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Cody Sperber
So I bought a building for 4.25 million and at that time I owed a couple million dollars in taxes. I could have taken my millions that I had saved up to pay my taxes and paid my taxes, or I could take my same millions and go put it down as a down payment, plus use some leftover money to repair the building and improve the property. And then I did what's called a cost segregation study on the whole building and all the improvements I made. And then I accelerated that depreciation from accelerating my four and a half million dollar building into the first year. Wiped out over $2 million in taxes. But I still own the building.
Dan
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. As you guys know, we typically have this podcast inside of an RV motorhome for over 110 episodes. However, these last five episodes have been done here in the studio called Move. Why? Why am I here? Why am I doing a studio when I'm always doing instead of a motorhome? Because we're in Miami. Just through six events over the course of three days, which is insane. And a lot of the speakers are here and one of them has been my dear friend. He's been part of speaking at Masterminds, hosting his own masterminds, hosting his own summits, 2000 person conferences left and right for many, many years. And he's been getting deep into other types of businesses. He has a flooring company, he has a commercial development company doing like $155 million. He's got so many things going on. And so without further ado, I'm going to have Cody Sperber, the clever investor, give you a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
Cody Sperber
Well, first off, thanks for having me on. Appreciate you, brother. Yeah, I've been in real estate 22 years, done every type of deal under the sun. Under the sun. Thousands of transactions. Started off with no money down, really small houses built my way up to, you know, doing big commercial development deals. Like you mentioned, that was a very nice intro. We got a lot of commercial development going on right now. We're really in three main areas. Affordable housing, land, entitlement, and then large developments where we're actually working with a lot of quick service, drive thru, massive chains, the things that you've all heard of, the Chipotle and the Farmer Boys and Chick Fil A's of the world and that kind of thing. And we're helping them find locations, working with the city and then getting their buildings built so they can run their businesses so that's on the real estate side of things. I started Clever Investor, the online education brand in 2009. That's what a lot of people on social media know me as. Just started teaching people how I was doing what I was doing and that was supposed to be something small on the side. I just love talking about real estate and it grew into one of the largest online education brands and had about 85,000 students come through that, which has been a real blessing because I love real estate and I love what it's done for me and my family and I love talking about it. So it was a match made in heaven. And then recently I took some of my real estate monies and my education monies and I started a business called Floor Daddy. And we're literally selling flooring, which is a whole new industry. But all of the things I learned in growing my other companies apply towards this industry as well. And I'm really passionate about it because everybody has floors. Not everybody wants to learn how to flip a house or do a real estate deal. Although they should want to know a lot about real estate because I haven't paid taxes in years. But everybody's got floors. And I love businesses that are kind of future proof AI is not going to disrupt them. And that's are very scalable that everybody can be my customer.
Dan
So on the Money Mondays we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. On the make money side, how can people make money in real estate? I know it's an open ended question because there's 15 different ways.
Cody Sperber
Where, well, where are you starting? Where what's your passion? And if you, if you got a lack of funds but a lot of hustle and you're willing to put in some work to increase your skills and capabilities, you can start like I did, wholesaling houses. That's no money down real estate. There's a lot of creative real estate strategies out there. Wholesaling is one of them. Taking over somebody's mortgage is a great way to get into a deal. Getting the seller to. There's. There's a tremendous amount of free and clear properties out there and there's softwares that literally tell you, here's one, here it is. You could do a quick search and, and get every free and clear property in your local area. And if you approach those sellers and say, hey, will you be my bank? Will you participate in giving me the funding I need to buy your property off you? Maybe they're retiring as a landlord, but they still like the cash flow. There's a deal to be worked out there, so you gotta squat up with somebody that's teaching this stuff. My favorite educators beside myself at Clever Investor would be like a Pace Morby, good friend of ours. He's great at teaching. You know, I, I try to find people that have great communities and that are very passionate about teaching because it's, it's an art form to teach. You know, you gotta, it's not about the money for me. I don't really care about. I, we make money naturally just because we're passionate about it. And so I would squat up with somebody like that, that has a good community and just get started and don't overthink it. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just get out there, make some calls, make some offers. You'd be surprised. My first deal, I made $40,000 and changed my life. And I never looked back since then.
Dan
So when you mentioned wholesaling, what the heck is that?
