week, seventy five thousand dollars, fifteen hundred a year,
• 13:01
  seventy five thousand dollars a year. And that's mostly cash, all right,
• 13:07
  although now like you pay the handyman with Venmo or zell or one of
• 13:13
  those payment apps or PayPal, but nonetheless a lot of it's cash, a
• 13:18
  lot of it to you know, just put in your pocket. And of
• 13:22
  course you're supposed to report it to the appropriate taxing authorities, which I'm sure
• 13:26
  everybody out there does, right And where point is, So even if you're
• 13:33
  not doing well now you're stuck in a fast food or whatever, you could
• 13:41
  spend literally two or three months learning this watching videos and hey, experiment on
• 13:48
  your own toilet, experiment on your own apple lit, your own switch dot,
• 13:54
  repaint your house, get the proper painting techniques down, because it's a
• 13:58
  lot of hand man's stuff. Is you patch up holes and you paint over
• 14:03
  it. Right, So even in these tough times, you know, and
• 14:09
  tough times mean that probably maintenance gets put off. So when stuff does break,
• 14:13
  it's got to be fixed right away. There's opportunity here, right,
• 14:18
  opportunity Wow. And you know, go to a construction site and talk to
• 14:22
  the guys and you know, the plumber, you know, kind of hang
• 14:28
  out and visualize me. People love to share their knowledge, you know.
• 14:31
  You start you start asking, you know somebody, you all want a job,
• 14:35
  Hey, what about this? What about it? You know, I
• 14:37
  was putting a double oveny in our hole and I talked to a contractor and
• 14:43
  I said, I don't want to come dust all over from cutting the brick.
• 14:46
  What do I do? I said, you drill it? He said,
• 14:48
  just drill about every quarter of an inch half an inch all the way
• 14:52
  perimeter of your new oven with and then just tap it out with a hammer.
• 14:56
  And I thought, oh, I'm so glad, I asked, it's
• 14:58
  a I would I yeah, I would have tried, you know, a
• 15:03
  saw on. I would have had red sawdust all over, red book dust
• 15:07
  all over the kitchen. So yeah, there's people people love to share their
• 15:11
  calling. They really do. Hey, and we used to call these tips
• 15:15
  or whatever, and now they call them hacks. I mean, I've got
• 15:18
  tons of hacks, business hacs, everything else. You know, one thing
• 15:22
  I did mention I'm starting to do now is help entrepreneurs whose businesses are failing
• 15:28
  or not living up to their expectations to maximize profits. It's something I've been
• 15:33
  doing my whole life. It's so much easier to do it for someone else's
• 15:37
  business than yourself. It's ridiculous how easy it is. And I love doing
• 15:41
  it. So you got a business you want me to consult with? Kl
• 15:46
  at Carrie Lutz dot com. Mark, it's so great to finally connect with
• 15:50
  you and to share stories and experiences. Wish you the best. They got
• 15:56
  a question for Mark and myself. Like I said, kl at Carrie dot
• 16:00
  com. Mark, keep the emails coming. It's great to meet you.
• 16:03
  Thank you, thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution
• 16:10
  to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com.
• 16:15
  Financial Survival Network now more than ever,