How Anyone Can Get Into Real Estate With No Money – Chris Rood

Evan Holladay: Welcome to Monumental. We are back this week. I'm your host, Evan Holladay and today we have Chris Rood. Chris is a serial entrepreneur, a real estate investor and a coach. He owns over 12 million dollars of real estate and has a 7 figure wholesaling and flipping business.He also runs a very successful coaching business to teach others how to be massively successful in wholesaling and getting into real estate. Chris is a 10X GrowthCon Sponsor for Grant Cardone’s events, and is hosting his own event called Skill-A-Thon 2018 this November. At the end of the episode, we will give out a special discount code just for Monumental listeners to attend Chris’ Skill-A-Thon 2018. In today’s episode we will touch on how to get into real estate anywhere and with none of your own money, think about that - None of your own money. Anybody can do this, seriously. How to get deal flow, which is huge, you have to keep up the momentum, and why mindset and thinking about thinking is the key to success. Remember that phrase, "Thinking about thinking". Chris will bring it up, it's a great point. You need to write this stuff down. This is a really great episode, I'm really excited for you all to hear this and it will pump you up to take massive action in real estate or in life. Before we jump into our talk with Chris, I wanted to give a quick shout out to anyone listening, leaving reviews, wherever you're listening right now. Here's a 5 star review from Alan: "Highly recommended, absolutely loved the podcast." Alan, you're the man, thank you so much for leaving that review and everyone leaving reviews, we love the great feedback. Seriously, guys. It's awesome. Alright, let's jump right in.

Hey, Chris. Thank you for joining us today. How are you doing?

Chris Rood: I'm good, thanks for having me.

Evan Holladay: Glad to have you on. Could you walk us through your background and how you got to where you are today?

Chris Rood: Sure. I'm 37, I'm from Lafayette, Louisiana, been an entrepreneur my whole life. It started probably when I was in 5th grade selling basketball and baseball cards to people, selling them on the value of the future of it, "This is a rookie card, it's this and this, this card is going to be projected, it'll probably be worth $5 in the next year" and just had a knack for selling. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. At 22 years old, I started my first real business out of the back of my truck while I was in college here in UL studying business. I started an on-site oil change and car wash out of the back of my truck just going from location to location and changing oil, and going to these different oil sale companies that had these fleet of vehicles. Going and washing, changing oil, changing [Inaudible 03:10], wiper blades and actually started making a lot of money doing it. By the time I graduated, I graduated college when I was 22. I started when I was 21, I started at my junior year in college. By the time I graduated, I was 22, I was making like 100 grand a year. I was like, "I'm not going to get a job, I'm going to keep doing this."

Evan Holladay: That's a lot of money for changing oil, that's great.

Chris Rood: Yeah. I was changing oil, washing cars and waxing and I got into auto glass repair. I was fixing rock chips and replacing the whole wind shield. That's really what took me to the next level because I was able to make insurance plans. I was making 3 or 4 hundred bucks of wind shields of what I would change. Took that business and kept going after college and worked for about another year. I was like, "I got to get a location, I'm not going to be able to scale this business by chasing everybody." So I put filters out, bought my first location in Lafayette, crushed it. When I got that location, I made a lot of money doing that and added another location. Let me back up - I rented out that first location and then, you remember Katrina 2005 when New Orleans got hit by Katrina? New Orleans got devastated, what happened was all these people moved to Lafayette, Baton Rouge, [Inaudible 04:35] so we had tons of people trying to find housing and I had just built a house, new construction. What happened was prices just started sky rocketing, this is 2005, this before the crash, by the way. Because there was low inventory and high demand, I was like, "All of a sudden my house that I paid 125 thousand for it is worth 225" and I saw an opportunity. I was like, "Let's put it for sale" so I landscaped the front, painted a bunch of rooms and put it for sale and it sold for 225, so I made 125 thousand dollars. That was my first taste of real estate at 25. I took that money and I bought another location - I only had one location at this time, like a Jiffy Lube style business, Quick Lube mechanic shop, bought another store on a really busy location. I paid almost 800 thousand dollars so I put that 125 and I put it down on a loan. Then I started doing really well because I had two locations, bought another, bought a pre far closure, flipped that and made 60 thousand. Bought a piece of raw land, flipped that and a month later made 20 thousand. Took that, bought another location, auto change and Quick Lube - so I had 3 at this point. I started making more money, then I rented out a fourth location, so I had 4 locations, I started doing really well and I started to get so much money with the Quick Lube car wash mechanic shops that I forgot about real estate for a little while. I had 33 employees at one time, I was 26, 27 making probably a half a million bucks a year, but I was getting burned out fast. I did that for 2 or 3 years, I was killing myself working this hard. I started to get back into real estate, took a lot of the profits I was making from my Quick Lubes and I bought up probably 3 million dollars’ worth of single family homes. This is between 2010 and 2012. I bought up about 3 million dollars’ worth of real estate.

Evan Holladay: That's a good time to be buying 3 million dollars’ worth of real estate.