Cody Sperber
Well, it's kind of the we buy uglies houses concept.
Dan
I see that billboard everywhere.
Cody Sperber
Yeah, so. Well, what are they doing with their properties? Well, they' the way it works is if you look down any American street right now, it doesn't matter which 1, 85, 90% of the houses and the owners that own those homes, they're not motivated at all. They got good jobs, they're, you know, they're financially stable and they're just living their lives. If they go to sell, they're going to sell through a real estate agent, they're going to take their time, they're going to try to get top dollar, whatever. But 10 to 15 of those homeowners at any given time, life is going to run them over, right? Death, divorce, inheriting an unwanted property, fire damage, flood damage, old ugly house, doesn't qualify for a new loan, whatever. Well, when that happens, historically Americans are pretty bad savers. And so all the money that they have is trapped in their house. And so if you can learn some skills on how to market yourself to get out in front of those people when they have one of those problem properties or personal financial problems, and you show up and say, hey, I can help you get that money out of your house very quickly. You don't have to pay commissions, you don't have to wait three months to sell it traditionally, and then you can put a work out a deal to put their house under contract. When you put their house under contract, even though you haven't bought it yet, you now control their real estate and we can take that contract and I can go to a guy like you, Dan, that's got more money than time and you're looking for good investments. And I can say, hey Dan, I got this house, it's worth 250,000, but it needs a ton of work. I'm into it for 175. I'll give it to you for 185. Would you be interested in it? And you might say 185, that's a smoking deal. I'll take that deal because not only will I rehab it, I'm gonna rip off the back side of the house, put a new another bedroom bathroom. And I don't even think it's worth 250. I think it's worth 275 or 2, 300, whatever. And it's a perfect deal for you. So I become a middleman, a matchmaker. I take the motivated seller and I take the cash buyer and I work the deal and I put them together and I get paid a whole wholesale fee, AKA an assignment fee for putting the deal together. And you don't need a real estate license to do this. That's what's great because you're doing this on your own behalf. That's the workaround on why you don't need a license.
Dan
Very cool.
Cody Sperber
Yeah.
Dan
All right. On the make money side, you've got a business that is doing so well in commercial real estate. You have your education business. Why get into floors? Why start Floor daddy?
Cody Sperber
Yeah, well, I, I have became one of the biggest, best marketers just by necessity. And starting in 2009, you know, social media was just starting to come around and buying ads on social media and funnels and copyright and all this stuff. And I had to teach myself how to become a marketer and I became pretty good at it. And we made a over $150 million selling education online through my clever investor brand. But there is a ceiling to it. And I have these amazing skills of starting and scaling businesses. I got these great marketing skills. But I was, I was looking for a vehicle that was really big. I didn't want a vehicle where AI was going to disrupt it anytime soon. If your plumbing goes down, you're calling a plumber. If your roof has a leak, you're calling a roofer. There's certain industries that are, I don't want to say forever future proof. Maybe there'll be some Tesla robots, robots coming out. Yeah. But, but for a while where those, those businesses are tried, true boring businesses that haven't really Innovated or, or switched up their marketing angles yet. And here comes a guy like me. I don't know anything about flooring, although I've installed a lot of floors in my development projects. And I just saw this huge market and we called it Floor Daddy because I, I'm a branding guy and a marketing guy. I was like, let's make it memorable. Sexy floors, affordable pricing, quality install. We got a little jingle. It's a, it's a cool name. It's memorable. And then I was. My plan was just to outmarket everybody and build a really great team, scale it. And plus, the last reason I went into flooring is private equity. Loves it. It's a very sellable business because it's not based around a person. It's not like my clever investor brand. It's like based around Cody. Whereas Floor Daddy, I don't really work at Floor Daddy that much personally. I'm not on the front lines. I'm not installing floors. I'm, I'm running marketing and working with the team and the culture building. And that's a very cool business. And with. I have a great mentor in that business. His name is Tommy Mello. He, he owns A1 garage doors, one of the largest garage door repair companies in the country. Billion dollar evaluation, about to have a second exit. Great mentor for me. And we're like backwards engineering a sale. My whole plan is to scale this thing for five years and sell a portion of it to private equity, keep scaling, use, use that capital to keep scaling and then eventually maybe do it a second time. And I'm sick and tired of seeing my friends like you get rich. I want to be like you, Dan.
