Build Wealth, Health, and Amazing Happiness with Clark Lunt

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. I’m here with Clark Lunt. Clark, thanks so much for joining us.

[Clark Lunt]
Mattias, man, thank you for having me on. I love what you’re doing with the show. I love the niche that you’re kind of focused on.

So I’m excited to talk about some slightly different things that are kind of related to investing and getting people out to get out there and start getting after the good fight. I love it.

[Mattias]
Clark, give us like a bird’s eye view. Give us an overview of kind of your world and what you do.

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, so I’ve been investing in real estate. So I’m probably, God, I’m 42 years old. Bought my first house when I got out of college.

So for the first eight or nine years, I was in a W2 sales job. I love sales, man. You know, my goal is always to sell the ice to the, you know, to the Eskimo, thank you.

And so I love sales, it’s my passion. But I noticed along the way in my W2 job for my first eight or nine years that I was buying just rental properties, just vanilla ice cream, 20% down, conventional financing, no hard money, no creative anything. And I noticed that it wasn’t that difficult.

Like it really like, I was buying fairly decent assets and I was able to get a property manager and I was able to do my job and they fixed the faucet when it broke and they sent me a check at the end of the month. And then I kind of got into full-time real estate investing in 2015. And I’ve pretty much been in different kind of niches within real estate investing for the last 10 years.

Obviously as COVID hit, things changed and then the interest rates, you know, spiked and that changed again. So I’ve been caught in a few pivots along the way and it’s been a hell of a journey, my friend.

[Mattias]
Wow, sounds like it. Yeah, what was the tipping point for you to get into investing full-time? Did you have enough acquired that you felt you could do it or what made you go full-time?

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, I hear that question a lot. It’s like, how many doors do I need? How many rental properties?

How much like cashflow do I need to like quit my job? My answer to that question is, I don’t think, I think you’re thinking, you’re looking at it from the wrong point of view. And what I mean by that is that, like if I buy a rental property, right?

Even if it’s like an Airbnb or a rent by the room or however you wanna get creative with it, it’s still like somewhat of a passive income, right? And you’re kind of passively working on it with your energy. I have yet to see people that have been able to do passive investments and make active income.

So if you think that you’re like, you’re listening to this and you’re in a W-2 or you’re wanting to do something passively and then get an active income that you can live off of and continue to thrive and grow, you’re not doing it with passive real estate, at least from what I’ve seen. So the tipping point for me was is that I was buying rental properties and I owned like six or seven, I think. And then I’ve actually tried to hire a salesperson and I was a sales manager and he told me about a real estate franchise and excuse me, a light bulb went off.

I was like, I didn’t really have the nuts to go quit my job, cold turkey and go do it on my own because I don’t know how to flip houses. I don’t know how to wholesale houses. But then when he talked about, hey, I’m buying this real estate franchise, they give you the cash, they give you the access to the money, they give you mentorship, they give you kind of all the tools in your tool belt to be as successful as possible, you still have to do the work.

And once he said that, a light bulb went off, I ended up quitting within about six months and bought the franchise and I did both for a while. So I stayed on with my company to make sure that this thing was real and legit. And then after about three or four houses that I flipped, I was like, cool, I like it.

I was working weekends, nights, the whole story that you hear with everyone else where they’re grinding 70 hours a week. That story is a bit of a tired story, but it was true. And then I felt comfortable enough to quit my job and sprint with the franchise.

[Mattias]
Okay, so that’s not a, I’m not super familiar with a franchise model like that. So they were giving you all the tools, like they would help you with the knowledge of how to do it. You said, so was it a hard money kind of situation where they would fund the deals for you as well?

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, so it’s a franchise called Homevestor’s We Buy Ugly Houses. So they’re a national franchise. They’ve got a caveman guy.

They usually have a lot of billboards and stuff. I haven’t seen it in their billboards in a while, but it just, it was a good push in the right direction to be able to, you get access to four or five lenders, right, so they’ll get lenders that’ll come in. You get better rates, you get lower down payments.

Maybe you only have to put down five or 10% instead of 20. They give you a cheat sheet on how to renovate a property. They give you a network, they give you a mentorship.

It is a good program, and the key thing is that they do the advertising. So when people, you pay money every month, they do advertising for you, and then they actually would, the phone call comes directly to me. Now I’m speaking directly with Miss Jones that’s been thinking about selling her house for 10 years, and you know, for whatever reason, she needs to get out of that property.

