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Real Estate Investing School Podcast
153. Purpose-Driven Lifestyle Real Estate Investing with Cam Cathcart
01:00:07
Welcome back to the Real Estate Investing School Podcast. Today we have Cam Cathcart on our podcast. Cam shares his journey from being a youth pastor making $40,000 a year to becoming a successful real estate investor as well as how he accomplished...
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- [00:00]
A
The only thing that you can't get back is time. And so for me, I've used real estate to, to give me my time and be able to open up my time quite a bit.
- [00:14]
B
Welcome to the Real Estate Investing School podcast. I'm your host, Joe Jensen. Today we've got Cam Cathcart. I'm excited for this one. I've been following Cam for a little while, as many of you probably have, but Cam is a seasoned real estate investor specializing in single family homes and renting floo flipping long hold, wholesaling all of nine yards. He's done 400 deals in four years. He continues to grow and teach others what he's doing. He uses real estate to position himself to be a better husband and a better dad. He's also the coast of the Better Life podcast with Brandon Turner. He's doing some really cool stuff, but welcome to the show. Cameron.
- [00:54]
A
Dude, thank you so much. I'm pumped to be here. Means. Means a lot that you guys would ask me, so thank you.
- [01:00]
B
Yeah. So, man, so you've, you've got quite the story. It's funny because I look over kind of your experience and it's like, seems like you should have been doing this for 10 or 20 years, but it's been a fast, wild ride for you, it appears. Would you say that's true?
- [01:15]
A
It has, yeah. I mean, it was, yeah, four years. We're, we're heading into our fourth year right now. Yeah, fifth year. We started in 2020, so. So whatever that is. Four or five years, right?
- [01:27]
B
Yeah, it's 2024. So it's such an interesting time to start. And you've done so much with it. I mean, that kind of scale, you know, 400 deals in four years. You know, you're not dabbling in real estate. You went full bore. All in. Let's go back to the beginning, though, when you. How did real estate as an investment first come across your radar? And, and did you originally even look at it as an investment tool or was it more of just like a money making machine?
- [01:59]
A
No, it was an investment tool. So my story and I can just dive into it and give kind of the quick, the quick overview of my story. But I was not raised in a incredibly financially literate home. I never needed anything. I lived a great childhood, but my dad was a pastor and we were raised with the whole Dave Ramsey method where you only buy things in cash. I didn't open up a credit card until I was like 23 or 24 years old. And I had to Because I went to go buy a car and I couldn't get approved because I didn't have any credit. So I go credit card and build credit. So I just didn't know a ton about investing. I thought that the way that life worked was you were supposed to get a job and, and make, you know, 70, 80, $90,000 a year, save as much as you can, live as frugally as possible. And by the time, you know, you're 70 years old, you might be able to have a certain amount of money in the bank to be able to retire. And so that was kind of the strategy that, that I had laid out for my life, where it's like, hey, I'm just going to save money. And my wife and I, we were pretty great about living frugally, and we were, we were going to do that. And so I was kind of the, the, the route that we were going. And so I graduated from, from college and I got a job is a pastor at a church in Denver. And I absolutely loved the church that I was at. It was, it was incredible. But it wasn't one of those churches that you see on the news where, you know, the, the, the pastor's flying around in a private jet. It wasn't one of the. And I was, I was a youth pastor, so I wasn't even, you know, a, a lead pastor and any type of, like, executive position at all at the church. But I was making $40,000 a year, and that was great for, while I was there and loved it and had a blast. But I knew that $40,000 a year wasn't enough to have a family on and to kind of do the things that I wanted with our life in 2017, I believe it was. We had our first daughter in November of 2017, and that was when it kind of hit me where it's like, we are very, very broke. You know, when my wife and I, we, we could, we could make ends meet. We would eat ramen, we could make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and like, we, we would be fine. We could, we could get by with it. But when we had our, our first child, it was like, this is, this is rough to, to make ends meet off of $40,000 a year. And my wife also had a job where she was making. She was a, a barber at a barber shop. And, and she kind of scaled back hours to, to take care of our, our daughter. And so, so probably between the two of us, we were bringing in, like, I would say, 65 to $70,000 after taxes. So, but it was still in Denver. It's expensive place to live. It was a lot. And so in we, we still made ends meet. And then in 20, 2018, my daughter, who you know is now 6, she had kind of a medical emergency and, and she ended up being okay, but she went into anaphylactic shock and we rushed her to the emergency room and we in doing so took her to an out of network emergency room. And so, yeah, and so we got hit with a fifteen thousand dollar hospital bill. And I'll never forget that night when we opened up the hospital bill and it was for $15,000 and we probably had four or five hundred bucks in our bank, bank account. We hadn't been putting money into savings at all. And $15,000 could have been a million bucks at that time where it was like, yeah, it didn't seem doable. And I remember being up that night and honestly just feeling sick to my stomach where it's like, this is not the life that I want. I don't want every time we have a medical emergency, or not even a medical emergency, but a car breaks down or we want to go on vacation or even we're going through the checkout line at King Supers or Safeway and we have to check our, know our bank account to see if we can buy groceries. I, I just didn't want that life for us. And so in 2018, that was when I decided that I was going to do something else. I didn't know what that something else was. I just knew like I, I have to have to figure out a side hustle to make more money because I love my job as a pastor.
- [06:24]
B
Sure. And so, and how old are you at this time? I was 2018.
- [06:28]
A
2018, I would have been 28 years old. I'm 33 now. So yeah, it would have been 20, 27. 28 years old. And so I, so anyway, I started just researching side hustles, like how can I make more money? And so I did, I drove like I did some, some Ubering for a little bit and realized like, this is not what I want. Then I started getting into actually Gary Vee, where he talks about like flipping stuff at garage sales. And so I started on Facebook, Marketplace or Craigslist free, getting things for free and then just trying to sell it for an extra 30 bucks. And so, and by the time you add up the hours of like, hey, I got a free couch and I brought it home, I took pictures, I relisted it and I sold it for a hundred bucks. But it took me seven hours to do that, and I made, you know, 12 bucks an hour, you know, so it didn't work out. And so I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about real estate, and somebody made the comment which I, I don't 100% believe is true anymore. But at the time it stuck with me. And it was that 90% of millionaires become millionaires through real estate.
