Subscribe via:
Show Summary
In this conversation, MJ Mott shares his journey from wholesaling to becoming a property manager and entrepreneur. He discusses the importance of teamwork, networking, and adaptability in the real estate industry. MJ also talks about his unique acquisition of a cemetery and how he diversified his business to protect against market fluctuations. He emphasizes the value of helping others and building relationships in business.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
MJ Mott (00:00)
Nobody wanted them.And so I had to get real creative with that contract with the owner. And they didn’t want nothing to do with it cuz it’s just a huge debt for them that they have to pay. And I’m like, well, I get some money out of it, get you about 40 Gs. And ⁓ if we can do that, will you be fine selling me all of these properties just for the back taxes?
Kristen (01:51)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with MJ Mott, who is a real estate entrepreneur. He’s got his hand in wholesaling, flipping, repairs, landscaping. We have a lot to talk about. He’s really great at seizing opportunities and yeah, I can’t wait to get into it. Thanks for being here, MJ.MJ Mott (02:08)
Thanks for giving me a invite.Kristen (02:11)
So, I mean, it seems like you’ve built such an impressive career and you’ve touched so many different aspects of the business. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you even get involved in real estate to begin with? ⁓MJ Mott (02:21)
Honestly, I started when I was in the military. ⁓ They had the VA loan. Let’s go even further back than that. In the military, they pay you allowance for housing. And I said, why am I staying in the rent house when they would pay me for free to buy my own house? And so, yeah, I bought a house. then, from then, you know, you move every four years. And so I just bought a new house at every duty station. When you’re married, you got…Kristen (02:27)
Yeah.MJ Mott (02:49)
two options to use your VA loan. And so between the both of us, we’d be by four different houses. And so that’s kind of where it started at. And once I got out the military, it’s like, I think real estate is something we can get into and do very well with because I was already a landlord. And I’m like, let’s see what we can do.Kristen (03:07)
That’s awesome. And were you able, as you acquired more homes, as you were moving around in different bases, did you keep the other ones and rent them out? Or how did that work? Yeah.MJ Mott (03:17)
I kept all of them untilI got back here in Beaumont because it got to be to where everything was stretched out and I have disbelief that there’s no such thing as a good property manager. ⁓ So I like to be close to my properties and so yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to sell some of them off and everything, I’ve been buying everything locally here in Beaumont.
Kristen (03:28)
ThankThat’s amazing. mean, I feel like starting with four long-term holds right away, people are wanting to do that throughout their whole career. So I think that that’s amazing. That’s where you started. So when did you start transitioning to do this full-time?
MJ Mott (03:53)
uh… twenty eighteen honestly uh… i was just kinda exploring what i wanted to do in this world and uh… wholesaling hit me as like you can actually do this you know i’m reading up on it and i’m like so this is not that complicated because was familiar with contracts i was a financial manager in the army and uh… and i’m like yeah this is uh… this is kinda simple you know we get in there and uh… get it contracted and sell the contract you know uh… so i did that for a few properties and then i’m likewhat these guys doing, the people I’m selling it to as far as flipping, this is not that hard, you know. So I kind of just copied it, you know. In the business world, copying is not bad. So I did exactly what they were doing and it worked.
Kristen (04:33)
Yeah.Well, it sounds like you found out something that a lot of times takes a lot longer to figure out, where the people doing quote unquote, like more than you or what you want to do one day, they’re no different than you. What they’re doing is not so complicated that you can’t learn it. So I’d to hear about kind of how you positioned yourself into just getting the education to learn how to do this kind of stuff.
MJ Mott (04:52)
Right, right. That’s my best.honestly YouTube University ⁓ combined with Propello Academy actually it’s a free online training and I mention this to everybody it’s like I took it like a college course you know just because it’s free don’t mean it doesn’t have value and what I learned with that you know I kind of took section by section and then I go back it up with YouTube see what they have to say about it then just go talk to people see what their experience was and then I tried it myself
Kristen (06:18)
Yeah.MJ Mott (06:19)
It wasn’t too hard once you got an understanding of the concept. Getting all the contracts and all that right, it just took a few goes and it’s like, okay, I see how this goes. Talk to the ladies in the title company. They will give you lot of good information. What do you need from me? And so that helped me out a lot. ⁓Kristen (06:28)
Yeah.Yeah, I can imagine so. And you had such a great background where you’re already pretty primed to understand a lot of these concepts pretty easily. ⁓ So talk about how you kind of got into other parts of the industry, like repairs, constructions, all that.
