Partnerships That Pay Off: Real Estate Success Stories from Indianapolis

John Harcar (00:01.174)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host John Harcar and I’m here today with Zac Canull. And what we’re going to talk about is how he helps folks build wealth through real estate guys. Remember at investor fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers. mean all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business by providing tools and resources to help grow the business they want to grow to in turn live the life they’ve always dreamed of. Zac, welcome to our show.

Zac Canull (00:28.738)
Thanks for having me.

John Harcar (00:30.118)
I’m excited to talk about the topic, right? You know, it’s a thing that I know a lot of people maybe have thought about, but don’t necessarily know how to do it. But before we talk about building wealth through real estate, give my audience a little bit background on you, kind of your journey in real estate. What got you here?

Zac Canull (00:48.118)
Yeah, so I’m based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. I was born and raised in central Indiana and I am actually a third generation realtor and a second generation investor. So I grew up around real estate. My dad was in the business for 53 years here in central Indiana.

He built his own company and at one point had 30 agents and they were property managing I believe you know about 300 properties So you know before I could even drive a car my dad had me at his rental properties you know painting and landscaping and I didn’t really think about at the time, but I’m like man. He cheap labor back then

John Harcar (01:32.2)
Right. I was going to ask I mean how much work did you have to do for pops on the free part?

Zac Canull (01:36.943)
Uh, you know, looking back, I wonder what I was getting paid back in the day. I’m sure it was, uh, you know, minimum wage back then or whatever, but it was a good experience. And, uh, you know, I think from a young age, my parents were really great about instilling, uh, just hard work and grit and, focus and, uh, you know, when you commit to do something to follow through. So I think having me do some of that manual labor stuff and then also teaching me.

John Harcar (01:45.482)
Sure.

John Harcar (02:04.928)
Mm-hmm.

Zac Canull (02:07.182)
entrepreneurship from a young age. You know, I took that experience with, you know, painting houses for my dad’s company and, my best friend and I, started a painting company and, you we were 14 so we didn’t exactly know what we were doing, but we were probably, you know, 13, 14 years old and, you know, we would get dropped off. We didn’t have licenses yet and we’d just paint all day and then they’d come back and pick us up. So.

John Harcar (02:21.462)
14?

Wow.

John Harcar (02:33.12)
So, so Mr. Home Seller, you want us to come on Thursday? Well, I can’t get dropped off at that time. Yeah, I’ve been schooled that time.

Zac Canull (02:39.622)
I’m still in school actually. It’s 3 so I’m only available in the afternoon. But no, you know, I grew up around it and I got into the business. Of course. Sorry, my dog thought he wanted to be on the podcast too. So I just, you know, I grew up around it and I got my license back in 2014 and my older brother and I were helping.

John Harcar (02:54.198)
That’s okay.

Zac Canull (03:07.662)
you know, helping run our dad’s business, you know, as he was kind of phasing into retirement and knowing that he was kind of exiting the business in 2015, we decided to actually start our own brokerage. you know, being literally only one year in the business for myself, luckily my brother had been in the business for about 12 years at that point. It was a great experience just learning, you know, how to start a brokerage and, you know, hiring agents and the different things that

John Harcar (03:19.733)
Okay.

Zac Canull (03:35.247)
you know an agent might want from you as a broker. So I feel like I was exposed to that, you know growing up and it helped me kind of just dive head into that. And you know did residential sales for the first few years and started helping investors I believe in 2017. Started helping a couple buddies who had the idea they wanted to get involved with flipping and you know helped them find the deal, helped them manage the project a little bit, you know saw them make solid returns.

John Harcar (03:45.419)
Mm-hmm.

Zac Canull (04:05.134)
a couple more investors, and like, okay, everyone seems to be making money around here. How do I get involved with this? So 2019, I finally took the leap and bought my first Flip. And what I learned with that experience is I had no idea what I was doing. So I thought I did, I’m a realtor, I can figure this out. But learning the hard way and kind of just figuring out on my own.

John Harcar (04:11.275)
Right?

John Harcar (04:28.266)
Mm-hmm.

Zac Canull (04:34.734)
Looking back, it’s been an invaluable experience. So I think this business more so than many others, you learn by the mistakes you make. And if you can turn your mistakes into lessons, then you continue to grow. to this day, I’ve done more than 40 flips. 23 of them were flipped and sold.

John Harcar (04:55.861)
Yep.

