Building Financial Freedom Through Creative Real Estate Investing

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (00:00)
Yeah, I would say like the biggest thing that I’ve learned in the past decade of entrepreneurship and also in real estate is when we come in, we don’t always know the goal. I learned that the goal is to build is to build freedom. Right. And like there’s so many people that are building, you know, friends with 100 plus rentals. And it sounds amazing, but you look at their day to day life and it’s not free. Right. Because they’re stuck at the mercy of like whatever text messages they receive about whatever problem that’s going on. They’re firefighting.

And so for me, it’s what we’re doing is we’re creating freedom and we do that by creating cash flow.

Quentin (02:04)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. And my slight pause is because I’m like, man, this gentleman do a lot of stuff. I’m like, do I just want to go down the list of stuff or do I just want to let him tell you what he did? You know, because I’m so, this is, so here we go. Here we go. This guy named his business is Financial Freedom Fighters.

I mean, think that’s that’s that’s a real human right there because listen, this guy is going to help you get financial free. Like, I love the fact that he’s not trying to keep everything to himself. No, he want to teach you. He want to coach you. He want to give you the tools you need to be financial free. And so, man, I’m excited. This guy, he does a lot, but he’s going to probably go over it all. But I’m so excited. So excited that we get the chance to peek through the lens of Mr. Philip Louden. Mr. Philip, how you doing today, sir?

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (03:00)
I’m doing amazing, how are you?

Quentin (03:01)
man, doing good, y’all. Yo, that’s his three line, man. I probably asked this guy maybe that twice. Maybe this might be the third time. That’s the same thing he says. He’s doing amazing. So man, glad you’re doing amazing, sir. So glad you’re here, And listen, man, I’m the type, Mr. Philip, I like to dive right in, sir. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, man. Kind of how you got into the space that you’re in, does the passion come from.

And then man, tell them what part of the world you’re in. People love to know, especially people that trying to partner, kind of what region, what part of the world you’re in. So what you’re up to, origin story, where you are. Mr. Philip, you have the floor, Yeah.

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (03:40)
Amazing. So

⁓ thanks for having me. And yeah, so a little bit about my background is like, was like, overall, the space I occupy in real estate is that

I am very much so a lifestyle design person. spent most of my 20s living overseas, backpacking, living in Australia, living in Bali and Thailand and for most of my 20s. And so I care deeply about freedom within life, exploring the world, living life to my fullest. And when I got into real estate, I started doing wholesaling and we did all the things that people told us to do. We hired mentors. We scaled up from one property a month to six properties a month. And then we realized that, or I realized that I had a business I didn’t actually enjoy. It took three properties.

Quentin (04:18)
Mmm.

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (04:19)
It’s just to break even. And every month we start from zero again. And so I knew I knew there had to be a better way. And I found a local mentor. What he was doing was he was locking up deals with creative financing and selling those houses on seller financing to families that didn’t qualify for traditional financing. He’s been doing for about 30 years. He took us under his wing and he showed us what he was doing. A lot of the families he was working with were first generation Americans. They had bad credit. Usually they had no credit. And these families are hungry to

achieve the American dream by gaining access to home ownership and they want houses. So the first ever deal that we did in this manner, we got $70,000 down and we were cash flowing about 600, 700 bucks a month. This is a deal that we would have wholesale for like $10,000. And then on top of that, like the family that came in was first generation American from Honduras. They’re like super grateful. It checked all the boxes. So like for us this like

They checked the box of it was purposeful. It was passive. It’s profitable. The families that move in, they have ownership mindset. So they’re not, you know, we’re not, we’re not responsible for capital expenditure. When things break, we’re not responsible. There’s basically no vacancy once it’s filled. ⁓ and they have ownership mindsets and not calling us if anything breaks. so, yeah, so that’s, that’s like how it all began. And then, yeah, we just kept doing that model for, for quite a while. And now I’ll say overall the space that I occupies in financial arbitrage, we

We

at first escape the rat race. You cover your monthly expenses with cash flow and then all these big opportunities exist outside there because you get to a place where you’re living from inspiration not from desperation. You’re work optional and you don’t need to think about I need to cover the bills how can I make money or like my bills are covered like what can I create in the world?

