How to Adapt, Fail Forward & Win in Real Estate Investing

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Micah Johnson speaks with Josh, a seasoned real estate professional with over 15 years of experience. They discuss Josh’s journey from working in contracting to becoming a successful realtor and hard money lender. The conversation covers the importance of hands-on experience, building relationships in the industry, and the transition to commercial real estate. Josh emphasizes the need for adaptability in a volatile market and the significance of enjoying the journey rather than just focusing on closing deals. The episode concludes with insights on how to connect with Josh for potential investment opportunities.

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
    • Fund With Sequel’s Website
    • Fund With Josh on Instagram
    • Fund With Sequel on Instagram
    • Sequel Investments on Facebook

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Josh Sell (00:00)
  You have to be willing

  to fail over and over and over again to get to that success point. I mean, how many times have you worked on a deal and it just doesn’t quite make it to the finish line, right? And most of time, thousands of times for you to be able to convert that acquisition or that refinance or, you know, you’re working on a new asset or a new type of multifamily or there’s always some.

  Micah Johnson (00:06)
  Right.

  Most of the time.

  Josh Sell (00:25)
  It’s like playing the Powerball, right? There’s like 26 million combinations you can do with your numbers and you just got to get that one that lines up to hit big

  And I, I, remember on that house, I almost went blind. I blew myself up with some electrical wires and I flooded the bathroom at one point with a broken pipe, you know, and like,

  It’s baptism by fire. It’s not everything’s going to go smooth, but you’re going to learn, aren’t you?

  Micah Johnson (00:48)
  you

  everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m speaking with Josh, who’s been making some serious moves in real estate now for the last 15 years. Josh, welcome in man. Glad to have you.

  Josh Sell (02:34)
  Thank you, appreciate it.

  Micah Johnson (02:36)
  Absolutely, man. I’m pumped for our call today. I’m glad you’re here. You’ve got a unique experience in real estate where really it’s longer than 15 years. You were doing some flipping work for your dad back in the day, but then led yourself to it. So I love being able to dig in with people that have been around the industry for a while. You’ve seen market changes. You’ve seen things shift. So much knowledge comes from that. So I’m pumped to dig in. For those that are listening and tuning in that aren’t really familiar with you yet, tell us a more about yourself and what your main focus is right now.

  Josh Sell (03:04)
  Yeah. Thanks for the introduction, Micah. You know, like you said, I’ve been in the business about 15 years. My family was full of investors. I started doing contracting work when I was really young. You know, I didn’t even understand that I was flipping houses at the time. I was just doing labor for the family. And, you know, come about 22 years old, I kind of realized, hey, my family’s been flipping houses. They’ve been renovating properties and buying and selling properties.

  And I started to gain an interest. So I jumped in. I got my real estate license at 22, became a realtor. I was contracting and started renovating properties and turning them over. And I started learning that I could sell properties to investors. Our family was financing properties with hard money. So I would sell a property, provide the hard money financing for them.

  they would renovate it all up and I would get to resell it again. I’d relist the property for sale. And that was ⁓ a pretty smart thing to do. It kind of like capitalizing from multiple angles. And I really loved that aspect of it. I would hunt down deals and find properties that maybe I wanted to buy myself or if I couldn’t take them all on myself, I would sell them to somebody else and provide the funding along with them. So.

  Micah Johnson (04:05)
  Right?

  Josh Sell (04:22)
  I gained a great deal of experience by selling hundreds of properties over the last 10 or 15 years. ⁓ I funded a lot of those investment properties. did thousands of hard money deals ⁓ and along with contracting and renovating all these properties. So that’s kind how I started and what I’ve been doing over the last 15 years. As we’ve grown, I’ve been able to

  scale into larger real estate investment opportunities, commercial opportunities, and have actually gone from kind of a regional, local, hard money lender that started in Delaware and expanded to the surrounding states to ⁓ now financing properties in all 50 states across the nation and developing a small brokerage and a team of advisors that provides financing.

  Micah Johnson (05:16)
  Man.

