On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I think a lot of people, they feel like it's either or. You can juggle. You can build a business on the side get it to a point where it can replace your current income. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way that give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody?
I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast. Today, I've got Corey Balu on the stage today, my brother. How are you? I'm doing great. Fellow, Missouri in, but not in Missouri any longer. We were just talking off stage here. We seemed like we were in similar circles at the same time back many years ago, but didn't know each other, anxious to to explore the relation now. Tell us what kind of business do you get? So I've been a real estate broker for 7 years.
So an agent realtor, and so I work with buyer sellers, investors. And what I really found my niche in the past probably 3 or 4 years is working with real estate investors and trying to find as much value as I can for, like, financing, structure. And I've done that a lot with first time homebuyers too about, like, finding specialized financing programs on the education aspect. And part of it is I've had a lot of really successful clients too that I've learned from.
I've taught other things for them, and it kinda like what we're talking about the Gathering Kings Chaz you Wolfe you get these mastermind sessions, and I do, like, weekly, weekly, and monthly meetups for different in real estate and especially investors. And kinda got get to talk with some more advanced strategies that some people are doing. Yeah. Yeah. Love the angle there. Obviously, yeah, you're right.
That's it's exactly the DNA, getting people together, talking about what's working, what's not. There's obviously ideas and systems and accountability, all kinds of flow that comes out of that. I love the, obviously, rural state space. I'm not an agent, but I'm on the investing side. And so Right. We need each other. Guys like me, neat guys like you, neat guys like me. Yeah. Exactly. And then and so in the past 3 years, I've been investing personally as well.
So I've got 9 investment properties currently. I've done that 6 of those have been this year. And, also, what I've been doing in this most recent one, I've been partnering with some other investors. So I've had some people that they weren't able to. It's sometimes it's not about the ability, but sometimes just opening up more creative financing. It's one thing I've been really kind of trying to master.
So this recent property we purchased with a partner, essentially a 100% financing between using a of credit and hard money. And then I also have a Amazon drop shipping business, a side photography business. So I'm kind of used to juggling several different things, mainly in the same space except the Amazon is completely managed by a separate company. Sure. Yeah. That's just an investment, you know, like, a mutual fund or something, but Okay.
The and the photography, obviously, is associated to real estate, I assume. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. So I I use a matter port camera, and I've done Chaz, but kind of as a side business for architects, Airbnb host, people that are doing flips and needing all the schematics for the property, and I'm just trying to think of some other cases on new construction recently done several to kinda document their systems and models on their properties and when they have it staged so they can use the showcase So you have kinda, yeah, juggle a few things. You're mainly in the real estate space.
Yeah. Well, I love the idea of, I mean, obviously, I'm in different industries and doing different things, So I love Chaz, but you know, I think a lot of people try to do multiple things, and it gets overwhelming or it gets, you know, your effort gets you know, convoluted. Right? And so when you say photography, someone immediately thinks, oh, jeez. That's really different. But what I heard you say was there's a service that happens when you sell a home.
There are lots of services, actually, when you sell a home, and one of them just happens to be photography and if that fits into a skill set that you have or you that you can manage, that seems like a good ancillary service to be able to offer. Yeah. Definitely. And on that, it's, yeah, it's creating, like, a three d model, four plans. So with Chaz, and mainly, I've used that for my other my list and it just kinda added as another another service.
I've all also done that recently for some wholesalers. So I've gotten some of these investment properties before they started marketing it as well. Yeah. It's good. Kind of value add for some of our clients to send out. Love it. I love it how it started too just because that's a lot of help. A lot of our businesses started. It's we started doing something for our Wolfe.
And then out of that, we go, well, I'm pretty good at this, or, you know, the service pretty good, or my team's pretty good at it, whatever the scenario is. And then so you just open it up to others that you know probably need it too. And then out outflows another revenue stream. I wanna know at this stage, Corey, you're obviously doing a lot. Like, you're like, we're talking about your successful financially. You got a lot ahead of you. You're obviously in real estate.
You got lots of properties of your own. You got some you know, things happening, you know, with JV. You got lots of stuff going on. Why have you been doing it? Why do you keep doing it? Because the income, pro it's probably not about money anymore because you probably have enough. It'd be my guess. I don't think you ever have enough. Okay. Tell me, man.
And the Yeah. So I well, I mean, part of that, though, is I think as you can sit if you consistently invest, if you keep yourself lean where you are always you know, looking for other investment opportunities, business opportunities, then you still have that growth mindset, but you're not trying to you're not just trying to go spend as much money as you can personally. You're trying to grow other businesses, other value add.
