Building Enormous Wealth, Balance, and Purpose with Nick Waldner

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. We are here with Nick Weldner. Nick, thanks so much for joining us.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, no problem. Excited to be here and share some thoughts.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I’m excited too. Let’s just, first of all, get like a bird’s eye view of your world right now. What’s your business look like?

[Nick Waldner]
Let’s see, I mean, first and foremost, husband, father, three kids, seven, four, and two, so there’s a lot going on at our house. At the same time, running a real estate team, we sell about 450 homes a year across the state of Maryland. On top of that, not only am I buying properties to hold or properties to flip, I’m also teaching and getting my team involved in investing themselves.

So we have, I think, 67% of our team has at least one rental property. Many of them have multiple renter properties partnered with me on their own. So we are constantly looking at a way to build wealth through real estate.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome. That’s so cool. I love it.

Tell me what part of Maryland, so you said all across the state you operate, but are you close to the D.C. area?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, so we’re pretty much the entire state of Maryland, except for if you go far to the east, you get to Ocean City. Far to the left, you get to Deep Creek Lake. Everything else we cover.

There’s 23 agents on the team, and we have two or three that live in just about every county. So if you tell me where in Maryland, I’ll tell you exactly who to work with. I’ve also got a great agent in Northern Virginia who, he just sold an $8.75 million home, which is pretty awesome. And then we step over the border in Pennsylvania and Delaware when needed, but really that is within 30 minutes of the border.

[Mattias]
Sure. Okay, that’s cool. We’re not too far.

We’re in Harrisonburg, Virginia, so a little bit south of D.C. Yeah, we’re your northern neighbors. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well, I mean, what got you into this crazy world of real estate?

[Nick Waldner]
Man, real estate for me was just in my blood. My mom was in real estate when I was a kid. I was putting up signs by the time I was 16 and installing lockboxes, and I just saw that world of entrepreneurship from the very beginning.

I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and probably a lot of the listeners thought, oh, this is awesome. I’ll make 10 offers, I’ll buy 10 properties, and I’ll never work again. And somehow it’s a little bit harder than the book made it out to be, but I will give it credit for how it got me started and all that.

[Mattias]
I mean, that book has changed so many people’s lives. It really has. No, I love it.

So what age did you get licensed? Was that the first step or were you trying to invest first?

[Nick Waldner]
No, so when I was 18, I read the book, and that’s when I decided, all right, I’m gonna buy property. I started running a seasonal business in Ocean City, Maryland during college, a couple years after college, and then I opened up a franchise with Cold Stone Creamery, so the ice cream franchise, but we actually took on the franchisee where we were a franchisor where we had all the franchises in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Southern half of New Jersey, D.C., and we were opening like 50 some stores a year, and that was my main focus, and then I decided to parlay all that and move from that, completely get out of it in like 2002 or 2003 and move completely into residential real estate, so that was a big leap of, I understood the franchise world.

We did really, really well. For some other reasons, I decided to get out and jumped into residential.

[Mattias]
Man, that’s interesting. People don’t normally go that way.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, I went the, I’m not gonna get into real estate. My mom sells real estate. I’ll never do that, and then I eventually came back to it and saw this is a great opportunity.

Actually, I came to my mom and I said, Mom, I read the book a few years ago, and it told me to make 10 offers on 10 properties at 50% of value. I want you to write 10 offers for me, and she rolled her eyes but supported me and said, I will teach you how to write one offer, and you can write 10 of them if you want. So I wrote all 10.

I sent them out. Guess how many houses I bought that day?

[Mattias]
None.

[Nick Waldner]
Not a single one, but one of the houses I had saw that I had made an offer on, I ran into a buddy, and he said he was looking for a house, and I said, well, I just saw one that was very similar to that. I took him to go see it. He liked it, and I was like, man, this business is easy.

He sold him the house, made a commission, and that was it. I was like, all right, this is gonna be my business.

[Mattias]
So were you working under your mom kind of at the beginning then?

[Nick Waldner]
You know, my mom did something really smart. When we were kids, she gave my brother and I a car that she paid $500 for, and she said, you have this as your car. If you want a better car, you gotta go out and work, and you gotta earn it.

When I got into real estate, she said, I’m your mom. I’m gonna teach you everything I know in real estate, but you’re not gonna take a single one of my clients. We’re not gonna partner.