You’re able to solve their problem, and they’re able to give you their property at a discount.

[Mattias]
Okay, I got it. I actually did not realize that was a franchise thing that people bought into. That’s interesting.

Yeah, so then, so you transitioned, you were doing buy and holds, and then you were kind of replacing your active income with flip money. Right, correct. So I would imagine then as well, you were still actively pursuing the long term.

So did you do BRRRR methods as well through that process?

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, I didn’t know what BRRRR was. I was just buying. You know, I think something that I see a lot is like, you’ll see a lot of these investors, especially newer investors, where they’re wanting to play chess.

And I’m like, hold on, hold on. Before you start buying everything on a sub two, and then you do a lease option wrap, and then you decide that you wanna do all this crazy stuff, and then hybrid, and then you’re gonna come in and give me the EMD deposit, and then I’m gonna raise the down payment to buy this like $200,000 rental property. Before you do all that, there is nothing wrong.

I repeat, there is nothing wrong with freaking saving up 20% and buying a $200,000 house with $40,000 down where you have some equity in it. You haven’t squeezed every amount of juice out of the lemon to where if the rent goes down, if the tax go up, if the insurance goes up, now you’re bleeding every month. And so I bought my first seven properties, saving money up the slow way.

And there’s plenty of people saying, well, I was just jogging, not sprinting, because I wasn’t strategizing right. But those seven properties enabled me to turn those into like 15 pretty quickly, turn them into 25, right? Because then as I got more experienced, then I’m able to start buying on creatively or using hard money and burying it.

So it was definitely a mix, but anyone out there that’s listening that’s like scared to get started because they don’t understand burr and like what if it doesn’t appraise, you know what you can do is you can go look at a property on the MLS that’s for sale for 250,000, figure out what it’s gonna rent for, figure out if you’ve got 20% down, figure out what the payment’s gonna be, what the rent is. That’s not, it’s very, very simple. So I just want people to not overcomplicate things, especially early on.

[Mattias]
No, I agree. And I think there are definitely the idea, the concept of sub two, just for an example on this, while we’re on this topic is appealing and I get why people think it might work, but there’s a couple of issues. In my market, we’ve definitely still been appreciating since the interest rates have gone up.

And so if you’re getting a property that has a low interest rate, or you’re looking into sub twoing a property that has a low interest rate, you’re likely having to bring more than 20% down to make it make sense for the seller to do this. Because their property might be worth 350,000, they only owe 250,000 on it. Sure, that’s low interest rate, but they’re not gonna just give it to you for 250,000.

So you’re gonna have to probably bring that extra 100,000 to make the deal work. And then is it really worth it at that point? And especially if you’re an agent listening in on this, again, they obviously could put it on the market, they can afford to do so.

So in the rare event that they are upside down, and that’s usually where it makes sense to do a subject two for the seller. If they’re upside down, that means you’re overpaying for the property to get this low interest rate. And then often it is in the, the opportunity often lies within buying something that is distressed and there’s motivation to sell.

And it requires work and it requires risk and investment to get it up to par. If you’re buying above market value, like it just, you’re not really getting that extra beat on the bone you can bring if it’s like a distressed property. So like buying a good deal is gonna probably be better long term than buying overpaying for a cheap interest rate is more or less what I’m trying to say.

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, I think that earlier on, because I remember I did a few sub twos in like 2015, right? Before Pace Morby was the god of creative financing. And the thing that I remember back then is that if you were gonna pay full price for something, you could still make it work.

But you had to make cash flow because you had to be able to ride the wave when the taxes go up or the roof needs to be replaced and you have some money. But what I’ve seen over the last few years is that as it’s exploded in popularity because the interest rates went up, and so now a 5%, taking over a 5% sub two is a good deal. But now I’m seeing not only are you paying full price, but then there’s no cash flow.

So it’s like, why would anyone do that deal? And the worst thing about all this that no one ever talks about, and this is what really pisses me off, is that when people get into deals like that where they’re barely breaking even on cash flow, there’s no equity in the property, is that if they’re walking away from these sellers, these sellers trust the person contracting the deal that they’re gonna do right by them. They’re gonna make that payment.

