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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Rashad Rizzo, a successful real estate investor who shares his journey from personal struggles to building a real estate empire. Rashad discusses the importance of mentorship, the challenges of real estate investing, and the opportunities within Section 8 housing. He emphasizes the significance of land ownership and the various strategies for entering the real estate market, particularly for beginners.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Rashad Rizzo (00:00)
I had like $100 left, I remember this, and it was like, damn, I can go buy some food or I can go buy some signs. So I went and bought some what we call bandit signs, all right? That’s for wholesaling. And I went and took my cousin’s car, he let me take his car, and I put him out, and that was my last hundred bucks that I had. And after that, somebody called me and I did a $4,000 deal. And with that $4,000 deal…I want to get some, then I just start, you know what mean? Then I start building up from there.
Erika (02:02)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m joined by someone that I’ve been looking forward to chat with, Rashad Rizzo. He’s been making serious moves in the investing space. Rashad, I’m glad to have you here.Rashad Rizzo (02:19)
man, appreciate it. Glad to be here.Erika (02:21)
I think our listeners are really going to have a lot to learn with your approach. So let’s dive on in. First, can you share with people who aren’t familiar with your world? How did you get started in the real estate investing world?Rashad Rizzo (02:36)
Well, I got started in real estate a couple different ways. First way when my mind really got into it is 2008 is when really real estate got on my radar. My mom lost her house and she was kind of devastated by it I always wanted to know how did she lose her house and what really went down with that. And so it made me very interested in real estate when probably other than that I wouldn’t have been.I was more trying to go to school to be like a lawyer or something like that. So when that happened, that’s when I realized that I want to write this wrong for my mother. And that’s what got me interested in it initially. I really couldn’t do nothing about it then, but I fast forwarded later and should I tell that story again or no?
Erika (03:31)
Yeah, yeah, go for it.Rashad Rizzo (03:33)
I don’t know, because I’m just like, cut. Do I still bring it back in or like, I don’t know. All right, I got your back, baby. And so I fast forward until later. I was working at Verizon and my dad came in one day and he said, can you give me a phone, son? And I said, sure. I went to the back, got him a phone.Erika (03:36)
Yeah.Rashad Rizzo (03:59)
And when I came back in, he said, what are you doing? I said, I’m getting you a phone. That’s what you asked me for, right? I mean, you could tell me and my dad, we don’t have the best relationship. I mean, it wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t like the best. He was around, you know what I mean? But I think everybody doesn’t like their parents, but that’s another story, right? And so ultimately, well, when they’re young, know, everybody doesn’t like their parents when they’re young. And then, you know, but that’s a whole nother story. So I was still kind of filling my own oats.with my dad and he came in there and he said, son, what are you doing? And I said, well, I’m thinking I’m making a lot of money. I think I’m doing good. Like, what do you mean? He said, well, how much are you making? I said, I’m making a hundred thousand a year. And he said, well, how much do you make per sale here at Verizon? And I said, commission wise, I make about $100 per phone. And he said,
⁓ really? Okay, okay, okay. He said, well have you ever seen somebody sell a yacht? And I said, no, I never thought about a yacht before. He said, well people that sell yachts make 100,000 per sail, per yacht. And I said, okay. And he said, I said don’t know anything about yachts. And he said, it doesn’t matter son, he said.
The same people that buy phones buy yachts. So if you can sell a phone, you can sell a yacht. And he said, what is your time worth? And so I thought about that and it just bothered me and bothered me and I said, damn, he’s right. Right? And so I didn’t get into yachts, but it made me remember that I did have an interest and wanted to get into real estate. So I looked at how much does people make per real estate and I said, the most millionaires.
or in real estate. I said, word, I done found the jackpot, Lordy Jesus. Right? And so I was already good at sales. I said, you know what? I’m going just sell real estate. And so I jumped into that and that was hard because to be honest, I didn’t have all the things that I needed to start, but me, my mind, how I am, I just jump in cold turkey. And so if I know I can do something better and do what I’m doing, I’m going stop doing what I’m doing and do something, do something better.
So I literally stopped working at Verizon. Well, I was trying to like do both, but they seen that I wasn’t all the way there mentally and they pretty much fired me, right? So they fired me from Verizon and within like three months, had a, cause I had a nice car, I’m Mercedes, I’m living in the high rise apartment, luxury apartment. I’m doing good. From three months from them firing me, I thought I would be able to figure something out by then. I hadn’t did a deal yet.