Chris Rood: It was. It was if you're outside of Lafayette, Louisiana because I'll tie in the story of Lafayette - Lafayette's economy is not like the rest of the economy in the country. We were going through an oil boom at that time where oil was hovering around 90 to 120 dollars a barrel and there were jobs everywhere. You could literally get out of high school and get a job making 150 thousand dollars a year off shore, so you could buy real estate and rent it out like that. I was buying, I was making like 20, 30 offers on MLS. This is all while I still had all of my Quick Lubes, I was doing this on the side, I wanted to get into real estate making 20, 30 offers on MLS buying, getting houses in a contract for around 80, 85 cents on the dollar. I was like, "OK, this is cool, I'm a real estate investor. I'm buying discounted" or at least I thought I was at 80, 85 cents on the dollar. Basically, I'd buy a 200 thousand dollar house around 150, and have 20% acquisition. Did that, bought about 3 million dollars’ worth of those, got them rented out starting wherever on 15 to 2000 dollars a month. Then came 2014 which if a lot of your listeners know, if you're familiar with the oil and gas industry, 2014 oil went from 128 dollars a barrel to 28 dollars a barrel. We lost 20 thousand jobs in Lafayette. 20 thousand, this is a population of about 350 thousand people and these are all high paying, good quality jobs. You're saying some 50 thousand dollar a year jobs. That was devastating. What happened was all my tenants that I was renting to, most of them were off shore workers that could afford 2 grand a month in rent, they all moved out. I got kicked in the nuts, so to speak, and I started having all these vacancies. Right around that same time, 2014, I found out a little niche business in real estate called wholesaling. If you don't know what wholesaling is, wholesaling is the art or technology of finding heavily discounted, off-market properties for motivated sellers. It's actually a perfect time and alignment with what was going on at Lafayette's economy because there was a lot of distress, people that needed to sell their house fast because of what was going on because they were losing their jobs. And here I am, learning about how to wholesale and I started marketing directly to motivated sellers. I started getting houses in a contract for like 50 and 60 cents on the dollar, way cheaper than I could ever do it on MLS. What I would do is get their houses in a contract and I would flip the contract to an investor for 10, 15, 20 thousand more. Here I am doing this and I'm still running my shops part-time. I started doing wholesaling and I started making a ton of money. I was making 40, 50, 60, 70, sometimes 80 thousand dollars in a month part-time flipping contracts while I was still running my Quick Lubes, and this is all by myself, not having a team. I had 34 employees making 300 thousand, 400 thousand dollar + a year with a big old headache. So I told my manager, "Don't call me unless somebody dies." I walked away from those shops and I started doing wholesaling full time and I started crushing it. I started making a lot of money flipping. I was making anywhere from 60 to 100 thousand dollars a month, sometimes 120, 150 thousand a month and I never looked back. I went all in with real estate. Back up, before that, the way I got into wholesale is I hired a mentor. I found it about wholesaling in YouTube. I was like, "This is interesting" and I did a bunch of research, figure out how to do it on my own and wholesaled a few of my own properties I had and I was making 25 hundred a year, 500 a year but I couldn't figure it out all the way so I hired three mentors back to back to back, that's what really took me to the next level because I didn't know what I didn't know. I was so good at it, my mentors hired me in their sales department to go sell their coaching because I was their top student. So I got to see the coaching side of it, too, and started seeing a lot of students and I started seeing some of the holes I felt like the coaching companies and the holes in their programs were like. I would do it differently, so I decided I'm going to start my own coaching company. As I'm doing wholesaling I said, "I'm going to get started a coaching company, too" so I started coaching and then I put all of my shops for sale and I sold off most of my Quick Lubes and car washes. I still have one of the stores right now which I'm still trying to sell, but now I'm just wholesaling full time, flipping houses, doing a lot of buy and hold. We're buying up mobile home parks here in Lafayette, we're buying short term vacation rentals in Destin, Florida, a lot of single family homes that I can pick up for 30, 40 grand out of worth 70, 80 thousand that I can pick up and put 5 grand into them and get 800 bucks a month in rent. That's our niche and I haven't looked back, I'm teaching people all over the country how to wholesale.

Evan Holladay: Awesome. There's so many directions we can take this, but I just love that you showed that what you're able to do is just be nimble and also the opportunity and run with it. Don't think twice, just keep moving forward. If some adversity comes your way, you're not looking at it as, "Oh, darn. The industry's bad." No, you went out and found, "I can wholesale and I can take what looks like a disadvantage and turn it into an opportunity."

Chris Rood: What I forgot to tell you too, I keep critical points too is right around 2014-15 my shop started losing a bunch of money. I wasn't profitable anymore, so it was really a perfect storm. If I wouldn't have got into wholesaling, I would have went bankrupt. No doubt about it. At one point, I was losing 20 thousand dollars a month with my shops when before I was making 30 thousand dollars a month. That's how the economy got, but there is a key of principle to take out of this is when economy shifts, one business may do bad but it may increase another business. Wholesaling got really good because I'm looking for motivated sellers to help them sell their house quick to me. Really when the economy is very good and hot, there's not a lot of motivated sellers because everybody's got jobs, they're doing well and there's not a lot of motivation. It was a perfect storm, honestly.

Evan Holladay: Yeah. Another thing you said that I think is very important is finding mentors. Let's jump into that a little bit, who were your mentors and what did you gain from that?

