Why Young Entrepreneurs Should Start Real Estate Now | Muhammad Haris Masood on Scaling Fast

Muhammad Haris Masood (00:00)
Then the day finally came. I found a deal, $110,000, four clicks, 42 % return and on a DSCR 7%. And I wholesale that in five hours to a buyer. Made $15,000 in five hours. And that was $3,000 an hour for me. From finding the deal, getting it signed, to sending it to a buyer, we got it inspected the next day, posted EMD in 48 hours, closed in 27 days. And yeah, that was my first deal.

Micah Johnson (00:00)
Hello everyone, welcome to the High Performers Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson, and today I’m joined by Haris, who makes some serious moves in real estate investing now for about the last year and a half, two years, man. You’ve just got cranked up. Welcome in today, glad to have you.

Muhammad Haris Masood (00:16)
Well glad to meet you Micah, it’s been a pleasure being here with you. Yes sir.

Micah Johnson (00:23)
Yeah, I’m excited for our talk today, You have pulled off some incredible things so far in your life before you even got into real estate. And then especially once you got in there and started applying yourself and just doing what it is that you do while high performers get done, you’ve managed to build some pretty incredible things. So let’s dig into it, For folks who aren’t familiar with you yet, tell us some more about yourself and what your main focus is right now.

Muhammad Haris Masood (00:49)
So, people, is Muhammad Haris Masood. I go by my middle name, Haris. ⁓ I’m 19 years old. I’m training 20 in a couple months. So, still in my teens, would love to use the word 19 until I can. Big leverage when it’s one of these conversations when you’re trying to…

tell people your story because what I received at 19, a lot of people are trying to achieve in their 30s. my story started as a high school student in Pakistan, 10,000 miles away from this. Someone who wanted to come to the States, study engineering. I made the switch to finance just a couple, two weeks before starting college. And I got into finance, business administration, pretty big switch and start learning about real estate. That’s a mention before that.

We’re successful enough, but not too successful. I have a couple of world records to my name and whatnot, but that’s not the purpose of this conversation. This is about my real estate story.

Micah Johnson (01:45)
We’re digging in. That’s part of the real estate story. That’s the thing about life and real estate. It runs along with it. Like you’re dealing with stuff that humans have to use all the time. And it’s interesting because our life stories relate directly to it. I’ve been doing it for 15 years now and my life experience has gotten me more deals than I know what to do with. It’s weird how it works in there. So all the things that you’ve lived.

are powerful so you can’t just kind of like glide by saying I have two Guinness World Records and not and not tell us the story man so start what’s the first one okay because most don’t even have one but what’s the first one and and take us through the story was it something you were trying to do was it like I want to set a record or how’d this happen

Muhammad Haris Masood (02:30)
So it started off, I was a high schooler. My first big project was a FinTech startup that basically it’s a small device, super cheap to produce thermal printer and NFC that allowed street vendors because I’m from Pakistan. There was a lot of street vendors. There is no brick and mortar shops. Allowed them to keep a legit, take cards and solve that issue. We onboarded around 600 clients because it’s super cheap. Everybody wanted it. And then sold it to a small bank for $10,000.

That was my first move in finance. I did a research project on autism as a freshman in high school. was one of the first teams who did a clinical psychological study without a clinical psychological degree. We did it with a couple of international organizations, found out, and then I started my stellar Pakistan. Stellar Pakistan is a society for transformative engineering and

robotics and it was basically focused on there were two sides. was a nonprofit tech startup. That’s weird that four words together is pretty weird. Nonprofit and tech startup. How’s that work? So we raised money from our projects. We raised capital and there were two wings. There was a nonprofit side and then there was a tech startup. As a tech startup, we were researching our three biggest projects where we started a solar panel project that was solar efficiency that basically came up with the idea of solar panels, solar panels that shift with sunlight. So

The incident rays always focused on solar panels and it increases the efficiency. Our second project was basically artificial intelligence based traffic lights that turns and that the time between the gray and green is based off of the traffic rather than just being a smooth 30 seconds. We implemented that in somewhere in Pakistan. That technology is pretty in the US, but it wasn’t in Pakistan three, four years ago when we started it. Then we came up basically sewerage systems are a big issue in Pakistan.

There is no sustainability of sewage system and blockages. So we came up with a small device. You could install in sewage systems and it has an acid and a base and a pH meter. And it would calculate the pH. And if it’s too basic, would add acid and would be acidic. It would add base and keep the water room. That was a three week. And we were taking all the money we were making, we were raising, and then we were holding bi-weekly workshops with the kids in the rural areas that

are interested in intrigue by engineering but don’t have the resources to and we were teaching them robotics, coding, skills like that. Mainly not too much but we started with the C and we taught and we put some scholarships in place for the students and that was my journey in the philanthropic world and it was so fulfilling for me that I stick. I joined in this organization called Paxism in Foundation. ⁓ Locally, we were one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in South Punjab where I’m from and

I started an orphanage project there. would go to orphanages and stay with kids and play with them for a weekend. We went, going to old age homes that was in the old age home that, you’re just living, it was not a care home. It was people who were abandoned by their kids, don’t have the place to live. They’re on government funding and they’re just getting by. We started going there. We would go one week to an orphanage. We would go one week to the old age home. And then I had a breakthrough and I like, why don’t we connect them both? And instead of, you know, going there, these are people who…

don’t have the blessing of their kids and these are kids who don’t have their parents. So why not connect them both? And then we started doing the stewards who would take the people from our old age home to the orphanages for a weekend. And both were fulfilled, pretty amazing project. Then we did all kinds of, did grocery drives, Ramadan drives, clothes, everything. We wanted to do something in sustainability and we did a plantation drive a couple of times and they were like, you know, let’s go for the

Hail Mary and we attempted a world record planting 1111 trees in 24 hours saplings mainly and we did that in South Punjab and we got Agiri’s world record for that and I was going to visit the technical team that achieved it alongside other people. Pretty big run and that was the first one. couple essay competitions here and there got some

entrepreneur of the year, youngest entrepreneur of the year award by the government, youngest philanthropist of the year award, because I was 16 when I was doing all of that. Then high school time came, I applied to 148 universities, got into 142 of them, a couple of big names, Purdue, University College of Imperial College of London, Bristol, a lot of places, and I got $13.5 million in scholarships as a high schooler.

