GI221: How to Flip 1700 Houses with Roger Blankenship

GI221 How to Flip 1700 Houses with Roger Blankenship

Roger Blankenship has personally fixed and flipped more than 1700 houses and bought and sold over $50 million dollars’ worth of single-family homes. Roger is also the host of the real estate podcast, “Flipping America,” which has been ranked as a top ten business podcast and nationally syndicated radio show.

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Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles:
Do you have money sitting in the stock market? And you’re worried about it or worse. You have money sitting at the bank, not keeping up with inflation. My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution. If you want to put your money to work in real estate, but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding in. The last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals. We fund the deals and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with us at investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com. Go to investwithharborside.com. If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time. Go to investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com.

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have Roger Blankenship. He has personally fixed and flipped more than 1700 houses and bought and sold over $50 million dollars’ worth of single-family homes. Roger is also the host of the real estate podcast, “Flipping America,” which has been ranked as a top ten business podcast and nationally syndicated radio show. So thank you so much for coming on today, Roger.

Roger:
Glad to be here. Thank you, Charles.

Charles:
So give us a little bit on your background about yourself, both personally, professionally, prior to getting involved in, uh, real estate investing.

Roger:
Oh, well, all right. Uh, I didn’t intend to be a real estate investor. That’s why on my show, I ask everybody what they really intended to be, because most of us aren’t what we thought we would be. Um, I trained for the ministry and I spent 20 years working full-time in the ministry before I even really gave much consideration to real estate, I started buying some rental houses on the side. But, uh, then when it was apparent, my time in the ministry was coming to an end, I decided to go for a full-time. And that time was October of 2006.

Charles:
<laugh>. Perfect timing.

Roger:
Yeah. Yeah. Who knew, right?

Charles:
<laugh>? I actually bought my first, uh, my first piece of real estate in October, 2006. It was a three-family multi-family property. Uh, <laugh>. What a time, what a time? A six and a half percent interest rate. I remember that <laugh>. Yeah.

Roger:
Well, that, that’s, you probably did all right on that.

Charles:
Yeah. Yeah. At the end of oh six, it was fine. I mean, I just sold the mall. I sold that in a bunch of other properties in, in Connecticut that I had, uh, last year, so 2022. But yeah, the, um, that was, I remember talking to real estate agents about selling it the year after, and they’re like, oh, yeah, everything’s about that. And then it was like the 8 0 8. They’re like, nah, you’re not selling <laugh>.

Roger:
I was just gonna say, if you had bought that in oh eight, you might’ve gotten a lot lower price.

Charles:
Yeah, I bought another property at the end of oh eight, literally almost two years to the day after. And, uh, yeah, it was a whole completely different ball ballgame end of oh eight was like a bloodbath.

Roger:
Where were these properties?

Charles:
They’re all in central Connecticut. Small little town there, or a little city there. I’d say

Roger:
Central Connecticut. I, you know, I don’t know how hard Connecticut got hit by the, uh, the disaster. Um,

Charles:
Not as bad as like Florida and a lot of the other hot markets, you know what I mean? We can name ’em all here. They were sold in Nevada. Yeah, Las Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. Um, all these places that got decimated. It wasn’t that bad, but it’s still a lot of those properties haven’t, um, I mean, one property I bought and I resold it to 15 years later, and I got a real discount from what it sold for initially in like oh seven. And I sold it still for, did work to it, and I still sold it for less than what it sold for in oh seven, and I bought a foreclosure out of the bank afterwards. But, so it’s like some stuff hasn’t, you know, and that area hasn’t, uh, in other parts of the country, like you’re down the southeast too. I mean, it would’ve come back, you know what I mean? But you’re buying in areas that really didn’t have much, uh, you know, so much population growth, and it’s a difficult area, you know what I mean? Those are difficult places that didn’t really recu re recover from G F C.

Roger:
Yeah. Yeah. I know that some places, I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and, uh, talking to my extended family and some friends there, they barely noticed, you know what, great financial disaster, you know, what housing crisis. Um, but they, you know, there was a different situation going on there in, in Louisville than, yeah.

