Creating Partners not Students

John Harcar (00:01.311)
Right on. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar. And I’m here today with Terance Lewis. And we’re going to talk about creating partners, not students. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra business. And by giving you the tools and the resources to create your own business, you’re able to build the life that you wanted to live. Terrence, welcome to our show.

Terance Lewis (00:28.866)
Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. It’s good to be here.

John Harcar (00:31.401)
Yes, man, I’m looking forward to talking about creating partners, not students. It’s interesting topic to discuss. But before we get into the weeds of all that, tell our audience a little bit about who Terrence is, where you’re from, how you got into real estate, and how you got here.

Terance Lewis (00:46.51)
Short thing, thing. 17 years, man, it’s been a long road, but a beautiful world, man. Started off, from Riverside, California, man, started off the same as everyone else, trying to go into college and figure that whole route out, had no clue where I was going, kind of being the first in my family to dive into that level of education. Realized that I had really no direction, so joined the military. Okay, so.

John Harcar (01:10.945)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:14.763)
Thank you for your service.

Terance Lewis (01:15.95)
Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. So went into the armed services, did my time with a goal of getting money for education. That was my whole sole purpose of it. Yes. I love my country, but I was trying to get the, get the education. I got that right. Got the education, got out, definitely took advantage of it. Got all the way up to a master’s degree. I’m kind of torn about that because most of everything I’ve created in my life really didn’t come from education. And I know I like to speak to those out there that

John Harcar (01:30.503)
Right, right.

Terance Lewis (01:45.614)
don’t really feel that education is that best route because I’m self-taught in what I mastered today, which is investing. And so got out and immediately while I was still in the military, I started investing in multifamily properties, which started off with the house hack will be right. So house hacking for those that don’t know is basically utilizing either a single family property or a duplex or three pegs, something to where someone else is paying 75 % of more of your board.

John Harcar (01:51.765)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (02:00.673)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Terance Lewis (02:15.894)
Right. So you’ve got an extra garage nowadays. You got eight, you got to turn them into ad use for additional income for Airbnb. We’ve got backyard space. They’ve got apps out now where you can rent your pool out in your backyard. So there’s a lot of ways to offset that income. So dived into multifamily properties. After that, I just started diving right into fixing and flipping. And I’ve got pictures of me earlier in in my, in my younger ages of 20 years old while everyone else is playing video games and

John Harcar (02:29.717)
Mm-hmm.

Terance Lewis (02:45.826)
buying the new Jordans, I was in there tearing up properties trying to figure out how to put them back together, literally. So after that I realized, hey man, I’m making more money in real estate investing. Unfortunately went through experience 2008 and lost it all, everything.

John Harcar (02:47.233)
You

I love it. Let’s go.

John Harcar (03:04.221)
I was thinking, you said 17 years, I’m thinking, man, this guy started right when it all just.

Terance Lewis (03:09.998)
Yeah, 2006 I started, had upwards to 1.2 million in real estate. And when I’m telling you it dropped like a rock, it dropped like a rock. what a lot of people nowadays that when I was doing that, you know, and crawling back into 2010 and 2012, 13, a lot of these people that are investing in real estate now were 16 and 15. When I was experiencing that crash.

John Harcar (03:33.749)
Yeah.

Terance Lewis (03:36.28)
So now when interest rates adjust and move, know now as experienced investors, we just know how to pivot. Like we either do new construction or we’re going to go back to fix and flip or we’re going to go into buy and hold, fix and hold. But so that’s mostly

John Harcar (03:41.525)
Yeah, exactly.

John Harcar (03:49.237)
So how did you pivot? I I like to ask people, especially in that time, how did you pivot? And if you took, you obviously took a pretty big hit.