  Talk about insider trading, dude. Like you got to grow up in it. You’ve seen it. And now you’re a handy thing about working with someone like you is one, you know, what’s going on left, right, up and down. You know what they’re fixing to deal with after they get the money that your ability to lend. Isn’t just based on, you know, simple underwriting, you know, you know what you’re looking at more than most do in that position that you’re in. How does that let you set yourself apart from everybody else?

  Josh Sell (06:31)
  You know, I think it’s really important. Just I never knew what I was building from day one, right? But I think all these guys that are doing contracting and labor, they’re setting themselves up for a much larger success than they even know. I remember doing my first bathroom or my first tile job or installing my first kitchen cabinets, you know, and you just think it’s a job at the time.

  Or maybe you find some good reward behind some of them. I always found reward behind doing kitchen backsplash or some tile work or whatever it is. But, you know, after you do enough, you start counting the hours and the minutes that it takes you to do it and realizing the actual cost that it takes to do one bathroom, right? Five or $6,000 to do a whole kitchen, $12,000. It’s like…

  And then you can just walk into an investment property that’s in distress and you can walk through in five minutes and say, Hey, this house is going to cost 50 grand to renovate. Right. You kind of gain that experience through labor. And I think that transpired, you know, through the different aspects of real estate that I’ve, I’ve worked in.

  Micah Johnson (07:31)
  Right.

  Josh Sell (07:40)
  ⁓ where you can place all the mathematics behind it, right? When you’re selling real estate, you learn what it costs on the front end to acquire a piece of real estate and what it’s gonna cost on the back end to sell it, what it’s gonna cost to hold it. Same thing with finance, right? What are all those costs included and what are the underwriters gonna say about this investment opportunity, right? So, ⁓

  Micah Johnson (08:02)
  Right.

  Josh Sell (08:04)
  Yeah, so I think I never knew what I was building from the gate, but I think I’ve gained a great deal of experience and I love the fact that I’ve touched on so many bases through the years.

  Micah Johnson (08:12)
  Right, man. The ability to walk into a house and peg a rehab quickly, that’s a superpower in this industry, because that’s the one it takes years to learn how to do. And it typically requires you to walk through what you walk through, actually putting the screws in the wall, mounting the things, doing the thing to see, okay, this is what it actually takes. This is what we’re going to have to do.

  And just being able to walk in on that on a deal, even for your own personal self, man, that, I mean, boom, your, ability to make an offer. You’re way more confident. You know what it’s actually going to take. And then now when people are bringing you deals, you can, you can sniff through the garbage of it pretty quick. I’d imagine at this point.

  Josh Sell (08:54)
  Yeah, yeah, it’s been incredible. I like I said, I started in Delaware, but it was a very small state and I used to go and see every property that I sold and that I evaluated. ⁓ very quickly I realized I needed more room to expand and started going to Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Maryland and Florida. ⁓

  And I got to the point where I sold probably a majority of the properties that I did and funded a lot of the properties that I did without ever actually seeing them in person, based off of photos or FaceTime walkthroughs that I would do with clients. I’ve coached some investors, aspiring investors, and that have flown me out to different areas to make sure we could walk through and inspect properties really well.

  But for the most part, if I have some good solid photos or video walkthrough, can tell what this place is going to take, you know, with a little, if we need a little extra due diligence, we can do that, of course, but yeah.

  Micah Johnson (09:46)
  Right.

  I mean, once you’ve seen them, I used to move a lot of houses to hedge funds and like 30 a month between 18 and 2020. But once you see there, and I only say that because once you see their breakdown enough, I’ve read more of their rehab reports than I care to admit to the point where like you’re talking about, you can look at some photos, look at a few things and be within 500 bucks pretty much on the dot, barring any kind of surprise that sometimes pops up we all know about. And just that ability, man.

  I keep saying the word confidence, but what it allows you to do in the industry, you move different. You can help people different. You don’t, you’re not faking it, right? You are actually, know, what’s going on. You’ve gotten that. We talked about a little bit before in the pre-call, you got the education, which is in my opinion, the most important part of real estate after, or I don’t know there. It’s an action to take, get education. there’s the action in the education part. They kind of run hand in hand, but I always try to tell people like making an offer step 10.

  Josh Sell (10:29)
  Yeah.

