I was thinking about, in one, some book I've read, it says that the average person knows like 645 people in their lifetimes, and I'm sure that's went up astronomical since social media, but if you just think about that, if you know 645 people and you ask that question, that's, that's You know, the numbers just get out of whack very quickly. Welcome back to the art of connecting podcasts. This is your host here, Haydynn Fike back with another episode for you today. And as I'm sure you might be able to hear a little bit, there's still a little bit of funk, a little bit of congestion going on. I'm kicking out this cold. Hopefully this is my final day or two. It feels like, you know, you get to that point where you're in a cold and you're like, all right, I'm almost there. We're almost healthy again. That's where I'm at right now. So hear any weird noises in this episode? That's what's going on. We're fighting. The demons inside of the cold. Anyways, we are here with Jason and Kelly Ricker. And these two wonderful people came to me from someone who I think I may have met once, and maybe I don't know for sure. I can't confirm that we met once all the way in Johnson city, which is funny because I have some connections in Johnson city, they're doing some really cool stuff that hopefully we'll get to get into in the episode. Former podcast guest actually lives in Johnson city doing some big things. And so without further ado, I will let Jason and Kelly introduce himself, who they are, and they'll tell you a little bit about what they've got going on. So again, we're Jason and Kelly Ricker. We are from. Upper East Tennessee just below Johnson City. We live in Greene County. We left we left corporate jobs in 2018. I left in 2018. He left in 2021. And we've been building our business. We're both full time investors now. High school sweethearts. Yeah. Yeah, we met in high school and dated. And then started our little family. And we worked corporate jobs for over 20 plus years we were in corporate world. We just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Yeah. Wow Congratulations. Yeah, that's awesome. We got two little kids now or they're not kids. They're they're grown now basically teenagers But life is went by extremely fast and we never really thought we would be out of corporate until we started digging into passive income and all that stuff and then one thing led to another and like Kelly said, she ended up leaving her job and then we got kept buying more and more properties. And then I was able to leave mine. So yes, we're full time investors now. Awesome. Let's dive into that a little bit. Let's talk about what you guys did before you started investing. What, what did your corporate world look like? I was a manufacturing engineer. I've worked in engineering my whole corporate career. I've done mostly mechanical, a little bit of architectural, pretty much architectural long enough for me to draw our house plans and us to build our house. And then I, I got another job in back in mechanical. So. All right. Mechanical and architectural engineering. Yep, I was I went on to college and got a machine shop degree and then got into an apprenticeship program. So I've done tool and die metalworking for over for 20, 22 years or so. It was what I was into. So that was a good mixture of, of working with your head and your hands. And I really enjoyed the job, but it was just time to do something else. Awesome. And so what got you guys into investing? Like how did you, how did you stumble into investing in real estate? So I, like many people, I'd read the book, rich dad, poor dad got, got ahold of that book and it started getting the wheels turning. And then of course I went out and just started talking to more and more people about it and then I got her on board. I got her to read it because I was just bringing up just so many new ideas and new possibilities. That's what hurt the whole thing. And then it was just getting out and starting to talk to people who started buying rental property. Got it. Okay. So as you started talking to people, where, where did you, where'd you meet these people? How did you, how did you find people that were investing in real estate? So my, the best way I found a network and it's simply starting with one person, start asking questions. And then I go to the next or after I talked to them, okay. And then I'll say, you know, who do you know that that I need to talk to about this? And that's worked so well just that we've met so many people, new people, just by asking that one single question, as well as all our private money lenders. We've all, we've always used private money to fund our deals and that's it. I'll, I'll ask, you know, show people what we're doing and if it's not a good fit for him, I'll ask, well, who do you know that I need to know? And that just, you just continue that path, you know, every, every week. That's wonderful. It's actually a book I'm reading right now called Never Eat Alone. I got recommended to it by one of my Facebook followers. And that's the exact playbook that that Keith gives in the book is to basically when you're meeting with someone, you you, you, you ask them if they know anyone and then you meet with that person and you ask them if they know anyone until you hit your goal. So you just share your goal with each person that you're meeting. And each time you meet one of those people, they likely know someone else that you haven't met before, or they may also recommend, this is what I've seen in my like connecting career. You get recommended the same person multiple times, but you have a hard time getting on their calendar because they're so busy all the time. Cause they're the person that everyone recommends. And