Transform Your Portfolio: Investing in Real Estate with Owner Financing

Mike Hambright (00:00.898)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I am here with Mark Ferguson from Colorado. We’re going to be talking about something interesting. I’ve never talked about this topic before, I don’t think. It might come up kind of randomly, but it’s actually buying real estate with businesses attached. There’s obviously been a lot of movement over the past few years of people moving into buying businesses, business acquisition, and Mark is actually buying real estate and the businesses come with it sometimes. And so it’s going to be a little bit of an interesting conversation.

Mark Ferguson (00:11.978)
hehe

Mike Hambright (00:29.102)
By the way, the surrounding, for those of you that are watching, it looks a little different here. This is actually the first episode I’ve recorded out at the Big H Ranch. so a little echoey here, so pardon that. But it’s going to be a great show today. So Mark, how are you, my friend?

Mark Ferguson (00:30.895)
you

Mark Ferguson (00:42.575)
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on the show. I’m looking forward to it.

Mike Hambright (00:44.93)
Yeah, yeah, looking forward to talking some more about it. And so you are one of those folks that I’ve known about for a long, long time. You create a lot of content. You’ve written a lot of books. You’ve done a lot of amazing things. And I’ve had you on my podcast before. I know we were both kind of brainstorming on it. Like, when you’ve been playing this game for a long time, sometimes you lose track of time. Like, how long ago was that? I know it’s been a while, but glad to have you back, I guess.

Mark Ferguson (01:07.352)
Yep, it’s been a long time. Yeah, no, it’s great. And yeah, I’ve seen you around for a long time too, and you’re doing really cool stuff. So happy to be on again and share some knowledge here.

Mike Hambright (01:17.734)
Yeah, yeah. So I know you’ve done, obviously you flipped a lot of houses, you own some rentals, you’ve been head of brokerage the whole time and done a lot of stuff. The last time we talked, I think you were buying laundry mats and stuff and that was probably some of the early days of tipping your toes into a walk into a business that has real estate is the underlying asset, but there’s also a business attached to it. tell us a little bit more about like, you know, well, before we jump into that, why don’t you tell us your, your, background a little bit? Cause

I just glossed over to a really high level. I’m sure I did you zero justice there. So that was your background a little bit more.

Mark Ferguson (01:52.363)
I’ll try and be quick. graduated from University of Colorado back in 2002-ish and had a finance degree and wanted to make all kinds of money in the banking industry and couldn’t find a job. So went to work with my dad for a little bit who was a real estate agent and I got sucked into that. Saw my friends in the corporate world and said, kind of like it on this real estate side. So got licensed, T flipped houses once in a while. I got into flipping with him a little bit.

And then along the way, I really didn’t like being an agent, working with regular buyers, but I got into the foreclosure business of selling houses for banks and HUD. Loved that side of it. Sold a bunch of those houses, then started making some money and thought, I need to invest this better, not just waste it all. And that’s when I started buying rentals. so for a while there, I had a goal to buy a hundred rental properties by 2023. Did not come close to that because the market changed.

my investment style changed, but I did buy I think 16 in a few, well, what five years, then switched a little bit to multifamily to commercial real estate because single families got pretty expensive. It was hard to cashflow, ramped up the flipping business because it was kind of easier to flip houses than cashflow with rentals at least where I was in Colorado. And so fast forward 2018 bought a

68,000 square foot strip mall, started my own real estate office there, and then really kind of ramped up the commercial multifamily side. And then yeah, a few years ago, I’m like, well, real estate’s been cool, it’s built a ton of net worth and equity, but I really want to increase my cash flow. I’ve always wanted brick and mortar businesses. And so I actually started out buying a bar that turned out awful.

Mike Hambright (03:18.83)
Hmm.

Mike Hambright (03:43.598)
I bet we could talk for a couple hours on that one or more.

Mark Ferguson (03:43.714)
did not work out at all.

Yes, people warned me over and over again. I’m like, no, it’ll be fine. Yeah, no, it wasn’t. And then got a laundromat. Then actually leased or took over another laundromat that was leasing the real estate. That’s the one kind of business I own that doesn’t own the real estate. Then ended up buying a liquor store with like a little mini mart attached that had apartments upstairs. Just purchased another liquor store last week, a much bigger one that had, you know, I bought the real estate.

