Wholesaling Houses, How Champions Are Built, And Automating Your Business With Kent Clothier

Episode 469: Wholesaling Houses, How Champions Are Built, And Automating Your Business With Kent Clothier

 

Who would’ve thought investors would willingly buy and sell houses without physical interactions? New technology opens up a lot of flexible avenues for you to wholesale houses straight from your computer. In this episode, Kent Clothier explains how the COVID-19 pandemic opened up tremendous opportunities in wholesaling houses for him with the use of new technology. Kent also shares his journey with Mitch Stephen, including how he had a great start owning a company with his dad, how he eventually lost it and stumbled down rock-bottom, and how he took off again wholesaling houses. Join in the conversation and learn the value of surrounding yourself with people who’ve done bigger things than you, why the hustler side of you has to die when starting a business, and why you should automate your business so you can get your time back.  

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I’m here with Kent Clothier. This man’s done it all. We met a long time ago out in CG, that was a lot of years ago, we met a lot of people. We were out there learning how to improve ourselves. We were all in that group. It was a pretty big group. Sometimes we didn’t all get to mingle together. This guy knows his stuff from the top to bottom. He’s been in the business for a long time. Kent, how are you doing? 

I’m doing good. I’m glad to be here. 

Thanks for being on. A lot of people are saying that it’s a tough time to get into this business. What do you say to that? 

I would argue profusely with anybody that made that kind of comment to me. I would argue the opposite. I don’t think it’s ever been an easier time to get in the business. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be strategic. It doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of smart people that might be making some moves behind the scenes that are sound and based off of some data that’s not necessarily readily available to them, super white hot media headlines how everything’s going up, all that nonsense that we’ve all seen before. I’m not necessarily saying that I buy into that, but I will buy into that. If you want to get in the real estate space, what makes it the best time that I’ve ever seen is that there’s never been a better time from a technology perspective and from an opportunity perspective. 

There's always somebody out there playing at a much higher level, and there's always something to learn. Click To Tweet

Meaning that you could be sitting anywhere in the United States with new technology, new tools, data, etc. You could quite frankly zero in on hot markets all from your laptop to see exactly who all the best buyers and best sellers are and get some good training on it, make virtual offers. You and I had talked about trying to buy a house virtually several years ago. Everybody thinks we’re crazy, but now that happens every single day because of all the new information and technology that’s available to just about anybody. The training’s never been better than it is right now. 

You don’t have to do a tremendous amount of volume to make some good money and replace your job. 

What’s fascinating is coming out of COVID, we all got a little spooked when this thing went down, but it’s created a lot of different cool opportunities out there. If you had told me back in the day that people would be 100% comfortable buying and selling their home or their investment property to another investor without ever stepping foot in it, without ever meeting somebody face–to–face, that had been an uphill battle, but COVID shown a lot of people that that could be part of the new norm, which is pretty exciting. 

I’ve always looked at, you always have to start off with baby steps, you have to start at the beginning, you have to start at the basics, but figure out what you’re making for a living, and for once in your life, if you don’t make a lot of money, you don’t have to do a tremendous amount of deals to replace your job. Let’s say you make $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, the minute you replace your job, you’re freeing up 2,600 hours a year that you can go accelerate your learning. Everyone’s got to burn the candle at both ends. When you started, did you burn your candles at both ends? Tell me your story how you started. 

I was fortunate because I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life. I was raised in an entrepreneurial family. I watched my father build a grocery store empire when I was a kid, and then ultimately he and I started an arbitrage business where we were buying and selling truckloads of groceries all over the country in a gray market fashion where manufacturers discount products in one market versus leaving them at retail in another market. We were clever enough to go into one market and buy something at a discount, turn around and put it on a truck and ship it to another market. When you got 50,000 items in a grocery store, there’s an endless supply of opportunities to do that. 

