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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Trenton Cook, a real estate agent and investor based in Montana. Trenton shares his journey from a 16-year career in emergency medicine to becoming a successful real estate professional. He discusses the keys to his success, including the importance of applying knowledge, maintaining a positive mindset, and understanding the difference between what one can do versus what one is willing to do. Trenton also shares his investment strategies, experiences with vacation rentals, and his current focus on commercial real estate. He concludes with valuable advice for aspiring investors, emphasizing the importance of taking action and finding opportunities where the numbers work.
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Trenton Cook (00:00)
Most people focus way too much on what they can do or what we’re able to do. And I think the far more important question is like, what are you willing to do? Like so often I hear from everybody, you know, when we’re talking to people like, yeah, if you were just saying that in the, on the topic of like buying your first investment property as a, as a first time home buyer. It’s like, okay, if you can get up to, you know, whatever the cap, $880,000 loan.for up to a four, know, fourplex for three and a half percent down. And then you ran out three of them. And then in, you know, two years, you end up renting the fourth one out and that’s your first investment property. And you probably got it for free. ⁓ Everybody, ⁓ if it was that easy, why doesn’t everybody do it? Because the fact is 90 % of people don’t do it because they just don’t want to do it.
Michelle Kesil (02:22)
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, Trenton Cook, who is a real estate agent and investor in the Montana area. So excited to have you here today, Trenton.Trenton Cook (02:40)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited as well.Michelle Kesil (02:42)
Awesome. So yeah, let’s dive in. First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?Trenton Cook (02:53)
so like you said, my main focus really is ⁓ as a real estate sales person, real estate agent. That’s what I spend most of my time doing.you know, got a background in just doing real estate investments personally, and that just sort of built and.
transferred into being a real estate agent and getting to help other people make those same kind of investments, ⁓ helping other people find wealth through real estate. And at the same time, it just provides even better opportunity for me to kind of keep an eye open for my own investment opportunities.
Michelle Kesil (03:29)
Yeah, and is this only in Montana?Trenton Cook (03:33)
It is, yeah. For now, my license is Montana wide. Montana is a pretty vast place, right? So there’s like four states composed into one, one in Montana. And so we can’t cover all of it personally, you know, but so normally we would refer out to, you know, Bozeman buildings, places like that, that are a little further from us. We’re up in the Northwest corner. But, but yeah, as far as working as a real estate agent, it’s just Montana.But on the investment side of things, ⁓ US nationwide is kind where
Michelle Kesil (04:09)
Awesome. And so what got you into real estate?Trenton Cook (04:14)
Well, what got me into real estate? Well, to be honest with you, I worked for 16 years in emergency medicine. I did 12 of those with the city municipal fire department here working full time as a firefighter. And, you know, we operated an ambulance and all that as well. And it’s hard on a person, you know, all the things that you have to endure over time. It was fine. Like I never had any problem 10, 12 years in.It started to actually take a toll on me, which I never thought it would just late nights ⁓ You know every every time there’s work. It’s always a negative thing right and so I just started to think man There’s just probably more to life with it and so
I mean it was long before I got to that point that we started dipping into real estate But I knew that that was gonna come some point and so I was trying to reach out and find other ways That we could start to make wise moves my wife and I and so that at some point in time I could
step back out of that and then just be able to have some sort of ⁓ plan for the future. A friend of mine, actually ⁓ a good friend, he ended up doing some creative financing on a big chunk of land out here and I was asking him about it and he says, ⁓ you know you got to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. So I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I know probably everybody’s read the same book and but it really just changed all the way that my brain was wired.
And ever since that point, it’s been a total switch has gone off and I’ve never ever been the same person. And it’s kind of been all efforts forward since then.
