From Corporate America to Real Estate Rockstar

Mike:This is the flipnerd.com Expert Real Estate Investing Show, the show for real estate investors, whether you’re a veteran or brand new. I’m your host, Mike Hambright and each week I bring you a new expert guest that will share their knowledge and lessons with you. If you’re excited about real estate investing, believe in personal responsibility and taking control of your life and financial destiny, you’re in the right place.
This is episode number 420 and my guest today is Rashad Sullivan. Rashad is only 26 years old but wise beyond his years. He got out of college just a couple years ago and followed the traditional path of going into corporate America but quickly realized that it was not for him. In just his second year of investing, he earned more than ten times what he was making annually in the corporate world.
Today, you’ll not only learn more about Rashad and his path to financial freedom, you’ll learn what it takes to be successful in real estate investing, the importance of defining exactly what it is that you want, focusing on what you’re good at, outsourcing the rest and finding the right mentor and the right group of others to surround yourself with for support. This episode will inspire you and hopefully energize you into action taking mode. Please help me welcome Rashad Sullivan to the show.
Hey, Rashad. Welcome to the show.
Rashad:Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me, man.
Mike:I’ve been excited to have you on. I want you to introduce yourself here in just a second. It’s always exciting to talk to a young guy. Maybe you’ll share your age with us here in a little bit, that just learned this early. One of the things—this is episode number 420. We’ve done a lot of shows and I have a pretty big network. Whenever I ask people and I ask this question all the time, “What’s your biggest regret?” people always say I wish I had started earlier. So, I’ve got to applaud you for getting started at a young age and you’re just crushing it now. Anyway, without stealing your thunder, tell us more about you. Who’s Rashad?
Rashad:Yeah, man. Thanks for that. It’s funny. Even at my age now, I’m like, “Man, I could have started a little bit sooner.” My name is Rashad. I’m out in California. I’m in the Central Valley, probably like, I don’t know, if anybody’s heard of Modesto, Stockton, Sacramento, I’m in that area. I’m 26 years old. I kind of fell into real estate out of nowhere. Basically, I was going to college. I was working a full-time job and going to school full-time. I was like, “This is terrible.” I hated it. I knew when I graduated I didn’t think the corporate world was for me.
Just from the people I worked with every day and kind of talking with them, I was like, “This isn’t for me. There’s got to be more. I kind of just stumbled into real estate based on looking at rental properties. I was like, “I’m going to have some rentals, maybe have some passive income.” Just supplement my income so I don’t have to be at this job. I kind of fell into flipping and have been going after it ever since, man.
Mike:What was your undergrad in?
Rashad:Business. It’s actually funny. It was in business, but it was a concentration in computers. I’m a huge data nerd. I could break down an Excel spreadsheet like nobody’s business. That was kind of my focus. It just so happened that major fell into business and I was doing that.
Mike:What’s the first thing that you might have felt like unsatisfied in your first job there in the corporate world? How did you find real estate though?
Rashad:My dad has quite a few rentals. He has five or six properties he bought. He was always working on those houses. He did all the work himself. He managed all that stuff. When I saw him, I was like, “This doesn’t sound like something I really want to do.” As I kept going, I kept thinking about it like, “I guess it would be cool I can do it differently.” I was fond of real estate. I knew you could make money with it. I knew a lot of people that did it. I knew it allowed a lot of flexibility to people. But I didn’t know anything about it. I started doing reading and saw that people were in property management and buying them differently. They would cashflow and this kind of stuff like that. My dad made money, but at the same time, it was more of an equity play more so than a cashflow play. So I kind of just started looking at that.
I remember this one guy, he posted a check, a guy out of Fresno and he posted a $50,000 check. It was like $50,000 for one house. That’s like double what I make at my job. I was like, “Well, flipping sounds kind of interesting. If he could do it, I could do it.” That was kind of my goal, but I didn’t knew I didn’t have the money. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was going to try to go more of the wholesaling route, but it just—as I kept going, wholesaling didn’t sound like what I really want to do. I started dabble more into flips.
Mike:Refresh my memory—you’ve been an investor for how long now?
Rashad:Successfully? I bought my first house in the beginning of 2016. I started trying to buy a house at the mid-2015. But yeah, 2016 I bought my first property.