I started that business with him when I was seventeen. By the time I was 23, I was running a $50 million a year company. When I was 28, it was $800 million. By the time I was 30, it was $1.8 billion, and he had retired. I had an interesting upbringing when it came to entrepreneurship and then got a run in with my business partners when I was 30 and ultimately left the company, dramatic slide down. When I got all the way down, I found real estate. I found a way to start getting into an entirely different field, started figuring out how to flip houses, wholesale houses at that point, I got good at it. I was a hustler. I was a guy that was running up and down the streets trying to figure out a way to make a deal. Anything and everything, make a buck. 

I was a hustler that refuse to give up so my first eighteen months, I did 91 deals and a little over $1 million. I got excited about this new business. Ultimately, all of my entrepreneurial skills that I learned from 17 to 30 started kicking in. I figured out there was a way to turn this into a big business, so I took it to scale. Fast forward here we are, several years later, we buy and sell, rehab 800 houses a year. We’ve managed 7,500 rental homes for all of our investors from around the country. In the last several years, I’ve built an education company software and all that good stuff. I never know where it’s going to end up, but I can tell you when it started, it was nothing but I just want to get paid. 

To make a buck, keep your head above water. Everybody started there and probably everyone starts out wholesaling. I didn’t start out wholesaling myself, but it’s a real natural place to start. I bought my first 100 houses on credit cards because the city skyline behind me here is of San Antonio, Texas. Several years ago, there were houses for sale for $12,000, $15,000, $8,000, under $20,000, there was tons of houses. All you had to do was get in the Classifieds at 8:00 in the morning, and by 12:00 noon, you’d have a perfectly good house that you could make some money on. If you screwed up, you’ve got two houses and you didn’t know how you’re going to pay for them. I didn’t have any money. No one wanted to loan me any money. I hadn’t overcome those self-limiting thoughts that I could go get someone to loan me some money. 

I defaulted to credit cards. I learned back then that if you had good credit and you applied for a credit card that you would get it, and then you had all the cash advances and everything that you needed. I bought my first 100 houses on credit card. It wasn’t unusual for me to have $250,000, $350,000 with a credit card debt, which freaked my wife out, hugely freaked her out, almost got me divorced, until I liquidated a few of them and showed what could happen. I burned my candle at both ends. I had the bartending job so I’d have some money to put in my gas tank. 

 

Every minute I wasn’t bartending, I was out there doing it, trying to find something. I didn’t have near the glorious start or near the results that you did. I’ve said this many times on my show and in my travels, I can state my numbers. I’ve done 2,000 houses since 1996, somewhere down the road is this guy that can wipe their backside with my financial statement. We’re talking to him now. There’s always a bigger gun down the street. There’s always some place to go for anybody to raise a hand up and get some help no matter what level you’re in. 

That’s a great point because that never stops. The moment you start buying into the theory that you are all that and you stop trying to surround yourself with people that are playing at a higher level, for every 800 houses a year we do, there’s guys out there that do 10,000. Were a rounding error for them. They wouldn’t sleep at night. They did as few houses as we do. There’s always somebody that’s out there playing at a much bigger level and there’s always something to learn. The only way you go backwards is that if you ever start believing that you’re not capable of learning anything. I’d highly encourage everybody to keep putting yourself in rooms, keep listening to a show like this because there’s good lessons along the way for people who’ve always done it. When they’ve done it bigger, they’ve also got some bigger lessons and bigger stories to share with you, so you don’t have to make some bigger mistakes. 

I believe in going through life with a hand down to help people up and a hand up to keep going because I don’t believe there’s such a thing as neutral. You’re either moving forward or you’re moving backwards. Even if you go to sleep, you’re burning oxygen. You’re going to have to get up and kill something to eat sooner or later. There’s no neutral. You might as well set yourself on a path to always move forward. You had this experience of growing a company from a young age. You had seen scaling before. For a lot of us out here, it took a long time to learn that we needed to scale. We all started off as one–man show. Did you start off as a one–man show or did you start off with people? 

In the grocery business it was just me and my father when we started. When I finally left the company, it was 800 employees. 

