How to Get Started Investing in Real Estate with Chris Prefontaine

Come on left with this is George G. And the time is right welcome. Today’s guest is strong and powerful Chris Prefontaine. Chris, are you ready to do this?

Chris Prefontaine 0:19
I am George. Good to see you again, buddy. Good to hang out.

george grombacher 0:21
Good to see you. And for those of you who don’t know, I’ve got my I’ve got my wicked smart real estate t shirt here. I’ve got got my two books that, that Chris sent me real estate on your terms, and then the new rules of real estate investing. And I share that for those who are just listening. I’m holding those up. Because Chris doesn’t just bring the awesome stuff as a guest. He also sends you swag and stuff. So thank you, sir.

Chris Prefontaine 0:51
Yeah, we just got to work on the smart there is no our New England. It’s my

george grombacher 0:57
right. Wicked Smart.

Unknown Speaker 1:02
There you go. Perfect. Joy.

george grombacher 1:03
You nailed it. I nailed it. So Chris, welcome back, tell us a little a personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do?

Chris Prefontaine 1:11
Sure. So as usual, I’ll give you a 10,000 foot view, right, because you want to go back 30 years, and then you can you can pick apart and peel the onion. So I’ve got this 30 years as of like, two, three months ago, and then my 31st year and my wife said to me about four or five years ago, it took you 50 years to figure this out. She literally said that we were sitting in our living room. So all that to say that I’ve done a lot of initiatives in real estate, and I now operate a family company with my son in law, Zach and my son, Nick. And when I say a family company, there’s several but one of them buys and sells real estate, in the ringland area in three different states on terms meaning no banks, we don’t sign pro sale loans. And we’ll get into that. And then we operate the smart real estate coach entities, which is helping students do the exact same thing all around the country, because I think there’s a huge gap George, in student, anyone any investor learning because they get to a course or seminar, and then it all sounds great. But then they go into real life. And they go oh, man, I didn’t know that was going to come. So we interact daily with our students and help them do deals. That’s the big connector there. Nice. So that’s what I’m doing these days. Appreciate

george grombacher 2:19
that. So So what is top of mind for you? Is there anything new and exciting? Or is it you know what? I figured out that after doing this for 30 years, and my wife give me a hard time that the trick is just doing the same thing every day?

Chris Prefontaine 2:33
No, good? No, very good question. So here’s what I’m excited about. We take that concept even further. And you and I definitely been talking about this. We were looking at yes, we’re interacting the students cool. Yes, we’re helping them with deals right in the trenches out, it’s all cool. But then we figured out I wait a minute, some of these investors solopreneurs, when they can scale, it’s a little different. But when they’re solopreneurs, they don’t want to do or they do it, but they stink at it. And that’s like the bookkeeping and the collecting of the tenant by just all the stuff that goes on. So we have launched and we’re in beta, but we feel like by March, we’ll be done. This is pretty cool. So the investor does a deal with us. And our company, national property processing, it’s just a processing company. It collects all the rents, pays the underlying debt and pays the revenue share to the student. They are literally just out getting deals. That’s our newest and greatest thing. And I forget who thought of it. So I can’t take credit, probably my son in law, but it’s a really cool concept. And we’re almost there with the beta.

george grombacher 3:29
Nice. Well, certainly congratulations on that. Thanks. What’s the what’s what’s the biggest piece of learning on that one? I think anytime you deal with money, it’s probably pretty tricky.

Unknown Speaker 3:39
Yeah, it’s tricky. And then the other thing is a student. Let’s say you’re a new student, you do your first 10 deals and you had no hiccups. You’re ready for hiccup, like you can handle it. But if you’re a new student, you do your first deal and luck, luck goes the wrong way. And you just happen to have a tenant that has a tenant buyer, we only deal with buyers has a life event. You’re pretty stung. Like you know, that’s a little bit of a hit my BG conference up. But if our processing company is collecting it, even handling the mishaps if they have to get them out of that you’re not as much involved in is that make sense? Like emotionally not like oh, man, this stinks. No, it’s okay. It’s just a curveball.