Mike:So, about two, two and a half years, I guess. I know you shared, just for folks that are listening, Rashad is a member of our Investor Fuel Mastermind and you kind of shared your story there. I don’t want to put you on the spot, but if you want to share how much you were making at your job and what you made in your first full year as a real estate investor.
Rashad:For sure. At my job, I was making about $38,000 a year, something like that. I was doing that. Then in 2016, kind of struggling to get in there. I think I bought six houses, I think three of those were to partner. I think gross profit was probably around somewhere in the $200,000, I think. Then 2017, I bought 13, all mine. I only sold seven of those, I think I sold three of those this year. In that year, I think I did a little under half a million.
Mike:The struggle is real, right? It’s all relative, right. For folks listening, he’s in Northern California, so there’s some bigger deals out there, but to go from making $30,000-some a year to 7 to 10x’ing that pretty quickly is awesome, man. We laugh here, we both know that was a lot of hard work. Right?
Rashad:For sure, man. You never could get the whole picture from someone. I’ll be happy to explain but I won’t go full in detail, but 3:00 a.m. was my usual bedtime, if not later, getting up at 9:00, still trying to answer phones and stuff like that. There’s a lot of hours, I mean, Saturdays and Sundays, all of that. It wasn’t just I was kicking back, flipping houses. I was very actively involved. Very actively looking for more deals and asking for help, mentors, all that kind of stuff. There’s a lot of work that went into that, for sure.
Mike:We talk a lot about that. It’s really easy for people to think that this is an easy business. People that know me, people that have heard me talk for more than an hour, they know I’m constantly saying how difficult this business is. It’s a challenging business. You’re working for yourself and you’re making a lot more money than you were before and you’ve got more freedoms than you ever had working for somebody else. That’s the tradeoff, right?
Rashad:Yeah, man.
Mike:Awesome. We’re going to be talking a lot today about—a lot of folks, even for those listening right now, you heard Rashad talk about his numbers, he’s not doing huge volume in terms of units. Some of that is because he’s in California, in Northern California and the deals are bigger. I think a lot of times, there’s a lot of my fellow podcasters out there, lots of information that’s put out that talks a lot about the number of deals that somebody does. Today, Rashad is going to talk about us quite a bit about it should be about the lifestyle and what you’re trying to accomplish.
A lot of us get into real estate investing because we want financial freedom, but we also want freedom of our time. It’s kind of hard to have those things if you’re like a super high volume person sometimes. It sounds kind of sexy or cool that somebody is doing huge volume, but sometimes that’s not really what’s necessary to live the life you want. Did I say that right, Rashad?
Rashad:Yeah, for sure, definitely. It’s really easy when I got started to get caught up just seeing all these people doing all these deals and you think that I need to live that same kind of vision. For me, I was chasing that for a while but I realize you really don’t have to unless you really want to. Obviously, I have aspirations to grow and do more deals. At the same time, I don’t feel like doing 30 deals a year is a for sure minimum to success. I think as long as you’re making money, you’re able to provide for your family and community and all this stuff, you don’t have to do all of that.
Announcer:If you’re an active real estate investor already doing deals and looking to double or triple your business, you should consider joining the Investor Fuel Real Estate Investor Mastermind. We’re a small group of investors that share our best practices, tips and tricks with one another in an effort to all win.
We limit our membership to only one to two members per market, so everyone shares their knowledge, tips, and tricks openly and honestly. Our members include some buying one to two houses a month up to some of the most respected investors and leaders in the real estate investing industry, some of which have personally done over a thousand deals. If you’d like to be considered for our invitation-only world class mastermind, please visit investorfuel.com to request your personal invitation. Our next meeting is coming up quickly. Go to investorfuel.com now to learn more.
Mike:It sounds kind of sexy or cool that somebody is doing huge volume, but sometimes that’s not really what’s necessary to live the life you want. Did I say that right, Rashad?
Rashad:Yeah, for sure, definitely. It’s really easy when I got started to get caught up in just seeing all these people doing all these deals and you think that I need to live that same kind of vision. For me, I was chasing that for a while but I realize you really don’t have to unless you really want to. Obviously, I have aspirations to grow and do more deals. At the same time, I don’t feel like doing 30 deals a year is a for sure minimum to success. I think as long as you’re making money, you’re able to provide for your family and community and all this stuff, you don’t have to do all of that.