I was talking about in the real estate business, did you start out as a one-man show? 

In real estate business, it was just me. I was broke. I’d lost everything. When I tell you that I went all the way down, I went all the way down. I was in a desperate situation and all I wanted to do was figure out how to make a buck. I’ll never forget the first deal I did, I did it all by myself, which was extremely empowering because no relationships, no real knowledge, not only been in the business for 30 days. I cashed a check for $8,200, it might as well have been $82 million. It was life-changing money for me. This is coming out of three years earlier where W–2–ing $3 million to $5 million. When I talk to people and I tell them emotionally that I’m empathetic with what it feels like to get started and to get that first deal done and what it takes to build it back up. I get it as well as anybody out there like you. As a one–man show, my motivation for scale the second time around was personal to me because the first time around I built a business from 17 to 30, I had married my high school sweetheart, I was the guy that was not ashamed to be at the office at 5:00 in the morning and leave there at 8:00 at night. 

I wore it as a badge of honor. I had no idea the collateral damage that I was doing and ultimately cost me my marriage. I was the guy making a sacrifice, conning myself into believing that I was doing it for them. None of that’s true. The second time around when I started my way back up and started flipping a lot of houses, I decided that if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. I want to spend time with my new little girl and my new wife. The only way that’s going to happen is if I start figuring out a way for me to get out of the way so I can own my time. That was my motivation for scaling. It was straightforward. 

I didn’t plan to go this direction here in my notes, but if it’s not too personal because it sounds like you fell a long way, your W–2 and $3 million, $4 million a year to zero, how does that happen? 

We were operating out of Memphis, Tennessee. My company was bought by our largest competitor. They were based in Boca Raton, Florida. They shipped me down to Boca Raton, Florida as a 26-year-old kid and threw me the keys to this company doing $800 million a year and said, “We bought your company for you. You come run this company.” By the time I was 30, we turned it into $1.8 billion. I was the guy, 100%, thank God they didn’t have social media back then, I was the guy that had all the toys, had all the trappings and 100% believed all of that success was because of me, all you had to do was ask me and I was more than willing to tell you.  

The only way you go backward is that if you ever start believing that you're not capable of learning anymore. Click To Tweet

In the end of 1999, I’m running the company, I can see the financials and seen the drastic improvements in profitability from $800 million to $1.8 billion, that was directly flowing right back to the two owners of this company because I was no longer an owner. I approached them on March 14th of 2000 in a casual conversation. I probably didn’t think about it more than five minutes, I walked in the door 7:00 in the morning, I said, “I want to talk to you about getting some of my equity back.” Without hesitation, they’re like, “That’s never going to happen.” Without hesitation, I was like, “I’m out of here.” I walked out the door.  

I never thought about it, I never planned on it. It wasn’t something I thought about for weeks or months or days, not even hours. It was just on top of mind. I was so full of crap and not humble in the slightest and so full of pride that I walked out the door. I was completely jaded and believed that I could go off and start a new business, a new competitor and be up and running in a matter of weeks and never miss a beat. Life has a way of humbling you when you need to be humbled. Over the course of the next 2.5 years, I took a beating trying to get the business back up and get going. My former employer is now suing me and we’re going back and forth in court. 

I was the bad gambler sitting at the table that keeps betting into a losing hand. I’m paying $200,000, $300,000 a month in legal fees trying to fight and keep alive and keep my own business going. I didn’t know when to get out. It was way too much pride. Fast forward, you burn through a lot of money quickly. I looked up, and before I knew it, I was done. I’m tapping out, I got nothing left. It took me to a place where not only had I done all that, but I had burnt my reputation, all of my relationships, all the way down. I wasn’t good enough to burn up the money. 

