Scaling Your Real Estate Business with Anthony J White

Anthony J White (00:00)
So I actually got it started when I was working at I quit McDonald’s and I was just doing odd and in things because I wanted to work for myself and I actually went to an investor class where They went they sell you on a class and the class is like 1,500 bucks and so was gonna sign up for the class and Then when I looked up the class and I said, okay because again, I wasn’t working so I didn’t have a ton of cash

And I said, well, let me look this class up. And from that class, everybody was like, it’s a good class, but they’re trying to sell you in a $20,000 class. And I’m like, oh yeah, no, I don’t have that. So then I said, well, let me figure out, like, I feel like a lot of the stuff I can learn, I just don’t know anything about real estate. And so the natural progression seemed to be like, let me get a real estate license.

Michelle Kesil (02:11)
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Anthony White, who is a real estate agent and real estate investor as well as an educator. So excited to have you here today, Anthony.

Anthony J White (02:27)
I’m so happy to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:28)
Awesome, let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Anthony J White (02:34)
My main focus is helping people simplify the concept of real estate investing. I’m a real estate agent, a real estate investor. I’ve done quite a bit with my personal investing. I recognize that a lot of people feel like they don’t have the bandwidth to learn real estate investing. Even as I built my real estate business, running my real estate investing has helped set up my future family in amazing way.

And I’m super eager to share how simple it could be to be able to get into real estate investing. But we also do some off the court stuff. We actually just recently started a nonprofit. We’ve been doing a scholarship for the last few years. We just really want to make impact.

Michelle Kesil (03:17)
Awesome. How did you get started in investing?

Anthony J White (03:20)
So I actually got it started when I was working at I quit McDonald’s and I was just doing odd and in things because I wanted to work for myself and I actually went to an investor class where They went they sell you on a class and the class is like 1,500 bucks and so was gonna sign up for the class and Then when I looked up the class and I said, okay because again, I wasn’t working so I didn’t have a ton of cash

And I said, well, let me look this class up. And from that class, everybody was like, it’s a good class, but they’re trying to sell you in a $20,000 class. And I’m like, oh yeah, no, I don’t have that. So then I said, well, let me figure out, like, I feel like a lot of the stuff I can learn, I just don’t know anything about real estate. And so the natural progression seemed to be like, let me get a real estate license.

Let me start to learn about contractors. Let me start to learn about building my network and learning some of those things. And then the more and more I started to think about it, it just

really was a natural progression. Because when I was at McDonald’s, I was actually talking to my crew about budget. I was talking to my crew about credit. And so a lot of those things that kind of became the building blocks for being what I felt like for being a good real estate agent, it was just lining up well that it made sense for me to jump into that. so ironically, even when I first became an investor, I wasn’t mentally an investor. And so I

Got in, I started hustling, I’m making, I’m selling. But the first couple properties, I wasn’t thinking about them from the perspective of buying as an investor. I was really trying to help my clients solve problems. There’s one property that, she was a single mom, she had four foster children. I went to her with a contract and I said, she said, you know, I didn’t realize that she had an experience with the realtor before.

I brought her a contract. said, hey, if you paint your house, we can sell it for $125,000. And then she said, I don’t have anybody to help me paint. I found somebody before we got on the market, said, hey, this person is willing to purchase it for $115,000 without it being painted. That person, we went under contract. They canceled during the option period because the guy thought he was going to lose his job. And so back then, we actually had to paper our option checks that we gave to the seller.

And when I went back to go give it to her,

I had already asked her, so what’s your next plan? Like, let’s go with moving forward. And she said, I’m just going to sell it to one of those, we buy ugly houses, people. And I said, well, what are they going to give you for it? And she said, I think like 72,000. And I couldn’t understand. I just brought you a contract. We haven’t put the house on the market yet. That contract was about 115, and you’re getting ready to take 72,000 dollars for this house. It doesn’t make any sense for me. But she also was trying to get into a good school district.

And so she needed, she was already going to be maxed out in order to get to that school district. She needed to get more cash for a house. And so I, you know, when I was going to deliver the option money check to her, said, Hey, ⁓ what if I was able to get you an offer? She said, I’d be open to it. And so in my mind, I wasn’t thinking that I was going to give her an option offer. I’m going to go like, my parents have good credit. You know, I’m to try and convince them that they should buy this house and they should be able to do something.

