Episode 200: Mike Swenson - Top Real Estate Investing Tips For 2024

The REL Freedom Show turns 200! That's right, this is our 200th episode. With it being the beginning of 2024, we wanted to share with you some of our top tips to help you achieve real estate investing success in 2024. Whether you're looking to get your first deal, or looking to scale larger, these tips will help you align for growth, help you with your decision making process, navigate changing interest rates, and get you on the right path.

Episode 199: Adit Shah - Navy Veteran & Real Estate Entrepreneur Living In Columbia

Adit Shah is a real estate developer, syndicator and military veteran that now enjoys financial and location freedom living life on his terms in Columbia. After getting out of the military, he worked for a real estate developer for free to gain crucial experience and build key relationships. He's helped develop nearly $3M of properties in San Diego County through his company Housebender, with the intent to provide housing for blue collar families and veterans. He's also raised $3.8M and acquired $18M in assets through hotel investing, through his other company Tempest22 (a tribute to the 22 veterans that lose their lives daily to suicide.)

Episode 198: Jenny Rojer - From Higher Education To Real Estate

Jenny Rojer enjoyed a career in higher education before beginning her journey into real estate. About 5 years ago she got involved with a group that provided real estate education, which allowed her to learn a lot about the industry and different strategies. She decided to make the jump in as an agent in the summer of 2022. Since then, she's worked on residential properties as well as investment properties, while also running a short-term rental of her own. She's focused a lot of her time and attention on growing her social media presence. Hear Jenny share her journey as she's building and growing her real estate agent and real estate investment business.

Episode 197: Spencer Hilligoss - From Golden Handcuffs to 20,000 Units

Spencer Hilligoss was an operations and sales junkie working for 5 high growth Fintech companies in 13 years. He decided to break free from the golden handcuffs, quit his job, and work on growing his investment group, Madison Investing. Since then, he has become a full-time investor by partnering with in-market, vetted operators and has $2.3 billion in acquisitions with over 20,000 units. He is also a registered member of FINRA and a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council.

Episode 196: Clifton Corbin - Helping Your Raise Financially Literate Children

Clifton Corbin left his business consultant gig after 2 decades of experience to become a full-time stay-at-home dad. He is the author of "Your Kids, Their Money: A Parent's Guide To Raising Financially Literate Children," which provides parents with the skills and tools to teach financial literacy to kids. He also wrote "The Richest Person In Babylon", which is the popular favorite "The Richest Man In Babylon" revised for modern time. When not reading or listening to podcasts about finance and economics, Clifton can be seen fixing up his 100+ year old home in Toronto, playing basketball with his kids, chairing a PTA meeting or DJing in his basement.

Episode 195: Ryan Luthi - Funding unBankable Real Estate Buyers

Having a mom who was a successful Realtor, Caroline Hobbs has set a goal to transform the process of finding homes and making it an enjoyable journey. Living in Silicon Valley, she has a prime seat to make that happen. Caroline is the visionary founder and Chief Broker of Reward Realty, established in 2013. She works closely with families and investors to deliver memorable experiences while helping them save money,time, and stress. She's also developing a new technology to help disrupt how agents, admin, and clients navigate a transaction and bring all parties together to create a client-first culture.

Episode 194: Caroline Hobbs - Bringing Silicon Valley Tech To Real Estate

Having a mom who was a successful Realtor, Caroline Hobbs has set a goal to transform the process of finding homes and making it an enjoyable journey. Living in Silicon Valley, she has a prime seat to make that happen. Caroline is the visionary founder and Chief Broker of Reward Realty, established in 2013. She works closely with families and investors to deliver memorable experiences while helping them save money,time, and stress. She's also developing a new technology to help disrupt how agents, admin, and clients navigate a transaction and bring all parties together to create a client-first culture.