I had to burn every opportunity I had all the way down. I had to reach rock bottom. I remember it clearly, December 22nd of 2002, I went to a real estate event because I was completely broke, down to about $4,000. I moved into my girlfriend’s apartment. I went from three years earlier living on this mansion on the Intracoastal in Boca Raton, Florida to a 400 square foot apartment with my girlfriend. I stumbled into an event and learned about wholesaling, which I knew nothing about, did not have zero concept of what that was and walked out of there having purchased a course and got highly motivated. I flipped my first house in little over 30 days and I was off to the races. 

Do you remember who was at that first event? I’m sure you do. Who did you go see? 

It was Russ Whitney. 

The importance of that first deal is more than just the money, it was the fact that it worked, it’s the confidence, it was the whole thing. I’ve seen people struggle for 3 or 4 months to make their first deal, but thank God they hung out because it turned into a great career for them, it’s getting that first check. I didn’t find my butt with both hands until I was 34. Not that I hadn’t been a hard worker or hadn’t been entrepreneurial, I had tried many things that didn’t pay enough or didn’t pan out or that I wasn’t good at. My first was Carleton Sheets and Ron LeGrand. I messed around and figured out how to make something work. I was seller financing my houses because I was buying such crap that no one would finance any of it. In my mind, I thought I had to go for the cheap houses because they didn’t have a lot of money or I didn’t have any money, which isn’t true. You don’t need money to do this, you need a mindset. Talk about that. 

You got to want it more than you want to breathe. If you can imagine, what I run into a lot out there, as I’ve gotten to become one of the old guys now, I don’t remember it being this way when I started, but I’m sure it was. Whether it’s social media, whatever the case may be, there’s a lot of people that are looking for this quick hit lottery ticket mentality, “Can I press the button and suddenly it’s going to start raining money?” You and I both know that is not the way the real-world works. If I called you up now and said, “Mitch, I’m going to go. I’ve watched every YouTube video on MMA, and I’ve listened to every podcast on MMA, I’ve read every book on it. I’m ready. Put me in the game. Let’s go. I’m a champion.” You would look at me like I’m freaking crazy. 

I’d probably be looking at you to remember what you look like because you’re not going to look too good after that. 

What has to happen to become a great champion? You’ve got to get in the cage, you got to mix it up, you’re going to have to get choked out a few times, you’re going to have to get bumped and bruised, black eyes. You got to go back to the corner and have a coach, help you understand what you did wrong, what you did right, what you need to improve on and get back in there. That’s the way champions are built. I look at business similarly. There’s only so much information, so many videos, so much stuff you could watch. At some point you’re going to have to get in the game. You cannot be afraid of getting hit, getting choked out and making mistakes. Do you need somebody in your corner to probably look over your shoulder? Of course, like anything else if you want to be great. You’re never going to get there by not having the mental fortitude of what it takes to be a champion. That’s why you see so many people jump into something and then wash out, is because they weren’t mentally prepared for what it took. This is business. There’s nothing sure or guaranteed about any of this, but if you got good training and you’ve got good tools and you got good people around you and you do the work, in all likelihood you’re going to get the results sooner rather than later. 

It’s not like these strategies don’t work. Everyone says, “This is work.” I’m living proof that it works. It’s not that it does work or not, the question is, “Can you figure out and make it your own and go in there and knock on enough doors and take enough rejection to make it work?” It works. There’s a lot of reasons why I do this show. One of the reasons is I get to speak to a lot of smart people. I make a lot of friends that are smart because of this show. The main thing that I set out to do when I started it was, I don’t care if you pick me as your coach or you pick Kent or you pick someone else, or if I’m interviewing someone, and sometimes I do, that doesn’t even have anything to do with real estate, but it’s a great idea. If real estate is not for you, maybe you should try this. 

The idea of this show is I’m trying to help people figure out where they belong so they become financially free so that they can get on with the part of life where they get to become what they’re supposed to be, whatever that is. You want to do seller financing strategy and it only works in certain parts of the country? It doesn’t work in every part. I’m a good choice, but I’m not the only choice. Do you want to know how to scale a big business? Kent‘s done more scaling than I’ve ever thought about. Maybe he’s the guy. You train from wholesaling all the way up to scaling the business that you do 800 houses a year. You teach that and everything in between. 

