← Rich Dad Radio Show: In-Your-Face Advice on Investing, Personal Finance, & Starting a Business
Rich Dad Radio Show: In-Your-Face Advice on Investing, Personal Finance, & Starting a Business
The Tax Loophole That Saves Real Estate Investors THOUSANDS!
00:48:22
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- [00:00]
Jaron Sustar
Welcome to the Rich Dad Real estate show where we talk about the good news and bad news of real estate, hosted by yours truly, Jaron. So star, I'm here with my good friend Cameron Cathcart. Today, Cameron was a youth pastor, which I can't wait to dive into because I think every male in my family is a pastor except for me and the black sheep. And then he decided to get into real estate and he's done 500 plus deals on 65 doors and is absolutely crushing. He's also the co host of the Better Life podcast. If I said that incorrectly, let me know with Brandon Turner, who's an OG from bigger pockets. Cameron, thanks for being on here, dude.
- [00:36]
Cameron Cathcart
Thank you so much for having me. I'm, I'm super excited to be here.
- [00:39]
Jaron Sustar
We got to hang out in Denver in October and it was like, I don't know, it's like I feel like I'd known this guy forever. I think part of it has to do with our background in faith and in church and we kind of have a similar journey from that perspective. I didn't choose to be a youth pastor. I was a little bit smarter than you. I looked and I said, you know, they don't make any money and they do pizza and games all day long. You. So I stayed away. But it's cool because seriously, my dad's a pastor, my brother's a pastor, my grandpa's a pastor, my other grandpa's a pastor, my great grandpa's a pastor. And then my other great grandpa, I think was a drunk. And so maybe I met in the middle of, you know, the pastor and, and the great grandpa was a drunk. No, I'm joking. But I stayed away from it. But I understand that life. And so I'd love to like talk and dive into how in the world did you go from, I do, we're doing full time ministry all bought in to now. We're, we still love the Lord, of course, but we're doing all these real estate deals.
- [01:32]
Cameron Cathcart
Yes. And so I, this is going to be a longer story and so I, I apologize, Jaron, but, but I love this story and it will give you me from, from being a youth pastor all the way to today. And so, so yeah, I was a youth pastor, absolutely loved being a youth pastor. And, and I, I, I do, I, I, I felt like we had known each other for a long time just because one, I think you and I, we, we're both, we're the two guys from the Midwest. Everybody else is on the west coast. They've got their cool clothes, their cool tennis shoes, their tight jeans. You and I, we hunt. We. You know, I grew up on a farm in Missouri on 700 acres and hunted every day. You know, we, we were a lot of like, we connected really well. But my grandpa was a pastor, dad's a pastor, great grandpa, pastor. We're, we're very similar in that. And so I, I just, I, I, I was, I was never like the person in high school that ran away from faith or anything like that. I honestly wanted to be a pastor and I went to a school out in Colorado called Colorado Christian University. My wife and I got, we got married at super young, went to school there, graduated, became a youth pastor. Absolutely loved my job. It, it was such a fun job getting to work with, with students and Saul, it's just so much, so many cool things happened when I was there, but the entire time that I was there, I, I never made more than $40,000 and I absolutely loved the church, but I just knew that that wasn't going to cut it. But at the time, my wife and I, we were young and we, we, we could make it work. And it was honestly, when you're young and you're not making very much money, there is a part of that that's fun. It's an adventure. Like, hey, how are we going to pay for, how are we going to pay for our groceries next week? And I would go and I would drive for Uber or I would. One of the things that I got into was getting on Craigslist free or Facebook Marketplace and finding free things, going and picking them up, bringing them home and then trying to sell them for, for 50 bucks or 100 bucks. And so really, really in enjoyed that. But when we had our first daughter Riley. So I've got three kids, seven. Five in three. And we had our first daughter Riley back in 2017. I knew like, hey, we got to figure something out because it, once you have a kid, it's no longer fun being broke. It's no longer fun standing at, in King Supers or Safeway and, and wondering if your credit card or debit card is going to get declined. And so it's like I got to figure something out. But I didn't have like, even though we were broke, I didn't have that, that like moment, that Tipping Point moment where I had to figure something out. But when Riley are now seven year old, when she was about a year old, so this was in the fall of 2018. We gave her peanut butter for the very first time. And she went into anaphylactic shock. And so like literally within minutes she swelled up to like twice her size, was struggling to breathe. And we threw her into the car and we rushed her to the emergency room. And obviously as like our, our daughter is not breathing in, in the, in the car. We're not getting on our phones, looking up our, our health insurance, seeing where we should take or where we shouldn't take her, all that stuff. And we ended up taking her to a, out of network. Like it was a, it was a privately owned 24 hour emergency room. It wasn't with a hospital because we were just taking her to the closest place to our house. And so our insurance didn't cover it. And so a couple of weeks after that, and by the way, my daughter ended up being completely fine. They gave her IVs that kept her overnight, but she was completely fine. And a couple of weeks later, I was sitting at the dinner table and we get a letter in the mail and I open it and it's a $15,000 hospital bill. And I remember sitting at the hospital or not, sorry, not the hospital. I remember sitting at the dinner table and I was looking at this hospital bill and I felt like just a massive failure as a father, as a husband. I wasn't providing the way that I wanted to provide for my family. And I didn't want to put my family through that for the rest of their lives. And so it was literally that moment in the