Mike:Yeah. The thing I tell people all the time—I catch myself saying units. How many units are you doing? What’s your volume? Stuff like that. Ultimately, another thing I say is you can’t put units in the bank. None of that matters, ultimately.
Rashad:For sure.
Mike:You are wise beyond your years, my friend, being 26 years old. Talk about what you have to do when you get in this business. How do you figure out what you want to accomplish if you’re not focused on, “I heard this guy and he says he’s doing X and I want to beat him?” Who cares about that. Just talk about the importance of defining what it is you want.
Rashad:Definitely. I’ll be pretty vulnerable here. When I first got started, I had no idea. I was like, “Whatever this guy is doing, I’m going to do that and that’s the way to do it.” I think really looking back, I wish I would have clearly defined things as far as like, “I would like to make this amount of money and what avenue should I take to get there,” so, that’s flipping, wholesaling, development, whatever the case may be. I know a guy who does one development deal a year and makes seven figures.
That’s awesome. That’s great. He has a pretty—I wouldn’t say cushy lifestyle, he still works, but at the same time, that’s what his avenue. I think getting clearly defined on what you really want. Do you want a huge team? Do you want a lot of staff? Obviously, we all have a revenue goal, but I think we don’t have to necessary equate that to units. I think we have to figure out what am I passionate about, what do I really want to do? How hard do I want to work? I think all those factors boil into what you should do moving forward from that.
Mike:Yeah. One thing I see a lot of investors do—it’s funny how investors no matter where they’re at seem to fall into the same trap. It’s like this feast or famine situation, right? You might be making a lot of money or you just did another deal. You’re going to make a lot of money. But somehow in your mind, this fear kicks in of, “Well, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to find another one of those.”
Rashad:Yeah.
Mike:Then you’re always worried about doing more deals or feasting because you’re afraid of the famine.
Rashad:Yeah, man. So true. I quit my job in mid-2017, which is crazy because you’re like, “What the heck? What are you still doing there?” I think the fear of not being able to do another deal, yeah, I had a great cool, but what about moving forward? What if it’s over now? The fear kept me at that job for so long. I was miserable. I should have quit in the beginning of 2017, but I couldn’t do it, man. I was so scared I couldn’t do it. I finally had to, I just couldn’t do anymore.
Mike:Yeah. I think back to the goals, it’s really important for people to realize that. Like I said, we all get into this for freedoms and sometimes people doing everything themselves. I know you’re working on some issue. We’re all constantly trying to fire ourselves from certain parts of my job. I say we all are, there’s a lot of people that don’t. They’re just like no, I’m just going to do it. They don’t have no plans to grow outside of themselves because they don’t want to have employees or they don’t want that extra expense or whatever it might be. What ends up happening is you get trapped into yet another job. You’re not really an entrepreneur, you’re self-employed and the job owns you instead of you owning the business.
Rashad:Yeah, for sure. I have no problem saying that. I’m definitely self-employed. I have a job right now. It’s a well-paying job with a lot more freedom, but it’s still a job, man. The phones ring. Actually, after going to Investor Fuel a lot of stuff helping me. I was learning to outsource some of that stuff. Before, if the phone was ringing, if I’m sleep and it’s whatever time it is, I’m going to wake up and answer that call because it could be potential money. More so than now, it’s like I’ve outsourced some of that stuff. Now my phone rings twice. I don’t answer any of those calls. I follow up with those leads and see what’s going on. It’s different when you have a job and more so if you have a business. I’m working on being an entrepreneur more so than being self-employed.
Mike:Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about a lot of times in the past, people have told me—I think a lot of us grew up, I don’t know about you, but if you’re not good at something, like you’re in school, you’re constantly trying to get better at things you’re not good at. Now, the first time in a couple years ago, I’m starting to hear people say, “Man, if you’re not good at it and you don’t like it,” don’t focus on it, just focus on what you’re good at.” I know you believe that too. Talk about what you should focus your time on when you’re building your business and when you’re just getting started.
Rashad:Yeah, man. I’m going to terribly butcher this, but Gary has this chart where you go through and find out what you’re good at and what you’re not good at and write it down. And what you like doing and what you don’t like doing.
Mike:Gary Harper, yeah.