- [07:32]
B
And so I've heard that dialog before. Yeah.
- [07:35]
A
Yes. So I think, I don't know how true that is, but for me, it's true. And so I was like, I want to get into real estate. And so I started listening to every podcast that I could. I got into Bigger Pockets. I ordered all the Bigger Pockets books. I read through those and realized that that was what I wanted to do. And, and still at the time, I was, I was still new to this whole investing thing. I had zero experience with investing. And in my mind, my plan was my wife and I were going to, well, first of all, we were in Denver and I, I made the decision, hey, we're going to move to St. Louis. And I took a job as a teaching pastor in St. Louis. And it did come with a little bit of a pay raise. And St. Louis is a lot cheaper to live in than Denver. And so my original plan when we were getting into real estate was, hey, we're going to live well below our means and we're going to save up 20% to put down on a house every single year, every other year. And so I'm 28, 29 years old at the time, and my goal is for the next 20 years, we're going to try and buy 15 houses. So by the time I'm 50, I'm going to have, you know, 15 houses, and then I'm going to spend the next 20 years paying them off. And so when I'm 70, I'll have 15 paid off houses and that'll be my retirement. That was kind of the, the thought process going into it. Yeah.
- [08:56]
B
And you had a plan, you know, it wasn't like you could retire off that. You could live off that. It was better than where you were. The, the, the way things were going then it was like, okay, this is doable.
- [09:06]
A
Yeah, Because I wasn't saving money for retirement. I wasn't maxing out my, I, I, I wasn't be, I wasn't able to do any of that stuff. And so this was kind of, that was the plan for me. And then I read the Burr book, I think, or it's like the book on, you know, the buy, renovate, rehab, buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, you know, the Burr Method. Yeah, yeah. And so I read that and I was blown away that that was something that you could do.
- [09:37]
B
This is a possibility in life. Like, what the hell?
- [09:40]
A
First of all, I was like, this is a multi level marketing scheme or something. Like this is, this isn't, this isn't real. And In January of 2020, we bought our very first rental property. And we bought it for the numbers on that where we bought it for around $65,000. We put $30,000 into it. So we were all in for $95,000. I used a private money lender to purchase that and then I got it appraised at $155,000 and the bank gave us an 80% cash out refinance on that. So we were able to cash out like $115,000. We were able to pay off our private money lender. I think it was like 102,000 or $103,000. We put, you know, 12 or 15 grand in the bank, plus we had $30,000 of equity in this cash flowing rental property. And so when we got done with that very first deal, I was like, this is, this works. This isn't, you know, it's, it actually works. This isn't a scam. This isn't some multi level marketing scheme or something like that they want you to buy into. Like this is actually a real thing and it works. And that was in January of 2020. And since then, man, we've, we, we got done with that first one. And I was like, this is it, we're going to go all in. And so we started burning properties and just in, in the, in the time of doing that where I started just hunting down deals, hunting down deals. And so realize I was having so many deals come through just from being out there and finding deals that, that we needed to start flipping more and we need to start wholesaling more. And so, um, so I, I literally went from, you know, zero properties at the beginning of 2020 to doing like 15. Oh in, in January and February.
- [11:22]
B
Geez, that's crazy. And it's just because you saw the Burr Method, you're like, oh, I could scale this because I can recycle the money. I don't have to save everything up. And were you using all just hard money at the time or did you start tapping into private money already?
- [11:35]
A
I was using hard money and then I did get one private money lender at the beginning, the private money lender was a really great connection with a family friend, and he was the one who lended me the $95,000 on the very first property. And really, I'm incredibly fortunate because not everybody has this, but paid him 12% on that. But really, this person believed in me, trusted in me, and essentially said, like, hey, I want to see you win. And so they, they, they were all in on us from, from day one. And, and that's actually my biggest private money lender to this day is we've just continually returned their capital. They've made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of us. And so, yeah, I was gonna say.
- [12:19]
B
I love how big of a win win is like, oh, I was so fortunate. This guy, you know, I gave him 12%. It's like he was fortunate too. You know what I mean? He wasn't making 12% anywhere else. But it's such a win win with real estate, which is so rad. So, so you saw this, this writing on the wall, you knew what was possible. You started just really scaling and just going ham. I mean, for, for years, just going as doing as much as you possibly could. It sounds like.
- [12:45]
A
Yes, yes, it was. I went all in when I, When I saw the power of real estate and to. To, you know, for us, we got super fortunate that right as we started to scale, the market completely shifted and the market went. Went crazy. And so I did. I was protected a lot by the market. You know, I was there. Yeah, I was able to make a lot of mistakes that didn't cost me a ton because the market protected us. And so we got really fortunate in that. But I will also say when we were, when we first got started, nobody knew what the market was going to do. We.
- [13:25]
B
We literally got started this crazy time to start. Yeah, like, looking back, we're all like, oh, good timing, Cam. But like, at the time, it was like, this is the worst timing, impossible life to. To go take on something this big because no one knew what was going to happen.
- [13:41]
A
Exactly. That's why I try and tell everybody is we did get. We got. We got very fortunate that the way that that all went. Housing prices increased, interest rates were low. We. We got really fortunate, but we didn't know that going into it. I think that the, the biggest takeaway from that period of my life is like, we just took massive action and knew that we were running our numbers correctly and knew that what we were doing was. Was like, right for us in the moment. And, you know, you can't, you can't predict the market. The market's all over the place. But what you can control is, is your, your outputs. And so we, we control that. And we were, you know, very fortunate that the market did go up.