And even, like, whenever we list a rental for rent, I get, like, 200 inquiries on rentals. And I'm like, man, there's a huge demand for all these people that need housing. A lot of them that don't wanna buy, you know, there's some people that talked with one re lady recently. She is just on disability. There's some people that don't want to buy.
And then, of course, the people that do wanna buy, we wanna help them as well find a house and eventually be able to show them how to creatively invest in real estate, whether that's using equity or retirement accounts or, you know, different strategies. So that Yeah. I don't think we're not at a point where we're fully financially independent.
I think we we probably could if we cut all our expenses back between the Amazon business and then our rental income, but most of our income is based on our sales. So it's if you stop selling, you stop bringing the capital plan. What's the greater purpose? Do you think? I mean, obviously, you're grinding. You're saying you're reinvesting, you know, like you said, if you had put some of those things into non investments, maybe the lifestyle would look different or maybe more flashy or whatnot.
You probably have all that you need, but your choosing to go broke, as they say, to Right. Move things forward into the future, why are you doing that? Like, there's that there's a deeper reason why you would consider the future versus now. Right. Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. I think I have very different kind of a lifestyle mindset from my parents. Of course, they had split up when I was, like, 5. So and then I have my mom and stepped out. They're very conservative.
And they've then they've done a very, you know, responsible work up management job, banking job until and the insurance and then retire. And so they're at a comfortable retirement right now. My stepdad's working till 8 70, and they have a great lake house done. We talked about lake at Taylor Rock Small you know, modest sized house, but near the lake. And then my dad is, like, he's, like, the money of your life. Like, he travels the country on as little budget as he can, and he enjoys it.
He's like, he in the summer, he works at Kitty Hawk Heights. And, And I kinda looks at the thing as, like, I don't wanna be limited by income. I wanna be able to retire or step away from work when I want to. And, also, the big thing is I have a daughter that she's she about to turn 6, and we we pay for private school for her. And some of that having opportunity for a daughter. And then also just wanting to do bigger things in the future.
So, like, building, I'm kinda passionate about a sustainable house seeing in vehicles and things like Chaz, where I would like to be able to have the capital to do larger developments. And it's much easier to buy a single family of small family investments than it is to go build, like, a $10,000,000 development or something like that. You know? So that's where I would like to go.
And so some of that, What I've been doing is real estate broker investment, doing some partnerships, eventually, to do syndication large syndicate commercial syndications is where I intend to go kind of managing like a hedge fund. That's where I intend to go and then doing those some of those larger developments. So that's where I intend to go. I've also been, starting to broker some hard money loans too because I've been using them for myself.
But that's kinda where I intend to go is to do bigger things, live you know, have bigger opportunities for my family and my daughter. And, yeah, some of that's delayed gratification on the investments, but I think the other thing is have one of our investors, and I've had a lot of influences from some of my clients. But one, he had the example of, a parable. He had two people that are on their deathbed in the hospital, and one said, I finally paid off my house.
And one and the other one that said I finally have enough money to find to to have my dream house. And so that was, like, a very different mindset about debt to you versus, you know, cash and income is that it's good to get as many asset debts you can and that they will pay for themselves over time and funnel as much down payment and capital you need then to them, but those will grow and pay themselves off in the future.
So You just kinda have to be a patient and willing to continually invest, but that was a good example on the mindset about debt and a good debt for buying assets. I think that that was Chaz investor, he's been doing a health care, nursing assisted living. You know, he started with, like, doing 50 single family, and now he's doing that on different skill for scale. Yeah. The mindset, you've used a few words here. You know, you've used delayed gratification. That's not in a pop that's not popular.
Right. It's popular to talk about. Fun and feels good to talk about, but, but in the moment of doing where you literally choose the future versus now or bet maybe a better way to say something greater in the future than whatever it is. Now it's like choosing what you really want for later as opposed to what you're settling for now and being able to choose that is something that that can be associated directly to success, for sure. Right.
And some of us figuring out ways for your assets to be able to pay for the current expenses that you need too. It's like the that's the other part of that. Just like you haven't paying for private school. It's like 12 a month, you know, that's it could either be $1200 out of my budget or it could be out of, you know, investments and things like that.
So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the mindset there is, yeah, is you're trying to cover living expenses with something that isn't necessarily associated to your active income. Although it takes active income, delayed gratification, and then the purposeful investing to be able to create, saying, is then gonna give you the lifestyle that you want. Otherwise, Chaz people look at, well, I'll just go ahead and get it today and whatever it is.
