Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #36 Buy Back the Block

Transcript

EYL #36 Buy Back the Block · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Coach, the energy out there felt different. What changed for
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the team today?
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: It was the new game day scratches from the California
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Lottery players.
• 0:07
  Speaker 3: Everything.
• 0:07
  Speaker 4: Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Are you saying it was the off field play that
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: made the difference on the field.
• 0:13
  Speaker 4: Hey, little play makes your day, and today it made
• 0:15
  Speaker 4: the game.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: That's all for now, coach, one more question.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco forty nine
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Ers and Los Angeles Rams scratchers from the California Lottery.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: A little play can make your day. Peace may responsibil
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: must be eighteen years or older to purchase late or claim.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: All right, guys, welcome back EYO Houston edition. Oh man,
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: if you notice the backdrop is different, that's because you're.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: On the road right now.
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, took this one for sure. Show in the me
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: in the great state of Texas, the beautiful city of Houston,
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: so first and foremost shot to everybody in an We've
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: only been here for them, like less than twenty four
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: hours and we got shown so much love so far.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, as soon as we got on the plane,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: right they gave up their seats. Shout out to Crystal
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: for give it up a seat.
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: So we yeah, shot shout out to the radio station today,
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: ye ninety seven, mad hatter. Yeah it was it was great.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: It was great. So we enjoyed ourselves and we're going
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: to come back out here. We're going to spend some
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: more time in is Real.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: So we got a special, very special episode today. We
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: have a special guest, Chris Senegal. Thank you for joining us.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: Appreciate it man.
• 1:19
  Speaker 5: Welcome to Houston, Senegalgue like the country, just like the country.
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: Shout out to Africa. So, yeah, we're going to talk
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: about a lot of different things this episode. We're going
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: to talk about everything from gentrification, real estate, investing, day trading,
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: a lot of different stuff. Chris is a very interesting guy.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: He's a renaissance man. He does a lot of different guys,
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: a lot going on, guy, lot going on. And this
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: is one of the things that we try to do
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: when we travel. We try to tap in with the
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: movers and shakers and business people that are making waves
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: and making a name for themselves in the city. So
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: we had to tap in with the good Brothers. So
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: I want to get right into it. Yeah, you're an
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: interesting guy. You told me that you went to school
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: for to be an engineer. You're a trained engineer, civil engineer,
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: degrees in all right, and then but you was actually
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: day trading for a little bit. Right. We haven't really
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: covered day trading too much. We had an episode on
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: stocks and we talked a little bit about Wall Street,
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: but we didn't really go into day trading. What made
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: you go into day trading?
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Man?
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: So eventually that essentially that was my escape to try
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: to get out of corporate America, you know, because I
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: was like, I was like the good kid, you know
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: what I mean, straight a's in school, full scholarship to college,
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: engineering job, got out there. I did it for like
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: the first six months. I was like, man, I've been
• 2:29
  Speaker 5: sold a dream. I hate this. That's how I felt.
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: And so the first thing that came across my desk
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: was stocks and trading. And I ran to a guy
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: one day when I was at a conference for work,
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: matter of fact, and he was about a pool all
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: day every day with his laptop, and I was like,
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: what is this dude doing? And so he was a
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: brother and he was sitting out there and I was like,
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: what are you doing. He's like, oh, I'm trading. You know.
• 2:51
  Speaker 5: So he was watching the market what they called scalping,
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: so basically watching for a stock to go up, knowing
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: that it's it's it's probably going to come back down
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: really quickly. He'll buy and make that little margin in
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: the middle. And so basically I kind of talked to
• 3:04
  Speaker 5: him into becoming my mentor. And so for like a
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: full year I was like fully invested and learned how
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: to trade outside of my work.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: So prior to that moment, did you have any familiarity
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: with stocks.
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: I had no familiarity with anything but going to school
• 3:18
  Speaker 5: and getting the job, you know what I mean. So
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: I had no exposure to business, entrepreneurship, investing, nothing else.
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: This was my my I high moment, you know what
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: I mean.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: And yeah, so what do you teach you about day trading? Like,
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: what does like day trading one on one look like
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: for anybody that's not familiar. Day trading is when you
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: could really day trade anything. It's when so most of
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: the time when you invest in something, you invest in
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: whole right. Day trading is when you're dating. You're trading
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: in the day. So you might buy a stock at
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: eleven o'clock in the morning and then you sell it
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: at eleven thirty, you're selling it at one pm. You're
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: trying to like just make quick short term profits. And
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: you do that pretty much every day, and it's like
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: a job where you're just like watching the computer, watching
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: like different you know, swings in the market, and then
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: you buy and then you sell. Right, So, what's the
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: one on one that he taught you.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: And you kind of learned as far as day trading,
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: mainly just the cycles of the day, you know, I
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: think a lot of people that understand day trading, they're
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: trained to look at the signals. So there's a lot
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: of different technical indicators that people use, and there's certain
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: like certain dips that you'll watch for. There's a certain
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: spike in a stock or a certain cycle where it
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: goes up and down, up and down a couple of times,
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: and then when it breaks up what they call like
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: a resistance barrier where it goes up higher than something,
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: then it's time for you to get in because it's
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: probably about to make a run and go up. And so,
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: like you said, you know, day trading is basically just
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: guessing what's about to happen based off of previous behaviors
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: of generally stocks in general, what's the stress.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Level of somebody that's going to be day trading?
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Man? I could imagine, right, Like I remember we were
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: talking about cryptocurrency and we weren't sleeping, so I mean,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: we were doing that with money.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: That we knew we could lose. But somebody who's doing
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: that as a career, what's the stress level?
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: Pretty high?
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: Mean a lot of people don't survive. I got out
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: of it after a year, honestly. I mean it is.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: I would say it's about thirty percent better than gambling,
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: sports betting, you know what I mean, because at the
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: end of the day, it's still a person on the
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: other end of whatever you're watching that's making decisions, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: it's big institutions that are buying stocks. Is it could
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: be individuals, but if they own enough shares of that
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: particular stock that you're watching, they make a decision, that's
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: what makes it spike or go down. And so you're guessing,
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: and you're assuming that because people told you when you
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: see this pattern and this stock, that this is going
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: to be the result, you're assuming that that's what's going
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: to happen this time.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: Again, a lot of times that's not the case. Yeah,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: because there's a thing called technical analysis. So when you're
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: looking at stocks, there's fundamental analysis and the technical analysis.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: So fundamental analysis when you're looking at fundamentals, so that's
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: like you know, when people actually look at like earnings
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: ratio and how the company is doing stuff like that.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: But then the technical analysis is when you're just looking
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: at all technical stuff, right, So these are things that
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: really has nothing to do with the how the company
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: is doing. And there's like different indicators in charge, like
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: the candlestick, it's charge and so like you said, and
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: then there's like barriers and it's like okay, if it
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: breaks out over this, then that makes it's going to
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: go up. If it goes down under that, then it's
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: gonna it's I tell people all the time, it's not
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: something that you can just jump into. Now. It's very complicated,
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: and you can get lucky, like all things in life,
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: you can actually get lucky and make some money, but
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: in the long haul, you can lose a lot of
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: money because it moves very quickly, and like you said,
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: a lot of things are just out of your control.