Chris Rood: Funny story is, my first mentor - Fabian Calvo, let's call him out on it - he stole 50 thousand dollars from me. My first mentor. I put him in jail. He was actually a great coach, he had great reviews and I actually partnered up with his partner because he went away from him, but long story short is that right around the same time I hired him, he got on drugs and just went off the deep end. He had my credit card on file, he ran my credit card, my American Express, 50 thousand dollars before my CPA found out. Nonetheless, put him in jail, got most of my money back or at least half of it. He still owes me money, but I take it as a learning lesson. Then I hired a guy named Joe McCall which is a great coach, I was one of his top students, killed it with his program then I hired another guy named Tom Crow which is a great guy, worked in both their sales department after I went through the programs because I was doing so well and I always had a natural knack to sale. It was a total game changer. If you want to do something really well, why do you want to be so prideful? Just steal somebody else's knowledge in knowing this. You pay them 5 grand and now I have the information, tools that make [Inaudible 14:24] dollars every year off of a 5 grand investment. That's how scalable the knowledge is. How does Benjamin Franklin say that? "Investment in yourself pays the highest dividend", something like that.

Evan Holladay: Yeah, and once you have that knowledge nobody can take it from you.

Chris Rood: It doesn't depreciate. It's so scalable. I 100% believe in mentors, I believe in it so much that I started my own coaching company. As a matter of fact, today is Friday, it's October 5th right now. If you follow me on Facebook, I just posted 7 checks for my students on my private Facebook group, on my Facebook page because 7 of my students all posted checks today. That's how powerful coaching is. It's amazing to be able to help people like that, change their lives.

Evan Holladay: It really is, you've gotten to that point where you've had the success and now you're able to turn around and pass on your knowledge and help other people scale up their business and use wholesaling as a tool to live their best life.

Chris Rood: Let's be real and honest, a lot of people ask me, "Chris, if you make so much money in wholesaling and investing, why would you want to coach?" To make more money. First, to make more money and 2, it's a second flow of income off of what I'm already doing. It doesn't take more of my time. 3, I love doing deals. There's nothing like doing real estate deals, but when you can show somebody else how to do real estate deals and they change their life, that's really fulfilling to me as a person. Spiritual, right? I love doing real estate deals, but when you can help other people do real estate deals like I got students in my program that were borderline - I have one particular student, I can't say his name but he was borderline suicidal. He borrowed the money from a buddy of his to get into my program, he's making 22 thousand dollars all year long. The guy makes 20 thousand dollars a month now, and he loves me for it. That's fulfilling to me.

Evan Holladay: I saw on your website and I've heard this before of the creative marketing techniques or different things that differentiate your company or your wholesaling business because you're going after people that maybe sometimes don't even know they want to sell their house yet. How do you use your marketing to differentiate yourself or bring in the volume of deals?

Chris Rood: How do I find deals? Like I tell my students, there's no cookie-cutter system on how to find deals. You've got to split test, measure, adapt and change the market. If there's one thing I've learned in the coaching industry the past 4 years is that there's not one market that's the same as another, meaning one marketing channel, just because that channel works for me does not necessarily mean it's going to work for you. A lot of things we do, we used to do a lot of bandit signs before the city cracked down all this. We put out so many bandit signs, they put a moratorium, it gets bandit signs. From Lafayette to Baton Rouge, I got to put out thousands of bandit signs. Literally everybody knows me as the bandit sign Nazi.

Evan Holladay: [Laughs] Chris Rood the bandit sign guy.

Chris Rood: We don't do a whole lot of that anymore. We do a lot of billboards, I do a little bit of direct mail, we do a lot of ring list voice drop, ring list voicemail, RVM's - I don't know if you're familiar with that. We're heavy online, I do a ton of online marketing, [Inaudible 17:50] SEO Facebook ads, newspaper articles, I just split test different things and I measure it, I track my KPI's, key performance indicators on what's working and what's not. Whatever's working, we put the gas on it, we double down on it and things that are not converting, we stop doing it. Then we're constantly tweaking our market and just dialing it in, that's all you're doing. I get people all the time, they ask me, "Chris, what's your secret marketing form?" The secret is there is no secret, just go spend money. Go throw a bunch of money at a marketing channel and measure it overtime, 2 or 3 months, see how it converts. If it's making money, keep doing it. Take the extra money and either pour more money into that same one and see if it scales. If it doesn't, just leave it the way it was then go start another layer of marketing and do the same thing. It may not work, then stop doing that and try something else, then you just split test. That's how you learn your market.

Evan Holladay: Let's say you have your student, they just signed up with you and they have $500 a month budget, what would you recommend for somebody who wants to get into wholesaling to use on that money?