It's usually something that kinda, like, throws away the money as opposed to Let me put it into things that then can then buy me what I want later, and then the asset still is there. Alright. And you can do this outside of any business. You don't have to be in real estate. Per se. Right. Yeah. Right? You can just you can have a you can have a business.
You can you can be listening today with a, you know, a a transportation an Amazon store, and you can take your profits and you can invest in real estate or in other types of things that, like, we're talking about that are assets. Yeah. And, actually, on the Amazon business, that's another good point too on the not even just from the profit from that, but from the credit card points, because you build a ton of credit card points and the cash flow on that.
So, like, in the Past few months, we've probably had, like, 4 or $5000 of credit card points. But a lot of contractors do that too if they're buying a lot of supplies, but that it's another game, financial game you can do as playing the credit card points to to buy some of the stuff that you want. Yeah. Definitely. And in regards to books too, I actually haven't read it until recently until the month.
I've been doing all this other stuff already, but, reached at poor dad about kinda the same thing on the balance sheet as, like, you're, you know, you trying to get your asset to pay for the your wants and your liabilities rather than just paying your liabilities and wants directly from your active income. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. It's a whole it's a whole another way of thinking. Obviously, we've talked about, you know, rich dad port at several times on this show.
Take me back to when you first got started. Obviously, you and I talked about, you know, you went to school. I'm at Missouri. And, eventually, you guys have moved out of the Missouri area, but tell me, like, why did you wanna go into business? Why did you wanna go into real estate? Tell me that transition from Regular Corey to business owner for you. Right? Sure. Definitely. So in college, one thing that I wanted to do was buy a property and a house hack and have roommates.
And we kinda still did that, but I rented from I had a rental property from my uncles rental property and then had a couple roommates. So I kinda did, like, the sublet, you know, roommate situation. And I already had an interest in owning real estate and owning rental property. I already had that mindset then. And then after college, we we didn't, like, start a business right away. What I actually did is the when we relocated Chattanooga, we had we didn't have a job.
We had we were working at the zoo at a bookstore. We left that job We relocated without any jobs. So we've my wife and I found jobs at Marriott, and she worked in front desk and eventually reservations manager. And I worked in bank and I study mechanical Engineering, you know, high a lot of math, you know, psychology, sociology. I have you know, very good background education, like, kinda sending a high school, you know, grade grade point average and things like that. Did all the honors classes.
So I was working this job that I really didn't like doing, and it wasn't okay. It was okay for a summer job when I was in college, like, to, you know, customer service or banquets but that started me looking. I was I was already looking for work the entire time. But instead of finding another corporate job, I did apply for some other jobs some of them were, you know, one more experience and things like that. But I started building websites.
I started doing marketing, like freelance work, and that kinda that that eventually got me into real estate. So I started doing marketing for a real estate another real estate agent in Chattanooga, and then I got my license after that. But that was having a few I have about 3 years of working about a 30, 40 hour job. A lot of times, they were like, 16 hour shifts, a lot of labor. And, like, I Wolfe never ever go back to an hourly job or a salary job Chaz I would I'll do anything before Chaz.
But that was kind of my that was kind of the thing I think that really scaled my motivation to, like, look for as many opportunities as I could all the time. And be aware of that. During that time, while I was at Marriott, I did some intellectual property brokering with some other part business partners.
It ended up not being successful is one of those things you kinda, like, learn on the on on the go, but here in Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, you can buy intellectual properties. So patents the government go commercialize it. So we did for industrial cutting tool. It took a really long time dealing with the government. So I was like, I'm gonna go into real estate. Good luck. You guys.
They eventually made some money on it Chaz I also did some marketing for commercial composting equipment for, like, schools, universities, prisons, things like that. Which was really hard selling something that was expensive and not as, like, you know, desirable things are not what everyone's trying to do anyway. Right. Usually, those have, like, slow. Yeah. Low, very long sales cycle on those. So, anyways, I got started kind of networking, doing other, you know, internal things in that time.
And but real estate is what I mean, everybody wants real estate. Everybody wants a home, and many people, you know, in concept, at least, when we talked about, like, winning lottery or things like that, they're like, I would buy some real estate. So it's like, well, why don't you buy real why don't you buy more real estate with with debt? Why do you why do you get, you know? Why I hope why hope you're gonna buy it and why don't you make a plan for it?
But I'm hearing you say, Corey, your your story is full of you being open minded. Right? Open minded to move across the country, being open minded to take a job, even though it was well below your quote, unquote qualifications, being open minded to try out a website thing, being open minded to network with other people, being open minded to buy some pack. Like, that it might sound a little crazy, actually, and then we zoom out a little bit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely.
