Why Real Estate Investing Still Wins Over Stocks, Businesses, and Mutual Funds | Sensei Gilliland

Sensei Gilliland (00:00)
But let me tell you why real estate is so important to be in your arsenal, whether it’s a business or a portfolio or both. If I walk into a bank today and say, you know what, stock market’s doing good. Where’s your loan department so I can borrow money to buy stocks? Oh, there isn’t one. But you know what you will find? A mortgage department, whether it’s the Great Depression or the roaring 2000s. That should tell you something.

Micah Johnson (00:27)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m speaking with Sensei Gilliland who’s been making serious moves in real estate investing now for over three decades. Sensei, welcome in man. Glad to have you. Absolutely, ma’am. I’m excited for you to be here today. You’ve done this for a long time.

Sensei Gilliland (02:13)
Pleasure, it’s always a pleasure to be with you guys.

Micah Johnson (02:20)
You’ve been highly successful at it for a long time. And that’s led to doing some, a few new things that are stretching you, which is awesome. And I just think folks are gonna get value out of your story here and what you’ve done and how you’ve done it, man. So let’s dig in for those who aren’t familiar with you yet. Tell us a more about yourself and what your main focus is right now.

Sensei Gilliland (02:39)
Yeah.

Yeah. My name is Sensei Gilliland as you mentioned, with Black Belt Investors, and we have been around for over 30 years. We are one of the oldest turnkey providers in Southern, or actually in all of California. And our main focus here is real estate education. So whether you want to, you know, build a business in real estate by buying and selling, or create wealth, we help you build portfolios and or a business. offer coaching and consulting.

And as I mentioned, we’re the old, one of the oldest turnkey providers in California.

Micah Johnson (03:13)
Love that man will take us back. What led you to where you are today? How why turn key? What happened then and take us through it? ⁓

Sensei Gilliland (03:18)
Hahaha

Well, I think

you’ll like this story because I actually started out in Florida. Living here in Southern California, I had my martial arts business going. We grew them to 11 facilities. I had watched an infomercial one night and it was all about buying and fixing and flipping properties. It’s something I wanted to do and I had my days free. Martial arts is kids and adults.

Micah Johnson (03:25)
Heck yeah, come on!

Sensei Gilliland (03:47)
program, which is after hours, at my day’s free. So I went to the seminar, spent about, you know, 1800 bucks for a three day session. Next thing you know, I’m swiping my credit card, spent $35,000 for a bunch of, ⁓ what they call workshops or seminars back in the nineties in combu camps. And I traveled around the country learning all about, you know, these shiny things about real estate, but what it boiled down to is really. Wholesaling and fixing and flipping for me because I want to pay checks.

and I bought my very first fix and flip in Fort Myers, Florida. And I did that remotely. I did it from Southern California. Think about back in the 90s, we didn’t have digital cameras. We barely had the internet and I didn’t have the cash to go back and forth to review this property. I was just hoping and praying that the team over there was doing their job. They said it’d take about three months to do it, to fix this place up and get it listed for sale. It didn’t. It took much longer than that.

And so what I had to do is I funded my rehab on my credit cards. And back then you can take a credit card, charge it up, transfer it to a balance of another credit card. The next month, they’re gonna have to pay any interest and move it over to another credit card. And so I did this vicious triangle for several months.

And what ended up happening is nine months later, I received a check in the mail for a little over $9,000. I’m thinking, not a whole lot of money, but it is a lot of money to me because back then, you know, I’m in my 20s.

Micah Johnson (05:58)
Right.

Sensei Gilliland (05:59)
And you know what? I realized I did this remotely without having to see any photos, without having to travel back and forth because I didn’t have the cash to do it. And I made a little over $9,000 per month somewhat passively. And so just like your can of Pringles, had a…

pop that top and dig in and grab another one and go after it. So I built my little empire at that time in Florida. I moved across the west side over, I should say the sunbelt, over to the west coast and started fixing flipping properties over here.

Micah Johnson (06:35)
Man, it’s fascinating because you’re right. It’s easy to remote now. It’s never been easier to invest remotely. You’re talking about in a time where faith was high up on the list, man. That is.

