Redefining Success and Building Balance in Real Estate with Kevin Kauffman
Key Takeaways
- Success is built by setting clear boundaries, prioritizing wisely, and protecting family time.
- True wealth comes not from sales alone but from ownership and long-term investments.
- Sharing knowledge and providing value creates authority, opportunity, and lasting growth.
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A New Vision for Real Estate Life
In this powerful episode of The REI Agent Podcast, Mattias welcomed Kevin Kauffman, a seasoned real estate leader who has redefined what it means to succeed in business.
Kevin’s journey from uncertain beginnings in 2007 to building a thriving team while living a balanced nine-to-five lifestyle shows that success in real estate does not have to come at the expense of family, health, or happiness.
His story is a living reminder that boundaries, consistency, and clarity create lasting impact.
The Breakthrough Moment That Changed Everything
Kevin did not stumble into real estate by chance. His perspective was shaped by a community college professor who believed in teaching not for money but for impact.
That moment sparked a fire in Kevin to pursue wealth through real estate.
As Kevin reflected, “I just had one of those blow my mind moments”, a turning point that shifted his entire career trajectory.
From those early days, Kevin was thrust directly into the crash of 2007 and the short sale storm that followed.
Rather than running from the challenge, he leaned into it. While most agents saw rejection and hardship, Kevin saw opportunity.
“The average success rate for a short sale listing at that time in the country was like 40 percent, and we were closing more than 90 percent," he shared.
This grit and persistence turned what looked like devastation into a foundation for growth.
Building Authority and Embracing Innovation
Kevin was never afraid to try something new. Inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It, he and his partner grabbed a camera and started creating short-sale educational videos for YouTube.
This bold move set them apart, and referrals began pouring in.
As Kevin said, “The business just came flying at us because we weren’t afraid to take them on and we were teaching other agents how to do them.”
By choosing to give value first, Kevin built authority, influence, and trust.
He demonstrated that success grows when leaders are willing to share their knowledge rather than hoard it.
Choosing Balance Over Burnout
One of the most striking parts of Kevin’s story is his unwavering commitment to boundaries. He works nine to five, does not work weekends, and prioritizes family and health without apology.
Kevin explained, “You’re always gonna have more work to do tomorrow anyways, whether you leave at five or ten thirty. So just go home. Go enjoy your family.”
His perspective is refreshing in an industry where burnout is often worn like a badge of honor.
Kevin proves that intentional scheduling and clear priorities not only sustain success but also create a life worth living.
The Golden Nugget: Wealth Through Ownership
Throughout his career, Kevin was reminded of a critical truth.
“You don’t get rich selling real estate, you get rich by buying real estate.”
This insight re-centered his focus and led him to start building a portfolio of income-producing assets.
Today, his wealth is not only measured in deals closed but also in equity, stability, and freedom.
Kevin encourages every agent to view their sales business as a machine that generates money to invest.
With wisdom, he framed it simply: “Your business creates income, and from that income you set aside money to invest. Real estate investing is at the top of that list.”
A Legacy of Impact and Growth
Kevin’s story is more than an account of real estate wins. It is proof that building a great life requires courage to take risks, the discipline to set boundaries, and the foresight to invest for the future.
His ability to turn challenges into opportunities, from short sales to market downturns, provides a roadmap for every agent who wants both wealth and fulfillment.
Living Boldly, Investing Wisely
Kevin Kauffman leaves listeners with an unshakable reminder that real estate success is not about chasing every deal or working endless hours. It is about clarity, balance, and ownership.
He has shown that boundaries protect what matters most, and investing wisely ensures wealth lasts.
For those willing to learn and take action, Kevin’s journey shines as a beacon of what is possible.
As Kevin declared, “Even when I was in heavy production and taking a lot of listings, I didn’t work on the weekends. It was just a decision, a boundary set, and then I followed it.”
His message is simple yet revolutionary: design your life, build wealth with intention, and never lose sight of why you started.
Stay tuned for more inspiring stories on The REI Agent podcast, your go-to source for insights, inspiration, and strategies from top agents and investors who are living their best lives through real estate.
For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com.
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- Achieving Holistic Wealth and Success Through Real Estate (Insights from The REI Agent)
- Partnering with Investors (How Real Estate Agents Can Exponentially Maximize Profits)
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Contact Kevin Kauffman
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Mentioned References
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk
- The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham
- The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
- The Banker’s Code by George Antone
- Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller, Dave Jenks, Jay Papasan
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Transcript
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I'm Mattias, an agent and investor.
And I'm Erica, a licensed therapist.
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.
Ready to level up?
Let's do it.
