From Panic Attack to Real Estate Wealth: Henry Washington’s 90-Day First Deal Story

Henry Washington (00:00)
I bought that property probably about 90 days after I had that panic attack. So that’s a very short window of time to go from panicking about how I’m going to figure out.

how I’m going to take care of my family financially to 90 days later, I owned an asset that was paying for itself and was paying me cashflow every month. And the bank gave me access to about a line of credit to the tune of like 25 or $30,000 because I had so much equity in that property. Like I now had this proof of concept.

Scott Bursey (02:04)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host Scott Bursey. And today we are strapping in for a masterclass on acceleration. Our guest, Henry Washington of real life has a journey that is pure high octane inspiration. He went from a demanding 50 plus hour work week and barely scraping by to building a $10 million plus real estate portfolio in just nine years.

This is proof that the grind doesn’t have to last forever. Henry is bringing the fuel you need to scale your vision. Let’s fire this thing up. Henry, welcome to the show.

Henry Washington (02:42)
Hey, bud, thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Scott Bursey (02:44)
It is a pleasure to have you here and for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please give us the front row seat if you would and how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Henry Washington (02:55)
Yeah, man, I started investing back in 2017. I did so out of let’s call it necessity. I had a W-2 design software, good paying job, but no financial education prior to investing. And ⁓ as a single male working in corporate, I was very comfortable making money and then spending all of that money. And then I got married.

and realized that my wife did not want us to spend all of her money after we made it. a couple of wake up calls kind of hit me in the face. One was when we tried to buy our first home together, I had poor credit and no savings. And, you know, as you go through the underwriting process and the bank is underwriting you as a lender, as a borrower, I had

let’s just say the bank decided that I wasn’t great on paper in terms of someone to be lendable. And they asked me to remove myself from the loan if my wife was going to be able to purchase a home, which was a blow to the ego and a blow to just me personally. I felt like I wanted to be a provider, but was slowly realizing that I couldn’t provide in the way that I thought that I would be able to.

And then, second wake up call came as well. and I were discussing what our future would look like and you know, if we were going to have kids, how many we were going to have, where we were going to live, what our dream house would look like, where we would go on vacations and all of those things were scary at that point because I’m like, man, I don’t know how I can afford a dream house. can’t afford to buy our first home together. And so, I had a panic attack.

⁓ to be completely frank and that panic attack led me to a late night Google search. I’m sure many of us have been there panicking, trying to figure out how I’m going to make some extra money. And that’s when I started to read and learn about real estate investing. just kept coming up as an option to generate more income when you’re searching in the middle of the night. And something about investing in real estate made sense to me.

It shouldn’t have, because I didn’t have any money and I had bad credit, but something about it seemed achievable. saw so many stories on the BiggerPockets forums and so many stories ⁓ on YouTube as I was researching of people who had reached financial freedom through real estate investing. And I was like, all right, well, maybe I’ll do this. And so I made a decision at three in the morning with absolutely no

no knowledge of how to do it, that I was going to figure it out. Cause I just thought, man, if all these people figured out how to do it, there’s gotta be a way to do it. ⁓ and so I decided I was going to figure out how to do it. And so I woke up in the morning and told my wife, Hey, I think we’re going to invest in real estate. And she said, well, I’ve got family that’s done it in the past. So I think it’s something that we can do. And so let’s look into it more.

And so that’s when I started learning and studying super heavily. started reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and the Millionaire Real Estate Investor and, or the Millionaire Next Door. And then I also read, ⁓ Gary Keller’s book on, real estate investing. And so all of these things, were information for the brain. But what I decided to do tactically was

Surround myself with other investors. I figured there’s got to be investors locally here doing this. And so I found every real estate investment meetup I could find in my local area. Literally, I found all of them. And I started going to every meeting I could. ⁓ And I did that just because I’ve always disbelieved that who you surround yourself with lets you know what’s possible. So if you think something is hard or unachievable, then surround yourself with people who are doing that thing, like on a daily basis.