george grombacher 4:14
Yeah, yeah. There’s no doubt about it. You want to really mess with somebody’s head and everything else you start messing with their money. Their first deal? Yeah, yeah. Especially in the first one. Got it. Alright, so so so give me the certainly congratulations on that. Give me the the 10,000 foot what is what is buying real estate on terms? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 4:31
So we buy on only lease purchase, or owner financing or subject to the existing finance, financing. And I did those in order of lack of better word complexity. Because if you’re new, can you tie up a lot of property and I’ll give you a very specific number, with $10 per lease purchase is what’s written in our pre done agreements. And that’s not fluff judge. I’ll give you an exact example. I think you know me by now I like to give examples to the exam so it’s not just oh yeah, it’s good. So Brian in Chicago comes to mind. They just hung up with him. He did his first two years ago, he didn’t know real estate. So he joined us. He did his first 11. Now, maybe on his 12 deals, but he didn’t with all these purchase, he didn’t do owner financing. He didn’t do subject to existing financing lease purchase with $10 each. And he’s upwards of about 860,000 some odd earnings on the three paydays that we create per deal with $10. A deal. That’s pretty remarkable. So you can control a lot of real estate without taking title. And you can do that with $10. So when you’re new, that’s your first avenue, in my opinion. Okay.

george grombacher 5:35
So that’s, that sounds pretty good. And it’s actually happening. So what is with with I think he said his name was Brian. Yeah, he didn’t do real estate before. And he joined your program? How much time is he? Has he taken too long? To get to the point where he could do his first deal?

Unknown Speaker 5:58
Yep. biggest question we get. I got it last night, the woman said, I don’t even know instead, how long it’s gonna take me. So I don’t know. But I can tell you about Brian. But I don’t know every person is different with their baggage in their skill sets, right? Brian took I want to say in the 90 day range, maybe 180 days, the only real estate experience he had was buying his own home and then selling it and kind of taking a bath on it didn’t know how to do what we do then. And then the learning curve, as you can imagine, George starts to shorten right and go faster. So after he had a goal to go full time after a year, he had a job for 17 years in corporate selling Elevate is nothing new in real estate. He did that in seven months. Actually. It’s an amazing story. So I’m not saying it’s the norm right. He’s a bit of an anomaly. He’s an amazing guy, but did take him nine year 180. We’re hovering around 180. For our for our first deal. We track this. I know a lot of Mentos could kill us, but we tracked as diligently. We call it TT FD time to first deal. Now have we had record breaking anomalies? 32 days? 42 days? Yeah. Have we had the other end 365 days to get to the first deal? Because they might have had some nuts or berries or whatever? Yeah. So we’ve had both I always give the good and the bad, right.

george grombacher 7:11
And I appreciate that. If anybody says you know, a watch a YouTube video and all of a sudden I’m a real estate investor.

Unknown Speaker 7:17
Right. Wow. That’s crazy.

george grombacher 7:20
I, I imagine it does. Alright, so I think that that’s the that’s awesome. All right. So you’re looking at six months to a year. And how many hours a week roughly speaking,

Unknown Speaker 7:32
the average part time it’s funny, this woman emailed me all these questions yesterday to our support spot on what you’re asking. The average person is gonna jump in somewhere between seven and 15 hours a week when they’re proud time in to this question 99% of people that come to us I pride time, it’s rare to have someone go, Hey, I’m full time real estate. We just had a guy in New Jersey join us who was a wholesaler already, and joined us to tack this on. Cool, but that’s not the norm. So yeah, you got to throw if you have 10 hours a week, here’s what I say to you, you’ll get to the point where I won’t be prodding you you’ll say hey, after three months of doing 10 hours a week I kind of get it I can scale back and only do a few a year or I can scale up keeping in mind George like if you learn how to buy real estate creatively on terms all this is is creative real estate, once you learn how to do it or the RAM in your life or not, and you just buy your own home every few years or you just do one deal a year we average like 75 grand well off to the community 45 grand to 250 grand a deal. So who cares if you did a deal to a year that’s why I said it really depends on the person. Nice.

george grombacher 8:36
So what do you think about the different ways that people can access real estate or get into real estate you mentioned wholesaling you are obviously you you help people buy on terms. How do you How is how is what you do different?