And I broke that record and that was, came to the States, shifted from engineering to finance and started learning about real estate. And I was intrigued by it, started wholesaling. The first three months, Micah, when I tell you they were hell. I didn’t sign anything the first month, signed 11 deals in my second month. Didn’t sell a single one of them. Then go through. Third month, my…

The deals are not going through and I’m so stressed. like, oh, this this case is not for me. I’m quick. I would, I can’t say I didn’t quit. I quit every goddamn day. just never gave up. was quitting every day when I was clocking out, was quitting. No, I’m not going to do it tomorrow. And I would just wake up and like, you know what, one more day. Then the day finally came. I found a deal, $110,000, four clicks, 42 % return and on a DSCR 7%. And I wholesale that in five hours to a buyer.

Made $15,000 in five hours. And that was $3,000 an hour for me. From finding the deal, getting it signed, to sending it to a buyer, we got it inspected the next day, posted EMD in 48 hours, closed in 27 days. And yeah, that was my first deal. I was like, know what? Even if I average it out, it’s $3,000 an hour or $5,000 a month. My ideology is, let’s say if you make 100 calls.

right? And it lands to zero deals. make 200 calls and you close one deal, that’s $15,000, right? So the one deal didn’t pay you. All 200 of them did. So that’s basically you made $75 in call, right? You don’t see that 199 calls for you. Every call, every time a seller is having a point, every time an agent is giving you a shirt, every time the deal is not going through, all of these calls are paying you $75 per call.

If you look at it that way, Micah, how many calls would you make if you knew every call is going to make you 70 some bucks?

Micah Johnson (09:10)
Well, you’re nailing it, man. And that’s where I’m glad you shared that part of the story. I was talking about this with a friend the other day of how often getting a deal too fast is a curse for folks in this business because it can mess with your head. The fact is real estate is a long game thing. It’s something you do for a long time if you want to leverage it the best way that it is. And when you have to go through what you went through, which is right on time, by the way,

In real estate, this is what I have taught people for a long time. I call it the 90-day mentality. In real estate, you are getting paid in money for about everything you do 90 days from today. If you can understand that and know that you’re building this machine, because I grew up farming, and farming has been a very helpful thing for me in real estate because it helped me understand the process. You don’t plant a seed.

and then get upset for 90 days while it grows until you get something. That doesn’t do anything. There’s nothing you can do to speed it up except water it, tend it, fertilize it, do all the things that you’re already doing. And then you get that payoff at the end. And once you got one, now you’ve been doing it the whole time. It just starts rotating. And that’s where it kind of hit me in real estate. This is exactly the same. And if I’ll process it that way, now I’m not in a rush. Do I want a deal today? I want one every day.

That’s not gonna freakin’ change. That’s what I’ve learned, okay? So I don’t use that as my motivator. I look at it as a machine that I wanna build of now I wanna trade in this particular thing. How do I set it up where it does that? And that’s what you have moved from that I wanna dig into is you went on this journey that one is incredible. like to one, just say thanks for people on behalf of humanity. Thanks for what you’ve done for them. That’s awesome. ⁓

I would love to learn more that we won’t dig into this now, but you went to a completely different kind of schools than I went to because I would have loved those kinds of projects. The guys that we did, those were fascinating things to work on. it’s.

Muhammad Haris Masood (11:14)
No, not really. Like I’m interrupting you here. The high school I went to didn’t have the infrastructure. I went to a small high school in Pakistan that had some clubs. I would say it was better than a lot. was top 10 % high school. We had around 400 high schoolers there, but didn’t have the infrastructure. I started out when I started my engineering society. People were looking and frowning on me. What the fuck are you doing? Not going to work. My whole strategy in high school was, hey, I want to do something if there is not an

there is not enough infrastructure, I’m gonna go ahead and make infrastructure myself. And that helped me, mean, engineering said we had 500 members in 90 days, because why? Because all across the Pakistan, all across the, we had members from 13 countries and all of them were paying members, they were paying a small fee and we were using that money to fund our philanthropic ventures. And the whole point was, hey, there is no infrastructure for this. There is no other.

No, nothing. I could just sit down and be like, hey, these are the cards I’m dealt with and I’m going to, you know, just have to make do with it. And I could just write up my own cards. And that’s what I did.

Micah Johnson (12:20)
Love that man, I love that. Entrepreneur at heart. It’s what is, not everybody is one and not everybody wants to be one, but the ones that are, and that’s why we have high performing folks on here, it’s what does it for you. It’s not about, it’s my favorite question. Okay, so what next? What’s next thing? You know, it’s the, you tell me there’s no infrastructure. Okay, well I’ll just build some infrastructure.

Just give me the answer. Give me what it is and tell me what’s real so I can just be like, okay What do I want to do? I can either build it or not build it It’s up to me and that’s that what drive I love it man, because it keeps you going and you’re only at 19. So let’s jump back in real estate took you 90 about three months to get your first deal and Then then what what what clicked for you when what started happening after that? How fast did you get your next one?

