Episode 84: Do You Want to Make More Excuses or More Money? Real Estate Legend Ron Legrand Reveals His Money-Making Secrets
THE PROFIT FIRST PODCAST
April 18, 2022
David Richter
Summary:
Meet the Godfather of creative real estate, Ron LeGrand. He was born with the heart of an entrepreneur and started doing business transactions by the time he was eighteen. Ron entered the real estate world in 1982, and from then on, his innovative mind, true heart, and logical systems propelled him to sell houses without any risks.
Discover the secret strategy that got him to garner massive deals for the last 37 years. Strap in, and let’s hear out how this genius climbed his way up the ladder.
Key Takeaways:
[1:51] What got him started in real estate, and why did he choose real estate?
[6:03] People who are looking for a lot of excuses don’t make a lot of money
[6:28] The problem of low self-esteem
[7:48] You have to be careful to whom you’ll listen. It would help if you weren’t listening to anybody until you have—a reason to believe that you can trust what anyone says.
[12:46] His journey facing six market corrections
[14:20] Delegation, Automation, and Systemization makes real estate easier
[19:09] The absolute key is selecting the best people for your business
[22:21] How important is it to know your business numbers?
[27:22] Take action, go out there and implement things
[30:29] Get your education from qualified people to render it
Quotes:
[0:13] “When you spend your life swapping hours for dollars and never really hit a home run, you never really had way more money to live on. It’s hard to get into the mindset that you’re entitled to get more money.”
[11:11] “Somewhere along the line, we have to start digging a little deeper, and find a faster and easier way to make money without the risk.”
[22:30] “Anybody running their business that doesn’t know their numbers wouldn’t be in the business very long.”
Links:
Join Ron LeGrand’s Online Training- http://ronlegrand.com/terms
Tired of living deal to deal?
If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal, and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David
Transcript:
Ron Legrand
I think one of the biggest problems that students come to me today with, David, is low self-esteem. They have a low opinion of what they’re worthy of. When you spend your life swapping hours for dollars, and you never even really hit a home run, you’ve never even really had way more money than you need to live on, it’s kind of hard to get into the mindset that I am entitled to make more money, I’m worthy, I can do it, but I’m not sure because I’ve never done it before.
Announcer:
Welcome to The Profit First REI Podcast where real estate investors master financial management, eradicate entrepreneurial poverty and learn to be profitable from day one. Now for your host, David Richter.
David Richter
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another very special episode of The Profit First REI Podcast here with Ron Legrand. If you don’t know this name, then are you in real estate? He’s impacted so many lives, taught so many people, has done so many deals, helped a lot of people that I don’t know if you are doing real estate. If you haven’t heard about Ron Legrand, you need to look him up and you need to see what he’s doing because he’s done a lot of amazing things over the years. So, Ron, thanks for being on the podcast today.
Ron Legrand
It is my pleasure. What a great introduction.
David Richter
Yeah. I get to see a lot of people in these mastermind behind the scenes and it’s been nice getting to know you and rub shoulders in that aspect as well, and everyone respects you in the real estate space. And you’re as real in there as you are on the webinars and stuff. And I like that too, seeing who’s really the real person. It’s not someone totally different behind the scenes. So that’s awesome. But Ron, let’s dive into it. Let’s let people know, for you, what got you started in real estate investing and why real estate?
Ron Legrand
Hunger.
David Richter
Hunger.
Ron Legrand
Yeah. I was working in a service station. I was managing the station and I was also the mechanic, which means I’d be interrupted every few minutes in the hot Florida sun because I had to go out and pump gas back when we used to do that. You’re too young to remember that. And then we had to work on cars and it was not really a fun job.
I was actually managing the station, but still making no money, barely get by. And crap, we had to buy groceries at least two times a week, couldn’t afford a whole week’s worth at one time. And I’d already been married 17 years. This was in 1982, I’m talking about, so that tells you how old I am. Well, in fact, we just celebrated our 56th wedding anniversary.
David Richter
Oh wow. Congratulations. That’s awesome.
