Always Serve Others

Mike Hambright (00:00.492)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my good friend, Ken Corsini. I would consider you a really good friend, but we haven’t talked in way too long. I guess I could say that about other people I on the show, but anyway, I feel like we could talk for hours now. And we’re gonna be talking about kind of serving the baby boomer, this silver tsunami that’s going on. And he’s doing some really interesting things that we, when guys like us get together, we could have gone like, we could do 30 different shows on 30 different topics. But I feel like this is really timely and really cool.

Ken (00:08.431)
I know, right?

Mike Hambright (00:30.363)
we’re gonna talk about. So Ken, hey before we get rocking here, for anybody that doesn’t know you, even though you’re a rock star, tell us a little bit about you and your background.

Ken (00:37.733)
I love it.

Ken (00:41.585)
Well, Mike, I, first of all, appreciate you having me on the show and agree a hundred percent that it’s, uh, it’s been too long, man. Granted, you know, everybody in the industry, but, uh, you and I go way back and it’s been too long since we caught up. So I appreciate you having me on. You’re like me too. When I do my podcast, the pre-roll always goes longer than the actual podcast cause you’re catching up. So

Mike Hambright (00:47.683)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (00:53.72)
Yep.

Mike Hambright (01:01.014)
What happens with a lot of my shows is, because you and I have been talking for a half hour before we hit record, a lot of times people are like, man, we should have just hit record a half hour ago. It’s like, well, anyway, here we are.

Ken (01:10.523)
You end up rehashing everything. Well, you know my story for the most part, but for your listeners, know, we, I’ve been in it for, in the real estate investing space since 2005, you know, so I was part of the big crash, had to reinvent myself, started doing turnkey, you 2008. And I was one of those turnkey providers here in Atlanta where we were doing a hundred houses a year, selling to the California investors, did that for a number of years. And then as the market came back, you know, we started flipping houses.

As you know, HGTV reached out to us about 2015. Next thing you know, they’re putting us on television. Don’t ask me why. We did a flip or flop Atlanta for a couple years and then we did Rock the Block season two and then they gave us another show called Flipping Showdown and that was over the span of, I don’t know, eight years or so that we did a bunch of TV. All the while, you we were taking advantage of the fact that they put us on TV to build our brand, which is Red Barn. And so we flipped a lot of houses.

Got a new construction division. We’ve got a real estate brokerage, little hard money lending. And now the most recent show called Flipping Showdown really helped us launch a franchise. And so for the last couple of years, we’ve been developing out the franchise model called the Red Barn Homebuyers.

Mike Hambright (02:23.477)
Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s a lot of stuff. Yeah.

Ken (02:25.553)
a lot of stuff. Yeah, it’s fun, man. You’re like me. You get bored too easy. It’s fun to like scratch a lot of itches though, right?

Mike Hambright (02:31.519)
Yeah, you know, for a long time, people probably ask you this all the time, people would say to me like, what’s new that you’re working on? Because they would know that every time I would talk to them, I’ve got something new going on. And honestly, I’ve consciously for the past couple of years, like not done much that’s new. I’m just trying to do what I do and go deeper and better. so, but I promise you, I’m still attracted to like every day I’ve got plenty of new ideas. I’m like, I just need to bury that really deep right now.

Ken (02:41.851)
Yeah.

Ken (02:57.147)
You

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and sometimes for me, I’ll scratch that itch rather than like start a new business. I’ll go buy something like this year I went and bought a trailer park, you know, or just do something I’ve never done before, you know, RV, that’s interesting. Let’s go do that on this. And so these are like a lot of little side projects that scratch a lot of itches for me too.

Mike Hambright (03:11.138)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (03:16.821)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought you said you were go buy something like a boat or something like that.

Ken (03:22.383)
No, last year I did buy a boat. Yeah. we have, we got the boat now. We have the wake surf boat. yeah. Yeah. I like to just keep my hands, but I like to keep doing things. It’s fun.