fall of 2018 that I decided I've got to do something else. I didn't know what that something else was. I have zero background in real estate. I have zero background in construction. I can't tell you the difference between a Phillips screwdriver and a flathead. I didn't know any of that stuff, but I was like, I just got to figure out something to make more money. And so, so I start listening to every podcast that I can on, just on, on building wealth and, and in over this time, like we're missing student loan payments, I miss a couple of house payments. It's rough. But I start listening to this podcast and somebody on the podcast makes the comment, which I don't even know if it's true, but he says something along the lines of 90% of millionaires, they do, they self made millionaires do it through real estate. And so I was like, I want to be a millionaire. And I, I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to get into real estate. And, and so I started exploring real estate and I come across the Bigger Pockets podcast. And if a lot of people on here are, or real estate investors, they've. They've probably heard of that podcast at some point. And I started listening to a guy named Brandon Turner. And Brandon Turner, he's sitting in his. What he called his sea shed in Maui, and he's talking about how he has used real estate to provide this, you know, life for his family, provide financial freedom to move out to. To Maui and live in Hawaii and. And back up five year or back up at this time, two years for our baby moon. We went to. My wife and I, we went to Kauai and we spent, like, every penny that we had on this trip. Not a great financial decision. And this is on the very last night. We're sitting there, and my wife's pregnant. We have a kid coming, coming in four or five months, and we're sitting there on the last night overlooking the ocean. My wife and I were talking, and we're like, we want to live here. This is. It's paradise here. And then we kind of just laugh about it because we pull up our phone, we look at what the price of houses are, and we're like, there is no. There's no way we could ever afford to live here in Hawaii. And so. And so. But that was always kind of like a dream of ours. And so then I start listening to Brandon in his seashed, talking about using real estate to move to Hawaii. And. And immediately I'm like, that's what I want to do. Like, I want to. I want to live in Hawaii, and I want to use real estate to get there. And so. So I literally. I buy a 10x you the 10x journals by Grant Cardone. I buy a 10x journal. And in that you write your goals every morning and every evening. And the very first thing I put every single morning and every single evening is live in Hawaii. Live in Hawaii. Live in Hawaii. And so. So start listening to that podcast, getting fired up about real estate. And then in the fall of 2019, we bought our very first property. And I'm still working at the church at this time. We buy our very first property. Everything goes wrong on that property. Literally, everything goes wrong. And so we have our second kid at this time, like, right before I actually put the. The house under contract while we were at the hospital with. With Cali, having her, because that was when I was like, I've been talking about this now for a year, and I just need to do it. And so I put a house under contract while we're at the hospital, we're flipping it, Everything goes wrong. We end up having to move in there. We have an air mattress, a one year old, a newborn, and our dog. And my wife and I were painting walls, we're refinishing cabinets where I'm laying floor. And we were rehabbing the house and we ended up getting out of that house and we essentially break even on that house. But there was something about just doing it that made us so excited. Like we've got this. Even though we didn't make money on this house, like we know can do it. And we learned the process. And In January of 2020, we bought our second house. And everything went right on it was actually a burr deal. We bought it at like 67. We put 35 into it. We got it appraised at $155,000. The bank gave us an 80% loan to value, so we actually were able to pull out like 115. So we even made a little bit of money. We put like 12 grand in the bank and we had a cash flowing rental. And we're like, this is amazing. This is the best thing ever. And so we just went crazy. And so we started buying like literally every house that the numbers worked on, I was buying. I didn't know how to rehab them. I didn't have crews to rehab them. I didn't have money. I just was. We were hustling and figuring it out along the way. And. And at that time, actually Covid. Covid hit and the church that I was working at, they shut their doors for a couple of months. And so I was, at that time, I was now a teaching pastor and was just hanging out with people. And because we weren't having services and we couldn't see people, I. I didn't really have a job anymore. I was still kind of getting paid. And so I was full time in real estate. I was putting 60, 70 hours a week into real estate. And I, I probably bought 30 houses over those two or three months that, that the church, the church's doors were shut. And some of those, when I say 30 houses, some of those were flips. Probably half of those were wholesales. And then we kept a couple as rental properties. So we weren't like getting in there and working on all 30 of them. But when the church went to open that back up their doors, I was like, man, real estate has been really good to me for the last couple of months. And so we, we decided that, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to resign from the church and go full time real estate. And so that was in May of 2020. So since May of 2020 I've been 100% all in on real estate. But, but kind of a fun part of the story is, and this is kind of where what I think is so important is I. We had a vision when we started which was we wanted to live in Hawaii. We wanted to use real estate to build up passive income, to build up our reserves to where we could move to Hawaii. And then fast forward a year, we were doing pretty well and I get invited to a Maui Mastermind that Brandon is hosted, hosting. And I don't know Brandon at all at this time, but I'm like, we're going to go out there because I've been listening to Brandon for the