Ron Legrand
So anyway, I just frankly woke up one morning and decided I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life after my wife and I got an argument over she wanted washing a machine, that I couldn’t afford to buy her, to wash my filthy clothes with. So I just made a conscious decision. Sometimes in our lives, David, something just snaps and it changes the way you start thinking. You just decide I’ve had enough. And some people need to get down to the point to where they’ve had enough before they can make a decision they can actually follow up on and implement to change things.
So I went out and I started looking. I had no idea what I was looking for, but saw an ad that said, come learn how to buy real estate without money or credit, and that appealed to me, had neither. I knew it wasn’t true. It had to be a scam, but I went down and checked it out. And next thing you know, I’m in a two day seminar. Had to scrape up the money for that one. And three weeks later, I got my first check on a low wholesale deal. Made three grand on that. Most important check I’ve ever got in my life.
That gave me the confidence to go forward and convinced me that I could do it and that I could do it here and I could do it now. And I just continually spun out. Next thing you know, a couple years gone by and I’m over a million dollars in equity in real estate because I was buying them and fixing them and buying them and renting them and buying them and selling them and wholesaling and the whole bottle of wax, like a man on fire.
And so I built a so-called millionaire portfolio within two years, but that didn’t make the cashflow all that great, because sometimes it was negative. And I decided I wasn’t going to live long enough to get rich this way because my life was destroyed by taking care of all these low income tenants that everything went wrong in their life, they wanted me to get involved in it. And I said, “Oh God.”
So I used to have dark hair back then. See? No more. So that’s how I got started frankly. And I just kept on going, honestly. I guess what’s the difference between most people and me is I just kept on going. Most of them run across a little obstacle, went back to work and nothing changed and some of them died that way, unfortunately. So it’s all in here.
David Richter
Yeah. So then versus now, because now I feel like, and I’m sure this happened in the last cycle too, that there’s just an overabundance of real estate investors. And what do you think from that, when you jumped into real estate to now? What helps people stay for the long term? What is that thing that makes one investor succeed where others don’t stick on and don’t hang on?
Ron Legrand
Well, just so you’ll know, when I got started in 1982, there were a ton of investors out there then. There’s been a ton of investors out there every single year since. I don’t know when they were more or when they were less, honestly I don’t care because nothing they do is going to affect me anyway. I sure never worried about my competition, I was too busy making my own money to care about them, let them worry about me. And that carries right up to the day, by the way in anything I do, I don’t care about my competition. Usually wind up doing business with them before it’s over.
So there’s always going to be competition and if one wants to use that for a convenient excuse not to do anything, it works. It works for you, it works for me, but there’s a whole bunch of excuses you can use if that’s what you want. But I discovered that people who are looking for excuses don’t make much money. People who ignore all the excuses they can come up with and just get to work and quit worrying about all the other things that don’t matter and start making money. And that’s easy to compound once you get that machine rolling, but plenty of excuses.
I think one of the biggest problems that students come to me today with, David, is low self-esteem. They have a low opinion of what they’re worthy of. When you spend your life swapping hours for dollars, and you never even really hit a home run, you’ve never even really had way more money than you need to live on, it’s kind of hard to get into the mindset that I am entitled to make more money, I’m worthy, I can do it, but I’m not sure because I’ve never done it before. And that’s a mindset thing.
So we spend more time changing people’s thinking than anything else, changing their thinking about what real estate is all about, because honestly, when people come to me, they’ve got all these myths running around their head and all these false impressions of what it is about. And they listen to all the people out there trying to tell them what don’t work and it’s illegal here and it don’t work here and this is a hot market and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Of course, all of them are broke and have no idea what they’re talking about, but we humans are conditioned to believe all this crap and absorb it. The next thing you know, they’ve stolen our dreams. And believe me, the world’s full of dream stealers and that’s not going to change. In fact, it’s just getting worse. Some people just live to criticize, condemn and complain and tear you down because the last thing they want to see is you succeed and they’re down here wallowing around in the mud where they want company. And if you’re not careful, they’ll have company because they’ll convince you.
