listen up real estate investors entrepreneurs and agents you're in the right place unlocking the secrets to real estate investing and entrepreneurship welcome to the titanium vaults hosted by r.j. Bates the third here's RJ hello and welcome to the titanium vault I'm your host RJ Bates today I'm sitting down with Todd Fleming Todd how are you doing I'm doing amazing and I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to pop it on here and speaking with you and speaking into your audience and seeing how we can help absolutely man so why don't you take a second to introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about what you do in real estate investing absolutely so boy it's a lot yeah so my name is Todd Fleming I am I've been investing full time for the last four or five years of my life and I'm the author of if you can't wholesale after this I've got nothing for you which is the first volume first part of a three-part series in which I'm taking you through not only my journey but the journey that you can take yourself in which if you have no money credits experience and you're scared to death it's perfectly fine if you've thought about getting in real estate that's a great book and a great resource to get you started because it's literally a step-by-step guide to getting you into real estate if you will and getting to a point where you can change your life if that's what you want to do and real estate has done exactly that for me so four or five years ago I was actually a full-time day trader in the stock market and not loving it for not not only because of the volatility and the stress and the constantly watching like every tick it's because I had to be in front of a computer screen all day which is what I wanted to get away from and living the nine-to-five life before that and really struggling through it no matter how well I did at the job I was really really miserable and real estate is where I really found my my entrepreneurial path and then from then it's taken on to owning educational companies and building communities in which people can move and strive forward and work on something similar and try and getting to the same same goal or similar goal and which empowers each other so that's that's really where I started and where you know and who I am now and that might be a really drawn-out answer there's just a couple senses but uh that is where I am at currently so I think you brought up a couple of great points are already a lot of our listeners what I've found out about my listener base is a lot of people that are in a position where they want to get into real estate investing because they see people that are currently doing it and they're achieving some some sort of financial freedom but they don't really know how to get started and so like you brought up your boat that you've authored part one is a great resource but let's talk about you personally how did you make that step from going from being the day trader to becoming a full-time real estate investor well I think it's kind of a funny story almost is especially when you look back it may be some things that how you started or how others have started that you know that are successful now and that people sometimes I you know fall into things if you will due to their environment or due to what's happening around them and then they kind of adapt to what's going on so when I first started I think a big I think a big piece of it was that I finally had enough pain in my life that I had to change it was not something that yeah I'm pretty sure I can be pretty stubborn people can be really stubborn people can have enough self-awareness to know that they're miserable but not enough action and courage to leave the job that they're miserable add to pursue something that they might be great at something that they might enjoy and be happy with and so that for me was sitting at a nine-to-five desk for a year and a half even though knowing two weeks in that I was miserable so it took me a year and a half to really pull the trigger and I started in real estate I can of we can all probably thank my mother funny story and that my mom I had mentioned that hey you know real estate was something that always kind of interests me I saw other people doing it but I never had any you know I was like I don't have any money how can you get in the real estate so what's the best way to learn real estate is to get your license right and become a realtor so I thought so my mom actually caught out an ad in the newspaper that's that gray paper that shows up on you know every once in a while that's still around I think yeah so I got lucky enough that my mom actually cut out an ad from the newspaper for a local broker that was looking for a new licensee and it said that they were gonna accept you know two or three people out of everybody that showed up and guess who people know when it shows up so by process of elimination I was able to get it so they were so they're gonna be my broker so I had to go through the classes and everything and before really understanding one what that cost because it's not cheap so I pretty much put myself into broke town basically borderline bankruptcy because I had to go through schooling and pay for the books and pay for the licensing and the MLS fees and yada yada yada and then you have to pay your broker on top of that a lot of times you know just to use a printer so I was really really struggling at that point and then two weeks into it here's that self-awareness I'm miserable again like how can this be how can I be miserable with everything I'm trying so many things how can I be miserable with everything and that's when I realize it's not that I was miserable with real estate I liked real estate I didn't like working under somebody I felt like I was an employee again so I was like how can I endgame is investing how can I get into investing or if I don't have any money and that is when I learned of wholesaling and I learned that from another entrepreneurial group great family to be a part of they're called secret entourage and they had they happen to have some materials and they had an interview recently that they had posted and talked about buying real estate flipping real estate for free and it obviously piqued my interest and I watched that and went through that and and realized that man I don't need any money or credit to start I just need to follow these steps and that's what I did and that's literally how I took off I had my first contract after that in like two weeks two or three weeks amazing so I want to go back to something you said about being stubborn and and a