Learning the Value of Flexibility Through the Real Estate Investing Transitional Process

Every new episode of the REsimpli podcast provides aspirant real estate agents and investors with interesting and pertinent industry-specific insights and guidance as is usual. Frank Iglesias discussed the path he followed from a decent position in the information technology sector to becoming a full-time real estate investor in a recent edition of the REsimpli Podcast, presented by CEO Sharad Mehta. Though we feel safe and comfortable in our surroundings, there are times in life when our natural curiosity and drive to accomplish more force us to go into the unknown ground. His move in 2011 was driven more by boredom and a desire for change than by a dread of the future. The aid and encouragement he had from his colleagues was crucial in allowing him to greatly boost his confidence throughout this major change in his career.

Frank added that a person would have to be somewhat innocent and hopeful on their side if they were to be able to welcome the possibilities of real estate. The discussion made it quite evident that following one’s own interests might lead to more satisfaction than just reaching financial success. Frank’s real estate interests were developed early in his career thanks in great part to his outstanding contacts with several financial institutions and his capacity to get sufficient capital.

Frank underlined especially the significance of having a coach or mentor to properly manage this complexity and prevent expensive errors. The shift to new buildings proved difficult, particularly in terms of overseeing many projects and supervising builders with past experience.

Frank now intends to keep investigating short-term rentals and react in a reasonable way. He went back to his former wholesale company and value-driven projects, stressing effective techniques that pleased customers and had a good influence.

Life isn’t all about working hard. Frank likes outside of the company mountain riding, hanging out with his family, and racing fast cars. Frank is grateful to feel that his personal life has given him both a sense of balance and inspiration. This episode provides a reasonable assessment of the developments in the workplace, the need of assistance, and the modifications in the real estate financial plan. Like in practically every other field of business, the real estate market is one where knowledge increases income. On the website of REsimpli, owned and run by Sharad Mehta, anybody interested in growing their real estate investment company could still get the tools and support required.

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Transcript:

Frank Iglesias  2:06  

Hello, hello, hello, Hey,

Sharad Mehta  2:10  

how are you?

Frank Iglesias  2:13  

How are you?

Sharad Mehta  2:15  

I’m doing really good,

Frank Iglesias  2:18  

excellent. I’m sending an email. Is sent. I’m minimizing and I am good. How are you Sharad,

Sharad Mehta  2:27  

I’m doing really good. Frank, turn, how are you doing today? Great.

Frank Iglesias  2:37  

Doing. Great.

Sharad Mehta  2:38  

Where are you joining in from,

Frank Iglesias  2:42  

I’m in Atlanta.

Sharad Mehta  2:43  

Okay, should have guessed from your the logo on your shirt, big, Georgia.

Frank Iglesias  2:49  

Oh, yes, actually, yes. Whereabouts are you?

Sharad Mehta  2:54  

I’m in San Diego. Okay, yep,

Frank Iglesias  2:59  

yep. Cool.

Sharad Mehta  3:01  

Any questions, yeah, no, I love, I love where we live. Um, actually, I’m 30 minutes north of San Diego, in Carlsbad, but San Diego County, yeah, yeah. Cool. Any, any questions you have about the podcast, anything in particular you want to talk about or not want to talk about,

Frank Iglesias  3:27  

probably not. What is the typical like? What is the subject?

Sharad Mehta  3:31  

I mean, we just talk about your real estate experience, and there’s no preset questions, but it just go based on the answers that you’re giving me and ask follow up questions based on that should last about 30 to 45 minutes. Max, yeah,

Frank Iglesias  3:47  

no, when you talk about whatever, the good, the bad, the happy, the sad,

Sharad Mehta  3:53  

perfect. All right? And Frank Iglesias, yes, okay, perfect. All right, we can get started. Then let me just make sure the mic is connected. You can hear me, good, right? Yes, okay, perfect. All right. One, switch off my phone. All right. 123, hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli, host of the REsimpli podcast, bringing you a very special guest on this podcast, Frank Iglesias. Frank, welcome to REsimpli podcast. How are you doing today?

Frank Iglesias  4:29  

I’m doing fantastic. How are you Sharad,

Sharad Mehta  4:32  

I’m doing absolutely amazing. Frank, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I want to get started. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live and what kind of investing do you do? How are you related to this world of real estate?

Frank Iglesias  4:48  

Sure. So we’ve been involved with real estate for a little over 15 years now, but my background was actually in music and it

Sharad Mehta  4:57  

so I was a you said. You take nit Yes,

Frank Iglesias  5:01  

yes. So I went to school for music, and then right after college, went into the IT industry. So I was a computer guy for a good decade and a half, and that was a fun time seeing that world. You know, a lot of things that are we’d kind of treat as commodities. That wasn’t the case back then. And so I remember when Windows 95 came out, when the iPod came out, the iPhone and and, you know, a number of other things that now we just take for granted. So it was a very fascinating time to be in the industry, and one that I’m grateful to have enjoyed and be a part of. So there’s a lot of good lessons that came from that that I’ve grown to appreciate, you know, the older I get then I got into real estate, sort of the way a lot of people did back then, which was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, right? Should have guessed yes and that I got the email to this day. I don’t know where it came from, but I got the email about the two hour seminar about Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And so I went, and like many other investors, your eyes go, whoo. And we got involved a few months later, and it has been quite a ride ever since. So

Sharad Mehta  6:18  

you had read the book, and then you got the email about the seminar, or you got the email about the seminar, and then kind of read the book and got into real estate after that.