So you have to be careful to whom you listen. Broke people cannot make you rich and you shouldn’t be listening to anybody until you have a reason to believe that you can trust what they say. And even then you take it with a grain of salt. I have a T-shirt, Dave, that says, “The whole world is full of crap.”
David Richter
That’s good. I like that.
Ron Legrand
Yeah.
David Richter
You and my dad would get along well.
Ron Legrand
I’m sure because he’s old too?
David Richter
Oh yeah. See, he’s got a lot of those types of sayings and I absolutely love them.
Ron Legrand
Yeah, I bet I would.
David Richter
Awesome. So flip side. So you think that, or you know, because you’ve seen it, the mindset, the excuses, people down on themselves, what about the people that break through that and come out on the other side? What would you say, for your most successful students, what is the common denominator for the most successful people?
Ron Legrand
The common denominator is that they keep going and pushing through all the really insignificant things that stop them in the beginning. I mean, it’s not insignificant to them, but there are no new problems. Well, I haven’t seen any and I’ve been at this 40 years. There is no new problems. Okay? They’re all the same, they’re just new to you, and they’re not hard to fix. There is no problem in the world of buying and selling houses that is very difficult to fix.
And in fact, if you don’t believe that, go get into another business. Go buy a restaurant. I’ve had six of them for crying out loud. If you want to buy a business that you work your ass off and don’t make any money at it, you got tons of problems and people and all that crap. Compared to what we do in real estate, it’s not even fair to compare the two.
We get high transaction value checks where most of the country is operating on low transaction value checks. We don’t have to do very many deals to make a ton of money, and we do not use money or credit. I will not allow my students to use their credit. If I catch him applying for a loan, I send a six foot eight guy after him. His name is Guido, tattooed from head to tail, got a big stick and there will be blood.
We do not guarantee debt. It’s the biggest mistake people make, but unfortunately they don’t realize it till after they’ve made it and things don’t work out the way they planned. Especially going into these uncertain times where in my opinion, there’s absolutely going to have to be a market correction. I don’t think it’s that far off. And I always tell my people, David, the only way you can not worry about another market correction is to make sure that you get out of personally guaranteed debt and build tons of cashflow that do not rely on you selling something immediately for a price you thought you were going to sell it for.
Let me explain that. If I’m in the rehabbing business, I’ve got to cash out. Market drops on me, I’m in deep ca-ca. I’m going to wind up not making any money. If I’m in the terms business like I am today, I buy on terms and I lease-option and put tenant buyers in there, and I hope they never cash me out, because I make a big old multi-thousand dollar check today from a non-refundable option deposit. I get a big monthly cashflow in these big, nice, beautiful homes in these beautiful areas, not these crack houses in a war zone. I get appreciation, I get depreciation. I usually get free equity the day I buy it. I get to raise the price because we’re selling it on terms. We get to raise the price even higher than they’re raising them in this crazy market we’re in and I get all of the benefits of wealth.
So in other words, I’m getting a check today, but I’m creating cashflow and wealth all in one deal, unlike those that are out there wholesaling and rehabbing and retailing and doing everything the hard way, like I used to do. Okay, I’ll confess, 20 plus years of that, so I get it. But somewhere along the line, we have to start digging a little deeper and looking for the faster and the easier ways to make money without the risk. And frankly, getting all your personally guaranteed debt out of your life is the most important thing I think you can be doing while simultaneously building the cashflow to the point where you don’t have to worry about just making a living.
So we can do that in real estate and we can do it very quickly. But like you say, once I start, if I’m under the impression that I don’t have to do anything or everything’s going to work out just exactly like it did in the seminar and I’m not going to have to get out of my comfort zone, I’m going to give up and quit and I’m not going to get very far.
But on the other hand, when people tell me about the problems they have in real estate, I ask them, do you know of another business that you can start and run that is not going to have problems and things that you’ve never done before that you have to learn to do, because there isn’t any? Payoffs in our business are so big, not only the cash, but also the tax advantages, it’s hard to beat it with another business. And I’ve had several and still got a few.