Muhammad Haris Masood (13:14)
My first thing when I got my first deal was I donated some money, I started a philanthropic venture because I feel that that’s something that makes me happy. We built an infrastructure for women who are in abusive relationships in Pakistan, in domestic abuse, that’s pretty common in rural Pakistan. We built an infrastructure for them to where we would put them through trade school, put their kids through schooling. We write a fund around 30 families that way and we’re increasing it and we push down a couple thousand dollars every month and

We’re doing that. Our goal is not to do charity. Our goal is not to give them money. Our goal was to make them independent and put them through trade school, sewing, embroidery, trade skills. So they have the infrastructure and put their kids, the next generation through school. ⁓ We’ve started scholarships for them, pro bono lawyers and all connected, all the dots. My goal was to build the infrastructure, not what if I die tomorrow, Micah? Who’s going to look after them then, right? They have to be independent enough.

My goal was that I took that, that was the first thing I did with my money. And then I was like, you know what, I want to start doing this on a bigger scale. And I put some friends onto it and I was like, you know what, I need a team. I can’t do this alone, but I can do so much, right? I could make a hundred calls, but if there are 20 people making a hundred calls a day, that’s 2000 people. So that’s, I would make, let’s say you’d work 20 days a month, right? You take out the weekends, you take out a couple of slow days, 20 days.

I’m making a hundred calls a day, that’s 2000 calls a month. But if I have 10 people making a hundred calls a day, that 2000 calls a day. And let’s say my whole basis was I could keep a hundred percent of $50,000, right? Or I could keep 20 % of a million dollars. What’s better? Right? I would rather keep the 20 % of a million dollars rather than 100 % of 50. So I started, came up…

The whole thing was the infrastructure, right? As an engineer, as a mind of engineering, we love to break things into small parts. I would love to go back to your thing about farming. I grew up around farms, mango farms, not your normal. The thing with mangoes is a mango tree takes around 15 years before it gives you the first mango. So if you plant a mango orchard today, for 15 years you’re watering it, you’re putting fertilizers.

You’re putting in all the care, you’re making sure it’s good, you’re treating the diseases, pesticides, and for 15 years, you’re not gonna do anything. But after 15 years, mere $10,000 investment would make you $200,000 to $300,000 every year for the rest of your life, for at least the next 40, 50 years. So it’s a slow process. have to do it, and you plant every year. You plant new orchards every year, so you have growing.

I like, you know what, need to build the infrastructure around this. as an engineer, started, was like, you know, what’s the easiest way? I need to compartmentalize everything. I can’t go to someone who doesn’t know anything about real estate and be like, hey, you may need to make calls, right? You need to do this. This is how you negotiate. I can’t teach him that. The first thing in real estate is I broke it down as like, what’s the, I basically said this and I want to come up with a SOP where if somebody follows it a step by step,

He won’t need me to do the deal. What’s the first step? Guidelines to find leads. The first thing you need is a lead. So I thought, you know what, the first pillar is going to be people who are going to generate leads, right? Then we need people. I’m calling, was like, you know what, we need closers right after this. And you know, they call this, it’s a waste of time. I call a hundred people a day. 70 of them just re-interest most because I do on market a lot. We have off market division, but mostly on market. So think 70 % of the people are not picking up the call.

I’m wasting all those, you know, a minute a call, leaving them a voicemail. I’m wasting around a couple hours a day just doing that. So instead of closers, we need someone who’s a cold caller, Who’s just calling and setting up these appointments, right? And then I was like, you know, he sets up an appointment. He sets it up with me. I’m like, no, I don’t have the time to take 20 calls. I need to scale it. So he basically,

does have acquisition specialist right next to him. He’s the one who knows the negotiation, who knows how the deal works, how the numbers work, how lenders thinks, right? He goes with the deal and he should be paid the most. So I put that at 20%. I put the cold corner at 6 % and the lead gen at 3%. You start as a lead gen and the thing is, I don’t hire my lead gen at the people who climb up the quickest. The moment your first deal closes, you work on your second deal. The moment that second deal closes, now you know how…

what leads are good, what not, you switch to a cold caller. As a cold caller, the moment two deals closes, you switch to acquisition specialist. And then you have to have certain quotas to move up in my, at least in my company. Like, you know, cause at that point, you know how to, as a cold caller, you did two deals. Now you know what leads work and what don’t. What’s the right price to buy houses? You know all of that. You analyze that. Then as a cold caller, you learn how to talk to people. Then as acquisition specialist, we do a two weeks training of teaching you sales, psychology, tonalities.

how to handle objections, all of that, right? And then now you know that and now you’re acquisition specialist. So there are five acquisition specialists, five to eight now, because we’re growing. And then there is the operational director who’s managing all of them, who’s making sure they’re working properly. We don’t monitor you on a Slack that you’re working eight hours a day or not. Totally up to you, totally remote, 100%. We don’t have an office. I operate out of my apartment in Chicago.

Oftentimes traveling, I’m going to Bali next month and I will be working from there. It’s totally remote. So it’s up to you. There is no ceiling. You could make $0. You could make $100,000. Right? Up to you. So the operational director gets 10 % overwrite for managing them, keeping an eye on them, right? Just, hey, keeping an eye on the sense if they need some help, they need a contract signed, they need some more professional help in signing these deals. And he gets 10 % for just doing that. And then he has access to our bigger network.

As acquisitions, you’re signing deals that are $100,000 to $200,000, mainly Section 8, mainly fix and flips, stuff like that. Some duplexes maybe, but as an operational director, you have a full vertical where you’re doing creative deals, where you’re signing up to 32 units, you’re doing land contracts, you’re doing industrial land, and you get 60 % of the commission for your own deals. If you find it in Discord, 30 % if you just find it and we’re Discord for you.