- [14:27]
B
Yeah. What I love about your story is just how hard you engross yourself in it. I mean, like you said, you listened to every podcast you could, you read all the books that you could, you're going to every meetup that you possibly can. Just networking as much like you're just every waking hour, I feel like this was on your mind and you're just like trying to just take over that world as it takes over you and, and just making it happen, which so many times people just want to dabble. And if you had just dabbled at that moment in time when you're like, oh, I lucked out, it's like a lot of people started buying at that time and they bought two or three things and that was awesome. That was really good. They didn't buy 400, you know what I mean? Like, because you sprinted instead of dabbling it. That, that moment in time wasn't just, oh, that was kind of cool. It was like the life changing.
- [15:19]
A
Yeah. And I, I appreciate you saying that because I think that's something that is very important to me to get across to people, to anybody that's listening to this and it's like, oh, you know, that, that's amazing that he did that. You know, got, got super lucky or I want to do that and I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and do that. The, the, the biggest thing that I want to get across to a lot of people is it we got very lucky. But it wasn't by accident. I, I legitimately was working 18 hour days every day. Yeah. Seven days a week where it was 6am I was up, I was running numbers on properties, I was leaving my house by 8am I was going and walking house after house after house after house all day long. A lot of nights I was at a meetup or I was at some sort of networking event. I was coming home, I was running numbers on property, sending out offers, going to sleep, doing it again, doing it again, doing it again. I do believe real estate, you put in two years of hard, focused, dedicated work and you can be financially free, but it does. I don't think if I would have gone in and dabbled and done 10 hours a week, or 15 or even 20, 30 hours a week, I would not be where I am today. When I got in, I was like, hey, I'M I am solely focused on this.
- [16:43]
B
Yeah. And, like, I'm convinced, like, you were gonna win either way. You say, oh, I was super lucky. It's like, yeah, that determined how big you won, but you were gonna win either way. You give you any time in the market and, you know, you could be starting today, 20, 24. You know what I mean? What you did for the next two, three years, like, you're going to win without the upside of the market doing what it did now, maybe wouldn't have won as big. Like, everybody that went ham in 2009, you're like, oh, that worked out really great. You know, it's like, yeah, they were going to win, maybe they wouldn't have won as big. But you're going to come out winning if you learn how these systems work and you apply that knowledge. Because it's, it's not like it had to be luck. Like, you knew how to run numbers, you knew how to do this, you knew how to find deals. Like, all the things you were learning, you were putting into practice, and they're applicable today, just like they were in the 2000, you know, 20. And as they were in 2000 itself. You know, it's like the success formula is there. We just don't always know when it's gonna hit.
- [17:45]
A
Right. Bigger. Yeah. And that's one thing I love about single family investing, is that it's in my mind, a lot of single family investing, it's, it's not that sophisticated. You know, you're. When you're running numbers on a, you know, new build, multifamily, like, there's a lot more sophistication that goes into it. I truly do think with single family investors that it's just who is willing to work the hardest, you know?
- [18:19]
B
Well, it is, it's not that complicated. And like you said, it's forgiving, too, because if you have one deal go south, it's like, oh, crap, you know, we lost this 10, 20 grand, whatever. You figure a way out, you know, you know, as opposed to, if you're doing this multi, multi, you know, $100 million, you know, multi family, if that goes south, like, you and a lot of investors are hurting for a while, you know, so it's very forgiving. And it's not that complicated to do just single family stuff. Boom, boom, boom, you know, and if you're doing 10 at a time, if one goes south, the other nine insulated and you're okay.
- [18:51]
A
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I, I love single family. I, I think one of the reasons I love single family is I'm, I'm not that smart, but am able to figure out a way to, to, to work harder. And obviously as we've grown, I've been able to figure out a way to, to build a team to allow us to continue to buy rental properties and flips and wholesales and wholesales in St. Louis and not have to work as hard anymore as I did my first couple years.
- [19:19]
B
Yeah, let's talk about where you're at now, Cam. And so you started out, you kind of shared that story of seeing the vision grinding for years to make it happen. You're not in St. Louis anymore. What does your life look like now? Where are you living? What do you do with your time? You're not working 18 hours a day running numbers and networking. What does your life look like now?
- [19:40]
A
Yeah, so one of the, I think this is important to people that are listening. One of the things that my wife and I knew when we got started in real estate was we, we had a vision for our life and I think everybody needs to have a vision for where they are headed because for me the vision was living in Hawaii legitimately. I've got, I've got a, a goals like, you know, picture that is framed with a picture of my wife and I that we made in 2020. And one of the goals was live in Hawaii. Another one was to have a net worth of $5 million. It was our five year goals. And so we had, we had all these goals written down and I hung it on my wall. And, and I say that to say the, because I had a very clear vision of where we were headed. I, I was able to put in those 18 hour days because I knew it wasn't forever. I knew that this is, that I'm working towards something and, and it gave me the, the energy and it gave me the aggression. Maybe aggression might be a, a strong word, but it, it gave me, might be the right word though, the aggression to, to work those 18 hour days. If I didn't have that vision, it was like, hey, we're just, we're just going. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been able to sustain that. I would have. But, but for me I knew, hey, if I, if I put in a lot of hard work up front that's going to allow me to live in Hawaii to cash flow hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to be able to spend more time with my kids, more time with my wife. I was able to do that. I was able to do it. With, with honestly, a lot of joy. And so I think that was the first thing for us is we, we had a very clear vision of where we wanted to go, and that was living in Hawaii. And so as we were doing, as we were scaling, we were also strategically thinking through what are, what are things that we need to put into place to allow that to happen. And so I got incredible advice from a mentor of mine when we were chatting about, like, hey, I'm still the person. For the first couple of years, I was the person that was walking every single house that we bought. I was going to the house and communicating with the sellers. And so we kind of made this rule. Even though we lived in St. Louis and we were close to these houses, I wasn't going to leave my house. And if the house that we were buying was three doors down, I would not leave my house to go look at it. I was going to have somebody else do it. I was in part of that was because we had a vision and we knew that we wanted to live in Maui and to live in Maui we had to have a team in place. And, and we couldn't have gotten that team in place if it wasn't for us making some sacrifices, honestly, in the business, because we probably made more, more or less money in, in a couple time frames where like, I'm really great at buying houses and I had to give that up, you know, and my wife was really good at helping managing the rehab project and we had. She had to give that up. And so it was, it was tough, but we knew where we were headed and so it was worth it at that time to say, hey, we might make less money, but we're working towards something bigger. And so just throughout our entire process, we always knew that we wanted to live in Maui. And we were able to move into Maui at the beginning of 2023. So we've been here for about a year and a half now. So we were able to do it in three years, which our goal was in five years, which I think is really awesome. But yeah, so we live in Maui now. We still run our team. We've got Rebel City, Revel City Properties, which is our, our just our rental portfolio. And so right now we've got 50 something rentals in that portfolio. We have Cathcart Capital, which is a single family rental fund. And one of the reasons that we created that was just because with interest rates as high as they are, we were able to raise some outside money to kind of honestly be like some sort of gap funding where it's like, hey, we can't leverage all the way up to 75%, recapture all of our capital because interest rates won't allow us to do that. But we can leverage up to 50%. So we need some sort of gap funding to be able to, to make up the rest of the money that we have into the deal. And so we raised $7 million. They're providing kind of that gap funding for cash flow and a percentage of the equity on that. So we've got.