But the pinging and open mindedness eventually landed you to, like, ah, this is home. Yeah. Definitely. And sometimes you just have to make some big proposals and sometimes They don't happen. One that I had here when I was still working at Marriott right before I got in license, and I was starting, before I started working with the agent, I did a commercial real estate proposal for, like, a historic abandoned building here that needed about a $10,000,000 free model.
I talked with quite a few investors and contractors, architects. And, of course, I was, like, you know, essentially broke kit out of college. You know? And but I was like, yeah. Well, I was like, why isn't anybody doing this? So I was like, connect the dots Wolfe try to do it, and that property still hasn't have anything done with it. But it made a lot of good connections, and it was willing to willingness to try something.
I think that's the other thing a lot of people scared to fail so they don't try, but you have to be willing to you know, it's a first attempt in learning is what fails you know, people say fit fail stands for. So that was kind of one of my first attempts at real estate investing on a really large scale. And then it kinda like reality hit. You know, I'm like, well, this isn't gonna happen.
I'm gonna have slowly build a portfolio, build the kind of, you know, cash flow and resources to be able to do those kinds of projects. But that was like a five story building. It was one of the purse Chaz was at Parkway Tower as the Tennessee Electric Power Company headquarters, and it was the first dam on the Tennessee river in, like, 1917. And they had a hail spare dam, and then this was the electric power company for that. So there's 2 separate buildings.
But, anyway, they had a lot of history to it, and it was right down and as you come into Chattanooga, if you've ever been on I24 coming through, it's like a big abandoned building. It kinda sticks out like a sore thumb. So Interesting. Chaz was my one of my first attempts of, like, yeah, why even though I don't have, you know, capital, why not get all their people together to see if we can do, like, a 5 or $10,000,000 project and Yeah.
Eventually, I'll do that with a little bit more, you know, portfolio experience and stuff. You know? But it's like a great spot for a big old storage There's several buildings here in Kansas City going like that. Old dilapidated hotels and restored, and then the whole thing is storage.
Yeah. My my success out of that, though, I said I did get on the news because I made a 3 d rendering Chaz I had a lot of AutoCAD experience stuff, and I used I made a 3 d rendering and put it out there online and on what it would look like on the at least on, like, Siri remodeled. So, anyway, I got on the news. So yeah. No to write it, man. You know? I gotta get your name out there. Right. Yeah. Exactly. I love it. And then, yeah.
So Your salary is full of left and right jabs, which I think that every entrepreneur can relate to. And so here's where I wanna kinda put the stake in the ground. Okay. So up until this point, you've been you know, left, right, kinda figuring things out even when you got into real estate, the story that you just gave to us of, I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't really have any money, but I'm gonna try to put the pieces together. This is definitely this figured out mentality. I love it.
Yeah. Once you started to make some moves, right, before the 7 figure mark, but in the process of making some moves is where I wanna I wanna live for a minute. Sure. Then that's where the listener is. They're trying to make moves. They're trying to make good decisions. What was a good decision that you made then that you can look back on and go, it's been a huge part of why I am where I am today.
Well, getting my real estate license was 1, and I started working with someone else that was already experience than the the agent Chaz I was doing the marketing with. And I the 1st 6 months, I sold 17 homes in 6 month period, which was is pretty good for a new agent. Of course, there's some that, like, knock it out of the water even big, but I did get, like, a rookie of the year award thing for our brokerage and stuff.
And I've since sold about 60 a year, 50 to 60 properties a year, but that was a big step. It was getting licensed and and be willing to work on commission. And that was one thing. Well, that was one thing. And when I was working at Marriott, there was quite a few other jobs that were all commissioned based. And I was like, oh, You know, it's that mindset.
They're like, oh, I don't wanna work all on commission, but usually there's more opportunities than sales that, you know, the harder you work, the more the more upside you have. And and that was a big thing of having, like, you know, taking a risk. Thankfully, my wife was still working at Marriott at the time, so we kinda had that balance where we did have the monthly income to pay our bare minimum expenses.
And then but as soon as I started getting dizzy in real estate, maybe the after when I got licensed, I think, maybe it was, like, only 2 weeks left. I had it Marriott, and I was like, I can't miss a call. I can't miss a sales call to work at a $9 $10 an hour job. So, anyway, that was the biggest decision for me that really gave me opportunity Yeah. Was getting my real estate license. Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolfe. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me.
We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things. On social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify.
We would love to be able to get our content into more hands more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. What about in the business? So now you're grown.
