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Show Summary
In this episode, Phil Georges shares his extensive experience in the real estate industry, discussing his journey from a microbiologist to a multifamily investor. He emphasizes the importance of education, focus, and consistency in achieving success. Phil also highlights the significance of building generational wealth and the mindset required to overcome challenges in the real estate market.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Phil Georges (00:00)
I didn’t know what it was back then. ⁓ I think it was just stupidity. I could have did it part time, right? I didn’t think about doing it part time. But my dad, my uncles were all entrepreneurs in the car service business. I saw them working for themselves. I’m an immigrant. I came to the United States when I was three from the country of Haiti. ⁓ Haitian people have a long history of being resilient.And as you probably know, were the first free Black nation who took it by force. So I think all of that was in me and I just didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know my mom’s family until I was pretty old. Maybe 10 years ago, I knew my mom’s side of the family. She passed when I was young. So I didn’t know any of her family. And I went to Haiti and found out that I had an uncle who was a real estate mogul. So was in my DNA.
You know, so that’s what gave me the guts. It was in there somewhere and I just went out there and took a chance.
Quentin Edmonds (02:32)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. Excited to be here today. Y’all know I say that. That’s in my intro every time, but it’s so real. I’m excited. One of the things I love to do is to meet new people and to learn their story, learn their processes, peek through their lens. And y’all heard me say that before. I I probably sound like a broken record, but you know, it’s really like the highlight of my day. And today’s no different. This may have some button.who has experience, has 40 years in the game, knows what he’s talking about, does coaching, very, very well known in his market. I’ll let him tell you what market it is. But I’m expecting a great conversation. I know he’s gonna drop plenty of nuggets for you all. And so I wanna introduce you to Mr. Phil Georges. Mr. Phil, how you doing today,
Phil Georges (03:19)
I’m doing wonderful. Thanks for having me on.Quentin Edmonds (03:21)
Absolutely, man. So good to have you here and listen, I want us to dive right in I would love for you just to tell the people what your main focus is these days Would love for you if you want to give us a little bit of an origin story about how you got into real estate We love origin stories and then of course man, tell them where you are. Tell them what markets are operating there And so sir, mr. George’s you got the floor,Phil Georges (03:43)
Okay, so origin story. I love my origin story. So ⁓ I saw an infomercial on TV. I’m a microbiologist with a college degree in microbiology. And early on, I was 24 years old, I kind of said to myself, this is not going to be my future. And ⁓ I saw an infomercial.Said get rich overnight, you know how those commercials go. I went to a weekend seminar in New York City back in 1984 and did the craziest thing on earth. I quit my job off of one seminar. My dad thought I was insane. I had a good city job making benefits and good money. And I just dove right into real estate. Okay, that’s the beginning.
However, them riches overnight did not happen. I was struggling to say the least. I walked into a deal six months after that seminar at the New York City auction. I bought a shell of a property for $27,000. And if you prorate that number to today, that’s probably, you know, I don’t know, a lot of money.
today, but back then it was a fortune to a 24 year old with very little savings. It was the complete shell. It had no windows, no doors, no kitchens, no baths, nothing. And I figured I would renovate this and make a fortune and live happily ever after. Well, I had a couple of contractors come in and they were telling me how much it would be to renovate the unit to put it back in service.
And all the numbers came in fairly close. One gentleman came in and he said, it’s going to cost you $150,000. And I said, oh, that’s no problem. That’s pretty much where everybody was in line. And he said, no, that’s not your problem, young man. Your problem is it’s not going to be worth $150,000 after I fix it. You’re going to be losing money. And I said, what?
And I did a little homework and I found out he was absolutely right. It would not cashflow. I’d be in debt. And I did what a 24 year old would do at the time. I walked away from my 27,000 and said, well, that’s just the way it’s going to be. And, ⁓ you know, rather than facing a foreclosure, New York city did an eminent domain just before the foreclosure. So basically I gave back the property, lost all of my money.
but I didn’t have a foreclosure on my thing. What that taught me is stay educated, be educated, know what you’re doing before you jump in. And I’ve been a lifelong learner since.
Quentin Edmonds (07:15)
Man, what an origin story. I want to find out more where you are now, but I want to ask this question before I do that. What gave you the confidence to quit your job? Like, it had to be something in you from when you were younger, maybe your dad put in you, your family put in you, your mom, your parents.What gave you the confidence to quit your job? Because I know it’s a crazy idea, but you did it. I know it had to pull from something inside of you. So what gave you the confidence to do that?