- [24:17]
B
So to clarify what I heard you say there is, you're still doing the brrrr method, but because you can't get all the money out because of the way interest rates and things are going now, you leave some of the money in, but to cover the money that's stuck in there, you're using investor money and they get a return on that.
- [24:33]
A
That's exactly right.
- [24:34]
B
So that's really cool. I heard that.
- [24:37]
A
Yeah, it's a, it's a great, it's a great strategy because it allows us to continue to buy rental properties. And kind of the reason behind it was we did a refi of eight houses that we had going on that were rental properties. And at the time when we bought them, I was calculating like a 5% interest rate. And by the time we were done with all of them and we went to refi them and we packaged them up as a portfolio, I think we got quoted seven and three quarters or something like that. It was like it was right in that 2022 into 2022 windows where interest rates just skyrocketed. And we had to leave about $400,000 of our own money tied up into those to be able to keep them, you know, because.
- [25:22]
B
To have them sell cash flow. Because if you pulled all that money out, then the debt would have been so high that it wouldn't have cash flow and been self sustaining. So you're like. So the only. Because interest rates are so high, the only way we can keep this cash flowing is we got to take only 15 of the debt out or 50 or whatever, like leave. Right. And then it's less debt. So there's the cash flow. The mortgage is less and it'll cash flow. But then you're stuck with your, you know, oh, what about all this capital that we didn't get to recapture?
- [25:49]
A
Exactly. Yeah. So like, let's use numbers, easy numbers, actually. So let's say every house is worth $200,000 and we're all into them for $150,000 and they all rent for 1500 bucks a month or so. That's not going to, that's not going to cash flow if we take out $150,000 on, on all eight of those.
- [26:11]
B
Properties at 8% interest.
- [26:13]
A
Exactly.
- [26:14]
B
Yeah, it will.
- [26:15]
A
Cash flow if we only take out $100,000 on all eight properties. But that means we have to leave $50,000 tied up into them, which is, you know, $400,000. And I don't know if that, that's not the exact way that it worked out, but we did leave $400,000 tied up into it. So the fund essentially covers that $50,000 on each of those houses to let us recapture all of our money back. Because I knew that we don't, we don't have millions of dollars sitting liquid to leave $50,000 tied up into every deal.
- [26:46]
B
Well, it stops you from scaling. It slows you down. You're like, I need to be able to go knowing I can just repeat every single time.
- [26:54]
A
Exactly. So what I. But what I could do was, hey, I could find a bunch of really rich people. They are willing to give me money to basically provide that gap on it. And they're going to get cash flow on that $50,000. Well, you know, some of them given way more than $50,000, but they're going.
- [27:13]
B
To get cash, whatever portion they have.
- [27:15]
A
They also are going to get a portion of the equity in that property, because $50,000 of equity in that property. And when we refinance the deal, say interest rates drop down or say rents go up in the house, the price of the houses appreciate and we refinance, they're going to be able to recapture all of the cash that they have invested, but still stay on as an owner.
- [27:37]
B
No way.
- [27:39]
A
Equity. Yeah. They get equity and cash so we never can buy them out. So they get equity and cash flow for the rest of their life. And eventually the goal is to be able to refinance and recapture their money. And the way that we have that worked out is it's a seven year hold. And if in seven years interest rates haven't dropped, rents or rents haven't gone up high enough and appreciation hasn't caught up, then we would just sell the properties and, and get them their, their, you know, their cash invested plus the equity that they have in it back.
- [28:07]
B
That's cool. That's a unique approach. I haven't heard that. It's what I love about it is like, instead of you going, oh, I'm gonna pivot. I'm gonna change everything that I Know and do. Because the market changed. I'm gonna go do whatever. Syndications instead. You know, you said, I want to keep doing what I'm really, really, really good at. How do I make that work? And you created this new hybrid model that still lets you do what you know best and what you're the best at. And that. That's really cool. I love how you customize that.
- [28:36]
A
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's been. It's been a lot of fun that's been going on for about a year now. And so we bought probably 20, 25 houses within that fund.
