It’s the means to the end, right? Don’t get me wrong, having money, it does solve some problems, but it allows you to focus a little differently too when you’re worrying every day about how I pay my bills. I want to make sure to not step on some people’s toes here because some people do need somebody overseeing them and poking them like, “Hey, dial, hey, make your call. Hey, prospect.” They need that type of a person over them to make sure that they hit their goals and become successful. Leverage your own home to help you invest in real estate. But first things first, my recommendation, focus on your own primary home first. Make sure you just focus on taking it easy, trusting your instincts, executing when you can. And you’re going to

Be great. Welcome to the Real Estate Masters Podcast, where we bring you the top real estate investors in the country. If you also want to be in the top 1%, you are in the right place. Listening to podcasts like this is exactly what helped me to scale my real estate investing business to seven figures, flip over a thousand houses, and more importantly, step out of daily operations of my business over a decade ago so I could start and grow other businesses. So get ready to learn from the best and start building a business that works for you and not the other way around. Enjoy.

What’s going on guys? Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time and coming on with us. I know you’ve been in this space for a long time, but I am curious kind of how you got into the space in the first place.

Hey, thanks for even having me, Noah. I appreciate it. I mean, I feel like I started at the very, very bottom of everything. My first home that I ever purchased for me, which I house hacked, was a $50,000 cinder block house. So I got started at the very minimum because that’s all that I had the opportunity of doing. And the reason why I wanted to be in real estate is because I knew I had nothing anyway. So I had to figure out something to change my financial position. Every retirement calculator that I ever worked on always showed me being broke later. And I said, “I have to fix that issue.” And that’s why I’m in real estate.

I love it. I love it. And what does the business look like today?

So today, I am a part-time investor. At least that’s how I want to describe it. Okay. So I have a regular W2 job that I really enjoy and like I don’t want to leave it, but my real estate has transformed my financial position. So I have rental properties. I pay a management company to handle that. They screen, they collect all the paychecks and the rents. They still need me. It’s not completely hands off though. It’s not absolutely passive income, but even though it still requires some time, I’m totally okay with the commitment because of the financial windfall that I’ve gotten from it.

I love it. I love it. I guess the easy answer to the problem that you were trying to solve was finances. Was there anything else that you were trying to solve when kind of veering into real estate? I

Mean, finances, it’s the means to the end, right? Don’t get me wrong, having money, it does solve some problems, but it allows you to focus a little differently too. When you’re worrying every day about how I pay my bills. That means you can’t worry about your in yourself. You can’t focus on your mental health, your spirituality. You can’t self-reflect often because you’re too worried about other things that are interfering with that time. So what financing has done or financial independence really has allowed me to really self-reflect, to try to be a better person, more for my family. And so even though finances was the result, but it was really transcending beyond that goal. If you have one less thing or two less things that are really big things to worry about if they’re not a worry, that allows your energy to focus on other things.

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Yeah. Well, even as simple as like a W2, for example, if you’re in sales and you’re struggling, the odds of you getting more sales aren’t as good because the prospects can tell that you have a lot riding on this. So I 100% agree with you. It’s a lot easier when you’re not struggling financially to focus and to really be present 100%. Why do you think a lot of people in your position … A lot of people with W2s that get into real estate kind of veer out of it, I’m assuming mostly because they don’t enjoy it. How have you navigated building a big real estate portfolio with having the W2?

Yeah. I don’t know how people with kids do it, man. I don’t know. Everybody’s got their own story. And then I’m the same way with everybody. I see the Tiki Talk and the Facebook. I bought 12 properties today. I’m like, “Really? How?” So I really try not to compete with what’s out there.