  Micah Johnson (10:48)
  It’s not the first thing we go do. There are things that we need to do ahead of time to ensure that you’re successful. From the from the lending aspect, how are you working with investors on the daily basis of walking them through that? So if someone’s listening to this and they’re newer at it, they’re thinking, OK, what do need to pay attention to? How do I need to make sure I’m set up before I talk to Josh? What would you recommend to them?

  Josh Sell (11:45)
  Well, I’ve always worked with, you know, a sliding scale of investor from brand new aspiring investors that I can help, you know, I can recognize their strengths and help them capitalize on that to experienced investors that maybe haven’t utilized financing ever before, or, ⁓ you know, have been doing kind of a smaller scale and we can help build their portfolio. So

  You know, I mean, especially with technology now, first and foremost, you can ask AI anything and you could gain a lot of basic knowledge that we need to be able to then step up to your mentors and your peers and the people that you want to work with or you want to learn from. And you can actually have enough knowledge on your own to teach you at least the basics and some of the foundation.

  Micah Johnson (12:32)
  Right.

  Josh Sell (12:33)
  And that doesn’t mean you know everything, right? But it gives you enough knowledge to be able to walk into a conversation and have a seat at the table with somebody that knows more than you, right? So I think that’s one of the biggest things. I do have a lot of people that will come to me and say, well, how does this work? Well, I can absolutely go over that with everybody, but there’s a lot of questions we can kind of learn on our own in a sense of getting started in that way, right?

  Micah Johnson (12:43)
  Right.

  Josh Sell (12:58)
  So, but working with new investors, it’s always been a joy of mine. love education. I’ve always loved coaching. I kind of came from a coaching background. My dad was an investor’s coach for years up in Delaware. ⁓ Well-respected, really honorable guy. Did a ton of hard money lending and flipping up there. And I kind of came in when he was at the height of his coaching. So I kind of picked up that coaching mentality where

  Micah Johnson (13:22)
  Okay.

  Josh Sell (13:25)
  You know, my goal is to be able to build branches of business with different people, different investors and relationships, and everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. ⁓ so, you know, anyone who’s ever looking to be involved in investing in real estate, I love talking about flips. Flips have always been my bread and butter. They’ve always been good to me. There’s so much opportunity there.

  they just kind of fall in my lap constantly. It’s like there’s a never-ending deal flow of flips, right? Along with that, then we’ve got the BRRRR method where we can flip right into rental properties and we can hold those and we can build our portfolios for the long run ⁓ tax deferred with all the incentives, right? Ground-up construction is kind of a secondary level. It’s kind of a step above all of that. It takes a little more experience to get into that.

  It’s better for you to know your numbers and have some experience with flips and rental properties before you dive into a 300K new construction build, right? When you don’t even know your numbers yet. So, ⁓ and then as we go into the commercial space, you know, what I’ve learned is that there’s always somebody that knows more than you. There’s always somebody that has more experience than you. And we need to be able to bring opportunity to those people, to be able to sit at the table with them and to be able to work on those larger deals.

  Micah Johnson (14:24)
  Right.

  Josh Sell (14:44)
  And I look at everything that way. So whether you’re aspiring or experienced, there’s always somebody for you to look up to and for you to learn from. And I think it’s about bringing them good opportunity rather than just looking to pick their brain per se.

  Micah Johnson (14:57)
  Right, man, what a great way to say it. I love that because it’s one, love your heart behind it. One thing I’ve noticed in real estate, especially at high levels is the go giving mentality from people like those that went out and earned their stripes. Like your dad, that desire to coach for a lot of them, it comes naturally. And that desire to give back and to really pour into people.

  But what you’re saying is that other part where folks, you know, if you’re sitting there listening and watching this and you haven’t been able to get somebody to have that conversation, Josh just nailed how to do it.

  These folks get asked to pick their brain all the time. They don’t need lunch. They don’t need coffee. They can do all those things themselves. Come with real questions. Arm yourself with some information first so that when you ask a question, you’re asking a real question.

  It’s something that’s going to engage them and want them to talk back because that’s what they want to see action. No coach will keep working with you you’re not taking action. Same thing with mentors. Same thing with others. Do you have that other part? But it’s up to you up front to show that gumption to show, right? What’s the old verse? You have not because you ask not. You got to learn to ask. Nobody’s just going to come tell you. So what’s that question? Right. And the question isn’t can I pick your brain? Well, what do you want to pick my brain about?