Episode 193: Lauren Keen Aumond - How I Quit My 9-5 Job From Real Estate Investing

Lauren Keen Aumond is a content creator and real estate investor based in Tampa Bay, Florida. She recently quit her 9-5 job and manages her short-term and long-term rentals. Along with her husband, Aric, they built a portfolio that helped them achieve financial independence in their early 30's. She's also the host of the Adulting Is Easy Podcast and The House Money Podcast.

Episode 192: Robert Taylor - McDonalds Crew Member To 30 Flips A Year

Robert Taylor is a former McDonald's employee who went from a humble crew person to real estate superstar. He set out with a goal to create $5k/mo in income from flipping, while still maintaining his job at McDonald's. He scaled to 4-5 flips a year while still working full time, and grew to 17 flips his first year on his own. Today he flips 25-30 houses a year in the Baltimore, MD area, and has also accumulated 25+ units he's held along the way. Robert's story serves as a beacon of hope and motivation for aspiring entrepreneurs, reminding us all that success is attainable, no matter where one starts in life.

Episode 191: Merrill Chandler - The New F* Word.....Fundability

For many people, building and growing a business in the real estate space is going to require some sort of funding. How much do you know about fundability? Merrill Chandler is THE expert when it comes to knowing what lenders are looking for to approve you for funding. Since 1997, he has led the transformation of the personal and business borrowing space. GetFundable.com helps entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and business owners supercharge their personal and business borrower profiles to reach their funding goals. You'll learn about "business credit" imposters that can ruin your personal credit, how funding approvals are NOT based on your credit score, and how fundability is based on 40 borrower behaviors that you can utilize to help you get approved.

Episode 190: BEST OF: Michael Elefante - Finding Financial Freedom Through 6 Short-Term Rentals

Michael believes that all it takes is one short-term rental to help set you financially free. How about 6? Michael shares his journey to financial freedom in just ONE YEAR by leveraging short-term rentals. He and his wife now own 4 properties in TN and 2 in FL and just moved into a $2 Million home in South Carolina and are expecting their first child this fall. We walk through how he selects properties, how he runs his numbers, how he funds them, what steps he take to maximize revenue on each property, and how you can do it too. He's an open book and willing to share his journey....just ask his 750K+ followers on Tiktok!

Episode 189: BEST OF: Eric and Deven Wohlwend - From Legos to Millionaire By 16 Years Old

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.

Episode 188: Mike Swenson - How To Invest In A 20 Unit Property

We are so excited to share that we closed on a 20 unit property! What excites us the most is that we got to have over a dozen people INVEST WITH US! These people wanted to passively invest in a property without having to do all the work themselves. They wanted to achieve economies of scale that they couldn't do on their own. They didn't want to have 100% of their income lost if 1 unit is left vacant on a single family home they rent out by themselves. Together we can do more! Tune in as we share details on the property, why it is advantageous for people to pair together, and how you can find deals like this moving forward. Do you have some money you want to put in a deal, but perhaps not enough to buy a property yourself? Don't buy the myth that you have to put in sweat equity to get started in real estate. Find someone you know and trust and you can experience passive real estate investing with your very first deal. Learn how to get started today!

Episode 187: Dave Foster - Tax-Free Investing Through The 1031 Exchange

Dave made a 30k mistake on this first investment, a duplex in Denver, CO, one that ended up costing him over 200k in future missed opportunities. He learned that every real estate investor has a silent partner - Uncle Sam. If you're not careful, Uncle Sam can make more money than you do. But Dave soon learned the incredible value of tax-free savings through the 1031 exchange, which allowed him to buy a sailboat with his family down the road. Dave is a Qualified Intermediary and consultant who shares his tax-saving strategies with investors who want to maximize their returns. He's the author of "Lifetime Tax-Free Wealth: The Real Estate Investor's Guide to the 1031 Exchange". Dave shares how a little bit of advance planning can keep all of your capital working for your own benefit and help you grow your portfolio faster - using your own tax dollars.