You are gonna live or die completely on your own, and honestly, I thought, nah, she’s probably gonna give me some business, and true to her word, she was cutthroat. It was nothing. She was the greatest mentor and teacher, but it was you will live or die in this business based on your work, and that was the best way to learn this business.

[Mattias]
Yeah. No, seriously. I mean, yes, learning from a seasoned person is valuable, and having that person you can go to all the time is so valuable, but yeah, if you don’t learn that you have to, the outcomes are related to what you put in.

Yeah, exactly. That’s great. So how long until you started this team?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, my first year, I was like rookie of the year, feeling all cocky and confident. By my third or fourth year, I was like number three in the office, and again, I’m feeling all about myself, and I can remember having this girlfriend, and we got into, I would call it a heated discussion, and that’s where she told me, you work too much. All you do is work.

All you care about is work. You’re a terrible boyfriend. You’re gonna be a terrible husband, and she slammed the door in my face, and I thought at 25, 26 years old, I thought she’s crazy, so then next girlfriend, fast forward a while.

We get into a heated discussion. She goes stomping off to the door, stops at the door, turns around, and she says, you’re a terrible boyfriend. All you do is work.

All you care about is work. You’re gonna make a terrible husband, and she slams the door, and she’s gone, and I thought, she’s crazy. My third girlfriend, this is where I’m not that smart.

It takes me a while to pick up on things. She’s storming off towards the door, and I am in my head thinking, wait, wait, before you go, let me give you your script. I already know what you’re gonna say.

Let me get you prepared, and she said, you’re a terrible boyfriend. All you do is work. All you care about is work.

You’re gonna be a terrible husband, and you’re gonna be a terrible father, and she slammed the door, and I remember in that moment, I was sitting there. I’m now 100% single. There’s no thoughts of marriage or kids or anything like that, and I realized at that moment, if I continue running my business as a single agent trying to do everything, I am gonna be a terrible father.

I am gonna be a terrible husband. I’m not gonna be around for my family, and I couldn’t bear to think about that. I had a father who wasn’t around a lot, and I knew that kind of pain, and I was like, that will not be me, and that was the instant where I was like, I’m hiring.

I’m gonna bring in some admin help. I’m gonna bring in some marketing support. Eventually, I started bringing in agents, but I was very clear from that exact moment, 26 years old, 100% single, and now everything I’m building is to be a great father.

[Mattias]
Wow, that’s amazing, and you said it at the very beginning when I said bird’s eye view. You mentioned husband, father, first, and if you look at, if you’re watching this, you can see that underneath, he has it in that order as well, so it was a very clear line in the sand he drew that that was your priorities, and one of the things I talk about all the time is if you don’t plan, if you don’t have the vision of what you want your life to be, if you don’t orchestrate it, if you don’t intentionally live in a certain way, life will just happen to you, and in this business, it’s gonna be exactly like you talked about.

I mean, you can just be consumed by constantly working.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, and there was a drive to be number one, to have the highest GCI, to beat everybody else, to work like nobody else, and I used to wear that like a badge of honor, and I remember one of my mentors telling me, you’re an idiot if you think the harder you work is how you make more money. So I was like, okay, tell me more.

[Mattias]
So in the hiring process, did you get somebody full-time right away then? Like admin or?

[Nick Waldner]
Yep, hired my first admin right away. I went out, sold a bunch of real estate. I came back, and I said, what have you done?

And she said, nothing, and I said, this isn’t working, and you’re fired, and then I hired a second full-time admin, and I ran out, and I sold a bunch of houses, and I came back and said, what did you do? And she said, kind of not really that much. I said, you’re fired.

What is this? I can’t find good help. And then I hired my third admin, and I went out and sold a bunch of houses, and I came back, and I said, what did you do?

And she looked at me, and she said, what have you taught me to do? What do you want me to do? What are the jobs you want?

And I was like, my eyes were this big, and I was like, wow. So maybe those first two hires were actually really good, and it was me, and again, I’m pretty slow. It takes me a little while to pick up on things, so that hire, we built our systems, we built the team, we built everything.

She’s still with me today. In her vision, her and her husband wanted to move to Florida, and there was a certain area, and they wanted to be able to walk the beach every morning, and they love sea turtles. I mean, we blew the vision out.

I knew exactly what she wanted, and the timeline, and all that, and we actually helped her move to Florida five years earlier than her planned timeline. Now, she was like, I’m not retiring. I want to stay on, and I was like, great.

I trust you. She lives down there. She’s been working for me remotely for probably six years at this point.

