SCF 8 | Real Estate

 

Getting into the real estate space can be a scary experience, but the rewards are worth the work. Gaining back time and reaching financial freedom are the goals worth working for. In this episode, Dale Corpus sits down for a talk with real estate investor, podcaster, and CEO of Zen Coast University, Calvin Chin. Calvin shares how he got into real estate and talks about his current investments and why he thinks having a team is important. Tune in for more real estate insights from Dale and Calvin in this informative episode.

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Getting Back Time And Financial Freedom Through Real Estate With Calvin Chin

What a fun and busy week it’s been, and I don’t think I’ve told any of the guys yet but I’ve been training for a lot of fitness-related things. I have two open-water students coming up. I have a Donner Lake swim and I have a second swim at Alcatraz. It’s my third Alcatraz swim but it’s the very first time I’m going to be doing it without a wet suit. Separate from swimming, I have a three-day hike in Utah and the hike spans 30 miles. Call me crazy but I’ve always wanted to do these things and I love challenges that test my physical and mental limits. I’m totally busy and I have a lot to juggle, like family and my business, etc., just like everybody else.

These fitness things are priorities of mine, and I know all of us have to wear a lot of hats and juggle so many things in our daily lives. What I’ve come to realize is that if there’s something that you want to do that’s important to you, you will find a way to make it happen, and you’ll find that right balance so that you could fit it into your life.

This is a perfect segue for me for my guests and we have Calvin Chin from Zen Coast University. He’s a full-time real estate investor and a friend of mine. I’m excited about chatting with him because he worked in the corporate world with a great job, and use real estate as a vehicle to replace his W-2 income. He built his real estate portfolio and now he teaches others to do the same.

He found that right balance and motivation while he was working his W-2 job, and now in real estate investing took off with it. A little bit more about Calvin, he got into real estate to find a path to buy back his time and energy. Over a five-year period, he was able to go from grinding in the 9:00 to 5:00 corporate job to having the financial freedom to choose to be a full-time real estate investor and he has built a portfolio of over 80 units in five years.

He scaled from owning single-family homes to flipping, to Airbnbs, and to moving money through the BRRRR method, which is Buy, Renovate, Rent, Refinance and Repeat to small multifamily homes and now commercial apartment projects. He believes in helping people create wealth, getting time and energy back so they can give that knowledge back to their communities. Without further ado, thanks, Calvin for being a guest on this episode.

I appreciate you having me, Dale. Good to be on.

How are you?

I’m excellent. It’s not really that sunny but I can see it’s blue skies and it’s California. It’s a great time. I actually went to a wedding for the first time, too. That’s shown that we’re out of this. Life is going back to normal. That’s really cool.

Real estate offers control. You can be the CEO of your portfolio. Click To Tweet

I love this normalcy. It’s the sense of going out again. I got to go out and hang out with friends that I literally have not seen in a year. Hanging out Downtown Livermore, we had drinks and it was wonderful, like live music and things seem back to the way they used to be and the way they should be. For my audience that doesn’t know you yet, what are you based out of?

I’m based out of the Bay Area. I lived in a little town called Brisbane, California, a little South of San Francisco on the Peninsula. We have a couple of areas of properties, but most of them are prescript on taxes, Alabama, Missouri, Utah some more at least.

You’re a full-time real estate investor but tell everybody what did you do when you were in Corporate America? I’m trying to show people what you transitioned from what you were doing before.

I was in corporate tech sales and a lot of people love it. I talked to at least are like, “I forgot to get out of my job and I can’t get out of my job. I got to get out of my job. I hated it.” For me, it was the opposite. I enjoyed my job. It was because I viewed it more as a vehicle like you mentioned before as a way to fund my real estate, which I saw as a vehicle to architect the life of my dreams. Going through it, my first started out, I knew that was the only thing I knew was getting a good job and climb the corporate ladder. Like a lot of us read the Rich Dad Poor Dad book and opened my mind.

