Kyle Bender - How to Build a Real Estate Business That Doesn't Depend on You | Real Estate Educators Podcast with Kevin Amolsch

Description

How do you build a successful real estate business without spending all your time working in it? After completing more than 1,200 real estate transactions and building a property management company overseeing approximately 550 units, Kyle Bender has learned that growing a business is about more than just closing deals.

In this episode of the Real Estate Educators Podcast, Kevin Amolsch sits down with real estate investor and entrepreneur Kyle Bender to discuss his journey from buying his first investment property to building multiple real estate businesses. Kyle shares lessons from his early deals, the challenges of scaling a team, and why having clear investment goals is essential to building long-term wealth.

Kevin and Kyle also explore how to protect your capital, manage debt, build cash flow through rental properties, and recognize opportunities in a changing real estate market. They discuss the importance of hiring the right people, balancing business growth with personal priorities, and creating a portfolio that supports your long-term goals.

Whether you're a real estate agent looking to become an investor, an experienced investor growing your portfolio, or an entrepreneur trying to work less in your business, this episode offers practical insights from Kyle's more than 20 years in real estate.

00:00 – His First Investment Property & Lessons from a Short Sale
09:00 – Learning Real Estate Through Experience & Mentorship
12:00 – Building a Business: Teaching vs. Managing People
16:15 – Single-Family Rentals, Commercial Properties & Syndications
21:00 – Building a Rental Portfolio Through Partnerships
25:15 – Hiring the Right People & Learning to Delegate
31:00 – Accessing Equity & Diversifying Beyond Real Estate
38:00 – Prioritizing Family & Creating Generational Wealth
42:00 – Key Takeaways & Advice for Real Estate Investors

Connect with Kyle Bender

Kyle Bender is a real estate investor, broker, and entrepreneur based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He works across residential real estate sales, property management, and investment properties.