lot of similarities between our two paths and our stories I have to give my mom a lot of credit for I'm at today thank you thank you mom's yeah I mean I I was already an entrepreneur I owned a general contracting business which when I opened it up I thought it was I thought it was the greatest thing in the world right I'm making these ugly houses beautiful I'm so proud of the work that I'm doing and then very quickly I realized I'm miserable I'm not a contractor I'm not supposed to be doing this and I was hired by investors and I'm watching these guys drive up in the Mercedes the BMW and their nice clothes and they walk around for 30 minutes and they point and they tell me what to do and then they walk away and I do all of the work and they're making more money than me at the end of the day and you know it just got to the point where I was I was so fed up with going to Home Depot 27 times a day and I couldn't figure out how to systematize my business and I was like I'm better than this like I'm smarter than this and so my mom actually helped me and and she she bought my first flip with cash and she allowed us to do the the rehab on it and then she also helped me pay for some education on learning real estate investing but recently and and I did not know this I did not plan this while you were talking had to pull this up on my phone but I was asked a question about 12 underrated management skills for entrepreneurs and this was what my quote was as an entrepreneur it is vital to allow yourself to be wrong sometimes the best decision you can make for your business is to deviate from the original vision being humble can be what differentiates you from your competitors you don't always have to know the right answer is for tomorrow but you need to be able to admit that yesterday's answer wasn't the right one and the reason why I bring that up is because when I was a a contractor I was stubborn for a couple of years I didn't want to make I didn't want to admit to everybody that I'd made the wrong choice of a career and so I just kept doing it yeah I mean it was like so maybe were like RJ do you're killing it that bathroom you did last week was beautiful and I'm like yeah but I made $300 on it no am i hey I'm glad you thought it was beautiful but it barely paid the electric bill you know and I was I was broke I was miserable and so for people out there that are listening to this and and normally I don't talk this much but it was just something that you touched on man don't don't sit there and be stubborn with yourself make the change and if you feel like there's something else out there for you make the change quick sooner than later so that's my rant for this interview that was so perfectly said it's like to take that a step deeper so there's such a huge difference between achievement and fulfillment mm-hmm and there it and to go into you know you're speaking about being stubborn and being able to admit that not maybe you're wrong you know not only that maybe you're wrong but maybe you need to switch something maybe pivot a little bit is that it's amazing to me when everybody that I've noticed it's super successful instance adopting this like my businesses have exploded as well I mean over the past few years and you know I've grown a ton and had a ton of opportunities and have measured my achievement versus fulfillment and things like that so every single day I'm literally waking up and going how can I create the day to day life that is ideal for me mm-hm and then it sets me on a path of what I need to do that day so I literally ask myself that every single morning and you'll see a pattern within the book even of like asking yourself great questions there's a reason for that right and what's great is that you can hold an end goal right so you can hold an end goal but then there's a million different paths to possibly get to it so you know ours it was real estate we like real estate you know we had a goal of that you're started in GC mine started as a realtor we both were able to change paths and still reaching the same goal so the goal can stay the same but the path might need adjusted you know constantly you know almost daily so it's awesome that you're able to realize that have the self-awareness to realize that that even when other people were appraising you you're like I'm feeling unfulfilled though and that's more important than this bathroom looking tip-top right but literally the only thing that I enjoyed about that path was when I got the post two pictures on Facebook and people would praise how great our work looked I mean that's how miserable I was in that career path and and now we still get to do the same thing right we flip houses so we still get to show beautiful pictures and we still get the praise and and again going back to your point just because this is our path and it's what we've chosen doesn't mean being a realtor or GC or a day trader can't be somebody else's path we're just talking about this is what led us to where we are and both of us started off in wholesaling so so you've got two weeks after you got your first property under contract walk me through how that translated you got one under contract how quickly did you ramp up and were you able to create an actual business yeah so I had it under contract first within the first couple weeks so it took me like two or three weeks to get my first contract it took me quite a while to sell it though because I wasn't working backwards in a sense I was not I didn't have anybody to sell it to so I was at the time I was actually still a realtor I was still license so I actually could have listed it and worked as a realtor on it but I said but I was very determined and you know I want to make this investing piece of my life you know the main my main business so it took me a little while to sell it but after the pain of not being able to sell it for literally two months right and I had to kept going back to the seller and and we the thing that saved that deal was that we actually became friends we still talked to this day me and my first ever seller so we built this really strong relationship and it really became like hey man it's not a huge rush you know whenever you're able to put the pieces together just let me know do the deal so I was able to continue networking and letting people know like hey I have this opportunity if you'd be interested and I learned so much from struggling through that for a couple months that now when I walk into a property or walk into it you know a situation if I'm thinking you know now my initial thought is how can I keep this for myself how can I build this wealth