I always say it’s like taking the red pill or blue pill in the Matrix but you’d think that ability opens up and sees the real world and I was like, “That was the receptor that for me.” I was like, “There’s something else more out there.” When I was in that position, in a more morbid way, I saw it like, “What do I want my tombstone to read?”

My first job was at a company called Oracle, 25 years at Oracle, and here’s a pension, 401(k) and a white picket fence and two and a half kids, and a golden retriever. I said, “That’s my life and I don’t know if I’d be really fulfilled in life.” That’s what sought me out to the real estate and it helped me enhance my job and be better at my job.

While working in doing real estate investing, it gave me more of that abundance mindset, especially in sales. I don’t need the sale but it allowed me to come more from a consulting viewpoint of, “I’m good but this is why you should buy from me.” It’s because, in real estate, it was always my side thing. I always had that as a backup like, “I had this additional revenue stream income and ready.”

Did you always know you wanted to use real estate as that vehicle to build passive income? Were you looking at other things or why real estate?

SCF 8 | Real Estate

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

I didn’t know. It’s funny. When you grow up and you start talking to people, especially people that are wealthy and you’re like, “What do you do?” Some people are like, “I’m in real estate.” I never knew what that meant. I always thought I was like, “You’re an agent, broker or lender.” Now I realize, “They’re investors. I’m in real estate. I need to invest in real estate.”

I’m coming to that conclusion. That makes a lot of sense now because I didn’t know that was always the case. My family comes from back to the South. I live in the South. I dabbled a bit in crypto but settled on real estate because of one thing and the one thing for me was the control. I don’t sit at the board of Apple. I don’t understand what crypto is at all, except for that. A lot of people we’re making money on it now but I wanted that control and real estate offers you that control. You can be the CEO of your portfolio versus I don’t make a say of what Apple, Tesla and IBM do. That’s why I chose real estate.

I feel that success leaves clues in a similar thing where I was seeing a lot of wealthy folks how they grew their wealth, and a lot of them had huge real estate portfolios, so same thing over here. I love the fact that real estate is so tangible and a lot easier to understand the things like crypto. I love that aspect of it. How were you able to manage that W-2 job and build a real estate portfolio? How did that start? I’m trying to understand that progression.

We all started as one of getting over the mental fears of investing in real estate. We’ve been blessed with good Bay Area salaries in California and that afforded me the opportunity to go out-of-state and say, “Let me see how far my money can go,” and I can. A lot of that fear piece to is if I look at it from a perspective of, “What’s the worst-case scenario that’s going to happen?” Buy $100,000 property in Texas, about $100,000 more but I don’t know why I was getting into it. A $100,000 property like, “I’m not going to lose my shirt. I’m not going to go home with that property.” Worst case scenario, it goes really bad in awry.

It was getting over that fear piece of, “Let me go ahead and take some action and see where this goes.” A lot of real estate, and I’ll call it Sunday morning real estate investors, think that, “I can get rich right away, off real estate.” That’s not the case. The case is, it’s a slow stonewall effect. We bought our 1st, 2nd or 3rd and it’s somewhat effective like gaining momentum.

Year 2 or 3, that’s when we gained a lot of momentum of assets. The money velocity was happening at that point. In the beginning, it was like, “Do I even know I’m a real estate investor?” When you’re starting out, you have 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 properties. I still didn’t feel like I was a real estate investor because I was still working my job and that was my identity.

In terms of the big thing that I’m up to doing now is this identity transformation. Going from a corporate tech sales guy, which was my identity for a long time. I was in that world for 7 to 8 years as a real estate investor. That’s been my journey of trying to change that and breaking that identity into something new and what even I wanted that new identity to be.

Tell me about your first investment. How did you get started there?

The first investment was a house hack here in San Francisco. I totally believe that, especially if you live in an expensive place like California, being able to get your own income expenses right and limit your own monthly net if you will is huge. I had a condo in San Francisco, it was a one-bedroom, one-den. My mortgage was $2,000 a month PITI and HOA.