Unknown Speaker 8:54
Yeah, um, there’s a bunch of little nuances just in my 30 years, because I’ve done a lot of those and I don’t I don’t poopoo on any of them. I’ve got great friends and a lot of different niches right there on my podcast, but I will say that the biggest thing for me it stands out and I just talked about this this morning on on clubhouse that is all these years that I did real to stuff building rehabs my wife etc they all were what I would call one pay day I’m not knocking it like real estate is treated my wife Kim and I very well one pay per deal though. So I kind of felt like here we are you and I talking in December. I kind of felt like every December I’d be a little excited but a little bomb and like oh my gosh, I gotta do this again. I gotta like push that boulder up again. Like when I was a relative Okay, I gotta do 100 homes again I got to like stop the clock over to get that one commission. So as an investor I said after the crash, what if we could create some wealth as we do this but also create immediate flow everybody wants cash like yesterday. So the three pay day system versus one is and we trademark this in the US is immediate cash flow, monthly cash cashflow, and then long term and you can play with that long term meter so to speak, you can go two years, three years, five years, 20 years. I’m in a building right now that I did owner financing 20 years. I own the building I did in touch a bank. So I know it’s a long answer. But the biggest thing is three paydays versus one, for sure.

george grombacher 10:18
Nice. Okay. So how does that work? When you say immediate? What does that mean?

Unknown Speaker 10:23
Yeah, so let’s say I secure a property. Let’s go with the lease purchase. Because we talked earlier, I secure a property for $10. On lease purchase, I make it contingent upon finding my buyer. Now, who’s my buyer, my buyer COVID has ramped us up crazy, but it’s always been popping my virus, someone who needs time to get qualified, they don’t qualify today. So as such, you’ve got this influx right now. For example, with COVID, depending on what stat you read, I read a Michael Dell’s book. He said it went from 20,000 US businesses, he had a 400,000 because people just like I’m done with corporate COVID hits, I want me on business. Great Guess what? If they did that they’re not financing right now, they need two years of seasoning with most banks, right? So then people that got hit with credit repair. These are great buyers, but what do they need time. So we put them through a stringent process. So we know they’re going to eventually qualify, this is not a wish. And then the immediate cash is what is their down payment, they put a down payment down to enter one of our homes, I’m not putting them in there until we qualify him. And they have that downpayment as if they’re a buyer. And that goes in our pocket, because that’s non refundable. So that’s page number one. Page Number two is simply I’m paying on the sellers underlying debt once I secure my buyer in place them in the home. And so if I’m paying on that underlying debt, I’m collecting something higher than that from my buyer, that spread that delta is my payday, too. That’s pretty cool. That pays the bills, keeps you over and going. And then pay day three is when I cash that house out 2345 10 years down the road. And that’s really cool. Because all those years that’s going all my principal pay down on the underlying debt is accruing to me plus my markup, of course. So again, long answer, but I hope that was clear. If not, I can go back.

george grombacher 12:00
Nice. No, I appreciate that. So nice. All right. So you are, you’re on clubhouse, you’re doing podcasts, you have this coaching company, you are launching new ventures, you are reading Michael Dell’s book and probably a lot more you’re in a family business. So you’re managing all that. How do you do? Do you have a daily routine that you’d like to stick with?

Unknown Speaker 12:26
Yeah, I’ll answer those two ways. Yes, my daily routine, and I’ll go over it. But it’s also as It’s the strangest thing like as an entrepreneur, you learn I was solopreneur for years and years. And so let me go that I may just have let me go the routine first do the routine for me. Personally, I’m not saying it works for everyone. I’ve got two in the morning, either do a workout or yoga. First thing, workout or yoga. That’s after that my dog got right yoga or workout after yoga workout, I’m going to do a 10 minute guided meditation. It’s not long, it’s not you know, go lock myself in a room for two hours. It’s as simple guided meditation. I’ve used two different apps for a while. 10 minutes. That’s all I can handle. And I’ve been doing it for a couple years now. After that, I will be listening to or reading what I call my I am statements. And they’re usually something about future statements. So for right now, as you and I speak, it’s grn I will be recording in writing my what is 1231 22 look like. Now, this might sound kind of either fluffy or simple. But I’m gonna tell you guys it is so powerful that when you do that does not many days I met this, right, the reader listened to it. And then here we are in December, I played with my wife today when she was amazed that I did this last January and all the stuff we hit not not everything. But that’s that’s the gist of it. So then I then I start my day, George. Now, as far as how to handle all that, in addition to starting properly. It’s funny. So I said as a solopreneur. till about literally 2013. That’s a lot to my wife’s point and took me 15 years. I’m 55 now. So what changed, I hooked up and I should have known earlier. But in hindsight, I hooked up with a company that does exactly that to help solopreneurs or businesses move from seven to eight figures. I’ve been with them since 17. And when I opened our offsite meeting last week to the whole team, we had like 15 of us there. I said that I said, Look, I couldn’t do this without you guys. And without this company, we fall called the lead entrepreneur, because I didn’t know how to do it. I was a solopreneur and I don’t want to water down a million dollars a year Josh but if you’re a solopreneur I feel you can muscle you can do more you can hustle you can work more hours and you can get to a million I really feel that it’s after a million it gets more difficult because people always say well how to have to do all that then you grow the team, you scale the team, you create culture and you create you know, good people. That makes sense.