Frank Iglesias  6:28  

I don’t know the book came later. I had never even heard of it. I got the email, and it was just, of course, like many people, even to this day, my idea of investing was this thing called mutual funds, right, or stocks, and that’s it. That’s what I knew. You know, just give money to 401, K at work. And that was it. Didn’t really think about it. Oh, that’s very

Sharad Mehta  6:51  

interesting. So you had not really been thinking about real estate. You’re kind of like just, you know, God, this is like 2008 2009 time period. Yeah, this

Frank Iglesias  7:00  

was 2008 I hadn’t thought about real estate on and off, mainly for two reasons. I’d had a older sibling, not sibling, but Uncle in the family had showed interest in it when I was younger, and it was kind of like, oh, that sounds fascinating. But when you’re young, a lot of things sound fascinating, right? And then I had a sibling who actually bought a foreclosed home, so that was kind of interesting. I don’t remember if that was before after the meeting, but it was somewhere in that general time frame. So alright,

Sharad Mehta  7:33  

so walk me through. So you get this random email, and you’re like, this seems interesting. So you go attend the seminar, the two hour seminar. What happens after that?

Frank Iglesias  7:43  

Oh, well, I went home and I told my wife, I took had all these notes. I was like, Look at what I learned. Right? It’s like, oh my gosh. And, you know, I learned about things like, I think I still have those notes to this day, but I remember, it’s the first time I ever heard of card money. The idea of flipping a house for profit, which, while that’s always been going on, it just never really computed in my head, so to speak. So that was pretty fascinating, how you could buy either a foreclosure, but also these other ideas, like a lease option or seller finance, which I didn’t really fully understand it, of course, but it was just, it was all just all the things that we take as commonplace terminology when you’re new. It all sounds very fascinating, absolutely. And so I shared that with my wife. I was like, hey, you know, this might be something to explore. So with that then led to the three day right event, right? We know the drill. The three day event then leads to buying classes. But from the time of that first event to us buying our first property, it was roughly five, six months, somewhere around that, okay,

Sharad Mehta  9:03  

yeah, did you buy? Did you buy a flip? Did you what? What kind of property Did you buy? We bought

Frank Iglesias  9:10  

a property. It was a buy fits and hold and back then we paid, if I recall correctly, we paid 55,000 and, you know, back now, this is like, and this was January, 2009 now, the world is burning down. We don’t really know that. Like, I’d heard the stock market go down and, oh my. But beyond that, this idea of real estate crashing, not computing. So we’re looking at houses, and we’re like, man, houses are cheap. How cool is that? Right? And that’s literally what

Sharad Mehta  9:45  

we had no idea, like, what had happened with the wild that is so interesting. It was

Frank Iglesias  9:53  

probably 2011 ish before we really started to understand, yeah. Uh, so we got to see a couple of hard money lenders go out of business. One in particular, because they’re like, Hey, can you help us sell these houses? I just learned about wholesaling, so I don’t really know it, right? Like, it was, like, still a very new idea, and all I remember that, and I couldn’t understand it was, man, they’re asking really high prices, but it doesn’t look like the comps are that high, yeah. So it just seemed very strange to me, and that lender ended up going out, you know, a year or two later, whatever the time frame was, I don’t recall, but I do remember just those little snippets where you saw these little things happening that to someone that was very knowledgeable understood it, but we didn’t. It was a while before we started realizing, Oh, this is bad. So

Sharad Mehta  10:59  

that is so interesting. So you bought that property to buy, fix and hold for 55 Yeah, just, do you still own that property?

Frank Iglesias  11:08  

No, no, we sold it few years back, but it’s so

Sharad Mehta  11:12  

you bought it with 55 what would that property be worth now

Frank Iglesias  11:17  

today? Well, the market’s a little bit down now. So today, it’s probably worth if I had a guess, I choose maybe three more around there. I mean, I haven’t looked at a little that’d be my guess,

Sharad Mehta  11:34  

right? So once you, once you bought that property, you, you know, fixed it up, rented it out, and then as the market went up, you sold it. And then, like, what, what happened? Like you said, it wasn’t until 2011 that you really started putting these pieces together. Hey, something really bad had happened to the real estate market. And you just, you just thought, like the prices of the houses where you were buying, that’s kind of like the normal prices, or did you just keep buying more fixed set uppers to buy and rent them out? What was your business model like for first couple of years?

