Success over time in Real Estate Investing

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. Really excited to have you here today and really excited to talk with my good friend, Mr. Mark McKee. Mark was on the flip nerd show like a lifetime ago, a long time ago now because we’ve been running that show for almost nine years, eight and a half years. Um, and mark is somebody I admire.

He’s been in the game for a long time. So we’re going to talk about today. What does success mean to him and what does success mean to somebody that’s been in the game for literally. Decades. Right. So that’s, we’re going to talk about today.

Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. That real estate is just a vehicle. A group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading real estate investors from across the country meets several times a year at the investor fuel you’ll save mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as friends and build more fulfilling lives for all of those around [00:01:00] us on today’s show, we’re going to continue our conversations of fueling our businesses and our lives.

I’m glad that.

Welcome to the show. How’s it going?

Mark: Yeah. Good. Good to be good to be here with your mic.

Mike: Yeah. Glad to have you here. So, uh, you’re a veteran, you’re like an old dog. You’re a young guy. I know. You’re super fit for your age. You were like mid fifties, right? Something like that, something like that. But, um,

Mark: I don’t have a six.

I don’t have a six. Okay.

Mike: So, you know, what’s funny is. You’ve been in the game longer than me, but a lot of people think that I’ve been in the game for a long time. And I know I’m starting to feel like every once in a while I’m like, wow, maybe I have a little bit of wisdom here, but nowhere near as much as what you do, my friend and so excited to talk to you today because I think a lot of people, you know, get in this game and they want freedom and they want success and they don’t really know what that is.

Maybe at the time. And then [00:02:00] along the lines, we all redefine it. We keep moving the goal line for ourselves and you get to a point to where you’re like, and I know you’re there. I don’t really have to do this anymore. Uh, but it’s kind of in your blood or you have other goals and it’s not necessarily all about the money, some of it’s about legacy and stuff.

So excited to talk to you about that today. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: Likewise. So it’s funny just as you were mentioning that about, you know, being in the business for a long time. I actually started back in 1986, so, okay. Thirties, six years ago now. And it’s funny thinking about it because when I started, I was 21, almost 22.

So I started as a realtor. That’s how I got my start and I just worked super hard, but, but I was always the young guy, the young kid. I remember going on my first appointment and. I remember doing my first appointments and they would look at me like, what are you? The paper, boy? Who are you? No, no, I’m the real estate guy.

I’m here. I’m the guy

Mike: with all the money that’s going to buy your house for cash. Yeah. Well, back then

Mark: I was a realtor. [00:03:00] So that’s how I got my start. But it’s funny being the young guy now, I’m kind of the, you know, we go to the, to the meetings and the masterminds and things. The older guy. I mean, I still feel young.

And like you said, been, I’m probably in better shape than most 30 year olds. So I feel good. And, uh, my, my mind is still great. And so, but yeah, a lot of, a lot of years. So, but yeah, just to, to your question, I, I started in 86 and worked, uh, as a realtor and just busted my butt a lot of struggles. Uh, but I became the number one agent at the biggest company in town here in Las Vegas.

No matter where I live. A lot of hard work. And that’s when I first got into buying properties because we might’ve talked about this before, but my first manager, he told me, he said, mark, you can make a lot of money in commissions. If, if you’re a top realtor, he says, but I can tell you, I’ve seen a lot of realtors.

They make a lot of money during their career, but when they get to. 50 60, 70. They have nothing. Cause they, they made a [00:04:00] lot of money, but they spent it all. And he said, mark, just start buying a couple houses a year. You know, you’re a realtor, you come across opportunities. You know, you’re young just even if you buy a couple of years, By the time you get older, you’re going to have all these free and clear houses.

And because there’s no retirement program, when you’re in business for yourself, it’s not like you work for the county. So I really took that to heart and just started accumulating properties. I always joke that, you know, some people collect stamps or baseball cards, I collect houses. So, um, Doesn’t you know, 50, 50 some, uh, rental houses now.

Um, and, um, mostly all three and clear a couple small loans are left on a few of them, but, uh, yeah, so I don’t really have to do anything. I mean, you can do the math 57 properties, average rent ground 1500 a month now. So that just comes in, you know, mailbox money, whether I even put out a better, not so, so I don’t have.

Um, plus all the income from, you know, our market here and our operation in Albuquerque. I mean, [00:05:00] There’s a lot of money coming in, so I really don’t have to, but, and similar with you. I, I, Mike, I know, uh, you know, I know we’ve gotten to know each other. I mean, gosh, that first Taiwan we, we met with skosh 8, 8, 9 years ago.