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: And even with the good technical now because you can
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: still not really because it's still kind of guessing in
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: a sense, you're kind of just making a prediction based
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: off of educated knowledge of what you are seeing. But
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: even what you're seeing can be manipulated.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: So you said, after you only did it for a year,
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I did it for a year. After the year, what happened.
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: Next, Man, I fell back for a minute. I started
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: reading more and trying to figure out, you know, what
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: other industry I could get into just to get out
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: of that job, And so I started reading books in
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: real estate kept coming up. At the same point in time,
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: I actually decided I was gonna leave that job I had,
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: and I moved back to Houston. I was in Memphis
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: at that point in time. Moved back to Houston, but
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: it was during the recession two thousand and eight, so
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: I couldn't sell my house. So after like a year
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: paying the mortgage payment, I just decided to get a
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: property manager up in Memphis to rent it out for me.
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: They rented it out. They rented it up for like
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: four hundred dollars more than what the mortgage payment was.
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: So then that's when that light bulb kind of went
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: off for me. It was like, wait a minute, So
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: I'm out here trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: And meanwhile, I got this property that's out of state.
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: I got somebody else working managing it for me every month,
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: and I'm making four hundred dollars a month doing nothing.
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: Blessing in disguise, blessing in this guy. Right, So that
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: open minds up to passive income. So that's when everything
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: shifted to real estate.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: Can we talk about the franchise business that you had
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: a little bit because you had it's called super week Express, Yeah,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: super we So what was the So all right, super
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: We've expressed. I'm assuming it was weaves.
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: Hair extensions, hair section, the full service of their business.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: So that's a billion dollar business. Right. We talked about
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: the hair business, but not really in depth. But what
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: made you want to go into as a man? What
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: made you want to go into a woman's industry? Man?
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: I mean it's it's it's a supplying demand thing, right,
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: So as an entrepreneur, you know you got a supply
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: a product and that if there's a demand for it
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: and there's a spread, then you can make a profit.
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: And that's the only reason why I looked at it. Actually,
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: the founders of that company are actually from my hometown
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: port Art of Texas, and they had several locations and
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: I sat down with them and they showed me the
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: revenue numbers and their store was doing like half a
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: million dollars a year and I was like.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: Man, I had no idea the weaves. Yeah, it was
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: a physical brick and mortar store.
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: Brick and mortar store they had, They had a stylist there,
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: and they it was a commission based salon, so they
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: got a percentage of the commission, but they did all
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: the marketing, They did all the advertising, and then they
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: assigned clients to the customers that they came in. And
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: they also supplied the hair. So they bought it at
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: the wholesale price, sold it that retail.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: So you bought a franchise, correct, Yeah, but a franchise.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: What's that process like? Because I think we spoke about
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: that in one of our early episodes about being a
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: franchise e.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: What's that process like and how'd you get involved?
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: So the whole franchise model is basically, instead of you
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: starting a business from scratch, you are identifying somebody that
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: already has a business that appears to be successful, and
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: you're paying them to use their branding, to use their
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: their business model, you know, their business plan, and in exchange,
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: you're going to pay them up front, you know, as
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: a as a fee to get in and then monthly
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: they're going to take a percentage of your revenue. I mean,
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: And so that's that's what your franchise fee is.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: And the thing.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: That most people don't realize is that the average business
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: is only profitable within the fifteen to twenty percent margin range. Right,
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: So then when you're a franchise e, if that franchise
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: says their royalty is what it's called, if it's forty
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: eight percent, that's forty eight percent of your gross So
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: they are a top line expense. They don't wait to
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: see if you're profitable or that. On the back end, franchises,
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: they can be good because it takes a lot of
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: the risk out of what you're doing, but your profitability
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: goes down.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: You said, that's the trade off. Can you can you
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: explain that when you said the average business is profitable
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: fifteen to twenty percent in the profit mark, can you
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: explain that like what that means to the average person?
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: I mean, no, understand that.
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: So the biggest issue that I see with a lot
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: of us, a lot of the biggest thing that we
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: have a lack of exposure to when we start businesses,
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: we listen to what somebody clots is their revenue, right,
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: and that's the growth. So that's every dollar you've taken in,
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: But that doesn't include what your what your rent cost is,
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: what your labor cost is, Yeah, what your what your
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: what your product cost is. You know, even when you
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: bring in money, if you're in a business that has
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: a lot of merchandise and products, even if you have profit,
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: usually if your business has grown, you got to take
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: all that revenue and put it right back in the
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: business to re up on your inventory and probably buy
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: more inventory to keep up with your demand. So there's
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: a lot of money you can't really pull out that pipe.
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: Then you got like you you got taxes, you got
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: all these expenses that come along with running a business,
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: and then what's left is profit. So and most of
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: the time that's fifteen to twenty percent, especially if you're
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: brick and mortar.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: You said that was one of your biggest mistakes, is
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: getting into a business based on that revenue and not
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: their net profit.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: That's it.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: How did that come about? How did you realize, like
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: this was a mistake that I made.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: Well this business specifically, So when we opened, we hit
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: a home run. You know, the first year we did
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: four hundred and fifty thousand revenue. It's like sixty percent
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: from the retail side and forty percent from the services side,
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: which is a hairsalon. But the expenses were so high
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: and we had to keep so much money tied up
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: in it that at the end of the year what
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: was left on the table.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: Was about sixty thousand dollars.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: And then I had a partner, so now you're splitting
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: that two ways. So now for all that work, you
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: make thirty thousand dollars a year.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: Oh that's crazy? Can you can you just go into that.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: You said that your your net was six hundred thousand,
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: four hundred and you you netted sixty.
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: Thirty Yeah all right, yeah thirty?
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: How did that happen? Okay?
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: So Number one, we went we wanted to be in
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: a prime area, so we went and got a retail
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: space in a shopping center. We were like between a
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: salad beauty supply and the SAMs and so that was
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: like five grand a month right there off the top.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: Then since Neither he nor I were stylists or we
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: knew how to run a salon. We had to hire
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: a manager and we had to have an assistant. So
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: that's seventy grand right there. And then you know the
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: revenue for the hair extensions. You know, only about thirty
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: thirty five percent of that is profit, So we spent
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: two undred thousand on that. So you know that that
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: revenue looks like it's really high, but when you look
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: at all those fences, it gets really gets smaller. Then
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: you got utilities, you got product you got to keep
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: in the salon the stylists to be able to use.
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: You got marketing and advertising, and we were spending like
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: five grand a month to stay on the radio to
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: keep people walking.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Through the door.
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: You got insurance. So it's a lot of expense that's
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: tied to that business.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: And this is what this is twenty seventeen.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: This was two thousand and fourteen, twenty fifteen. Okay, yeah,
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you said that because a lot of times
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: people don't fully understand a reason why most businesses fail,
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: right financial issues. You don't fully understand what goes into
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: making a business. So even if you make almost in
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: your case, almost a half a million dollars a year,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: you still might be broke. You end up making thirty
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: thousand dollars. It's like you could have worked a part
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: time job really and now, but that business is probably
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: taking like ten hours a day for you to actually run,
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: maybe even.