Welcome back to the REI Agent, Mattias here. I'm gonna keep this intro really short because A, the guest is awesome, and B, I'm running into another podcast recording because the last guest was awesome and we spent extra time talking. But I just wanted to really highlight Kevin.
Kevin Kauffman is the guest that we interviewed today. He was able to basically work nine to five, Monday through Friday, after his second year in the business. And he started in 2007.
So put that all together. He started A, he hired somebody from day one. He split an assistant with his partner and was able to immediately basically go to nine to five.
And they were doing really well. So I just want to put that teaser out there and listen to this guy because it is a possible thing. You can really create your business how you want to.
And I know a lot of people are out there grinding and working all different hours all the time, but it doesn't have to be that way. And I think he was just very good at setting the boundaries and being very productive when he was on and setting clear boundaries with all his clients. So it is possible.
I'm just gonna leave this, again, short and sweet so that you can get right to that good content. Definitely give us a follow, like us, share us, favorite us, leave us a review. It really helps us grow so we can keep giving you guys like this awesome guest, Kevin Kauffman.
So without further ado, here's Kevin. Welcome back to the REI Agent. We're here with Kevin Kauffman.
Kevin, thanks so much for joining us today.
Yeah, man, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Hey, Kevin, you are coming out of the always sunny and beautiful Arizona, Phoenix area, Tempe specifically, right?
Yeah, it's warm and toasty this time of year.
You know, I think, I had people, I had a family around Tucson and visited, and I found it, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. I thought the desert would be a lot more miserable than it is. And yeah, no, I can see why people wanna be there, why a lot of people move there, right?
Yeah, to be honest, man, it's great. About eight months out of the year, it's amazing. Three to four months a year, it's really tough.
So I just try to get out of town during that time of year. But yeah, the desert's great, I love it here.
Snowbird to Minnesota.
That's my goal, that's my goal, man, be a snowbird.
Anyway, Kevin, tell me about how you got into real estate to begin with.
Yeah, I'll give you, I'll try to give you the short version of the long version, which is I was going back to school. I never finished college, just had struggled with that as a young adult, but realized at a certain point in my career that I didn't make a great employee, and I was probably gonna have to work for myself. I just didn't know what that was gonna be like.
And so I was taking classes, and I had this professor, and the reason I'm telling the story is because I always like to give him credit whenever I can. His name's Professor Goodner. And what I came to learn about him is he really only taught to give back.
He taught one or two classes a semester at this community college I happen to be going to in Phoenix, Arizona. And one day he walks in, and he says, hey, we're not gonna talk about whatever the syllabus was. And it was a class on business plans.
He said, today we're gonna talk about real estate and money. And he sort of laid out this game plan of wealth through real estate. And I just had one of those blow my mind moments, and I went up to him afterwards, and I said, can I buy you coffee or breakfast or something?
And luckily he said yes, and we had a great talk one morning. And one of the great things that he said to me was, hey, dude, you're not gonna just become a real estate investor overnight. That's not how this works.
Even if you're great at this, you're working in your job for five more years. And so my bright idea was, well, if I'm gonna work, maybe I should just work in real estate, and I'll get a job as a realtor. Having no idea what that meant.
And that was really what led me into the idea of getting into real estate, is I met this mentor who taught me about real estate and money, kind of opened me up to the rich dad, poor dad model of things. And that got me off and running into residential real estate. And then, I mean, there's a whole lot of twists and turns from there, but that's really what got me started.
And to top it off, I got licensed in 07. And so I'll let you do the math on what was going on in Arizona in 07.
Sure. It's really interesting that in college, so you got the poor dad teaching, even though it sounds like he was really more of the rich dad in the story, right? But in the system, you're getting that rich dad lessons, which I think so many people talk about things like, why don't we learn how to pay our taxes instead of calculus or something like that in school?
And that's such a needed lesson. So that's awesome. So was he a successful investor at that time?
And you said he just taught one or two classes and he was mainly just out there, succeeded already, probably still investing in deals.
That's exactly what it was. He had had a successful corporate career, had retired from that, based on his real estate investments and not just real estate. He truly lived that rich dad, poor dad model, if you've ever read that book.
And he literally just taught because he saw it as a way to give back to the community and to younger people.
Yeah, I think there's phases in life that becomes more pronounced. I think there's the building of the empire phase that I think many of the people that I interview and myself are on. And then there's definitely the legacy kind of other side of that, that probably has a lot to do with that, giving back and making an impact on other people's lives.
And I think it's good to have that balance and to try to have those mentors as well along the way if you are established. But yeah, it's fascinating. So you got your license at the best timing ever.
Did you catch any of the frenzy before everything went?
