This is episode #407, and my guest today is Steve Carlson. Steve is a good friend of mine, and fellow Texan…as he operates in San Antonio. Today we talk about how to build your business to stand the test of time. To be a successful real estate investor, to run a successful business, and to build a business where you’re not doing everything yourself…you need 3 key things:
1. A team with the right people
2. A balanced business model with multiple exit strategies (so you can balance ‘today cash’ with long term wealth and cash flow).
3. Access to capital to fund your business
Steve has been an investor for 20 years, through up and down markets, and shares a wealth of knowledge with us today. If you’re new, you’ll love today’s show. If you’ve been around for a while, today’s show may help you fill any gaps you have in your real estate investing business.
Please help me welcome Steve Carlson to the show!

Highlights of this show

  • Meet Steve Carlson, veteran San Antonio based real estate investor.
  • Learn Steve’s exit strategies, why it makes sense for him, and how you can determine the best mix for your real estate investing business.
  • Join our conversation about building a great team to help your business perform better, and help you get your life back!
  • Listen in as we discuss the importance of having access to private money for your real estate investing business.

Resources and Links from this show:

Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

FlipNerd Show Transcript:

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 407 and my guest today is Steve Carlson. Steve is a good friend of mine and a fellow Texan. He operates out of San Antonio, Texas. Today, we talk about how to build your business to stand the test of time.
To be a successful real estate investor, to run a successful business, and to build a business where you’re not doing everything yourself, you need three key things—a team with the right people and the right culture, people that have your values, a balanced business model with multiple exit strategies so you can balance today cash with long-term wealth and cash flow, and access to capital to fund your business to allow you to keep rental properties if you choose to or fix and flip houses that allows you to not have to make decisions because you don’t have access to capital. Really, really important.
We’re going to talk about those things and a lot more today. Steve has been an investor through 20 years through up and down markets, through thick and thin, through different teams and lots of other things going on. He really shares a wealth of knowledge with us today and with you.
If you’re new, you’re going to love today’s show. It’s going to help you get started on the right foot. If you’ve been around for a while, today’s show may help you fill any gaps you have in your real estate investing business and recognize maybe some bad habits you’ve picked up because we all do it over time. It’s going to be a great show. Please help me welcome Steve Carlson to the show.
Hey, Steve, welcome to the show.
Steve: Hey. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you having me on.
Mike: Yeah. I’m glad you’re here. We haven’t talked for a little while. We’ve talked a little bit here lately, but it’s been a while. I know you were on the show before. I actually don’t have it up, but it’s been probably a year and a half or so.
Steve: Yeah. That was a great show. It was one of the [best 00:02:10].
Mike: Yeah. Truthfully, I think maybe folks that listen to the show don’t always know this now but more than anything, I’ve meet so many people who—this is episode 407. We’ve done a lot of shows, obviously, and I really just enjoy having people I’ve had on before, people I’ve built relationships with or gotten to know. We could probably have ten different shows and talk about ten different topics.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. You have a little bit of a different angle than some of the folks that are on. Before we get started here, why don’t you tell a little bit more about you and who you are for those that don’t know you?
Steve: Sure. I’m Steve Carlson from San Antonio. I’ve been involved in real estate for going on 20 years now, a long time, full-time since 2009, but I bought a lot of deals when I was part-time. I understand the part-time, have a full-time job and do real estate on the side, been there done that. It’s tough. It’s heavy. The greatest thing we ever did or I ever did in my financial life was quit that J-O-B.
Mike: We’re going to get into your business model today and talk about how to get your business set up right. I know as real estate investors, we’re still dependent on people, people on our teams. People change and people flake out and people leave and come and go. So, that’s an ongoing challenge. Even when you’ve got the code cracked, it just takes one person on your team leaving to shift the dynamic of your business.
I know we’re going to get into that. Maybe you could share a little bit, a couple tips there you just said on that transition from part-time to full-time. A lot of people, I think, struggle with that. They want to go in full-time. They want to leave their job, but they need that bridge. Maybe share your thoughts there.
Steve: Yeah. It is a complicated thing for most people. It’s very difficult to leave that comfort of the J-O-B. What made it work for me is when I figured out and I knew that all I had to do was turn up that marketing knob and get the phone call ringing and I was free. I had the knowledge—being an engineer, I had to have the knowledge, and I had the experience. I knew I could just turn up that marketing knob and get the phone to ring.
