Unlock Financial Freedom: 7 Proven Investment Strategies for Real Estate

John Harcar (00:01.223)
All right. Hey, guys. Welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar. I’m here today with Glenn Yaney. And what we’re going to talk a little about is his journey in real estate, but also getting to financial freedom and what it meant for him and how you can maybe get there, too. Guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors. mean, service providers, all entrepreneurs, two to five extra business by providing tools and resources that really allow them to build that business they want to build and live the life they’ve dreamed of.

So Glenn, welcome to our show.

Glenn (00:33.656)
Thanks for having me on, John.

John Harcar (00:35.155)
Yeah, I appreciate your time coming here. I’m excited to talk about your journey, but also the financial freedom part. We’re all trying to reach it. But before we get into all that, why don’t you fill our audience in about your background, your real estate journey, and what got you here?

Glenn (00:51.502)
Yeah, so I will tell you that I started at working at Red Lobster and it was the endless shrimp that pretty much almost threw Red Lobster into bankruptcy. And it was for me, it was the thing that made me want to do something different. It’s hard to fill up on endless shrimp. That’s the business flaw. So it’ll keep you running around the restaurant, really not making any money. So yeah, so I got into

John Harcar (01:02.762)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:06.815)
There we go, okay.

John Harcar (01:13.375)
That’s true.

Glenn (01:21.736)
I got my real estate license like I thought I should to be an investor. within six months, it was in 2012, I was trying to show new home buyers houses. And what ended up happening is they couldn’t even put an offer in because there were so many institutional buyers coming in and putting contracts down on houses, like cash offers for, and you’re competing with FHA buyers. So the cash offer generally always wins.

John Harcar (01:41.973)
Mmm.

John Harcar (01:49.842)
Right.

Glenn (01:51.784)
And so it turned into more of a rental agent, know, and there’s other agents around me that were doing better than, you know, successfully. And so they were handing me all their rental customers. So I became a rental agent and I found the company I worked for, that I worked for for 10 years after that. They recruited me as American Homes for Rent. They have 55,000 houses and I started really when they were…

John Harcar (02:13.62)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn (02:19.246)
working on getting their first thousand leases for the company. And it was a startup at the time. So I pretty much left my Red Lobster job making $1,500 a month at Red Lobster. And my first month working there at American Homes for Rent, made $15,000, which was, it was hard to believe.

John Harcar (02:40.917)
Incredible 10x baby.

Yeah.

Glenn (02:44.746)
I couldn’t even understand, is this really happening? I literally thought it was always gonna end. For six months after that, I living with my parents still and sucking away all the money. I had this mentality even up to the day before I left is I worked as if I saved as if I worked at Red Lobster and I just put the money away.

John Harcar (02:57.012)
love it.

Glenn (03:12.246)
And I always thought the other shoe was gonna drop, lose my job. And I always thought that this is not gonna last forever and it lasted 10 years. And really on my terms, so thankfully it was, yeah. But yeah, so I got into that and then started putting money away. I started finding mentors in real estate. I had a mentor that had about 600 units at the time that he was applying for one of our

John Harcar (03:21.535)
That’s so awesome.

John Harcar (03:38.463)
Wow.

Glenn (03:41.634)
houses for his, I guess ex-wife and trying to get her in to the place and, ended up, seeing his bank statements and I’ve never seen income that high before, renting a house. And, so I just asked him what he did and he said he bought mobile home parks. And I thought when I first met him, I was like, so you live in mobile home parks or like, how do you get there? So I, I, on my days off, I would ride around with this guy.

John Harcar (03:57.087)
Wow.

Glenn (04:11.81)
like my days off would be like a Tuesday and I would go get in his car and we would ride around looking at mobile home parks and he like ramped up. I was like in the middle of his, like we, like some of us see people when they first start, some of us see after they finished, I was like right in the middle where he was like still broke, but putting money away and he had like 600 units. Yeah. Yeah. So he had about a thousand units within a short period of time and I just watched him.

John Harcar (04:14.239)
Okay.

John Harcar (04:33.525)
That’s time to learn, man.

Glenn (04:41.186)
grow that and I ended up he ended up seller financing me my first two parks mobile home parks, I bought a three unit and a nine unit and That was what pretty much made me financially independent it covered my expenses about five thousand dollars a month at the time and I Ended up I had some rental properties like con condos and single-family home a lot of equity tied up

John Harcar (05:05.652)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn (05:10.67)
and I saw what mobile home parks did, so I realized that I needed to unwind that. So I started selling those off and it was funny. Once I became financially independent and I had $100,000 in my bank account, I quickly was like, I don’t need to work anymore. I don’t need to work at this W-2 job anymore. Let me focus on this real estate thing. And my risk tolerance changed overnight because of cashflow. It was like,

John Harcar (05:28.649)
Yeah.

