From Passion to Profit: Transform Your Mindset for Real Estate Success

John Harcar (00:00.704)
Alright, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host John Harcar and we’re here today with Wesly Atwood and what we’re gonna talk about is Wesly’s journey and his love for real estate so much that he’d do it for free. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5X their business by providing tools and resources that help you build the business you wanna build and live the life you wanna live. Wes, welcome to our show.

Wes Atwood (00:29.772)
Thank you, John. Appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:31.356)
Yeah, I’m excited to talk about this, man. I I love how you stated that, know, loving something so much, you do it for free. Because if you love something, you’re not working a day in your life, right? But before we get into all that, know, do me a favor and give our audience a little bit of background on kind of where you came from, what got you into real estate and what got you here.

Wes Atwood (00:51.47)
Sure thing, appreciate it. So, gosh, I had a nice long corporate career. I worked for…

several years with a company called 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota. I managed a $400 million global business for them. If you remember when the world shut down and everybody was wearing masks, that’s the division that I worked in. But of course it was many years back. I moved here to the Dallas area about 18 years ago and worked for what has now become about a $25 billion company that most people

John Harcar (01:14.108)
Okay.

Wes Atwood (01:28.014)
have never heard of. I managed a $180 million business for them in the U.S. So I share that as a little bit of background. It has nothing to do with real estate. It has to do with the fact that the comfortable with numbers and comfortable with marketing I think gave my wife and I a lot of confidence to step into real estate and do our first deals. My wife is a licensed interior designer. So finance,

marketing, interior design background, it was kind of easy to take a look at deals and run some numbers and get a quick idea if this is a deal or not a deal. But I think the real story is, you know, my daughter is going to be 15 years old this year and my family owns a coffee shop and so we met almost 15 years ago, a lot of real estate investors that would come in, brokers, realtors, and as my daughter was going to be born, I

thinking, you know, she’s gonna have to go to college someday. And I would really like for my investments to pay for that. I don’t want to pay for that out of my pocket. So we started talking to some of our friends as they came in and expressed some interest in starting to get involved buying some rental properties. And again, both of me and my wife working in corporate America at the time, right around this time every year, it’s bonus season in corporate.

And so when those bonuses would get paid out, my good friends would go buy a new BMW, they’d take a trip to Europe or Hawaii, and my wife and I would buy a property. So 15 years ago, we bought our very first property. was a Dixon Flip.

Nothing special, three beds, two baths, 1650 square feet with a swimming pool that had sat vacant for the better part of two years. Everything in the front yard and backyard was dead, the swimming pool in great shape but septic. And we bought it as a short sale, so it took us almost a full year to close on that thing. We were in no rush.

Wes Atwood (03:39.182)
So we bought that we rehabbed it it turned out so nice just a few blocks away from our house that we decided to move into it and We lived there for two years and a day That’s right, and we made the house we were living in at the time our very first rental and Good

John Harcar (03:49.894)
two years and one day.

John Harcar (03:56.386)
Awesome. just real fast, from your corporate background, obviously, and I know you mentioned the coffee shop and investors coming in. Were there any other real estate influences in your life? Have you guys, like, did you previously think about getting into real estate prior to this coffee shop scenario?

Wes Atwood (04:15.158)
You know what, that’s a great question. Actually, we did.

And a lot of people, think, are concerned about that initial hurdle because they don’t know what they don’t know. And I think the thing that gave us the confidence to do it is we were doing a deal is basically in our neighborhood. We knew the area so well. We knew for sure what our current house was that was going to become our very first rental. We knew exactly what we would rent for in an exemplary school district. with the concerns and the risk just based

familiarity we felt we were able to bring that down. And I think that’s a really good point that you bring up is because I think a lot of people they don’t know where to begin and I always say you start right where you are with the tools that you have always in every business I’ve ever done.

John Harcar (05:07.27)
Did you have any help or reach out for help as far as learning how to underwrite a property? Because I know that’s some things that people are kind of either afraid of or they jump into it without having all the facts and do it wrong.

Wes Atwood (05:22.03)
You know what? Again, I think the finance background helped. This is how I underwrote my first property. So how much can I buy this for? And it was 125 grand I purchased it for. And I looked at that property and I put my finger on my chin and I said, I know for sure.