Rashad:Yeah, Gary Harper. He really wrote that down for me. I was like, “Whoa.” He’s like what you’re not good at and what you don’t like to do is probably not getting done, so you might as well find someone to do it. I was like, “That is pure gold.” I’ve never thought of it like that. Depends on who you listen to, you always hear, “Work on your weaknesses and get better.” I just don’t feel like that’s the best way to 100% do it.
For me, I don’t feel like I’m a very, very adequate salesman. I have worked a little bit on my sales, but I’m only working on a place that I get to a certain level and then I’m going to try to find someone who’s a great salesman, just so I understand but enough to pass it off because I don’t care what I do, I think I’ll be working on it forever if I wanted to be the greatest salesman. I’m more good at analyzing deals, finding deals, working on more creative stuff. I would rather focus more on that than try to focus more on sales.
Another example, project management, to be honest, I’m not good at project management, but I know how to hire the right VC to go do the job because he knows what he’s doing. So I hire VCs to help me with that. It works out better. I think that we should focus on what we’re really, really good at, learn the stuff that we’re really weak at, but learn enough that you can get it off your plate and get someone in there that really knows what they’re doing.
Mike:No doubt. Plus, if you’re not good at, you usually don’t like it either. That’s part of the reason you’re not good at it is you don’t like it. So, why do more of it.
Rashad:True.
Mike:This is kind of crazy. You were referring to Gary. Gary actually is coming into my office this Sunday for us to do our quarterly EOS update, but I have the same chart. The same chart you’re talking about, I literally have it on my wall right here. You can’t see it on the camera. It’s kind of like you love it, and you’re great at it, you like it, and you’re good at it. You don’t like it but you’re good at it. And you don’t like it and you’re not good at it. It’s kind of like this matrix of what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing. Just focus on what you enjoy doing and you’re good at. That’s kind of where you’re a shining star. The other stuff, eventually you’ve got to outsource.
Rashad:Yeah, man.
Mike:I would argue that most real estate investors should never focus on the administrative stuff. Generally, we driven entrepreneurs, right? I don’t want to say this to offend anybody, there’s almost no way you’re a driven entrepreneur that’s forward thinking and you’re a good admin. You might be detail-oriented, but you’re just not by definition, we’re not detail-oriented.
Rashad:Right. You’re speaking to me like I’m looking around, like I’ve got bills out here I need to pay, like this needs to be filed. I bought three houses and I haven’t updated my little filing charts. I can’t do it. I’m more focused on what’s the next deal. I looked at a house yesterday, I’m like, “Let’s try to find another deal, that may work.” We don’t focus on the back end stuff. We really do need an admin. That’s the first thing I think I need. I have tons of return mail back here that can be skip traced and stuff like that. Those things I need to focus on. Or I need someone else to [inaudible 00:18:44] Mike:There’s no doubt. As a real estate investor, the highest paying job we have is finding that next deal. I’d say kind of not necessarily in this order, but these three things—finding more deals, finding more money, and god forbid enjoying your life more, which is why we’re doing this anyway.
Rashad:For sure. [inaudible 00:19:03] right now.
Mike:The crazy thing about the administrative stuff is there is somebody that is looking for your job, the job you have. They will be awesome at it. They don’t know how to find deals. They don’t want to have to deal with that, but they give me a checklist of stuff to start working on and I’ll love it all day long. So you have to find that person.
Sometimes we think that person doesn’t exist because we don’t like it. Like nobody must like it. But I’ll tell you, when you find an admin that’s like, “Just get out of my way and give me a list of stuff to start checking off,” and you hear them laughing because they checked off another one, they’re totally geeking out on finishing a puzzle, it’s like that’s when you realize, “Man, I should have gotten rid of this a long time ago.”
Rashad:Yeah, man. The same thing with my CPA—I can’t stand taxes. I don’t like bookkeeping. I like knowing where we’re at, but I don’t like the process to get there. I was talking to my CPA yesterday, he was super juiced about we can do this and we can try this, and once I get your books, I can have this and I’m just like, “Yeah, dude, whatever. Let’s get it done.” I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to focus on that stuff. I want to focus on buying more houses and moving forward.
Mike:I used to have a CPA and tax guy. He would give me tips, like what to do, and he would start giggling. I was like, “That guy is in the right seat.” He was so geeked out on it. I love to save taxes. He wasn’t even saving himself taxes. He was saving me taxes, but he was like giddy about it. I was like, “That’s the right guy.”
Rashad:Exactly. I need him for sure staying around forever.