If you stop learning, you stop growing. Click To Tweet

I rented out the den to a coding academy person for $1,200. My monthly net was $800. $800 in San Francisco is really good. It allowed me to save a lot of my own income, now my profit. I was income, expenses but now my expenses went down. My gap between that was bigger. I kept on making more money and I’d take that and I would redeploy that into investments.

Until I ended up money to save to then buy my first out-of-state investment property, which was in Dallas, Texas, a single-family home but sight unseen and probably made a bunch of mistakes in that one but still made a lot of money, we bought the deal in the right location and in buying it with enough meat on the bone.

That Dallas property, was a detached single-family home?

This is a normal single-family home in every corner.

How did you make that switch then? I know that a lot of the stuff that you’re doing now, I believe is multifamily. You switched over and cross over from the residential side into the commercial side of things. When did that happen?

I’ll tell your story. I was in the BRRRR out in San Antonio and took six months to get all my money back out and the deal was great. I bought it for $70,000 put $20,000 into it. Appraised that for $150,000. I got all my money out plus some. At the end of the day, I did a lot of work for six months and I was cashflowing $100 a month. I was like, “How many of these am I have to do to my financial freedom number?”

I figured out, “Why don’t we look at these bigger properties?” I’ve always wanted to get into these bigger properties but it scared me. It’s the same thing as going into your first out-of-state investment property. That’s always that stair-step approach. I do it and then stabilize it, and do it, then stabilize it. For me, it was like, “Let me try to break new barriers and get a little more uncomfortable.”

Another go, he told me something wise and he probably doesn’t remember this conversation but it was a call. He was like, “I don’t do any deals. I don’t cashflow $1,000 a month out of anymore.” I was like, “That’s a good rule because the amount of work that they put on these bigger deals is the same amount.” Even probably less, to be honest, give you the right team and systems in place. That’s what I did. I was like, “Let me try to go bigger and put that rule in place. Let me try to do deals that I only make $1,000 a month after the refinancer.” That was the transition and that’s the why behind it.

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Real Estate: The amount of work that you put in on these bigger deals is the same amount, even probably less, to be honest, if you have the right team and systems in place.

 

The very first multifamily place that you purchased, where was it located and how big was it?

It ended up being about 12 units, 3 quads we bought over the third time and it was in Kansas City, Missouri. We like Kansas City, Missouri. A lot of good metrics, population growth, job growth and a lot of money are being invested in the area that we invested in the neighborhood. Close to downtown, so it was great. That was our first taste of that. I’ll tell you this much. I thought, “Let me self-manage that.”

A mistake, I never self-manage. Do it to see how much you hate it but I found myself as a grown in myself as like or if you’re trying to be the CEO of your life, you’ve you got to be a CEO of your time because at the end of the day, you only have time and energy and they grew wasting your time. Wasting time but if you’re spending your time, your energy talking to tenants that are paying $600 a month and they’re complaining about the light bulb being out, and you got to call out an electrician after that or handyman and get over there. That was a big waste of my time. I should have been not doing that and I could have been outsourcing that to a Profit Manager and spending my time on what was making me money, which was finding deals and networking.

Speaking of finding deals, how are you going about finding your deals?

To be honest, in the beginning, it was all about agents and brokers. That day it was about agents, brokers and your relationship with them but a big part of that is networking. The best deals that you have are networking and creating a brand of, “Dale, I know you sell real estate in East Bay.” That’s your brand. For me, it’s like, “Calvin buys RV complexes and multifamilies in the Midwest and South.”

I want my brokers, the people I know, work with and surround myself with, that’s what I do. They’re like, “Why don’t you look at this deal? I know this is part of your buy box.” When I tell my brokers, “I can execute it and I do this for a living. Send me your deals and if it meets my buy box, I’ll put it on a line.” That’s what I would say there and knowing what your buy box is, having people know what you buy and what you do. That’s how I found my deals.

You mentioned that you’re looking for deals in the Midwest and South. How did you go about honing in on geographic locations that you’re comfortable with?

