Mastering Multifamily Investments: Your Guide to Cash Flow Success

John Harcar (00:00.896)
All right. Hey, guys, welcome back to the show. I’m here today with Onaje Barnes. And what we’re going to be talking about today is starting your wealth journey, right? Helping you get to that point that you’re looking to achieve. Remember, guys, that investor fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business. And we provide the tools that allow them to build the businesses that they want to live and in turn live the life they’ve dreamed of. So, Onaje, I said that right, right?

@onajebarnes (00:29.283)
Yep, that’s it. Thanks for having me, John.

John Harcar (00:29.874)
All right, man. Welcome to the show. Yeah, I’m super excited. We talked a little bit before we got on here kind of about, you know, what your journey is. And I’m excited to go more into it and share that with our audience. But before we do that, tell them kind of about you, right? You know where you came from, how you got into real estate, you know, what got you to this point today?

@onajebarnes (00:49.529)
Yeah, I’m from Houston, Texas. You know, kind of grew up, didn’t grow up with a lot of money. Mom had four kids, single parent. And you know, I started my life just trying to do the right, all the right stuff, right? Right stuff was go to college, you know, do, good grades, go to college. So I did that, right? Made good grades, went to college, went to the University of Texas, Austin, majored in economics.

John Harcar (01:12.622)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (01:18.373)
checked boxes, got internships, got on with corporate America, working as a buyer for Macy’s. When I left, when I got my corporate job, a lot of people hate their corporate job. I actually liked mine. It was really, it was, it was actually really cool. Being a buyer, I bought things like lingerie and, you know, men’s apparel, like really cool stuff, right? To go out and do.

John Harcar (01:43.256)
shirt. Yeah.

@onajebarnes (01:47.333)
But three years in, my company actually merged with Macy’s at the time and they laid off 25,000 people. And this is probably right maybe 2006, 2007. So I was with a company called Foley’s at the time, large department store chain. Most people know it as Macy’s now. But long story short, that’s happened to a lot of people in America, right?

John Harcar (01:56.333)
man, what year was this?

John Harcar (02:04.686)
Okay.

@onajebarnes (02:16.921)
You know, the layoff thing, I’m kinda in that generation where, you know, the people above me were used to working for a same company 20, 25 years. So that’s what I was taught, right? I was taught that, if you continue to just work hard and do the right thing necessarily corporate-wise, you’re gonna get to wherever you wanna get to. Well, I did all that. And I found myself at 25, 26, looking for another job. Now, cool thing was I was still young.

John Harcar (02:45.454)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (02:45.605)
I had a good resume and you know, I got hired on pretty quickly. But a lot of the people who were in the company who were me and your age now back then, they weren’t getting hired, right? Little asianism going on. And I noticed that and I just looked up and I thought to myself, I said, okay, if I continue down this path, will I achieve my financial goals? I might end up bouncing around from company to company. But more importantly,

Realize a cold hard truth when you get hired by somebody It’s not their job to get you rich. They don’t promise you any of that, right? There’s no contract that says I’m gonna make John wealthy. I’m actually gonna give him a retirement They don’t say that right? They don’t say that we’re gonna guarantee that you retire with dignity in your later years like There’s no sign up for that, right? So

John Harcar (03:23.895)
No.

John Harcar (03:40.542)
No, right? No, they can’t.

@onajebarnes (03:44.185)
So when I realized that, I realized that in the cold hard truth that lot of Americans have to realize is that this is on you, right? This is on you. And that led me to start reading some books and educating myself. You know it, right?

John Harcar (03:56.966)
me guess. The purple one. every year, everybody I talk to, everybody I talk to, man. So, when I got started, I read this book, this purple book called Rich Dad Poor Dad. Do you know that? Yeah.

@onajebarnes (04:07.205)
It’s purple book. Do you know that book? You know what’s interesting though? I read the second book first. I read Cashflow Quadrant first. And most people read both. Most people know the first book first. Or what if I actually read Cashflow Quadrant first? But either way, we all know the book.

John Harcar (04:16.248)
Cash flow, okay. Okay.

John Harcar (04:25.644)
Yep, yep, exactly. So cool. Keep going. Sorry to interrupt.