last three years. He was kind of the reason that I got into real estate. And so I go out to Maui and the, the very first night we have a little get together at Brandon's house. And then the next day, the very first session at the Maui Mastermind is a guy named Rich Fecke. And he takes you through this five year vision and, and essentially he sits there and it's like everybody close your eyes. And it sounds kind of, it sounds a little weird, but he's like go fast forward, fast forward five years into the future. And he's like, imagine the house that you're, you're looking at. And like you walk up the stairs and you knock on the door and you open it and the person on the other side of the door is you in five years. And he really takes the time of like in detail. What does the house look like? What, what does that, that future you look like? What does the future you talk like, act like. And, and because I was at Brandon's house the night before, I was envisioning Brandon's house in my. I'm living in St. Louis at the time, but I was imagining like this Brandon's house, beautiful view of the ocean, sea, shed, ohana. I was just imagining that house. And so then from that point on, every single morning I start having coffee with myself and going and visiting myself five years in the future at Brandon's house. Like it's my house in that video. Like I'm sitting there talking to the five year vision of myself who is financially well in a great spot, loves his wife, loves his kids and I'm just envisioning that person. And what that did was over the course of these last couple of years, it realigned every single day. Like hey, if I want to be that person, I've got to work hard, I've got to love my wife, I've got to love my kids, I've got to work on myself. And so I'm doing that every single morning over these last five years is just going and meeting myself this future vision of, of what I want to be. And I think that's so important for people that are getting into real estate or anything, where if you don't have a vision of where you want to go, you're going to wander around aimlessly. And so I had this very clear vision of here's what I want. And so I started heading towards that at 100 miles an hour. So now fast forward a couple more years and my wife and I, we've done probably three or four hundred deals at this point. We have the money to move to Maui. So we move out here to Maui. I don't know Brandon very well at the time, but move out here to Maui and meet, you know, start hanging out with Brandon. And our real estate business has taken off. Everything's been really cool, a lot of fun. Brandon asked me to be a co host on his podcast, which I think is just a full circle moment where it's like literally from 20, from the, the time of like the fall of 2018 to, till then I'd been riding like, live in Maui, live in Maui, live in Maui. And, and we ended up moving out to Maui. And then from 2021, I'm, I'm envisioning myself in this beautiful house overlooking the ocean and it's all like coming together in this wild, wild way. And, and one of the fun parts of this story is I had been literally for the last, since 2021, envisioning myself living in Brandon's house and, well, buying Brandon's house. And it's my house. And a really fun part of this story is when I was first Starting Real Estate 2018, I listened to Brandon in the sea shed talking about living in Maui. And last week we, we bought Brandon's house from him. And I'm shooting this. Yeah, this is in the se shed. So if you ever watch bigger pockets in the se shed, this is the se shed. And, and so I, I, I love this story just because of what real estate can do for you and what real estate did for me, where it's like I set this vision for our, our, our lives and for, for my family's life. And, and then we ran 100 miles an hour towards that vision and it ended up working out. It would have still been amazing if we didn't buy Brandon's house. But I think it's a really fun story of what having that mindset and that vision can do for you. So that's a. That's a long answer to your question about my story. But. But I wanted to share it because it's a. It's. It's fun for me. And we just. We just closed on it, so that is insane.
- [16:45]
Jaron Sustar
So we got a dude who's a youth pastor making $40,000 a year. Had a kid, realized, dude, I got to be able to provide for my family, which happens to a lot of ministers. I have noticed this is something that a lot of them go through, because a lot of times you just don't make a lot of money in the ministry. And they're like, holy crap, I got to provide for my family. Goes. Starts doing real estate. Do it for a couple months during COVID And you're like, holy crap, we just made a lot of money. We did 30 deals in three to four months. You're like, I'm going all in. Chips are going all in. I want to create a life of my dreams, which is living in Hawaii. You envision it for five years, take the actionable steps, and today, not only do you live in Hawaii, but you literally now are either do or you're about to live in the house that you envisioned of living. So we bought. We live in a simulation.
- [17:41]
Cameron Cathcart
It feels like, yeah, we bought the house that I have literally been going to. And I know this sounds corny, but I've been going to and having coffee at this house with the future version of myself every single day since 2021. We. We bought that house that I was going to, and it's. It's wild. And we. We. It doesn't make sense. But a couple other things, like, when you're. When I. When. When I'm doing that, and I think everybody should do it, even though it sounds really corny, is. I'm also envisioning, like, you know, in that. In that scenario, I'm financially in a great spot. I love my. My wife. I love my kids. And so then every single day, I'm realigning myself with what are the actions that I need to take today that align with that future vision of myself. And that means that, like, hey, I'm present with my kids. I'm loving towards my wife. I'm asking for forgiveness and forgiving my wife. When we are butting heads, like, I'm doing the things that I'M supposed to be doing because I know that the future vision of myself is in that spot. And so it aligns my day with who do I want to be? And then I'm going to take those exact actions that I need to take to be that person, if that makes sense at all.