- [28:46]
B
Yeah, it's cool. Let's go back to your vision a little bit, man. I love how you pointed out that the vision was there from day one of what you were trying to accomplish, and I think that is why you were able to do it so much faster, is because it was clear from the beginning. A lot of times people like one, if you didn't have the vision, but you just knew, hey, this is important, and you started grinding that hard, you would have hit a burnout wall. You're like, wait, is this just going to do this forever? I don't care. I'm going to back out because I don't want to do this forever. And you just kind of would have lost half of the opportunity or two, you would have just got so sucked into this rat race of buying wholesale, flipping, buying wholesale food because I'm making so much money. I never had this opportunity as a kid, you know, and you're just in the grind of this rat race because you never systematized a way for you to get out of it because of the goal to move to Maui. Like I said, you. You wouldn't have pulled back. You would have kept being the person on every single door, on every single deal, and never pulled out. Maybe eventually you would have figured that out, but maybe it would have taken five or six or 10 years. But because you had the vision from day one, it gave you the motivation to not burn out, and it gave you the. I mean, the way to sacrifice. Like I said, you were leaving money on the table by stepping back and systematizing for a moment. But it happened. And that's just so cool, I think. Vision. We talk a lot about it, but I don't think people always understand what it means. They just think, oh, I have a big goal, or I want nice things. But it is more than that. It's more nuanced than that. And your story is a really good example.
- [30:21]
A
Yeah. I think a couple things along Those lines is one, we, we for sure would be making a lot more money if we were back in, in St. Louis. You know, there, there's no doubt about that. But that wasn't the most important thing to me. The most important thing to me was being able to live in a place that I love with my family and getting to spend a lot of time with them. And so always coming back to that inspired me and gave me, I guess just the mindset to keep moving forward of knowing that hey, this is a season to get to a better season. And I think that was important. And then the other thing that I would say when it comes to a vision is that there has to be a why. I mean everybody, or not everybody, but a lot of people probably read the book, start with why and there has to be a why attached to it that is incredibly meaningful. And so like for me, if I had attached my why to hey, I want to make a lot of money so I can buy that, you know, multi million dollar house and that really nice car, I would have burned out because that wasn't a big enough why. Like the things, the money that, that's not a big enough why. But for me a big enough why is, hey, I want to be able to watch sunset with my kids every single day. I want to be able to pick up my kids from school every single day at 3 o'. Clock. I want to be able to, you know, on, on Friday last week, my wife and I, we took the day off and we, we flew over to Oahu and spent the day on Oahu together. Like that, that was my why. And that keeps me going, you know, versus, hey, I wanna, I want a really nice car. And there's nothing wrong with nice cars and nice watches. But for me my why was attached to something way bigger and way more valuable than anything that, that, that money could, could bring.
- [32:26]
B
Money helps that. But yeah, I mean, and because how old are your kids?
- [32:31]
A
We've got six, four and two.
- [32:33]
B
Six, four and two. And that, that's the thing is like that's a moment in time. I've got a five and a seven year old, so I'm kind of right in that same boat a little bit. And it's like this moment in time when they're this age like you said, oh, I would have been making way more money if I stayed in St. Louis and doing this. It's like you can always go back, like you can always make more money later, but you'll never have this age again where they actually want to Watch the sunset with you, you know what I mean? Where they actually care to hang out with you. When you can actually, like, build that bond that will last a lifetime. Because it's like their childhood, you know, that. That. That only lasts so long. You can go make millions and millions more and scale bigger stuff when they're teenagers or when they're out of the house or whatever, but you can't get these. These years back. I think about that a lot because I'm in a very similar situation.
- [33:22]
A
Yep, that's so true. You can never. The only thing that you can't get back is time. It is that. That's the only thing that you can't get back. And so for me, I've used real estate to. To give me my time and be able to open up my time quite a bit more.
- [33:40]
B
That's awesome, man. So. So, you know, you kind of have done what a lot of people dream to do, and you did it really fast, and you did it really hard. You sprinted to make it happen, and you sacrificed a lot. You're still doing. You're still running your teams, and we were talking, and you're waking up at, you know, 5:00am to be able to do all the mainland meetings, get everything rock and rolling so that you can hang out with your family the rest of the day. So it's not like you're. You're out of the game in any means, you know, But. So what's the next vision, though, for you? You obviously achieved those goals you set in 2000. You learned real estate, which that was the first goal is learn how to even do it. You figured that out, which is awesome. And then you scaled it. You hit your goals of moving to Maui and spending time with your family. What's kind of next on the horizon for Cam to be able to motivate you? What's your new why and what do you foresee the next 5, 10 years looking like?
- [34:41]
A
Yeah, that's a. So it's a great question. And my answer to that would be, I love teaching people about real estate. I think it's kind of the pastor in me. Like, I love.
- [34:55]
B
Right.
- [34:56]
A
And. And I've seen so much value in my life from what. What real. Real estate has done for me. Real estate has completely changed my life. And in literally four years, you know, we. My wife and I, we. On Friday, we went to dinner, and this is not like a brat. It wasn't even that much, but we spent. We spent like 350 bucks on dinner, and we, you know, we had Great steak, great, you know, some wine, it was just a blast. And my wife and I afterwards, we looked at each other and we, we would never spend more than, you know, if we went on a date night, like 50 bucks was, was hard for us. Like, yeah, a total for the bill. Like, and you know, that's like a, a steak and shaker, a Denny's, like, that's where we're going. And just to be able to do that and, and not be worried about money being able to, to, you know, for instance, like the school that my daughter's in, we, we have like a co op where we hired on a teacher to be able to come teach her that. We were able to hand pick and make sure that her values aligned with our values. Like there's just so much, so many in living in Hawaii and all. Like, real estate has just brought so much to my life and has changed our lives dramatically in four years. And I want that for everybody because I do truly think that real estate can do that for every single person. And so my goal is to teach people how to do that. And for me, I'm a single family guy, so that's what I'm not going to try and teach somebody how to do syndications or to do storage units or to, you know, do co op living or, you know, I want to teach people how to invest in single family real estate. And I really, my heart behind it is I want people to have a bigger. Why? Because I think that real estate is incredible and money allows us to do a lot of really great things. But I think that again, going back to the whole burnout, like if you, if you are in real estate because of the money, you're, you're, you're either not going to make it or you're going to make it and you're going to realize, wow, this I'm still really unfulfilled. And so for me, real estate is. How can you use real estate to pursue your, your passions, to pursue your dreams, to create more memories, to spend more time with your wife, to spend more time with your kids. And so I really, I love teaching that and I also want to do it in an honest and authentic way with integrity versus like, hey, here's my three step system for making a million dollars a year. Because that's not authentic, that's not honest. Like, there's a lot of work that goes into. If you want to make a million dollars a year in real estate, you have to put in a lot of work. And so I want to be Able to teach people how to be able to scale a rental and a flipping business primarily for single family investors and, and, and use that money to be able to create a better life for themselves.