And so in that three months, I lost my car, I lost ⁓ my apartment, and I lost my girlfriend. Imagine that in three months, right? But I was down, and I went to go sleep, to be honest, went to go sleep on my cousin’s, ⁓ he didn’t even have a couch, because he had just moved in his apartment, he didn’t even have all this furniture. So I was sleeping on his floor. But for some reason,
I wasn’t like deterred. For some reason I wasn’t destroyed. It felt like I was finally going in the right direction that I needed to go. Even though I didn’t have anything, it’s like I lost everything. But I was like, you know what? For some reason I was still not depressed. And so I think that was the point that I realized, okay, if I’m not broken already, then I’m gonna do this. So I got up and…
I had like $100 left, I remember this, and it was like, damn, I can go buy some food or I can go buy some signs. So I went and bought some what we call bandit signs, all right? That’s for wholesaling. And I went and took my cousin’s car, he let me take his car, and I put him out, and that was my last hundred bucks that I had. And after that, somebody called me and I did a $4,000 deal. And with that $4,000 deal…
I want to get some, then I just start, you know what mean? Then I start building up from there.
I started getting more signs, more deals, and then I was figuring it out. But.
It was a hard beginning, but now I own 37 properties, right? And I’ve done millions and millions of dollars worth of deals. I can’t even count. But I’ve done it. I can’t even count how many deals I’ve done, but I know it’s in the millions and millions. ⁓ Wholesale, real estate, commercial, all kinds of things. But I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t start with…
You know, nothing, like start over. I could have just stayed in that lane and kept going down that path I was going. And who knows, I might’ve got to raise every horizon. I might even be a manager right now. I might be making 120. You know what I’m saying? But to be saying, okay, I was making 120 a year to making six figures in one deal. You know, that’s a whole different ball game, but yeah, so.
Erika (10:41)
wow, that is really, really amazing that you know when you were going through you know what could have been one of the roughest moments in your life and you could have just given up that you had the grit to keep going. Where there any lessons that you learned from those early years doing those first few deals that you still carry with you today?Rashad Rizzo (11:09)
All of them, tons. Well, one thing I learned is don’t try to do anything on your own. Like the difference between a small business and a corporation is delegation. So it’s like, a lot of times people start a business, but they want to continue to do the main things in that business and continue to be every different part of that business. And really what they’re doing is they’rethat really holding themselves back from growth, right? And I learned that another thing that I learned is that sometimes you gotta go back to go forward. I went backwards, but I still already knew that I was gonna go forward eventually, right? And sometimes that’s in business, because people think business is a straight line, but in reality it’s kind of like a loop, right?
Sometimes you gotta go up, sometimes you gotta go down. Sometimes you make money, sometimes you gotta spend money to make more money. As long as the final trajectory is going up, but it’s not always just a straight line, sometimes it’s like this, right? So once I learned that, then I learned that in different aspects that even when you hire somebody and they’re doing something that you’re supposed to be doing, like say you might hire somebody to take over sales.
They’re not gonna do it as good as you right away. You see what I mean? So you’re gonna go down in sales. So you just gotta be ready for that. And then you can rehire somebody else though. And now you got two people that’s not as good as you, but if two people have as good as you, that’s you, right? There’s multiple people that you can hire. So if you take yourself out, remove yourself, but you have to remove yourself first to be able to get that going.
and take a dip in sales to be able to get that going. So that’s what I learned. Sometimes subtraction equals addition. And that was one thing that I learned while I was sleeping on my cousin’s floor, no doubt. Definitely. Definitely, definitely, yeah.
Erika (13:19)
When it came to the delegation, what were you, what did you start delegating first?Rashad Rizzo (13:26)
My first start of delegating was ⁓ my Dis Dispo. So I would pick up leads and then I would let somebody else disperse them. I was like, go find some buyers and we’ll Dispo like that. So I was just letting people kind of JV with me so I could have more time to just because I didn’t feel likeAnd then I stopped feeling like talking to the customers. I was like, well, I don’t even want to talk to the salespeople. I don’t want to talk to the seller that much. So I started training people how to pick up properties and what to say in there. I started making scripts. And then so they started picking up the properties for me. Then I had somebody dispelling them for me ⁓ as well. And I pretty much was, I didn’t have to do much. But two things about wholesaling.
that I know for sure, ⁓ and I tell a lot of my mentor mentees this, is that there’s two questions that people ask me about wholesaling. The first question they ask me is, how do they get into it? And then the second question they ask about it is, ⁓ how do they get out? They want to get in, they want to get out because that is a low hanging fruit.