Missed it all, missed it all. My third transaction ever was a short sale. And then truthfully, like the next thousand, of the next thousand, 980 of them were short sales.
I mean, I did, you know, it wasn't until I'd been in the business for probably five years before we even did double digit traditional sales in a year. It's like it took a while. So for the most part, I was, you know, right away, like I saw prices dropping.
I like to say by the day, sometimes by the hour.
How was that market compared to the rest of the country? And I ask that because I have gotten the pulse that Phoenix is, people I interview from that area seem to be a little bit more doom and gloom about the market than some other areas, and Florida included. Was it a front runner at that time?
Yeah, you know, it was from like a, from an impact when you just look at, let's call it short sales foreclosures. It was, you know, Phoenix, Vegas, couple different cities in Florida. You know, we were like, we were impact.
Like you just didn't, if you didn't, as a real estate professional, if you didn't represent buyers or sellers for either REOs or short sales, you effectively didn't sell real estate. Sure, that's crazy. I mean, it was massive.
And honestly, it was like the best thing that ever happened to my business because I had to learn when it was quote unquote hard. Yeah. I didn't have REO accounts for a number of reasons, but it was, you know, it was a challenging time, but truthfully, I see it as, it was my competitive advantage.
Yeah, so I started in 2014. So it was still very slow in our area. It wasn't like everybody was feeling that the sky was falling and it maybe felt like a little bit of traction was happening, but not really yet.
And I'm thankful for that. I'm definitely thankful that I kind of had a gradual start to my career. And, you know, I had to build the systems.
I had to learn to do the things the right way. Is that kind of what you're getting at there? Like, you know, having to, it's not just like, you know, sales are just knocking down your door from day one.
You know, what it was is because, the reason it was such a competitive advantage for me is because I was willing to argue with banks. I was willing to go fight and get short sales approved. And it kind of became our thing, right?
Which actually made getting business easy because number one, we were happy to take the listings as a short sale. Number two, the average success rate for a short sale listing at that time in the country was like 40%. And we were closing more than 90% of our short sale listings.
Partially, my business partner and I are both very hardheaded and stubborn. We like a good fight. And we both have backgrounds working for banks and financial institutions.
Me specifically in a call center. So I understood the mentality of the people I was mostly talking to. And once I sort of figured out the puzzle that short sales were, they were still challenging, but they were hard work, but they were very easy.
If that makes sense.
Sure, yeah, no, definitely. That's, yeah, that's really cool. I mean, that's a challenge.
Like I, yeah, I've done short sales on the buyer side. No, no, I've done it on a seller side. Nevermind.
It's just, that was like years ago. I don't remember anything about it really.
You know, it's fun. Yeah, it's a challenge for sure because you take a listing today and you know, at the time it was like, oh, I might get paid in six months, nine months. Like, you know, and you've got to, but I was happy to do that.
I mean, I remember that. So my first full year in real estate, which would have been 08, I got licensed in the middle of 07. My business partner and I started working together February of 08.
We closed 60 deals that year. 40 of them closed in the fourth quarter. Just because of the life cycle of a short sale.
So we had the competitive advantage that we were willing to put off getting paid. We were willing to be told no. Hundreds of times in a lot of cases and have to fight and talk to people that you would never really want to talk to on a regular basis.
And then once we kind of figured it out, not only was that amazing because we were able to sell a lot of real estate and build the foundation for our businesses, but then built our database for the future. Still living off of that today.
Yeah, it's amazing how that, yeah, that if you nurture your database right and follow up with people, it's just, yeah, that's the holy grail. So you were able then to eventually market to potential short sale listings that you have a much higher success rate than the average, right? I mean, I would imagine that was a compelling reason to work with you.
Yeah, what we started doing, it was early days of social media. So we'd post about it. And then it was actually November of 2009.
I don't know if you know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, but he wrote a book called Crush It. That book came out in November of 2009. We instantly, like that day, we went and bought a camera.
It's called this Kodak Zi8. We started filming blogs on short sales and the business came pouring in. I mean, I'm talking like in under a year, we had 1.95 or so short sale listings. Like the business just came flying at us because we weren't afraid to take them on and we were teaching other agents how to do them. And so what happened with that was the other agents would decide, I don't wanna do this, I'm just gonna refer to them because I know what they're doing. Or they would go, cool, I learned something, now I'll have a better chance at success.
And then it also instilled, again, going back to the thought of like only 40% or so of them were successful nationally, buyers agents weren't afraid to bring their buyers to our listings because they knew that we'd get the job done.
You were the experts in the field and that niche. Yeah, that's amazing. And so was that going on YouTube then?
Yeah, early days of YouTube. I mean, early for me anyways. I don't remember.
I don't know when that was started.