Dan
So the reason I have so many different companies and investments is because I have an operator, a CEO, a quarterback. When you started Florida, did you decide someone's going to run it? You just said you don't really run it. Yeah, I don't run any of my companies. I have a CEO or quarterback running each one. What did you decide when you were doing it?
Cody Sperber
Yeah, so first I, I squatted up. I found some great partners, brought in Tommy, gave him some equity and said, hey, I want you to guide us. I brought in a couple of my best friends that I've been friends with for 20 years that were really great human beings that had complimentary skills in me like operations skills, finance skills, those kind of things. I took over charge of the marketing. I immediately went out there and I don't want to say I stole because I didn't steal, but I Definitely did a good job enrolling one of the CMOs from our biggest competitor out there. And I said, what do you need to make in order to work for me? And he gave me a number. I said, done. And so I started building a team by bringing in other industry experts that have lots of experience, which cut our learning curve way down. And I'm also a very aggressive marketer. I'm willing to spend a lot of money, screw a bunch of stuff up, build systems very fast, throw a lot of resources and energy at things in order to go quick, because money loves speed. And I wanna, I don't want to be in the small phase for too long. When you're small, you, you, you die. You know, it. Everything is painful when you're small. And I've screwed everything up. I. We were going so fast. We're already doing, you know, over about 1.1 million a month right now. We're 10 months into this thing and I'm installing floors in the wrong houses. We're not doing subfloors right. I have to rip stuff up, give people free floors. Like, there's lots of challenges on the quality control install side when you're bringing in that many customers this fast. But I love it because we're learning a ton, we're building systems around it, and it's. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel where this thing's just going to get that exponential return.
Dan
So you keep mentioning marketing a lot. Why should people consider spending money on marketing.
Cody Sperber
Or more money flows where the energy goes? Maybe something like that. Yeah, I, I just, you know, you need to be the biggest cheerleader of yourself and your brand and your company at all times. And there's a lot of noise out there, people are distracted constantly. And so you got to kind of cut through that with the right messaging, the right hooks and the right repetitiveness. Like it, it's really you, you do get this exponential return on your marketing spend. And you have to be, have marketing stamina. You really have to keep doubling down, doubling down, doubling down, tweaking, testing, tracking until you get it right. And over time, especially with flooring, you don't know when your customer is going to need floors, but you got to have that jingle in their head. You got to have that messaging. I bet you right now I can go into Arizona and say, name three flooring companies. And before Floor daddy was around, they probably would have been able to name one, maybe two. And that's because they're on tv, they're on the billboards they got a jingle and then here comes floor daddy. Small little company I'm now competing with guys making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We're this little company and they're fearing us already. We got a fleet of cyber trucks, we got jingles, we got commercials, we got billboards. We're doing everything the big boys are doing and trust they're paying attention. And it's a good thing because our we're seeing the call volume scale every single month, month after month.
Dan
So I have a really serious question. So earlier you mentioned the Tesla robots coming into the house. Would you actually trust one with the power tools inside your house?
Cody Sperber
I think maybe, yeah. I don't know. That's a weird question. I don't, I own a Tesla and I don't even do the self driving, so I don't know if I would.
Dan
I wouldn't want a robot to hold power tools.
Cody Sperber
Yeah, that would be kind of a weird thing.
Dan
They learn so fast. I don't want them think about something nefarious.
Cody Sperber
Yeah, that would not be good.
Dan
All right, so we talked about the making money side a bit. Let's talk about the investing side. Why you mentioned earlier about not paying taxes and being able to do that through real estate, not just not paying taxes. You're doing it because of real estate implications. Can you walk us through that whole concept of like why should people considering buying a real estate and what that can do for their taxes?
