How Charles Loescher Built Millions from Police Work, ATMs & Real Estate

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Charles Loescher shares his journey from being a police officer in New Orleans to becoming a successful real estate investor and entrepreneur. He discusses his diverse ventures, including commercial real estate, ATM businesses, and restaurants, emphasizing the importance of making money work for you. Charles offers valuable insights on balancing a full-time job with entrepreneurial pursuits and the significance of networking and negotiation in achieving success.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Charles Loescher’s Website
    • Charles Loescher’s Website
    • Charles Loescher on Instagram
    • Charles Loescher’s Phone Number: 504 908 1722

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Charles Loescher (00:00)
  So I go in the hotel and of course I’m in a police uniform again and I go up to the desk, says Jack here. And they said, Jack’s in a meeting.

  Can you wait for him? He’d be out in about 10, 20 minutes. So I’d go sit down in the lobby and this big, big guy sitting across from me says, I got a question to ask you. He says, is Jack going to jail? I no, Jack ain’t going to jail. Why’d say that? said, see, in a police uniform, you ask for Jack. I said, no, he wants to go see this property he’s got under contract to run a corner bill hotel. He ⁓ that’s good. He says, I’m relieved. He says, because I’m here to sell him the flag for the hotel. I work for Choice Hotels. And me and him, he started telling me how he worked for Bad Bryant.

  how his work ethics and stuff related to how he learned in the national championship football team he was on. And me and him became friends. Because that’s the good of friends we became and he taught me a lot of things that Bab Ryan taught him about work ethics. So he used to send me, so I made $100,000 off that first deal.

  Dylan Silver (02:25)
  Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a New Orleans based real estate investor developer also involved in commercial deals. Law enforcement background has done deals in retail and office buildings. Serial entrepreneur, really, who’s owned restaurants and operated ATM business. Please welcome Charles Loescher. Charles, welcome to the show.

  Charles Loescher (02:48)
  Thank you, glad to be here, excited to be on your show today and excited to get some of your guests. Hopefully they can get some education out of me and hopefully I can help them in some kind of way to advance their careers in real estate and become entrepreneurs as I did over the years. I’m 62 years old, been in business over 35 years, I love it. I don’t hunt, I don’t fish, I don’t play golf. I just love doing business.

  Dylan Silver (03:13)
  I always like to start off at the top Charles by asking folks really how they got into the real estate space. How’d you get in the real estate?

  Charles Loescher (03:21)
  Well, that’s it.

  Long story, but I’ll try to make it short and brief as I can. I was a New Orleans policeman, worked Bourbon Street, walked the beat on Bourbon Street, was in the French Quarter, but always had an ambition to be in business. So, while I was on the police department, I kind of expanded out my career doing other things, getting involved with ATM business, and my wife graduated from dental school. So, when I got into real estate, I knew, I mean, I’m sorry, when I was in the police department, my wife was in the dental business, I knew I wanted to

  something so I started using the cash flow we had to invest in real estate. So I used to drive around a police car look at different sites different different opportunities and try to figure out if the cash flow and put my money into work instead of me working eight to twelve hour shifts in the police department for a hourly salary I wanted to make my money work for me so I wouldn’t have to work this hard and use my brains.

  Dylan Silver (04:11)
  Now your first deal, we were talking before the show here, your first deal was a commercial deal.

  Charles Loescher (04:16)
  Yes. Yeah, when I first got in real estate, got my real estate license. And the reason I got my real estate license is because I was unhappy being a policeman, believe it or not. A lot of people like being a policeman. It just wasn’t my mindset. And I was a policeman for over 20 years. the way I got into it was…

  I actually was working off duty detail for $15 an hour back in the 90s and and going to a place where people play pinball and different type of game machines and stuff. And there was drug deals and thugs coming in and out of there. And it’s like, is this my life really came to what do I really want to do in life? Because I’m not happy doing what I’m doing. So I decided to go up my real estate license.

  So I went to school. It only took two weeks in Louisiana to your real estate license.