Phil Georges (07:48)
don’t know what it was back then. do know now.I didn’t know what it was back then. ⁓ I think it was just stupidity. I could have did it part time, right? I didn’t think about doing it part time. But my dad, my uncles were all entrepreneurs in the car service business. I saw them working for themselves. I’m an immigrant. I came to the United States when I was three from the country of Haiti. ⁓ Haitian people have a long history of being resilient.
And as you probably know, were the first free Black nation who took it by force. So I think all of that was in me and I just didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know my mom’s family until I was pretty old. Maybe 10 years ago, I knew my mom’s side of the family. She passed when I was young. So I didn’t know any of her family. And I went to Haiti and found out that I had an uncle who was a real estate mogul. So was in my DNA.
You know, so that’s what gave me the guts. It was in there somewhere and I just went out there and took a chance.
Quentin Edmonds (08:51)
Yeah. No, I’m so glad you said that because, confidence alone can cause us to do stupid things. But confidence, like you said, mixed with education, you say stay educated, right? Education mixed with discipline, with attentionality. You fuse all those things together and you can find success. But most of the time there is something innate. It could be gut. It could beThe voice speaking to you is something that in us to make it say, I feel like this is the way to go. But after we got the confidence, then of course, build an education, all that stuff. That’s what I think.
Phil Georges (09:27)
I think that’s the biggest obstacle to, I would say, 90 % of people is that fear, know, false evidence appearing real or forget everything and run, you know, however you want to characterize that first step, people are afraid to take it because I don’t know what they think is on the other side. You know, it’s either swing or miss or swing and hit. I’m okay with swinging and missing, you know.Quentin Edmonds (09:55)
But that’s the thing the fear it paralyzes you it blinds you it caused you to think Irrationally because all you can think about is the fear and so that’s why sometimes they said you got to do it scared, right? And so in your case you had the confidence Some people got all the knowledge in the world and don’t have the confidence to pass And so that’s why I say all these names fuse together That’s what’s really going to benefitPhil Georges (10:54)
What you’ll find on the other end of the spectrum when they have all that knowledge is that they are stuck in what I call or has been called analysis paralysis. They’re going to analyze it over and over and over and then the deal is gone or the opportunity passed them by. I think most people need to find what is characterized as the minimum viable product.go in with the least amount of information that you need, that you need, I mind you, to start, right? Because if I know something, Q, five minutes before you, and I tell it to you, I become a genius. Because, wow, he knew that, you know? And I just learned it five minutes ago, So if you take that mindset that no one knows everything,
You you just got to learn it as you go on the job learning. And that’s what I did. And, know, after that, you know, horrible beginning.
Quentin Edmonds (11:54)
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, where are you now, Mr. Phil? Like what powers you now? What are your hands and where is your feet planted? What do you do now?Phil Georges (12:03)
Well, I am basically a multifamily investor ⁓ at this stage in my game. ⁓ I started off, know, in New York City. ⁓ Property in New York City was too expensive for me. So I started driving down to Camden, New Jersey and buying cheap, cheap properties, making a profit. And after I had a whole bunch of those, I said, wow, you know, let me, I ended up buying stuff in New York City.And that propelled me to buying multifamily in three states. So, you know, I currently hold properties 50 units and above in three different states. you know, but it was a process. wasn’t an overnight success. It was a process of, you know, learning, understanding, taking action.
Quentin Edmonds (12:50)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I’m glad I love talking to people like you. And so I’m gonna ask this question. And I would love if you’ll answer it two ways, right? So I would love to know, have you identified core strategies that help you business wise, but also that helps you personally? You know, I know some people do meditation, heights, different things like that, reading, but are there core strategiesthat you have identified for you that works for you on the business side and that also works for you on a personal side.
Phil Georges (13:22)
Okay, I’ll give you multifaceted answer. You mentioned ⁓ meditating and that kind of stuff. When I was young, ⁓ Tony Robbins was just getting started. I know everyone knows who he is now, but ⁓ he was a relative new face. ⁓ somewhere in that he talked about visualizing your success. And I thought back when I heard him say that to high school basketball.And I had sprained my ankle during a game and I couldn’t play. And I would sit at home visualizing my shots going in, not knowing what I was doing. I was just visualizing shots going in as I laid there with my ankle twisted. And then when I came back, I was a pretty good shooter from just visualizing it. Now, I didn’t know that’s what happened. You know, I was a teenager.