They’re not gonna stick their head in the sand and the minute that the insurance goes up $2,000 a year, it doesn’t make sense. They’re like, my name’s not on that mortgage, not my problem. So I’m starting to see a little bit of that and I don’t wanna get on a soapbox on that, but that’s something that there’s too many people that don’t know what they’re doing trying to play chess.

Just go back and start and buy some houses with some money down and learn and see how tenants react and how a property manager and what stuff costs. You can do all that very simply without having to try and play chess.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and again, not to dwell on it too much. There is a better way to do the subject too and where it is, I mean, from interviewing attorneys, it’s like you need to put it into a trust that you’re both part of and then I think also do a wraparound mortgage so that you are liable for it so that the seller is not on the hook like that. And so just clarifying that too, just in case anybody’s listening to this and thinking that’s like a complete scam, it doesn’t have to be completely lopsided of a deal.

But to your point, I think one of the things that I preach a lot and one of the things I think the best action item, especially if you’re younger and flexible, don’t have kids, that kind of stuff, is if you don’t have 20% or you don’t wanna wait around for 20%, move into the house, you wanna turn into a rental. Just do a lower down payment, move into it, live in it, if you can house hack, if you can rent, using fancy terms again, but if you can rent out rooms or a basement or something like that to offset the mortgage, that’s amazing, it’s a win-win. And then save up to get the next one and do that as many times as you’re able to.

Me with a wife and three kids, that’s not really in my cards. You can’t do it, my man, you’re gonna be sleeping on the couch. But that’s one of the best ways to just get started and especially if you’re a little handy, you could probably do some things around the house and prove the value while you’re living in it.

But no, I agree with you completely. There isn’t anything wrong with doing a 20% down deal. And yeah, the analysis paralysis of trying to figure out the ultimate strategy is probably just gonna lead you to not do anything for a long time.

[Clark Lunt]
I love that you said that about, because that’s my number one thing. And it comes down to one thing that you have to get past, is especially if you’re in your 20s, because I did it, I bought my first four houses and I lived in it, I rented rooms out and then I bought another one. Roommates, lived in it, rinse and repeat.

I did that four times. Were these houses that I lived in the coolest A-class, near the beach, da-da-da-da houses? Of course not, right?

And people say, well, I don’t wanna live with roommates. Oh, I don’t wanna live in that type of neighborhood. Guys, it’s like a one or two year thing, right?

Like you date the house for a year or two, so what? Paint the fence, make it a little bit nicer, get some roommates in there. If you’re 24 years old, no one cares what type of car you drive when you’re 24.

No one cares what type of house you live in. The fact that you own a house, you’re ahead of everyone else that’s renting, right? So if you’re able to buy a house, buy a three bedroom is what I kinda recommend.

So you get two roommates, your mortgage payment is two grand, 2,500, charge in 800 bucks. You’re basically splitting everything into thirds. You’re splitting the bills into a third.

You do that, like it’s funny how everyone wants to go out and make more money, but what if you reduce your expenses? What if you take that $2,000 rent payment and now it’s 800 bucks a month? How would that help you to get ahead?

How would you be able to save up more money more quickly? How would you be able to put in that new kitchen quicker because your roommates are basically buying you a new kitchen? But it’s not free, you’re gonna live in a B minus neighborhood and you’re gonna have to deal with that for a year or two.

And if you’re not willing to do that, so be it, that’s okay, just know that the guy or the girl that’s living in the B minus neighborhood that now has four houses by the time they’re 28 and you’re still moving into the one that you’ve been waiting for, waiting for the market to do something. It’s not pure luck, let’s put it that way.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and I think another great move there while you’re doing that method is if you do experience appreciation while you’re living in the house, getting a HELOC on that property before you move out, you get better terms if it’s a HELOC instead of a RELOC and you have to live in the property to get the HELOC. So before you’re applying for a mortgage for the next one, set that in place and then you have access to capital, you don’t have to use it, it’s gonna cost you maybe a thousand bucks to set up and then you have access to whatever that equity you’re able to tap into, move on to the next one. If you do that four times, you suddenly have some money to play with and you suddenly can do things like flips and so you’re not necessarily having to save up $200,000 of cash to do a flip without a hard money lender and all that stuff, you’re able to tap into your previous equities of these other properties and that’s when things start to snowball and that’s when you can start getting a little bit more complicated with your approaches.

