Cold open

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Live Let Drive, a podcast about the Airbnb live, digital economy, and everything in between. Here are your hosts, Mikey.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another exciting episode of Live Let Drive. I am your host, Stevie Stax, coming at you from Fort Worth, Texas. And this is episode 302 of your favorite short-term, mid-term, long-term real podcast in the world. And we're gonna have some fun today. We got a great guest today, Mr. Jonathan Crutchfield. Did I say that right, Jonathan?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

You did, Stevie Stax.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

That is, that is, I bet you've been having uh a lot of fun with that name all these years, correcting people.

John Crutchfield: 500 units, $30 million in assets, and a family-first foundation

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, I know, right? John John is fine, John Crutchfield.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Awesome, John Crutchfield. Who is John Crutchfield? Well, he's a multifaceted entrepreneur, educator, and real estate expert with a family-focused approach. He excels in mentoring, in mentoring teachers, and entrepreneurs, especially in educational leadership, business, real estate, and faith-based initiatives. Say that five times real fast. He has successfully amassed over 500 rental units with an asset with assets valued at over $30 million. Uh John has combined his expertise in real estate with his passion for education, holding an EDD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Louisiana, Monroe. As the owner of multiple businesses and an author, his experiences provide a rich tapestry of insights for any discussion. Welcome to the show, John.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, man. Very good. I'm glad to uh glad to meet you, glad to get able to jump on here, talk to your listeners. Um, I love the personality, love the podcast, and love you got a YouTube channel, man, that's got a pretty good following, so it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, yeah. We we we kind of do it all. But what what jumps out at me is that um, okay, you're talking about family first, faith-based. I love all that stuff. Yet you have time to have multiple businesses and over 500 units. And how do you have time to do all that stuff when actually really keeping family and faith first?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, so you know, family and faith foundation of like why we get to do what we do, right? And I think you know, a lot of people will throw that out there, but the truth is I can't do anything that I do without without God. You know, I'm a believer in in Christ. So, you know, definitely um have had the opportunity to see him working actively in my life. And uh when things get tough, you know, that's who I lean on. That's who I know has my back and who um is making sure that that the future is already predestined. So I know that. Um I've been married for 20 years. My wife is uh my high school sweetheart, and uh she's got my back. You know, she strokes me when when things are are are challenging and says the right thing when I need to hear it. And uh that certainly helps. Got a daughter and a son, they're 10 and 12 years old. And a lot of times, you know, we as guys, we we get out there, we know we have to provide. Um, but I want them to see the example of somebody taking chances and getting uncomfortable in work. And so, you know, making sure that they see that they come with me whenever possible, and that I'm pushing it to get back to them when I have to be gone from them. All of these are examples of how you how you implement this in your life. So love being a dad, husband, follower, follower of Christ, you know, love that part of my life. And a few years ago, probably seven, eight years ago, I I left a full-time job to start building a real estate business. And that real estate business has only over time given me more and more freedom to um be with family, you know, and and participate in faith-based activities. So real estate is certainly a vehicle for me to um be able to accomplish the things in life and have that time freedom that I think a lot of people desire.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Amen. Amen. Um, so so you did have you had your nine to five. And now did you start investing while you had your nine to five?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Absolutely, absolutely. So it started off, you know. I I'll tell everybody I I I followed the directions, right? You go to school, you get good grades, and

The professor path: following the rules to a $60,000 salary and still not making ends meet

