52: You might be a real estate investor if…

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Show Notes

We’ve all heard those Jeff Foxworthy jokes about how you might be a redneck if you…

For example:

• You think “loading the dishwasher” means getting your wife drunk.
• You own a homemade fur coat.
• You think a chain saw is a musical instrument.
• You read the Auto Trader with a highlight pen.

That’s funny right there! – Tow Mater

What might make you a real estate investor…

We as real estate investors have our own quirks and situations that make us who we are. These are the things that create a special bond between us.

If you find yourself nodding and laughing at the following truisms, well…you just might be a real estate investor.

I’m afraid I haven’t found a cure for it so you’re tough out of luck. 😉

You might be a real estate investor if…

• you have a thousand keys and you have no idea which house they belong to.
• you buy every directional sign in stock at home depot, then go to another home depot and buy their stock.
• you are proud of your lockbox collection.
• you happily sit on urine-stained couches. (cheers to Rob Caldwell for this one)
• you will jump up from the dinner table to answer your phone because you don’t want to miss a deal.
• you understand Ron Legrand on a deeper level when he says, “don’t go driving through a war zone in your fancy car wearin’ lots of jewelry!”
• you get excited by the sight of feces on the floor throughout a house.
• you have done the shake-it-all-about-hokey-pokey dance all over the street trying to get all of the fleas off of you.
• you know exactly what is meant by being embarrassed by your offer.
• you just have to see the inside of that REO, don’t want to bother the agent, and decide that you and your wife need to crawl through a window, only to have 3 police cars swarm the front of the house within just 2 or 3 minutes.
• the top 5 called people on your phone are your wife followed by nothing but contractors.
• you have more pictures of nasty houses than family and friends in your phone.
• you’ve nearly run over people and hit parked cars because you craned your neck to get the address of a house you just passed.
• you no longer consider so-so neighborhoods dangerous because you’ve seen the furthest end of the spectrum.
• your kids tell you you are obsessed with houses.
• your kids say they don’t want to go and look at anymore houses every time you leave the house together.
• you laugh when someone tells you their house doesn’t need any repairs or updating on the phone.
• you can’t help but look at the ceilings and walls looking for mistakes at friends and family members’ houses when you visit them.
• you have nightmares that you completely forgot about a house you bought and it’s been sitting their vacant and being vandalized for over a year.
• you are constantly surprised at how some people can live.
• you’ve seen a toilet that you wouldn’t want to get within 10 feet of…daily.
• you will do anything to not have to replace the cabinets.
• you spend an hour debating between two faucets at home depot but will decide to buy a house within 5 minutes.
• you are stilling reading this post and are looking forward to seeing what other investors have added in the comments. 🙂

 

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Episode Transcription

Welcome to The Flipping Junkie Podcast. My name is Danny Johnson former software developer turned house flipper, flipping hundreds of houses. Each week we bring you interview, strategies, stories and motivations to help you get started flipping houses and on your way to becoming your own boss and achieving financial freedom. Thanks for spending time with me today. Now let’s get to it.

Hey everybody welcome to episode 52 of The Flipping Junkie Podcast. I can’t believe we’ve already had this many episodes. Things are just getting started too because we’ve been doing this series basically like a treeing series every week. We started with mindset, motivation, getting you to where you need to be for yourself. You got to grow yourself to become the person required to succeed and to be able to build your own business and achieve financial freedom. So we started with that and then we got into funding because obviously we need to find a way to either wholesale or get some private lenders, hard money lenders or JV partners to be able to buy houses to fix and flip. Then we’ve been talking for the last several months about marketing, finding deals, getting great deals so as a real investor you need to generate leads so that you can get some deals and make money, so we’ve been talking about all of that. We talked a whole lot about direct mail because that’s really what most very successful investors are using to generate a lot of leads. I want to split everything because right now I want to transition into doing online because that’s the other side of it and I generate most of my leads online. I know a lot of other people are also generally leads online and I feel like the conversion rates are a lot higher with leads that come from online as opposed to direct mail. And so we’ll be getting into a whole series of generating leads online through this podcast so be sure to subscribe on iTunes and listen in for these new episodes coming up.