- [38:03]
B
I love that, man. And something I love about you is you haven't been on the other side for 10 years where you forgot what it felt like. Like it's, I can still feel your fire. You're like, this is so awesome that I can go to a nice dinner and I can watch the sunset, I can hang out with my family and like all of it's still exciting and new to you because you haven't just been doing it for 20 years. You know, it's like I can still feel that fire. And I think that's exciting and I think that's the kind of coach you want to have is somebody who like feels that fire and you know how life changing it is. You have got complacent or taken for granted where you're at. You can tell which is super exciting.
- [38:43]
A
Yeah.
- [38:44]
B
That's awesome, man.
- [38:45]
A
I never want to lose it. Yeah. Four years ago we were living in Lexi's parents house for free. So.
- [38:50]
B
Yeah.
- [38:51]
A
Yeah. So I've been, been able to like just see and do a lot of really cool things and very passionate about it and never want to lose that. Like wow. I am so incredibly blessed and grateful for, for what real estate has done for me.
- [39:08]
B
So one thing you mentioned with, you're like, I want to teach people how. You didn't say I want to teach them real estate, like how to run numbers. You're like, I want to them how to build and scale a business of wholesaling and flipping. And I think that's, that's very specific and, and I think that's very needed. You want to expound a little bit of maybe some key points of what that means to run a wholesale flipping business as opposed to just doing some of it.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah. Well, because I, I don't want to knock anybody that is the, the weekend. I would call them like a weekend warrior investor. I don't, I don't like. Some people love their W2 jobs, feel very secure in that and their personality is they're wired to do that where it's like, hey, I'm going to work a W2 job and I'm investing in real estate on the side. And so I don't want to knock anybody that does that. Those are probably people that I'm not going to teach just because it's not what I did. I also think that for a Lot of those people. It's more of a 10, 15, 20 year run to, to get to financial freedom. Because it takes, it takes a while. When you're, when you're working a W2 job, it takes, unless it's a really high paying W2 job, that you're able to invest a lot of that money into other assets. It does make it tough. And so especially in the single family space, like we talk about the brrrr method, people want to hit, you know, that $150 to $200 a month in cash flow per door. And if you're doing that as a weekend warrior, say you're buying two houses a year, you know, you're adding an extra $4,000. No, not 4,400 bucks a month. Yeah, an extra, you know, 48, $5,000 a year to, to your, your income. It's going to take a while to get to financial freedom. And so for, for me, I want to teach people how to go all in. And really, like, I want to teach people who want to do what I did, because that's the only, that's the only, how would I say it?
- [41:13]
B
That's the only thing you can genuinely teach because you did it. And that's what I love about what you're doing. You're like, I don't want to teach them what's, what's catchy or trendy or popular. Like, I know this because I did this. Yeah, that's what I want to teach. Like, I love that about you.
- [41:29]
A
I want to speak into things that I know and I know how to, I know how to grow a single family real estate investing business. And I tell people all the time that will, you know, reach out and say, hey, I want to, you know, I want to do Airbnbs or I want to do storage or I want to develop land. I'm like, that's, that's amazing. And you should do that if that's what you're passionate about. I'm not the guy to teach you that because I know how to do that. So I want to be open and honest about what I know and what I don't know.
- [41:58]
B
I love that.
- [41:59]
A
So teaching with authenticity and integrity versus, you know, there's some people that, that don't necessarily have that, where it's like, yeah, I can teach you that. I've never done it before, but I'll try and teach you. I want to teach out of integrity and authenticity.
- [42:14]
B
Yeah, I feel the same way. Whenever I have a student or somebody asks me about like, something I haven't done. I'm like, look, I hate teaching theory. Like, here's the things I know. Go study on your own, whatever. Like. Like, if I haven't done it in reality and in practice, like, I can't truly teach it. I can share some things I've heard, but it's. I hate teaching theory is what I call it when it's just theory, but I haven't, like, lived through it. I'm missing the nuances. I can only teach. It's the nuances that. That really make the difference. And I only know those because I've been through them. You know, when you've done all the closes, you understand the different. Just the closing costs and how to run this number and the taxes and this, like, all these stupid little things. It's like, that make a big difference. If you haven't been through it, you. You kind of miss it, you know, even, like, burring, like, oh, wait, is there a seasoning period? When are you going to pull that money out? Are you thinking you're getting in one month, or is it 12 months now? What's your lender season like? I remember when I first learned about seasoning periods, I was like, where was that? On all the Bigger Pocket podcasts? Like, I swore I'd never heard it brought up. You know, on a hundred podcasts, maybe I just didn't know what it was. So when they said it, it didn't click. But it's like those nuances that make such a big difference. But when you've done it, like, you have, then you know every nuance you can actually teach in reality, not theory.
- [43:29]
A
Yeah. Love it.
- [43:31]
B
That's great, man. Well, we'll get wrapping up here in a minute. I do want to ask you a couple more things. We have. We have some final four questions we'll go through, but what's a few key things you could say to someone who is interested in, like, doing what you're saying? Like, they want to start a wholesale flipping business to really scale it up and build a portfolio personally where they can kind of keep a bunch of the stuff that makes sense to keep. What are some. Some key, you know, advice you could give them of what they should be looking to do. Yeah, the.