You're closing the 17. You know, you said you're starting to get on this track early on, a 50, 60 a year, what was a business decision that you made in there too? Cause obviously, taking the leap, I agree. Incredible, like, life changing. What was something unique inside the business? Maybe more tactical of, like, okay. I decided to do this type of marketing or I hired this person, something like that. Right.
So my big so the way I scaled my business was paying for a lot of online marketing And I started that. I ran a few side jobs to start, like, $300 a month of online marketing. I I did do several De Zillow and Facebook and, you know, some homes.com and several different newspaper ads, but I scaled a lot of the online marketing, and I did that slowly. I did, like, 300 to 600. In 2018, I got up to spending about $10,000 a month on marketing. About 8000 was was online buyer leads.
And that was a big thing that accelerated my growth. In 2019, I was able to cut out all that marketing costs for buyer leads and just focus on our advertising for our listing. So when we're paying for photos and paid ads for boosting you know, open houses and things like that because we've built such a referral base Chaz we built a database, and that's what any business is.
Whether you're gonna do that organically or paid or a combination and you have to build a database of people that know I can trust you, and and it, you know, gets repeat business. But Chaz is usually the way to scale and ramp up businesses. You have to be really proactive on networking, on getting enough monthly or daily leads that you can you can talk, have conversations with. And that's I think the big thing is people understand have to understand the math about it.
It's like, for me and our business, the online leads, it was about, like, 1 or 2%, usually about 2% of the most. So, like, if we had a 100 contacts. There's people that they might have another agent. It might not be the right time for them. They might not be able to get financing.
A whole different, a slew of other reasons, but the ones that actually choose to do business with you qualified and don't have someone else they're gonna work with, So you have to make, you know, you have to make a 100 contacts to have 2 closings. So then you have to know if, like, if you're gonna if you wanna if you wanna close 50 properties, a year of how many con you have to have thousands of contacts to to do that usually.
Unless you're building, it does make a difference if you have a lot of direct referrals or people that you know, and you have that already good database. But I was working in an area that I didn't grow up in. I've, When I started real estate, I'd only been here 3 years. So I didn't have, like, you know, call everybody I graduated with and things like that.
Which does help some people do if they have, like, their church and school and their, you know, their other, like, sports events and stuff they're into or whatever their network, whatever their network is. Right. They reach out to the network and get enough referral and repeat business, and then they do a extra mark on top of it. So I had to do it, you know, in the way where I was building a lot of marketing myself. Yeah. The principle still remains the same. Right?
Like, you had to build the pipeline. You didn't have the organic pipeline necessarily, but over the course of time, you've taken paid traffic, let's call it, and you've turn that into organic traffic because you Correct. Built relationships. You weren't, you know, pushy salesman. Yeah. Of course, close the ones that can close, but you continue to relationship afterwards with these people. You built relationships with investors. You've done the meetups.
Like, You've done all those things over the course of time since being there. It's just early on. You didn't have it, so paid advertising was the ticket. Right. It is. And I think the biggest thing that I Chaz I did in very intentionally is try to learn as much as possible, and I always still continue.
And there's a lot of other season agents and other investors in our area that that asked me for resources or advice or different things like that because I was very committed to, like, meet one on one with different lenders and learn about every loan product they have rather than just send somebody and see what they come back the same thing with home warranty companies or meeting with home inspectors and learning about as much of the process as I Chaz.
And I really think what you have to do with any businesses. You have to know your business inside and out. You can't just rely on other people. To do it, you can eventually rely on other people to do it for you. But you have to know, you have to know enough about what they're doing. So that way, you can be advised it's, you know, the full quote is like Jack of all trades. Master of none is better than the Master of 1.
You have to know enough about all those different aspects of whatever the business it is so that way you can be you can be comfortable talking with that profession. All, you know, and understanding from their side of it. Yeah. Because otherwise, you you get taken advantage of. And that happens in business too. It's you don't have to be the to your point, there are people that you're gonna hire or JVs or partners that you're gonna bring in that are much better than you and I and my endeavor.
But the reality of it is that that there's a competency see. I don't have to know ever less detail, but if I'm completely aloof, hoping that someone else just does this for me, it it's a little bit of a gap that there's a lot of business owners that they just think, oh, I'll hire this marketing company, and they'll do it for me. Or I'll hire this whatever, and they'll do whatever for me.
And, yes, there are plenty of done for you services that work, and they're the expert, but you've gotta have a level of understanding because it's your business. You still gotta manage Chaz process, someone on your team managing that process. Otherwise, they're just doing whatever they do without any notion from you. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Let's flip the coin here. Corey, tell me about a bad choice that you made, especially in those earlier years. I wanna know the juicy details.