I forget. And then I know we did the, we did the interview and then now I’ve got to know. More through, uh, through investor fuel and investor machine, you know, two great companies that, uh, that you have, and, and even have spent time. Now we were down in Cabo, what, four months ago? Um, you and I together with some other guys in our, in our wives, first time we met our each other’s wives.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so that, uh, that was a lot of fun, but, um, but my point was, I know you really don’t have to do, and if, if you wanted to, you could just go. You know, go somewhere and chill on a beach, but we’re not wired like that. And I can tell you that the thought is, oh, I’m going to make so much money. And then I’m.

Check out, but you, you know, the people and, you [00:06:00] know, people, I’m sure that have tried that after about a month or two, they’re going insane because as humans, as humans, we’re goal oriented, we’re goal seeking we’re achievement creatures. And if we don’t have something to work towards and achieve. Yeah. You just kind of empty.

Mike: Yeah. You know, I put a, I put a, a little write-up on, uh, Facebook today. I try to do a little, um, just something that’s on top of my mind and actually it made me, it just made me think of this. I, I basically. So a couple of things. I said, winners lose more than losers and that’s because we never stopped. We just keep going and like losers, if you will, they quit when they lose.

It’s like, well, I lost, I’m done. And we just like what we say, that was a learning point. I get to keep, keep going. Well, the other thing I said in there is that when. We know our best days are ahead of us. Like tomorrow is better than yesterday. Next year’s gonna be better than last year. We just keep going forward because we’re progressing.

And we enjoy that where losers. And I’m not trying to like call anybody out here specifically, but we [00:07:00] all know people that all they talk about is, you know, they’re like 40 years old and they’re their best years are when they were the captain of the football team in high school or whatever their best years are behind them.

And it’s because they. When they lost and they just never moved forward and they just started stuck.

Mark: They’re still reliving that one touchdown right from high school. I think there’s a

Mike: song, but my point in that is like part of, I think, what keeps us going where we don’t think about some line in the sand where we can kind of retire necessarily is that we were wired to keep winning, to keep moving forward, to keep challenging ourselves.

Even though we don’t have to anymore. It’s like a, if you’re a true athlete, You’re competitive for the rest of your life. It’s not like something to use to do, right?

Mark: Correct. Yeah. And you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got to have goals and things evolve and change. I remember my gosh, back when I started, uh, it was tough.

I mean, when I, when I first started in the real estate business, man, I look back now I get goosebumps. It was just, it was [00:08:00] brutal. I mean, just, I had to work so hard and there’s so many frustrations and, and I, I felt like quitting so many times. Um, But just kept, I knew I was on the right path and that’s one of the keys to success is, you know, you’ve, you’ve got to have talent.

I, I think there’s two components, talent and drive, you know, motivation and work ethic. So talent and drive. And if you asked me, which was more important, I would say the drive because I’ve seen many people. I know you have where maybe they weren’t the most talented, but they just went out there and worked and worked and worked and kept pushing forward.

They had adversity, they had set backs, but they just kept pushing forward and they got better, their skills improved as they went along. But you could, you could show me somebody who’s really talented, but they just want to sit around on the couch. Yeah, it’s not really going

Mike: to learn talent. You can learn talent, you can learn those skills, right.

Especially if you’re motivated. And I have a friend when I went to grad school, we, you know, I haven’t somebody I haven’t talked to in years. [00:09:00] I know this guy was like a genius, like aced, his, whatever they call it. So long ago, I even forgot that the GMAT score you have to take to get into grad school or apply for, and then straight A’s.

And like, everything was a great student and he didn’t have a job for like three years coming out of one of the top 20 grad schools in the country. And he was like a philosopher, but he just couldn’t like, do anything, you know?

Mark: Well,

Mike: it’s like, you’ve got to have a beer with, but not to work for you or with you, you

Mark: know, it’s just like college, college professors.

Pick on them, but there’s, there’s a lot of super smart college professors that, you know, are living paycheck to paycheck.

Mike: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So, you know, I think w one of the questions was what does success mean to you? And I know, and we haven’t, I haven’t asked you this question before. I don’t think.

