The Real Estate Hack Maurice Philogene Doesn’t Want You to Miss

Maurice Philogene (00:00)
Real estate is fantastic. I have been involved with, I’m gonna guess, like $250 million worth of real estate in my life. It’s great, but it’s a tool. It’s just a tool. From my perspective, it is a tool to generate income or equity such that you can live life the way that you want to. I just happened to stumble on real estate in my early 20s because I was…

reading financial books and I was trying to like not fall into the college kid run into credit card debt type of thing.

Michelle Kesil (02:03)
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil And today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Maurice Philogene who is a real estate investor and entrepreneur. So excited to have you here today, Maurice.

Maurice Philogene (02:20)
It’s my pleasure, my pleasure.

Michelle Kesil (02:21)
Awesome, so let’s dive in. First off, those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Maurice Philogene (02:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. So ⁓ as you and I were chatting in the virtual green room, if you will, but my main focus has always been living. I just want to make that clear. I think we can get into these business podcasts and like go heavy that business is life. ⁓ Business is something that powers my life for sure. ⁓ But I’ve been a real estate investor since I was age 21. I’m age 50 now.

⁓ I did a ton of single-family large-scale multi multi-family complexes mobile home communities things of that nature But as I was mentioning to you, it’s been such a run I’ve done fairly well for myself and ⁓ Right now my focus is actually on kind of D leveraging from all

let’s say business relationships and projects and things of that nature in favor of much more intentional living.

Which I think, you know, it’s a good topic for us today, however we touch on it, but that side of real estate or business in general doesn’t get talked about. The fact that you get to a certain point, most people just keep going because that’s their identity. I got to a certain point and recognized that that was not my identity at all and there was much more living to do. So my focus now is kind of on winding down and doing passion projects as they come up, but not heavy business per se.

Michelle Kesil (03:45)
Yeah, absolutely. And what did your real estate investing journey look like when you were just getting started?

Maurice Philogene (03:54)
Yeah, um

Why I mean it’s way it’s a ways now, but essentially I i’ve told this story on on podcast before but I was traveling when I was age 15 to france Changed my life as an inner city kid Fast forward to age 21. I found a financial book the book talked about passive income And I put two and two together and realized that look if I could create income without having to physically be somewhere

I could free up time and I could go travel the way that I did when I was 15 when I had that wonderful experience.

Since then, what occurred was I bought my first place in 2002 to live in. I was very lucky because I was at the beginning of the 2000 real estate cycle. I ended up buying 35 places through 2014. Well, maybe more like 50 places. So it was all like single family.

Condominiums that were eighty thousand to like a hundred and thirty thousand dollars something that I could afford just being a new kid out of college Working at a corporate firm also in the military. I Saved the down payment for my first investment property over a couple of years and I just started buying them and The reason I started buying them wasn’t necessarily for money It was because of what I told you before which was I had this notion that if I could create income from this stuff I could live the kind of life that I wanted

⁓ So it the detailed answer to your question my first real estate life was my financial freedom journey. It was 2002 to 2014 I Bought somewhere around 50 single-family homes or condos Of course, I hit 2008 it hurt a lot, but I made it through and I ended up ⁓ The ones that appreciated in a value

Sold some used my pay from work and by 2014 I ended up with 18 paid-off places generating 13,000 a month and I and I realized at the time I was like, oh, I’m actually free But I loved working so I stayed working at my corporate firm and in the military and I actually became a police officer later in life I found multifamily syndication later. I’ve done 30 apartment complexes syndicating apartment complexes

since and then my my last real estate life is my overseas life where I’ve done some development on the island of Cyprus and I live part-time in Lebanon now so I do a few things there as well so it’s it’s just been this first life financial freedom journey second life how do I help other people get financial freedom third life just living as much as I can

Michelle Kesil (07:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And was like the whole point of real estate, like it was that vision of living like in the back of your head the whole time. Was that something that you learned as you were investing later?

Maurice Philogene (07:26)
Real estate is fantastic. I have been involved with, I’m gonna guess, like $250 million worth of real estate in my life. It’s great, but it’s a tool. It’s just a tool. From my perspective, it is a tool to generate income or equity such that you can live life the way that you want to. I just happened to stumble on real estate in my early 20s because I was…

reading financial books and I was trying to like not fall into the college kid run into credit card debt type of thing.