Instagram: @KyleMBender
Facebook: Search Kyle Bender
Phone/Text: 704-942-6316

Learn more about Pine Financial Group: www.pinefinancialgroup.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I like the teaching bit. What I hate is managing people.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
Okay. That's the hard part for me. I actually enjoy educating and even clients. It's easy when you're talking to people or investors saying, hey, I don't start with this is what you do. I start with your goals, your plan. What do you want? 2015 and it said by 2020, I'm going to have a real estate team this big. I'm going to have property management this big. And it had all these goals. And I looked at it, I was like, Oh my gosh, kind of teared up a little bit. I was like, I hate this stuff. Like, we did it. The problem is, I don't know what I want to do next. I do think for agents that are good and been in the business a while, I think we're going to see our sales go up when the market does any big stuff, right? 21, everybody's sales went up.
Speaker #1
We were in negotiations. We're investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back. We've got another great guest with us today, guys. Kyle Bender. Now, you've been in the business for a long time. I know you've done over 1,200 transactions. You're a real estate investor. You're an entrepreneur. And you have a niche, a specialty in helping people get from that agent mindset, let's work in the business, to get out and work on the business. Welcome to the show, man.
Speaker #0
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So started Scarlett Properties. I assume when you got into real estate, it was that, but maybe not because you got excited about real estate when you were a teenager. So take me back. How does that happen?
Speaker #0
Well, I first got excited. My mom was going over her budget with me and we were sitting there talking. We did not grow up wealthy at all. I mean, like she was pinching pennies. Let's be real. But she'd go through her budget and she'd say, okay, here's the grocery bill and here's this. And it was all allocated, kind of like the cash envelope system. And she goes, and here's our rent check. And I was like, what's rent? I'm in middle school. I'm not sure what anything is. I still don't know what anything is. And she's like, well, we pay rent to live in this duplex. And I was like, okay, explain more. And then she kept going on and on. our landlord's name was Peter Schmidt and I'll never forget it. Cause I was like, mom, I want to be that guy. Like I want people to just give me rent, but he doesn't have to work on it. He doesn't have to do it. Like I want, yeah, I want, I want to be Peter Schmidt. So I don't know what he's doing today. I mean, I was a kid.
Speaker #1
You should totally find out.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Ever since then it was, I should, there's a, there's a couple of people I want to find out that I've, that have really made an impact on me that probably have no idea. He has no clue. He'd be like, Oh, that. little kid that was in the duplex he probably doesn't know right but um yeah ever since then it was like let's go and i just started learning reading books it was a little bit later on maybe into high school when i was like you know what i have no clue what i'm gonna do in my life like i thought it was me a professional athlete you know like every boy's dream and then uh it was like yeah okay well we're not gonna make it it's such a small percentage so i kind of walked away from that. started learning everything real estate, started learning everything mortgage, like everything. I wanted to have apartments and I wanted to develop and I wanted to build. And here we are today. I'm still a broker. I work on the business, but I also work in the business and I also do our investments. We do our property management stuff. So there's a lot that we continue. I just keep growing and learning and learning and growing and making mistakes here and there and failing forward. Like, okay, well, not a total failure, but let's learn from that and keep going.
Speaker #1
Go fast and fall forward, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
All right. So Peter Schmidt, man, I got to say, this is so cool because you totally looked at it from a different lens when your mom was sitting right next to you. So I think most people, even adults with mature minds, would be thinking about, oh, I got to pay this out. And you're thinking about how do I get that? So how do you find this guy and tell him? You have to do this.
Speaker #0
I'll find him. I'll find him.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
We have Skip Tracers and everything. I can find him. He's probably on Instagram and Facebook too.
Speaker #1
Yeah, dude, you're a real estate investor. Of course you could find somebody.
Speaker #0
He's probably like the white Robert Kiyosaki. He's probably got some bazillion dollar portfolio now. I'm like,
Speaker #1
oh yeah, that was my landlord. He might want to sell off some of it.
Speaker #0
That's right. That's right.
Speaker #1
You never know. All right, so your first deal. Was it as an investment or as an agent? Like, how did you actually get into the game?
Speaker #0
Oh, geez. My first actual deal was an investment. Oh,
Speaker #1
that's cool.
Speaker #0
So I dropped out of college. I was supposed to be a math teacher. And I was like, you know what? Like my family's teachers up in Buffalo, New York, and they've got a great life and they're locked in for their retirement. I was like, I just, I don't want to do that in real estate part-time. Like I'm the guy I'm all in. Like if we're going to start something like that's where I'm going, I think it's the best way to do anything. Like I don't want to half-ass it. Like we're going. And I met this guy, I went to real estate school. So I moved down to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I live now, 21 years ago. I was 21 years old. I'm 42 now. You can do the quick math. And I met this guy, I was playing hockey with him. He goes, Hey, you're in real estate. I'm thinking he's going to ask me to help him sell his house or something. He goes, well, I got divorced and I've got this house. And again, this is 2005 or 2006. And he goes, and this is down here. It was booming, booming, booming until 2007 and 2008. And he came through and he was like, yeah, we're getting divorced and we want to sell you our property. Okay, let's talk about this. Come to find out they've owed on it. It was about to foreclose. So I went through a whole short sale process. It was my first ever deal. Like, mind blown. I had no clue what I was doing. I'm calling this bank, talking to them. They're asking me things I have no idea. I did have my mortgage license back then. And one of the guys did the loan for me. And I'll be real, I wasn't making any money. Like, nothing. And they gave me a loan.
Speaker #1
100% financing.
Speaker #0
This is the big short. This is why we had such a big problem. And I was like, they're going to give me money. Like, I don't make any money. So they gave me money to buy this short sale. Went through the whole process. It took a while. This is kind of funny. The last thing comes up, the closing statement, and they're like, well, do you want to get paid a commission? And I was like, well, I am a real estate agent. And I was like, no, just to get through the deal. Like I want you guys to give me the house. So I said, no, come to find out they would have tacked on my 3% anyways. So I'm just an idiot. I kicked myself in the butt today, but I'm like, all right. And it wasn't a lot. It was 120 grand. Lesson one,
Speaker #1
don't say no if someone's trying to give you money.
Speaker #0
Had no idea. I thought they were like, I don't know. I have no clue what was happening. But yeah, we got through there. We might've made a little bit of money. A friend of mine stayed there, slept on the ground, did all the work ourselves and ended up getting out of it. Another lesson number two, the buyer was buying an FHA loan. Well, guess what? I had to hold the property for six more months and rent it back to them. So it wasn't like that flipping transaction.
Speaker #1
Oh, really? I thought that was 90. Did that change? Because that's 90. I don't know. I swear,
Speaker #0
maybe it was 90, but back then I swear I was like, what am I doing? I need the money. I was broke.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And it's not when you close, it's when you contract. So you can't contract until the 91st day. And then it's what, 30 days, 45 days after that, when you can actually get your money.
Speaker #0
Yeah. But like going back this 21 years or like 20 years, like I had no clue, but I was like yeah what do I need to do? So now I'm trying to talk to the buyer through their agent. Can I just rent them the property? Go in there and they're paying me $250 a month. That's all they can afford. And I was like, that doesn't cover the mortgage at all, but I need the buyer.
Speaker #1
How are you going to buy it?
Speaker #0
And I have to wait. Oh, it was awful. How did they buy it? They bought it with an FHA loan. I don't know. They probably got a loan just like I did to get the thing.
Speaker #1
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker #0
Again, lesson number three. I'm an idiot because I'm like not even charging what the real price should be.
Speaker #1
So you give them a discount rent, a discount price. It closed though and you got paid. How much did you make?
Speaker #0
I want to say maybe $7,000. Maybe. But we made money. It was positive. We were profiting.
Speaker #1
Have you ever gone back? Because I know I've done short sales, man. I know what that's like. Have you ever gone back and calculated the per hour? Oh, you don't want to do that.
Speaker #0
I was going to say one thing in our business, you never calculate the per hour. There's coaches, there's real estate mega coaches. They're like, you need to calculate every hour so you know what your time's worth and what you're getting. And I'm like, uh-uh. I make good money. I make good money. I'll sell a $50,000 lot. I'll sell a $2 million home. I'll tell you right now, yeah, making way more money. It's around the same amount of time I'm putting into it, but there's times you run yourself ragged thinking, oh my gosh, I lose money on deals. I'll lose money on that $50,000. I pay a transaction coordinator, pay my assistant, I pay out everybody. And then am I left with anything? No, you lost money on that.
Speaker #1
It's probably a bad habit, if you want to call it that. But sometimes I just work really hard on a deal. I've got this development deal, dude. I've been in for 15 years. I don't even... I don't even know where to begin to calculate my per hour on that one.
Speaker #0
I can't wait to chat with you about that one offline here.
Speaker #1
Oh, gosh. I'm right near the end. And I will make money, right?
Speaker #0
It's a beautiful thing. But 15 years.
Speaker #1
Pretty low IRR. Oh my goodness. We're going to get out. We're going to get our money back. We're going to make a little bit of profit.
Speaker #0
People think development, it's easy. Investing's easy. Real estate's easy. Like, oh my gosh.
Speaker #1
I saw that you were doing some development too. What projects have you worked on?
Speaker #0
Just little stuff. Nothing big. When I first started, I was building custom homes on the framing crew. Like I was, when I say like, I've learned this business. okay i still don't know it all um but like our little development stuff there was a guy here um he's passed away now but he was like in union county he was like the big developer for the custom homes and he kind of took men or his wing a little bit and was like hey because i was just hungry i'm telling you like kevin i go and i'd be like hey i'll work for free like i i will wake up i'll be there so like when i was going i was it's 4 a.m i'd meet him early just to see what was going on with some of the all the machines, you know, what's going on? Like, how do you cut a road in? Like, what is, what is a gutter? I don't know. Right. You learn all these things, surveys, like, and I'm still learning all this stuff, but it was just, yeah. Like the most development stuff was little things that I was trying to help to learn. And then even now, like there's probably five years ago, I went to another developer who works pretty much for DR Orton, develops all the lots for them. And I was like, let me just learn. He's like, man, it's really hard to just teach you. And it's funny because now I've got like junior associates that are following us on the broker side. And I'm like, I want to help you, but I just, this is just annoying. And I'm like, man, I don't know what to tell you. You got to learn so much and I don't have time to sit here and like coddle you. So like he's actually shadowing my assistant now, which is kind of funny because she knows he's done more deals and she knows more than most agents do.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I'm right there with you. And that brings me to the scaling. But man, if you could come to me with specific questions, I probably have an answer or at least an opinion. But if you just get a broad question, like, how do I, I don't know if I could help, man, I'm not I'm not a great teacher like that. But it seems like you have to be able to coach up your team if you're going to scale. And you've done that, like such a great way. So what's the disconnect, man? How is it you don't you're not good at the teaching bit, but you've been able to grow a nice team?
Speaker #0
I like the teaching bit. What I hate is managing people. That's the hard part for me. I actually enjoy educating and even clients. It's easy when you're talking to people or investors saying, hey, I don't start with, this is what you do. I start with your goals, your plan. What do you want? I sat down a long time ago. I said, I want 10 rental homes that are each bringing in a thousand dollars a month. They're single family. It was an easier route to go. And all this multifamily stuff, no commercial loans, it's all residential. I was like, okay, I can do this. It's obtainable. All right. If I've got a hundred thousand or a $200,000 house, I know how much to save. I know what the cashflow looks like. I know how much the rent should be versus what my mortgage payment is. It's very simple. But I'd sit down and say, hey, okay, Kevin, you guys want to get in real estate investing. What kind of investing do you want to do? Is it single family homes? Is it multifamily? Are we talking commercial buildings? There's so much to go, but what is your plan? Tell me what you want five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Are we talking about generational wealth? I want to know where you're trying to go because it's a different story for everybody. And when somebody says, I want one home and it makes 2,000 a month, that's it. I'm like, no offense. You better hedge those bets because when that tenant doesn't pay, when they ruin your house, when you got damages and you got this, this, this, I don't think one home is worth it.
Speaker #1
I agree.
Speaker #0
I do think if you're going to invest, you're going in.
Speaker #1
Have you only done a residential to this point?
Speaker #0
I've got some commercial, like small commercial. Like the biggest thing I have personally is a fiveplex.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
