From Air Force to Real Estate Investor & Coach

Christian (00:01.21)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today we have an incredible guest here, my friend Carlos. He’s a military veteran, a real estate investor and a coach who is making some serious waves in his industry at only 27 years old. Carlos has built a thriving real estate business. He’s closed over 14 million in volume in his career. It’s generated over 500,000 in profit in just two years without a real estate license, background or marketing budget. So currently right now his journey is nothing short of inspiring.

He was medically retired from the Air Force in 2021. Nick Carlos transitioned from working as an electrician to achieving massive success in real estate. So on top of that, which is crazy, with also raising five beautiful children, two of whom were born from teenage pregnancies with his wife, proving that faith, resilience and determination cannot overcome any obstacle. So Carlos, my friend, without further ado, welcome to the show and I’m super excited to talk with you today.

Why don’t you just introduce to the audience who you are, your background. I know it covered a bunch of stuff already, but I’ll just throw it back to you and let you take it from there, my friend.

Carlos Bolton (01:07.916)
Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for having me on. First and foremost, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. Yeah, man. humble beginnings. Like you had mentioned, the two kids, it’s from Teenage Breakers. was actually 14. My son was born 16. My daughter was born. And I grew up in poverty. So, everything around me was all negative, as you can imagine. So, with the humble beginnings and then…

Christian (01:30.214)
Mm-hmm.

Carlos Bolton (01:33.87)
going through my own little struggles dealing with street life and that kind of stuff from like 12 to 16. I wasn’t my second kid that like spoke to me about I’m a Christian which you know it’s funny your name is Christian but I’m actually a Christian you now I wasn’t always but looking back I know that God was using those teenage pregnancies as reasons to pull me away from what I was doing and do something greater which drove me to the military right so that’s how I got into the military because I wasn’t somebody that bled blue was like yeah America type thing like

That wasn’t me, but like I needed a way out of the streets, right? So I use that to get out like a lot of people do. But then like you said, I got medically retired in 2021, you know, had a wrist injury, two surgeries, full reconstruction, couldn’t repair me, random phone call. within six weeks I was out. So I fell on my face, you know, financially. And Grant Cardone was the person that introduced me into real estate. Like a lot of people out there probably see him everywhere, right? Grant is like,

the guru of all gurus in a sense, right? But I joined his real estate master real estate multifamily like blueprint bootcamp, whatever it was called back in like the end of 2021 and gave him my last thousand dollars I had in my name and got his multifamily course started going into that. And then I was like, okay, well, I’m still broke as heck, right? I started driving girl pub after I got the service because for whatever reason, I couldn’t land a job, right? My wrist is destroyed.

So I couldn’t be an electrician anymore. That’s what I knew. I was a journeyman. So I tried to get some project management jobs, moved from Northern California to Tennessee, and could not land a job at Aldous. So I fell on my face completely financially, torched my credit score, went down to like a 400, living on personal debt. I had to pay loans and credit cards, taking care of my four kids. It was terrible. But that led me into real estate. And then I realized I need a network.

or net worth to do multifamily and didn’t have either one of those either so back at square one hit my knees in the closet like literally in tears like I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life right now but I gotta do something and that’s where I found out what will sell.

Christian (03:43.119)
Mm-hmm.

Christian (03:48.742)
Man, I’m a firm believer that God puts those experiences in your life for a reason, right? I mean, you ultimately would not be here if that was not your story, right? And I do believe that also, you know, those hardships form you into the man that you’re supposed to be, right? And the fact of the matter is that you were punched in the mouth so many times through that, just hearing you speak, and you’re still here is just a testament of who you are, right? And also, I mean,

Let’s just talk about this, man. I mean, you were able to close in your career, I over 14 million in volume and generate over $500,000 in profit without a license, real estate background, marketing budget. Where do you think that came from? Do you think just the drive of just, again, being hit in the mouth and just being like, you know what, I just have to figure this out. I have no other choice. My back’s up against the wall. How did that come from, man? Why don’t you walk us through that process and how you were able to achieve that?