- [18:55]
Jaron Sustar
Totally amazing. Yeah, this is absolutely blows my mind. Cool. So I want to dig in more. And after the break, we're going to talk about the tactical steps you took to be able to do all those real estate deals.
- [19:05]
Cameron Cathcart
Awesome.
- [19:07]
Jaron Sustar
Hey guys. Jaron Sustar, host of the Rich Dad Real Estate show and the Jaron Sussar show here. If you're brand new and are serious serious about getting into real estate this year, or if you have a few properties and are serious about scaling your current portfolio, I've got something special for you. The Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor dad and I put together a free ebook that walks you step by step through how to buy your first or next investment property. Whether you're a complete beginner or you've done a few deals already, this guide is action packed with proven strategies and and tips that can help make you a smarter investor and make better investment choices. In this book, we're going to break down everything from finding the right property to finance and options and we even give you insight into how the pros are managing their real estate portfolios in today's market. And the best part, it's completely free. All you have to do is head to the link in the show notes below or go to your first property co to download it right now. I believe 2025 is going to be one of the best years for real estate investing that we've seen in recent history and I do not want you to miss out. Plus, your future self is counting on you to make good decisions today so that they can live a great life later. So go to your first property co or click the link down in the show notes to grab your free ebook today. Welcome back to the Rich Dad Real Estate show where we're talking about the good news and bad news of real estate with Cameron Cathcart. Cameron, we were talking about setting vision before the break and I, I mean that is, I hadn't heard that story. Obviously it hadn't unfolded completely when I saw you in October. I think I said I saw you in Denver. It was Utah. Sorry, great time. But that is just, is absolutely cool. And I, I, I was teaching our students, we were doing a goal setting call a couple weeks ago and you've heard These statistics, but I have them written down on this paper in front of me. I don't know why it's sitting here, but now I can use these Data points. Only 30% of the population sets goals. Out of the 30% that set goals, 1%, only 1% of those actually write them down. But based on data, if you write them down, you're 42% more likely to achieve goals compared to if you don't write it down. So we got 30%. Only 30% are even writing them, or, excuse me, even coming up with goals. One percent of those are writing them down, and they're almost. They're increasing their chances of accomplishing them by 42%. Right. And it's like me and you both are Christians. We were talking about faith earlier. Habakkuk2. 2. Write the vision and make it plain. I think it's very simple. Write the vision and make it plain. There is power in deciding what we want and then putting a plan together to go and accomplish it. Now, one thing that I would add, being a believer, is I think it's very important to coincide what we want with what God wants for us. And when we're doing both of those things and we're following his plan, then we go and we execute it. But once we know what that is and you knew what it was, we have to. We have to write that down, and then we have to take the actionable steps. Things don't just happen. Right. Not only did you do mindset, which is very important, I struggle with mindset. It takes a lot of discipline for me to do it just with my personality, but I've learned that it's very important. And that type of discipline, whether it's a spiritual discipline or just a mindset, discipline is very, very huge for your future. You were doing that every day, but then also you went out and you did the nitty gritty. You're finding those deals, you're wholesaling deals, you're flipping deals, you're getting rentals. And you didn't just wait around and say, oh, it's gonna. My blessings coming to me. My blessings coming. You said, no, go make it happen. Yeah, I think that's. That's pretty awesome.
- [22:56]
Cameron Cathcart
Yeah. So, yeah, I wrote down my goals twice a day, every morning and night. And then I would go visit myself in the future when those goals had been accomplished. So, like, three times. Three times a day. Really?
- [23:09]
Jaron Sustar
Yep. That's. That's what that does. I'm. I don't believe in, and I'm going to open up a can of worms here. I don't necessarily believe in manifestation.
- [23:18]
Cameron Cathcart
Neither do I.
- [23:19]
Jaron Sustar
So, you know, y'all beat me up in the comments, but I think that you can put your mindset in a place to allow yourself to go accomplish goals that you want to set. So you did that. So I want to talk about tactical. Like, all right, you got this youth pastor who's making $40,000 a year, and then all of a sudden, he does 30 deals in two to three months. How in the world does that happen? Walk us through. Like, bro, how. And you can even start with the first property if you want, or the first profitable, and then we can talk about how you scale from there. But, like, what types of properties are we looking for? What was your go to methods of finding those? How'd you fund them all? The nitty gritty.
- [23:56]
Cameron Cathcart
Yeah, yeah. And. And it kind of goes back to what you just said. I don't believe in manifestation either. Like, even though all of that happened, I don't.
- [24:03]
Jaron Sustar
I.