Sensei Gilliland (06:47)
It sure was. mean, it was a time where couriers

would come to your house to sign loan docs. You know what mean?

Micah Johnson (06:53)
Right. Right. Like

it’s a whole, everything was way more mechanical and not, electrical at all. it’s the fact that you can do it. That’s what I love for people to hear these kinds of things. Like you can solve it. That’s just the reality of real estate. It’s a problem solving game. If you’re good at solving problems and you enjoy it, you’re going to have a lot of fun here.

Sensei Gilliland (07:15)
100%.

So whether you’re, hey, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. I don’t care if you’re a truly active investor as a realtor or if you’re fixing and flipping or doing purchase options or a little bit more. I don’t never say passive investor because if you’re passive, that’s a hobby. You’ll never get paid to lose money. If you’re into rentals, it’s a residual income, but either way, you’re always solving problems and we get paid to solve problems and we’re here to serve.

Micah Johnson (07:18)
So.

Right, right.

Sensei Gilliland (07:45)
by a partner. So serve first, get paid second.

Micah Johnson (07:48)
Exactly, especially for single family residential. Like one thing that folks, they usually learn the math problem first and that’s good, but that person you’re usually buying a home from, they don’t have a math problem. They’re actually willing to, they’re willing to be on the wrong side of a math problem if you solve their problem correctly, because the reality is, and what I learned in mine is money is not what they’re worried about.

They are worried about solving something else and they are willing to do this and done well. They will thank you for it. They will real it is a, it’s, that’s what really is moving about it. When the people that are really good at this, they are really helpful. Actually, they’re really helpful. They’re not taking anything. They are really, really helping somebody. And that’s what’s man. You don’t think about it on the outside, but it’s a beautiful thing that happens. Like I really appreciate it. And I’ve been a part of it because it.

Sensei Gilliland (08:23)
Yes.

Yeah.

Right.

Micah Johnson (08:44)
You see it, you see what happens in their life.

Sensei Gilliland (08:47)
For sure. So listen, like you said, if you sell a house, a single family over to a home buyer, you’re one and done. Then you’re off to the next deal. Right. But in my case, my target buyer are investors. They buy rentals from me. And so my job is to solve the problem now and foresee problems in the future and eliminate and hedge against that risk so that that investor doesn’t just buy one, they buy seven from me. Right.

So it’s very important to be able to forecast any type of liability that that investor may inherit. So they have a seamless transition of building a real-time portfolio. And you also retain the client because you are serving them first.

Micah Johnson (09:28)
Exactly, exactly. Now why turn key? What led you there?

Sensei Gilliland (09:33)
well, I’m in the rehab business, right? So and rehabbing step down is a wholesaling business. So I pick up properties at a significant discount. I refurbished them. And then I was selling them to home buyers and home buyers would only buy one from me.

Micah Johnson (09:37)
Right.

Right.

Sensei Gilliland (09:52)
So then

I decided, let’s change that target. Let’s focus on investors because I want rentals too. So I would find deals, fix them up using investors’ money.

And then I would partner with them and hold that rental together. So I was the legs and the brains behind it. And they would be the money source. I started building my rental portfolio in that direction. And then what I’ve noticed is that, okay, great. ⁓ They want more than one.

So it was much easier to find that at that time it was much easier to find the properties and get them at an acquisition that was affordable for everybody. It was a little bit harder to find the buyer at that time until we hit the 2000s. 2000s then there was a lot of buyers that came along and then they kind of died off again. And then I went back to the wholesaling tactics and worked the auctions back in the later 2000s. And then everybody started jumping back on the bandwagon.

Micah Johnson (11:08)
Mmm. Gotcha.

Yes.

Sensei Gilliland (11:23)
to where we start building up that investor network.

So it’s important to me to focus on investors because not just to make money, but there’s a lot of people like you and I and others out there that just don’t have the savings or the retirement that they thought they were gonna have, or maybe have never started it. And so here, Black Belt Investors allows them to step into something extremely affordable and have an asset that produces appreciation, equity, tax deductions, cashflow, and it’s easy for them to manage. And now they’ve got

a little or large portfolio that supplements their other retirement.