Chris Rood: If they only have $500, I would say drive for dollars, based on where you drive around neighborhoods, I would tell them to go around 20, 30+ year old neighborhoods. Listen, every house I buy that's distressed, you can always tell it's distressed. There's two foot of grass, or a foot of grass, there's trash in the yard. People that want to sell their house fast, they're usually having a lot of problems and you can tell. It shows on their house, they don't take care of it, they're hoarders, they may have been going through a divorce, they just don't care about the house, they just want to get rid of it. You go around and write addresses down and send them a letter or door knock them. I would do that and I would put out bandit signs, I would hand write letters to those people that their houses look distressed. There's a plethora of things you could do. You could go on Craigslist, you could go on Facebook Marketplace. There's a lot of people selling their house on Facebook Marketplace, those people are motivated. Why wouldn't they put it on Facebook instead of over their realtor? Because they want to sell it fast, they don't want to wait 2 or 3 months. If you don't have a lot of money to find deals, you just have to trade out your skill set and some of your time. You have to trade your time for deals but we're spending about 15, 20 grand a month in marketing right now, so I don't have to hustle as hard as I used to do because I can just throw a bunch of money at marketing. My phone rings, office number rings and we just get deals that come in every week.

Evan Holladay: Right. I read Multifamily Millions by David Lindahl and he mentioned that quite frequently in his book. He just said, "We are not a real estate company, we are a marketing company" because if you can control the deal flow, then the deals come to you and then that way it just makes your whole life a lot easier because you're not tied to any one deal. You say, "OK, the numbers don't work" or, "The seller's too pushy and I can move onto the next. I got 20 more behind you."

Chris Rood: If I'd have found out about wholesaling when I was in my early 20's, I would be worth... We own about 12 million dollars’ worth in real estate right now. If I'd have got into real estate when I was in my 20's, I guarantee I'd probably own 40, 50 million. Why? Because you can find all the best deals. The best deals are not on MLS. The best deals are direct to seller, off market. I didn't know that, you don't know what you don't know. If I can give any advice to anybody that's only just getting into real estate, go direct to seller and find deals off market. Go shake the trees. If it's on MLS or LoopNet, it's not a deal, I'm sorry. Can you get deals on LoopNet? Yeah, but everybody and their mama's looking at that deal. That's why it's on LoopNet, because nobody wants it.

Evan Holladay: Exactly, it's the deals that are on. We use LoopNet on the commercial side and it's like anything that's on LoopNet has already been picked over, been pocket listed for two months already.

Chris Rood: Yes. So what you want to do is, we do a lot of single-family home wholesaling, the multifamily stuff we get, we usually keep it, we close on its [Inaudible 21:57] today. I could have wholesale that made 50 grand if I want, but if you take my model of everything I just said and you just apply it to multifamily, just go around and go to mobile home parks, apartment buildings and just go around door knocking, go talk to the property managers. If the owner's distressed, the property manager's going to know and he's going to say, "My owner's freaking out, we have like a 40% vacancy rate and he hasn't paid the mortgage in two months. We're ready to sell." But you got to catch it before it gets to a realtor or a broker. If you can catch it at that point right there, then you can go straight direct to seller and you get to maybe buy it at 60, 70 cents on the dollar. But as soon as you throw it on MLS, there's going to be a bidding war and it's going to drive the price up. All these other big boys with money are going to drive the price up and in the end it's not really a deal anymore.

Evan Holladay: Is there any negotiating tips that you would have when people are sitting down with sellers or certain things that you look for how to work with the sellers to get it at that right price point?

Chris Rood: Yeah, focus on the person, not the actual product meaning the house or the building. When I'm working with a motivated seller, I don't even talk about the house. I talk about them, I get to know them, people do business with people they know, like and trust and if you can add value to their life, find out what's going on. Obviously, they're going to want to sell their house at a fair price but if you explain to them, I state my intentions right up front. "Look, I'm not a full retail buyer. I'm an investor, I can't give you full price. If I gave you full price, I wouldn't be in business no more and that's how I feed my family" and if you state that upfront and you tell them your intentions, it's not like you're trying to beat around the bush. I tell them, "Yes, I need to buy your house cheap. However, if you give me a good deal, I'll buy it fast and you can just walk away. You don't have to wait." And I tell them, "You may be able to get more for your house or your mobile home park or the apartment, but it may sit in the market 3 to 6 months or even 2 months. If you want to do a deal now and fast, if you trade out some equity, I'll trade out some time. Meaning I'll give you a quick sale and it'll make all your problems go away by trading out a quick sale."

Evan Holladay: Once you have that first deal, where do you go from there? Who do you find as the buyer?

Chris Rood: If it's not a deal that we want to keep, then I have a huge list of buyers. I have about 450 people on my buyer's list and I just start calling up people or we email it out to the list and say, "Look, we've got this deal at 65 cents on the dollar, we'll sell it to you for 75 cents on the dollar." As simple as that.

Evan Holladay: For somebody starting out, they just need to start building their list?

Chris Rood: Build their list. If you're just starting out, buyers are everywhere. There's cash, buyers everywhere. Just go ahead and find them, add them, network with them, build relationships with them and show them that you can find deals and you're going to bring them deals with equity and they'll be glad to pay you 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 sometimes 50 grand for your deal.

Evan Holladay: Right. Then I guess with your coaching business, how long have you said you've been doing that?

Chris Rood: I've been in the coaching space total working for other people for 2 years, but I've been having my own coaching business going on two years now. But I've been in the coaching stage for about 4 years.

Evan Holladay: That's great. How has that been able to help your wholesaling business as well? Is that complemented at all?