Mike Hambright (03:27.147)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, you gotta keep things interesting for sure. So we’re gonna talk today about…

kind of serving this baby boomer population. I I think at a high level, everybody knows there’s an aging population. At some point, there’s gonna be a house there for sale or they downsize whether a person doesn’t necessarily need to pass away. They could simplify their life and things like that. And there’s a massive population, right? And when we were talking upfront, think everybody knows that. There’s a lot of people that market or certainly with direct mail market people over a certain age, people that have their house paid off or have a ton of equity, right? Like real estate investors,

already know that. But you found a way, there’s some things you’re working on that are interesting, an interesting way to build those relationships and not just go after the house, like to monetize it in other ways. And so I’m excited to talk about that, but kind of high level, let’s just talk about, you’ve done a lot of different things over the years. I’ve done a lot of different things over the years. And it’s always trying to solve either a problem I have or a problem that I see other people have. And, and, you know, kind of go at it from that angle of being a problem solver. And then a lot of times it’s

It’s like, okay, how can I make this a business or how can I fold this into what I’m already doing? So just talk about that mentality of being a problem solver and not just, and serving others, I guess, to solve their problems, but not just being a business owner per se.

Ken (04:50.565)
Yeah, right. Well, yeah, as a, as an entrepreneur, I mean, you always take a step back and figure out where are the needs, where are the problems, where can I step in and, you know, provide some sort of service or problem solving some form or fashion that creates an opportunity for me, but also serves the community. And for us, you know, it was about a year and a half ago, we just sort of took a step back and looked at the landscape and say, where, where are the, where’s the demographic landscape?

shift occurring right now. And it’s kind of obvious, you know, that you’ve got 72 million baby boomers that are all going to be moving, especially over the next 10 years. I mean, you’re looking at maybe the largest transfer of real estate wealth in the next 10 years because of this aging population. And so for us, sort of, took a hard look at that and we looked at, even the marketing we’re doing for Red Barn Homebuyers and our ad copy, because a lot of investors are already kind of doing it in their, you know, in their direct mail copy, especially if they’re marketing to probate, you know.

It’s rare that, you in a probate marketing context that you’re just saying, Hey, I saw somebody died. I’d love to buy your house really cheap. Right. Nobody, nobody. And if you are doing that, then probably adjust course. And so for us, was already this approach to like, to probate of like, Hey, you’re in need. You’ve got this house you got to deal with. Let me come in there and help with the house. But we took it a step further and said, okay, it’s not just, you know, that we’re going to add that as some extra.

Mike Hambright (06:02.496)
Right.

Ken (06:19.147)
know, bonus features of us buying your house, but let’s approach with that strategy of, not even necessarily just to probate, probably it’s only after they’ve passed away. Well, there’s a, there’s a lot of this aging population. They’re just simply moving because they can’t care for their house anymore. And so, you know, in a lot of cases they’re going to assisted living. So our, our thought was, okay, how do we approach them on their way out of their house into assisted living in a way that serves them?

and can simply just stand by itself as a business of just serving them, regardless of the real estate. And so we’re coming about it from a really true context of like, we want to help you. You’ve got this house full of junk that’s got to go somewhere, right? Somehow we got to move the stuff that you want to keep into this assisted living facility. Oh, and some of this stuff’s not junk. We probably could sell it and make a little bit of money for you, put it in your pocket.

Mike Hambright (06:50.433)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Ken (07:10.755)
And then the very last thing after we’ve come in there and offered these services, then it opens up a very organic conversation with them of, by the way, man, I see this house is here. It needs a lot of work. Do you have, do have a plan for the house? And now we’ve already built trust because our business isn’t predicated on whether we get the real estate or not. It’s predicated. And let me just help you with, you know, offer this white glove service to help you transition out of your house. And we discovered, you know, the hunch was that it was going to open a lot.

Mike Hambright (07:28.706)
Right.