SPEAKER_00 4:39

if you go to school and get good grades, you'll be able to get a good job. And I I did that, you know. Mom and dad worked every day. I come home, show them my report card. They say, good job, you're gonna get a good job one day because you got good grades. You listen to the teachers and uh ended up actually becoming a teacher and taught for five years. I taught social studies and math, and um did did good at that. People say, hey, you should go back to school. You should, you should, you know, get a get another degree because you can get more money, right? You make more money if you have more education. And I did that over and over again until I had a PhD in education and became a professor at a college, which is kind of like the terminal place that you can be. Um, ended up teaching at Ole Miss in in Mississippi, um, but still not having enough to make ends meet. So working that um full-time, you know, I wouldn't even call it a nine to five, just full-time salary whenever they need you, other duties as assigned type role. And ended up starting to invest in real estate because I had extra time and wanted to make passive income, right? You know, you Google passive income, you see people talking about passive income online, um, people talking about making more money online and just started buying rentals while I was working, and eventually the income from the the real estate was more than I was making at work, and it made sense for me to to to jump full full-fledged into real estate.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Took the leap. Now, real quick, get you said it said a lot there. I want to dive into something. So, teachers, and here's the thing, man. You know, uh real estate has helped me to you know free up my time. I I do have my day job still, but I only go like two days a week. You know, I it's a real flexible job. I give away a lot of my shifts. And I've you know, uh luckily, real estate has provided my my you know primary means of income, and a lot of it is passive, which is good. I would do a lot of short-term rentals too. But anyways, um so I do every Friday I go have lunch with my daughter, right? And my first grader. It's so cool. She's excited, you know, excited to see us there. Me and my wife go have lunch with her. And um and it's it's weird because I, you know, I feel this, I feel, I feel sometimes I feel a little bit of a guilt. I'm like, you know, I'm I'm coming in here, these teachers are working really hard. And it's always been a thing that teachers didn't get don't get paid a lot, especially for what they do, right? They're they're I mean they're they're helping shape our our kids, you know, they're they're they're giving them knowledge and resources and all this stuff, and they're not getting paid a lot. A lot of them don't make a lot of money. And I'm like, man, I'm walking in here, you know, I'm not trying to brag or nothing, but I, you know, uh my net worth is is probably bigger than most of them in there, and I make more than them, and they're doing like a job that's really hard, really important. Now, I is there is that all that being said, uh are there vehicles that can help teachers, you know, kind of like invest in certain ways, like let's say like the military's VA loans or something like that, they're able to get these zero percent down loans. Are there vehicles where teachers can take advantage of to like actually invest their money since they don't get paid a lot uh compared to what they do to actually grow their wealth?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, so here's what I here's what I know about teachers, and not all teachers are the same, but I think I,

How teachers can use summer break and project management skills to flip houses

SPEAKER_00 8:06

you know, I was a teacher, I was a principal, I've got a lot of relationships with people still teaching. And most people that are teaching are not teaching for the money. They already know that they're not making as much as they could if they went and worked corporate jobs or if they went and did something else. A lot of them are teaching because it's a passion that they have, it's something they really enjoy doing. And we have fantastic and amazing teachers, you know, all around the country, really. Um I think that it when I was a teacher, if I had known that if I just took some of my extra time, you know, if I took some of my money and invested it in just like a real estate project or two per year, that it would make a massive difference in the salary that I could make. You know, in DFW, we flip houses. So, you know, if I was a teacher and I knew that, hey, I could, you know, maybe provide some gap funding to a flipper, or maybe I could actually run a flip with the extra time I had on the weekends. And I did one or two of those a year, and that could potentially have doubled my salary, or that could have, you know, been a supplement to my salary. I think that that's the type of education and knowledge that teachers should have. Um, because they aren't making as much as they should be for all the time and energy that they're giving. Um, but I remember when I was teaching, I mean, you get your paycheck and it's gone by the end of the month. So if you told me, hey, a couple of times a year I could get a nice bonus because I'm running this real estate project, which teachers have a lot of skills that correlate with project management. They're used to having to do lesson plans, which is kind of like a scope of work in real estate. You know, they're used to having to project manage and keep things on a timeline and track their students' data. Like teachers have a lot of skills that translate to our profession now in real estate. And they could manage projects and get a project completed and get that bonus check. And I know that when I was teaching and I got my first kind of flip check, I was like, man, okay, this is this is what I would make in half of a year working and I could do two or three of these in a year. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think there's a lot of opportunities for teachers to get into real estate either by running their own projects or partnering with people that are doing their own projects.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Right, right. And um, to me, what jumps out is, and it used to be even more, it used to get the the three months off for the summer, right? And still get the paychecks rolling in. So they could actually, if they wanted to, really focus on doing like a side hustle like real estate, uh, with three months undisturbed, not having to go, not having to teach or nothing. Now it's all the way down to like two months and ten days because they start school so early, but still, that's a big chunk of time to have off to devote towards something like real estate.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Absolutely. I mean, you know, time is fleeting, but uh if you really want to do something, you can find the time, right? If you really want to make something happen, you can find the time. And we're doing it in so many other areas of our life. You know, we're finding time for other activities and other interests. Um when it clicks for you, that you also need to find time to grow your financial network, to grow your financial literacy, you will start making the time to do that. I remember when I was getting started, you know, I would listen to podcasts on the way to work, or I would listen to podcasts while I was on duty or something, you know, different times when you have that time. And, you know, it's where you're putting that time, right? You can put that time into reading the newspaper or watching the news or listening to some music, or you can put that time into your financial education or literacy, wherever you put that time is where you're gonna bear fruit. And that's where the mindset comes in. Um, that I still have to do every day because when you are programmed that you go to school to get good grades, to get a better job, that type of conditioning and mind programming lasts a lifetime, and you have to counter it with other programming and other mindset training.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I'd I'd say, you know, everything you say it makes me think of something. And about about, you know, we're starting to listen to those type of podcasts, you know. It reminds me of my own journey in a way because I used to just, you know, I'd I hated my job. I'd drive to work and I'd put on sports talk radio and I'd drive back, you know, try to kind of listen to that all day, sports talk radio. And then one day I started listening to bigger pockets and and I just like started hearing these stories from these people that are like financially independent from just a few rentals. And I was like, what the heck? This is this is possible. And so I always I always thought I wanted to do real estate. I didn't know how to do it, you know, but I took the steps because I started putting those, putting that in my head, you know, the put listening to the different podcasts. I just I quit sports talk radio altogether. I didn't say I'm not getting nothing from this. There's millions of commercials, and it's just BS. And then I started listening to other, you know, real estate podcasts, and then I started doing the things that they told me to do on these podcasts, and I started, you know, accumulating rental properties. So yeah, it is what you're listening to, it is the group you surround yourself with, you know, other investors start going to meetups and things like that, and that's what really starts changing the whole mind shift, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