Episode 186: Whitney Elkins-Hutten - Investing In Car Washes & More

Whitney Elkins-Hutten serves as the Director of Investor Education at PassiveInvesting.com, and national passive real estate investment firm that holds $1.4Billion in assets under management. After making 52k after her first sale of real estate, nearly losing it all on her 2nd deal, she focused on how to grow her portfolio the right way. Today Whitney holds $800M in real estate including over 6,000 residential units, 1,400+ self-storage units, and is focusing on growing even more through investing in express car washes. She's focused on helping others grow Money For Tomorrow, which is the title of her book that will be coming out in 2024.

Episode 185: Pip Stehlik - The Path From Family Grocery Business To Real Estate Mastery

Originally looking to build a career as a stand up comic, Pip Stehlik (with the help of his wife) came to the conclusion there was a different path out there to make money and achieve their family's financial goals. He went back to the family grocery business, where he was miserable, until he attended a Zig Ziglar event in Omaha back in 2002. His attention quickly turned to real estate, where he bought 16 properties in 16 months. Since then, he's been able to do lease options, renovations, commercial, short term rentals, creative financing, and many other methods. Taking a page from Zig's book, he believes "You can have everything you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want." He's led from the stage, training and mentoring over 40,000 entrepreneurs in 18 different countries, as well as launching Pip's Path To Property, and company designed to help others achieve their goals in real estate investing.

Episode 184: Sterling Griffin - Living In A Honda Accord To Millionaire In 2 Years

With $250 in his pocket, Sterling Griffin decided to spend it on attending a life-changing Tony Robbins event instead of on rent, which began 5 months living out of his car in Los Angeles. By investing in himself and surrounding himself with other high achievers, Sterling turned an online fitness business to a 7 figure exit in less than 2 years. He then took that money and bought $26.5 Million of real estate in his first full year of investing with no outside investors by investing in medical real estate development. Hear Sterling share about his rapid accent and how he's utilizing his niche to achieve his investing goals over more traditional methods of multi-family syndications.

Episode 183: Josh Dobson - Mortgage Dad & Social Media Star

As the real estate and lending market had changed, Josh Dobson knew he needed to adapt. While much of his mortgage business came from real estate agent referrals, he needed to pivot and get straight to the consumer. Insert @MortgageDadOf3. Through trial and error and adjusting his message to resonate with the consumer, and not seeing significant results for almost 18 months, Josh has now built a social media following of 115,000 on Instagram and 63,000 on Tiktok! He's dancing, he's educating, he's providing EDUTAINMENT! In addition to being a lender, Josh has also invested in single-family and small multi-family homes around his area of Modesto, CA. He bought his first house and turned it into a rental, and repeated that step a couple of times. Josh shares how he's helping consumers through his Highway To Home program so that each person has a path laid out to begin their journey of homeownership to help them build future wealth.

Episode 182: Mike Swenson - Choosing Your Real Estate Investing Strategy

When people first start looking at investing in real estate, inevitably they start thinking "How Do I Choose What To Invest In?" Today we're going to help guide you through that decision! We're going to walk through many of the popular investing strategies, help you do a self-assessment on your goals & resources available to you, and help you move closer to pursuing the investing strategy that's right for you. We'll touch on flipping, buy & hold, short term rentals, BRRRR, mobile home parks, self storage and more. We'll talk about the importance of running your numbers (with the help of a great deal calculator), doing due diligence, and pursuing partnership opportunities that are a fit. This is a great overview for a newer investor to help bring some more clarity on where they might want to go in the future.

Episode 181: Michael Sarracini - Hitting Lifestyle Freedom At 25 Years Old

Michael Sarracini is an award-winning entrepreneur and real estate investor. After a failed stint of being in a boy band (true story!), Michael made a deposit to a bank for rent as a university student. After seeing how much the landlord made in profit each month, Michael and his roommate Scott McGillivray, decided they were going to purchase their first property however they could. They did. They fixed it up, added value and refinanced it, to pull money out, and put those profits into another property. They did that 20 times as quickly as possible, allowing Michael to retire at just 25 years old! Michael is now CEO of Keyspire and Chairman of The Sarracini Group. Michael and his team have trained more than 100,000 real estate investors and helped them generate tens of millions of dollars in net worth. In 2016 he led the #1 fastest-growing consumer business in the country. He lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and 2 boys and loves swimming, mountain biking, hiking, scuba diving, and playing squash.