@onajebarnes (04:29.645)
No, no, you’re right. Like that’s how powerful that book was for a lot of people. And I read some other books as well, but long story short, I live with about six months of reading and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna get into this thing called real estate. Now, still didn’t really have a lot of money, because I was kind of in entry level roles. All this were, you know, a couple of corporate jobs. My fiance slash wife at the time, she was an educator. So we were kind of just…

John Harcar (04:34.414)
Yeah.

@onajebarnes (04:59.397)
you know, regular salary type people, right? Like weren’t making a whole lot of money. But one thing I knew I wanted to do was get into real estate. And so we just did something super simple, man. We just bought an ugly home for ourselves. Instead of buying that new construction suburban home, we bought an ugly home in a good older neighborhood and original owner, 1960 build.

John Harcar (05:02.498)
Sure, sure.

John Harcar (05:27.074)
Hmm. Yeah, baby.

@onajebarnes (05:27.077)
green shack carpet, gold foil on the wall. Right? And you know, we bought that. We got a great loan product, which I’m a big fan. As you, if you’re an investor, make sure you understand the loan game, right? Make sure you understand the lending. But we did, we got a FHA 203K loan.

John Harcar (05:41.88)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (05:50.533)
which is a renovation loan for the viewers, right? That’s a, if most people have heard of FHA, there’s also a component that they will give you the renovation money, okay? And we got that loan and I literally, I mean, when I tell you I ain’t had no money, I mean, I might have had five grand to my pocket, like maybe, right? Which is more average than average American, you know, most people don’t have a ton of money and they, you know, when you think of count. So did that, they gave me the money to renovate the property.

Six months in, we bought a property for 135, we put about 30 grand into it, the neighborhood was going for about 240. Next thing you know, six months in, I’ve got 40,000-ish in the cash out refi. Speeding that up. On my first deal, you know, and at the time, not bad. And so for a kid at 26 years old,

John Harcar (06:41.176)
Bad.

@onajebarnes (06:47.043)
having 40K in my pocket. mean, I know everybody on social media make 40K in one day or whatever, but, but for me at the time, that was a life-changing type of situation. You know, now ironically, when did I find this property? And that’ll answer that question.

John Harcar (06:51.278)
So they say. Yeah.

John Harcar (07:00.13)
How did you find this property?

John Harcar (07:07.726)
Okay, when did you find this property?

@onajebarnes (07:09.605)
2008, one month after Lehman Brothers crashed.

John Harcar (07:12.984)
Get out. I mean, did you just door knock it? Did you mail to it? I mean, what? Well, yeah, I mean, I imagine that. I know that, but… Okay.

@onajebarnes (07:14.895)
Yeah.

No, I’m saying they were everywhere. Yeah, it was a foreclosure. And again, I say 2008 when Lehman Brothers crashed because everything was dumping. And so everybody was getting out of real estate, lots of foreclosures, very, very tight lending, lending environment was very, very tight. So in that kind of environment, so we were able to find it.

John Harcar (07:29.294)
yeah, that’s when everything dumped, uh-huh.

@onajebarnes (07:47.139)
It was a different time back then, but it was standard foreclosure. had a realtor at the time, a friend of mine was my realtor. you know, it was ironically enough, everyone I knew told me not to do this thing. Cause you know, real estate was terrible at the time. Yeah. So, and, and the, and the, the, that I always tell that story. Cause that’s probably one of most important moves I ever made in life. And then the second move was in the top three, right? The second move.

John Harcar (08:00.6)
Hmm. Just real say what- Yeah, yeah.

@onajebarnes (08:16.869)
with that 40, do you do with that 40 grand? Well, you go out here and go get back on the market, found another foreclosure listed for like 60K. And again, this is in Houston, Texas. Now Houston, Texas ain’t trading for this right now, right? But back then it was and found one for 60K. I only had like 43,000 left in my bank account. So guess what I offered? I offered 40 grand. And at the time the bank took it because they was taking whatever they could get.

John Harcar (08:30.669)
Right.

John Harcar (08:41.838)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (08:46.92)
And they took that I only had maybe three grand left opened up a Home Depot car commercial car and Got a whole lot of sweat equity two weeks three weeks later into that I got a tinted tenant written out for 900 bucks and You know on the mortgage ish in the 300 range. So Yeah, so so for me I kind of hit

John Harcar (09:07.758)
Nice, a little bit of cashflow there.