But it was, oh nine is when we posted our November, November of 2009 is when we posted our first video and did them five days a week for a couple of years.
You know, I think often the world of real estate sales can feel very cutthroat and dog eat dog. And that's an awesome example of how you were providing value for other agents that they could have been your competitors, et cetera, but it really made you more successful.
Oh yeah, it was by far, I got way more than I could have ever given.
Yeah, it's such a, you know, I think it's a good lesson. I think that, honestly, I think oftentimes the investing world gets that more. And it might be because like, you know, they're maybe not working as much with other investors or don't have as many other investors in their area that they're like, you know, collaborating with or whatever, but I think they're very open to helping others.
So, and that, you know, that might just be market specific, but yeah, anyway, so you were crushing it. Did you start investing in real estate as well then?
You know, it's funny that I didn't, man. At some point, what happened is I got in, I got really lucky, met some amazing mentors and kind of got into rooms I probably didn't deserve to be in just because we were succeeding at this thing that seemed hard to everybody called short sales. And I kind of fell in love with the business of selling real estate.
I realized that I wasn't a realtor, but I loved being a business owner. And I got so focused, I got so narrowly focused on that, that I kind of forgot, not kind of, I forgot why I got into real estate in the first place. And it wasn't until kind of a wake up moment, I had this moment, you know, probably six years ago or so where I was like, what am I doing?
You know, and that's when I really started to focus on the investment side.
Okay, what steps did you take then? Where did you start?
You know, I think the steps I, what I realized is I had opportunities literally in my inbox all the time. It's like I run a real estate team, you know, residential real estate team, and we get referrals, we have past clients, we have new, you know, new stuff coming in all the time. And I just started, decided to like pay attention to what I was literally already looking at every day.
And just looked at my part, we got our listing referral one day. Well, let me back up. First thing I did is I was like, we have a business, we're paying rent, let's just go buy a commercial building to operate out of.
So that was the first thing we did. And that, I guess that was a little longer ago, that's probably 2017 that we bought this building. And it was just, you know, cool real estate appreciates over time, we're paying rent anyways, let's just do that.
And then a couple of years later, when I sort of had this aha moment, I just looked at my partner one day at this listing referral we had. I was like, what? This seems like a good deal, maybe we should try to buy it.
And that just got us like asking questions, like, is this a good deal? What would this rent for? Crap, do we have the money for it?
You know, how much money would we need? And we ended up closing that, we ended up doing that deal. And that showed us like, oh, we could do this.
This doesn't have to be hard. I've got this main focus over here of my residential real estate business. And then I've got this like community business as well that I've built up.
And, but I'm already, I'm looking at, I'm literally looking at listing handoffs every day from my real estate team. What if we just paid more attention to that? And that was really the thing that got me going.
And I still don't consider myself to be a great real estate investor. I just have been at it for a little while now. And I always like to say that this is true, I think both about real estate investing and being a real estate agent is the longer you do it, the smarter you look, because time does all the heavy lifting in real estate.
Yeah, it really does. And then you get the compound effect. The more you have as well.
So $20 rent, $50 rent increases across 20 units, it looks a lot different than one. But yeah, no, that's awesome. And I think that a lot of people don't, they might be afraid of the headaches involved.
I think they might be afraid or have seen, have been gone through those listings where the tenants absolutely destroyed the place and they don't really wanna dive into it. I still, I say this all the time, but I think a syndication is such a great opportunity for people like you were when you were just laser focused on what you do best and killing it, crushing it, to take advantage of all the benefits of real estate ownership without having to really do too much, without having to really distract yourself too much. So that's always a different path as well.
Yeah, owning your own building you operate out of, that's awesome. Like you can pay yourself a rent, right? I mean, that's another thing you can do, which is great.
So it sounds like you have your own brokerage. Is that, you said team, do you have your own brokerage as well?
No, no, so we operate in a brokerage, but just got a traditional real estate team, if you're familiar with like millionaire real estate agent book. Like we don't run that model today, we did originally, but yeah, so we just run a real estate team inside of a brokerage.
Okay, I was gonna ask how the team started, what you started with a partner. So you guys kind of just each shared each deal.
Did you like- Yeah, man, we were just trying to like, we were both broke and had a lot of bills. We were just trying to make money and so we decided to share the cost of an office, share the cost of an assistant. We had actually both been using this assistant, it's actually my business partner's brother at the time, to help us with our listings and our files.
And so when we started working together, we just came up with a structure that worked for us, which was, it's kind of funny because it was so one-sided. If you brought the deal in, you got paid 80% and the other person got paid 20, but all of our expenses were split 50-50. And that was because we had both come out of other business relationships where we both felt we were kind of left holding the bag and in all of the responsibility.