There’s just no way that I could spend more than X amount of money on this thing unless I cover the walls in gold. I just know, I know that I can find people who will do this work for, I told myself 70 grand and probably not even that much for a full cosmetic rehab.

John Harcar (05:58.438)
Mm.

Wes Atwood (06:06.614)
And it turned out to be $52,000. And I wasn’t sophisticated at the time. I didn’t know that there was a world of wholesalers out there and private money lenders. We just bought the thing from the bank and used a mortgage and put 20 % down and paid for the rest of it ourselves. And I think that that’s another important point. Like, you don’t, I don’t feel like you have to know all of the pieces and parts to begin with.

And the fact that we you know, we weren’t trying to make a living at it on our first deal we were able to do our first deal learn from our first deal and Subsequently, you know, we’ve done so many deals now that I can tell you walking through a house in my market There’s going to be 38 to 42 dollars a square foot to do a cosmetic flip We’ve worked with the same teams over ten years and so you just it’s pattern recognition after that over time

you

John Harcar (07:04.474)
Right. So this first house that you guys did, did you do the work or did you hire out all the reno and stuff? Those are your employees right there, huh?

Wes Atwood (07:11.582)
These are accounting. These are accounting fingers. These don’t have calluses on them. So how did I find the the rehabber? I had a neighbor back behind my house who was having a whole rehab done on a property. What do you think about this guy? His name was Israel.

John Harcar (07:26.876)
Mmm.

Wes Atwood (07:32.302)
He does really good work. He’s not a great GC, so if you want to work with him, plan on GCing it yourself. the rest is history. I did probably 15 deals with him, and then he brought another guy in that have done at least 15 deals with that guy, and not difficult.

John Harcar (07:56.646)
Were there any mistakes that you look back and say like, man, how did I do that? Or what was I thinking when I did that on that first deal?

Wes Atwood (08:04.974)
Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that a lot of people don’t think about when they do a real estate deal is for buyers and investors that are purchasing at a certain price point, there are certain expectations. As you move up in the price point, the expectations change.

And as you move up in price point even further, the expectations change. The higher the price point, typically these are people that they’ve got, let’s call it just higher expectations on finish outs. They don’t want to touch things when they move into them. So over the years, as the price point has gone up, making sure that you’re tailoring your finish out to that expectation, I think.

was a little bit of a learning curve.

John Harcar (09:02.338)
And that’s great advice. Are there any other challenges that you were coming across as you started to scale up maybe into a higher value asset? mean, things that just kind of as you grew, you kept running into or had to overcome?

Wes Atwood (09:16.622)
You know when you’re working with different investors in different crews

Wes Atwood (09:30.862)
I guess the best way to say this is you, much like a football team…

You might have a core team, but over time you take pieces out and trade out players and bring in new players and keep things fresh. The people that you go into battle with you have to be able to count on and if there’s any sense that they’re not following through or doing what they’re supposed to be doing when they’re supposed to be doing it, you’ve got to be quick to take corrective action.

John Harcar (10:04.228)
And how were you finding all your properties? Is it something where you were buying off MLS? Were you doing any type of off-market marketing or anything like that?

Wes Atwood (10:14.886)
So I’ve been a real estate investor for 15 years and in the very early days, again, I was not very sophisticated. So just buying off of MLS didn’t know that there was a whole world of ways to acquire properties. And as I grew more sophisticated and of course became familiar with the world of wholesalers and different ways to acquire it, I just started getting on wholesalers lists and I would

John Harcar (10:29.798)
Ha

Wes Atwood (10:44.79)
you know, look at 40, 50 deals in a day. I’d run them through a very quick unsophisticated spreadsheet and if they pass the sniff test, I might go look at two or three deals per day. I’ve never been really a thrift store shopper, but I’ve been to a thrift store before. You might have to dig through a pile.

to find anything worth looking at. I always kind of compared it to that when you’re looking at those kind of deals. And then as you become more sophisticated and kind of more networked, we’ve hosted many, many real estate investor meetups and people start reaching out to you. I got this thing. It’s in this area. I know you love this area. Let me know if it’s something you’re interested in. it just, the more deals you do and the more

John Harcar (11:07.408)
Yeah.