for my family right but even if it's not right for me how can I make it you know create passive income for me how can I build more freedom for me and you know what it worked for someone else I have somebody in mind so any contract that I have is moodily has 100% chance of being sold because I don't put anything under contract now that I don't know who I'm selling it to if I'm that that's what I'm you know starting to do so the first couple months were a struggle without a doubt I don't know anybody else that started anything and was a master of it the next week exactly any time anybody comes to me and they're like hey I'm really struggling I know as well you should be good job I continue going out making mistakes and learning if you can adopt the mindset of you know you either win or you learn and not only on top of that when you're taking these failures when you're getting punched in the face and then the gut and you're like man I really feel like the world is coming at me right now if you can remember that those are actually packed those failures are packed with information that you should be downloading to yourself and then putting into action this is why this didn't work so I won't do this so I'll go to this and pretty soon there's no reason that you shouldn't be doing multiple deals a month with no none of your own resources if you will because you've built such a database in such a network and to go deeper into the question of you know how long did it take for me to really ramp up my business after that first deal it was 2 to 5 a month every month like almost every single month because I had worked those pieces out and it became like you talked about earlier systematized and a point where I have these three great relationships with buyers that I want to deal with right and I know they can perform you know we go to I mean literally we know each other first name or you know we can go to dinner like we have that closer relationship and I can go to a property and go hey it looks like this one that we did once before okay great and then I already know the prices everything I know where I need to be at offer wise so literally you can just start going out and cutting yourself checks yep and and that's very similar to to what happened in my business almost identical I mean you talk about getting that first deal I remember getting my first deal and I don't still talk to the seller but because the seller made me use the title company I still use that same title company same escrow officer and I consider her a part of my business now oh for sure that absolutely part of your team huge part of your team absolutely and but the other things is right after that that's where I had this struggle that that first deal was so easy I was taught that you go get a deal under contract and you slap it on Craigslist and it gets sold yeah and so I went and got my first deal under contract slapped it on Craigslist literally within hours of putting it on Craigslist a guy called me and said send me the assignment and so I was I was like oh my god I have found the easiest thing in the world I am going to be a billionaire in like a year this is all you have to do yeah I was like I can't believe it's this easy why isn't everybody doing this and so you know we went out and got like the next two to three properties on a contract and it didn't go so well you know you actually have to build a buyer's list and build rapport with your buyers and and things along those lines but you know like you said after we narrowed it down we actually got to know her buyers and what their criteria was that's when the business started being built and we understood what we were doing and that's when we saw change as well so it's a it's it's funny to hear I mean you know Todd and I've never actually talked about our businesses this way together but hey they kind of mirrored each other a little bit you're gonna continue to see them mesh together I bet yeah yeah and and now you're talking about passive income that's also where I met and I think that's a like a usual path right you get started in wholesaling because there's no cash no credit needed that's what everybody says so how long did you wholesale before you decided to branch out into other strategies I was pretty primarily wholesaling only like when I say primarily wholesaling only I mean my mind wasn't even open to other things so every every opportunity I ran across and looking back on it now I'm like oh so many killer deals that like act like that I passed other people but you know what it built amazing relationships and business opportunities with other people that I don't regret it at all like how do the exact same thing and what Elsa did is that it really really taught me how to how to talk to people and how to negotiate and how to work through problems and you know problem solving so now when I have a problem in my business now or something that arises don't you know I've dealt with something like that before when I was strictly just wholesaling and I understand like how my buyer handle bit so about a year and a half I was really really gung-ho set that's all I was gonna do and that is when so one of my personal my personal coach my personal mentor he actually owns the title company that I used and he kind of took me under his wing in the very beginning as I was struggling and working through things and he's somebody that owns hundreds of units himself he's an investor you know this is just another piece of his business right and that's when we started talking about you know how can even if I'm if I want to transition right the importance of you know big lump sum checks or sexy right I can't got my 10 I got my 15 but what's the problem with it I gotta go out and do it again mm-hmm so am I really building a business or am I really just owning a job yep and I started to realize that I was owning a job and I was actually starting to lose passion for because I realized that so I was finding myself falling back into this oh no like okay I don't wanna get bored with this I don't want to get to the point where like I don't want to do this anymore I have to learn something new because continuously starting over isn't really the best way to lead you to the road of your goals right and so we started having conversations I start and we started to talk about well how can you create passive income you create streams of income that are always coming to you no matter whether you're working or not and obviously rentals is you know you know same whether it be single or multi family is you know a great way to do that but I was still very risk adverse so I