And at this point, it moves deeds on average 48 hours. That’s how long it takes. And if we can’t find a buyer, have network with the bigger, I would say, I think people in real estate, like Ground Cardone, Jerry Norton, Pace Morby, we just forward it to them and they oftentimes have a partner. So we have a disposal side of things. And then we have five operational directors and you have a managing partner. At that point, you’re not making a percentage off of their deals. You are operating in more than

properties that are worth more than 2 million or more. 100 unit building, stuff like that. They’re closing them and you’re getting a piece of the company as a managing partner. And that’s negotiated with everybody separately on their vertical. Let’s say for someone, it’s 20 % for someone, it’s 15, for someone it’s 30. And we have two managing partners now and they basically manage everything and they close the deals. They’re the ones who connect with lenders, buyers. That’s the point when you have access to all of that and they make quite a bit. And then…

I am just there, I’m taking meetings like this, spreading the word, hiring more people, talking with other people in their industries and closing something that’s just, they couldn’t be closed for something like, let’s say there was a deal, we had it for a week, 280,000 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, DSCR, 40 % return can be sold. I went in, renegotiated it to a seller finance, got it sold in 12 hours. That’s where I specialize.

And we’ve made infrastructure, we have around 30 employees now, three zero. They are doing it really, you know, our goal is to have a hundred people working for us. I gave you a rundown of the deal I just was closing when you texted me that, I’m ready for the call. $1.7 million, 50 units, excess. The guy who brought me that lead made $6,000 off of it. And this is his first deal, the way. The one who called it, he…

did I think 50 or 100 calls and he made $12,000 setting up the appointment. The guy who brought it to the finish line, he made $40,000. His operational director got $20,000 out of it. I’m going to make somewhere in the $100,000 figure out of this for my company. We have expenses, but that’s the revenue to our company because we would have expenses in the company because I couldn’t, I didn’t have a buyer for this. So I went to a friend of mine and to one of the investor circles and I was like, Hey, I need a buyer for this. And he found the buyer and he made $50,000.

The realtor, I’ve worked with him for the past year now, closed multi-families and so much. He made $53,000 from the seller’s end on his commission, 3%. So many people are getting fit. Would I have closed this deal on my own? Never. Would I have been able to follow up the way Martin did? Never. Would I have been able to have these connections? Never. As you said, economies of scale. It’s not just scaling, it’s economy of scale.

dig into it and I mean, just doing that, we’re one of the first companies. Now we did 9.86 million in acquisitions last year. Compared to that this year, we did 6 million in three months, Q1. Compared to that, we did 4.5 million this month, till yesterday. And I just closed another 2 million. So we did 6.5 this month. So 9.89 a year and we are up to 10.5 just now. So.

Micah Johnson (23:12)
Powerful man. Well, you’re watching it work. It reminds me his name’s dr. Ben Hardy He wrote a couple books one is who not how I think that’s who wrote that that might be Dan Sullivan. Hold on There’s who not how and there’s another one’s called 10x is easier than 2x And you’re you’re talking about the principles of it right here that once you solve a problem You can do it yourself like you’re saying and you can make I mean sure

Good money, I 50 grand, getting that, that’s not terrible money doing better than most. However, for solving basically the same amount of work like you’re doing, you’re closing, what’d you say, how many transactions are you at a month right now in your company?

Muhammad Haris Masood (23:55)
Right now this month we are up to around 85 I would say. Our goal is to go around 120 each month now. That’s what we’re working towards.

Micah Johnson (24:05)
And that’s what allows you to do that right there. You were able to do exponentially more than you were beforehand. One, because you got it. I like the example you use. I can have 100 percent of 50,000 or 20 percent of two million. And that’s when I first got in real estate, I used to talk about that with same people. It was more commitments, though. It’s like you can have six percent of zero or you can have like five percent of something.

Right? 4 % of something. What do you want to do? Like doesn’t make sense. Like if I can do one or do this other, it doesn’t make sense not to do it. Like why wouldn’t I do it that way? And that’s how you’re running up that. Especially for a personality like yours, that is going to build. It’s funny to me how many entrepreneurs I meet that begin as engineers. It’s like the engineer’s curse. you’re behind the veil. You don’t look at something from the outside. You think about how it works.

Muhammad Haris Masood (24:56)
Yeah

Micah Johnson (25:02)
And you just really nailed this down with by breaking it into step by step because a real estate transaction is simply a series of steps. Someone finds it, someone calls it, someone puts it under contract, someone does the due diligence, someone closes it or wholesales it. It’s just this series of steps and if you just do the steps, you get to where you’re going.

Now it took you 90 days to see the full cycle. To do step by step by step until you did all of them. Where like, okay, now I see the process. Now I understand how the machine goes. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Let me build backwards. You Charlie mongered it, man. You inverted. If that’s how it goes, I’m gonna build back to the thing that I want. And boom, you just laid it out. And I feel like when folks can understand real estate that way, when you can see it as a series of steps, now it’s just a system to build.

And how can I build it in an effective way that creates the life that I actually want to live? That’s the other side. You can do it to do a lot of things. But one thing I like that you’re doing and doing it at a young age is, can we make a lot of money? Yes, we’ve known how to do this for a long, long, long time. What do we want to do with it now? That’s the mentality I see business owners taking. I can make a lot of money and do really incredible things. One doesn’t cost me the other.

Actually, I’ve learned in my life, the more I do the incredible things, the more money seems to flow in my direction, weirdly enough. So it’s like the opposite of what we’ve gotten scared of. It feels like.

Muhammad Haris Masood (26:36)
Tell us a little story. I grew up Muslim, I had a little partner, was a little on agnostic side and I was like no and then I came to a realization the thing is the more you give the more it comes. It’s economy right? The thing is I have a certain percentage, I call it an agreement. call it God’s my business partner right? He’s a silent partner in the business. He’s just there, he’s making sure everything is going smoothly and I donate a certain percentage to

my own charities and I see that work and it fulfills me, it gives me peace and then I just have this feeling the more I’m giving the more I’m getting. Right? And I like the way you said I had this mentor in high school and he had this quote and he told me, here’s 100 % of, 10 % of something is better than 100%, a whole lot of 100 % of nothing.

Micah Johnson (27:31)
It’s true, man. It’s true. It’s true. I love that.