Frank Iglesias  12:12  

So the first couple years were mainly buy, fix and hold. We did end up executing our first wholesale deal somewhere in there. I don’t know if it was 2010 or 2011 when we got learned the idea of flipping an REO, which you don’t hear about REOs that much these days, but back then, of course, you fell out of there was 20 of them. So we learned the idea of wholesaling that and executed that. We executed our first flip, which was cosmetic. It was small, but it worked out pretty well. And so everything was, it was the excitement and the newness of it, all right? It was just the newness. And you know, that went on till 2011 and that’s when I left my job. Okay,

Sharad Mehta  13:02  

so you’re working full time till 2011 like what? What happened in 2011 that it’s interesting. I also left my job in 2011 March. 2011 is when I left my job to do play listed full time. But what was your reasoning behind like leaving it? How many deals had you done between 2009 and 2011 before you started to leave your job, decided to leave your job. Oh,

Frank Iglesias  13:25  

how many deals? I mean, I’m guessing, right, but I don’t know. It might have been a dozen, give or take, okay? It might have been less than 10, or certainly not more than 15 or 20, okay, but I don’t know. Off top my head,

Sharad Mehta  13:39  

were you? Were you making enough money when you decide to leave your full time job to replace your income, or you just saw the opportunity in the market?

Frank Iglesias  13:48  

It was more the latter. More the latter opportunity. Okay, if I had to do it again, maybe I would have done it differently. But the thing was, the reason I left was I was getting bored with it. Okay. By the time 2011 rolled around, I worked for a great company. I mean, good pay, benefits, great team. We were very good at what we did, and it just got boring. So it just sort of became like, unless the bigger company takes on an initiative, bigger project or something, it just became mostly management. I see so it was so it was comfortable, and it was a great place. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any negative about it. It was very positive, but I was bored, and I’m like, Well, when you have everything in your board, we need to make a shift, right? Just didn’t have. So when I I remember when I went to leave and I met with my manager, I said, I’m not leaving the company, I’m leaving the industry. I’m just bored. And I would, and I would, I said some to the effect of. Ehsan rishat, we call it an iPhone, yeah, and they’re way more powerful now than they were in 2011 Right, right? But, you know, it just the the industry became commoditized when I got into it. That was not the case, you know, when I got into it, pagers were still like a new thing, and then blackberries came along, right? And then you had the flip phone, the note, or the Nokia’s right, that you could throw them against the wall and they would never break kind of thing, right? Which, by the way, we didn’t throw the phones against the wall, but there were plenty of stories. There were people that did it. Both phones, they were extremely dull, probably the most durable phone ever. But you know, just, it was just fat, and that fascination just wasn’t really there anymore. Got

Sharad Mehta  15:51  

it so you decided to leave your your wife on board. Was she working? She not working? Like, what was the like? How did that go down with your wife?

Frank Iglesias  16:02  

No, it was definitely a step of faith. She was not working at this point, because my first child had been, you know, he was already born. Both my kids were born. So it was very much a step of faith that it would work out. It was a step of faith. And if there’s one that can tell you about real estate is it will do wonders for strengthening your faith, because it can be very dynamic. It can be the dynamics of being a full time real estate investor and really just a full time entrepreneur. So it’s not unique to real estate. I mean, it’ll challenge you, and not everyone’s meant to do it. And certainly there’s times where I’m like, should I even be doing this? Should I go back to full time? Oh, yeah, yeah. But the reality is, every entrepreneur’s probably had those thoughts. Many have have them often, and you realize, you know, it’s not for everybody, and that’s okay, that’s okay. There’s a place for everybody to fulfill a role, yeah, mission in life. And, you know, the the hard part is sometimes deciphering what that is for us.

Sharad Mehta  17:09  

So a lot of people listening, you know, they want to be in that situation where you are doing it full time, and going back to 2011 when you left your full time job, I think that’s where a lot of people, excuse me, that’s where a lot of people get stuck, that they see the opportunity, they see the potential, but it’s the fear of making a change, fear of letting go of the comfort zone that they’re in. Right? I’m sure you had some doubts also, I’m sure you had some concerns. Also, you know, how did you kind of get over that? Like, what was, what was your thought process back in 2011 we How old were your kids back then?

Frank Iglesias  17:53  

How old was I?

Sharad Mehta  17:54  

No, how old were your kids?

Frank Iglesias  17:55  

Oh, my kids, 111 that means my kids would have been eight and 10, eight

Sharad Mehta  18:02  

and yeah. So you have young family, you know, it’s a big decision. Your wife’s not working. It’s a big decision. So I, you know, I really respect that, that you took that decision. How did you get over that fear factor that you had and just it was faith, or what was your thought process back then? Um,