I Just focus on me. So for me, I absolutely have used my extra spare time to focus on real estate and I do not sacrifice that time for anything. It’s just like a call block or time blocking, right? I even have space on my calendar to hang out with my wife. It’s on there and I do not move it unless we both agree that we’re doing it. So if it’s a really important thing, you do not compromise on it. And that might be where some people get caught up. I mean, hey, life gets in the way. It certainly does. So the way that I feel like I’ve stayed focused on it is I don’t sacrifice or compromise on the time commitment that has to be there to stay with

It. Yeah. I feel like a lot of investors really struggle with the first piece that you mentioned was hearing a guru or hearing someone on Facebook or Instagram or whatever saying that they did this many deals or they did this or they got rich this quick. How do you really just kind of block it out? Because I feel like a lot of investors, especially when they get into real estate, it’s kind of like all they can look at, all they can think about. How do you block that out and really just focus on the actual work?

Yeah, man. I mean, hey, I’m in sales. I like to be sold. I want to be sold on some things too. I want to make sure to not step on some people’s toes here because some people do need somebody overseeing them and poking them like, “Hey, dial, hey, make your call. Hey, prospect.” They need that type of a person over them to make sure that they hit their goals and become successful. I’m willing to pay for that too. I mean, I do believe in coaching. I certainly do. But what’s right for me may not be right for you. That’s why some of us are very demonstrative about our real estate investing. You might see this. If you’re listening to this podcast for the first time, some other people you come to are going to be very, very passionate about how they did it because it worked for them. So I need you to be equally passionate about what’s going to work for you. You may not get it right the first couple times. Just be patient with yourself, be patient and trust your instincts. You can do this. You can.

Yeah. And I think that there’s so many verticals to go into when it comes to real estate. I mean, you can make money a thousand different ways in real estate. So it’s also about finding exactly what you’re saying, like what works for you and your lifestyle. For example, if you’re having a W2, what you’re doing is probably a lot easier than if you were to try and fix and flip or wholesale on the side, because that would take a lot of brain power. Let’s be real. So there’s so many ways to get into real estate. For someone that has a W2 and wants to keep their W2, how did you do it and what would you recommend the best way to go about it? Yeah.

Okay. So Noah, this is really important. If I’m a regular person, I’ve got a good job, I kind of like it. Your own primary home should be your paramount importance to you. This is where my family lives. This is where my kids grow up. These are the places that I have to figure out my neighborhood, where the best doctors are. If I live in the same home for long periods of time, your divorce rate is lower. The crime rate is lower. There’s so many things that aren’t financially dependent that come from owning your own home. Now, if you can, you can absolutely just live in your primary home for a couple years, move to another one, live in it for a couple … There’s plenty of people that I know who … I mean, you’d be surprised about how much money they make. They don’t make very much at all. And they got five or six properties because they focused on their primary home first, and then they invested in real estate later. So you can absolutely leverage your own home to help you invest in real estate, but first things first, my recommendation, focus on your own primary home first.

What would you say is the most common misconception about your model when it comes to building wealth with real estate?

Oh, the most … Yeah, the biggest misconception, man, is it’s easy and it’s quick, and it ain’t either one of those. It’s really annoying. And you wish you could get there faster. You certainly do. I do. I wish I could have gotten where I am now a lot quicker. I will say though though, when I got started, there weren’t podcasts for me to watch. I couldn’t log onto the internet and learn from other people. I had to learn it all on my own. So if you’re watching this episode today, you can glean a lot of information from this type of a resource and be better than Andrew. I made it. I’m there. It takes time though. So just be patient with it. For example, if you’re in your 20s or 30s, and let’s say you buy one home every five years, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be a millionaire. You’re going to be fine for the rest of your life. You’re going to retire with like 10 homes. You’re going to be great. So make sure you just focus on taking it easy, trusting your instincts, executing when you can, and you’re going to be great.

So I’m understanding. So you’re buying your main house, this is kind of how you started. So you’d buy your house, then you’d turn it into a rental and go buy another house and live in that one, correct? When you were doing that, did you refi once you left the property? What was your buying strategy as far … Were you FHA the first house and then went conventional? What was your kind of strategy to switch it from your primary to a rental?