Carlos Bolton (04:44.354)
Yeah, so I’ll say definitely being punched in so many times and you know my whole life I’ve had to overcome everything right like since a young child you can imagine being a teenager with kids like two of them right I had two kids working with drive I was riding the city buses with strollers right like just always like just going through that dude and just like man like there’s a better life out here and I got to find it right so when I found out what real estate was and wholesaling in particular I followed the traditional route everybody else does you know get a list and cold call.

Christian (04:51.458)
Yeah.

Christian (05:07.343)
Yeah.

Carlos Bolton (05:14.406)
And I started cold calling and I was like, this sucks. Like I’d rather like go find a job than sit here and cold call these homeowners that are hanging up me don’t want to talk to me. So about two weeks went by, I talked to couple hundred people had no traction. And I was like, there gotta be a better way. Like there has to be a better way. I don’t have money for, you know, to put TV ads on that people are talking about and then it sides I see them. But you know, I don’t even know where to find those. How do I get those made? You know, that kind of stuff. So that’s what I found out working with agents.

And then the MLS was like, wait, there’s people out there that already have their hand up to sell. Like you don’t have to go out here and copy that don’t even have any interest. Right. That’s the most, the biggest thing is a lot of drugs to seller. All they want to know is what’s the most you’ll give me. And then before you know it, they’re like, nah, I don’t want to sell. Right. So you end up wasting so much time compared to if you’re doing inbound marketing, which you know what I’m getting into now, you know, with money, you know, but if you don’t have the money, that’s not an option.

So it’s like, not go over to the lowest hanging fruit and make the best of it? So that’s what I did. And that’s how I was able to close 14 million was 98 % of my business was on the MLS. The other 2 % was from agent outreach, which didn’t happen until like year two of my business. So like year one was strictly MLS. I I went from two weeks of cold calling homeowners, hated it, was like, I’m done with this. Two weeks on Zillow, I made five grand. And I was like, oh, this is way easier than that.

Christian (06:38.693)
Mm-hmm.

Carlos Bolton (06:43.918)
Right? So I just kept doing it and I just kept doing it and before you know it, right? I just got more efficient. I got better with speaking. My communications skills got better. I got better working with agents. I started closing deals with them and that’s what happens. You know, a lot of people think of wholesaling as transactional when really it’s a really just like everything else. It’s based on relationships. So when I started closing deals, the law reciprocation started happening and people started calling me back like, hey, Carlos, I got one coming up. And then it was just like left and right.

Christian (06:44.42)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Christian (06:55.162)
Yeah.

Christian (07:05.061)
percent.

Carlos Bolton (07:13.228)
Like it started coming to me and I was like, well, I have an inbound channel here that I’m not paying for, but it’s all happening based on the fruits of my labor. So between the relationships from agents bringing me stuff and me continuously out there hung the MLS and just being a sharpshooter and knowing exactly like my numbers, right? A lot of people will get their numbers off, but my first deal I sold, I became best friends with the contractor on that deal. So he helped me out with construction costs, the realistic numbers, what do we really need to be at and

Christian (07:20.325)
Hmm

Carlos Bolton (07:41.71)
me learning all of that so early, man, it’s just like I go on a deal with so much confidence. Everything is built on your confidence. And they can also feel that on the other side of the phone. When you’re on the phone, you’re confident about your offer or what you’re submitting or whatever that, the other person has automatic confidence in you. So that’s really how it happened and transpired. And before I knew it, I was doing five, eight deals a month. Some deals would be like two grand, right? My biggest on-market deal I did was $40,000 in one deal. So it was like,

Christian (07:51.108)
Yes.

Carlos Bolton (08:11.898)
people again they one of the biggest things people talk about is my buyer is not going to want it because it’s on market and again pulls me back to relationships you have a strong list for your buyer they don’t care where it comes from as long as they can make money like that’s it so that’s really how like my journey had started and really what I teach as well now is hey there’s so much weight ways to do this and it’s so easy like just get good

Christian (08:22.789)
.