I'm looking at another six unit, but there's nothing like, I know residential so well.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I talked to, like, I've got really good commercial friends and I'm like, okay, what are we doing here? They start spitting out all these numbers, the IRRs. I'm like, so I'm in a bunch of syndications, right? So honestly, like, okay, I have a part of probably a few. thousand rentals. But no, I really talk about me because I know it better. I can tell you, go put some money over there. As soon as they all turn, then I'll know better. But that's really where I'm mostly residential. I'll say it all day. And when I talk to some commercial guys, they send me a proform and I'm like, all right. So again, back it out. What are these rents today? And here I am, I'm a real estate broker. No offense to all the brokers. I don't like real estate brokers. The real estate agents to me are kind of like used car salesmen. It's very hard to be like, I really like you. You have my best interest. You know, like most of them, like I just, yeah, I want a commission. So do I. But if I can help you, you're going to send me all your friends and all your people and all your other investors. I literally have a list of investors on my board. When something comes up, like boom, I know who to call. I mean, it's, and they're also like, well, Hey, thanks for not pushing me to that. I can tell you when COVID happened, I was really scared and nervous, but I was like, I don't know. I was telling people to sell. Well, guess what?
Speaker #1
Oh, you were.
Speaker #0
Oh my gosh. The first six months when everything dropped, I'm like, we're going to have 2008 all over again. Here it is. We're blowing up. We're going to bust. And then all of a sudden, everything doubles. I was like, I should have held on to every property I've ever had. I'd probably be retired not even talking to you right now. I'd be like, I'm good. We sold 50 properties and made it.
Speaker #1
We'd still be hanging out. You love this stuff.
Speaker #0
I do. That's the problem.
Speaker #1
Man, that COVID thing. I think we were kind of headed towards a recession when that hit. anyway. So I agree with you. When you look at it, it looked like we were going off a cliff. It's just all the government stepped in. And now we're giving some of that back. What do you guys see now in your market?
Speaker #0
So there's a couple of different ways I look at the market. So in Charlotte and the surrounding area here, basically the luxury homes, let's call it a million dollars and up. I mean, it seems like they're still moving along just normal, just fine. I say that because I think it's just the wealth. I think people aren't worried about 7% interest rates, but when you look under there and you're looking at the 500 and under, and you start talking about the middle class, the lower class, the affordability, I don't see the markets. To me, it's going down. The prices are coming down, the interest rates are going up. There's more inventory. There's a lot of things that I'm like, man, it doesn't look good to me. So as an investor, and I'm talking to my wife about this too, Because like. We want a different home. We have three boys. We want to grow into a bigger house. And the oldest is six. The youngest is going to be one in December. So we have a spread. And I'm like, I just want to get them to the next family home that's kind of like, we're here for 20 years. Kids are going to grow up here. This is it. But at the same time, I'm like, man, I want to get a little bit more debt paid off. I want to have some more cashflow. And I'm telling you, I think opportunity's coming. But again, I was wrong at COVID. So... I don't know, do the opposite of me. Go buy everything you can right now. I'm like, you're probably going to make bazillions of dollars. But I can't say like back when it was 2008, all the way to 2012 and 13, I had a partner, a really good friend of mine come in and he's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm buying real estate. He's like, why? And here's my math, right? Like it was all the way from 2010, basically to 2013. I said, okay, that house right there, I bought. The builders can't build it that cheap. Okay. And I'm like, all right, the rents, our mortgages were so low. I'm like, my rent's at least 500 bucks more than that mortgage. He's like, all right, so how much do I need to put down? Like, how would we do this? And I was like, well, here, let me get you one. So I go find him. It was a foreclosure. We had to do some things that the bank didn't know about because it was inhabitable. Like we had to go in and put carpets in because there was dog feces on the ground. Right. And they're like, well, the bank's like, we're not going to give you money for it. I was like, all right, whatever. I'll just do it. So we just did it. Didn't tell the bank. Still bought the house.
Speaker #1
I've done that.
Speaker #0
As soon as we got the tenant in there, he goes, oh my gosh. Yeah, I want more. And I was like, okay, let's go. He goes, you're doing this with me. So now we have 13 units together. Okay. Because he's like, he didn't want to go it alone. And I didn't know if he trusts me, but I think he was like, no, I'd rather have you in there making sure this stuff is like, this makes sense. So there's just things like that. So his money, your expertise,
Speaker #1
and your- My money, his money. So,
Speaker #0
yeah. we split and then we have, yeah, the property management company. So Scarlett's named after my niece, which is hilarious because we started this so long ago, but she's like 21 years old now. Like, like, and she loves seeing her name on stuff. Like I have a company in Charlotte. I'm like, yeah, Scarlett, Charlotte, like rhymes too. Um, but yeah, like that's where, like I started with little investors, but we manage about 550 units now, maybe a little bit more. Um, we have two offices. And that's been... It's been great to just hold people's hands. Like I've got some people since 2008, when I actually opened the property management, I've got some clients from that long ago. I'm like, oh my gosh, like great to still see that you're here or they call and say, hey, it's time to sell.
Speaker #1
That says something because property management, no offense Kyle, but typically suck. You think agents? Like management companies.
Speaker #0
Management companies. Well,
Speaker #1
that's my experience, not everybody's. Oh no,
Speaker #0
it's mine too. it's mine too um i'll tell i got some great people that run that company i'm not you're not going to call kyle bender to manage your like i'll call you i'll talk to you about what we charge but you're going to get passed right off to Rudy and Samantha. Those two will just run it.
Speaker #1
They're amazing.
Speaker #0
I've been very lucky because I was like, when Rudy first came over, he's been with me, I think 11 or 12 years now. But when he came over, I don't know, I had a company, I sold it, started a new one. I had like 30 properties I was managing. And I'm also trying to sell real estate. And I'm also doing this. I'm also growing the business. I'm also investing. And he's like, you are a mess. I'm like, what do you want to do? He's like, I could do this. I was like, okay, go get your license. You can do this. It's easy. But I'm like, there's not enough money here for you. He came from project management and IT world. And I was like, I know what you made before. You're not going to take a huge... It was a huge step down. He goes, if you let me be with my family when I need to, if you do this and this, I'm like, okay, go for it. And I'm telling you, I wouldn't have it if it wasn't for him, I don't think.
Speaker #1
And he's grown it.
Speaker #0
He's helped grow it. It's been... A lot of times what happens is I'll start... All the agents, not all of them, a lot of agents know me here. So when they have something, they know if we have it and the agent brought it, they're going to get it back if they want to sell it. I'm not here to steal clients. Take it. I'm sorry. Or if you want me to do it because you're out of the business, I'm like, here's a referral fee. We'll figure something out. But no, he's just been great. I'm mostly hands off in that company.
Speaker #1
All the business arms that you have. Kyle, what's your, I guess, your favorite one or what drives the most passion for you of all these different areas of real estate?
Speaker #0
I don't want my clients to hate me, but it's 100% investing in real estate.
Speaker #1
So what side of investing? Because you've done some development. It sounds like you.
Speaker #0
Right now we're doing a couple of spec homes we're building. It's just fun. That's the showy stuff that just looks good. They're like, oh, we can build a million dollar home and we're going to sell it. Yeah. But I think more of looking back, I found a journal entry I had from 2015 and it said by 2020, I'm going to have a real estate team this big. I'm going to have property management this big. And it had all these goals. And I looked at it. I was like, oh my gosh. I kind of teared up a little bit. I was like, I hit this stuff. We did it. The problem is I don't know what I want to do next. I hit a lot of these goals that I felt great about, but it's like, all right, well, I would keep investing. I'd keep investing in real estate. I'm going to learn more commercial stuff. I'm going to look at development stuff. I've got a couple of guys, literally, I'm trying to work on some things to learn it and to grow it. And I'm dangerous. I'm a risk taker, but I'm also conservative, which is funny because I don't want to lose what we've already built. But jumping into this development side, it's going to be me. so yeah you've been through it so you got to protect it but then there's other guys like all in like hey just take it all i'm like man i've been there i want to i want to make sure the family's okay and then yeah one of the guys i was talking to he's he was a bigger developer like had the banks backing him and uh he's like yeah like i got wiped out in 2008 and like i want to say close to like 100 million not like the whole family's gone like wealth is gone she's right so like you go from from here to here to here and i'm like buddy, I don't want to do that. Like, like I want to protect what we have, but also be smart to get to the next place.
Speaker #1
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Speaker #0
That's a great question. I have financial advisors ask me that all the time. Like, why don't you move some of that? Why don't you sell us some of that? There's 1031s you can do. There's these other Delaware Statutory Trusts you can do. There's so many different things. I'm like, I just know it and I trust it. For me, my debt is much... I was also a big Dave Ramsey fan. So I threw out Robert Kiyosaki earlier. like Dave Ramsey debt-free. And do I 100% agree with him these days? No, I don't. But I think leverage and mortgages are okay if you're using them smart. So my debt, let's call it, I don't know, is less than 50%. So my mortgages are lower. My payments are there. My cashflow is good. And that's where I was saying earlier, I don't know the smartest thing. Have one of you guys that are listening right now. shoot me a DM and be like, this is what you need to do. I've got a good nest egg, but I just don't know. I've looked at doing HELOCs on all my properties. I looked at life insurance. I've looked at being my own banker. I'm looking at all these things. I don't know. But right now, it's just, I feel protected because I know the rents. The rents are going to go up and down, just like the market goes up and down, like the sales prices, just like the stock market goes up and down. So I just know if those numbers change. how much are they going to change? People need places to live. People are always going to work. It's not like everybody's going to stop working. It's not like everybody's not going to pay their mortgage or their rent. So I feel good that way. And then I see the values of the homes go up and down. It's like my portfolio goes up, it goes down. Right now it's kind of going down. Okay. As long as it's covered, I feel good.
Speaker #1
So most real estate investors actually call most entrepreneurs in general. have a real hard time getting money out of their business. And we talk about this in some of the business masterminds and different groups I'm in. I read about it constantly. Like it is a good idea to pull cash out of the business and invest it somewhere else, right? We all know that, but we all know how incredibly difficult that is. What is your view on that? And are you trying to implement any strategy like that?
Speaker #0
That's literally what I'm working on now. That's why I brought up like being my own banker and the HELOCs. When I'm talking, I mean, I'll give you real numbers. I don't have a huge portfolio, but I'd say I probably have 3 million, 4 million in equity. Okay. How do I tap that equity to go? I either refinance the properties, I do a HELOC, I do some other kind of life insurance, which whole life insurance, I mean, blow your mind. I'm learning a lot. Again, I'm dangerous with that too because I'm like, I want to do this, but at the same time, it's a big risk to me as well. Yeah. So I haven't tapped it, but like, I'm looking at like, what is the best way to do this? And am I going to take all three, 4 million? No, like I'll take a million and a half to 2 million. Let's go play with that. Right. Like let's reinvest that into something else. Keep letting everything pay it down. Now we're going to have, call it 4 million to 6 million. Great. Take two to 3 million again, reinvest that, pay it down, you know, and it's just going to take time, you know? So I feel like I need to start compounding what we've built. and keep going from there. The other thing that you brought up, the businesses. Okay. So I've got the brokerage side and that's where we make plenty of money selling homes. But to me, I feel self-employed there. I have to go to work. I have to make money. Property management makes a little bit of money. I just reinvest a little bit back into those companies. But I've never pulled money out from those companies to be like, okay, I'm going to go do this. I use some of it, I guess, for investment stuff. distribution wise. But I don't know, I'm learning, man. I love these things because I'll talk to an entrepreneur and be like, okay, I never thought about that. I never thought about taking a bank loan, even though I'm sure I can get some money, but where do I put it? How much do I reinvest back into the brokerage? How much do I reinvest in the property management? Growing that side, I can tell you right now, we're at a very comfortable level where Rudy is putting the... pause, the brakes on me. Because I'm like, man, let's get a business development manager. Let's just get somebody out there on the streets like I used to do. And we're just going to go get a hundred properties. We'll get another a hundred properties. Well, the problem is, as soon as you do that, you got to hire somebody else and you have to train that person. And they have to want to be there. And property management, yeah, it kind of sucks. So I got an employee for six months. We just poured a lot into them, a lot of time, money, and effort. And then within six months to a year, maybe they're gone. You're like, oh my gosh. So how do you find people that want to be there that enjoy this work?
Speaker #1
That's a hard business, man.
Speaker #0
The owners are great. Like we have the best owners in the world. Our tenants are actually really good too. But if you ever look at our reviews, every single one of them, a tenant complaining about getting evicted or we didn't accept their application. Like that's 90% of them. Sometimes it's a maintenance issue. Other than that, the owners are, Hey, you guys are awesome. We love you. Thanks for having our backs. you know so it's a really funny place to be where i'm like i don't know there's another bad review so i'll be like hey rudy he's like don't even ask we didn't we didn't accept their application they've got a 350 credit score Oh, okay. Well then why are you just being mean guy? Like maybe spend your time learning something to get a higher credit score.
Speaker #1
And the, the structure of EXP, if I understand this correctly is, I don't want to use the term pyramid, but I can't think of how else you would do it, but there's a downline.
Speaker #0