David Richter
No, that’s awesome, and that’s great advice. So for you, you said you had 20 years of learning it the hard way and then something had to change. Was that a market correction where you were like, you know what? I’m tired of doing this. I want to do the terms and I want to build the wealth now and for later? Was that what happened?
Ron Legrand
Yeah, actually I’ve been through six market corrections, the worst being ’08. However, you can call what we’re doing right now market correction. Market prices are going up, but it’s definitely a market correction. They’re going to come back down. And back in the ’80s, very few people that are watching this will know this, but back in the ’80s, when I started in this business, prime rate was 16% interest. Can you imagine trying to get houses financed when the prime rate is 16% interest? I mean the whole industry died, especially after Reagan passed the 1986 tax law to take away the tax advantages of owning real estate. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a Republican do in my life. Okay?
And it killed the market. And the point is we had to learn about terms. We had to learn about buying and selling with owner financing and lease options because that’s about the only way you can get in and out of houses. Realtors were dropping like flies, giving up their licenses, because it was just a miserable time to be in that business. And ultimately that changed, but that stuck with me over the years and I learned to apply those.
I don’t know why it took me so long, frankly, because I learned it in the ’80s, but I really didn’t start applying it until the late ’90s and the early 2000s and been applying it ever since. And it’s been getting better ever since because we constantly work on making it easier, and easier, and easier for our students. They don’t have to do much of anything, it’s all done for them. I mean, even the calls to the sellers are done for them, for crying out loud.
So I will say this, I’ve never seen a time in my 40 years where it’s easier to be in the real estate business than it is now because of delegation and automation and systematization. Back when I started, that was way before Al Gore invented the internet, man. We didn’t have all that cool stuff.
David Richter
Yeah. Well, that’s great. No I love that. So would you say being in the terms and being in that type business, did that help during 2007, ‘8, ‘9, when a lot of other businesses were going down?
Ron Legrand
In 2008, when Lehman Brothers went down in September of ’08, my company’s revenue dropped about 80%. My personal revenue dropped about 80%. So it’s a good thing that I had other cashflow coming in at that time, or I probably would not be here now. We had to lay off half of our staff all in one day and we had to claw through that and there were some miserable times after that and we had trouble paying our bills. I mean, look, you either pay your payroll or you pay a bill outside your company. It’s a pretty easy choice and anybody in my position would’ve done the same thing. We got them all paid, but it was not fun dealing with people and couldn’t keep your promises.
So it would’ve been easier just to fold it up and quit, and frankly, a lot of people did and a lot of businesses, a lot of businesses. But we kept up on plugging and we took a couple, three years to get back on our feet, but we adapted. And I guess that’s one of the biggest keys to being successful in this life is that you have to adapt with the times. You got to be willing to change and the best thing you can do is get ahead of this. Before it’s too late, start changing.
So anyway, I started in the terms business. I don’t remember what got me in it. It might even have been by accident, but I grow to love it real fast. Look, I still rehab a house or two now and then, but I haven’t rehabbed one in quite a while and I don’t care if I ever do rehab another one, if you want to be honest, because that’s the hardest way to make money in the business there is.
Wholesaling is easy, but you get one little old check and you got to go out and do it again. You got to give half of that to the government. So what do you gain? You don’t gain anything but a little bit of money. It’s kind of like going and working on a job. And you and I both know people who wholesale 150, 200 houses a year, but still all they’re getting is big checks, making big money. But dig deep, what are they doing with the money?
Now, I have no idea. It’s none of my business, but making that money would be all right, but remember they’re giving a minimum of 37% of it to the IRS because they’re in a higher tax brackets. They’re gaining no positive cashflow. They’re gaining no depreciation, no appreciation, no future wealth. So they better do something with that money to create those things, because they’re not doing it in real estate.