Charles:
Yeah. It was, it was, uh, one last thing before we got on with your story was that I was at a real estate conference in 2004, and I was talking to investors. They had a, they were taking investor money to buy condos in Miami, and they were saying that condos, uh, would buy and sell three times before they were built. So that is insane. I mean, it’s just like, you know, and I don’t, you know, it’s just, just like when you look back on that and you’re just like, we called that insane. Now when we’re looking at it, that was odd back then. We’re like, wow, this is really interesting. I don’t know how long it’ll go for, but it was just, I mean, it was crazy to build up to it, you know, what people were doing. The financing was just, and I mean, that was it. The financing was so easy. That was what did it all, you know what I mean? So, but so tell us a little bit about Roger. You, you started doing, getting into real estate. Um, what were you, you know, what, why did you pick real estate as your investing vehicle, let’s say?

Roger:
Well, I like to say it’s not rocket surgery. <laugh>. Uh, I have, you know, uh, you could take all of the business accounting classes and everything related to that, that I took in college and graduate school, and you could put ’em in a thimble and have room left over because the number is zero. Um, but because I had been in, in a profession where by choice, we didn’t make a lot of money, and I was fine with that, I chose it, went to it fine. Um, but whenever something would break in our house, I had two options. I could pay somebody to fix it, or I could go down to the local hardware store, talk to the guy that worked there who had become a friend of mine. And before this was over with, he was a real friend of mine, and, uh, ask him how to fix it.

Roger:
He would tell me how, tell me what tools I needed. I could get the tools to do it myself cheaper. And then I picked up a skill and also had some tools. So, uh, that’s, that became my habit. And after a few years of doing that, I just got the courage. I had an unfinished basement in the house I lived in. So I went back and got him to give me step-by-step instructions, and I reframed my, I framed up and finished my entire basement. I even laid the carpet. I did everything. And some of it we had to do two or three times <laugh> to get it right. I was learning. But, you know, fast forward, uh, a few more years, when it was time for me to, um, think about, you know, when I was 40, I started really thinking about retiring someday, maybe.

Roger:
And I didn’t have a lot of options. And one of the gentlemen in my church sat me down and talked to me about the benefit and wisdom of owning rental properties. And he got me to read Kiyosaki’s book, rich Dad, poor Dad, and you know, how many people, I don’t know how many people I’ve talked to on the show. We’ve done over 600 episodes, told me that was the impetus that got them. Well, it got me. And so I started looking for rental properties, and I went out and made all the classic mistakes with the first ones I bought. The numbers were wor worked, but the areas were terrible. I didn’t have enough cash or liquidity to really take care of the problems that would inevitably arise when you buy into bad areas. And boy, those were some tough lessons to learn, but I was hooked.

Roger:
And then, um, we decided to flip a house because I knew how to make all the repairs, you see, <laugh>. And, uh, my dad got interested and he put up the money for my first flip, and we didn’t make a lot of money. I had a partner and my dad, we made 15,000 on that first flip. And I walked away from that closing with a check for $5,000. And, uh, that was, well, one of the larger checks I’d ever held in my hand at that time. And I thought, there’s something to this. So I did a few more and then, you know, decided to just go for it.

Charles:
So, fast forward a little bit to where you are now, and you’re doing a lot of training and coaching. You have a great, uh, show. Um, how are you able to flip 1700 houses? I mean, the amount of your team and the process and the setup. Can you tell us a little bit about how you went from, you know, doing the work yourself, which I imagine you didn’t touch any of those 1700 houses after that, really? Um, some of them

Roger:
I never seen.

Charles:
Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that, like kind of process you had, because when I look at that, there’s so many different parts about flipping house, and I’ve only, you know, I’ve done a dozen or so in my life before many years back. And, you know, you’re finding houses, you gotta do the renovations and you gotta sell it. It’s like anything, you know, the, there’s a whole process with it. And to do that many, I mean, tells me that you had such a team in place for everything from acquisition all the way through disposition.