  This gentleman just bought a big plot of land, 3,000 acres. And somebody told me about him and I happened to have a connection with him, got a meeting with him. And I went over there he gave me a plot. asked me if I could get somebody to get a hotel on the plot of land he had. So I drove around, I police called for days to different hotels that I knew and different people that knew me in the French Quarter and CBD area in New Orleans showing this plot plan. So I run into one of the gentlemen who was the manager of the hotel. I said, man, I got this plot plan here. I’m trying to get somebody to build a

  hotel there. He goes, you got to go visit this gentleman named Jack. He’s on Chef Highway, which was out of my district. And I said, you know, okay, I’ll do that. So I ran out to Chef Highway, drove out there, my police car and police uniform and wasn’t supposed to be out the district. So, but I was out of the district and went to this hotel and it was named Jack’s Hotel. So I to ask for Jack. said, there ain’t no Jack here. And it was an in and out hotel. I said, no, named Jack here. I said, man, the gentleman told me Jack’s on Chef Highway.

  only hotel named Jack. was, oh, Jack owns that Comfort Inn over there. So I go to this Comfort Inn with the map, I ask for Jack. Jack comes out and we’re policing him. He goes, I you officer? said, yeah, just said, I’m not here to arrest you. I’m just here to show you his plot. If you want to buy a piece of land and build a hotel. He looks at it. He says, no, he says, but I noticed you worked for the ladder and blow because I gave him my card, which was, which was a big brokerage at the time. And he says, y’all have a property listed downtown for a million.

  He said, I’m interested in that. This is the first real estate deal I’m getting involved in. So I run back down to the CBD in my police car, go run up the ladder below him, get the flyer on the property he wanted, bring, drive back all the way out to New Orleans East, give it to him. He says, make an offer on that for me for a million five, million six. So I wrote the offer. This is, I’m going back 30 years ago now. So I write the offer and, little to the whole, we negotiate. He takes it from me and seven. So.

  Dylan Silver (07:14)
  You’ve ever done, yeah.

  Charles Loescher (07:36)
  Why is it due diligence time? Two weeks after that, he asked me to come to his hotel that he already owns downtown.

  So I go in the hotel and of course I’m in a police uniform again and I go up to the desk, says Jack here. And they said, Jack’s in a meeting.

  Can you wait for him? He’d be out in about 10, 20 minutes. So I’d go sit down in the lobby and this big, big guy sitting across from me says, I got a question to ask you. He says, is Jack going to jail? I no, Jack ain’t going to jail. Why’d say that? said, see, in a police uniform, you ask for Jack. I said, no, he wants to go see this property he’s got under contract to run a corner bill hotel. He ⁓ that’s good. He says, I’m relieved. He says, because I’m here to sell him the flag for the hotel. I work for Choice Hotels. And me and him, he started telling me how he worked for Bad Bryant.

  how his work ethics and stuff related to how he learned in the national championship football team he was on. And me and him became friends. And actually later on in life, my daughter was only born then and actually went to University of Alabama because of him. Because that’s the good of friends we became and he taught me a lot of things that Bab Ryan taught him about work ethics. So he used to send me, so I made $100,000 off that first deal.

  My first real estate deal as a broker. And what I did throughout my career, I learned from other ethnic groups.

  groups

  like Indians and other people how to negotiate deals and how to invest in deals and not to be afraid to take your money out the bank and invest it and put your money to work for you. So that was one.

  Dylan Silver (08:58)
  I want to ask you about

  some of the other spaces that you’re involved in and have been involved in and also how you managed it all while having a ⁓ job as a police officer. You mentioned ATMs. I know you’ve been in the restaurant space as well and then lots of different asset classes within real estate, retail, office, buildings and being a real estate agent all the while and a police officer. Walk me through the entrepreneurial journey here. It’s a lot to take in, right?

  Charles Loescher (09:23)
  sister.

  Well, it’s ⁓ good to have a good story another story for you is that before I got my real estate license I was

  driving in a police car and a friend of mine was hosing down a sidewalk in the French Quarter on a corner building of Roll and St. Philip. I stopped and said, Earl, what you doing hosing down a sidewalk? He says, he was a policeman, he said, my mom owns this building. I man, your mom owns that building? He said, yeah. It’s what it used to be, he a convenience store. I said, let me come look inside. So I went and looked inside and I said, tell your mom I’ll take it. He said, what you mean you’ll take it? I don’t open a convenience store. He said, how are gonna do that? said, don’t worry. said, tell your mom, you don’t even know how much she wants for it.

  It’s how I give it 2000 a month. So I bought this, released this convenience store and I was driving another day in the police car and I see a guy, when ATMs first came out, where I probably owned ATMs could be owned besides the bank. And where I used to work, Burberry Street on a beat every night. Everybody come ask me where’s the nearest ATM. The only two ATMs they had there was bank one at the time. And I think it was…

  Hibernia Bank. So there’s only two ATMs and people all night. Where’s an ATM machine? Where’s an ATM machine? So I knew I needed an ATM in a thing and I seen somebody unloading. I stopped to see what he was unloading. He was unloading the ATM machine. I said, man, I need one of them in my grocery store at this spot. So little behold, he said, well, I’ll put one there as long as you load it to money and stuff. I said, that’s fine. So the ATM money was making more than the grocery store. So I bought the grocery store. Well, I had about 40,000 in this grocery store.