In my terms business, I’m doing it while simultaneously getting great big old checks. I ain’t going to do a deal for less than a $20,000 within a few days after I buy the house, put a tenant buyer in the house. But remember they’re nice houses and they’re in the nice neighborhoods, they’re not garbage. Some people listening that have been in the low income rental business have a hard time understanding how I can get somebody to give me 20, 30, 40, $50,000 on a non-refundable deposit. Well, it’s because of the quality of the product that I’m offering them.
So I get terms and I don’t have to pay cash, I don’t have to raise private money and I certainly don’t have to deal with … Contractors sometimes do a little bit of work, but I don’t have to deal with rehabs, long-term holding periods, the banks, the picky buyers and all of that stuff. So I’m in and I’m out, usually don’t touch the house. I get paid quickly and I keep getting paid long term, sometimes 20 plus years. So it’s a different world.
David Richter
Yeah, it is. That’s awesome. Want to switch gears here, maybe just a little bit, because you’ve also built a great team around you as well too. You’ve got a really great team. And I wanted to ask before we talk about the team, but what would you say your superpower, your strength is? Is it putting together the deals or bringing the right people together and building that business? What would you say is your personal, like this is what I like to do and this is what I know I’m good at doing?
Ron Legrand
Well, in real estate it’s putting together the right deals because I have a commercial mastermind group as well and we’re partnering with them on commercial deals.
David Richter
Awesome.
Single family houses I can do in my sleep, it don’t stir up the molecular structure of my brain actually. Done so where I can’t quit counting. 10, 15 years ago at 3000. I don’t know how many I did, I don’t care. But as far as the company, Global Publishing that puts on my seminars all over the country and virtual as well now, and has been doing that for, golly, since 1999, however many years ago, that was. What is that? I don’t know, 22 years, I guess.
David Richter
22, 23 years. Yeah.
Ron Legrand
The key most absolutely is the people. Did I select the best people? No. I selected … train them and work with them and create the environment that they want to work in. I got a note says your internet connection is unstable. So if we go off, I wasn’t mad at you.
David Richter
Okay. No, it’s okay.
Ron Legrand
And that girl right now is Jennifer Shedlin. She’s been with me for 17 some plus, odd years.
David Richter
Wow.
Ron Legrand
She runs the show. She makes almost all of the decisions. Of course, it didn’t start that way. She came in to work in HR and I did that to remove the previous COO because it was more of a roadblock, couldn’t get anything done. It was one of those mindsets that you got to make a decision. When you’re leading, you better be making decisions because if you don’t, then people who want to move faster than you are going to leave.
So really I got to credit it to her to be honest with you because I haven’t picked any of the people in the building. I honestly don’t even know how many there are. I don’t deal with them from day to day. I deal with a handful that have to do with what I do, which is teach, do podcasts, go on the road. And also my marketing team, we meet from time to time. And that’s about all I do because I’ve delegated it, trained them along the way and more importantly, turned them loose and let them do what they do.
And look, you have to build trust. You have to be able to trust the people or you’re not there yet. You’re not going to be ever be able to get out of the way until you trust the people that you put there. And some people have a hard time believing, David, that somebody could actually replace me. I laugh at that. There’s not one damn thing you do in your business that somebody else can’t do it for you, not one, and that includes making the decisions. But you got to get them to that point and then let them make those decisions.
And that’s one thing that Jennifer does well, is that she lets the people contribute, think for themselves, bring stuff to the table, feel like they’re a part of the business because they are, share the stuff with them that most people don’t. We know our people know our numbers. I’m not afraid to share my numbers with my employees. They’re the reason for it. Why not? And it works because now they feel like a family. I’ve got, I don’t know how many people been there over 15 years. I mean, been a whole slew of them in there over 10 years.
David Richter
Wow.
Ron Legrand
Because they’re not going to get a better environment and they’re not going to get better culture and they’re probably not even going to be able to find a better income than what we pay. So that’s the reason that I don’t have to get up and go to work every day.
