Why Passion, Relationships, and Real Estate Changed Everything for This Investor

Mike Litton (00:00)
A few years ago, I took my son to breakfast and he was a senior in college at the time. And I asked him, said, there were no, if it was just he and I, I said, if there were no limits, money was no object, no complications, just straight perfect world, what would you do after you graduated college? And he said, I’d invest in real estate with you, dad.

And this is a kid that grew up his entire life telling us he was going to have nothing to do with real estate. Right? And so I sort of looked at him and I said, so can I ask why? And he said, dad, he said, you’re never as magnetic as you are when you talk about investing in real estate. He goes, I don’t know anybody with a pulse that wouldn’t want to work with you.

Michelle Kesil (00:26)
you

Mike Litton (00:44)
blew me away. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a feather, man. ⁓ But that was quite an experience. And now my daughter, who grew up in real estate, she was never gonna get into real estate, and now she’s joining us. So both of our kids are going to be working with us in the not too distant future, ⁓ which is an absolute dream come true for me.

Michelle Kesil (02:40)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Mike Litton, who’s been making serious moves in the flipping houses space and real estate. And yeah, really glad to have you here with us today, Mike. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching scaling flips.

having your own podcast and just growing your business. So let’s dive into all of that.

Mike Litton (03:13)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Michelle Kesil (03:15)
Of course. So first off, for people who may not be familiar with you and your world yet, just give us the short version of what is your main focus these days.

Mike Litton (03:29)
So the main focus is our flipping business. have two currently that we’ve closed Esquire on and we’re in construction on, under construction on. And it looks like we’ve got two more that we’re getting today that we’ll be closing in a couple of weeks and those will be under construction. And then we’ve got one more that we think we’re gonna get next week. So we should be at five under construction in the next couple of weeks. ⁓ So that’s kind of our main focus.

right now and then also the podcast as I mentioned to you we’ve been doing for the last couple of years.

Michelle Kesil (04:04)
That’s great. So what markets do you operate in?

Mike Litton (04:07)
San Diego County.

Michelle Kesil (04:10)
Okay, amazing. And yeah, I would just love to hear a bit more of your story. How did you get started with all of this?

Mike Litton (04:17)
Well, I got started in the real estate business 33 years ago because I got turned down for a home loan.

⁓ Very first home loan I ever applied for. I went to a big bank that doesn’t exist anymore because they were bought by a bigger bank. But I went to a bank and I applied for my first home loan. I was declined. I got a form letter in the mail three weeks later. Went into the branch. officer wouldn’t help me. Wouldn’t return my calls. Wouldn’t help me. ⁓ I went to go see my dad because when life doesn’t make sense, my dad’s my sage.

He goes, I don’t know why we’re having this conversation. said, why is that? And he goes, well, you’ve never taken no for an answer in your life. Remember? I raised you. And he brought up a couple of examples. And so I ended up going and getting my real estate license, and I got out of the business. I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And I was inspired. I was very, very interested in real estate, and specifically in the investment side.

But I wanted to learn how to take that no and turn it into a yes. And I figured out the best way to do that was just go do it. So I ended up doing thousands and thousands of home loans in my career. I was one of the top producers. Had an opportunity in 2000 to diversify. I was on the builder side and was doing an amazing amount of business. And found out at a dinner in January of 2000.

that we were running out of permittable land in San Diego County. And I’d sort of heard rumblings of it, but when these two experts said that, it sort of rocked my world, because I had a baby here, I had another one on the way, that ended up being born in January or June of that year. And so I walked out of there, deciding I was going to diversify, ended up starting a Keller Williams franchise, I owned for 18 years. So I was the owner broker of that, worked with a lot of investors, did a lot of investment deals, that kind of thing.

And ⁓ a couple of years ago, I ended up going to work for a friend of mine who was a flipper out here and needed a director of acquisitions. I was able to make them a very, very large amount of money in 22 months. And I figured, you know what, if I can do that for them, I can certainly do that for me. So I started my own company and ⁓ we’re brand new, but we’re getting after it. exciting.