Is, I know that’s changed for you over time. And I think that that’s okay. Right. But I’m sure now, like obviously when you first started, you didn’t know that you’d be training your kids and working with your kids eventually when you first started, you didn’t have all these kids. Right. So, um, [00:10:00] I’m sure that that’s a part of your success formula now.

Uh, but what does, what do you think success meant to you when you first started? What is it?

Mark: You know? Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, one thing too, just thinking about what you were just saying is, you know, several of you brought my kids. Several of my kids were, uh, baseball players, uh, you know, big baseball players in high school and stuff.

And it just brings back the thought of, if you don’t step up to the. And swing the bat. You’re never going to get a home run. Yeah. You’re going to strike out, you know, the old story, uh, babe Ruth had more strikeouts than anybody else, but he also had more home runs. I mean, maybe that’s different now, but the point is, if you, you know, you’re going to strike out sometimes, but as long as you, as long as you have more hits, uh, in your, you just keep out there and swinging the bat and you’re doing the right things.

And so a success. To me, if you really boil it down, just means being able to do what you want when you want with who you want. And, and, and, and to be able to do that. There’s [00:11:00] two main ingredients. Which are time and money. And I often tell a story, uh, in, in my neighborhood. I, uh, I’m in a really nice gated neighborhood here.

And some of my neighbors are doctors and lawyers and, and, uh, and such, and I see them driving out the every morning, you know, while I’m, you know, in my, in my gym shorts. So, you know, going to do a workout and they’re headed off to the. To their office. And so they they’re making good money, but they’re, they’re working all the time, you know?

So, so it’s one thing to have a lot of money and not much free time. And then you can also find a homeless person who has, has plenty of free time, but they don’t have any money. So the key is time and money. And the way to achieve that is with residual income, you know, mailbox, money. I was fortunate. Years ago to learn the difference between linear income and residual income, linear income is the money you work to get paid.

Like when I was a realtor, sell a house, get paid, sell the house, get paid, or flip a house, get paid, flip a [00:12:00] house, get paid, stopped doing that. And you stop getting paid. So, yes, I still flip houses and wholesale houses, but the key all along, I viewed my realist. Business as a means to acquire cashflow assets.

So, um, my focus was always buying more and more properties at the right price and making sure they were, you know, good, good investments and cashflow. Um, and then once, once it comes it and it’s, I think it’s, um, I want to say it’s thinking. Where in there, it says, once riches come, they’re going to come with such velocity or force that you’re going to wonder where the money has been hiding all these years.

And, you know, cause I had a lot of years of struggle and, and I, I mean, I was never homeless or anything like that, but just a lot of mental anguish and struggle and part of it, I put on myself just because I had very, very high standards and I wanted to be the best I wanted to be number one. And I was just driven, driven, driven.[00:13:00]

Um, which may not be good all the time, but, um, so yeah, just that, that, that success mindset and what I was saying about money is it’s, it’s, it’s almost weird somehow where you, one day you wake up, I know this happened to me and I just, you know, you’re cause your head’s down and you’re working and you’re working and all of a sudden, one day you look up and you’re just.

Wow. I got up, I got a lot of stuff here. I got up, you know, there’s a lot of money coming in here and I don’t need to work anymore. And wow. And it just, and, and it all stems from. Doing the right things. You know, the, the foundation to everything. And most everybody knows this, but, uh, is honesty, integrity doing the right things?

Do what you say. You’re going to do show up on time, do those those basics. And if you have the right strategies and you work hard now, you got to have the right strategies because you could be looking for a sunset, but if you’re [00:14:00] headed east, I don’t care. Fast you run. You’re never gonna achieve your, you never going to see a sunset.

So you’ve got to be pointed in the right direction. But if you work hard just to have. That, um, you know, and work on yourself, work on your skills, educate yourself, surround yourself with, uh, with great people, uh, like, like you do with your, your, uh, investor fuel mastermind. It’s been great. Great bunch of guys.

Um, we really commend you for that applaud you for that. It’s a great group. And, um, and just surround yourself with those type of people. Uh, too many people have those naysayers and doubters and wet blanket people, dream stealers. We would call them sometimes. So just surround yourself with the right people and, and, uh, stay on that path.

But residual income is. Yeah. You

Mike: know, and I agree with you completely. And we have, we have some rentals here and I’m doing a lot more multi-family now and the with, so, you know, with the rentals, even though we have somebody else manage them, there’s still some work they’re not completely [00:15:00] passive. What it does create residual income with the multi-family.