 

Everyone’s got a volume that they do, that shows whether entry-level should be, or maybe they even need the backup a little bit to square up what they’re doing. The biggest problem with a lot of the real estate entrepreneurs that I know have, is figuring out how to set up a business so they have the freedom that everyone says they want, but a lot of times, the entrepreneurs set up these businesses, they become enslaved to because they don’t know how to compartmentalize the business. 

You used a powerful word there is that they set up a “business.” I would argue that no, they don’t. What they’re setting up is a hustle. As you and I both clearly understand, learning how to go out and create income and replaces a job is literally the first step, but that’s not a business, you figured out how to not have to work for anybody and how to take care of your family, but you don’t own a business yet. It’s simple to know and be own a business, just leave. Think about what would happen, Mitch, in your business right now if you took off for six months, when you got back, there would be more money in your bank account than when you left, without question and so with mine. 

That’s a business. There’s people, processes, operations and systems in place that are going to make sure that the cash register is still syncing while you’re gone enjoying your life, controlling your time. What people have to understand is it’s a means to an end, is that coming in, the first step in this journey is you got to get comfortable transactionally putting it together, understanding how to replace income, understanding how to get enough income in house where you can walk away from your job or whatever the case may be, Unfortunately, the great irony in my opinion of this and this clearly varies from business model to business model, in my world, the moment that you want to turn something into a business, that whole hustler side of your brain almost has to die. It has to go away because that hustler is constantly thinking, “I can do it myself. I’ll do this. Nobody can do it as good as I can.” When you do that, you’re enslaving yourself to a business or an operation that is a high paying job. 

It even worse than a high paying job because you can get yourself on a hamster wheel where you’re running to meet payroll every Friday, which is a horrible feeling. Usually, it starts out transactional. You make a living, but you’ve got to keep doing transactions. The next logical move is to do the transactions, but with the money you make from the transactions, get involved into something that produces residual income coming in so that you can relieve yourself. If you run at that pace transactionally all the time, you’re going to burn out. It’s just a matter of time. My problem was maybe you’re similar, probably not, but I never moved to the next phase until I woke up one morning and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” 

I went to sell a house. I sold the house. I came back. I was so unhappy. I should have been happy I sold the house. I made a great profit but I was frustrated and angry. I walked in and said, “This is no longer been fun for me. I can’t do this anymore. Emotionally, I don’t want to do it anymore. I’ve done it so many times. I don’t want to do it anymore and I’m not going to do it.” I sat down and watched my sales phone ring for two days and not answer it because I said, “I’m not selling any more houses.” My wife finally said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know, but I got to find someone to answer that phone.” I hadn’t sold a house since that day, but unfortunately, I was a personality, which gets close to the edge of walking out. I get to the end and say, “I can’t leave it because it’s worth too much money.” 

I’m going to have to take a deep breath and figure out who’s going to sell my houses. The first paycheck the biggest thing for you. One of the other first great things that happens is when something starts happening that you’re not doing anymore. My first one was sales. I subbed out sales once I saw that I didn’t have to sell a house that someone else could sell my houses. I’m selling houses now and I’m at the Lake on my boat. I sold two houses. I’m not working wherever I’m at. It doesn’t matter where you’re at. That became the revelation and then that sparked like that first check sparks, “How do I do this over and over again?” It sparked the idea, “How do I sub out acquisition? How do I sub out this office work?” 

It’s all like these tiny building blocks. People think they happen overnight, but it took me a year and fourteen months to automate my business. Maybe I’m slow, but from the day I said I’m not doing this anymore, someone’s going to do everything, it took me a year and fourteen months. The problem with it was instead of doing 100 houses a year, I had to get to where I didn’t care if I did one. I got to fix this office. The fourteen months it took me to fix my office, I only sold 33 houses. I figured out the reason why. Before, when I was trying to fix my business, I did not give myself permission not to buy 100 houses a year. There was nothing left of me to fix the business at the end of 100 houses, there wasn’t time or the mental fortitude to do it. The day I didn’t give a shit because I was so worn out that I didn’t care if I ever bought another house again. That’s the day I fixed my business. 