  If you got nothing after that, we’re going to have a problem. You’re definitely not getting coffee or a lunch. That’s for sure. But, but I love that man, because it’s how do you show up in a world and provide value first? And that that’s a cliche statement almost at this point, but you need to believe it with all your heart, because it’s how you get to those next levels. Like you’re talking about. So pre-call you said 2026 y’all excited about moving into more big commercial deals and how to do that. But the fact is it’s stretching you.

  Josh Sell (16:56)
  Yeah.

  Micah Johnson (17:19)
  It’s making you learn things you haven’t learned before. mean, you’re for all practical purposes, an absolute professional at this industry. And now you’re growing yourself into a world where you’re not the smartest guy you know anymore. You’re willing to put yourself at a table and say, I don’t know. Teach me, man. This is what I do know. This is what I am learning. This is what I have done. And it’s that that gets people to really buy into you because real estate’s relationship game. That’s it. This is a relationship business at the highest levels.

  Josh Sell (17:36)
  Yeah, absolutely.

  Yeah. And, you know, talking about commercial real estate, ⁓ I think one of the biggest things that I learned, like you said, it is relationship driven. You’ve got to be able to add value to your peers, to your mentors, to be able to sit at that table with them and have the discussions to help you learn. I’ve learned that, you know, more than anybody in this last year or two really diving into commercial real estate.

  It’s been an amazing transition. ⁓ It’s a difficult balancing game to balance the high volume residential funding that we do and acquisitions and refinances and all that, you know, to keep all of that going and to be able to spend the time working on commercial lead generation and marketing and learning all of the new commercial loan programs that you can across

  15 or 20 different asset classes, right? It’s like endless. But the truth is that you don’t have to sit there and act like you know everything. You don’t need to know everything. What you need to have is some type of value to bring to your mentors, to bring to your peers, to where they say, wow, Josh just brought me a really good lead. This is valuable. And because he brought me a really good lead, I’m going to teach him everything about this asset class and see if we could do this deal again.

  Micah Johnson (18:42)
  All

  Josh Sell (19:06)
  Right? And ⁓ so I think that’s so important. There’s always going to be somebody bigger than you or more experienced than you. And it’s, you know, how can you bring value to their lives to be able to educate yourself and step up to that level?

  Micah Johnson (19:07)
  phone.

  I love that man. I love it. Cause if you’re the coolest person, you know, out there, you got to expand your circle. That that’s your rule. And that mentality doesn’t do well in high levels of real estate for 99 % of the people you’re going to run into because everybody in real estate, if you’ve been in a long time, you earned your way there. I think about it like, it’s like the PGA tour, right? I like golf because you can’t talk trash about golf. You can talk all you want to you put the ball on the tee and then not get to watch you play.

  Josh Sell (19:27)
  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  Micah Johnson (19:51)
  Now I get to see you do what

  you are talking about. And at the highest levels of golf, everybody there earned their seat at that table. That’s why they’re there. They put in the reps that nobody watched for years and years and years. They went through the heartbreak. They went through the glory. They’ve done that to earn their right to sit there where to them being that isn’t a big deal because they worked their asses off to get there. That’s why you got there. And

  Same thing in the high levels of real estate. They’re not there by accident. You get a seat at the table by doing the work, showing that you’re willing to show up and being willing to say, don’t know, I’ll go learn. I don’t know that. Nobody wants to work with somebody that knows everything. It’s impossible. You can’t

  everything. Right.

  Josh Sell (20:33)
  And you got to be willing to fail, right? You have to be willing

  to fail over and over and over again to get to that success point. I mean, how many times have you worked on a deal and it just doesn’t quite make it to the finish line, right? And most of time, thousands of times for you to be able to convert that acquisition or that refinance or, you know, you’re working on a new asset or a new type of multifamily or there’s always some.

  Micah Johnson (20:41)
  Right.

  Most of the time.

  Josh Sell (21:00)
  It’s like playing the Powerball, right? There’s like 26 million combinations you can do with your numbers and you just got to get that one that lines up to hit big into that next level, right? But you just keep doing it and you keep pushing a little further and you break down that next wall and you take it a little further until finally you get that clear to close on that big multifamily building or that big marina that you’re working on, you know, whatever it might be. Gotta be willing to fail for it.