Michelle Kesil (06:44)
Awesome. And what do you feel are some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be successful?Trenton Cook (06:54)
Main keys that have been success, that I’ve found success with so far, ⁓ two main things I think is one, ⁓ well we’ll call it three, right? Like three of, one of them being obviously just applying what you learn. There’s so many people who found so much information, like all day long, all of us are on our phones, we’re constantly getting overwhelmed with information and like almost none of it sticks, right? Very few people actually apply what they learn.And so I just started trying to be more intentional about applying what I’ve learned. Like reading Rich Dad Porter, was like, okay, that’s fine. That’s one thing to read it, but then to actually see if there’s places, even on the small scale, that I can start to apply those things. ⁓ That stuff compounds. And as you get used to handling the small things, I’m a big believer in like, know, attending the small things well allows for growth in those areas. So just trying to be more intentional about applying what I’ve learned ⁓ is a big one.
Secondly, mindset is everything. Like we already kind of talked before, just being able to, I think, keep focus where the return is, is a huge thing, right? It’s nobody, I’ve yet to find anybody that does well and thrives in business if all they focus on is the stresses of it and have this doom and gloom outlook. And I think that that’s far too easy to get sucked into that.
And it takes far more effort and training and habit building to be able to keep your mindset ⁓ in gratitude and your mindset on abundance. And once that sort of thing happens, you just end up finding so much more opportunity. And then the things that you are, you know, taking steps towards achieving, they actually come to fruition instead of just spinning your wheels because all you’re noticing is the negatives in life, you know? ⁓ And thirdly, and I think this, nothing else really matters if you don’t get this part, is that like,
Most people focus way too much on what they can do or what we’re able to do. And I think the far more important question is like, what are you willing to do? Like so often I hear from everybody, you know, when we’re talking to people like, yeah, if you were just saying that in the, on the topic of like buying your first investment property as a, as a first time home buyer. It’s like, okay, if you can get up to, you know, whatever the cap, $880,000 loan.
for up to a four, know, fourplex for three and a half percent down. And then you ran out three of them. And then in, you know, two years, you end up renting the fourth one out and that’s your first investment property. And you probably got it for free. ⁓ Everybody, ⁓ if it was that easy, why doesn’t everybody do it? Because the fact is 90 % of people don’t do it because they just don’t want to do it.
So it’s not anything to do with what a person is able to do, but everything to do with what are they willing to do. I think that success,
purely comes from what you, what extents are you willing to go to? Does that make sense?
Michelle Kesil (09:50)
Yeah, absolutely. And can you share a little bit about the types of investments and what’s your investing business look like?Trenton Cook (09:52)
Yeah.Yeah, so
When my wife and I we first bought our house we we wanted to be able to make our dollars go a little further we had very little to do anything with so We did not go the route that I just mentioned was like buying a four-plex looking back I wish I would have but I didn’t know then ⁓ what I did know was that like
So we found a house that was in terrible shape. ⁓ needed completely gutted and remodeled, but we got it for like $100,000. And so we did have some money saved up in like $8,000 I think it was. yeah. So we were able to get into the house and we were able to remodel that house. Luckily that happened at a pretty good time in the market as well. ⁓
where our market appears a little bit protected. So everything happens here a little bit later than everywhere else, right? It’s a little bit slower ⁓ to tank. It’s a little bit slower to grow. But ⁓ so we kind of thought we missed the boat on it really ⁓ because everywhere else was starting to gain back the equities after the crash, you know, wait. And so so we ended up buying this place, but we thought we’re just going to put enough work into it that it’s going to we’re to get some money back that way.
be a good stepping stone. And so that’s exactly what we did. put, we just, I would go work 24 hour shifts, I come home and lay new sub floors in and tear off the siding. And so we just basically learned to do all these different things because we didn’t have the money to put into hiring it out, right? And obviously when you get into, you know,
and that kind stuff. Hiring out is much better return on your money if you’ve got some expertise you can go focus on instead of doing the job yourself. But at the time, that option, there wasn’t an option. So we just did the grind and we spent a year and a half or so, almost two years, just redoing everything on that house and then we ended up ⁓ paying cash as we could and we doubled our money in that one. And so we did it again and we found another.
that we thought would be a better fit for the time being but also have the potential to grow and we did it again. so that kind of got the ball rolling started with that. We decided after that we would jump into something with a little bit better, a little bit greater return potential.