Mike:So, let’s talk about how you—I know you listen to some podcasts or other things you did when you were getting started, but talk about the importance of a mentor or somebody to lean on for guidance.
Rashad:Oh, man. I can go on and on here. When I first got started, obviously, a lot of people talk about it, but you’re like, “Yeah, that costs money and I’m not trying to do that.” For the longest time, I fought it. I was like, “I’m not going to [inaudible 00:21:00] I’ll figure this out,” and then five to six months later, I’m like I’m really struggling, I’m running out of money, what do I do?” I finally gave in and got a mentor and it’s like, “I wish I would have did it a long time ago.”
But the one thing I did do when I got a mentor—I got a couple mentors, I don’t want to say they’re bad. They weren’t really aligned with what I wanted to do. They were a mentor in the real estate realm, but they were the wrong mentors. So, I would 100% recommend getting a mentor, but more so than just getting a mentor is getting someone in what you want to do. If you want to be a developer, don’t get a flip wholesale mentor. That makes no sense.
If you want to strictly flip, you probably don’t really want to get a wholesaling mentor as your primary person, maybe for lead gen, but as far as to develop the flip side of your business, there’s a whole other avenue, so you need a whole other skillset that that mentor may not be able to give you. You need to get a mentor for sure, I would 100% recommend it, but more so than getting any mentor is getting the right mentor. I wouldn’t recommend getting someone because they’re cheap. And that’s what I did. I was like, “This guy, a couple thousand, I’ll just do that.” I wouldn’t recommend it. Now I would say multiple five figures to get the right mentor to help me and it’s like worth every penny.
Mike:Yeah. You ultimately get what you pay for. I have a coaching program. Honestly, our coaching program is very expensive. And when people ask about it, I’m like, “I’ve got thousands of shows for free on FlipNerd. You can have access to those. It’s just not the same. I mean, I love my podcast. Obviously, we’ve been creating tons of them. I love doing those. But it’s different with the information out there. There’s probably nothing you couldn’t learn on YouTube. Let’s be honest. It’s just not necessarily in a paint by numbers order of exactly what to do when.
Rashad:For sure, man. We were chatting about it really quick before we got online was like a lot of people that listen to podcasts and stuff, they generally don’t do the information on the podcast. I can give you the break down step by step in a five-hour podcast to whatever on everything and you’re probably not going to do one of those things, if not any of them. You’ll probably think about it forever and then you’ll just get busy and you won’t do it. I was like that. I listened to a lot of podcasts for a lot of cool strategies. I’m looking back, “Why wasn’t I doing this?”
But you don’t know what you don’t know and I think that accountability aspect is missing as well as the monetary involvement is missing as well as asking questions. Like I can listen to a podcast on how to do marketing, but it’s like how do I set up a marketing calendar so I can stay consistent? That’s probably not going to be on there. But they’ll tell you to send out these letters to this list and you get calls. How do I stay consistent? There’s little facets in there that you can’t get from a podcast, YouTube, whatever.
Mike:I think part of the mentoring and coaching is, like you said, the side conversations. It’s not the here’s the meat and potatoes, but it’s like there’s always bits and pieces like, “How do I do that?” or even if you say it, sometimes you and every individual listening learns a different way. Sometimes they’re like, “Can I do one and show you what I did and let me know what you think?” Most of us learn by doing, not necessarily just by listening. We like to do it and have some more questions about it. There’s some iterations going on before you’re kind of like, “I’m totally comfortable with this now, right?
Rashad:Yeah, man, 100%. When I did my first deal, I thought I knew everything because I listened to hundreds of podcasts because I had plenty of time in my job. I know what I’m doing and then I got my first deal. I partnered on it, which was great. We brought the money and I learned a ton and we split it. I learned so much just by doing that process, being at the jobsite escrow, who to talk to, what a binder is, all these different things.
I think that’s really necessary and you can’t get that from a podcast. It’s not the sexy thing to talk about, so it’s not going to be talked about. You’ve really got to learn by doing and by doing is getting out there. Or if you don’t learn by doing, you learn with a mentor in correlation with doing, so I think it’s a good pair to have a mentor as well as striving in a certain area. They can help you with stuff that is not talked about and not known.