Zac Canull (05:04.8)
and then the rest were flipped and held and they’re now rental properties. But each project has been its own learning lesson and I’ve continued to kind of hone in my craft in figuring out what systems and processes work, what things don’t work, where to spend money, what are things that maybe the end buyer really cares about and what are things that…

You know really add value. So it’s really just been a great learning experience and You know, think the now Nowadays, there’s so much more information out there that we’ve almost crossed that threshold where There’s too much information and you know, there’s there’s too many calculators and Methods and you know, there’s you know bigger pockets and they’ve got

John Harcar (05:50.624)
Yeah.

John Harcar (05:59.274)
shiny objects.

Zac Canull (06:01.504)
all these opinions.

lost you on my end.

John Harcar (06:11.264)
Did we pause out? Something happened.

Zac Canull (06:13.516)
don’t know if you can hear me, but on my end everything’s frozen.

John Harcar (06:26.55)
I think we’ll have to redo this.

John Harcar (06:35.284)
I think it might have been my internet that, yeah.

Zac Canull (06:36.322)
Well, still frozen on my end.

Zac Canull (06:45.144)
Didn’t want to keep going if it’s not recording at all. maybe I’ll just wait till it kicks back in here.

John Harcar (06:55.089)
Sorry about that. Everything on my end just dumped out. It was really, really weird. That’s all right. We can edit it, but go ahead. Yeah.

Zac Canull (06:59.523)
Yes.

Okay, cool. So I’m not entirely sure what the last thing you heard was, because your screen’s still frozen on one side. Oh, there we go. There was two versions of your video at feed. So I don’t know. I’ll just kind of kick back into, you know, I think I am fortunate that I was able to take all the mistakes that I made.

John Harcar (07:11.492)
Is it really?

John Harcar (07:15.573)
okay.

Zac Canull (07:31.535)
and convert them into lessons and be able to kind of hone my craft over the years. You know, I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve had, you know, I had a great investor partner that I found late 2021. He and I built a 24 door rental portfolio from scratch. And, you know, his faith in me to deliver on, you know, being able to build this portfolio.

John Harcar (07:47.59)
Awesome.

Zac Canull (07:57.439)
you know, was, has been huge for my career. And to this day, I still asset manage, you know, with him, this portfolio. so I’ve gained a lot of experience from the rental side of the business, you know, through working with him. And then I’ve had a great contractor partner through a lot of this, you know, renovation and experience. And he and I have developed, you know, a great system where we really kind of piggyback off each other in terms of.

designing space and picking finishes. And he’s taught me so much about the anatomy of a home and just, you know, design features and being able to look at space in just a different way. I think, you know, especially in a hot market like Indianapolis, know, Zillow named us the number two housing market in the country earlier this year. We were also named potentially the number two most competitive market.

So what I think that’s done is it’s brought a lot of outside attention to the Indianapolis market and to me one of the one of the key components of you know real estate investing especially with when you’re redesigning space is Being able to look at you know, maybe even a home on the market and being able to see what others don’t in terms of Potential of how to utilize a space or you know, can I add a bedroom? You know, can I finish the basement?

John Harcar (09:00.401)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (09:23.548)
Right.

Zac Canull (09:24.596)
it makes sense to do an addition and being able to calculate very quickly, know, how much would it cost to make these improvements to make this home more appealing or how much would it cost to to renovate this home so that I can hit the highest possible potential, you know, when it comes to trying to flip. So I’m very thankful that I’ve come across, you know, wonderful partners that have taught me through their experience, you know,

what they’re capable of doing and it’s helped transfer it into me helping gain this experience and then taking that experience and trying to elevate that to help my clients and my investor partners really build wealth together.

John Harcar (10:08.967)
Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like you’ve had a lot of influence in your life. Obviously, you mentioned that your father’s in real estate for 53 years and your brother’s in real estate. Tell me some of the challenges as you kind of progressed along your journey going into retail or residential real estate, into flipping and all that stuff. What are some of the obstacles or maybe mindset things you had to deal with or do to kind of keep that train going forward?

Zac Canull (10:27.054)
Mm-hmm.

Zac Canull (10:37.134)
Yeah, that’s a great topic. So I think one of the toughest things for most investors getting in is having the confidence to take that leap to get started. There’s so much information out there and it’s really easy for someone that maybe wants to get involved in real estate investing to get stuck in the analysis paralysis stage. There’s just…

You can read books and you can listen to podcasts and you can attend webinars and seminars and listen and assume that you’re going to gain enough information that you’ll feel confident. But the reality is at a certain point you just have to dive in. You have to take action and you need to take what you’ve learned from those that have done this before and…

develop a plan and then get in motion because it’s very easy for most investors and you know even me as a realtor thinking working with investors it’s easy to talk about it it’s another whole nother thing to you know jump in the game and do it and I think I learned from a from the beginning that it’s very difficult as a realtor to get the investors to you know kind of trust your judgment

if you’re not investing yourself. So I think it was almost like as I’m helping others flip houses and find rentals and whatnot, I find a great deal and I present it to an investor and they might say, if it’s such a good deal, why don’t you do it yourself? And I think at one point a kind of a light bulb went off and I’m like, you know what? Why don’t I do this myself?