That's exactly what it is, is you're surrounding yourself with people who are focused on different things. Um, and especially when they're focused on different things that you're you know you need to be focused on. It kind of reminds me of the book that I'm using as my theme for this year, which is uh atomic habits. And this book really tells us that one of the ways we can change habits or form habits that we want to create is by

Atomic Habits and surrounding yourself with investors who take action

SPEAKER_00 14:12

putting ourselves in an environment where it becomes easy to keep the habit, right? So if you want to be healthy and you stay around healthy people and you always are friends with healthy people and you go out with your healthy friends, they're probably gonna be doing different activities than your unhealthy friends, right? They may say, hey, let's go on a walk or let's meet here and they choose healthy foods. Whereas if you're going out with your unhealthy friends, they're gonna be like, hey man, have another one, right? Um, the same thing is true for real estate investing. You know, if you're hanging out with people that are doing deals, that are taking action, that are raising money, that are finding properties, um, that are building the business, the conversation is just different. The encouragement is different, and you're gonna have ups and downs. You'll have days where you're like, man, I wish I wasn't doing this. And that's gonna be when they say, Hey, but you're doing it. And then you're gonna have great days when they're down and you're gonna say, Hey, man, but you're doing it. And you're able to bounce off of each other and kind of keep yourself moving in a positive direction.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, you wrote something um on the um, you know, the thing, the calendarly or whatever. You wrote a cool thing about how you how you, you know, yep, you mentioned an episode of mine, uh, episode 296. And and and like I, you know, I come on the show sometimes. I I do pour my whole heart out. I I talk about the bad, you know, the lows and the and the bad stuff that goes along with it. Not just, I mean, if you look at Instagram and stuff like that, it's always all these gurus making millions on the beach, you know, it's like they got perfect lives and it's everything's easy. But no, this this stuff ain't easy. And and and I I'm happy that you you uh you gave me some props for for pointing out like you know some of the stuff and the some of the stress, and it gets heavy sometimes, man, because I mean it's it's a lot of moving pieces to this, right? And so um there are dark days, there are hard days, but if you have a good, like you mentioned earlier, a good foundation, faith foundation, family, you know, strong family, and then you surround yourself with other um you know entrepreneurs or real estate people, they can tell you, yeah, I went through that stuff too. This is how I got out of it, man. It's it's it's all about uh the a good strong community.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

100, 100. A good network is the only way to survive in this, and you're gonna have days where you feel like, why am I in this? You're gonna have wins where you're like, okay, this is why I'm in this. So it's it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

And it's funny, it's like when you get really, really, really down, and then all of a sudden God throws you something like a nice win. You're like, oh, okay, okay, he saw I needed something right here. Yeah. But I always tell myself, as long as I keep going forward, as long as I keep going and don't stop and don't quit, it's gonna be okay. It's just gonna, it's just gonna accumulate more victories than losses.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So um one of the things I thought I would share a