needed another way that I could have the passive income but not have any responsibilities and that's when it really came down to well I can structure wholesale deals differently I got to a point where a ten thousand dollar check wasn't gonna change my life so I started with my buyers in a way that hey when you have a rental or whatever type of deal we're gonna structure a little bit differently I'm still gonna sell it to you which is totally fine you know but instead of a $10,000 check up front I went $200 a month for the next ten years eight years five years seven years so or whatever it came out too you know what I mean a little bit of interest but what it did was I in what it made me realize is one if you've ever if you've ever tried to wholesale before or anybody that's ever wholesale a deal or been in real estate before they've had multiple deals where man it's like $2,500 off from being a deal like so so close but you know no one's willing to budge on their numbers and for good reason you know it needs to stick within their criteria what I realized that this did was when I would sell to guys and I would take a promissory note instead of just a lump sum up front it's almost every single deal could possibly work because they didn't have to take the extra money out of their pocket to pay me their tenant would pay me overtime mm-hmm so they were able to do more deals they were able to get more property they were able to cashflow more because I was willing to take payments over time instead of you know hey I gotta have my fifteen thousand dollar check now right which created a huge huge opportunity for more problem-solving with my buyers so anytime there was a property let's just say they're their criteria is that they have to be all in under 20 and there was someone willing to sell at nineteen five that's a deal still I can still make five or seven grand over the next two years on that now what people normally say when I talk about this they're like come on it's only $200 a month I admit it is not sexy little streams of income instead of the big pond it's not as sexy but I will tell you this do it one time when that 200 hour check comes in while you're playing xbox or doing whatever you like to do you're gonna be absolutely addicted to it because you're gonna being paid for doing nothing at this point you're being paid hundreds of times instead of once and on top of that the $200 check a month doesn't change your life I admit that maybe a pays your phone bill what if you do it 10 times right what if you do it 20 how many times can you repeat this in the next 24 months now you have 8 10 12 15 grand a month that just flows to you without you having to go out and work anymore right and that is the big difference maker when everything shifted my wholesaling business to me becoming who I am today of not only owning and holding property just being super super creative and everything that I look at and taking everything one step further like I just put a house in there contract two days ago that normally people would look at and they go no way that's a deal way too much rehab needed you're not gonna have anything on top when in reality I'm not gonna put a dime into it I'll sell it to a retail buyer for a couple grand down and they can pay me a few hundred dollars a month because there's a huge huge need for people who can't get a traditional loan but have a few bucks saved up in their pocket right so now they can pay me overtime and I am no responsibility my only job is to cash checks every single month which is a pretty good job by the way my only job is the cash checks every month and if they don't pay i've lien position i foreclose just like a bank i've taken no money out of my pocket i literally created money out of thin air yeah so I have interviewed quite a few wholesalers and you're the first person who has brought this up not surprising to me right no so either nobody knows about it or nobody talks about it have you have you come up with a name for this strategy because you're basically like owner finance seller financing your whole selfie and if yeah so so so what what is we need to come up with a title for this this is a whole new strategy we do need to come up with a cool name for this yeah and we need to put a little team at the end of it I totally think exactly this is this is exciting I like this a whole new strategy the whole sale here so so is that your main strategy now is that how you're building all of your passive income or are you taking down in owning actual rental properties I do both so I have a very specific criteria for what I'll hold on to and if it does not meet that criteria I will still buy the house but I'll just sell it I'll resell it and hold a note on it so my whole goal again is when I wake up in the morning how can I create the day-to-day life that is totally ideal for me what is what is the most beautiful day to day for me what does the house look like like what does the family look like where do the cars look like where is it at how close is it to the beach it's on the beach just let me tell you you know I'd be like what does the weather look like I mean absolutely everything and everything that I do has to do with me living life on my terms and every single time that I create another note even if it's only for a couple hundred dollars I have promissory notes that pay me as little as two hundred dollars a month and I have some that pay me as much as five thousand dollars a month and it's that stuff that whether I go to work the next day or not I'm gonna be paid and you can do this with anything too so I have mobile homes that I own security on I love owning debt my goal is to actually own a billion dollars in debt there's a reason banks are so well-off right right and this is what you're doing is you're becoming the bank yep you don't had you don't have to create it you don't have to take any money to actually lend you create money out of thin air so if I have a house that I'm willing to sell for forty thousand dollars I have five thousand dollars in it and I sell for five thousand dollars down you know on paper it looks like I landed somebody 40 grand right and they had to pay me interest but in reality it's literally not a dime because they paid me my five grand down so I'm free and clear in my house I've literally created a line of income for free that'll pay me for the next decade and also what's really cool is let's say the house so the market that I'm in you can buy houses 20 30 40 grand and so when I buy a property at discount sometimes you know I look for problems to solve first I don't look for property so