george grombacher 14:46
It does. Thank you for sharing that. So your I Am statements I’d like to I got turned on to those probably two or three years ago and that’s one of those things you’re like, Oh, how did I not know that these were a thing. Don’t tell So we’re thinking ahead. So do you mind share an example? Or sort of framework?

Unknown Speaker 15:06
Yeah, so for some framework, these items, there’s two different types. And I do both. One is that future statement that I told you so it’s writing as if 1231 22 already happened. So we scaled this year, we’ve been growing like 3025 to 45% a year for the last six, seven years. Really, really happy with it. So I will speak as if 1231 22 already happened. And emotionally get into that so I am, you know, in my case, and building a home in Vermont for a second home. I’m in my home Rivermont we just surpassed this in sales. So you’re really speaking specifically? It’s not I will I can it’s I did it is out feels his who else it affected like really get it into motion that’s gonna change your your brain. The other set? I do, this is harder. My coach with elite. Brett Gilliland had me go through what he calls presidential pardons. This is not an easy exercise. So you take all the things that you attributes about yourself, George, you would say like, it’s like you describing that microphone? How would you describe you, you describe you in any of the negative ones that you feel a negative or shortcomings. You pardon yourself? Ah, you literally pardon yourself? Well, I forgive myself for x, because the new truth is X or Y, I forgive myself for X, the new truth is why those become your I Am statements. The new truth becomes your I Am statement. It’s an interesting mental exercise. We do it now yearly. So we get clear in the new year, it doesn’t mean they’ll change. Out of all my im statements I did for 21. I believe I’m going to have almost all still on there this year, because they’re they’re bigger thoughts. So two different types of IBM’s.

george grombacher 16:48
Nice. Awesome. So the presidential pardons. I think that that is a great term. I think this was a huge thing. And a big breakthrough learning for me, probably right around the same time I started exploring I am statements in general, but just looking for limiting thinking or different blocks, and the realization or recognition that we are superhuman, and it’s very, very human to be making the errors and the mistakes that we make. So we forgive ourselves. So it’s, I forgive myself for x and what

Unknown Speaker 17:21
happens? Yeah, I forgive myself for X, whatever your negativity statement is for the new truth is and then you have the new statement. Then after you get all those you want to be around 15 or 20. For these, you want to hone in around 10 of those to what you want to work on this year. So then it just becomes I am. I can give you an exact example you asked me i this piece of paper, this paper piece of paper has been with me since 2015. So I’ll read these statements daily. And I’ll give you some simple ones, right. So don’t get too personal. But the very first one that pops up is I am a clear, calm leader. Why? Because I can be a little hyper and a little micromanaging. So clarity, just calm. That’s now that some people laugh and say that is absolutely the opposite of you. Okay, that’s why it’s an I am statement. I got to work on it. So just an example of that was a negative turned into a positive. Yeah. That’s awesome.

george grombacher 18:15
Thank you for sharing those. Yeah, super powerful thing. I mean, do you how how do you think about set goals? I’m gonna totally shift gears. We’re gonna have a two hour conversation.