Roger:
Well, you know, at at our peak, we never had more than five full-time employees. Um, I, I like, I’m kind of proud of the fact that we ran lean, but, um, so to, to get there, the first thing, um, in fact, I’ve got my book on screen over here. And, uh, uh, the, the book starts out telling a story of me working on my third house I ever did. I was up on a ladder painting, and my phone rang and I climbed down off the ladder, and it was somebody who had just driven by and seen the for sale by owner sign in the yard, and, uh, wanted to know if the house was still available. I said, not only is it available, I’m here right now. So they came over. I had borrowed, uh, copies of a contract, a sales contract from a realtor.

Roger:
I knew they were on the counter. We filled out the contract. And I went home that night thinking, all right, I just made $30,000 and I did it all myself. Well, uh, come find out A week later they couldn’t qualify for the loan. They had not been pre-qualified. I didn’t know to ask that question. There were so many things I didn’t know. We, it ended up, we made more money on the house than that Anyway, later on. But I’d started learning the value of having a, a professional, uh, realtor sell the houses for me. And then I got to thinking, and then of course, I’m an avid reader, so I started reading books and, and I read the E-myth books, ate those up, and I realized, Hey, you know what? I’m probably shortchanging myself by doing all of the work myself. So I started looking for contractors and bringing in people, and of course, there were some stops and starts on with that too, you know, while you’re learning how to hire a good contractor.

Roger:
But I’m taking notes all the way through, and I’m reading and I’m learning, and, you know, just because I had no formal training doesn’t mean you could sail through this without getting educated. So I sat down with a C P A and learned how to keep the books, learned how to run QuickBooks. Then this, then I only did that, so I would know how to hire somebody to hand it off to just like I’d handed off the duties for selling the houses and, uh, eventually. And, um, to borrow a phrase from Gerber, um, what’s his, is it Brian or Michael? Michael Gerber.

Charles:
Uh, I just know it’s Gerber <laugh> when I, when you say email, yeah,

Roger:
Sorry, apologies. I don’t remember that. Um, Michael, I think,

Charles:
I think so. I, I have it on my shelf here, but it’s behind something.

Roger:
That’s all right. Anyway, Michael

Charles:
Had said, I see it, Michael, I

Roger:
Worked to the point where, uh, the only thing that I did were the things that only I could do. Um, that became a goal early on, and eventually I got there. And the things that I can do that no one else on the team can do, do is make the final decision about what we buy and make the final decisions about where we’re going with some of the rehab stuff. And the final decision about will I take this low offer? That became my role. Now, we outsourced, uh, we, we outsourced a closing coordinator who handled our, uh, uh, on the purchase side and the sales side. So whenever we had a closing coming up, she would handle everything. She was a former lawyer who was looking for something else to do. And, uh, we kept her busy because, uh, in the busy years, we were doing 120 houses a year.

Roger:
And, uh, of course, I don’t know how to say this without sounding insensitive. I don’t wanna be, but the great economic collapse was where we really made all of our money. Yeah, because I had capital, I had investors, and we didn’t have to do a whole lot on the acquisition side except work. The foreclosure auctions really hard. Um, in the state of Georgia, we went from, uh, an average of 2004 closures statewide per month to 20,000. And we had our pick of the litter because there weren’t that many people around With cash, we would go to the courthouse auction and buy 10 or 15 houses and watch with sadness in our heart that 15 or 20 other houses went back to the lender because we had run outta cash. We could, we had our pick of the litter. We were just buying up everything. Um, we, we would buy $700,000 houses.

Roger:
You know, I don’t know, a lot of people realize this, but lenders were in the, in the big crisis in order to avoid getting dinged with res on their books and affecting their Texas ratio and all those other things, they were doing effect effectively a short sale at the courthouse steps. And I, you know, I I, I bought some deals. I couldn’t believe, I still can’t believe we bought a house in a country club that was worth, even then it was worth $750,000. We bought it for 103,000, we bought, um, and we, we ended up selling it for like 475,000 because the market was going down. But we had a quick sale in the cash buyer. So why turn that down? Um, we had so many deals where we could, we tripled our money. It’s, it, I, I can’t even tell you how many of ’em there were, but we bought a house for $5,000 that we sold for 95,000.