Chris Rood: It keeps me sharp, because if I'm not doing deals, I'm talking about deals. I eat, sleep and drink real estate and deals. I just want deals. If I'm not talking about deals with my students, I'm talking about deals with my wife. Before I got on the phone with you, I was on the phone with a buyer talking about deals and here I am on a podcast talking about deals. I eat, sleep and breathe deals. If you're a real estate investor, you're all about deals. You know that, it's all about the deal.

Evan Holladay: I love doing that. Sometimes I wonder, I'm like, "I hope my girlfriend doesn't..." Always, even late at night I'm like, "I had this deal and he was coming in and putting this money in" and I'm like, "Don't you ever get tired of this?" and she's like, "No, I like it." It's nonstop. If you love real estate, you eat, sleep and breathe it and that's what makes you truly successful. What motivates you? Obviously the deal and going after that. Is there anything else?

Chris Rood: I want to live to my full potential. Ever since I was a small child, I wanted to do big things. It's something inside me. I don't want to wake up and be 75 years old and know that I didn't live to my full potential. I'm putting on an event here in November called Skill-A-Thon, the whole theme is become the best version of yourself. I feel like I'm huge on personal development, I've spent so much time and money and effort on personal development to become the best version of myself and help other people become the best version of themselves. I feel like you're only going to make as much money to the degree of how well your saw is sharp or your knife is sharp meaning you as an individual. You've got to sharpen that knife all the time. The most high level people I know are the most self-educated, meaning they're the most personally developed people. They're always reading books, they're always at masterminds and networking with other high level people, that's the secret. It's not information, it's personal development. My favorite quote by Jim Rome, he says, "Your personal finances rarely exceed your personal development." How true is that? You never make as much money as how personally developed you are.

Evan Holladay: That is so true. Really, you are constantly like we talked about earlier, your brain is your best asset. If you can figure that out and figure out to be able to create relationships with other people that are on that same level of, "I'm in it to make the best me and create the best life I can" and also for those around you, too. The people you love and support, create the best life for them, too.

Chris Rood: 100%. My purpose comes first in my life, then my wife and kids. My purpose becomes before my wife and kids and I know some people disagree with that but I guarantee, there's a great book called - what's the name of that book? I'm going to remember it, but he talks about, he says, "If you don't live up to your purpose, what happens is when you get older, you're going to have regret." You have to be able to be a little selfish. You do, you have to be a little selfish to your own purpose because if you don't live up to your own purpose and your dreams and aspirations, you're going to be miserable when you get old and you're going to regret that you didn't. I'm going to remember that book here in a minute, but let's keep talking and I'll remember it.

Evan Holladay: That reminded me of Grant Cardone, I've heard him say similar things where he's like, "The passion is what's first and if that's not in place then you're not going to be happy and nothing else is going to be in the right spot."

Chris Rood: I totally agree with that. Some people put their wife and kids before they put their own dreams, I would disagree with that. If you put your dreams first and your purpose first, you'll be a happier you and you'll make your kids and wife happier. So many people live like carelessly through their kids and then when their kids leave they're miserable. How many times do you see that? I see that all the time. These people have no life or they don't have a purpose and they live through their kids, and their kids move out and they have to because their whole purpose was their kids and their kids grow up and have kids and they don't have that much attention on their kids anymore and then they have no more game and life in purpose. You become a miserable person.

Evan Holladay: I think it's not one or the other, it's a symbiotic relationship. If you're developing yourself, you're also feeding that to your kids and then they see that and they aspire to that as well.

Chris Rood: The book is called The Way of the Superior Man, I think is what it's called.

Evan Holladay: I'm writing it down now. Speaking of Grant Cardone, you're doing some work with Grant Cardone. You're now sponsoring the 10X GrowthCon, is that right?

Chris Rood: Right. I sponsored GrowthCon last year, I was the platinum sponsor. The first sponsor last year, the first sponsor this year. I have my own show in his network called Into the Hustle where I teach wholesaling and real estate investing. I'm putting on my own personal event here - I say here - In Destin, Florida November 16, 17 and 18 that have 14 high level young guys in their 20's and 30's that are making millions of dollars in real estate come to speak in my event all in a different niche. I got a 33 year old guy come and speaking on to 88 million dollars’ worth of apartment complexes, he did it on his own with none of his own money, all private money. They don't come from money, because that's a cop, he did this on his own. I got 24 year old kids that are making 100 grand plus a month in wholesales, I've got guys that have flipped 5 thousand houses. I got a guy that owns a bunch of single family homes and he's turned them into miniature nursing homes and basically assisted living homes, he's making 10, 15 grand a month positive cash flow off of little four bedroom houses, single family homes. All kind of different little niches that I'm bringing.

Evan Holladay: And you're bringing all those people together for a few days of mastermind and teaching and learning.

Chris Rood: That's right, that's what I've got going on, just trying to add value and help people, build my portfolio and become the best version of myself and make a lot of money. If anybody tells you they don't want to make... Too many people try to beat around the bush and say, "It's not about money", it's about money. It's not necessarily about money, money is just the score card. It's the numbers, it helps you play the game, it has to be about money. You want to help people, but you want to make money. There's a fine line between not helping people and not adding value and taking money, that's unethical.