I have long story short, I ended up figuring out I didn’t have any money. I was able to use the HELOC from my first house for the down payment for my second house. And it worked out. And I purchased the house. And so, again, mentally I wasn’t an investor. I didn’t do any due diligence about the area. It was close enough to my other house. So I didn’t feel like I felt like I knew what I was getting into. I didn’t know.

that the neighborhood was actually a rough neighborhood. And so some time while I was there, somebody actually broke into my house and I was like, this isn’t safe. And so fresh off of already doing something that I didn’t think was possible because nobody in my family had two houses. And so now I’m looking to say, okay, I need to find a new place. And so I’m looking at opportunities. And I went back to the bank and I said, hey, would you guys qualify me for anything else?

They said, like $60,000. And I think they were just being funny. Well, one of my clients, I had another client, was going through the process of bankruptcy. And he had to sell some of his properties. He was an investor. He had five properties, and he just got real ill. And I think he just had a hard time getting the leverage to get everybody to get everything done. And so the houses went into decline. Everything kind of went out of control.

And so he was selling his properties. And so then I said, hey, you the bank told me they give me this. And so he had already tried to sell the house before that we’re in the process. We’re clearing up a liens. We’re trying to get his other properties sold. But this one I saw that they had already tried to sell it for seventy five thousand. And I said, hey, don’t be offended if you say no, like I’m all all the way on board. But like they said that they give me sixty thousand. If you’ll take it out by the house like.

And again, I’m just trying to solve problems. Well, he says yes, and I was thinking that that was gonna be my first, so in my mind, the first house I rented out, the second house that I was gonna buy, I was gonna rent that out also, and those two mortgages, or those two, the profit from those two was gonna pay for my mortgage for where I was living. It still wasn’t solving my problem about finding someone, but at least I felt like I was gonna be a net even on now I’m basically living for free.

And in that experience, it was my first time dealing with contractors. And I had a friend that I had helped out before. He said, hey, can you do me a favor and pay me in advance? And if you ever worked with contractors, you know, that’s horrible idea. But he was a friend. And so I’m like, sure. I paid him. And then I said, hey, if you just, the guy was going to work with me, he said, we could get all the work done with the stuff that I was going to do to it. He was fine with me doing before we closed.

So while the loan was going, I’m like, hey, if you can do everything and I can rent this house immediately, that’d be perfect. Well, my friend, he took off. He went to go visit his mom. And then when he came back, it was like months later. And then I’m like, hey, and now he’s asking me for more money for work that I already paid him for. And so I got frustrated with the whole thing. And I actually asked somebody to like, hey, help me get some money.

⁓ I just want to put enough money into this house. I just want to sell it. I just want to break even. If I can just get my money back out of it, I’m good. I just am frustrated with this house. Then after we got it done, said, actually, it looks like I might actually be able to turn a little profit. That’s how it ended up being my first flip. But in the process though, neither one of those, there was a part where somebody kept saying, I had an AC guy that was looking at the houses. He’s like, yeah, usually when investors, I’m like,

Who are you talking to? I’m not an investor. And I think there was also, had a negative stigma about investors. thought investors were low life. They like to steal people’s houses. They don’t want to, like, I had all these things. So I think there was also an identity crisis that I had there too, because I don’t want to be like those people. And it wasn’t until literally the next project property, I have another property that, so now I have this property.

and I’m putting a sign up, I’m getting ready to sell another house. A guy from two doors down comes and says, he thinks that I was putting the house up for rent. And so he says, oh, I got this house over here. I went over to the house and I said, well, why don’t you let me list it? And he’s like, oh, I don’t want to work with realtors. You I know what I want for it, da da da da. Well, he thought he was being whatever. And he starts trying to convince me because I connected him with the lender. My lender said, oh yeah, Anthony’s an investor. I’m like, I’m not an investor. Why are you guys calling me investors?