Micah Johnson (12:00)
Man, I love that because you said it a second ago and it reminded me of something that a group, another group I’m in, call it the deal triangle, which is in each deal, there’s pretty much three parts. There’s a deal finder, there’s an operator gets it done, and there’s a deal funder. And very often, especially real estate people, they’re good deal finders and operators, but that funder one is the one that can be elusive for most.

Sensei Gilliland (12:20)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (12:25)
That’s where you’re proving it’s a very valuable skill to be the two, if you can do that, because now you can go plug in, especially if you have that heart of service. That’s where there’s nothing like real estate, especially in America. And when you are encountering the people like you’re talking about and providing a way where they never were gonna get this otherwise, right? They don’t care about fixing a house. They don’t wanna start at step one. That’s not their thing.

but that’s great for us because we want to be in business. We’ll do step one through three. You can have step four. Dealio!

Sensei Gilliland (12:57)
Yeah, yeah,

for sure. And you know, the cool thing about it is it has allowed me to cherry pick the deals that I want to keep for my own portfolio. And wholesaling is fantastic because if you know how to operate a business properly, wholesaling should be very easy because you can wholesale basically anything, right? Every product is a wholesale product. And then you start marketing up at that point. But it allowed me to

Micah Johnson (13:00)
You

Sensei Gilliland (13:23)
you know, assign contracts and fund my rehab projects. I started out as a rehabber where I had to go to Bank of America, put 10 % down at that time, had to pay mortgage payments, but flipping the contracts allowed me to sell fund to a point where Black Belt investors doesn’t use any lending today at all. And we’ve done over 10,000 flips over the last 30 years. And so with that, we…

acquire properties with our own funds and we no longer, you we cut out that middle man that’s making that interest. You know, as well as I do, hard money lenders are very expensive. They can really eat and make and break a deal if you’re not expedient in your rehabs.

Micah Johnson (13:57)
Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. They add stress to it. Things start going like you don’t want them on a flip and you have that hard money out there, man. It gets harder and harder to sleep. That is what’s happening. And that’s a powerful tool to use. And I love the way that you’re talking about it, because it’s what I see the best, what I call the professional real estate investor. When you’ve built that business that does it, it’s a machine that

finds a wholesale deal, then determines best, how does best dispo, who is it, is it to my own stuff, is it to someone else, is it wholesale first, and they just run it up the chain, is it wholesale, fix and flip, who’s this going to, and that is how you capitalize. The only way to do it in any market is you need to be able to dispo multiple ways because one channel doesn’t survive the whole cycle. That’s what I’ve seen time and time again.

Sensei Gilliland (14:32)
Mm-hmm.

That’s

very, very true. And I’m going to add onto that if you don’t mind, you know, in Martial Arts, right? People would come to me and say, Sensei, I want to learn grappling. I want to learn Taekwondo. I want to learn boxing. I want to learn all these different arts, right?

Micah Johnson (14:56)
Please.

Sensei Gilliland (15:48)
You got to master one first. You have to be a black belt in one first. And then it’s okay to add on the next because otherwise if you start, you know, dabbling in purchase options, lease options, contract for deeds, wholesaling, rehabbing, mobile home parks, great.

Now you’re Jack of all trades and I’m Astro.

Micah Johnson (16:06)
none right

Sensei Gilliland (16:07)
Right? So master the

first one ⁓ more than anything. And you got to figure out, you know, what is that first one? To me, it’s whatever’s affordable to you, not just in money, but also in time and knowledge. And also, which one’s going to get you the fastest paycheck, if that’s what you’re after? Is it going to be a rental portfolio or is it going to be a business?

Micah Johnson (16:20)
Mm.

Right, right.