Christian (08:37.369)
Yeah. No, man. I just, love the fact that you touched on all those things because it’s so important. It all goes back to, to ground zero, right? Relationships relationships. If you just focus on being able to build authentic and real relationships with people and deliver value, you are going to win long-term in this business, right? And if you’re not just focused on the dollar so much and you’re just focused not, not on the transactional aspect of things, just having conversations, but

Something I really want to touch on too is just you found your niche and you consistently just put in your reps to become a master at it. And I think as you know, man, in this business, there’s cold calling, there’s text blasting, there’s voicemail drops, there’s Google PPC. They all work, right? But a lot of times people will start a new process or a new marketing channel and they’ll blame the leads, right? They’ll mainly say, they’re just not working. This is not sustainable. But then you realize that it’s…

Most of the time, the story, it’s not the leads. It’s just you haven’t put enough time to see the fruits of your labor, right? And you put in that time to be able to do that. So I’m curious now with the stuff you’ve learned and have been able to develop now, you’re coaching now, right? So kind of just walk us through that. mean, the people that you’re coaching right now, like what can they expect? What do they get out of that? What are you teaching them? Why don’t you walk us through that?

Carlos Bolton (10:03.148)
Yeah, so I unintentionally fell into coaching. I joined some other mentorships and you probably heard of Pace Morby, Jamil Damji, those guys. So I joined Astro Flipping back in 2022 is when I joined that. And I just made my name for myself just from closing deals. I got to get on the call and talk about a deal closing. Everybody would come to like, hey man, can you help me? you help me? Can you help me? And I helped dozens of people in that community get their first deal.

Christian (10:07.076)
Mm-hmm.

Christian (10:13.253)
Yep.

Carlos Bolton (10:33.164)
And then there came an opening one day and they’re like, Hey, we’re going to nominate, you know, student leaders to run their own coaching calls. And everybody voted me, my wife to coach them. And we’re like, okay. And it was like totally for free, right? Like every week we do a call was totally for free. We gave everybody all the sauce. We will comp their deals, did everything. And people are again, we’re just closing stuff. And I was like, man, this is, this is awesome. So me as a Christian, I’m like, well, I’m already got all these people I’m helping, you know, financially my favorite part about

Christian (10:55.269)
Yeah.

Carlos Bolton (11:02.094)
Everything is mindset like we talked about earlier. So I created a Christian entrepreneur group I was like hey if you guys want to do this, you know come over here every Friday We’re gonna meet we’re gonna go over mindset spirituality like I’m not a religious person by the way, like I’m just a non-denominational Christian I believe in the gospel not saying you got to do X Y or Z to make it to heaven No, like I don’t believe in all that stuff But I bring people in and like shape their mindset because I’ve noticed when you have a high mindset and you have a high drive Your success is just inevitable

So that’s how I fell into coaching and with me doing that for free, I got exiled from that community. So they like banned me from everything. They’re like, because I was helping so many people and I was like, you know what? I’m going to do this on my own. Right. And when I started doing that, again, the same people, they just started coming over to me and then where a mouse started happening and people start coming for help. And I was like, look, this is what I have to offer you. Right. I’m not here to make a ton of money. Like my coaching program is not ten thousand dollars.

Like it’s half of that. And what you get with me is every single process, everything you need to have mentally and all the skill sets you need, right? You need the mindset, skillset and tool set. I give you all of them, right? I help you with your mindset. I give you the skillset that I’ve developed, right? You save years of experience by literally finding a good mentor, right? And then I give you the tool set, right? I give you my CRM, right? I give you all of my automations.

all my Dispo, all my acquisitions and I give you videos on how to do it yourself. This is you set it up. Right? So I give them literally everything they need. And then on top of that, I run a challenge happens monthly. Right now we’re in day four called the master your market challenge. So helping people understand how do you actually master a market? Right? Because people say I’m in the Florida market is like, okay, well what Florida market are you in? Because I can tell you that Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa are completely different.

And don’t even let me get started on Miami. Miami is a whole other beast. So you’re really not a master of your market if you just claim a state. I made all that money in Jacksonville. This is my market that I claim, this is my market that I’ve had my success in. I branched out to Tampa and Orlando and I found out really quick it’s not the same. Mentalities are different there, agents are different there, buyers are different there, numbers are different there.

Christian (12:59.247)
Yeah.

Carlos Bolton (13:23.192)
But people don’t understand that when they’re getting the business. They just think, I got to get a contract and I’m fine. It’s like, you have to know the things about it. So when you’re working with me, you know, you’re going to get the skill set, the mindset and the tool set, but you’re also going to be able to develop the mastery. And like you had mentioned earlier about mastering your craft, like if you want to get good at anything, you got to master it. Right. There’s a reason why the old terminology, like I’m electrician, right. The highest level of electrician is called a master electrician. Right.