She’s amazing, and every morning, she sends me a picture of her walking on the beach, and whatever’s going on down there. It is, it’s awesome. She gets to live her dream, too.

[Mattias]
I love that. It sounds like you’ve learned a lot of lessons over the years. A lot of three-peats.

[Nick Waldner]
I’ve screwed up a lot, a lot.

[Mattias]
If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started, what would you do differently?

[Nick Waldner]
I think I would be okay with the boredom of success. I think we’re so fast to look for the next shiny object, to watch the next thing on YouTube, to follow the next hot book that just got released, or the hot new speaker that just came on the scene, and we’re constantly chasing and running after what’s new because we’re bored, and we want some new excitement, and the reality is, if you can get comfortable in the boredom, that’s how you become a master. When I look at everything I’ve built in my life, it was time that made me look like the genius. If I did it long enough, over time, eventually, I look like a genius, and every hotshot thing, every single tech thing I bought, and all this other crap that I stuck on my business, two, three years later, I’m like, what am I paying for?

This is such a waste of money, and it was all, not just a waste of money, it was a waste of time. I spent way too much time focused on that dumb stuff when I could just do the fundamentals and the basics better than anyone, and make more money than anyone.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes a ton of sense. So now that you’re more balanced and you have help and all that stuff, how are you able to live better with your family and for your personal health because of these systems and people that you’ve brought in?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, I’m glad you said your personal health, because I think that’s what we all think. Like, well, you know, there are celebrities, so they have, you know, I’m thinking of Hollywood stars, and they have a personal trainer who comes to their house, and they have a chef who’s there on site making all their meals, and they have this, and they have that, and their life is so easy, and the reality is, none of us are getting to that level. None of us are having that type of atmosphere where we’re going to shoot a movie for four weeks to make 12 million dollars, and then we have the rest of the year to do whatever.

In our world, you have to figure out what works. So for my health, you know, I’m 46 right now, and my whoop tells me I’m 40, which is pretty awesome. So my biological age versus my chronological age.

Yeah, exactly. And it’s all because of sleep. It’s all because of stress.

It’s all because of the way I eat, the way I work out, all those things. I’m a 5 a.m. guy every single day, which means I’m in bed and trying to be asleep between 9.30 and 10. I wake up at five.

I go to do my workout from 5.30 to 6.30 because I know no one in my family gets up to around 6.45. So if I’m back by 6.42, my first son wakes up at 6.43, like on the dot. My next son wakes up 10 minutes later. My daughter wakes up 20 minutes later.

My job is the morning routine, getting them up, dressed, teeth brushed, getting them fed. And I look at that as like, hey, the first hour and a half of my day is for me, my health, all of my supplements, everything I do for me personally. And then the next hour, hour and a half is for my kids.

This is not, I have to get them ready for school, but like, this is my moment. Like this is, once they’re off to school, I don’t get to see them the rest of the day, but now I get to be that present father that figures out what do you guys want to make? Okay, do you want sprinkles and whipped cream on your pancake today?

Like all this silly stuff that I get to be a father. And then at eight o’clock, my day starts. I’m off, I’ve got an 8.15 leadership meeting, an 8.30 all team meeting, and like my day is structured and set. And then by 5, 5.30, I’m done, I’m coming home, I’m sitting down with the family. It’s dinner time, there’s no phones, there’s none of that. I’m spending time with them.

Maybe we’ll go out and throw a lacrosse ball, maybe we’ll go out and shoot baskets. And then like 7.30, eight o’clock, they’re going down, I’m putting them down for bed, and now it’s time to, okay, what did I miss? What do I need to answer?

What do I need to respond to? Like just little things while I’m doing whatever. Like while I’m just kind of calming down, 9.30, bed, start all over again. It feels, I guess when I say it like that, it feels so regimented and it’s like, oh, I wouldn’t enjoy that. But I love the time I get with my kids. I love the guys and the girls I go to the gym with every morning.

And we have kind of like a cult, because how many people get up and go to the gym at 5.15 in the morning? So those people you get really close to and the people I work with all day. And like all of a sudden, it’s a planned life that I enjoy all the parts of it.

[Mattias]
Yeah, well, I mean, Jocko says discipline equals freedom, right? So I think it’s so true that if you don’t discipline yourself and don’t regiment yourself, in certain ways, life just happens to you. And so you feel like you don’t have time to work out.

And then you’re not present with your family because you haven’t set time to do the emails or whatever you need to. So it’s great.