Right. And, and you’re, man, you’re Charlie mongering it. Invert. Where are you trying to get to? And we are going to backdoor our way there. And it’s so important because it really tells you that channel. If money is what you need fast wholesaling, there you go. That’s your fastest way to do it. You can turn it there. You’ve got that time and you can hold. Okay. Find that next deal. Like you’re saying, and it’s one of the coaches I work with, called, he’s called it building a stable planet. Like get

build a place that you’re really good at before you go somewhere else, because it’s what lets you go see the world, right? You always got to be able to come back to something before you can leave it. So like build that really understand it. And that’s where that thing latches on. Cause that’s a, those companies I mentioned, and like you’re saying, they’ve been through cycles. That’s how they know to add channel, right? That’s kind of what shows you is you’re learning, learning, learning. Like, why do you change things that are good? And then boom,

Sensei Gilliland (17:03)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Right? Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Micah Johnson (17:27)
Hold on adjustment y’all.

Sensei Gilliland (17:28)
Right. Well, here’s the thing, you know, I’ve been doing this since 95, right? Now we’re in 2026. You have to be like a Navy SEAL when it comes to real estate. You have to adapt. You have to learn, stretch and adapt. If you don’t, you’re out of business. Listen, I don’t know where you were back in 2008, but 2008 and 2009, 10, you know, lot of, there was a lot of scrambling going on and a lot of real estate businesses.

Micah Johnson (17:39)
Mmm.

Sensei Gilliland (17:54)
Went away, they went back to work at Walmart or where they were working before. And then they came back, you know, right around 2012, 13 and 14 when things started getting easy and good again. But those that stuck around and knew how to adapt and shift with markets and be able to manipulate and have a deal and throw it in your funnel know, is this going to be a whole, am I going to sign it? Am I going to double close it? Am I going to lease option this? Am I going to do a sandwich lease option with, am I going to?

That’s it, right? You have to have some arsenal to your belt. But you only have that extra arsenal once you’ve mastered how to work this one first.

Micah Johnson (18:25)
Right.

Right. Because it goes across the board. And we were talking a little bit about that with now you’re into buying businesses and looking at those, but the nuts and bolts of it are the same. The niche is different. It’s it’s what commodity does your machine put out? That’s the difference. The machine, the nuts and bolts on the ground level, that’s the same part. it’s like Amazon. I always say this to people. Amazon only sold us books for nine years. Never forget. For nine years, that’s it.

Sensei Gilliland (18:54)
Right.

Micah Johnson (19:03)
And now they can sell you everything. Okay. Think about that. There’s a bet. There’s a lesson in there y’all on that because that’s the reality. If everyone’s your customer upfront, no one’s your customer. Everyone becomes your customer later. That is not an upfront thing. And it’s,

Sensei Gilliland (19:04)
That’s right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Right.

Well, the cool thing about Amazon

is they’re selling all these products to something that they don’t own. Right? It’s like Uber, right? You’ve got all these cars out there, but they don’t own one car. You know what mean? So.

Micah Johnson (19:24)
⁓ Yeah, life hack.

Not

one, not one man. it’s heck. That’s why it’s fun. Kind of fun to live today. Like if you don’t feel like you have opportunity today, we got to work on your mindset. That’s a, that’s a mindset issue. And cause it’s even when times are hard, we’re in a place where there is opportunity if you’re willing to go find it. And that’s where you find opportunity is it’s in the daily stuff. Like you’re saying it, you get the opportunities at the home run deals by doing those little things each day.

Sensei Gilliland (19:36)
Yeah, right.

Absolutely. And that’s the whole thing. It’s consistency each day. Don’t skip a day. Don’t wait till the weekend. I don’t care if it’s five minutes per day. To me, that’s five minutes per day is much better than an hour on Saturday. You know what mean?

Micah Johnson (20:14)
Right?

Right? Right? I agree. And it’s, I’m really big into journaling. I’ve got almost the last, actually in a couple of weeks, I’ll cross four years in a row written down of each day. And I love to go back and read it as part of my routine. I’ll go back each morning and read different sections of life. And what it really showed me was,

It’s really all about the little things. Very few big things happen and they’re always a byproduct of really the little things. And it’s not that much. Our brains like to see it all as this one thing, but really when I look at it how I document it, like, it’s mostly just these little in the middle moves. It’s not that much, but it’s consistent each day, pressing, pressing, pressing, pressing, go to sleep, wake up, wake up. And now I can look at four years ago and now I’m be like, whoa, that’s cool.