And then the inventory and equipment was another 100,000, which I think is a smoking deal, but there’s a reason why it’s a smoking deal. It’s not doing very good right now we’re trying to turn that around. So the draw to me is kind of businesses can generate more income, more cashflow, but they also can be more work and be much riskier as well. So kind of a trade-off there. And I think having the real estate with it gives you a hedge and can help you, you know.

Mike Hambright (04:38.232)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (04:43.937)
make money on those deals if things don’t go as perfectly planned as you think they will.

Mike Hambright (04:48.672)
Yeah, yeah. When you had your strip center, is that what piqued your curiosity? Did you like see some businesses and maybe they like were struggling to pay the rent and you’re like, hey, let me tell you how to run this thing.

Mark Ferguson (05:00.175)
Um, not actually that’s been my best investment. That’s where I’m at right now still. So my office, we built my office here. There’s a dance studio next door, a restaurant, a grocery store, a coffee shop. They’ve all been here for five, six years now and they’ve actually done really well. So, um, I have definitely seen some businesses that struggle, but, um, really, you know, what piqued my interest with businesses with just like being able to have a real product or service.

Mike Hambright (05:05.485)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (05:15.982)
That’s great.

Mark Ferguson (05:29.731)
you know, not just something that’s online. Cause I’ve had, like you said, my books and some online coaching and stuff too. But for some reason, I just always wanted brick and mortar businesses. It’s like a real product. You’re selling to people in person for some reason.

Mike Hambright (05:43.982)
Yeah. So how do you, I mean, there’s a, you know, one of the, guess one of the challenges with small businesses is there, there’s a lot of owner operators, right? Like they’re not really, it’s because their business isn’t big enough to afford to outsource management, right? And there’s no redundancy. So if somebody gets sick, like the owner gets pulled in. And so even like, you know,

a lot of franchises, right, or just owner-operators. Like the person ultimately kind of buys a job. how do you prevent, when you’re kind of buying those businesses, like how do you prevent from you having to be the guy that has to jump in, like to be the liquor store clerk because somebody called in sick. Like how do you prevent that?

Mark Ferguson (06:22.987)
Right, no, that’s a great question. Actually, the small laundromat I bought, it was like a real small laundromat in a small town, had a car wash attached, an apartment with it, and a little shop. It’s not big enough for me to really hire someone to work on it. So we actually are selling it right now because of that. But it was fun for me to learn the business, go through it. I make lots of videos and stuff about it for YouTube. But that’s definitely a concern. And that’s one thing with laundromats is

Mike Hambright (06:49.4)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (06:51.587)
you want to make sure you buy one big enough that you bring in enough revenue to pay cleaners. If you have, know, if you don’t want to be the one collecting money, which I think it’s fun, but if you don’t want to, you’ve got to be able to afford to, you know, hire someone to manage it, do that side of it. Now, the nice thing about my laundromats, they’re unattended. There’s no wash and fold. There’s no POS system. There’s no, like it’s very simple and easy to operate. Yes.

Mike Hambright (07:04.034)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (07:16.878)
It’s all self-serve. Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (07:19.201)
So it doesn’t take much time and that’s why I really like those. But it’s definitely a concern and we see a lot of businesses like that for sale, liquor store, restaurants especially, right? I feel like restaurant owners are in there their whole life, like working and they don’t always count those in the books either. So you got to really dig into those and say, hey, are they counting all of these employees or is that them working 80 hours a week and pretending that that’s actually profit? So that’s definitely a concern.

Mike Hambright (07:22.371)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (07:30.104)
Yeah.

Right.

Mark Ferguson (07:46.477)
and you’ve got to make sure you’re buying a business that generates enough revenue, is big enough that you can pay people. So my first liquor store, I have a full-time manager, full-time staff. I go there once a month maybe. So.