But to start, yeah, I mean just having property over time as if you’re a real estate agent or if you just know about real estate in general, that’s the key is just owning assets over time. You’re gonna have more and more equity and with that, you can do more and more things.

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, it’s something that it’s taken me a long time to learn is that again, the approach of like, hey, I’m gonna buy assets and it’s gonna eventually kick off enough income for me to go sit on the beach or quit my active job where I work my, it doesn’t matter if you’re a real estate agent, same thing, right? I work hard, it’s stressful, I’ve got clients that are needy and they’re wanting this and I’m working on weekends, right? Being able to just say, well, I’m gonna go buy 10 or 15 properties and just think that now it’s just a little passive job where maybe you take on one or two clients and that’s it.

The thing is that let’s say you get to 15 houses, right? It takes, like delaying your gratification, it takes someone to get out of bed and wanna get up and bust through the door every single day so if you have that mentality to go out and buy a 15 unit or buy 20 houses or whatever, well, you don’t just turn that off. You don’t just hit 15 houses and you’re like, oh, pina coladas at 8 a.m. every day for me on the beach. I’m not gonna be ambitious anymore, I’m not gonna be motivated, I’m gonna turn into a big fatso that just eats cheeseburgers and drinks pina coladas all day, that doesn’t exist, right? So if you have the ambition to get to that point, you’re gonna probably wanna keep going and saying, God, I now have more experience. I now know that I love rent by the room or I wanna go buy multifamily or self-storage or whatever it is, you kinda graduate into the next thing and as someone, I grew up playing sports, right?

So I’m competitive, so I’m like, I wanna win the game, right, so it’s like I wanna learn and use my skill sets to advance my career and mature into different asset classes so the kind of the theory that you’re just gonna buy some assets and be able to just turn off life and it just becomes easy, that’s Fugazi.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, I think, actually was touring some properties, I was showing some properties to a couple that had, they were my age or younger and at the time, I was probably like 32 or I don’t know but they were low 30s and they had sold their, they had like a hospitality business and some commercial property in California in like wine country, I think they maybe had a vineyard. It was like they did some big moves, they sold it. Pretty valuable stuff right there.

Didn’t have to work a day of life anymore and in the process, they were looking at to buy something small and that they could just kind of like comfortably live in and not have expenses over their head and that kind of stuff and when I was going through it, I was just thinking like in my shoes, like I just couldn’t imagine just retiring. Like just not doing anything and I asked the guy, I was like, so what’s your plan? Like are you planning on just not doing anything now?

Like what are you gonna do? And he’s like, you know my wife, she’d be happy to garden, she’d be happy to do her art projects and just do that the rest of her life. For me, like I always had to have a mountain to climb and I’m gonna have to turn my sights onto something else and that really resonated with me and I agree with you completely.

Like I think it’s, doing all this stuff will afford you some other opportunities and you can get more complex if you want to but even just, yeah, just even just, let’s say you love being an agent, you love selling and you’re just collecting rental properties as you go, that gives you, yes, some extra income and I think it’s amazing if you can have a goal, which is very hard, to kind of match your lifestyle to your passive income so that you’re never like experiencing the lows.

Like if you can build up $5,000 a month in passive income, you’re still selling but you’re not worried about like, you know, if it’s a slow season or whatever, you can keep going but you know, you can, there’s just a lot more options at that point and I think if also, when you talked about reducing expenses, like your living expenses, you can also then look at your sales, like okay, this year is a big sales year.

I’m making hundreds of thousands of dollars, I’m gonna have a huge tax burden and I have a good cushion now so at that time, if you’re playing chess and trying to find the most magical creative deal, you’re probably gonna leave a lot of money taxes wise on the table instead of just going ahead and buying a property and then doing accelerated depreciation and reducing your taxable income and that’s one of the biggest advantages for real estate agents to also invest and that can be buying your own property, that can also be investing in a syndication but all that to say, like getting started, like starting off and doing the, you know, the easiest, it doesn’t have to be over complicated, just yeah, getting started and moving on something is key.

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, my favorite slogan is you can’t hit a home run from the dugout and it’s so true. It’s like getting from first base to second base is a little bit less, it’s just easier. Getting from second to third, a little bit easier, right?