Quentin (06:47)
Yeah, man, I love it. I love it. Thank you, Mr. Philip. Thank you for taking me through the journey. Now, you just gave me a synopsis of your origin story, where you are, how you started, where you are. Now, we know that took you maybe about three or four minutes, right? But we know life has unfolded over years, right? Like, everything you said has been unfolding over years. And so I often like to ask this question, Mr. Philip. Well, I make the statement. I often say destiny has no wasted moments.

right? Destiny has no wasted moments. We are moving, building momentum to the people that we are now. And sometimes when we reflect back, if we look long enough, we get a saying that we were like, dad, you know, I didn’t say it then, but man, I can see how that they dividends now. So I would love to know through the journey, sir, what has the moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline, resilience? Has it changed your mindset on innovation? Like what has these moments taught you about you, Mr. Philip?

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (07:17)
Yes.

Love this question. Yeah, I think there are no waste of moments. love that. As entrepreneurs and as investors, it’s one of the most blessed places to be in the world and in life.

for many reasons. One is because we’re taking a stand for like living life on our terms. And I think that’s like a very special thing. I think that, you know, we get to like live a life of freedom and like we do that by saying like, no more. I’m not going to work a job that like feels like it’s sucking my soul out. I’m not going to like trade my time for money for the rest of my life and wait till I’m retired. Like there’s there is a better way. We’re going to go towards that better way. And when we make that decision, it’s like the hero’s journey. When we make that decision, we are then

Quentin (08:05)
What?

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (08:22)
Forged in the fires of entrepreneurship and there’s fires before you know purify you in many many ways so for me, I mean, yeah, I’ve the there’s so much to go in certain so many ways, you know, learning the skills and also learning through the failures and learning the mindset and learning the Relationship to results and like when we don’t meet our goals where we go and when we do meet our goals and what we do and like all of it

Quentin (08:35)
Yes.

Yeah. man, you talking my language, man. You talking language that I’m familiar with when you talk about fire. I synthesize it says fire purifies, right? Fire purifies. ⁓ know, ⁓ actually scripture, I’m just gonna be honest. It says, after that we have gone through the fire, we come through as purgatory.

Right? We come to this period. And so, you know, often say failures are just fertilizer. Right. So you got fire that that that purifies failure, just fertilize. Like we got to face this stuff. And if we do, we allow it to do what is designed to do, it will make us stronger. It will find us. We will literally come to this period. And I love the fact how you talk about, you know, taking your time back like time is our most precious commodity.

And you just said it so eloquently. We leverage our time. So many people leverage that time week after week, day after day, and they get paid once. So it’s like, I’m giving you my time. I’m giving you my time. I’ll give you my time. Then I get paid once. No, how about like, I’ll give you my time once and then get paid, get paid, get paid. Like that’s the mindset that I’m really trying to be on. Right. And so I love it, man. I love it that you take your time back. So, with financial freedom fighters, what’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve a scale next, sir?

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (10:36)
Yeah, I guess a few things. One, we learned like…

In my opinion, like we figured out the best way to build cashflow in single family real estate. And that’s through a combination of lease options, seller finance deals, slow flips, like different ways for the pieces together. But for me, this is the best way to build like actual passive cashflow and to escape the rat race. And so now I still buy about one to three properties per month in this manner. And I also teach people how to do this. And that’s where the financial freedom fighters come from, because like the day, like all businesses service. And I like to serve people like, like,