Mike Hambright (07:59.35)
Yeah, yeah. It’s part of your strategy to buy enough of them that you could have management that oversees like three or four stores or locations. mean, you could probably do that for the business you mentioned so far, like Laundromat or a liquor store. Like you could probably have some sort of like manager that manages multiple locations, I would presume, right? Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (08:21.791)
Yes, you could. And especially the laundromats, there’s challenges on both of that. The laundromat challenge is that nobody wants to sell them unless there’s a big problem. Like they’re very popular right now. Everyone I talk to is trying to buy more of them, not sell them, and they’re trying to buy mine. So it’s tricky to find them and they’re hard to start just because, especially in Colorado, you need a lot of water and water is extremely expensive in Colorado.

Mike Hambright (08:34.818)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (08:51.663)
$100,000 for a share of water right now and you might need two shares of water to start a laundromat. The machines, you you’re spending $200,000 to $500,000 on machines to start a laundromat and that’s before rent, renovation, anything like that. So if you can buy existing ones, you can really get in good or take them over. I got very lucky and basically took mine over for free. But starting from scratch, building new, it’s a little tricky. And then with liquor stores in Colorado,

Mike Hambright (08:57.102)
our

Mike Hambright (09:08.014)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:15.639)
Mm.

Mark Ferguson (09:21.603)
they only let you have three liquor store licenses right now. So you’re limited in how many you can own at once. But yes, what you described as having a manager or someone do everything is the ideal situation. I do have people in my staff. Nikki’s been my project manager for a long time who helps with all of that. With my real estate office, I’ve got a few agents and pretty much all of them help with either property management or my online stuff or something.

Mike Hambright (09:37.005)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (09:50.627)
definitely have a lot of right now too.

Mike Hambright (09:50.68)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:54.114)
So if you’re moving in that direction, like what are, you talked about Laundromat, Liquor Store, a few other things maybe, but if you were on the hunt, like what makes a good target? I mean, there’s lots of different kinds of businesses out there, right? I pet, could, you know, I’m sure you’re probably not going to buy a pet store, but you could like, you get crazy, you could, yeah, maybe, let’s see what the numbers look like, right? But, you know, what are some good, and you’re-

Mark Ferguson (10:14.191)
Maybe so. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:22.328)
from your perspective, what are some good businesses that you would be on the hunt for?

Mark Ferguson (10:26.991)
So LaunchMats is just ranked as like the least risky one, but there’s still some risk. saw that, but a couple I’d stay away from, unless you have a lot of experience, a bar for one, like I said before, just management, drama. There’s a lot of risk and fights and DUIs, all kinds of stuff that can happen. anyway, restaurants are really tough too, because they also have the bar aspect with them, and it’s such a tough industry to make money in.

Mike Hambright (10:44.312)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:52.052)
yeah.

Mark Ferguson (10:56.781)
Some people do great, but a lot of the ones I see just don’t ever make money. Like you said, kind of the real small ones where the owner has to work in it. You know, if you’ve got a tiny cookie shop or a tiny pet store, that’s probably not something you can scale or buy and, you know, have it be somewhat passive. So I would definitely look for more medium range businesses to larger ones. And if you were an expert in something too, like if you’re an accountant or, you know,

Mike Hambright (10:56.824)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:00.856)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:15.373)
right.

Mark Ferguson (11:26.595)
a contractor or something, you know, there could be opportunity to buy businesses in your field where you’ve got that expertise. You could, you know, maybe you’re just starting your own business in that field and hiring more people. That’s an, that’s an opportunity as well. But for me personally, you know, like I said before, a lot of the businesses I’ve found, I haven’t gone out and searched for, I want this exact business. I’ve seen real estate for sale and then it’s kind of like,

Mike Hambright (11:40.898)
Yeah, that’s great.

Mark Ferguson (11:55.693)
there’s this business here that may or may not stay open. It’s kind of up to you. And then I’m like, that’s interesting. There’s a liquor store here and it’s got a small grocery store. and then I’m like, this would be really cool. And then I buy the real estate and pay a little bit for the inventory. Didn’t pay for any goodwill or really anything else, because they were trying to sell the real estate mostly. And you can end up getting this business. It can be very valuable and make a lot of money, by just looking for the real estate first. So,

Mike Hambright (12:00.238)
Hmm.