then once you meet, you're like, dude, I've had like six people connect, connect me to you. And then they're like, Oh my gosh, the same. Like we were finally meeting. And then it's like, you're almost, you have a built in friend because. You have a circle of people that all know that you need to be talking to this person and it's like an instant relationship. That's a good point, Haydynn, and I was thinking about, in one, some book I've read, it says that the average person knows like 645 people in their lifetimes, and I'm sure that's went up astronomical since social media, but if you just think about that, if you know 645 people and you ask that question, that's, that's You know, the numbers just get out of whack very quickly. So it's just staying consistent with it, doing it, make sure you're intentional with it, and you'll find the people to help you along the way. Let's see, so 645 people connected you to three people each, then you would meet 2000 new people that you haven't met before. 19, 19, one of those needs to know 645. So yeah, it's a crazy number, but it shows you how powerful it is. Just, if you'll just get out and talk with people, share your vision. I think that's huge. It's just sharing what you've got plans to do your, your core values and things like that. It's amazing what happens. So I always like to ask this when you were first getting started and you were sharing your dream and your vision with these people, you know, you're still in your, you're both in your corporate jobs. You have this crazy idea that you want to invest in real estate because of this book you read, what were you telling people when you were first getting started? Like what was your, what was your big vision and dream? Like when you were first meeting people, I'm thinking like, As I read that book, I was trying to figure out how to get out of our corporate jobs. So I would go around and I would ask these guys I worked with, these, these men who were already past retirement age, and I would just ask them, I was like, why don't you get out of this place? And then the number one answer usually is like, man, I just cannot afford the insurance. So I mean, Kelly would talk about this. And I was like, what if we bought just two rental properties that just pay for insurance? That's all you done was got two rental properties that pay for insurance. We both could easily retire at 55 at that point. And then, you know, it was that it was just, I started with that. And then I started getting out and talking with people that had property. And what I found out with asking people that had rental property was If they just had one or two, they said it was the worst thing ever. So, but then you just keep digging and you keep talking to people. And then, then you meet a guy who's got 10 or 12 and he says, this is the best thing in the world. And then it just goes from there. So it sounds like as you guys were meeting people, you were kind of adjusting your goals a little bit to where you're like, The same thing happened with me. I bought I bought my first property when I was 22 or 23. I'm 24 now. And after I bought my first property, I was like, I want to go buy three more. And I told that goal in my mastermind group, I'm in the action Academy. And then Brian, the leader of the action Academy, he goes, Haydynn, you've been in this group for over six months now, you know, exactly what you need to know to go and underwrite. So why don't you just go buy a 30 unit? I was like, it just broke my brain. Cause you know, it's like in our brain, you, you did it once. So now you can do it three times. Right. And it was like, why don't you just go and jump 10 levels? Like why not? Like it's easier actually for you to acquire a 30 unit because it's the same process, the same closing, the same negotiations, but you're just getting 30 units at the same time. Yeah. And that was like, you're thinking up to a whole different way. You just never went there before. Yeah. And it gets to being around the right people. Right. When, when you're around someone who has 300 units, it's easy for them to say, why don't you just buy a 30 unit? Right. Yeah. So when you guys are first meeting, Oh, go ahead. You're a little different, like, because you're so young, like your belief system is not like so ingrained like ours has been, you know, because we worked over 20 years and of course was raised to just always, work for somebody else. And so going against the grain and changing that whole belief system took us more time. Yeah, that, that was challenging. You just gave me an idea. I'm starting I'm starting some new events and new things. It would be really cool to name it against the grain. That would be a, that would be a cool, a cool name for, for like entrepreneurship, business ownership kind of thing. So autumn remind me that my, my executive assistant autumn will edit this. And so autumn, if you could remind me to talk about against the grain in our, in our upcoming meetings. I love that. That's a wonderful thing to think about because I mean, I grew up the same way. I didn't grow up with. The entrepreneurial parents and my mom will probably listen to this. My parents gave me everything by, by not giving me everything. If that makes sense. You know, I grew up, we would go to Wendy's and if we got a few things from the dollar menu for the week, that was like our treat for the week. It was super exciting. But what that taught me was you have to work hard for what you want. Right. And in my viewpoint on that was like, I need to go work at Chick fil A as many hours as I can. I'm going to work 60 hours a week in the summer because they'll let me do it. And I can work overtime and overtime's amazing. Cause I can get time and