Those are the most passive thing that I have because. Professionally managed by like national companies. And, you know, they’re just big machines that have on-site management and everything. Right. And, you know, Jason Lewis at the last edit last fuel was talking about this idea of a minimally managed like business.

Right. And I think it resonates because a lot of us are real estate investors. We tend to think about, I have a passive business, which people associate with rentals, which isn’t always passive and then, or I’m like in the business, but there’s this idea of. You know, somewhere in the middle, it’s like, I’m a little bit involved.

I’m making sure that it’s not, you know, the train isn’t coming off the rails, but I’ve got a team in place. I’ve got systems and processes in place. I’ve got good people in place. And I, and I know that, you know, you’ve built up your business over time in a way to where. Early on. It was a grind because you’re doing everything and we all were there.

Now you, you might be working more than you want to, or maybe you’re not, but you’re probably more in the minimally [00:16:00] managed state. Right. You’re making decisions, key decisions on stuff, but you’re not doing everything yourself. Right.

Mark: True. And the that’s the old adage of working on your business instead of always working in your business.

And, and I really focus on that, but I will say. I don’t mind doing some of the things I even, uh, well, some of the rehabs I’ll stop by every now and then just to have been my main crews worked with me for almost 14 years now. So I really don’t even, I mean, they just do, they know what to do, so, but I don’t mind going by.

I don’t mind even meeting with, with, uh, with sellers sometimes I enjoy, uh, I enjoy getting out there, but I also want to have the freedom we were, we were talking before we went on, uh, on the show here. Uh, I’ve been, I just flew back into town and got home on my flight was late. I got home about midnight last night.

So I’ve been out of town every week for the last six weeks. [00:17:00] Um, one of them was when I saw you in Scottsdale at the fuel event, which was awesome. So, uh, but yeah, just being able to do that again, doing what you want when you want. Um, another key thing I would probably say to maybe somebody who is younger and is coming up and working hard is that, you know, it doesn’t happen overnight.

There’s a, you know, you gotta, you gotta pay the hate to say, pay the price, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to put into times. Yeah. I mean, all these free and clear properties I have, they weren’t, well, a lot of them, I did pay cash for when they were, you know, back in, back in 2010, 11, when I could buy four bedroom houses here for 40,000 and 50,000.

You know, a lot of those I did, I did just pay cash for it, but. You know, a lot of them, I had loans and you know, you put something on a 15 year loan and when you’re younger, you can think, oh my gosh, 15 years though, I can’t wait that long. You know, but you know, put, put a house on a 15 year loan, get a tenant in there.

And if your cash flows, they’re going to buy the house from. All right. Here’s, here’s one thing. And [00:18:00] you know this, I know you’re not quite as old as me, but, uh, but the time goes by, man. I mean, 15 years, I mean, 15 years ago. I’m sure you remember. Uh, we’re we’re right now, we’re 2022. I still remember the whole big thing about Y2K.

You know, when we, when, when, when it went from 1999 to 2000 and the world’s gonna have the electric grids is going to shut down and computers aren’t going to work and all this other stuff. What happened, but nothing happened. It seems like yesterday. I know your, uh, your son is he’s 15, 14, 13. So probably started a real estate investing.

Mike: He was just

Mark: born. And probably that probably seems like yesterday. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, the time goes by and that’s one thing as you start to get a little older and, uh, you’re, you’re. The Five-O are we

Mike: talking? Everybody talking to eight year mark I’m

Mark: 47 for the record? 47. Okay. I didn’t mean to slow some of the guys in the

Mike: group, like, act like I’m older than that, but [00:19:00] he just makes them feel good about them.

Makes them feel good about themselves,

Mark: but you still are a very handsome man and you’d hold that. You look more like 40 to me. Okay. Now

Mike: in real estate, we all. With, with our real estate business, you round up, but everything else we round down. Right. That’s right.

Mark: So, but what happens is you start to get older.

And I’m, uh, you know, I’m in my mid, mid fifties now, again, I still feel great. I, uh, you know, I was snowboarding two weeks ago. I was out riding motocross bikes last week. Uh, you know, I still do all the crazy stuff. I went on a big hike yesterday, so very active, do a lot of stuff. So I still feel great. It’s uh, but you start to realize.

You know, you’re not going to live forever. I mean, I don’t, I want to live to be a hundred, 120, whatever. So I’m not going to die anytime soon, but you start to your, your mind [00:20:00] shift changes a little bit. When you get a little bit older. I mean, when you’re. The twenties and thirties, that’s the furthest thing from your mind and which is good, you know, you just keep cranking away.