There are a lot of metrics that you can look at. You can say, “Let me look at the population growth and job growth. Let me see what companies move in there. There’s tech go in there and all that stuff.” What’s inventory? There are all checkboxes but at the end of the day, you got to see where you can make money. I’m not like saying, “I’m only in this area but here is how I’ve structured it out.”

I was like, “I got a team that I like working with and that team reaches in this area, and we can make money in this area because I’ve done it before.” I’m only looking at it because I know that’s where my team’s reach is. It’s only looking backward. As long as those areas still check off the boxes of, if it’s a tertiary market, secondary market or it is a primary market, does it also have the population growth, job growth and all that stuff.

Real estate is just a vehicle. Money is just a vehicle to get back our time. Click To Tweet

It sounds like you are investing in multiple cities but you have established teams that are your go-to people that are on all of these locations?

Yes, 100%.

You’re still utilizing a lot of that broker network to find a lot of those deals. Do you even have other systems that you create yourself to find deals that don’t even necessarily rely on brokers?

We’re building a system now. It’s off-market multifamily. My VA profile leads, we’re skip tracing ourselves. We’re using things like PropertyRadar, and then we’re making calls.

For the types of investments that you’re doing, what’s your strategy when you acquire them? Are you increasing occupancy? Is it a value add or what strategies are you doing?

Imagine value add is very broad but we’ll call it value add for sure. We’re buying properties now that the rents are lower than what we think market rents would be. To give you an example, an apartment complex in Alabama, the rents at the time were about $500, $550 and it’s where the range was. I knew at market rent, they’re probably $850 for renovated units.

What we did was we said, “We’re going to buy section. We’re going to raise rents to $750 and hopefully, that will kick off some natural attrition, that way we can go in there and start renovating units.” The funny part beyond that strategy was they ended up saying, “$750 that sounds good because I can’t get rent cheaper than that.” It was cool because I didn’t have to renovate anything. I put no money for renovations.

I raised rents by $250, which was awesome but I wanted to get the full map because I know my numbers at the $850 would get me the highest evaluation. We’ve got some natural attrition now and that’s been great. Now the rents are probably at $875, $900. Basically, we’re getting the NLI up. We’re putting money in renovating floors, carpet, paint and all that stuff. Appliances, if need be.

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Real Estate: Never self-manage your properties. Do it just to see how much you hate it.

 

Given the NOI up, and my strategy is once you get the NOI up, we bought that deal for 1.1%. The evaluation now with the rents at $750 is 1.6%. I’m trying to get it up to the $875, $900 number, and once I get that or refinance, and we are probably worth a lot more than that. Even at the 1.6%, it’ll pull my money out of my original capital. Essentially you can think about it as an apartment complex BRRRR.

You get your money out and did they take a year potentially use that money to invest again?

You got it. Same strategy with commercial deals. For example, this property will cashflow $3,500 a month after it’s all done and I have all my capital back out, which is awesome. I got $100, not $300 a month. That moves the needle a lot faster.

This is a great way to build that portfolio. I take it that, are these long-term holds for cashflow? Most of these long-term holds or do you know that you’re going to sell some of these investments within a 5 to 7-year time span to get something bigger? How do you figure that out?

Most of these are long-term holds. I look at these as long-term investments. If the opportunity and you have a 5 or 10-year fixed right on the commercial loans, at those points, I’m always evaluating to say, “What’s the best use of my money on the return on equity?” Maybe the property has a lot of equity in it. Can we 1031 exchange and do it again on another property? I always go into it like this is a long-term hold, but with that being said, I’m always also looking at this opportunity cost. “Is there a better opportunity somewhere else?”

Going back to some of your initial investments. You said that you made a lot of mistakes. That’s part of the progression as you get used to learning a new thing. Are there any mistakes that jumped out at you that you would be willing to talk about? It was something that you wish you knew back then.