Mike:You’ve been in the business a couple years here, what you start to realize, I probably spend between $50,000 and $100,000 a year on additional education. I’ve been in business for ten years. I’ve bought hundreds of houses. I’m really well-connected. I host the podcasts. I’m listening to hundreds of episodes here.
But I still value, “Hey, I need to go take a deep dive into a certain area just because I can’t learn that on my own.” I don’t have the time to figure it out on my own and the value. I practice what I preach. I value education even for myself. My wife bought an expensive training program recently just to learn tax liens and tax leads better. Even though we’ve been doing this for a long time, she’s like, “I value somebody showing me exactly what to do, like show me the shortcut.”
Rashad:Yeah, for sure. Definitely, that makes sense.
Mike:Awesome. Talk a little bit about there’s the mentoring and coaching side. Some of it’s about surrounding yourself with the right people. We kind of mentioned up front where you’re a member of the Investor Fuel Mastermind where we’ve got a lot of great people that have a lot of great experience there. I think a lot of newer people don’t really understand the value. They feel like if I get around other people like me that they’re going to take something from me, instead of saying I’ll share my knowledge and other people will share theirs too, but maybe share your thoughts on the importance of surrounding yourself with other people.
Rashad:Yeah, man. Kind of where I was at with that, I’m in a couple masterminds, one thing I realized, I feel like you can’t do this business as a lone ranger forever. I feel like there’s the people that do and I think they get to a certain point of success. But I feel like to really reach past that plateau, you really need some outside help. Me, after hanging out with Gary and taking a couple tests, I noticed I’m not a huge visionary person, but I’m a great implementer. So, Gary recommended it’s good that you’re in a couple masterminds because you can get vision from other people.
I remember talking about a couple guys from Investor Fuel, Steve and Mike Singletary. Listening those guys talk, I don’t think I slept that night, bro. I was up so late because these guys were talking about some big steps. It’s helped me to cast vision on my own vision. If I want to get to a certain place, these are the steps that need to happen and what’s possible and stuff like that. Just getting around a mastermind and talking with other people and even if you don’t have aspirations to go big, just talking with other people to help you get over some stuff. There’s somebody out there that’s been through the same situation you’ve been through.
Me being one of the youngest guy in the room, a lot of people didn’t want to talk to me. Once I started opening up talking about my business, a lot of people were interested. A lot of the other guys that were killing it came up to me and started giving me some great advice like, you need to stop doing this, do this, do this. That little correction has changed everything. I have so much more freedom. Right now, because I’ve outsourced a lot of stuff now, and just taken a lot of the information they gave me, and now I’m trying to refill my time with more stuff that I can do to work on to make better.
Mike:Yeah.
Rashad:It’s always good to have a community that you could . . . let me put it this way, a vested community too because you can have a community of people that come around for coffee and they’ll just share what they’re doing. When you have an investor community that’s want to get something out, that’s way better than just sharing stuff with people who kind of just I don’t want to say don’t care, but maybe don’t have that same kind of vested interested as well.
Mike:Yeah. It’s hard for me to not sound biased about this, but the more money you spend, the more vested you are on these things. We’ve done some free groups or there’s people that are like, “Why would I put to be part of your mastermind when I can just go start my own meetup?” There’s nothing wrong with that. But you’re not going to get the same collection of people in the room that can really move the needle for you.
I think the type of people that we have at Investor Fuel or any of the high-end masterminds are the type of people you can have a hallway conversation or hear them say something and it could literally double your business. There’s just little things you can pick up and be like, “Oh man, that’s going to change everything.” It’s not these big ideas necessarily. It’s little things that move the needle for those of us already in the business.
Rashad:Yeah. You learn so much from all these guys. I think one thing too is most people shy away from these high-end masterminds because the capital investment. It’s like man, if that makes you ten times the amount of money, is it worth it? You probably tell your coaching students all the time with direct mail, you can’t look at it as an advertising expense. You’ve got to look at it as an investment. If you spend $5,000 and you make $25,000, are you really going to be mad about it? In the long-term, it all boils out, and I think these masterminds help out a ton, especially for me, just the community and having people that under the business and want to grow and it’s like getting around these people helps a ton. I’m not pushing a mastermind by no means, but I will say it’s definitely changed my business and my life.
Also, too, me being young, I don’t have many friends that are doing this.
Mike:It’s a lonely business, right?