Roger:
I, I bought multiple houses for less than 10,000, or less than $20,000. These were even in the day, a hundred thousand dollars houses. And, um, uh, it, it got so that where the deals were so sweet every month that, and there were just three of us in a metropolitan county in, in, on the south side of Atlanta, Henry County. There were only three of us that were coming to the steps. Mm-hmm. And we decided, um, we, we weren’t trying to hurt anybody, but we decided not to bid against each other and just, we’d take turns, alright, you, it’s your turn to get the best deal this month. And one of my friends bought a three bedroom, two bath house in Stockbridge, Georgia for $101. <laugh>, the house was only about five years old. There was nothing wrong with it. Two weeks later he had tenants living in it, $101.

Roger:
He still owns that house. Ask him just recently. Um, crazy, crazy stuff going on. And when you have that, it suddenly you have the opportunity to do 120, 130 houses a year. A lot of them didn’t need much work. Some of ’em needed nothing. And we were, we were kind of selective if we drove by and it looked like the house was gonna need more than $20,000 worth of work, we’d pass. But we, the other thing that we did is I got with my best contractor and we developed a system, um, to swarm a house. And, uh, you know, and, and, and the, you know, Georgia conducts their foreclosures on the first Tuesday of the month. So what do we do the rest of the month? Well, we’re working on the houses, but I’m also looking for HUD deals because remember I told you all those houses that went back to the lender, um, we were picking up those deals. Um, our rehab system could do a roof, paint, carpet, new appliances, new countertops, if it was needed, basically all of the surface stuff of the house and be in and out in less than 10 days. Alright.

Charles:
So, yeah. So when you’re saying that, is this what, how big of this area is that you’re blanketing for properties?

Roger:
Well, to begin with, we were just in one county, but immediately, uh, after the crisis, uh, well, I, I’m sorry to begin with, I was in two counties, Henry and Clayton County, Georgia. Okay. Um, but then we started branching out and I remember one of the guys, one of the three guys who were regulars with me at the Henry County Steps, when I started talking about going to the, uh, Rockdale County, which is just 10 miles east. He said, oh, I’ll never go over there. No, I’m not gonna do it. I’m gonna stay right here, right home. So I went over to Rockdale County the next month, and I left one of my people to bid for me in Henry County. I had one of my people bidding in Clayton already. I went to Rockdale County and there wasn’t anybody there. And so I picked up the best house there and I made $40,000 on it in two months. And so that guy said, oh, wow. And so the next month he had somebody over in Rockdale County bidding against me. <laugh>.

Charles:
Yeah.

Roger:
Anyway, but once we saw that the opportunity was really all over the state of Georgia. And so I started getting the foreclosure list for the entire state of Georgia. And we bought properties from the Tennessee line down, well, uh, a little bit further south than Macon. Not all the way down. We, we considered going to Savannah, but it’s a three hour drive from Atlanta to Savannah with not a whole lot in between. And, uh, so we, we basically focused really from Macon, Georgia northward and picked up everything we could and we managed to spend all of our money most months.

Charles:
Right. Yeah. The thing key is you had the money because back then no one had money. And the only things that was really selling, I found during that time was stuff that people were getting, you know, one to four unit, uh, single family residential mortgages on, because anything over that was gone, there was no, there’s no funds out there for it. So you had to stay right in that three, two type thing that you’re focusing on. And that’s where people could get loans for, you know, f h a mortgages for him.

Roger:
Well, we weren’t, we weren’t trying to borrow money. Yeah. Um, one of the biggest blessings of my whole life was my dad had enough money to stake me to begin with. And he was retired living in South Florida, and he was looking for something to do. And, and I was getting into this right after the.com burst, and he had sold his business and put money into the stock market and was trying to listen to people. But he admitted to me later, I don’t understand the stock market. I don’t care about it. I never paid attention to it my whole life. All I know is I lost a bunch of money with this.com bubble and I wanna get back in real estate. I know that. I understand that. So he put up the money for me to buy my first couple of flips. Well, after we did, well, of course he had, you know, he, he would uh, meet other old retired guys at the Hardee’s on Tuesday morning, you know, for a biscuit.