  Micah Johnson (21:11)
  Right.

  Yeah. And you see the loop close.

  Like failing. I try to teach my kid this and tell other people this. If failing really bothered you, you wouldn’t have learned to walk. Like really, if it really bothered you, you’d still be crawling around because I watch my kids are 10 and 12 now and I watched them fall down over and over and over again. I never saw them get upset and say, I’m just staying on the floor from now on. And it’s what I try to show up. You’re like, look, it’s okay. Failing is the point.

  Josh Sell (21:36)
  Hahaha

  Yeah.

  Micah Johnson (21:52)
  If you can understand that the process of perfection includes failure, your world will light up. Because then you won’t take it so personal. Does it feel good? No. Okay. Like it never feels good to fail. I’ll be the first to tell you. Do you let it wreck your day? No. No, it’s just not helpful. It just is. My mentor, one the he really, we were talking about a couple of weeks ago.

  He was in the commercial real estate in New York City for a long time. And he said, Micah, do you know why I have a highlight reel? You know, I’ve done all the cool stuff I’ve done. I said, well, why? cause I have a low light reel.

  because I can’t, I can show you how often I messed up and how terrible it went and the stuff I had to go through to do all the cool things I got to do. And it’s, love hearing it. He’s fixing to turn 70. And it’s one of my favorite things is to see somebody far ahead of me that’s really been successful to say that right there. Like it’s okay. Embrace the low light. Create the highlight.

  Josh Sell (22:35)
  Yeah.

  I was getting…

  I was going to say that with one of my mentors during one of the first houses that I ever renovated, ⁓ he said, you’re ready. He said, is baptism by fire, right? He said, I’ve showed you everything to do. Just go do it. Right. And I, I, remember on that house, I almost went blind. I blew myself up with some electrical wires and I flooded the bathroom at one point with a broken pipe, you know, and like,

  It’s baptism by fire. It’s not everything’s going to go smooth, but you’re going to learn, aren’t you?

  Micah Johnson (23:17)
  you

  That’s

  right. And there’s only, there’s only that way to learn. Like there’s so much book knowledge until you got to go take that and apply it to the real world, apply it to the house you’re working in, the deal you’re working on, the loan, cause that’s just it, man. And don’t get upset by it. And it leads me to one of the last thoughts we were talking about before we started recording, which is enjoying the present and the journey.

  Enjoying where you are right then, whether you’re where you’re at now in this phase where you’re getting ready to grow. Enjoy the beginning too. Like don’t feel like you need some kind of accomplishment to start enjoying it because if you only live for closing days in real estate, you’re missing out on your whole life. Like the entire thing. We don’t close that often. It takes months to do it typically. So if only thing is going to be a win is a closing or a sale.

  It’s going to be a tough life for you. You’re not going to enjoy what you can. And when I first got in real estate, I got on that treadmill where I was just living for closing days and 45 days at a time, my life was going by and I wasn’t paying any attention to it. And then all of a sudden I realized like, Whoa, years have gone by and all I can tell you that’s happened is how many deals I’ve closed. I can’t really tell you much else because I just wasn’t paying attention to it.

  Josh Sell (24:19)
  Yep.

  Micah Johnson (24:30)
  and it forced to slow down. Wait a second, hold on. What’s really happening right now? Do I need to be running around like this? Is this helping those deals close? No, it’s not helping at all. It’s going to do its thing. Real estate’s team sport. I wasn’t even involved in the part that was going on, right? You get it under contract. Now you got your lenders, underwriters, all the things that got to happen where you’re just kind of sitting there. If you’re only focused on that closing, man, you just miss out on life. And that’s what I don’t like to see for people.

  Josh Sell (24:40)
  Yeah.

  Micah Johnson (24:57)
  I say this, a good life is made by living the individual days well. Start stacking them, man. Start stacking them. We have control over that right now. You can take control of that right now in your life. You don’t need a deal to do it. You can literally do it right now.

  Josh Sell (25:04)
  Absolutely.