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: Once I had that confidence and the support of my wife, then it was no stopping me. But it was a rough time to quit. It was 2009, middle of that recession, right? It was really scary. The first six months I did one deal. That was really scary. I was glad to have that parachute from my previous job and the support of an awesome wife. But funny, in the seventh month, we closed seven deals.
Mike: On the seventh month, you did six more deals? Yeah. I started in 2008 and I tell people all the time I didn’t know it. We didn’t think about market cycles. We just thought about we don’t want to go back to corporate America. Truthfully, you’d love to have 2009 to 2012 back now, right?
Steve: Oh, big time.
Mike: It’s coming. I don’t know when, but it will be here again.
Steve: We loaded up. That was a great time. We loaded up and my net worth increased exponentially every year for like five years in a row.
Mike: Yeah. One of the things we’re going to talk about today, we’re really going to talk about how to structure your business for the long haul. There’s a few legs to this stool. There’s having the financing in place, having the right team and people in place and having the right business plan, what you do with exist strategies.
Let’s start by talking about people. I know your team has changed over the past year. My team has changed a lot. The problem when you’re in a small business is your team is often always in flux, right? It’s not like you’re a large company and you’ve got 40 people and maybe 10% changes. It’s like you’ve got three people or four people and two people changing in a year is a 50% turnover.
Steve: Right.
Mike: But talk about the importance—we’ve had a little bit of conversation offline—just the importance for truthfully your mental wellbeing as well as your business to just have the right people in place.
Steve: Listen, we get into the business for lifestyle, right? If you’re a one-man show doing all the work, then it can get too busy and overwhelming. When I started hiring people, my first person was an administrative assistant, brought her into the house and she was awesome, did phenomenal things for me for a lot of years. We grew really well, had a healthy dynamic there, and things went really well.
Then we were doing so many deals and having so much effort and my time—she was admin. I’d get a contract, she handled a whole lot of stuff, but I was still calling sellers, I was still managing projects. So, my second significant hire was the guy that changed my life was my project manager. I don’t get a thrill out of going to rehabs every other week or every other day, I’m sorry. I don’t even get a thrill out of every other week. I don’t get a thrill out of them at all. I like to go when they’re finished.
Mike: Right.
Steve: I love the metamorphosis, but going and working with contractors is like pulling teeth. So, the project manager was a key, key hire for me. He changed my life, amazingly.
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: Then we hired an acquisition person and another administrative person. They’re moving in and out. It’s a struggle dealing with people.
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: I really admire those guys that are great at it. There’s a few guys that I can mention that are phenomenal culture builders and team builders. I wish I could model myself more after that and I’m trying to. I’m working on it really hard. This is one of my key things to implement this year is to be a better leader. That’s really what it’s all about. It’s not about managing people. It’s about being a leader.
Mike: Yeah, for sure.
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Steve: . . . builders and team builders. I wish I could model myself more after that and I’m trying to. I’m working on it really hard. This is one of my key things to implement this year is to be a better leader. That’s really what it’s all about. It’s not about managing people. It’s about being a leader.
Mike: Yeah, for sure. So, let’s talk a little bit about that project manager role. So, that kind of implies you were obviously doing some rehabs and spent a lot of time doing that. What do you think the right—there’s a lot of ways you can do that. If you’re not doing a lot of volume, it would be a part-time person that’s doing one-off and maybe they’re doing something else for you or maybe they have a full-time job and they check on things.
We’ve talked a lot on this show about coordinator, office manager, administrative type role and certainly, we talk a lot about acquisitions, the importance of an acquisitions manager. So, the project manager we haven’t talked a ton about before, so just to share a little bit on that, what point does it make sense to bring that person in? Because you’ve got to balance, “I don’t want to have to deal with that anymore,” with, “Can I keep somebody busy enough?” right?
Steve: Absolutely. My guy was very fortunate because he has his own rental portfolio and him and his dad flip houses too. So, he had other income, which was really key, I think.
Mike: Yeah, that’s good.
Steve: I couldn’t keep him full-time busy doing 20-25 deals a year. Today, he’s full-time busy. As a matter of fact, he’s overloaded today. I think it became overwhelming to me when we had 20 deals a year that we were acquiring and rehabbing. That’s when I couldn’t handle it anymore and effectively do anything else in the business. Now, if you can find a guy that doesn’t need a significant income, then bringing them on at 15, if you’re doing 15 or maybe two or three projects at a time, it’s a good time.
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: Having him manage rental issues is a big thing too. So, I no longer receive tenant calls. They go to our bookkeeper and then to Kevin. So, that’s a major lift off of my back too.
