I Was The Chef For Joe’s Family, He Taught Me The Business Now I’m Making Well Above 6 Figures

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Christie: My name is Christie VanSteenWyck. I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana. I was Joe’s cook for a number of years. He would come into the kitchen and want to talk about investing in real estate. And from what he was saying I was clueless as to what was going to happen or what he was doing but I was always very curious. With my very first phone call, he was teaching me the for rent method, and we chose to take a telephone number out of the newspaper. And he said, ‘Okay, Christie, I’m going to watch. You’re going to sell this house today.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, really?’ So I called the number and I did my little script, probably just reading it most of the time and the fellow on the other end, the seller said, yes he’d be very interested in doing a rent to own, and I was so astounded by that that I actually hung up. I said that I have to go ahead and consult with my partner to see what we do next. So that was my first deal and I was very embarrassed and intimidated by the whole process. So that’s how it worked. But then, after that, I kind of got the hang of it. After one false start, and after actually putting somebody into a home, it went on from there.
 
Christie: On my first deal, we were asking for $5,000. And I’m thinking, $5,000 to get into a home that I practically knew nothing about was quite a big amount of money. But actually we made a little bit of a payment arrangement and probably collected around $3,500. It closed and got ready to go within a week. The people moved in and it was successful for both the lease option tenant and the owner as well.
 
Christie: I think Joe’s program has just been phenomenal. What I really like about it is that he teaches you ways to put buyers and sellers together creatively. And in today’s market with the actual transaction, with blending and the banks being so very difficult to get money from, I think we’re using the resources in a very creative way to actually get people into homes in which the owners are selling the properties, as well as giving the lease option tenant the benefit of trying to repair their credit in order to purchase the property.
 
Christie: Joe? He’s just such a quiet, humble guy. And it works; it really works. I think the major part of that is that as a student and with having Joe be your mentor, you are gaining the confidence to be able to do these deals. I think the more that you do it and the more that you put yourself in the place to be able to do them, the more you’re going to be very successful. Joe is the only one that I ever came across where I followed his program, and it’s just led me into really wonderful things. I’d stay by him in a heartbeat.
 
Christie: It’s just that I kind of changed directions. I had a private chef business prior to that. With that business, it’s very physical and with Joe’s program, it’s more intellectual. We’re putting buyers and sellers together and just figuring out how that’s going to work best for their circumstance. I was both doing the personal chef business and doing Joe’s program at the same time and when the program got a little bit more demanding, i.e. selling homes, lease options and subject-to’s, I was able to let go of that cooking. I do voice shots and then we do emails through a website. But in terms of the automation, that’s something I’d really like to learn a little bit more about. It is very time consuming to make one on one calls, and I think they can be very effective, but really there are not enough hours in the day to return all of the phone calls that we get.
 
Christie: Just go for it – get your feet in, jump in, just know in your heart of hearts. You’re not going to be really comfortable when you start the program but as you do deals, each deal you do is going to build your confidence and you’re going to be able to do more and more and be very successful with what you do.
 
Christie: Put trust in yourself, put your trust in Joe, learn as much as you can, and just get out there and do it. Just do it. You’re going to feel uncomfortable, I mean, any time you do something new, you’re going to feel uncomfortable, but once you do it, and you get a little bit of success, just keep moving forward and you will be successful and probably make more money than you’ve made in any other position.