a half, like you're telling me I can get paid like 14 an hour instead of getting paid 8 an hour. Like, yeah, that sounds amazing. And through that, then going into the corporate world, I worked in insurance and the fortune 150 insurance world. And then I just realized, like, I got let go from that job. And I realized like, wow, this is all going to be a big rat race. I was going to be in this thing for like 20, 30 years. Oh yeah. Because I was going to start making a hundred grand a year. And then once you make a hundred grand a year, they got you, man. It's hard to get out. It's a good job that it was challenging for us. And we grew up, both of our parents, you know, we were, we grew up on farm. So we were taught the value of hard work, but they neglected it to tell us that, you know, you can still work hard. You just don't have to work near as long as you're working. So they knew half the puzzle. Our parents did, but they neglected to tell us the other half. I'm a believer in hard work mixed with network leverage. So, I mean, think about how, if you work hard in knowing the right people, like if that's what you're working hard is, I mean, I, I work, you can, you can see all my Instagram stories. I work 10, 12, sometimes 14 hours a day. But my one of my favorite sayings of Jason McDowell, who's, who owns a big earth moving company, he said, I'm a master of one machine and he's got 60 excavators, like a hundred dump trucks. He goes, I'm a master of this machine. And he, and he's like, you noticed that I didn't get a bunch of phone calls while we're here. And he's like, I got 60 guys out working right now, but he said, I mastered this machine. With, with one beck and call, we can go and move, we can, we can go and build a lake, you know, like, it's so cool to think about that. And like, if you master the right, the right people relationships, not like massive, if you master the relationship aspect, you can do incredible things while sitting in your cushy comfy office. And you know, not to say that that's you, you don't go out on the field and work hard and show you, not that you don't know how to operate that excavator if you needed to, but the thing is, is like, you got to figure out where you're, where your seat is. And if you have the right relationships, nothing is impossible, right? Our mentor, as she used to tell us, cause she, she helped. You know, ingrain new beliefs in us. And one of those beliefs was you've got to get out and you've got to start meeting people. You've got to tell every single person what you do. And that was hard for us because just the jobs we had, we didn't network at that level. So in the beginning, that was so key to building our power team. Well, and it's also hard to tell people what you do when you don't own your first property yet, you know. I would tell people all the time, I'm a real estate investor. And they're like, Oh, cool. What property are you on? And I'm like, Oh, I don't own any property yet. I was like, I got to tell myself I'm a real estate investor. I don't own it yet, but let me tell you what my plans are. Yeah. I was like, I'm working towards being a real estate investor. I'm a real estate investor. I'm, you know, I'm analyzing properties every day. Right. And so I, I, you hit on something that I want to get into before I kind of rabbit trail. I want you to talk about so like you just mentioned your mentor, right? So a common question that I get all the time from different people who are trying to get into the industry and trying to learn how it all works is how do I find a mentor? I have an amazing mentor. He's taught me So much and we barely even talk that much but just like being around my mentor for a little bit of time Has taught me amazing things as he's operates, you know, 30 different businesses. He does all the lending for me. He's my private lender. And I met him just happened since at a, at a party at his house that I happened to get invited to. You never know when you're going to find a mentor. I'd love for you to tell a story about how you found your mentor. And then also maybe if you could tell people some advice on how to find their mentor. So our first mentor, we actually hired her. She come through the education we went through, but so we hired this lady. The thought behind that was. I was still at such a young point. I was still struggling meeting the right people locally. So I seeked out somebody who had had super success in real estate investing and hired that person just so we we wanted to get out of jobs within three years. So I wanted to try to hire the best what I felt like the best person We could find and that that was her. But since then, you know, we've built so many more relationships from event, like meeting at just events and starting a conversation with them and then going to lunch with them. And then before you know it, you're playing golf with them and you're going out to eat. We've got close friends now in Greenville, South Carolina, Bob and Nancy, and they're just, they're not only some of our real estate. Investing mindset, but they also mentor us as Christians, how to run, how to, how to do real estate with a Christian mindset, and that's been absolutely huge. I love that. Yeah. We don't necessarily like, it's not just building houses. You can build a kingdom, you know, with, with property. It's just incredible. That's because you want to, you want to make sure you're doing this business with integrity and, and even though you can make some really big money doing it, you want to make sure at the end of the day that, that you've done it, right. And it's been a win, win, win for everybody that's involved. Sometimes I hear these gurus talking and they're like, yeah, you just do