Ken (07:39.043)
of buying opportunities with real estate. The hunch was that. And so for the last year and a half, we built out this model where it was those services of, know, let’s declutter, let’s organize, let’s get rid of junk, let’s do an estate sale for you and see if we can make money at just that. Just those services, can we make money? And then how often do we actually get a shot at the real estate? And what we learned is we get a shot at about one in four.

Mike Hambright (08:00.427)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ken (08:03.971)
So one in four of these, we’re offering the service model gives us a shot at the real estate. and by the way, we can make money on the service side of this business as well. It can actually be a really lucrative standalone business, again, by serving this aging population. so for us, man, to combine the real estate know-how and the expertise to buy it along with the service was, for us, was a real eye opener for us.

Mike Hambright (08:04.171)
Wow.

Mike Hambright (08:17.185)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (08:28.877)
Yeah, they’re definitely, I’ve known people and you have too, that are like a lead source for them as estate sales. Either they’re gonna go find a listing in Craigslist or whatever for estate sales or they’re gonna try to.

befriend a few estate sale companies to say, where are you going next? And then they always use it as an opportunity to say, hey, if somebody’s having an estate sale and they’re kind of liquidating everything, there’s probably a house that’s about to be sold to, right? And it’s often from an aging, somebody that’s in an aging situation. But in my experience, we’ve had a few family members pass or other people that have passed, you know, there’s no relationship with an estate sale company. You’re usually just finding either some sort of word of mouth or, it’s very fragmented, right?

Ken (09:11.867)
very fragmented.

Mike Hambright (09:11.891)
And so I think it’s, and then everything you would do from everything you would, anybody that I know that’s done, where they’ve like had in a state sale situation, a situation like that, they have to go find every single one of those pieces together. So it’s kind of brilliant to have this consultant that’s like, can advise you on this next phase of your life. And there’s nobody else doing that. And then you become their trusted advisor. And then sometimes there are some real estate opportunities that come up as well. That’s brilliant, man.

Ken (09:39.793)
And I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s a fragmented space right now. You know, there’s a there’s a company that just does estate sales. There’s a junk company. There’s a moving company. You know, there’s all these companies and somebody’s got to put it all together. Well, why not just offer a white glove service where we do all of it? The headache is off the in most times. It’s the children who live 400 miles away. That’s who’s bearing the burden of this. And so we’re able to get in front of them and say, look, you’re you’re 400 miles away, two states over.

Here’s, we’re going to just take care of all of it for you. And hopefully at the end of this date sale, I’m going to cut you a check for, for your stuff. I’m going to take care of your parents, make sure that they’re set up that by the time they move into this assisted living facility, their rooms arranged. I’m literally making a pot of coffee and it’s their new home. and by the way, do you have an op? Do you have a plan with the, with the house? Do you have a real estate agent? you don’t? Well, maybe I’ll just make you an offer and make, you know, take that off your plate as well.

Mike Hambright (10:33.868)
Yeah.

Ken (10:34.563)
And it’s a real organic conversation to have with him at that point.

Mike Hambright (10:37.397)
So you know what’s interesting, like from, you and I are both.

kind of cut our teeth early on in terms of info marketing, coaching products, other things you would sell online, right? And the interesting thing about a lot of folks that sell things online is they use, everybody will resonate with this even if you have no experience doing this, is a lead magnet. So it’s like a lead magnet, you’re get a free lead magnet, then we take you to a page that’s called a tripwire. It’s like a low cost thing for 27 bucks or seven bucks or 47 bucks or something. And the truth is, is nobody makes money from those things, but they use it as a way to offset their marketing cost. That’s all it is, is how do I liquidate my

