From Employee to Investor: Scaling Real Estate with Faith & Systems

Brad Lancaster (00:00)
if you’re going to be flipping houses and you’re going to do it at a high level, um, it’s only a matter of time before you’re going to lose money.

we lost over $50,000 on it.

the truth is not that I lose $50,000. The truth is that I can lose $50,000 and get up and go anyway. And I’m gonna go do the next deal.

Quentin (00:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Lancaster (00:16)
if you’re going to be in this

get punched in the face.

What do you do when that happens?

Quentin (01:52)
Hello everyone. I’m your host Q Edmonds and welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am super excited to be here today. Listen, my host, man, I’m telling y’all, y’all are in for a treat. This man’s a husband. This man’s a father. And let me tell you right now, this man is a damn good businessman. Like he is doing things in an incredible pace, in an incredible way. And I am so excited for you just to be able to sit here

and get things from his lens to be able to get nuggets. And I know he’s going to drop more today. I, you know, I’m not trying to, you know, oversell and under deliver. I promise you, this is going to be a good one. So listen, y’all sit back, relax. And I want to introduce you guys to Mr. Lancaster. How you doing today, sir?

Brad Lancaster (02:40)
Two one four. Two one four, Keith. How are you, bro? Fantastic.

Quentin (02:42)
Good, good. I’m good, good, man. I ain’t say too much

to it. I think you would agree with everything I said, right?

Brad Lancaster (02:47)
well, first of all, I’m humbled that you keep so much praise on me. will say that. I do pray that whatever whatever inspirations out there flows through me and whoever’s listening gets whatever is intended for them.

Quentin (02:56)
You

Yeah, so y’all should have added Humphrey. Y’all see it. This is just going be great episode. So let me not try to be too much hyperbolic, right? But I just know our listeners, Mr. Brad is going to give something, take away something from what you have to give today. So that’s God writing in. I want you to bring the listeners into your world, right? Like, they’re not sure who you are, maybe, what you do. give us, ⁓ know, pretty much just take this.

where your main focus is these days, right? And if you don’t mind, tell us what markets you’re operating in as well.

Brad Lancaster (03:29)
Sure, so my wife and I live 25 miles just west of Salt Lake City. So we are in what we call the Wasatch Front. We operate up and down the Wasatch Front. It’s about 110 miles stretch north and south and about 45 miles wide, about 2.5 million people in our market area. We’ve been operating here since 2011 full time. I’ve been operating in the market since 1999.

I went through the 2008, 2009 real estate crash. And I actually, didn’t mention this to you, but I took six months off in 2000, the very beginning of 2010, lots of ups and downs and plenty of hurdles. And I experienced a lot of heartache, but my wife, I got divorced in 2009. I met my now wife near the end of 2010. By 2011, we decided we were soulmates and we were going to give this thing a go. I had four kids, she had three kids.

We came together as a blended family and together we have also had one child together in 2013. He’s now turning 12 this year. But more importantly, we, well, not more importantly, but from a business standpoint, we focused right off the bat. We knew if we were going to raise this family together, we were going have to do something different. We weren’t going to be able to be working the jobs we were doing. I was working real estate kind of part-time. She was getting her license kind of part-time.

On April 1st, 2011, we quit our jobs both on the same date. Somebody asked us, is this April Fool’s? I said, no, it’s not. Like, we’re really doing this. no real good, like, if I was coaching me now, I’d say, hold on, what are you doing? But we had more faith than we did fear. And so we dove in head first and no looking back. It’s not been an easy road, but we now flip.

houses and we’re full-time real estate investors. My wife’s an agent as well. Although she doesn’t really act much in a real estate agent capacity at this point, we’ve built our business that our businesses primarily ⁓ flip, buy and hold. do some wholesaling, do a little bit of developing. And for the last, for the majority of the last 15 years, we’ve been operating here primarily along the Wasatch Front and over the last six months due to market conditions, we’ve decided to expand.

Quentin (06:14)
Thank

Thank

Brad Lancaster (06:26)
We are grateful and blessed to be able to get the right information as well as the right mentors and guides to help us expand into two other markets. We’re now operating in Northern Alabama, the Huntsville ⁓ metro area, well as Southwest Missouri, Springfield, and Joplin, Missouri. So we’re now operating in three separate markets and we’re expanding into others. We’ll be expanding into others.