Mike Hambright (12:24.045)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (12:24.857)
That’s one way to look for them, but it’s not easy, right? There’s not a lot of those around, they also aren’t being sought out by many people either. Those can often be harder to sell for people because a lot of investors are like, don’t wanna deal with the business, I just want the real estate. And some business owners might be like, I don’t want the real estate, I just want the business. So if you’re to buy both of them, there can be some opportunity there.

Mike Hambright (12:35.608)
Right.

Mike Hambright (12:43.235)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so you’re primarily looking, it’s just real estate that’s for sale and there’s a bit happens to be a business there. The owner probably thinks it’s worthless or they’re just going to shut it down or something anyway. And so when you’re in that situation, do you, are you just, are they just kind of liquidating the inventory and the equipment? mean, they probably thought it was not worth a whole lot anyway, or I mean, you’re not paying, obviously I know you’re not paying a big premium for only by the business too.

You probably just create an easy button for them to say, hey, what if I paid you this for the whole thing, right?

Mark Ferguson (13:24.417)
Right, and sometimes, like with my first liquor store in Mini Mart, they pretty much sold the real estate for, I think I paid $610,000 for a 5,000 square foot building. The main floor was a business. There were three apartments upstairs and the building was worth that. Right, no problem. So the business was a bonus. And yeah, they just said, well, you can keep running it. It’s running right now or you can close it down. It’s up to you.

Mike Hambright (13:45.571)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (13:53.807)
And I think I paid like 70,000 for the inventory, which include all the alcohol, goods, equipment, coolers, everything. And in another instance, you know, I just bought this other liquor store, paid nine, 10 for the building, which was quite a bit, but they’re like, we have a liquor store. They want to give me any sales information, which means it’s not doing good, right? They would give you sales information if it was, but they wanted a hundred thousand for the inventory equipment. They had more than a hundred thousand dollars in.

alcohol there. Plus you’ve got 12 walk-in coolers, all the lights and shelving and different stuff throughout. knew liquidation value is more than what I paid for it. And then me being smart or dumb, one of the two, I think I can turn it around and make it make money as a liquor store. And that’s what we’re working on right now. But valuing the business, you talked about that before. if I were able to take that business and say, make it

Mike Hambright (14:37.39)
Sure.

Mark Ferguson (14:54.031)
net $200,000 a year, which wouldn’t be crazy at all for a liquor store. You’re usually valuing that business at three to four times the income. That would make it worth $600,000 to $800,000 for that business. so that’s another, like we could talk about so many different things, but you can often buy businesses cheaper than real estate based on the income they generate. So that’s another plus if you can get a good business.

Mike Hambright (15:09.826)
Mm.

Mike Hambright (15:18.296)
Sure, yeah.

Mark Ferguson (15:23.555)
find one for sale, there’s opportunity there too. But again, it’s making sure their books are right and they’re telling you the whole story as well.

Mike Hambright (15:25.891)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:30.688)
Right, right. So I know you said that you’re typically looking for the real estate and the business just happens to be there. There’s a lot of, I mean, there’s a huge industry now buying businesses too. So have you thought about partnering with business brokers or even just reaching out to businesses to say any chance there’s real estate associated with this business or not? Or kind of going from the other angle, you know?

Mark Ferguson (15:53.231)
I haven’t too much, but that’s a good idea actually. So yeah, no, that’s an interesting idea. I do see some of those, like there’s buybiz.net and LoopNet and Crexie, all list businesses sometimes. And sometimes you do see the real estate attached with those. A lot of times I see on those sites, they’re really looking for a premium on the businesses plus the real estate. Sometimes you see some stuff on there, but yeah, that’s not a bad idea. you know, for example,

Mike Hambright (16:06.071)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Hambright (16:17.763)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (16:23.373)
There’s a liquor store for sale here for $2.5 million without real estate. Just a liquor store. And so, you you mentioned how do you find out if it’s a good deal? Well, looking on those sites, researching other businesses for sale. If you sign an NDA, sometimes they’ll give you the numbers and finances and you can look at them and, you know, start to get an idea of what businesses are worth. And then you figure out what the real estate’s worth and you can kind of mesh them together and

Mike Hambright (16:30.124)
Hmm.