Marketing cost as soon as possible so that I can do more marketing and I used to tell real estate investors I mean I’ve coached and advised like lots of people over the years and I’ll forever I was like do not get your real estate license Well, that’s required in some states now, but I was always like that’s a waste of time Just like focus on other things and then I had this epiphany of like well, you know, especially with Inflation and all that’s happened over the past few years a few years ago. I was like, hey, it’s a great there’s a lot more age investors that have become

and a lot more agents that have become investors. And I’m like, if nothing else, it’s a great way to liquidate your marketing costs because most of the leads that we generate, we can’t buy as investors. But if you could get a referral or a list it yourself, if it’s not too much effort, you’re going to get your bait back. From my standpoint, it’s getting your marketing dollars back. And that’s why I love this model is like, is another way to monetize the leads you’re already generating. It’s a way to become the trusted advisor. And so I think, you know, whether it’s what we’re talking about here for those of that are listening,

are other ways to kind of monetize those leads or help people in the process from the leads you’ve already generated. It’s not necessarily like yours would be great as a standalone business, you said it is, but there’s also just things it’s like, hey, if all you’re doing is just getting your bait back, then plow, don’t look at that as like a standalone business. Look at it as a way to get more marketing dollars back so you can keep pushing it out because where you really make the money ultimately is in the real estate.

Ken (12:39.843)
You’re a hundred percent right, but I’ll do you one better. What, one of the reasons I love this model is you don’t have to have ad spend. You don’t have to have marketing spend. can actually call it sweat equity. You know, you can do the networking to access the people in these positions. So assisted living facilities are, it’s just really low hanging fruit. You become that person to the, to the local sales agent at the, at the assisted living facility.

who’s motivated to bring that person into their facility. So if you can facilitate them moving and selling and getting the money they need to move in, then they’ll be your best friend. And so you don’t even have to spend money on marketing if you’re just out there networking, generating these buying opportunities.

Mike Hambright (13:19.477)
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And probably even with the estate sale companies, like, it’s one more reason to say, hey, if they work, you know, if you could help me work with this person, I’ll make sure they use you as, as the estate, like their piece, right? Like it’s so fragmented that all these people with little pieces need the other components as well. They just don’t do it. Yeah.

Ken (13:31.697)
Absolutely. That’s right. Yep.

Ken (13:40.465)
That’s right. Yep. And the cool thing is too, you know, what we find is you can do all you, you can do the declutter, you can do the relocation, you can do the estate sell yourself if you want to be good at that, but you can also sub any one of them out. I don’t want to be in the junk hauling business. So I got somebody to do that. Maybe I don’t want anything to do with the estate sales. So I’m going to sub out. Like you said, I’ll give a piece to another estate cell company, split the profits with them, but maybe I’m okay moving people. I don’t, I don’t mind, you know, running a U-haul and hiring some guys and moving them.

wherever you want to capture some of that profit, you can do it or not at all. It’s up to you. But again, you’re still that one point of contact, you know, for this, we call white glove service.

Mike Hambright (14:17.633)
Yeah, and I think a lot of people appreciate that. At that point in your life, if you’ve lost a loved one or you’re getting older and you just don’t want to deal with it, those folks want to, they want one person that they can trust to handle it all instead of rounding up 15 different people or services to do it, half of which are not even gonna show up.

Ken (14:33.969)
100%.

Ken (14:39.505)
Well, and think, you hate to stereotype, but think of, you know, your local mover. Think of even your local estate sale company. You know, a lot of times it’s Billy Bob in the back of his pickup truck putting on the estate sale, you know, or the junk removal guys. Like those aren’t, you don’t want to have to manage three of those guys, you know, from different industries. You want one sophisticated consultant to help you with all of

Mike Hambright (14:57.153)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:02.059)
Yeah, that’s great. So talk about just like maybe share your thoughts on for all real estate investors, whether they’re doing a model like this or not, just that mentality of solving problems. Because I know, like I’ve talked about when I first started as a real estate investor, like,

We had no income, we had to make things happen, you And early on, all I cared about was me. Like, I’m just trying to buy a house. I’ve given the story several times. It took me a couple months before I realized, hey, if I can’t serve this person and help them, they’re not gonna work with me. So unless I can serve them for whatever they need, I can’t win without them winning. And it was a learning curve for me. Because I remember, I’ve said this a few times, we were…

Ken (15:27.163)
Yeah.