Terance Lewis (03:56.234)
I took a big hit, but what I did was I realized I need to learn how money works, how the financial lending side of work. So I think one thing that I see myself standing above a lot of other people is that I can tell you how to take a traditional mortgage and buy investment properties. I can tell you little tricks and nuances like, hey, you don’t know this, but people are like, why would someone let me take over a mortgage payment from them? Well, 12 months after you making those payments, they now can qualify.

as if that is not on their mortgage or not on their credit report. So little tricks to the trade now. So that’s how I pivoted. moved into lending. became a real estate lender, mortgage lender. Yeah.

John Harcar (04:26.559)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:35.613)
Okay, so you were lending you were lending money were you buying creatively or what were you doing?

Terance Lewis (04:41.614)
So I took some time off from real estate investing because obviously I had to file a BK. You got to bounce back from that. So now you got to learn about before I was using traditional mortgages to invest in the state. So now I’m starting to advance into using hard money lenders, which everybody has access to. I’m now moving into private money investors, which we’ll talk more about that with partners, not students, giving people the opportunity to partner with me. But moving more into the non-traditional stuff, but still

John Harcar (04:46.443)
Right.

John Harcar (04:51.605)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Harcar (04:56.009)
Okay.

Terance Lewis (05:11.05)
At this point, I just kind of went back to the not necessarily nine to five, but as an individual contractor to helping people get traditional mortgages. So now I know as an investor, I know how traditional mortgages work, what are the kind of the loopholes within that. And I know how non-traditional mortgages work. between those two, I’m pretty versed in getting access to capital.

John Harcar (05:34.241)
Now when you’re saying non-traditional, are you talking about seller finance, two, or those type of things, or what are, yeah.

Terance Lewis (05:39.52)
All of that. Yeah. So that’s how I got back into the game. Right. So before my credit took a bounce back, I started doing subject twos or what other people may know as lease options. we’ll find individuals that got their tax returns back or they may have access to capital, but they just don’t have the credit. Well, me having a experience in a lending background, I can look at you and I can look at your credit. can say you’re two years out, buddy. You’re two years out. So what we could do is

this person needs to get rid of get out of their property at this price I can get you in it at this price and I can make something off the spread basically so the owner will keep the mortgage in their name because they’ve got to move out of town they get relocated or they just lost their job and they can’t afford it no more so instead of experiencing that foreclosure I can take over and assume that new mortgage and reassign that to somebody at a more favorable terms for myself and them

John Harcar (06:13.023)
Okay.

John Harcar (06:31.563)
Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. when you were in, I wanted to ask you this a minute ago, but you were going off on some good stuff. I didn’t want to stop you. How did you even get into the idea of real estate? You went to college, you did all that. I mean, you went to the military, and then you educated yourself. mean, where did real estate pop into your head?

Terance Lewis (06:39.072)
Yeah

Terance Lewis (06:46.039)
Okay.

Terance Lewis (06:54.922)
Man, okay, so start off, I’m a D student at best. If I got a C, we’re going out for pizza. That’s just my history, right? Right, that’s just started there. So education was never my forte. It wasn’t until I got to the military that I realized like, hey, you’re not actually dumb. You just didn’t, wasn’t excited about that. So I picked up a book while I was in the military. I picked up a book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert K. Sykes.

John Harcar (07:14.569)
Mmm.

John Harcar (07:19.167)
Rich Dad Poor Iowa’s Iowa’s I knew there had to be rich dad poor dad story in here. Yeah Love it

Terance Lewis (07:22.51)
Yeah, yeah rich day up for that man and it and so driven because it just really breaks down the flow of how money should work instead of it coming in and then going out because your car payments and your liabilities Comes in goes into an asset like real estate Now if I want that yacht or I want that car. I want that house Let’s let the real estate pay for that liability, right? And we just learn a different trend of money. People think you got to make a lot of money. I retired at 35, right?

John Harcar (07:43.147)
Yep. Yep.

Terance Lewis (07:50.348)
and people think you gotta make a lot of money to retire, you just have to have your expenses at a certain number and your income at a certain number and you’re free.