It's the best. Everybody thinks like that. There's a downline. They call it revenue share.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Revenue share. Okay. So, I mean, when you grow a team, in that environment, you're not really managing those agents, I would think. They're just in your downline, right? But the income will flow up. So you're getting some passive income from this as well, I think?
Speaker #0
I get a little bit. It's not a ton. I was working a hard, solid year trying to grow this, talk to agents, talk to agents, bring them on. Because for me, I've had my own firm, like I said, since 2008. So when I switched over to with the brokerage side, that was in 2019. And that's really when the big snowball happened with the XP. Like everybody was grabbing onto things and like big agents were coming over and other independent firms. I just saw the opportunity for me and the other agents, right? Not just rev share, like our fees, 80-20 split. I cap at $16,000 a year. I mean, I'll do enough sales. I cap in the first month, right? So I pay them a bunch of money, but the rest of the year, I don't have to pay them anything. we can buy back some stock. That was a huge thing for me. We don't have retirement besides me buying investment properties. So all the other agents on it, I was like, guys, do you have anything? They're like, no. Okay. Here's a way you can at least buy some stock. Our stock price is not so great right now, which isn't really fun for me or anybody, but you can just keep buying it. I've got another 20 years minimum doing this.
Speaker #1
You're not catching it in any way, Kyle. Buy it. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Right. So I'm like, okay. So for 20 years, maybe I'll have. 50,000 shares, 100,000 shares. Will it be worth anything? Maybe not. I don't know. But I don't know. It might give me an option too. And then if you want to try to recruit agents, sure. Recruit agents and get your downline going. Make a little bit of money on each one. So that part, it's good. I got a little butthurt when a couple bigger of my agent friends... I say agent friends. I never really was great friends with agents because I just see everybody's competition. But I do have some really good agent friends where we bounce ideas and they share and I share and we're wide open. Sometimes people are closed off. But a couple of these other guys that I thought were closer decided to go with other... To sign up under different people. And when that happened, it just sucked. It would help the downline quite a bit. And I was like, you know what? I don't want to keep doing this because I don't want people thinking that's all I do. you know, like other agents and what happened, what I think eXp should have done personally, if we're going to talk about this, they should have corporate had one person that that's who you talk to. If you want to come over to the company, like if I said, Hey, Kevin, you got your license. Why don't you come over and talk to him? Talk, talk to me about eXp. I'll give you a little bit, but you're not like, I don't want to throw up eXp on you. You got to talk to Charlotte over here. You know, she's the regional vice president. She does all of the recruiting. Boom. Now Scarlett talks to that person. That way there's not all these agents just throwing up, throwing up. It's a great company. They've got everything you need.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I've heard really great things.
Speaker #0
But when you get all these agents just sitting here trying to get you, like, come over, come over. Don't sign up under him. Sign up under me. Don't sign up under her. Come over here. Be part of my tribe. You're like, man. Don't worry,
Speaker #1
Kyle, about a downline because I guess that's how they sell it to you. Then they are selling houses.
Speaker #0
So I see there's a lot of them that make way more money doing that. Yep.
Speaker #1
Some. Yeah. Most people. Well, you'll be most people, in my opinion, if you stay focused on selling houses, if that's the business you want to be in.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
I mean, there might, if you're looking for downline, there might be other opportunities other than real estate that would perform better.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, there's tons of them, right? I mean, there's all sorts of different companies that do it. Right.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
So I don't know. That's what I think they should have done though, because then it would have stopped all the. I mean, I had one of my buddies was like, I just, I don't want to come over because I got too many people that I know over there and I don't know who I choose. Yeah. Okay. Well,
Speaker #1
fine.
Speaker #0
All right. You know,
Speaker #1
you can piss somebody off, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, as we get into 27 here, tell me something you're excited about. Like, what are you working on right now? You got so many things going on. So maybe it's just what you've already talked about, but is there anything really cool you're working on?
Speaker #0
Really, I don't really, I don't want to say I have anything really cool I'm working on. I do love the investment stuff. I like flipping homes. I'll do a bunch of those every year. What I'm really excited about is the kids, like to be real. Like, let's talk about the family. And this is maybe going to shoot myself in the foot for business, but like, I actually kind of want to figure a way to step back a little bit, you know, to spend more time with the kids. Like right after this, my son's playing hockey. So he's got a little hockey game tonight at, you know, five o'clock. So I'm hoping I can scoot up there, go see him play. But it's things like that. You know, like I want to be able to spend more time to see these boys grow up, to have fun with them, to act like a child again. I mean, I'm already pretty immature. I mean, may as well keep it going. And that's really what I'm excited about. But the real estate, I just see, I don't love it, but I just see all these things that are like going against us in the sales world. That's why I think there's opportunity, you know, on the investment side. So like if I'm, if I'm looking there, if I'm looking for foreclosures, if I'm looking for flips or multifamily, like I'm just, I'm excited for life, I guess. But really I want to keep, I want to get these kids going where I'm like, you know what? Guys, I keep having these ideas that my kids are going to want to do what I do, which I really hope they do. But at the same time, they're probably not going to.
Speaker #1
You played hockey, didn't you?
Speaker #0
A little bit. I mean, I wasn't professional, but I still play now. But looking at it, if they want to do the real estate investing side, that's where I see this generational wealth. Like, hey guys, I did what I could to give you this. We don't have the debt so you can borrow. And then you have to find a good deal. So I want to teach them like, here's how you find a deal. Here's how it pencils and makes sense. All right, go ahead. Let's buy it. Add it to the portfolio, right? Slowly chip away, pay it off, add another one, do this. And like, I would love for that to be like, okay, I'm dead and gone. And now they built this thing to, I don't know, I've got 24 units. Maybe they'll have 200 units. You know, I think that'd be awesome. But again. The oldest is six. I've got plenty of time to just try to build this and put a plan together. So we'll see.
Speaker #1
All right. We do got to wrap it up here in a minute. But I'm just curious, because you love flipping properties. That's where your passion is, even though you have other income generating businesses. How are you finding deals right now in this market?
Speaker #0
So I haven't actually been looking since COVID. I've stopped. I told a lot of our investors, guys, I don't think it's a great time. there might be something that comes across. The last three that I did, there was a client of ours in property management. He called me and said, hey, I've got these properties. I got to let them go now. I'm getting too old. I don't want to deal with them. He goes, is there anything you want to do? And I was like, let me look at them. Let me run some numbers. He actually had four of them at the time. And I sold one to another investor. That investor I'm still doing work with he's a GC And I was like, I don't want to take this on. Do you want to do it? He goes, actually, yeah, here, like this is the number. And I offered it to the guy. He said, yeah, you know what? I'm good with that. Let's do it. And I was like, crap, maybe I should have kept it because there's probably some money to be made there. It's like, you know, if he can do it, I can do it. So the other three, I kind of looked at him. I was like, Hey, here, here's what we got to do. Do you want to sell them all in one year? He said, actually, no, I want to sell them over two years. So we did, you know, the GC bought the first one. I bought another one. That first year. And then the next last year, I just bought two more. So I just got done. I just closed on our last one last week.
Speaker #1
And you're going to call Peter and see if there's any other houses.
Speaker #0
I'm going to call Peter and see what he's got in New York and be like, okay, dude, you got to be old now. You got to be, it's time to go. Do you have any kids? I hope not. But like, I'll buy these from you.
Speaker #1
Oh, that's awesome, man. All right. So I'm going to go through my notes here. Every time I do an episode like this, I want to, whatever I learn from the episode or important things I want the listener or the viewer to get a hold of. I write. Yeah. So I'm just going to go through, if you could just add a little color, anything I'm missing, anything you want to make sure that the listener hears. And then right before we wrap up and get your contact information, if you could give me one piece of advice for a newer real estate investor going into this challenging market, what would that advice be? All right. So I put my first thing I said, we started with your background and getting started with the middle school budget. And then we talked about Peter. Um, but then you, you said, uh, don't say no to free money. So that's when you were giving away your commission for free. So I wrote that down. Do not say no. If someone's giving you money, take, go ahead. It's okay. Take the money. Um, start with the end in mind. You have to have a goal. So, so many people start talking about, Hey, what do I want to do? But it's like, what are you, where are you trying to go? Let's identify that first. And then you also said, and then narrow in on the real estate. Like, do you want to be a broker? Do you want to be a manager? Do you want to do, do you fix it flips? You want to do rental? Like let's narrow down on the path to get there, but... always start with that end in mind. To protect capital, we did talk a little, we spent a fair amount of time talking about that. What I pulled out of that, Kyle, is to protect capital, you really want to reduce debt. But then you took it a step further and say, well, maybe you could take on some debt, some reasonable amount of debt if you want to diversify outside of that asset class. So you want to get into a life insurance policy or another asset class that's not real estate, you could potentially pull some of your equity out. So I thought that was interesting. Money okay, the money in real estate is not in the downline. I did write that down. It's on the transaction. So stay focused on on selling houses.
Speaker #0
And that's me. There's people that may, I'm telling you like my upline, they're making all stupid money.
Speaker #1
Yeah, but it's such a small amount. It's a very small percentage. Actually successful in real estate. The most successful people that I know in real estate have built teams to do it. So whether you're on the investment side or whether you're on the sales side, either way is fine, but you need people working for you to help you elevate. Yeah. So I did write that down. You're really focused in 27 on your family. So I wrote down family first. That's huge, man, especially at this age. It's a little bit easier to get back into the business when they're teenagers and they don't want to hang out with you anymore.
Speaker #0
I'm just glad I did this early, man, and didn't have my kids until later on, honestly. I built the business and then I had the kids, which I'm so happy about right now.
Speaker #1
The last thing I wrote down, Kyle, is there is opportunity on the investment side. I happen to think there's going to be opportunity on the sales side also. Because... as we sink into whatever it is coming and inventory increases, you're going to, the buyers are going to come back out. I do believe that. I don't know when that's going to be, but there's going to be opportunities on both sides. So how did I do with my notes?
Speaker #0
I think those are great.
Speaker #1
Good. What would you add?
Speaker #0
I do think for agents that are good and been in the business a while, I think we're going to see our sales go up when the market does any big stuff, right? 21, everybody's sales went up. right? 2008 and nine, my sales actually went up. The market went down, but my sales went up. So for brokers, I think that's a very important thing to remember. There will be a lot of transactions happening. You just have to know what you're looking for. What else? I want to find a way. I do want somebody to tell us another option, where to put your money. when you're there to diversify. Like, do I want to take it? Like, I think the stock market's crazy high right now too. I don't really want to take that $2 million out of the real estate and put it in the stock market. I almost would rather just let it sit, but I don't know what the real options are. You know, do I go buy a different business? I don't want to have another thing to worry about. I've got enough businesses to worry about now.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Stay focused, man. I would not to do that. There are You could hedge that, right? You could invest in a stock market and create gates, right? So you have a, it won't drop below amount, but it also won't go above. So any upside, you know, someone else captures that, but they'll take on the risk if it goes below. So there are financial tools out there if you're concerned about it. I'm not a financial planner, by the way. So I'm not giving financial advice, nor do I even know the name of the hell I'm talking about. I just know it exists.
Speaker #0
I know it's there, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker #1
That's hilarious. Hey, Kyle. How do we get ahold of you?
Speaker #0
Well, the easiest way is probably Instagram. It's Kyle M. Bender, and then Facebook as well. And then you can always shoot me a text if you want. To be honest with you, it's 704-942-6316.
Speaker #1
All right. First of all, thank you for coming on. You are super busy. I know you got all this going on. Even the management company, even though you're not really in it, I know how it is to be a business owner, man. You're still involved. So you have all these different things. Over 1,200 transactions, lots of rental properties. And you still came and hung out with me for about 40 minutes. So thank you so much for your time, man.
Speaker #0
This is great. I love doing this stuff. So thank you for having me.
Speaker #1
Yeah, it was a great time. And for the listener, you have other podcasts you could be listening to, but you chose the Real Estate Educators podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. If you got value out of this one like I did, it's a little bit different because we're talking about the sales side, the real estate agent side, which we don't talk about. that often on the show. So I know you got some value. Five-star review, share it with a friend, and I hope you make this day a great one. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh yeah, and tell a friend.