For us out here in Montana, it’s like big sky country, right? Even though we’re in the mountains a little bit, we’ve still got these valley bottoms and there’s a bunch of acreage, right? A lot of farm fields that get sold up, which it kind of sucks to see farm fields get taken up with houses, but at the same time, it’s my livelihood too to have houses and real estate developed. So we decided to jump into that and started doing some subdivision with it. So we bought 30 acres in whitefish.
with the proceeds from the previous investments turning those houses. And we did that and we did a split, and we split the land up. And then we took one of the pieces and we ⁓ decided to go a little further into a different variation of real estate investing and ⁓ we built some vacation rentals.
And so we did those very specifically. We didn’t build a normal house that we were just going to live in and then we’ll rent it in the summer. And that’s a good option for some people if they’re already in that position. But we built dedicated vacation rentals for that purpose. And we finished them off the way that we wanted them to be, what would look good in an Instagram post. So we had this big red barn that was very Montana and touristy. And we spent some years.
running multiple vacation rentals and seeing the return on those. And again, ⁓ the thing that took the most of our own personal energy and investment, ⁓ time and energy investment, had a far greater return than if we were to just run it passively, like a long-term rental and hold, right? ⁓ And so it was worth it at the time, for sure. ⁓ So we did that. That was being the bread and butter of how the kind of the basis and the foundation of everything we’ve done.
From there, we have been able to go a little further, more so in education than in reality.
But going further into a, I did a mentorship with a investor out of North Carolina, and he specializes in private acquisitions.
business acquisitions and real estate investment property acquisitions through creative financing is particularly ⁓ owner financing or subject to and So I did that for a while I did that for like probably eight or nine months I just kind of mentored into this guy and participated with him in lot of acquisitions and you know I never actually was able to not able to but I never ⁓ I never took that further ⁓
into building a portfolio of my own, but the amount of knowledge base that I gained through that, I’m actually starting to see pay off more than I ever thought now being in my career that I’m in.
So that’s a really cool thing to get into also. And I know that’s a whole other side road of things. And there’s people that are far, far more advanced and experienced in that like Pace Morby and those guys getting into the creative financing thing. But that was a great little mentorship just to look at all the different creative ways of doing things. And I think it really opened up another area of my mind about.
to how to go about opportunities is just being creative. Like there’s an endless supply of creativity and you just never know what you don’t know. So, ⁓ you know, there’s always a way it seems like.
Michelle Kesil (17:14)
Yeah, that’s awesome that you were able to just go for it and progress in that way. I think those kind of stories are super relatable.Trenton Cook (17:26)
Yeah,yeah, yeah. And then now, I mean, where we’re at now with it, I guess, is just we did liquidate the vacation rentals. We sold those. And what we’re after now, we did start a 24 hour fitness center here. We started that for now. And I think the main thing that we’ve got our eyes on is just going further and more into just growing.
business, trying to capitalize on the opportunity for owning the commercial real estate that these different general locations can build. So again, just being intentional, right? Basically, I’m open to anything that the numbers jive on. Long-term holding real rental properties here in this area of the country is just not very feasible. The prices are so high.
that you just can’t make a profit off of holding rental properties. So it’s either got to be like multiple units to one property and vacation rental use, you know, if you’re to go residential. Otherwise you have to do, you know, multifamily properties and stuff like that. So again, we’re open to all of it. I’m good with with looking at everything. It just depends on what the numbers look like on it.
Big one is like RV parks are a big one up here where they just, they generate so much more return for so much less overhead to operate and things like that.