Christian (13:51.855)
Mm-hmm.

Carlos Bolton (13:51.936)
It goes the same thing with anything you do. If you’re going to be a jack of all trades, you’re never going to have the success that you can have. You’ve got to be a master at what you’re doing. That’s really what you get when you work with me and when I coach you. Now, am I selling you a coaching program? Absolutely not because I can tell you that I don’t even accept everybody. If I have some negative Nancies that want to come to like, hey, I’ll give you five grand today. like, no. I care more about my name than I care about you coming here being negative and blaming me for your reason for not succeeding.

Christian (14:19.109)
Hmm.

Carlos Bolton (14:19.598)
So I’m not one of those gurus and I do not do any paid marketing on it either, so I’ll wear them out.

Christian (14:24.515)
Wow. So no paid marketing, all word of mouth. I love that. I love your delivery on setting the expectation as well. You’re very selective. And I think that a lot of people need to develop that trade as well as being very selective on the things that they know they don’t want to do, but they do them anyways, right? Or accept the money. And then you realize that it’s not the right reasons, right? You have to really go with where you feel and work with the people that are obviously going to be in the best interest for both, right? And especially respecting your time.

Carlos Bolton (14:27.278)
I’ll them out.

Christian (14:54.529)
as well, right? And I love the fact that you, because, and you know this is so true, there are so many people out there, and this is no shade thrown to anybody, everybody’s in their selective courses, whether it’s mentorship, masterminds, whatever it is, but a lot of the focus isn’t really built on upfront on helping you develop yourself mentally and spiritually, right? A lot of it’s just take quick action, make as much money as possible.

all your problems will be erased. And you find that as you know, obviously the more you start to scale, the more you start to develop more money, this and this and this problems get a little bit harder to deal with. That’s just the name of the game. Right. And I think that if you forget about yourself and that process and you forget about also the people, like, what are you doing this for? Right. Like for your, for you, you have a family to feed and I know that’s what’s most important to you. Right.

And you know, you’re going to live and die by that. And it’s like, you have to remember your why on like why you’re doing this. You know, what do you, what do you want to get into the business for? Right. And a lot of the times it’s to make money, but it should be, no, I want to help people. I want to make an impact and I want to build something long lasting for the next generation to come. And ultimately just to be in the history book in your own world, you know, so I’m curious, man. mean, do you, do you agree with that? And also

I want to get and talk about maybe fear, right? Many people hesitate to even start this business or let’s, let’s say, just work with you in general because of fear, right? Oh, I don’t know if it’s going to work out or I’ve tried this thing in the past before and it just wasn’t exactly what, you know, I was sold on, you know, how do you, how did you push past, you know, all the doubts and, know, everything that you’ve been through and just, you took action on everything, right? I mean, your back was against the wall, but is there any advice you could give to somebody that’s in that position?

and what they should do.

Carlos Bolton (16:54.924)
Yeah, I’m happy you actually brought this up on the fear. I tell all my students that fear is an acronym. It’s false evidence appearing real. And when you have fear, you only have two ways you can go about it. can either have fearfulness and curl up in the corner, or you can have fear and have courage to keep on going. And when it comes out to the point of people being sold on something and thinking it’s not what they’ve been sold on.

Christian (17:03.173)
Mm.

Christian (17:18.373)
Mmm.

Carlos Bolton (17:25.048)
We have to ask yourself the question. Has somebody else done it? And if they’ve done it, why are they special and you’re not? Because maybe it’s not the matter of how you do it, but it’s a matter of who you learn it from or who you are doing it with. Right. Dan Solomon has a great book called Who Not How, right? Everybody wants to focus on the how part. But in reality, it’s the who you got to figure out who you need to be around, who you need to learn from.

who you need to help. Right. Not every seller needs cash. So you got to know what to give them. Right. Maybe they’re in a high equity or a low equity situation. You’re like, you know, maybe this is a good deal. They just bought it. They have no equity. But maybe we could do a creative deal and it’s going to cash for a four or five dollars a month. Like let’s do a creative deal. Right. Maybe this is an ovation deal. Maybe this is just maybe that’s its own free and clear. And we’re going to try to help them save taxes and we’re going to do a seller finance. Right. Like

You have to know who you’re working with and in what way you’re going to help them. Like you said too about serving people. Again, you know, being in the military, one of the things that I had was, know, integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do. That’s our core values in the Air Force. But that goes right into business, right? Being a person of integrity and serve before you serve yourself. Like don’t just think about the shiny object syndrome everybody’s selling your face like.