Quentin (06:27)
Okay. ⁓

Man, I love it, man. I absolutely love it. mean, you guys are forced to be reckless, right? I mean, not only, like I said, and I told you, our husband, father, eight kids, y’all building a successful business. But not only that, y’all didn’t just want to contain it for yourself. I think you told me that you want to help people build time, finance, and soul freedom along this journey.

Right. And so it’s like, not only are you concerned with your eight kids, you like, listen, I want to be able to coach other people up too, so they can change their future. And so I want you to speak to that. And then also tell me, how do y’all keep that machine running smoothly, man, with all that stuff going on?

Brad Lancaster (07:10)
Yes, sir. ⁓

Sure. Well, first of all, I do believe in the basic idea that we as entrepreneurs and investors, we are the lifeblood of this country and our community. we have a, because of that, I believe we have a duty to be looking for the next one who’s up, lifting them up, whether it’s an employee, somebody who’s, we specialize in working with contractors and real estate agents who want to move from,

being what I call a multi employee because you know in the in the cashflow quadrant we all you know we see rich dad poor dad and just about all of us start with that some version of the rich dad poor dad story and we know being an employee is just not working for us and so to do that you have to move to self-employed and that’s great and if you move from employee to self-employed that’s certainly better but what we found is and what I found my wife found is that when we move to that we let go of one employee

employer to hire multiple bosses, every client, every job, every single person. so my wife, when we started down this road, she quickly found that she didn’t great. fired one employer. Now we have 15. so the goal is and the vision is to move from operator to owner where you’re no longer subject to the whims of all these different clients and whether or not they’re going to hire you for your

Quentin (08:23)
Yeah.

Brad Lancaster (08:46)
commission or whether or not they’re to hire you to finish your basement or do the roofing job. But now you get to decide which jobs matter most. Now you get to decide which client matters most. My wife still will work with clients occasionally, but it’s on her terms rather than theirs. And that vision is so important because we knew if we were going to be active parents with at that time seven kids and we lived. ⁓

My kids were 35, 40 minutes away from where we lived. We had to have time freedom. And so you can create time freedom just with a change of mindset, just with a change of focus. How do we keep it all together?

Luckily for me, I married a woman who understood the power of systems and processes. And with much screaming and kicking on my part, because I believed everything was happening because of my force of will, like how good I am.

at showing up and networking and man, I’m really good. You get me in front of somebody, I’m gonna close somebody, I’ll get this deal done. And yet it wasn’t repeatable, it wasn’t something that could be done. And if I’m not working, the problem is if I’m not working, we’re not earning. Or if she’s not working, we’re not earning. So how do we set up a business that is working even when we’re not? How do we set up a lead system that can generate leads? Like right now as I’m looking at my computer screen, six different conversations happening.

that I have nothing to do with. I mean, I’ll pick it up when necessary, but lots of conversion happening. And so that’s all about systems and processes and going through a lot of rewiring of my brain about what it takes to ⁓ be a successful business person. So how do we keep it all straight? Number one, I listen to my wife a lot. And when I do that, Tiffany, my wife is…

She’s just amazing and she’s able. She’s been given this beautiful gift to be able to have this 30,000 foot view at all times and just keep me keep me heading in the right direction. I’d like to say that I am perfect at implementing her vision, but I would be a liar if I did. I still deal with my own ego and I still deal with my own, you my own struggles. But for the most part, when when we’re paying attention to that view. We’re able to do that.

Quentin (11:24)
Mr. Brad, man, I hear you, sir. I have a wife that is similar to yours and I too let my ego get in my way sometimes. Cause I’m like, babe, you know, I know what I’m talking about. Just to come back and be like, babe, you were right. And I’m just, I’m just, I’m just so, I’m glad that I can now humbly admit when I’m wrong, right? There was a time, this, well, here we go. This is her favorite line, Mr. Brad. This is my wife’s favorite line. Babe, you strong and wrong.

Brad Lancaster (11:44)
Yeah.

Quentin (11:53)
Strong and wrong, that’s our favorite line, man. So I’ve learned now to not be so strong. when I come back with the wrong, I could be a little bit more humble. So I hear you, man. And so I hear that we talked a little bit about, you know, about, know, just that that’s just a good strategy. Like when these when we when God blesses with somebody like our wives, that’s able I love how you said can be had that 30 foot view and be able to overlook things.

Brad Lancaster (11:53)
It’s beautiful. ⁓

Absolutely, absolutely.