I just started reading about it and then when I bought a place to live it just kind of made sense. It could have been stocks, could have been bonds, it could have been gold or nowadays Bitcoin or NFT. I don’t know but it worked for me and…

But the entire time, I’m not suggesting I didn’t make mistakes, I did. But what’s interesting is the mistakes that I made, the heavy ones that I made along the way, were when I started to chase real estate for the sake of real estate. I started to chase the money. And when you chase money, it runs. The moment I made those mistakes, and when I’m heavy mistakes, like losing 300, 400, 500 grand, but the moment you make those mistakes and…

You feel your instinct to get back to what your initial mission was and my mission was freedom. I wanted financial freedom. It’s not even the money. I wanted time. I’m 50 years old. ⁓ I don’t work anywhere. I think this week you are my only meeting.

I’m raising my kid well, I travel the world constantly. This was the whole purpose of the thing the entire time. So wasn’t so much that I was so focused on real estate as much as I was focused on using it as a tool to be able to sit with Michelle today and have a cool conversation.

Michelle Kesil (09:05)
Yeah, that’s incredible. And what advice would you give to someone that’s looking to get started or early in their real estate career?

Maurice Philogene (09:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. You have to know your why. The folks who I interact with or even coach in my, the coaching that I sometimes do from a lifestyle design perspective, if you don’t have a why that is strong enough to keep you consistent, you won’t get there. You won’t get anywhere.

My why, as I told you, was always freedom. It didn’t matter to me. There was no necessarily a money number or something like that. A number can be a why as well.

But we have to have some kind of North Star that pushes us forward for the days we are not motivated. I wasn’t motivated all the time. What I was was consistent. I never stopped. I never stopped sending paychecks to pay down properties. And even if it was five bucks, 10 bucks, 100 bucks, thousand bucks, I was always chipping away, chipping away, chipping away because my Y never went away. And…

If I think back to my 20s and probably early 30s what I’m doing now is what 23 year old me was thinking. I just didn’t I couldn’t quite put my hands on it But I’m in a position now where and I’m not talking from 20 30 Million dollars. I mean I’m talking thousands of dollars on a monthly basis, but I’m in a position now where I own my time I own my space I own my mental capacity

I joked when I left my corporate firm after 25 years that I got my brain back because it was on loan for so long I became this very creative person. I started doing passion projects and things that nature so Have a why because you’re gonna run into problems. You’re gonna make mistakes, which means you’re going the right direction But if the why is not there as your North Star then you’re gonna veer off and just follow the next trend the next Bitcoin the next NFT

the next fad, the next… like everybody’s chasing everything. I just stuck with real estate and the way that I attacked life because I knew what I wanted and my why, which was freedom.

Michelle Kesil (11:39)
Yeah, amazing. What have been some of like the biggest challenges that you’ve overcome as a real estate investor?

Maurice Philogene (11:40)
Yeah.

Well from a financial perspective, well, it’s not even financial, right? It’s The 2008 downturn was very difficult. I had ⁓ I’m gonna guess 20 places at the time. I can’t recall and half of the tenants stopped paying because Times are tough and I was doing the right thing. I had a hundred grand liquid in the bank I think I was in my low 30s at the time

But that money ran out so fast. It was shocking. I had the opportunity to file bankruptcy if I wanted or whatever and I just refused. refused. Again, this goes back to the why, Michelle, because I like, look, I bought all these things. I gotta find a way through this. I didn’t do something wrong, just the market changed. People don’t have money right now to pay rent. How am gonna solve this?

And what I ended up doing was getting a second full-time job. I became a police officer at night. That helped. I went to every bank, every lending institution that I owed money, and I said, how do we figure this out together? Some did a deed in lieu and took the property back. Some short sales. I think I had one or two foreclosures. But I never had to file. And then a lot of deferments, right? They restructured the loans and all kinds of things.

And made it through I think I lost like two or three properties out of the 20 or 25 that I had but it was brutal and All that does all that did in reflection was show me that their real estate is in cycles at the time I didn’t realize that real estate was in cycles because it was the first time I was in real estate, right? I had just started what six years earlier Well, if you fast forward to 2022 23 and 24 We’ve gone through a bit of a crash

cash crunch cycle in the commercial market. I could I could feel it coming right? So it just puts you in a position where I felt this before I know what’s about to come. We’re going to have to keep as much cash available to make the properties last as long as we can and keep them healthy. So that’s probably one of the biggest. ⁓ Challenges I went through and then I will also add.