Mike Hambright (16:39.575)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (16:51.449)
get an idea of if you’re getting a good deal, if it’s worth it. Yeah, there’s a lot.

Mike Hambright (16:55.15)
Is that in fact how you analyze the deals? You kind of keep the real estate separate and comp that out and then you comp the business? mean, tell us about your kind of process for analyzing the overall deal, I guess.

Mark Ferguson (17:09.293)
Yeah, exactly. So I’ll look at the building and be like, okay, if this, you can look at it in two ways. One, if this was a good liquor store making money, know, what rent would they typically pay in this area? Which isn’t always easy to find, but sometimes you can find it looking at those other websites where you see a business for sale, they’ll list what the rent is they’re paying and you can get an idea. Okay, this is what liquor stores pay for rent. And then you can, yeah, comp the building out. Okay, let’s make an eight.

thousand a month in rent, you’ve got your expenses, what are the cap rates in the area, this is what my real estate’s worth. And then yeah, you can go to the business side and be like, okay, if it makes, you know, a hundred thousand a year, it’s worth $350,000, that’s what the business is worth. And like I told you, don’t think we’ve mentioned it here. When I do this, I’ll buy the building and I can usually get bank financing on the building much easier than a business too, which is a huge advantage.

Mike Hambright (17:55.65)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (18:06.444)
Hmm. Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (18:08.375)
and then I’ll buy the building, create another corporation for the business, separate the two. And so I’ve got one business that rents from myself and I’ve got, you know, the building, the business, I could sell the building, sell the business, sell both of them and I’m keeping them separate. Also gives me a clear idea of which one’s working, if they’re not, one’s not working or they’re both not working or if they’re both working.

Mike Hambright (18:29.366)
Right, Yep. And I know part of the movement right now with people that are doing business acquisition are usually finding kind of baby boomers that like their kids aren’t going to take the business over and it’s not that liquid. And so they end up owner financing it, which is how a lot of people are getting into the acquisitions is it’s, you know, little, not a lot of money down or maybe using, using like a small business loan, right?

Mark Ferguson (18:57.602)
Mm-hmm

Mike Hambright (18:58.136)
So, but for, you coming across people that are willing to own or finance the business? Are you even trying that?

Mark Ferguson (19:04.527)
I always ask, you know, it never hurts to ask, but I’ve honestly never done an owner finance deal. So I’ll ask him, but usually the terms just aren’t good enough for me or they don’t want to do it. They just want to get out of there.

Mike Hambright (19:06.68)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (19:10.744)
Okay.

Mike Hambright (19:15.298)
Yeah. If the businesses are struggling, they’re probably, there’s probably, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. They’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which by the way is how you can get the very best deals for sure.

Mark Ferguson (19:23.609)
They want to be done.

Right, and I should mention the one laundromat, the good one I have that I rent space from, it was a networking deal. I had another laundromat, so my brother-in-law said, hey, if you want some more machines, this laundromat just went out of business. I’m like, okay, so I went and looked at it, and they were gonna liquidate everything and turn it into an office. I went to the landlord and said, hey, can I just lease this from you? And he’s like, okay. I didn’t pay a dime for anything. I signed a lease for market rate and took over the whole thing, everything that was in there.

Mike Hambright (19:58.84)
Wow.

Mark Ferguson (19:58.921)
And it was kind of the same situation where they weren’t doing good. They just kind of let them out of their lease to be done with it all. yeah, so you mentioned the boomers and there’s a lot of people out there who have businesses that maybe they’re not perfect, but they have a lot of value. You know, it’s very expensive to start a business from scratch. Equipment, remodeling, all of that. And some of them just think, I’m done, I’m retiring. We’re just going to close down. They don’t even realize they could sell it.

Mike Hambright (20:18.219)
for sure.

Mike Hambright (20:26.335)
Right. Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (20:27.895)
or someone might buy it. So yeah, like you said, if you can find those kinds of businesses, there’s a ton of opportunity there.

Mike Hambright (20:32.984)
Yeah, yeah. So Mark, what do you do, any tips? mean, you probably have some scars on your back, I’m guessing, some arrow wounds, as I say, about just like how to make sure you don’t buy a business and end up buying a job.