Quentin (12:19)
We got to yield humble ourselves and work together as a team. So I love that you said that. And so, know, so Mr. Brad, you know, there’s moment when things get real, right? Every operator has it. A moment where a deal goes sideways or a time when you had to pivot fast. You mind sharing a moment like that for our audience, Mr. Brad?

Brad Lancaster (12:22)
Absolutely.

Oh man. Well, uh, look,

if you’re going to be flipping houses and you’re going to do it at a high level, um, it’s only a matter of time before you’re going to lose money.

Uh, you’re going to do, do a deal and you miscalculated your ARV, you, uh, you underestimated your repairs, you underestimated, uh, the repair time or, um, you just don’t perform. Like you, you have this plan laid out and you just don’t hit it.

You we all like to think that we show up 10 out of 10 every day, but we don’t. You can get sick. You can get distracted. You can have family distractions or honestly, you can just get lazy. I’ve seen that happen and I’ve done it myself. And I actually think one of the biggest plagues of real estate investors is we, a lot of us are lazy. We want things just to happen. And so, I mean, just within the last year, I shared this on social media. We had a deal.

Uh, in one of our markets, that’s one of our core markets and

we lost over $50,000 on it.

Um, we, we missed, uh, we missed on our ARV. We thought the property was going to sell for, um, 440,000. It sold for 400,000. Um, that doesn’t equal $50,000 loss. That’s a $40,000 loss in potential revenue. So how do you keep losing money? Well, you overspend on your, uh, on your repairs. And we did that on this one. We thought we were going to spend 74,000. We ended up spending 96,000.

Quentin (13:31)
Hmm.

Brad Lancaster (14:35)
We held it too long. We thought we would do it in four weeks or four months. we ended up, it ended up taking us nine months because of problems with permits, homeless people moving in, everything that happens. I, everything that can look, I’m a seasoned guy. I’ve been doing this a long time. ⁓ it’s easy for me to get into, I should have known better, like dive into shame, dive into beating myself up. that’s just not what I do. And so it.

And I say this all the time. If you’re going to be in the fight, it’s only a matter of time before

get punched in the face.

Mike Tyson says everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so

if you’re going to be in this

something’s going to happen.

What do you do when that

I’ll tell you what we do. We number one, we record the loss and we share it. Like we’re going to dive into it. I’m not going to act like it didn’t happen. I’m going to share it with everybody that matters, including social media, because I want to expose myself.

The greatest antiseptic is the sunlight. God’s given us that gift that the more we bring into the light, the truth will be shown.

the truth is not that I lose $50,000. The truth is that I can lose $50,000 and get up and go anyway. And I’m gonna go do the next deal.

Quentin (15:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Lancaster (15:41)
And I’m gonna own that loss to my partners. And I’m gonna make it right with my partners. And I did have to do that. And I had to own that loss to my partners. And I’m gonna make it right with my partners. And I’m gonna do it by getting up tomorrow and saying,

Quentin (15:41)
Yeah.

Brad Lancaster (15:53)
not my will, but thine. Let’s go forward. There are people’s lives who need to be blessed. are people who, me allowing that failure is allowing adversity, allowing my ego, allowing everything that is wrong in the world to win. And I’m not gonna let that happen.

Quentin (16:07)
Yeah. Yeah. So listen, man, I’m not going to get too preachy, but you know, we talked a little bit backstage. I mean, you just quoted an ancient text, right? And so I just want to give kind of like some ancient language to something that you do, because I told you, I’m listening to you. Tell me the way you live and I could just see you living out just golden principles, right? And so you said you record the laws. You said you record the laws. I never heard anybody say it, right? But there’s an ancient text. It says this.

Brad Lancaster (16:29)
Thank you.

Quentin (16:35)
It says confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed. So by you taking ownership of something that happened that faulty, something that didn’t go the way you want it to, which you are creating as a cycle of healing and say, no, we made a mistake, but we’re going to get over this. And not only am I just going to, me and my wife going to talk about it. I’m going to tell y’all about it. And so you’re creating a ecosystem vacuum of healing when you share with people, Hey, this is where I messed up.

But listen, you can learn from this and not only are you gonna learn from this, I’m gonna learn from this by telling you what actually happened. And so I said it before, man, you’re really living out, I think your core values of what you believe. And so I love it, man. Yeah, I absolutely love it.