And somewhere in the process of that, it ended up being a switch to where I actually started to become an investor on purpose.

one day I literally woke up and said I don’t know why I’m fighting with this I am an investor and Ironically that weekend. I was doing an event that I put on for for Father’s Day at a gun range And so we’re at the gun range I’m doing I’m showing up as a real estate agent and I’m just chatting with one of the ladies that was at the

the countertop or she was working there. And I said, yeah, just so you know, this is how we do anything. If you have anybody who wants to buy or sell, we help them. And she said, what if I know exactly what I want and I want to sell as is. And I said, yeah, we can help you with figuring out how to get stuff done and build it to closing. And she says, no, I want, I know what I want. I want to sell my house as is. And then the library said, shoot, you’re an investor. So she gives me details about the house.

It’s in the same neighborhood as the flip that I’m working on. And so that property, actually still own that property. It ended up being my first true rental property that I kept with the intention of keeping. But like there was a mental process and that’s one of the things that I try to tell people when they’re looking at getting into real estate investing. I think the hardest part is the mental shift. I think it like the idea of it makes sense to people.

The upward money potential makes sense to people, but the mental part of it, I think, is the hardest thing. And so for that reason, I actually recommend for most people, the easiest, simplest way to become an investor is to buy a new, buy a primary residence, then buy a new primary residence and rent out the old one. Because renting out my old house doesn’t seem that scary or daunting, right? But buying a property to invest it and rent it, like that’s, I gotta come up with this, all this money, I gotta do all these, then I have to worry about,

But right in my old house, I know if the bathroom lights, outlets don’t work, you have to go in the garage, press the reset button, I feel like I have this familiarity and this comfort that makes me feel like I know this and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. And somewhere in the process, it really starts to click, hey, I’m really a real estate investor. And I think at that point, it makes it a lot easier. Alternatively, think business owners.

usually also have an easier challenge. Some of the stuff that they’ve done to become a business owner, I think it’s a similar energy with becoming a real estate investor. And so I think that a lot of times business owners, if they’re armed with the right information, it’s easier for them to make the switch. Because I think the mental part, some of the mental work is already done.

Michelle Kesil (14:23)
Yeah, amazing. Thank you for sharing your story.

Anthony J White (14:26)
Thank you.

Michelle Kesil (14:26)
And so what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Anthony J White (14:31)
So I’ve got an aggressive goal for this year. It’s aggressive for me. This year I intend to buy 30 houses. Not so much for the houses because it forces me to learn to scale. I have to get clear about what things I want to do, what things are not important. It also allows me the opportunity and space to create opportunities for other people.

as far as contracting and some of those things. If I’m doing one or two houses a year or three or four houses a year, I don’t have the same capacity like I do for 30 houses of energy behind creating that. I know that my current team can’t handle 30, so there’s some things that I have to do to grow in order to do that. But I like the fact that also the energy behind that gives me a lot more focus, capital.

for some of the stuff that we want to do in the community. And so trying to scale up that so that I can scale up this year, we have scaled up our scholarship. We usually we do two $5,000 scholarships for the last four or five years. This year we have made the commitment that we would do a $40,000, $10,000 a year scholarship and five $2,000 scholarships. We’re trying to scale our impact.

Really a lot more of the stuff in the community is really what we’re trying to scale up.

Michelle Kesil (15:54)
Yeah, amazing. And what has been the biggest challenge you’ve overcome on your investing journey?

Anthony J White (16:41)
The biggest challenge that I’ve overcome on my investing journey

You know, I think one of the biggest challenges I’ve overcome, which is…

It’s kind of hard because I see, I came from McDonald’s. I didn’t come from a ton of money. I didn’t come from like an amazing, like the ideal perfect scenario. But there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve been able to do. I always came from the perspective of, I don’t want to come up alone. I want everybody to go with me. And I have…

The challenge is trying to force everybody. It was really hard for me to recognize that not everybody, number one, everybody has their own journey, their own time. I think that there’s this feeling. I looked at, heard stories about LeBron James and LeBron James got to this level and he was able to bring his whole crew with him and put them all in positions. I’d say probably,

Maybe it was selfish, right? Maybe it was an ego thing that I wanted to be the one to put everybody on and do some of those things. But for sure, recognizing that there’s so many opportunities with this and just feeling like this is something, like I just want to make you change your life. That was hard. I think that was really hard because going on this journey, you know, there’s some times where you kind of get lonely and really…