Roger:
And, uh, my mom and my aunt called it the Liars Club, where they would get there and they would talk about fishing and golfing and all that stuff. My dad told his, his buddies about this deal that he had just done this real estate deal in Georgia. How’d you pull off a real estate deal in Georgia and make that kind of return? He’d put up $90,000 and he’d come back with a check for 5,000 in three months. And he said, well, my son’s some sort of real estate genius. He’s got this thing up there. The next thing I know, his friends are calling me and saying, Hey, I’ve got a hundred thousand, Hey, I’ve got 500,000. Hey, I had $1.2 million within the next six months to spend. And it grew from there over the years as we started making a return for our investors, I didn’t know any better.

Roger:
I didn’t know what this was called. I just know they put up the money. I did all the work. We split the profits half, half, and half. And I didn’t get exactly half because I was also paying for all of the legal and professional fees and, and the, the expenses of maintaining an office. But I was a little too dumb and inexperienced to even know that then. Um, but we learned things, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that, that’s how it happened. And you know, it just sort of, it wasn’t handed to me, but it was an opportunity that presented itself and I’m grateful for it.

Charles:
That’s awesome. That’s great. Great story. So you teach a lot of people about investing in real estate. What are common mistakes that you see real estate investors make?

Roger:
Number one is paying too much for the property. And I, I could say that is a broken record over the last six or seven years. And people are often surprised to hear me say, I haven’t bought an investment property. I haven’t bought a flip property in Atlanta in the entire metropolitan Atlanta area. I haven’t bought one in now five years. And the last one I bought, we did okay on. But, uh, you know how, you know, what’s happened with prices over the last four or five years, prices been going up. Anybody that needs to sell a house can put a sign in the yard, get multiple offers. Wholesalers have come out of the woodwork and they’re, they’re making deals with sellers, but they’re putting deals out there. And I get hundreds of them every day still in my email. And they’re making deals with sellers that even by their own numbers, it’s not a deal. I got a, a deal from a wholesaler the other day. Um, they’re wanting $245,000 for a house, and the house has an RV of 3, 320 5,000. That’s the number that they put in the email. I wanted to write back and say, Hey man, do you realize that even if your numbers are true, there’s no money to be made there? Yeah.

Charles:
Hurt

Roger:
Me. The cost of capital, the cost of the rehab, and the commissions sell the property. But what will the reason they’re doing that? And I have called people out on this a few times, and then I’m getting to an answer to your question. Um, what I, when I call ’em out, they say, well, you know, we’ve got two people wanting to buy it. You know who those people are, people who paid $50,000 to some hotel room based guru. And uh, they now feel like they’ve gotta justify that investment. And they do. So by paying too much for a property, it’s, it’s a problem.

Charles:
You get short-term, short-term rental people pay. Um, I talk to wholesalers and that’s like their big place. If they have a prime area with like, you know, a tourist area, uh, it they’ll, that’s where they, they dump it off to and they’ll rehab it and pay. And it comes out to be either kinda retail property.

Roger:
Yeah. Well, um, this is one of the, you know, I, I have short-term people on my show and I get a little bit of that shiny object syndrome with these guys because the numbers that they make when I just sort of, I sit down and I look at the numbers, <laugh>, man, that’s way better than having a long-term rental in there, renter. But wait a minute, <laugh>, everybody listen to this. Wait a minute. If you don’t want to be in the hospitality industry yourself by going in there and doing the cleaning and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the turnaround the unit to get it ready for the next expert, you’re gonna pay somebody to do all of that work. And what I would wanna do is I would wanna pay somebody to manage it. I want, I wanna pay somebody to run the Airbnb ads and handle everything. By the time you’ve, uh, reckoned all of that expense, you might as well just put a long-term tenant in there.