[Nick Waldner]
Wait, so this is how crazy I am. So Jocko, the Navy SEAL guy, yep, same guy, he wrote a children’s book and it’s called The Way of the Warrior Kid. And I have read it with my son, I wanna say 900 times.

And I’m telling you, it is written for a child and they truly understand it. And when I say discipline equals, both my boys yell freedom, like they get it. And it is also pouring into me every time I read it with them, it’s reminding me of those little fundamentals.

It’s a great book. I know that sounds silly because it’s a kid’s book, but if you have a little boy or a little girl, I would say age four till probably 12, go out and get it. There’s three different versions of it.

And it’s like when they’re really small, they’re a little bit older, now they’re in middle school. It is an awesome book to teach those fundamentals.

[Mattias]
I’m 100% behind that. I’ve never heard of that. It’s amazing.

[Nick Waldner]
It’s fantastic.

[Mattias]
Yeah, there’s been so many of these. So I worked as a behavior specialist in the school system before I got into real estate. And I did a lot of work with kids with things like the seven habits of highly effective people and all that kind of stuff.

They have a teen version of that, but I actually found like I could relate to better.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s crazy how good it is. I could tell you the characters and I’ll say to my son, just the little stories and the fables that are in there that make you understand it.

And I’ll say, well, should Mark gotten in trouble for that? Well, yeah, you got to take ownership. It’s 100% on you.

You’ve got to take responsibility for everything. Well, is it okay that Mark did that? Cause Nathan was being a jerk.

No, Mark still has to control his emotions. And I’m telling you, we use it all the time.

[Mattias]
All right, yeah. Now I’ve got a three-year-old, a five-year-old and an eight-year-old.

[Nick Waldner]
You’re in, you are in. Your eight-year-old is gonna love it and your three-year-old is gonna slowly start to get it. Your five-year-old is gonna be good too.

[Mattias]
Sure, that’s amazing. I thought there’s a lot more like parenting things we could talk about, but I also wanted to get into your investing. I love the idea that you are helping your team also invest.

So I guess maybe start off with where, after you failed 10 offers, where did you start actually picking up property and what strategies have you used?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, for anybody who’s in the younger demographic listening, I started with house hacking before it had a really cool name. Back in the day, it was buy a house and throw your friends in it. And that’s what I did.

I bought a house. I had two guys in the other two bedrooms and a third guy in the basement. And my rent, which is basically all of them paying rent minus my mortgage, was like $110.

So I’m saving money every month. Like, all right, what’s my next property gonna be? When I finally bought my second one, I replaced myself with another tenant.

So now my house is still full. And then my buddies were all like, wait a minute, we should buy houses too. And I’m like, great idea.

So I sold each of them a house and then put new tenants in. And then my next house, I had two roommates live in with me. And like, you can continue doing the house hacking for me until you get that significant other that’s like, hey, I don’t wanna live in a frat house anymore.

And that’s when the life ends. You’re like, all right, all right. That strategy was awesome for that age.

So I ended up with two properties over that. I still own them to this day. And then it started being when I found the home runs.

I would go out and look at properties. I’d go out and meet with listings. I would hear about this.

I would hear about that. And anytime it was a home run, it was, all right, how do you find the cash? How do you scrape it together?

And I was probably on a pace of buying about one a year. It wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t wild.

I wasn’t picking up five, nothing like that. But four, five, six, seven, 10 years later, all of a sudden, not only do I have 10 or 12 properties in my portfolio, but the ones I bought 10 years ago are now worth a hell of a lot more than I paid for them. And time just keeps making you smarter and smarter and smarter.

And I had a buddy, I just saw him the other day, no offense to anybody who likes this, but he showed up in his Porsche GT3 something or other. I don’t know all the details. And he was like, yeah, I’ve got this one.

I’ve got another one. I’ve got a third one. And I’m thinking, you’ve got three Porsches?

How many rental properties do you have? How many business do you own? Where do you put all your money?

And apparently, it’s all in Porsches. And that’s what he likes. And I’ve got no problem with that.

But I knew from Rich Dad, Poor Dad, my long-term vision did not include three old Porsches. It included 35 houses that were paying my bills. And the only way to do that is to start buying one a year, one a year, one a year.

And then all of a sudden, you’re buying two a year. Then I got into multifamily, and I started with buying it with others, and then just as an LP, a limited partner. And then it was, okay, now what about shopping centers?