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: More exactly right, And we were open seven days a week,
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: so there was no days off, you know. Yeah, so
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: even though you have a manager, and manager still looks
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: to the owner and make final decisions on things, so you're.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: On call all the time.
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: You know, I tell people a lot of times what
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: you said is exactly right. You may leave the comfort
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: of a job to start a business not really realize
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: that you just created another job for yourself with less benefits,
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: with nothing to fall back on.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: So it's got to be the right decision. You got
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: to really understand the business you're getting into.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: Now, that's a fact. So what what would your suggestion
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: be as far as an entrepreneur, an inspiring entrepreneur that
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: is going out there, would you say that, you know,
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: looking at expenses is just as important as looking at
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: what they could potentially make.
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: Much more important, much more important, much more important. Yeah,
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: and you know, and I highly advocate getting a mentor
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: somebody that's doing it, and you know, because it's hardly
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: a business, you're gonna find where somebody else isn't already
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: running a business like it. And I encourage people to
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: try to find somebody in a different market that's doing
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: the same thing so that they're more open and willing
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: to talk to you about the ins and outs, the
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: nasty part that people don't talk about, you know what
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: I mean, because they won't feel like they're creating a competition.
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: But a lot of times, a lot of them just
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: want to vent and they want to talk about, you know,
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: the real issues, and they don't want to confide in
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: their friends and their immediate circle because everybody looks up
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: but then puts them on a pedestal for having this business.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: But so it kind of gives you an opportunity to
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: be a sounding board and really learn the business.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: And also experience is always the best nature as well.
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, no matter how much you're still gonna have
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: to make mistakes and learn your own. Yeah, but like
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: you said, you kind of curve the learning curve a
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: lot if you actually have a mentor or you're working
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: under somebody.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: For it's not about what you what you make, it's
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: about what you keeping.
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, yeah, And your school kind of conditions us
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: to try to learn how to get it right on
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: our own. First, don't cheat, don't copy off for somebody.
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: But when you get in the world of business, your
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: best bet is to copy the.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: Right cat Toad's that's a good you know, that's a
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: good point.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: That was excellent.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: That's actually a really good point. Never really thought about
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: it like that.
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, and that's something I teach too, like
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: because I mean, so many people in corporate America that
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: are trying to get out and I just tell them,
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: Number one, you got to retrain the way you think
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: about everything because school now only school teach you not
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: to cheat. School teaches you that if you're wrong more
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: than ten percent of the time, you are not the best.
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: All A students got to be writing ninety percent of
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: time or more consistently to stay to stay up up.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: On that pedestal.
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: Whereas you got a lot of people that were seeing
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: these students failed, they comfortable feeling twenty thirty percent of
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: the time all the time, and at the end they
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: got the same diploma you got.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: You know, Jack mad said something interesting. If anybody that
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: doesn't know who that is, that's the head of Ali Baba.
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: He's one of the richest people in the world. And
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: he said, he told he tells his son that you
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: don't have to be an A student. It's okay to
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: be a C student because those are the only people
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: that have enough time to be well rounded and to
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: experience a lot of different things. Because if you've the
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: theory is that a lot of times it's like doctors, right,
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: a lot of times they don't know anything about a
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: lot of stuff because they focus so much on medicine
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: and passing all the tests. They don't know how to
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: write a check. Right. So what you're saying actually makes
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: a lot of sense. And it is an issue with
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: the school system because even if you look at a
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: sport like baseball, you bat three hundred, you got four
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: hundred every right, that's less than fifty percent. You expect
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: somebody to do eighty ninety percent. Yeah, it's not realistic. Right,
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: in the real world, make mistakes, especially if you're going
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: to be broad range and have knowledge on a lot
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: of different things. It's hard to just truly master five
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: different subjects.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: That's one of those questions we used to ask ourselves, right,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: it was like, should we know a lot about a
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: few things? I know a little about a lot of things, right,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: because that makes you more well rounded when you're versed
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: in a lot of things. Right, Like I don't have
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: a background in business, but I'm willing to learn in
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: these areas.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: I might not know medicine, but I'll research on it,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. So we got to keep
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: ourselves well around it. That's why I always stressed, like,
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: education doesn't stop in school, right, Right, it goes beyond
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: the four walls of the or the building of school.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: It goes in the living environment, it goes in the home,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: it goes in the communities.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: It's all over, it surrounds.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: Us, all right. So all right, so that was that
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: was actually really good information as far as for anybody
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: that's looking to get in the business and business owner.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: But now we're going to go into some more stuff.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: You're going to glose thing. We're also going to go
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: into your career as an engineer. I think that that's
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: interesting something I.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Think we've touched on that.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we haven't really spoke about that, but all right,
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: So We're going to that in the next segment. All right,
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: So now we want to talk about all right, so
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: you're you're an engineer my train and you you worked
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: for the railroad company, right right? Can you explain that,
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: like what you actually did, because that what you did
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: that for twelve years? Right? Yeah?
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: So I started while I was in college, like working
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: for in part time. But what I did was so
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: design rail terminals. I mean it's pretty it was pretty
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: simple as far as the engineering because you're not building
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: buildings and everything. But it was just a lot of
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: work that was needed to like when after a derailment,
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: you know, realigning the track, making sure that the trains
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: can run because they they running a high velocity on
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: these two little bitty rails and you got hundreds of
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: thousands of tons moving at sixty seventy miles an hour,
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: so you had to make sure that everything was designed,
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: the curvature was right and all.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: That kind of stuff. And where were you doing this at?
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: So I started off working for ce In Railroad. So
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: I was covering between Chicago and ben Ruge, Louisiana.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Wow, because we seen in you know, the past few months,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: these railroad systems the subway stys, especially in the New
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: York where we're from, that are completely outdated. They're running
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: on systems that are from like nineteen ten, right, and
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: we're like, how is this even possible?
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, technology has not changed and they just they do
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: the minimum maintenance to keep it up. So I was
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: on like the freight side, so it wasn't any passenger rail.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: So a lot of it's behind the scenes, you know
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: that they didn't get a lot of exposure unless that's
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: a big derail me somewhere.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So merchandise and product is moving through your.
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: Life right exactly, And like eighty percent of anything that
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: moves somewhere in the United States, if it comes in
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: on a cargo ship from China somewhere, it moves by
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: rail at some point in time. It only moves by
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: truck when it gets closer to its destination.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think people realize how big of a business
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: trains are because the vast majority of the country probably don't.
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: They don't ride trains like we're kind because we're from
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: New York, so we're used to riding trains, subways and trains,
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: it's pretty normal. But most of America they don't really
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: ride trains like that anymore. So people might not fully
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: understand that trains is a big business. And even if
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: you don't ride it, like you said, a lot of
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: cargo rides and trains.
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And what people don't realize is that the railroad
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: is basically what helped build the West. Like when everybody
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: went from the East coast to West coast, everything was
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: moving by a rail. There was small trains, great expansion, right, yeah,
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: the great expansion. Yeah, everything was done by rail And
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: people always wondered why the railroads in the hood that
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: wasn't always the hood. That's what the first area that
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: was settled in every small town because you had to
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: bring everything in by a rail to set up, you know,
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: the infrastructure, to build a city hall, to build small buildings.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: Everything came in by rail.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So one of your job, not titles, but responsibilities is
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: designed Are you designing the actual tracks?