So one of the bad choices is so Zillow is a great marketing source for agents. It's a good resource for people to, you know, usually when they start looking and things like that. But, anyway, I had hired 3 buyer's agents at the time, and we built a team, real estate team, and that's what you usually a large way you can scale your businesses, have other people that are assisting you and you're training them.
And I wanted to provide as much leads for them as possible so that they could go out and do more business. And I went from spending about $4000 a month to about $8000 a month in marketing. And then I had some of those Buyers agents that didn't work out left for different health, life reasons.
You know, nothing necessarily on them, but I took too large of a jump and advertised And so I had, like, a 6 month contract left that had to pay out $8000 a month, and it was just myself and one other agent, and we had enough leads essentially for 4 agents. And with those contracts, they're like, if you don't pay, it goes into collections, and then you don't get the leads. So you better pay, get the leads.
And then at the end of 6 months, you can end your contract or, you know, modify your terms or whatever. Right. So that was an expensive decision that put us, you know, we've spent a lot in credit card credit cards, you know, to ramp up business. So I think that's Yeah. A lot of times people think they have to have a lot of capital for that, but At the same time, you don't wanna take too big.
You don't wanna bite off more than you can chew, and we bought a bit off a little bit more than we can chew. We have figured it out. You know, I'm very creative with financing. I've never made a payment late myself on my so, you know, I just went to go get some more credit cards, pay it off. Work is sell as much as I could to make sure I was paying my marketing bills, but that was a mistake.
And we also had a co marketing lender that changed their mind that they didn't They weren't locked in 6 months like I was, though, you know, sometimes strategic partners you have to have good agreements with. And so Some of that was on me taking on too much and then not having a long enough agreement with one of the co marketing partners on that. But, yeah, that was a big mistake, and that was just one that my wife and I talk about Salsami.
You know, it's like, you know, she's like, you should've listened to me. And there's a lot of wisdom to that. You need to, like, you know, be on the same page. So For sure. Yeah. I've told the story a couple of times, but there was a in early on, there was a franchise that I wanted to build that my wife was like, don't do it. And I did it, of course. And, yeah, that sucker cost me a lot of money, and I ended up proposing it.
And, good lessons to be learned out of that, but the number one is that even I've said this before, even though my wife couldn't bring what I call a business case. So why we shouldn't do it? There was no math. There was no reason. There was no nothing that made sense to my logical brain and why we shouldn't. I had plenty of reasons why we should. I had I I have since then learned that her voice, although maybe not business, dialed in, there's something to it.
And I need to just, you know, pay a little bit more attention. Right. Yeah. Women's intuition. We call call it, you know, a download from heaven. I don't know, but definitely, I pay attention a little closer nowadays.
Yeah. And I think on major business decisions Chaz, regardless of who it is, you need to have some people that are that you can go to and talk to to see of of opinion if is this a good is this a good endeavor to go Am I doing it the right way or are there other better ways I could do it? You know, and like an example could be if I, if I raise some, you know, more funds from a vendor, or I had a better contract with them, or I didn't jump into quite as much.
I might have had a you know, a better situation with that. So that's always important to have some people of a panel aboard or trusted advisor mentor somebody in your life that you know, helping those decisions. Yeah. Exactly. I love it. Let's switch over to the speed round here. I've got a couple of different angled questions. I wanna know if you take, obviously, you're in in different sectors, if you will, an industry, even potentially, if you depend on how you classify your businesses.
But if you dwindle them all down into one trackable metric, what is it? So for real estate, it's the amount of appointments to go on, and they used to track that religiously. When I was doing a lot of online leads since we've had a lot more organic business and referral, I don't track that as much as I used to. I think overall, though, what I track primarily now, and my goal is to have as much gross cash flow as I Chaz.
Per month because I can use that wisely and looking at some other financial strategies. So and even like the credit cards, it's as on the Amazon business. It's about how much spending we can get for how much points or how much profit as well. So I think gross cash flow is important And we the other thing we've done in the past couple of years is look more of our net profit.
And I think that's the scary thing that a lot of us, you know, we do want the gross cat We the cash flow is king on the month, you know, monthly income. That's why some of that I've been looking at, but also your profit, you know, looking at Chaz you put money in monthly profit somewhere, whatever vehicle that is, because it doesn't matter how much your what business you own, what you're selling, anything, if you it's not sustainable.