Fast forward, I hear Tony Roberts talk about visualizing things. And people talk nowadays about vision boards and all that kind of stuff. ⁓ He gave some reference of that. And what I did is I would visualize my success. I would visualize the things I wanted. ⁓ So back then, I visualized owning a Mercedes. I visualized a house that I wanted to live in.
And I put them both in the visor of my car. And every day, I would sit there and stare at them and say, I’m going to get there. I’m going to get there. And I’d stare at them. And one day, believe it or not, I came home. I’m super tired. The kids are running around. So I used to take a five minute before I walk into the house, just decompress. And I’m sitting there looking at the house. And then I looked through the windshield and said, oh my god, we live here.
I was living in that house that was in my visor for years, not even knowing it, but I manifested it. really believe in that. So that’s part of that.
The other part of my success has been learning to not be a jack of all trades. Because when I first started in real estate, I told you the origin story, the next phase was figuring out how to make money.
flip houses, would wholesale houses. I’d make money on commercial leases. I’d make money on, you know, all this, a hundred avenues in real estate to make money. And I’ve made money in many of them. But at one point, Nike came out with this slogan, I believe it was around 1990, just do it. And I said, I am doing it, but how do I do it better?
And I sat down and realized I was missing one key component to success. And that is the word focus. And I characterized that word focus by follow one course until successful. So when you follow one course until you’re successful, that means, you stick to something until you make money or make the kind of money you want and don’t change lanes until you do.
because so many people see the shiny ball syndrome. They wanted one thing one week, something else next week, and this the next week. And those people never succeed because they never get good at anything. They’re just floundering around. that’s been what I consider my keys to success.
Quentin Edmonds (17:26)
You said so many things that connect with me. When you just talked about focus, man, I love the way you broke that down. Literally, I’m looking at my phone, my lock screen. It says focus equals feelings equals function. So when I’m focused, it translates to my feelings and my feelings translate to my function. Like how you talked about visualizing, there’s a book by Dr. Caroline Leap. She’s a neuroscientist.And it’s called switch on your brain. She teaches how everybody has the ability to do brain surgery on themselves. And when she say that she says, because when you start training your brain, how to think the body is designed to heal itself. The brain is designed to tell the body what to do. And so she’s like, when you switch on your brain, you are literally telling your mind what’s what to think. And you’re going to tell.
Phil Georges (17:54)
Okay.Quentin Edmonds (18:18)
The body is going to follow what the mind tells it to do. And so what you did talk about visualizing, every day you get rewiring on your brain to say, hey, this is what we’re going after. This is what we’re focusing on. All those feelings when you’re tired, when you’re hungry, all those feelings still, this is still what we’re going after. Yeah, you’re tired, but this is what we still going after. And became second nation where you didn’t have toYou didn’t have to spend time necessarily thinking about it. You just rewired your brain to say no, this is what we’re going after. So it makes sense why you didn’t realize you was in the house. And so you kind of like had a moment. You was like, ⁓ man, I’m here because the brain was like, yeah, we’ve been working for like three years. We was going to get this thing. And so like I said, so much of what you said really, really resonated. And I’m so glad it came from you so that our viewers can see the validity of what you’re saying.
the validity of 40 years of success, the validity of being an immigrant from Haitian to not even knowing about the entrepreneurship that was in you until like he was like, well, I’m already in it, it’s in my blood, the confidence that you had. It makes so much sense and validity coming from you. So I’m so glad you changed. So glad you changed. So listen, I gotta ask, what’s the next real goal for you, Mr. Phil?
Phil Georges (19:34)
You know, ⁓ to be honest, it’s probably retirement. Gotcha. That’s the real goal is just, you know, let my kid pick up some of the slack of, you know, talking to the managers because I, you know, I own quite a few units and I have to talk to the managers ⁓ on a regular basis. And, you know, my kids are not ready to do that just yet, but, you know, hopefully it will be.⁓ and that way, you know, they learn and take over and, know, unlike me, I start, started at home plate. They’re going to start on third base, you know? ⁓ so that’s pretty much it. I had a goal when I was, who I would say about 25 years ago, this, this was a cognizant became a cognizant goal. ⁓ I learned the scripture of proverbs 13 and 22.