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Like what what does that mean?
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Designing the actual tracks? You are? Yeah? Oh well,
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: I mean that's what I did. Now.
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: I did that for the first four years I worked
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: for the railroad. But like I said, I wanted to
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: get out of engineering. So and once I started getting
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: into reading the real estate and entrepreneurship stuff. I realized
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: I needed to learn more about business, so I kind
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: of took that opportunity while I had the corporate blanket
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: over me to try to get into other departments. So
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: I went into operation. So I ran freight terminals.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: For like four years.
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: And that was crazy experience because I'm like twenty four
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: to twenty five guys that's forty fifty making twice as
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: much money as me. Another union guys make over one
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: hundred grand a year. I was making like fifty sixty.
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: So I learned a lot about managing people in that role.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: Then I got out of that and I got into
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: the marketing and sales side, and I was lucky enough
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: to get into industrial products, which is chemicals and oil
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: and gas stuff. So I'm sitting in rooms with all
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: these decision makers at Exxon, Chevron, pill Up sixty six,
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: these type companies, and yeah, man, it's just open mye's
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: to a whole different world. They speak a different language.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: You learn a lot more about the economy and infrastructure
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: of everything.
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: But what's one of the things you learned when you
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: was working on that side of the fence.
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: Man, I just learned how money really works. And how
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: people really make decisions because energy runs the country, you
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: know what I mean, Like without without coal, without oil,
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: without gasoline, everything shuts down. And so they know that
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: they basically have monopoly on everything, you know, and the
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: profit margins are crazy.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: That in the world, what's the profit margins are.
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: Three hundred percent on a lot of stuff?
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: Wow, like gas and oil and stuff. Yeah, so let
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: me ask you this. Then a lot of people are
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: saying that we should move away from that, going to
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: solar energy, wind energy, electric energy. You're you're an engineer
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: and you worked in the space. Hey, is that realistic?
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: And what's your thoughts on that, like as long term?
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: Can we continue the way we're going now or do
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: we have to make a change.
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: I mean eventually there there will have to be a
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: change because there's a limited amount of fossil fuels out there,
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: so we're gonna have to find other energy sources that
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: we can use that are renewable. So it's definitely feasible,
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: it's definitely plausible, and like wind, sunlight, water, that stuff's
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: not gonna go away, so we're gonna have that. But
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: you just have these big institutions that are making so
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: much money off of the fossil fuel based energy sector
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: that they're not going to just give up their position.
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: And they do a lot of lobbying in Washington. That's
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: I was about to say, that's something that we don't
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: really understand. But their lobbying is powerful. That's why all
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: the legislation really happens. I don't care who you vote for,
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: is somebody with money in the back, behind the scenes
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: in Washington taking them out to dinner, wining and dinam
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: and that's when the real decisions are made.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: You got to make sure they keep their money.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: I remember when Hillary Clinton was running for president versus Trump.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, so they were saying, I think Chase
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: Chase put like ten million into Hillary's campaign, but they
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: put nine million in the Trumps campaign. No matter who won,
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: they won, it doesn't matter. I mean, that's what people
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: don't fully understand either. It's like you're playing a political
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: game based off of emotion, but these people are playing
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: a political game based off a strategy. It's two different things.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're playing chess.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they're gonna give money to Republicans, Democrats, and independence
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: because at the end of the day, they need what
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: they need done and money talks.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: And whoever, whoever's the decision maker, either red or blue,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: is gonna help them.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, so you started a business the erail commerce.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: Can you talk about that?
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: So basically something else I like to teach entrepreneurs, especially
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: the ones that's coming out of corporate world. Everybody feels
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: like I got to create something new, Like I got
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: to get into an industry that I see everybody else doing. Right,
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: But what I realized is like, man, if this company
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: is paying me one hundred grand a year to do
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: this job, there has to be a smaller business out
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: there somewhere that needs these same services, need the same
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: skill set, and I can just go out and provide
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: the service for them, and instead of being their employee,
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: I become their consultant. So that's what Erael commerces. I
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: took all that experience I had, all those connections I
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: had with the railroad, all these oil and gas companies,
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: and I found all these smaller companies that need or
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: want to get a contract with an Exxon. Because Exon
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: has over ten thousand rail cars, Everyone of those cars
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: has to be maintained, has to be repainted, has to
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: be cleaned, that has to be maintenance done to them.
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: They have to storm when they're not using they got
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: to park them somewhere. So what I do is I
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: help all those companies that provide those services get in
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: the door with exon, get the contract, and then they
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: perform all the work and I just get commissions off
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: of the deals.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: So you get like the relationship, man, I am.
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: I'm basically broker, basically broker in and I have everything
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: set up with with my clients to where whatever contract
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: that helped them get I get paid.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: But so email is not the only.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Form of consultation that you're providing, right, Don't you have
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: a few other consultation things that you do well.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, in general, I just try to help entrepreneurs
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: get started, you know, because I mean I was so
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: lost when I was trying to get out out of
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: the work world. I was like, man, nobody was really
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: here to guide me and teach me. So I use
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: my social media platform and you know, I use that
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: network and that audience as as my way to give back,
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: you know. So anybody that has helped wants helped with
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: it getting started entrepreneurship. I try to teach them the
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: basis the kind of stuff is we're talking about.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Now, you know what I mean.
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: I get them as far as I can, and then
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: I try to network with someone that's actually in their
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: field and try to get them to get under that person.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: So you're providing the mentorship by consulting. Right, Okay, gotcha.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Consulting is something that we also haven't spoken about yet
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: in this podcast, but it's extremely important and it's a
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: very profitable business as well. Consultants. You have consultants in
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: school industry, you have consultants in political industry, have consultants
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: and all kinds of stuff. Right, can you explain the
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: importance a lot of times, especially for small business owners.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: This is the problem with small business owners us compare
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: the business big business. They have a small way of thinking.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: They dot understand the power of consulting. They don't understand
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: the power of marketing. They don't understand. They just want
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: to just do the work. It's like running on the tread,
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: but you can only get so far. Right, when you
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: get enough wind behind you, know, you can start to fly.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: So when you're talking about the power of consulting, like
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: what can somebody get value out of a hiring the
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: right consultant?
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: So there's only two ways you're gonna learn. You either
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: gonna bump your head and you're gonna lose time and money,
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: or you're gonna pay for the knowledge period. There's no
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: other way you're gonna learn. Right, So you hire a consultant.
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: A consultant as someone that's an expert in that field
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: that's already got experience doing what you're trying to do.
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: Or they can help you with a particular area of
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: the business that you can't fulfill.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: Like if you have a great product.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: But you don't know how to get it in front
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: of enough people, you need a marketing consultant to come
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: in and help you get it in front of the
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: right people. And so it's basically a way for you
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: to you can add This.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: and sure, they definitely can be, but understanding of professionals
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: day after day.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: It's like banking with P and C Bank. It might
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: seem boring.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: To save, plan and make calculated decisions with your bank,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: but keeping your money boring is what helps you live
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: or more happily fulfilled life. P and C Bank Brilliantly
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: five is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: P and C Bank National Association Member FDIC.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: Erness.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: What's Up?