when the problem is large enough the numbers no longer matter right so I can buy houses for four or five six seven grand then if they don't fit my criteria I can sell them on that money down and what's what's cool about it is that it's solving a problem for the seller it's solving a problem for my family and it's solving a problem for a buyer so everybody's happy at the end of the day so okay I'm glad you brought up the market that you're in okay because not everybody is in a market and you can buy houses for that cheap so for someone who's in a market where you can't buy houses for five six seven thousand dollars down how could they achieve the same how could they utilize the same strategy that you're talking about say say the cheapest you could buy a house is fifty to sixty thousand dollars how could they achieve that same goal which is awesome and this is actually one of my favorite questions because that's usually the one that people go to when I talk about it at first like while I live in so I use BAE I'm even gonna use Bay Area San Francisco that's the example so I guarantee that you live somewhere in between the market that I can invest in and living there right right there's gonna be something in between there the first and easiest answer which is semi cheap but it's still an answer is that you do not have to invest where you live you can be investing anywhere in the world so my market is your market that's just a decision that you can make right secondly is that this is all relative if you live in Bay Area San Francisco and you can't get a house for less than nine hundred grand right and let's let's say you find a huge problem to solve because you're still needing to search for problems not property you know you're not gonna find a deal like this on the MLS right so you're gonna be coming across somebody you're gonna be building a network and a database and putting your name out there as a problem solver so someone's gonna come to you and say you know hey there's a death in the family there's multiple siblings they all have their own properties in other states and they can't deal with it right they don't want to deal with it so you ask them what's the best way that I can serve you what's the best way for me to you know take this problem down I've actually had people give me property before for free because they didn't have either the resources that know how or didn't want the responsibility of handling you know utilities taxes insurance that kind of deal so like hey please just take this off my shoulders and that was a large enough value for them that I got a property for free not it's happened more than once to me when you approach yourself as a problem solver as opposed to just someone who's gonna swing numbers around so let's say you're in Bay Area houses are a million five you get one for half a million dollars 600 grand 900 grand even if you want to use this strategy it's funny because when people are in those areas they just have more cash to put down don't be afraid to ask for that amount down so it's gonna be different for one it's gonna be difficult for you to probably turn down half a million dollars up front and turn it into a note right but if you look at it this is what banks do if you look at this long term that's that's the absolute key is switching your perception from what am I gonna do tomorrow to what am I going to be doing in ten years and when you can switch that from tomorrow to 10 years to 15 years you want to keep getting paid every single day every single month without having to necessarily work any harder for it and trade it any more time for it so if you're in a bad area of San Francisco more people have money to put down so you can get a larger amount down even if you hold you know a different position a different lien position and say you're in second position instead of first because they can put all of it down the important the important key is that they can put a large chunk of it down and then they can pay you every single month in your secure right exactly yeah so that was kind of what I was one to get to and and I just wanted to hear if you had the same answers I would have given so I'm glad to know that I follow Todd's strategy there so my other question is is for the people that are listening there all right this is great this sounds amazing I want to do it but I'm struggling finding leads III yeah I want to be a problem solver but I don't know how to find the problems what are some of the best tips that you can give the people on how to find those problems start telling absolutely everybody what you do for some reason when people are trying something new or they're looking to grow on something they're very hesitant to share what they do for whatever reason you should hang out with me and my wife sometime my wife can't stand going out with me sometimes because I'm telling the later what I do like the clerk wherever we're at everyone's gonna know what I do hey I solve problems in real estate you know what do you do and because it gets the conversation going and then what does is like any because everybody knows about real estate so that what that does is they go oh my cousin greg has a house oh well I'd love to talk to cousin Greg have him call me here's my number you know like that kind of deal so getting building a database building a network and getting your name out there is absolutely far and beyond the best thing that you can possibly do especially over time that that web of network is gonna grow up you know outgrow anything that you could do monetarily with you know yellow letters bandit signs things like that but it's kind of one of those things like you need to be doing that but at the same time if you want to be locating problems you need to be looking in your area and seeing possibly how other people are finding problems in your area if they're doing you know direct mailing great you can give that a shot if they're doing bandit signs if you see bandit signs everywhere there's probably reason bandit signs are everywhere it's because they work right so people are not doing it because it doesn't work exactly so when you look at other people that are doing things you're like and then the other problem comes in I was like oh it feels oversaturated well how can you set yourself aside how can you be a little bit different then can your sign be bigger can you be more unique can you have a sticker on a gas pump can you go one step further than other people if you look at say code enforcement right people like to chase code enforcement cuz code enforcement is a painful situation and those guys are usually