Get to failure faster: why taking the wrong action beats contemplation

SPEAKER_00 17:04

little bit, um, just as we as we talk about real estate and investing is is really in line with that, right? Is that oftentimes I've found that like the faster I get to failure and the faster that I make mistakes, the faster that I can learn from those mistakes and implement that learning, right? So one of the things that we really probably have to take a different attitude towards is like whether or not we actually want failure, right? Like, you know, we think about the creation of inventions, you know, we always hear the story about Thomas Edison and how many different light bulbs he tried to create before he comes up with the light bulb that works. And when he realizes that, hey, the faster I figure out what doesn't work, the faster I can get to what works. I think this is very true for us in our investing careers and businesses. It's like the types of deals we do, the faster we figure out the types of partnerships we want to be in, the types of, you know, uh lenders we want to use or the types of financing, all of that stuff that we can figure out. It's like, okay, well, I'm not gonna be afraid of failing. I'm going to get to winning faster by figuring out what doesn't work faster. Um, definitely has helped me a lot. And I think people should think about that when they're they're considered you know, I don't know if you ever spent time in this phase, but I spent time in this kind of uh contemplation phase. Like, I don't want to do anything, I don't want to take any action because I want to take the right action. But taking action is what allows you to figure out what the right action is down the road. Um, but yeah, we we need to start thinking about that and our attitude towards failure so that we can get to success faster.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

I like that. Fall forward as they say. Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's a hard thing, man, because I you know, we've been taught all our lives since we were kids, you know, you get that that paperback that's full of red marks and stuff all over it, you know, and then that the big F. I don't even think they use the letter F anymore. I haven't seen that in my kids' schools, but it was so terrifying, right? You did everything you can not to fail, but you learn later in life failure is what breeds success. And so we're so afraid of failure. It's built into us since we were kids, it'll keep us avoiding to do uh difficult things or things outside of our comfort zone because we know, oh I can make an F. I could fail.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, we could fail, but what do we do with that failure, right? And no, I don't think we use the the letter grade F anymore. No, I think nowadays they use just the number, right? So it'll just say a 53, which means you failed, by the way. But that response to that number, that response to that F, right, is the most important thing in the world. Because, you know, I make F's today, right? I have a huge company. I make F's, I make failures. You know, we hire the wrong person or we get the wrong person in the spot. And it's, you know, do you give up or do you figure out, okay, what could I have done differently that would have made this process better? Um, what could I have changed? What could I change about my process? Um, and that's how you gradually are improving. And I really like this concept of getting just a little bit better every day. You know, you're implementing and executing, but every day you're just trying to get a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I like that too, man. Uh I mentioned it, it'll be on the next podcast, but I mentioned it, uh, a situation I went through uh with one of the short-term rentals, had this psychopathic guest that checked in too early, threw our cleaner out, was screaming and going crazy and and then like saying, you know, accusing us of uh of abuse on them and all this crazy stuff, right? And so um hold on real quick. And so so I don't know, it was it was a real bad situation. You know, luckily, you know, we got through it. But I the whole time I was telling myself this is this is terrible. This is I don't know what this is gonna lead to. And um, long story short, everything, you know, we we got it all sorted. But I was like, this is this is a great learning experience, this will help strengthen our systems. It's not gonna happen again because we're gonna do this, this, and this. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the part of being an entrepreneur to be able to look at the situation that it's like the lowest point you can be stressful as heck, and then um, and but you're like always telling yourself, okay, this is gonna this is gonna strengthen us, this is gonna strengthen our systems, and we're gonna be a better uh company because of this.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Absolutely, absolutely. And that's what's happening, right? If you look back at your career and you look every year, you know, you might be doing Things just a little bit better than you were at the beginning. I mean, that's what's happening, is we're getting better over time.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Right, right, right. And so how was how scary was it to actually take the leap and leave the job to focus 100% on real estate?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah, so for me, it wasn't scary. Um, I definitely think that giving yourself a runway