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: You ever walk into a small business and everything just
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: works like The checkout is fast, the receipts are digital,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: the line even builds Odds are they're using Square? We
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: at a pop up market, or even one of our
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: merch partners, Square makes it easy for them to take payments,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: one simple system. If you're a business owner or even
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: one of the best tools out there to help you start,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: run and grow. It's not just about payments, it's about
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: giving you time back so you can focus on what
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: matters most ready. To see how Square can transform your business,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: visit Square dot com, Backslash, go backslash eyl to learn
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: more that Square dot com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: don't hesitate. Let's Square handle the back end so you
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: can keep pushing your vision forward.
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: Indeed stop struggling to get your job posts seen on
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: so you can reach the people you want faster. According
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: forty five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: wait any longer, speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
• 29:39
  Speaker 6: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: at Indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen. Just go
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: to Indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen right now
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply hiring Indeed. It's
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: all you need.
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: At a whole department to your business without actually having
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: a hire un employee, it's a consultant.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: That consultant can neither be somebody that's paid by the hour,
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: or it could be somebody that I always recommend you
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: get performance based consultants, which means they work off a commission.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: So if they don't.
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: Produce for you, they don't make any money, right, so
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: that that gives them a vested reason to get in
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: there and work hard and get something done. And on
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: the flip side of that that, like you said, that's
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: a very lucrative business too, because it's a business where
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: it doesn't require you have to invest a lot. You
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: can work from home and be a consultant and people
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: actually paying you just for the knowledge that you already have.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: You know, so you can take that corporate experience you could. Man,
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: you could have been flipping burgers and McDonald's for five years,
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: but guess what skill set you got. You know what
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: it takes to onboard a new employees. So you can
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: go to other small restaurants and say here's the McDonald's model.
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna teach you how to run a McDonald's model
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: for your restaurant.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: And that's something that anybody can do. Like, as you're
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: saying it.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking of like, especially in the education field, and
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: especially in the restaurant field as well. It's like people
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: always try to figure out how can they make passive income, right,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: and they don't realize that they have a skill set already.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: They're just overlooking it, right, They're not maximizing their potential.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: Well, this is one of the things you talk about
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: multiple streams of income. That is that the average millionaire
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: has seven streams of income. That doesn't mean they has
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: seven jobs or even seven businesses. Is that they're maximizing
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: their skills maybe one or two businesses. So, as you said,
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: you can be a teacher, right, but you're an expert
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: in that field. If you're a really good teacher, Now
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: you can be a consultant to school districts, right, curriculum
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: things of that nature. Right, And that's something that anybody
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: can do. As choice said, even if you're still an employee,
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: you can be an entrepreneur and create your own consulting business.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: And the amount of time it doesn't require as much right,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: right to say these are my hours.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: You dictate the hours, and you dictate the fees, and a.
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: Lot of times you're helping different customers and clients with
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: the same problem exactly, so you already know it like
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: in and out.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: You know your business. How did you market yourself to
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: your customers or clients?
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: How do you man The most powerful tool I use
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: is linked in okay, And what I liked about LinkedIn
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: is because when when you put yourself on there as
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: a business owner, you give yourself whatever title you want.
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: You know, so I gave my it's just it's me
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: and one partner, but my title is executive VP. So
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: that puts you in a whole different arena. They look
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: at you like, it's all perception. It's all perceptions. So
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: then when I go to when I see a company
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: that I'm trying to get a connection with and I
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: go to the CEO and request to connect with them,
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: They're like, oh, it's another executive that wants connect you.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: We got an execut that wants to meet you.
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: And that's all it is is positioning, and it's it's
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: all about you know what you post. I post. I
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: repost a lot of Wall Street Journal type articles that
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: are related to the industry. Any type of insight that
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: I get from anybody else that's in the industry, I'll
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: make a post about that. So then you kind of
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: position yourself as a subject matter expert. So then a
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: lot what happens is eventually enough people watching your posts
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: to where when they have a problem, they come to
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: you instead of you having to go out and ask
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: for business. And another great thing I like about LinkedIn
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: is because you can type in any job title you want.
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: So I'm in a supply chain, right, I type in
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: director of supply chain. LinkedIn is gonna give me a
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: list of people with that title. So all I do
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: is go connect, connect connect, connect, connect, connect, you know,
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: and then that builds your audience because people go to
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: check you out to see who is this that's asking.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: The link with me?
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: And then like my network on LinkedIn is like seventeen thousand,
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: it's all industrial products, supply chain people from all these
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: big companies.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: That's a lot of that's LinkedIn. You got to accept
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: every single person.
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: Right yeah, well yeah, the person has the person has
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: to approve the connection.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: But if your page.
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: Is set up to where it looks like, oh, this
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: is somebody that I might want to my network, then
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: you're good. And that's the whole purpose of you know,
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: making sure that you set yourself up right on there with.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: The right titles, you send and you send Uh was
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: it in mail? Right? They send you in mail? So
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: you could both.
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: I guess something both. Yeah. I met with a guy
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: matter of fact, he flew in from Arkansas last week
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: because he's working with a private development group that does
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: industrial development and they're looking for new locations to build
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: new rail terminals. And that's part of my job when
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: I working in railroad, so that's part of my consulting too.
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: So he literally reached out to me because he had
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: been seeing me make these posts on LinkedIn about railroad
• 34:22
  Speaker 5: development and railroad terminals. So he just got literally fluent
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: for the day just for that meeting.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: You are using your resources efficiently.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: And a lot of times people don't realize that they're
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: just on LinkedIn, or they're just on Facebook just to
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: put pictures up, not networking, and not realizing how powerful
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: a tool they have at their fingertips.
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: Well, LinkedIn is only for networking. But I got to
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: get a better I go actually got to do a
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: better job on LinkedIn because I don't know, I just
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: don't feel too comfortable with it. I feel like it's
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: some kind of boring.
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: It is boring, but it's like Facebook, but it's for
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: business only.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's powerful, Yeah, it is, it is.
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: I mean you can you would be surprised that people
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: that don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers that are
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: like powerful people like I mean like producers, executive producers
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: at these big stations. They may have five hundred, one
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: thousand connections and you go requested and it's approved the
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: next day, you know. But it's like it's like it's
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: like a backdoor to get the connection that usually you
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: have to call a corporate headquarters and talk to administrative
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: person and ask the schedule time to meet this person
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: you just got LinkedIn and find them.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: So when you need it's like getting you past all those.
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: Stings exactly, like all the gatekeepers. Yeah, you pass all
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: the gatekeepers if.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: The person's on LinkedIn.
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: If they're on that, but every everybody's on LinkedIn, and
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: LinkedIn is one is the most powerful search thing too,
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: because like so when you search somebody's name on Google,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: the first thing that comes up is LinkedIn. That's like
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: the first thing. It's like it's like your online resume
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: pretty much, it is. And so I don't know how
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: they how they work that with the algorithm, but they
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: always are on the top of your thing. So you
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: kind of have to have a LinkedIn page if you're
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: doing anything in business. It's like almost mandatory.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, agree, I gotta upject man.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, so that was good in for so
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: now in the last time we want going to real estate,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: we're going to talk as sting real estate.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: That's things going on.