And it will become less scary when you can see people doing it. Like the mystery kind of gets removed. ⁓ that’s just something I learned growing up. And so I surrounded myself with other investors, started to see what they were doing, started to make changes in how I saved money. didn’t save money really before that. But now that I had this goal of becoming a real estate investor, like things like saving became more realistic and achievable things like.

you know, finding deals became more realistic and achievable. ⁓ and so those are some of the tactical moves that I did. The other thing that I did was I really just started to change the way that I talked. So I, ⁓ again, ⁓ I don’t know if you know this, but you can just do stuff a lot of the times. So I just told people that I was a real estate investor before I had ever done a deal. And it wasn’t to like, like be fraudulent. It was just.

to like, if I didn’t believe that I could be this, then why would anybody else believe it? So I just started to take on the identity of a real estate investor so that the universe or God could start providing me the things that investors do. And I think those are some like easy small steps that most people can do. Surround yourself with people who are doing what you want to do. Take on the identity of the thing that you want so that the universe returns to you the thing that they return to those people. I was like, this is low hanging fruit. Like if I can’t do this easy stuff, then the hard stuff.

I’m definitely not going to do. So those are some of the easy like beginning steps that I did that I think anybody could do in their journey.

Scott Bursey (09:18)
Wow. Hearing how you’ve turned that early spark into such a massive engine for growth. That is the exact kind of high octane trajectory we love to showcase here on the Real Estate Pros podcast. You know, Henry, what really caught my attention about you was for you, it’s not just about the deals and the $10 million portfolio. It’s that you never forgot what it felt like to wonder how you’d ever be able to provide the life for your family that

that they so much deserved. And honestly, that’s pure investor fuel.

Henry Washington (10:29)
Yeah, man. Here’s my take on this. It’s that after, so let’s fast forward a little bit. After I did all of these like small shifts in positioning, right? Positioning myself to be in the right mindset to be a real estate investor, positioning myself from a financial perspective, I started saving 10 % of my income regardless of what bills I had to pay.

paying myself first, right? Concepts I learned in the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The other thing that I did was, again, that telling everybody I was an investor led me to getting my first really good lead for a good deal. And to make a short story long, after I bought that first real estate deal, which was

you know, a single family home that I kept as a rental property. I was able to buy it without using any of my own like money out of my bank account. I was able to get a line of credit against the equity of that, that property to the tune of like $30,000. And

I bought that property probably about 90 days after I had that panic attack. So that’s a very short window of time to go from panicking about how I’m going to figure out.

how I’m going to take care of my family financially to 90 days later, I owned an asset that was paying for itself and was paying me cashflow every month. And the bank gave me access to about a line of credit to the tune of like 25 or $30,000 because I had so much equity in that property. Like I now had this proof of concept.

And I just remember after getting access to that line of credit, I remember feeling extremely overwhelmed with the sense of responsibility.

⁓ cause I just didn’t believe that, that God was going to lead me down a path to solving that problem so quickly. Like I knew at that point, I had figured out how I was going to take care of my family financially for the rest of my life. And I was 90 days removed from a panic attack about not knowing what to do. And, and I just didn’t feel like, like I was led down this path so that I could learn how to be wealthy. I felt like I was led down this path.

so that I could show other people that they’re so much closer to solving their financial problems than they think they are. They just have no idea that this is a path for them, that this is a path that they can do. No one had told me it was something that I can do. And so I just said, all right, well, I’m just gonna start sharing my journey from this point forward. I just want people to see what I’m doing. Not that I…

had any experience to teach anybody what I was doing. But at that point in my journey, I was like, I can just share this on social media so that other people can see and maybe they can go start to try to figure out how to do some of these things for themselves. And that journey of like sharing what I’m doing and being transparent about what I’m doing opened a ton of doors for me. And now I get to do things like host the BiggerPockets podcast and I get to do things like

you know, share on social media and teach on social media. But that wasn’t the goal. The goal was just to like share what I was doing because I couldn’t be the only person going through financial hardship who could change that financial hardship through real estate investing. And I just needed to give people an idea that it was possible.

Scott Bursey (13:56)
from waking up at three o’clock in the morning, putting yourself in the correct mindset, and then 90 days later, experiencing success. That’s truly remarkable.