Like look at this check for 30 grand that you can do this to overnight. You can put the cell phone in the laptop next month. You’re going to be firing your boss is like is that reality not for everybody. People are coming from all different places in the world and they have to relearn things right. So it might take you six months compared to somebody it takes two weeks also by your your will your determination right. So to my thing back to the people that have the fear and are scared is like look if they’ve done it.

Christian (19:08.164)
Mm-hmm.

Carlos Bolton (19:21.358)
You can too. The only question is how long are you going let it work on you before it starts working for you? And if you’re willing to withstand that pain and that grit of it working on you and making you a better person and becoming the being you need to be, then you’ll be able to do the things you can do. And guess what happens after that? Naturally, you have the thing you want. And even just to break it down a little bit further when it comes to the money you make, I never go into a deal and say I’m making 15 grand on every deal.

Christian (19:42.98)
Mm-hmm.

Carlos Bolton (19:52.142)
Right. I’ll take a 500. I’ll take a 2000 because it’s not about the money that I’m making, but the problem that I’m solving. So I’m going to get paid based upon the value that I’m bringing and the amount of room that I have. Now, can you get creative with it? 100 % it can come to a deal right now and say, making five grand. And then what happens? I know my construction budget. I know my buyers and how they work. And I say, Hey dude, you can probably save 10 grand if you do this. Right.

Christian (20:01.359)
Yeah.

Carlos Bolton (20:21.422)
and I go back to the seller and I say, you were okay with netting $3.45. I’m like, yeah, I was gonna net $3.45 from good, right? And I’m at $3.50. And they’re like, okay, well, can save my buyer 10 grand. Hey dude, will you buy it at, let’s say, $3.60? He’s like, yeah, dude, all day I’ll buy $3.60. I just turned five to 15, right? But I got creative in how I made my money instead of saying that I need to make 15 and then I come with my offer at $3.30 to my seller.

Right, it just depends on how your outlook is, your mindset is, and the way you perceive things.

Christian (20:59.333)
100%. Man, Carlos, you are a powerhouse, my friend. You are a powerhouse. I honestly wish we had another hour to speak on this stuff because there’s so much other stuff that I want to get into. So we definitely need to have you back on. So stay tuned for that one. Yeah, for Carlos, in the meantime, where can people find you, You know, have so much to offer in this and you know, you’re incredible. So where do people need to go to work with you?

Carlos Bolton (21:11.854)
Yeah, I’m down for it,

Carlos Bolton (21:23.47)
Yeah, so you can go to carlosbulton.com and that’s my website. It’s like 99 % done. There’s a couple buttons on there you’re going to click and be like, it take me to the product page. But if you scroll down, you’ll find the product and things like that. And there I have a link to a free community that I have for Christian entrepreneurs. If you’re not a Christian, that’s fine too. We welcome everybody with open arms. Like I said, we’re not religious. So you have all kinds of people of different religions, Muslims, Mormons, Baptists, Catholic, all kinds of people.

So we’re almost at 300 members in that You can go to mastermarketchallenge.com to get registered for the next challenges coming up and you can find me on Instagram at Carlos dot underscore dot Bolton and my YouTube channel is Business with the Bolton so at business with the Boltons you’ll find me or biblical business with the Boltons as well will come up as well So that’s you can find me and I love to meet you guys

Christian (22:17.989)
Awesome. Awesome. I love it. Carlos, thanks so much for your time today and thank you for jumping on and just sharing this wealth of knowledge to the audience. I definitely gained a lot of it. I know they are too, but just wishing you nothing but the best man in the future and for your family as well, my friend. Hope to continue seeing you thrive. Yes, sir. Awesome. Of course. Absolutely. Well guys, hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I know I did. And as always, my friends, we will see you on the next episode. Take care.

Carlos Bolton (22:32.056)
Thank you. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.