And so over time that changed, we became 50-50 partners within like three years. However, we just didn't start that way. We just, we started with like, let's share the cost of an office and a person and let's see what can happen.
And then we started creating so much together because of what we were doing, like teaching the classes, having success with getting short sales approved, that we looked up one day and we're like, oh, there's actually this, there's a business here.
Yeah, and that's kind of crazy to me that at the time you started, you already hired somebody like when you just were brand new. That's kind of unusual, right?
Yeah, I like to, I joke now, like reflecting back, I like to say, I'm not sure if I'm lazy but ambitious or if I'm ambitious but lazy, but the thing is like, I'd rather pay someone to do the things I don't wanna do and pay them first and then I'll take what's left than do things that I don't wanna do.
I mean, it's such a hard lesson for most people to learn. I think people usually take years to get there and then have hard times letting go of things. So that's awesome that you did that from the beginning.
What was your first or what was your next hire since your first hire was right away? What was your, or team, how have you structured things? Like what was your next move?
I think, I'm trying to remember who came next. What happened soonish after, within six months is we hired really an actual, what's the word I'm looking for, operations person for the team and she had run a brokerage, done like all the financial stuff, cut the checks for a brokerage and she'd approached us one time about us and we hired her. Somewhere around the same time, we tried hiring buyers agents and we sucked at it.
You know, we failed through that as well but at some point not too far in the future, we had two administrative people working for us, one full-time and then one or two, I think it was actually we started with two buyers agents almost, hired them both almost at the same time.
Okay, and when you say hired them, were they getting paid hourly and or were they getting like?
Strict 50-50 commission splits. So what we did is and we again, then we didn't know anything. We gave them basically our sign calls, any sort of buyer leads like they got it all and just whatever they could make of it.
We split with them 50-50 or you know, our administrative person would service everything once it was under contract and that was it. Yeah, we kind of were off to the races.
So I mean, yeah, for them like they get leads, they have to basically follow up with and try to get them to buy something and then they're basically done, right? I mean, they have the transaction coordination happening in the background.
Yeah, I mean and again, we were terrible at it. You know, our business evolved so much over the years but you know, that was that early version of it was just like that.
Well, where are you all now? I mean, what's your team size and what's that look like?
We are up to about 15 agents in Phoenix. I say that because we've also sold real estate in Denver since 2014. But our main focus now is just Phoenix.
So we're at 15 agents. Gosh, two of them are new this month. Three of them are new this year.
We had a long stretch of time where we've got a lot of tenure on our team now. A lot of agents playing with us for six, seven, eight, 10 years and to be honest, like it just didn't require that much leadership and management and so we kind of, we coasted on it for a long time, for years. And then earlier this year decided to sort of get back into the day-to-day of the real estate team and which has actually been a lot of fun.
So we've been hiring agents again and onboarding and training, coaching people up and helping them get their businesses started.
Sure, and so are these agents just kind of operating their own businesses within the team structure or do you have like designation with buyers, seller agents, that kind of stuff?
No, they work buyers and sellers. I like to look at my business of the team as the platform for the agents on the team to run their business. Yes, it's all under our brand but it's a, my business is truly supporting their business.
So from the administrative staff to the coaching, to the training, to the technology, the lead generation, all of that stuff that goes into that, I like to think of it as it's their business that we're supporting.
Okay, cool. Yeah, no, it seems like I could see it being a hard sell for a lot of people to be restricted to just being a buyer's agent, for example.
I remember when I made that change, man. It was 2014, it was July of 2014. I had a conversation with a buddy of mine and I just said, hey, sell me on your model.
And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, I can tell that like your agents take buyers and sellers, mine just take one or the other. Why?
And he drew it for me on a piece of paper. And I remember I went to my business partner later that afternoon, I was like, look at this. I think this is what we're looking for.
And then I started doing more homework and what I realized is I was pretty connected through some masterminds with some of the top agents in the entire industry around the country. So I started making phone calls and asking them and what I realized is most of the agents that were selling more real estate than I was, they were running a similar model. And so we made that switch, it was July of 2014.
I remember very specifically where we started using the term sales agents instead of buyers agents or listing agents.
Okay, cool. Yeah, no, it makes sense. I think somebody could be a lot more excited about that and even if they're, you know, the natural progression for people typically is that they are gonna have more buyers to start with than sellers for a while.
For sure. But yeah, that's a good way to kind of learn the trade and then you actually have a lot more support within the team to take on a listing if it comes up as well. Yeah.
No, it's awesome. Are you all CRM wizards then?
No, I mean, I remember the last year like that I was truly in production. My business, we were using a CRM called Infusionsoft which is now called Keep. It's like a marketer CRM.