John Harcar (12:03.463)
Mmm.

John Harcar (12:26.343)
Maybe I should. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Zac Canull (12:29.598)
This is a great opportunity and I think at a certain point I found such a great deal, I thought to myself, well, I could, you know, sell it to a client and, make the 3 % or whatever the commission was, or, you know, there’s a hundred thousand dollar margin on this project. Maybe this is something I should try to figure out how to do myself. And I think that experience on the investment side of the business is everything, you know.

You can, everyone’s read books, everyone’s theoretically flipped at home in their mind or watched HGTV or whatever, but doing it yourself and having to go through the process and jump the hurdles that come up and gain that experience firsthand, to me that that’s an invaluable skill set. And I think one thing I’ve learned here is that

for all the realtors that we have, Indianapolis probably has 7,000 realtors or more, a very small portion of them are also active investors. there’s this almost like unintentional gatekeeping of information, I think, from all the really experienced investors, because if we told everyone the secret of how to do it, then it’d be just harder for us to do it too.

John Harcar (13:54.639)
Right. Right.

Zac Canull (13:57.155)
You know, it’s this balance of I like sharing the information and helping others get involved with real estate investing, but nothing really beats experience when it comes to working with someone that can provide deals and analysis and can help guide you as an investor or something that I’ve kind of leaned into the last six months or so is

John Harcar (14:15.866)
Mm-hmm.

Zac Canull (14:25.62)
working on leveraging partnerships with investors in a more passive manner and Cannot create relationships, you know with investors that that want a passive investment where they’re putting capital in and They don’t have to do anything else, you know, they wait until the projects over they get their money back plus a return and they don’t have to worry about the day-to-day and you know the contractor situations and you know

John Harcar (14:30.534)
Okay.

Zac Canull (14:53.09)
the steep learning curve that comes with learning how to flip or learning how to build a rental portfolio. It’s not something you can just read a book and dive right in. You kind of have to work your way up, start with the lowest, small projects, mostly cosmetic, and then kind of work your way up over time, not only with the amount of work you’re doing, but I think also price ranges.

You don’t want to dive in and just buy a million dollar house. if you flip it, a lot of people start with a hundred thousand dollar house and kind of work their way up. And eventually you hit a barrier and okay, well, let’s go for duplexes. Let’s go for fourplexes. Let’s trade that up for an apartment, a small apartment building. That turns into commercial. And people kind of work their way up. I think that there’s…

John Harcar (15:21.851)
Yeah.

John Harcar (15:41.158)
Right.

Zac Canull (15:47.875)
Like you said, there’s a lot of information out there. It’s important to leverage that experience. I think finding either a mentor or an experienced investor to work with or a network like you guys have at Investor Fuel seems like such a great opportunity for those that either want to get started or take the small amount of experience they have and kind of leverage that to the next level.

John Harcar (16:16.455)
Hmm?

Zac Canull (16:17.496)
You really need to have those that have done it before show you how to do it.

John Harcar (16:21.063)
And I like what you said about the, you know, be having that experience investing as a realtor because it also adds credibility, right? Like you mentioned, you know, if an investor goes to realtor and they say, you know, they haven’t done any investing, it doesn’t land with as much weight what they say or their information or advice as if with you, if you’ve done the projects, it lands a little bit better. Why do you think there are so few realtors that actually do the investing part?

Zac Canull (16:51.586)
You know, I think some of it comes down to maybe just the availability of education on the investment side. From what I’ve seen, you know, I started my career at an independent brokerage, so I had no idea what was really going on with the bigger brokerages. Now, I’m currently working with Kelly Williams, biggest brokerage in the world.

They actually have a wealth of knowledge and information available in terms of investing, but it seems like a lot of the big brokerages, know, and medium and small and basically just most brokerages in general, they don’t teach you that side of the business. know, most, it seems like most are concentrated on, you know, just the residential side and how to, you know, how to lead generate, how to work your sphere and how to do open houses and

you know, proper techniques for listing a home and there’s nothing wrong with all that, but it almost seems like there’s just, there’s a gap in, you know, maybe the information available or helping people get from information to action. So, you know, at least from my experience, that’s what I feel like I’ve seen. You know, I think a lot of realtors maybe don’t know that

know that that opportunity’s there because they started just working residential and I think over the last few years, it’s become apparent that investors are a much bigger part of the marketplace. And I feel like maybe a NARS statistic recently was cash buyers are somewhere near the 33 % of all transactions now. So in my thought process,

If you’re not an investor or you don’t work with investors that are purchasing cash, as a realtor, how could you service your clients in the best manner if you don’t understand how cash buyers operate when they are now one in three buyers? So, yeah, I think it’s incredibly important that realtors take that time to dive into them.