- [44:01]
A
The first thing that I would say is it is start with. And we've talked about this a lot, but start with a why. Like, what. What's the why? What's the vision behind what you're doing? Because that is going to keep you moving forward, because the single family space and real Estate investing in general, like, it'll beat you up there. There are deals that won't happen that you thought were going to happen. There's deals that you thought you were going to make a ton of money on that you won't make a ton of money on. There are going to be times where you feel like you're going bankrupt. That happened so many times in our first couple of years where we had all of this money out on the street, flipping properties, buying properties, and then we'd look at our bank account, we wouldn't have any money in our bank account. We'd be like, oh, what do we do? And so real estate investing will beat you up if you don't have a very clear vision of where you're going. And one of the tricks that I use for that, and I love this is I, I love to go meet myself, and this sounds super corny, but I love to go meet myself every single morning in five years, I literally will sit down with a cup of coffee and I will go meet future me and I'll literally go walk into future me's house and, and I close my eyes and I'll look around the room and I'll look at future me and I'll have a conversation with him and, and obviously, future like, when you're imagining future you, they're gonna, they're gonna be the best version of yourself. You're not imagining a future. At least I hope you're not a future you that's like in, in a really rough spot. I'm imagining somebody that's, that's loving, that's caring, that has a great relationship with, with his wife, that has a great relationship with his kids, that has financial freedom. And so like, I'm, I'm meeting with that person every day. And the reason that I do that, and I know it sounds corny, is because then in my day to day, I can be aligned with where I want to be in five years. So when I'm, when I'm, when I'm aligning myself every day where it's like, hey, future me is loving and I'm doing something in my life that's not loving, I, I immediately know that's not future Cameron. Future Cameron is, is somebody that's loving. When I'm, when I'm working really hard and I feel stressed out, I, I can align myself with, well, hey, future. Future Cameron put in a lot of work to be able to get to where he's at when I, you know, get done with work. Some days And I want to sit on the couch and I, I want to watch TV and not be present in my kid's life. I'm immediately. Well, future Cameron has an incredible relationship with his kids and is incredibly present in their life. And this future Cameron would not be sitting on his, his couch right now. When even going to like future Cameron, he's healthy. Like when I, when I want to eat, you know, like crap and not work out, it's like, future future Cameron is somebody who does eat healthy and takes care of his body. And so it aligns me. And so the very first thing that I would say is like, become aligned with your future. The future version of you, whoever you want that future version of you to be, become very aligned with that person because it'll make everything easier. During the day when you have hiccups, when real estate will try and beat you up, and you'll have all of these thoughts that are limiting beliefs and fear creeping in. When you align yourself with the future version of you, all of that will, will kind of fade away because you know where you're going. So come up with the future version of you and head towards that I'd say is step number one and then two, which that step number one, everything else will work itself out. But the second thing is be willing to put in the work. Be willing to put in the work. It's not as easy as you would sometimes see on Instagram of like, hey, follow this three step process. You have to put in the work. And when you can do those two things, like everything else will just work itself out.
- [48:01]
B
Man, I love that. I love that, like the alignment of becoming your best self and having your daily actions be aligned with your ideal you is just so powerful because you get that, that power, the consistency, you know, whether it's the health or the relationship, it's all those little things that if you keep that alignment and focus, you know, day after day after week after week after month after month of year after year, it's like it has. There's no option but for it to turn out the way that you envisioned. Yeah, I love that, man. That's powerful. Well, this is sick. I really appreciate your time. I want to roll into our last few questions here, but it's been inspiring. Anybody hasn't checked out your story, I'd recommend them, you know, follow you on Instagram. Is that the best way for people to keep in touch with you and reach out to you and participate in what you're doing, whether they want to fund it or learn it? Or hire you as a coach or mentor, whatever. What's the best way for people to be a part.
- [48:56]
A
Instagram's probably going to be the best option. It's just Cam Cathcart. Yeah.
- [49:01]
B
Awesome. Check it out. All right, Cam, so our final four questions. Question number one. What is a dream deal that you'd hope be able to tackle someday? Mm.
- [49:16]
A
I. It's a great question. I. A dream deal that I'd love to. I would love to buy. And I don't know where this is at, and I don't know what this looks like, but one thing that I've been wanting to do lately is, is buy a really, really cool house. And in a really cool part of the country, whether that's, you know, in the mountains in, in Colorado or on the beach here in Maui and use it as a. Is a mastermind house where I. Part of this. I love, I love people, I love hanging out with people. I love teaching real estate and, and so like having a dedicated spot where can have consistent like masterminds throughout the year at a certain house or a certain spot. Dude, that'd be cool for that house. So that would, that would kind of be the goal.
- [50:07]
B
I like that. I like that. Okay. Invite me to that when you get it going. Yeah, I'll go, I'll go find the house for you. See, I love it. That's really cool. All right, question number two. What is a book or podcast that we're not associated with that you would recommend?
- [50:26]
A
So I can't say a better life podcast.
- [50:28]
B
We could throw it out there. You know, obviously that's the number one.
- [50:32]
A
Yeah.
- [50:32]
B
But real quick, how's that been going? I know you just recently came on as the co host with that, with Brandon. How's that been?
- [50:39]
A
Dude, it's been a blast. It's been so much fun. I mean, it's. It's hard for me in the sense that I'm interviewing so many amazing people that all have different strategies and I get, I get shiny object syndrome. You know, just over the last couple of weeks, we've interviewed by the guy, a guy who does co living and is crushing into the co living space. And then we interviewed a person who does high, like high ticket or not high ticket, but expensive insurance settlement houses. So like she's. Anytime she buys million dollar houses and her entire niche is people that have some sort of disaster happen at their house, whether it be a fire, a flood or something happened, she's connected with all these insurance companies that will then rent her house and let These families live in them. Or her houses.
- [51:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [51:36]
A
She's able to rent, you know, a million dollar house for 25 to $30,000 a month, you know, and her cash flow is insane. So I'm like listening to this and then I'm listening to somebody that is in, you know, the Airbnb space, or somebody that's in the new new builds, or somebody that's in land development. And every single one, I'm like, oh, I need to start doing that. And so it's fun to learn, but it also gives me shiny object syndrome.