Mike: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about the culture stuff. I struggle with the same thing. We have FlipNerd and my house flipping business, rentals—things are a little more complicated than they used to be. Across the whole thing, I think we have about 14 people, but literally, there’s four or five that work in my office, all the rest are all over the country or all over the world, virtual folks. So, I struggle with that too, the culture stuff.
Truthfully, I don’t even really like to come to the office most days. I like to just go to Starbucks and work or somewhere because I can just kind of put the blinders on and focus on something, but it’s hard to build culture in a small business. There are times when my office just has one person in it because somebody’s working from home that day, I’m on vacation, a couple things going on like that where it’s like one person or two people.
It’s not like we’re Google over here where there’s a ton of people going on and there’s foosball tables all over or whatever they do there. It’s a little bit harder to do that. Let’s talk about culture in a small business and maybe some of the lessons you’ve learned.
Steve: Yeah. We are in a small office, right. So, we’re all—I’m just like you, Mike. I don’t want to go to the office if I don’t have to, but I have to. So, I’m there. When I’m there, I try to create a light, airy attitude/environment. The thing probably that is biggest about culture is it’s not something that you can really create. You have to hire the people that fit your culture.
So, when we’re hiring and interviewing and advertising, we advertise our values. This is our values. This is what we live by and this is the people that we are. If you don’t fit these values and if you’re not a person like me that values integrity more than anything else—probably second on the list—but you’re not going to fit. It’s not going to work for you.
Mike: Right.
Steve: The latest hires we have are great Christian folks that fit our culture and our environment and want to grow with us. They’re not necessarily entrepreneur types that want to create their own business because conflict, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: There are people that want to be individual contributors and can see our vision and can get involved in the excitement around our vision and growing to the point where we’re flipping 500 deals a year or whatever the number is, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: They get excited about that. I think that’s the basic background of where it comes from. You can’t really manufacture it. I am blessed with a wife that has a great personality that people love to be around. She’s a lot of fun. So, people like coming to hour office to hang out with Tamara. She’s such a fun person.
Mike: Not necessarily you, right?
Steve: No, not me at all. I am so blessed to have her there.
Mike: That’s awesome. So, let’s jump into the right exit strategy. So, a lot of new people tend to focus on wholesaling or assigning properties and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think you and I probably agree that long-term, you’re probably leaving money on the table if that’s all you’re doing.
And of course, if you’re not keeping some houses as rentals or doing some seller financing like you do, you don’t have any additional income streams coming in at all. You never get off that treadmill. Without being critical of other people’s models, let’s share a little bit about your model and your beliefs and a balanced mix of exit strategies, if you will.
Steve: Sure. I started out just flipping houses. That’s all. I didn’t understand wholesaling 20 years there wasn’t anybody to wholesale to in my little bitty town other than my friendly competitor. So, wholesaling wasn’t a thing. So, we fixed and flipped. After two or three years doing that with a full-time job, I realized this is just another job. It’s the same thing with wholesaling today. It can be a very high-paying job.
Mike: Yeah.
Steve: It’s a job. You quit doing it, the income stops. So, then we started buying rental properties. I’ve heard rental properties is the way to go for cash flow, right? We started loading up on rental properties, buying a bunch of rentals. I didn’t have the capital to buy them with cash, so they’re all leveraged.
I learned really quickly—well, over two or three years—that my rental portfolio—it doesn’t mean yours wouldn’t—but my rental portfolio didn’t cash flow a lot. So, I figured when the debt is paid off, I’m looking at the $500 a month that’s going to be added on top of that income and that’s going to set me free. So, leveraged real estate is a long play. That’s the end game.
Mike: Right.
Steve: Now, to get cash flow today, the game is to take those little bitty houses, those little $20,000, $30,000 houses and sell them for $40,000 to $60,000 on payments. So, you’re getting arbitrage. If you’re financing them, you’re buying them at 8% or 10% interest loans and then we’re selling them with 11% notes. So, we’re getting a little bit of arbitrage on the interest rate, but a huge arbitrage—maybe that’s the wrong word—on the spread.
Mike: Sure.
Steve: So, there’s no repairs, there’s no issues with maintenance. So, those things cash flow like crazy. They are amazing cash flow machines for us.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Steve: So, we got the cash flow from the notes. We have the long-term cash later from the rentals and we’ve got cash now needs to go buy the motorhome or whatever toys we want to buy from flips.
Mike: How do you break that down? How do you decide on those three things?