But, uh, my, my one advice would be have that long-term focus. There’s no such thing as get rich quick. Well, I mean, I don’t know, maybe, I guess if you, but then there’s more luck. I mean, I was going to say maybe it’s about crypto, whatever. 10 cents or something. I don’t know which I I’m not into crypto. I don’t know anything about it really, but you know, or maybe you win the lottery or something like that, but, uh, you know, realistic.

Yeah, whether it’s multifamily single family, it’s not get rich quick, but it’s get rich for sure.

Mike: Exactly. Yup. Yup. And it’s been on denial, like there’s things that you can’t predict when I started buying my, uh, my rentals, I had a mentor here locally. It was a guy that had like a couple thousand rentals, you know, real, got a lot of wisdom who started buying them in the seventies and just a real smart guy, kind of a millionaire next door type guy that like nobody.[00:21:00]

Nobody really knows this guy who he is. Cause he doesn’t come out of his cave very much. And he’s not, he doesn’t live a flashy life or anything. You know, it just looks like a regular guy lived in the same house for 30 or 40 years, modest house in a modest part of town and all that stuff. And he said to me, You’re never going to get appreciation in Texas.

Like you got to buy for cashflow. Um, and, uh, and I took that to heart and the truth is, is they never cashflow it as well as I thought they would love the appreciation actually has been insane. And I don’t think anybody could have predicted it because that’s how it was for a long time. But, you know, the, the whole world’s upside down now with inflation and appreciation and stuff like that, especially in markets like Vegas and.

Texas markets, which are just, you know, um, massive increase in population

Mark: going on too. So yeah, can’t count on that. Don’t base it on that. Appreciate.

Mike: No, yeah, you shouldn’t bake on anything, but I think you should bank on, uh, that good things happen over time, right? Well,

Mark: you can, you can bank on appreciation, but not 30% a year.

Sure. Maybe [00:22:00] five,

Mike: four or five. The truth is, is the appreciation these days, let’s be honest. I mean, we could have a whole nother show on this. Mostly the appreciation is destruction of the dollar. It’s not just, you know, regular old inflation. It’s where your purchasing power is being.

Mark: Yeah, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just a general inflation and people fleeing, fleeing into hard assets that help hedge against inflation.

And that’s one of the other great things about. Real estate is it’s a hedge against inflation. I mean, I’m, I’m doing another round of rent increases and I try to keep my rents reasonable. I believe that, uh, maybe we’ll talk about that here in a second. Uh, as we, as we get to wrap up here in a few is about where I think this market’s going, but, um, rents, uh, I’m, I’m doing a whole nother round of rental increases, but you know, if I have a house that maybe fair market rent is 1800.

I might probably, I might rent it for 15, 50 or 1600 just because they know they’re getting a good [00:23:00] value. I mean, they’re all free and clear anyway, but you know, of course I want to get the most I can, but then the people know they’re getting a good rental rate. They’re not bugging me there. They’re going to stay put because if they move somewhere else, it’s going to cost them more.

And, um, so it’s kind of a win-win. I mean, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll push it up, but, and I also believe. That some of the markets that have seen crazy crazy rental rate increases, for example, Las Vegas, where I am now, Phoenix, especially the top five, I think, or Phoenix, Tampa, um, Las Vegas, Dallas, probably in there somewhere, but I think, I believe, and of course nobody, my crystal ball.

Uh, probably not a whole lot better than anybody else’s, but I have been doing this a long time. I do believe that prices are going to correct and that rental rates will, uh, sag a little bit. Um, so, you know, cause I, when I started it, just for example, here in Las Vegas, when I started as a realtor back in 86, the average price of a house was 75.[00:24:00]

And there was just slow, steady appreciation through the eighties and nineties. And then we know what happened in the mid two thousands and 2004 or five. It just went ballistic. And the average price here in Las Vegas in the summer of oh six, hit 3 25. Well, four years later in 2010. It was 125. So it went in oh six from 3 25, 4 years later in 2010 to 1 25.

Wow. And I mean, we just had the biggest bubble ever. Uh, Vegas was the epicenter of, of, of all of that, which, which meant great opportunities. And I, I, I mean, I still own a lot of the houses I back I bought back then for dirt cheap and now we’re back up. And, and one thing I might say to. I don’t know if you were in the room at the last fuel event.