John Harcar (19:07.121)
Yeah.

Zac Canull (19:17.472)
investment side of the business, not to say that it’s right for every single one to flip or do that themselves, but you still have the data available to how to analyze an investment property. And even in the MLS, we have access to all the data necessary to analyze a deal. It’s really just taking the time to learn that skill set.

John Harcar (19:45.307)
Yeah. Well, and and I like what you said too about, you know, them not really being able to service their client because, you know, there might be a lot of times when they come to a realtor and their property really isn’t best fit for an online or on market type of thing where it might need a lot of work. And if they had that investor connection, right, they could better serve their client. Maybe it’s a short timeframe or a distress type of situation. Right. so it really helps him. So

What do you think a lot of your keys to success have been in your journey? Right? Cause it looks like you’ve kind of scaled up. got into investing, you’re doing other things. have rentals. What are some of the key success points, resources, or mindset tools that you used to kind of keep that everything going forward?

Zac Canull (20:27.31)
Well, I think first of all, mindset in real estate and entrepreneurship and business in general, mindset is everything. And especially the journey of learning how to flip from kind of scratch or learning the hard way, you know, without the mentorship that I think is incredibly important. I think that being able to take those

losses or mistakes that you make and considering the big picture and converting those into lessons, you know, that’s all mindset, you know. It’s easy for anyone to, let’s say you flip your first house, maybe it takes you six months and in the end, if you break even, you spend all that time and effort, it would be really easy to say, maybe this isn’t for me, you know. I don’t, yeah.

John Harcar (21:22.117)
loss yeah yeah

Zac Canull (21:24.878)
It’s too risky. I don’t want to do this and I’m sure there’s a ton of people out there that do that but the reality is You know, I would assume most flippers lose on their first deal because that you know, they don’t they didn’t have that experience so I think just having the mindset of Understanding the big picture, you know setting goals and focusing on what can I achieve in five years or ten years and not just

John Harcar (21:34.567)
Mm-hmm.

Zac Canull (21:52.877)
What did I do on this one project? I think to me that’s been an invaluable part of why I’ve kept going when maybe, you know, I’ve been down after a project or after something that popped up and that we didn’t expect, but the reality is, okay, what can we learn from this? You know, how can I take this experience and make sure I don’t make the same mistake again? And I think as long as you can focus on that and

John Harcar (22:09.607)
Mm.

Right, right.

Zac Canull (22:22.804)
stay with a positive mindset of, okay, this happened, how can I learn from it and how can I move forward and just keep going? So I think mindset number one has been everything. I think another big thing is positioning yourself to find great partners to work with. I’ve been very fortunate to find great investor partners.

John Harcar (22:32.327)
Yeah.

Zac Canull (22:51.522)
great contractors, other realtors and other investors and being a part of real estate masterminds and seeking mentorship. also, I’ve had, I’ve been involved with Tom Ferry coaching for last about six years now. And I think my coach is honestly getting closer to being my therapist than he is. So having

John Harcar (23:08.935)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (23:16.685)
Yeah

Zac Canull (23:21.006)
an outside third party perspective has been crucial for me to be able to kind of think through some of the different partnerships that I’ve developed over the years and you know relying on someone else that isn’t giving me their opinion based on well if I lean this direction they might make a couple more bucks. You know my coach has really that outside view.

He’s been a crucial part of me being able to develop both my residential side of my business, but also my investments. And then, you know, I think overall I am, I’ve always been, you know, very interested in the idea of being kind of the knowledge broker. You know, I got involved with, you know, there’s a company out there called KCM, it’s keeping current matters.

They’ve been huge with talking about becoming the knowledge broker and understanding that real estate investing, but also just being a realtor in general, there’s a lot of things that are constantly changing and understanding how to leverage the changing technologies or the changes in laws and rules and how buyers have access to properties or 3D tours and.

All these things, I think if one thing is constant, it is change. And being able to stay educated, what’s going on, and being willing to change with the technology or whatever else is changing, I think that has been crucial for myself and my business partners to able to help our clients as we try to stay involved with what’s

coming up next, how can we leverage AI, for example, to help either find deals in the future or analyze properties or help design, stay in contact with customers. There’s a ton of uses for AI and I think just being able to stay in front of all those things, I think that’s also been a huge part for me.