And we bought our first shopping center year and a half ago in Indiana. We’re talking big, Best Buy, Target, and all that kind of stuff. And now we’re looking for the next one of those.

It’s monopoly. That’s all it is. I started buying one house that I lived in personally that I filled with a bunch of my buddies to having conversations with Best Buy about right-sizing their store so that we can make room to put an Ulta in there.

[Mattias]
That’s amazing. Your story is literally my book. It’s exactly what I preach.

It’s perfect. It is 100%, like when you’re young and flexible, buying one at a time, you get the lower down payment. And one of the things I talk about in the book too is to consider is that when you’re getting into real estate, there is the burn the fleet model, and there is advantages to just jumping full in, but you’re not gonna qualify for a mortgage for two years if you do that.

So maybe consider keeping a W-2 a little bit as you’re starting and getting your feelers out, buying your first house, and then maybe then jump in and fill it up so you’re not worried about the mortgage payment because also not having expenses or as little as expenses as possible when you’re starting out is great because you never know when the next paycheck is gonna come until you get more busy.

[Nick Waldner]
I love living with my buddies. I thought that was awesome. One of my buddies, I still golf with him.

He lives right down the street. We’re at the same country club and we joke about that. He tells the story, he’s like, 25 years ago, I lived in his basement.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, it’s great. And then on top of that, you mentioned having the whole Porsche thing. I think that’s another stigma or thing that people think they need to have a fancy car when they start this business.

And I think really if you’re providing good value, they don’t care if you show up in an old Corolla or something, it doesn’t matter.

[Nick Waldner]
It’s who you show up as. If you show up and I look at you and you are young, hungry, and a hustler, and you’re gonna go out and work harder than anybody else, I’ll take you over the guy in the three-piece suit who shows up who looks like, I’m not interested in doing a day’s work. I look really good and I’ve done this for a long time, so you just need to believe in me.

Nah, give me the kid who’s gonna work their ass off.

[Mattias]
Yeah, 100%. And then, like you said, some people are car people and that’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, but keep your lifestyle low. Build up that passive income to pay for that stuff later and they’ll be so thankful you did.

[Nick Waldner]
Well, the difference is for me, I would always, this is not advice. Don’t take this as sound fundamental advice, but this is what I would do. I would work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

I’d be depositing commission checks left and right and then I would look up and I’d have a bank account that would tell me, hey, things are pretty good right now. You can relax a little bit and I did not like that. So I would immediately be like, oh my God, I have $60,000 in my checking account.

I gotta go buy something and I would go buy a house and I’d go find a house for 300,000 and I’d put down the 60 grand and I would be dead broke again. And then I was like, oh God, I’m broke. I need to go out, I need to work, I need to work.

And I’d go out and sell a bunch more houses and then I’d look up and I’d have 75,000 in my account and I’d be like, oh, I could probably take a vacation. Nope, nope, gotta buy something. And I kept buying things to keep money out of my bank account so I never felt like I could relax.

I think the more successful you get, it tends to make us feel more and more comfortable. And when you become comfortable, you don’t push. You don’t make that extra phone call.

You don’t drive that extra mile. You sit back a little bit because you can. And that is the enemy of how to get to the big, big, big levels.

[Mattias]
Yeah. And then I wanna highlight more about your story too about how picking up these properties and holding them for a while, how they increase in value. You mentioned being an LP in a syndication, which is amazing as a real estate professional.

You get great tax benefits. It can be a really good, very passive thing. But if you’re not making 200 or $300,000 a year, but you have a million in net worth because of all these rentals you picked up over this time, you now are able to invest in things like this, slash you are now gonna be sitting on potential capital to go into something crazy like a shopping center with a Best Buy.

[Nick Waldner]
Yep, exactly. And what I would say, I think when I look back to syndications, I got a poor education in syndications. And when I say that, what I mean by is I invested in a syndication with a group that I was introduced to.

We had great results. And then we bought another, another, another, another, all great results. Great results is a terrible teacher.

Yeah. Because now I believe that all syndications are created equal. And anytime somebody gives me a prospectus, well, yeah, those numbers must be pretty accurate.

And I had to learn really quick because now I have a long list of failures on my resume. I have everything from like, not as big as the Bernie Madoff, but scandals like that where they were taking money here and paying off here and that pyramid and all, you name it, I’ve been involved in a little bit of all of it because I got that poor education that told me, these are all working, they’re all doing well, I’m making money on all of them, just keep putting money in. And that one original company I still have deals with, we still do deals together, and we’ve won 80% of the time.