Michelle Kesil (06:48)
Yeah, that’s so exciting. That’s amazing that you started just following what you are passionate about and scaling from there.

Mike Litton (07:00)
Yeah, it’s all a passion for me.

A few years ago, I took my son to breakfast and he was a senior in college at the time. And I asked him, said, there were no, if it was just he and I, I said, if there were no limits, money was no object, no complications, just straight perfect world, what would you do after you graduated college? And he said, I’d invest in real estate with you, dad.

And this is a kid that grew up his entire life telling us he was going to have nothing to do with real estate. Right? And so I sort of looked at him and I said, so can I ask why? And he said, dad, he said, you’re never as magnetic as you are when you talk about investing in real estate. He goes, I don’t know anybody with a pulse that wouldn’t want to work with you.

Michelle Kesil (07:32)
you

Mike Litton (07:49)
blew me away. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a feather, man. ⁓ But that was quite an experience. And now my daughter, who grew up in real estate, she was never gonna get into real estate, and now she’s joining us. So both of our kids are going to be working with us in the not too distant future, ⁓ which is an absolute dream come true for me.

Michelle Kesil (08:14)
That’s really beautiful that they were able to see how inspired you were and follow that.

Mike Litton (08:21)
It comes from passion. It’s definitely something that they responded to. it’s interesting, they’ve come back to me now that they’re 25 and 26. They’ve come back to me and said, you know, dad, we had no idea how much we picked up over the years about FICO scores, about qualifying, about mortgages, about budgeting, about everything. And they said, we had no idea how much we picked up just by osmosis, just by being in the house.

Michelle Kesil (08:23)
Yeah.

Mike Litton (08:50)
and listening to the thousands and thousands of conversations that I had ⁓ and just conversations in the house. So ⁓ pretty awesome. They’re now tutoring their friends on how to buy a house, on how to get their credit ready, how to budget their money, all that kind of stuff. So kind of interesting.

Michelle Kesil (09:10)
Yeah, that’s really great. And as far as your podcast, like what is the main goal? What kind of conversations are you having?

Mike Litton (09:24)
So, great question. So we get people’s life stories. And this all started back in 2011. In 2011, there were a lot of people losing their houses to foreclosure. And it was frustrating for people like me that had to deal with people every day that were losing their homes. And people would call me up and say, hey, you’ve helped us with thousands and thousands of deals. We know that you can solve our situation. We know that you can keep us out of foreclosure. Wow, no pressure, right?

So one of the things that I learned or one of the things I figured out was, was having a lot of one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-three conversations, but I needed a larger megaphone. I needed a bigger bully pulpit, so to speak. Right. And so I went down to the local radio station, talked the radio station manager into, into letting me start my own radio show, even though I had no experience in radio, but I loved getting people’s stories. And so one of the things that I did was I promised myself that when I had a podcast,

I would go deep. And so we start with where people were born and we go up to today. So recently we interviewed, I interviewed John Paul DeGioria who started Patron Tequila and sold it. Also ⁓ currently he started Paul Mitchell Hair Products and, still owns it today. ⁓ He’s 84 years old. He’s worth $12 billion. And he grew up in Los Angeles with a single mom who didn’t have any money.

Their dad, when he was two, abandoned them and didn’t pay them any support. So was he and his older brother and his mom. She didn’t have a lot of money, obviously, right? Affordability was a big deal. So she would take them every year to the mall and they would ride the free kid, kiddie train rides, you know, and stuff. Well, there was always that red

Salvation Army kettle there. So she gave each boy a dime and had them take the dime and put it in the kettle. Fast forward 82 years later, he’s now 84, he’s helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people get off the streets, get their mental health in order, get off of their, kick their addictions, get retrained, get gainfully employed, okay? And it all started with a dime.