Episode 180: Derek Vickers - 38 Mobile Home Parks Totaling 1900+ Units

Derek Vickers moved to Florida with less than $300 in his pocket and had just started a 100% commission sales job. Wanting to build something in addition to his 9-5 job, he started working on finding mobile home park owners and finding deals to purchase throughout Florida. Fast forward a few years and Derek is CEO of Vicktory Real Estate Group, which currently owns 38 parks totaling 1926 units. He retired from his sales job to pursue this full-time and is also the host of the MHP Show.

Episode 179: Chad Wittfeldt - Teenage Landscaper to $30M in Real Estate Investments

Chad Wittfeldt started his entrepreneurial journey at a young age by turning 2 businesses into 6 figure endeavors. He started a landscaping company and electronic arbitrage business, and found success in both. Chad later became a full time investor and real estate entrepreneur in his twenties. He has also investing in cryptocurrency and builds systems and processes to acquire accredited investors. Today, he's partnered on over $30,000,000 in real estate syndications.

Episode 178: Kevin Amolsch - Hard Money Lender Raises $135 Million

Kevin Amolsch is a successful real estate investor and private money lender. He originally served in the US Army for 4 years, earned a degree in Finance, and worked as a Mortgage Bond Analyst with Wall Street for 2 years. He founded Pine Financial Group in 2008, has raised $135M in private capital in 4 funds and has helped to close on over 2,400 transactions as a buyer, seller or private money lender. His company is approaching almost $1 Billion in fundings. He's also the author of "The 45 Day Investor", is a frequent speaker, and is host of "Real Estate Educators Podcast".

Episode 177: Kyle Stanley - The Fearless Investor

Kyle Stanley was originally a sports broadcaster and decided to get into real estate to be able to control his destiny and live the life he wanted. He now manages around 50 short-term rental properties in the Fresno, CA market through arbitrage and co-hosting strategies. He turned it into a 6-figure business in year 1 and got to 7-figures by year 2. He's also the host of The Fearless Investor Podcast, where he discusses the short-term rental market, generating passive income, and scaling your business. He also recently launched another podcast called The Setup Man, where he dives deep into the lives of current and former Major League Baseball players and coaches.

Episode 176: Tyler Coon - The Short-Term Rental Specialist

Tyler Coon has always been an entrepreneur. He loves the adventure of building on his own vs working a W2 job. After being a real estate agent serving all clients needs, Tyler saw the opportunity, and loved the idea of niching down into focus on Short Term Rentals. Living in Asheville, North Carolina, Tyler founded Savvy STR Agents, a real estate team focusing on helping investors purchase Short Term Rental properties. He has grown his team to help serve North Carolina, Kentucky, Southern California, Gatlinburg, and Myrtle Beach and is looking to grow to other areas. He currently owns 8 STR properties himself. Hear Tyler share why he loves working in the STR space and how he's helping others build wealth through owning great STR properties.

Episode 175: Kristi Winfree - Building A Legacy One Transaction At A Time

Kristi Winfree is a former teacher that discovered she has a passion for helping people and loves to use her natural gifts of being highly detail oriented and implementing systems and processes. She launched Legacy Transactions to help agents grow their business and provide education to them along the way. Her personal motto is "wake up every day to create Raving Fans and make someone's life better!" She is also the host of "Not Just A Daydream - Business Insights and Inspiration for the Work At Home Entrepreneur"