Steve: A lot of it has to do with financing of it. More than anything is the price point. If it’s an $80,000 house in San Antonio, it’s not a neighborhood where I want to go collect rents. I have a hard time relating to that socioeconomic level. I can’t quite get there. So, those are great for owner financing. There are great people in that socioeconomic level that have nice sized down payments that will pay and they have pride of ownership and those are the people we’re looking for to buy.
Mike: And at that price point too, $80,000 or below there, it’s not as interesting to you to make $10,000 or $15,000 by doing a fix and flip because the value of the property is so low. You’d rather make a lot more money over the long term.
Steve: Absolutely. It’s a massive difference. For those little houses, we buy them for $20,000 and sell them for $25,000 or $30,000 to collect a wholesale fee, if you will, or we can owner finance them and make $100,000 over 15 to 20 years.
Mike: Right.
Steve: It’s the quick nickel versus the slow quarter thing and it’s a lot of quarters, actually, when you add them up.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Then the rental stuff is kind of in between, right? Not low enough for you to want to keep it as a seller finance—truthfully, when you start to model out as the value of houses go up, it’s harder to seller finance because you’re trying to keep the payment amount equivalent to what rent would be. Close to that. That’s why not a lot of folks are seller-financing $200,000 houses because the payments are so much higher than what rent would be more what their mortgage would be if they bought it the traditional route if they could.
Steve: That’s right. And people in the $200,000 range can easily get financing. So, anything above $120,000, you’ve got buyers that qualify for loans and you’ve got banks that are willing to lend money. Those things we’re flipping. So, between $120,000 and $80,000, it’s really the sweet spot for rental margins, but it’s also a high-demand rental price point. So, a $100,000 house is going to rent for $1,100, $1,200 a month. That’s a really good margin.
Mike: Sure.
Steve: And they’re good people, just regular Joes, regular people like us.
Mike: Yeah. You’re saying you’re regular?
Steve: I am very regular.
Mike: So, let’s talk a little bit about capital. I know capital has, in many ways, kind of sets you free. I have some private money I do my fix and flips with and even some long-term hold stuff. That has really helped a lot. I don’t know exactly how you got started with private money, but when I came in 2008-2009, I found out pretty quickly a lot of the banks had gone away, a lot of the lenders were gone.
Everybody and their brother is a lender today. I don’t know if you use LinkedIn at all. I’m sick of LinkedIn, but I have a huge, huge—I’ve got 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 connections, but I literally get like 20 new connection requests today and I think 18 of the 20 are lenders. They’re like, “I’m a private lender.” As soon as I accept that, I start getting the emails, like, “Hey, would you be interested? We’re lending between $10,000 and $500,000 at 4%.” We’re like, “What is going on here?” But anyway, lenders were gone during ’08, ’09, ’10, really, the traditional lenders certainly dried up. Is that what forced you into looking for private money.
Steve: No. Remember, Mike, I’ve been doing this since 1998 and back then, I used plenty of hard money. I got tired of paying the 16% rates. Then, I had this magic connection. A seller called me and said, “I’ve got this house, I’m about to lose it to foreclosure,” and I go through my lead sheet and I’m asking him all the information and finally find out who his lender is and it’s a local guy. It’s a local business man. So, he bought the house on owner financing.
I was learning about the subject too at this time. It was probably about 2000, 2002, somewhere in there. I said let me call Mr. Carter and see if he will let me assume that loan. Sure enough, he wanted me to make up the back payments and get the taxes paid up and let me assume that loan. So, I got to be friends with Mr. Carter and one day, he told me, “My accountant said I should probably start lending some money.” I’m like, “Perfect. Excellent.”
So, he became my first private lender back in 2000. Then I would just meet people—his rates were 9% as opposed to 16% and it wasn’t a rate he dictated. He said, “What do you want for this?” I’m like, “Uh, 9%?” So, we did plenty of deals at 9%. Then I would just meet people at events or wherever I was and just started talking to regular Joes like you and I, regular people, not institutional people that call themselves private lenders. These are just neighbors and friends about putting idle cash or retirement funds to work.
So, we over the years raised, I don’t know, millions of dollars in very, very private money. It was an absolute game changer for us. Now, when I need money, I call up Mr. Carter and say, “Mr. Carter, we’ve got this house for $80,000, we need $100,000 on it. It’s worth $150,000. Are you interested?” “Yeah, send me the details.” So, I send him the details and two days later, we’ve got it.
Mike: And you’re still using that same guy from the beginning?
Steve: Yeah.
Mike: That’s awesome.
Steve: We’ve got about 14 more now.