Cody Sperber
Yeah, so there's something out there called depreciation. Right. And, and the government kind of tells you what they want you to focus on and you can depreciate a lot of assets, not just real estate, but with commercial real estate specifically, you could do this thing called a cost segregation study. So I bought a building for 4.25 million and at that time I owed a couple million dollars in taxes. And so I could have taken my millions that I had saved up to pay my taxes and paid my taxes. My millions got. My millions are gone, the government gets paid and I move on to make more money. Or I could take my same millions and go put it down as a down payment, plus use some leftover money to repair the building and improve the property and then rent that building out. This particular building was an 18, 000 square foot building with six different 3,000 square foot suites. And so we used some of the suites for our businesses and we rented out a bunch of the other suites. And then I did what's called a cost segregation study on the whole building and all the improvements I made and then I accelerated that depreciation. So instead of taking it over, say 37 years, I was able to take it in the first two or three years. And it's changed a little bit since I bought their bonus. Depreciation used to be at 100 when Trump first got in office. Now it's down TO I believe 60% or something like that. At least it was last year. And so your accountant will be able to tell you like how fast you can accelerate that depreciation, how much you can take in that first year. But I essentially wiped out all my taxes from accelerating my four and a half million dollar building into the first year. Wiped out over $2 million in taxes. But I still own the building, I still have the income from the building. Now let's say 10 years from now, I go to sell that building. There is some recapture of that, but hopefully by then I'm either in a lower tax bracket or I have another tax strategy that I can implement to make sure I don't pay taxes.
Dan
So on the investing side, people can invest into cryptocurrency, NFTs, businesses, small businesses, stock market. Why real estate? Why is that something you dedicated your life to, to focus on real estate?
Cody Sperber
Well, it's physical. I like that it's physical. It's tried and true. It's very proven. You know, there might be, it's kind of a future proof business because, you know, Uber wiped out taxi drivers, but at some point Uber drivers are screwed, right? Because they're going to have self driving cars way well, even if the car's flying, I don't really care. They're going to park it in a garage somewhere and go sleep somewhere. And so the, the real estate side of things always made a lot of sense to me. There's a lot of tax benefits for it. Financing is in place. There's a lot of laws, especially here in the United States, to protect your assets as long as you're not in a crazy state that, you know, where squatters can just live in your property for free forever. But yeah, it's just, and, and it's accessible to anybody. I know immigrants that come to this country that English is their third language. They have very little money to their name. They're, they're working as a dishwasher or whatever and they save, save, save, save, save. And they get in a duplex and they live in one unit and they rent out the other and eventually a few years later they sell that, they get into a fourplex and Live one on you. And then they keep house hacking their way up. Next thing you know, they're 25 years in, they got millions of dollars worth of real estate, they got huge apartment complexes and they're financially free. I love that. That's a vehicle that anybody can get in, no matter where you start.
Dan
That's really cool.
Cody Sperber
Yeah.
Dan
So on the investing side, people also need to invest into their minds. You know, we are both proponents of books, masterminds, courses. We buy them, subscribe to them, and we also own them. Both of us have them ourselves and we both speak at each other's events. And you've got Clever Summit, all these major events over the years. Why should people be investing into their minds?
Cody Sperber
Well, unfortunately, a lot of us aren't taught how to be successful. I think, you know, it's like you're doing the best you can with the resources and the knowledge and the environment you grew up in. But if you want more in life, more joy, more control, more freedom, more money, then you've already taken yourself as far as you've able to take yourself up to this point. Well, you get in proximity to somebody else, that's maybe, maybe you live in an apartment and you get around somebody that has a $300,000 house and you're hanging around people that are making 150 grand a year, you start to think that, well, what are you listening to? What are you reading? What do you do? What's your habits like? And you get exposed to another level of thinking. Well, eventually you're going to tap out there and maybe you say, well, I want a $500,000 house. I want a million dollar house. I want a $5 million house. Every time I put myself to, in proximity to somebody playing the game at the next level, it exposed me to a new set of principles. And it's up to me, nobody's coming to save us. It's up to me to put in that work. It's up to me to invest in myself. And we've all heard like, you know, the best money you can ever spend is on your own self education. Because it's true, you're going to increase your skills and capabilities. You're going to add more value. And yes, there is a moment. I'll end with this. There is a moment when you put yourself like, let's say I'm making $500,000 a year, which is more money than our parents ever made. And we're feeling like, wow, we're doing really good. And then we get around somebody making 2 million a year. There's going to be a moment when you're trying to push yourself into that next level where you actually go backwards for a while because you're new. It's scary. There's more things to learn, there's more things you're going to screw up. But that's exactly when you know you're in the right place. You're pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. You're kind of feeling like, God, this isn't happening on my timeframe. It's not having fast enough. Maybe I'm screwing up, whatever that self limiting belief is. But the reality is you're doing all the right moves because then you're going to springboard forward and all of a sudden level up. And that's a beautiful thing because your kids are watching, your family's watching, your spouse is watching, your people are watching. And it's up to you to be the leader and set the standard and remind everybody else of their shortcomings. So that way they want to level up as well.
