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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Kristen interviews veteran real estate investor Jamaal Richard, who shares his journey from being a novice landlord to a successful acquisitions expert. Jamaal discusses the importance of learning from mistakes, the value of networking and mentorship, and how adaptability in strategy is crucial in the ever-changing real estate market. He emphasizes the need to trust oneself and to forgive losses as part of the learning process. The conversation wraps up with practical advice for aspiring investors.
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Jamaal Richard (00:00)
And after it all, after it was all done and we got to closing finally, I made $19,000 and I was so grateful that I had the money to split because I was so afraid that I was going to have to pay this realtor who was my business partner to sell his house. And so, you you make every, you make those early mistakes and I call it paying tuition.Because I tell people now if you did a deal like that you made 19,000 you had to split it and after nine months you made about a thousand a month but you pulled your hair out every night would you want to do that deal? A lot of people will say no ⁓ Or I’ll say hey what if you did a deal for nine months and you didn’t make any money would that be a good deal? A lot of people say no. I said what if you lost 50 grand? And they’re like well that’s a terrible deal. I said well I would do a deal if I lost 50 grand but I learned a ton
Kristen (02:23)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Jamaal Richard, who is a veteran real estate investor and acquisitions expert. He has over $250 million in closed transactions across Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston. He brings a direct, no fluff approach to wealth building. So I’m excited to get into it. Thanks for being here, Jamaal.Jamaal Richard (02:41)
Thank you for having me. it.Kristen (02:44)
So let’s get into kind of how you got into this industry to begin with.Jamaal Richard (02:48)
Um, it didn’t by accident. I think thefirst thing I did was I bought a house, a cheap house for 50 grand and renovated it for 30,000 and did way too much renovations. And then, um, uh, my grandmother passed. And so I wound up renting my house out and moving to my grandmother’s home. So I became a terrible landlord. I had no idea what I was doing and made every mistake that you can make and eventually moved out of state to Atlanta. And so then I had two rentals and then I was a terrible landlord twice.
And I think that it’s important for people to know that it’s okay to be bad at first. And that’s, it’s okay to learn. So that’s exactly how I started doing everything terrible.
Kristen (03:27)
What made you think that you were like a bad landlord?Jamaal Richard (03:32)
I’ll say first the the neighbor who who lived next door to me went into foreclosure and I felt bad becausehad made a decision to put their kid through through the private school and not pay the mortgage and I didn’t really understand it at the time but I thought it was a noble thing and so when I moved out of my home they were you know we knew though you know I knew those people and so so well you know you can rent a house and so let this be a lesson do not rent your home to someone who recently
was for closed on and so that’s not a great a great tenant to start with and then from there it goes on to you know picking the wrong paint when you renovate a house sometimes you want to do things how you want them and definitely renovated thinking i was going to live there for a long time and so i picked the you know the 300 gallon paint because it was the you know the salesperson was a very good salesperson and so um and so now it’s time to repaint it all of a sudden
try to mash his pain after he got out of a gallon. That’s not a smart decision. So I don’t do those things.
Kristen (04:35)
Yeah, well you’ve learned on the job. I feel like that’s a lot of it. Did you feel like you had a lot of, you know, formal education before this is or was it mostly on the job?Jamaal Richard (04:45)
No, everything was on the job. I was, you know, at the high school, I joined the military. And so that’s about as on the job as you can get in the Marines. And from there, just had a couple of jobs. get a few Fortune 500 companies, nothing special.And just got into real estate by accident, working a regular job and buying a house and eventually renting that first house out. And I think that’s kind of what starts the process. I tell everyone, if you can get to two homes, you can do this and retire.
