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Show Summary
Cameron Burke shares his journey into real estate, highlighting the naivety of starting out as a young agent during the COVID-19 pandemic. He discusses the challenges he faced, including the difficulty of building a client base and the pressure to reach out to friends and family without providing real value.
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Cameron Burke (00:00)
You know, one of my mentors has always said that the market doesn’t dictate how much business you do. just dictates how you do business. so, yeah. And so I kind of just took that and I ran with it and I say, you know, everybody’s worried right now. Everybody’s scared. Everybody’s cutting their marketing. They’re cutting people from their team. I’m going to ramp up. in a good cash position. I’m ramping up or increasing our marketing. We’re going to take a larger market share. And that’s exactly what we did in 2024.Quentin Edmonds (02:00)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds and super excited to be here today. I have a fantastic guest. Man, I can’t wait for you to hear his story. Listen, they try to hate on one man because he was young. They didn’t realize and didn’t see him coming. They thought his age was going to be a problem. Really, did they know he was just going to be a problem period becauseHe has grown his business. love the way he has run it every year. He just keep hitting new benchmarks, new benchmarks. And so, I mean, this gentleman goes across different asset planes. so listen, I’m trying to do a great intro, but I’m not going to do it justice. And so I’m going to let him tell you himself, just how his story goes and what he’s involved in. But I would love to introduce you guys to Mr. Cameron Burke. Mr. Cameron, how you doing today, sir?
Cameron Burke (02:50)
Good, really good. I appreciate you having me on.Quentin Edmonds (02:53)
Absolutely, man. So glad that you’re here man. And listen, I’ll be honest with you. I want to dive right in I want you to take us into your world Tell us what your main focus is these days if you want to give us a little bit of an origin story I love the origin story. So you want to tell us, know how you got started? I’m sure the viewers of will love to hear that and then also tell them what markets you’re operating in as well So Cameron the floor is yours,Cameron Burke (03:16)
Yes, sir. So I’m in Oklahoma city and we buy and sell real estate and help other people buy and sell real estate. And so that is kind of kind of my mission statement. You know, I started real estate. I’m 24 now started real estate at 18 and I was pretty naive, you know, and you get into real estate, you think you get your license and you’re ready to go, uh, ready to start working with, with clients. But little did I know.Not a lot of people wanted to work with an 18 year old, which I don’t blame them. didn’t have facial hair at the time. If I shave, I look like I’m 15. And so, uh, I’ve got a baby face. so anyways, got into real estate, very slow, uh, first nine months, didn’t sell any real estate, uh, right, right when I got in, it was right after COVID. So it was like March of 2020. And so everything shut down and then it opened back up. It started going crazy.
I still wasn’t selling deals and I had a bit of a pity sale at the time. It was a family friend. They worked with me. It just did not sit well with me. I was working with an old school brokerage. They were doing what they could. They were doing a great job, but they were telling me you need to reach out to your sphere. You need to reach out to your family and friends. But I just graduated, so I didn’t quite have a sphere at the time. And it just didn’t sit well with me.
I was reaching out to people saying, we work with me, but with no value add, wasn’t quite, I wasn’t adding any value. I didn’t even trust myself to buy or sell a house at the time. know? And so at that pity sale,
started marketing on Facebook, you know, other people’s listings and ⁓ brokerage reached out to me, that number one team in Oklahoma. This, I kept reaching out to them and said, Hey, why don’t, why don’t you come interview with us? So we did.
