How to Build Real Estate Wealth with Rental Properties | Joel Miller

Joel Miller (00:00)
people actually can have preconceptions too much to the good or too much to the bad. Like, for example, they might think that they’re not going to invest in real estate because they just believe it’s all broken toilets and bad tenants. And they also might invest because they think it’s all rainbows and unicorns and all they have to do is buy this rental property and

get the money every month and there’s nothing, no effort involved. It’s really somewhere in between. And as I said, the key is to get educated about it so that you get rid of your preconceptions and your doubts about whether it can be done,

Micah Johnson (02:11)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Joel Miller, who’s been making serious moves in real estate investing for quite some time now. Joel, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.

Joel Miller (02:23)
Good to be with you, Micah. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Micah Johnson (02:26)
Absolutely, absolutely. Man, I’m excited for today. You’re coming back, you were with us last June. Now you’re coming back again, checking in with us this year. You’ve got some exciting things that are coming out that I’m pumped to dig into that really hit on the mindset stuff, team building stuff, philosophical things that we can dig through based on what you just put out. So I’m pumped to dig in today, man. So for those who aren’t familiar with you yet, let’s get started there. Tell us a little more about yourself and what your main focus is right now.

Joel Miller (02:51)
Well, Mike, I am from Erie, Pennsylvania, little halfway between Cleveland and Buffalo, right along Lake Erie there, and been a landlord now since 1978. in the early 90s, started flipping houses, flipped over 100 houses. And in 2018, got into hard money lending, which is actually my primary focus now. I haven’t been accumulating property as much as I’ve been disposing of property lately. And ⁓

Then while we were all sitting around during COVID, I started making some notes, which turned into my bestselling book called Build Real Estate Wealth. Enjoy the Journey of Rental Property Investment. Took about four years to get it out after I, from when I started, you know, and came out about a year ago. And it’s about investing in rental property and how you can add rental property to your already busy life, which is what I did. I had another parallel career.

for 35 years and a lot of people think that real estate is not for them. So this book is written not only to the seasoned investor that’s looking for some new game changing information to supercharge what they already have going, but also for somebody that’s starting out or maybe even doesn’t think real estate is for them because they don’t understand it or they have something else going that they don’t want to give up, like a good career or a job or a hobby that takes a lot of their time.

This talks about how you can add rental property to that so that you increase your income and bolster your retirement, which your other activity may not be providing for you. And it also has all the tools in there to push on the path of getting to the point where you give up your W-2 job, if that’s what your goal is, so you can do the whole real estate thing full time. ⁓

But I’ve been in a long time. actually can tell you that I have a couple of specific memories from ⁓ junior high that really set me on my path. know, the first thing is some investor built four four unit townhouses right on the edge of our subdivision on my right on my paper route. And I remember kind of doing the math on like, OK, you know, because we all live with our parents in single family homes that they own, you know, this this whole thing about OK, these people live there. They.

pay to be there and kind of had a rudimentary understanding of that and sort of stuck that in my back pocket and said, yeah, I want to do that later. And the other thing was one of the older kids in the neighborhood built a pirate radio station in his basement with the antenna flagpole in the back. A pirate radio station is illegal, unlicensed radio station. And I get to hang out there and that’s where I decided I wanted to be a DJ.

I actually did work in radio production in high school and went to college where I got a degree in accounting, but also worked at the campus radio station.

And, and then, uh, went full time on, on the radio, uh, before I got out of college. And then, uh, about a year after that, um, uh, ended up pioneering the mobile DJ business in this part of the country. So I did, did that for 35 years, um, uh, retired from that in 2011, but I did.

Micah Johnson (05:57)
Okay.

Joel Miller (06:03)
5,051 appearances during that time. And I had bought my first rental property ⁓ only about six months after my first mobile DJ appearance. Or excuse me, six months after I left radio. I had just stuck with radio about a year after my first mobile DJ appearance because I found out I could make more money in one night than I was making all week at the radio station. So that was my point is that I…

built my real estate portfolio while I had this other career going, you know, and then after I retired from the DJ business, I expanded the rental property business and as I said, got into hard money lending, you know, but so the book is ⁓ about that and it starts with things other than just, okay, here’s how you buy property and here’s how you have the property and here’s how you get rid of the property. That’s the middle part of the book.