⁓ yourself and

like yourself and also like other investors who are taking that stance, like build a life of freedom. And so I do a lot of like guide people through like how to get their first deals, how to scale this model and how to get to $10,000 a month in passive incomes. think at that point here, you know, you’re at tier one financial freedom where you can definitely cover your expenses. And so that’s my, that’s my big focus is like really spreading this to as many people as possible and helping there’s so much opportunity and so much abundance in the world and in this space in so many ways. This is still such a blue ocean. We’re operating in a space where

The banks are not serving people. People want to own houses. They have no other options. Investors don’t focus on this too much. So we’re in this blue ocean of opportunity. And so for me, I continue taking during my own deals. And I also continue teaching as many people as I can how to do this. I’m guiding them through it, walking them through the steps and making sure that they have like their handheld as they do their first three deals. Because like most the first deal is always the hardest. And once you get the first one done, like the second and the third knife had those like

reference experiences and you’ve had the experience and so you at that point you have some confidence and you know confidence leads to confidence right

Quentin (12:23)
Love it, So listen, I’m sitting on the screen, WrapAcademy. So is WrapAcademy, is that a facet of Financial Freedom Fighters? Or tell me more about WrapAcademy. What’s the idea behind that?

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (12:35)
Yes, the Financial Freedom Fighters is the name for LLC and then Rappacafé is our mentorship and community. what we do is we do a lot. So the idea is we have.

Quentin (12:38)
Gotcha.

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (12:47)
The idea is to create enough cash flow to cover your monthly expenses. That is the goal of our community. So we’re very, very focused in doing that. And we do that in a few very specific ways in markets around the country. And so we also have a coaching call every single day. It’s a small group. We have about 100, 120 people in our community. And so the goal is just to guide people through this process and hold their hand through the process. it’s our community. It’s our tribe. You know, we’re a tribe.

Quentin (13:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (13:12)
people that are working on creating freedom, we’re go-givers. We help each other out, we share resources, share. One of our students just did 20 slow flips or 20 wraps in the last.

six, seven months. We’re about to do an eight week long bootcamp for all the students to bring them through. And the goal is to get people who never done a deal, their first deal through this model, because this is a bit lower barrier to entry. And so, we’re just out here doing the thing, man, just to bring people together, building a tribe, building a community, creating freedom and doing it with friends. And that’s like the, that’s the way.

Quentin (13:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Man, again, you keep these words, the language that you use, and the words that I hold so dear. so everyone that comes on the show, I always want to get their philosophy on this one word. I love getting your answer to this, because you keep synthesizing this one word. Relationship, man. So Philip, when you hear the word relationship, sir, what comes to mind to you?

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (14:06)
⁓ Relationship is everything. Relationship is depth of life. Like the most fun things in life are closest relationships. And so there’s like depth, there’s business relationships. But for me, most of my business relationships come from just connecting with people and having a connection. like relationships are like, that is the web that we weave for our lives. And they also throw up for our businesses.

Quentin (14:11)
Hmm.

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (14:29)
And for me now, like I don’t do any direct to seller marketing. All my deals come through relationships, right? Comes through people that I’ve talked to or people I’m building a friendship with or connection with. And so whenever I need to buy a property now, I have people that I just text and they’re like, they’ll send me deals first because we have a relationship.

Quentin (14:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, Now, man, you synthesized on a word. Well, actually, more the synthesizer. You embodied it. because I always ask people about relationships, but then I’m always bringing the word community as well on the tail end. Because for me, community paints a beautiful picture. Because if you just go outside in your community.

you’ll see different things that serve the community. You may see a convenience store. You may see an actual grocery store. You may see a pharmacy. These are all things that serve the community, but they do different things, but it still serves the community. And so I always say community is common unity. It’s people together doing different things, but with one common goal in mind. We’re going to protect this community. And so I love how you’re building a community and when you build it right, it supports each other.

You’ll have the convenience store again. You’ll have the pharmacy. We have people doing different things, but it all supports the health of the community. And so I love it, man. I absolutely love it, ⁓ Mr. Philip, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Is there any other words of inspiration, education, or motivation? Like maybe you came in with something on your mind that you wanted our audience to definitely know.