John Harcar (05:37.151)
Sure.

Glenn (05:38.722)
You have enough expenses, your W-2 no longer has to pay those expenses, and it became where I could just take bigger swings, and that is what I started doing.

John Harcar (05:48.213)
That’s awesome. OK, so let’s go back. I like to always start at the beginning. You’re working at Red Lobster. OK, I think you said you got your real estate license because you thought that was the right thing to do. What guided you to real estate? And did you have any idea about investing? Or is it just how everybody thinks? Real estate is a real estate agent.

Glenn (06:00.931)
Yeah.

Glenn (06:10.54)
Yeah, and I think that’s where a lot of people get wrong. I would say that maybe being a real estate agent isn’t how you become financially dependent. It’s just a job. It’s really how you divert your dollars once you make them. So like, you can learn all you want about real estate without being a real estate agent. And it’s probably, you can make more money doing other things is what, it just happened to be the thing that I learned how to do.

27 years old, didn’t know any better, and I just said, let me go be a real estate agent.

John Harcar (06:48.639)
Why was it important for you when you saw this guy and they saw his income, right? Why was it important for you to, know, go an extra step, right? Don’t just seek him out to talk to him, but spend that time with him, be around him. Why was that so important to you and your journey?

Glenn (07:04.641)
Yeah, so I was obsessed with financial independence. I mean, I think I was, yeah, when I left Red Lobster, I was already on that mode. And when I saw him, he was actually one of the only people I’ve ever seen living off of real estate. You you could hear about it on podcast, but it’s like, once you find that person, it’s like, how do I get there?

John Harcar (07:16.181)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn (07:32.322)
I was talking to somebody right before this podcast is sometimes criticism is pretty tough. Like people might be harsh. It’s like, but you have to see through the criticism to see what they’re trying to tell you. like sometimes these people that I look up to might be harsh because they’re trying to communicate to me what they’re trying to say, but they just have their way of saying it. And if I would have had this wall of criticism or, or,

John Harcar (07:46.303)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn (08:01.324)
I mean, not criticism, like where I’m just, my feelings are getting hurt or, you know, I have to be able to accept this information as it is and then trying to figure out how to get there is really how, what’s made me successful is because I’ve had people screaming at me about problems. And then instead of realizing it’s personal, it’s like, what is the problem and how do I fix this? And then that’s what property management has taught me is like, if you’re getting yelled at by like a tenant,

John Harcar (08:10.421)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (08:27.913)
Right.

Glenn (08:30.882)
It’s like they’re not mad at you, they’re mad at the situation. How do you fix the situation? And that’s kind of like the same thing with mentors. Mentors might have their own way of relaying the message, but it’s like how do you get to what they’re saying, you know, the right information.

John Harcar (08:47.921)
Besides, you know, the mentor, like what other mindset pieces or what other things did you have to work on as you started started growing, etc. to where you are today?

Glenn (08:59.182)
Yeah, so conventional knowledge has been, you know, if you want to be in the 1%, you have to not do what the 99 % of the people are doing. So that’s the big problem. And a lot of the 99 % of the information that’s given you to be financially independent is like, put your money in a 401k, you know, do these things that are, you know, maybe pay down certain types of debt. And it’s like, you don’t have any debt, you know, stuff like that. And it’s, it’s like,

I actually think that there’s other ways to go about it and it’s to become more liquid, be able to take and here’s one thing that I’ve always thought is that they always say you take more risk when you’re younger so you don’t have to take as many when you’re older. But what has happened for me is that you go less riskier, more liquid to be able to take the bigger swings when you’re older. Like, because now I would say my risk level

to somebody with no money in their bank account would be very risky. If you don’t have any money or any income coming from anywhere else, it might be a riskier venture if you decide to leave your W-2.

John Harcar (10:01.583)
Yeah

John Harcar (10:10.709)
Right, right. Got a lot more to lose, definitely. So what were some of the challenges of getting to your level of, you know, what was it, 650 doors? So what were the challenges of getting up to that type of level and then, you know, the challenges of maintaining it?

Glenn (10:15.33)
Yeah, exactly.

Glenn (10:30.978)
Yeah, so this just another example of like meeting somebody further along than me. He had about 2000 units, I believe, when I met him, another mentor and mentor that I met only one time. So it’s but it was information that changed my way of thinking. And he said, when you get to 200 units, you’ll have different problems than when you have 500 units. And when you get to 1000 to 2000, he’s like, they’ll all be different.

