Eric & Deven Wohlwend - From Legos To Millionaire By 16 Years Old
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
Eric and Lila Wohlwend started out sleeping on a mattress on a warehouse floor. They educated themselves in real estate and taught it to their kids. Deven the oldest son, began real estate investing at the age of 7 with no money from his parents and became a millionaire and accredited investor before he could drive! The Wohlwend family has rehabbed and repositioned over a thousand units, grown multiple businesses, and authored a book - Family Success Triangle. In addition, the children started Millionaires In Training (MIT), a group of kids ranging from 160 members in 8 countries teaching kids and young adults how to become entrepreneurs. They do this and still spend half of their time traveling and speaking all over the world. They are the Real Power Family.
In this episode hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:- How Eric ended up selling his first house and flipping it
- How Deven focused more on talking to people to learn something new which led him to start investing on his own at the age of 5
- How Eric taught Deven to investing on something that he knows which are Lego
- Why did Deven focused on finding and buying Lego sets that are retiring?
- Teaching 20-year olds about cash flow at the age of 7 in a Youth Academy
- How Eric and Lila disciplined their family to always save up even when they never made more than $45,000
- How Deven started in real estate and got into acquiring 46 units at the age of 16
- The children have always had jobs to do around the house. They clean their rooms, bathrooms, mow the yard, do the dishes, etc.
- The vacancy rate when Devin took over as CEO of the company was 92% occupancy and is now 95% today.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro to Eric's and Deven's Career
1:49 - Eric's Background in the Military
4:32 - Devin's Interest to Invest on His Own
5:34 - Investing in What You Know
8:08 - From Lego to Real Estate
10:20 - 10% Savings
16:06 - Deven's First Deal
18:14 - How Eric's Kids Find Their Own Deals
23:20 - How Does Deven's Day Looks Like
28:51 - How to Find Eric and Deven
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Minnesota Real Estate
Read the full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The Real freedom show where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together
Mike Swenson
Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Real freedom show talking about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson, and I am super excited about today's episode a couple episodes back we had Lila and Ethan Wohlwend on and they told their story of coming from not much to building a lot of wealth in real estate. And their son Ethan has been phenomenal and building and growing his real estate assets starting at the age of seven. And so now today's episode, I have the other half of the family Eric and Devin on and we're going to talk a little bit more about their journey and then hear from Devon's perspective to what it's like to start investing in real estate building and growing and becoming a millionaire by the age of 16. And then becoming an accredited investor. So lots for us to talk about today. So Eric, and Devin, we are so excited to have you on the show.
Eric Wohlwend
Thanks for having us both. And Ted to jump in and ahead of Devin it not a competition. Nothing in our family does is a competition. But Devin and I were going to do way better than mom and your brother.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. I love it. Let's get started maybe with Eric, you sharing your background, you were in the in the military, got into medicine and got into real estate. So talk about that journey. And we'll just set the stage there. From your perspective. I know for those folks that have maybe heard the other episode with Lila and Ethan, they have a little bit of a background, but we'd love to hear your perspective on beginning.