It was me and my wife at the time she was licensed and we ended up joining their team. And long story short, found a, uh, creative. Financing option in Oklahoma city was a lease purchase company. So they would work with anybody that had challenge credit challenge work history, but had good income and good reserves to be able to buy a house. so took that and then took the marketing that I was already doing and.
started using that. And then I felt like I was adding value to the market, you know, and it’s like, okay, now I’m adding value. Now I can, I can work with people who other agents don’t know how to help. so 2021 I sold about 9 million, 22, 12, 23, 14 million as a solo agent. And then 24 was like a banner year. Last year we did, I grew my team. So we’ve got 17 agents now and grew my team. We did 30 million last year. then
That was across 155 transactions. And then 26, I haven’t counted our volume yet. You know, we’re November now, but we’ve done 180 transactions roughly. I believe we’re a little over 30 million on the year and I bought and sold about 70 houses. so anyways, that’s kind of, kind of the trajectory. I don’t come from money particularly, you know, I, my mom went to prison when I was 17. so I, uh,
I lived with my grandma for a little bit of time and then I ended up moving in with my wife now moved in with her and her parents until we were about 19. And so I did have a leg up in that sense, but at the same time, I didn’t have somebody that was bankrolling me or buying my first house for me or anything like that. And so I like to tell that because there’s a lot of people out there that have more unfortunate situations or maybe similar situations that don’t.
think that they can do what I’ve done, but I believe anybody can. I’m not, I’m not the smartest. just kind of go after it, you know? And so, ⁓ yeah, in terms of assets, you know, we’ve got just under 60 units. ⁓ we’ve got about 25,000 square feet of commercial that’s across industrial and retail and single tenant, building that I own. then. ⁓
small eight unit apartment complex. We just bought a 200 acre development. So I’m excited about that. And then the rest is single family. And so that’s kind of what my portfolio looks like. We mainly buy and sell real estate and that’s all I do nowadays. And so we’ve done about 70 deals this year between bought, sold, double closed stuff like that. And, ⁓ so yeah, I like to buy and real estate.
Quentin Edmonds (08:26)
that you like to buy and sell real estate and you’re good at buying and sell real estate. So, ⁓ but thank you so much for the story. Thank you for a little bit, just a little vulnerability, right? And transparency, appreciate that. And I’ll be honest with you, man. I kind of want to pick your brain a little bit when it comes to some of the strategies that you use. And when I say strategies, I mean, core strategies, business clause and actually core strategies, personal.because it sounds like you had to come, overcomes the personal obstacles, right? So sometimes that comes with meditation. Sometimes that comes with therapy. Maybe you might do cold plunge in the morning. Like what are some business strategies and personal strategies, Cameron, that you can see is really helping you out as you grow your business and actually grow yourself.
Cameron Burke (09:12)
So I don’t have a rigid morning routine. ⁓ I would say the number one thing that’s helped with stress has been working out. like to work out. Yeah, least some endorphins. that everybody should move, you know, whether that’s working out, walking, whatever it is truly helps. ⁓ You know, that’s that’s the main thing there. I’ve got I didn’t really have hobbies for a while, butI like to hunt fish now. that actually quite a bit. And then, know, just, I think that a lot of times stress comes from not being grateful. so I fall into that as well. But, uh, if I’m, you know, if I’m stressed about, we’ll take, for example, I was stressed about some of my bookkeeping the other day because bookkeepers are just not, they’re not getting it done right now for me, you know, a pam a lot of money.
send a year. And so I started to get a little stressed about that. And then I was like, you know, I’m grateful. I’m just healthy, you know, and you start bringing it back to gratitude. It’s like, well, does the bookkeeping matter that much? You know, yes, it does matter. It’s pretty big deal, actually. But it’s not the end of the world. You know, it’s not going to it’s not going to make or break anything. So obviously you can’t do that with everything. But I’m healthy. I’m happy. My wife is, you know, we got guardianship. My six year old brother, he’s doing good.
then life is good, know? And so taking back to gratitude and just having that perspective has helped quite a bit.
Quentin Edmonds (11:14)
Yeah, no, me, my wife and I, we have something called a gratitude jar. And so we’ll, what we’ll do, we’ll write down things that we’re grateful for and we’ll put it in the jar. And then, know, 2026 is right upon us at the beginning of 2026, we’re going to go to that jar and look at all the different things over the year that we had to be grateful for. And so you bringing up gratitude is an amazing thing. It’s hard to be angry and grateful at the same time. It’s hard.It’s hard to worry and be grateful at the same time. It’s hard, you know?
