40 Doors in Two Years While Working Full-Time
In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing buy-and-hold real estate investor Henry Washington. I asked Henry to kick things off by sharing his background and what brought him to this type of investing. He said that getting married and the talk of starting a family really changed his mindset about his lifestyle and how he was going to support a family. Like so many others, his real estate journey began by reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
Living and working in NW Arkansas, Henry started by just telling everyone he knew that he was a real estate investor and came upon his first deal this way. He then started a marketing campaign by sending postcards and found three more deals. I was really curious about Henry’s first marketing strategy and he explained that he wanted to stay away from what everyone else was doing in order to find a niche market.
Without having any background in construction, Henry talked about how he first started estimating rehab costs. He created a square-footage-based spreadsheet with costs for each discipline he found straight from Google searches. He eventually met and partnered with a guy who had a very strong construction background who proceeded to evaluate properties for him. This partnership allowed Henry to scale his business at a much faster rate.
I wanted to focus on the subject of partnerships with Henry for a bit and I asked him to talk about the elements that were contributing to the success of his partnership. He stressed the importance of shared values and vision and also attributes such as integrity, honesty, and the desire to help people. He also emphasized the importance of open communication in minimizing conflict and successfully working together.
Henry has his values listed on his website and I especially wanted him to define what he means by “servant leadership.” He talked about the importance of focusing on helping people and then success will follow. He believes the more you lead by serving, the more contagious that behavior will be. He recognizes the deals he is getting is because people have a situation and it is vital to him to meet them where they are and make the situation beneficial to both parties.
We then shifted gears to talk about lessons learned by dealing with contractors. Henry talked about the importance of having a detailed scope of work upfront so that he did not waste time talking with contractors that were never going to take the job anyway because of the state of housing market. He also worked extensively with his partner on honing his cost spreadsheet so that he could basically dictate the price of any construction work. Henry talked about the importance of keeping his valued contractors happy so he could establish long-term relationships.
I know that many real estate investors struggle with finding deals, so this was the next topic I asked Henry about. He said his most lucrative deals are currently coming from his lead generation website that he runs a Google ad words campaign on.
As far as Henry’s advice for people just starting in this business, he said after someone has done their due-diligence of self-educating, he advises them to focus their resources on figuring out their market and what a good deal looks like before deciding on a lead-generating strategy. The next step is learning how to properly evaluate properties once they have leads. Henry is convinced that focusing on these three things in order to buy a good deal, is the key to success in this business. Using these principles, Henry continues to grow his business while still having a full-time job in the IT industry.
Henry is a great guy, with a ton of character and depth, so I hope you join us for this newest edition of Just Start Real Estate!
Notable Quotes
“I never saw real estate as something I couldn’t do - I just didn’t know what I didn’t know.”
- Henry Washington
“Being a landlord is easy. I couldn’t fix it if I wanted to… I gotta call a guy.”
- Henry Washington
“You heard what people were doing and decided to do something different.”
- Mike Simmons
“The scale you can get when you have more people helping you - there is a multiplier there.”
- Henry Washington
“You learn really quick in this business, it is not a real estate business, it is a people business.”
- Henry Washington
“I need to be a solution to your problem.”
- Henry Washington
“It is funny how it works out - the people that focus on helping folks end up having more financial success.”
- Mike Simmons
Links:
Level Jumping: How I Grew My Business to Over $1 Million in Profits in 12 Months