- [24:03]
Cameron Cathcart
The reason that it happened is because I put in the work. But. And I think the reason that I put in the work was because I had this. This. This goal for our family, and I knew that every single day I had to put in the work to get there. And so. So I want to be really clear with people. Like, it wasn't like I was just envisioning this, and it just kind of all fell into place. No, every. I was working crazy hours when I first started, and. And I still work a lot of hours. I'm not this person that's like, oh, I've got my. My. My team built, and I don't. I don't do anything anymore. No, I work a lot still, but I love it. I really enjoy it. But when it. When I first started. So. First house we bought from a bigger wholesaling company, and. And I think that the. The first house is a good. Just picture of your. Your first deal doesn't always have to be a home run, because ours for sure was not where I bought it. And I think we bought it around $130,000. And I thought it was going to be a $300,000 house. And honestly, it probably would have been a $300,000 house. Um, but I had a. This is going to take us. Cost us 35, $40,000 to get to a $300,000 house. And we had a contractor come through there, and the. The very first thing he told me was like, hey, what were you thinking? Was the rehab? And I said, you know, $40,000. And he said it's going to be about triple that to do what you want to do here, which like take out walls, redo kitchens, redo bathrooms. He's like the, he's like, I, I, you're gonna lose money if you try and rehab this house the way that you want to rehab it. And so immediately my heart sank and I was like, oh my goodness, what did I just do? I just made the biggest financial decision of my life and, and, and I, I made the wrong one. And so that is when we bought an air mattress and we moved into the house and we did the work ourselves and we.
- [26:01]
Jaron Sustar
Didn't you sell your previous house?
- [26:03]
Cameron Cathcart
Well, I didn't have a house at the time. I was, we were living at Lexi's parents house. Yeah, so, so yeah, I kind of skipped over that. But I was in Denver when, when, when we, when I was a youth pastor and when I decided, hey, we want to get into real estate, I didn't know anything about real estate at all. I didn't know, didn't know that I could have done probably what I did in St. Louis and Denver. And so we, I took a job as a teaching pastor at a church back in St. Louis and we moved in the summer of 2019 back to St. Louis and was going to invest in, in real estate. And part of that move was we lived in Lexi's parents house then because we grew up in St. Louis and so we didn't have a house. So moved in family and love. Yeah. And we, we painted the walls, refinished the cabinets. We didn't do a full, like, we didn't do the rehab that I wanted to do to it, like, which was taking out walls and, and opening it up. Because it was a house built in like 1913, I think. We didn't do that. We just, it was a lipstick remodel, but we ended up selling it for I think $210,000. And we, we probably put in, probably put in like 35 to $40,000 worth of work, which was originally my original rehab budget. And then if you had paid us for labor, it would have been a lot more. And we, we ended up honestly after, after just supplies and we did hire some stuff out that we didn't know how to do, like electrical and some plumbing and whatnot. We broke even on that house. But again, I, I think that that was what like got us super excited because it, it showed that we could do it. And I think that was really important to us is like we, we Knew after that, hey, we can do it. We didn't make money on this, but we can do this. And also we learned that, we learned so much over that process of like, hey, what does, what does hard money look like? What does private money look like? What does setting up insurance, utilities, all of these things that you have to know. Like we learned that in that, in that first deal and it's kind of like we were, we were paying for knowledge. And also we broke even, so we didn't have to pay for it, but we broke even for, for knowledge. And after that one we decided, hey, we're going to, we're going to kind of go for it. And so then we bought our second one that we bought from another wholesaling company and, and that one went really, really well. And then we just started buying houses left and right. But one of the things that I personally got really, really great at was finding deals. And so if you want like the tactical of how we built our business, my wife and I, we built it together. So it wasn't just a one man show, it was me and my wife and we had a really great synergy where my job was literally everything until the contract assigned. And then she would handle contract to close and she was our project manager. And so I got really, really great at finding deals. And at the beginning we weren't doing direct to seller marketing. And so my job was I, I found leads, what I call from, from connectors and that is wholesalers, real estate agents, property management companies, probate attorneys, senior living facilities, junk removal companies, mold remediation companies, anybody that comes across a distressed house potentially. Like I wanted them to know who I was and I wanted them to be the, I wanted to be the first person that they called. And so I was at every meetup in St. Louis. I was there with my business cards. I was the first one to show up, the last one to leave. Shaking hands. Honestly like that, the. Being a pastor served me really well in this because that, that's what I used to do. Like I would just, you know, at the church, I was in the lobby shaking hands, talking to people, smiling. You know, I was, that, that was my thing as a pastor. And so I just would do that at meetups and I would, I would make relationships with people. Then the next day I would, I would have a stack of business cards, I would go through them, I'd call them all personally, thank them for the conversation the night before, I'd ask them to go out to coffee, meet with them, I would tell them hey, here's what I'm looking for. If you have anything, let me know. And I, I just got leads being fed to me from that and, and I, I really built that system out really well. Where I had, we used podio and I had in my podio like here are the, here are the like what I call the platinum connectors. And those would be probably more so wholesalers and real estate agents, the ones that I'm going to buy a lot of houses from. And then I had my, my and so those people I'm talking to multiple times a week, pocket listings a lot from real estate agents and then the wholesalers, what they have like direct, direct to seller because a lot of them were doing direct seller marketing. And then I had my, my, my gold level connectors which I might buy let's say five houses a year from those people. And I'm talking to those people once, once every, once every couple of weeks. And then I had my, my silver level and I'm talking to those once a month. And those people I might buy one to two houses from a year. And then I had my, my what I would call which hey, I might buy a house from them, I might not, but they're good to be in my network. And those I'm talking to once a quarter. And so I had that in my podium. So I would follow up every single day. First thing I would do is I'd sit down and I would make sure that I'm going through that entire list of doing my follow ups. And from doing that, man, I got so many leads. And so I think there's this in the, in the single family space especially there's this thought that oh, I can't be successful unless I do direct to seller marketing. And I, I think that couldn't be farther from the truth. I think most people, the, the, the connector leads is the way that you should start. And then once you start making money, yeah, you can put money into direct mail or cold calling or ppc, ppl, whatever it is you want to put into. But you can find deals just from your community and from your network.