Cameron Burke (11:45)
100%.Quentin Edmonds (11:46)
Absolutely. Yeah. So now appreciate you, man. Listen, I know things have not always been easy. I imagine business-wise, you always talk about personal, but I even imagine business-wise, things hasn’t always been easy. And so I like to just not show people to success, but show people the journey to success, right? Because people are at different parts of their journey, know, business owners that’s listening and watching different parts. And so are there momentswhen things got real, maybe deals went sideways, a moment where you had to pivot fast. If there is a moment you can think of, you mind sharing maybe a moment like that for people that may be stuck, that may be facing adversity right now?
Cameron Burke (12:29)
So a lot of it comes down to the confidence in decision making, think. so, you know, for example, back in 2023, markets cranking everything, low inventory. could throw a nail at a wall and make money on a deal. You know what mean? And then all of sudden,they increase rates and then they increase rates and then they and then boom, they ripped the bandaid off and all of a sudden rates went from zero, know, prime went from zero to five overnight, you know, whatever it was. Everybody was freaking out at that time. Everybody’s like, we’re going to, we’re going to cut our marketing. We’re going to, uh, we’re going to do this. And you know, here I am. I’ve been having pretty good couple of years and I was, I was stressed out that I was like a one hit wonder, like, Oh, this, uh,
This is coming to an end, you know, this gravy train is. so this is the most adversity I’ve faced, I would say. Thankfully we do well with selling our deals and whatnot. And of course we’ve ran into deals going sideways or contractors taking money. Everything’s fixable and on that front, but this is like whole market shifting. Everybody thinks that it’s going to go pretty sour. And so I was pretty confident that.
You know, one of my mentors has always said that the market doesn’t dictate how much business you do. just dictates how you do business. so, yeah. And so I kind of just took that and I ran with it and I say, you know, everybody’s worried right now. Everybody’s scared. Everybody’s cutting their marketing. They’re cutting people from their team. I’m going to ramp up. in a good cash position. I’m ramping up or increasing our marketing. We’re going to take a larger market share. And that’s exactly what we did in 2024.
And so I was confident in that decision and I just ran with it. So that’s what I would say.
Quentin Edmonds (14:26)
Man, give me that quote again. Market doesn’t dictate how you do business, just how much or do I have it reversed?Cameron Burke (14:32)
This is Peter Levinson, this is his quote, market doesn’t dictate how much business you do, it just dictates how you do business. And I love that quote.Quentin Edmonds (14:42)
Yeah, man, he Pete.Cameron Burke (14:43)
Yeah, he gave me that confidence because a lot of people are like, well, because of the market shifting, therefore I will do less business. And that’s not taking ownership. That’s putting the ownership somewhere else. And you don’t take ownership, you can’t control the situation. And so by taking that ownership of like, well, if we just change how we’re doing business, we can still do the same amount of business or more. And that’s what we’ve done every year consistently.Quentin Edmonds (15:08)
Hmm. Man, I absolutely love that man. I absolutely love that quote. And Peter Levinson, right? I get his name right? Appreciate that, brother. Listen, man, what’s the next real goal for you? What are you looking at the solve a scale next?Cameron Burke (15:17)
Yeah.You know, this year I came back from a trip and I usually have some decent ideas coming off of trips because I kind of get out of that. You you’re in the business, you’re really working hard in the business, easy to get in the business, but really like when you step out and let things calm down, you give yourself a second to breathe is when you can like see high level overview of like, this is what I want to do.
