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Show Summary
Host Michelle Kesil sits down with real estate investor and author David Ounanian, who shares his journey from corporate burnout to building a successful career in real estate. Despite losing money on his first deal, David stayed committed, sought mentorship, and eventually built a thriving business flipping houses and growing a rental portfolio with his wife. He now leads the Investor Friendly Agent program, helping agents support investors with the right tools, training, and resources. David also highlights the advantages of working with investors—more transactions, higher commissions, and less emotionally driven decisions. His mission is to scale this model nationwide and transform how agents and investors succeed together.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
David Ounanian (00:00)
something I heard Tony Robbins say talking about leveraging your fear. You’ve to be more afraid of something else. And in my case, I was more afraid of spending another 30 years in my corporate job than I was at failing at real estate investing. And so after losing on that first deal, I decided to come keep
I went completely broke real estate investing,
You would see me on the side of the highway with my cardboard sign and it would say, buy houses.
And I had that sign in my closet to remind me, I’m not giving up on this.
I might’ve lost like seven or $8,000, but I had like a PhD on how to flip a house
got about 20 rental properties
like my wife and I wouldn’t have been able to flip several houses where we made over a hundred thousand dollars in profit on each
Michelle Kesil (02:23)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, David Ounanian. I hope I pronounced that correctly.
David Ounanian (02:39)
Yeah, everybody just says David ⁓ so ⁓ you did a pretty good job though.
Michelle Kesil (02:41)
Okay.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, so excited to have you here on the show today. I think the listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re teaching investors to work with real estate agency and just earn more money through commissions. So let’s dive in all of that.
David Ounanian (03:05)
Yeah,
yeah, awesome. Yeah, I mean, the big question everybody has is like, should I get my license as an investor?
sides to that, think right now is a massive opportunity for investors to get a license and start adding additional cash flow to their investing in their business because there’s a lot of people out there right now that are struggling with the traditional retirement options.
They’re financial advisors, they’re 401Ks, are only focused on Wall Street and investing in stocks and bonds and mutual funds and all these things that don’t create wealth quite like we know real estate does. And so what I’ve been teaching people, and I just released a book this year called Investor Friendly Agent, I’ve been teaching people how to use your license and almost act as like a financial advisor.
We call ourselves real estate investment advisors, but we’re essentially guiding people to invest their money into real estate, invest their retirement into real estate. And we get a paid healthy commission doing that. So I think right now is a huge opportunity for investors to ⁓ use a license in that way and be smart about it. And the whole process is written out in my book. If you hang on to the, till the end of the show, we’re going to get you a free copy. So I’m really excited about that.
Michelle Kesil (04:32)
Amazing. That’s so exciting. Yeah, this is an interesting topic that, yeah, I feel not many people are diving into. So what kind of like sparked this idea for you?
David Ounanian (04:47)
Yeah, I’m glad you asked that Michelle. You know, I was kind of raised like most people and told, you know, go to college and get a job working for somebody else. And so that’s what I did.
Went to school, decided to study computer science because software engineers seem to make a lot of money. So I did that for 12 years after college and just got completely burned out in the corporate world.
⁓ So tired of the nine to five all the emails the conference calls
David Ounanian (06:06)
Yeah, so
something I heard Tony Robbins say talking about leveraging your fear. You’ve to be more afraid of something else. And in my case, I was more afraid of spending another 30 years in my corporate job than I was at failing at real estate investing. And so after losing on that first deal, I decided to come keep going and doing another one. And, ⁓ you know, I one of the ideas I had at the time was like, if I went completely broke real estate investing,
You would see me on the side of the highway with my cardboard sign and it would say, buy houses. That’s how committed I was to it. And I had that sign in my closet to remind me, I’m not giving up on this. And so was that level of commitment after failing miserably at my first deal that I kept going. And I found out.
that I learned so much on the first deal. Like, you know, I might’ve lost like seven or $8,000, but I had like a PhD on how to flip a house because of all the lessons I learned. And so the next couple of deals, I was making good money and knock on wood. I still haven’t lost on a property since that very first deal. we’ve, my wife and I have probably done like two dozen flips.
and we’ve got about 20 rental properties that we’ve done the burn method with personally. And it’s just changed our lives. Like we both quit our corporate jobs. I saw the power of real estate investing. ⁓ Those struggles that I had on that first deal where most people would quit, have taught like without doing that, without losing that money and learning those lessons, like my wife and I wouldn’t have been able to flip several houses where we made over a hundred thousand dollars in profit on each
So like,
the return on investment on that was incredible in hindsight. But when you’re going through it, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like it’s the worst time of your life and you made a huge mistake and all these things. So I understand that. ⁓ But what I’m really proud about now is we help hundreds of investors through those situations, avoiding as much pain as possible and encouraging them to keep going and helping them make smart investments. And ⁓ I’m really proud of the team that we’ve built around that.