I hope that people are reading this carefully. The irony is that the bigger the business gets, the harder the problems are to solve, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less real. Getting to a place where you’re flipping 100 a year by yourself is a lonely business and sucks the life out of you. To the readers, I would venture to say that he’s doing 100 houses a year, how bad could it be? It can be bad to the point where you’re willing to effectively put yourself in a box where you got to figure out how to automate and do all those kinds of things. If you listen to my story as well, when your life and the things that matter being your time and who you spend it with, when that becomes such a powerful force inside of you that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get that time back and construct the business or rework the business to where it serves you versus the other way around, this is a powerful place for people to get to. 

Back to the original point, you don’t start there, you arrive there. Hopefully, guys like us in a show like this helps people to understand that it’s a main stone edge. You got to go through the hustler side of the business, you got to do the things, but as fast as you can get to a place where your time matters, you want to solve that problem as quickly as you can. You don’t want to be 100 houses a year in with a massive machine having to slow it all the way down to fix it. There are things you can do to put things in place to make that happen quickly. 

Life has a way of humbling you, and you need to be humbled. Click To Tweet

I’ve recognized two trends. Tell me if there’s another trend, what I try to get the go–getters to do when they’re on their way up was at least pick one facet of your business, the sales or the acquisition or some admin area or something, while you’re doing this, take a little extra time and get one thing off your plate. That’ll free up some time. It gets easier to get the second piece off your plate because you already got one piece off your plate. You’ve freed up some time. The other way to do it is to get up with so much financial reserve that you can damn near shut down the sales side and the acquisition side for a moment to start to train the people. What do you think about that? Are there other choices besides that? 

I would try to avoid door number two. I’ve noticed this, it’s human nature. People get conned into believing, even some of the most successful people out there that, “I can’t slow down enough to train. I can’t find any good people.” First thing I would tell people is you have to change the language that you use. I’ve yet to meet somebody, I do this to people all the time that if I ask them something they’re super passionate about, it might be NBA, “Tell me what you know about NBA.” “I can tell you everything about LeBron James. I can tell you everything about this.” Let me make sure I got this straight. When you’re super passionate about something, you know every detail, exactly what they do and the stats, you’ll sit there. You cannot use the words can’t. Can’t and cannot are extremely limiting when you’re trying to do something that’s uncomfortable. 

You need to change that language because you’re always listening. You hear yourself saying this, you need to change that language to, “I choose not to,” because for guys like us, if I sit there and say, “I can’t scale, or I can’t find people.” I then replaced it with, “I choose not to.” That doesn’t feel good. What that feels like is this isn’t a priority. When we don’t like the way that we feel about something, we have a tendency to take different actions. The reality of the situation is we are all walking around with one of the best training tools in our pocket every single day. I don’t know anybody to this day that isn’t walking around with a high-quality video camera that you can easily turn it on. 

Whether you’re at a seller appointment or whether you are going on a property or whether you’re doing transaction coordinator and you’re shuffling paper on your desk, turn that sucker on and record it then take it and go to a website called Rev.com, they will transcribe that video for you in less than 24 hours. The moment you do those two things, think about what you created. By the way, it didn’t require you to do anything that you aren’t already doing. You literally recorded a training video and you have a training transcript. You put both of those, whether you put them into a private Facebook group or a private YouTube channel or anything else, and you host it right there, you have the beginnings of a training mate. It costs you nothing. 

It was all free with the exception of the transcription, it took you no extra time. You have to, number one, be careful of the language you use, because it’s not true, but you will make it true. If you sit there and tell yourself, “I choose not to do these things.” You will change quickly, because what that feels like is, “I’m choosing not to do this because my family, my health, my time is not important enough.” Guys like us don’t like the way that feels at all. It will make you start changing. 