@onajebarnes (09:12.069)
you know, decent, right? Like, you know, I’m making five, 600 bucks a net cash flow. Yeah. And at that point I’m like, okay, I’m clearing about five, 600 bucks. That’s more than a car note. I mean, I make it, you know, that’s better than the car note. And at the time, again, I’m young. So I’m like, I like this. This makes a whole lot of sense. And so fast forward, that was probably about 17, 18-ish years ago.

John Harcar (09:15.222)
Great entry into the business for sure.

John Harcar (09:25.282)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (09:40.239)
We pretty much bought one house at a time for like the next eight or nine years, just slow rolling it.

John Harcar (09:45.622)
And did you keep doing that with an FHA loan? Get that thing, get that extra money flip?

@onajebarnes (09:48.619)
well, we weren’t necessarily doing the FHA because I didn’t qualify for that necessarily anymore. But what we did do in that, and I actually, the house, the first house that we bought, I still live in. We just finished our second renovation because you know, time goes on, right? but, we, you know, I put, was scrapping together 20 % downs and hard money loans and literally however way I could come up with a couple of niggles to make it to the quarter.

John Harcar (09:53.346)
Got it. Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:00.592)
nice.

John Harcar (10:04.952)
Sure.

John Harcar (10:17.198)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (10:17.485)
you know, we tried to do to get to some properties and I’d say eight or nine years in, we pretty much had a bunch of single families, but something else changed. I realized that it wasn’t moving fast enough. And…

John Harcar (10:33.208)
Why not? Like, why do you think it wasn’t moving fast enough?

@onajebarnes (10:37.443)
Well, one, I probably wasn’t educated enough. I I got educated through hard knocks of landlord and renovation. I mean, hard, hard knocks, right? Taking body blows on some bad contractors, bad tenants, all that kind of stuff. All that stuff, right? All the downside we don’t talk about, I got educated that way. But then also, I was married now. I had kids now.

John Harcar (10:49.944)
We’ll talk about all that in a minute.

John Harcar (11:01.71)
Mm. Mm.

@onajebarnes (11:03.247)
So my initial projections on what I thought I needed, I thought I was good with five houses paid off, I thought I was gonna be good to the promised land, right? And then guess what, inflation happens, right? And things of that nature happen. And I’m like, okay, this ain’t really enough. Like I might take care of myself, but I do have this woman here and I do have these kids here and I do have extended family and other things and dreams and goals or whatever. So, and then something else.

John Harcar (11:13.325)
Yep.

John Harcar (11:26.958)
All right.

@onajebarnes (11:29.519)
Really, really, I won’t say bad, but I always took an L. But when they say you take a loss sometimes, it could also be a learning. So I took another loss, and this was called Hurricane Harvey.

John Harcar (11:36.654)
Sure.

John Harcar (11:41.474)
Oof. That’s right.

@onajebarnes (11:43.033)
Yeah. So my dependent, we were kind of starting, we were accelerating payoffs. So at the time, of course, that nine years, I never quit my job. My wife never quit her job. So we pumped every dollar that we made in the real estate back into paying down the properties and things of that nature. We were fairly conservative investors by that definition. And what we did there, the Hurricane Harvey hit.

John Harcar (12:01.141)
Nice.

@onajebarnes (12:11.109)
Hurricane Harvey hit two of my homes that were across the street from each other flooded them both out now I Say that was a loss right and it was but it was also a big learning So what I learned was one I was equity heavy I Really wasn’t that cash heavy at the time big equity heavy and if you read certain types of books in real estate They’ll tell you like hey real estate’s fantastic, but don’t be parking all your money in it

John Harcar (12:14.659)
Mmm.

John Harcar (12:30.702)
Mmm.

John Harcar (12:40.365)
Yeah.

@onajebarnes (12:40.485)
You know, it’s a delicate balance between cash out refis and equity, right? Like how much you really wanna be at, right? So I’ll speed it up, but what I learned was I saw over, I’ll say both these properties were worth 150 grand a piece at the time-ish, right? I bought them super, super cheap. Those are whole other stories, right? I got great deals on those, but essentially I had them paid off.

John Harcar (12:46.67)
Stay liquid.

John Harcar (13:01.176)
Mm-hmm.