Like it's not even like tied to a website or anything. Like there's no website that goes with it. Like I just need something that will let me email from, text from, and set tasks for.
That's it. Because I'm just like a, I'm a follow up machine. Like I will just, I'll just beat you in the long game.
And so, I mean, we have a great CRM. We have an amazing CRM. Now, like I look at the technology, good friend of mine built it and it's called Brevity.
We love it. And it's so far advanced over what I could even possibly get out. I bet you, you know, I probably use 25% of it.
We really try to use more and more of the features and I'm sure the agents on the team that are transacting with buyers and sellers, I know that they use a lot more of the features say than I do. But like, you know, I use it for my recruiting for the team as well as my sphere and database. And I'm kind of a, you know, minimalist when it comes to that, but I know we've got some pretty, pretty cool technology these days.
Yeah, no, I think people get a little, it's tempting to go down the rabbit hole of the really fancy software, but at the end of the day, like you can do everything through Outlook. You can do everything. You don't even need Outlook.
Outlook's pretty robust actually. But yeah, that's kind of how I got started. Tried a bunch of different CRMs or a couple and just kind of stopped using and didn't really use them.
But I'm building one now for the team that is, yeah, it's amazing the technology and the possibilities. I don't know if I want to use all of them. Like, I don't know if I want AI agents on the phones and chatbots.
Maybe if it's transparent so that it's just going to serve a purpose like scheduling an appointment, but yeah, I don't know if I want to go that far because I feel like this is a personal business. You're building personal relationships with people and I think that's, you don't want to lose sight of that. But yeah, that's awesome.
So how do you see, how do you help guide your agents through potentially changing markets, that kind of stuff? You've been through it before. Is there a lot of fear in your team at the moment or what are they looking at?
There's really no fear in our team. The reality is, if you can't make money in this market, there's always challenges, right? There's just that you can make money in any single market.
It's a matter of what skillset do you need to flex a little bit more, get better on, what's your strategy? All markets are easy to, you can make money, you can make a living in. And so we just try to talk, we talk about the basics, man.
We really talk about the basics. We stay on top of things so we're not lying to ourselves about what the market's really doing because really the market is just gonna dictate our strategy, the types of conversations we have and that's it. And it's not, it's nothing to be scared of in my opinion.
Yeah, that's a really good outlook. And obviously you made a killing with the last big downturn, which I'm guessing won't be the same as this year at all or as this market at all. When I was talking to, I was talking to Joshua Smith, he's out of Phoenix, right?
Yeah, he's a buddy of mine, yeah.
Yeah, so he's definitely like kind of battling or batting down the hatches for.
Josh, I love Josh and he's so smart but he's the most doom and gloom guy I know. I love that guy, I genuinely love him and he's got the most dark view on the world of almost anybody I know. I'm a little more optimistic than Josh.
And maybe I'm wrong, maybe he's right, maybe the answer's probably somewhere in the middle. And I think that as long as you are paying attention to what is actually happening and then acting appropriately for that, like you're gonna be okay.
Yeah, he was definitely a similar kind of, I mean, yes, more gloom outlook but a similar kind of strategy basically, like there's opportunities in every market and you just gotta keep a pulse on it and figure out where that opportunity is. So that, yeah, makes a lot of sense. In Florida, it's a little bit different.
I mean, it sounds like, I can't imagine having to pay that much for insurance. It's just crazy what's happening over there with insurance and there's also probably some overdevelopment in some areas but so, yeah, it's just interesting how different pockets, the vibe you get when you talk to people is different. No doubt, yeah, no doubt.
But it's nice to hear you and you have a big smile on your face and you guys aren't worried and you're gonna keep, not putting your head in the sand but you're gonna keep a pulse on the market and keep going.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's all you can do, right? Like if things get really bad, all you can really do is the next right thing. If things are really good, you should just keep doing the next right thing.
Yeah, absolutely and you're gonna be happier if you don't focus on all the negative, all the bad.
Yeah, here's the deal. If the worst case scenario comes true, you're gonna have much bigger problems anyways and then if it doesn't come true, why do you spend all the time worrying about it?
Yeah, 100%. I was trying to, there's the Don't Worry song about a thing, everything's gonna be all right. There's a line in there about, I was playing it to my kids on vacation because there was a lot of whining, a lot of worrying, a lot of all the stuff coming from them and I was just started playing that and it's like every time it was coming up, I just started playing it and it's something like there will be troubles in this life.
You can count on them or something like that. If you worry about it, it just makes them double and it's like, yeah, that's a really simple, easy thing to try to start getting that message into their heads. No doubt, yeah.