The burned-down house wholesale that paid more than a year's salary

SPEAKER_00 22:22

where you have some income coming in already from from the business, right? I had some rentals already. Um, I was already doing some renovations and burring, right, when I got in. Um, as a matter of fact, my rental income had exceeded the income that I was that I was making at work. So that made it better. What made it even better though, is probably a couple months after I quit, um, a house burned down in my neighborhood. And whereas most people see a house burned down and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry for that person, I was looking at it like, hmm, I wonder who's gonna fix that house back up. And it wasn't that I wasn't compassionate on my neighbor, but I also saw the ability to help my neighbor. And I went over and made an offer on the house. And, you know, they didn't accept it immediately because they were still dealing with the insurance and just the emotion that goes into losing your home. But a few late, a few weeks later, they called me back and they offered to sell me the property. Um, and I wholesaled that deal. I didn't actually end up fixing the house, and I made more on the wholesale than I would have made at work for a whole year, just open that property to another investor. And I remember when I got that check or a wire, I showed my wife, and it was only maybe a couple of months after I had quit my job. And she was like, Yeah, we're we'll be all right. Like, this works, this works. Um, and so that confidence that comes from actually getting deals done and doing projects, um, not taking no for an answer, I think it builds as you do more deals. Um, you know, I've done a deal just in the first quarter of 2024. I never could have made that kind of money, you know, at work. In fact, we'll go through the numbers on this deal because I think sometimes it's helpful for people to look at deals practically, right? So, my last year working, I had a doctorate degree. I was a professor at University of Texas at Arlington, okay. Um, and my salary was $60,000 a year. People don't realize professors don't make a ton of money. Wow. Okay. Um, so after insurance and taxes and 401k and all that, my check, they only pay once a month. My check was $3,100 a month. Okay. And I have two kids and a wife. And in DFW, that's a lot of money. Not really, right? You know, this like between property taxes and your mortgage payment, that's that whole check, right? So um I'm I'm telling you this story because that $3,100 was for like a career. Like that's a career if you're not doing anything else. Like, how can you live on that unless you have a partner, which my wife, of course, works, and unless you have a second job, or unless you're working a ton of overtime. You know, you got to figure something else out if you're gonna live on that. Well, the the this year, um, I actually bought a deal in Mississippi. Um, it was on the MLS. Um, guy, you know, posts five mobile homes, and um he's trying to sell them for $150,000. They're rented for $4,300 a month. Okay. And it immediately goes pending on the market.

The Mississippi mobile home deal: five units generating $4,300 a month

SPEAKER_00 26:01

So somebody buys it. I don't really buy a lot on the MLS, and I certainly don't buy at asking price most of the time. So I just kind of like take my eyes off of it and don't worry about it. A few weeks later, I get a call from the realtor that had initially had it, and he said, Hey, the deal fell through, it's not gonna work. Um, I think you could get this for a lot cheaper if you could come in fast. The seller is just tired, seller was out of state person and just want to be done with it. Um, and I ended up buying that property for like a steal. I almost don't want to say the number. Let's let's just say I own that property in cash right now, and that property, that one property, pays me the $3,100 a month I used to make working. Right? And that property is um an example of why it'd be very hard to go back to working a full-time job where you're bringing home $3,100 a month. That's one deal in one quarter. Right. And that's you know, the power of getting into a business where the vehicle can actually help you create time freedom. Um, obviously, it takes a ton of training, it takes a ton of confidence building to be able to get into projects, be able to make the decisions quick enough on opportunities like that. Um, but that's why you build your network, you get mentorship, you know, you listen to podcasts like you know yours, because you're building that muscle to prepare yourself for when your knowledge meets opportunity and you can take that action.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