Yeah. Somebody had mentioned to me that I should make some YouTube videos, you know? And so at the time, this is back in June, I was just posting on Facebook, you know, posting real stuff like that. And so I came back, made a YouTube video. First video had, you know, 30,000 views or something like that, which I guess is not common for YouTube video. And so made another, made another. And, know, I’ve grown that we’re just under 25,000 subscribers now within the last six months. And, uh,
And so I enjoy doing that. It’s very raw. It’s very, it’s just, I don’t script anything and that is, that’s a lot of fun. so I, 2026 is just, it’s going to be focused on growing my YouTube and really dialing in my processes for the different businesses that I have currently, you know, and of course buying more real estate. this year it was a little bit harder to hold real estate. I didn’t hold as much as I wanted, you know, we,
We’ve got 11,000 square foot retail building that we bought. We’re buying 15,000 square feet of industrial next month. And then I think about 17 or 18 single family deals. so I’m a little disappointed in the amount of deals that we’ve held. So 2026, I would like to hold more deals. Unit count doesn’t matter to me. None of that matters to me. What matters is my bottom line. What’s my equity position?
and what is my cashflow. And so that is going to be 2026 focus.
Quentin Edmonds (17:58)
Man, I love it. I love it. I know you talked about, you know, 2025 was a year kind of like growing your team, like, or at least now, at least in 2025, you have a team members at 17. You mentioned your mentor, Peter Levinson. So it sounds like to me, you value relationships. And so briefly, I just want to talk about relationships. Like what’s your view on relationships? Have relationships help you in any type of way, building relationships?Cameron Burke (18:24)
100%. Yeah. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, life is about relationships and experiences, you know, put the money aside, put, put everything aside. Relationships really the only thing we’ve got at the end of the day. It really is in my opinion, at least, you know, but we’re not keeping any of this other stuff. and so my real estate today is not going to be my real estate forever, you know, but relationship.relationships is what mattered the most to me. And I would say I try to just add value to every relationship I have. And I don’t do that great every time, you know, but that’s kind of like I try and focus on that. And then my buddy Colton is always harping on this. Something that I picked up that I focus on as well is that to just leave people better than you found them. ⁓
Those are my two biggest takeaways with relationships. But yes, I I wouldn’t be where I’m at without them.
Quentin Edmonds (19:24)
You add value to your relationships, add value wherever you go. And like your friend Colton said, leave people better than when you found them. Kind of like, right? relationships, you hit the nail on you say relationships is all we got. I tell people all the time, relationship is real currency. That’s the real currency. You build the right relationship, the resources will come. When I say resources, the money, the connections, the partnerships.⁓ Advice like relationships is the real currency and when you truly Want to bring value to the relationship instead of just sucking all the value out. That’s everything and so man Camera sir. This has been great man. Listen if someone wanted to reach out to you connect with you Learn more about what you’re doing collaborate. What’s the best way for them to reach out to you,
Cameron Burke (20:13)
Yes, So Instagram at the cam Burke. So the and then C.A.M. B.U.R.K.E. They can follow me on YouTube and or on Facebook as well, just under Cameron Burke. And so, yeah, that would be that that’d be the best route. post a lot of my wins, my losses, what’s working and what’s not working on my YouTube. I’m transparent. You know, there’s not everything goes right. A lot of stuff goes.especially if you do enough volume. And so I just appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for letting me come on here.
Quentin Edmonds (20:46)
Nah, man, this was fun. I appreciate you taking time out. Thank you for your story. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your perspective. Like this has been really a very valuable part episode, podcast episode for our viewers. And so Cameron, man, thank you for taking time out, man. I appreciate you, Awesome. So listen, y’all heard Cameron. Listen, Cameron gave y’all free game. And I told y’all, I told y’all he jumped. I told y’all this guy was amazing, right? And so you’ve seen what he’s doing. You hear what he’s building.Cameron Burke (21:03)
Thank you,Quentin Edmonds (21:14)
You hear the way that he’s building it. And so what I need you to do is make sure you are subscribed because we’re going to continue to bring amazing people up just like Cameron. So, sir, I thank you again, Cameron, and listen to everyone else. We will see you on the next time.