this. And, and like, are we screwing over somebody in this probably? And I'm like, Nope, I'm out, you know? Like it's, it's. Real estate can be a game where everyone can win. It truly is a game where every party can win. There's a house right now. I'm waiting on the client to call me back. We're looking at offering on it. We'll probably make like a hundred thousand on it based on the underwriting I'm doing right now. But the guy doesn't want to list with the realtor. He just wants cash and we can provide that, right? We can, our company can come in and we can buy it cash 400, 000. And then, you know, it's a win for us because there's an opportunity where we can subdivide off a lot and do the rehab and all that kind of stuff. And we're actually going to pay for him to move too. So he doesn't have to come out of pocket at all for the move. We're going to pay for that. And he doesn't even have to plan it all. Like if he accepts my offer, viewers will show up on the date that he wants. Okay. And we'll move this stuff to Nashville and he can live happily ever after. And then we're going to go and do all the hard work. Is that guy giving us some equity? Could he just list the property and potentially sell it for probably like four 50? Yeah. But if he does that, guess what? He's going to have to pay real estate agent commissions and all that kind of stuff. So long story short, you know, real estate is a game where everyone can win. If you. If you play the game right and and if you operate with integrity, right? It is, it must be like some of the relationships we've made with sellers over the years. Like Barbara. Yeah integrity is probably our number one core value and then helping others is Is a close second, you know, and I mean, obviously we're in it to make a profit, but at the same time, sometimes them going with us and us buying their house is not the best thing for them, you know, like when we look at it and we'll tell them that, if we don't think we're the best thing for them, sometimes they still choose to go with us. And then sometimes. And then we just refer them out. But yeah, the relationships that we've made with some of our sellers is amazing. I mean, we've bought multiple houses off off the same people, you know, just because they like dealing with us. And and just, you know, I don't know, you know, some people get it and they understand what we do and they love working with us and, and that's who we love to work with. That's awesome. Yeah. The relationship goes, not just in the networking to try to like buy the house, get your, you know, get your private money lenders and get your contractors. It also goes with the sellers. You know, every time you're talking to someone, if you're meeting someone new, it's a potential seller opportunity, right? You know, if you're meeting someone in an environment where you're not in a real estate environment. You know, you can say you're in real estate. I've had that happen many times where I get deals sent to me and it's like, you're just a real estate guy, right? Like, like we know you do real estate, so we're just going to send you this. My, my aunt is trying to sell her house and you know, probably eight, nine times out of 10, it's not really a deal for me, but like you said, I can refer it out to somebody else. That's the beautiful part about what we do is if you have the right pieces in place, I can make 25 percent on a referral. And I send it out and, and I can say with, with integrity and the best thing in my heart that, Hey, this is not really a deal for me. I would, I would be in lower than it's worth. And, and I don't even want to do that to you, but you know, this is a new house. You're probably best to list it. Here's three of the best listing agents that I know in Chattanooga and let them know I sent you. And I'll let them know you're on the way, you know, and call them and compare them. I'll do that. Like, I don't just send them to one, I send them to three. Because if they go with any of the three that I send them, then I still win and they win. So, and so do the agents. They just got a lead for cheaper than Zillow would charge. Hey, that just gives people so much trust in you when you do that. And there's something, it's almost magical happens when you say, I may not be the person that's fit for this house. It's almost like they, they let their guard down. Alright, this person's on my side. And then eventually maybe months down the road, you're the one that buys the house because they just couldn't make it work with somebody else. Absolutely. And there's something to be said about the power of cash, you know, like, as a real estate investor. You know, there's plenty, and there's a lot of people out there that will say, we'll buy with cash, right? When in reality they're looking to wholesale. So I always, I always do my absolute best to be totally clear with my clients to say like, like this one, I mean, your contract, I may end up wholesaling it. You know, I'm gonna be like, Hey, as I get this property under contract, I just want to let you know, I may also have a partner that's interested in purchasing it, you know? And if I do that, I will assign this contract to them. So like, it. There's so many people out there that don't say that, right? They, they go in and they say, I'm going to buy this house cash. We'll close in 30 days at this price. And then in, in the background, right there, there. They're signing the contract, they're putting it on the Facebook groups, they're putting it to the buyers. And that's not being honest, right? Like, like, it just isn't. Like, they make all the excuses in the world of why it is honest, and like, Oh, we're gonna close with cash, but it's like, you weren't up front. What