But if you’re not on the field, you know, like the man in the arena, right? If you’re not in the field to begin with and you’re just telling, you’re giving yourself every excuse, the market, the interest rates, the news says it’s scary, oh, this isn’t the right market in terms of like geography and you know, the thing that I’ve learned over the years and I’ve learned in the last couple of years is you know, wealth loves time, right? Like wealth just loves time in the market and you know, making money, it loves speed, right?

So it’s like speed to lead, right? You’re trying to close a client or whatever it may be, like you need to be on that like quickly, right? Wealth is like a big cruise ship, right?

It takes time for it to turn and move and it takes a long time for it to get going but once it gets going, guess what happens? That cruise ship is now going and it’s going well. It’s hard to stop.

Yeah, and it’s hard to stop, right? So the things that I’ve kind of noticed is that like if you’re just getting started, it’s hard to picture this but in the beginning, if you can just get started and buy like that first one and get punched in the mouth, right? Like and learn and make mistakes.

Like the mistakes, the journey that we’re on is the fun part and like you’re not even gonna, until you start making mistakes and buy the wrong property or whatever it may be, you learn from it and that is such a great thing and every successful entrepreneur can tell you all the mistakes they made but that’s what fueled them to be like, I’m not making that mistake again, right? You can’t learn that mistake from YouTube. I don’t care how many YouTube videos, how many podcasts you listen to and listen to someone else’s mistake until you get up to the plate and start swinging the bat, you truly don’t know how it feels because you’re not playing with your own money, right?

And so I tell a lot of people that but what I’ve noticed Mattias over the last couple years is with my rental portfolio, the thing that it’s enabled me to do that I never would have understood until I started to see it is I’ve been able to take my property, I’ve been paying the mortgages down, right? The values have gone up over 10, 15 years and that has equity, right? So there’s the equity built into it which is a combination of principal pay down and just the market, you know, just inflation doing its thing but what I’ve been able to do is go back to that portfolio, take out an equity line against the portfolio and do other stuff with it, right?

So like I’ve built a couple, I’m building my second house on a development project. I just put in some money on a entitlement project on a 400 acre project and it enables me to have cash to be able to do things that I wouldn’t be able to do and I’ve had to sell zero rental properties to get access to that cash but it takes time, right? If you buy a property that’s a quality asset, you’re probably gonna pay pretty close to what it’s worth.

It’s gonna take five, 10, 15 years before you start to really see it but guess what happens is that if you delay your gratification long enough, now I get to try things. I get to try development. I get to try buying multifamily or whatever it may be or participate with other people in syndications but it takes time, guys.

Like this is, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

[Mattias]
100% and yeah, just so many options. I mean, so you borrowed against the equity. If you refinance, you can get that money out tax-free.

Obviously, that changes your payment and changes your cashflow but depending on your circumstances, I mean, if you’re, let’s say you get that first house that you live in with a low down payment and then you move on and you keep that property and you have it and then you have a kid and then fast forward 18 years, they’re wanting to go to college. You could refinance the house and pay for the college and have the tenants paying for it. So it’s just like, if you don’t do anything, you don’t have these options and it’s, yeah.

So it’s so true and I think people are often afraid that it’s a zero-sum game. Like, hey, I’m investing, I’m buying a $250,000 house. I could lose $250,000 and I mean, that’s just so rare that I know that there are nightmare stories of people losing hundreds of thousands of dollars but typically, especially if you’re buying just a normal rental, it’s like, there’s just, it’s not likely gonna happen like that.

[Clark Lunt]
Well, I bought, like, I’m glad you brought that up. I bought my first house in 2006 at like the height, right? And of like 06, 07 and then it crashed but guess what happened?

I owned it, I had roommates in it. My mortgage payment was on a 30-year fix. It stayed the same.

Okay, it didn’t look good on paper as it lost value but then I still own it today. I own the first house I bought in 2006 and guess what? I just renovated the kitchen and I rented it back out and it cash flows six or 700 bucks a month.

It was a crappy house when I bought it. It is still a crappy neighborhood but it got me to the second house and buying the second house was easier than buying the first one and then buying the third. By like the fourth or fifth house, I was like numb to it.

I remember calling my dad. I’m like, dad, come look at the inspection report. I don’t know what any of this means.

My dad’s really handy and I remember I was like, what do you think? We went to the first one and he was there and reading all the documents and stuff and then I remember I brought him to the second one and he didn’t look at it quite as closely and by the third one, I just said, hey, I’m buying a house. I’m moving here and I moved into it and he didn’t come to it.