on top of the sellers or could be sellers all the time harassing them you know they're basically not people they are just numbers on a spreadsheet which is sickening so that's usually a pretty solidly to go after if it's difficult to get the code enforcement list from your county or from your courthouse like that's a great way to start and a great way to start building those leads because other people aren't gonna want to do it because you have to jump through one more hoop if you have to jump through three hoops to get a lead you're gonna be the only guy with that lead you know so staying super super consistent and always telling everybody what you do is gonna be the best way to start attracting these leads to you and just do on your social media even I mean you need to be telling every you need to be obsessed and letting people know what you do every single day so two things how much does it cost the Toby what you do it costs exactly $0 okay all right so for everybody that says they don't have the marketing budget to be successful from two guys that started off with basically no money it costs $0 to tell people what you do and you will get leads and you will get deals and then you'll have money the second thing is is being different in your marketing when you do have a marketing budget and you're spending those marketing dollars very few small tweaks and adjustments here and there on the different types of marketing for example Direct Mail we just recently made a small change to our Direct Mail that made us stand out a little bit more than everybody else nothing it's nothing that anybody hasn't heard of everybody's heard of it but we just did it and we were inundated with over 400 phone calls two weeks ago that since I'm from one direct mail campaign in a market where I am told consistently you cannot do direct mail you cannot compete with all the big people it's impossible possible it's dead 400 phone calls so it's not it's not dead it's just about being intelligent and making yourself stand out so it just like you said though tell people what you do that's all you're doing with your marketing just you're telling them what you do you just need to make sure that it stands out more than everybody else that's it a huge piece is direct mailing for me that meant help me become successful in it was you just kind of make it easier for them to call you have to make it easier for them to read so mines super super short and I don't even I don't actually I'm gonna call it lick and Stamper like stick her glue the back of the envelope anymore it's just stuffed in the back so it's easier to open even mmm like those little those little things I get a 12 to 15 percent return rate on letters that I send up that's how many calls they get back that's crazy which is crazy high and I totally understand that you're not gonna get that everywhere probably but there's a there's a ton of people right now markets they get 1% and they're hating you right now yes 100 letters I'll get 12 to 15 calls minimum that's crazy that's awesome I mean so from there where are you today in your business you said you're taking down you're trying to create wealth passive income you have the book now so let's talk about the book what what caused you to want to write the book in and spread that content to people man first I you know what's funny is that I wrote the book in between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. and I well you know I've been a little bit of a night owl all my life but literally I never thought I would ever write a book and let's let's face it there's a lot of real estate books out there right and you know and we've obviously read a lot of them and as I continue to read through them it just gives some of them just give me an absolute rage that here's how awesome your life can be for 300 pages with no action steps you know so someone gets excited they feel great about it and then two weeks later when their life hasn't changed because they haven't taken any action because they don't know what to do it wears off and suddenly real estates to blame right and then their life is in the same position which is really really frustrating to me if you follow me on Goodreads you will know the last book that I read about real estate investing I spent an entire Sunday afternoon reading it and when I got done I threw it a half way across my house and said they literally repeated the same thing for 350 pages yes and it's all like just how great it can be without any exactly without any showing of like hey this is what it took and that's what I had to go through and this is where you start so that being said there are some great books with some action steps and there are some great books with some mindset I have never come across a book in which both of them work together now one of my favorite book series ever is called the go giver series and it inspired me to write in a way that I wanted to create both of them in one so I wanted to put them both so I wanted to create something where you know you could you could go into the book and let's say you get stuck at a section or you get stuck at you know step four right and you're like well how do I you know I don't remember how I can locate buyers you can go back in the book go to step four and it's like oh this is how I do it then you just take action on it it's literally a step-by-step guide it's a checklist for you it's supposed to create the action for you now other books have had similar actions and I don't wanna calm action steps but actionable content in it but the problem was that they didn't build your mind in a way that the second that something went wrong you would quit because you have to be in a certain mindset to ever complete your first deal or to ever scale your business so the pole first a the book split in half the whole first half of the book is completely on mindset and building yourself up to a point where you are confident and understanding and that this is a process and that this is a path and that as long as you stick to the path I actually 100% guarantee that you'll get a deal and I put that out in the world I literally 100% guarantee that you will get a deal if you do not quit and the first half of the book teaches you how to not quit so once it triggers that point of like okay I'm ready for this here's step one go do step one one step one is complete go to step two and so on and then literally if you are following the book and you're taking action along with the book by the time you're done reading the book you've completed the deal right and I love that I mean because honestly I I naturally struggle