@onajebarnes (13:09.603)
And that money evaporated overnight, right? no lender’s gonna give you some money on a property that’s flooded out. That’s not really how they like to do business. So I took a credit card again, because I was in some cash situation, rolled up our sleeves, got the crew to work, got the properties back rented out, got our original tenants back into the properties after a month, which we were proud about. And then I changed my strategy.

John Harcar (13:13.272)
Yeah.

John Harcar (13:20.812)
That is true. Right.

John Harcar (13:34.232)
Nice. Yeah, that’s awesome.

@onajebarnes (13:38.853)
got into cash out refinances, got a $200,000 check on that one between the two properties. That’s a little couple of dollars. And instead of buying three or four more single families, we moved up to buy a large 21-unit multifamily. Like big jump. So I went from like nine units and 30 units overnight. And then there, that’s kind of where we got harder into multifamily.

John Harcar (13:48.981)
yes.

John Harcar (13:57.376)
Awesome. That is a big jump.

@onajebarnes (14:08.101)
did the multifamily game, renovated those units, raised rents, raised the NOI, if you guys know multifamily and how to do that, really dug into forcing the value of that property. I wanna say maybe two years into that property, we were able to get another cash out refinance closer than the six range, $600,000 range, and we bought two more.

John Harcar (14:14.392)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (14:34.722)
Nice. Sweet. So that’s what the three multi. So how many total doors do you have multifamily?

@onajebarnes (14:40.453)
We’ve got 50 doors total. We have the original nine single families in around 41 Multifamilies and we’ve got some land as well that we’re playing around with that we might build on one day Yeah, we yeah, I’m sitting on some good valuable land as well that we can do some things with in the Houston area so

John Harcar (14:54.421)
Okay, some new construction,

John Harcar (15:03.502)
sweet

@onajebarnes (15:04.613)
Yeah, and and we you know, we’re operators I mean that’s what we really and that’s what our business has really morphed into is Making sure because what they don’t tell you is 50 doors Times the average rent you expect like everybody’s in their mind is doing the math right now How much money is you got making them off? Well, I’m not making the same money every month because you got to get this money y’all Yeah, you know as they as the joke

John Harcar (15:25.558)
Yeah, right, exactly.

@onajebarnes (15:31.129)
The worst part of real estate or the biggest fear of real estate that most people have is tenants and toilets.

There you go. And I won’t deny that.

John Harcar (15:41.358)
Yeah, so help our audience out a little bit, maybe some of the newer guys. What is or what were some of your challenges getting into real estate as a whole? mean, you came, you didn’t, you you mentioned you just went out and did it. So what are your challenges getting into it? And then what was your challenges transitioning?

@onajebarnes (16:00.365)
Yeah, I think number one, I think my challenges were the same as the average person, right? I think number one, my challenge and probably everybody’s challenge is education. Do you know how to get started? Do you know where to get started? What should you do? Who should you call? You know, who should be on your team, right? What does the team look like, right? I think those are some of the initials. And then right behind that, that, if that’s one A, then one B is probably the money for everybody, right?

You know, those were my challenges. I told you, I didn’t really have any money. So I had to kind of really do a lot of research around lending and understanding where and how to get money. And I mentioned education first because frankly, I wasn’t that educated as I should have been. As most people are now, I didn’t quite understand wholesaling and how to go direct the seller like I do now.

that probably could have accelerated me further. And then of course, the big one is that, especially today, rent property ain’t as easy as it used to be. You know, especially post COVID and people feel like they didn’t have to pay their rents and all that kind of stuff. operations of actually getting the projections of what you think you should be making is not quite easy. Collecting that rent.

John Harcar (17:05.71)
Mm-mm.

John Harcar (17:12.567)
Yep. Yep.

@onajebarnes (17:23.789)
And then also scaling with the toilets piece, right? And that’s the repairs, right? That’s what people, people don’t want to get calls in the middle of the night. I’ve got plenty of those. I’ve got calls on vacation. I’ve got, mean, like I’m guaranteed we do something. We’re man, we’re vertical down. Yeah. And, and the reason why we’re vertical is because here’s another misnomer. Property management is not a set in the forget it situation.

John Harcar (17:35.34)
Mm-hmm. Do you self-manage?

John Harcar (17:41.888)
okay.

John Harcar (17:52.238)
By no means.

@onajebarnes (17:54.117)
Meaning you can’t, a lot of people think and a lot of people out here tell people, well just go get a property manager and you’re good. That’s not, that’s not as simple as that sounds, right? Because ultimately it’s still your money, it’s still your investment, this is your money and no one really loves your money kind of like you, you know?