Why? Because it’s easier because I took the action and yeah, I made mistakes and probably didn’t buy in the right neighborhood but so what? You just learn from it and evolve but if you keep telling yourself the same story about oh, the market’s this, is that like this right now in my opinion, especially if you’re getting started, is like the perfect time to go out, identify properties, being able to find things that people want rental properties.

The first rental property is the minute you buy your own house and move into it, voila, you have your first investment property, live in it for a year or two, paint the fence, put in a new front door, put some new, reface the cabinets, get some roommates in there and then go out and if you buy it on an FHA loan where you’re doing 3.5% down, then if you can force the value up enough, then you can refinance if the rates are coming down and it makes sense. Refinance out of that FHA loan because you only get one, right?

Then you have a conventional loan. Now go buy the next house, move into a little bit nicer neighborhood, use your FHA again and do that again. I did that three or four times.

[Mattias]
Yeah, 100%, it’s so true. But yeah, getting started is huge and I think one thing that we were talking about too before we got on the air here was just kind of focusing on quality of life too. I mean, there’s definitely a grind phase.

I think most people that are in this space or are driven and whatever, they’re gonna have to go through a phase where they’re working a little bit harder, working a little bit longer and to try to get the ball rolling. But at a certain time, I mean, I think throughout it, you shouldn’t lose focus on what’s important but there is a lot more to life than just, yeah, your number of doors or your net worth. And so like, look at these things as an ability to enhance your life as you go and if you’re delaying things like material objects or eating out every day or whatever, that’s one thing but maintaining your physical health, maintaining your relationships, all that is, don’t lose sight of that and use this vehicle as a way to get to a dream life which includes a lot more than just the money in the bank.

[Clark Lunt]
Hey man, I love that and as I get older, I said it was earlier, I’m 42, is like health is, to me, I look at some of these entrepreneurs and they’re older, they’re so stressed out, they’re overweight, they’re on their third marriage. I’m like, you can keep your $50 million. I would not trade for you and put trade spaces with you.

I wouldn’t do it because to me, it’s like I wanna be able to get up, I wanna be mobile, I wanna be healthy, I wanna try and eat healthy, I wanna have healthy relationships with my significant other, my network, my friends, my family and if you don’t have all that stuff and you’re constantly burning bridges because you’re grinding and you’re doing all that stuff, that’s fine but I wanna be healthy and happy at the end of the day. I think it’s what we all aspire to be and sometimes I think we get caught up in the rat race and you just get focused on how can I post that I just bought another five unit or that I flipped this many houses or I made this much money.

At the end of the day, if you don’t have anyone to celebrate it with, if you don’t have anyone that wants to be around you, if you’re constantly having health issues or things like that, why are we even doing all that, my friend? It doesn’t make sense to me. No, 100%.

[Mattias]
I think having a healthy realization that we all are going to die and it’s not gonna be very long until we’re forgotten. It makes it just highlight the importance of ensuring that you’re living a life that you love and that it’s full. It’s not just one-sided of finances.

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, amen, man. I think that and I’m interested to see if you see because I see both sides. I’ll see entrepreneurs that are healthy and have healthy relationships but then I also see the other side too and I almost feel bad.

I’m like, man, it’s great that you have X, Y, and Z assets or houses or money in the bank or whatever but is it worth it? Because it’s not worth it to me and I don’t know if there’s necessarily a wrong answer because everyone is driven differently. Go ask Elon Musk how he feels about this.

He’s gonna have a very different answer, right? It’s like if you’re not sleeping in the office till 2.30 in the morning and taking helpers to keep you up and all that stuff but look where he’s at, right? He’s one of the richest guys in the world so he may have to say, well, you’re just not committed.

You’re not this. Fair enough. That’s all good to each his own but I feel like that I’d much rather live a slightly more balanced life and as we get older, as I’m midlife right now, whatever you wanna call it, I’m starting to watch the shot clock right now and the shot clock is not at 24 seconds anymore.

It’s at like 15 seconds and I wanna squeeze, I wanna get as much as I can out of every day and so sometimes you have to like kinda stop, step back and smell the roses.

[Mattias]
Yeah, absolutely. Curious if you have any golden nuggets you wanna share with our listeners.