Dan
So Garrett White and us, we just announced the man in the arena tour. It's coming out May 17th at the Maverick Center. We're have thousands and thousands of men in that room to hopefully change their lives. And then September in Miami, December in Phoenix. In your area, you've invested a lot into Clever Summit. These are 2000 person, give or take, 400 people, 1600 20, 400 people, et cetera. Let's just call it 2000 people size events year after year after year. Last year you kind of retired it. I think you're gonna bring it back. We don't have to unveil that right now, but I think you're gonna bring it back at some point because you should. It's just a great name, a great brand. Why do you invest so much money? Time and energy? Because it takes months of headache and energy to go fill up 2000 people. Why did you do it and why is it important for people to attend events like Clever Summit?
Cody Sperber
Yeah, let's start with the benefit for the people. I do it because when you're standing on stage and you're looking out in that crowd and I've had thousands of people attend my events, I've spoken on tons of stages over the last 15 years. When I look out in the crowd and I see the eyes of the people and I'm able to shake their hands after we get done speaking and meet them and hear their stories, it's so inspiring to know that I was that person. I got on a plane Scared to death. I looked like I was 15 years old. I didn't know if I could do this real estate thing. I'm dead broke. Piece of Nissan pickup truck. But I got my butt to an event, a Jack Miller event, and I'm standing in the back, and I'm feeling total imposter syndrome. And I'm super quiet, but I'm seeing success happening. I'm learning new things. I'm meeting people, doing the thing that I'm dreaming about doing. And then I go to another event, and instead of sitting in the back, I sit in the middle and I go to another event, and I work my way up to the front. Now, I get more courageous each time I put myself in that environment, and events and masterminds have moved the needle for me more than anything else that I ever have done in my life. I can read every book, watch every YouTube video. But you put yourself in that environment and everything integrates, internalizes, and changes for you. And you never know. One relationship can change everything. One sentence that somebody says to you at one of these events can change everything. I met my first mentor at an event. His name was Lyall Wall. He changed everything for me. I was struggling. I was overwhelmed. I was drinking from a fire hose. And that man helped me become who I am here today. And I. I'll. I'll. There's no amount of money I could have given him or paid to go to that event because the benefit was so. Just out light, outrageous, and lifechanging. So. And what I love about the man in man in the arena event is it's bigger than just content. It's bigger than just, hey, come to this event. Get motivated and learn a thing or two. No, this is a movement. This is powerful. When I was listening to you and Garrett talk about it, I was like, damn, I want to go to this event. I don't go to any events. I don't even want to go to events anymore. Like, I'm so busy, but I'm like, I want to go to this event because it's powerful. It's. It. And the world needs what you guys are doing right now. And I'm not saying that to pump your chest or puff you up or anything. I really believe what you guys are doing is going to create a army of men out there, specifically, that are going to go out there and do great things and lead us to where we need to go, because we need it more than ever right now.
Dan
So you host your own mastermind events. You speak at my Masterminds you attend Masterminds. Why do you think masterminds are a good investment for people that are doing 1 million, 5 million, 10 million as they're scaling their business? Why do you think they should be investing into masterminds?
Cody Sperber
Yeah, so masterminds are really cool and unique because there's not a lot of places business people can go to be around other like minded people doing the same type of things as you. Not our friends aren't always doing this stuff our family doesn't understand a lot of times. And there is this unique thing that happens when you cut a check versus and there could be free masterminds. I'm not saying that they can't be free, but there's something that happens when you cut a check, especially a big check when you show up in that room. You're intentional. You're there to serve, you're there to network, you're there to build, you're there to help, you're there to grow and you're very intentional. And I've never cut a check and joined them. Specifically a business mastermind or a personal development mastermind that I didn't get a hundred x ROI on my time and my money. I've gone to a lot of events where you're like, some events are good, some are kind of lame. Sometimes they just talk at you. Masterminds are experiential. You're breaking down real problems and challenges in your life, in your personal life, in your business. We just did a round table at the 100 mil mastermind the other day. Everybody's talking business. This one guy's talking about his daughter and the challenges he's having with his daughter and how she was having a lot of in tough feelings around like the way she looked and the way she felt and her friends and stuff. And everybody that was a parent was piling in, helping and this person. And by the time we were done, we were almost all in tears because it was so powerful. Just a quick 15 minute session with somebody guaranteed changed everything that he's going to do when he goes back home with his family. And you can't get that very many places, but you can in a mastermind.