Wes Atwood (11:34.66)
your network expands the easier the deals come. is.

John Harcar (11:37.744)
Yep, your network is your net worth. So what does your business look like today? I mean, it was you and your wife before. Have you built out a team? What does it look like?

Wes Atwood (11:48.27)
So we started out just one at a time. Then we got to a place where we were doing maybe a couple per year. And then your brain starts thinking, how do I do more of this and bigger and faster? And so your brain starts going toward multifamily. So we did three of those. And then when COVID, when we learned the word COVID.

And the market, I thought we were gonna see a rash of foreclosures in our DFW market from people not paying. And I was planning on buying all of them.

John Harcar (12:22.577)
right?

Wes Atwood (12:27.274)
And exactly the opposite happened. was like the inventory went to almost zero. We had seven days of inventory here. So we started building houses because there’s significant shortage. This is a roundabout way of answering your question. What does your team look like? To my wife, a business partner and his wife are our team and everything else is outsourced, everything.

John Harcar (12:32.646)
zero.

John Harcar (12:53.071)
Okay.

Wes Atwood (12:57.24)
from title to borrowing to the teams that we work with for doing the rehab. And we quite prefer it that way. It allows us to be more opportunist and prevents the amount of overhead that can sometimes force people to do deals that they might not otherwise want to do.

John Harcar (13:21.968)
Yeah, I know that makes sense. Are you, so you mentioned multifamily. Do you have a preference of single family versus multifamily? Are you more heavily involved in one than the other?

Wes Atwood (13:33.006)
No, not really. Single family is just kind of what we knew and it’s kind of where most people start. But then moving into multi-family, I kind of compare it to hunting a little bit. Like you could go out and hunt small game or you can go out and bring home a bison. And it depends on, you know, are you prepared to manage that?

John Harcar (13:53.596)
Yeah.

John Harcar (14:00.048)
Were there any obstacles or things you ran into when you made that change to go up to multifamily?

Wes Atwood (14:06.862)
You know, you don’t get to work with the same crews that you’ve been working with in single family, right? The guys that you’ve relied on that are consistent and do the kind of work that you know exactly what to expect are typically not the same crews that can do a rehab of a hundred unit property, you know? So, go ahead.

John Harcar (14:29.808)
bright. no, go ahead.

Wes Atwood (14:33.844)
So then it became a matter of reaching out to our network, other people that are in this multi-family space, starting to see who they refer, who they recommend, a lot of interviewing people, and then hiring slow and potentially firing fast.

John Harcar (14:52.912)
Right. Is there a mindset shift that you had to do when going up to multifamily?

Wes Atwood (14:59.726)
You got to know that that’s going to be a longer burn But I think I think Probably 70 to 75 percent of it is is really kind of the same thing making sure you’re buying right? making sure that you Have your timing and expectations, right?

making sure that you have a very clear path of how you’re going to take this thing on and how you’re going to get out. A lot of those things are the same. Some of the things that you can’t anticipate that you kind of…

make assumptions around, or once I take this project on and we start doing these rehabs and we start taking the rents up, are those rents gonna stick? What’s our vacancy gonna look like in the short term as we’re doing some of these rehabs? Are we on course in managing these to a level of what we’ve planned? So that’s the different part of the whole thing.

John Harcar (16:03.644)
it okay and and what trends are you seeing in the industry right now like where do you see things going?

Wes Atwood (16:11.942)
I can only really speak for, at the macro level, I know that we still have a massive shortage of housing.

East Coast and West Coast, massive shortage. We’re starting to see in some of the markets where it’s easier to build and develop, which would be Texas, Florida, some of the Sunbelt states, we’re starting to see inventory creep up in those markets. What’s fascinating is, your listeners probably know this well,

Typically when you get about six months worth of inventory that’s historically been referred to as a balanced market. If you have less than six months of inventory, it’s historically been a seller’s market, more than six months a buyer’s market.