Kristen (06:01)
Hmm. I mean, and what was that kind of turning point for you where you felt like things, you know, were maybe going wrong and you were making a lot of decisions that you can learn from. When did that shift to you being confident to do this full time?Jamaal Richard (06:16)
I’ll be honest with you. There was a friend of mine who Who ⁓ was in real estate, but I didn’t know what he was doing He was working for a company and I had at that time I had two rental properties and I was a terrible landlord and I wasn’t making any money I wasn’t doing negative cash flowing and wasn’t doing the math and ⁓ I was just thinking this real estate thing sucks and he comes around and he’s got you know $27,000 for this house that he just sold and I’m thinking to myselfYou’re poor and I know there’s no way you. You live in
apartment. How did you sell? I’m so confused and so literally sitting down with him saying walk me through exactly what you did is I’m smart. I should be to figure this out and and he taught me about wholesale and I was like man cash flows great, but it’s slow sometimes and it’s great to be able to wholesale was fees into being able to learn how to get properties off market at a discount. So when you get into a position to buy.
and do your own flips you should. So that was kind of the natural transition for me.
Kristen (07:19)
Nice. And so did you wean heavily on mentorship or networking?Jamaal Richard (07:24)
I think you can see mentorship. My friend was a very good teacher. He taught me step by step the wholesale process. And I had a couple of rentals, like I said, but I wasn’t doing very well. And that led me into a few small networking groups. And so that’s where I learned the title company to use because some of the other investors who were wholesaling were using the title company. So think that networking is key because you don’t know what you don’t know.And you don’t know who you know or you’re in close proximity with that can help you out. I remember meeting one guy networking and I needed a transactional funder right away. And I called him and I’ll never forget it. And I’ll shout him out. His name is Justin Schip with Chaotic Realty. He’s great. And I called him one day. said, hey, I need you. And I had never done a deal with Justin. And he asked me, what do I need? said, I a quarter million dollars. He said, when do you need it? said, tomorrow.
and it took him seven minutes to call me back. I’ll never forget it. And so, and I wouldn’t have had that relationship if it wasn’t for Cody Hansen. I wouldn’t have had that relationship if it wasn’t for networking. So, know, the kind of, once you get into a market, you’ll learn that the markets aren’t really big. It’s usually 20 or 30 people in each market and everybody kind of knows each other. So networking is key once you get inside that group.
Kristen (08:40)
Yeah, absolutely. You never know when something is going to be useful to you or come back around. So it’s important to kind of do what you can with everyone. ⁓ So talk about those early deals and when you started really rolling with this. I’m sure the early deals were a little ⁓ challenging.Jamaal Richard (08:58)
Well, yeah, the early days, my first flip was at Hampton, Georgia. I a little house there and I did everything wrong again. And ⁓ I got a hard money loan and I think it was like 150 points or something crazy. And so it was just a slow process. I think it took me maybe nine months to do the project and I had a business partner and he was a realtor. so.I was kind of heavily relying on him instead of learning some things myself.
And after it all, after it was all done and we got to closing finally, I made $19,000 and I was so grateful that I had the money to split because I was so afraid that I was going to have to pay this realtor who was my business partner to sell his house. And so, you you make every, you make those early mistakes and I call it paying tuition.
Because I tell people now if you did a deal like that you made 19,000 you had to split it and after nine months you made about a thousand a month but you pulled your hair out every night would you want to do that deal?