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, I think that especially if there’s a lot of, Mattias, if there’s a lot of folks that are on the fence, right? They’re in a W-2, maybe they’re a real estate agent and they’re kinda scared to make that next step. I think that one of the biggest, my motto for 2025 is who not how, right?

Meaning like instead of figuring out how do I buy my first rental, how do I buy my first flip, how do I get out of my W-2 is to really go look at my circle and figure out who is around me. Is everyone I spend time with a W-2 employee? Is everyone that I surround myself with, they don’t own investments or real estate and I really think that being able to change your circle and be self-aware of what your circle is and I think the easiest way if you find yourself saying, my circle isn’t really helping bring me up is I hate to say it but you’ve gotta buy your circle, right?

You gotta buy your way into mentorships or masterminds. You know, I’m a part of two or three different masterminds and are you buying your friends? You’re damn right you’re buying your friends but you know what?

It’s not who is in the room that you’re there is you’re paying for who’s not in the room, who’s not the naysayer that’s gonna say that’s risky. So I would keep that, you know, if you’re listening to this, I would do like a self audit of who you spend your time with and who you’re taking advice from. Are you taking advice from your Aunt Mabel that had a bad rental back in 1985 and it’s like it’s a horrible idea?

You may wanna think about that because without that, it’s really freaking hard to just keep getting up and pound the pavement every day when you’ve got all these people barking at you saying that’s risky, it’s not a good idea, I would never do that. This one bad time, I had a bad experience. You’ve gotta get rid of all that clutter and focus on it.

It’s not easy. Easiest way to do it, in my opinion, is to go write a check and invest in yourself.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah. The people that, yeah, you surround yourself is so huge. It is a huge game changer being around people that are further ahead than you of where you wanna be.

I mean, that just opens so many doors and that’s mostly just your mindset, your, yeah. Yeah, also having voices that drown out the naysayers that haven’t done it and are too scared to do anything. So, well said, love it.

So, do you have a favorite book that you think everybody should read, a fundamental one, or one that you just currently really enjoy?

[Clark Lunt]
I mean, I’ve got a bunch. We could spend a whole hour on this, but I’ll try and keep it short. I think that, I’m gonna piggyback off what I just said, who not how, right?

The way for people to be attracted to you, to say like, you know what, I like this guy. This guy or this girl is a hustler. I’m gonna spend a little, I’m gonna spend 45 minutes on a Zoom call with them instead of 10, right?

Or I’m gonna meet them at this event. And I think that the way to be attractive to people is you have to be able to be very curious about their life and how you can help them and how you can serve them, right? So, two books that jump into my head are certainly The Go-Giver and How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It’s an old book. It’s got a bunch of old acronyms and things like that. But How to Win Friends and Influence People helps me to understand like, Mattias, we’re on this show together.

Like, what is it that you do? What is it that I can help you with to grow whatever you’re trying to do? What is your goal?

And instead of being like, hey man, how do I buy my first rental? Give me free knowledge. You’ve been doing this 15 years.

You made all the mistakes. Give me all the cheat codes, right? If you have that mentality, it’s very nearsighted and people aren’t drawn to that.

So, if you go out and you read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, it’s like a classic. It really helps you to be able to walk in the shoes of somebody else and have empathy for their situation to see how you can seek to serve them first.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that book is a classic and a good reason for it. Yeah, those are great. And then finally, if anybody wants to follow you, you have a podcast.

Where can people find you?

[Clark Lunt]
Yeah, so I have a podcast. It’s called Burn Your Boat’s Wealth. And so you can reach out to us there.

We’re on Spotify, Apple. You can reach out to me on Instagram. It’s the letter @useriousclark23 is my Instagram handle.

I haven’t changed it in a long time, but. So yeah, if you have any questions or if I could help kind of like push you off the ledge a little bit. If you’re like on the fence, I’m more than happy to hop on a 15 minute call and see if there’s any value I can bring to you to see what it is that you have that mental roadblock that people keep telling you this or that.

You’re kind of stuck. Give me, DM me or go check out our podcast. We’ve got 100 plus episodes up.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome, Clark. Thank you so much for being on the show, being somebody that people can be inspired by. I think this is a motivating episode, so I really appreciate you being on here.

[Clark Lunt]
All we can do, man, I really appreciate it. And I love what you’re doing, Mattias, and this niche that you’re in, man. And I look forward to seeing you explode this thing.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in this show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.