as an adult to read books like that is just one of my downfalls I want to but I get frustrated I get frustrated because nowadays it's so easy to have content just right in front of us via the Internet and so when I'm reading books I get frustrated when I come across things and I don't have that those actionable steps because I'm the kind of guy where it's like if you tell me hey RJ you're gonna go walk through that door and you're gonna make $1,000 before you can even say hey RJ go walk through the door on our way through the door the doors open yeah right I'm like whatever I'm doing it right now I'm gonna find out what's through this door so I get frustrated with books oh I love the fact that you took that the the mindset is important but also giving those actionable steps after you have your mindset correct so I love how you have the flow of the book I actually shared with you before now that I have people reaching out to me and they want to learn how to wholesale I'm telling them that they have to go read your book because I believe and what you've written in the book and and I see the success that you've had I mean you you do a great job of getting yourself out there every Friday night you go live on Facebook and you know recently you have talked about you you want to create financial freedom for for everybody talk about that and why is that important to you yes so yeah my life's purpose with every fiber of my being my life's purpose is to leave this world a more financially secure place than when I came into it and I want more people to be able to pursue their life's purpose without having to fund it through a traditional job I think the world would be a better place because that it wasn't that long ago that there was an agreement between government and the land and people that if you work for 40 years will take care of you you can have the the house the two and a half kids the dog the white picket fence right that was the agreement and you never have to worry about anything information age hits 2,000 deal's off deal deal's off right I'm watching people plunder into bad debt that they can never get out of you're looking for multiple bankruptcies people finding and looking at money as fulfillment or thinking its fulfillment and then even possibly receiving it realizing it's not fulfillment and then being even worse off because of it when in reality money is a tool and it will just magnify who we truly are already so if we are somebody that's good we're going to give more right if you're someone it's bad you got more to be bad with but that's much more you know rare than you know some generally people are good and what's amazing is that people are not that far away from being where they want to be financially it's just a few adjustments and it starts with the mind and after because I myself had to go through this this you know one of my favorite people in the world is Tom bill you and he speaks about it's not the many problems it's the one problem that affects you right so I had financial problems earlier in my life because of the badge poor choices that I made right so once I learned how to get through that I realized well anybody can get through this but nobody knows that because nobody knows how money actually works so every Friday which by the way it was super comfortable to decide to do like hey I'm gonna go live every Friday in front of as many people as possible and talk about the most taboo topic on the planet of money right so exactly super super comfortable right so it was not easy to do but yeah I do go live every Friday and I'm building a community around setting people financially free that's awesome man and weather and the best part is is whether they want to if they want a job if you want a nine-to-five and it's like fulfills you that's awesome but what I'm telling you is that you can actually magnify that through changing a few things with your finances that way you go to work because you want to not because you have to which is a huge difference right well and I think this goes back to kind of prove why you've been successful the fact that you you sit out and you say okay every Friday I'm gonna go live just to give back and to help people and I'm sure you're just like I am with this podcast I don't really care if one if only one person listens to this interview and it makes them take a step to better their lives that's fine yes I'm okay with it a it changed one person's life that's amazing I'm sure until the people that show up not for the ones that don't the ones that don't it's okay if they don't because I'm gonna be better tomorrow so if you don't join me today that's fine if you join me tomorrow you'll be better off because of it right so that's actually a mindset I've adopted on that yeah and I was actually was a guest on another podcast and I don't know what the conversation just kind of spiraled into this and it was funny because I had this moment where the day before we had closed on a flip and tidal had written us a $70,000 cheque and that same day I had posted something on Facebook and a gentleman wrote on there RJ what you give in your podcast is worth more money than I could ever pay you and has changed my life and at the end of the day I could care less about the seventy thousand dollar check but that comment that he made impacted me so much and it was just it's funny because like three four years ago it would have been the complete opposite like it would have all been about oh my god this is such a massive check and this is changing my life and it is funny how things like that just change change you as a person and as you had achieved certain levels you different things become more important to you and I know that's the same thing with you and why you give back on Fridays like you do so for everybody listening follow Todd Fleming on Facebook he goes live every Friday there they're awesome definitely followed those completely change the subject here but and you have no idea that I'm gonna bring this up but I have to all right so when Todd goes live he always goes live from the same location and he has this rack of baseball hats and I'm a hat guy oh nice I didn't know that I I have to understand what in the world is going on here are you just a major league baseball hat fan or do you not have teams or what is going on man you have every team back there it's true I have every team's head I have actually have multiple so I have like their alternates they rode their home I don't even know what that is you're wearing right now is that a minor league so I've actually started collecting minor league it's because I have all the