But, uh, when I was up on stage talking, I said, how many of you have been a real estate investor for, for less than, you know, eight or 10 years? And some hands went up and I said, well, you guys don’t know. [00:25:00] Crap. I think I used a different word, but, um, and I did what I meant by that was you, you, you haven’t seen what you haven’t seen for what you don’t know.

Yeah. And I’m not a doom and bloomer or anything like that, but I just know, I know that this, this is unsustainable. Um, The truth is that a blind monkey could make Ray could make money in real estate. The last few years you could re you could go, you could buy a property on the MLS and go in a bidding war and pay top dollar.

You could pay over retail and the prices are rising so fast. You’re still, you could still be a hero for sure. So anybody could make money in real estate the last few years, last five years, unless you’re are. Um, but my advice is my advice is just be careful because change is coming. I can feel it. And I’m not, I’m not saying it’s going to crash as bad as it did here last time.

But I think a correction is inevitable.

Mike: Yeah. Well, for sure. You know, and it doesn’t mean get out, right. It means to be smelling [00:26:00] over pay don’t over rehab. Like there’s, you know, I said this, um, I said this yesterday, I was on a, I was on somebody else’s show and like, I know people. Have stayed principled.

They’re still trying to buy a really deep, they’ve struggled a lot the past couple of years because they’re sticking to their principles of trying to buy deep and not over pain, but when they get deals, they’re super profitable. Right. And I also know people that. Um, our only buying deals right now because they’re overpaying and they’re over rehabbing to the market and they’re setting the high bar on the cops, um, which is in my opinion, not something you should ever do.

You should really focus on paving, you know, not paving new ground, like just follow what somebody else has done before. Like find comps, find a bunch of them, feel comfortable that you can fall somewhere in the middle there, but not. Over rehabbing and trying, my whole goal is to sell a house for a hundred thousand in this market, in this neighborhood that nobody else has even sold for, but I’m going to make mine so much nicer.

That will probably be okay because those people are going to get hit

Mark: first. Right. Yeah. And it’s, it’s just [00:27:00] sheer craziness right now. And, um, and we do mostly fix and flip. We, we renovate most, all the properties. We do some wholesaling when we’re busy, but mostly fixing flip. Can I have one? Uh, it just closed yesterday.

Um, I bought the house. Two 70 or two 80, and it was a light rehab, maybe 10,000, 15,000. And I thought that I would be able to sell it for around 3 55, 360 long story short. I, I, uh, after the rehab, I put it on the market. I had 25 offers and I ended up sewing it to the, or no, it was a why, but we had offers from invitation homes, all that.

And I ended up selling it to progress homes for three 90 calves. So, uh, no one’s no repairs, no nothing. Crazy. That’s progress, progress homes. I’m not familiar with them. I guess they bought, I guess they bought 40,000. They’re kind of like an invitation homes [00:28:00] or, um, you know, one of the hedge fund, big, you know, one of the big buyers.

And we’ll see what happens with these guys as, as. Uh, rent growth, stagnates. Uh we’ll we’ll see. I mean, we know what happened with Zillow, Zillow lost almost a billion dollars, uh, trying to, trying to do what we do. We’ll see what happens with, uh, with OfferPad and open door. Um, we’ll see the eye buyers. So I don’t know.

It’ll be, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with them. Interesting.

Mike: Yeah. And I think the good thing for guys like us and hopefully a lot of folks that are listening to this too, is. You know, there’s a lot of opportunity in a downmarket too. So just make sure that you’re prepared when the market starts to go down, not to retreat, but the pounds out of the bushes, because you’ve been, you’ve been squirreling away cash, or you have been building up, uh, private lenders that are ready to pounce and you kind of educated them that like, Hey, when you start hearing in the news of the.

Decreasing that’s the time that we’re going to go in, not the time for you to get scared.

Mark: Right. And I would say, and I know there’s a lot of good, uh, private lender partners and, and, [00:29:00] uh, you know, through your organization, there’s some, some good ones. Um, but my advice would be to. Again, live below your means and start saving that money, uh, because to do what I do on the scale that I do and the way I do it, I mean, you’re going to need a few million cash now.

Yes, you can do hard money or you can do private lenders and things like that, which, uh, you know, if I was in a pinch, I would do that. But having the flexibility just of having the money to, to do deals and you know, my advice right now would be keep, uh, you know, build up your assets, build up your cash reserves, keep some dry powder.