Henry Washington (14:08)
Thank you.

Scott Bursey (14:10)
Let’s jump straight into a quick fight around here tailored specifically for the pro who is juggling a high demand career while striving for that eight figure portfolio. Henry, what is the biggest strength or habit you developed that allowed you to scale your portfolio while maintaining a demanding full-time job?

Henry Washington (14:31)
Yeah, I think the biggest skill that people need to hone if they want to scale, there’s two problems that stop people from scaling. That’s access to deals that can be profitable and access to money to buy those deals. I think if people solve those two problems, they’ll scale their business as fast as they want to scale their business, right? So Scott, where do you invest? Like what part of the country?

Scott Bursey (15:38)
I’m in the Midwest.

Henry Washington (15:41)
Okay. So if I called you tomorrow, Scott, and I said, Hey, Scott, just got off the phone with this landlord. She’s in the Midwest. She’s got five single family homes. They’ve all, they’re all tenant occupied and she is willing to sell these five single family homes at a 30 % discount. And I have a lender who loves lending in the Midwest.

They want to fund these deals. You just have to bring a 5 % down payment. They’re going to fund 95 % of the deal. How many of these homes would you like to buy, Scott? You’re going to say?

Scott Bursey (16:17)
My goodness.

Henry Washington (16:20)
You’re going to say all of them, right? Like the thing that stops people from scaling is deals to buy and money to buy the deals. So if you can solve those two problems, you’ll scale your business at whatever pace you feel comfortable scaling. I’m not saying you need to buy a hundred units like I have. I’m just saying that the thing that’s stopping you is access to deal flow and access to money flow. So I learned early on after that first deal that I had access to capital.

All right. And the reason I learned that is because the bank that funded my first deal basically told me, Hey, take out a line of credit on the equity. We’ll fund your deals at 85 % of purchase and then use this line of credit for your 15 % down payment. So it’s no money out of pocket to you. And so I was like, all right, I’ve got money. The only thing that’s stopping me is profitable deals to buy. And so what I did was I just started studying the people in the real estate investing industry.

who are great at finding deals and that’s typically going to be wholesalers. So I didn’t want to wholesale. I don’t wholesale, but I wanted to operate like a wholesaler so that I could get access to good deals because I had access to money. so my answer, my long winded answer to your question is if you want to scale, figure out what strategy you’re going to use to find good deals and figure out a way to put it on autopilot.

And then figure out how you’re going to solve the money problem. Like for me, I used local community banks and I had access to a line of credit. And the more property I bought at a discount, the more access to lines of credit I could have, right? Cause I could get lines of credit against equity on other properties that I bought. So I was able to scale because I had solved the money side and then I had solved the deal flow side. got really good at, at off market deal finding.

And the typical way that I did things was direct mail. I still use direct mail to this day. ⁓ And so ⁓ if you can, the magic sauce with solving these two problems is if you want access to money for your deals, the best way to get access to money is to get really good at finding good deals. Cause in an economy like we’re in right now in a market that we’re in right now, banks are tightening up. They’re less willing to lend on riskier assets.

But if you call a bank tomorrow and say, I’ve got a house under contract, I’m paying $100,000 as it sits, the property is probably worth $225,000, but after I fix it up, we’re going to sell it for $325,000. They’re going to throw money at you to do that deal. Why? Because it’s not a risky deal. Even if you’re a brand new investor, it’s not risky to them. Because if you fail to pay them, they’ll take that asset back.

but you’ve just given them access to an asset that they only have, you know, a hundred and something thousand dollars a debt on that they can go and sell to any other investor that they have a relationship with for $200,000. They’ll make more money if you fail to pay them, then they will, if you just make your monthly interest payments. So if you want to find access to capital, learn how to get really good deals. And if you want to learn how to get really good deals, you all you have to do.

is understand how much time or money you have to put towards finding deals and then pick a deal finding strategy that you have the budget to afford to, that you have the budget to afford to give that strategy until it works. We’re just, we’re in such a good place as real estate investors right now, because of all the people that have done deals before us. All of those people that have done deals before us have given us all this data.