Michelle Kesil (18:58)
Yeah, absolutely, that makes sense. So, is your main focus now to kind of like scale that commercial aspect?Trenton Cook (19:01)
Yeah.Yeah, mean, main focus has got to be, it’s still got to be my job as ⁓ an agent. ⁓ That’s got to take primary focus for sure, but I know obviously this is more about investing. ⁓ yeah, while I’m off doing that, I think the primary things that I’m keyed into looking for right now is either more business opportunity, right?
I think I can’t remember who said it. I mean, it was Grant Cardone was saying what like, you know, 90 % of millionaires come from real estate and 100 % of billionaires come from private equity. So I’m always just like, okay, let’s what business opportunities exist for sure. But as far as real estate properties go, the main, the main thing I’m looking for is just opportunities for commercial real estate, specifically like shop space is big in the, in the States that I’m, that I’m looking mostly here.
Utah and Arizona are big for like, you know, multiple unit shop space.
Michelle Kesil (20:11)
Yeah, absolutely. Is there any advice that you would share for someone that’s looking to get started in investing?Trenton Cook (20:21)
Yeah, I would say, now keep in mind, I’m probably like three steps back in caliber from most of the people you have on this podcast. Like I completely can see that. Like I’m still just trying to get the ball rolling with a lot of these things. And like I said, most of my experience has been educational so far. I’m learning to apply. It seems to be going fairly slow. But yeah, I would say.I would say the numbers don’t lie, right? So ⁓ it’s like the average net worth for a rent, somebody who rents a place is like $10,000 or something along those lines. ⁓ And what, 90 % of statistics are made up on the spot too, something like that. So we’re just gonna throw in numbers. But I think it’s something like that. I think it’s not far off from like $10,000 average net worth, whereas I think the average net worth of someone who owns their home is closer to 100.
And so just by taking one step difference, you’re not even changing your lifestyle. You’re not out more, you out of your pocket. Just taking the steps to follow down the path that’s already been paved is a sure thing. Brian Tracy said that, you know, it’s not a rich quick, it’s a get rich for sure, right? And I think he was quoting somebody else on that. I don’t know the original speaker of that, but.
But like it’s just, it’s a for sure thing and it may not be a get rich quick, but just taking the steps that you know are proven to take, just being willing to do those things that you already know to do. We don’t have any excuses for not knowing. We’re at the age of information where everybody has every bit of information that’s ever been documented in our pockets at all times, right? And so it’s just about applying that. And so I would say for someone who’s just getting started, just find a place where the numbers work.
Find a situation where the numbers work and then just go do it. Just like you have to do it.
Michelle Kesil (22:23)
Yeah, absolutely. Action is super important. Awesome. Well, 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 and reach you?Trenton Cook (22:28)
Yeah.Yeah, so well, I guess I don’t know what the way you guys normally like doing this, but I mean, I work with Beckman’s Real Estate up here in Kalispell and you know, you can find all my information on there. ⁓ Just trent.beckmansrealestatemt.com is my personal website here. And my info, contact info is on there. yeah, I mean, I know we operate as a real estate agent, real estate brokerage, but ⁓
I love talking about and helping people get sorted out on investments and building wealth of all kinds. ⁓ And so we’ve been able to apply it, what we’ve learned to our own lives and we’re seeing that come through in huge ways. whether somebody’s actually looking for something to buy or sell, or they just like to.
You know, plan out ideas and get creative and dream. I’m all about it. It’s all got to start as a dream. Everything in the physical, truly believe, starts off in our spiritual realms, right? So like, it’s got to be conceived and dreamed about before it can ever come to reality. So I’m all about it. So yeah, hit me up if I can help with any of that stuff, for sure.
Michelle Kesil (23:56)
Perfect, well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here. Of course, for those tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Trenton who are building real businesses and we will see you on the next episode.Trenton Cook (24:01)
Yeah, thank you for having me. This was awesome.