John Harcar (07:55.283)
Yeah. Your freedom number. Yeah, yeah, it’s your freedom number, right? You got to make sure that if I got $5,000 in bills and I’m getting $5,000, you know, passive income from my rentals, well then it’s offset. I can retire. I got everything I need paid.

Terance Lewis (08:10.19)
Exactly. Yeah and and realizing that a lot of the stuff that’s dangled in front of your face is a trap the the bags the car the it’s all set there because it’s going to depreciate so it’s all set in motion so you can stay suppressed believe below that that that threshold so once you start learning how to Life hack I have a hundred thousand dollar RV, but it gets rented out for the payment is 770 it gets rented out on RV share for 20 2200 hours a week so

John Harcar (08:39.009)
Yeah.

Terance Lewis (08:39.818)
learning how to offset your lifestyle like that instead of living for liabilities. You got to make that.

John Harcar (08:44.897)
Okay, so you picked up this Rich Dad Poor Dad book and then you just said, hey, I’m gonna go buy, I’m gonna go house hack.

Terance Lewis (08:51.054)
I literally was called a trigger puller because I unlike some people I understand that it’s hard you could take them to the water but it’s hard to make them drink I didn’t have that problem I was a trigger puller like what we’re doing it out let’s do it right so yeah let’s go like hey let’s let’s get into it I mean it yeah so I did a lot of the creative stuff I renegotiated terms on property so I was in Brunswick Maine at this time when I was at that base

John Harcar (09:03.649)
Yeah, let’s figure the rest out later. Let’s just go.

Terance Lewis (09:20.214)
I realized for some reason Brown houses wasn’t And the other thing I realized too is that what people can’t see you can create for them. an example is this seller is more than willing to give the closing costs to contribute to your closing costs. They’re more than willing to come down the price, but you’re too scared to ask them to come down $20,000 and contribute, but I’m not. So I would just negotiate those terms and sell those more favorable terms to the next person. So that’s another way that I kind of came back into the game is just

John Harcar (09:39.573)
Yep, yep, yep.

Terance Lewis (09:50.958)
You know, my girlfriend, she told me, you know, one very important thing that kind of sticks with me. She’s like, why? I had her watching a property. They were asking $240 for it. I was like, just keep watching it. She was like, why would they come down $40,000? After three months, they came down $100,000. And I was like, it’s not your responsibility to figure out what they will and won’t do. It’s your responsibility to put the offer in and move on.

John Harcar (10:05.482)
yeah, big time.

John Harcar (10:13.573)
Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, and that’s, and that’s too. It’s like when you, when you talk to folks that have acquisitions, guys or stuff, it’s like, you know, go in there and offer three 20. Yes. That’s worth 600 offer three 20. Well, they’re never going to take that. Who tells you that they’re never going to take that? Did they tell you that yet? No. It’s mindset mindset. Mindsets big. So what are

Terance Lewis (10:27.84)
Right. Yeah, exactly. That’s not your business. your business. is my, yeah, it is my business. So Rich Dad 4DAD got my mindset shifted over to learning a different way of financially moving my money around and just living life. Even with the three grand I was making at the time, three, four grand, wasn’t like I had a lot of money. It’s just, if you learn the habits with the three, four grand, when you get five, six grand, it…

actually feels like more when you get to the 1012 grain it feels like more because you’re moving it right.

John Harcar (11:00.353)
Yeah, well, and I think they need to make Rich Dad Port out of a book you have to read in a school. mean, they don’t teach the proper money education that you need because 95 % of the stuff you really learn and you apply in life is outside of the classroom. OK, so tell me about some challenges, some mistakes, some kind of pitfalls you made getting into the business and some things that our folks should look out for.

Terance Lewis (11:04.895)
is there.

Terance Lewis (11:16.482)
Mm-hmm exactly

Terance Lewis (11:26.638)
Sure, sure, sure. Starting off, one thing that I always use an example in my trainings with my mentees is I read even within Rich Dad Poor Dad, there’s certain, I understand how it feels to embody and just try to learn real estate or just anything new. You don’t, like let’s say you read Five Things, you don’t know which one of those things are the most important or what’s really prevalent to take away from this content, which is why it’s important to consistently read the same material so you can, as you grow, you’ll receive more from it.