You know, I like how you compared that price to what you were making, you know, bringing home a month, because that's that's like a huge mind shift change too. When I, you know, when I was still, like I said, I still have my day job, but when I was still working, you know, you know, four or five days a week, I'd be at the you know, at the tool crib or whatever at that my job. And um this this uh I would hear the old guys, right? The old guys uh start talking about about you know, oh yeah, you know, if I retire at this age, I'm gonna bring home this much a month. But if I just work three more years, I could bring home an extra 500 bucks a month, you know. And and so if I if I hit this, you know, whatever the price was. To me, I was like, you're gonna give three more years of this life. You're already old. You're gonna give three more years to make an extra 500 bucks. And I'm looking at my mind, I could pick up one more rental and that's a thousand bucks, like today. I could pick up one more rental property and that's another thousand bucks I'm making a month. I could pick two, you know, two or three in a year, and that's three or four thousand dollars more a month I'll be pulling in. You know, to me, I'm thinking that, and then like, oh, you know, they talk about, you know, what about insurance? We can do for insurance if you if you quit your job and all this stuff. It's like that's another line item. Well, okay, I pay like 500 bucks a month insurance on my work. Outside of work, I might pay a thousand or more. But to me, that's a rental property. That rental property will pay for my insurance, right? So I to me, if you break it down into line items and it doesn't look as scary, and they're like, Man, you're gonna give a giveaway three years of your life just to make another 500 bucks on that um that paycheck or that um uh social security check. It's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Yeah, yeah, but it's a mindset thing too. And I'm not saying that it's hard to break because I have those days where I'm like, man, I wish I would go back to work. And you know, with the example I just gave you, you might be like, Well, man, why would you ever want to do that if you know how to make this income? It's it's it's programming, right? We're programmed to think that getting up and going to work for somebody else is what we're supposed to do. I mean, you were indoctrinated since you were five years old for most of us to go to school, right? Get in line, sit in the rows, listen to somebody else. Um, and that's why mindset training and and and relationships, like we've talked about, mentoring is so so important.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yeah, man, getting into some deep stuff today. Um, so how the heck did you get uh 500 units and what does

BRRRR at scale: buying portfolios of 20 to 60 houses at a time in Mississippi

SPEAKER_01 30:18

that entail?

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah, so first of all, I have no idea how many units I actually own. So I think that might be good quick. Um, I don't actually keep up with the number. Um, I I I I I got lucky, right? Um, I do think in 2024 when we're recording this, that you know, the market is different. Um, I got I started buying pretty heavily in 2016, 2017. Interest rates were around four, four and a half percent. Uh money was flowing into the market, you know, banks were lending a lot more easily than I would say they are today. Um, and I fell in love with the burst strategy. So I would look for fixer uppers, houses that were run down. Um, I would talk to property owners that had a bunch of rental houses that they weren't keeping up, and I would purchase those properties at a discount. I'm a negotiator, I'm not a person who likes paying full price for anything. Um, I'm not a haggler either, though. I just, you know, I know the value I offer, which is hey, I say the price, I mean it, I'll close. Um, and I had a lot of people that I was helping just get out of properties. They were tired of properties. We would fix them up and then we would rent them out and refinance. So my first deal, you know, was a little bitty house in Mississippi for 15 grand. You could buy the house and then put another 25 grand into it. So I'm all into the house for $40,000. And then I go to the bank and they'd say it was worth $80,000 and they loan me $50 or $55k on the house. And when I realized that you could actually repeat that process over and over again, I just went on steroids with it. You know, I just every house I could get that would meet the numbers, I was buying it. And then I realized that there were actually people who owned multiple properties that would sell me portfolios. So they would sell me 20, 30, 60 houses at a time. Um, some of these are single families, some of these are like small multifamilies, you know, duplexes, triplexes, quads, things like that. But they would actually sell me their whole portfolio because they're tired. They want to get out, and I'm that guy that's like, okay, let's buy some more, let's keep renovating them, let's keep the guys working. Um, and so you know, you you you figure out, and I think this is so true because you're you do a lot of like Airbnbs and stuff. I think it's true, like when you figure out your lane and what works, and you turn off the YouTube and you turn off the social media and you just go to work, you can get a lot done. Like you, like there, there are times right now, even I it's like I have people right now burning properties that I have never seen, right? Because the numbers work. Um, it becomes they're all four walls and a roof at some point. You know, you figure out, okay, this is how I finance them. Um, I figure out, okay, this is what the bank likes to finance. So this is what we buy. I don't buy things that the bank doesn't like to finance. Um, these are the neighborhoods that the the banks like to be in. These are the neighborhoods we buy in, you know, things like that. And you figure out your lane and you just replicate it over and over and over again. You know, you don't have to switch from thing to thing when what you're doing works. Now, when interest rates go from four to seven and a half or eight percent in three to four months, which is what it felt like a couple years ago, that did disrupt our business and that did disrupt the entire process because we were borrowing money. And when you're borrowing money, you're you're at the you know, you're at the whim of of the people who are loaning it to you. Um but that's how we did it, is we just bird our way to it, you know. And bird, the bird strategy works. You know, if you're somebody who wants to do one or two deals, it works. If you want somebody who wants to do a hundred a year, it works, right? If you're buying at the right prices and getting the numbers right.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Yeah. I went and checked out this uh this house the other day. Uh a wholesaler that I just started working with. He said, Well, with this one over here in Bedford, you know, you know the area. Uh, it's sold already, but I'm gonna show you what kind of properties that we're we're picking up, you know. And it was you walk in there, I mean that neighborhood's great. Neighborhood's great. House outside exterior looks good. You walk in, it smells like smokers have been there for like 30 years, you know, kind of deal. Just like reeked. There's dog poop everywhere. The you know, it's old, dated from the 70s still. Uh, so it need a whole, you know, it need a lot of renovations, right? This nasty carpet everywhere. But my thing is, um, as of course, trying to sell it to like a regular regular buyer, this is disgusting. They're they're they you know, this is pointless to buy this thing. But an investor walking in there is like, oh, there's money here, you know, I can get it for 250. And down the road the household for 370, it's just the numbers, right? Just um it's just investors get excited when they see that there's a lot of renovations that's that's got to be done.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah, we we like that. That's that's value add, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Value add, value add. And so um so how how are you able to build a team like like to to help you? Like you said, there is there's uh what's it called? Uh burrs going on without even you knowing or whatever. How how are you able to build your team to keep this thing going with the even like you could pull you could even pull out of it yourself and not even do anything, and it can still keep going.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Right. So let's be clear, I I work definitely definitely doing something.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