about if your buyers aren't interested in that? And then all of a sudden you just locked up that property for 30 days. And these people are about foreclosure. I've seen it. I've watched it happen. Yeah. Something that's worked well with us on that, on that topic is after we've offered a cash offer, after we've tried to buy it on terms or whatever, and it just didn't work out. You know, we'll always offer, Hey, if our number doesn't work for you, what if, what if I try to find you somebody, another cash buyer that's willing to pay what you want, is that cool? And usually they say, yeah, at that point. So now they know exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to go, you know, just blast it on social media and try to find a buyer, they know exactly what we're doing and what the intent is behind it. That's a great nugget right there. Cause in our company, you know, we'll run across all the time, people that suck on two 50, right? And it's like, that's a great way to say it. And then it opens up the opportunity. You get that property under contract. You try to dispo at two 50. You keep a record of all the people you talked to and the feedback that they gave, and you can say, Hey, I kept getting back at this number and then now. Since you've communicated with them for a month, you update them every week on, Hey, I've talked to five buyers this week and they're all coming back at this. And then eventually you might get the chance to reset their mindset. And then you can come back and say, Hey, you know, you know, I tried and this is what we kept getting. Can we make something work? And then there's going to be a higher likelihood that A, the trust is built there, the relationship's built. And then B, you know, you've proven yourself to them that you've done what you said you would do. And they may trust you to just purchase it at the price you offered originally or even lower. Right. Yeah. They, they, sometimes they let realtors set that price for them. We found out, you know, because the market is just so strong and maybe the house would go for that. But if you're trying for weeks to find cash buyers and everybody's at this same price, then it just helps them understand, well, maybe my house is not worth a million dollars. Maybe it's just worth 200. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So going back to the mentorship. So you, you paid this person to be your mentor and where did you find them? So we went through, go ahead. We went through the rich dad, poor dad education, you know, like back in 2018. We went to the free seminar there in Knoxville, you know, and bought into, All the things. And right after we bought into it, they done an upsell with us for a phone mentor. And it made sense to us because we, we had found out like in the contract what we were getting, but it's like, you know, I'm the detail in the weeds kind of person. So I need to ask more questions. And it didn't look like we were going to have that. And we knew this was what we were going to do. Like I had by the time we bought into this right after this I put in my my notice at work Because I told him, you know, I can't I can't start a business and work full time and raise a family I just there's not enough me to go around anyway so we did that and I decided what we went through and talked about we needed more help and and then they done this upsell with us and It was substantial But yet, she, she would call us on the phone, like, you know, like every few weeks, and we would tell her what was going on, and she would say, okay, this is what you need to do. You do this, this, and this. Very specific. And then after we get to know her, we find out that she's available even more. Then just those every few weeks, she's like, if you need me, email me or text me just to let me know that it's an emergency and I'll call you as soon as I have availability and, and so it was invaluable to us and she become just a dear, dear friend. I've heard, I've heard mixed opinions about the rich dad, like upsell and all that kind of stuff. So you would say that it was worthwhile for you guys to make that investment? So it was, yes, but we found out later after we made it all work and we just did what they told us to do. And it works, but we were like, We were like the 2 percent I think that it works on. It just takes, you gotta have such a big why to go out and totally change careers and start this. Now at your age, it's probably not as hard because you can buy one property a year, Haydynn, until you're 40 and you're set. But, you know, us being in our early 40s and just wanting to do a 180, you know, I, I seen no other choice than to get somebody on my phone who I could ask questions to when I needed them. So that money, I seen it, you know, all I've got to do is flip a couple houses that mentors paid for. I seen the value in that. So it really didn't matter to me. We were going to do it regardless. And also I, this is something that I've seen is if you, if you aren't invested into something, if something is free, you don't take it as seriously. Right. Whereas if you pay 50 grand for a program, you best bet you're going to go through every course, every module. You know, if you're spending a large portion of what you have on, on a. And this is not me encouraging it, you know, I, I did, I did it and it's, it worked well for me, but I think it has to also be mixed with enough pain. And enough drive, like you said, a big why. And really, I think it goes back to pain. Are you, are you in a painful situation? Like, is there a true reason as to why you would make this pivot? Because it can't, you, you, you know, it's going to be uncomfortable. And I think that's why only, you know, 90, probably like probably