We like to ask people what they did on their first deal, like how much money they made on the first deal, how they got it and where you’re at today.
So let’s dive right into that. I started out by lying to myself for seven years that I was gonna get started in real estate and I was gonna figure it out on my own that’s how I started separate for seven years I told myself I was gonna start I was gonna get started I was gonna get started I was a contractor to you know, paying my bills as a contractor own my own construction business and for seven years would work on other people’s flips as the contractor other people’s apartment complexes, I even sprouts.
You guys have sprouts here, right? I’m not familiar. I mean, okay, well, people in Arizona know sprouts. Yeah. And sprouts is a big company kind of like Whole Foods, but they’re sprouts.
Okay, the grocery store. Okay, got it, the grocery store. So I did like all their renovations. I did all their tenant improvements. I did all of that stuff. So all the signage you see inside of the sprouts, I did all those things. That’s what I was doing for a long time. And I would work on all these buildings. And I would lie to myself so long that I convinced myself that I was also in real estate. Yeah, I convinced myself like, look at me, I’m touching all this real estate.
We’re doing this stuff. I’m in real estate. So when people had asked me instead of me saying, I’m a contractor, I’m like, I’m in real estate. I do real estate stuff I want to do i renovate properties, I fix and flip. Yeah. And I didn’t really understand that I wasn’t involved in real estate. I was basically a service provider. I had a lady come to me hired me to do a flip for her name is Bethany, this is back in 2013.
Okay. And so roughly 10 years ago, she says to me, Hey, will you do a flip for me? You know, you have a great reputation. I was doing work for Open Door offer pad Zillow sprouts. I had a great complement those years. It was a company that you owned as I owned it. Yeah. So I owned it. I was a contractor for 10 years did probably 7000 renovations, something like that for other people. I goodness. Yeah, it was a lot.
And now a lot of those renovations take open door for example. Open door I was their first contractor when they came on the scene. Okay. Offer pad. Do you guys have offer pad in Utah? Not in Utah, but offer pad. Okay. Same thing with Zillow. So I was one of those very first contractors when they started actually doing flips and buying properties and doing all those things.
So I would do 6070 renovations a month for these big companies and it’s unreal, you know, there were five to 1015 $20,000 You know, estimates that we would do the work on carpet paint, carpet, paint, a lot of carpet, paint, drywall, repairs, touch ups, all that kind of stuff. And I created a little machine that made really great money.
My first time clearing a million dollars was in 2014. The year after I got into real estate I cleared a million dollars in construction. Take home. Yeah, so I did good construction business. I wasn’t like broke. Right, right. Yeah. And the problem is I was reinvesting all of my money back into my construction business, which was like I just didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t have the financial education. 10 years ago, I was 30 years old thinking I had it all figured out.
And then Bethany hires me to do a flip I do it on time on budget, she hires me again for the second one on time on budget on the third one, she comes to me she’s like, what’s wrong with you? Why are you a contractor? This doesn’t make any sense. No contractor I know shows up on time gets the budget done.
You know any of that she says you should be in real estate. I’m like, I What are you talking about? I am in real estate? Are you a lunatic? I’m in real estate. Look at me. Look at all these houses. I’m flipping. She’s like, No, no, you are my slave, your business. She talked to you that since like that directly like that directly. Still to this day. 10 years later, we’re friends and she’ll still text me. She goes, You shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have done that.
And I’m like, I appreciate her. That’s funny. She says to me, you are a simple Google search away from being replaced. You’re nothing. You think you have a business you don’t your business relies on my business to make money. And I was like, name a business that doesn’t use like real estate investors. I don’t rely on anybody else. I rely on tenants to pay their bills, the author’s reliability, but I’m not reliant on somebody else making decisions for a business.
I own this thing. The only person that cannot be replaced in a real estate transaction is the real estate investor. I was like, dang, she broke it down. She’s like real estate agents service provider. They’re not in real estate and like, okay, that’s kind of weird. A real estate agent Bethany is in real estate. She’s like, No, they’re not. I go tell me how she goes is a mobile notary in real estate. I don’t know. She was then how is a real estate agent, any different than a mobile notary, who’s somebody who just has you signed the documents? And I’m like, holy crap, you’re right.
Like all we are, are service providers to other people who are actually in real estate lenders are not in real estate. Real estate agents are not real estate, notaries appraisers, yeah, there might be a piece of real estate attached to it, but they’re not in real estate. They’re a service provider to somebody else’s real estate business.
And I was like, crap, I have been lying to myself. And She then told me to pull out my phone and she says, I’m sick. Your excuses. We’re going to generate leads right now. She sounds tough. She’s gangster. She’s what everybody needs.