Yep. So the two big techniques that I use is buying my primary home and the BER method. So I did buy properties. I used the BER. On my own primary home though, what I would do is I would live in it. My early home, I said a house hacked, right? I rented out the rooms, but later I would then move out and rent it as a 12 month boring lease home. And after a few years, there’d be enough equity in that home that I could then sell it and go buy two more homes. So once you have 100,000 or 150,000 of equity in your primary home, you don’t have to put three or 5% down anymore. You can actually go out and buy an investment property. So in these cases, if you just hang onto your real estate for a little while, you can gain enough equity to go out and buy your own rental properties and keep your regular job.

When you switch it from your primary to the rental, you’re not switching anything on the financing side, you’re keeping it as because they don’t require it to. Okay. I got you. Yeah, that makes it a lot easier for sure. And then when you sell the first one, you’re burning that into two more properties or you’re like …

So for me, I did Burr also, but let’s talk about my first home, my first home. So my first home when I sold it, I netted 30 grand from it. That’s not enough to buy another rental property. I had to go out and do Burr Method on other homes to make that leverage work. But when I bought my first home, there was no money out of pocket because I used a down payment program. I didn’t have any money anyway. I think I had like $4,000 to my name at that time. So I had to buy an expensive home. I had to use down payment. And then I leveraged that home to do the Burr method. Later though, Noah, I had homes when I sold them. I had a hundred thousand plus in net profit from it. Those make the choices a little easier. I can now go buy a move-in ready home if I wanted to.

Andrew, when you were looking for properties, where was your main place to go? Where were you finding the properties? Were they off market, on market? What were you doing to acquire them in the first place?

Yeah. Anytime I did the BRRR method, Noah, off market, off market, off market in a state of disrepair. That way you could get them really inexpensively. You alluded to this in the beginning though. I had a regular W2 job. I don’t have time to go out and wholesale and door knock. I had to rely on wholesalers to find the deals for me, which meant I wasn’t always getting the best deal to be kind of like a borderline deal, because if it was best deal, they would keep it.

Right.

But even on those borderline deals, there was enough there for me to make money.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. What mistakes do you often see people in your sector of real estate make that you think could be really easily avoided?

Yeah. Not getting help. Okay. It’s the easiest thing to do now. There was nobody to help me 20 something years ago because there wasn’t anywhere to go. Where’d you even go? I remember I went to the library to check out a book on real estate. It was eight years old. It was already outdated. I had to figure out everything on my own. Now, I feel like I was blessed in one way that I realized I have no idea what I’m doing. So my process was I’m going to least buy the cheapest home I could find. And that way, if my mistakes are there, they’re small mistakes. So that’s why I bought a $7,000 home as my first Burr method property. Now though, you, as an investor, if you’re watching this, you can go to meetups in your area. I live in the country, Andrew, I don’t have those. All right, great. Go online. There are tools, Facebook. There’s Facebook real estate groups that you can be a part of. Go call people, talk to them, interview them, listen to what they’re saying. Help is free. It costs you nothing. And it’s unfortunate, but yes, people get into big properties without knowing what they’re doing because they didn’t know where to turn.

And nowadays, I mean, there’s mastermind groups. There’s so many things that you can join. Obviously those cost money, but like you said, the RIAs, the Facebook groups, they’re all free. How important would you say it is to invest in yourself? Once you get maybe a little bit of money, but how important is it to invest in yourself in getting some coaching or getting some help?

It is a requirement. If you talk to any CEO, the top 50, Fortune 500, no. Fortune 50, Fortune 10. They all have coaches and mentors that help them in their daily routines. Everybody has a coach. They may not talk about it. They have coaches. Think about an athlete. How many coaches does an athlete have? They’ve got dozens. They have a head coach, the offense coordinator, but then they got strength and conditioning. I mean, all sorts of coaches. If you want to be a high producing person, you have to have a coach. And Noah, it took me … I’ve been in coaching program. It took me a couple to get to the right one, but I knew that if I had somebody there that was a great mentor, it could catapult me into another place. And that’s exactly what happened. If you want to make it in a very successful place, coaching is a requirement.