- [52:01]
B
Well, I can relate. I feel the same way every time I interview someone. Whoa. I need to get into self storage. Oh, I need to. I need to start doing syndicate. Oh, I need to do multi family. What am I doing? Doing single family. So I actually appreciate yours because I'm a single family guy too. I'm like, yeah, see, we're good. We can just keep doing single family, then we don't need to get distracted. So that's great. I love that.
- [52:23]
A
But a book that I would say, you know, I said, I really like one of my favorite books right now is. And I just reread it again for a second or third time. It's called the Happiness Advantage.
- [52:39]
B
Sean Anchor.
- [52:40]
A
Yeah, I just love that book because it flips the script on what being a leader looks like. What being what working looks like. A lot of times you think, you know, talking about, like, the whole vision and working hard, where you think that, like, hey, this is why I say you have to have a why. Where it's like, hey, I'm gonna work really hard and I'm gonna be unhappy, but eventually it's going to pay off and then I'm going to be able to buy all the cool things and do all the cool things and then I'm going to be happy. And the problem with that is burnout. Burnout happens and you, you don't feel satisfied, you don't feel content. But when you can flip the script and say, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna focus on being happy and being content with where I'm at right now, then all of a sudden that makes you work harder because you're happy, you're content, you're in a great place mentally, you can work harder, you can, you know, in the single family space, you can handle challenges and adversity better when you're doing it from a place of happiness and joy and contentment versus not being there and trying to work your way through it. So I love the fact that it just kind of flips the script on what being a leader and being a business owner is a little bit.
- [54:05]
B
Yeah, I love that. And even if, worst case scenario, you aren't as successful, if you're actually happy, being less successful, isn't that better than being unhappy and more successful? Right, but. But would you say that's how it was for you when you were going through the grind for those two years, though? Were you, like, present and happy for this opportunity, or was it like, just put my head down, I'm going to be miserable, hate my life, but I know there's an end right at the end of the tunnel.
- [54:29]
A
No, it was so much fun for me. That was so much fun. And I think that's, like, one of my core values is have fun. And a lot of people look at that and are like, well, that sounds stupid. Like, have fun. Like, but. And I think they misinterpret that with, like, living an easy life. But I think it's the exact opposite. Like, dude, having. Having kids is the most fun thing that I've ever done and will ever do. It's also the hardest thing that I'll ever do, you know, raising kids. It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that it. Having fun is not working hard. It doesn't mean that having fun is not doing hard things. It doesn't mean that having fun isn't overcoming challenges. All of those things create the fun. And so, like, for me in real estate investing, like, I want to have fun every single day. And sometimes that fun is selling a house and making, you know, $150,000 on it. But sometimes it's, hey, we've had a house that's been broken into seven times out of the last nights, and we have to figure out how we can stop that from happening. Like, that's fun. And so, yeah, so I think, like, that's a. That's a core value of mine. So I want to have fun, and it makes everything else easier.
- [55:42]
B
I love it. All right, question number three. What's one of the most expensive or interesting mistakes you've made in real estate investing?
- [55:52]
A
That's a great question. That is a exp. I mean, one of the most expensive mistakes that I've made would be.
- [56:07]
B
I.
- [56:07]
A
I mean, just buying houses with. Without proper due diligence. So we. We buy every house, typically without any contingencies in them. That allows us to buy a little bit cheaper because we're.
- [56:20]
B
Hey, we're.
- [56:20]
A
As is, no contingencies you can take to the bank that we're going to close on it. And so early in my career I did that and I just, I was making offers on houses that I didn't necessarily know what I was doing. Excuse me, I don't have any rehab experience. I was not like a contractor before I got into real estate. And so on one of the houses in particular, it had foundation issues and I felt that we just needed carbon fiber stripping we're going to find. And it ended up being like a, you know, they had to put in piers, they had to re grade the entire backyard and put in drainage and all that stuff ended up being like a forty thousand dollar fix that I had budgeted like five thousand dollars for. So we ended up, we ended up losing about 15 grand on that house. But it wasn't, and it really wasn't that big of a deal. But it did teach me like in our business, we put contingencies now on anything that has like severe foundation issues. Anything that's on septic or anything that has a pool, those are those where we'll hire a professional to come and check it out to make sure that, that we know our numbers. Because those are things that I can't just tell by the naked eye.
- [57:24]
B
That's cool. And if the seller is going to balk at those contingencies, then they're so specific. You know, you have an issue you're running into because they'll know if that's not an issue, then they'll be like, oh, that's fine, that's cool. I like that. All right, so one word to encapsulate why you love real estate investing.
- [57:49]
A
Present. Present. I think like my goal in life is for every conversation that I leave somebody to feel like I cared and that I was present and that I was a part of that conversation. And that when they had me, they had 100 of my attention. That's my goal for my wife, that's my goal for my kids. Like I want, I want when, when I die, one of, one of the best things that my kids could say about me was he was a present father. And, and so real estate has allowed me to do that. Real estate has allowed me to. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that had to happen for me to be better about that, like building a team. And obviously the more money that we have, the more present I can be. Because I'm not worried about stuff like that or if we're having issues. It's like, all right, well, you know, it's just money. But real estate has allowed me to be more and more present, and my goal is that continually helps me to become more present. Uh, and so that, that's. That is my favorite thing about real estate, where I think that. That even though there's a lot of stuff that. That I worry about and there's a lot of stuff that's going on in our. In our life and in our business. Before I was in real estate, I was. Was never fully present because I was always thinking, I was always worried about money or I was always thinking through how can I make more money or how can I do this? And real estate has allowed me to honestly shut the phone off at times and to be 100% present, and that's my goal in life, is I want to be.
- [59:36]
B
I love that present. That's a good one. I like that one. Well, Cameron, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and. And sharing, you know, your energy with us, your excitement, your fire for life, and letting us have a little peek into your world and be able to access you a little bit. Thanks so much, man. Love it.
- [59:53]
A
Thank you so much for having me. It was a blast.
- [59:56]
B
This is Joe signing off for the Real Estate Investing School podcast, reminding you to know your vision.