Charles:
Yeah, for sure. Definitely. That’s what I see as well. And it’s also, it’s, uh, there’s a lot of other factors, but I’m, uh, I’ve never done a short-term rental before. I’m, I, you know, I, I understand people make more money with it, but I just don’t feel it’s as, uh, as a seasoned, as a, as an investment option compared to long-term rentals. Yeah,

Roger:
I think a lot about numbers and different things. And of course one of the things with, uh, with short-term rentals is the changing legal situation. Now, they’re not likely to do this in vacation areas that are known for short-term rentals. But, you know, short-term rentals are all over metro Atlanta because business travelers and so forth, well, some communities are, are now passing rules and that’s gonna get tested in the courts. And I think that the communities will lose because they can’t after the fact take away homeowner’s rights. But that’s an issue to be resolved. And because of that, one of the ways to deal with this is to lease a property with a master lease and then sublease it to your short term tenants. And that’s a way that I think might actually work and the numbers might actually work. I’ve looked at it enough to believe that that’s the way, if I were gonna pursue short term, that’s what I would do.

Charles:
Interesting. So what would you suggest to, um, say new investors that are out there that are looking to get involved in real estate investing? What’s the first thing or first things you would suggest?

Roger:
Take some time to take stock of yourself, find out what it is. You know, um, in this business, there are a lot of bits of knowledge you need to have. And there are a lot of moving parts. And look, I say this a lot on my show. Flipping houses isn’t for everyone. ’cause there’s a hundred ways a flip can go wrong. Um, but I do believe everyone should consider investing in real estate in some capacity or another. Okay. So first of all, take inventory of your own life. Ask yourself what do I know? And, uh, the three knowledge areas that I think that you, that will give you a leg up in, in this business is if you already know how to run a business, and this is the big mistake that the hotel room gurus make, well, they don’t make it. The people that are going there are tired of being middle managers, but they’re not entrepreneurs.

Roger:
They’ve never owned a business. They don’t know what’s involved, and they pay, they borrow from their retirement to pay for this opportunity to own a business. They don’t know how to run a business. That’s a recipe for disaster. Um, so knowing how to run a business. Number two, knowing some things about real estate. If you’re a real estate agent or a broker that gives you a leg up, it doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about being an investor, but you, there’s a terminology, there’s a whole glossary that you need to understand to be effective in real estate. And number three is knowledge of the construction trades, the parts and pieces of a, of a building and what’s involved in repairing those and some idea of the process that’s involved. If you, so if you’re coming from the trades, then you have a leg up. If you’re coming from a real estate background, you have a leg up, or if you’ve just even been a business owner, all three of those have a lot of knowledge requirement. So ask yourself, what do you know? Then ask yourself, what do you have? Well, if, if you don’t have money, you better have time

Roger:
Because it takes one or the other. Um, if, if you have plenty of time, then there’s a way to do this without having any money. If you have money, there is a way to do this without investing a lot of time, but you better get the knowledge before you put your money anywhere. And it’s not just knowledge about the three things I talked about, but also learning who to trust because there are now a million sources online for real estate investing. And, uh, you know, if there’s a million sources, if that number is true, 500,000 of them are lying to you and 250,000 more are stupid. They don’t know what they’re talking about. They do five deals and they call themselves a guru. They haven’t seen what they don’t know. Um, so you have to be careful about who you trust. So I would say the, the, the thing to do is after you take stock of yourself, you know, what do you know, what do you have?

Roger:
Um, think about what do you like? What are your interests? Are you handy? Are you a a a deal shopper? Are you, um, a shrewd business person? Are you a good judge of people? What, what, what are some of those qualities that you have? And, uh, once you start doing those kinds of things, you might be able to find your perfect fit. And because of this, I developed a course years ago, and this is not a sales pitch for it, but we got a course called Find Your Fit in Real Estate Investing, where I encourage people to take stock of their, their lives with this kind of inventory. I even have ’em take a personality test. And we see how that weighs in. It doesn’t exclude any particular asset class, but it does give you some insight about how to approach whatever it is you choose to do.