We now know exactly how much mail we need to send in almost any market in the country in order for it to produce a deal. You can just ask AI, it’ll tell you. We know exactly how many cold calls you need to make in almost any market in the country in order for you to get a deal. We know exactly how many offers on the MLS we need to make at 40 % of list price before somebody says, yes, there’s literal data on all of this and AI can help you sort through it.

All you need to know is how many hours do I have to spend each week to look for deals? How much money do I have to spend each month to look for deals? And you can simply ask AI, say I have $2,000 a month and 10 hours a week. What off-market deal finding strategies do I have enough money or time to do that I can do it until it works? Where people fail finding deals isn’t that the strategy doesn’t work. It’s that you didn’t give it enough time or money.

for it to work appropriately. So we’re in a great place in terms of deal finding because we have so much data and so much technology to help us sort through that data that we don’t have to guess at how to find our next deal.

Scott Bursey (21:13)
I love that, Henry. That focus discipline is so key. You know, you can’t reach $10 million just by hustling. It requires structure.

Let’s shift gears here just a little bit. Now you remember the feeling of worrying about providing for your family. What internal weakness or mindset, I guess, roadblock, if you will, did you have to overcome to stop working for survival and start building for freedom?

Henry Washington (21:38)
⁓ yeah. A couple of roadblocks. First roadblock was just imposter syndrome. I think a lot of people struggle with not just the like, believing that they can do this. I think a lot of people are scared to like, what if it actually works? Like, what if I do a deal and it works? Now I have to scale this thing. Now I, now I have to become this real estate investor and, and, and face the question of like leaving the comfort.

of a paycheck every two weeks that you know is going to be there to go and do this thing that you’ve now proved the concept that it works. like, it’s all scary, but like depending on an employer to pay you every two weeks is scary because they could decide not to at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it. But also going out and killing what you eat is scary because you don’t know when your next paycheck is going to be. You got to go manufacture that next paycheck.

It’s all scary. You got to pick which scary makes the most sense for you. And so I think there’s some imposter syndrome with both, yes, scared to do it, but also what if it works and now I’ve got to go actually become this thing. So, I struggled with that. ⁓ when I was trying to make a decision about leaving my day job, I think what it boiled down to when, when my wife and I were talking about it was that I don’t

need to leave my day job. And so I didn’t, I kept my job as long as I could for a couple of reasons. One, I kept my job as long as I could because I enjoyed my job for the most part. Yeah, there were some sucky parts about it. There were some things I didn’t like, but for the most part, like I was designing software and doing data analytics and it was fun for the most part. I just didn’t like having to get up and go to work every day and be where somebody else wanted me to be. But

the work that I did, I enjoyed. And so I didn’t leave because I could. I left because I had to. And what I mean by that is at some point I was faced with a decision. I either had to give my employer more time and effort, or I had to give myself that same time or effort. And so I didn’t quit until it cost me money to have a job.

until it was lit until I was literally losing money because I had to spend the time at my day job versus spending the time in my real estate business. So I built up my business to a point where I outpaced my earning in my day job. And then when my company said, Hey, we need you to give us a little more time. It was just a question of like, well, let me do the math. If I give you another five to 10 hours a week, here’s how much money I make.

Or if I give myself that same five to 10 hours a week, how much more money do I make? And so the decision was made for me. That’s that’s, and that’s what I would tell people. Like I’m sure there are people who are in jobs that they hate and that are not healthy for them. And if that’s the case and your real estate business produces enough income for you to quit, you should probably quit. But if you enjoy what you’re doing on any level and you can do both and do both as long as humanly possible.

Scott Bursey (24:54)
Thank you for that transparency. You know, that mind shift moving from employee to owner is often the hardest and most critical pivot for any pro.

Henry Washington (25:03)
Yeah, Yeah, it was definitely a difficult decision to make, ⁓ which was the comforting part was I just kind of put it off until I couldn’t, like there was no other choice but to quit. And that when the choice makes itself, it’s just, it’s easier to jump off the cliff.