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: That's so yeah for sure. All right, so in the
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: last time, we're gonna talk about real estate, right, So, okay,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: what made you go into real estate first and foremost?
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: Like I said, I kind of fell into it with
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: the court, with the with the corporate job and leaving.
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: And I had bought a house at the first gig
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: and when I moved back to Houston, I couldn't sell it,
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: so I had to get.
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: A property manager.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: Property manager rented out. I was making like four hundred
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: bucks a month and I wasn't working at all for it.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: I was like, this is this seems like something lucrative.
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: And you know, the more you research real estate, it's
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: like eighty percent of the first time millionaires I made
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: in real estate.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: But this is at a relatively young age, right, like
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: your first property was at twenty two.
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, twenty two, that's pretty young. Yeah, twenty man, So
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: that was that was kind of a blessing. Through having
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: worked with the railroad while I was in school, I
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: had enough tenure with them to actually qualify for a
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: moving package. So when you work with a corporate company,
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: when they move you, they either give you a stipend
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: or they give you like a down.
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: Payment towards the house.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: And so they gave me the down payment and instead
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: of meeting apartment and pocketing the money, just.
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: Had to get a house.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: But you could have took the stipend, I could have
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: took the sype. He took the long term place.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: I mean you're not an engineered by mistake.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah. So all right, so then how did that
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: transition to you doing what you're now as far as
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: you're developing?
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: So okay, So when I moved to Houston, I decided
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: I wanted to go really hard on the in the
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: real estate game. And so one of my my line brothers,
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: my frat brother, worked for home vestors that we buy
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: ugly houses people, and he was their property manager in
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: the hood. And so I kind of told him what
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: I wanted to do, and so he ended up plugging
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: me with one of the contractors that Home Vestors using.
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: This guy was flipping twenty thirty houses a month for them,
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: doing actual rehab work. And so he kind of became
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: my mentor and we would pick houses, I would flip them.
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: Of course he would make money off of the rehabs,
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: and so that's how I kind of got into the
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: real estate game.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: In two thousand and nine.
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: I would sell some of them, I kept some of
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: them for rentals, and I was doing that for about
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: five years, but then I got tired.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Of having rental property.
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: I mean, I know everybody says that's supposed to be
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: supposed to buy the home of living and have rental property,
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: but man on the rentals sucks.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: The downfalls.
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: Okay, so a lot of people, it's a good profit
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: margin on a rental properties three or four hundred bucks
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: a month, right, but you have one month, say like
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: a tenant moves out, and then it takes you a
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: month to find another tenant's And if your mortgage payment
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: is twelve hundred dollars, that's literally three months of your
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: profit gone.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: If you got to make a repair that repairs.
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: One thousand dollars. That's another two and a half months
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: of profit gone, you know what I mean. And so
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: for me, it was like and then you have this debt.
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: I was own like one hundred, one hundred and twenty
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: on each house, and so now you got debt and
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: you got these small profit margins, and it's like, Okay,
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: I can see how long term I can continue to
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: do this and make money slowly, But dealing with tenants, tennants,
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: tearance stuff, fuck, you know, it just wasn't.
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: It wasn't something that I enjoyed doing.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: What type of properties were you looking for? Was it
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: single family homes or yeah family or yeah property.
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, at that point in time, I didn't qualify for
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: anything like extravagance. So I was just buying a little
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: single family homes and I'm saying, there's nothing wrong with it.
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: You know, everybody can make money in any industry. But
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: for me, it's just like, I want to do something bigger,
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: and so I guess I continued to flip. I started realizing,
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: you know, this narrative about gentrification happens over and over
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: and over, and I was like, man, I.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: Know a few of us that are flipping.
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: I don't know anybody that's really trying to get into
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: the development game, and you know, kind of change the
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: narrative so we have some control over that. So twenty thirteen,
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: that's when I decided to kind of get off into that.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: So would you buying land in twenty thirteen? Was that
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: the next step?
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: I didn't know what I was going to buy. I
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: just knew what I was gonna do is stop flipping
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: and try to figure it out. Okay, So I just
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: started talking about it, and man, it came full circle.
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: That same my same line brother that helped me get
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: into the game. He had an old tenant reach out
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: to him that used to be in one of the
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: properties and say, hey, I'm over here in Fifth War
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: and the landlord over here isn't taking care of the property.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: I think he's on drugs. And so you know what
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: he heard was opportunity. So he reached out to me
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: and he's like, man, I think we got opportunity to
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: go pick up a few houses over here. So I
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: went to go meet with the guy. Ended up being
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: a whole block, got a grocery store on it. Okay,
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: true story. At the time, this was in the hood.
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: It wasn't worth nothing. It was probably worth three hundred thousand.
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: The whole block. Everything was kind of run down. But
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: it's in the area where you tell somebody I'm about
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: to go spend three hundred thousand, They're like, man, are
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: you crazy? It's the hood, nothing but drugs and prostitution
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: over there. You're gonna waste your money, you know. So
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: what I ended up doing to talk him in doing
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: the deal, I offered him four hundred thousand for it.
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: So but of course I didn't have the cash to
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: pay four hundred thousand. So he actually had inherited the
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: property from his dad. His dad was like a real
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: estate taccoon had like twenty six blocks over there, twenty
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: six blocks, twenty six blocks. Who twenty six blocks, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: this block happened to be the one that they gave
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: this this kid, and he was like the horrible kid,
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: He watched it.
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So so this was the one he had,
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: and he still wasn't taking.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: Care of it.
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: So I offered him owner finance scenario where it's like,
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: I give you ten percent now with the finance. So
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: that's when the instead of you instead of going to
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: the bank, the owner that actually doesn't have any debt
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: on the property will let you make payments over time
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: to buy the property from them. So I gave him
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: ten percent of what we agreed to the four hundred thousands,
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: so forty thousand dollars which came from me selling one
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: of my rental properties. And then that allowed me now
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: to control that whole block of property and it had
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: the grocery store on it and then had the houses,
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: but everything was really run down. So instead of fixing
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: it up, what I decided to do was do parole
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: housing for felons because it's really hard for him to
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: find anywhere to live. So I would rent them out
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: a single room in each one of the houses, charging
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: three to fifty out.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: There was something that they could afford because the type
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: of jobs they could.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: Get, you know, they didn't have much income, or they
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: like a halfway house pretty much like a halfway house.
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they call them sr row houses. And then so
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: the state pays you that right.
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: Sometimes sometimes if it depends on what program they're in,
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: they get some type of housing assistance, but most of
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: the time, no, they had to go get a job.
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: So that's what made it really good because you talk
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: about a low risk tenant, you got somebody that's happy
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: to be out of prison. They was in prison for
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: non violent offense. I didn't do violent people. They had
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: to keep a job and they had to keep somewhere
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: to stay, and ninety nine percent of the places wouldn't
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: even allow them to live there. So they were like
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: they were like built in good higher revenue for me,
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: you know what I mean as collectively in each house.