of real estate is literally like having a job. It’s literally like, you you’re pretty much working for the least amount of the whole pot, right? And so it’s still good money compared to other things, right? You can make a lot of money doing it, but it’s kind of hard to scale. And so once I realized that, because you got to sell salespeople and salespeople are ultimately like you, right? They just know whatever they… ⁓
The thing that’s different between them and you is what they know. And once they get that knowledge on processes and how your systems work, then they can go do their own thing. And that’s what you want to do, because that’s what you want their mindset to be like when you hire them in the first place. So when I realized you can’t really scale, then I realized that I had to do other parts of real estate that are more scalable. So I started doing Section 8 real estate.
to where that was more scalable for me, to where I could just buy properties and sell them and just run them out to the government.
Erika (16:36)
Talk more about Section 8. What do you find exciting? What’s the opportunity there?Rashad Rizzo (16:43)
The opportunity to section 8 is uncapped. It’s uncapped potential. It’s many properties that you could find that you can get with creative real estate. And you don’t have to worry about the interest rates of today. You don’t have to worry about dealing with banks. You don’t have to worry about FHA loans, which some people can’t even get right now because the government shut down. So…All those things you don’t have to worry about, can go straight to source, which is the owner, you can do owner finance, or you can do some type of creative deal to where it makes sense for you and makes sense for the owner as well that is selling you the property. My thing is with a wholesale deal or even a flip, you only get paid one time, right, when you sell it. With a section eight deal, I get paid when I buy it, which is it has equity in it, right?
I get paid every single month from cash flow and I get paid from the appreciation that it gains as I own it alright. So there’s three different ways I can refinance that money out, take it, if I need actual liquid, go get it, but at the same time it’s my net worth. Right? So it’s a bunch of different aspects that you can make with just one deal of making money. So that’s the main thing I like about it is that it’s like a, you do the work once.
and you get paid forever.
Erika (18:10)
Yeah, yeah, you can reap a lot of benefits in different ways. Are there any challenges with it, though? Is there any downside people should be aware of?Rashad Rizzo (18:19)
Yeah, well, section eight is like real estate in general. Real estate in general is a challenge and it’s a risk, right? And that’s why it’s a lot of people that don’t get into it is because it’s so hard to actually get to where you’re making money and understand the terms, the lingo, and just understand that the actual risk, because risk and real estate are different than risk. in other fields because the amount of funds that it takes to create that risk is so high, right? So you can mess up, if you mess up big, if you don’t know one little thing, it can be a big price to pay, right? Literally, like as far as your cash and cashflow. And so one mistake can mess you up and just, and throw you out of the game until you can’t get back to where you can’t recover.Right. One mistake. So I would say just get a mentor. Find somebody that’s doing what you already done. It could be somebody local. It could be somebody online. It could be both. I have multiple mentors myself. And so what I would suggest is just see how they do it and then just do it exactly the same way. Real estate has been here for years and years and years and nothing new under the sun with real estate. And it’s like you just have to find somebody that’s already done it.
and just do it just like them. Like cheat on the test. That’s what we say. That’s the best answer. Did I answer your question? I’m sorry.
Erika (19:58)
Yeah, yeah, you did. We were talking about the pitfalls, but you transitioned with talking about the importance of finding a mentor. And actually, that’s great because I wanted to talk more about that with what you do and your coaching there because you have a lot to offer there in terms of how you’re helping others.Rashad Rizzo (20:21)
appreciate you. for sure.Erika (20:24)
Yeah, you, Rashad, can you share more about how you help people get into investing and where you advise them?Rashad Rizzo (20:34)
Yeah, I advise people to get invested at the lowest price points possible. So whether that’s subject to, whether that’s owner finance, or credit finance, rent to own. I know now it’s 22. It was 21, now it’s 22. 22 different strategies to get you into real estate. And a lot of them, you don’t even need money.You know what I’m saying? So I just teach my mentees a lot of those different strategies and show them different opportunities that where they might not see opportunities at first.