Frank Iglesias  18:24  

I don’t know if there was a lot of fear just because, and there’s, there’s probably a lot of naiveness in there. In fact, they’re always, you know, there always is, right? When you make that kind of shift, you know, we don’t know we’re getting into till we do it. But because I was bored, I knew I had to make a shift of some guy, okay, you know, when you have a great situation, you’re bored out of your mind. Something had to change. So there wasn’t like 10 other opportunities to do stuff that I was looking at. So I think for me, it was more about I just need to make a shift. Okay, so I didn’t really give the idea of being fearful too much weight, like I’m sitting here thinking, Did I even fear? Like I don’t really recall memories of fear. Okay, everything goes back to I’m bored. I need to make change. I just we got to do something different. And this looks exciting, which, again, it’s probably a little bit on the naive, almost risky side. And certainly there was some risk there that I of course had no idea about until you get into it. But I don’t know that there was a lot of fear. It was more of, all right, we will. It was probably more like, or am I willing to take that step of faith to go make it happen? Yeah. And one of the things I thought, and this is something that I remember, is really positive, is when I made the change, a lot of my colleagues were actually very supportive. And. And one thing that I thought was striking is there was a few colleagues that actually said, hey, you know, they applauded me, you know, having the boldness to take that step right, which was really kind of interesting, because it was kind of, and I don’t know that they were implying, I would love to take it, but I don’t have the strength to take it, so I don’t want to say that’s what they were saying. I don’t know. I didn’t sit there and play 20 questions with them, but it did make me think, hey, is this something that’s maybe a little bit bigger than I realize? Right? And it wasn’t like I dwelled on it, but that thought did cross my mind, yeah, because it was interesting to see how supportive people were. And they were like, man, best of luck on your new endeavor. Stay in touch. And I still stay in touch with a number of those people to this day. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  20:53  

it’s interesting. Like, I also left my full time job in 2011 and now thinking back, I don’t think I had as much fear. I mean, of course I had some doubt, but it was more the possibility of everything that I could do, have the freedom of time and money, that was the vision I had, rather than, you know, leading with the fear I was leading with the vision of the future that I had. So it sounds like it’s very similar to kind of what you went through. And you did mention that if you could do it all over again, you would change some things about it, like, what? What would you do differently? Now,

Frank Iglesias  21:32  

I probably would have, the one that I would have changed is I probably would have maximized how many rentals I could have got conventional financing on Right, right, because we didn’t match that out. That’s probably the one right like, because it was so cheap, right, and back then, you could refinance into a cheap bank loan, even though a lot of banks weren’t doing it, we had a relationship with a bank that did direct lending, that did do it, and they would finance a $40,000 loan, you know, you I don’t know if there’s any bank today that would do that, but back then,

Sharad Mehta  22:07  

Yep, yeah, it was a different time back then. So, so you decide to leave your job, like, walk us through, like, what happens after that? You just go out, start buying more, fix it up was to rent out you get into wholesaling flipping. What does that look like for you?

Frank Iglesias  22:26  

Yeah, the early years, we got a lot in the wholesaling. We enjoyed flipping the Oreos a good bit. That was nice. While it lasted, we always did a little bit of flipping, and and then we would just buy additional rentals here and there. And that went pretty well if I had to do it. So, yeah, here’s the other thing, if I had to do it all again, I would have probably sold nothing and kept everything right.

Sharad Mehta  22:55  

That’s what all the landlords say. I wish they had not sold their property than just kept it exactly

Frank Iglesias  23:01  

that is the number one thing that would have done. But, you know, you can’t live in the past, right? So we played in that space for, you know, quite some time, and that went very well. And then we started getting into bid projects. We did our first folder at rehab. And I want to say that was maybe 2014 15, somewhere around there, which that was very and it was our first edition. And then that led into new construction. And in 2016 was when we built our first house, if I recall? Yeah, it was 2016 and interestingly enough, our first new construction project, we didn’t buy it with the intent to build. We bought it with the intent to remodel. And then somebody, not to this day, I don’t remember who it was, but somebody said, Hey, let’s, you know, have you considered just knocking it down and starting over? And so that was like, right? So, and we had bought it so cheap that we actually had time to do that. And so I remember we worked with our lender, and we’re like, hey, let’s explore this. And they were on board with it. Long story short, we ended up building our first house. You know, worked out great for them, was very profitable for us. And I was like, wow, this is cool. And so we ended up getting very deep into new construction, as well as full dots pop the tops. And, you know, all those big projects that look and sound cool until you do a bunch of them and realize maybe they’re not as cool as the hype. You know? And we did that for a number of years, and we ended up actually kind of burning ourselves out. You know, you were talking earlier about where the vision drove. US in the early days, the vision, the opportunity, the excitement. And when we got into new construction, we we saw a very without trying to be too negative. I mean, it was kind of an uglier side of the business. What ends?

Sharad Mehta  25:20  

I mean, what did you like about new construction?

Frank Iglesias  25:23  

Well, what the problem was, we had a we had a a time where was easy to buy property. It was too easy. It was literally too easy to get deals, because we had gotten good at acquisition. So that was good. So what ended up happening is we ended up buying too many properties, and we had this naive thought, again, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I’m also a big fan. Just a quick aside, I believe you’re going to be in business, you have a coach. You have to have a coach that’s been there, done that, not the guy that’s done 10 deals. I’m talking about the guy that’s done hundreds. They’ve seen the mountaintop. They’ve seen the dates of hell. So we had a period of three years where we didn’t have coach, and that’s when all the mistakes happened,

Sharad Mehta  26:12  

just for so you’re buying all of these in Georgia, right, correct? And how many, how many projects are you doing at any given time?