I mean, you can take a nice vacation, is all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Yes, I can take I could definitely take nice vacations.

Building a team: first hire at 40 units handles all tenant contact

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Um my first hire was around 40 40 units. Um, I hired uh an assistant to help me, and I told her that I just I needed to focus on buying deals. I didn't want to have anything to do with actually managing the rentals. So I didn't ever want to talk to tenants. And to this day, that's a core principle. Um, my team does the things that I don't want to do, right? They do the things that they're much better at than me. Um, my team is much more patient than I am. They're also much more generous and kind generally with people. So um that first hire was an assistant who I said, hey, your job is to find me tenants, keep them paying, and make sure that they're taken care of. Um and then we, you know, when when that happened, I was able to focus on just talking to sellers and just buying deals. So before we knew it, I think we had we had hit 80 or 90 units, right? Um, and then I ended up hiring a second person. Um, I think that was a virtual assistant, which I believe everybody should have a virtual assistant in their life. Um, it's it's it makes no sense for an entrepreneur not to have a virtual assistant. Um, but you know, when I hired that virtual assistant to start doing things like, you know, paperwork, checking my email, sending me a uh update on what I have going on for the day, okay, that was another level, right? Um, and then as we add units, you know, somewhere around 80 to 100 units, you know, we just keep adding, you know, keep adding staff to support that. Um and I do think my former experience as a principal of a school, you know, we had to hire teachers, we had to um train teachers. I know that that has helped me in building a team, helping me kind of know when it's time to bring in somebody and helping me know what skill sets they need and helping me figure out how to keep them happy enough to stay and retain them. I'm sure that's you know, that's something that that experience has helped with.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

If someone messes up, they got to go see the principal. I know, right? I know, right? So uh real quick, uh you are you where are a lot of most of your houses located?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Yeah, so most of my properties are in Tupelo, Mississippi, which is uh northeast Mississippi. Um I lived in Mississippi for about seven, eight years, and uh now we do a lot of deals in Dallas, but those are flips. You know, it's hard to own rental properties in DFW to me. Um, a lot of them hard to pencil out because property taxes are high. So we buy in Oklahoma, we buy in uh Louisiana and Mississippi, places where the property taxes are lower, the numbers kind of make more sense for rental property. And then in DFW, we flip, you know, and we buy properties and turn them over to other investors.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

You know, you remind me of Micah because he has an unfair advantage because he came from Arkansas, so he knows the market over there, and he was able to buy those cheap houses and then you know fix them up and get them rented out, stuff like that. And and you have an unfair advantage because you know Mississippi, and that was like, you know, everybody's talking all the places to invest. That was one of the last ones people were talking about, but you were already in there.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Yeah, definitely. Uh definitely started in Mississippi and still heavily invest in in Mississippi.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Nice. Do you do you deal with a lot of Section 8 and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Not a lot. I would say about 20% of our portfolio is Section Eight. And we we do enjoy that. I mean, it's it's been a good experience for us. The consistency of the income um helps, you know. We we definitely have to do a lot of chasing rent for people that are not on Section Eight. Um, so I think it does help us to to uh it does help us to have some that are just that consistent Section 8 income. If we have Section 8 people, we try to get more of that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Yeah, I'm liking it too. I got one, it's it's pretty nice, a nice old lady. Uh you know, government and guarantees the money, it's a sweet deal. So, real quick before we hop off, contractors, I want to know because I'm going in on some properties with an investor, right? This is the first time I've ever done something like this. So, how do you how do you find great contractors to to do a great job and not rip you off?