Micah Johnson (06:40)
Gotcha.

Joel Miller (07:42)
The beginning is,

getting in the right mindset for investing, and ⁓ understanding that you can overcome your hesitations about it and your preconceptions, which might be too much to the positive or too much to the negative, by education. And this is an educational tool. ⁓ So it starts with that and then goes through building your team, starting an entity that you should have in place before you start making offers on property. And then it picks up after the whole

Micah Johnson (08:02)
I want to pause right

Joel Miller (08:14)
having the rental property thing with like you were alluding to ⁓ with ⁓ philosophical discussions on things like the difference between riches and wealth and so on. And also ⁓ a lot of best practices for keeping calamity out of your business and personal life. I’m all about that. know, head it off at the back. Don’t have the calamity. Don’t spend your life putting out fires. You know, do something to prevent fires.

Micah Johnson (08:32)
Man.

All right.

I love that, man. I love that. Now what led you, what led you to write in a book? When did that become a desire?

Joel Miller (08:45)
Well, as I said, they started around 2020 and that was about the time that it became apparent that my then middle teenage son was showing interest in wanting to ⁓ follow in the rental property business. so, know, Micah, I kind of wrote this book as though he might be the only one who ever reads it. And what that means to your listener or somebody that’s

thinking about in the book is that there’s nothing in this book that I haven’t done or wouldn’t do if I had the opportunity and that I wouldn’t tell my own son to do. And so there’s no BS in there and ⁓ it’s a very clear path to ⁓ accomplishing significant things in the real estate business. And just to fast forward,

He graduated from high school in 2024 and he bought his first rental property about a week after he graduated from high school. He’s now a sophomore at Penn State at the branch campus that’s here in Erie and the business department’s finance major and he bought his second rental property last year and as we are recording this, it’s been about three weeks or so since he closed on his buying his first property to flip.

Micah Johnson (09:45)
Hell yeah.

Joel Miller (10:06)
And it’s going to be very profitable for him. But he needs the money. Micah, I’ll tell you why he needs the money. Because the plan is for him to take over our stuff in a couple of years after he gets out of college. But I’m not giving it to him. He’s going to buy it. And so although I intend to ⁓ hold the paper, that’s our eggs instead. I say ours, my wife and I, his mom. ⁓

Micah Johnson (10:07)
Love it.

Joel Miller (10:34)
The plan would be to hold the paper on the properties, which would all be free and clear by that point. And I told him, no, said, Brandon, you know, I’ll give you a good price and good terms, but you know, I’m not going to the closing to sell you my property and bringing money. you got to have it down payment here. So that’s what he said.

Micah Johnson (10:52)
Right? Business

buddy. It’s business. Well, I love that angle on it. I want to jump back to that where you wrote it from a place where you’re sharing it with your son. And that’s really what makes, my opinion, powerful writing is where it’s coming from, who it’s to what it’s for. And when you’re going through that mindset of, I actually want my son to be successful and understand all the aspects that I’ve learned through my career. Cause you’re, you’re touching on all of them.

Like real estate forces you to become a different person that you got to become the person that can do it. That whether it’s starting out with mindset, believing it is for you, right? Getting over stories you were told about it. Just actually thinking, I can do this. This is for me. I can, I can be this investor. It’s not this like thing outside my mind. I can actually do it. And then moving through all the stages that create it, especially into that, that last one.

So many folks create a business or go into real estate investing, end up just becoming self-employed. They didn’t, they didn’t become free. They didn’t find that thing that they were going in there looking for. And a lot of most of them didn’t know you have to do that on purpose. They thought they would just be a by-product of a bunch of hard work, but that’s not what does that. So I love that you’re showing it and that big thing he’s getting results.

So if he read it in the past four years, he’s now putting those things into action and getting those results, man. So you’re getting, you’re getting powerful feedback from the audience. It was originally written for that means the rest of the audience they’re going to get it’s like dessert, man. That’s killer.

Joel Miller (12:19)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s, ⁓ I’m very proud of him with what he’s done so far. And actually, Mike, I, I believe he’ll, if he sticks with this and I believe that he will, because it’s all he’s interested in, ⁓ he’ll do more with it than, than I ever did, you know? And, cause he has a running start. Let’s, I admit that, you know, I started from nothing. had, you know, great.