  I think you’re absolutely right. ⁓ You know, after being in this business that’s so volatile over the last 15 years, you can go through a lot of ups and downs. I’ve had a lot of wins and a lot of losses. And guess what? We don’t celebrate the wins that long, right? You work your whole life to accomplish all these little wins and all these milestone achievements and you keep scaling your business and you do bigger and you do bigger and that’s great. You got to keep doing that too.

  But you got to enjoy the journey along the way. You got to live for the present because when you close that next biggest deal that you’ve ever done, you’re only going to enjoy that moment for a day or two. And then you’re going to be on the hunt for the next one. There’s always going to be something else. There’s always going to be something bigger. And I think that, you know, I think when I was younger, I had a live fast, die young mentality, right? But after accomplishing so much, ⁓

  I can’t envision this ever ending to me. I still feel young. I don’t really look at retirement as a plan in my mind because I love the hunt. I love investing. I feel best when I’m busy. I’m just not at a point where I could imagine not working, not hunting.

  Micah Johnson (26:23)
  Mm.

  Josh Sell (26:29)
  not having relationships and building opportunities and hunting down that next best opportunity, right? So I think that as I grow and as I get a little older, I just try to really sit back and realize like, what are the most enjoyable things that I go through in my life? It’s my family, it’s my fiance, it’s my dogs, it’s the life I live here in sunny Florida, it’s being near the beach, it’s going on five or 10 mile runs.

  It’s all these personal things that really matter because it doesn’t matter what we’re doing along the way. We’re going to keep hunting. We’re going to keep working. We’re going to keep trying to accomplish more. And maybe one day I will look at retirement as a real option, but look at these guys like Warren Buffett and all these guys who have been in it forever. They’re not stopping because they love it. We love it. This is what we’re best at. We are

  Micah Johnson (27:14)
  Mm-hmm.

  Josh Sell (27:22)
  We are mentally stable and at our best when we’re working on something, whatever that project or that passion is for you.

  Micah Johnson (27:30)
  Right, man. And that’s like a key of high performers. Most high performers aren’t thinking about retirement. They’re just thinking about what they’re doing because what are going to retire from? Like, what are you going to do? Just sit there and do nothing? I can’t imagine just doing nothing. Like that sounds absolutely terrible. And one of the reasons I love real estate is it pays the financial paycheck, but it especially pays that emotional paycheck. It keeps me coming back. does it for me in a way I enjoy where

  I’m learning land right now. I want to start investing in land and just the education parts like, my God, I love this. love asking my robot tons of questions and reading and doing different things and planning stuff out for what I’m going to target, why I’m going to target it. those kinds of, there is no stopping. How do you stop it? How do you stop being yourself? And that’s, that’s man. It gets me off in real estate because I’d never found an industry like that before. I was in the medical field before I grew up farming, nothing that really just like

  Josh Sell (28:04)
  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  Micah Johnson (28:27)
  scratch that itch and then you get into it and you find it and you get that drive and then that really high performer mentality can start coming out and you’re going and you end up like you’re talking about you look back at your life you’ve accomplished a lot you’ve done a lot you’re like we’re just getting warmed up baby here we go statistics say you make your most money in your 50s come on

  Josh Sell (28:44)
  And.

  think that’s what I talk about like adaptability too, because there’s some relation between adaptability and retire, retirements, right? Like I’ve been through so many different phases of real estate and markets change and regions change and states change, you know, so in real estate, have to, I’ve always felt that you have to be adaptable. And that’s why I’ve always liked being a part of so many different things.

  Micah Johnson (28:55)
  Mm-hmm.

  Josh Sell (29:13)
  I had years where I would run a contracting business and I would do renovations for other people. had years where I would go heavy on the sales. At one point I was a VIP buyer for auction.com and hub zoo and I would just fire off their auction properties and sell them to everybody. But then what happened five years ago, the bank owns dried up. That business disappeared. Right. So I had to find something new. I had to focus on finance as a whole.

  Micah Johnson (29:31)
  Right?