Evan Holladay: I completely agree with you. For me, it's a way to not only keep track but give a purpose or a tool to create A, the life you want to live and you want your family to live and B, to impact other people's lives.

Chris Rood: You can finally do that.

Evan Holladay: You can compound that impact like 10X because of the money.

Chris Rood: But you need money to do that. You have to have a lot of money, so stop telling people you don't want to make money or you don't like money. If you're saying that, you're never going to make money. You need to love money. You need to love it, it's what you do with it that makes the kind of person. If you're taking that money and doing bad things with it, that's everything but if you make a lot of money, you could take care of your wife, your kids, you could donate money to charities, do awesome things with it. That's just my philosophy on it, you may not agree with that, maybe some of you people listen may not agree but that's just how I feel about it.

Evan Holladay: Yeah, I love that. I know we've touched on the wholesaling but somebody getting into real estate, somebody seeing that opportunity of real estate and creating long term wealth. What would you advise to somebody completely new to real estate?

Chris Rood: 100% start with wholesale, because with wholesaling it teaches you how to be what's called the source of the deal. I just wrote a book called The Source of the Deal, it's all about wholesaling. If you become the source and you put yourself in first position and you learn how to market direct to seller, you're going to learn how to capture the most equity and you're going to be in a position to where you buy right. You can only control one thing, and that's the buy. You don't control the sale, but you control the buy. That's why the whole cliche is you make money when you buy. That's so true, and people don't really understand that when they first get in, you have to understand that. You don't make money when you sell, you don't control the sale. You control the buy, so buy right. How do you buy right? Go with direct to seller, learn how to market direct to people and network. The deals are not all on MLS, start a wholesaling business. Pick up my book, The Source of the Deal, on Amazon.

Evan Holladay: We'll have a link to that on the podcast show notes.

Chris Rood: Wholesaling is the fundamentals that shows you how to find deals, as simple as that. You can learn how to find deals, you really can't lose because you're buying to discount it to lose. If you buy a deal and you don't like it, you bought it at 55, 60 cents on the dollar, so what if you don't like it? You can wholesale it by 65 or 70 cents or retail it. You buy something low enough, you just can't lose.

Evan Holladay: Exactly. I remember somebody early on in real estate told me, "They call me Johnny Low Ball because I always low ball out of the price", so it is true. You get the value on the front end. With wholesaling, can you wholesale everywhere or is it geographically defined? How does that work, can you go everywhere?

Chris Rood: You live on planet earth, you can wholesale anywhere. There's always going to be motivated sellers. If I knew how to speak Mandarin, I could wholesale in China. There's people going through pre for closures, people getting divorced, there's people on drugs that need to sell their house fast so I would say the more higher in the market, the harder it is going to be able to sell. It's going to be tough to go downtown New York and wholesale because there's not really going to be any deals. In New York or Los Angeles, the real estate is still smoking hot and if they do get distressed, they know a rich buddy that can bail them out. I would say the best place is the wholesale if you want to get into this is E class and C class markets. Middle class America, that sweet spot. That 100 to 200 thousand dollar house, that's the sweet spot.

Evan Holladay: I like it. I think there's a lot of opportunity and also people say, "It's a hot market, everybody's looking at real estate" and it's like no, there's opportunities, you just got to put in the work. You got to comb through the deals, you got to drive for dollars, you got to knock on the doors and also just don't make excuses.

Chris Rood: Right, it ain't easy. It's simple but it ain't easy. Anything that's worth a damn that makes money ain't going to be easy and you've got to get over yourself. If you're looking for the easier road, you're going to stay broke your whole life. You want it to be hard. The harder it is, the more valuable it is because once you've achieved that, most people can't, the barriers of entry are very high. Why do you think gold and silver and diamonds and platinum are so rare? Because it's hard to mine. It's hard to find but once you have it, that's what makes it so valuable. The same thing goes with a successful business. The harder it is to achieve that business, the more valuable that business is going to be, the more it's going to be worth.

Evan Holladay: Exactly. Another thing I wanted to touch on was what in your eyes is the most common reason that people fail or people give up?

Chris Rood: It's going to be multiple things, it's not going to be one thing. You're talking about wholesaling or just entrepreneurship in general?

Evan Holladay: Both.

Chris Rood: With wholesaling I would say they're scared to spend money. I actually wrote 13 things in my book of why most wholesalers fail.

Evan Holladay: Another reason to get the book.