And that scripture says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. So I told, when I learned that scripture, I said to my kids, I’m not leaving y’all nothing. Y’all got to go out and make it. Cause I’m leaving all of this to your kids. And then you go out, you make a fortune for your kids’ kids. Because that way you build generation wealth. If you just leave it to your children, they’re going to waste it. They don’t understand.
the value of it. recently saw, not recently, but I saw on social media this gentleman say ⁓ that, and I’m paraphrasing. He said that his great grandfather walked to work. His father was fortunate enough to have a bicycle. He was fortunate enough to have a car. And his son is fortunate enough to have a luxury car.
but his great-grandson will be walking again. Okay? And the reason for that is because strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men.
Quentin Edmonds (21:20)
Hmm.Hmm.
Phil Georges (21:30)
You feel that?Quentin Edmonds (21:31)
feel that absolutely.Ooh, I’m sitting in there for a moment, That’s…
Phil Georges (21:38)
And if you follow some of the wealth of this country, the Bill Gates, the Warren Buffets, have you ever said that they’re going to leave anything to their children? You hear what they say. They say their children are going to be left with a nice amount of money, but the bulk of that is being donated to different things of that nature. But I understood what they meant by that. They didn’t want to leave the kid lazy and notbuilding anything for themselves because all they’re gonna do is waste that fortune and all your hard work goes to nothing because it’s generationally, you’re not gonna be that family. And people from our community have to understand like when grandma bought that house and paid it off, you can’t just go sell it, That’s equity for the future. And that’s what they have to understand.
Quentin Edmonds (22:28)
So listen, man, you brought scripture into this. I’m not trying to make this y’all a religious podcast. I just want to say this same from the Bible, right? I’m just want to say the same from the Bible. Cause I think it kind of coincides with what you just said. The Bible said that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. There isSomething actually there scientifically with your brain when your brain does hard things It releases a chemical and releases a certain part in your brain that would never be touched If it did not go through just hard times when you overcome a hard situation it releases a Chemical in your brain that would never get touch if it wasn’t for the hard time I’m saying that to say there is a beauty in working hard
There is a beauty in, I know it’s a strong word, in suffering. There’s a beauty when you have to really be intentional. Mix your confidence with hard work. Mix your confidence with discipline. Mix your confidence with grit. Mix your confidence with losing 27,000.
Thank the Lord it wasn’t gonna be a foreclose like he’s like listen now I’m still I’m simple I’m gonna teach you something but I’m gonna work with you at the same time, but you know, there’s a beauty in building something From the ground up and so I find exceptional beauty in your story I find exceptional beauty in a way you think in the fact that you’re leaving something for your children’s children and so mr. Phil I am
I say all that to say, man, I really appreciate you being here today. I knew that this podcast, this episode would drop nuggets. I just didn’t know these nuggets was going to be this shiny and this heavy.
Phil Georges (24:18)
Thank you for having me on, Anytime I get on and share some positivity and some insight to the next generation, I feel real good about that.Quentin Edmonds (24:27)
Absolutely, I appreciate it. think you’re doing what you suppose you need. The old men, no disrespect, but the ones that seasoned, they’re called because they’re wise. The young ones are called because they’re strong. So there has to be a confluence. Listen, the younger, you’re strong, but you need this wisdom. And so today, you gave this wisdom, and I appreciate you, If anybody wanted to contact you, collaborate with you, get to know you a little bit better, how can they get in contact with you, sir?Phil Georges (24:54)
⁓ LinkedIn is probably the best place. Phil Georges. I am first in that category. ⁓ I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done it myself. ⁓ they can also go to my website, multifamily graduate.com. If they’re looking to get some coaching and learning about, know, how to get in multifamily because it’s a very lucrative business. And, know, that’s, that’s where I’m at.Quentin Edmonds (25:17)
Absolutely. Well, listen, sir, I got to say, man, I thank you so much. Thank you for your time. I thank you for your story. Definitely thank you for your perspective, the way you think. I appreciate you, man, so much for coming through today.Phil Georges (25:28)
Alright, thank you for having me.Quentin Edmonds (25:29)
Absolutely. So listen now, y’all know y’all got the value y’all heard the nuggets. Listen, make sure you are subscribed. I tell you time after time, we are going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Phil. So Mr. Phil, thank you again and everyone else. We’ll see you on the next time.