100%. And to your point, the right coach. I mean, you could hire the wrong coach and it would be … I wouldn’t say a disaster, you’ll probably learn something, but you won’t get the full extent to when you find the right coach, the right person, the right mastermind group. I mean, we sponsor tons of mastermind groups and there’s tons of them out there. It really comes down to finding your tribe, finding your people, finding the people that you resonate with, which is huge. I think that’s really what separates top operators from everyone else. But in your experience, what do you think separates those top operators from everyone else?

Oh, they do not take no for an answer ever. They don’t give up on the first call. They continue to reach out to everybody. You see it. There’s some people, they will not be denied. They’re going to make it. So I feel like complacency is the antithesis for a lot of us because once we make it to a good place, why am I working so hard anymore? But there are some people that they will work hard all the time, nonstop. That’s who they are. And the rest of us kind of have to learn from them. I’m not that. I like to say I am, but I have to learn what they’re doing too. Sometimes it comes naturally to them and the rest of us kind of have to lean off of what we can from them.

Yeah, 100%. A lot of people define the word success differently. They strive for it differently and they measure it differently. How do you define the word success? How do you strive for it and how do you measure it every day?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I totally believe in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that little top triangle of Maslow’s hierarchy. It’s unknown. It’s like each individual person’s goal to do it. So even mine, I have personal things that I feel are successful, then I have business things that are successful. So it might be a little hard for me to describe in a forum like this, man, but I will say that the minute that I started making a certain amount of money a year, I’m like, “Oh, this is what it feels like. ” That was a very big indicator to me that I could not give that up. I had to stay exactly right where it is. So I don’t have children. My wife and I, we don’t have children. So for us, our personal goals might be a little different than other people, but for me, I just want to make sure to have a great life experience. I do tons of cool things in my life, but I also give a bunch of money to charity, a bunch of money. So that’s a personal goal for me is I want to make sure that I can contribute to my society, my local community in a way that impacts it and not stress that I just gave them $10,000 to a great cause. It takes a certain tax bracket to get there. I totally appreciate somebody giving 50 bucks a month someplace. That’s awesome. Imagine if you were 10 times as successful as you are, you could contribute so much more. And this is why we preach being a high level earner, because you get to do so many more cool things, including helping out your community.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. If you were going to restart from scratch, everything goes away, you get to keep all the knowledge that you’ve learned over the years. What would you focus on first to rebuild?

Oh, doing more off market BER method transactions. Yeah. My first ones know what … Remember, I didn’t know what I was doing. So the example I gave earlier was that $7,000 off-market property. So I bought a $7,000 home. I put 23 grand into it and it was worth 30. Look to do. But again, I didn’t know what ARV was. I didn’t know how to calculate rehab. I didn’t know any of that stuff. So my lesson how I learned was from that home. I still made money on it. I still made money. I kept it as a rental. Then I owned or financed it when I sold it. But if I knew what I knew now, I’d probably be twice, three times, 10 times more successful. That’s a crazy number to even say, but I’m okay. I did just fine. But yeah, doing more Burr method properties would absolutely be my main focus.

I love it. I love it. Well, if someone is in your position and they have a W2, they want to start getting into investing and they want to reach out to you, they really resonate with you. Where can they go? Where can they find you if someone wants to reach out?

Yeah. So my name is Andrew Postell. I’m on Facebook as Andrew Postell. I’m on Instagram as Andrew Postell. You can Google me. I have a website and a Google page, all sorts of things you can find me. And my personal cell phone is on every single one of these sites, including Facebook. It’s there. You can call or reach out anytime. Here to help.

Awesome. I love it. I love it. Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time and come …