Chris Rood: Right, and I've got it right here. The Source of the Deal, I'll tell you the 13 reasons I wrote why most wholesalers fail and it's right here: "13 reasons why most people don't succeed in wholesaling. #1, you don't know and understand your market. That's a huge one. #2, you think all the deals are on MLS. The best deals are direct to seller. #3, you don't know what things cost to fix. You've got to know your repair costs. #4, you don't know how to buy right, you only control one thing and that's the front end so you need to buy right. You're not intentional with your offer. That's one that you have to wrap your mind around, you got to be very intentional when you make offer. You can't just be like, "I'll give you 50 thousand..." like, "Listen, I really like your house. I'm going to offer you 50 thousand." You see the intention? You have to be serious. #6, you're scared to make low ball offers. Some people are too scared to make low ball offers, they're worried about hurting their feelings. You're not a retail buyer, you're an investor. If you don't buy right, you're going to go out of business and you're not going to be an investor no more, you're going to be broke. #7, you don't connect with the home owner. You don't know how to connect with home owners. I see a lot of my competition, they go into a house and they don't even talk about anything besides the house. When I'm in the house and I'm talking to the home owner, I want to get to know them. I want them to trust me, I want to get them to know who I am and I'm talking about their kids, I got their dog on my lap, their daughter on the other lap and we're talking about soccer, his cousin knows my mother and I get to know them. Then at the end of the conversation, 30 minutes into it, they'd start talking about the house and they want to do business with me. #8, you are scared to spend money on marketing. Some people don't want to spend the money on marketing, they're too scared. You've got to go all in, you've got to spend the money. #9, you don't have the confidence in yourself and you're not certain of yourself. People are going to business with people that are confident. If I'm not confident, the home owner's not going to be confident in me. You've ever been around somebody that's not confident so you don't trust them? #10, your follow up sucks. You've got a follow up? Follow up until they block you. #11, your people skills and likability index are very low. You've got to have people skills to be a good real estate investor. This is a people business, this is a relationship business. You've got to have people skills. That's my whole brand, skills get the deals, it's my hat right here.

Evan Holladay: I love it.

Chris Rood: That's not something I made up, that's a fact. #12, your unwillingness to network and put yourself out there is cowardly. If you notice, I'm all over social media. Not just from our coaching company, if you come to Lafayette, everybody knows who I am. Why? I'm in magazines, I'm in newspapers, I got 14 billboards all at the busiest intersections, I'm all over Facebook. How are people going to know what you do unless you tell them? Some people are scared to put themselves in the public eye. Tell people what you do and how you do it and how you can help them. #13, you are scared to build relationships with your buyers and you fail to understand what your buyers are looking for and want. Meaning you've got to reverse engineer what they want.

Evan Holladay: Start with the end in mind.

Chris Rood: That's right. If you build relationships with them, you take them to coffee or lunch and you find out, "What are you looking for?" Now you know what they're looking for, so next time you come across the 3-2 house in a certain neighborhood, you remember, "Bill told me about, that's exactly what he likes, I'm going to call Bill." Because I built that relationship. That's the wholesaling side. Entrepreneur side, the most vital ingredient to be a really good entrepreneur - some people may disagree with it - #1 thing is going to be communication skills. He who communicates the best wins. Simple as that. I don't know if you disagree with that. If you have unbelievable communication skills and you're a likable person, which goes back to selling, too. Good communication skills with sale skills, you can do anything in life.

Evan Holladay: I couldn't agree more. I think communication is so key and people talk about it but people don't act on it enough. I think that's very true in all facets of life. If you want to be successful, that's a big part of it.

Chris Rood: 100%.

Evan Holladay: Alright, let's jump into our Monumental Questions. What does success mean to you?

Chris Rood: Success means to me to have so much money that you don't even think about or worry about money. On the money side of it. When you have a lot of money, you have a lot of time, you can buy your time. Basically, I want to have so much money so I can control my time. I want to have a portfolio of real estate producing money while I sleep to cover all of my expenses, all of the things I want to buy and more. That's 100% freedom, and if you have that, you can do that with businesses but I feel like real estate is probably the easiest - it ain't easy, I'd say it's the best way to do it is through real estate. Think of all the rich people in the world, they all have real estate. 80% of them, [Inaudible 44:02] through real estate.

Evan Holladay: Yeah, they own some sort of real estate. Do you have a morning ritual or daily habit that contributes to your successful day?

Chris Rood: Let me go back on the first question, the question was, what was it again?

Evan Holladay: What does success mean to you?

Chris Rood: Leaving a legacy is huge. You can make it all about yourself for so long but I've got my daughter right here that's doing cartwheels. [Laughs] Say hey, Allison. You want to teach your kids to be like you. That's why I work hard in front of them, I talk real estate in front of them, because I want them to see that's what you do and that's what you talk about and that's what's natural is that I want them to have the minds that I have of working hard and doing deals and getting into real estate. I don't want to be 80, 90 years old and my kids struggle. I want to be 80, 90 years old dying and my kids are doing well.

Evan Holladay: And knowing that.

Chris Rood: And knowing that, that's peace of mind when you're dying. Leaving a legacy. They got to remember Papa Roo, you remember Papa Roo? You remember grandpa Roo? He started real estate company back in 2007 and we got 300 million dollars’ worth of real estate and he started that 100 years ago. You see what I'm saying? You've got to think that far. That's the last thing I want to say, leave in a legacy. Now we can get into the next question.

Evan Holladay: Real quick I'd just add to that, it's something I'm always thinking about is there's an Indian adage, I don't know where it came from exactly but I read that they thought in 7 generations. They didn't make a decision until they thought about, "What are the ramifications of 7 generations from now?" and that blew me away. That shifted my mindset, like, "I need to be thinking 7 generations out."

Chris Rood: That's true, it's a different viewpoint to think about how what you do now is going to affect hundreds of years from now, because it can. That's why I put so much content on YouTube. I bet you, YouTube will still be around 20, 30, 40, 100 years from now because it's a different way of, you can leave a piece of you in content and information. You look at all the big names, they're all over YouTube leaving content.