The way the interest rates spiked so quickly set a lot of people who are would be buyers on the sidelines just because of the uncertainty. And the prices that we were seeing have been seeing across major markets have set a lot of people back as well. So even though in many of these markets there’s three and a half, maybe four and a half months worth of inventory, prices and mortgage rates have had people still kind of sitting on the sidelines.

So it’s almost acting like a balanced market right now. Buyers and sellers are having to work at getting deals done. In the last several months, think builders have really been winning in our market because they’ve often got a little more margin in the deal. They can do more to work with buyers, especially on mortgage and rate buy downs.

John Harcar (17:59.578)
Yeah, I saw that. I saw an article the other day and it’s funny you mentioned that those areas like Florida, Texas, where, you know, that type of inventory and builders are being able to give more incentives maybe towards the buyers. So let’s talk a little bit about kind of what our topic is in the sense, the love of real estate, right? And doing it for free. Why is it important to you to have that conviction and that passion about what you’re doing?

Wes Atwood (18:30.638)
I’ve started five businesses in my life. Two of them went really well. One went, and one didn’t go so well. And I told my wife, you when I step out and do the next thing, which is real estate, I’ve been doing this for many years now.

Then I want to do something that I love so much I would do it for free because there were times in other businesses where the wind is in your face and the rain is blowing sideways and you’re just like, why am I doing this? You you have to love what you’re doing to get up out of bed some days the next day. And the thing about real estate that I love so much, a lot of people get involved in this business because of the potential, the opportunity. They’ll tell you about the way that

you know these assets pay for themselves over time and all that’s good I love that I still to this day love

to see some decrepit piece of property that’s overgrown and just hideous looking turn into something special again. I get a personal sense of enjoyment and I’m energized by that alone. I would do that alone for free. And because of that, when I talk about real estate, I don’t feel like I’m talking about work ever.

John Harcar (19:50.972)
I love it.

Wes Atwood (19:59.2)
I meet people in my family’s coffee shop who want to pick my brain and talk about real estate. Some of them have done hundreds of deals, some of them have done none. And it doesn’t feel like any time has gone by. We sit and talk just like this. And for that one reason alone, I love it.

John Harcar (20:08.55)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (20:19.12)
That’s why I love what I do. literally get to sit and talk real estate all day long. Another thing we’ve mentioned and you talked about before we got on is staying in your lane, right? Knowing your path. You know, in this day of shiny object syndrome, why is just finding your path and staying in it so important?

Wes Atwood (20:38.868)
That’s such a great question. I’ve met so many different real estate investors, some of them like me, are, they call themselves opportunists, I think. And you do tend to get distracted by…

the next opportunity or the next big opportunity. You were successful at the previous level. I take, I took down the, you know, the, I took down the deer. Can I take down the water buffalo now?

John Harcar (21:08.54)
Right.

Wes Atwood (21:09.858)
That’s kind of where you start thinking and what I’ve seen over the years and the investors that I’ve worked with over the years, many of them have kind of gone down those roads and they ultimately end up finding the one or two or the three things that they’re just really good at. They find their lane. You know, I’ve met people now who are wholesalers and they’ve built systems around wholesaling. use technology. They’ve got

John Harcar (21:29.606)
Hmm?

Wes Atwood (21:39.834)
significant buyer lists that they’ve developed over time and it’s what they feel good and comfortable about. They hardly ever do a fix and flip unless it’s something that is just so grossly profitable that they just couldn’t fail at it.

John Harcar (21:53.542)
Right.

Wes Atwood (21:54.446)
And then I’ve met fix and flippers who they’ve just figured out that fixing and flipping is their thing. It’s what they’re good at. They’ve built processes and teams around that. And they’ve defined like specific markets and price points that they love. And they end up kind of staying in that lane. I’ve got friends who only build high end, only build high end. If it’s less than a million, they’re not interested and they’re good at it. So finding that lane I think is important.

John Harcar (22:20.785)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Atwood (22:24.4)
important.

John Harcar (22:26.672)
Yeah, and I think too on the stress level part, stress level part because I mean, myself as being a wholesaler, I’ve tried the fix and flip stuff and for me, it’s not me. I had no my lane.

What advice would you give to someone that is looking to get into the business, whether it’s fix and flip, whether it’s wholesale, just any advice to get into real estate? What would you give them nowadays?