  Some people came to me about three months later.

  Wanted to buy the grocery store from me. So they bought the grocery store from me for $100,000. So I made 60 there. I put in the Sublee’s that I had all rights to the ATM location because the ATM was kicking off to $3,000 a month in my pocket. So my other brother became disabled at the time from Chevron. He had two hip replacements. He had two young kids and I had a baby, but he had two young kids. said, man, don’t, Chevron won’t let me back to work. What can I do? I said, don’t worry. I just discovered a business we’re going into.

  He said, what’s that? So we’re going to an ATM business. So every hotel I saw, I got the owner to let me put an ATM in there. So I was mixing real estate with ATM. So if I got a social, my hotel, I’d say, please let me put an ATM in there. So I had all the ATMs and the CBD in New Orleans and hotels, and then also downtown New Orleans. And my brother, even though he had two hip replacements, he was able to run the business for me, but I had the connections to get the locations. And my brother was an electronic technician.

  So he was able to repair the machines. So what we did was take that cash flow, and my wife’s cash flow, and started investing into real estate, finding deals. A lot of my deals were after Katrina too, even though I was a policeman doing Katrina. A lot of my deals, I bought deals that were underwater and so on rehab. One of first deals I bought was a gas station in New Orleans, each, which I still have today. And it was a Chevron station. We bought it for 500,000. We put about,

  Dylan Silver (12:33)
  Incredible.

  Yeah.

  Charles Loescher (12:57)
  I $400,000 and $900,000 and leased it out for $12,000 a month. And then today, today, this has gone back 15 years ago, well, no, more than 20 years ago, 20 years ago Katrina. Now it’s paid off. We get $13,000 a month rent. You know, and it’s a great location right off the interstate. I…

  Dylan Silver (13:16)
  I want to ask you

  Charles about the restaurant space as well. mean, ATMs, you got real estate. Some of these are of course not as passive as some of the others, but restaurant isn’t passive in any way. You’ve definitely got to have a good management team in place and it can still be a hairy business because it’s such a service focused business. How did you decide to get into the restaurant space?

  Charles Loescher (13:38)
  Well, I was in the restaurant business years and years ago, however.

  You know, most of the restaurants I do own, I lease out. I don’t operate. The only thing I’m operating right now is Tony Shoshri’s Crispy Cajun Chicken. And that’s another story, who the operator is. And I’ll tell you that story in a second. But I own multiple key restaurants and bars in Meadoway, Louisiana, which is a high traffic population area. And I basically bought them, renovated them, and put them in the market to lease out.

  Dylan Silver (13:46)
  I got you.

  Charles Loescher (14:49)
  I use residual income.

  Obviously, ⁓ I do own two liquor stores that I control in New Orleans and ⁓ I’m famous on Instagram for eating pepperoni and drinking red wine with crushed ice. People make fun of me all over the world and trash me. have the first liquor store in the world to have a Wend chap win it. ⁓ Chuck’s on the Avenue. People come in there, tour us all over the world, take pictures of our Wend chap without tasting room. They get a kick out of it. Setmai has made fun of us on a tonight show.

  because

  we had a wedge jet board inside of a liquor store in New Orleans, but we get weddings all the time. So I’m having fun in life now from, you know, I have a lot of real estate investments. I bought the whole second floor of Yacht Club Destin and Destin on a harbor, which is a very expensive piece of property, but it was a restaurant on the second floor of a condominium building. And I had to tell the homeowners association that I would convert it to three residential condos instead of a restaurant.

  because the restaurant was too loud for people to live there. So I converted it, built three condos, kept one for myself overlooking Yacht Harbor, flipped the other two which paid for my condo. We have no debt on my condo from flipping the other two. ⁓

  So I do many different deals. mean, I can tell you, deal after deal after deal. I’ve had Popeyes under contract one time. There was Popeyes Chicken that was closed down. And I a ⁓ tenant of mine, a major tenant, ⁓ national tenant I have that leases a lot of my bill ones. They wanted me to get that corner after I put it under contract and that.