Eric Wohlwend
And then we'll hop in and chat North Devonabsolutely spent four years active duty at Fort Bragg ended up with 13 Total in between that guard and reserve went to school at Kent State, my degree is pre med and right before med school, I went in search of my life. And like an awful lot of college graduates out there, I've got that degree that's never done anything for me, that accidentally got me a job teaching for a year anatomy and physiology, and ended up fixing up my first house. And the whole goal was to fix it and flip it and do a couple of those. So I had enough money to put a downpayment on seven acres on an airport by an aeroplane a bunch of parachutes and run a skydiving business. And then I realised that the guy running it today had been doing it since the literally the year I was born and still wasn't making any money. And that did not sound like any fun to me. And I thought Why would I sell this house, I just put all this work into fixing up when I can rent it out and make $50 a month, every month for 15 years. And then it goes up to like 500 a month. That sounded nuts to get rid of a cash flowing asset, even if it was a teeny amount of cash flow. So by the time my son came along a few years later, I had done 20 of these in my first two years that brought in enough money that we never had to work again. So I was technically retired, although that didn't stick for more than a couple of weeks. And Lila said you will get out of this house very politely. But I implied I was going to get a divorce or a job one of the two. And a job sounded like a drag and I really didn't want to divorce. So I started a couple new businesses. And now we have a construction company a real estate brokerage, many hundreds of rentals, we've done over 1000 rehabs and an aviation company and a training company for best selling books and I get bored every few years, I go and do something new. And as I was going through these jumps in my life, I had kids, so I just took them with me everywhere I wanted to go. And I found that you can drag a child into these fancy expensive seminars, just pay the cover charge, they don't throw you out as long as the kid doesn't screen. So Devin and Ethan had been doing this and going to different business meetings, literally since they were born. And I don't know Devin, when you were going to my Wednesday meeting, you were wandering out to play in the kids area. And then more and more often, you stuck around and you spend more time in the business meaning and less time in the toy area.
Eric Wohlwend
What was going through your mind then what were you thinking Ifocused more on the talking to people cuz I was like, Alright, I can play with the same twice I've been playing with for two months, three months, however long I could remember. Or I can talk to people and maybe learn something new. And that seemed way more exciting to me. I could do something. I could talk to these people and maybe do something so I could either or I heard about making money so you can buy more things. I probably wasn't as focused on freedom at the time, but maybe buying a new toy, or whatever I was into at the time. Yeah, I'd like that. I can do a little bit of work to get that. And that led me to wanting to start investing on my own. So by the time I was five years old, I walked into my dad's office and was like, Hey, Dad, I think it's time for me to start investing. And then you replied with,
Eric Wohlwend
I said, Great. And you asked me, What should I invest in? And I told him exactly the same thing. I tell everyone else in the world invest in what you know. So what do you think Devin? What do you know?
Deven Wohlwend
And I said, Well, the only thing I really know is Legos. And he said, we'll go find a way to invest in that. And so I did I, I have seen Legos for a long time. And I found a way to invest in that and made a whole bunch of mistakes, then learn from and have saved me a lot of money. When a couple of years later, I got into real estate.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, now you had started, because I know Ethan had shared a little bit about the story. So you were focusing on finding sets that were retiring? Is that right? Or how would you how were you considering investing in Legos.
Deven Wohlwend
So when a Lego set when they start making a Lego set, the price goes up a lot, and I heard and heard by low, so high. So that makes that that made sense to me. And so then I thought, all right, which one are they going to retire next? Because I didn't really want to wait for three years for something that happened. And I thought I balanced like, you know what I had seen this one set for as long as I could remember it. And every Lego has a magazine of all there have a lot of the sets they wanted to promote. Like, I'd seen this one set. And every one of them it was the biggest set I had ever built the Lego Death Star. And I was like, you know, if this is the oldest one, this probably the most likely to be retired. So I should probably buy that one.
Eric Wohlwend
So I was just saying, you used exactly what you know, and everybody listening to this, they have something maybe it's just a hobby, maybe it's a toy like Legos, but they know something about it that somebody else doesn't. And if you are creative enough, you can turn anything into making money. I taught a bunch of teenage girls and one of the high schools that called me in to speak to their business class, how they could make money shopping, because that's what they said they were good at. So there is anything can be turned into a business. If you're creative enough, and you take action.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And you learn a lot of basic fundamentals about like you said, Buy low, sell high, right? It's those things like that, that can apply into a different industry. And so yeah, so then share how Legos turned into real estate for you.