I’m not saying don’t buy right now. I’m still buying. Uh, but just be cautious. And the other thing too is, as I mentioned a minute ago, Las Vegas went from, you know, the peak in oh six to the bottom in 2010. That was four years, maybe almost five years. So the real estate market. Kind of liken it to a cruise ship, you know, a big tanker ship, you know, it doesn’t turn on a dime, you know, it’s going to take a while it [00:30:00] took four or five years last time.

So, but I think the turn is starting. I can, I can feel it in my bones. It’s starting to turn. And I, I know now we’ve got some other chaos going on, you know, politically, globally, and we’ll see where that leads. And so I know. Interesting times, right? It’s an interesting

Mike: time for sure. Yeah. The good thing is, is people always need a place to live.

And so we play the game, right. And we’re a provider and we do the right thing.

Mark: That’s the great thing, not to interrupt you, but the great thing about real estate and, uh, and multi-family is great. And you know, it’s more, more turnkey. Uh hands-off like you said, I don’t think the returns, at least for me, the returns are much better with single family homes.

And I mean, you can do well with apartments too. Um, but. The guys just, I was just looking at it. I lost my job. I know what I was gonna say. You were talking about, uh, um, houses and the great thing is it’s the last thing somebody is going to let go, they’ll go behind on their credit card payment or they’ll let their car be [00:31:00] repoed.

The last thing they are going to want is to be out in the street. With no roof over their head. So they’ll borrow, they’ll be, they’ll do whatever they can. I mean, w you know, getting evicted is the last thing that anybody wants. And I will say also, if you want to get into it and do what I do on a larger scale, I mean, you need to have a good team.

And I’ve got people that work with me. A lot of my family members are working with me now, my kids, um, But you gotta be a little tough. And I, you know me, I’m a nice guy. I would give you the shirt off my back. I help people. I do whatever. But if you’re going to be a landlord on a large scale, you can’t listen to every sob story.

I mean, if my wife was in charge, nobody would ever pay rent. She says, oh my gosh, you evicted that lady with the little baby. Uh, well, all Victor evict, all victims, nobody else like her. I mean, I hate to

Mike: be cruel. You have to do it. You have to roll with an iron fist a little bit. Yeah. And some

Mark: people, some people aren’t cut out for that.

They, you gotta [00:32:00] be, you gotta be a certain kind of psycho like me to do well, to be able to turn it on.

Mike: Yup. Yup. So, so mark, uh, you share a lot of wisdom, obviously. You got a lot of experience. We appreciate you sharing a lot here today. What you’ve been in the investor fuel group, you and I have known each other for a long time.

You’ve been in the group for about a year now, would you mind just kind of sharing a little testimonial on your experience with investor fuel? I know you’ve been around the block a lot.

Mark: I don’t know what you’re doing here. I forgot. I even had my, uh, investor fuel. You sent me some goodies the other day, so I just saw that was sitting there. So yeah, industrial fuel. I know I mentioned it earlier in our talk here today, but great group. It’s a mastermind. If you, again, if you surround yourself, With turkeys, you’re never going to fly like an Eagle and you’ve probably all heard your, the income.

Your income will be the average of the five or 10 people that you hang around with. If you hang around with clowns, you’re going to be a clown, that’s it, or loser or whatever, [00:33:00] or just not successful. If you want to be, if you want to be successful, hanging around with successful people, uh, driven like-minded entrepreneurial type people.

And that’s the value of a, of a mastermind group, like investor fuel. In fact, you and I met at a mastermind group. Whatever it was eight years ago, whatever it was. And so, uh, yeah, investor fuel. If anybody’s listening to this, uh, um, you would want to talk with Mike. I mean, they don’t just let anybody in, so you would need to qualify, but if you are an aspiring, uh, or inexperience and, and there’s there’s guys in this, in, in investor fuel, That are doing hundreds of deals a year.

And then there’s some doing 10, 20, 30, you know, so, and there’s a couple of different options for getting into the group, but, uh, yeah, I love it. Look forward to, uh, to all the meetings and, uh, the comradery and the knowledge and the sharing. That’s the great thing is that it’s a group of top people. And you would think that a lot of them would keep [00:34:00] everything, uh, you know, close, close in and not, and not share, uh, you know, their strategies and secrets.