David Richter
That’s awesome. I love that. Culture and making sure that they’re empowered to make those decisions. I think that’s key. That is huge. Just a couple of final questions here. You talked about your numbers and this being The Profit First REI Podcast, let’s talk about that just a little bit. So your team knows your numbers, you know your numbers. How important would you say to the real estate investors listening is it to know the numbers of the business?
Ron Legrand
I would tell you anybody that’s running a business that don’t know their numbers is not going to be in business very long. I don’t care what business it is. I had restaurants. What if I didn’t know what my food cost was when it goes up or when it goes down or my labor? What if I didn’t know what it cost me to advertise and get a customer? I mean, I can’t believe that companies would run them and basically run them out of their checkbook, which is a big pet peeve of yours, I’m sure.
David Richter
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ron Legrand
Because if there’s money in the checkbook, that don’t mean you’re making money.
David Richter
Right.
Ron Legrand
And if there’s no money in there, that doesn’t mean you’re not making money either. So I teach my people that you better know what your break even is before the month starts, not wait till it’s over and hope you made some money because that’s going to guide the decisions you make along the way. That means you need to know what your expenses are and what your projected income is. And that’s just a couple of the numbers.
One number that, I mean, just boggles my mind, you go out to any brick and mortar business, they have no idea what it costs them to get a customer or what that customer is worth. They have none. Heck, most of them don’t even know who their customers are, they don’t even collect their names and a contact. What an idiotic … How’re you going to communicate with the people that do business with you, if you don’t even collect their information?
Well, you can rest assured when they came into my restaurant, we shamelessly bribed them into filling out the card and putting them into our club. And that club, every week they got emails with specials, and it worked, brought them in. We communicated with them, make them feel like they’re part of the family. And there’s not a business out there that can’t do that, but they don’t. And it’s not really their fault, just nobody teaches them how to do it. So they just go out and do their thing and do their craft and hope they will come and hope they survive. And of course, most of them don’t. Businesses are dropping like flies out there right now. Aren’t they?
David Richter
Yeah. Yeah. They really are.
Ron Legrand
Yeah.
David Richter
So like you’ve said, I don’t think a lot of businesses learn that. They are just flying by the seat of their pants. Where did you learn to make sure that you knew everyone’s name, you can market to them, you can make sure that they felt like a family?
Ron Legrand
Well, because honestly, when I started in real estate, I didn’t do all of that. But when I started information marketing and actually teaching what I knew in 1987, I knew I had to keep track of who my customers were and then I became an expert on marketing over the years and teach it. And spent I don’t know how many millions of dollars I spent on marketing. It doesn’t much matter anymore, but when you’re in the world of marketing, you learn you better know your numbers or you’re going to get killed real quick.
So that came from there, but it’s inherent in every business that I’ve ever touched since. I mean, I’m not going to work with anybody that can’t tell me what their numbers are because that’s all I want to know, what are our numbers based on that particular business. And if they’re going to hang around me, they better know them.
David Richter
Right? Yeah, no kidding. And thankfully I think shows like Shark Tank, if they’ve watched them where stuff is really put forward of like, yeah, you better know your numbers if you’re going to go in front of a real investor and pitch anything. It’s even more important for your business to be able to just sustain that, to be able to go to the next level or whatever you want to do.
Ron Legrand
How many times did you see people going there, they say, “What’s your cost?” “I really don’t know.” “Well, what’s your spread? What’s your margin?” “I’m not sure.” Give me a break. See, that’s the kind of mentality that one better … Very clearly, you’re either going to get trained to do the business before you get into the business or you’re going to get trained after. And trust me, if you don’t get trained before you get in it, you’re probably not going to be in it long. And that’s how most people learn how to run a business. They go through several of them along the way.
David Richter
Exactly. They learn via mistakes, failures, and then, hey, get back on the horse.
Ron Legrand
You think education is expensive? Try ignorance.
David Richter
Right? Yes, exactly. Oh man. Are you a reader? Do you like reading? Do you recommend any books to people as you’re out there?
Ron Legrand
I have a stack of books about six feet high.
David Richter
Okay.