One thing I did realize that I read and I remember to this day I read it said start small, right? And I understand small is relative, but starting small that way like things like when 2008 happened and your mortgage starts to adjust and go higher and your utility bills change and your all that’s amplified the more you are in the deal, right? So my biggest advice to people that I’ve learned over the the spare of time is when you start start small.

Because just like when you go to college and you’re willing to give up 30 to $80,000 for a real estate education, or for a degree, you should be willing to do the same for your real estate education. Because once you learn what I know, you’ll never be broke another day. So it’s what at what cost is that? What values that give to you? So it’s okay if you don’t make out $50,000 on your first deal. I say your first three deals is your college education and it’s to be used as such. What mistake did I make?

John Harcar (12:36.181)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (12:42.518)
Yep.

Terance Lewis (12:55.256)
and what did I learn from that mistake? And if you keep making those adjustments, three, four years of this business and you’ll never be broken of a day of your life.

John Harcar (13:04.033)
Yeah, no, that’s huge. What resources you think are some things that people should use or who should they reach out to if they want to get into the business? Obviously, you read Rich Edport. And a lot of people might or might not have. But if they don’t know anything else about the business, how do they find out?

Terance Lewis (13:07.534)
So

Terance Lewis (13:26.028)
I would say there’s two things you’re you think of your brain as a cup fill your cup up until the point where you feel like you could teach other people that’s all you can talk about so keep absorbing information but the other biggest thing is if you go to a desired area that’s being gentrified and there’s a guy like me driving around or a project manager driving around volunteer your time because I can’t measure how much game I should give you because you keep

John Harcar (13:46.945)
Thanks

Terance Lewis (13:51.938)
Helping me with going to drive by properties and going to take pictures for me and going to Get that contact number for me or get that lead for me. I can’t measure it I’m throwing all this game at you as much time as we have I actually had a mentee that would fly with me to every event that I did She even went on a vacation with me to Costa Rica with my family. She’s like I’m that flight time from here to there She sat next to me with a notepad and a book Yeah

John Harcar (14:03.359)
Yeah.

John Harcar (14:12.065)
Right on.

Yeah, yeah, that’s valuable.

Terance Lewis (14:19.884)
So if you can attach yourself to somebody even now that you have so many resources, you’ve got Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you’ve got a lot of people that are investing in real estate and if you feel they have that level of knowledge that you need and you can learn from them, offer your time to that person and see if they’ll be willing to educate you and give you some game because of that time that you’re giving them.

John Harcar (14:41.781)
Yeah, mean, and you know, like that always says, you got either time or you got money. If you don’t got the money, then volunteer your time, put the time into it. So what does your business look like now? Like how many people on your team? What are your volume? Are you holding more, flipping more? What’s your kind of thing going on now?

Terance Lewis (14:58.606)
Sure, like I said, I’m retired. I’ve actually transitioned the last two years. I moved to Puerto Rico. It’s a really good safe haven for you can get it. You can get a raise of 30 40 % by just moving to the to the state just because it’s there’s no federal taxes and there’s no short-term capital gains. So anything you do flip here, you don’t pay certain capital gains on. So I took the last two years off, but now we’re ramped up. We’re about an eight man team right now. Probably a little bit more than that. I’ve got a couple meetings today to bring some more agents on.

John Harcar (15:14.453)
Right.

Okay.

Terance Lewis (15:27.33)
but I’m actually moving into new construction. So there’s two piece to it. There’s two piece. Now that I’m in Houston, Texas is one of my markets. I’m moving into new construction of duplexes to keep as a portfolio and fix and flips back into fix and flips. And I’m doing it for two reasons. A, I want to build the classroom of sorts because I’m also adapting a education program now. So.

John Harcar (15:29.344)
Hmm.

John Harcar (15:51.988)
Okay.