Muhammad Haris Masood (27:36)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (27:38)
It’s what makes all this worth it, right? Work-life balance gets tossed around a lot and you’re 19, I don’t know how much that gets tossed around in your world, I’m 40 now. But it’s not really, for me as an entrepreneur and in this stage, it’s not one or the other, right? Like you use them all, it’s all one person. My mentor, he’s big on, he calls it role-based living. Understanding, you know,

You’re a lot of stuff your business owner your son your brother. You’re a dad You’re like you’re all these different things Which one are you right then and just be that one to as good as you can be right then? It’s when you’re trying to be a bunch of stuff at once your life gets messed up So when you are working and you go home and you’re supposed to be husband dad friend or whatever But you’re not being that because you’re still stuck in work mode. That’s costing you your life like stop

switch the roles, go be the thing you need to be. Man, I found that so helpful to do that. Because then you actually give yourself permission to do the things you enjoy. The philanthropic efforts that you want to do, the whether it’s going, I like to play golf, I like to go on walks. The things you just enjoy doing as a human that fuel all of it. It’s, I don’t know, it’s the whole system, man. It’s not just one thing.

Muhammad Haris Masood (28:54)
I read this book and there are three currencies in the world. You have time, you have money and you have knowledge. You use the two to get the third. You don’t have money, you use your time and your knowledge to get money. You don’t have knowledge, you use time and money to get knowledge. don’t have time, you use your money and knowledge to get more time in life. You hire people. It’s the principle. You can’t have all three. You can’t have time, money and knowledge. You have to use two to get the other.

I love these two of them. Yeah, that’s a good principle I’ve worked on and ⁓ it has gotten me pretty far in life. I won’t say I have a good work-life balance, just to be honest with you. I work 18 hour days. I wake up at six in morning and I’m sleeping probably at two a.m. every night. And thing is, I love what I do. ⁓ absolutely love it. Bingo. I enjoy it. That’s my enjoyment.

Micah Johnson (29:47)
That’s why work-life balance isn’t a real thing. It’s a made-up term. What do you mean work and life? As if work and life aren’t the same thing. I work at everything I do. When I go play golf, I work hard at playing. When I’m playing, I’m working at it. I’m not there not participating. And that’s all work means. It means active, work. That’s it. Or active, intentional effort. That’s work. That’s it. That’s all that word means. But we’ve made it occupation.

You know, like, take Elon Musk. That dude is wired to do what he does. Do not try to be like him unless that is your wiring. It’s not something to like live up to and that’s where hustle culture got a really big run. Where’s this idea about working hard? You gotta learn how you work hard. How do you, what’s it look like for you? And that changes throughout life, right? When I had nothing else to worry about, dude, living and breathing it.

When life shifted and there were kids around and other things to do, I didn’t want to live and breathe it anymore. The desire changed along with the circumstances because you’re, you’re just being yourself, right? Like outside of it all, entrepreneurship really lets you just be who you are as a person. Just let’s like the real you out on the world. That’s what it does. If you got the guts to do it because there is no infrastructure, you’re building all of it from the ground up.

Starting in here like the mental fortitude it takes to do it to keep I call it getting good at being human It’s a skill set and once you solve that and spend your life continuing to do it man. What do you want to do? More about making sure you don’t keep doing stuff You don’t want to do like dude. Don’t just do more do more on purpose. Like what do you really want?

Muhammad Haris Masood (31:37)
I’m a big believer of that. would tell you when I was starting out and I, know, three months in I did, was like, you know what? I need people. I pulled my best friend, which we were on not so good terms. We haven’t spoken to him in a couple of years. was like, whatever it is, I know you have the same hunger I was doing. We got to do this shit together. I worked with my one of my best friends. I know him from before we knew how to wipe our asses. I know him for 13 freaking years. He is my business partner. He is my business partner. I enjoy it because I’m

Most of the time when I’m working, he’s sitting there with me and he’s working. We’re all wired in together. When I’m down, he picks me up. When he’s up, I push him more, I help him up. And it’s just that, it’s that relationship. I’ve met most of my friends through real estate. Most of my favorite people I love talking to through real estate. I meet some, I love meeting people. That’s my calling. love, I enjoy it. I’m a super extroverted guy.

I love putting myself out there and I met a lot of people through that and I call that my calling and I’m at the point in my life where I don’t have a wife, a kids, right? I least talk to my parents a little bit, my family a little bit, but I spend most of my times with my friends and instead of going out partying and calling it work life balance, say I’m working till six and then I’m gonna go get drunk, do drugs, snort some cocaine, I spend that time with my friends and we’re working something on the back end and I enjoy it.

Except real estate, I’m running a government contract agency. I’m starting an AI start, but I’m doing this with all my best friends. And you know, that’s the work-life balance. You start enjoying what you do once you find your people in that. Why corporate work is annoying? You tell me, if you were to work 12 hours in a bank, let’s say, but you were working besides your friends and family, would you need work-life balance? You would.

That’s the thing about entrepreneur. can surround yourself with people you like. The whole concept of the company culture or corporate culture is that they want you to do the corporate culture. I’ve seen so many companies hiring people based on their vibe just because they want to make the corporate culture a lot less like work and more like, you you enjoy it. And entrepreneurship gives you that freedom that you could work with the people you want to work with.

It’s amazing. It’s one of the best things and I enjoyed it and I love it.