only 5 percent of people that pay all this money for these programs are truly successful is because. It, they work, they can work and. If you, if you leverage what you have, but a lot of people make the excuse of, Oh, I don't have time. You know, Oh, I've got kids. I've got a family. I can't do that. I can't go spend 30, 000 on a program. I could, that's private school for my kids. Right. Yeah. And we find a way as humans to make, and I, Do a lot of mindset coaching people. You, you have to get out of that mindset. It's like, you are your best investment, period, point blank. Like if you're not investing in yourself, what are you doing? But if it's something that's free, you're not going to respect it. You're not going to respect it the same. Yeah. Once we prove that I turned right around when I left my job and got into another program and the guy taught probate properties. So instantly I seen the value in it. Nobody in our area is doing it. So I dropped. We dropped another 40, 000 And I made that money right back in just a couple months because I've seen that the value was there and I knew it would work. And so for us, it was going to work. We were going to do it regardless, but everybody's not, they're not molded like that. I was at least getting my money back. I think that's why it works is because you're like, man. I've got to at least get my money back out of this. And what happens most of the time is people do pardon my, my crudeness here, but they'd mentally masturbate. They watch all these videos over and over and over. And all they're doing is just like, like just beating their head into the screen of YouTube of how to do this. How do I do that? But when you invest, Into something like that. You're like, okay, this is real. I've got to go in and I've got to get a return on this. And that's what I feel like that push of like, okay, I need to actually do this thing now. And then like you have the support there because whereas something's free, you know, maybe you could send an email or leave a comment, but that person's not getting, you know, they're not getting any return from helping you except for the goodness in their heart. Right. Whereas when you're invested in a program, you run into a problem and you go, Hey, I paid you 40, 000. You better pick up my phone call. Right. And they're going to help you because like, Hey, oh, paying customer, you give me 40 grand. Yeah. Hey, Hey, what do you need? What do you need right now? Let me help you. And that's the difference. And you and I both know this. Once you do your first transaction, it's, it's, it's, it gets exponentially easier. Once you do your first transaction, it's 50 percent easier. Once you do your second, it's 50 percent easier. And then like, once you've done a few, it's like, okay, I just need to, you know, need to call this person. I need to get my contractor in there. We need to order materials. We need to do this. And you just run down the list. Once you've done it enough times and it gets easy. And that's why you see so many people that have hundreds of units is it just becomes a system just like anything else. Exactly. What I noticed with the mentoring was not only will they show you, you know, how to do the stuff with real estate, but it was just having the support emotionally, you know, cause you've got some bad days, you meet some bad people and you got some deals that just went. And when you can call those people up and get hope again, man, that was, that was invaluable, wasn't it? It was, yeah. She's talked us off the ledge more than a couple times, because it's scary, you know. I mean, we totally ripped out, ripped out our security blanket from her very established financial situation. Right. You know and, and so there was some really scary moments, but she got us through all those. Man, I don't know if you guys can resonate with this. I was it was summer, summer of 24 and I was out laying by the pool at my country club that member at and life was good. You know, I'm a house flipper. I've got two projects going on. Everything's moving along. I had a few hiccups, but I'm making, I'm going to make all this money on these flips. And I look at my business bank account and all the, I'm like, I have to pay my designer, I think 1300 bucks. And I have like, maybe like, I maybe had 1800 in the business account. Maybe I looked down and I was like, holy crap, I'm broke. Like I had 15, 000 of personal line of credit out. I had stuff on the credit cards. I had no money in the personal account. And I was like, Whoa, like I just, I just, I broke down crying. So I was sitting there like I'm laying by the pool right now, thinking life is all great. And then I got to the point to where I was like, I've spent. All of my money on these flips. I was watching, I was watching five grand go out, seven grand go out, all this money just going here, there, and everywhere as I was flipping these houses, and then I had this realization moment, and I don't know if you guys have had that, like, all right, we're out of money right now. I don't, I don't know what I'm going to do, but. The next week I got a wire for 107 grand because the house closed, like finally, and I was like, Oh, I'm going to be okay, but I don't know if that's been your experience, but that was my, that's like, I mean, in the real estate world, it's been like that's constantly, at least for now, as I'm getting my stabilizers out as I build my systems, it's, it's a lot of stress. That's where that's that pivotal moment. And that's where when you get to where everything's exhausted and you're freaking out. But once you figure that out. Yeah, we had a house flip go bad. I remember thinking like when when we had that moment. I remember thinking