Erika (21:18)
What are some of the strategies that you find to be really helpful when they’re just getting started off? Can you get into some of the specifics?Rashad Rizzo (21:27)
Yeah, I mean, it just depends on ⁓ the deal. you can go, if somebody, you can go sub too. I know a lady that she was older and her husband died. She didn’t have, she couldn’t pay for a mortgage. And so her family wanted her to move back, but she didn’t have enough equity in the property to be able to sell it. So she just thought it was just gonna be a…just gonna be a dent on her credit. And so she wanted to move. think she lived, her family lived in somewhere up north, I think Atlanta or something like that. And she wanted to move there with them and they wanted her to move there because she was older and they wanted to watch her since her husband wasn’t there. And so I came by and she reached out to us. I came by, talked to her about it and just see where she stood because…
At that time, people, if you don’t have a certain amount of equity in a property, people are not even going to touch it. It’s like 75 % plus the repairs, right? And so if you don’t have that spread, a regular investor is not even going to look your way and they don’t care about your properties or about your problems if they can’t make money, right? So she called me and I came out and she said, I don’t have much equity and that’s what they keep telling me and this and that. I said, don’t worry about it.
And so I took the property from her and it was really no, she didn’t charge me anything for it. She just said, just, you can have it just as long as you take it over. So we wound up taking it over and the PITI, which is the property taxes, insurance, interest in the principal, all of that was the mortgage, right? Quote unquote, the mortgage. The mortgage was so low that
the FMR, which is the fair market rent, was so much more higher in her area that I could rent that property out. I could do just rent it out, just long-term rental, or I could have done a past split. I could have done, at that time, Airbnb was a thing. So I had all these different options that I could have used it for that these regular investors wasn’t thinking about. so that’s just a…
a thing that we’re not. Now I got a property for free. Now I got like, I think I got $80,000 of equity in that property. Just from having it over the years. So that’s a property I spent not one penny on. You know? So.
Erika (24:07)
That’sa really unique strategy there. Well, Rashad, what would you say is next on the horizon? Are you looking for more deals like that or what have you got in mind?
Rashad Rizzo (24:17)
Well, for me, I just want to bring as many people, make as many people as aware of real estate as possible and how important it is to own land, to own properties. We was talking earlier and now we was talking about, and I’ll tell you about how the two biggest wars right now, Ukraine used to be Russia, right? ⁓ Gaza and Israel are in the same spot.Israel used to be Gaza. So those people are fighting for land. It’s a fight for land. And they’re literally going to war for it. And so it’s like, people in America, we don’t understand how important it is to have land because you can’t do anything else without land. I was listening to Killer Mike, which is a rapper. I don’t know if you know, if you’re familiar. Oh, okay, okay. Atlanta rapper.
named Killer Mike and he was talking about, you know, ⁓ asking people, said, can you hunt? And he’s like, how many people can hunt? now so many people raised their hand. They said, how many people can fish? And some people raised their hand. And then he said, how many people know how to grow crops? then like less people raised their hand, right? And he said, yeah, well, if you want your own stability and you want your own this and that, you gotta be able to be able to do all those things, right?
and people were getting frustrated. But my thing was, as I’m watching it, I’m like, well, how you gonna hunt? Whose land you gonna hunt on? Whose land are you gonna grow crops on? You gotta get the land first. We skipping steps. You gotta get land first before you start planting seeds or before you start hunting, because you can’t just hunt on anybody’s land. my thing is for people is just to go out there and get land and get as much as you can. If it’s in good areas, even better. So… ⁓
You can pass that down to your, you can pass that to your uhm family. Worst case scenario, best case scenario, you can grow some crops. Grow corn, all kind of things, because the way eggs is going, you can buy chickens. Matter of fact, know somebody that, a friend of mine, he does real estate and he bought a lot and he just put chickens on them. Now he just has the chickens for eggs. He just uses the chickens for eggs, so now he don’t buy eggs anymore.
I’m saying but like no, I don’t blame you because eggs is crazy high right now You know what I’m saying? And if you can if they keep if that keeps going up and that trajectory only thing that we’re gonna be able to do is grow our own crops, so
Erika (26:58)
Yeah, having ⁓ having your own real estate is so important. Well, Rashad, this has been great. If someone today listening wants to connect, reach out, learn more, maybe they want to collaborate on a deal, maybe they’re looking for some advice. What’s the best way for them to reach you?Rashad Rizzo (27:17)
You can reach me on Instagram, Instagram, TikTok, Rashad Rizzo everywhere, YouTube. Yeah, just DM me. want it all.Erika (27:33)
I appreciate you being here Rashad sharing your story and your expertise today.Rashad Rizzo (27:39)
Appreciate you having me.Erika (27:41)
And for our listeners today, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with experts like Rashad who are out there building fantastic real estate empires. We’ll see you on the next episode.