Ken (15:40.081)
100%. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:47.97)
you know, we weren’t like living under a bridge, but we were burning through savings quickly when we first started our business. And I remember the first couple of houses I went on, I would literally sit in the car and pray, like, please, please let me buy this house. And then I realized, you know, it just took a while. like, wait, this isn’t about me. If I can’t help that person solve whatever, a lot of times it’s all sorts of weird stuff, you know, people that are whatever life happens to people, right? But just talk about that mindset of

Ken (15:59.217)
You

Ken (16:09.009)
it is.

Ken (16:13.521)
That’s so, you’re so smart. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (16:16.149)
Some things that people maybe don’t think about are how to serve people at a higher level so that you can then serve them on another level, which is working with them in the business.

Ken (16:23.865)
Absolutely. mean, that’s it’s sales 101, right? Anybody that’s gone through John Martinez or Steve Trang or any of that. It’s, know, you’re uncovering the motivating factors, right? So in that initial conversation, there’s a reason they invited you into their house to talk about their house, right? So as you unpack those layers, you’re uncovering where are those hurts? Where are those needs? Where are those fears, those things that are causing them to be motivated? And absolutely you always.

address those first. You do, you put on that detective hat and you become their problem solver and the house almost becomes secondary to the equation, right? You’re scared about cleaning the house out. You don’t know where you’re going to live for the next 30 days, you know? And so how do I, if we’ve put people up in hotels, we’ve definitely cleaned out houses. I mean, we’ve done all sorts of stuff where you structure an offer in a way that solves every one of those needs before you even worry about.

buying the house and what you’re gonna pay for it and how that’s gonna get, or you’re gonna, you know, maybe you’re gonna structure it where let’s stay in, let me let you stay in the house for the next 60 days. I’ll buy it, I’ll get rid of all the junk. You stay in the house for the, well, yeah, maybe it costs you a few bucks, but you know, at the end of the day, the goal is for that seller to feel like they won in the equation, right? You might’ve won and bought the house well below market value, but you want that seller to feel like they won as well. Like this was exactly what they needed.

in order to sell that house. And there’s a lot of times where, you’ve probably experienced this Mike, where you serve them in some form or fashion and it doesn’t come back to you in that transaction. Maybe you didn’t end up buying the house, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter, you serve them in some form or fashion and if you do that on a consistent basis, it will always come back to you in the form of future business, whether it’s with them or somebody else or good reputation. Your goal at beginning of every day should be like, how do I serve the next person I talk to in some form or fashion, whether I buy their house or not?

Mike Hambright (18:08.855)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (18:20.045)
Yeah, that’s great. That was an early lesson for me too is the truth is as a real estate investor, we all know that you’re buying a very small fraction of the leads you generate. Maybe it’s 8%, 10%, 15%, maybe, right? But you generally as a real estate investor, I mean, there’s some high volume folks that we all know, but…

The average investor is not buying a house every day. And I just got to the point where I was like, hey, if we’re serving other people and we can help people every day, it doesn’t always turn into a purchase on that day. But you sleep better at night if you go into every situation knowing I want to try to help this person. And maybe they need a referral for a foundation repair, or maybe they need an estate sale company to help, or maybe they just need a realtor, honestly. so, in some instances, I think as an investor, you can go in and you could build those realtor

relationships where maybe you get a referral fee or maybe you make some money doing it.

But even if you don’t, if you could just be a problem solver overall, I mean, I think you would agree with this. mean, there’s very few houses, like my best deals ever were never because I paid the most. Those are the ones you lost money on typically. And so if you’re not providing some sort of consultation to become that trusted advisor for whatever that person needs, because it gets to a point to where a lot of the people for our very best deals, it wasn’t really about the money.