Episode 174: Karim Kerachni - Growing A Business Living 12 Time Zones Away

Karim Kerachni has been all over the world. He was in Canada with Algerian parents, grew up in France, and is currently spending a year in Malaysia. Karim is passionate about being an entrepreneur, launching and growing businesses over being just a "business owner". He started a residential and commercial cleaning company called Steamates in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Getting that company up and running afforded him the time to focus on his next journey, doing franchise development in Massachusetts for PropertyGuys.com, the largest private home sale network in North America. Karim shares about his story, how he's able to be successful while being a full 12 time zones away, and how he plans to grow in the future

Episode 173: Christina Leavenworth - News Anchor Turned Real Estate Agent, Team Owner, & Investor

Many people assume that a news anchor turned real estate agent would have it easy. But what if you couldn't leverage your news personality at all to let anyone know you were even in real estate? Christina Leavenworth found a way to use any free time she got to connect with people outside of her day job as a news reporter and managed to sell 65 homes for $14.8M in volume in her first year in real estate in the Pensacola, FL market back in 2016. A few years later, she launched The Leavenworth Team as a way to handle the growing demand for her services and has turned that into a thriving team of a half dozen agents. In addition, she's grown a rental portfolio to 18 properties ranging from short-term, medium-term, and long-term rentals, all while continue to manage those properties between her and her husband. Find out how she's built this up in just a few short years and how she's willing to lean into uncertainty, grow through challenges, and come out successful!

Episode 172: Shawn Baxter - Professional Real Estate Investor While Working A Full-Time Job

Many people work hard in their W-2 job to be able to do real estate investing on the side. What if your W-2 job allowed you to learn real estate investing WHILE you worked? Meet Shawn Baxter. By day, Shawn is a truck driver that travels all across the US. Because of his role, he is constantly listening to real estate investing podcasts and audio books all day long. Because of this dedicated time commitment, he puts in MORE time as a real estate investor than his truck driving job. This allows him to have the coveted "real estate professional" tax status and all the tax benefits that accompany it. Hear Shawn share how he's using real estate to build wealth, from house hacking to utilizing a home equity line of credit, to infinite banking, to a self-directed IRA. He's learned a lot while he's on the road, and is excited to build an amazing life through real estate.

Episode 171: Mike Swenson - How To Get Started Investing In Real Estate With Little Money Down

The 2 questions we hear most often are "How do I get started investing in real estate" and "How do I invest if I don't have enough money for a property". Today we're tackling those important topics! Mike Swenson covers the many different ways that investing in real estate can bring you income & profit, how you can fund your purchases, what considerations to make when deciding what type of investor you want to be, and how you can push the "easy" button and passively invest your money into other people's deals.

Episode 170: Vince Villani & Adam Hager - $250k Revenue In 6 Months Without Owning A Property

For many people, real estate investing is an amazing path to build long-term wealth. At the end of the rainbow comes opportunity towards time and financial freedom. However, what if you're looking for some more immediate results to accelerate time and financial freedom now, so that you can invest that time into other things down the road. Adam and Vince currently have 11 short term rental properties across the US. They are using the arbitrage method to build their short term rental business. They are also the founders of Airpreneur.com, a coaching program designed to help people in 9-5's scale to 10k profit per month in short term rentals without needing tens of thousands of dollars to purchase properties.

Episode 169: Brandon Thomas - 15 Units With Only $600 Out of Pocket

Brandon Thomas began his real estate journey working as a property manager throughout college helping to manage a 65 unit apartment. He saw firsthand how much an owner could earn and wanted in. Brandon has been able to creatively finance 15 units in Morgantown, WV that he also manages, as well as doing other deals. He's a licensed agent in Maryland and runs a team there. His work in real estate has given him the opportunity to also launch a clothing company that donates 50% of all profits to the Save The Children Foundation. This clothing company operates 100% self-sufficiently from technology and requires no additional time or money to maintain and operate from after launch. Brandon is also a respected mentor and sought-after speaker in the real estate investment community.