Dan
So on the charity side, why do you think it's important for companies, especially company executives, to have some charity component to build culture within their staff?
Cody Sperber
Because when you're doing things for more than money, when you're fighting for something bigger than a check, when there's a passion and a purpose behind it, people galvanize and work way harder and go above and beyond because of that. Every one of my businesses since I met our friend Cole Hatter, and he kind of talked, taught me about this for purpose concept. All my businesses have a charitable component built into the business model. Because I'm like, yeah, I want to make a lot of money, but I want to make a lot of impact at the same time. I want to feel good about making money. We've all heard that, like, rich people are greedy. I don't think that at all. I think rich people are the most generous people I've ever met. At least my friends are. You know, I don't hang around rich guys, you know, and all the ones I know are like you. They're donating tons of time, tons of money, tons of connections, tons of resources all the time. It's just part of who they are. And when you put that into a company like my company, Green Elephant Development. Every house we build, every property we build, a portion of our proceeds goes towards elephant conservation. A simple thing that you can do, but I want to save as many elephants as I can. There was a Steve Irwin video I saw one time where he was like, give me all the money. I want all the money, because I want to buy all the land and save all the animals. And I was so inspired by that thought. I was like, damn, I'm not doing enough. Maybe I can integrate it into the business. And it's been cool, because when we build a house and we donate the money and we sponsor an elephant, we actually show the homeowner or show the building owner the elephant that we sponsored. And they think it's super cool. It became part of our brand. And they. What do they do? They go around and they tell their friends, their family, like, look, we sponsored this elephant when we bought this house or this building, and everybody thinks it's cool. And then they remember Green Elephant Development. So it actually helps you with referrals, helps you make more money, better reputation, lower refunds lower. Just problems after the sale. And the team loves it. They get behind it.
Dan
So the last question is a question I ask on almost every single episode, but I've never gotten the same answer. So, Cody Sperber, you're gonna go out there and make hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars. In the real estate category, the flooring business goes becoming humongous. You do it two, three, four times, and you've amassed all this wealth. It's time to pass away. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to Hudson and the other kids?
Cody Sperber
So this is a Tough one, because my conversations with them up to this point, now they're 14 and almost 16, where you're not getting money, you're getting, you know, I'll make sure their housing and their medical and all that stuff is. Is there. And maybe, maybe at age 37, they'll get a small amount released every single year. Year to them to. To play with. But my goal is to set up a foundation that they can run and help do more charity, help do more, make more impact. And if that is something that they're passionate about, I would love to have them as involved in that as humanly possible. But I don't see a moment where they get this huge bucket of money and they could just, you know, do whatever they want with it. Yeah.
Dan
So where can people find you across social media, the business, Floor Daddy, and everything between.
Cody Sperber
Yeah. So with Floor Daddy, we're local in Arizona right now. If you need new floors, we would love to help you with new floors. We'll. We'll take really good care of you. But nationwide, we have something else called Super Cheap Floors, which is our wholesale division. And we can help anybody who needs a small amount of flooring, a large amount of flooring, Cabinets, countertops, all the stuff you would put in a house. Blinds, Astroturf, we can sell it all. We can ship it to any state. We can help you find an installer. It's more of a wholesale thing. We work with a lot of designers and contractors and stuff like that. So that's on the Floor Daddy side of things. You can just go to floor daddy.com and then if you want to learn anything on real estate, go to cleverinvestor.com or look me up on all social platforms at Official Cody Sperber or at Clever Investor.