And so I think that's the really prob like, when we're really getting down the nitty gritty is that there is a monthly profit and doing profit loss statements or having I have a spreadsheet that has every single expense that I pay for personal and business that I keep track of, and I'm, you know, I have to make sure that there's enough there. I pay up probably, like, 50 different accounts or more on on different items.
So I've gotta make sure that there's enough cash flow coming in for all the expenses. 100%. Love it. What book would you recommend? The 6 figure business owner read. I think a basic one that I started out actually reading in high school was how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.
That's a very great fundamental If interested in investing in real estate, the millionaire real estate investor is another kind of basic one to open up your mindset about and that's make to make a $1,000,000 a year. So, like, after everything and then recently, I've been reading I know it's getting in a few other book recommendations. Also been reading a couple of Garrett Gunderson's books too.
K. So I don't know if he read his, but the killing sacred cows, and then what would the rocket propellers do? Oh, those are some other good books to dig into, but I think it I think it's fundamental of being a good person and a good business person, how to win friends and influence people how to have good relationships, being, you know, generally interested in other people. You know, I think that's the basic.
That's a fundamental, but at the same time, if if that's all you read, then you're not gonna be blow off because you gotta, you know, you gotta keep on further education. Yeah. There's some other mindsets. You you can win friends, influence people, and probably get some good contracts maybe some good relationships, maybe even make a lot of money.
But then the delayed gratification and the investing mindset that you've given to us here today, pressing forward, you know, even cash flow, which even stems to eventual personal net worth. Like, all of those things, you wouldn't be able to get that from that one book, but I'll tell you what.
That is a classic And I had a client here recently that I told him about that book, I don't know, maybe 2 years or so ago, and he circled back to it for whatever reason, and he was You're just in a different place. You know? And it was like, yeah. Good. Right? Like, yeah. There's your principles that don't go away ever, but when you come back, You're a different person. I do the same thing every year. I'm rethinking for a rich every single year.
Right. You know, I'm a different person when I read it every single year. So I need to refresh. You know? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Definitely. And also on the how to win friends and influence people, there's one for the digital age too. So in that one, I I think I had, like, skim through.
But some of those other principles are just like how you take active relationships of having, like, you know, whether it's social media and, like, applying some of those principles to the digital age because not everything's the same of, like, I don't send handwritten letters.
I I send people a happy birthday messages like, Facebook and LinkedIn or things like Chaz, you know, do I think cards are still nice to do, but I just personally don't, like, nobody does waste they break through the noise in in in the digital age, as you say. Yeah. Chaz do you think about networking and or master mining with other entrepreneurs? I think it's been really valuable.
And and so what I do, one of the meetups I regularly go last Thursday of each month, There's a real estate investor meetup. And then on top of that, there's been a lot of other mastermind events. So we Chaz, like, an investor weekend in 2020, right, for COVID to happen and everything snuck it in there. Yeah. That was a good that was a really powerful one that I had some really good contacts that really opened up my mind on Some other concepts. And one was, like, one guy did only private banking.
He was a real estate investor that had never bought a investment property with a bank. Because he was, like, a former pastor. And so, like, he and he, like, did that right out of ministry, so he didn't have an income. And since then, he bought, like, 50 to 100 properties, and he has short term private investors and long term private investors. But he also already had a network of people that knew like and trust them.
Yep. And that he was gonna be a good steward of the money for it was gonna be secured on assets. So if that was thing one thing that really opened my mind a lot on private financing, and it kinda goes along with the hard money as well too, is there's a lot of things that sometimes people think they're like, I don't have the 25% down in 6 months cash reserves that would be required by, like, a conventional loan to invest.
And even with other small businesses to start up, it he could have started any other business, is that you can you can sell equity. You can raise capital. I've used a lot of no interest credit cards for different investments. So some of the properties I bought this year I use business lines of credit, private money, and a no interest credit card, convenience checks, and I 100% financed about a $1,000,000 in real estate. So it was, like, you know, trying to consistently be creative.
And I know people are doing it on the commercial side where they're buying, like, 10 to $20,000,000 properties and syndicating all the down payment. You know? So Yep. They're they're they're not on much higher level on Chaz. But Yeah. 100%. The the mind the mindset remains. Yep. Yep. Definitely. And I think create it being creative and being willing to learn, and you don't know that and let until you're exposed to some of those kind of situations.
So even if someone's creative and willing to learn unless they're finding other people and networking with other people and doing different strategies, they don't necessarily think about certain ways to do things like that. Right. Yep. Exactly. Alright. Well, I got a last question here for you, Corey. Yeah. Sure thing. If you lost it all, What would you do? And if we lost it all, so all assets, all income, would we lose the credit too? That's another kind of question. Yes. Okay. Alright.