One thing that I wish I knew back then was a couple of things. One of the mindset mistakes was living in belief. When I first started, my someday goal is, “If I have ten units, I’ll be so happy.” That’d be my dream. I would go back and slap Calvin right in the face and be like, “Are you pansy? You better not.” That’s what I thought my own self-worth was when I first started years ago. I would challenge everyone and all my students to dream big. You are probably projecting what you think of yourself now but that’s not who you’re going to be.

That’s one, on the mindset piece, on the tactical piece. I have my first deal in Dallas. I didn’t look out for CapEx stuff. When the AC went out the first time, I was like, “What?” Now I’m always gunning for CapEx and no matter what because it’s always going to happen. Things get old and break and then new and betting on partners, too.

Renting out business partners and people you work with. You want to surround yourself with good people and at the end of the day, life’s too short to work with people that you don’t like or people who are inauthentic and not good people. Unfortunately, we’ve had the opportunity to work with both types of people. What I learned from that is to make sure that your business partner or anyone that you surround yourself with, and for me, it’s like, “I would never, ever try to make it not a win-win deal because, at the end of the day, your brand is so important.”

Life's too short to work with people that you don't like or people who are inauthentic. Click To Tweet

Dale, you know it because you’re a real estate agent. You crush it but you want to take care of your clients because you know that they’re going to recommend you to someone else in their lives. You want your brand to be good versus, “I give a bad review,” and that sucks. That’s detrimental to you. The same thing with me. I want to make sure that everyone I come across and I talk to, I’ll leave that conversation a better place for them because I know in my life, my mentors, and everyone that I’ve talked to, it’s such a great group.

You just never know but you have a conversation with someone, you get a little nugget that grows in your mind and they may not even know that they gave you a nugget like that guy. I don’t even remember his name. We had a conversation one time but the $1,000, that’s the only the deal to see what we would do. That nugget is like one of my minds, that was a great nugget. He doesn’t even know my name but that changed my life.

I would say the same thing of just leave it better than you found it. Go out there and talk to people. Go out there and surround yourself with other people that are doing what you want to do and be around them and try to help them out. At the end of the day, this is not golf or tennis like a single sport. This is a team sport and you need people. You need a network.

For this investing, even real estate sales are like that network is so important to you because that’s how you get to that next level or you learn new things that you didn’t know before. It’s amazing all the growth that you’ve had. Speaking of when you start it off, I’m curious about education, how did you educate yourself from starting off after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and getting that condo in the city, and then getting out-of-state rentals to apartment buildings? How did you go along educating yourself?

I always know back to my last piece, these ranges of great people. I’ve read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Me and my fiancée now, we’re literally driving to Vegas. We’re 22, 23 years old to go to a party. We put Rich Dad Poor Dad on an audiobook. It’s a twelve-hour drive. Turn on 1.5 speed or 1.75 speed. We finished the book when we got there.

I’m like, “Why are we in Vegas?” This is not the place you want to be. This is the absolute liability all around. When we got back, we found a Mastermind that we joined. We put a lot of money down on that, max out our credit cards but it’s rendered ourselves with all the people, give us the education. The foundation of education allowed us to feel more confident to take action and then do it.

It’s like bias Moses. One, you see other people doing it that around you, that inspires you to take action. Two, you feel confident to do it because you want to also, naturally human beings want to be part of the crew. I’m like, “Am I going to do it, too.” You naturally want to go for it. I hear a lot of times too with students and people that we interviewed to become students, a lot of them are like, “I read all the good books, I’ve done all the podcasts and I’m at a wall.” I need that little push to take action and it’s 100% true. I know it should because it was me. To have that community the one that to push you to take action and then continuously growing.

We should always have that beginner’s mindset that even though we did deal great for me, I have a coaching program, but it’s like, “I’m a beginner. I’m always trying to learn because if I stopped learning and growing and I felt everyone that I’m part of it, too.” My motto this 2021 is, “Be comfortable being uncomfortable.”