  Josh Sell (29:38)
  And that’s what brought me to this new phase of life is honestly, I like being able to sit in my office for 12 hours a day and just loan after loan after loan calls and conversations, talking to so many different kinds of high level players and aspiring investors, you know, but being adaptable and not being afraid to make a shift when you can sense that you need to make a shift, right? Because

  Business has not always just gone well. Everybody has had losses and changes that they know they have to make. And I think that’s just as important as anything is being able to recognize when you need to make a change and what is that change going to be? And at some point you have to be able to set aside time to focus on what that is. You don’t have to know what it is, but you better start dedicating an hour a day to figure out what your next step is. And I think that could be.

  To me, that could be a part of what retirement is to me. At some point you say, okay, maybe I’m done the hustle. How can I make this more passive or what is my new passion? What is my new passion? have everything I’ve learned. it ground up developments or is it going to be wholesaling? You can do anything you want, right? So adaptability and recognizing when change is appropriate.

  Micah Johnson (30:32)
  Mm.

  Right.

  Right.

  Absolutely, man, especially in real estate. We are a market cycle driven industry. It is volatile. It goes up and down. It does it regularly. But even in just disposition strategies, you can dry up on one and need to shift quick where, know, fix and flips in a down market can be tough in a lot of areas where you might need to start wholesaling a little bit. You might need to think about holding. might need to… No business ever just stays the same.

  If it did, it would just shut down. Like in any industry, everybody is doing that, that adaptability. So I couldn’t agree more, man. It is the, honestly, it’s probably one of the traits I see in the most successful people is that willingness to change course, to swallow that hard pill of, know, and I may have spent a lot of time building this and it was running great, but now it’s not. what? Okay. So what’s next? So what do do now? So my favorite question. So what now? I’m not stopping. Where am I going?

  Josh Sell (31:33)
  Yeah.

  Yeah. Yep. And it’s going to take hard work

  and it’s going to take hard work to make that change. And there’s going to be a lot of unknown as you make that change. But all of a sudden you’re going to come out on the other side of that change and you’re going to go, wow, I’m glad I did that. And I’ve had a lot of moments through that. I’ve done that over the years.

  Micah Johnson (32:01)
  Right, man. That enlightening feeling. So if you’re out there dealing with that and you’re thinking about making a change and it’s hard, I can’t remember the military officer who said this, but it was about the Marines. He said, Marines don’t retreat. We just fight in a different direction. Okay. So embody that and do that. It’s not about retreating. It’s about fighting in a new direction. Where are you going to go to accomplish what you’re trying to pull off?

  Josh Sell (32:08)
  Uh-uh.

  That’s good, I like that.

  Micah Johnson (32:25)
  Josh, man, I could have this kind of conversation all day, buddy. I’ve really enjoyed it. I appreciate you being here. Thanks for sharing your story. I think we need more folks out there doing it like you’re doing it with heart, with passion, actually caring. That’s the secret sauce in business. Actually caring sets you apart. So for folks that are listening in that would be interested in touching base with you, possibly booking a call with you, learn more about lending, what’s the best way for them to find you?

  Josh Sell (32:48)
  Yeah, so the best way that you could get in touch with us would be go to fundwithsql.com. We actually just launched our brand new website for the third time over the last few years. ⁓ You can submit your loan or your opportunity right there with a quick questionnaire. It takes about one minute and then you can follow up with a free consultation and a schedule a call with us. ⁓ We’re very quick to respond.

  I like to handle and evaluate deals very quickly. I’ve never been one for procrastination. Like we talked about, I’m one for taking action. So if I’ve got a deal in front of me, I like to evaluate it quick. I like to learn what we’re working with. So go to fundwithsequel.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook under SQL Investments or on Instagram, fundwithsequel. ⁓

  Yeah, feel free to check us out and I’d love to connect with everyone.

  Micah Johnson (33:47)
  that man. So if you’re listening or watching in, check our show notes. We’re going to have all of Josh’s links there. Like I say on this show repeatedly, we bring on professionals for a reason. Reach out to people and talk with people who know what they’re talking about. They’re active in the business. They’re not just there to sell you stuff. They’re actually there to help pull your dream off too.

  So take that opportunity, reach out to Josh if his service is something you’re needing. Again, Josh, thanks for being with us today, man. I appreciate you. Thank you everybody out there listening and watching in. If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else that can get value out of it. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. Appreciate every single one of you that follows along out there with us. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Josh.

  out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you on the next episode.