Micah Johnson (13:19)
Right.

Joel Miller (13:22)
parents and

you know, good ⁓ upbringing, but I didn’t have any real inheritance or advantages. My dad worked for the government and my parents never owned any investment property. They owned two houses in the course of their married life, you know, and ⁓ when I started investing though, my dad, who was fortunate to retire fairly early, was able to lend a hand on things and I learned a lot of

this, you know, carpentry work and other sort of things like that, that I’m glad that I learned and experienced. I want to point out that although your goal might be to, you know, have your full-time income or your main income from rental property and in order to do that, you can’t be doing every little thing that comes up with the property. I would point out that it’s okay in the beginning to

to do as much of that stuff as you can because I know that for me doing it, it meant that I learned how things are done and what to ask somebody else to do and whether it’s being done right and ultimately, you know, a reasonable price that should be paid for that sort of stuff so that as I moved into basically directing other people to

do all that stuff. I wasn’t doing it from a position of someone who had never done what most of these craftsmen are doing, you know, whenever they go out to work for me. ⁓ he’s on this flip. He’s utilizing a number of contractors that are, you know, familiar to us already from working on my property and actually one new one who is ⁓ familiar to us, but it’s our

first project together and he’s also he’s not only an investor and he’s not only a contractor but he’s also an investor with a couple of partners and by himself in other flip properties and is in fact one of my lending clients you know so somebody very familiar to us and and he and one of the other lead contractors have both agreed that they will allow my son to work

Micah Johnson (15:22)
Nice.

Okay.

Joel Miller (15:41)
for them whenever he can on the project because he’s a student, you know, he can’t work there all day every day. And then we’ll just keep track of his hours and then in the end they will subtract from what they are owed the payment for his time working with them, you know, and they will not only allow him to work doing things that he already knows how to do but also teach him how to do things that he’s not experienced yet. So it’s pretty good arrangement.

Micah Johnson (16:00)
That’s awesome.

Yeah, that’s powerful. it’s, you know, I want to go back to that story there real quick, because what I see and what it gets me excited and I want folks to see it is how a family actually progresses. Right? Like we all start in different places, you know, and so you got to start with a lot of love in the household, but not a lot of resources. That in and of itself is a powerful position to start from, it lets you get to this next one where you get to work, you you start to see

The possibilities you start doing it and now it leads to, and this is how the way you’re describing it with your son is how, I mean, the oldest stories say it this way. Heck, I think Jesus said it in a story this way where, you know, he gave one person one talent, one person three and one person five or something like that. the, whoever gets the most, you should be able to create more. That’s the point. Like you don’t stop working. Like your chance at affecting it isn’t less.

what you can do is just bigger. And that’s the benefit of living stacked work. It excites me for my kids. I’m hoping they want to follow in dad’s footsteps. Certainly 10 and 12 right now. But I lived at that same thing. Except I started a little bit further back. Not a great house, not any resources. So I spent a lot of years figuring out, okay, how do you even have a good family? Man, how do you do this? How do you show love in a good household? Solve that. Now it’s okay. How do you build that financial platform that you can actually grow from so they start even further?

And it’s just the way, and I love that that’s how it’s happening. So if you’re listening out there, you know, whatever stage you’re at and your family’s line, you may be the first one that’s changing everything. You may be the beneficiary of multiple people in front of you doing it. Just understand the position you’re getting in and the work that’s in front of you, because that’s what leads ultimately to the generational wealth. You hear everybody talking about making right. Create generational wealth.

Okay, to do that, like you’re saying, it’s bigger than just money. It’s team building, it’s philosophy, it’s family, it’s all these different things because a human’s quite a dynamic thing. They’re not just one thing. have my mentor, he calls it role-based living, right? Which role are you in? Are you dad right now? Are you husband right now? Are you boss right now? Like, which one is it? Because we have all of these, it’s getting all those in order. It’s living each role well.

And that lets you just boom, keep going further and further and further and then done well. Your people after you pick it up and keep running with it. And that’s, it’s exciting, man. Good job. Congratulations. I don’t know if anybody’s told you in a while, but congrats, man. You off something cool.

Joel Miller (18:39)
Well, thank you.