Mark Ferguson (20:48.109)
Right, yeah, so that’s what I did with my small laundromat, but luckily that job is only a couple hours a week and I can make videos while I’m doing it and I multitask and it could be much worse. But that’s really, you’ve gotta make sure the business is big enough to pay staff. And so that’s really what it comes down to. if it’s a situation where you have to be working in it full time,

get out of it, honestly, unless it’s like your passion and that’s what you love to do. Your dream was to run this store. You know, we make mistakes. We do bad investments sometimes and you can’t always know everything going into it. So there’s obviously some risk there. Sellers often will fudge the books one way or another, you know, so but yeah, do as much due diligence as you can. Look at other stores, you know, in your market that are similar if you can go in there.

Mike Hambright (21:20.173)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (21:34.488)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (21:47.427)
Talk to, people will talk to you more than you can believe. You know, I went to different liquor stores and started talking to them and, yeah, I’m the owner, bought it such and such and they love to talk about their business. So you can get a lot of information that way. But yeah, be very careful about that side of it because as you know, time is our most valuable asset and if you’re spending all your time working the register, you’re not using your time as you should.

Mike Hambright (21:50.402)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (21:57.624)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (22:10.55)
Yeah, and I’m saying more from like, you didn’t intend that, but that’s what happened. know, Salo seems to be running really well, and there’s like one key employee that like quits the week after you buy it. And you’re just like, holy shit, I got to jump in here and start, you know, doing, making the sausage. Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (22:28.619)
Right, and that’s where it would be really nice, as you said earlier, once you have a few businesses, or even if you’re an investor and doing other stuff, if you’ve got an assistant team member who’s a little flexible, maybe they’ll hate you and it’s a bad idea, I don’t know, but hey, can you cover me for a few days while we hire someone at this store or something like that? If you’ve got a dedicated manager for each store, that could be their job description.

is you’ve got to fill in if we’ve got a staff shortage. And that’s what my manager at my other liquor store does is they’re there at the store, you know, managing it, taking care of it, and they’re actually helping with my new liquor store too. But if there was an emergency, they’ll work, no problem. That’s kind of part of their job description.

Mike Hambright (23:16.206)
Yeah, yeah. So what do you do? I guess everybody’s goals are their own goals. Everybody has their own goals. But how do you go into these things with the kind of the end in mind? Like either you’re going to fix it and flip it just like a house, or you’re going to hang on to this forever, or how do you, what do you recommend people to kind of be thinking about their exit strategy, if you will?

Mark Ferguson (23:40.751)
Right, and with real estate it’s a little easier I think, you pretty cut and dry what it’s worth. Well, sometimes commercial can be a little tricky, but you know what it’s worth. You can kind of see what the money is coming in from it. It’s like, well, should I keep it? Should I sell it? It’s a little more cut and dry. With the businesses and real estate it’s a little trickier, but really to me it’s more of how much income is it bringing in versus am I spending time on it? Am I?

Mike Hambright (23:48.578)
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Ferguson (24:09.207)
paying someone else to spend time on it. Is it worth their time or are there other opportunities out there we could be making more money on? Opportunity cost is a huge thing I look at. And so with my small laundromat, it’s pretty obvious from the beginning it was too small. It wasn’t making enough money to really be a viable long-term investment. So it’s kind of let’s get it going as good as we can. Let’s fix it up. And then try and sell it and see if we can do that.

Mike Hambright (24:37.996)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (24:39.107)
with my other businesses, you you don’t always know what’s gonna happen. You can do all your due diligence, look at other businesses, but there’s so many variables, so many things could happen. It might do great, it might not do so great. So again, it’s kind of a personal decision of, all right, this business makes me 5,000, 10,000 a month. I’m not putting much time into it. It’s definitely worth it for me to keep this business. You know, if I sold it, I might get three, 400,000, but.

I’m making so much more on it, know, income wise, I’d rather keep it, just keep that cashflow and we’ll keep it going. So really a lot of my exit strategy is I know I’m getting a good deal either on the business or the real estate. I know I could sell it if I had to down the road, but hopefully I can create a long-term business, it to my portfolio, kind of like a good rental property, and it just keeps bringing in cashflow year after year. And then

Mike Hambright (25:11.906)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (25:36.398)
Mm.