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: Whereas I could have rented that whole house for five
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: hundred dollars to a regular family, now I'm making eleven
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: twelve hundred dollars off that the same house, you know,
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: with this program, and because you were renting the rooms,
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: them individual rooms, and most of them had trades, so
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: they were like carpenters, electricians, plumbers. They all earned their
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: trades in prison. So anything went wrong, I just dropped
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: off with.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: The wind is built in and they were just happy.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: To have somewhere to live, you know. So yeah, so
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: that worked out. That was a win win man.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: And then that was twenty thirteen, fourteen fifteen.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: I did that.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: In twenty sixteen, redevelopment kind of started in the area
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: that I was in Something else that I always watched too,
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: even when I was flipping, is what the city's plans were.
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: And you can go to the planning Department's website and
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: it'll tell you what they're planning to do five years,
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: ten years down the road. And that's a lot of
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: the game that we don't pay attention to, but you know,
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: the other group's pay attention.
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: Where can you find that information that Usually you.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: Can just google it, like Planning and Development Department or
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: Urban Planning for whatever city you're in, and it'll pull
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: up on that website. You know, it's usually a dot
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: gov type website, and they'll have all their information. A
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: lot of us talked about the city council meetings, so
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: you can look up city council meeting minutes and they'll
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: tell you about anything big, any developer that's proposed to
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: do something in certain area.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: All that has to be public publicly announced.
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: So but what I noticed about Houston was like everything
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: was going to counterclockwise around downtown. And the fifth one
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: neighbor that I was buying it was the last quadrant.
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: So I knew eventually it was gonna come. I just
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: didn'n't win, you know, And so yeah, So that's how
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: I got into it, and twenty sixteen is another guy
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: started building. So then I figured it was time for
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: me to try to figure out how to get it done.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: So what is your all, right, So what's your philosophy
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: on gentrification? What's what's your how do you feel about that?
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: So gentrification has a very negative connotation in our community
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: because we are never the ones revitalizing that neighborhood. And
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: what happens is the people that are revitalizing or looking
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: out for themselves or their own groups. It's not that
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: they don't care about us, is that they have their
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: own personal agendas that that that they're moving forward.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: And so we can.
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: Either continue to watch it happen or we can participate, right,
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: and we can participate in the way that we kind
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: of control the narrative of what's being built, who it's
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: being built for, and what happens to the surrounded.
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: Community that we're building in. Right.
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: So my goal with my project is, you know, most
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: of the time when you hear about black builders in
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: black neighborhoods, it's low income stuff. And I feel like
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: that's great, Like we do need to look out for
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: the low income people, but we got to attract the
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: people that were successful to the people that made it
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: out those neighborhoods, to back to those neighborhoods because we
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: need that income, we need that demographic if we ever
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: want a grocery store to come back. We can't sit
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: and depend on the government to do that. And right now,
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: what happens is the people that are successful, they go
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: and buy houses in the suburbs.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: It's not because they don't want to move back, it's.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: Because they have no options.
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: So my focus is, well, let me start building some
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: market rate stuff, not low income houses and stuff, but
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: try to attract these working professionals back to the neighborhoods
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: with a high quality product that they know they're gonna
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: pay the same price they're paying in the suburbs and
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: in the city. Your value is going to appreciate a
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: whole lot more, especially when that neighborhood starts to revitalize.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of what you've done with you know,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: the land that you bought in twenty thirteen, right, which
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: is the most recent development that you worked on, fourteen fourteen, Yeah.
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: Fourteen units individual house townhouses.
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you want to talk about that, how that came about.
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's the same property that I bought with
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: the grocery store and everything. So twenty sixteen I decided
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: to just tear everything down. When I saw there's another
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: developer that was building houses deep in the neighborhood and
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: he was selling them for two fifty before they were complete.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: He wasn't even listing them on MLS.
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: So I'm like, so that tells me that there's a mindset,
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: there's enough people out there are willing to save one
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: hundred thousand dollars because everything else inside the city loop
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: was like entire sixteen Loop was two three fifty or
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: more so, but people would rather save that money and
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: live in a neighborhood that was still pretty rough. So
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: I was like, well, if he can do this deep
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: in the neighborhood, I'm right on the feeder to the highway,
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: you know, I got a view of downtown. I should
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: be able to do something with my property too. And
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: so that's when I decided I'm gonna move forward with
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: this initiative to try to build these townhouses. And it
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: took a lot of work. It took me building the
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: right teams. I had no idea what I was doing
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: goes back to what you're talking about earlier with the consultant.
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: I had to find the right team, the right I
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: had to find a builder that had enough experience that
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: was willing to kind of lend his knowledge and time
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: to me. Of course for a fee, you know, I
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: had to pay him to be my consultant basically teach
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: me how to do the first project.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: But that's what I did. So what's your what's your
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: your plans now as far as how many projects are
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: you are you working on? Like what's your what's your
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: vision look like for the next five years?
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: Next five years, I want to finish this project, which
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: you're probably finished next year, and I want to continue
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: to build the same model in the same neighborhood. I
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: kind of want to make this like a real world
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: example that can be duplicated in other cities, like we
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: can go in, we can buy the land. And I
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: didn't mentioned my entire team is from the community too,
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: so like my my builders, my real estate brokers, my
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: insurance brokers, everybody, the contractors as.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: Well contractors as well. Yeah, yeah, I'm working with a
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: black builders.
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: So and it's not just anybody's people that got good reputations,
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: but we kind of always silo ourselves and.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: We never really collectively work together on stuff.
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: So yeah, and the goal and the most important part
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: of all of this, whether you're flipping another industry a
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: lot of people and it's whole selling or building new construction,
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: is ensuring that you put the.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: Product in front of the right end buyer.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Because if you're flipping, you call yourself buying a block,
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: but if you're not watching who you're selling to on
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: the back end, you're still gentrifying the neighborhood. So my
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: goal is really to educate us on, like I said,
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: the working professional on why it's better for you to
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: buy over here. So I'm building the first three now,
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: got contracts on two of them. Both of them are young,
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: young black professionals, basically all in gas professionals. The townhouses, Yeah,
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: I got a dentist, a black dennist from Dallas that's looking.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: At buying one, you know.
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: So it's all about making sure that we create that
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: model because right now, that gentrification narrative is the only
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: thing that that's real and for our people, we do
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: better when we see examples of something that's actually working.
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: And so when this is complete. I want to make
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: sure that this model is as much exposed as possible.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: It's not about me making all the money. I want
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: people in other cities to do the same thing, you know,
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: to say it's possible, we really can't do this.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: And this is the example. How do you evaluate like
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: what area you want to I know, you say you
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: look at it like the city plans, but do you
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: have like a set formula. It's just kind of like
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: you just know the area and you just kind of
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: have a good feeling because you can't buy in some
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: bad neighborhoods and they don't get better, right, So it's like,
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, how do you know like this is this
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: is probably going to get better.
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: It's all about your network because you got to be
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: talking to people in the industry.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: So a lot.
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: Of the realtors that I work with they work with builders,
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: and you know, you gotta have a network of commercial
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: realtors around you too, because they know where the commercial
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: developers are looking at, what areas are looking at. So
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: it's a lot of it's word of mouth in addition
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: to what you see on the city plans, you know,
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: But yeah, you gotta have your foot in the door.
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: You got to be on the inside, understanding where they're moving,
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: and you just kind of ride that wave along with them.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a few years ago you had one of the
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: most horrific hurricanes in United States history. What impact have
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: you seen since then on the real estate in Houston, Man?