John Harcar (18:15.682)
Well, and also too, it’s like, you could do most of the stuff that they do, you know, it’s not, know, but to reframe this, there are a lot of great contract or property managers that are out there. I’ve had a couple on my show, but yeah, it’s just really about vetting them.

@onajebarnes (18:26.905)
That they are.

@onajebarnes (18:33.061)
Exactly. And I think you’ve got to, there are absolutely great property managers out there, but a lot of times they’re really, really large companies. And if you’re getting started, they may not actually take you on as a client, the good ones. And, you know, for me, I kind of tell people if you’ve got a job, you’ve got a W-2, you’ve got a regular life, managing four to five properties actually isn’t quite that difficult. Like you can do that.

You know, you just have to break it down, right? And we break it down very simply, right? Like you’ve got to, you know, we call it, you know, aspects of property management. One, you got to know the law. You should know the law regardless. Like you have to, but a lot of people don’t tell, right? You’ve got to know the law in your area, right? Do you live in a landlord tenant state, a landlord state or a tenant friendly state? That’s huge. I’m in, I’m in Texas. I’m not buying rental property in New York.

John Harcar (19:12.93)
Yeah, just to protect yourself.

John Harcar (19:25.003)
yeah.

@onajebarnes (19:30.883)
Love New York or Cali. I’m not doing it. Yeah, exactly. And you got to know the reasons why, right? I can evict somebody in three to six weeks. It might take you two years somewhere else, right? So, know, these type of things, understanding how the vet tenders, what are the red flags?

John Harcar (19:32.012)
or California. Yeah, those are tenant friendly big time.

@onajebarnes (19:49.957)
Right, do you have a system to take background checks, right? Do you have a system to answer those tenant calls in the middle of the night, right? These are things that can be built out, especially with modern technology. There’s so much cool stuff in modern technology. But the point is that the game of real estate or part of the game when you call yourself a landlord or a buy and hold, what we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to buy.

John Harcar (20:02.894)
yeah. yeah.

@onajebarnes (20:17.965)
an asset that might be worth $250,000, $300,000 and let someone else pay for it. That’s what we’re trying to do, right? That’s why I always kind of bring it back to that, right? Because I tell people all the time, I always ask them a question. say, what’s the easiest way you think you could gain 300 grand in your 401k? They’re like, well, how long does that take? Well, it take years. I’m like, yeah, it takes a long time, right? Like I’ve been there, it takes a long time.

John Harcar (20:26.765)
Yeah.

@onajebarnes (20:43.897)
But how easy, like you gotta put 300K into it, or at least you gotta put at least 150 or 200 into it. At least on the match, right? You gotta put 150 into it. But with real estate, you could potentially put zero, three and a half, five percent, 10 percent, 20 percent down, or be creative with your strategies, if you know creative strategies. You could put that down, and essentially someone else is paying that off. Because as they pay off that mortgage, your equity grows up.

John Harcar (20:48.489)
At least 150 if they’re matching you.

@onajebarnes (21:12.585)
And I always like to include real estate. Pay down and go up at the same time, right? We’ve got appreciation going on and a pay down at the same time. And the beauty of that is someone else is contributing to your retirement, your kids’ college fund saving, whatever your wealth in particular, whatever you need. It don’t have to be, I’ve got to be a kazillionaire billionaire. I mean, that may not be everybody’s goal.

John Harcar (21:14.168)
They’re getting pay down and appreciation.

@onajebarnes (21:41.059)
your goal just might be extra financial security. You know, which is kind of my goal. Like I don’t need to be a billionaire, right? Like I just want to be safe and comfortable and you know, have, be able to pay for my kids college and you know, my daughter’s wedding and all, you know, the basic stuff, right? That we all dream about. And frankly, not even really worried about getting laid off by somebody, right? Like I’m not really as concerned about that kind of stuff.

John Harcar (21:54.538)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Harcar (21:59.853)
Right.

@onajebarnes (22:08.357)
So that’s really what I’m on and the beauty of rental property is that someone else is contributing that for you, right?

John Harcar (22:08.365)
Right.

John Harcar (22:18.99)
Yes, no, 100%. I love how you just put it there. You’re buying a property and someone else is paying it all for you. What?