So, essentially, someone that's so no job? No job. So they have no job? Okay. No job. You got nothing. Okay. Well, the first thing would be to get some sort of income coming in, whether that's, I think, a base job, that has some income and then a sales job. Because I think if you don't have some base income and you're having like, you can't just do all the sales without some kind of base income.
So I think some kinda base income, whether that's selling some products or it's a small job to pay the bills, building credit as quickly as possible. Chaz secured credit cards and starting a business. So as starting a business, only 3 to $600, and it opens up so much more financing opportunity, but usually you need to have a good personal score and a good and then have a and then build a biz good business score with your Dunn's number.
So I think that would be the thing I would do is I would get some kind of, now I'm saying that. I don't wanna ever wanna go back to an hourly job. So I'd probably find some products I could sell. Yeah. And then I'd get some base income, and then I would get some sort of either sales job and then start a side business And I think a lot of people there, they feel like it's either or, you can juggle.
You can build a business on the side and get it to a point where it can replace your your current income. And and then leave a side job. But I would probably I think a lot of people with the gig economy we have now doing, like, like, it doesn't have to be an hourly job Chaz be Uber or, like, for my photography, charge, like, about a hundred bucks an hour for that. I think you need to find a good, even if it's a small amount of work, something that's very higher high pay per hour.
So, like, whether that could be mowing lawns, it could be Ubering, it could be doing freelance work online. You know, I think a lot of people have these opportunities on at home that they could be doing websites. They could be doing marketing. They could be doing calls. There's a lot of opportunities, and there's a lot of website for that too. So that's what I would do to start kind of getting the baseline.
And then from the business, then I would be investing in real estate and I would be used I would be leveraging credit and my income to be able to start some investments. Yeah. Love it. Love the strategy pinpointed down to the to the plan. I appreciate a a mind like that. You said that you were I can't remember exactly, but math engineering psychology, basically. Right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think that answer reflects all of those. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, a lot of things you have to look at kinda hell holistic and, yeah, you can't just, you know, segment. So, also, I think for, you know, people that are young and interested in investing, I've only had one client do it, do it so far, but house hacking into buy a duplex or quadplex to live in one side.
I think that's a really great way, but you have to have a w two income for So, for example, if I was starting over, I probably wouldn't wanna have 2 years of w 2 before I started, you know, my entrepreneurship again. Right. But that's a really great way to lower expenses plus build income, and then they can move out of that go go buy another property to do that in and easily build a portfolio over over a couple years doing that. Yep. 100%. Corey, how can the listener connect you?
You online, email. How can they find it? Yeah. So Corey Belue, you can either go on Twitter. I mainly use Facebook, though. It's my big thing is on Facebook, and it's the blue team is our real estate business. So it's a th e, and then blue is ball e w. And so real estate, I can help with people looking to buy, sell, invest.
Also, I can do hard money in about 40 states and help with, either fix and flip loans up to 2,000,000, a rental loans, usually about, like, 4, 500,000 or bridge loans for up to 2 years. And as the rates are getting higher, a lot of the hard money is about the same as some of our conventional lenders, like a point higher or 2 points higher. I've got between some of these I purchased this year between 6.5to8.8 for most of the hard money loans for the company I've used.
The most recent fix in flip 1 was at, like, 11 0.5%, but that was a 6 month loan. So, anyway, I can, yeah, help with financing. And then the company that we partner with for Amazon, the Amazon Automate I can get connect to people if they wanna start that and do that as well. So but, yeah, Facebook is good. My phone number, though, is 423 529-0696. And usually texting me is the bet best way to get in touch with me, though.
And I prefer to, yeah, Yeah. In initially get who someone is and get text and then set up a time to call and because I do have quite a few things going on. I always have time for people It's just best if I make sure that there's a window of time that's a good time to you to really talk. You're more than generous to even offer that. So thank you for that. I hope the right listeners take you up on that.
They whether it's creative financing, learning about real estate, even just getting to know a guy like you, because, man, you're a hustler. You're Wolfe thought out And that's actually what I appreciate most about our conversation is that it even though from maybe a high level, there was a lot of, like, maybe this, that, and this, and that, I think that overall you were on a very strategic path. It's gotten you where you are and where you intend to be, as you say. So thank you for being here.
Nothing but blessing and success over your family and your business. Thanks for being here. Definitely. Yeah. Thanks thanks for having me on. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com.
You take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.