Ron Legrand
Someday I’m going to read them. Sure. In fact, I just got a couple here for Christmas presents and the truth is I am not nearly as avid a reader as I used to be. Something’s really got to be interesting to me to make me read it, but I do like books on tape because I’ll plug them in my car and listen them to them in my car. I can read, I can write as well, and if I write it’s something productive, maybe even a sales letter or something. And when I have the choice … I mean, I’m not saying I don’t read, but I don’t sit around and read books very long because I don’t have the patience for it and there’s always so many other things I could be doing.
David Richter
Right. No, I love that. Take action. The next time, if you’re listening to this now, take action sometimes instead of just sitting down to read and make sure you’re doing something productive. I love that. Producing content versus consuming content.
Ron Legrand
There’s nothing wrong with reading. I mean, I’m certainly not knocking reading.
David Richter
Oh yeah. Yeah. There’s definitely … No, but yeah, I think of that a lot, like is what you’re reading really helping you get to that next level or could you go out and do what it’s talking about right then and go out of there and do that? Awesome. So just a couple last questions. General advice for the real estate investors listening to this, what would you say your best advice to give them right now?
Ron Legrand
I would say be very careful to whom you listen because the whole world is full of people that just don’t have any idea what they’re talking about. And if you’re under the impression that they want you to succeed, quit kidding yourself. I mean, there’s only but a handful of people in your life that want you to succeed and they’re probably under your roof and, or you were birthed from her, one of the two. Everybody else does not want you to succeed. So I don’t care what they say. Think about it, do you want your friends and relatives to succeed and leave you down here wallowing around trying to get by? Internally, you do not. So you should know that and very carefully weed out the stuff that people come at you with.
I mean, look, we’re in a hot market right now, everybody knows that. And of course that gives them a really good excuse for saying, well, this term stuff won’t work in this hot market. Baloney, it absolutely works in this hot market. In fact, we just did a four day event here a couple weeks ago, we did 19 deals for students on terms calling sellers in a live event, their leads that they brought to class. 19 deals and literally that’s two days of three people calling those leads. 19 terms deals all over the country. But it don’t work here. I’ve never done a live event where we did that where we didn’t do deals.
Okay, so you got to call some. My virtual assistants do all the hard work making these closing calls. Asking them three questions is all we do. It takes two, three minutes per call. But every deal is worth 20,000 plus. So compare that to what people do for 20 grand plus and you’ll see this business is hard to beat. Okay, you got to learn a few things, but you got to hang in here. You got to have some grit. Geez, people just want to quit the first time they hit a little old roadblock. What are you going to do that don’t have roadblocks? I don’t know what it is. You want roadblocks, go buy a restaurant. You’ll understand how easy this business is, I’ll tell you that right now.
So got to hang in there. You got to get the proper education. And if you think it’s expensive, it’s absolutely dirt cheap. And I don’t care if you have to go through 2, 3, 4, 5 trainers to get the one that they helps you the most, I get that all the time. Okay, people come to me, rarely do I have somebody come to me that hadn’t been to somebody else first. Like everything else in the world, some you can work with, some you can’t. Some give you information you can work with, some don’t. And I’m not the cure all to everybody, but I can tell you that most of the people out there teaching right now are my students or their students that I’ve taught them real estate and then taught to train on real estate.
David Richter
Right, yeah.
Ron Legrand
You need to go get your education from people that are qualified to render it. And that should probably take a little time and effort on your part to check that out before you go believing all the hype and all the fancy videos. It’s easy to make the fancy videos. It’s not hard to learn what I know over a 40 year period, because you just can’t. You just can’t do it in a few years.
But whether it’s me or whether it’s somebody else pay for the quality education, do not try to get it on your own. It’s going to cost you many, many times more than what anybody charges you for it, regardless of what that number is. And be willing to take and listen, and take good quality advice and then implement it.