Description

Connect with Kyle Bender

Kyle Bender is a real estate investor, broker, and entrepreneur based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He works across residential real estate sales, property management, and investment properties.

Instagram: @KyleMBender
Facebook: Search Kyle Bender
Phone/Text: 704-942-6316

Learn more about Pine Financial Group: www.pinefinancialgroup.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I like the teaching bit. What I hate is managing people.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
Okay. That's the hard part for me. I actually enjoy educating and even clients. It's easy when you're talking to people or investors saying, hey, I don't start with this is what you do. I start with your goals, your plan. What do you want? 2015 and it said by 2020, I'm going to have a real estate team this big. I'm going to have property management this big. And it had all these goals. And I looked at it, I was like, Oh my gosh, kind of teared up a little bit. I was like, I hate this stuff. Like, we did it. The problem is, I don't know what I want to do next. I do think for agents that are good and been in the business a while, I think we're going to see our sales go up when the market does any big stuff, right? 21, everybody's sales went up.
Speaker #1
We were in negotiations. We're investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back. We've got another great guest with us today, guys. Kyle Bender. Now, you've been in the business for a long time. I know you've done over 1,200 transactions. You're a real estate investor. You're an entrepreneur. And you have a niche, a specialty in helping people get from that agent mindset, let's work in the business, to get out and work on the business. Welcome to the show, man.
Speaker #0
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So started Scarlett Properties. I assume when you got into real estate, it was that, but maybe not because you got excited about real estate when you were a teenager. So take me back. How does that happen?
Speaker #0
Well, I first got excited. My mom was going over her budget with me and we were sitting there talking. We did not grow up wealthy at all. I mean, like she was pinching pennies. Let's be real. But she'd go through her budget and she'd say, okay, here's the grocery bill and here's this. And it was all allocated, kind of like the cash envelope system. And she goes, and here's our rent check. And I was like, what's rent? I'm in middle school. I'm not sure what anything is. I still don't know what anything is. And she's like, well, we pay rent to live in this duplex. And I was like, okay, explain more. And then she kept going on and on. our landlord's name was Peter Schmidt and I'll never forget it. Cause I was like, mom, I want to be that guy. Like I want people to just give me rent, but he doesn't have to work on it. He doesn't have to do it. Like I want, yeah, I want, I want to be Peter Schmidt. So I don't know what he's doing today. I mean, I was a kid.
Speaker #1
You should totally find out.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Ever since then it was, I should, there's a, there's a couple of people I want to find out that I've, that have really made an impact on me that probably have no idea. He has no clue. He'd be like, Oh, that. little kid that was in the duplex he probably doesn't know right but um yeah ever since then it was like let's go and i just started learning reading books it was a little bit later on maybe into high school when i was like you know what i have no clue what i'm gonna do in my life like i thought it was me a professional athlete you know like every boy's dream and then uh it was like yeah okay well we're not gonna make it it's such a small percentage so i kind of walked away from that. started learning everything real estate, started learning everything mortgage, like everything. I wanted to have apartments and I wanted to develop and I wanted to build. And here we are today. I'm still a broker. I work on the business, but I also work in the business and I also do our investments. We do our property management stuff. So there's a lot that we continue. I just keep growing and learning and learning and growing and making mistakes here and there and failing forward. Like, okay, well, not a total failure, but let's learn from that and keep going.
Speaker #1
Go fast and fall forward, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
All right. So Peter Schmidt, man, I got to say, this is so cool because you totally looked at it from a different lens when your mom was sitting right next to you. So I think most people, even adults with mature minds, would be thinking about, oh, I got to pay this out. And you're thinking about how do I get that? So how do you find this guy and tell him? You have to do this.
Speaker #0
I'll find him. I'll find him.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
We have Skip Tracers and everything. I can find him. He's probably on Instagram and Facebook too.
Speaker #1
Yeah, dude, you're a real estate investor. Of course you could find somebody.
Speaker #0
He's probably like the white Robert Kiyosaki. He's probably got some bazillion dollar portfolio now. I'm like,
Speaker #1
oh yeah, that was my landlord. He might want to sell off some of it.
Speaker #0
That's right. That's right.
Speaker #1
You never know. All right, so your first deal. Was it as an investment or as an agent? Like, how did you actually get into the game?
Speaker #0
Oh, geez. My first actual deal was an investment. Oh,
Speaker #1
that's cool.
Speaker #0
So I dropped out of college. I was supposed to be a math teacher. And I was like, you know what? Like my family's teachers up in Buffalo, New York, and they've got a great life and they're locked in for their retirement. I was like, I just, I don't want to do that in real estate part-time. Like I'm the guy I'm all in. Like if we're going to start something like that's where I'm going, I think it's the best way to do anything. Like I don't want to half-ass it. Like we're going. And I met this guy, I went to real estate school. So I moved down to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I live now, 21 years ago. I was 21 years old. I'm 42 now. You can do the quick math. And I met this guy, I was playing hockey with him. He goes, Hey, you're in real estate. I'm thinking he's going to ask me to help him sell his house or something. He goes, well, I got divorced and I've got this house. And again, this is 2005 or 2006. And he goes, and this is down here. It was booming, booming, booming until 2007 and 2008. And he came through and he was like, yeah, we're getting divorced and we want to sell you our property. Okay, let's talk about this. Come to find out they've owed on it. It was about to foreclose. So I went through a whole short sale process. It was my first ever deal. Like, mind blown. I had no clue what I was doing. I'm calling this bank, talking to them. They're asking me things I have no idea. I did have my mortgage license back then. And one of the guys did the loan for me. And I'll be real, I wasn't making any money. Like, nothing. And they gave me a loan.
Speaker #1
100% financing.
Speaker #0
This is the big short. This is why we had such a big problem. And I was like, they're going to give me money. Like, I don't make any money. So they gave me money to buy this short sale. Went through the whole process. It took a while. This is kind of funny. The last thing comes up, the closing statement, and they're like, well, do you want to get paid a commission? And I was like, well, I am a real estate agent. And I was like, no, just to get through the deal. Like I want you guys to give me the house. So I said, no, come to find out they would have tacked on my 3% anyways. So I'm just an idiot. I kicked myself in the butt today, but I'm like, all right. And it wasn't a lot. It was 120 grand. Lesson one,
Speaker #1
don't say no if someone's trying to give you money.
Speaker #0
Had no idea. I thought they were like, I don't know. I have no clue what was happening. But yeah, we got through there. We might've made a little bit of money. A friend of mine stayed there, slept on the ground, did all the work ourselves and ended up getting out of it. Another lesson number two, the buyer was buying an FHA loan. Well, guess what? I had to hold the property for six more months and rent it back to them. So it wasn't like that flipping transaction.
Speaker #1
Oh, really? I thought that was 90. Did that change? Because that's 90. I don't know. I swear,
Speaker #0
maybe it was 90, but back then I swear I was like, what am I doing? I need the money. I was broke.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And it's not when you close, it's when you contract. So you can't contract until the 91st day. And then it's what, 30 days, 45 days after that, when you can actually get your money.
Speaker #0
Yeah. But like going back this 21 years or like 20 years, like I had no clue, but I was like yeah what do I need to do? So now I'm trying to talk to the buyer through their agent. Can I just rent them the property? Go in there and they're paying me $250 a month. That's all they can afford. And I was like, that doesn't cover the mortgage at all, but I need the buyer.
Speaker #1
How are you going to buy it?
Speaker #0
And I have to wait. Oh, it was awful. How did they buy it? They bought it with an FHA loan. I don't know. They probably got a loan just like I did to get the thing.
Speaker #1
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker #0
Again, lesson number three. I'm an idiot because I'm like not even charging what the real price should be.
Speaker #1
So you give them a discount rent, a discount price. It closed though and you got paid. How much did you make?
Speaker #0
I want to say maybe $7,000. Maybe. But we made money. It was positive. We were profiting.
Speaker #1
Have you ever gone back? Because I know I've done short sales, man. I know what that's like. Have you ever gone back and calculated the per hour? Oh, you don't want to do that.
Speaker #0
I was going to say one thing in our business, you never calculate the per hour. There's coaches, there's real estate mega coaches. They're like, you need to calculate every hour so you know what your time's worth and what you're getting. And I'm like, uh-uh. I make good money. I make good money. I'll sell a $50,000 lot. I'll sell a $2 million home. I'll tell you right now, yeah, making way more money. It's around the same amount of time I'm putting into it, but there's times you run yourself ragged thinking, oh my gosh, I lose money on deals. I'll lose money on that $50,000. I pay a transaction coordinator, pay my assistant, I pay out everybody. And then am I left with anything? No, you lost money on that.
Speaker #1
It's probably a bad habit, if you want to call it that. But sometimes I just work really hard on a deal. I've got this development deal, dude. I've been in for 15 years. I don't even... I don't even know where to begin to calculate my per hour on that one.
Speaker #0
I can't wait to chat with you about that one offline here.
Speaker #1
Oh, gosh. I'm right near the end. And I will make money, right?
Speaker #0
It's a beautiful thing. But 15 years.
Speaker #1
Pretty low IRR. Oh my goodness. We're going to get out. We're going to get our money back. We're going to make a little bit of profit.
Speaker #0
People think development, it's easy. Investing's easy. Real estate's easy. Like, oh my gosh.
Speaker #1
I saw that you were doing some development too. What projects have you worked on?
Speaker #0