That’s cool to see like in real life.

Sensei Gilliland (21:03)
Well, let me answer you this way

again, because I’m curious because you mentioned mindset and you said little things every day and you’ve been consistent for four years journaling, which is phenomenal. Going back and reading your journaling, how much worry was there and how much that worry actually came to fruition?

Micah Johnson (21:21)
Exactly. There was a ton up front. What really changed too, one of my bots I trained, I let it read it because I wanted to give me feedback and things I can’t see, like show me stuff I can’t see in this. And what it really helped me see was the early couple years, the way I wrote was actually really dramatic. It was very like, very just interesting. And when I look at those years, yeah, I had a lot of chaos in my life, like inside stuff I was working on and personal development.

And now the writing is very calm. It’s very, it’s not flowery. It’s very bland. And that’s what it was showing me is like, you can actually watch you calm down through four years. And that’s, that’s the thing is like realizing none of the stuff you worry about actually comes true. And I got a weird background in that I was raised in a world where we were in a doomsday cult as a kid where the world was ending, right? Like you grow up believing the world’s going to end. You talk about a limiting belief.

Sensei Gilliland (21:56)
Right.

All

right.

Micah Johnson (22:16)
that

one gets in the way of stuff. And it was really going through that as a person seeing how often really that’s, that’s just it. And that’s what I love for people to hear is, if you if the words it’s not for me is going through your mind, ask a second time, do you really not like it? Are you just scared? Because both are options. There’s plenty of stuff I don’t want to do because I don’t like there’s some things I don’t want to do and they make me feel a certain way inside. And that’s like, there’s the door, I need to walk through that one.

Sensei Gilliland (22:35)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. good point. love that. You you, know, I, what I hear it from you and what I’m trying to take this is how can we get people to listen to this and understand it to be able to attack their dreams, whether it’s real estate investing or, you know, building a different type of business and

The reason I ask for worry is because fear is the biggest factor, isn’t it? It’s the biggest F word that people come across and they trip up on themselves. We all know that. In fact, the people listening today know that themselves because we all go through it. But with a little bit of guidance, a little bit of consulting, a little bit of coaching, those two are different by the way, and just getting your boots dirty, you’ll find that that fear goes away very quickly.

Micah Johnson (23:32)
It does. I couldn’t agree more. it’s, that’s where I like people to know it’s the indicator. It really is. I like golf and Jack Nicholas used to talk about before a golf tournament on the first tee, I only felt a certain way then. Only that could make me feel this way inside. And then he talked about other places eventually in his life. He said, but what I noticed was it was always the opportunity for something good to happen. That’s what that feeling was. Because it didn’t necessarily feel great.

Sensei Gilliland (23:59)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (24:01)
But it was that I was just like, wow, that is fascinating because it really is like we want safety, protect ourselves. But it’s that exposure. But especially like you were saying, it’s with people, especially in real estate. Real estate is a team sport, y’all. Nobody got anywhere alone. Nobody, nobody. It’s not the way that works.

Sensei Gilliland (24:08)
Yep.

Yes.

Absolutely. You know what I

hate? I’ll tell you, it’s pet peeve of mine when people say, I’m a self-made millionaire. BS, you had a team around you. People were helping you. You’re just the one standing in the spotlight because you pushed everybody behind. No self-made millionaires. Team-made millionaires. So…

Micah Johnson (24:36)
Right? No. Exactly.

Sensei Gilliland (24:43)
Everybody’s

got to surround themselves with a team. That’s why it’s important to have podcasts. So when, you know, instead of driving down the freeway, listen to country rap, they can be listening to this podcast and get something educational, expand their mind a little bit and learn how to expose yourself because you’re not going to grow unless you expose yourself. There’s nothing wrong with being vulnerable. There’s nothing wrong with stepping out in front, not knowing what’s going on. Toddlers do it. Why can’t we do it?