Roger:
If you understand your personality and the different personalities you’re gonna be interacting with, um, then after you’ve gotten some knowledge, just find somebody else who’s doing it. Go to a local real estate club or listen to some podcasts and find somebody who’s approachable and get connected with them in any way that you can. If you find someone out there that you admire and respect what they’re doing, get connected to ’em, follow ’em on social media, reach out to them. And, you know, I get a thousand emails a day, but when people make it personal and say, Hey, I listened to show episode number 545 and that show, uh, I, I just got this email, which is why it’s on my mind. That show changed my life. That it was a show about get up, how to come back from failure and, and defeat. Um, we’d, somebody makes it personal like that. They’re gonna get a personal response from me. Yeah. Um, and so get connected to that person that you have learned to trust and admire and, and just kind of learn from them. And when you get ready to do your first deal, bring in an experienced partner.

Charles:
Hey, those are some real, a lot of great information there for, uh, new real estate investors. So as we’re wrapping up here, Roger, uh, what do you think are the main factors that have, uh, contributed to your success both, uh, personally and professionally, uh, over your lifetime?

Roger:
Hmm. I think first and foremost is persistence. Um, and I’ve even developed my own little phrase, consistent persistency, because you can’t be persistent for one season of your life. Uh, you have to be persistent over and over again. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve been blessed, uh, to have played two sports in college. I played football and basketball in college, and seasons overlap, which meant I was putting on two different uniforms throughout the week for a, a portion of the season. And, uh, I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it. And if I could do it all over again, I would do it all over again. But it was, it was challenging and, you know, learning what I needed to learn to be in business was challenging. And guess what? I have had some colossal failures in this businesses. We didn’t talk about that on this show, but, uh, after spending four or five years making so much money in the collapse, I got overconfident and I went through a period of expansion. I tried to follow a wise path, but I still blew up my own business and nearly went bankrupt in 2014.

Charles:
Wow. Um,

Roger:
So what do you do? You just power through it and you’ve gotta be persistent, go after it. I think that, um, really inside of myself, probably the other thing that has, um, served me well is a creative approach to problem solving. Um, I went to hear an old guy in real estate, his name is Russ Whitney. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I went to hear him one time and he said, most people get into their business, think that they’re gonna do their business. But what they don’t realize is 85% of business ownership is not working on the business things. It’s solving problems.

Charles:
Yeah.

Roger:
Persistence in creative problem solving

Charles:
Ing. Very good. So how can our listeners learn more about you, your business, your training, your books?

Roger:
Oh, well, you can go to flipping america.net and let’s see here. I think I can put that on my screen. Uh, maybe, uh, it’s flipping america.net. It’s easy enough to remember. And, uh, I’ve got books on Amazon. I’ve got a book, uh, well, the Flipping Houses in 10 Days, that’s on the screen right there. Um, I’ve got another one called Fantastic Deals and where to Find Them, how I get 10,000 deals in my inbox every week. And, um, anyway, there’s some other things there, but Flipping america.net is the best way.

Charles:
Okay, awesome. And I will put that link into the show notes as well. And I wanna thank you so much for coming on today, Roger, looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future. Yeah,

Roger:
Thanks for having me, man.

Charles:
No problem.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

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About Roger Blankenship

Roger Blankenship is host of the real estate podcast, “Flipping America,” and is often called the “Flipping America Guy.” The Flipping America show has been ranked in the top ten business podcasts in multiple surveys and REIkit has judged it the top real estate investing podcast in each of the past two years. Roger is an international bestselling author, educator, motivational and inspirational speaker, and business leader. He has personally fixed and flipped more than 2000 houses and has been a part of hundreds more real estate transactions. In 2020 he founded the Flipping America REIA which grew to more than 40 local chapters across the country with over 20,000 members. In 2023, he combined the REIA with a trading and technology platform rebranded as the Flipping America Network. Members easily access online training and coaching and have access to an investment property trading platform. Learn more at flippingamerica.net. Roger has undergraduate degrees in Theology and Speech and graduate degrees in Education and Psychology. (He also minored in music!) It’s almost like he couldn’t decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. He will tell you this is true. He will also tell you that although he uses some of the things he learned in college, the true value of that education was in learning how to think. That skill is the key to learning business and real estate.

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