Micah Johnson (33:57)
It is man, it lines up one of my favorite quotes right now and it’s not even profound at all but it’s in my opinion the entrepreneur’s mantra. You can just do stuff. You can just do stuff y’all. If you’re out there listening this, watching in with this, I hope you’ve gotten this point from Haris and his life because you’ve encountered multiple times where it wasn’t there and you just built it because you can just

do stuff and that is something I want more and more people to like really get inside of them because we’ve been we don’t have to buy into any of the ideas we’ve ever been sold we can just do stuff we can think about it for ourselves if we want and that’s what entrepreneurship really does you get to create what you want the culture that you want whether you want a big company you want to work by yourself it doesn’t matter you get to be you in this arena and the world needs more of it because

What we’re learning, the groups that I’m involved with where we’re active about this, other investors at scale doing more than 100 deals a year, the thing we think about is how there’s two paychecks that gotta be paid, especially to have good employees. One is the financial one and the second one is the emotional one. You can only pay someone so much money long enough to keep doing something.

you look over and over throughout America especially if people die in early and or quitting midlife crises all these things because you can only do something you hate for money for so long however you find that thing that pays the emotional paycheck and the financial one and if you’re a business owner and you intentionally do it for your employees now you build something awesome because they show up completely different way

They bought into their life. You’ve connected. You’ve done something bigger than just build a business. You’ve done something. People’s lives are impacted. Their children will be different because their mom and dad go happy to work. That has huge impacts on lives just over and over again. Awesome times are ahead. I’m pumped, man.

Muhammad Haris Masood (36:14)
All of the employees I have, I have a simple policy. You have a kids play to attend. Freaking clock out and go. I don’t care if it’s a million dollar deal or if it’s a $10,000 deal. You just drop it. You just send in an email here. I have to attend a play. My kid is playing. I have a basketball game to attend. I have a baseball. You just go. You show up. Because what’s the point of having money if you’re not showing up for your kids? If you’re not showing up for your family when they need it? So I have that policy with them. And my goal is not to have employees.

The thing I told you about the acquisition specialist and then the operational director, once you’re operational director and you hit your quota, around, it’s different for everyone, but it’s, let’s say half a million dollars in assignment fees a month for two months, could go either, you could, you could either climb up to a managing partner, request a review and be a managing partner in the company and then manage multiple operational directors and do that. Or we could teach you display and investor relation and you could be a co-operating arm.

where we set up your own company, where we give you initial capital to start and all the connections and you run your own shop. As a core, we don’t own you, we don’t control you, you just piggyback off our connections and pay us a 20 % fee of every transaction using our connections for our network’s work. So my goal is to become self-invented and you have the network, you have seen how we work, just copy it. Copy that principle and you’re good. That’s my goal and I’m like, you’re going work for me for 20 years.

Just freaking learn it. You’re good. Make a core, make a network, make an affiliate, and then you go out and do your own thing. What help will teach you will give you the right connections for it. were piggybacking off of you and right, you know, we’re getting a 20 % cut and we’re good. We’re happy. And you’re running your own shop. You’re your own boss now. You don’t need to report to anyone. I’m like, do that. Cause I would rather have you running your own shop and be happy rather than, you know, just doing something for me because that’s a big thing. I,

I’ve met so many great people and I just feel that it’s a big, big…

I can’t explain. It’s a profound feeling knowing so many people are getting fed because of you. So many people are enjoying their life because if you, I’ll tell you the story. The thing is when you do this, when you, when you have a soft heart, you understand people. I have to pull up the exact numbers from my LinkedIn because I posted this a couple of times ago and I would tell you the thing was, you know, you’re familiar with the 70 % rule and fix and flips, right? You buy something at 70 % ARV minus the repairs, right? Pretty famous, pretty open, right?

So there was this deal and it was failing and it was something I was physically there for. I was like, you know what? It’s failing the metrics and it just, he told me get the hell out of my house because I offered him the 70 % ARV minus repairs, the golden rule, Repairs minus, no, it was in Nashville, 2025 summer. And I was like, you know, if he was going through a divorce and you know, he’s hurting.

And I offered him, his house was worth $200,000 fixed and he did 30k in work. it was like, hey, I offered him 110. Makes sense, right? I offered him 110 and he got pissed and I’m pissed driving back to my hotel. like, you know, I flew out all the way here for something personalized that I go through and it’s freaking annoying. And something flipped and something was feeling off. I you know what, I just lost another deal.

So I called him back as like, listen, I messed up. Let’s, let’s stop. Let’s talk. I went back to his house, put my ego aside. I was like, tell me what’s the issue. Tell me what’s why, why 110? He turns out he needed $135,000. It was for his daughter’s medical bills, his divorce proceedings. The thing was, according to all the numbers, it was, walked away and I was like, you know what, listen, if even if I don’t make much money on it as a soft part, let’s, let’s do it.

let’s do it. And I was like, Oh, you know what? What if I buy it on a seller carry back? I’ll pay you a hundred today and I’ll do the seller carry back for 35. Right. And I could just do the carry back with the hospital. could follow up with them. We can have my lawyer negotiate something with them. You’re like, okay, right. I listened because I, what if I, get creative there, right? What if I never knew why he needs 135? We did that. We

fix it, we slowly fixed it up. We went ahead, we did it, sold it for $215,000 six months now. He got his money. He was happy. I made $67,000 off of Group.D’s just because I listened. Right? And if I was just following a formula, wouldn’t have worked. That’s the thing is everything is different. You have to think about people. You have to think about what’s the impact on them. The whole day just go in a low board, throw in a hundred thousand below asking, that doesn’t work.

Because the golden rule 70 % would have made me zero dollars going out of my way listening and trying to hope.

Micah Johnson (41:13)
This is a issue. The golden rule is not right. It doesn’t account for carrying costs. And that’s why everybody is so far off when they send me deals and they’re always off by the carrying costs. And it’s just like, you’re using a formula that’s not very helpful, but bigger than that, I want to nail on something that you’re hitting that’s very important. And we talked about it a little bit earlier, especially if you are investing in single family residential.