Mike: Let’s talk about it. So, there’s a bank right down the road here. I won’t say the name of the bank. It’s more of a regional bank, I guess. They have a big board outside that’s like they have a CD, the APR is like—I think they’re saying for a 10-year it’s like 1.2% or something. That’s ridiculous. But that’s who you’re going after, right? The people who really don’t have a lot of alternatives. They don’t trust the stock market anymore. They’re tired of it. They want a chance to make more money than what they typically make in something they trust and in their community, right?
Steve: That’s precisely correctly. Every one of my lenders I think when I first met them was over 50 years old. So, they had some cash reserves set up. One guy liquidated CDs to work with me. I think he liquidated another one about two weeks ago because he was late to getting into the count. He had to liquidate a CD, pay the penalties and put it to work with me at 8.5%.
Mike: Right.
Steve: It’s a beautiful thing. We treat them all obviously very well. They always get their money. They always get communicated with and we treat them right. Because we treat them right, they always come back.
Mike: Talk a little bit about that, that treating them right and the importance of—of course, you need to set the expectations of what’s going to happen, but talk a little bit about that balance of setting the expectations of what the typical expectation is from a local private lender, people that you’ve worked with.
Steve: So, I sit down with them and go through a presentation. I’ve got a 30-page PowerPoint presentation that I sit down and go through that with them. I show them this is our business model. This is why we can page such high rates. Honestly, older people—I’m not saying 50-year olds because I’m 50.
Mike: That’s young, yeah.
Steve: 60, 70-year old folks, a high interest rate loan is a risky loan. So, anyway, we explain why we can pay the rates because we’re buying at such wholesale prices. We explain the whole process. We collect all the money up front to be used on the rehab. You’re protected at—we will never borrow more than 70% value of the house, never, and you have insurance. You’ve got the first lane mortgagee insurance, title insurance, all of that is the same protections they have from a bank, they get with us. So, that’s presented early on at our first meeting when we’re talking about the program. It’s not usually a negotiable thing.
Mike: You don’t say, “What do you want?” You say, “Here’s what I offer.”
Steve: “This is our program. Yeah.”
Mike: It probably helps to show some examples, right? Like, “Here’s a recent deal we did.” People like to see that kind of case study, right?
Steve: Case studies are big. Every time I get to the case study part of a presentation, people start pointing and getting really interested. That’s the meat and potatoes behind any presentation, really, is case studies, I think.
Mike: Right. I did a similar thing early on with a couple banks that we work with now many years ago and now I haven’t had to do that in a long time because we’ve got access to the capital we need. They were always like, “How did you buy it for that?” They don’t really understand—they’re thinking more of a traditional lender or traditional buyer and seller, but just over and over again, “How’d you it for that?” That’s our model. Then once they understand it, then it provides a lot of security for them, at least in their mind.
Steve: It does. In my case study, I explained how we found that deal and why the seller sold it to us at such a crazy price or interesting terms.
Mike: Right. Awesome. So, we talked about having the right people, having the right exit strategies. When you’re building the business for the long-term, there is no one exit strategy that makes sense for every house that you could possibly call—I’ve had people that say—I do obviously a lot of coaching and mentoring—people are like, “I want to keep them all as rentals.” I’m like, “Well, unless you’re independently wealthy, you probably can’t do that. You have some operating expense.” You’re not going to keep the $90,000 house that just came through and the $400,000 house that came through. That $400,000 house isn’t going to make a good rental, right?
Steve: Right. I grew up in a small town. I grew up in my real estate business in a small town. So, we had to make whatever came through work. If it was a $20,000 house, what are you going to do with that? No bank wants to finance that. People with $40,000 houses don’t have credit. How are we going to monetize this? And then the same thing with a $200,000 or $300,000 house. It makes no sense from a rental standpoint, but from a flip standpoint, it will work all day long.
So, those are the things that you’ve kind of got to engineer the deal based on what you have in hand. So, I don’t want to pass up opportunity. I’m an opportunist, I guess. That’s a good word and bad word in some circles. So, you’ve got to take advantage of what’s given to you. If you’re just marketing for high equity deals, that’s great. It works. If you’re just marketing for high equity deals, you’re going to lose out on some creative financing opportunities from sellers subject to, for example.
If the model is only wholesaling or only flipping, what are you going to do with the cash? You’ve got to roll it into something. I don’t believe into rolling it into the stock market. I don’t believe in rolling it into something you don’t understand. We understand real estate. Let’s take our real estate knowledge and grow it from this wholesaling little funnel to add some rental properties and then maybe doing some fix and flip or whatever else you want to do.