But that’s one of the great things about the group is that, uh, everybody’s willing to share. And if somebody has a problem, you know, you go to one of the meetings and, and, you know, you say, Hey, I’m having a challenge with this. Well, if somebody in the room has already faced that challenge and oh, call this person or do this, or here’s how I handle that.

Hey, here’s my checklist for that. Or here’s, here’s the forms we have for that, or here’s her you call, there’s always a, um, you know, you can always find a solution to almost any problem there.

Mike: Yeah. I appreciate that, mark. And I think you would agree with this, even though you’ve been doing this for a long time, we’ve discussed this on you.

You have a ton of wisdom and experience. You also have to be a lifelong student, right? Like. W you’re never afraid to learn something new. You have to keep learning to move ahead. And so you get in rooms like investor fuel, and even guys like you who have a ton to share also also are open to like learning new things and seeking those things

Mark: out.

When I go to meetings like that, I come back [00:35:00] with pages and pages and pages. I’ve studied a whole time. Uh, you know, I’m taking pictures of what’s up, which I don’t know why I do that. Cause I know you guys have that available on everything. Yeah. You record everything and you have everything, all the slides and everything available.

But I, you know, I take pictures, I will sit in the front. I don’t know if you ever noticed. I always sit in the front and I always take pictures and I always try to engage and, and, uh, yeah. The day is stopped learning. Does the day you stopped dying? I, uh, I know you watch a lot of podcasts. That’s what I do every, every morning when I’m working out, I am watching all different kinds of things related to real estate and, and, uh, money, you know, if you want to be rich study money, I think it was Brian Tracy that said that years ago, you know, if you want to be rich study money and health, and it, we didn’t talk about that too much.

Today, but when we were talking about success, you know, free time and money, and I didn’t really get into the third one, which is health, because you can have all the money in the world, but if you’re dying of cancer or something, or you don’t feel good, or you got other health issues, [00:36:00] you know, all the money in the world, isn’t going to do that in anything for you.

So, um, yeah. Take, take care of yourself, get sleep, you know, like I always say, you know, when, when are you supposed to wake up? When your body tells you to when you’re done sleep and

Mike: yeah. So it’s a little different when you have kids to take to school though. That’s why you

Mark: hire somebody else to take them, have your wife take them, but no, the point is just, you know, take care of yourself.

You know, get off the sugar and, you know, again, do, as I say, not as I do, I mean, I, I mean, I am in pretty good shape and I try to watch what I eat, but that’s the number one, culprits processed food and sugar and not enough sleep. And, uh, you know, just, just take care of yourself because you only got one, you only get one.

Mike: Well, and you have to think about it. I’m guilty of a lot of stuff, which we won’t even get into in this show, mark. But you know, at the end of the day, um, we didn’t work this hard to have life cut short, right? We, we worked this hard because we thought we would never die and we know, you know, we know we’re going to, but you know, you got to make it your best life.

For sure. So, [00:37:00] mark, if, if folks wanted to connect with you or get ahold of you in some, some way, what’s the best way for them to reach out.

Mark: Yeah. If they have anything here in the, uh, in the Las Vegas area, I really don’t have anything to sell or promote or anything like that. Uh, but, uh, if, if anybody has anything for the Las Vegas market and we’re also in Albuquerque, my oldest son runs our Albuquerque division.

And, uh, that’s where I just came back from last night, um, was Albuquerque. And we’re doing really well down there. And in fact, my oldest daughter works part-time for me as well. Um, my middle son is working in acquisitions for me now. Um, so, uh, yeah, so that’s good. You can get your family involved, so it’s great business, but as far as reaching me, um, uh, main website here is, uh, is Vegas fast sale.

Uh, so they could just, uh, email would just be [email protected]. Awesome. Possible. I appreciate you joining us today. Hey, always good to be with you, Mike.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, everybody [00:38:00] that’s watching right now, uh, if we haven’t talked before, if you’re a professional investor and you’re looking for a new home to be surround yourself with like-minded others masterminds like ours, ours, just to be Frank are not cheap, but honestly, if it helps you do one more deal a year, you’re going to be way better off.

And it’s not uncommon for people to come into our group and double, triple, quadruple their business inside of a year, just from getting around the right people and getting your mindset. Right. So go to investor fuel.com. We’d love to. How do you schedule a call and talk with us to see if it might be a fit between us?

Appreciate you a bunch. We’ll see you on the next show.

Mike: Are you an active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us to learn more about Investor Fuel. Simply visit investorfuel.com to get started.[00:39:00]