Just little stuff. Nothing big. When I first started, I was building custom homes on the framing crew. Like I was, when I say like, I've learned this business. okay i still don't know it all um but like our little development stuff there was a guy here um he's passed away now but he was like in union county he was like the big developer for the custom homes and he kind of took men or his wing a little bit and was like hey because i was just hungry i'm telling you like kevin i go and i'd be like hey i'll work for free like i i will wake up i'll be there so like when i was going i was it's 4 a.m i'd meet him early just to see what was going on with some of the all the machines, you know, what's going on? Like, how do you cut a road in? Like, what is, what is a gutter? I don't know. Right. You learn all these things, surveys, like, and I'm still learning all this stuff, but it was just, yeah. Like the most development stuff was little things that I was trying to help to learn. And then even now, like there's probably five years ago, I went to another developer who works pretty much for DR Orton, develops all the lots for them. And I was like, let me just learn. He's like, man, it's really hard to just teach you. And it's funny because now I've got like junior associates that are following us on the broker side. And I'm like, I want to help you, but I just, this is just annoying. And I'm like, man, I don't know what to tell you. You got to learn so much and I don't have time to sit here and like coddle you. So like he's actually shadowing my assistant now, which is kind of funny because she knows he's done more deals and she knows more than most agents do.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I'm right there with you. And that brings me to the scaling. But man, if you could come to me with specific questions, I probably have an answer or at least an opinion. But if you just get a broad question, like, how do I, I don't know if I could help, man, I'm not I'm not a great teacher like that. But it seems like you have to be able to coach up your team if you're going to scale. And you've done that, like such a great way. So what's the disconnect, man? How is it you don't you're not good at the teaching bit, but you've been able to grow a nice team?
Speaker #0
I like the teaching bit. What I hate is managing people. That's the hard part for me. I actually enjoy educating and even clients. It's easy when you're talking to people or investors saying, hey, I don't start with, this is what you do. I start with your goals, your plan. What do you want? I sat down a long time ago. I said, I want 10 rental homes that are each bringing in a thousand dollars a month. They're single family. It was an easier route to go. And all this multifamily stuff, no commercial loans, it's all residential. I was like, okay, I can do this. It's obtainable. All right. If I've got a hundred thousand or a $200,000 house, I know how much to save. I know what the cashflow looks like. I know how much the rent should be versus what my mortgage payment is. It's very simple. But I'd sit down and say, hey, okay, Kevin, you guys want to get in real estate investing. What kind of investing do you want to do? Is it single family homes? Is it multifamily? Are we talking commercial buildings? There's so much to go, but what is your plan? Tell me what you want five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Are we talking about generational wealth? I want to know where you're trying to go because it's a different story for everybody. And when somebody says, I want one home and it makes 2,000 a month, that's it. I'm like, no offense. You better hedge those bets because when that tenant doesn't pay, when they ruin your house, when you got damages and you got this, this, this, I don't think one home is worth it.
Speaker #1
I agree.
Speaker #0
I do think if you're going to invest, you're going in.
Speaker #1
Have you only done a residential to this point?
Speaker #0
I've got some commercial, like small commercial. Like the biggest thing I have personally is a fiveplex.
Speaker #1
Okay.
Speaker #0
I'm looking at another six unit, but there's nothing like, I know residential so well.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
I talked to, like, I've got really good commercial friends and I'm like, okay, what are we doing here? They start spitting out all these numbers, the IRRs. I'm like, so I'm in a bunch of syndications, right? So honestly, like, okay, I have a part of probably a few. thousand rentals. But no, I really talk about me because I know it better. I can tell you, go put some money over there. As soon as they all turn, then I'll know better. But that's really where I'm mostly residential. I'll say it all day. And when I talk to some commercial guys, they send me a proform and I'm like, all right. So again, back it out. What are these rents today? And here I am, I'm a real estate broker. No offense to all the brokers. I don't like real estate brokers. The real estate agents to me are kind of like used car salesmen. It's very hard to be like, I really like you. You have my best interest. You know, like most of them, like I just, yeah, I want a commission. So do I. But if I can help you, you're going to send me all your friends and all your people and all your other investors. I literally have a list of investors on my board. When something comes up, like boom, I know who to call. I mean, it's, and they're also like, well, Hey, thanks for not pushing me to that. I can tell you when COVID happened, I was really scared and nervous, but I was like, I don't know. I was telling people to sell. Well, guess what?
Speaker #1
Oh, you were.
Speaker #0
Oh my gosh. The first six months when everything dropped, I'm like, we're going to have 2008 all over again. Here it is. We're blowing up. We're going to bust. And then all of a sudden, everything doubles. I was like, I should have held on to every property I've ever had. I'd probably be retired not even talking to you right now. I'd be like, I'm good. We sold 50 properties and made it.
Speaker #1
We'd still be hanging out. You love this stuff.
Speaker #0
I do. That's the problem.
Speaker #1
Man, that COVID thing. I think we were kind of headed towards a recession when that hit. anyway. So I agree with you. When you look at it, it looked like we were going off a cliff. It's just all the government stepped in. And now we're giving some of that back. What do you guys see now in your market?
Speaker #0
So there's a couple of different ways I look at the market. So in Charlotte and the surrounding area here, basically the luxury homes, let's call it a million dollars and up. I mean, it seems like they're still moving along just normal, just fine. I say that because I think it's just the wealth. I think people aren't worried about 7% interest rates, but when you look under there and you're looking at the 500 and under, and you start talking about the middle class, the lower class, the affordability, I don't see the markets. To me, it's going down. The prices are coming down, the interest rates are going up. There's more inventory. There's a lot of things that I'm like, man, it doesn't look good to me. So as an investor, and I'm talking to my wife about this too, Because like. We want a different home. We have three boys. We want to grow into a bigger house. And the oldest is six. The youngest is going to be one in December. So we have a spread. And I'm like, I just want to get them to the next family home that's kind of like, we're here for 20 years. Kids are going to grow up here. This is it. But at the same time, I'm like, man, I want to get a little bit more debt paid off. I want to have some more cashflow. And I'm telling you, I think opportunity's coming. But again, I was wrong at COVID. So... I don't know, do the opposite of me. Go buy everything you can right now. I'm like, you're probably going to make bazillions of dollars. But I can't say like back when it was 2008, all the way to 2012 and 13, I had a partner, a really good friend of mine come in and he's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm buying real estate. He's like, why? And here's my math, right? Like it was all the way from 2010, basically to 2013. I said, okay, that house right there, I bought. The builders can't build it that cheap. Okay. And I'm like, all right, the rents, our mortgages were so low. I'm like, my rent's at least 500 bucks more than that mortgage. He's like, all right, so how much do I need to put down? Like, how would we do this? And I was like, well, here, let me get you one. So I go find him. It was a foreclosure. We had to do some things that the bank didn't know about because it was inhabitable. Like we had to go in and put carpets in because there was dog feces on the ground. Right. And they're like, well, the bank's like, we're not going to give you money for it. I was like, all right, whatever. I'll just do it. So we just did it. Didn't tell the bank. Still bought the house.
Speaker #1
I've done that.
Speaker #0
As soon as we got the tenant in there, he goes, oh my gosh. Yeah, I want more. And I was like, okay, let's go. He goes, you're doing this with me. So now we have 13 units together. Okay. Because he's like, he didn't want to go it alone. And I didn't know if he trusts me, but I think he was like, no, I'd rather have you in there making sure this stuff is like, this makes sense. So there's just things like that. So his money, your expertise,
Speaker #1
and your- My money, his money. So,
Speaker #0
yeah. we split and then we have, yeah, the property management company. So Scarlett's named after my niece, which is hilarious because we started this so long ago, but she's like 21 years old now. Like, like, and she loves seeing her name on stuff. Like I have a company in Charlotte. I'm like, yeah, Scarlett, Charlotte, like rhymes too. Um, but yeah, like that's where, like I started with little investors, but we manage about 550 units now, maybe a little bit more. Um, we have two offices. And that's been... It's been great to just hold people's hands. Like I've got some people since 2008, when I actually opened the property management, I've got some clients from that long ago. I'm like, oh my gosh, like great to still see that you're here or they call and say, hey, it's time to sell.
Speaker #1
That says something because property management, no offense Kyle, but typically suck. You think agents? Like management companies.
Speaker #0
Management companies. Well,
Speaker #1
that's my experience, not everybody's. Oh no,
Speaker #0
it's mine too. it's mine too um i'll tell i got some great people that run that company i'm not you're not going to call kyle bender to manage your like i'll call you i'll talk to you about what we charge but you're going to get passed right off to Rudy and Samantha. Those two will just run it.
Speaker #1
They're amazing.
Speaker #0
I've been very lucky because I was like, when Rudy first came over, he's been with me, I think 11 or 12 years now. But when he came over, I don't know, I had a company, I sold it, started a new one. I had like 30 properties I was managing. And I'm also trying to sell real estate. And I'm also doing this. I'm also growing the business. I'm also investing. And he's like, you are a mess. I'm like, what do you want to do? He's like, I could do this. I was like, okay, go get your license. You can do this. It's easy. But I'm like, there's not enough money here for you. He came from project management and IT world. And I was like, I know what you made before. You're not going to take a huge... It was a huge step down. He goes, if you let me be with my family when I need to, if you do this and this, I'm like, okay, go for it. And I'm telling you, I wouldn't have it if it wasn't for him, I don't think.
Speaker #1
And he's grown it.
Speaker #0
He's helped grow it. It's been... A lot of times what happens is I'll start... All the agents, not all of them, a lot of agents know me here. So when they have something, they know if we have it and the agent brought it, they're going to get it back if they want to sell it. I'm not here to steal clients. Take it. I'm sorry. Or if you want me to do it because you're out of the business, I'm like, here's a referral fee. We'll figure something out. But no, he's just been great. I'm mostly hands off in that company.
Speaker #1
All the business arms that you have. Kyle, what's your, I guess, your favorite one or what drives the most passion for you of all these different areas of real estate?
Speaker #0