Deven Wohlwend
With that Lego set. I had done that I learned some stuff from that. Over the next couple of years, I had just, I had invested in smaller things. I bought some gold and silver, some precious metals, because I had heard about that I've watched the YouTube series, The Hidden Secrets of money. And this seemed interesting for me, and you know, I could buy a $20 piece of silver. And so I had bought a bunch of that a bunch in, you know, six year old terms. Then I was seven years old was like, you know, I think I'd like to start investing in real estate now. And I go to my dad into the Octomom. It's like, well, first you gotta read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And then, any day before you start investing a guy come or start buying real estate, you should come to the national real estate convention, or Oh, Ria is a big conference we go to. And so I went there, I went to the youth academy, I was a little under the age, the recommended age, I think.
Eric Wohlwend
I talked to him the minimum ages 14, he was seven. And I said, just let him try it out for an hour. And if he's not mature enough, I'll pull him right out. And by the time I got in there a couple hours later, and said to the instructor, hey, is my kid mature enough to be here? He rolls his eyes and points in the backroom and says, yeah, he's the one teaching others 20 year olds how we beat him so bad at cash flow.
Deven Wohlwend
My parents play cash flow every Friday night for years. And I just eventually joined in the game as soon as I learned some basic math. And the entirety real estate could probably thought of it a lot like just the game cash flow, I was just doing that.
Eric Wohlwend
But in real life isn't just some of the basic, easy things. So many people contact us and say, Oh, but what if I spend 90% of what I bring in, it's not how much money you make. My wife and I combined, never made more than $45,000 Until about 10 years after we started in real estate. And granted, we have an awful lot of depreciation deductions in real estate. But working normal jobs, both of us were working for eight to $9 an hour, and we managed to buy our first home. So it's not the amount of money you make. It's how much you keep, oh, we set aside 10% I don't care. If you can't live on what you have, then there's no reason for you to not stick $100 aside every payday, you already aren't making it. Find a way to save that $100 drive less eat out last give up cable, we turned off the cable, I don't have cable. Now. If you're watching TV for hours a night, and you're not already a millionaire, you can't afford it. And it's not the money you're spending on the cable is the time you're wasting. You could be reading a book. There are so many incredible podcasts like yours out there. Just turn those on while you're driving around. Instead of listening to the radio and your favourite tunes. We listen to books on tape and podcasts continuously. And then instead of just veg and out going to the bar watching TV at night, we sit around and play board games with our kids. Like he said, every Friday night, we play cashflow. And you would mentioned before we started you want to get into homeschooling what could be possibly be better than playing games with your children. And we started out before they could count his little brother Ethan really is so ultra competitive. Hence the joke. It's not a competition but and he learned how to play Uno because he can match the numbers and the colours even though he was barely counting. And not too far. We're playing one summer we're camping and at Grandma's house. And he grabs us cards and tells us his score. I said how would you do that you can't possibly add that many numbers in your head that fast. He is just barely learning addition at the time. And he showed me everything had the faith, you know the reverse and skip counting them all right, did all the math in his head. And that is how he got good at math. But when you gave him a math workbook, he hated it, he still had Oh, he is so far behind, I need to catch up on his grading. They learn when they're doing something fun, just like everybody else in the world. And that is what makes it good homeschooling. And if you can turn that in, do you remember how you learned how to reconcile accounts, how you learned multiplication, and I made it important to you how you learn the theory and theorem by measuring walls and one of your properties.
Deven Wohlwend
I don't necessarily remember the Pythagorean Theorem, but I do remember you sitting me down in your office and had me like match up this thing here to this paper down here. And then when everything's matched up, and the number at the bottom is zero,
Deven Wohlwend
You went and learned how to reconcile my corporate accounts when he was like three years old.
Mike Swenson
So I mean in a game and making it fun.