Scott Bursey (25:21)
And Henry, on that note, for our listeners who are still grinding away at their day job, what niche or strategy offers the absolute highest rate of return on limited time investment?

Henry Washington (25:32)
That is a question that I don’t know that I can answer for you. Right. I look at investment strategies this way.

I think here’s the order of operations for me, right? First is goals. Every investor should have goals. If you don’t have goals, then stop everything you’re doing and go sit down and figure out what your goals are. And if you don’t know how to do that, think in terms of money and time. Your goal should be some function of how much money you’re trying to make and in what timeframe are you trying to make that money? Start there. Regardless of if you’re like, well, I want to

do apartments or I want to flip houses or I want to don’t think about that. How much money you’re trying to make and at what time frame you’re trying to make it. Once you figure that part out, then strategy becomes easier to figure out because if you’re in a position where you’re like, hey, I need to make large sums of money in a short period of time. That strategy, the strategies that are available to you to do that are limited, right? You’re going to have to flip some sort of

asset, flip houses, flip apartment buildings, whatever it is. that’s, you can’t cashflow your way into large sums of money in short periods of time. Right? So your goals will help you pick a strategy. So if your goal is to generate $10,000 of income over the next two years, well, now you’re building up cashflow over, over a sustained period of time. So that tells me you probably need to be buying some sort of

cashflow producing assets in a market that you can actually buy cashflow in, right? Or create cashflow in by doing value add, right? So if you live in San Francisco and your goal is to build up $10,000 of cashflow through a portfolio, you probably can’t do it in your backyard. So then you probably need to pick a market, right? Where you can do it. So goals dictate strategy, strategy dictates market. And if you…

stick to it in that order, it becomes a lot easier to figure out what strategy to do. so again, long-winded answer to your question. Yes, there are strategies that are lucrative that take less time and less effort to produce more income, but it doesn’t mean that you are structured financially and systematically in a way to take advantage of that strategy. so set your goals first, then pick the strategy.

that fits your goals and fits the lifestyle that you want and then go execute that strategy. So it may be that you need to invest in multifamily, but you need goals and a strategy first before you go start doing that. you know, I don’t, don’t like to tell people just, you know, what strategy I think works best for them. I can tell you what strategies I think work best in the market that we’re in in terms of the economy and the real estate, but I wouldn’t want to tell you what I think you should go do.

Scott Bursey (28:24)
Orders of operation, so key. And on that note, what is the core principle you use now to protect and grow that wealth that you didn’t even know existed when you started?

Henry Washington (28:37)
Yep.

Yep. ⁓ Two sides of the coin, right? So on the acquisition side, the way that I protect myself and I protect my business is being a very conservative underwriter. Essentially, if I’m underwriting a deal, I’m trying to talk myself out of buying it. And if I can talk myself out of buying it, I shouldn’t buy it. But if at the end of the day, I’ve stress tested that deal through extenuous under and conservative underwriting, and it still makes money.

then I’ll buy that deal. In other words, I’m not doing base hits right now. We’re doing doubles, triples and home runs. It’s gotta be a phenomenal deal. And that means I gotta get it at a pretty hefty discount. And that means I gotta make a lot more offers to get a yes, because a lot of sellers aren’t willing to sell at the price points I’m willing to buy at. And I’m competing with other investors who are willing to pay more than I’m willing to pay. And so the way I protect myself on the under, on the…

on the buy side is I’m only buying deals with multiple exit strategies. I need to be able to dispose of that asset more than one way. If I can dispose of an asset in more than one way, I’ve got a pivot plan. If my plan A doesn’t work, I’m more likely to buy that deal. And also I’m just, I have high margins for the return I’m looking for. If it’s not going to produce a certain percentage return, then I’m probably not going to do the deal.

And that just means I have to make more offers. So sound conservative underwriting in an uncertain market is the first way I protect myself. The way that I protect myself ⁓ on the backside. Sorry. Ask your, ask your question again.