Episode 168: David Dippong - Building Multi-Generational Wealth Through Home Ownership

David is the go-to resource for all things real estate in Los Angeles & Orange County, California. He helps people plan for, create, and acquire a portfolio that meets their investment & financial freedom goals. His mission is to spread a higher level of real estate and financial education, show the benefits of home ownership, guide people to achieve it, and help his clients leverage their homes into multi-generational wealth. We discuss how owning at least 1 property gives you the tools to fight inflation and protect your family from the rising cost of living, and how harmful a short-term mindset will be for people more and more as the average life span reaches 100 and beyond over the next few generations.

Episode 167: Derek Schenck - Bringing Excellence In All Things

Having completed over 28,000 professional coaching sessions, Derek Schenck knows how to help people. He is the founder and executive coach of Peak Performance Coaching, a coaching and consulting company laser-focused on the pursuit of excellence. Derek has the unique ability to entertain and inspire while guiding his audience on an engaging journey of self-discovery to create lasting change that matters. We discuss why entrepreneurs are struggling today and what separates the good from the great to help you get to the next level in your life.

Episode 166: Kevin Link - Doing 1000 Flips

Kevin Link started out as an attorney for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). He wanted to be able to take control of his career and stop working for other people, so he launched into real estate in 2017 by co-founding 4 Brothers Buy Houses, based out of the Washington DC area. This investment firm brings in over $5 Million in revenue per year with a team of 25. In addition to that, Kevin founded 1000Flips, a game-changing investment company designed to help other do what they did. He's also the host of the 1000 Flips Podcast. Kevin will talk about his journey from legal eagle to a real estate guy, the ups and downs he's faced flipping thousands of homes, and the secret sauce behind his sales coaching techniques.

Episode 165: Marla Harmon 

Combining 2 Loves: Technology and Real Estate

What options do you have when you have a strong love for technology and real estate? The possibilities are endless, yet for Marla Harmon, she took her passion and formed an amazing real estate investor CRM. This digital marketing wizard is the CEO and founder of REISoftware, an all-in-one CRM designed specifically for the real estate investor. She talks about how she took her high-level understanding of technology and built an engine that helps people capture leads, nurture leads, and close more deals. She's able to carve out an amazing niche and pursue her passions at the same time.

Episode 164: Eric & Deven Wohlwend -
From Legos To Millionaire By 16 Years Old

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.

Episode 163: Chris Miles

Getting Your Money Working For You

Chris Miles, the cashflow expert and Anti-Financial advisor is a leading authority on teaching entrepreneurs and professionals how to get their money working for them today. He retired very early in life, lost it due to the housing crash, built up his cashflow again and thus was able to retire twice by the age of 39. Chris runs Money Ripples and is host of The Chris Miles Money Show. His personal clients have increased their cash flow by over $300 Million over the past 13 years!

Episode 162: Mat Pezon

Chemical Engineer Turned Full-Time Investor

Mat worked as a chemical engineer for 12 years before recently becoming a full-time real estate investor in 2022. He got a Master's degree in International Management  at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. While working his regular job, Mat would spend his nights and weekends looking for foreclosures, learning and asking questions about real estate investing, and working on his personal finances. He and his wife have now been purchasing rental properties since 2014 in the Allentown, PA in the greater Lehigh Valley area. Outside of work, Mat enjoys spending time with family, playing the guitar and violin, and maintaining his Spanish language skills..

Episode 161: Agostino Pintus 

Bulletproof Your Investing Through Cashflow

Agostino Pintus is a former INC 500 Technology Chief Executive, with a masters degree and 2 bachelors degrees, made a life-changing decision to walk away from a six-figure corporate career to pursue his true passion: real estate. In the span of 5 years, he's built a diverse portfolio of multifamily, development, and net lease assets. He is the founder and CEO of Bulletproof Cashflow, where he applies nearly 2 decades of real estate experience to source, negotiate, and acquire commercial properties. He is a dynamic speaker who at a wide range of events throughout the United States and Canada.