Keep growing that circle of knowledge and not creating new circles of knowledge over here because that’s going to screw up your score. Trust me, I’ve tried day trading. It didn’t work, man.
Mike: Truthfully, this has been a long time ago now but my undergrad is in finance, specifically in investments because I wanted to work in investments. My wife was an investment banker on Wall Street. We just got dismayed with Wall Street and New York. I don’t really understand that stuff anymore. It’s more financial engineering, it seems, than something that you can believe in anymore. So, we believe in boxes with windows and doors. I can see it, I feel it, I understand it.
Steve: Yeah, don’t try to get sidetracked with other stuff. Entrepreneurs can have that problem with getting sidetracked with a different business model or something. There’s so much power and focus. Creating expertise in how to run a rental property and then once you create that expertise, go flip some stuff so you can rebuild your cash reserves.
Mike: Good stuff. For those that are listening in today, I think this is a treat. A lot of folks that listen to the show, if you’re newer, I think hopefully what we’ve conveyed here is the importance of building a business and not just being a one-man band or a one-woman band. That’s not why any of us get into this, although I think there’s a lot of real estate investors that even if they get past that line of, “Hey, I can do this now and not have a job,” they end up just kind of trapped in their own job and kind of self-employed. So, the team is important and having multiple exit strategies, you’re right. I’ve bought hundreds of houses. Now, in hindsight, I look back and say I wish I’d kept more as rentals. We all do that, right?
Steve: We do.
Mike: After some massive appreciation over the last five years, of course we all wish that. But I think the key is if you’re wholesaling and fix and flipping everything, you’re not building up any assets or anything that you can generate cash flow from.
Steve: High-paying job. You’ve got to have the multiple—not multiple income strategies. I’m a huge believer in that.
Mike: Yeah. And then access to funding is something that all real estate investors need or want. Like you said, that hard money stuff gets expensive if you rely on that for the long-term, not that when you’re getting started, that might be like Steve talked about, talking to private investors and not that it can’t be done if you haven’t done any deals yet, but it’s easier when you can show that track record or here are some examples of what I’ve done.
Steve: Sure. Start off with some hard money and build that as your basis of knowledge and proof that you pay your debts and then show that to your neighbors and family.
Mike: And even with private money, you can continue to get rates on it. I’ve heard you talk before about you’re offering 8% or 9% and then you go to somebody and say, “I’ve got another deal coming up, but I’ve got another lender that I’m going to use.” They’re like, “I’ll do it for 6%,” or they’ll start to negotiate down because they’re looking at giving the money back and them having to do what with it. So, they start to compete with each other a little bit. You’re trying to build relationships too. There’s a balance there, right?
Steve:There is.
Mike:But in a time like this where you’ve got access to more money than you need, you can continue to get rates down a little bit too.
Steve: Okay. Yeah. I lost some people when I went to 8%, I lost some 10% investors. It’s part of the thing. I liked them. We’re still friends, but they just don’t—they just wanted a 10% return. That’s fine.
Mike: Awesome.
Steve: [Inaudible 00:34:38] at 8% and 8.5%.
Mike: Right. Well, Steve, if folks wanted to learn anymore about you or reach out to you or anything like that, where should they go?
Steve: Well, I don’t have anything to sell. I don’t have any programs or anything, but I did create a little whitepaper on my business model that I think can be very beneficial. They can find it at SARealEstateDeals.com, as in San Antonio Real Estate Deals. At the bottom, I think we’ve got a link to pick up that whitepaper. I think you just put your email address in there and it gets sent over to you. If not, reach out to me. It’s [email protected]. I’ll forward it to you.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll put a link down below for the website you gave out there.
Steve: Yeah.
Mike: Cool, man, good to see you.
Steve: Yeah, good talking with you again, Mike.
Mike: Yeah, thanks for sharing this knowledge. This is good stuff. Hopefully people took a lot of notes today. There’s some good nuggets in here.
Steve: It served me well.
Mike: Yeah. Everybody, this was episode number 407 with my buddy, Steve Carlson. Good information in here. Hopefully, you’ve got some good information here to apply in your business. So, we appreciate all you guys. If you have not yet, if you can subscribe to us on YouTube, of course we’d like it if you’d watch it on FlipNerd.com and give us a positive review and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play and any of the other million places you can get access to a podcast these days. We’d appreciate it. That kind of fuels us to keep going forward here. So, appreciate you guys, see you on the next episode.
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