Micah Johnson (24:56)
Right?

⁓ no.

That’s the literal analogy I use, man. You took the words out of my mouth and I, failure is the process of perfection. My kids showed it to me when they learned to walk. They failed over and over. They never got upset. didn’t get all the only time they’re upset when they hurt themselves a little bit, which okay, we get bumps, but now they don’t even think about walking. They can walk just fine and never think about it anymore. And it’s like, my God, that’s it. Like that’s it.

Sensei Gilliland (25:22)
Yeah.

Right.

And that’s why if I come across a client that is extremely fearful, for me, it’s best for them to step into wholesaling because that eliminates almost all the risk, right? You don’t take title to the property, you’re not putting money into the property, you’re not rehabbing the property, you’re not using your credit. I, you know, wholesaling eliminates the risk. All you gotta do is find the deal, put it in a contracting, expose that deal to everybody else and see if it’s interesting. If it falls apart, you didn’t lose anything.

Micah Johnson (26:07)
Right? Right? And it’s, and it can be those baby steps, right? And that, that’s the thing, whatever that next step is. And we all want to rush to the, the offer part. That is the fun part, but I always believe education is step one. So even if you feel like we are, you want the end house, but that started one day with listening to something, with doing something you didn’t, you haven’t gotten as far as you have in martial arts by skipping days. One,

Many years ago you started and you’re only as good now because it’s just day after day and y’all times going by anyways. That’s what, no matter what, it’s gonna be five years from now and there’s a story you can tell. I was asked myself, what do you wanna say you did? Because when all you can do is tell a story about it, what do you wanna say you did? And it kind of gets me going like, well, I don’t wanna say this story. All right, let’s do this.

Sensei Gilliland (27:00)
Well, I’ll tell you also with education, mean, God forbid I have to have heart surgery. Am I going to go and, you know, go to a doctor that learned how to do heart surgery off of YouTube University or someone that actually went and paid for medical school and became an intern and winged off of another surgeon? know what mean? So education will also cost and it’ll cost time and it’ll cost some money. Doesn’t mean you got to go spend a lot of money, but understand that

If you’re going to be proficient and you’re going to want to build some sort of empire, you’re going to have to spend some time and money into it. Nothing wrong with free podcasts like this or going to YouTube. Those are supplements, but you got to get to the gym and to get to the gym, got to pay for a membership and you got to start working those muscles to where you’re sore. And if you’re not sore, you’re not doing enough.

Micah Johnson (27:45)
Exactly.

That is a great, great analogy because if you are out there and you’re stuck on the idea that you have to pay for something, let me tell you what you’re thinking about how much money you’re trying to save and you have zero idea how much money you’re losing. How often do you go to the gym by yourself? Let’s keep that up when it’s just you. And then how often do you show up when the personal trainer appointments on the thing? That is the difference.

Sensei Gilliland (28:09)
Mm-hmm.

And how often do you go to gym and try

to find the closest parking spot to the door? Because you don’t want to walk.

Micah Johnson (28:22)
Right. Right. I’m again, I find the furthest one ever. Like that’s my thing. I love walking. Don’t give me, ⁓ give me a chance to walk. But it’s true

though. But it’s the cost. Think of the cost as what keeps you in it. That is that dog in the fight. Cause the opposite of that is you’re trying to be cheap. Real estate ain’t for you. If you’re trying to be cheap, this is not the world for that. That is sell something else. Don’t do this. Cause this ain’t for that.

Sensei Gilliland (28:45)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Micah Johnson (28:49)
We everybody, the best I know are all in groups, all have coached, have been coached or coached, have mentors. And a big one is learn from someone that’s doing it. That’s why I like having people like yourself on the show. Real estate moves too fast to learn from someone who used to do it. That is not the way, especially for marketing and the different things that are heavily nuanced by the now. So.

Sensei Gilliland (28:56)
Right?

Micah Johnson (29:16)
Since a man, I appreciate you being out there. I could go on and on about these kinds all day. Cause these, these get me jazzed up man, because it’s.