There are two problems that you’re solving in that world one is a math problem The other one is a human problem. You are never buying a distressed home in an undistressed situation Something terrible has happened to that human being They’re going through a divorce the four D’s death debt Dissolve meant divorce that is what’s happening something not good has taken place and you are arriving in the most ⁓

embarrassing time of their life that they don’t even want to talk about to their best friend. That’s what you’re showing up in. And when 99 % of people show up and just talk numbers and then get pissed and say, you’re just unrealistic seller. Nobody cares. And that’s where in real estate, if you actually care just a little bit, that’s the secret sauce. Even Dale Carnegie says it and how to win friends and influence people. The secret is to actually care just a little bit.

and it’ll unlock all the doors you ever wanted. Because that’s what someone wants. They just want someone to actually care. Take a listen to my story. Let me understand. If it’s a deal, great. If it’s not, who cares? At least you help the person. They got something off their chest. That’s the thing. When you’re having that conversation, it doesn’t matter if you talk about money early or late. There’s a lot of formulas. But are you having a real conversation? Are you talking to them straight up? Because when I’m talking to them,

I will tell them exactly what I’m doing. I don’t beat around the bush about it. It is, it took me years to learn how to get really good at it and have all the people that I have and that’s why it’s a valuable service. And what’s amazing is when you do that, you sold that guy’s house and made money and did all the things and what did tell you after? Was he upset you made a lot of money?

Muhammad Haris Masood (43:27)
No,

no, he actually I I was you know, it changed everything and what happened was it’s just he pointed me to two other friends and You know he This will do and by the way, I you know Still I still his daughter is now doing well and she actually went to Quantico right after getting you know, I still get a postcard from her

and her father, time to time. He said thank you. me happy.

Micah Johnson (44:03)
You made a bunch of money, which is what we try to do as investors and you took care of humans. It’s not one or the other. And I just love that. I love that man. I love that you’re learning that early in the career because it is it’s how you cut through all the noise. It’s how you cut through all the noise in this business is just do that. Show up on the station.

Muhammad Haris Masood (44:25)
It’s understanding. I’m 19. I haven’t been through a divorce. I haven’t been through a death of a loved one. I haven’t experienced these things. I can never understand. I always say I don’t play a lot in the probate market because that’s a big market. The thing is probate market is so dangerous to play in. You have to show up at the right moment.

You have to wait enough time that they’re over the grief and you have to wait. You have to be quick enough that they already didn’t start thinking about, know, putting it on the market and you can never ever, ever find that perfect moment. The perfect gap between the grieving and they’re now about to say you show up a little early. You are so insensitive. All you care about is many. just lost their loved ones. And now if they have already thought about selling, they’re looking at comps and you’re not going to make money off of it. So you can never time it perfectly. The best you could do is just show up.

Be sensitive enough to care about the story because I know a lot of people who did it. Yeah, no, no, we hear why are you selling? want to know. You’re insensitive. Why are you selling is not a question. It’s like what happened? What are you going through? It’s just you have to be. It’s not just asking a question. It’s not a sealed script. Hey, why are you selling? It’s you have to have that wanting you to hear the other person out, hear their story and feel for them. Feel that I’m at my biggest principle is I try to put myself in the other person’s shoes. What would I be doing if I was there?

I was in that shit. I mostly find I’m like, oh my freaking God, would be devastated. I would be worse than that guy is right now. I would be worse. I ate an omelette, huh?

Micah Johnson (45:58)
It only takes just that simple frame of thought to put yourself in the shoes of someone else for a second. it completely shifts how you think about the conversation and it changes your whole, it’s one of the reasons you’re doing the transactions you’re doing, man, because it reverberates through all the conversations you have, whether it’s tradespeople, realtors, whoever it doesn’t matter if you just have those conversations as a real person. It sets you up. It sets you up.

Muhammad Haris Masood (46:25)
I’ve never bullshitted with my realtors. I’m always transparent with them. What’s the better word of that? I have a network of 800 realtors across the US now. The moment they get something interesting, they make up the packet and send it for approval to the seller. They send it to me. They’re like, hey, we’re about to put it on the MLAs tomorrow. Think you would pick it up and I get so many off-market deals doing that. Why? These realtors love working with me. I’m always upfront with them. I’m not bullshitting them. I’m honest. I’m telling them, hey,

This is the deal with this. is it. This I want to be. I mean, there is the whole wholesale bullshit and what happened. I’m transparent with them enough that they trust me and I have landed half of my deals. Personally, I would get calls. I would genuinely just tell you, I’ll read this off. Uh, this, the deal I was just telling you about, right? I, I got a call 11 14 today. Right. It takes it. He, I sent you an email. I looked it up. It’s a, it’s a $2 million deal.

And I was yeah, it’s like one of somebody from your company reached out to you yesterday and I was like, oh, it’s your company. I’ll reach out personally and it’s, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s my listing. was like, okay, perfect. Close it. Didn’t have to bullshit him. Didn’t have to cause he was like, Hey, their, their ceiling is 1.7. I was like, done. They listed it for 2.1. 400,000. I didn’t have to tell him 1.5 and then one, they were, they won’t take less than 1.7. They would take 1.7. go, okay, Send you the LOR. We’re going through.

Because I skipped all of that just because I knew the guy and he trusted me. He trusted me enough to tell me the real number and I trust him enough to know that he’s not bullshitting me when he tells me the real number.

Micah Johnson (48:05)
Exactly. Exactly, Business teaches anybody anything. People only want to work with folks they like, and trust. You solve those three things, you can get wherever you want. And you do that by building good, good relationships.

Muhammad Haris Masood (48:21)
Ryan said he had one of the biggest realtors in US right now, New York real estate from Sarah and Robin needed this big real estate with Netflix recently. One of his quotes was that I loved was people hate being sold to but they love shopping with their friends.

That’s the sauce. That’s the sauce. You establish that friendly network, you can sell anything. People hate being sold to but they love shopping with their friends. If you can have that friendly connection when they’re laughing with you, they’re giggling, they’re happy, you can sell them anything. They’re happy.