But then every time I got outside of my education, I’m like, oh, I’m gonna invest in this ATM deal, I’m gonna invest in this stock deal, I’m gonna invest in this, all the industries that I don’t really know a lot about, almost all of them came back to bite me in the butt and lost money or failed on this one or this guy went under. So you wanna make sure that GP, your general partner, has a track record, can show you that they’ve done this over and over and over again, and the success and failure, if they’ve never had a failure, I’d avoid them too. They should have successes and failures and be able to show you all of them.

And I wanna see, introduce me to five people who’ve invested in 10 or more of your projects. If they don’t have investors to keep coming back, back, back, back, stay away.

[Mattias]
It’s really good advice. That’s really good advice.

[Nick Waldner]
And I think that is- That only cost me about half a million dollars, so you’re welcome.

[Mattias]
I’ll cut you a check after the show. No, that’s very true. And I think it’s easy to have the rose colored glasses on things like that, because it’s easy passive money, it’s all this stuff.

But yeah, there is risk. There’s definitely risk involved and I’ve definitely heard of people and sometimes the bigger names that are out there are ones that are not focused on the business and like actually making it successful. Like sometimes there is a, the industry gets them to get a new deal to be able to get that payment within the structure, so to keep the lights on, to keep going.

And they might take a deal that doesn’t make near as much sense in order to do that. So yeah, 100%, those are really good tips for anybody considering this space. But the point of it all too, is that you have those options because you did things like buying these properties and building up your wealth and building up your team and building up your business in general.

So you can make these decisions and hopefully you’ve made more than the $500,000 you’ve lost. And so it’s been worth it in the end. But yeah, I mean, that’s the thing too.

When people think about getting into a flip or something like that, it often feels like a zero-sum game where, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be investing $200,000 into this deal and it could all go belly up. We’re gonna lose everything. And even if you did, which is, I don’t really think it’s possible to lose everything.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, I was just gonna say, it’s not possible to lose at all because you’re gonna have some leverage there. You’re gonna have that. But you could put $200,000 in a syndication and literally lose everything.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Nick Waldner]
Like nothing.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yeah, but in this circumstance, I’m just saying the lesson learned, that getting in and getting started is worth it. And usually with a flip type scenario, the worst case is you pay a little bit or maybe you break even and it wasn’t really worth it.

If you do your calculations right, you can’t just go and throw a dart at the MLS.

[Nick Waldner]
That goes back to my team. When I’m teaching this and I’m sharing this and I’m telling them my successes and failures, there’s a hesitation to jump in. So I immediately said, if you were on my team and you bring me any deal and we work it together, I will go in 50-50 partners with anyone.

And if I’m putting in my money, we’re gonna sit down and I’m gonna teach you and we’re gonna do the research and we’re gonna understand the numbers and we’re gonna go through everything together. And even if that just got them to buy their first one, and then they buy their second, third, fourth, fifth, without me, I’m fine with that because it got them off the fence and got their first one. And I have several that we’ve bought four or five together and that’s fine too.

I want them to get comfortable enough to be willing to do it themselves. I’ll partner with anybody on my team for as long as it takes them until they’re comfortable to be able to do it on their own because I think long-term, they’re gonna look back and be like, man, thank God he got me to do that first one or that second or third one.

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. And it does often take somebody else to feel comfortable doing it. So yeah, I was gonna ask you then too, how that all has started or how that works in your team.

So you’re obviously talking about your wins and your failures and stuff with your team actively. And when you’re picking up deals, if they’re going out and finding them, so it sounds like that’s a key piece there is that they have to bring you the deal. You’re not out there finding deals for them.

No. Which makes sense. You gotta put speed in the game.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, and the reality is they might be bird-dogging and looking for deals, but we might only buy one in every 20 deals they bring, which means they’re getting an education on the analysis 19 times before we buy that one. And that means there might be 19 mistakes that they would have made if we weren’t partners and they were just gonna do it on their own.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I love that. And so are these then any kind of deal? Are you targeting burrs, fix and flips?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, it depends on the deal. We look at it for buy and hold is our number one priority because that’s how you build wealth. Doesn’t work for that, can we flip it and what do the numbers look like there?

So that’s really why we’re looking back and forth. And it’s funny because I’m always a teacher, but I’m always a student. So when I bought that first shopping center, who did I buy it with?