When I went on my core journey my core what I call 17 year financial freedom journey. It was just very lonely There’s not a lot of people who were working three careers plus doing real estate on the weekend plus self-managing 35 units ⁓ I did not know how to find tribe like people like Michelle who would talk about real estate or

⁓ Just any entrepreneurial type mind. I was very much stuck in the corporate world and was not vibing well with people so ⁓ I did get over that but I recognize that now and anyone that I spend time with now I’m like, where’s your tribe? Because we cannot do all this stuff together or excuse me alone because we’re gonna run into problems and to deal with those kinds of issues on your own can be very very difficult

Michelle Kesil (14:34)
Yeah, absolutely. And Y has been like one of the biggest highlights that real estate has given you.

Maurice Philogene (15:21)
Well, I guess I’d say two things. One, people misunderstand real estate investing. It is a career and it can also be a pastime for people, but it’s also a self-development tool. You’re growing. You’re ⁓ overcoming fears and challenges. You’re having to do research.

You are meeting like-minded people, hopefully. You are learning how to problem solve. You are trying to optimize business. You are also, and you can tell I’m very big on this, what’s the best way that I can use this resource to affect a better life for myself, my family, my kids, my, all that kind of thing. So it’s just been, I love the fact that it’s just the self-development thing that makes you independent. So just to…

highlight my point. If I hit that financial freedom, financial freedom for me was 6200 bucks a month in 2014. Once I hit that number, like corporate world had no idea that I didn’t need them anymore. I just stayed there and I stayed working for another seven years. And of course, you know, I invested that money and kept going, but it gave me.

Confidence I didn’t need them anymore. I didn’t need the the Necessarily the w-2 paychecks that were coming in and stuff like that It created this person who’s very confident about life who has an a personality because I attack something because I knew my why so I think real estate or any Passion endeavor can do that for you. And then the second thing about it. It’s just people I’ve been exposed to people around the world or even local who are just wonderful awesome human beings trying to

life the same way. So just those two things have been so powerful for me that I don’t think I would have got there without taking a shot on myself and real estate happened to be the tool to do it that I did that I did that with.

Michelle Kesil (17:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And so I know that you’re more in the living stage now, but as far as like business, is there any opportunities that you are excited about or still lit up by?

Maurice Philogene (17:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I’m not saying I won’t buy more real estate. I will. I still own a fair amount. ⁓ But I’m executive producing TV projects now and some movie projects as well. ⁓ I started a platform called trylifeon.com to express some of the views that you and I are talking about, that real estate is a tool. Status quo is this default language we don’t have to follow. You don’t have to…

Climb the corporate ladder and become the partner. I never did actually when I was in corporate I turned down being partner four times because I knew I didn’t need the money I wanted the time to go do other things like travel to a hundred countries and stuff like that So trylifeon.com is something that I’m very proud of. have a podcast I write a blog I’ve coached well over 300 people at this point And then to be honest, the way that I think about life is intentionality ⁓ So a passion project for me is taking care of my two boys

And now I’m in a position where I have to start taking care of my parents. So even when I do get calls from old partners or existing partners now, my answer is no. And the reason is we have this finite thing that’s called time.

If we place it constantly on growing growing growing financially or the next project the next this next that I think that’s fine But people’s priorities are different my priorities are very much associated to my family and friends and me living out my years as much as possible I don’t want to wait till I’m 75 to do the kinds of things I’m doing now And I’ll give you one more example. Somebody called me. ⁓ I Don’t know four or five months ago about a deal

It was a great deal. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have done it to be honest and I probably would have benefited seven six high six figures Maybe seven figures and I said no and the reason I said no was because it would have taken up my time and I’ve been splitting it between ⁓ Maryland and the country of Lebanon. I’m spending a lot of time with my parents. I Walk my son to school every day. I walk my son from school every day. I’m at every single practice he has so

There’s a little bit of business there, but I’m much more like what is Heavily meaningful for me a little bit of the TV stuff now But mainly friends family and spending time like I after 30 years of doing what I’ve done I’ve put in my time This is I don’t want to wait until I’m 70 to put everything down. I’m putting it down at 50

Michelle Kesil (19:36)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great way to look at life. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

Maurice Philogene (19:41)
Of course.

Of course.

Michelle Kesil (19:42)
And before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, and learn more about what you’re up to, where can people find you?

Maurice Philogene (19:50)
Yep,

so the absolute best place is trylifeon.com T-R-Y-life-on.com ⁓ [email protected] is the email address and then ⁓ Sometimes LinkedIn they can check me out on LinkedIn to and send a direct message and they can reach me there as well

Michelle Kesil (20:07)
Perfect. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Maurice Philogene (20:11)
My pleasure, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (20:12)
And for the listeners tuning in, you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Maurice who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.