A lot of people will say no ⁓ Or I’ll say hey what if you did a deal for nine months and you didn’t make any money would that be a good deal? A lot of people say no. I said what if you lost 50 grand? And they’re like well that’s a terrible deal. I said well I would do a deal if I lost 50 grand but I learned a ton
And I think that’s what separates a lot of people who are serious about investing because people will spend, you know, of $300,000, $400,000 on education and get ultimately become a professional that they don’t really want to do. meet professionals like that every day. And whether they’re doctors or lawyers or dentists, I hear dentists all the time. And they say, I didn’t realize I would be on my feet as much. Right? And so…
Kristen (11:15)
Mmm, yeah.Jamaal Richard (11:17)
It’s to a point where it’s okay to spend that money on tuition and the traditional college, but people don’t think about paying it in the real world since sometimes you have to lose a little money and do a deal and learn how what not to do essentially, right? Don’t do that again.Kristen (11:30)
Absolutely, and I think a lot of people stop at that point and maybe feel like they’re not good at it, but you’re right. It’s so normal and once you get the kinks out, things are a lot easier.Jamaal Richard (11:40)
Correct. Correct.Kristen (11:42)
So talk about kind of that adaptability that you have in the market and how you’ve been able to switch your strategy over the last 10 years.Jamaal Richard (11:49)
Yeah, so started with a couple of run knows and then my buddy was wholesaling and I got addicted to those quick checks and and we, you I had other companies outside of outside of real estate then I was really big at scaling and so I was trying to figure out how do we scale scale. And so I scaled that company, everything from auto dollar to ⁓ to drip campaigns, you name it and within you know, three months we’re up and running and we wereThe team grew quickly. We’re talking maybe 200,000 people a week. It was crazy. And we’re closing, those are COVID times, and we’re closing three deals a week, wholesaling. And when you get addicted to those checks and then COVID ends, and we still have all these deals, no, I’m sorry, COVID ⁓ begins, we have all these deals that we’ve been selling, and then all the buyers go away overnight. And so we have a pipeline of a ton of deals, people that are ready to sell and are willing to take a deep discount, but we don’t have
anybody to sell into. And, and I remember sitting back with my friend and I said, man, we should just buy these deals. He said, we don’t, we don’t have the kind of money. And so I reached out to the, to again, a lady who had funded my deal for me, that Justin, a relationship that Justin set up and I called her again and I said, Hey, by any chance, can I borrow $150,000? And she says, why? So I got the short sale that I really want to get. It’s a great deal.
And she said, I’ll come see it. So she goes to the house, comes to see it. She says, okay, it’s a good deal. It’s 150. We’ll do the deal. So I got the deal out of short sale. And then my friend and I moved into the house with the contract over the weekend. So we bought it on Thursday and we stayed in the house Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday renovated the house for four days. did cow cosmetic, new carpet, new paint, new cap. It’s know, the whole cosmetic deal of four days. And we listed it. And when we sold it,
She didn’t believe that we got an offer within a week. And she came back to see it. She says, OK, well, how much money do you need to do this again? And I had a great relationship with that private lender for the better part of five years. And they wanted to pull the cash and go into crypto. Who can blame them now? But we had a great relationship. She wanted to give me a $5 million line of credit. And then it was off to the races.
Kristen (14:12)
Wow. Yeah. I mean, you really have to be agile in this market and kind of go towards what’s working. Do you have experience with that? know that you’ve had, you know, you had a title company for a while and now you’re leaning into investing kind of how have you leaned into certain things as you’ve grown in your career.Jamaal Richard (14:30)
I it’s, you know, being good at what you’re doing currently, but paying attention to when the times are changing, right? And so, you when I was buying inexpensive houses down in New Orleans and I was renting them out, I had, I think, seven at one time. When you see the flood insurance go up, when you see the taxes increase and it kind of eats away at your cash flow, you start to think, okay, is there a better way to make the same cash?Well, instead of wholesaling as much as we’re wholesaling, can we start flipping?
All right, well, now we’re wholesaling and we’re flipping at the same time. We’re doing three transactions. We’re living inside of the title company. And we’re starting to realize, wait a minute, how does these title companies work? So it started looking at vertically integrating, right? And so I launched a title company. And I launched a company for three years. then interest rates go from two and a quarter to seven overnight. And you start forecasting.
Is your own power gonna drop these rates anytime soon? No. So, okay, well, our transactions are gonna slow down, right? So, if you forecast, you know, what does it look like if I renew this corporate lease for the next five or 10 years and keep the title company open? Will we make money or is it time to pivot? And I think that sometimes you just have to be realistic and understand, like, a lot of us are smart and we see the indicators, but I think that people don’t trust themselves.
Kristen (16:14)
ThankJamaal Richard (16:38)
And I think it’s time to start trusting yourself. You know what’s happening, especially if you’ve been in the game for a while, you know what’s happening. We see interest rates are high, right? And we see prices are coming down. It’s time to buy. All right, and so if you have access to capital, now it’s time to buy. And at some point, it’ll be time to sell, right?Kristen (16:52)
Yeah, absolutely.Absolutely. And how do you kind of build that mindset of trusting yourself, especially, you know, after you start out and you have some rocky moments, how do you really get to that point?