I don't want my clients to hate me, but it's 100% investing in real estate.
Speaker #1
So what side of investing? Because you've done some development. It sounds like you.
Speaker #0
Right now we're doing a couple of spec homes we're building. It's just fun. That's the showy stuff that just looks good. They're like, oh, we can build a million dollar home and we're going to sell it. Yeah. But I think more of looking back, I found a journal entry I had from 2015 and it said by 2020, I'm going to have a real estate team this big. I'm going to have property management this big. And it had all these goals. And I looked at it. I was like, oh my gosh. I kind of teared up a little bit. I was like, I hit this stuff. We did it. The problem is I don't know what I want to do next. I hit a lot of these goals that I felt great about, but it's like, all right, well, I would keep investing. I'd keep investing in real estate. I'm going to learn more commercial stuff. I'm going to look at development stuff. I've got a couple of guys, literally, I'm trying to work on some things to learn it and to grow it. And I'm dangerous. I'm a risk taker, but I'm also conservative, which is funny because I don't want to lose what we've already built. But jumping into this development side, it's going to be me. so yeah you've been through it so you got to protect it but then there's other guys like all in like hey just take it all i'm like man i've been there i want to i want to make sure the family's okay and then yeah one of the guys i was talking to he's he was a bigger developer like had the banks backing him and uh he's like yeah like i got wiped out in 2008 and like i want to say close to like 100 million not like the whole family's gone like wealth is gone she's right so like you go from from here to here to here and i'm like buddy, I don't want to do that. Like, like I want to protect what we have, but also be smart to get to the next place.
Speaker #1
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Speaker #0
That's a great question. I have financial advisors ask me that all the time. Like, why don't you move some of that? Why don't you sell us some of that? There's 1031s you can do. There's these other Delaware Statutory Trusts you can do. There's so many different things. I'm like, I just know it and I trust it. For me, my debt is much... I was also a big Dave Ramsey fan. So I threw out Robert Kiyosaki earlier. like Dave Ramsey debt-free. And do I 100% agree with him these days? No, I don't. But I think leverage and mortgages are okay if you're using them smart. So my debt, let's call it, I don't know, is less than 50%. So my mortgages are lower. My payments are there. My cashflow is good. And that's where I was saying earlier, I don't know the smartest thing. Have one of you guys that are listening right now. shoot me a DM and be like, this is what you need to do. I've got a good nest egg, but I just don't know. I've looked at doing HELOCs on all my properties. I looked at life insurance. I've looked at being my own banker. I'm looking at all these things. I don't know. But right now, it's just, I feel protected because I know the rents. The rents are going to go up and down, just like the market goes up and down, like the sales prices, just like the stock market goes up and down. So I just know if those numbers change. how much are they going to change? People need places to live. People are always going to work. It's not like everybody's going to stop working. It's not like everybody's not going to pay their mortgage or their rent. So I feel good that way. And then I see the values of the homes go up and down. It's like my portfolio goes up, it goes down. Right now it's kind of going down. Okay. As long as it's covered, I feel good.
Speaker #1
So most real estate investors actually call most entrepreneurs in general. have a real hard time getting money out of their business. And we talk about this in some of the business masterminds and different groups I'm in. I read about it constantly. Like it is a good idea to pull cash out of the business and invest it somewhere else, right? We all know that, but we all know how incredibly difficult that is. What is your view on that? And are you trying to implement any strategy like that?
Speaker #0
That's literally what I'm working on now. That's why I brought up like being my own banker and the HELOCs. When I'm talking, I mean, I'll give you real numbers. I don't have a huge portfolio, but I'd say I probably have 3 million, 4 million in equity. Okay. How do I tap that equity to go? I either refinance the properties, I do a HELOC, I do some other kind of life insurance, which whole life insurance, I mean, blow your mind. I'm learning a lot. Again, I'm dangerous with that too because I'm like, I want to do this, but at the same time, it's a big risk to me as well. Yeah. So I haven't tapped it, but like, I'm looking at like, what is the best way to do this? And am I going to take all three, 4 million? No, like I'll take a million and a half to 2 million. Let's go play with that. Right. Like let's reinvest that into something else. Keep letting everything pay it down. Now we're going to have, call it 4 million to 6 million. Great. Take two to 3 million again, reinvest that, pay it down, you know, and it's just going to take time, you know? So I feel like I need to start compounding what we've built. and keep going from there. The other thing that you brought up, the businesses. Okay. So I've got the brokerage side and that's where we make plenty of money selling homes. But to me, I feel self-employed there. I have to go to work. I have to make money. Property management makes a little bit of money. I just reinvest a little bit back into those companies. But I've never pulled money out from those companies to be like, okay, I'm going to go do this. I use some of it, I guess, for investment stuff. distribution wise. But I don't know, I'm learning, man. I love these things because I'll talk to an entrepreneur and be like, okay, I never thought about that. I never thought about taking a bank loan, even though I'm sure I can get some money, but where do I put it? How much do I reinvest back into the brokerage? How much do I reinvest in the property management? Growing that side, I can tell you right now, we're at a very comfortable level where Rudy is putting the... pause, the brakes on me. Because I'm like, man, let's get a business development manager. Let's just get somebody out there on the streets like I used to do. And we're just going to go get a hundred properties. We'll get another a hundred properties. Well, the problem is, as soon as you do that, you got to hire somebody else and you have to train that person. And they have to want to be there. And property management, yeah, it kind of sucks. So I got an employee for six months. We just poured a lot into them, a lot of time, money, and effort. And then within six months to a year, maybe they're gone. You're like, oh my gosh. So how do you find people that want to be there that enjoy this work?
Speaker #1
That's a hard business, man.
Speaker #0
The owners are great. Like we have the best owners in the world. Our tenants are actually really good too. But if you ever look at our reviews, every single one of them, a tenant complaining about getting evicted or we didn't accept their application. Like that's 90% of them. Sometimes it's a maintenance issue. Other than that, the owners are, Hey, you guys are awesome. We love you. Thanks for having our backs. you know so it's a really funny place to be where i'm like i don't know there's another bad review so i'll be like hey rudy he's like don't even ask we didn't we didn't accept their application they've got a 350 credit score Oh, okay. Well then why are you just being mean guy? Like maybe spend your time learning something to get a higher credit score.
Speaker #1
And the, the structure of EXP, if I understand this correctly is, I don't want to use the term pyramid, but I can't think of how else you would do it, but there's a downline.
Speaker #0
It's the best. Everybody thinks like that. There's a downline. They call it revenue share.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Revenue share. Okay. So, I mean, when you grow a team, in that environment, you're not really managing those agents, I would think. They're just in your downline, right? But the income will flow up. So you're getting some passive income from this as well, I think?
Speaker #0
I get a little bit. It's not a ton. I was working a hard, solid year trying to grow this, talk to agents, talk to agents, bring them on. Because for me, I've had my own firm, like I said, since 2008. So when I switched over to with the brokerage side, that was in 2019. And that's really when the big snowball happened with the XP. Like everybody was grabbing onto things and like big agents were coming over and other independent firms. I just saw the opportunity for me and the other agents, right? Not just rev share, like our fees, 80-20 split. I cap at $16,000 a year. I mean, I'll do enough sales. I cap in the first month, right? So I pay them a bunch of money, but the rest of the year, I don't have to pay them anything. we can buy back some stock. That was a huge thing for me. We don't have retirement besides me buying investment properties. So all the other agents on it, I was like, guys, do you have anything? They're like, no. Okay. Here's a way you can at least buy some stock. Our stock price is not so great right now, which isn't really fun for me or anybody, but you can just keep buying it. I've got another 20 years minimum doing this.
Speaker #1
You're not catching it in any way, Kyle. Buy it. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Right. So I'm like, okay. So for 20 years, maybe I'll have. 50,000 shares, 100,000 shares. Will it be worth anything? Maybe not. I don't know. But I don't know. It might give me an option too. And then if you want to try to recruit agents, sure. Recruit agents and get your downline going. Make a little bit of money on each one. So that part, it's good. I got a little butthurt when a couple bigger of my agent friends... I say agent friends. I never really was great friends with agents because I just see everybody's competition. But I do have some really good agent friends where we bounce ideas and they share and I share and we're wide open. Sometimes people are closed off. But a couple of these other guys that I thought were closer decided to go with other... To sign up under different people. And when that happened, it just sucked. It would help the downline quite a bit. And I was like, you know what? I don't want to keep doing this because I don't want people thinking that's all I do. you know, like other agents and what happened, what I think eXp should have done personally, if we're going to talk about this, they should have corporate had one person that that's who you talk to. If you want to come over to the company, like if I said, Hey, Kevin, you got your license. Why don't you come over and talk to him? Talk, talk to me about eXp. I'll give you a little bit, but you're not like, I don't want to throw up eXp on you. You got to talk to Charlotte over here. You know, she's the regional vice president. She does all of the recruiting. Boom. Now Scarlett talks to that person. That way there's not all these agents just throwing up, throwing up. It's a great company. They've got everything you need.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I've heard really great things.
Speaker #0
But when you get all these agents just sitting here trying to get you, like, come over, come over. Don't sign up under him. Sign up under me. Don't sign up under her. Come over here. Be part of my tribe. You're like, man. Don't worry,
Speaker #1
Kyle, about a downline because I guess that's how they sell it to you. Then they are selling houses.
Speaker #0
So I see there's a lot of them that make way more money doing that. Yep.
Speaker #1
Some. Yeah. Most people. Well, you'll be most people, in my opinion, if you stay focused on selling houses, if that's the business you want to be in.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