Absolutely remarkable life story, but those are the kinds of things that we collect, right? We had Lee Steinberg on the other day, the super NFL agent who they wrote Jerry Maguire about, and he told the story of Cameron Crowe who wrote ⁓ Fast Times at Ridgemont High and ⁓ also Jerry Maguire. He followed Lee Steinberg around for two years. Went to all kinds of, went to Super Bowls, went to all kinds of games, went to the combine.

went to all these different places with him. And he picked up a ton of stuff, took a ton of notes, all that, and he wrote Jerry Maguire, and Lee Steinberg was the inspiration for that character. Really fascinating stuff. When he was growing up, he sat on his granddad’s lap at Hillcrest Country Club, where all of the old Hollywood stars would come and hang out and play gin rummy.

Michelle Kesil (13:10)
Wow.

Mike Litton (13:25)
So he would sit on his grandfather’s lap and his grandfather was playing gin rummy with the likes of George Burns, right? You old Hollywood stars that he had no idea who they were. just seemed, they just were granddad’s friends, right? It wasn’t until he became older that he figured out he was sitting with, you know, all these stars, right? So quite a way to grow up. Pretty cool. Amazing stories.

Michelle Kesil (13:51)
Yeah,

yeah, those are such beautiful stories for people to get inspired and passionate about what’s possible.

Mike Litton (14:00)
So one of the most exciting stories we’ve ever had came from a real estate investor in San Diego. No joke. Okay. And his life story is crazy. I recorded his life story for our podcast and then I shared it, paraphrased it with my wife and she said, that’s a movie, Mike. Okay. It has everything. Everything you can imagine a life story would have, this has.

Unbelievable. And he’s one of the most successful real estate investors in the world now. And he went through some just unbelievably awful things, all of which he didn’t do. All these things happened to him, but it wasn’t his fault. It literally was a clerical error from a mortgage company that caused all of it. And it’s just crazy. yeah, so it’s some of these

We have over 340 episodes, so some of these life stories are just compelling. They’re unbelievable.

So yeah, they’re fun. And one of the best things about it is it’s kind of a chicken and egg thing, right? You sort of find out what these people are made of and how they got to where they are, right? Like I grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and not a lot of people know that. And my grandfather was like, my mother’s dad ⁓ was like a father to me. And I learned a ton.

But one of the things that happened was I farmed with him for nine years. And what happened from that was that work was so difficult and so tenuous and I mean, hot and know, miserable, right? That everything after that has felt like I was playing hooky. Because it was easy. Everything else has been easy by comparison. You know what mean? So.

Michelle Kesil (16:33)
Yeah,

absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. So, yeah. So, every operator I know has a moment in business where things maybe got real, maybe you had a deal go sideways, or you just had to make like a fast pivot. Would you mind sharing an experience like that for you?

Mike Litton (16:36)
Yeah, it’s kind of fun.

where I had to make a quick pivot.

Michelle Kesil (17:00)
or just like something went sideways and then you had to resolve that problem.

Mike Litton (17:07)
Yeah, how much time do you have? We only have a, yeah. Yeah. There have been a bunch. know, one of the things that would happen when we owned the Keller Williams office is we would, because I was the owner broker of the office and the operating principal, when things got pear shaped, it landed on my desk. And I had this one situation where

Michelle Kesil (17:10)
⁓ You can shorten it. ⁓

Mike Litton (17:38)
I had owned that office for probably 14 years at this point. And I got a phone call from one of our agents and the agents, or pardon me, I got a phone call from the agent on the other side that didn’t work for us ⁓ that said, I’m not talking to your agent anymore.

Excuse me? I’m not talking to your agent anymore. I’m done. Okay. So this is the listing agent. We’re representing the buyer, right? So we’re the selling, we’re the selling office. So I found out who the, who the company was the listing agent worked for. And I called the broker of record. And this is somebody I had had a, ⁓ a a relationship with for a number of years. And I called him up and I said, David, we’ve got a problem.