And you’ll never be able to continuously operate the same way you did when you had 10 units to 20 to 200. So the one thing we found with mobile home parks is that when you’re small, having park-owned homes is okay. You have park-owned homes, you make more cash flow, but then it turns into there’s less leverage because you have all these maintenance issues that happen.

And when you’re able to offset the mobile homes, you actually are able to grow way faster and remove the liability of the mobile home itself. that was one big hurdle, because what we found is that we holding, we had 400 mobile home, park owned homes is what they’re called. And then being in Florida, insurance is an issue with that. They don’t want to.

Banks aren’t gonna be excited about financing the income from a mobile home. They wanna see the revenue coming from the lot rent. So once we got out from revenue from the park owned home, the revenue from the rent actually drove the values of the mobile homes up and our operations became easier to operate at.

And that was the big learning curve with that because you know, we have 400 units you think and we’re going to cut our revenue down to get bigger. And it’s actually just remove the liabilities is what we were doing. The liability was the maintenance cost, the roofs, all the stuff that goes with it. Big CapEx projects going into mobile homes.

John Harcar (12:46.87)
So did you just rent these units, mean, sell our finances units to the people or how did you, okay.

Glenn (12:51.35)
Yeah, yeah, so we do like it’s called rent to own if you do a seller finance or interest cost on the sale, it turns into where you have lending regulations to go with. But if you have like a rent to own, it’s just a straight zero percent interest really loan to the resident.

John Harcar (13:12.189)
Right. OK. And then they were responsible for all the maintenance, all the, you know, everything like that. That’s awesome.

Glenn (13:19.308)
Yep, we fix them up nicely. We make them nice. We don’t just like let people move in into bad units. so we make the communities nice and make it to where families want to move into.

John Harcar (13:31.061)
So where are you looking to take your business? How many, you’re at 650, how many doors are you looking at?

Glenn (13:36.27)
Yeah, this year we, okay, so what happened between 2023 and 2025 was we started the year, the end of the year at 2023 at 350 units and we finished the year at 650. So we gained 300 units last year and it got to a point where we just looked at it and said, we buy a value add, heavy value add properties. So it turned into,

If we just focus on our portfolio, we will actually make more money than to buy more real estate. and focusing on the efficiencies, the operations of the office and making sure that vacancy time is not, you you’re not spreading your construction crew thin to where when you do that, when you spread your construction crew thin, they become more more expensive. They just charge you more. You need them more.

John Harcar (14:12.181)
Mmm.

John Harcar (14:24.99)
Right.

Glenn (14:34.656)
It’s like when you slow down and say, okay, well now we’re setting the prices. It’s like what it’s like you, you actually have pricing control on the construction. So because of that, we figured we have about a hundred thousand dollars of monthly loss rent at this time, which is equivalent to like a, probably a eight to $10 million piece of real estate. So we look at that and said, okay, we don’t have to buy eight to $10 million worth of real estate this year. We just have to.

John Harcar (14:50.933)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn (15:04.334)
Stabilize it. Yeah, improve, fix them up, get them going and thankfully we’re getting through it, fixing the delinquency issues and stuff like that because when you’re so busy, you don’t have any time to really hone in on the good skills that you need to focus on to become a good operator. But if you’re just trying to be 650, let’s get to 1200 next year. And it’s like, well, how does the 650 run?

John Harcar (15:04.391)
And proof. Yeah.

John Harcar (15:09.322)
Right?

John Harcar (15:24.487)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Glenn (15:32.686)
if you’re trying to get to 1200, you know, so let’s just focus. Exactly, exactly.

John Harcar (15:34.385)
Is it quantity or quality? one? it’s forever question. OK, that’s awesome. So what do you think in your journey of so then we’ll talk about our financial freedom here in a second. But what do you think the biggest keys to your success have been?

Glenn (15:53.966)
Biggest Keys, I think, has a lot to do in its underestimated savings rate. I’m not any different than anybody else that’s working at a normal W-2 job. There was people that were making just as much as me, but buying bigger houses, buying nicer cars. I think there’s a time for that, but it’s not when you’re growing. When you’re growing, you stay lean. That way you can pivot when you need to.

At the time, it was very dumb of me to leave my W-2. I was making $150,000 to $200,000 a year, and I was leaving to make $1,500 a month to manage a property management office. So terrible financial, but what I saw is a bigger picture. How do I attract more investors? do I, you know, so is it making, just because my expenses were low, I was able to pivot to go do

raise investor capital, be able to live lean, to focus on the properties, to increase the revenues, to make more money, stuff like that.

John Harcar (17:04.297)
Yeah, fantastic. And let’s talk about this financial freedom. What is financial freedom to you?