Today I wanted to just have a short quick episode, a fun one. I had posted something on Bigger Pockets a long time ago. It think it was five years ago and it was basically like the Jeff Foxworthy jokes about you might be a redneck and then it gives different things that show that you would probably be a redneck. So for instance you might be a redneck if you think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk. You might be a redneck if you on a homemade fur coat – it’s good but you might be a redneck if you think a chainsaw is a musical instrument and you also might be a redneck if you read The Autotrader with the highlight pen. I wanted to do something along those lines for real estate investors. Most of the real estate investors I know get a kick out of all these kind of things because it’s what we all experience and sort of creates a special bond between us because we understand it. If you find yourself nodding and laughing at the following truisms, you just might be a real estate investor. So without further ado, I’m just going to get into this list – Well before I do that, I’m also going to mention that I will have a post on Facebook on the Flipping Junkie Facebook page which is facebook.com/flippingjunkie and I encourage you to go there and post other “You might be a real estate investor if…” statements into that group so that we can share and grow this list and have something to laugh out whenever things get hard and tough and we just need a laugh and something to motivate us. So if you would go to the facebook.com/flippingjunkie and check out that post for “You might be a real estate investor if…” and please add your comments and let’s vote these up too. If you like some of the ones that have been posted, go ahead and like those and let’s see who can get the highest number of likes on a on the comment of this. So let’s get into this list, you’ll also be able to find this list that I’m going over on the podcast on the show notes page at flippingjunkie.com/52.

Alright, so “You might be a real estate investor if you have a thousand keys and you have no idea which house they belong to” – Oh man, this is just most every day I’m finding a pile of keys somewhere and I have no idea what they go to.

Alright, “You might be a real estate investor if you buy every directional sign and stock at Home Depot, then go to another Home Depot and buy their stock.” – I constantly wonder why they just don’t have enough of those things in stock.

Now, “You might be a real estate investor if you are proud of your lock box collection.” – I think once you start to get to the point where you’ve got 20 lock boxes you know you’re doing really well.

“You might be a real estate investor if you happily sit on your own stained couches.” – It might sound kind of gross, but I think if you’ve done this for any amount of time you’ve probably sat on those couches to talk with sellers and cheers to Rob Caldwell for that one. That’s one of the responses I think back on the Bigger Pockets post a long time ago that we had that he added that one, so got a big kick out of it.

Alright, “You might be a real estate investor if you will jump up from the dinner table to answer your phone because you don’t want to miss a deal.” – Seems like always get a call in the evening when you’re taking motivated calls. If you haven’t delegated this out to someone that you hired to handle this stuff or you know what I’m talking about, you get calls all day long you never know which one is going to be the super motivated seller that’s going to want to sell their house for an awesome price right away and so you have to answer all the calls because you don’t want to miss that one and have it go to your competition. So you just have to do those things.

“You might be a real estate investor if you understand Ron LeGrand on a deeper level. When he says, “Don’t go driving through a war zone and your fancy car wearing lots of jewelry.” War zones are dangerous don’t do it.

“You might be a real estate investor if you get excited by the sight of feces on the floor throughout a house.” – I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this and I’m always blown away and you can see some of it’s probably 10 years old some are five years old and some are a week old. It just blows my mind. You’ve also see dirty skivvies from time to time. That’s always interesting.

“You might be a real estate investor if you’ve done the ‘shake it all about hokey pokey dance’ all over the street trying to get rid of all the fleas that are on you.” – I remember this one time I looked at a property and I was just in the driveway on the side of the house for maybe 30 seconds and I walked back to the front of the house and I kid you not I had probably thousands of fleas on my pants legs. It was unbelievable. Needless to say I did not go inside that house.