Terance Lewis (15:52.812)
I’m starting to bring people in and I like the one on one aspect and I like the aspect of hands on instead of the talkie talkie come to one of my properties. Let me show you why we use 12 gauge wire versus 10 gauge wire. Let me show you why we go 16 on center. Let me show you how we would mitigate a duplex in that middle wall and show you how we’re going to keep why we would pay a little bit more to have sound density between these two walls so your tenants stay long term.

John Harcar (15:59.379)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

John Harcar (16:21.825)
You

Terance Lewis (16:21.902)
right versus oh yeah you can build it for cheaper so let’s talk about those things let’s I like to be touch touchable talk and so really the it really it’s the the new portfolio is being structured a for my son is 17 now and he’s always been 13 6 9 and watching watching dad do his thing now is 17 is getting ready to graduate high school now he can come and start cutting some checks start doing draw schedules start analyzing properties

John Harcar (16:26.337)
Smart.

John Harcar (16:43.009)
Yeah.

John Harcar (16:51.69)
Nice.

Terance Lewis (16:51.81)
So as he has the decision, his college is already paid for it to a master. So as he walks into this new chapter of his life, he can decide which route, his mother went the doctor route, she’s a dentist. And his dad is an independent investor and he sees how much time we have for each other. And so he can kind of help run and see this part of it. I got the projects as a classroom of sorts for my.

John Harcar (17:10.645)
Yeah.

Terance Lewis (17:19.31)
new mentees coming on board so they can get their hands on a piece. And it’s back doing what I love to do. It’s a passion anyway. So three check boxes for me.

John Harcar (17:26.751)
Yeah, sounds like it. I love it. I love it. So let’s talk about kind of what our title was, Creating Partners, Not Students. Tell me a little bit more about that and what the difference is of a partner versus a student for you.

Terance Lewis (17:41.134)
I do have the student aspect where people may have minimal capital and they need to come in and want to just learn real estate education. But what I find is that this is where this triggered from. I was one of those people when you contact one of the bigger real estate education courses, I was the mentor here teaching you about real estate education. Those courses were paid 20, $30,000 for, right, as a coach.

And what I realized is that I can teach you the concept of how to buy a property without any capital, but I can’t give you conviction. And that’s what it takes. You got to talk me into it, right? So not talk me into it, but you got to make me believe that you can actually buy my three, four, $500,000 property. And that’s what a lot of people left those courses paying that money, which was enough money to get started fixing and flipping. But now they’re a little bit behind the curve because they paid so much money for the education course.

John Harcar (18:33.12)
Mm-hmm.

Terance Lewis (18:33.142)
and now they only have that thought, that process of no capital into real estate investing. So my Partners Not Students program was born from that where now I can help people get access to that capital, which is the same thing they would do if they went to one these bigger programs. But now instead of you paying me to teach you, we’re going to go on a deal together. We’re going to become partners on a deal. I believe that I can make enough capital off of the deal.

to work instead of having to make the capital off you as the mentee or the student. So from that investment into a deal, you got that hands on accessibility, but now we’re going to go through that one on one education together. That’s your entry into the one on one education. And so I’ll educate you through that whole process as we’re in these deals together. And on the other side, you get your capital back plus the return from that capital. Essentially, you got yourself a free real estate education.

John Harcar (19:04.585)
Right, right, right.

John Harcar (19:30.309)
Is there like a, you know, I know you said you have some that just learn, but is there like a minimum someone has to come in when they’re going to invest with you or do something like that?

Terance Lewis (19:41.228)
Yeah, I would say meet me halfway and meet me halfway is just like with your children, you know, you give them something they’re going to tear it up. You make them earn it. You make them earn it. They got, you know what mean? So it’s kind of like, I don’t do it because yeah. So it’s like, I’m not doing it because we can’t meet you further, but I think that’s a good halfway point to meet me. Meet me at a seven 20 FICO score. Meet me at 30, 40 grand and I’ll take you the rest of the way. If you’re having trouble getting to that point.