Wes Atwood (22:51.094)
You know, I never want to limit somebody and tell them what they’re able to do or even try to set their mind thinking about what they should or shouldn’t do. But I can tell you the advice that I’d give myself that worked for me that I think really set me up for success. I’ve seen a lot of people jump into this business head first.

And some of them jumped into this business head first with very limited liquidity, very limited net worth, and they just started swimming hard. And some of them made it. And when I say some of them made it, many of them didn’t. Yeah.

John Harcar (23:38.394)
some did.

Wes Atwood (23:40.782)
So I’m not saying that that can’t happen. Anybody that has that passion and it turns out that they’ve got a network of people that they can rely on and people who will invest in their deals, I the sky is the limit. The thing that I think set my wife and I up for success was that you never forsake the day of small beginnings.

Right? Everybody knows this story of David and Goliath, right? What’s the story of David and Goliath, John? The 10 second story.

John Harcar (24:11.532)
David conquers or defeats the giant with a sling and a stone. David’s a poor shepherd boy.

Wes Atwood (24:15.672)
That’s right.

Wes Atwood (24:19.402)
What do you think it was that gave David the confidence to go out after that giant?

John Harcar (24:27.484)
Belief. Belief in God.

Wes Atwood (24:30.518)
A lot of people forget that he first faced the lion and then he faced the bear. That’s right. So when nobody was looking, he was like, I think I can take this thing. And he had a success. And when nobody was looking, he was like, I think I can take this bear. And he had some success. And then all of sudden he looked at the giant and was like, you know what? I think I can take this thing.

John Harcar (24:36.634)
The bear. Yeah.

Wes Atwood (24:58.87)
And I think that if I were giving myself advice, that slow burn, that one to two deals that I was doing per year, doing it as a side thing.

doing it and learning. And by the third deal, knew that, you know, at that time, $25 a square foot basically does any cosmetic fix and flip I’d want to do in my area. When COVID hit, prices went up. I knew it was 35. Prices continued. It’s 38 to 42. It’s those deals over time that give you the confidence to start to realize what you can do.

John Harcar (25:20.604)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (25:36.602)
I love that. And I love that analogy. That is that’s perfect. And thank you for sharing all this stuff with us, man. I mean, this has been fantastic. If folks want to reach out to you and maybe talk to you a little bit about the journey a little bit more, maybe some advice or maybe want to do deals with you. I mean, how could they reach out and how can they get in touch?

Wes Atwood (25:56.332)
You know, I am a…

A little bit embarrassed. was on a podcast once before and they asked me the same question. I don’t have a ton of social media. Like I’m on Facebook and I’m on Instagram. You can find me easy enough on Facebook and send me a DM. These days I focus almost entirely on financing other people’s deals. I’ve been on the side of the table where I’ve been shopping for deals for many years and now I’m at other people’s deals and I’ve been in their shoes and financing those deals.

John Harcar (26:23.452)
Mmm.

Wes Atwood (26:29.136)
I don’t know, do I give my email and…

John Harcar (26:34.16)
Yeah, well, if you want to give your email address, can. We’ll put it all in the show notes as well.

Wes Atwood (26:39.286)
Sure. If you want to reach out to me, Wesley Atwood, Wesley Atwood, W-E-S-L-E-Y. Last name, A as in Apple, T as in Thomas, W-O-O-D, WesleyAtwood at gmail.com.

John Harcar (26:58.585)
Perfect. and like I said, we’ll put all the show notes so they can reach out. know, guys, I hope you took a lot of good notes. There was a lot of good nuggets he dropped. know, Wesley, thank you again for coming on and sharing all that. You know, we probably could have talked for another 30 minutes. We didn’t even get a chance to talk about the lending part. But guys, reach out if you guys have any questions. If you’re in the DFW and maybe have a deal that maybe needs some funding, reach out to Wes. You know, nothing like collaboration. And this is a smart gentleman. So.

Guys, I hope you enjoyed the show, and we’ll look forward to seeing you on the next one. Cheers. Thank you.

Wes Atwood (27:30.616)
John, you’ve read it. Thank you.