Ken (19:27.931)
Totally,

Mike Hambright (19:42.433)
They wanted to get as much money as possible, but there were other things that were more important and those are our very best buys like ever.

Ken (19:49.809)
For sure. Yeah. Sometimes the speed is the, is the reason you got, you know, a couple of inherities that want the money right now and they don’t have time to fix it and wait for it to sell. But to your point earlier, I I’m a big proponent of either be licensed or have a spouse or, know, somebody close to you that is licensed, especially in this market, because there’s just too many opportunities to capture commission on these. Right. I mean, my wife’s been licensed since 2007.

I remember being an investor early on. said, Nita, I’m going to be an investor. I don’t want to be licensed, but I want you to be licensed. So she had no interest at the time, but she did it anyways. And there’ve been lots of times she’s an active agent now. She didn’t used to be, but so many opportunities where we captured commission, you know, that I’d much rather keep that in house as an investor than to give it away.

Mike Hambright (20:20.93)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (20:24.887)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (20:40.385)
Yeah, and these days, honestly, I call it a second chance sweepstakes. So if they need to list it and if you can get it, I the way that houses have appreciated it in most markets, they’re not too far off from a typical assignment fee. Yeah, yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, Ken, if folks want to learn more about you, you’ve got Red Barn Homes, like a franchise system.

Ken (20:54.425)
for sure. No, in some cases, it’s higher than an assignment fee. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Ken (21:05.979)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (21:07.321)
And you’ve got Family Nest, which is, just real fast, without this being like a sales pitch, tell us about the Family Nest idea. That really is the crux of what we talked a lot about here is like becoming this trusted advisor to help people that are navigating through selling a house of a loved one or family member or even themselves if they lost a spouse. Talk about that at a high level if you don’t mind.

Ken (21:28.145)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, you know, obviously red barn homes as the parent company, we have a number of red barn brands that fall underneath that, including our franchise, which is red barn home buyers. And again, what we determined was this family nest model ended up, it’s a great standalone model, but for real estate investors, it’s a great bolt on model to your business. Cause it’s a great way to access buying opportunities. And it was exactly what we talked about, right? Family nest is all about, you know,

developing those opportunities with seniors, the baby boomers who are transitioning typically into assisted living facilities and then helping our franchisees, you know, with the marketing for the relocations and the downsizing and the decluttering and the estate sales. And then ultimately we want to help them get a shot at the real estate. They don’t always get the real estate. It’s a great standalone business, but again, for those that are inclined to, you know, do a handful of deals a year on the real estate side, it’s sort of a double whammy.

you get the real estate side and you get, you know, you can grow a legitimate business just serving this aging population.

Mike Hambright (22:22.082)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (22:28.257)
Yeah, I love it. If folks want to learn more about you or whatever you’ve got going on, where can they go?

Ken (22:33.541)
Yeah, so a great website that kind of points to a lot of the different things that we’re doing is redbarnhomes.com. Simple enough. That’ll lead you over to Red Barn Homebuyers, Red Barn Franchise, Family Nest Franchise. mean, all of those, if you search any of them, you’ll find us. But like I said, Red Barn Homes is usually a great way to start. Yeah, great catching up, Mike. Enjoyed our time.

Mike Hambright (22:53.037)
Cool. Good to see you, buddy. Thanks for joining me today. Yeah, we gotta talk again soon. We need to hang out. Yeah. I wanna go on your boat and have you out of my ranch and we can do it all.

Ken (22:58.405)
We do 100 % 100 % with it. Let’s go. Yeah, we’ll do some hunting. We’ll do some surfing a little bit everything.

Mike Hambright (23:07.394)
Yeah, awesome. Hey everybody, there’s a lot of ways to make money in this business. At the end of the day, I think if you focus on serving other people and finding unique ways to serve them, whether you make money doing that or not, it’s gonna get you more deals at the end of the day. So hopefully there’s some good value in today’s show for you. Appreciate you guys and see you on the next show.