You know, and I will ⁓ expand on your mention of the parable of the talents in the Bible. If you recall, ⁓ the ones that got in your example three and five talents and so on, they invested for the master while the master was gone, and ⁓ they were told, you know, well done, faithful servant, you know.

Micah Johnson (19:04)
Hmm.

Joel Miller (19:05)
The guy that got the one talent went and buried his talent and didn’t invest it at all and gave one talent back to the master. And the master says, what the heck, Gary? And the guy says, well, ⁓ I was afraid that you’d be mad at me if I couldn’t give the whole one talent back to you. So I did nothing with it. And ⁓ the master

Micah Johnson (19:17)
Right?

Joel Miller (19:33)
call him slothful, you know, so to speak, and said, okay, you you didn’t do anything with what I gave you. What I gave you is now going to be given to the guy that did something with it. And, and of course, a parable is not history. It’s a story for told for an example. And that’s the way it is. You know, if you, uh, in this life, if you, if you have, uh, abilities and resources that you don’t use and to

you know expand then you’re gonna lose that and somebody that is utilizing the talents that they’ve been given and the resources they’ve been given is going to get more and probably including your talent that you didn’t do anything with you know so you know that’s yeah

Micah Johnson (20:19)
Exactly. It’s a powerful story that has so many angles to it because

I find it fascinating that it’s the guy with the one talent that decides to bury it because it’s easy as someone who came from very little, it’s very easy to have an excuse. It’s very easy to be fearful. It’s very easy to have a lot of these things where what I learned in the story was that’s what, especially if you have little, you have to get over. You have to.

You have to, can’t hold onto it because you, you look at the people that have much and what are they doing with it? They’re growing it. Right. And it’s just get over where you are. A perspective is my favorite thing. wanted to play professional golf for a long time. So I would print off PGA tour stats every week and I would keep my stacks against it. It wasn’t good. I can see clearly why I wasn’t playing on TV on the weekends. However, what it did show me was here’s where your work is, man.

This is it, deal with it. Like you can feel good about it, bad about it, doesn’t really care. But if the best are doing this and you’re doing this, you got to make up this gap. And that’s really, it’s just perspective from there. Honestly, I felt empowered for the first time, right? Now I can actually take action cause I know what I need to do. And yeah, man, it’s, it’s, it’s just using what you have. I like, there’s a fun quote. If you don’t have resources, be resourceful.

Joel Miller (21:39)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (21:39)
It’s

don’t just say no, don’t just, it’s not for me. I don’t know who got back on that part, but again, leading back into that book, it’s just bigger than how to actually do the mechanism of investing. It’s the person behind it all that’s doing it and how to make sure they’re consistent. Cause it’s doing the little things well for a long time. That’s, that’s what creates all this.

Joel Miller (22:00)
Yeah,

and you mentioned ⁓ preconceptions. I talk about that in the book that

people actually can have preconceptions too much to the good or too much to the bad. Like, for example, they might think that they’re not going to invest in real estate because they just believe it’s all broken toilets and bad tenants. And they also might invest because they think it’s all rainbows and unicorns and all they have to do is buy this rental property and

get the money every month and there’s nothing, no effort involved. It’s really somewhere in between. And as I said, the key is to get educated about it so that you get rid of your preconceptions and your doubts about whether it can be done, you know, and, and, you know, it’s not going away. Everybody’s still here. We all need a place to live, you know? And so like, ⁓

Micah Johnson (22:52)
Right.

Joel Miller (22:55)
Will Rogers said, know, invested land, they’re not making any more of it.

Micah Johnson (22:58)
None of it, man. That’s why land is my favorite. Like, ain’t no

more earth popping up right now. Volcanoes might be active, but we can’t sell what they’re creating. ⁓ Or build on it. But ⁓ one thing I appreciate that you said there, Joel, is the fact about education. I try to say that on this show as often as possible. Education is step one. It’s like turning the light on. Go and learning how to do it, especially from people who have already done it.

Joel Miller (23:06)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (23:23)
like yourself. I appreciate you sharing that book, getting that knowledge out there because it is the game changer, learning from people who have done it to show you, hey, this is actually possible. So for folks that are listening in that want to find out more about the book and more about you, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Joel Miller (23:40)
Well, first of all, I will hold this up. know we do have some people that will see this, ⁓ you know, with the video, but there’s, there’s the book right there. And there’s a website dedicated just to the book. It’s joelmillerbooks.com. That’s J O E L M I L L E R B O O K S.com. And on the, and you can also find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram X and all that.