I bought it in a partnership with four other guys where one guy has 12 of these and he’s been doing this for 20 years. So I went in as a partner with him knowing, all right, I got a million questions, teach me this, show me this, why do we like this? And we’ve been analyzing deals every week for the last probably two years and now I’m understanding so much more because of my conversations with him where I don’t mind partnering with him on the deals because I’m learning so much.

Like it’s worth it to me, then go to take that risk alone and not sure what I’m exactly doing.

[Mattias]
No, 100%, that makes a ton of sense. I had a follow-up question there.

[Nick Waldner]
It’s probably a good one.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s why I can’t remember it. But so yeah, that’s really cool that the team is involved and oh yeah, I know what I was gonna ask. It was about how do you teach your team to walk the line of finding a deal, sometimes I’m assuming they’re gonna be off-market and talking to sellers as a licensee, how do you walk that line of if you put it on the market, you could get X, Y, and Z and if you go with me, I can close in two weeks.

Tell me how you approach that.

[Nick Waldner]
I love that because I think that this gets lost in the highlight reel of YouTube where everybody’s like, oh, I found this deal, I made 85,000. You probably stole it from some old lady. Like if their kids find out, they’re gonna be pretty upset.

Like that’s not the business that I ever wanna run. So when we go and we sit down with a seller and we’re looking at those, especially the really terrible, the horrible houses that you buy that are probably the best buys to turn around and make money on. Those are the ones where we sit down and up front it is, hey, we’re a licensed real estate company, this is what we do, we’re gonna give you three different options and you’re gonna be able to make the best decision for you.

The first option is convenience, easy, you pick the close date, you don’t have to take anything with you, there’s nothing simpler, no repairs, no appraisal, nothing, it’s a cash offer. The downside is it’s going to be the least financial but it’s gonna be the least work. That’s one option.

The next option is to sell it as is on the market, this is where we’re gonna put it on the market, you could have inspections, you’re gonna have buyers coming through, we’re gonna ask you to do certain things to clean up the house and make it safe to get in and out of. And then our third option is we will partner with you, we’ll renovate the entire process together, you put money in, we put money in and we sell the renovated property and this is what you can obtain in the market once all that’s done. Now if I’m buying it cash, I want you to know that I’m gonna put all the money in myself and this is what we’re aiming for, there’s no guarantee we’re gonna get there but that would be our goal.

If we put it as is, maybe you only need to spend $10,000 getting stuff cleared out and doing this and doing that and getting it on the market. And then obviously if you wanna put the money in to renovate it, we’ll help you with contractors and all that and it’s gonna be approximately this amount of money. What sounds like the best option for you and we find that a lot of people in that scenario where their house is just awful, they just want out, they just wanna walk away.

[Mattias]
Hit the restart button kinda.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah and I tell people all the time there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s almost like if you’ve ever sold your car and you’re going to buy a new car and the dealer says, look I’ll give you 10 grand for that and you’re like, man I could probably put it online and get somebody to give me 11 and then I gotta take it to the DMV and get the title transferred and I gotta get the money from them and I gotta get it inspected. You know what, just give me the 10 grand, it’s not worth 11.5 and going through all that hassle. Now if the dealer says I’ll give you five and I can get 11.5 if I sold it myself, all right, my next move I’m going to CarMax. What will you give me? And I’m gonna try to figure out the best scenario for me that causes either the most money in my pocket or the least time and effort out of my debt.

Whatever is most important to me, that’s where I’m gonna lean. So we get really clear and we show them everything. Here are the comps of why your cash offer is here, here are your comps if it’s after renovation and what that would look like and we just have them initial each page that we reviewed it, we shared it and they get to pick.

I don’t wanna make my wealth off of the backs of anybody. I wanna be really open, I wanna be really clear and we have people that are like, man, I didn’t know I could get that. Yeah, I’ve got some savings, let’s put money into it and we’re like, great, no problem, let’s help you.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I love that, that’s perfect and I think people may also think when they’re in this kind of scenario if they’re not having thought through everything like you that you’re not gonna wanna tell them that you’re gonna get a profit for taking on the risk and putting your capital into it and renovating it. Of course you’re gonna get a profit for doing this. It’s not like you’re gonna do that to break even.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, you are not a charity and no one thinks you’re doing it for the good in your heart. I think the more honest you are with people, the more clear what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, hey, I can respect that, I don’t expect you to work for free. Okay, you buy it for this and sell it for this and you take that profit, I’m okay with that because I don’t have any risk.

I can just walk away. All right, that’s fair to all of us and that’s what people want. They want a fair deal for everybody.