You start looking for the elegant and simple solutions, and they’re all around us. Let’s think about what you and I are doing right now. Two technically challenged guys get on a Zoom recording and hit record and we have the makings of a training right here. It’s this simple. It’s pennies on the dollar. If we had to go and think about, if you and I were putting something together, “Let’s sit down and put together a training module.” It doesn’t have to be that complex. Sit down and talk about what you do, and you will have the beginnings of training, which to your point, takes a lot of the heavy lifting off you. I 100% understand that if I had to sit down with somebody right now and train them on acquisitions, in lieu of me doing acquisitions, I understand that mentality, but it doesn’t have to be that choice. The choice can be as simple as what I pointed out. 

When I would get these people to train them, one of the tasks and one of things they had to do up front was they had to document everything they did and create the manual beyond what I had done. If there’s any improvements or there’s changes, they had to keep the steps of everything they did together for me so that if they ever left, I had the manual for that chair. I had sold myself on the idea that flipping houses wasn’t a business you can automate. That’s the bag of crap I had sold myself because I couldn’t do it, then it wasn’t automatable. Some man sent me down one day when I said that to him and he said, “They push a Mercedes-Benz out the back door of a factory about 1 every 30 seconds. What’s more complicated, flipping a house or building a Mercedes-Benz?” I said, “Building a Mercedes-Benz.” He says, “They put one out in a matter of seconds. Every second there’s one rolling out the back door. You’re wrong.” 

It’s a great lesson, because anybody that’s reading this, they should understand this. You get to be right in what you believe. To your friend that pointed out to you, you can sit there and believe that this can’t be automated. You won’t take any action and you get to be right, or you can question everything and say, “There’s got to be a way to automate this and find the solution.” 

While we’re on the subject, there’s a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maltz that I read that changed my mind about the way I think and also made me start gating myself talk. I started listening to what I was saying to myself. The person that you will talk to more than anyone in the world is yourself. You’ll have long, lengthy conversations with yourself forever from the time your eyes opened up to the time they closed. Even while you were asleep, you’re having conversations if you’re dreaming. You got to watch what you’re saying because Kent said it is exactly true. “Whatever you say is what’s going to happen.” If you keep repeating it long enough, it’s going to happen. That can be good and bad. 

Words are powerful. 

Let’s talk about what you have to offer. I’m going to send everybody to 1000Houses.com/Kent. You want to know more about Kent or anything he’s about to mention now, go there. There’ll be all the contact information, if he’s got some freebies to give away or anything to give away, it’ll be over there. If he’s written a book, it’ll be over there. If he has a website, it’ll be over there. Tell us how you can help people. What are the different stages you can help people at? 

First off, I appreciate that opportunity. People can connect with me on social media, on Instagram or Facebook, @KentClothier, you can go to my website, KentClothier.com, or you go to my company’s website which is REWW.com. We help people at every stage. I’ve become extremely passionate during the pandemic about trying to get as many people involved as I can and show them the automation, the tools, what’s possible, believe it or not, as little as $1. We have a $1,500 course that we have sold for the last few years. 

April of 2020, I took it all the way down to $1. I’ve got a ton of flak for doing that, but we’ve helped about 10,000 people get into that program now. The feedback has been amazing. It isn’t about the $1, let’s be clear. It’s about getting you into our world. If you’re in our world, I promise you that at some point, I’ll prove to you how valuable all this can be to you. That’s my way of saying, I’ll take all the risks, let us show you what we can do for you. As you progress, we can talk about what it looks like to move up the ladder with us. We have eleven courses that are available in our academy, our company, REI Nation, flips 800 properties a year to investors all over the world. We have mentoring and coaching and everything. If you want to get in and check it out, get under the hood and understand exactly who we are and that we’re good people, we’ve been around for a long time, we’ve helped a lot of people, that’s probably the easiest way to get somebody introduced to exactly who we are and how we operate. 