And ⁓ I would suggest you just put Joel Miller real estate or something like that. Otherwise you might get find information about a popular video game character of the same name. But anyway, ⁓ on the website, you can click on something that’ll show you the entire table of contents, which is fairly detailed. You can see exactly what we’re getting into. And ⁓ another button that you can click on that’ll show you sample content from

Micah Johnson (24:18)
Okay.

Joel Miller (24:35)
each of the 16 chapters, know, some of the meatier paragraphs from each of the chapters. And if you click on any of buy buttons on the website, it’ll just take you right to the page on Amazon where it is for sale or just go to Amazon and search for the book. You will readily find it there in a description of what’s in it. But as I say, it came out a little over a year ago, became a bestseller. It’s chugging along and getting a lot of satisfaction out of

getting that information out because one of the things that I evolved into in my real estate career was a lot of involvement with the local professional organization of landlords. Actually for the past 14 years I’ve either been the president or vice president of the organization here. Now since we had some terms ended I’ve moved more into some other positions on the board but in particular education and I teach our landlord.

101 class and some more advanced classes as well. So I have a real heart for getting the information out to others and being a part of the equation for their journey. And when I started, Micah, there was nothing like this. There was no internet. I was reading hardcover books by guys like Al Lowry and Bill Nickerson and so on. Bill Nickerson was Ron LeGrand’s mentor.

And Ron now, can, Ron LeGrand is like the guru to all the other gurus that you could find out there right now. Ron actually got ahold of my book and he wrote a review on it. He said, I wish I would have had his book when I was getting started. So that’s what Ron LeGrand had to say about the book. And, you know, I would say, you know, just a few things in conclusion about it. You know, first of all,

If you belong to any kind of a local organization of landlords and investors and so on, and you want to do education for your members, you don’t need to write your own course material like our organization did 10 or 12 years ago. You can just use my book, Build Real Estate Wealth as your textbook. Just have your students have a copy of it. Teach right out of my book. You know, and you could go on and on for however long you wanted to teach landlord one-on-one classes or more advanced classes. Just use it for the…

the source material. And I also believe that everyone that already owns and has read a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki should also get a copy of Build Real Estate Wealth because it’s a perfect complement to the theories and ideas that are presented in Rich Dad Poor Dad. This is, it covers all that, but also give you a lot more nuts and bolts. And, you know,

Micah Johnson (27:13)
Awesome. That’s what everybody asks for is that you read Rich Dad Poor Dad. How do I do this? So if you’ve got that complimentary book, that’s powerful.

Joel Miller (27:14)
Is it? sorry. I want…

Yeah.

Yeah. And last thing is it’s not a lead into any kind of upsell for ⁓ mentoring or coaching or boot camps or seminars or anything like that. I don’t have any of those things. All I’ve got is this book and this book is all you need, you know, to ⁓ educate yourself to be well on your way to ⁓ changing your life with rental property, rental real estate.

Micah Johnson (27:45)
That’s excellent, man. Well, thank you for being with us today. Thanks for sharing your story. I love your perspective. I think we need more folks out there like yourself doing it. What would you tell your son to do? That’s a, that is a powerful frame just to think about it in. So if you’re listening and watching it out there, our show notes. I’m have all of Joel’s links there. Take a look at this book. Like when someone’s willing to share with their, information to their own family, there’s a reason Ron LeGrand said he wishes he would have had it.

Joel Miller (27:55)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (28:11)
Right? When you can know, understand nuts and bolts along with philosophies, mindsets and things need to go with it. Take advantage of it. You hear me say this all the time. Learn from someone who’s doing it and done it. That is who you want to talk to. So if you’re in a place in life where you’re ready to start taking some more action, get this book, check it out and start bringing those dreams that you have to life. Freedom’s possible for all of us. We just got to create it.

So Joel, thanks again for being here today. Thank you everybody for being with us. We appreciate you. If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think you get value out of it. And as always, if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do. Click that button, follow along here with us. We appreciate every single one of you that do. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Joel, folks who have built a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you on the next episode.