MJ Mott (06:54)
Okay so when I did the first flip, I think we bought a property, it was like, we just bought it for the back taxes, eight G’s. Put about 30 G’s into it and it was worth about 85. And then I realized you can’t sell, or you can’t put a mortgage on something for 50 G’s. It’s all I wanted was 50 G’s out of it.and hold on to the property. And that’s kind of hard to do, you know, considering the way that it has to be staged here in Texas as far as the lending requirements. So I went ahead and sold that one and I’m like, well, I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to get a bigger payout and keep moving forward. But,
I found that it’s not so easy to do back to back deals. You have to have something to keep you floating in the middle. Because while you’re putting all that money out, you need to have money coming in too. And I was like, well, there’s a couple of guys that’s in here that’s doing this work. Let me talk with these guys and see if we can get some type of partnership. And what’s crazy is my GC ended up going to jail. And I had to take over a job.
Kristen (07:55)
I’m going.MJ Mott (07:56)
⁓ And I’m like, this is not that hard. He kind of laid out the framework for me. the crews that was working out there, they’re like, well, we’ll finish the job. And they just became a long-term crew. And from then, I just go to different sites as I see people doing work. Hey, who you guys work for? And just talk with them and kind of look at the work they’re doing and give them little jobs and stretch it out, see if they do bigger jobs and all that. And it just kind of ran with it.Kristen (08:26)
Yeah, I mean that’s amazing. seems like, I mean, you’re able to really seamlessly grasp a lot of areas of the business. I would love to talk about maybe the parts that weren’t so pretty and maybe something that you learned from early on.MJ Mott (08:40)
Well,I’m making this sound easy, but it was not easy at the time. I went through some heartache. mean, that first property was part of a fire property deal and it had all types of problems with it. The properties weren’t worth anything. They were in bad shape. They all had back taxes.
Nobody wanted them.
And so I had to get real creative with that contract with the owner. And they didn’t want nothing to do with it cuz it’s just a huge debt for them that they have to pay. And I’m like, well, I get some money out of it, get you about 40 Gs. And ⁓ if we can do that, will you be fine selling me all of these properties just for the back taxes?
And they were like, oh, that’s excellent, sure. So I just had to find a way to disposition all five of them properties. So I flipped one, did a seller financing with the other one. We assigned a few. And so it just, it worked out. But every property had a lot of problems. One property, the land was owned by a different person than the actual structure. it’s just stuff like that that you run into. And getting through it, you learn a lot. You learn a lot every time.
Kristen (09:40)
Yeah.Absolutely, and I think that something you do really well is, I mean, you probably learn quickly because you jump into opportunities really well. It doesn’t seem like you, I mean, maybe there’s hesitation. It seems like you’re very proactive in jumping towards an opportunity. I’d love for you to kind of talk more about that in your mindset with that.
MJ Mott (10:44)
Yeah, yeah, I figure it just seemed like it wasn’t that hard, you know, and then it’s like once you get so invested in it, well, I’m not about to lose this money, you know, I refuse to fail at this. So, you know, how are we going to get through this? You know, we’re not going to stop, you know, in the middle just because it got hard. And that’s kind of the way I go at everything. You know, if somebody else did it, that means it’s possible, you know, and so I can do it too.Kristen (10:54)
Right.Yeah.
MJ Mott (11:12)
That’s kind of the way I look at everything. And some of that is the military mindset too. like, know, it’s not, know, failing is not an option, you know, because I didn’t have any other job, you know. So this is the only thing I could do to make money. And at that point in time, I was like, well, you know, I’m not about to be homeless, you know, so.Kristen (11:26)
Yeah.Right.
MJ Mott (11:33)
I definitely tried my best and yeah, some late nights. I I sat up here, let’s say with Propello Academy watching those videos until literally, you know, I hit the keyboard and I wake up the next morning and go try something out, you know. ⁓ I talked to some people about something I had a question about, just one small aspect of it, you know, and I’m taking notes on everything. I kept this little book, I mean, with just all the little things that had like questions and answers, you know, and eventually.Kristen (11:44)
Yeah.MJ Mott (12:03)
I started remembering it and didn’t have to look back in the book anymore. yeah, yeah, I just, you know, I just tried to stay organized and keep moving forward all the time.Kristen (12:13)
Yeah,you really do reach a point where you have so much in it that you can’t really go back. You gotta keep pushing through it.