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: You know, for it was a period of time where
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: the houses in the areas that did not get flooded,
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: the values went up tremendously or they were getting bought
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: up really really quickly. I didn't see too much of
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: a negative impact. The only thing that I did see
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: is a shift in ownership where the people that didn't
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: have the proper flood insurance who lost their homes.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: Had to become renters for a while. Right.
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: But at the same time, the investors who had the
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: cash on the table were able to pick up a
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: whole bunch of properties for a lot less than what
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: the values were. Anything under like two hundred thousand dollars
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: was still selling as it was rehabbed, but anything above
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: that two hundred thousand dollars mark, a lot of it
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: sat on the market, a lot of it's still here now.
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: We had a lot of out of town investors that
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: bought that thought that they could buy these flood houses
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: and flip them and sell them really quickly, but the
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: people in those price points were not comfortable, you know,
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: setting up their homestead.
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: Again in an area just flooded like that. So, so
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: what is what's your outlook for for for Houston for
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: anybody that's interested in and maybe coming in and investing.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: Optimistic for the city, Very optimistic man Houston.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: On the next census, they're gonna announce that Houston is
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: now larger than Chicago, So it's gonna be the number three,
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: it's gonna be.
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: The third largest city.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and Houston was least hit by the recession because
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: we didn't have the big inflation and home.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Prices that other markets had.
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: When you look at like international investment as far as
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: real estate in the United States, Houston is number one,
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: whether it's coming from China, Australia, Nigeria, anywhere. Basically they
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: invest here because if you're looking at the three or
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: four biggest cities, the real estate is still cheaper here,
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: like I said, and the economy was not hurt as
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: much as the other big markets by the recession, So
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: it's the safest bet. Not only that, but you got
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: more people moving to Texas every year, and like I said,
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: Houston is rapidly growing, so that the real estate outlook
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: is strong for this market. I mean, that's two things
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: that I believe are kind of the way of the
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: future for investments, either tech or it's real estate, because
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: no matter how as technology will advance and replace people
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: in jobs, but people always have to have a place
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: to live, it's never gonna change.
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: And I think it's the biggest city land wise, Yeah, yeah,
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: it is.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's a lot more room for it to
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: be developed. It is.
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: It is, And what it is is like as it's
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: spreading out and it's consuming all the smaller towns around
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: it and they're all merging into one big municipality.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: You think part of that that population increase is due
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: to the influx of people who were misplaced after Hurricane.
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: Katrina or I mean, we saw a wave of that,
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: but I mean a lot of it. No, it's just
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: business is just it's just it's attractive. You know, you
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: got a lot of people that move from high high
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: real estate markets like California.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: They sell their house out here and you know.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: It could be a regular, regular eighteen hundred square foot
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: house in California. They sell it for one point two million.
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: Come out here and buy a mansion. You know, so
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: a lot of people transition down here because just the
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: cost of living is cheaper.
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Sure, so thank you man, thank you, thank you
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: for rocking with us. So how can people contact you?
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: Many initiatives you got going on social media, handles all
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: that stuff. Yeah, so social media.
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: My Instagram is underscore I N V S t R,
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: which is investor with a lot of the vowels missing.
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: And then my website is my name Chris Senegal dot com,
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: c h R I S S E N E g
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: A l dot com. It has a link to everything
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: LinkedIn my email, my my websites, everything. So yeah, I
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: use my platform to kind of do everything we're talking
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: about now, just educate people on entrepreneurship, real estate investing,
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: and you know, how to change understanding money and how
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: money works.
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: You know, that's a point, that point, Troy.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we just want to give a quick call
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: to Patreon dot com. That is our private paid program
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: is Patreon dot compactsass Angelisia. There are five different tiers
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: you can join that Each tier has a has a
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: different feature. You know, we have bonus content, bonus video,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: we have video calls. Shout out to our new members Jason, Candice,
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Michael and Elliott Elliot. We reached out and we kind
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: of got disconnected on our call, but we're definitely gonna
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: be in contact with him. And shout out to Danita
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: again who's from the Ahe town and has been showing
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: us so much hospitality. We landed and she came up
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: with a full o tenery as soon as we got
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: off the plane, So shout out to her and yeah,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: mat feel free to subscribe at anytime.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: Also, go to earn leisure dot com.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: We have our merch up there and we got a
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: few other things that will be coming in September. September
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: is going to be a big month, so be gonna
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: look out for some new things from marinor Leisia.
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah for sure, and once again thank you to the
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: City at Houston. By the time you guys here this,
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: we'll be back in New York. But the network and
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: then we actually got our networking event tonight, and I
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: know it's going to be crazy. I know it's going
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: to be amazing, so I'm looking forward to it. But
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: you know, this is what we like to do. And
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: Patreon is a way to financially support the podcast. And
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: this is ways that we travel. We highlight local entrepreneurs
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: and business owners, and we educate people on what's going
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: on in different areas. Right, we want to go to
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: like these different areas and say, okay, we in Detroit,
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: what's the opportunities here, what's the opportunities in Chicago, what's
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: the opportunities in Cleveland, what's the opportunities in Houston, Texas?
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: So it's important we can't just think locally. We gotta think,
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: you know, we got to broaden our horizon and think
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: on a national level and on a global level as well.
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: Very big on that globally. So my book tip of
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: the week is Entrepreneur roller Coaster by Darren Hardy, and
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: every entrepreneur understands what that means because it's a roller coaster.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: It's never it's never all good. It's never all good.
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: So yes, and also, don't forget to subscribe to our
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: YouTube channel early, your Leisia YouTube. We will be putting
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: bonus content up and we got different segments and you
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: just want to see things visually, YouTube is a place
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: to see it. iTunes as well, subscribe to our iTunes.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: Those are our two main outlets, but we're also on Spotify, Google.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: We're all over the place. And then, as I always say,
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: people want to get in contact with me as far
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: as to ask me questions in regards to my business
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: as a financial advisor. You want to roll logo for
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: one K? You haven't, You want to invest some money?
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: You can go to earn leisure dot com and my
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: calendar is on there. You can book a thirty minute
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: free consultation with me and I can give you some advice.
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: See if I could be of any help. And yes,
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: we will see you guys next week.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: We got to welcome Chris to the Alumni Club.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, appreciate it.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: For everybody that comes on the show. After they finished
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: the episode, they become alumni. Because the next time we
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: come to use the know, we go to a city,
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: you may say, yo, I want to come to the
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: event too, So we just bring alumni to the event.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: Oh I love it, So welcome to the Alumni Club.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: Well, he's gonna be he's gonna be at the event tonight.
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: He's going to be the youngest alumni for sure, for sure,
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: for sure. So yes, thank you for rocking with us. Well,
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: see you next week please.
• 56:43
  Speaker 6: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
• 56:47
  Speaker 6: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use Indeed.
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: the top of the for your relevant candidates, so you
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data,
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty five percent
• 57:09
  Speaker 6: more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer,
• 57:13
  Speaker 6: speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and listeners
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: of this show will get a seventy five dollars sponsored
• 57:20
  Speaker 6: job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed
• 57:23
  Speaker 6: dot com slash pod katz thirteen. Just go to Indeed
• 57:28
  Speaker 6: dot com slash pod katz thirteen right now and support
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need