And of course the big thing is implementation. You can go to seminars, sit in seminars until your butt hurts, till your ears bleed and your eyes are crossed and that won’t do a bit of good until you come out of there and implement it. That’s what I did on my very first seminar, David, I implemented immediately and I got that first check. I don’t know where I would have been if I didn’t. I’d probably quit like everybody else.
David Richter
Right. Well, I’m glad you didn’t and think there’s thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands that have listened to you and done what you have recommended and turned their life around. So I’m really glad you didn’t. Now, the last question here. You’ve provided a ton of value here, like you always do. What are you working on right now? What seminars are coming up? What webinars? What are you doing, working on now?
Ron Legrand
Well, here I can give all your listeners a place to go to learn the terms business because I went through it step by step, online. It’s ronlegrand.com/terms. Spell my name right. It’s L-E-G-R-A-N-D, not L-A, there’s no E on the end. ronlegrand.com/terms. And there’s a whole hour and I think 15 minute online training on that. And I take you right on through that from beginning to end. You’ll see where the money’s made in terms and that should excite you. If it don’t excite you, play it again, because you slept through half of it.
I’m doing commercial projects with my commercial mastermind group, got several of those working right now. I want more. Then I’m always looking for single family house deals with our students. I partner with them if they need the money for those who are in our mentoring program. And then we’re working on growing Global Publishing this coming year, much bigger than it was in the past.
And then I’ve got a whole bunch of classic cars at my house that I work on to keep me busy. I don’t have anything to do much. And I work on them at night and basically, it ain’t for money. Trust me, it ain’t for the money. But I buy a few, sell one now and then, and I just enjoy driving them. All of us old people like old things.
David Richter
That’s awesome. And there you go, that’s how you can get a hold of him, get that terms training, get your life turned around. Wherever you are right now, make sure you can go out there, listen to Ron’s stuff. He’s done this, helped so many people. So really appreciative of him coming on, giving his time, making sure that you as a listener can get that and get in there, implement, like he said at the end. Implement, implement, that’s really what separates the people with excuses, from the people who go out there and blow through those excuses as well too. So make sure you follow that advice. Ron-
Ron Legrand
And-
David Richter
Yeah, go ahead.
Ron Legrand
One thing before we go. When you do this and you actually get your first or your next check, you got to send me a testimonial letter. It is required. It’s in federal law, passed in early 2018. So you must send me a testimonial. I’ll put you on our wall in our building. We’ve got testimonials all over the building. I mean, they’re on our walls. They take the place of wallpaper.
David Richter
Nice.
Ron Legrand
So I would love to add you to it. And it’s been my pleasure to be here, David. It’s been fun working with you and I hope we’ve done something to increase the value of the lives that you touch.
David Richter
Yeah. You really have today and would love to continue that. You can find more of these episodes at simplecfosolutions.com, and the book Profit First for Real Estate Investing. But this has been another amazing episode. Thank you so much again, Ron.
Ron Legrand
Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode valuable, could you do me a quick favor? Could you give us an honest rating within iTunes. And be honest, you could say whether you liked it or not. And obviously with iTunes, the more reviews and ratings we have, the better it is for other people that are searching for a profit first in a podcast. So we’d love to be ranked on there and that’s thanks to your help. So we would really appreciate that if you would like to go give us a rating.
Also, if you’re looking to connect with us further, I would highly recommend checking out our Facebook group, Profit First for Real Estate Investors. And that’s literally what it’s called. So you can type in Profit First for Real Estate Investors and you’ll be able to find our Facebook group right there. So come join active real estate investors who are supporting each other and growing their businesses and profits together. That’s what that group is all about. The links should be in the description below.
And if you’re interested in working with us and implementing profit first in your real estate business, we offer coaching and guidance. So if you want to work with someone who’s actually Profit First certified and who works right now currently with real estate businesses, you can actually go start your application process by going to simplecfosolutions.com/apply, or just go right to simplecfosolutions.com and there’s an apply button right on there, if you want to actually start your Profit First journey with someone who can actually walk you through those step by step and help you know and grow your cashflow.
Thanks again for joining us for another episode of The Profit First REI Podcast. See you next episode.
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