- [32:07]
Jaron Sustar
Dude, I've done it all. And there's no better way to get leads in my opinion than what you're saying, than through the connectors. And it's free. It's free. People are like, I don't have money to pay for deals, don't pay for them. Go make connections, do everything you just said. It is literally completely free to just take some sweat equity. And I'm telling you Man, I've, we've done ppc, I've hired cold call, I've done it all. And you can, there's deals that come from all of them, but those connector leads are absolutely fantastic. I've got three, I was telling you before the show, I got three deals I'm working right now for a total of 26 units. I hope to have them. I'll have two locked up today and I hope to have the third locked up by the end of the week. One of them came from an investor friendly agent from a brokerage that I'm friends with that I built a relationship with over time. It was a pocket lead. They brought it to me, another investor owned it. While I was running comps on it, I saw 15 other homes listed for sale in that area and I was like, that's kind of odd. I bet it's an investor because I was trying to find comps and I look, it was an investor owns 15 units called a lady and they're trying to sell a portfolio. So that's mls, right. And then the third was the only one that came from direct to sell marketing. I was driving by a home that looked, I think it was like vacant or whatever and hit send mail and they called me back. And so two out of my three are just connectors or from literally being listed on the Internet. And that is 24 units right there. And so I've been doing this a long time. You've been doing this a long time. Combined, we've done a lot of different deals. You don't have to get fancy. It just takes some relationship. Everything. Every business is based on trust and relationships. And so if you'll take the time to build the relationships with the players who are already in the game and then build that trust over time and then actually do deals. When numbers make sense, dude, you can get fed really, really well. You can fed good enough to move to Maui. Yeah, even you know, my, my first.
- [34:09]
Cameron Cathcart
Year we did not do direct to seller marketing and did over a hundred, 100 houses. Yeah. And that's not completely true because I took a job too with another like a bigger wholesaling company. I think you know him, Sam. And so I was working with Sam and he was doing some direct seller marketing. So but I, I probably bought 70 houses my first year just straight from connectors. And, and so you, you can do that, you, you can make a lot of money just from connectors. And I think like when we're talking about connectors, a lot of people, they, they don't Understand, like, it doesn't mean, hey, I, I, you know, found these. A bunch of people on Facebook, and I sent out a. A. A blast text message saying, hey, do you have any deals? No, that. That's not how I've done it. It's. I'm making relationships with all of them. I'm building personal relationships to make them know, like, and trust me. And so then when they come across a deal, they want to sell that to me. Like, a really a fun story. And this was, in my first year, one of my biggest deals ever. It was a. I. I don't remember how many houses within the portfolio, but it was from a property management company. And so one day I was sitting around, I was like, who. Who would have deals that they could sell me? And that was the fun part about connector leagues. Leads, too, is, like, when. When I'm not having leads come in. Like, it's creative. Like, who potentially is coming across deals that they could potentially sell you? And so I was.
- [35:46]
Jaron Sustar
I.
- [35:46]
Cameron Cathcart
In my mind, I was like, property management companies, they have clients that have portfolios that want to sell their houses all the time. And so I went and drove around to all the property management companies in St. Louis, introduced myself, and just said, hey, if any of your clients ever want to sell their portfolio, I would love to know about it before you list on the market or anything like that. There was this one lady that I talked to, and she was super nice, and she was telling me about how on Tuesday nights that she plays in a senior, senior women's softball league, and then afterwards they go to Applebee's, and. And all of the. The ladies, you know, get margaritas and, you know, have dinner together. And so she's just. We're just having conversation. And I remember that. And so the. The next Tuesday, I went to Applebee's and I bought a $25 gift card, and I went to her office and I handed to her, and I was like, hey, thank you so much for the conversation last week. I wanted to buy your dinner tonight. And it gave her the Applebee's gift card. Three days. Two or three days later, she calls me and she has this. This package where she had a. Actually somebody who didn't live in the country owned this portfolio of houses that wanted to sell it. And I ended up locking it up and wholesaling it for a $70,000 spread. And that just goes back to, like, being a good person, getting to know people, investing in people's lives. And. And that will come back to you.