I’ve earned the EXP icon award four years in a row now, which is given to agents that gross over 500,000 in commissions a year. Last year we did about 168 investment transactions and we make a minimum commission of around $5,000 a transaction. So you can do the math to see what kind of income stream this can have for your business if you turn around and leverage your license to help other investors and
We’d love to get a copy of our book in your hands and kind of show you how this works, because it can literally change your life and the people around you.
Michelle Kesil (09:02)
Yeah, that’s such an incredible journey that you really like took those obstacles and learned so much from it. What do you think is like the biggest lesson that you learned from that experience that you’ve been able to carry forward into your success?
David Ounanian (09:18)
Yeah, I mean the biggest thing is like having somebody guide you or mentor you is just absolutely priceless. Like when you’re doing something and trying to figure it out all on your own, like it’s gonna take you so much longer. It’s actually gonna cost you so much more if you had not just hired the help and that was something I learned. So after my first deal, I was like, I’ve gotta get the help and I had this local guy.
pitch me on real estate investing coaching before I got started and it was like $6,000 and I was like, know, that’s, you know, that’s totally not worth it. I could figure this out on my own. can listen to the podcast and read the books
and believe it or not, once I had, ⁓ I had all my money stuck in this first deal and in our bank account, red zero and every everybody, you know, my family was all stressed out about it and everything else.
I went and opened up one of those like new credit cards where you get 0 % financing for six months. And I said, sign me up for the coaching and took a huge leap of faith. But at that point I was like, I’m desperate to get some knowledge and some help. And he came in and helped me with some things, helped me figure out ways to get out of the property I was in. And within two months of working with ⁓ my first coach, like we did a deal.
together that made me maybe $8,000. So I was able to pay for the coaching back right away and then money on top and that relationship was priceless. He’s still one of my best friends and partners on deals to this day. And I just encourage people like to find a mentor, find a coach, find somebody that you trust, somebody local that can kind of hold your hand and walk you through the process if you’re just getting started. Because it will save you more time and money than you.
can possibly imagine.
Michelle Kesil (11:44)
Yeah, absolutely, because no one really knows what you’re gonna get into once you’re in that world. And having someone that’s walked through that fire before to support you is so important. Yeah, I really believe in that as well. Yeah, so.
David Ounanian (12:01)
Awesome.
Michelle Kesil (12:04)
How are you guys supporting new investors in this process now? Is it a program? What are you offering?
David Ounanian (12:14)
Yeah. So great question. So we talk about it in the book and it’s basically like, try to think of like everything a new investor could want. ⁓ How do we provide that for them as their advisor, as their agent?
David Ounanian (12:29)
So one of the big complaints that a lot of new investors have, if they’ve hired a coach or a guru before, they’ve paid thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. We’ve helped clients that had gone through a Rich Dad program and spent $50,000 on coaching and never did a deal. And it’s kind of like crazy to see somebody in that situation. But one of the things is like, we want to design our program for helping investors as their agent.
to be world class, like something that changes our industry, that changes the game. And so we said, hey, there’s no cost to get started working with us. Like it’s completely free. We’re gonna give you all the resources. And guess what? When you buy a property and you win, that’s when we’re gonna win. That’s when we’re gonna make a commission. That’s when we’re gonna make money. And so that’s how we set up our program. We give them training. We give them deal analyzers. We give them a vendor’s list. We give them a referral partners.
We show them how to look for deals on the MLS and off market. We help them negotiate. We help them do the due diligence, do inspections. We help them underwrite the property, figure out all the financials, what the returns are, and get them to closing. And so ⁓ we kind of help them with everything that you could possibly want as like a new investor and guide them through that process so it’s as seamless and easy as possible for somebody to start investing.
Michelle Kesil (13:58)
Amazing, that sounds so helpful for people that are looking to get started. So what are you most focused on solving or scaling next in your business?
David Ounanian (14:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, we basically want to scale the ideas in this book to get other investors around the country to get their licenses and start helping all these people that are looking for that alternative to the stock market, right? To help them get into the investing game. There hasn’t been really a way for the average American who works a nine to five to start investing without a, you know, paying a coach tens of thousands of dollars.
or B, trying to learn it all themselves on YouTube and podcasts before. And so what we’re doing with this investor friendly agent is really creating a trusted ⁓ real estate investment advisor that they can go to and get free advice and get help to start the investing process. so I want to
be able to scale this to investors across the country and get agents everywhere doing.
hundreds and even thousands of transactions for investors in really changing ⁓ the wealth building process in this country.
Michelle Kesil (15:50)
Yeah, that sounds like it’s going to help so many learn more about, yeah, how can they up their financial game. So that’s so important.