Glenn (17:11.714)
Yeah, so financial freedom, it’s definitely changed. I used to think it was just enough to pay your bills and now I’m getting to a point where I have enough that pays my bills and probably double that. But at the same time, it’s more of a time freedom. It’s focusing on, you know, I have my own podcast as well. I have my office that manages the properties. Could I make more money?

John Harcar (17:29.683)
Mm-hmm.

Glenn (17:40.214)
managing my properties. Could I go out and answer the phone, deal with the maintenance calls? Yes, I could. I could cut the salaries and then become that guy that works in the business. But I’ve learned that the way to really grow is to really focus on growing the business and giving myself back all my time. And yeah.

John Harcar (18:06.761)
Yeah, that’s to one of the biggest is money or time. How did you quantify outside of your, because I don’t think that someone saying, hey, all my bills are covered is really a financial freedom because, okay, all your bills are covered and you got money to do anything else. So like, how did you quantify and say, hey, I need XYZ over what my bills are to know that, hey, I’m okay.

Glenn (18:09.858)
Yeah.

Glenn (18:31.916)
I mean, to be honest, I don’t know if that goes away. think that there’s, feel like I could always, yeah, I always like, right, you know, I would say my bills are, you know, about 8,000 a month is what it costs. And I, you know, make about 20,000 a month, but I would say that there’s still things that keep me up at night. You know, it’s like when I’m, there’s,

John Harcar (18:36.661)
There’s always want. Yeah.

John Harcar (18:51.999)
Sure.

Glenn (18:55.532)
the operationally, know, $100,000 of lost rent. Like these are things that I think like if you look at like, if you watch a podcast with Elon Musk, there’s things that keep him up at night. And it’s the crazy like you see him on Joe Rogan and his mind is just like going on a whole different level. It’s like that still happens. I’m not saying I’m at his level, of course, but at the same time, it’s like, how do I get that a little quieter is what my goal is. And

John Harcar (19:06.01)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

John Harcar (19:24.084)
Yeah.

Glenn (19:25.282)
to have less problems on my plate to make them to where the things are being taken care of. And I don’t know what the number is, but I would say that I think growing is the most fulfilling thing. So when they say like retirement, that’s like in a lot of people’s minds, that’s financial freedom, but retirement is, know, it’s like, then you’re wondering what’s next. You know, it’s like, what is next after this? It’s like.

there’s always gonna be something to be handled. that’s why I try not to have too much of a goal of like, I have financial goals, but I don’t have like a utopia goal. I’m not gonna be happier here. I’m just gonna, the only time to be happy is in the present. And that’s what I’ve been really trying to focus on. Yeah.

John Harcar (20:05.044)
Right.

John Harcar (20:10.719)
Mm-hmm. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. If someone wanted to get into the game, what type of advice would you give them? Like, what was the main driving factor for you? Or what resources would you say, hey, check this out?

Glenn (20:25.966)
It’s a good question. think I’m impressed. do them once in a while, but I go to the Ria’s, how these guys are just, they’re like young and some of them are making a million dollars a year more than me. And I’m like watching them and I’m like, man, they are killing it. And I was like, so I would say that hang around the people that are doing it is the main thing. And Ria’s real estate.

John Harcar (20:43.082)
Yeah.

Glenn (20:52.544)
investment groups and stuff like that. Those are the places to really find out where these people are and how they’re doing it.

John Harcar (20:56.179)
Masterminds.

John Harcar (21:03.551)
That’s a big thing. It’s being in proximity of folks that have done what you want to do or what you’re doing and are doing what you want to do. That’s awesome. If anybody is listening to, and I appreciate all the knowledge you dropped, man. That’s pretty cool. If people want to get in touch with you and maybe talk about some investments, maybe talk about, hey, how do I get into mobile home parks? What’s the best way for them to be able to reach out to you?

Glenn (21:10.114)
Yep. Yep.

Glenn (21:29.294)
Two places that I’m always at, I have a podcast called the Millionaire Journey Podcast and we pretty much have a similar conversation that me and John are having and also I’m on LinkedIn regularly. So if you go to LinkedIn, it’s Glenn Yaney and I’ll answer pretty much. As long as you’re not AI, I’ll probably respond to you. Yeah, exactly.

John Harcar (21:50.901)
We’re a bot. There you go. I got a bot. Yeah, we’re Well, cool. And we’ll take all this information. We’ll put it on the show notes. So Glenn, thank you so much, man, for coming here, dropping some good knowledge. Guys, I hope you took notes. If you have any questions for Glenn or something I want to talk about, please reach out to him. And I’ll see you guys all in the next show. Cheers.