Mark Ferguson (25:37.581)
maybe sometime down the road, if I get a deal I can’t refuse, or offer I can’t refuse, I’d be willing to sell it. for the most part, my business is I’m thinking I wanna keep as kind of long-term cashflow plays. And if I decide to move to Florida or the beach somewhere or something and then I wasn’t local, maybe I’m like, well, maybe at that point I can sell them, they’ll have equity, the real estate will be making money and being paid down as well. But I wanna leave myself.

Mike Hambright (25:49.592)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (26:07.595)
open options, but really my goal is to create that long-term cash flow.

Mike Hambright (26:11.79)
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Cool. Well, Mark, if folks want to learn more, I know you’ve done a lot of stuff in real estate and you’re doing a lot of stuff in real estate. Folks wanted to learn more about you or follow you. Where should they go?

Mark Ferguson (26:23.471)
Um, invest for more has, has been my brand now for 12 years, which seems crazy. Like we time goes by fast. Uh, that’s invest F O U R M O R E. And, you know, I’ve got a blog and best for more.com that I’ve written hundreds of articles on. We’ve got a few different coaching options on there. And then, um, my YouTube channel, you know, we just passed 120,000 subscribers. Uh, so we’re always showing everything we do there from my flips. Cause we still are flipping houses.

to rentals, to the liquor store, the laundromats, showing all that stuff and behind the scenes and the good and bad. It’s definitely not all good. Like when the pipes freeze and your laundromat floods, that’s not fun, but something you have to deal with. And then yeah, I’ve got my book, Build a Rental Property Empire on Amazon and a few others on there too. And social media as well. I’m on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, showing stuff all the time as well.

Mike Hambright (27:00.237)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (27:04.698)
wow.

Mike Hambright (27:20.984)
Good stuff. Yeah, yeah, we’ll add some links in the show notes down here. So, well, Mark, thanks so much for joining us today. Good to see you, my friend.

Mark Ferguson (27:21.295)
I’m pretty easy to find if you just search for Invest For More.

Mark Ferguson (27:30.639)
Yeah, it was awesome. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. And yeah, we’ll have to have to stay in touch and maybe do this again.

Mike Hambright (27:35.886)
I’m always intrigued that I have a son that’s 17 that’s about to get out of high school and he’s going to go to a music school which is a little bit of a different path, but that he’s really into music. I guess I came up a more traditional way through college and then ultimately…

got in real estate and none of that really mattered anyway. So, and I’m surrounded by hundreds of entrepreneurs and I’m always just amazed at like how many different ways there are to make money. And it’s honestly, it’d be a pretty exciting time to be a younger person where you don’t have to go follow a proven path. Like there’s a lot of ways to kind of carve your own path and more than ever these days.

Mark Ferguson (28:09.402)
No, it’s crazy. And the thing is, you know, there’s a lot of complaining out there and the world is awful. like, do you understand what world we live in and how many opportunities there are where people can literally make money sitting at home, like talking on their phone live? Like it’s crazy. Or you can go on Amazon and start selling stuff in 20 minutes, honestly, and create stuff or resell. Like there’s so many opportunities out there for business, for content.

Mike Hambright (28:23.712)
Right. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (28:30.274)
Yeah.

Mark Ferguson (28:37.249)
No, I think back if I would have, they would have had all this when I came out of college. Well, I might not have gone to college for one, like, but just, you know, I could have done so much stuff and started so much sooner, but same time, I was pretty immature and in college and might not have taken advantage of it either.

Mike Hambright (28:42.818)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Hambright (28:52.93)
Most are, most are, yep. Cool, Mark LaHaye, thanks so much for joining us today.

Mark Ferguson (28:57.827)
Yeah, that was awesome. Had a great time. I appreciate it.

Mike Hambright (29:00.748)
Yeah, buddy, great to see you again. Everybody, thanks for joining us today. Hope you got some good value here and maybe spark those, get those wheels in motion about just how many different ways there are to make money in and out of real estate. And some of them are real estate and something else. So pretty interesting little conversation today. Hope you got some value from it. We’ll see you guys in the next show.