Sensei Gilliland (29:20)
Well, I’ll tell you man,

things are just rolling in my head with all these little pet peeves that I’m a reality-based guy, you know, I’m a hands-on tactical type of guy and ⁓ and when you say something like, you know Learn from someone’s actively doing it versus someone did five years ago because things have changed. I couldn’t agree more

There’s so many phony imposters out there that maybe did one or two deals and now they’re selling information. Or, you know, I find that a lot of, you know, new, new investors coming along or wanting to team up with another new investor and they want to struggle together. And that’s kind of like running a two-legged race in a way. You know, it’s just, you know, with their ankles tied, it’s just, you want to team up with someone that’s got the money. So what you take 5 % if it’s 5 % and they get 95, I don’t care.

Micah Johnson (30:03)
Yeah.

Sensei Gilliland (30:10)
It’s the journey, it’s the education that they can’t take away from you at that point. Now, we never tell anybody to go into debt to go spend money on real estate. I would never do that, okay? But there’s ways that you can navigate to get involved in real estate. Let me give you this example here. You can buy businesses, you can invest in stocks, mutual funds, commodities, and all these other great things.

Micah Johnson (30:15)
Right.

Okay.

Sensei Gilliland (30:36)
But let me tell you why real estate is so important to be in your arsenal, whether it’s a business or a portfolio or both. If I walk into a bank today and say, you know what, stock market’s doing good. Where’s your loan department so I can borrow money to buy stocks? Oh, there isn’t one. But you know what you will find? A mortgage department, whether it’s the Great Depression or the roaring 2000s. That should tell you something.

Micah Johnson (31:03)
Right.

Sensei Gilliland (31:06)
and you can get in as an investor on a conventional loan with 20 % down, some even have 15 % down, and you can find properties out there that are actually decent properties in decent neighborhoods for a hundred grand in some markets, come on. So if a person can stay focused and disciplined, and our tagline is, know, a disciplined investor. If you stay focused and disciplined and learn how to

Micah Johnson (31:32)
Mm.

Sensei Gilliland (31:35)
cut out the dining and how to cut out the vacations and quit buying the new cars with the spinning rims on it and put that money towards something that’s actually going to appreciate? My God. Well, what’s the problem with that? People are lazy. People are too comfortable. People just want instant gratification. They would rather have that new car and that flat screen TV than an asset that’s going to help their family.

Micah Johnson (31:55)
Yeah.

Sensei Gilliland (32:02)
It’s crazy thinking. goes all the way back to what you said earlier. Mindset.

Micah Johnson (32:02)
Right?

Right? Right. The story you tell yourself is the most important one. It is determining everything in front of you. Literally, it’s science. is provable. It is what is happening. it’s, man, it’s why it matters so much. And that’s you know, since I thanks for being on the show today, there’s a reason I try to find people like yourself because you are a professional. You are doing it. Someone that reaches out after this, I feel good about it.

Sensei Gilliland (32:12)
And so it’s more you’re gonna believe.

That’s right.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (32:36)
And

that’s important to me because at the highest levels of real estate, y’all, people are givers. People have abundance mindset. We know in this business that if you show up and do the work, you got your house. I’m never going to take your houses from you if you’re showing up and working. And guess what? You’re never taking mine because that’s just the way it goes when you show up and do this. So, man, thanks for being here today. Thanks for dropping the knowledge on us. For those that are listening in that want to find out more about Black Belt Investor, the

programs, consulting, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Sensei Gilliland (33:08)
Yeah, just hit me up on the website at blackbeltinvestors.com or call us at 951-280-1900.

Micah Johnson (33:17)
Awesome, man. Thanks for sharing. you’re watching and listening, check our show notes. All the Sensei Gilliland’s links will be right there. Again, reach out, book the call. This is not something you do alone. We do it with people. We do it with people and that’s how we have that success. So again, thanks for being here. Thanks everybody for being with us out there. If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think can get value out of it. And if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do.

Click that button. We appreciate every single one of you that follows along with us. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Sensei Gilliland out there building real businesses in the industry. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you on the next episode.