Eric Wohlwend
Yeah, that's it, you turn it into a game. And then obviously reward him with something inappropriate like ice cream, or a trip to the McKinley monument and go see the dinosaurs or whatever it is you'd like to see where you are. But it doesn't need to be spectacular. And then of course, when you're there, you turn that into a natural history lesson. And that is how we school you want to learn about Bernoulli principle, then go stand at the edge of an aeroplane looking back the wing. Let me show you it's cool if you memorise a formula that I still can't even remember and I'm a pilot, but it's way better if they're driving down the road going like this with their hand catching the air and then you put him in the aeroplane and fly him around. And let him see when you pull on this the ailerons move and you turn Oh pull back elevator you go up and they learn how aerodynamics really works. So yeah, we've just we integrated them into every part of our life, into the flying into the real estate into the businesses that we have If, and they tended to get interested because they saw the benefits of what we were doing, not just us coming home, like a lot of real estate investors do. They come home and if they make it to dinner, they're they're complaining to their wife about oh, tenants trash and toilets, this person didn't pay, and they trashed that, that happens every now and then what is not the majority of the tenants. And if it is the majority of the tenants, I assure you, it's not the tenants fault. It's the landlord's fault. You need to do better screening, have a lease and enforce the lease from the beginning. Don't set them up for failure. That's really that's exactly what Devon's doing today is enforcing his system in his office. And that's why I'm at the home office and joining and I'm gonna go out to lunch. And he's working all day.
Mike Swenson
So Deven, talk a little bit about getting started, then into real estate, your first couple of properties, couple of doors, whatever that is, and how you scaled to now what is it 45 ish units here at the age of 16?
Deven Wohlwend
Yep, I'm currently at 46 units. And I started with side con to that conference, I learned a bunch about real estate. And so I was looking for the deal. And I came across a deal. A, someone who is flipping a house, they had gotten a loan that was about to be called due. So they were about to have to come up with a large chunk of money, and they just wanted to sell quickly, I can't get a bank loan, because banks won't lend me I'm under 18. And so if I could find financing and close on it quickly, they would sell it to me for a much lower price than they would normally went for it. And so that's how I got it deal under contract to buy an $80,000 house for 50,000. Now, I just had to find where I was going to come up with the $50,000. And that's where I had that there was that much difference, that much equity that would be in the building. And so private lender, just a regular person, it was willing to loan on it. They saw that was like, yeah, he's a kid. And no matter what happens, I make money, I either get the building and make a bunch of money that way, or he pays his mortgage on time. And I make money that way. Either way, it's a win. And so I made it a win win for every person. And that's how I ended up with a fairly good deal at the start. And then my dad, helping me set this up teaching me what paperwork to do and everything, I had me get a nine year around a nine year loan on the property. And it was seven at the time. So I'm 16 now and it'll be paid off in the next year. Or you know what I want at 16 a vehicle,
Eric Wohlwend
I was never good at saving money. And I thought if they learn rather than saving, I'm never going to pay for their college, I'm not going to buy them a vehicle, they are not going to walk around, they've never even got a allowance for anything. If they clean their rooms and the bathrooms, if they keep the yard mowed, if they did the dishes, when they were little, they'd stand on a chair and put the silverware away if that's all they could do. But they have always had jobs to do around the house. And that's just what you do to keep the house going I do my part and you do yours. That's what we all do to earn the place of living here, right. And then if you do stuff for my business, you will be paid in accordance with the value provide, just like everyone else that works for me. So we have always separated that. And I thought the easiest way for them to get in and have money for a truck without me going out and giving them any money letting them take responsibility for themselves was to set up the loans. So he's got a loan paid off by the time he's 16. And he can buy a vehicle. Oh, he's got a couple more paid off when he's 18. And he just helped them find the right deals. And now the children find the deals and send them to me. And if they find something that I buy that they don't want to put in their company, then I pay them a finder's fee just like everybody else out there. And if they say no, I want to do this. I used to drive them and I'd walk through with them. And thankfully Devon got his driver's licence. So now and him or his brother want