Dale Ramsey would hate, I racked up more credit card bill, but it was all good debt. Dale Ramsey does the primal scream when people get debt-free. Around this show or at my side of coaching, we ring the bell when someone can fire their boss. That’s my primary goal. It’s to help people become independent financially so that they can become who they they’re supposed to be and not be given 2,600 hours. You’ll notice I say 2,600 hours, hardly anyone ever corrects me. If you do the math at 40 hours a week, it’s 2,080 hours in a year if you worked 40 hours a week. Everyone goes, “It’s only 280, not 2,600.” I say, “No, if you’re going to make it my world, you better be the kind of guy that got paid for 280 but went ahead and put in 2,600. If you’re not that guy, you don’t make it in this business.” 

Mitch, let me give you a shout out before we get out of here because it’s funny, I teach people one of the things I become extremely passionate about in the last several years is teaching people how to build wealth, how to get in the game in a powerful way outside of wholesaling, outside of flipping and turnkey. One of the prerequisites that we have was we make them go and read your book. In fact, we buy the book for them and ship it to them to make sure they get it. I want to shout you out. You don’t know that about me. 

I did not know that. 

That’s a huge shout out to you. 

Thank you so much. I had no idea. I’m humbled. I never intended to write a book. Something tragic happened that was cataloguing my life. That year that I started that book, I bought 150 houses, which was a little much for me at the time. I had to cut back a little bit. I didn’t intend to write that book. The reason why it worked was I didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought because I was in this grieving process. I wanted to show the uglier sides of the business. I would go to these seminars and people would show these nice checks and these boats and the dancing girls, but no one ever told me about the guy that tears your house up and the leaves with all the sheetrock busted and the copper gone. No one ever told me about that. 

I’m like, “Shouldn’t have someone mentioned that part?” That book, My life & 1,000 Houses: Failing Forward to Financial Freedom, is that the one you’re talking about? I fall down a lot in that book and that’s what people appreciated. I talked a lot about my time in the woods. People would call me and say, “You and I are so much alike.” I start talking to them, I say, “I’m thinking to myself, we’re not alike at all.” What they were connecting to, which I figured out later, was I had my time in the woods and they’re having their time in the woods. It’s just as dark for both of us there. The journey getting out of it is the same. That’s what they were connecting with. 

I wanted you to know that that’s a powerful book. We have 60,000 students around the world. We highly recommend that they read it. I would have thought you would appreciate knowing that. 

 

I had no idea. I am so flattered. Thank you so much. One last thing, COVID there’s a lot of pain right now, a lot of people need to start over or find something else, what do you want to say to them? 

Take action man. Take messy action if it’s necessary. I would prefer that you take messy action than no action. The time is now. The clock is ticking on all of us. Do not hesitate in any way whatsoever while you’re thinking about it. Somebody else is out there doing it. Get in the game. 

If you think there’s a perfect plan, there’s not. Every plan is in the middle of a morph right now. My plan, the way I bought houses a few months ago and the way I’m buying houses now, the way I bought a few months before that isn’t the same as I’m buying them right now. You got to keep shifting and you got to talk to people and figure out what’s working or get other options. Just because something is working in another market, it doesn’t mean it works in your market. You got to get a lot of feedback to figure out what’s working right in your space right now and then you ride it for a little while. When it starts to drop off, you got to find something else. Kent, Thanks. I’d like to thank everybody out there for stopping by to get you some Kent Clothier. 

 

Important Links

• 1000Houses.com/Kent  
• 1000Houses.com/TFF  
• 1000Houses.com/Livecomm  
• 1000Houses.com/100 
• 1000Houses.com/101  

 

About Kent Clothier

Kent Clothier is a real estate veteran. As the Founder and CEO of Real Estate Worldwide (REWW), a multi-faceted real estate education company with headquarters in La Jolla, California.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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