- [37:04]
Jaron Sustar
And.
- [37:04]
Cameron Cathcart
And that's how I've made my money in real estate.
- [37:09]
Jaron Sustar
It's all relationship based. I love that story. Going the extra mile, doing a little bit more than the, than the next person and caring for people will open so many doors for you. And that's a lesson in life no matter what industry you're in. How did you do a lot of funding of these deals? I know you wholesaled a lot. So you guys, when you go to find these deals through connectors, direct sale or direct to mark seller and then, you know, sometimes you would sell them off, but the ones you kept, how did you go about funding, let's say your flips?
- [37:35]
Cameron Cathcart
Yeah. So a lot of that was hard money. There's a, in St. Louis, there's an incredible company, they only lend in St. Louis, but it's called faster funds lending. And if you found a deal deep enough, they would lend 100% of the purchase and the rehab if you were at 70%. And because I was buying everything off market, got really good at finding deals, I would find a lot of deals that match that criteria. So I didn't have to bring any money to the table on a lot of these deals. But so, so I used faster funds. And then I also was able to. One of the things I'm really good at is just building relationships. And so I was able to, to build up a pretty substantial amount, about a million dollars in private money really quickly. And so I would use private money at times if I couldn't get the funding from the hard money lender, or sometimes if I was over that 70% mark where I was at like 75, 78% and I needed some sort of gap funding, I would use private money to cover that gap funding and then I would use hard money for the rest.
- [38:37]
Jaron Sustar
There's so much funding available. It's one of the things I stress often is it's plentiful, it's, it's almost unlimited. And so I preach, if you can get good at finding good deals, the money will come as long as you're not a terrible person and you build those relationships. And if you're taking the time to find, to build relationships to find deals, then there's a good chance that you're going to end up running into someone outside of a hard money lender. Hard money lenders are companies who will lend to you for deals. But being able to build those relationships with a private lender or two, which is somebody in your network, whether it's friends, family, co workers, acquaintances who will also lend to you as well. And I'll tell you, man, just having one of those to start can completely change your life. And then the more deals you do, the more reputation, the more your reputation grows. And then people start literally coming to you. I have a lot of people that I work with make high incomes that reach out to me all the time. Hey, when you gonna let me get on in on a deal? Because they know that I know what I'm doing. It's interesting how the doors open over time, but at the beginning it's just like finding deals. Let's get out there, build those relationships, earn trust and then, dude, once you have funding, man, oh man. Dude, it's a rockmanship, dude.
- [39:52]
Cameron Cathcart
And you said this and it's exactly because I think the question that I get the most from new investors is how do I fund deals? And my response is if you have a good deal, the money is easy. Honestly never struggled with finding money. I've struggled with finding deals at times, but I've never struggled with finding money because if I have a good deal, the money's easy to get. A hard money lender is lend on it. It's easy to bring in gap funding for that 10, 15, $20,000, whatever it may be that I need because it's a good deal and I can show them on paper like, hey, here, here's the, here's the purchase price, here's the rehab, here's the arv, here's our, our safety net if it doesn't sell where, where I want it to sell at or if the rehab goes over. And I, I've never struggled with money, but I think that's because I've always been really good at finding deals.
- [40:46]
Jaron Sustar
I love it. Cam, thanks for being on today. I got one last question. It's kind of off topic of real estate, but it's all, it's some. It's a question that I think about often and I love to ask thought provoking questions. Maybe if they don't completely do a real estate. So when it comes to faith and money.
- [41:01]
Cameron Cathcart
Yes.
- [41:02]
Jaron Sustar
How does one balance? And how would you talk with somebody who's struggling with, hey, how do I, how do I strive for more? How do I want, like, want to achieve more, buy real estate, build wealth without crossing that line of loving money and keeping my focus on the main things? And that could be, even if you aren't a faith driven person, there's other things in life that you could be allowing money or success to pull you away from. I live in a small town and so talking about money is taboo anyways. And so you can imagine I'm in this fishbowl in the Southeast, and I have a. I don't have a large brand, but I got a big enough brand where everybody in town kind of knows this guy, likes to talk about money in real estate, right? And so you can kind of get a stigma about you, which is fine. I know in my heart how I feel about success and money, so. So it doesn't bother me, but it makes me think thoughts of like, okay, how do. How do we teach people to be able to balance both of these without going too far in the wrong direction of chasing things that are all going to wither away one day?
- [42:07]
Cameron Cathcart
Dude, that's. That's such a great question. And we could do an entire podcast on that question. But the.
- [42:14]
Jaron Sustar
What.