I guess before we start asking the golden nugget questions and stuff, I'm curious if through all this, obviously you've had very busy, even if you've hired immediately, you sound like you've been very busy throughout your career. How do you try to maintain yourself, your mental health, your physical health, whatever? Do you have any rituals, anything that you have to do to keep your mind right?
I think number one thing is I go home. I don't work 80 hours a week. I work nine to five.
I basically work nine to five and if I say five, some days I stay till five because here's the deal, I had a mentor kind of instill in me earlier on, you have to work from a sense of priority. Not everything is the most important. And also, so when you tackle the most important thing early in the day, every day, just go home.
You're always gonna have more work to do tomorrow anyways, whether you leave at five or 10.30. So just go home. Go enjoy your family. So I've got young kids.
I've got a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old and a wife and I wanna go home and be with my family. I don't work weekends. I haven't worked weekends since my first year in real estate.
I just don't, I just have, I've got clear boundaries and yes, I do all the stuff, like when I leave today, I'm gonna go work out today at four o'clock. So I do stuff like that, don't get me wrong, but the most important thing is, like I'm leaving work and I'll be done with work until I open my computer again tomorrow morning when I get here. And if you're doing the right things, you're never worried about, if you're always work on the right things every day, maybe not, but not always, no one's ever gonna be perfect.
You're always gonna have enough business. You're never gonna be worried about one deal falling apart.
Yeah, everybody, you heard it here, it's possible. You can work a nine to five.
100%. Even when I was in heavy production and taking a lot of listings, I didn't work on the weekends and that was simply because I got my, I talked to the sellers ahead of time about not responding to offers on the weekends, which I know pissed off other agents, but I didn't wanna work on the weekends just cause they do doesn't mean that I should have to. And so I focused on taking more listings so I didn't have to show buyers homes on the weekends.
And- Sorry, keep going.
You know, it really was just a decision and then a boundary set and then I followed it.
Did you implement listings going live on Mondays as opposed to Thursdays or Fridays? Actually, Thursdays. We always did Thursday.
Okay, but then you just didn't respond to anything until- Directions were very clear in the MLS that we would respond on Monday. Sellers all signed off on it. They all knew.
It was part of my listing consult. It's just the way, and I'm not here to tell other people that's what they should do. And I think there's a time for everyone in their business where they have to do things that maybe they don't wanna do and more of it.
And if you use that time wisely, that doesn't have to be years and years. That could be a year or two as you're building a foundation and then it's just a matter of setting boundaries. But also if you're gonna set boundaries like that, then you gotta do what you gotta do during the time you're doing it.
Right. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I love it.
Yeah, that's amazing advice. I've heard it described as a eat the frog. Is that the- Oh, yeah.
The analogy of take the worst thing and do it first. But yeah, anyway, I love it. So let's transition into the golden nugget question.
If you have anything that you think is fundamental for people that they should know or just some really good advice in this crazy world of real estate, what would that be?
I'll share with you. I referenced it earlier where I kind of had this moment in my career where I was like, damn, I got into real estate because I was excited about investing. I'd forgotten why.
But I've got a Facebook group of real estate agents called Next Level Agents. And there was a thread going on about investing. And somebody just simply had typed the comment like, you know, my mentor taught me that you don't get rich selling real estate, you get rich by buying real estate.
And for whatever reason, at that moment in time, that hit me like a ton of bricks. And it really caused me to think like that was what led me to, it was probably within a week or two of that, that we put together that first deal of that rental that my business partner and I still own. And that was kind of like the first domino for us.
And so just remembering that like, hey, your business is like a, it's like a machine to generate money. And a certain percentage of that money really should be set aside to investing. And the way one of my kind of my main mentor and friend has taught me is like, when you've got that chunk of money, and then there's different buckets within that money, and a big chunk of that, like 20% of that should be for real estate specific investing.
And so that's what, you know, that's what I did. And so I look at my real estate business as it creates an income for me. And then from that income, from those profits, I got money to live on, and I've got money to invest and do all the things I've got to do.
And real estate investing is just the top of that list.
Yeah, I'm not gonna say that, you know, put all your eggs in one basket by any means, but I think it is really, I think if you think about understanding an index 500, that all the businesses in an index 500 versus understanding your own market, and if you're gonna invest in your own market, understand, you know, the product, you're a realtor. Like, you understand that house, that townhouse on Main Street way better than you're gonna understand anything that's happening on, you know, an index 500. Again, so like, not to say put all your eggs in one basket, but it just makes a ton of sense that you're an expert in this, that you would invest in this as well.
And 100%, like, I mean, yeah, I mean, my net worth is from equity. Yeah. Like, there's some other stuff in there, but I mean, it is from equity.