Evan Holladay: Online real estate.

Chris Rood: Yes.

Evan Holladay: Alright, morning ritual or daily habit.

Chris Rood: Favorite topic, favorite subject, I love this. I'm a huge morning person, I wake up at about 4:34 o’clock every morning. As a matter of fact, I sit in this chair or that chair and my wife's sitting right there and I drink my coffee and I read, I got tons of books, these are all books right here. I read probably 3 or 4 books a month and that's my favorite time of the morning. If there's one thing I could tell you that you should do, wake up early and read books especially on mindset when you're first getting started, it'll totally change your life because it primes you. You wake up before the rest of the world is up and you're reading and drinking and sipping your coffee and you just soak in. That's my mind, at least. I don't know other people, my mind works best in the morning. It's just everything's quiet, you haven't started your day, you're reading, you're reflecting, you're having different ideas and concept based off of what you're reading in these mindset books. After that, I like to think about thinking. Think about what I just said: I like to think about thinking. That's the hardest thing that people don't realize, it's easy to do manual labor. The hardest thing to do is to think about thinking, meaning think about what you're going to be doing and actually think it out. One of my favorite books is called The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles, he was the original guy that talked about mindset, visualization, gratitude and visualizing and thinking about what you want. You're a powerful being, we're like some of the only creatures that can think about that we're actually thinking. We're self-aware, we have a special power and ability to actually visualize, think, forecast, foresee into the future and create our future. That's a gift, that's a God-given gift. People don't realize that they have so much power that just with that one gift, all the big names, all we talk about this, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill interviewed Carnegie and he talked about this. You have a gift, that's the secret. That's the whole secret, it's all mindset, it's all visualization. Not just all, but it's about how you think about yourself, your belief system. You have to know that you're worth it and you believe that you're going to get this stuff. If you're going to riches or whatever you want, you can't just visualize. You got to visualize it, you have to have the intention that you're going to go get it but you have to act. The key ingredient is believing because I can have the intention, "I'm going to try this out, I'm going to try to be successful", you already lost. Who said it best? It's kind of silly, who said it best is Yoda, "Do or do not, there is no try." It comes from a Star Wars movie but it has so much philosophical meaning.

Evan Holladay: It's got a lot of truth.

Chris Rood: Truth, do or do not, there is no try. If you do something, do it whole heartedly and believe you're going to be successful. Belief is the key ingredient to making your thoughts and your dreams come true, is belief in yourself.

Evan Holladay: I love that and I love your morning ritual, too. Alright. In closing, how can people follow you or reach out to you?

Chris Rood: They can follow me on Facebook, my fan page is Chris Rood Entrepreneur, I'm maxed out on friends on my personal page but you can press the follow button. You can follow me on Instagram at Real Estate Rood, you can follow me on YouTube, I put out tons of free content. I got over 110 videos on YouTube. You can go pick up my book, The Source of the Deal, on Amazon for $14.99. You can go to chrisrood.com and you can book a call with my team if you're interested in learning how to wholesale, which if you're going to get into real estate you got to learn how to wholesale. I do two Facebook Lives a week on content, on my personal page, on YouTube I give tons of content away on real estate. Then I'm putting on an event in November 16 and 17 in Destin, Florida called Skill-A-Thon, if you want to come to that, look it up and just follow me. I love helping people, it's a lot of fun. Real estate's a lot of fun. I'm a firm believer that everybody in this whole country needs to be in real estate. Our God-given right, the founding fathers started this country based on men owning real estate and that's how you build wealth, through real estate. All these people sold in the stock market trading this and doing that, they're building wealth through an idea that's not even tangible and it can evaporate like that with a shift in the economy. Real estate will never evaporate. It may lose 10, 15, 20% corrections in value, but you literally see people lose 90% of their wealth, 80% of their wealth in the stock market. They get sold by Wall Street saying, "This is the best thing since sliced bread", bullshit. I'm not saying you can't make money in stock market, everybody in the whole country needs to have a portfolio and there's enough real estate out there for everybody in the whole country to have some real properties and live off of that instead of giving your money to Wall Street who don't really care about you, they're just trying to make fees and you don't even control it or see and do or touch your money anymore. Get into real estate.

Evan Holladay: Exactly. Alright, guys. You heard it, reach out to Chris. He's got lots of great content and thank you very much for being on the show, Chris. We had a blast.

Chris Rood: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Evan Holladay: Guys, what an awesome episode with Chris today. I hope you enjoyed it. I had a blast. Chris and I actually had the chance to meet in person the other day and he's an awesome dude. Please go out and follow all his stuff, he's doing amazing things, he's helping people get into wholesaling, get into real estate and I know he can help you if that's what you're trying to do. Also, I had mentioned earlier about the discount code, so the discount code for 30% off his Skill-A-Thon 2018 event in Florida, it's just a few weeks away in November, the code is Skills30 and I'll put that in the show notes as well but please go out, follow Chris. Also, let us know you're listening today. Post it on social media, post wherever you're listening to and take a screenshot, share it, tag me, tag your friends, send it to your friends if you liked it and with that, let's all go out and have a Monumental day.