John Harcar (25:19.996)
Yeah.

Zac Canull (25:46.601)
of being able to compete with other large teams or more experienced brokers or whatever, just trying to stay knowledgeable and be able to help educate my clients or my investor partners with what I’ve learned.

John Harcar (25:49.424)
Sure.

John Harcar (25:58.439)
Keeping up with the Joneses and it’s funny you say that in the AI one of the big topics that our mastermind coming up here in May is AI for real estate investors. So yeah, it’s all about knowledge. It’s not all about, you know, continuing to grow and learn with the trends. What, you know, what advice would you give to somebody that was looking to get into real estate now, whether it’s residential real estate, whether it’s flipping, whether it’s investing. I mean, what kind of tools, resources or advice would you give out?

Zac Canull (26:01.102)
Thank

Zac Canull (26:29.23)
Well, I think the first thing is do your research. know, not just real estate investing in general, but definitely do your research on the potential partners that you might use. I don’t think people talk about that enough. You know, this is a business. It’s kind of a dog-eat-dog situation. So you have to be careful. You know, let’s just say, for example, with a contractor partner you choose

There’s a ton of theft and fraud and a contractor might say, yeah, we need a 50 % draw up front. And maybe you give them the money and all of a sudden they disappear. And that kind of stuff happens all the time. Same with lending partners. It’s different if you’re using a large company or a conventional means of financing. But you start working with private lenders.

John Harcar (27:08.753)
Yeah.

all the time.

Zac Canull (27:26.848)
If you don’t have some sort of legal counsel double checking the contracts you’re using, you don’t know what you might be signing or what sort of clauses are stuck in those contracts and you might have a lot of hidden fees that you didn’t know were there. So I think do your research on the partners you get involved with. Have a plan. Don’t just dive head in like I did and not have an idea what you’re doing.

Create a business plan, talk to contractors, have the relationships in place before you start. I think seek a mentor. Find someone that’s been in the business, whether it’s a realtor or an investor or an investor group, like Investor Fuel. Utilize the experience and understand that it’s not just a guessing game.

John Harcar (28:18.555)
Yeah.

Zac Canull (28:23.626)
They’ve done it before and if they’re willing to share that information with you leverage their experience, you know, so you’re avoiding what can be a very steep and expensive learning curve. I think, yeah. And I think, you know, the last thing I think that’s super important is just once you have all your ducks in a row, take action, you know, you know, Tom Ferry coaching, one of the things that they always say is action solves everything.

John Harcar (28:34.16)
or mistakes.

Zac Canull (28:52.11)
It’s so easy to get stuck on the sidelines and be waiting for times to be perfect or this perfect deal or rates to come down or all these different scenarios. And the reality is, if you’re waiting for the perfect scenario, you’ll never get in. And you’ll just be talking about it. And 10 years from now, you’ll think, wow, I wish I would have bought a bunch of property because homes are double the in-value.

John Harcar (29:07.982)
Nope.

John Harcar (29:20.293)
Right.

Zac Canull (29:21.166)
So I think, know, do your research, but at the same time, you know, take that leap. Jump in, you know, do your first deal. Try to mitigate your risk as much as possible, but with no risk comes no reward. So you just have to be willing to take a little risk.

John Harcar (29:39.525)
That’s fantastic advice guys. hope you guys had your pen and paper out and took some notes right there. If guys want to get a hold of you, if people want to reach out and talk to you, maybe they have a deal in Indiana or Indianapolis area, they want to do some business with you. How do they get in touch?

Zac Canull (29:56.31)
The best way to get a hold of me is by phone, cell phone number 317-496-3632. I’m also very active on social media, so you can find me on Facebook, Zach Canal, or you can look up the Canal Group, and that’s C-A-N-U-L-L. And, and, or you can find me on Instagram, at Close With Canal, and again, that’s C-A-N-U-L-L.

John Harcar (30:25.543)
And we’ll put all that stuff in the show notes. So if anybody wants to reach out to you, that’ll all be there Guys, I I hope you took some of the notes I have I mean I’m looking at my paper right now and it’s just I’m trying to it little scribbling because I’m trying to write and talk at the same time, but Exactly brought some fantastic information. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today guys I hope you enjoyed as much as I did, you know, again, and I’ll see you guys on the next show. Cheers

Zac Canull (30:39.438)
I’m

Zac Canull (30:52.611)
Awesome. Thanks.