@onajebarnes (22:24.933)
And that’s a great way to increase your wealth.

John Harcar (22:27.808)
Yeah, yeah, especially, yeah, for long term and then get that appreciation. What does your team look like now? Like, what are you, I know you got 50 doors, what,

@onajebarnes (22:36.259)
Yeah, so my wife retired during COVID and she took over the management piece of the business. I am in charge of acquisition, rehab, construction, you know, that kind of piece. And then we have…

We have a on-site property manager that kind of just works for us exclusively. She lives at one of the properties and makes a lot of rounds. We have three virtual assistants that we use. I know a lot of people and they kind of do basic property management functions. So one of the cool things that kind of came out of COVID is that I think a lot of consumers or renters have gotten used to not necessarily going into the quote unquote leasing office every

day and meeting and talking to their person right so a lot more things became virtual a lot of technology we use a lot of technology we actually are using AI to help manage our property from a maintenance perspective

Yeah, that, you know, we have AI inbound calling where they can answer a lot of basic questions. You know, our AI technology that we’re using right now can actually get a text message come in, troubleshoot the maintenance request with the tenant and actually text out the corresponding vendor. Yeah, yeah. So we’re using a lot of technology that way. Again, virtual assistants, most managers are

John Harcar (23:53.336)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (24:07.694)
That’s pretty cool.

@onajebarnes (24:15.629)
most property managers is just like one, you know, grandma Susie type, right? And that’s on the phones and just pulling our hair out. And we’ve tried to go through and automate or at least help out a lot of that. And that’s kind of my wife where she kind of manages that piece. And then we have different people kind of up under it because we do have different business models. We have the regular long term tenants. And then we even do and we’ve got a boutique. One of the eight unit complexes is a boutique hotel that we

John Harcar (24:21.005)
Yeah.

John Harcar (24:33.687)
Okay.

@onajebarnes (24:45.559)
operate as a short-term rental and that’s a completely different business but we’re able to do that because of a lot of automations.

John Harcar (24:49.454)
Got it.

Awesome. Before we run out of time here, let’s touch on our topic or our title of our things. Starting your wealth journey. It’s okay, man. That’s what I know. This is a great time. When I’m looking down, I’m going like, we’re running out of time. Let’s speed this up a bit. Okay, so talk about how folks can start their wealth journey. What are maybe three main things that are critical for them when they start?

@onajebarnes (24:57.079)
Yeah, I’m on with it. You shouldn’t let me just talk,

@onajebarnes (25:17.091)
Yeah, number one, hit on it first, education, Go get educated on the broad of real estate, right? Like what is out there with real estate? Because I think you host a show where you probably talk about a thousand ways to make money in real estate, right?

John Harcar (25:32.843)
yeah.

@onajebarnes (25:33.673)
Okay, so first things first, watch this show y’all. So that’s first thing, right? Watch this show and understand the many ways to make money real estate. Number two, how about let’s shrink that down. What strategy works for you? Right, that’s a key, right? You could follow me on social media.

John Harcar (25:36.814)
Thank you.

John Harcar (25:50.478)
Hmm.

John Harcar (25:53.902)
Now when you say strategy, you’re talking about like, you a buy and hold guy? Are you flip guy? Are you wholesale? Got it.

@onajebarnes (25:57.893)
Correct, but then even within buy and hold what what what do you really try and like what works for you and your family? Right, you know some people have different goals written different ages of life You might need to be doing different things If you don’t really have a job and you’re trying to use real estate as a tool for to make real money right now You need to be looking at lending realtor flip fix and flip. need to be looking in that zone a whole selling right? But maybe you already have a good job

Maybe you’re doctor or lawyer and say, hey, this is going to be my career. I’m good on that. I just need a different place to build my retirement. Right. Then you might be wanting to look for more of a long-term buy and hold situation. Right. So I think that’s a piece that a lot of people don’t kind of stop. They might look on AGTV say, hey, I’m going to flip this house. Well, you got a job that’s working you 60 hours a week. You ain’t got time for that.

John Harcar (26:50.734)
Yeah, how you gonna do all that, man?

@onajebarnes (26:52.843)
Yeah, so, you know, I think people need to spend a little bit more time there. And then obviously, like I said, go get educated and then shoot and then build your team. Right. You got to build a team. You know, what does a team look like? You know, if you don’t have a couple lenders in your phone, you’re not ready. Really, honestly, you like you’re not. You need to have a couple contractors or somebody that you or a way to do the construction piece. Right. Like you have to have that. Who is your realtor?