big leagues covered so this is actually an acrobat ox-head yeah and I have multiple ones of this to just live their home road alternate I even started doing batting practice so what I am a heck I they are the source of my power right naima hat guy but to baseball was my life until I was 24 I never had a job until I was 24 I was playing baseball full time I played at the University of Akron so I was a Division one athlete and then I had some aspirations to obviously go professional play professionally and when that ended around the age of 23 24 because my opportunities had essentially run out with Scouts and you know letting me know like hey you know you know you could stick around this level but it's not gonna be the next level I'm actually a pretty small guy comparative lead some most of the guys from the bigs you know I'm only 510 511 hundred and fifty sixty pounds so they to small comment was all too real and but I love baseball about die-hard baseball fan and I think it's the greatest sport in the world you know it's America's pastime for a reason you can't convince me of anything otherwise and my favorite team is actually the Pittsburgh Pirates my father played for the Pirates in the early 70s so my love for them started like at birth but it's baseball first favorite team second so I love being able to collect all the hats and wear a different hat every single day so yeah I actually look like a lid store my entire wall is covered max yes it does so that's awesome man I'm very somewhere in that regard where I have my team's but I'm a little bit but like for example I'm a huge Dallas Stars fan yeah probably the biggest Dallas Stars fan out there and and we're missing the playoffs this year but I love the Stanley Cup Playoffs so I have to have a team yeah so I'm gonna I'm gonna be pulling for the Tampa Bay Lightning and I have a Tampa Bay Lightning hat so everybody at work gives me a hard time because they're like oh so the Stars lost so now you're a lightning fan well it's also because I like the Hat so you know I like the logo we have a team right you know so that's awesome that it you know that's just a little bit of a side note just because I always see the hats and I'm like man I see some people make comments on your on your face always like what's up with the hats man I'm like I have to ask this guy I mean now I very rarely have I ever seen someone I think have more hats than me but I'm pretty sure you have me topped and people have actually started to request like at the beginning of the show like to request what hat I wear like whatever team that there's favorite but I just have such a respect for all the guys that are able to do that and I have friends that are in the big leagues right now that I played college ball with that you know who I'm able to follow and interact with and it's just incredible to you know hear about you know the ups and downs of it you know they they still love the game but at the same time I'm like hey what's the worst part no they call the travel never home like it's funny because always my entire life I was like if I don't play baseball don't know what I'd ever do I don't think I can be happy and it turns out that my ideal life that I think about every single day is not being on the road right so everything that I've created now is I actually have more freedom than these guys they probably still have more money don't get me wrong but we just but we just talked about how money is achievement not necessarily fulfilling and what's crazy is that without the financial training that hopefully they're tuning in on Fridays and you know it's consuming the content without the financial training in 30 years I don't know where they'll be because the checks right now don't really matter you need to keep him coming you need to keep him growing and you need to make it you know have it working for you so I actually really worry about some of the guys okay but so hopefully they can they can take something for me as I've taken you know some from them absolutely well I'll have to get you sent a titanium hat I'll get you to set one and all in I'll have to see it on a Facebook live video but hey man I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us today for the listeners that want to find a way to contact you what's the best way they could reach you the best way to reach me is really Facebook my profile picture is currently one of me in my book but that's that's probably the absolute best that's probably the absolute best way between that and joining the kingdom which is the kingdom real estate com okay awesome man well thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us today and I'm gonna have to have you come back on there's just not enough time in one show for for all the content that you can provide for everybody but very much appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us today absolutely and the the second book is under way part 2 is under way so if you have way I can come back on after that actually there you go that's always gonna say there's Episode two yeah yeah absolutely perfect so the first book is 100% on wholesaling how to get it done mindset and everything it's called if you can't wholesale after this I've got nothing for you which you can find on Amazon and then at the end of the book is actually built in scaling so it does talk about creating that passive income through wholesaling so if you had more questions on that it walks you through that and then the second book here is going to be called I mean this is actually the first time I released my name it's gonna be on this pocket oh here we go it's actually so it's gonna stick with you I've got nothing for you series and it's gonna be called if you can't cash flow after this I've got nothing for you and it's gonna be all on the strategy which we talked about and then transitioning that into actual ownership in the benefit speech awesome awesome man I'll put a link in the show notes for the book on Amazon and again thank you so much for everything that you're doing for the real estate investing community with those books I very much look forward to the second part coming out and the third part as well I am that's that's awesome so thank you and we'll talk to you soon okay thank you my man I truly truly appreciate the opportunity the honor is all mine alright bye bye thanks thanks so much for listening to the titanium vault with your host RJ paints the third for more info and to stay up-to-date visit www.gfi.com/webmonitor tane IAM vault if you enjoyed the episode please rate and review we'll catch you next time on that titanium hand [Music]