You know, if you have your squad, your day ones, and we’re all in the same like-minded page, it feels like it would be a lot easier to get through some of the stuff. And I think being able to get to the place where I recognize, and there’s nothing wrong with not everybody doing it at my pace, right? That was hard for me to, like, I see how people that we’re close to, and the…

like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, right? A lot of times people that are really close to them and say, man, they’re rough. They’re so intense. They’re so, right? And I understand that element of it because you want to play at a higher level, but I also understand it really is. Everybody’s running their own race and there’s nothing wrong with people not running it at the same pace or the same rate that you want to be at. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think that was…

That was really challenging for me to accept, especially when I see people in a situation. And I’m like, man, you can get up. can fix. The problem is, right, and just flip the switch. Just do what I’m doing. That’s not the solution for everybody.

Michelle Kesil (19:04)
Yeah, definitely. I can understand that. And so are you looking to continue to scale and get more opportunities in investing? I know you’re also educating. So what does that mix look like?

Anthony J White (19:19)
So 100 % we’re looking for opportunities. I recognize being able to shift my real estate business. in scaling, one of the other challenges is I build my business to where a lot of people will refer me for different aspects. before I was committing so much time, I’d probably say the first couple of years.

maybe a quarter of the deals that I got done or things people said you can’t get done. And I just beat them to death and I’m like, no, we’re gonna figure this thing out. And we did. And a lot of times, the energy that it takes to do those type of things, also, I can’t scale and do that. And so recently I made a decision to focus more on specifically working with people who are thinking about wealth building and using their real estate intentionally.

so that I can have more impact and I can recognize more opportunities in that place. And it is already showing me opportunities to scale there. And it also has given me opportunity to scale my impact because I was spending so much time in those spaces. A lot of the things that I wanted to do, I couldn’t do. Now, I’m regularly going to, we have schools that we’re…

affiliated with that we’re going to, we’re pouring into, and we’re loving on the teachers, and we’re being able to do that because of making the shift, right? And so now my intention is to scale up on that kind of stuff. I don’t know how, my sister was a teacher. I don’t know how teachers do it. I don’t know how teachers do it. But I recognize an opportunity there, and I just, being able to love on the teachers, right? I also recognize that

being able to, like some of the, sometimes people just need somebody that understands, right? Like a judgment free zone. And so being able to have a conversation from somebody who has lived a life, I’ve learned a lot, I’ve had a lot of experiences, and so I have a lot of understanding and I can have empathy and sympathy with people. And being able to be intentional, I really wanna scale that up to be able to, from the perspective of,

a man, you know, trying to go and find his way from the perspective of somebody making a transition into business from the perspective of a business owner growing, right? Some from the perspective of a serial entrepreneur. And there’s so many different like aspects to where like, these are things like that I’m learning and collecting data. And I really want to be able to scale up the reach and the conversations and more specifically the impact.

Michelle Kesil (21:44)
Yeah, amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that. And before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?

Anthony J White (21:54)
I am at Anthony J White on Facebook. That’s probably where I’m most active-ish. You know, I struggle because I am super introverted and I prefer not to. Like if I didn’t have to be on social media, I wouldn’t. So I’m trying to do the juggling act. On Instagram, I’m @PerfectSight, S-I-G-H-T as in vision. Same thing on threads.

I talk to myself on threads. Those are probably the main ones where I’m most active. I’ve got a little bit of presence. And even on my Facebook, I’m trying to be intentional because I am poor at self-promotion. So we’re trying to be intentional. People don’t realize there’s so many different elements of what we do. So we just, we created a philanthropist page that actually shows here’s some of the things we’re doing. Cause I don’t, I don’t really want to do it to blast it, but

I realized that people need to see that. We’re creating an investor page that shows like here’s a lot of the stuff that we’ve done or we’re doing. Of course we have the real estate page and I’m intending to continue to grow out on those pages. And so that again, that’ll be connected to my Anthony J. White. So picture me and my chicken, which is a funny story. I got this chicken from one of my investment properties. She’s a cute chicken. We do photo shoots. She’s my…

My pet, she actually lives inside my house.

Michelle Kesil (23:07)
Okay, nice. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Anthony J White (23:13)
My pleasure, I’m glad to be here.

Michelle Kesil (23:15)
Awesome. And for those tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Anthony who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.