Dan
All right, guys, you're listening to the Money Mondays. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. You have to talk about money. Have hard conversations, have it in a daily moment with your past, present, and future. What do I mean by that? People that you haven't even met before, you got to be comfortable enough to talk to them about money because you're going to have bills, insurance, payroll taxes, borrowing money here, paying for leases. There's so many things that go on in real life. Money is just a part of our life. Some people try to say money is root of all evil. Sure, there's a tiny portion of that, but truly, there's nothing evil about paying for your family to go on vacation, paying for medical bills, for family members, paying for food, enjoying yourself, and paying for the fundamentals of your daily life. So share the podcast Like Comment, subscribe, check out CleverVest across social media and we will see you guys next Monday on moneymondays.com.
Podcast Summary: The Money Mondays
Episode: How I Wiped Out $2M in Taxes with One Real Estate Move w/ Cody Sperber 🏡 E116
Release Date: April 7, 2025
Host: Dan Fleyshman
Guest: Cody Sperber
In this episode of The Money Mondays, host Dan Fleyshman welcomes real estate mogul and entrepreneur Cody Sperber to discuss a transformative real estate strategy that enabled Cody to eliminate over $2 million in taxes through a single property investment. Filmed in the studio Move in Miami due to a series of high-profile events, this episode delves deep into Cody's extensive experience in real estate, his innovative business ventures, and his philanthropic endeavors.
Cody Sperber is a seasoned real estate investor with 22 years of experience, having executed thousands of transactions ranging from small single-family homes to large commercial developments. As the founder of Clever Investor, an online education platform launched in 2009, Cody has educated approximately 85,000 students on real estate investment strategies. Beyond real estate, he has diversified into other sectors, notably founding Floor Daddy, a flooring business aimed at outmarketing industry giants through innovative strategies and scalable operations. Cody's mentorship under industry leaders like Tommy Mello and his strategic partnerships have been pivotal in his business growth.
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [01:32]:
"I started Clever Investor, the online education brand in 2009... it grew into one of the largest online education brands and had about 85,000 students come through that, which has been a real blessing."
Cody introduces the concept of wholesaling, a strategy where investors act as intermediaries between motivated sellers and cash buyers. By securing properties under contract and assigning these contracts to buyers for a fee, wholesalers can generate substantial income without owning the property long-term.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [05:18]:
"I become a middleman, a matchmaker. I take the motivated seller and I take the cash buyer and I work the deal and I get paid a whole wholesale fee."
Transitioning from real estate education, Cody discusses his venture into the flooring industry with Floor Daddy. Leveraging his marketing expertise, he aims to outcompete established industry players by focusing on memorable branding, aggressive marketing campaigns, and scalable operations.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [08:40]:
"I don't want a vehicle where AI was going to disrupt it anytime soon. If your plumbing goes down, you're calling a plumber... real estate side of things always made a lot of sense to me."
A significant portion of the episode focuses on Cody’s strategy to eliminate $2 million in taxes through real estate investments, specifically utilizing a cost segregation study.
Detailed Breakdown:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [00:00]:
"I did what's called a cost segregation study on the whole building and all the improvements I made... Wiped out over $2 million in taxes. But I still own the building."
Cody articulates why he prefers real estate over other investment avenues like cryptocurrency, NFTs, or the stock market.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [16:44]:
"It's physical. I like that it's physical. It's tried and true. It's very proven... real estate side of things always made a lot of sense to me."
Cody emphasizes the critical role of continuous learning and networking through masterminds and large-scale events like Clever Summit.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [18:27]:
"You put yourself in that environment and everything integrates, internalizes, and changes for you... One relationship can change everything."
Integrating charitable efforts into business models not only fosters a positive company culture but also enhances brand reputation and employee motivation.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [25:55]:
"Because when you're doing things for more than money... People galvanize and work way harder and go above and beyond because of that."
When addressing the topic of wealth accumulation and legacy, Cody shares his intentions to ensure his wealth serves lasting, impactful purposes rather than being indiscriminately distributed.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
Cody Sperber [28:24]:
"My goal is to set up a foundation that they can run and help do more charity, help do more, make more impact."
In this episode, Cody Sperber provides invaluable insights into leveraging real estate for significant tax savings, scaling businesses through effective marketing, and the importance of continuous personal and professional development. His multifaceted approach, combining investment acumen with philanthropic efforts, underscores a holistic strategy for building and sustaining wealth.
Final Thoughts from Host:
Dan Fleyshman underscores the importance of open discussions about money, advocating for transparency and education as crucial elements for financial success.
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