Unknown Speaker 18:29
Okay, this is interesting, too. So since 2015, I’ve been really a student back then. And now it’s live with me. And I read statements about it. And that is Joe Vitale. He Dr. Joe Vitale, he did a course with Joe, so I got to know him really well. It’s a nice 31 Day billionaire course we have all in mindset. And when I got to know him, I didn’t know them, like we really dug in. He practices how oponopono it’s a very detailed mental thing. So I don’t want to get into teaching that. But the bottom line is, there’s a fine line between you being so rigid that these are my goals very boxed in, versus letting some of the energy take its toll and you following it. I know it sounds Fufu. But it’s super powerful. So when I do my im statements for the end of the year, I don’t think about the how, like, Oh, I gotta hit all these benchmarks to go to that we do that as a strategy as a company. But I’m saying for me personally, I just picture that the end result, I pictured my home in Vermont, being built with cash, not one dime of debt. I’m not thinking about how it’s happening yet. So then an energy will come a thought will come a dream will come I wake up in middle night. Those are all energy things that you should really pay attention to, and let that direct you in my opinion. So So I do a little of both. I just don’t get so rigid that I’m going to be stuck in this box because here’s the scary thing. I said this to our associates on a private call last Thursday. When you write these is a scary thought. You won’t go my opinion. Again, you won’t go above what you write scary like you so you’re going to limit yourself or push yourself by what you write. And for some people that might be well I just limited myself the last five years so you may want to think a little bigger you may want to add a zero or two to your goals you may want to may want to may want to why then let the energy come into how to do it. It’s a neat thing and pick up Joe’s books and I’m not promoting job I love the guy I think that he’s been around long enough he’s written about 80 of them it’s crazy

george grombacher 20:18
amazing. You seem like a you mentioned I don’t know if you said we will prove for whatever which is I bet that was hard for you to get your arms around

Unknown Speaker 20:30
Yeah, cuz I was always I would for years until 13 in the crash help you know God have you saved myself you can do something different clearly you just had a crash again. So yeah, it was I was always rigid here’s my goal book is called My Life Plan his this I’m a big believer in all that stuff. But I just want to leave it open for the energy and what I did is I read Joe’s first book I forget I think it’s called Zero limits this might I might be out of order there. And then I was reading his book and then it mentioned other books i said i I’ll just follow it so I read a couple of those. Those are mentioned on the I just kept following this for like two years. And to this day they’ll statements that are in the with my items, they’re just pulled out of my journal that you saw me pull out I have read those again all listen to those every day since 15. After taking two years to learn this,

george grombacher 21:17
I love it. And this is all stuff that you mentioned you were talking about this on your call this is stuff that you’re teaching to your students

Unknown Speaker 21:25
yep and here’s why this is a cool question to you’re right on on on focus here because I can teach people to do a deal like that’s easy you and I can get together and go Hey George, here’s the structure God’s cool then you go out and do it and what happens the mental game will absolutely take over so I can teach you the skill sets I can even teach you the systems it’s the mental game that’s gonna trip you up every person enters that community with the intent of crushing it next year right on course they would why why do some even with all our our hands on I’m telling you like daily we talk these people some disappear why like like 8% of them why mental? They got a curveball thrown at them or someone threw a curveball mentally or a deal and saw like these things are going to happen I’m screaming from the rooftops that this happens other mentors go no no it’s all fluffy up in the field and you’ll everything will work out no mental game is going to trip you up. So we talk more than anything about that we have a January wicked smart kickstart event we call that event is all based on mindset not skill set and systems because that kicks a year off properly. Is that does that make sense? It does

george grombacher 22:33
mindset versus skill set. I love it. Perfect. Well Chris is so great catching up with you again thank you so much for coming back on where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with wicked smart real estate go

Unknown Speaker 22:48
That sounds good. And look I’m big on free you can go to YouTube and these deals we’re talking about what the three paydays I think we’re up to about 140 Like we give you the good the bad the ugly the challenges so you can learn they’re all on their their whiteboard live. You can also go to smart real estate coach comm forward slash masters class that’s a free class that I just updated. It’s about 55 to 58 minutes long, literally just just updated and then it’ll give you more of what George and I talk about and if it’s for you fantastic schedule a free call and if it’s not I get it best of luck and crush it somewhere else in real estate. They’re all great niches. Love it.

george grombacher 23:25
If you enjoyed as much as I did show Chris your appreciation and share today’s show the friend who also appreciates good ideas, find out find them on the YouTube, find him on his YouTube channel to list in the notes and then go to smart real estate coach calm and take advantage of that free masterclass and learn more about the community. Thanks again, Chris. Thanks, buddy. Good to see you. Good to see you. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

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