So it's definitely, definitely true. It's really good advice.
Yeah, it's, I'm also not like a, you should only invest in real estate. Like, I've got plenty of friends, like, they only invest in real estate. I've got other friends that only invest in, like, stock market and equities, and they're really rich and really smart.
I would never tell them that they're wrong. For me, what feels right is, I do have a specialized knowledge in residential real estate, so I invest in that, and then I've also got money into other things, into other arenas. And for me, that's just the best way to go.
And I'm a believer in, like, when you do that, when you make money, whether that's, like, through the cash flows or different events from investments, you take that to then go buy more investments and hopefully spread that out amongst other things. Like, I look at it as buckets, five different buckets, and however it is that you view it, that's fine. And I don't think it's right or wrong to be all real estate or all one way or the other way, but we are or theoretically should be experts in residential real estate, so to not be invested in that somewhat, to me, is foolish.
Yeah, 100%, and I was, I did some math, so I did a lot of, I basically, first house turned into a rental, and then through that equity and through the equity of the new house that I bought, opened equity lines to start doing BRRR deals where I'm buying rundown places, rehabbing them. Instead of selling them, I'm doing a refinance and keeping them as a rental and getting all my cash back. And I kind of did some calculations as to what my return was on my real estate investments, because I had spent too much time in 2021 on some crypto rabbit holes.
I'm not saying I hate it, or I'm not dissing it completely by any means. I think there's some interesting stuff there. But when I sat down and thought, my rate of return there versus my rate of return in real estate, and I was like, what am I doing?
I shouldn't be focusing so much more on trying to pick up more BRRR deals or something like that.
And that's simply because you're an expert in real, by the way, I know guys that have killed it in crypto. And that's part of my portfolio as well. And I'm like, I kind of approach crypto and stocks and real estate very similar, which is like, I want to have to not think about it.
I want to do the easiest thing and what makes sense in the long run. And, but the reality is, is when you have specialized knowledge, like in real estate or in crypto or say stocks or whatever, like you can actually take bigger risks and have bigger, you should have bigger gains from that area simply because of your knowledge. And so it's, yeah, all that to say that's what jumped out at me is like, of course you have better returns in real estate.
You're an expert in real estate. If I showed you my network statement right now too, it'd be the same way. There's a lot of equity built up and that's partially because I was like, hey, that's a good deal.
Like that's a decent deal. Even I can do the math on that one.
Right. Yeah, I think I was like, when I calculated it was like 700% or something was like my rent per share because I basically took a low down payment and then, or two low down payments and then created multiple rentals from it because I was able to get all the money out that I put in to the renovations, et cetera, in a refinance. So I was like, I should just keep doing this.
It's harder now, but I digress. You, do you have any books that you would recommend? Favorite books, fundamental books you think everybody should read or just kind of ones that you currently enjoy?
Yeah, you know, my favorite, one of my favorite business book of all time that I go back to at least once a year now, if not twice is The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. I don't think there's a better business book out there. He's actually Rich Dad.
Like Rich Dad is based on him. He is Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad was actually two people.
It's mostly based on Keith Cunningham. The Road Less Stupid, one of my favorite books. Of course, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
When it comes to money, I love the book, Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Yeah, and that's newer. And then one of my more recent reads, although I don't think it's a new book, it's called The Banker's Code.
And so private lending has become a bigger part of my overall investment allocation over the last probably 18, 24 months. And Banker's Code is a very simple, easy read, similar to Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And the fact like it almost looks janky.
Like it almost looks like they just printed it when you ordered it. And it's like told in story format. But it taught me another viewpoint of real estate.
And so that's been a cool one that I really like. So those are the four I would say.
Yeah, you gave me a couple new ones to read. I got, my list gets longer and longer all the time of what I need to read. Finally, is there a place if people are interested in following you on social media, if you have anything you can share?
I think you have a podcast as well, right?
Yeah, I've got a real estate podcast. It's really aimed at like residential real estate agents. It's called Next Level Agents or The Next Level Agents Podcast, where it's mostly me interviewing other people.
I've got a few co-hosts now that have joined me in the last few months after the first 500 or so episodes where they're also interviewing other people. Sometimes I'll just share thoughts that I have, but it's mostly interviews. I enjoy learning from people.
So that tends to be what my podcast is about. And then with the same name, Next Level Agents, I've got a Facebook group in there, and you can find me in there. That's, I don't know, 25, 27,000 people or so.
It's not as active as it once was, but there's a lot of great people in there that are real estate agents at all levels that are just trying to get better.
Awesome. I love it. Hey, Kevin, this has been a lot of fun.
Thanks so much for being on the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
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