Rashad:Oh, for sure. A lot of my friends are working jobs and at a college and kind of still figuring it out and it’s like I’m not better than them by no means. It’s like I can’t really talk to you about anything else so it’s good to be around people that are business minded and focused. My other friends are from my other stuff and business is for you guys. It’s good to have the best of both worlds, I guess you could say.
Mike:That’s absolutely true. I think it helps to get around people that are—this is one of the things we say about masterminds or groups like that. If you’re the most accomplished person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. You need to constantly be getting yourself around people you aspire to be, not be like but they’ve achieved the kinds of things you hope to achieve.
Rashad:Yeah, definitely. 100%.
Mike:Awesome, man. Any kind of final words of wisdom here you want to share for those that are getting started? One of the themes I think we’re trying to get across here is don’t focus on volume, just focus on building a business you love, right?
Rashad:Definitely. Don’t get caught up in the hype. There’s a lot of hype out there. I was caught up a lot of times. I think also too comparison really kills your joy. I read the other day another kid out there is like 21 and he’s going to do almost seven figures this year. I was like, “Whoa.” Even I caught myself like, “Man, I’m 26, this, this and that.” Like he’s killing it, I’m doing well. Does it really matter? I guess you can only live the life that’s yours. You can’t live your life through someone else’s perspective. It’s like, man, just build a business that you can be happy about, keep your head down, keep working, and just keep going for it, man. Don’t let other people dictate your happiness. You know what I mean?
Mike:For sure. Yeah. Hopefully for folks listening, one other thing we’ve got across here is Rashad is 26, he’s doing well now. We all wish we could have started earlier, but if you’re listening right now and you haven’t started—I’m going to screw this quote up—it’s like the best time to get into real estate was 30 years ago and the second best time is today. If you haven’t started yet and you just heard somebody that’s 26 years old talk about how they’re crushing it, don’t let that discourage you, let that encourage you to go ahead and get started, like don’t wait another day. None of us are getting any younger, right? Now is the time.
Hey, Rashad, if folks wanted to learn more about you, I know you don’t have a whole lot of social stuff going on. Any way they can go follow you or follow along? Do you do anything for social media that you can share?
Rashad:It’s funny. I don’t. I need to. I get a lot of real estate ads all the time for other stuff going on. I don’t post anything, but I’m always on Facebook. You can look me up. My name is Rashad Sullivan. I have a graduation photo on there I’m going to change that’s like five years old. So I need to change that.
Mike:You’ve been busy buying houses, man.
Rashad:Yeah, man. I have. Some people probably added me like, “Who is this guy?” You can add me on Facebook. I’m always on Facebook. That’s pretty much the only social I’m really on. That’s probably the best way to contact me.
Mike:Cool. We’ll add a link down here in the show notes here. Awesome, man. Great to see you. We’ll see you next week at Investor Fuel, by the way. Thanks for joining us.
Rashad:Yeah, for sure, man. I’m excited for it. I’ll be out there. I’ll see you then.
Mike:Awesome. Take care, buddy. Have a good day.
Rashad:You too, man.
Mike:Hey, everybody. This is episode 420. We’re going to keep bringing them to you. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to the FlipNerd podcast on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, wherever you might listen to it. You can subscribe to us on YouTube and watch our videos out there. You can watch and listen to everything on flipnerd.com as well. We’re going to keep them coming at you, show us some love and we’ll keep these shows coming your way. Everybody have a great day, we’ll see you on the next one.
If you’re an active real estate investor already doing deals and looking to double or triple your business, you should consider joining the Investor Fuel Real Estate Investor Mastermind. We’re a small group of investors that share our best practices, tips, and tricks with one another in an effort to all win.
Real estate investing can be a lonely business for successful real estate investors, but it doesn’t have to be. Investor Fuel members meet four times a year, but we talk to each other 365 days a year and we focus on improving the profitability of our businesses, improving the quality of our lives. That’s why we do this, right? And making an impact on those around us so we can truly leave a legacy.
We limit our membership to only one to two members per market, so everyone shares their knowledge, tips, and tricks openly and honestly. Our members include some buying one to two houses a month up to some of the most respected investors and leaders in the real estate investing industry, some of which have personally done over a thousand deals. If you’d like to be considered for our invitation-only world class mastermind, please visit investorfuel.com to request your personal invitation. Our next meeting is coming up quickly. Go to investorfuel.com now to learn more.
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