Micah Johnson (48:58)
It’s It’s true. Well, Haris, man, these are the kind of conversations I can keep taking on forever. But I think this is a good time because you’ve laid out how you view business, what you’ve accomplished for folks that are listening in that want to learn a little bit more, see what you have going on, possibly book a call with you. What’s the best way for them to find you?

Muhammad Haris Masood (49:18)
⁓ I recently, a lot of people were coming. We have a website that’s not doing much. We got a couple leads, but we started a Discord server, totally free to join in. I’m pretty active in it. would text you over the link. You could join in, you could put it on here and you know, they can reach out, they can talk to me, other people who are in the space, connect and you know, just be involved in the space. It’s a community. It’s a whole community. And my biggest advice for people who are getting young.

getting young, that’s the biggest lesson from my story. I come from a poor household. I told you I made, why I said $3,000 an hour, why is that number important to me? made $15,000 in five hours for that deal. I have a pay stub for $3,200 a W-2 from that year. And I was working 20 to 30 hours a week as a student worker.

I was washing dishes. was some I came from poverty from a third world country from Asia made my way to the US didn’t had much money came on a scholarship, right? Did all of that slipped hungry did all of the struggles slept on the slept in my freaking car. All of that and I made it in the space if I can what are the chances of someone from Pakistan or Nepal or one of these countries coming to the US and making it their way you you’re already in the US you have the resources, you know.

I had to learn the whole American credit system from the scratch. I didn’t know what the credit score is. I didn’t know what the experience is. You have the biggest gift you can imagine you’re born in the American economy. You’re in the American economy, let’s say, if you are. Even if you’re not, know about it. You have social media. I started this journey when six years ago, there were no resources. There was no AI, no charge, GPT, cloud, nothing. Nothing. You have all these resources. I would say just start. Just as you said, just do it. Just take the first leap and trust me.

You would thank yourself for the rest of your life. And my preaching is to the younger generation, people who are 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, you can start right now. You don’t have responsibilities. I started in college and a lot of people like, yeah, we’ll start something after college. I’m like, your means are comped by the college or it’s getting paid by a student loan. Your housing is covered. If you don’t make money, what’s going to happen? You still have food to eat, a place to live. You’re good.

you can get a go at a job, you have a degree. But what if you graduate? Now you have a $1,500 a month apartment in some city like Chicago, there are $1,000 in groceries. And you’re like, you know what, I’m not gonna do a job, I’m gonna do real estate. Man, how are you gonna feed yourself for the three months? What if it doesn’t work at the three months? You are gone. What if you do it at 25, now you have a serious girlfriend for sale. Let’s say you do it at 30, you have a kid, you have another kid on the way. If this doesn’t work, you’re gone.

This is the perfect way to start. don’t have responsibilities. You have a net to fall back on. You have your parents who will support you. You have a lot of room to do it. Just take the first leap. There are so many people who will help you. There were so many people who would just have a conversation with you. I said I didn’t pay for a single course. I didn’t do anything. I just went and asked people for help. I just went and I was like, have no shame. The thing is the shame comes from a…

egoistic point of view. What are you egoistic about? You’re broke, you don’t have money, you don’t have resources. So why are you having a shame of asking people? You are exactly what you think you are. Yeah, it’s shameful to ask people because you don’t have nothing. And yes, you do. You don’t. Just get out of that. Break that barrier once. Do a rejection therapy. Try to get rejected instead of, you know, I have been accepted so many times and I expected a rejection. I would tell you that I am working with this guy and ⁓

I’m helping him dispo one of his, I think it’s in Iowa. I would read you the conversation I had with him. Exactly. He texted me, he just saw you in the community. was in one of the communities with the repealers. He reached out and I was like, yeah, sure. He said, hey, congrats on getting deals under built. just saw, and that’s the only thanks. like, if it’s okay to ask, how did you get to that level? I got my first deal in Ohio.

But it’s hard to disprove even though with good numbers. I don’t want to ask because you are so ahead of me and I don’t have anything valuable. I can trade for a response. would you be able to take a look in what I got wrong? And as extended through our buyers in Ohio, maybe a tidbit of advice, always ask for help. Worst that can happen is they can say no. Make sure you ask. Here is a calendar link. I do free consults with who will want to get in the space. And here’s the link book. And he booked a meeting with me.

sat 30 minutes, analyzed the deal, found him a buyer, and now he’s going to make, I think, $6,000 on it. Also, if you didn’t ask, you wouldn’t have known. I mentor people every day on deals. I do live streams, there’s a free server. So just always ask, never fear asking. I’ve got so many connections by just asking. Every hundred DMs, I get maybe five or 10 replies. Maybe out of those 10 people, one is willing to listen to me, but you do that a month. You send a hundred DMs a month on LinkedIn, get on LinkedIn.

You get 20 connections a month. In five months, you have 100 people who are willing to help you out to make connections, right? That’s the thing. Just don’t have the fear of rejection. Don’t have to do that. Just ask. Worst that can happen is no. Worst that can happen is failure. That’s it. Embrace it.

Micah Johnson (54:47)
man. You have not because you asked not. That’s all you got to do. That’s all you got to do is ask. Well, Haris again, man. Appreciate your time today. Thanks for being with me. I think we need more folks out there like yourself doing it the way you are. I appreciate that trumpet you’re sounding for the younger generation. So if you’re listening and watching in out there and got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think get value out of it as well. Make sure you check our show notes. We’ll have

All of Haris’s links there for the discord for his website go check him out Like I say a lot talk to people and work with people that are actually active in the business There are a lot of people who will help you if you just ask the secret to getting more questions answered though is Take action don’t be an asshole ask questions get answers take asking action ask more questions And it’s endless for you what you want so again Haris. Thanks for being with us, man

Thanks everybody out there for being with us. We’ll see you all in next episode.