John Harcar (19:53.249)
Yeah, it’ll last for years.

Terance Lewis (20:09.474)
then you need to focus on that because getting into real estate, it’s going to be so much more challenging for you and I can exponentially grow you faster. So if you’re not there, take the time to get yourself there because you’re not going to lose any time. Trust me. Like it’s going to be harder to crawl from a capital standpoint or from a smaller credit standpoint versus we get you there. Don’t worry. We’re going to get you caught up. Don’t be in a hurry to go broke.

John Harcar (20:22.497)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (20:29.151)
Yeah. Yep.

John Harcar (20:35.135)
Yeah. Yeah. And I like how you say that. It’s I mean, you’re going to, know, you can do this without money.

You could get into real estate without money. It is possible. Now, do you really need money? Yes, you do. You do need credit. Yeah, if you really want to start playing big, you’re going to need that type of stuff. yeah, I mean, it’s difficult nowadays to really sustain something if you don’t have skin in the game or like go to learn. You got to have skin in the game, right? So it’s got to, you you got to be able to put your effort forth and be held accountable, that type of thing.

Terance Lewis (21:01.315)
Yeah.

Terance Lewis (21:06.477)
Yeah.

Terance Lewis (21:10.094)
Yeah and I’ve got some programs for those if you if there are an education course for those that have minimal capital and I can teach those principles but I think what you find is that I’m not going to leave you where I found you. I’m not going to say OK let me just teach you these principles. I’m going to say wait your credit is is a 680 or your credit is a 620. OK you’re just mismanaging your credit. Let’s do some credit counseling and some let me help structure restructure your credit. So I’m not going to just say just because you came to me and you have a 620 I’m like you don’t have the much.

John Harcar (21:32.095)
Mm-hmm. Okay, cool.

Terance Lewis (21:39.392)
No, we’re going to part of consultations with me or part of getting involved in any of my education platforms comes with that assessment. So that way I can see where you’re at, just like I was doing before with people doing lease option programs. I’m going to look to see where you’re at and where you could be. And I’m going to give you a roadmap of exactly what you need to do to get yourself there.

John Harcar (21:46.473)
Consultation.

Terance Lewis (22:09.078)
while you’re hanging with us during that time, you’re going to be able to visually see what you’re going into when you get to the other side.

John Harcar (22:16.939)
Got it. Any last pearls of wisdom, advice, something you want to drop on our students or on our listeners?

Terance Lewis (22:25.138)
yeah, I would just say enjoy the journey, enjoy the ride, find a partner so you can enjoy those ups and downs. The key to all success is learning from your mistakes in life period. It doesn’t matter if it’s relationships, kids or in real estate investing. The secret sauce is in making the mistakes and learning from them. outside of that, man, I got a book dropping soon. Flippin’ ain’t easy. so look out for that. LewisHelps.com.

John Harcar (22:37.397)
Yep.

John Harcar (22:50.547)
Awesome

Terance Lewis (22:52.782)
can get access to that. We’ve got the YouTube channel there for all those that want the YouTube University and learn. That’s Lewis Homescore helps. Same with the IG channels and all the other social media platforms. So all the free games there is Lewis helps for a reason because I’m really truly here to help people out and leave them better than I found them.

John Harcar (23:04.693)
Okay.

John Harcar (23:09.761)
God bless you, man. I love the way you approach things. I love your mindset on that. And we’ll put all those links and all the ways to get in touch with you. We’ll put this in the show notes so anybody listening will able to click on. Terrence, man, great conversation. A lot of nuggets that you dropped. I hope people that were listening here today really got a good feel of some good information. anytime, Terrence, you want to come back on, I’d love to talk to you some more. And guys, I hope you had a great episode.

Terance Lewis (23:20.27)
Beautiful.

Terance Lewis (23:38.03)
Yes, sir. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. All right now. Peace.

John Harcar (23:38.859)
Talk to you guys soon.