I told you that, Dale when you were here. It’s so true because when you’re uncomfortable is when you grow the most. I want to continue to apply new networks, go to the new things and be joining a group really helped me because it helped me network with a bunch of people and create a community there where I’m able to find new people to talk to then hear me out and listen to my super real estate jokes.

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Real Estate: The only difference between the people sitting down on these chairs and the people talking right now is that you guys took action.

 

Speaking of networks and I love meeting people through events, like through networks. A lot of these people have achieved so much, and then if you rather buy, you’re like, “I can’t do that.” When you start hanging out with them and you realize that these ordinary people are like anybody else. In that, if they can do it, then why can’t I do it? It’s just, I only have that type of epiphany. It’s surrounding yourself and going to meeting people, and realizing that they’re no different from you.

We had a retreat here at Zen Coast. One of the students, this is the quote of the week. I was like, “My epiphany is the only difference between the people sitting down on these chairs and the people talking now is that you, guys, took action.” I was like, “Bingo. Yes.” That guy is out taking massive action and he’s like, “I’m jumping in hardcore.” At the end of the day, it’s 100% what it is. It’s like, “I’m an old guy. You’re a normal guy. I do say these and normal people do.” I’m no different but I decided years ago that I was going to do something and I did it and kept on doing it.

Here you are. Speaking of education, now you’re educating people obviously through your company like the Zen Coast University. Can you tell me more about that? What kinds of folks are you looking for that you come into your program?

You seem to understand that. It’s like they understanding the why or why we even started it and we, meaning me and my fiancée Jenny. A lot of us, for me and Jenny is like, I don’t ever read the book but Tim recommended me this book. It’s called The Second Mountain. Your first mountain is about you climbing and getting yourself fulfilled.

Not only your finances but your fitness, family, friends, and all that stuff so you can fill your cup. Eventually, once your cup is filled, you can give back your second mountain to fill their cup. If your cup is not full, you can’t fill anybody else’s cup. That first mountain journey for us was about how can we achieve financial freedom? How can we get to where we need to be?

When we got there a couple of years ago and our someday goals, that’s also the power of writing down your goals and telling people what they are. We were like, “How can we now give back? What’s the bigger picture of life?” For us, it was like, “How can we make a bigger impact on this world?” We said, “We could turn nonprofit. We could hand out soup at the kitchen.” Honestly, both of those sounded like checking boxes and not a good use of our superpower. We were like, “What is our superpower?” Real estate has been pretty generous to us over the years. What if we could teach people what we taught, we’re taught and teach our journey and hopefully, they can find their journey and living a more abundant life.

They can share that with their community, family and friends, pass that down to their generational wealth of knowledge that their kids. We’d feel like, “We’re making an impact on this world and on our deathbed.” We could say, “If we help transform people’s lives, that’s a quick purpose.” Like you, Dale, you’re helping transform people’s lives. Helping them make the biggest investment that they’re going to make in their house.

That’s why we started Zen Coast. Our motto is how can we help people create passive income that they can create passive impact. That’s what we’re all about is how can we help that? We look at real estate as a vehicle and money is a vehicle to get back our time to spending time with who we want, when we want, doing what we want, then that’s what it’s all about.

How can we now make a bigger impact on this world? You can be rich and they did. Like a-hole if you will. If you’re not helping impact the world then, what is it all about? That’s our philosophy. We interview every student that comes in. I literally personally talked to every single person because I want to ensure that one of our cultures is that, I don’t want to turn people away and say, “I don’t think this is the right program for you.” When I ask a question, what would you do with your time if you had all the passive income in the world and they say, “I want to be richer.” I said, “Why? Where is the substance there?”

At the end of the day, this is not a solo sport. This is a team sport. You need people. You need the network. Click To Tweet

That’s our target. Someone that is too long-winded answered your question. Someone that is looking at creating passive income can create a passive impact on their community and give that knowledge back. It is quintessential to say, like still roll back down because we’ve had mentors. I’m sure you have had mentors too that threw a rope down to us, and we’re so appreciative and grateful for those people in our lives because they’ve changed our lives.