I mean, there might, if you're looking for downline, there might be other opportunities other than real estate that would perform better.
Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, there's tons of them, right? I mean, there's all sorts of different companies that do it. Right.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
So I don't know. That's what I think they should have done though, because then it would have stopped all the. I mean, I had one of my buddies was like, I just, I don't want to come over because I got too many people that I know over there and I don't know who I choose. Yeah. Okay. Well,
Speaker #1
fine.
Speaker #0
All right. You know,
Speaker #1
you can piss somebody off, right?
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, as we get into 27 here, tell me something you're excited about. Like, what are you working on right now? You got so many things going on. So maybe it's just what you've already talked about, but is there anything really cool you're working on?
Speaker #0
Really, I don't really, I don't want to say I have anything really cool I'm working on. I do love the investment stuff. I like flipping homes. I'll do a bunch of those every year. What I'm really excited about is the kids, like to be real. Like, let's talk about the family. And this is maybe going to shoot myself in the foot for business, but like, I actually kind of want to figure a way to step back a little bit, you know, to spend more time with the kids. Like right after this, my son's playing hockey. So he's got a little hockey game tonight at, you know, five o'clock. So I'm hoping I can scoot up there, go see him play. But it's things like that. You know, like I want to be able to spend more time to see these boys grow up, to have fun with them, to act like a child again. I mean, I'm already pretty immature. I mean, may as well keep it going. And that's really what I'm excited about. But the real estate, I just see, I don't love it, but I just see all these things that are like going against us in the sales world. That's why I think there's opportunity, you know, on the investment side. So like if I'm, if I'm looking there, if I'm looking for foreclosures, if I'm looking for flips or multifamily, like I'm just, I'm excited for life, I guess. But really I want to keep, I want to get these kids going where I'm like, you know what? Guys, I keep having these ideas that my kids are going to want to do what I do, which I really hope they do. But at the same time, they're probably not going to.
Speaker #1
You played hockey, didn't you?
Speaker #0
A little bit. I mean, I wasn't professional, but I still play now. But looking at it, if they want to do the real estate investing side, that's where I see this generational wealth. Like, hey guys, I did what I could to give you this. We don't have the debt so you can borrow. And then you have to find a good deal. So I want to teach them like, here's how you find a deal. Here's how it pencils and makes sense. All right, go ahead. Let's buy it. Add it to the portfolio, right? Slowly chip away, pay it off, add another one, do this. And like, I would love for that to be like, okay, I'm dead and gone. And now they built this thing to, I don't know, I've got 24 units. Maybe they'll have 200 units. You know, I think that'd be awesome. But again. The oldest is six. I've got plenty of time to just try to build this and put a plan together. So we'll see.
Speaker #1
All right. We do got to wrap it up here in a minute. But I'm just curious, because you love flipping properties. That's where your passion is, even though you have other income generating businesses. How are you finding deals right now in this market?
Speaker #0
So I haven't actually been looking since COVID. I've stopped. I told a lot of our investors, guys, I don't think it's a great time. there might be something that comes across. The last three that I did, there was a client of ours in property management. He called me and said, hey, I've got these properties. I got to let them go now. I'm getting too old. I don't want to deal with them. He goes, is there anything you want to do? And I was like, let me look at them. Let me run some numbers. He actually had four of them at the time. And I sold one to another investor. That investor I'm still doing work with he's a GC And I was like, I don't want to take this on. Do you want to do it? He goes, actually, yeah, here, like this is the number. And I offered it to the guy. He said, yeah, you know what? I'm good with that. Let's do it. And I was like, crap, maybe I should have kept it because there's probably some money to be made there. It's like, you know, if he can do it, I can do it. So the other three, I kind of looked at him. I was like, Hey, here, here's what we got to do. Do you want to sell them all in one year? He said, actually, no, I want to sell them over two years. So we did, you know, the GC bought the first one. I bought another one. That first year. And then the next last year, I just bought two more. So I just got done. I just closed on our last one last week.
Speaker #1
And you're going to call Peter and see if there's any other houses.
Speaker #0
I'm going to call Peter and see what he's got in New York and be like, okay, dude, you got to be old now. You got to be, it's time to go. Do you have any kids? I hope not. But like, I'll buy these from you.
Speaker #1
Oh, that's awesome, man. All right. So I'm going to go through my notes here. Every time I do an episode like this, I want to, whatever I learn from the episode or important things I want the listener or the viewer to get a hold of. I write. Yeah. So I'm just going to go through, if you could just add a little color, anything I'm missing, anything you want to make sure that the listener hears. And then right before we wrap up and get your contact information, if you could give me one piece of advice for a newer real estate investor going into this challenging market, what would that advice be? All right. So I put my first thing I said, we started with your background and getting started with the middle school budget. And then we talked about Peter. Um, but then you, you said, uh, don't say no to free money. So that's when you were giving away your commission for free. So I wrote that down. Do not say no. If someone's giving you money, take, go ahead. It's okay. Take the money. Um, start with the end in mind. You have to have a goal. So, so many people start talking about, Hey, what do I want to do? But it's like, what are you, where are you trying to go? Let's identify that first. And then you also said, and then narrow in on the real estate. Like, do you want to be a broker? Do you want to be a manager? Do you want to do, do you fix it flips? You want to do rental? Like let's narrow down on the path to get there, but... always start with that end in mind. To protect capital, we did talk a little, we spent a fair amount of time talking about that. What I pulled out of that, Kyle, is to protect capital, you really want to reduce debt. But then you took it a step further and say, well, maybe you could take on some debt, some reasonable amount of debt if you want to diversify outside of that asset class. So you want to get into a life insurance policy or another asset class that's not real estate, you could potentially pull some of your equity out. So I thought that was interesting. Money okay, the money in real estate is not in the downline. I did write that down. It's on the transaction. So stay focused on on selling houses.
Speaker #0
And that's me. There's people that may, I'm telling you like my upline, they're making all stupid money.
Speaker #1
Yeah, but it's such a small amount. It's a very small percentage. Actually successful in real estate. The most successful people that I know in real estate have built teams to do it. So whether you're on the investment side or whether you're on the sales side, either way is fine, but you need people working for you to help you elevate. Yeah. So I did write that down. You're really focused in 27 on your family. So I wrote down family first. That's huge, man, especially at this age. It's a little bit easier to get back into the business when they're teenagers and they don't want to hang out with you anymore.
Speaker #0
I'm just glad I did this early, man, and didn't have my kids until later on, honestly. I built the business and then I had the kids, which I'm so happy about right now.
Speaker #1
The last thing I wrote down, Kyle, is there is opportunity on the investment side. I happen to think there's going to be opportunity on the sales side also. Because... as we sink into whatever it is coming and inventory increases, you're going to, the buyers are going to come back out. I do believe that. I don't know when that's going to be, but there's going to be opportunities on both sides. So how did I do with my notes?
Speaker #0
I think those are great.
Speaker #1
Good. What would you add?
Speaker #0
I do think for agents that are good and been in the business a while, I think we're going to see our sales go up when the market does any big stuff, right? 21, everybody's sales went up. right? 2008 and nine, my sales actually went up. The market went down, but my sales went up. So for brokers, I think that's a very important thing to remember. There will be a lot of transactions happening. You just have to know what you're looking for. What else? I want to find a way. I do want somebody to tell us another option, where to put your money. when you're there to diversify. Like, do I want to take it? Like, I think the stock market's crazy high right now too. I don't really want to take that $2 million out of the real estate and put it in the stock market. I almost would rather just let it sit, but I don't know what the real options are. You know, do I go buy a different business? I don't want to have another thing to worry about. I've got enough businesses to worry about now.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Stay focused, man. I would not to do that. There are You could hedge that, right? You could invest in a stock market and create gates, right? So you have a, it won't drop below amount, but it also won't go above. So any upside, you know, someone else captures that, but they'll take on the risk if it goes below. So there are financial tools out there if you're concerned about it. I'm not a financial planner, by the way. So I'm not giving financial advice, nor do I even know the name of the hell I'm talking about. I just know it exists.
Speaker #0
I know it's there, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker #1
That's hilarious. Hey, Kyle. How do we get ahold of you?
Speaker #0
Well, the easiest way is probably Instagram. It's Kyle M. Bender, and then Facebook as well. And then you can always shoot me a text if you want. To be honest with you, it's 704-942-6316.
Speaker #1
All right. First of all, thank you for coming on. You are super busy. I know you got all this going on. Even the management company, even though you're not really in it, I know how it is to be a business owner, man. You're still involved. So you have all these different things. Over 1,200 transactions, lots of rental properties. And you still came and hung out with me for about 40 minutes. So thank you so much for your time, man.
Speaker #0
This is great. I love doing this stuff. So thank you for having me.
Speaker #1
Yeah, it was a great time. And for the listener, you have other podcasts you could be listening to, but you chose the Real Estate Educators podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. If you got value out of this one like I did, it's a little bit different because we're talking about the sales side, the real estate agent side, which we don't talk about. that often on the show. So I know you got some value. Five-star review, share it with a friend, and I hope you make this day a great one. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh yeah, and tell a friend.

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