Brad Lancaster (17:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

I appreciate that. We call that, by the

way, we call those pattern interrupts or habit breakers. Like we are ⁓ doing things because you’re in some kind of pattern that just will continue to repeat over and over again until you interrupt it and say, whoa, that’s happening right there. And it happens in relationships, right? Our wife tells us something, we just react the same way over and over and over again. And we keep wondering, why is she not liking me right now? Why is she not happy to be with me? Well, you’re doing the same.

Same thing my dad used to say, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. So you’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to change. so a confession, a realization rather than avoiding it and acting like it didn’t happen. 100%.

Quentin (17:57)
Absolutely. I got y’all didn’t think y’all was gonna get some emergency advice on that too. Y’all know we just gonna talk about real estate.

Brad Lancaster (18:04)
That’s right. Well, it’s all connected, right? Like we don’t operate in silos. We don’t operate like in a vacuum where we’re just, oh, I’m just a real estate investor. My wife is my partner. She’s my lover. She’s my soulmate. Like she’s the person that I’m doing this with. So yeah, absolutely.

Quentin (18:07)
all connected.

Come on. Come on.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, Mr. Brad, you are on it, Well, let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next? What’s the next real goal for you your

Brad Lancaster (18:30)
Well, we’ve wanted to figure out how to, ⁓ and we stood on this, okay, we want to grow our real estate investing business. We want to be doing more deals. We want to be, you know, moving into other markets. And then we took a step back and said, well, why do we want to do that? Well, is it really just about more zeros in the bank? Is that what’s, is that what matters to us most? At our core, we’re in this business for a purpose, and that’s to serve, bless, enrich the lives of all those around us. And so,

Quentin (18:42)
Mmm.

Brad Lancaster (18:55)
we started thinking, okay, how can we do that best? Well, what if we could show others that want to move like where we were at 10, 15 years ago, employees barely getting by, coming out of a crash, coming out of a, you know, whatever personal thing, what if we could provide them the inspiration? What if we could provide them the tools, the strategies, and more important than anything else, the mindset and the core belief that this is doable? So we can accomplish both goals. We can bless the lives of others.

raise up and our goal is to raise up over a thousand new or ⁓ new investors who are moving from that employee or sole self-employed to an operator of a business. We want to impact a thousand lives and that’s how we will scale our business. We will be doing more deals with those thousand families all across America.

We used to keep our vision that we’re here on Wasatch Front, we’re near Utah, we can bless the lives here. Okay, well, that’s not very big. Let’s see, can we move out maybe to a couple other markets? Well, that’s a little bigger. And then I just had to come to me there. Like we are in the land of opportunity. That’s what we say. And so if we are in the land of opportunity, like this is the place. I can’t speak for other countries and maybe one day my vision will expand to that. But right now here in America, I know the rules that we play by. And so…

We want to bless the lives of those here in America that want to move and have that goal that they can achieve financial freedom, that they can have time freedom. In other words, working when they want with the people they want. And more importantly, do it with a sense of joy, of peace, of love, of excitement. And we call that soul freedom. And enjoy the process, enjoy the journey. Because as far as I know, we get this one. And while…

This life can seem really, really difficult sometimes ⁓ for a lot of folks. You know, there’s this saying, life is short. I actually don’t believe that. And here on the Wasatch Front, we’ve got a ton of traffic happening. And if you’ve ever been in a traffic jam in a big city, life is not short. It can sometimes drag on and on and on. But what we know is that it’s finite. I was blessed to have one of the most amazing fathers in the world. My dad passed this past February and it drove home.

Quentin (20:39)
Yeah.

Aw man.

Brad Lancaster (21:02)
drove home the point ⁓ in three weeks. was so sad. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on January 27th, passed on February 17th. But what it drove home was all of us have this expiration date on us. None of us know when it is. So in the meantime, while we’ve still got breath in our lungs, we still have the ability to have love in our hearts, let’s go out and do the most we can. So that’s our vision and that’s what we’re looking to scale.

is to just get in business with people who share those values with us and show them our path and show them the tools and the strategies as well as the mindset that’s taken for us to, not that we have everything figured out, I’m not gonna represent that, we’ve got challenges, we’re still growing a business, always looking for ways to expand, but we’ve got something figured out.

Quentin (21:44)
Yeah, yeah. So man, I’m glad you mentioned your dad. Of course, allow me condolences. February is super fresh. I mean, February is super fresh. so, yeah, yeah. My dad, about to turn 70. I’m actually writing a book with him about his life so I can keep his legacy alive. so, but I’m glad you mentioned your dad, because it even put in more context. And allow me just to gush with you for a little bit, Mr. Brad.