- [42:14]
Cameron Cathcart
What I would say, first of all, I struggled with that, especially when I first started, because you always hear the.
- [42:20]
Jaron Sustar
The.
- [42:21]
Cameron Cathcart
Especially in. In the Christian, you know, religious background, like the. The story of the rich young ruler where he says, you know, it's harder for. Oh, why am I blanking on this? For a wealthy man to camel to go through the Nile of the needle than for a wealthy man to. To enter into the kingdom of heaven. And, and so I, I always struggled with that. But honestly, as. As when you read the Bible as a whole, you see multiple times where, like, dude, some of like the absolute studs for the kingdom of God were also the richest men in the world. Like, you've got Job, you've got David, you've got Solomon, you've got Moses, you've got. I mean, yeah, Abraham, you've got time and time again where it is these very wealthy men that are doing incredible things for the kingdom. And so I, I honestly don't think that that's true. I do think that the love of money is. Is. Is tough. You.
- [43:17]
Jaron Sustar
You.
- [43:18]
Cameron Cathcart
And so for me, I guess what. What I have decided is like, as long as I'm aligned with what I believe God is calling me to do, and as long as I'm continuing to give back and as long as I'm continuing to bring other people with me, like, then I feel. I feel good about it. And one of. One of the things that I would say with that is, like, I 100% believe that God calls us to be our best in every single thing that we do, and that is naturally a lot of times going to be rewarded with some sort of financial increase. Like, if you are the best at your job is even if you're a Janitor at a school. And you're the best at it. You're going to get promoted, and you're going to get promoted and you're going to get promoted and money is going to follow that. If you are the best, like in real estate, what I'm doing and, and I'm working hard because I believe that God calls us to work hard. You're going to be rewarded for that. And there's this incredible parable in the, in the Bible where it's called the parable of the talents, where in this ruler he gives three guys a talent, let's just say gives three guys 100 bucks or a thousand bucks. I don't know what it correlates with to, in today's money. But, and one guy, he goes and buries that money and one guy goes and doubles it. And I think one guy goes in 10x is it? And then years later they come back to the ruler and the guy that buries money gives back the $100 in the, in the ruler is very unhappy with him. And then the guy who doubles it, and I'm, I'm butchering this story, but he, and I don't remember what the, the, the ruler says the guy who doubles the money, but the guy who 10x is the money, the, the king looks at him and, and super proud of him and says, like, well done, my good and faithful servant. And, and I believe, like, if we are doing what God has called us to do, like, we need to be multiplying time and time again. And so, so I, I, I want that for my life. I want that for my family. I want that for my business. I want to continue to multiply and to grow because healthy things grow. And if, if I am healthy, spiritually, relationally, emotionally, my business is going to grow and my finances are going to continue to grow. And to, to be honest, like, things is, is you have to, you have to look at yourself and, and, and realize, like, if all of that got taken away from me tomorrow, I promise you I would still be the same person I am right now. And I think that's where that, that my identity is not in money. My identity is not in that I live in Hawaii. My identity is not in that I have a, you know, $15 million rental portfolio. My identity is not in any of that. My identity is in Christ and, and my family and being a good dad. And money is just this thing that is happening because I work hard and, and, and I'm, I'm growing our company. But if that got taken away for some reason, I would not change at all. And so I think that's, that's the delineating factor is like, I, I don't care about money, but I work hard, and because of that, the money comes.
- [46:50]
Jaron Sustar
I think, yeah, it makes sense. And I think wealth can help actually remove selfishness if you allow it. Think about this. If you are broke, you're constantly, from a financial standpoint, having to think about yourself, how am I going to provide for myself? How am I going to do this for my family? When you have wealth, as long as you're a good person, you can now stop thinking so inwardly in that particular area of your life and go bless others. Because I think people who have been blessed are in a position and almost have a mandate to go help those who are as fortunate. Cameron, it's been fantastic having you on the show today, man. Where can people get a hold of you if they want to learn more from you?
- [47:29]
Cameron Cathcart
Yeah, I think the. The best option is probably just Instagram. So it's Cam. C A M Cathcart. C A T H C A R T. Follow me on there and. And shoot me a DM if you want to chat more.
- [47:40]
Jaron Sustar
Awesome, Cam. Thanks for being on, dude. You're awesome. Love hanging out with you. And I hope to do this again soon.
- [47:46]
Cameron Cathcart
Dude, I'd love that. It's been a blast.
- [47:49]
Jaron Sustar
Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the Rich Dad Real Estate show where I talk with Cameron Cathcart. And he went from being a youth pastor to doing over 500 deals in real estate and absolutely changing his life and living the life of his dreams in Hawaii. You can't beat that. Guys, thank you for tuning in. If you haven't already, grab the free ebook that Robert and I put together for you guys. How to buy your first next investment property. It's going to give you everything you need to succeed in real estate in 2025. Thank you.
- [48:15]
Cameron Cathcart
This podcast is a presentation of Rich Dad Media Network.