John Harcar (27:19.342)
Mm-hmm. Right.

@onajebarnes (27:22.019)
Who is helping you evaluate properties from a value perspective? Who’s your coach? And a coach could be an accountability partner, but I think somebody, accountability partner, coach, homeboyfriend, someone that’s not emotionally tied to you.

John Harcar (27:38.104)
Yep. Yep.

@onajebarnes (27:39.309)
Right? That’s not emotionally tied to you. That can say, hey, you know, John, I don’t really like that idea that you got right there. Maybe you should do it like this. Maybe you should do it like that. And that’s a piece that a lot of us really don’t have and we really need that bouncing.

John Harcar (27:52.366)
It’s like a board of advisors type of relationship, right? Someone that can look at it and be honest and be like, look, man, yeah, move on.

@onajebarnes (27:57.817)
This ain’t it. I know you spent six months looking for a property and you fell in love with this property and whatnot, but you know, the numbers ain’t really mathin’ and I think you’re forcing the rents a little bit higher than what you really could get. That honest feedback.

John Harcar (28:11.714)
honest, honest experience conversation, right? Having it being able to have that.

@onajebarnes (28:16.836)
Exactly. And then lastly, after you built that team out, you got your realtor, you got your lawyer or whoever, you got your coach, you got that, then you gotta shoot. You gotta shoot your shot. And I love sports references, so I’ll give you this one. Most people know Steph Curry, right? He’s a great three-point shooter, right? And you could probably argue he’s the…

John Harcar (28:30.914)
Yep, we got it. Action.

John Harcar (28:39.63)
Hmm.

@onajebarnes (28:44.527)
Probably the best three point shooter of all time. Is that fair? know, Farish, well, at the best three point of all time, he probably averages about 38 % as a three point shooter. That means he’s missing six out of 10 times. He’s missing six out of 10 times and he’s the best three point shooter of all time. So we’re gonna miss a lot of shots.

John Harcar (28:48.408)
Sure. Yeah.

John Harcar (29:01.164)
more than he’s making, that’s for sure.

@onajebarnes (29:13.721)
But you can’t hit none if you ain’t shooting.

John Harcar (29:16.396)
Love it. You can’t miss a shot you don’t take.

@onajebarnes (29:19.301)
There you go. Okay, make a shot you don’t take, right? So, you know, that to me is that last one is that we don’t shoot enough. I believe in shooting, but if you hear what I said before him, I believe in preparation and planning and practice as well, right? And Steph Curry didn’t become great if he wasn’t shooting in the gym first.

John Harcar (29:20.258)
Yeah, or make a shot. Yeah, no, I love it.

John Harcar (29:40.814)
Yeah, mean, what was it, Kobe sat after practice and shot hundreds and hundreds of free throws?

@onajebarnes (29:45.849)
There you go. And there’s just a middle ground between over analyzing and shooting, right? And that’s where I try to find people in their comfort zone of, okay, you’re ready.

John Harcar (29:59.746)
Got it. Okay, well cool. I love it, man. I mean, I think we could take this like another 30 minutes if we want. it, yeah, in the effort of trying to make sure we stay within my parameters. So people can get ahold of you. So people can talk to you about your journey. Talk to you about, I know you mentioned you have a coaching program. How can they reach out to you for anything?

@onajebarnes (30:04.645)
We could. People ain’t trying to hit us B that long.

@onajebarnes (30:22.329)
Yeah, real simple. If you can remember my crazy name, Onajig Barnes on all social media channels and onajigbarnes.com. Real simple, if you can remember. Yeah, so you can hit me on Onajig Barnes on all social media channels and whatever your favorite social media channel is and more particularly onajigbarnes.com.

John Harcar (30:32.716)
Well, and I’ll put it all, it’ll all be in the show notes.

John Harcar (30:44.718)
Perfect. Onaji, thank you, man. That was a great talk. Guys, I hope you took away all the nuggets I did. And there were a lot. Take action. Put the work in. Educate yourself. And enjoy your journey. Onaji, thank you again. Everybody, we’ll see you on the next episode. Cheers.

@onajebarnes (31:02.479)
Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.