Jamaal Richard (17:08)
think that the biggest thing you have to do is forgive yourself for the losses. And I think if you’re okay with taking calculated losses, then you can go forward confidently. And so it’s not really, I don’t really feel like I have to trust myself other than I feel okay if I fail. I feel like if I’m wrong, okay, we’ll have to adjust.Kristen (17:13)
Yeah.Right.
Jamaal Richard (17:37)
⁓ I’ve lost, I’m always worried if anyone in this business who says they never lost money, I don’t trust those people. I think that everybody’s had one or two of those deals that go sideways for something. And I like to talk about those deals because…Kristen (17:46)
Yeah.Jamaal Richard (17:57)
And it’s authentic, right? And because it called, those are the things that make, know, hey, I opened a title company, I lost money, I don’t do that. Or I tried to build a house down in Fairview, Georgia, I had two lots that I was gonna build on and it didn’t work out and it hit a drainage pipe that wasn’t on the city plans and I lost $75,000. Jamaal doesn’t like to build houses anymore. So those losses kind of put you into like a laser focus on looking at the things that do work, right?Kristen (18:13)
again.Jamaal Richard (18:27)
So I don’t regret any losses. I think that it’s important that we know what we’re good at doing. Sometimes we get a little crazy. I remember when King came out with tacos years ago. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Make breakfast.Kristen (18:32)
Mm-hmm.No, I think it’s a good point that, I mean, nobody’s fearless. It’s just about having a good relationship when things don’t go wrong. Don’t go right. You know that you’re going to be OK if there’s quote unquote failure. ⁓ But I think, I mean, I think that’s really inspirational for people. So if you could wrap it kind of
up in a bow, what would be a piece of advice that you wish you learned earlier in your career that you could share with us today?
Jamaal Richard (19:12)
I say I would have networked more. I would have networked, I would have made it more of job to network. I think sometimes you need to get it more to the shore. But I told you, networking has given me endless opportunities, right? My lender came from networking. My business partner, I opened a title company, came up from networking. And so often we kind of go to those events and we kind of like drag and.And I’ve hosted networking events when I had the title company open and I’ve been there at several events and I know sometimes it can be mundane. But if you network with the purpose, it can be very, very effective.
Kristen (19:54)
Yeah, absolutely. think networking is really important in this industry. Kind of just like learn from other people and learn from their mistakes and you can kind of level up together.And what are some of, I know you mentioned
events that you used to go to, what are some good ways to network for people kind of starting out?
Jamaal Richard (20:14)
think everybody’s online now, so starting with, know, Quintessential Facebook groups, Instagram is a great networking opportunity, but I don’t think anyone, don’t sleep on just the smaller groups. Speak about what you do, I’ve been part of being in networking organizations before, so I don’t think there’s any wrong way of networking or any wrong way. I have a friend who’s a realtor, and ⁓ he hosts next door events and barbecues.And he just hosts events just so people can say, what do you do? So then he says, I’m realtor. So he doesn’t host an event as a realtor, he just hosts an event. so I think that sometimes you don’t have to be as, a lot of my deals came from, you know, mistakes or came out the blue just from network and being in the right place at the right time. So ⁓ be intentional about what you want to do. That way when you meet someone, you can speak intelligently about it.
So if you’re gonna be in real estate, tell people, I’m in real estate. Don’t mean that. Your passion shouldn’t be a secret.
Kristen (21:08)
Absolutely.Right, absolutely, and just being open to opportunities from anybody. I love that. Well, thank you so much. I think you’ve given people a lot of good practical tips and given some inspiration to people starting out. Where can people find you?
Jamaal Richard (21:28)
Instagram is kind of the best place. It’s just my name. I’m super simple Jamaal, J-A-M-A-A-L-M Richard. Just on Instagram, shoot me a DM, follow me. I try to drop tips online all the time so people can kind of navigate these weird waters of real estate right now.Kristen (21:47)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here, Jamaal.Jamaal Richard (21:50)
Thank you for having me again.Kristen (21:52)
And thank you everyone for listening. I hope you learned a lot, got some inspiration for your own business and we will see you back next time. Bye.