I kind of want to create space for you to land that message. So I just want to do that if you have.

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (16:49)
Yeah, I would say like the biggest thing that I’ve learned in the past decade of entrepreneurship and also in real estate is when we come in, we don’t always know the goal. I learned that the goal is to build is to build freedom. Right. And like there’s so many people that are building, you know, friends with 100 plus rentals. And it sounds amazing, but you look at their day to day life and it’s not free. Right. Because they’re stuck at the mercy of like whatever text messages they receive about whatever problem that’s going on. They’re firefighting.

And so for me, it’s what we’re doing is we’re creating freedom and we do that by creating cash flow.

And if we can stick to that mission of knowing what the goal is, if we know what our actual mission is, and all we have to do is go and execute. once you’re, once you’re already at a certain market, you’re like, I have like 10, 20, $30,000 of cashflow coming in. You know, at that point it’s like the world is open to you. And because we forced ourselves through the fires of entrepreneurship, are now, we’re now skilled and we are like equipped to be tools to like build really

amazing things in this world. And so you asked me earlier, Quen, before we have Dawn here about mentors that I have, because I mentor others, and I have many, many mentors. And my mentors are people who are building projects that set their soul on fire. They’re really building living communities in Costa Rica, and they’re building membership botanical gardens in Miami, and they’re building these other projects that are really, really, really inspiring. And so for me, my life, the constant flow is like, take care of our own, take care of our family.

do good while we’re doing it and then you know free up our time to build projects that like are good for the world and that’s like I’ll say that’s a lot the philosophy that I step in here with.

Quentin (18:26)
Yeah. One of my mentors said, and I’ve carried it with me from my 30s now into my 40s, when you know who you are, you know what to do. And so like you said, you have mentors that are things to set their soul on fire. When you know who you are, you know what to do. You know when to get in business with people. When not, you know when to leave things alone, because that’s going to exhaust your time and energy. And you know when it’s not. So when you know who you are, you know what to do. Mr. Philip, man, I truly appreciate you, sir.

If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (19:03)
Yeah, so it’s tons of ways. So we have a skool community called Seller Finance Freedom Academy. This is our free community. I’m on Facebook as Philip Louden. I’m on YouTube as Philip Louden and WrapAcademy. Those are probably the main the main ways to go about it. I invest in Kansas City. I buy and hold in Kansas City. I live in Austin, Texas. So we’re around. You can actually you message me on Facebook. I’ll respond there. You can check out our YouTube join our skool community. Come in, check it out. Start hanging out. I free calls all the time.

I do free deep dives all the time and then for people that want to like work directly with me and and get like their Handheld through actual deals we have opportunities for that if you guys say you came through this through this podcast I’ll give you like a fat a fat discount. So it’s an easy way to work together

Quentin (19:46)
Yeah, yeah. Listen, my friend, let me say three things to you sincerely. One, thank you for your time. As you said, time is our most precious commodity or, you know, that’s what we do. We do to get our time back. We want freedom of our time. And you synthesize that very well. And so you chose to be here today.

So I thank you for that. I value that because I know you value it. So thank you so much for your time, sir. Secondly, man, thank you for your story. I value stories. put a high premium on stories. So thank you for your gift of your transparency, the gift of your authenticity. I believe our stories, when we share them, they plant seeds. And those seeds can grow at any given time. We may not see it, but the seed is there. So two years from now, three years from now, five years from now.

that seed can grow and literally course corrects mighty’s life. So man, thank you for your seeds. Lastly, sir, thank you for your mindset, man. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on today,

Philip Louden – WrapAcademy (20:44)
Yeah, thank you for having me. You’re a great hit. I really enjoyed being here.

Quentin (20:46)
Absolutely.

Same, my friend. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Philip. His information is in the show notes. Get in contact with him. Definitely make sure you’re subscribed here, because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Philip. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.