MJ Mott (12:24)
I believe in teamwork. I have no problem asking for help from people that know. You can tell I bother some people. I first started out, I learned that because I got to that point now where people come and ask you lot of questions. They’re not really bringing no value to you.And what I decided was that instead of me just coming to ask you to give me free advice, I said, what can I do for you? What can I do to make your job easier? ⁓ Is it something you don’t want to do that is maybe complicated or something that you might want me to do? And a lot of people, they don’t want to deal with these properties because they got so many title issues. OK, let me see what I can do. And just go for the hard stuff first and everything else is easy.
Kristen (13:04)
Right, absolutely. That’s a great perspective on it. And I think that networking is so important in this industry. kind of what are your tips? Because I think a lot of people feel annoying reaching out to people and they have some hesitation with that. What’s your mindset with all of that? Yeah.MJ Mott (13:21)
got over it.I do bother a lot of people. I say bother, but I feel like I’m bothering people. If I’m calling you and I don’t have something to bring to you, but I still have this burning question that I really need to ask. I try to be interesting too. I got this unique problem. Do you want to hear about it? If it’s interesting and we can chat about it, I try to find other people that’s kind of nerdy like me that like to talk about things like that.
So look for people that’s kind of like yourself because honestly ⁓ We do business with people that we like, you know And and that’s kind of where I’m at. Like if you really annoy me, I probably not gonna work with you too much, you know, ⁓ And I figured I’m the same way if this person gets annoyed by me, we probably not gonna do a lot of work together
Kristen (13:57)
Yeah.Yeah. ⁓
Right. Yeah, and I think also, like, I think we underestimate people do want to help other people. People aren’t immediately put off by the idea of helping somebody. So.
MJ Mott (14:17)
Mm-hmm.Yes indeed, yes indeed.
I noticed that the more I help people, it comes back. I helped a few people start wholesaling the first couple of deals. I’ll tell you like 50 % because I did most of the work on it. And then after that, they go off on their own, but they still call me back every now and then. Hey, I got this little issue. Can you help me with that? And every now and then, I don’t want to deal with this. This one is too complicated. Here, take this one. And it’s right up my alley. It’s all this type of stuff you deal with. it works.
know, keep it.
Kristen (14:54)
Definitely. And talk about kind of where you’re at now. I know that you just acquired a big property and you’re from there a landscaping company. You’ve got even more going on. So talk about that.MJ Mott (15:06)
Yeah,I just kind of fell into it. had a owner of a cemetery called me. It was in horrible shape. I’ve been calling myself the property problem solver from what I was doing in real estate. And she was just like, hey man, this grass is out of control. ⁓ We upside down as a company. Most of the owners have died off and we just mismanaged. And I’m like, well, I haven’t been cutting grass, but ⁓ let me come take a look. So I took a look. I’m like.
Kristen (15:58)
Yeah.MJ Mott (16:16)
I’m trying to make these numbers work, know, like how much y’all paying for it, you know, and they really wasn’t paying enough to cut the grass, but it was money, you know, so I’m like, I’m not turning down that money. So I got some commercial equipment, ⁓ through my contracting accounts, picked that up and started cutting grass. you know, the next year I kind of like, Hey, do you guys even want this company? And nobody, you know, they didn’t really want to deal with it.And so, we’ll go ahead and sell it to you. I ended up buying it on the note. The money that I was making cutting the grass and when they had cut my salary in half and say, I’m gonna go ahead and pay it off within a year. And then let me become the full owner of it.
And from there, I just started a landscaping company to supplement that for the money that I was missing. So it kind of worked out. And like say, it was an opportunity. like, hey, I never owned a cemetery before. People got to die. And I feel like I can branch out and get some more land, which I’m uniquely suited to do at this point, and can continue on with that.
Kristen (17:12)
YouYeah, I think with the cemetery, it’s like the one industry that’s always protected. It’s never gonna stop happening. So, I mean, it seems like… Yeah.
MJ Mott (17:27)
ThankAnd at the same time, this is my hometown and they were
in bad shape. But these are historically black cemeteries. They just haven’t been taken care of. I felt like I wouldn’t mind. Because a cemetery, you never stop taking care of a cemetery. You’re just a caretaker for a certain amount of time.