Frank Iglesias  26:20  

I’m about to tell you do it, but what happened was when we didn’t have the coach, and we’ll hop off that in a second, but basically, you can make mistakes in real estate and not even realize they were mistakes for 1218, 2436, months later. So one of the things people don’t talk about much in real estate is the decision of NIJ, you may not, you may then everything’s fine, and then it bites you years down the

Sharad Mehta  26:49  

road. Can you give an example of that? Yeah, so,

Frank Iglesias  26:54  

and here’s how it works. So going back to your number, because it encompasses the answer that question is we, we attempted to do 20 spec projects at once, 20 new construction projects. Now, four of those were really more like full guts with additions, which were additions are effectively a micro form of new construction, and we were still getting the house. So we have 20 of these going on. And where we were super naive was we had this idea of, hey, when we’re flipping a house or two, what do you do? You go hire a general contractor. They’re going to do XYZ. You sell the house, you make money. And that’s all fine and good. When you’re doing a project two, maybe even three or four, the problem was we were trying to do 20. So what we thought was we’ll just hire multiple general contractors. And, you know, each contractor can manage four. So we’ll go find five GCS, and the world will be good. It sounds good, you know, logically well. And then on top of that, the other thing that we learned that we were very naive about was there’s a lot of general contractors in this country, right? 1000s of them. So if you go to the board, the licensing board, like, let’s say, in Jordan, let’s say there’s 5000 contracts. I don’t know what the number is, but just, oh, let’s just use a hypothetical number, 5000 what we learned is, of those 5000 maybe 10 to 20% actually built houses, meaning the vast majority of people that are GCS, they won’t touch new construction, and they will tell you flat out, they don’t build. They remodel. Maybe their specialty like kitchen and bath. Maybe they’re some other trade, like tile. Maybe they do everything. But we kept finding only a small, micro amount. Didn’t do construction, so in our brain, again, naive not having a coach guiding us, relying on our experience in our real estate circles, which, again, I don’t blame the real estate circles. We just didn’t have the right resources. I We thought logic says, Well, this is a small group of contractors, and what they do, because there’s less of them, it’s more specialized. It’s more niche. And somewhere in our brain we assume, and a lot of people in my circles assumed they must be better. What I learned the hard way was that is not the case. In fact, it was an epic problem that was created what we didn’t know at the time, and we didn’t know this for it took. It took a good bit of time. To learn this in the builder space. If you’re a GC and you’re a builder, there’s really three different kinds. There’s your production builders that build neighborhoods, your spec builders, which is probably closest to us as investors, and then custom builders, which, that’s the person that says, you know, Bob and Sue down the street, comes to you and says, I want to build a house and tell you every detail about it for the next two years, right? So, and that’s fine, no problem. So I actually have met people that took two years to build their house, very interesting, but And so where we went wrong without even realizing it? For literally, to come back to your questions, we were hiring production builders to build spec homes in an in town environment in Atlanta, and it was not a fit. It was a it was a terrible fit. And we just again we didn’t know what we didn’t know. So I would sit there and be like, Why is this so difficult? Like, why are these guys having such a hard time? And I’ll give you an example. We had a house, and this was one of the ones where we gutted it and we literally ripped the entire back half of the house off, literally just, it was like somebody chopped the back half and just demoed it out. Well, this was a house built back in 1910, 20, whatever the age range, was old school. And so you had concrete footings that, of course, are old, and some has settled, and so forth. And one side of the house was roughly, I don’t remember the exact number, maybe four to six inches higher than the other side, which is 50 feet away, somewhere, something like that, whatever that distance was, and so, and and we struggled because our GC was like, Hey, I can’t reconcile how to make this work. Now, when you’re the investor, you’re sitting there thinking you’re the expert. Why can’t you reconcile, you know? And I’m like we and I’m sitting there thinking, well, most of these old houses in Atlanta, if the difference is four to six inches from one side of house the other, that’s pretty normal, right? Now, if it was two feet, that’s no one’s sweating four to six inches, because these houses are all old and they’re all trashed, and they all need, God knows how much work. So it was very difficult to reconcile. So we ended up having to get a concrete guy directly to work with to figure it out, because the GC couldn’t figure it out. Now, the GC had built hundreds of homes for a production builder, yeah, but we and we did get it figured out, and then we ended up laying over the GC. And so I share that one story to say, is this story I just shared changed the details, but it was effectively the same story with every one of the GCS we were hiring and what. And we just sat there and we’re thinking, why don’t these people understand how to solve these houses, how these problems? So

Sharad Mehta  33:06  

how did you then get to the point where you knew that? I mean, I didn’t. I didn’t know until you mentioned that there’s like, three kind of new construction people, you know, production, and then your spec and then your custom builders. How did you figure out? Did you just like, happen to come across one that was a spec beta and like, Hey, you’re really good. Where can I find more of you guys? Yeah,

Frank Iglesias  33:31  

basically, I ended up going back to a relationship that I had years ago, and it was by actual like, I didn’t even realize he was building, but I had networked with a gentleman, a couple of guys, that really helped me understand, hey, there’s different segments of this world, right? And we’re just we were we were putting a square pad in a round hole right now? Were these builders are hiring in their environment of production, were they good? I don’t know, but probably a lot better than what I was getting. And so in our world, we were putting a square peg in a round hole. So once I got around the right people to help me understand what was really happening. And these were not investors, these were pure builder types or GCS that understood that environment, they were like, Yeah, we need to make some shifts. Yeah. So we made some shifts, and we were able to finally do all these projects done. But, I mean, this was a process that went over years, because again, when the first GC doesn’t work out. What was the natural inclination? Let’s go guide another one,

Sharad Mehta  34:43  

yeah, without knowing if you’re looking for the right one or not.