“You might be a real estate investor if exactly what is meant by being embarrassed by your offer.” – That one. Yeah. You understand what it’s like when you have a great conversation going with sellers and then you make your offer and everything completely changes. Awkward silence. Nobody speaks for a couple of minutes and yeah it gets pretty interesting.

“You might be roasting investor if you just have to see the inside of that REO, don’t want to bother the agent, decide that you and your wife need to crawl through a window only to have three police cars swarm the front of the house within just two or three minutes and have a neighbor using his dooley to block the escape down the alley way.” – Yeah that happened to Melissa and I. Thank God we knew the agent and had it resolved. I just couldn’t believe that three police cars swarm the front yard of this house. It’s not like they even stopped in the street. They drove up into the front yard. This house was crazy. I guess we looked pretty dangerous, I’m not sure if you’ve seen pictures of us. If you haven’t you go to Instagram.com/flippingjunkie. We post pictures of things that we’re doing. I don’t think we look that scary.

“You might be a real estate investor if the top five people called on your phone or your wife, followed by nothing but contractors.” – That’s embarrassing.

“You might be a real estate investor if you are more pictures of nasty houses than family and friends in your phone.” – That’s another dead giveaway.

“You might be a real estate investor if you’ve nearly run over people and hit parked cars because you craned your neck just to get the address of a house you passed.” – Now Melissa’s got great stories about me almost running over people, but we won’t get into that.

“You might be a real estate investor if you no longer consider so-so neighborhoods dangerous because you’ve seen the furthest end of the spectrum, the true war zone.”

“You might be a real estate investor if your kids tell you are obsessed with houses.” – Ours actually said that we were “abscessed” I think – no, we were “ussessed” which is even funnier because the tax assessor – yeah whatever…

“You might be you’re also investing if your kids say they don’t want to go and look at anymore houses every time you leave the house together.” – It got to the point where they thought that every time we left the house we were going to look at houses. They weren’t very happy about it.

“You might be a real estate investor if you laugh when someone tells you their house doesn’t need any repairs or updating while talking to them on the phone.”

“You might be a real estate investor if you can’t help but look at the ceilings and walls looking for mistakes of friends of family members’ houses when you visit them.” – Yeah, this one happens to all of us. If you check on rehabs at any point, you get to the point where you’re really kind of look at everything – baseboards, crown moldings, ceilings, looking for imperfections in the drywall and the texture and the paint all that kind of stuff. It’s just becomes sort of an obsession

“You might be a real estate investor if you’re constantly surprised at how some people can live.” – That one’s kind of sad, but it’s true.

“You might be a real estate investor if you’ve seen a toilet that you wouldn’t want to get within 10 feet of – DAILY.”

“You might be a real estate investor if you will do anything to not have to replace the cabinets.” – Some you might not get that, but we will go on extraordinary lengths to not have to replace cabinet sometimes it’s just because we’re sometimes cheap like that.

“You might be a real estate investor if you can spend an hour debating between two faucets at Home Depot, but will decide to buy a house within five minutes.” – This one’s definitely true for me. I have a really tough time with small decisions and buying houses is something I can decide on very quickly.

“You might be a real investor if you’re still listening to this podcast and look forward to seeing what other investors have to add.” So if you’re still listening and maybe if you’ve gone and subscribed on ITunes and left a rating or review that could mean that you’re truly a real estate investor or going to be very soon.
Anyway if you would, check out the Facebook page, facebook.com/flippingjunkie and I’ll have a post on there for “You might be a real estate investor if…” and I’d love to hear what you guys have to say. I want to get some communication going between us. I’m always talking lot of times. I don’t get to hear you guys. People email me all the time but Facebook is a good place for it and I’ll be sure to check in on there and respond. Looking forward to check out what everybody has to say.

So anyway, we’ll get back in to the marketing side of things on the next podcast next week and we’ll be getting, probably in two weeks or so, I think we will be starting on the internet marketing for leads which is the way everything’s moving, so be sure to want to listen to that. Subscribe on iTunes and have a great week.