Kristen (17:43)
Right.MJ Mott (17:47)
And so I’m like, well, during my time, I wanted to become nice, know, and something that people would like to go visit versus being an eyesore. And, man, we’ve been back and forth with it. We get so many complaints because it’s in such it’s old, you know, and a lot of things are broken and we’re working on getting it fixed. And so we get a lot of calls about it, but ⁓ it’s definitely looking better than it did when I got it. And now it’s making money.Kristen (18:13)
Yeah, well that’s amazing. mean, I’m sure that’s pretty gratifying too.MJ Mott (18:19)
little bit a little bit until you know I’m trying to wait till this really you know ⁓ you know one of those things that’s prideful to go look at you know you really feel nice going there but right now it looks decent and so I’m satisfied with it now but I want I want to do a lot moreKristen (18:31)
Yeah.Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it’s really inspiring how you’re able to just kind of hop into various parts of the business. And I think that, you know, it shows your adaptability, but then also like, just like tenacity and not taking no for an answer. And I’d love for you to talk about how this kind of going after different parts of the industry, how this can kind of protect you through market up and downs.
MJ Mott (19:00)
That’s exactly my goal. I was trying to diversify and not just get stuck in one area. Because I see some guys that they was only doing flips and it’s like they didn’t understand the acquisition process, you know. And so they were relying on other people to bring them properties. you can’t really, you know, unless you buy right, you know, the deal is not going to be right. And relying on wholesalers to bring you a deal, of course, they taking a big cut.And so if I find them myself, you know, it’s not a problem. I can put the package together and I can either sell that package to somebody else or can take the deal myself. like I said, I just want to be ⁓ maybe a transaction engineer the way everything come at me, just throw it at me. We’ll figure it out and we’ll make money, you know.
Kristen (19:40)
Yeah,absolutely. So I’d love for you to talk about, kind of to wrap this up, because I think you’ve given a lot of great inspiration to people. What would be something that you wish you learned earlier in your career that maybe you can share with people now?
MJ Mott (19:55)
I wish I had learned how to maybe I think network even more because I mean I’m a network but it’s honestly I’m an introvert that plays an extrovert and I really don’t want to be bothered but I got to it’s part of the job you know and so I wish I had startedKristen (20:14)
YouMJ Mott (20:20)
like more of ⁓ a concerted effort toward networking. Because right now I reach out to everybody. If I see that you’re doing something that I want to know about, I’m reaching out to you. I’m talking to you, know, see if we can mesh some kind of way or collaborate in some kind of way. And I want to bring value to you, you know. And it’s kind of hard because I guess you see so many people that’s wanting to take, take, take without give. initially I’m coming with the, hey, what can I do for you? You know, because I can see what you can do for me. What can I do for you?Kristen (20:41)
Bye.Yeah.
MJ Mott (20:49)
Itseems ⁓ to get me a lot of people I can work with, solving a problem ⁓ for them.
Kristen (20:53)
Definitely.I think that that’s the perfect way to do it. I think that’s a great way to build up your network and your credibility and people trust you at that point. Well, I think this has been really inspirational for people. Please tell everybody where to find you, how to work with you. ⁓
MJ Mott (21:10)
I am a dinosaur when comes to social media but if you look for me, MJ Mott. ⁓ I’m on Facebook, I’m on Instagram, you’re see some corny jokes up in there and I’m a nerd so you’re see maybe some about farming or something. But look me up, every night I drop some gems in there too in the midst of me being corny. MJ Mott, afore me coldness is my company, you can look that up and it’ll pop up too.Kristen (21:29)
You ⁓MJ Mott (21:36)
to what we do and I’m really trying to get a good video editor and somebody to make this social media pop but as of right now it’s still in its infancy because this is only me and I just post pictures and videos and it’s just me talking.Kristen (21:50)
Yeah, no, that’sgreat though. That’s a great way to get out there and share information. Well, thank you so much for being here. really, you know, I think what you’re doing in the industry is really exciting and it’s, I mean, you’re just such an impressive person.
MJ Mott (22:05)
Well, I should appreciate the opportunity. Like I said, I don’t get a lot of opportunities to talk in the podcast setting. So this is another thing. I’m networking right now.Kristen (22:14)
Yes, amazing. Well, everyone, please check out MJ online and we hope that you learned a lot from this episode, got some inspiration for your own business and we’ll see you back next time. Thank you.MJ Mott (22:26)
Yes indeed,yes indeed, I sure appreciate it.