to see as he drives them there. And I actually have some 2026 year old and another guy that's in his mid 20s that are following Devin around to learn how to evaluate properties, because he's done so many of them in the past with me. And then I have multiple 40 and 50 year old adults those that need help with their accounting software. Devon's done doing QuickBooks since he was three years old. He goes in, he helps him set it up, teaches them how to do the data entry. And trust me, you don't want to try and hire him to be your bookkeeper. He's far too expensive. But he will do the setup for you. And it will be done right the first time. And these are just the things that are normal to him, as well as riding four wheelers and playing in the orchard and the pond and everything else that normal kids do. Alright, maybe that normal if he jumps on an aeroplane and goes to Columbus for barbecue? Oh, yeah, these are some of the ways we have integrated our entire life into everything. So I get to spend more time with my kids, which is really what I think is the main point in my life, we were already financially free when we had them. And I decided I don't, I can't really give up the businesses or that money goes away. So even though we have money coming in, it still takes some maintenance, you still gotta work a few hours a week to make sure it keeps going. And it's not like I have to clock in from nine to five every day. So what can I do? What's the most important thing to me in my life, being with my children, children need their parents, they really need their dad, they need the masculine role model, which the whole world is seems to be getting away from. Look at how many more people are in jail that didn't have a father figure in the family. That just the stats are incredible. If you just stick around and show respect for your wife, your children will learn to show respect for the women they're with, or whatever, you know, mine are both boys. So these are some of the real life lessons I want them to learn. I want them to see it. Because they will learn from you. Regardless of what you do. If you come home complaining about your job, they're probably not going to want to be in that job. If you wonder why they don't want to take over your business. How many people do you know how many people you're in real estate Have you bought all of their properties when they had a child that was roughly your age, it could have taken over. And their kids want to nothing at all to do with their job. Because it's not a business. If you own 30 to 50 and do everything on your own. That's just a job you happen to own. And I have enforced the ideas on them start investing at a young age, even if you only have a couple of bucks, you can buy an ounce of silver, and then that grows up and you can buy some gold and then you can buy some real estate. It's not the amount of money to start with. It's the active investing every time you get paid. And from the time they were infants, they literally still have jars that are baby food jars. And that is what they started separating their money into every time they got paid. So we set up a budgeting system where they have investing and a play jar they get to go out and you have to let them blow some money and have fun. If not what use is it making money.
Mike Swenson
So here we are. on a weekday morning in Devon, you know most of your classmates or colleagues of your age would be in school right now. So what does what does a day look like for you being homeschooled kind of I almost say in parentheses, because you're just learning through life. So what what does a day look like for you?
Deven Wohlwend
Right now a lot of what I'm doing is I'm going and I think my dad mentioned earlier, I'm working. I'm in charge of the real estate brokerage, the management company that manages a lot of our properties. I'm the CEO of that now. So I'm here I have to make sure everybody gets their job done. The all the stuff I need to do is done that I check on all of these things. And that's a lot of what I've been doing for school the past month or two, especially as I'm actually learning the skills that I'll use in life, leadership, building a team managing a team, and creating systems for a business, building a business, all of these things that will be far more important to my life, then writing another writing one more meaningless paper, like this is the stuff I'm going to use.
Eric Wohlwend
Do you think the people working for you respect you even though you're only 16? I mean, there's a lot of people out there that I bet are gonna say wow, that's not real. He's just daddy's boy. So he's in there and he took over. Tell us what how do the people treat you? And what was the vacancy rate when you took over as CEO of the company and what is it today?
Deven Wohlwend
So people respect me just as if I'm any other person. They treat me as they am as the leader. And part of that is due to, when I started, we were at 91, or 92% occupancy. Right now we're at 94, or 95%
Deven Wohlwend
is I'm measuring but 95.4% today.
Eric Wohlwend
Wonderful. So I got there because I'm getting better results than the last person. I like.
Eric Wohlwend
I was three times his age. Yeah.