Contractor vetting: get a recent reference and never pay labor up front

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Yeah, so this is still a story of my life. Um, the the single most important factor for finding a great contractor that will not rip you off is to get a reference before you hire them. And it needs to be a recent reference, preferably from the person that they just did work for or are currently working for. If you just do that, you will lose less money to contractors. Now, I said less money because they can do a great job for the person before and do a horrible job for you, that happens. Um, but we just we still do a lot of reference-based hiring. So if you know we we need a contractor in the area, we're gonna call other investors in the area and ask them who they're using, ask them if they have a referral. Um, if we meet a new contractor, the first question we're gonna ask them is where, you know, where are you, who are you working for right now? And will they give you a reference? And that weeds out a lot of them because they can't give you a reference from the last person that they did work for. Um the second rule that we follow to AT is that we do not pay contractors in advance under any circumstance. So, you know, it helps that we're a larger company, we can kind of dictate that. Um, I know oftentimes when you're smaller and you're trying to get started, or or you know, just depending on the market that you're in, some contractors will want 50% up front and or they just won't do it and they're trying to protect themselves. Um, but we found it just works if we tell them our process is that we pay if it's a week or less, we pay when the job is done. Right? If it's a week or more, then we pay when, you know, we pay in stages based on what's complete and we decide what's complete. Okay. Um, if you need materials because you don't want to front materials for the job, then we will pay for those materials and we'll have those on site for you. That way you don't have to worry about fronting materials. But we don't front labor under any circumstance because we've just been burned too many times. So I think those two rules go a long way. It's funny because I just got a text this morning from one of my my managers in Mississippi. Um, and we had a, you know, we had an employee that that didn't work out, and it's like we're texting about okay, what did we do wrong with this person? Well, well, we we we didn't get a reference, like, but that's part of our process. Like, let's make sure that we get a reference because those references are gonna save you time and energy and hassle on the backside.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Man, that's everything. That's every part of business getting the references. Well, big part of it, yeah. Well, John, thank you so much for hopping on.

Dallas meetup with Henry Washington from Bigger Pockets

SPEAKER_01 43:37

I'm gonna link up with you for sure because we're looking for you know, fix or flip type deals, and and and I know you're the man to go to about that in the DFW and Mississippi area. I'm not looking at Mississippi, but in this area, I'm looking to do you know, buying holes and stuff like that, fixer uppers. But um yeah, uh, you have a big Dallas meetup coming up.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

Yeah, Friday, actually, short-term notice this Friday. This Friday this Friday. So we'll talk about that offline. If um but definitely, you know, once a month we do little get togethers in Mansfield, Texas. Um, but this this event right here, we've got people coming from from all over the country. So let's sync up about that. Henry Henry Washington from Bigger Pockets is our guest this Friday.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Holy smokes. Oh, I will be there. What time is it?

SPEAKER_00 44:25

It's uh it's all day on Friday. Um I think our boat, we're we're actually uh we've rented a boat for the day. So we're gonna we're gonna go out on a boat from like 9 a.m. to two or three in the afternoon, and our speakers will actually speak on the boat, we'll enjoy some some bad food, you know, hot dogs and amber. Let's just enjoy the day.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Uh that'd be cool, man. Well, where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00 44:50

I'm everywhere on Facebook, on on inner internet, I guess. I I've noticed that I'm getting older, so I almost call it the Facebook. But at Grab the Map, you can find my company, or you can look me up. I'm John Crutchfield. But look look me up at Grab the Map and definitely let's connect.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Awesome, brother. Thanks for hopping on. Great show, and best of luck in the future, and I will be reaching out to you.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Hey man, sounds good. Live let thrive.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Peace out, thanks.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Live Let Thrive. Be sure to tune in next week for all the latest in the world of Airbnb and all that entails. Bye bye.