Brad Lancaster (21:51)
Appreciate that. Six months,

Beautiful.

Quentin (22:11)
It continues to put in context the great man that I see in front of me, man. And so to know that you said, you you talked about your dad said you had one of the greatest dad. I’m with you. I feel like I have one, you know, the greatest dad. And so I know where that comes from. know that comes from a place, a fair place. And I can see even more of the motivation in you while you want to change people’s lives. I mean, you said you want to raise up a thousand new investors and take them from.

Brad Lancaster (22:17)
you’re very kind.

Quentin (22:40)
operators to owners. I mean, that’s a big vision. it has to be big because that’s keeps us pursuing, you know, because it’s big, kind of, it keeps us going, right? Because we got to keep turning, right? Because if it’s a small dream, we might get lazy on it, but if it’s a big dream, it kind of motivates us. And so I think this is last question and we coming up on time, but I got to ask you this man.

Brad Lancaster (22:45)
Yes.

Quentin (23:06)
Because you got a built-in partner. have a built-in, somebody that you have a built-in relationship. And you want to empower 1,000 people. So I know this question. I got to get this from your lens. A lot of people that are listening, they’re early in their journey. They’re looking to level up. And I think it would benefit them hearing when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Brad Lancaster (23:31)
So it’s mindset that I will ⁓ share. And I was given it by one of my mentors several years ago. And the mindset was to not look at relationships. Like when people go into networking events, typically they’re looking to get cards, get people that they can add to what we used to call a Rolodex, but they’re CRM or whatever. And there’s a lot of what’s in it for me thinking.

Quentin (23:50)
Yeah, yeah.

Brad Lancaster (23:53)
And what shifted, and I have to admit, like that was my mindset for probably the first 10, 15 years of my professional career is what can I get out of this person? And when I heard this shift and saw one of the greatest networkers I saw, he said, Brad, I don’t look at relationships as transactional. I look at it as me being able to show up for that person. Is this a value match? Is this somebody I can show up for? And, and I believe that,

I believe that we’re there are no accidents in life. I believe that we’re put into the circles, the places that we need to be at the right time for a right reason. I don’t always know what that is. I can’t always see it. But when I feel connected to somebody, when I share my message and it resonates with them, OK, let’s talk. Let’s talk about how we can bless each other’s lives. I’m going to tell you what I’m what I’m working on right now. Tell me what you’re working on. Let’s see if there’s something that we can work on together.

And it doesn’t stop me from selling. Like I’m gonna, if I’ve got something and I think it’s gonna solve a problem, I’m gonna offer it to you. But I’m not looking at that relationship simply as a transaction. And if I can’t get something out of it, then I’m gone. So that’s what I think about relationships is don’t look at them as transactional. Look at them as an opportunity to bless each other. And you never know, that might be God’s way of bringing somebody to you.

So don’t be so egotistical to think that you’re the one who can solve all the world’s problems.

Quentin (25:17)
Absolutely not man. You’re right on it. Listen, I thank you man. Listen, I could do this. I could do this with you probably for another 20 more minutes. I don’t got the time to do it, but man, I know I could man. Easily, I mean just another easy 20 minutes. But before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to get in contact with

Brad Lancaster (25:25)
Well, that’s very kind.

So my wife and I have a Instagram and Facebook. It’s called Flipping4Real, Flipping and then the number four real couple. Easy to find, we’re on Instagram. You can also follow me on a, I have my own TheBradLancaster on Instagram and Facebook is Brad Lancaster. So easy to find there. But our Instagram and Facebook, we’re active. We’re the ones responding to it. We don’t have a bot. I mean, we have bots for different courses and other things that we send out.

But you reach out, you’re gonna be talking to me.

Quentin (26:06)
Absolutely, absolutely. There he is, y’all, Mr. Brad Lancaster. Sir, I thank you for your time. I thank you for your story. I thank you for your perspective. We definitely need more people like you in this space. So man, thank you for what you’re doing and just doing it the right way, man. I really appreciate you, Absolutely. And for those tuning in, y’all know I say it very slowly. If you got value from this, please make sure you are subscribed.

Brad Lancaster (26:23)
Thanks so much, Quint, appreciate it.

Quentin (26:33)
You do not want to miss out on these amazing, amazing conversations that we have, just like we had today with Mr. Brad Lancaster. And so thank you again, sir. And to the rest of you, we will see you on the next time.