[Mattias]
And you’re gonna build the trust and you’re not gonna ruin your reputation by, and I love that you have them initial, the three different options that you reviewed it, that makes a lot of sense. Man, I need to have like a part two of this podcast. We flew through 39 minutes.

This has been wonderful. I do need to move it into the golden nuggets but there’s been a million already but do you have any golden nuggets for the listeners?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, my golden nugget is find a mentor. Whatever age you are, whatever stage you are in business, you have to become a student always. So if I’m looking at my mentors and one of them is a billionaire and he’s at such a higher level than where I am and I watch his life and I see what he does and I can see where his focus has moved away from money and trying to get as much as possible and it’s much more about his life and his enjoyment and his family and his health and his time and like I see that end game and it allows me to cheat the system and I don’t have to kill myself for 70 years before I realize, man, maybe I should care about my health, my family, my relationships.

Stuff like that. So I think go out and find a mentor. There was a book, I don’t remember the name of it but it talked about a mentor lunch.

Find somebody that you respect, you take them to lunch, go ask them if they’ll have lunch with you and have five questions and ask those five questions to every single person you take to lunch that way and once a month, you have a mentor lunch where you find somebody that you respect, ask them to lunch, see how it goes and it could result in a relationship where they become a mentor for years to come, it could be just that one lunch but you should always be looking for those successful people because to be honest, they’re at a point of success where they want to give back, they want to share. Their kids don’t want their company, their wife doesn’t want to hear about their business, like nobody cares and you show up and you’re like, tell me everything you did and they’re like, really, you want to know? And they’re almost dying to give you that information so go out and find a mentor and make sure you’re being a mentor to somebody else.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I love that and just the who you are surrounding yourself with is so important and like trying to, like you said, if you can give back yourself, have a percentage of your time allocated to that, if you can be around peers that are kind of in the same world, kind of the same mindset, they’re raising you up, not bringing you down, that’s great to spend a good amount of time with people like that but then I’ll definitely find those people that are ahead of you is so critical, I love that.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, love it.

[Mattias]
So we talked about Robert Kiyosaki but is there, and Jocko, what is the book? We got it.

[Nick Waldner]
The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom.

[Mattias]
Okay.

[Nick Waldner]
And there’s five types of wealth, I love how he breaks this down. So Sahil, great writer, spent some time with him, really good guy, family person, like this is more of a compilation of five or six different books, all put into one that teaches all the lessons you would learn after reading all these other books but it’s in one. It’s well written, it’s easy to follow, it’s got some good stories but it talks about how we measure our success on our bank account only.

And financial wealth is important, I’m not saying go live in a yurt and never worry about money but it’s not the only thing because there’s plenty of CEOs that are on their third marriage and their kids don’t talk to them and their health is so poor, who knows how long they have left. And all of a sudden when you start looking at the different categories of your financial wealth, your physical wealth, your mental wealth, your social wealth, your relationships, and your time wealth, when you start looking at all those things and then you start putting purposeful time into each. Gosh, I wanna make sure I’m healthy so I’m watching what I eat, I’m working out and I’m doing the right things there.

And man, I know that no matter how successful I am, if I don’t have great relationships, if I don’t have a relationship with my kids or my parents or my friends or whatever that social circle is, how am I gonna enjoy my success anyway? So I’ve gotta put time in there and then when I talk about the mental side and how stress kills and what you need to do there, it is encompassing in our entire world of how to approach this life and still go after the highest levels of success but without giving up on all the other areas that are important too.

[Mattias]
I love it. I mean, that’s exactly what the show’s about. So that’s perfect.

[Nick Waldner]
There you go, five types of wealth, Sahil Bloom.

[Mattias]
And then if people are interested in following you on any social media or anything like that, where can they find you?

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, you can find me, I think Facebook, it’s WaldnerNick, @Waldner Nick. Instagram is at Nick Waldner. You can go to nickwaldner.com.

You can go to thewaldnerwinnersteam.com. If you send an email, I’ll actually answer it. If you send a DM, I’m not somebody who has assistants running all that.

It’s just me responding. So if you see any of this and you wanna reach out, grab any one of those, send me a DM or send me a message. I’m happy to share and to give ideas or thoughts or if something piqued your interest, ask a follow-up question, I’m there.

[Mattias]
I love it. Nick, thank you so much for your time. This has been a wonderful conversation.

[Nick Waldner]
Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me.

[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.