  They decided they didn’t want the corner. And they said, we’re not gonna lease the corner from you. I said, well, I’m not dropping the contract. I’m still buying it. They said, you’re still gonna buy it even though we’re not gonna lease it from you? I yeah, I’m still buying it. So before I even closed, I went and put a police sign on it. I had a gentleman call me, made an agreement to lease it from me. Three weeks later, before I even closed on it, he called, offered to buy it from me. He said, I’ll give you $50,000 more.

  then you have it under contract for, I think I had it under contract for $2.75, something like that. And I said, no, that’s not enough money. And he called me back a week later and said, I’ll give you $75,000 more than you got that for the contract, 70 contract. He said, no, still not enough, I really like this corner. He called me back a week later, I’ll give you $100,000. I said, I’ll tell you what, if give me $125,000 for the contract, I’ll sell it to you. He said, done deal. And shit, nothing in writing. We went until a week later,

  went to one room, he handed me 125,000 on check. The attorney, I filled one little paragraph out of Sondon, handed him the contract. He went in the other room, closed the deal, bought the deal. I made 125,000 to do nothing other than sign the contract.

  Dylan Silver (17:28)
  So you that was effectively a wholesale deal and that was up for a restaurant basically Unbelievable

  Charles Loescher (17:33)
  Yeah, those were old Popeyes. My intentions wasn’t

  to wholesale it. My intentions was to keep it because everything I buy, I buy cornets and I don’t like selling anything. I try to hold my real estate holdings for my family. I probably have 50 pieces of property and I don’t really like selling anything. know, Tommy was right and I did it.

  Dylan Silver (17:41)
  Right.

  I wanna ask you, we are coming up on time here Charles, but I wanna ask you generally, you mentioned not having a huge education background, you also had a full-time job as a police officer, right? I think all of these different asset classes that you’ve been involved in and really your journey as an entrepreneur, it could have been a full-time job each one of them. For folks who may be in law enforcement or they may work for the government or they may have a W-2 job and are thinking about, how do I balance my

  passion really for entrepreneurship with having a job, what would be your advice to folks who may be just starting out in that position?

  Charles Loescher (18:30)
  My advice is when you get home, you know, I do a lot of research on the internet, looping that and heal that LACBD. So after hours, I would do your homework, know the areas you want to buy in, study them before you get involved in it, know what you’re doing, look at your cash flows, know getting…

  ⁓ Get a good banker, get a great CPA. I have a great CPA that got me. I built a hotel one time. We got new market tax credits which gave me a million to free equity. Having a great CPA like Ken Abney, have ⁓ got me through it. So having a great CPA and a great banker that understands what you’re trying to do ⁓ can get you to that level. And also, ⁓ you know, always…

  always answer your phone. That deal, you don’t answer your phone, the person’s going to the next guy. Unfortunately, just stay in the age, everybody’s an instant gratification. If you don’t answer your phone, they call in the next guy and they call in the next guy. Or if you see a sign and something you want to buy, call right there and then, don’t procrastinate. Don’t do it the next day or the day after. Call right there and then. There’s so many things that, no matter much I procrastinate on, and I wish I would know, that I own even more property today. There’s some of the things I called right on and got on it.

  I made the best deals ever. There was deals that were listed for 675,000, that I got for 200,000, negotiated down. There’s deals that listed for three million, that I got for a million and half. You just need to learn to negotiate. I’m not educated from college, I’m educated from the street. I’m street smart. what do you call it? From hard knocks, hard knocks in my school, hard knocks.

  Dylan Silver (20:07)
  That’s right. Charles, if folks maybe have a deal in the greater New Orleans area, where can they go to reach out to you? Or if they would like to reach out to you because maybe they’re on a similar path and would like your feedback on ⁓ their journey.

  Charles Loescher (20:22)
  I’d love to give people advice, especially younger people. They can reach out to me, Charles Loescher. ⁓

  504-908-1722. I own a franchise of Weikert Loescher Realty. I also have a separate brokerage company, CML Commercial Real Estate. Also, if you want to follow me on Instagram, Charles Loescher, just put Charles Loescher on Instagram, you’ll be able to see the different sections of business I am. I’ve got some funny stuff on there, but I’ve got some serious stuff on there about how to get involved in commercial real estate and investing. I’ve got stuff about my liquor stores in there, and of course Tony Shoshri’s

  Cajun Fried Chicken, which is a Dustin, which we want to expand. And if you have any property that you think would fit us in Florida, ⁓ Panhandle area, ⁓ Alabama or New Orleans, we’re looking at expand. And we’d be glad to look at your property if you have any holdings.

  Dylan Silver (21:11)
  Charles, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

  Charles Loescher (21:13)
  Thank you. appreciate it. Anytime you need me. Anytime anyone wants to call me. I got to give you free knowledge, free education, whatever you want.