Frank Iglesias  34:47  

Yeah. And these were guys with with experience, and so just, just super quick, funny story. It got to the point where I, and I’ll never forget the interview we met a nice guy. He. And, and we chatted for 20 minutes or so, whatever the time was. And it wasn’t that long. It’s probably 20 minutes. And, and I asked him, anytime I asked anyone to hire him, why should I hire you? I always ask that at the end of an interview. And he said, I’ll never forget. He’s like, Well, I got 30 years experience, 35 I don’t know it’s 30 or 35 one of those two. And I remember saying to him, so did the last guy I fired, right? What else do you got? Yeah, and then he said, Well, I have all these subs. They’ve been with me for years and the yada and I said, Yes, that is what everyone that we’ve let go has said as well. And for some reason, when we hire you all these subs that you’ve had for a long time so so much, it was amazing how often they just disappeared. It’s like, wow. So needless to say, that one did not work out. So, you know, part, part of the process for us was we ended up learning how to be the builder. And what that really taught us was we got so far away from what we were doing in the early years, where we were investing, and the opposite, we’re bringing it full circle. Investing opportunity, excitement. That’s what it was for years, all of a sudden, we became a builder. Now, is our knowledge base very vast? Yes. I mean, we built contemporary homes, modern homes, traditional farmhouses, bungalows, shotgun, like, we’ve built all that stuff, but we were off on our mission, and so we realized we need to, like, not necessarily shut it down, but it basically encompassed everything we did. And we’re like, Wait, we didn’t sign up to be a full time builder. That was never the goal, right? And and there were other projects along the way, but it started with that additional with that first batch of 20, and it was a ride. And now we’ve been able to bring it back to Hey. My name is Frank. I’m a real estate investor. I just happen to know how to build houses and do all these other things, but that’s not the focus anymore. That’s not the goal. So

Sharad Mehta  37:29  

what is it that you’re focused on right now in your business, we’re

Frank Iglesias  37:34  

going back to basics, like, what was it that was fun about real estate investing? The opportunity was fun. Wholesaling was a lot of fun. That was probably some of the most fun we ever had, because you got to help people, real people, with real problems, quickly, yeah, something that put a smile on somebody else’s face, that truly solved their problem quickly. That was exciting. You know, I we’re okay, we’re rentals. It’s a little hard right now, because I know the recent stats a few months ago said something like, over half the people renting today cannot afford their rent and like, so that kind of makes it’s like, okay, rentals, cool, but you got to be just as conservative, you know, the Airbnb thing. You know, short term rental, that’s kind of cool. We experimented with that in some different markets, and what we learned from that was, some people love that stuff and they want to like we like it because we enjoy being hospitable, is what we learned. So we’re like, in my mark in downtown Atlanta, we tried Airbnb in downtown Atlanta. Absolutely hated the experience. The numbers were good. I’m sorry. What? Why

Sharad Mehta  38:53  

is that? Okay? We

Frank Iglesias  38:56  

did not enjoy the clientele. It just, they just didn’t respect the property okay? And for some people, it’s like they’re okay with it. It’s like, that’s just part of the game. I get it, so I don’t fault them. It just our first short term rental actually came in 2012 where we bought a house that was late front that we got super cheap, and that house became a short term rental for several years. And the best part, you know, when I think back about that house now, we still have the desk book, and when you look at what people wrote in the desk book, like that’s really what I remember far more than the house was awesome. There was a and it was a light front house in a community. It was really quiet. And I mean when I say quiet, like you could walk outside and hear a pin drop, quiet, wow. And people really love the tranquility, the way it refreshed their family, the time they spent, where they would go on the lake and whatever, and so over the. We realized we got we got too focused on deals. It’s particularly when we got a new construction because it was too easy to buy, and we got focused on deals when really what made the business fun was helping people. And so today we’re we’ve been pivoting back to that place. Can we build you a house, sure. Can we go rehab a house of any size, sure. But now it’s, is this project going to be a value add to somebody? One of the things that really helped with this was we did some spec builds where we pre sold the house. And when I think about the ones where I had a buyer before I even laid the foundation and they got and I could interact with the buyer as we were building it, those were the best ones running away because you could see the value when the guy sold the house to post on his and I didn’t even notice. I’ll never forget, he posted on his Instagram something about He’s the first person in his family to own a home. Wow, as like, and we got to be part of that process, from foundation to

Sharad Mehta  41:22  

close. That’s amazing. That

Frank Iglesias  41:24  

was that’s the fun part building. It just build and get a check. Honestly, it doesn’t excite us. It just doesn’t. It’s like, yeah, I tell people it’s four walls and a roof, yeah, so plan, but four walls and a roof, it’s the people. No, no. I