if. If this is their bottom, if this is the bottom, I can handle this and we can just go up from there. And so far, thank God that was their bottom and it hit, it hit like a week, the week that in 2020, when everything shut down in March, that's when, that's but we were we done. Okay. We were supposed to make about 80, 000 profit on this flip. And we ended up clearing about 30, 000, but we still made a profit. We still considered it a win, but Oh my gosh. I mean, education costs something, you know, And it was a really big one. It was a big education. I had to fire a contractor on a flip that I was supposed to make 80 grand on. And we cleared 30. Yeah. I've been in the same exact shoes. And it's, it's kind of a bittersweet, right? Like I'm like, if I made money on a flip and I tell every new flipper this, I'm like, if you make money on your first few flips, you're doing good. Right? Like if you break even, you did a good job. Like, because when you're first starting, I mean, it's like, it's like, imagine a toddler doing a house flip. I mean, it's essentially what you're doing when you're an adult. I mean, like you're basically a toddler. You don't know, you know, you're learning how to, how to use a bathroom. You know, you're learning basic things. That's exactly what a new house flipper is. You are a, a adult toddler. And there's a lot of hard lessons. You're going to bang your head. You're going to fall off the bike a few times. So yeah, the way I look at it. I, I've, I've had several successful people on the podcast that lost a hundred grand on their first or second flip and they didn't have a hundred grand to lose and, but they figured out a way out of it. And so I'm proud of myself for making, you know, I made 60, 000 on my first flip and then 30 on the second split 50, 50 with, with some other partners, but that was a, that was a little tough blow. You think you're all smart until your contractor just stops responding to you. And you have to fire them and then pay someone to do what you've already paid them to do again. And then it's like, Oh crap. Like I might run out of money on this project. Yeah. What's helped us so much with that is we were just huge, huge, huge, huge fans of that number one rule of investing. You got to make your money in the buy. You can do that when you can get houses under contract way below market level. It gives you a little wiggle room in case it does go bad. And that's been one of our strong points. We've been been very blessed with negotiating property. And the reason for that is Cause we, we've always bought, we've always done our own marketing. We've always bought houses that did not have for sale signs. So how does that work? How are you, how are you guys negotiating these prices? Cause personally, you know, our, our company, we bring in about 10 to 15 leads a day, and a lot of these people that you see that say, I do want to sell my house, but I want 50, 000 more than even retailers on it. So how are you negotiating with these sellers? Like, what does that look like? It's very, it's very slow. We do a lot of probate properties. The process is extremely slow, so we get to meet these sellers usually for a good solid month and talk and try to brainstorm on how we can solve this situation. And, you know, it gets to the point we always make, try to make three different offers, and we always stick really close to our cash offer. And these people I really think that know, like, trust, philosophy. I think that is huge in our lives. We just really get to make friends with these people and, and two or three months down the road we've got a, we've got a great, great property under contract. We just, we just, We're fixing to close one next week. We've been trying to buy this house for two or three months and it's going to close next week. So that's our secret sauce. I think it's just getting very personal and patient. Nice. Yeah. I'm training some, some guys to do some cold calls for us. And it's funny cause I will not, they're not cold calls. They're warm calls. We've already, they're already leads. We just are recalling them back to set appointments and confirm appointments, but it's, it's so funny when they, when they were first getting on the phone, they're like hi, Mr. Ricker. This, this is Haydynn. I, I I saw that we called you and you wanted to sell your house click or, or there, there was one where, where JC called and, and he was like, What company do you work with? He's like, I work with Goliath. And he was like, well, what's the LLC? Like I'm, they were pulling up open corporates, like looking us up. And I was like, dude, I haven't, ain't never had anybody asked me for any of that because they didn't trust. Right. Because of the tone of insecurity and unsureness. So that was, it's not something that you can just teach overnight. And, and, you know, it's, it's something that you build up over time, but now I called two or three people afterwards. I was like, Hey, Jason, what's going on, man? Oh, Hey, just hanging out, watching football. I'm like, good man. Good. Hey, I was just calling you back. Cause you had talked with Kelly the other day and she, you know, you told her that you were interested in selling your property over on main street. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's like crazy night and day. So I think that that relationship, if you're. Getting into this. And this goes for like networking or if you're cold calling or whatever. Pretend like you're talking to your friend. Yeah. That you already know. It is funny'cause Jason took a call from one of his buddies. He goes, Hey, what's up man? And I was like, dude, that's how you need to talk to every single person that you're calling, every single person. And then we go meet him. Same thing. Hey it's great to see you with the biggest smile because people can sense that insecurity inside and who likes to be around someone who's insecure. You know, insecurity breeds insecurity. So we spend a lot of time with empathy. Like we really, I think we talk more about their lives than how we can help them. Yeah. We just really dig into what their situation is uncovering their pain point and trying to figure out how we can help them with those pain points. Absolutely. And, and maybe it's, yeah, I think a one that, that I could see is like, oh, I just want to send my kids to private school so they can have a better opportunity than I did. Maybe they have this house that they've inherited, right? And it's like, well, what if we could pay, how much does it cost per month for that school? Oh, it's like 2, 000 a month. Say the house is worth, you know, 400, 000. What if we paid you 200, 000 a month? Or 2, 000 a month, right? Oh man, that would just be incredible. Because sometimes with people, and I'm dealing with this myself, if you gave somebody 100, 000, it's going to find a way to vanish. Right? Whereas if you paid someone 2, 000 a month for a specific purpose, and you could even say, Hey, I'll pay you 2, 000 a month and it'll go directly to the school. Right? Until, until they're done with school. Man, what, that's crazy. You know, some people would want that, right? Because it's like, I know that that's going to be covered no matter what. And I know that my habits are, I'm just going to spend it. It's going to vanish, even though my intentions are to send my kids to private school. So those are just one of the ways where you can like utilize something that's going to be good for you. You just got yourself a zero interest loan on a property and it's good for them because this thing that they didn't even know it was worth, they just inherited it. Maybe they would have sold it for 200 grand, but you can give them 300 instead. And they're getting their kids private school paid for. So it's really fascinating. Yep. That's how it works, man. Cool. Well, we're coming up on our time here. It's gone by really fast. All of my podcasts do just get to talk in and have fun. So I will ask you guys my final art of connecting question that I asked here, and that is, what is a connection to a person or group of people that changed the trajectory of your life or business? So, okay, our, our mentor, Vicki, that was her name. She, she called us up one day. We hadn't talked to her in several months. She was just asking, you know, how are we doing? What are you guys into? So we told her all the deals we had going. It was like, we had five deals in like, Three different rehabs going on at one time. And she was just super excited. And she says, Jason, how would you and Kelly like to do like a little interview with me so I can show it to some of my other students and man, we got excited. That was, I was like, yeah, let's do it. I would love to do that. Yeah. Cause it was like, what? You know, she wants to interview us, you know, like we hadn't done anything like this. It was, we just felt kind of special. But we'd done that with her. And then a few weeks later, she calls us back and she said, Jason, I've been, Talking with this guy, his name's Pip. He's got a huge education thing going on. I'm, I'm actually helping him. She said, I would like for you to meet this guy. And I was like, well, sure, we'll talk with him. So he calls us up like a week later and he asked us to come down to Dallas. We get on his stage, you know, we just kind of tell our testimony of how we got in real estate. And then from that before you know it, he asked us to come on board and, and help mentor some of these students. So we've done that for, for a couple of two or three years and we enjoyed it, but it almost started feeling like a job again. So then we just, we, we started brainstorming. It's like, why don't we get out and teach and things? So we, from that, from that one relationship, we went on, we built our, our own online education. We just show people how to get out and raise private money the way we did. It's been snowballing ever since from that one, one phone call. That's amazing. Well, awesome guys. Well, I'm super excited that we got to meet today and hop on the podcast. And I know we'll probably chat about potentially having you guys come to Chattanooga and speak at my big in person meetup as well. So if people do want to, Follow along with you guys or get in contact with you what's the best way for the listeners to do that? So they can connect with us on facebook. It's jason and kelly one word Ricker That's the easiest way. They can reach us email info at the arv project Dot com that's a good email address for them to touch base with and then we've got the website The ARV project.com. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for coming on. And if you made it this far into the episode, I just wanted to tell you a huge, huge thank you for listening to the podcast and being a supporter. It will mean the world to me. If you could leave a five star rating and review, if you're on Spotify, it's up at the top, you just click that little five star button. If you're on Apple podcasts, you scroll down to the bottom and leave a five star and a review. And then also the best way for a podcast to grow is to share it with your friends. So if you learned something on this episode and you heard something from Jason and Kelly that really does, it's going to change the way you look at things, share that with the friends. It's the best gift you can give. All right. With all that being said, this is Haydynn with art connecting podcasts and I'll catch you on the next episode.