Here’s the problem.” And he said, well, he said, I can tell you this, I’m really, I’m really comforted by the fact that you’re on the other side of this thing. So between David, their broker record and me, we figured it out and we made it work and we got it closed. And when it was all said and done and everything was finished, the two agents that wouldn’t talk to each other anymore basically ended up coming back to us and saying, you know what?

We overreacted. We shouldn’t have responded that way. That kind of thing, right? But we were literally dead in the water and we had a good three weeks left before we were closing escrow. But David and I took it on and in a sort of dispassionate way, right? We just took care of it and got it fixed. So, and got it closed. The thing is, it’s not about the realtor. It’s not about the investor. It’s about the people.

that are involved in this, the principles, okay? If you take your ego and insert your ego into a real estate deal, you’re literally playing with fire and it should never happen. What you should keep your eye on is the fact that you’re looking to take the best care of that client you possibly can, take best care of the seller you possibly can, and get the deal done, right? This whole thing with

taking offense and not talking to each other and all that kind of stuff, it’s all child play. It’s literally children in adult clothing. And when you get into these situations that can become really tenuous and really stressful and make you want to pull your hair out, right? That kind of thing. You just want to keep your eye on the ball. Keep your eye on what it is that you originally got into this to do.

which was to close the escrow, right? And figure out a way to create a situation where it works for each side.

Michelle Kesil (20:34)
Yeah, that’s really important.

Mike Litton (20:34)
People underestimate

the power of relationships in this business. And one of the things that’s sort of my biggest strength, and you asked me about strengths earlier, one of my biggest strengths is relationships. I take really good care of people. I had a friend of mine who used to sell new homes and I used to finance them. She went to work for a local college here. And 25 years ago, she had me come down and talk to her first class that she had taught in real estate. was real estate.

Michelle Kesil (20:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Litton (21:05)
principal’s class. And she walked me out to my truck afterwards and she said, you’re going to be involved in every real estate, every class that I teach from now on. Great. And she said, in 25 years, I’m going to retire and I want you to take this department over because you’re the only person on the planet that has the passion that I have for what we’re doing here.

Last month, she called me and said, it’s been 25 years. It’s time. So now I’m going back to school to finish my master’s degree and my master’s degree, and I’m going to be taking over her department in a year and

Michelle Kesil (21:35)
Wow.

Wow. Yeah.

Mike Litton (21:46)
Isn’t that crazy? But that’s

a relationship, right, that has stood the test of time. We’ve literally been friends for over three decades.

Michelle Kesil (21:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, relationships are everything in this space.

Mike Litton (21:57)
They’re everything. They’re everything.

Michelle Kesil (22:01)
So let me ask you this, what is your next big goal that you’re working towards accomplishing right now?

Mike Litton (22:08)
scaling the flipping company. the biggest, also with the podcast, we’re just looking to continue to level like top grade, you know, our talent that we’re interviewing. But with the flipping side, we’re looking to scale it. So that’s really the next step, right? Is to sort of get through the first few and then we’re going to take it to a whole other level. Our goal next year is to do 10 a month.

Michelle Kesil (22:40)
Yeah, and what is like your plan to hit that goal?

Mike Litton (22:46)
Well, we’re going to, I haven’t told everybody that we’re back in the business. ⁓ So, that’s one of the things is we’re going to expand that network, right? And then we’re also going to, we’re also going to work that network to find other people that are doing what we’re doing that we can work with. So this thing is about to get really busy, really fast. So it’s going be great.

Michelle Kesil (23:13)
Yeah, that’s amazing. Excited for your expansion. All right, amazing. So before we wrap up here, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate, or just learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Mike Litton (23:17)
Me too.

So probably on LinkedIn, so linkedin slash Mike Litton, M-I-K-E-L-I-T-T-O-N, that’s probably the best way.

Michelle Kesil (23:42)
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time story, your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing things in this right way. So thank you again for being here. Of course.

Mike Litton (23:54)
Thank you so much, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (23:57)
And for those of you that are tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Mike, who are out here building real businesses. And we’ll see you all in the next episode.