Sharad Mehta  41:40  

absolutely admire that you have a bigger purpose than just making money, you know. So right now you’re mostly wholesaling a set what your focus is, and to add value to the end buyer or to your buyer, then they can, like, either flip the house or keep it as a rental asset, what your focus is right now in the market, and that’s

Frank Iglesias  42:01  

what we’re getting back to. I mean, we’re just now getting back to it. Okay? We kept, we kept trying to go back to it, but what we learned is, when you get involved in new construction, it’s like a massive vacuum cleaner. It just sucks up so much time. Yeah, and, and even if you’ve got a great general contractor, the challenge with great general contractors is they still have a million questions, and they should, they should, right? That’s a good thing, right? But it’s still very time consuming and and a lot of flips are the same way. And so we realized we needed to dial that part of our business way down. Will we do more of it in the future? I mean, I don’t know. Maybe. Who knows, but we just know that moving forward, we want to get back to a place where the people, part of the business, became the focus, not the deal.

Sharad Mehta  43:00  

Is that, what do you see yourself doing? If you look ahead, you know, 18 months to like, two, three years down the road, you see yourself kind of pivoting towards wholesaling and maybe doing some short term rentals.

Frank Iglesias  43:13  

Uh, yeah, that’s probably where we think we’re going. Of course, 18 months is an eternity in today’s world, especially today’s economy, election here, all that you know, two months from now, feels like a long time, so hard to say, but that’s a reasonable loose idea of what we’d like to be fully engaged in. I also enjoy coaching like I enjoy we learn so many crazy things the hard way. You know, I told you there was three years I didn’t have a coach, and those three years was, you know, that’s where he made all the mistakes. And many of these mistakes have literally take years to fix, and that that’s challenging. And so if I can be a value add to somebody about how to handle deals so as to reduce your risk, even if it means not doing the deal. You know, I enjoy doing that. Yeah, 100%

Sharad Mehta  44:12  

and that’s one thing. When I look back at my house, flipping business and even the software company that have it’s one thing I wish I’d done much earlier in my career, is find a coach or be a part of a mastermind. It just takes so many years of your learning, just being in a group you know, learning from a coach. It just it, rather than making your own mistakes, you can learn from your coach’s mistakes, because everyone, any, any coach that’s, you know, worth what you’re paying them, has had, has made bunch of mistakes, and if we can just go to them like, kind of what you had with the hiring a general contractor, if you could have gone to your coach and said, Hey, this is kind of the issue that I have, they would just give you the answer, rather than you taking two years of your mistakes. And learning from it, you would have saved all of that. So 100% agree with that. Coaches make such a big, big difference. It’s yeah, if I could go back, that’s one of the things I would definitely change. Is hire a coach. Yeah, yeah.

Frank Iglesias  45:12  

I tell people, if you find a great coach, you will never pay them as much money as they’re going to save you?

Sharad Mehta  45:20  

Oh, 100% 100% especially when you look at as a percentage of the value that they’re adding, it’s probably going to be less than 1% when you really think about the value that they’re adding in terms of how much you’re paying them, and then the mistakes that they’re going to save you and then guide you towards the right opportunities, it’s 100% they’re like, What 100 times that you’re paying them? So like, 100% agree with that. Frank, this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Couple of last questions for you before we let you go. What is it that you do for fun with everything that you have going on?

Frank Iglesias  46:01  

Oh, you know that? Ehsan. Kids have gotten bigger, but nowadays I like playing games with my wife. I do that a lot more now, and I like I enjoy my mountain biking, and I enjoy sports cars, taking them for drives in the mountains. It’s beautiful. It’s joyful. Yeah, I always, anytime I’m in the mountains taking a drive, not only is it fun to drive the car, but you also realize our creation is a pretty amazing place. And I’m a faith built person, so I’m the guy that says, look at the creation. God’s created. Not everyone believes that that’s okay, whatever, whatever your belief system is, when you go to the mountains, it there’s just something about that environment that just speaks to your soul. And you just sit there and go, Wow, and you realize how small we really are.

Sharad Mehta  46:57  

Yeah, I was gonna, that’s gonna say that I live, I live not too far from Pacific Ocean, and then you go to the beach, and that’s, that’s, I feel the exactly the same way, like you realize how small you are and how amazing this world is, everything that we have, the mountains, the oceans, the trees, the birds, like how amazing everything is. So thank you for sharing that is there one book that’s had the biggest impact in your life? It could be a recent book. It could be one that, you look back, you’re like, oh, man, I’m so glad I read that book. It could be a personal book, business book, or one of each.

Frank Iglesias  47:32  

I’ll give you one of each, because there’s a lot of great business books. And then there is, to me, first of all, is the Bible. To me, that’s foundational. And as I’ve gotten older, what I realized is Most Great Business Principles are biblical concepts basically reworded into everyday speech. But there’s just, you know, there’s so many things that I’ve learned in business. I’m like, wait a second. When I really thought about it, it was like, Wait a second, this is not revolutionary. It’s in the Bible. It’s just reworded to non spiritual speak. So I always say, start there. As far as a business book, I think there’s a number of great examples. The one I think I would say right now that’s really been resonating with me, has never split the difference.