Literally, they may not know it and hopefully, they do but our goal is to throw that rope back down, our students have grabbed that rope, and once they’re up, throw that rope back down again to someone else. That’s a compound effect of impact that we can make because they can help someone else, that person helps someone else. It’s a spider web of infinite impact.

It’s like keeping it forward and you don’t even know how many lives you touching. It’s because it keeps going and going.

It’s not quantifiable. I’d love to be able to quantify it someday, but it’s not that something that’s easy to quantify. As long as I can see that transformation happening, then you know what’s happening.

The Zen Coast, how did you come up with that name? This is a very random question.

Zen Coast was the first LLC that we have created for getting properties but we came with that name because one, we want people to live a Zen life without worrying and they can coast through life. It speaks to us because we live on the Coast as well but we have our worries. Even in our coaching calls, what we do is we do a lot of mindfulness exercises first because we want people to get in this hanging mode.

Many people can take courses but sometimes, like you’re so pissed off or you’re so busy in your own mind that you’re not present that you have a fire drill at work. I got a client that is pissed off. I got to deal with this fire drill, and then you go into a class in a state of not being present. We do a lot of exercises on mindfulness, even meditation during the exercises so that we can get in the right mindfulness that they can receive data in a present way. That’s where Zen Coast comes from is, it helps you find the time to be present in life. Live a life that you designed that you put together with the people that you love and then live your lives.

A lot of the folks that you’re coaching through the program, are a lot of the newer investors or experienced investors?

It’s a combination. We have different levels as well of what we teach. I’d say 75% are going to be the ones that are got no properties. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have one, and then the 25% is, “I got five units.” A little bit of scale.

SCF 8 | Real Estate

Real Estate: If you try to be the CEO of your life, you got to be the CEO of your time.

 

Speaking of newer investors, any type of advice that you can offer for those that are looking to get into real estate investing?

Understand your why. I was talking about my little sister about this and it was like, “I’m going to buy a short-term rental. I’m going to buy Airbnb.” I was like, “Why?” She’s like, “I don’t know.” I was like, “Figure that out first.” If you don’t know your why and what you’re doing this for, I got a student now that is crushing it because he’s got one of the biggest whys I know.

He is one of his whys is like he’s Jamaican and that he wanted to go back to where the village that his mom was raised in, and rebuild and redevelop that town, the village but he’s already crushing it. He’s like three properties are cashing $300 a month and this is the first time he invested in real estate and it’s like literally three months in.

That to me, he had that big why as a driving force. If you don’t know your why, what are you doing is for? You’re not even motivated. You don’t have the energy to drive you forward. I’d find that first. You probably know it too. It’s like it’s up there first and it’s a mental game. It’s a mindset game first, and people don’t realize that. People are like, “How do I do this?” “Why are you doing this?” Ask that question first and then get back to the how.

How can someone learn about you and your company?

Go on our website and go to ZenCoastUniversity.com. You could book a call with me to deal more with the program. You can always follow me as well on Instagram. It’s @Calvin.Chin91 or Facebook. My name is Calvin Chin. Those are the best ways that they can contact and reach out.

Those are all the questions I have for this episode. If any of the readers have any more questions for Calvin, feel free to reach out to him directly. Thanks, Calvin for coming on this episode with me. Thanks for your time, providing so much value to my readers. To my readers, thanks for checking out this episode of The School of Cash Flow. I’ll see you and until then, live life abundantly.

 

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About Calvin Chin

SCF 8 | Real EstateCalvin Chin got into real estate to find a path to buy back his time and energy. Over a 5 year period was able to go from grinding in a 9-5 corporate job to having the financial freedom to choose to be a full-time real estate investor and has built a portfolio of over 80+ units in just 5 years.

He has scaled from owning single-family homes, to flipping, to Airbnbs, to moving money through the BRRRR (Buy Renovate Rent Refinance Repeat) Method, to small multi-family homes, and now Apartment commercial projects. He believes in helping people create wealth (getting time and energy back) so they can give that knowledge back to their community!