David Ounanian (16:01)
Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (16:03)
Awesome. So what is like the biggest goal that you have right now for your business?
David Ounanian (16:10)
Yeah, biggest goal right now for our business is to just get these books in as many investor hands as possible. ⁓ I’d love to get to 100 agents across the country by the end of the year and a thousand agents over the next three years. We released the book, it went bestseller on Amazon so you can buy the physical copy on there. We’re gonna give you a link here at the end of this ⁓ to download.
the free PDF version and then you’ll also get the audio version for those of you that want to listen to it while you’re in the car or working out or something like that. ⁓ We want to get these ideas in front of you because they can literally unlock a new pipeline, a cashflow for you and ⁓ it might just be right there under your nose and we’d love to ⁓ connect with you and see how we can help you implement this program.
Michelle Kesil (17:05)
amazing that is going to be so powerful for people. What is like the most like common block that you find your clients or your mentees have when it comes to getting started?
David Ounanian (17:23)
Yeah, so I mean, the biggest complaint is like with people that ⁓ are real estate agents or have their license and you you say you mentioned working with investors and they’re like, ⁓ those, you know, they’re a pain in our butts and they make too many lowball offers and you know, they run you all over town and you know, we’ve encountered all those problems and we have very good solutions to combat them.
But at the end of the day like the results that we’re getting from working with investors blow away like somebody working with a homeowner for one there’s more transactions So our investors are buying multiple properties a year where it’s just the average homeowners moving like a every eight to ten years so you have to wait that long in between sales where we’re helping investors and Usually the goal is not buying one investment property, right?
One investment property is hardly going to change anything in their life. Of course, unless they hold it for 30 years and appreciates, but likely they want to get to like that 10, 15, 20 rental units that can really replace some income for them. And so we’re helping people do that. Number two, we earn higher commissions. We earn a lot higher commissions than your typical realtor. Most realtors are making 3 % or 2.5 % or somewhere in between there.
We’ve done deals where we made 18 % commission. It’s kind of crazy. I don’t like to talk about it a whole lot, but the secrets are in the book ⁓ Everything’s done ethically. Everything’s done fairly ⁓ Actually the example in the book I give you about the 18 % commission are our client left us a five star review and he got a great off-market deal doing it
David Ounanian (19:10)
There’s a huge potential to earn higher than average commissions when you’re focused on the niche of helping investors invest in real estate. ⁓ Number three, it’s it’s they’re buying properties usually without financing contingencies or paying cash. So it’s much easier to get to the closing table. Number four, they’re buying properties as is. So many of our investors, they want the problem property or the property that needs some work because they know they can build some equity in their invited discount.
So inspections aren’t that scary to us. know, that normal agent would have to deal with or back out of a deal because of repairs needed or something like that. And then number five, and probably my favorite benefit to this is that it’s not an emotional purchase. If you’ve ever been an agent before, you’ve been ran all over town trying to find the perfect house for your aunt or your cousin, and it just doesn’t exist, right? ⁓ With investors, what’s great is they only care about one thing. Is it going to make them money?
And so a lot of times we can very easily figure that out before we even go to the property, right? We can run cops, we can run rental cops, we can look at the pictures and say, Hey, this is probably not going to make money. We probably don’t even need to go there. So we don’t waste a whole lot of time running around town. Like most people think we do a lot of our stuff in five minutes on our phone or our laptop to evaluate a property. And if it makes sense to go out and show it, we go out and show it. And sometimes you’ll find something you didn’t see in the pictures. That’s okay. But a lot of times,
⁓ we have a pretty good idea of what that property is going to generate before we even go there.
Michelle Kesil (20:46)
Amazing, I love that. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more from you, what’s the best place for them to find you?
David Ounanian (20:56)
Yeah, so you’re gonna go to freeagentbook.com. You’re gonna get a copy of this book for free and you’ll also get all my email list. So ⁓ that’s a great way if you wanna respond to any of those emails. I get those personally. Would love to connect with you. There’s a link in there to when you start getting the emails to do a strategy call with me. I’d love to jump on and understand your situation and how maybe this could help you. ⁓
would love to connect with you guys and help spread this message of ⁓ investor friendly agent and helping people invest in real estate and give them an alternative to retirement and wealth building out there.
Michelle Kesil (21:35)
Perfect. I really appreciate your time, your story and perspective. We need more people in this space doing things in this right way. So thank you for being here.
David Ounanian (21:44)
Thank you, Michelle. And again, the link is free agent book, www.freeagentbook. And I’d to connect with you guys. And thank you so much, Michelle, for having me.
Michelle Kesil (21:57)
Awesome. And for those of you tuning in, you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like David, and we’ll see you all on the next episode.