Scott Bursey (30:22)
Yes, just curious and you know, let’s put it this way. And I know our listeners are going to be very curious about this. You you talked about hitting home runs and even grand slams, hitting the bow over the fence with the bases loaded. How do you, it’s easy to grind when you’re first starting out, but how do you find the motivation to go out there and find those big deals?

Henry Washington (30:46)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Again, the profitability is there. It’s more about, ⁓

figuring out what problems you want to solve, right? Because again, as real estate investors, what we’re doing is we’re buying properties at a discount and then we’re adding value to them, right? No one wants to sell their property at a discount. So if you’re buying properties at a discount, you’re doing one of two things. You’re either solving somebody’s pain because there’s typically pain associated with buying a property at a discount. Nobody wants to, they need to, and if they need to, there’s a problem. And if there’s a problem, how can I solve that problem?

Sometimes solving that problem is buying the property. Sometimes solving that problem is doing something else to help them. So framing everything around like, how can I solve your problem? Does a couple of things. It takes the pressure off because when we get a lead, it’s hard not to get excited, right? It’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of a potential profitable deal. And you don’t want to walk into this appointment with the seller and say the wrong thing or piss them off and miss this opportunity. And so I throw that out of the window and I don’t

approach any appointment as a deal I need to close, but approach the appointment as how can I help this person? They’re reaching out because they need help. I’m going to try to figure out how to help them. And when I have a conversation from a place of support and assistance, it’s a whole lot easier to talk to somebody than it is when you’re putting pressure on yourself to go close some deal. So how can I be of service and approach every appointment from how can I be of service helps take a lot of the pressure off. And then the, the other thing

that we focus on is just making sure that ⁓ we’re doing right by the person that we’re sitting across, right? Because we’re building wealth, but we’re building wealth with people’s homes. And that just takes a level of respect that I think that some investors lose sight of. ⁓ And so ⁓ if you can approach every appointment from a place of how can I be of service? How can I help? ⁓ That changes the tone.

in your conversation and sellers pick up on that. And sellers want to do business with people they trust. And so you’ll actually close more deals with that perspective than if you’re going in and trying to make sure that you run all the right numbers and, and, and, you know, fight every objection the seller has, ⁓ you know, with your, if we are sales logic, and just be more of a human being who’s trying to help.

Scott Bursey (33:16)
Yes, you know, it’s easier to hit those fastballs right down the middle of the plate, but hitting those curve balls, that’s where the skill comes in. And Henry, you know, let’s focus on your operation real life. What would you like our listeners to know first about your business?

Henry Washington (33:23)
Yeah, that’s very true.

Yeah, man, my business, again, I want to help people learn how to invest in real estate in a way that is ⁓ beneficial to the communities where we’re buying these properties, right? So again, we’re buying properties ⁓ that somebody else owns at some point, right? So we’re building our wealth with other people’s homes. So I never want to lose sight of that. So first and foremost, it’s about how do we take care of the seller?

How do we take care of the person who needs our help? Sometimes that help doesn’t mean buying their house and I’m willing to do that as well. So my business is all around integrity and honesty. I call the way I approach making offers a brutally honest approach because I literally show the seller all the numbers behind my offer. And the reason I do that is because it makes it easier for me to make offers and it makes it easier for sellers to trust me.

If it’s easy to make offers, you’ll make more offers. What stops people from making offers is the uncomfortability with, with you thinking, I don’t want to make this low offer and hurt somebody’s feelings or piss somebody off. So if you can remove the uncomfortability, you’ll make more offers. If you’ll make more offers, you’ll close more deals. Also removing the uncomfortability by being transparent builds a ton of trust and people want to do deals with people they trust. You’ll get more yeses. So the way that I do it.

is I show them. literally write, I sit down at the table with them. take the contract and I write on the back of it and I get them involved. asked them, hey, if you were going to sell this house and it was all fixed up, what would you sell it for? I already know what the ARV is. I knew it before I got there, but I’m still going to ask them their opinion, why it gets them involved, be it helps them understand what I’m doing. Right? So if they tell me an ARV that’s close to what I think it is, great.