Sharad Mehta  48:26  

Oh, it’s funny. I’m I’m reading that book right now. Yeah, it’s fantastic,

Frank Iglesias  48:30  

and here’s why I’m rereading it now. And the book is about negotiation, and when I think about investors, the vast majority of investors, you know, they don’t make it past a year or two, right? The number one investor is the first time investor, and it never changes, because most of them, they get into deals that they probably should have got into. Well, why is that? Because most investors pay too much for property like this is not new information. You’ve got lenders, you know, they’re pitching 7080 85% LTV deals in most markets. That’s too hot. Now, people can argue there’s different ads at different rate, and we could talk about that for a whole podcast, right? But the point being, the vast majority of the reason deals don’t work out to the degree we want them to is because we just didn’t negotiate a good enough deal. And the skill of negotiation rarely gets the attention that’s needed. And I understand why. It’s not sexy when you go to rehab camp, you want to know how to fix the house, right? Like I get. That’s what sells negotiation like no one, like nobody wakes up and goes, I’m a bad negotiator, right? Most people don’t say that. But really, negotiation is a massive career. Yeah, there’s people, that’s all they do. And to be really great at, it takes just as much effort as it does to flip a house Absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  49:58  

Yeah, you. Yeah,

Frank Iglesias  50:01  

yeah. But when you do a deal, how much of that deal timeline is negotiation? It’s a fraction of 1% but that little fraction is actually the most important.

Sharad Mehta  50:10  

Yeah, yeah. You make your money when you buy a house and you just cash it when you sell, like people like, that’s the biggest mistake, I believe, you can make, is overpay for a house. Once you’ve done that, there’s, there’s nothing you can do. There’s, you cannot go back and negotiate, you cannot push the market value beyond what the house can reasonably afford. So, yeah, the most important thing that I have people is, like, if you buy the house at the right price, you have so many options, but if you’ve overpaid, there’s, there’s nothing you can do. Yeah, so thank you for sharing that.

Frank Iglesias  50:40  

So there’s a just a funny thought, I have a coaching client now that he’s getting into new construction, and when I gave him my formula, because we were talking about this negotiation thing, and I told him, you know, go read the book. But here’s the thing, when I gave him the calculator, he literally came back to me the following week after doing his assignment. He’s like, Frank, like, over 90% of the deals I was interested in aren’t interested in any. I was like, yeah, that’s and I said, that’s the point. That’s why I just saved you a lot of and a lot of headache. But I said, but let me qualify that it’s not that they’re not deals anymore. It’s that what I’ve exposed to you is how you to make those deals, actual deals, you’re going to have to mean much better in negotiation. Yeah, absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  51:31  

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That’s 100% 100% one of the most important skills is to negotiate the right price. Final question, if you could spend a day with anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with? And why

Frank Iglesias  51:48  

that’s a good question. It’s evolved over the years. Now it’s very simple, I would spend that time. I was actually reminded of this question by a person I met not that long ago, actually, so interesting. You asked that for me, the answer is simple. I’m going to say the same thing this young lady said, and that’s Jesus, because when I think about how challenging business can be, how challenging life can be, and that, here’s a guy that came, you know, came to Earth, died for our sins and so forth, to save humanity. Like, tell me more about that. Like, what was going through your mind? You know, it really when I think about what he did, I think about my challenges, and I’m like, we’re good. It doesn’t matter what happens. We’re good. We’re going to get through it. It’s all good. And one thing I love was the one thing I’d ask him about would be adversity. It’s something we were actually reading about this morning, and it just, I’ll close with this. There’s a beautiful Bible verse. It says, Be anxious for nothing. But in all things, with prayer and supplication, make your request known to God. But those first few words, Be anxious for nothing, there’s a lot of peace that comes from and when life is peaceful, stress comes down, and all of a sudden you realize it doesn’t matter what problem comes in your life, you can handle it absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  53:33  

Thank you for sharing that Jesus as Jesus and Bible are the number one answers on

Frank Iglesias  53:38  

those two questions. That’s the foundation. Yeah, Frank,

Sharad Mehta  53:42  

thank you so much for sharing your time, your experience, your wisdom, with us. Someone listening to this or watching this wants to connect with you, learn more about what you have going on, about your coaching program. What’s the best way for them to do that?

Frank Iglesias  53:55  

Yeah, so I’m on all the social medias. I’m not hard to find. Frankie glasses. You can find me. You can call our office, 678-408-2228, you can go to my website, frankieglesias.com, and I tell people, Look, whatever your challenge is, I do a free 15 minute consult with anybody. So if you got a problem you want to talk about anything we talked about today, or anything else. You know, I’m happy to do that with people. And yeah, I’m just happy to help, and I can, if I can make somebody’s life a little bit better, then I always enjoy those opportunities. Absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  54:34  

Frank, thank you so much. We’ll put links to all of that in the show notes. Frank, thank you so much again for being a guest. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Frank Iglesias  54:41  

Sure thing. Thanks. Bye.