Deven Wohlwend
So I, I'm doing this and I'm getting results. And that means that people's lives end up better. And they like that. And so as long as I'm getting results, I'm staying here.
Eric Wohlwend
And he started by emptying the trash and running folders from place to place. And then he was doing so much bookkeeping at home for me, when the bookkeeper caught off sick or quit, or whatever. We sat him down, probably eight or nine years old, and he sat in the bookkeeping chair for a day or two until they could hire somebody new. And all of these people working in the office realised, wow, he's not just some little kid, he actually knows what he's doing. And I was amazed by the time he's 12, or 13. People are coming up, they ignore me when I walk in, and they come up and say, Devin, how do I do this? Again, I knew you showed me a quicker way. And they're asking his advice. So it's not like he just jumped in at 15 and took over the company. He has worked in every part of it all the way up for many years. And it was like, you know, a day a week because I thought that was good for him to spend a day a week learning what the business is. And now it's turned into more of a five day a week thing. But it probably helps them a lot more than flipping burgers at McDonald's.
Deven Wohlwend
Yeah, Donald's does have good systems. So you might have to go learn some stuff from them.
Mike Swenson
They are good systems. A burger is a burger is a burger, no matter where you go. It's made the same way. And using the same ingredients. Real estate agents, are you tired of letting the busyness of life get in your way from achieving your real estate investing goals, I'm super excited to announce we've created the real freedom investor agent tribe, it's a place for you to come, get educated, and network with others so that you can make sure that you're hitting your real estate investment goals. So find out more on our website, real freedom.com. Click on the store link, we've got a membership, we've got a mastermind group and some private coaching as well. Check it out, I've priced it super low, the goal is to get you in not have price be a determining factor to keep you from your goals. So come check it out, schedule a call with me. And we're happy to see where your real estate journey is going to take you. So a few things I just wanted to highlight here that we haven't hadn't had time to cover. Devin, you had wrote and published your first book at the age of 11. If I can do it, so can you how I started buying real estate. I think what I take away here is you guys make it sound simple. And it can be that simple. And for somebody like me that works with investors or works with people that don't know how to get started in real estate. They tend to overthink things and overcomplicate things versus taking action and and especially you know Devin, you sharing your story getting started. And then even going back to Ethan sharing his story of how he got started. He's like, Well, I just, you know, talk to this person and talk to this person talk to this person. And it can be that simple. And so we tend to overcomplicate it versus just taking action. But yeah, I also wanted to mention that you guys also have a book for your family to the family success triangle. So is there anything more that you guys want to share in regards to what you're working on. And for people that are listening maybe how they can reach out to you if they want to learn more?
Eric Wohlwend
Absolutely, look up real power family. We are real power family.com, Instagram and Facebook, YouTube, we're really starting to grow our YouTube channel. And I'm very excited to announce that we are having a real power Family Radio Show will be internationally syndicated should be starting the end of this month. So that'll be on AMFM 24/7. And most of the major cities around the US, Canada and in the United Kingdom, real power family everywhere you want to go and we hope you can achieve financial freedom is early as possible in life. People always told me that the youth was wasted on the young, they're wrong. The youth need to go out and have fun. I think retirements wasted on the old we should all retire much earlier. Then when we're financially free. We can really do something to make the world a better place for everybody else. Ever. You just live in the grind nine to five every day. Then you're stuck, get out, get financially free and then you can do great things for the world.
Deven Wohlwend
I'll quickly go back to the UN mentioned people get so wrapped up instead of just taking action, and you do have to learn and then go take action, do more and buy your first house or start investing even if it's just what you know whether that be Legos or silver or anything else
Mike Swenson
Action is going to be what produces learnings that are going to get you better results. Thank you to both of you. Thank you to the other half of your family coming on Lila and Ethan earlier and just excited for you guys and excited for your continued success on top of the success you've already had. So thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it.
Deven Wohlwend
Thank you Mike. It was great to be here.