I say, yes, absolutely. So I’m going to try to sell this house. Let’s say the ARV is $300,000. Yes, Mr. Seller, I’m going to try to sell this house for $300,000. Right. So if I’m going to sell this house for $300,000, that means I got to do what? I got to list it with a real estate agent and they want their 6%. Right. And they go, yeah, agents want their 6%. Great. So I take the ARV and I subtract 6%. Now we have a new number. Right. And I say, all right, well, if I’m going to, if I’m going to sell this house, I got to fix it up. How much do you think it’s going to cost to fix it up?

and they’ll tell me a number that’s lower than what it’s going to cost. And I’ll tell them a number that’s more realistic. And then I’ll say, great. So you think it’s going to cost 30. It probably costs you 30 because you’re going to do the work, but I got to pay somebody. You know, these contractors want to get paid right now. Yeah. OK. So it’s going to cost me about 50. Right. So we take that new number and we subtract 50. OK. Well, also, I pay cash for these homes, but I borrow the cash from an investor. They want their 12 percent payments every month. So I got to make a mortgage payment. That’s about two thousand dollars a month.

If it takes me 90 days to fix it up and 90 days to sell it, that’s about six months, give or take. So 2000 times six, we subtract that from our new number. Now we got a new number. It’s like, great. Also, when I do this, I’m going to pay your closing costs when I buy it, because I don’t want you to pay anything. I’m to pay all your closing costs. I’m going to pay all my closing costs. And then when I go to sell it in this market, they’re going to ask me to pay closing costs. So I’m going to have to pay mine and I’m going to have to pay theirs again. So it’s going to be about 2 % each time.

So we take that number and we subtract it. Now we got a new number. And I say, hey, I got to make money, right? I can’t be doing this for free, right? So I need to factor some profit in here, right? And they go, yeah, well, you can’t do it for free. And then I subtract whatever profit I want to make. And then I circle the number and I say, here’s our number. Here’s where my offer is. And that offer might be like $150,000 on a $300,000 asset. But no one’s mad at me for making that offer. We all did the math together. They saw how I got there. It wasn’t magic.

I showed them exactly what I’m going to do. showed them exactly what I’m going to make. No one’s uncomfortable. They may not want the offer. They may not like the offer, but they respect me for being transparent and they respect me for showing them the process and they’re not offended at all by my offer. And if they’re not offended, I can make more offers. And if I can make more offers, I can get more yeses and I’ll build a ton of trust. Cause even if they say no and they go talk to three other investors, they’re all going to make the same offer, but none of them are going to explain it to them the way I did.

So when they’re finally ready to accept that offer, who do they call? And I get a deal.

Scott Bursey (37:55)
That’s the spark that lights the fire right there. Thank you for that, Henry. Henry, you have supplied so much high octane fuel for our listeners today. Is there any additional golden nuggets that you could convey?

Henry Washington (38:08)
Yeah, 100%. Again, the goal is to figure out how to find good deals consistently and how to find the money for your deals. So if you’re starting out and you’re trying to figure out how to ramp up, first is to figure out what’s a good deal look like in the market you’re looking to invest in. The second is to figure out what strategy are you going to use to find those good deals. Put it on autopilot, do it until it works. It all works. MLS offers work, cold calls work.

direct mail works. You just have to figure out which one you can afford to fund appropriately, do it until it works. Second is never ever forget that we are in the business of helping somebody. And if you keep that in mind, you’ll build a ton of trust and you’ll actually get more yeses than if you’re just following some sales script and trying to be the most, the investor who’s greatest at the numbers. The seller doesn’t care about the numbers, the sellers and their feelings.

So you gotta get down there with them sometimes.

Scott Bursey (39:07)
You just gave our listeners the blueprint to add serious horsepower to their game plan. Thank you for that, Henry. And for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Henry Washington (39:21)
Best way to reach me is on Instagram. I’m @thehenrywashington on Instagram, or you can go check out my website www.roadtotheclosingtable.com

Scott Bursey (39:31)
Thank you for joining us today, Henry. This has been a sincere pleasure.

Henry Washington (39:35)
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (39:36)
And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Henry Washington, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you on the next episode, everyone.