This Will Be Pretty Much My Retirement, I’ll Be Able To Enjoy What I’m Doing

“This Will Be Pretty Much My Retirement, I’ll Be Able To Enjoy What I’m Doing”

Michael: My name is Michael Haisly. I was originally born in Fairborn, Ohio, and I now live in Indianapolis, Indiana. I wound up in Indianapolis because I worked on Indy cars for about thirty years and I love it, so I will always be close to being able to go to the 500 and enjoy the month of May every year.

Michael: I think I kind of stumbled on it looking through things on my phone watching some YouTube videos and other things that I’d picked up from either an email or webinar or something. And I listened to a couple of his YouTube videos and watched those and decided to give him a call and pursue it from there.

Michael: I started a little while after attending the first class in January of 2016. It was probably about a month, maybe six weeks after that class and fortunately I was able to deal with a friend of mine who’s a realtor in Ohio and I got a listing from him on expired listing and I sent out some postcards and got some responses and was able to make a deal after probably just a couple weeks from sending out the first postcards. It wasn’t but two weeks after I made the original deal and signing the agreement that we had a sale on the house and then two weeks after that the new owner moved in. So that deal went quickly and smoothly. I’m very happy.

Michael: If I enter into it, the entire time I spend on writing postcards, which didn’t take that long, and going to see the homeowner to get the agreement signed and then the showing and then the final signing of papers and everything, I would say probably three hours. And fortunately I didn’t make a lot of money on it, because just the way the deal came together and the amount for the selling price of the house, but I still made $2,000 which I felt was reasonable under the circumstances and for the amount of time invested it’s a good return.

Michael: The biggest thing was I proved to myself that it could be done and it isn’t that difficult.

Michael: The best deal I did was actually a HUD property the year before. I bought and sold a house that I had never seen and I made about $3,000 on that one with a split on the profits with a person that I worked with to help get the house sold. That was a sweet deal because I only had about an hour and a half in that one and the hour was because I spent that much time at the closing agent. Prior to that, it was just a few phone calls, signing the papers for HUD and the guy I did the deal split with, he found the buyer and put up the money, so that one was nice.

Michael: The future is in, I think, the lease options and going that direction for me because there’s no out-of-pocket expense. The amount of time involved isn’t much and the opportunity I think is much greater, especially with people who are looking to get housing versus trying to actually just sell one outright.

Michael: The average income would be about $2,500 based on those two. I’ve only been doing this a little bit part time. The main reason is my wife’s been a big part of this to help me and she’s had some medical issues and has had some major surgery so that kind of put a crimp on things a little bit this year. But we’re getting back into the process now toward the end of 2016 as she is doing okay. She won’t be able to do too much for a while, but that’s okay. I’m going to go ahead and proceed and kind of get the ball rolling again and by the first of the year we ought to be going pretty good. My intention is by the end of 2017 this will be pretty much my retirement and I’ll be able to enjoy what I’m doing and be able to replace my income with this. The biggest deterrent to leaving my job right now is insurance. So once I’m at a point where I can cover that expense, because my wife’s medical condition I definitely have to have good insurance. Once that happens, we’ll be okay.

Michael: Well, my goals are to be first comfortable, where I know that I can cover our living expenses. And then the second is to be able to do what I want when I want and to leave a legacy for my daughter and granddaughter so that they will be able to hopefully enjoy a little bit of the fruits of my labors so that their future can maybe be a little more comfortable than mine was.

Michael: The impact is that I know that I can go into retirement and control my own destiny because otherwise depending on anything else could be a little bit shaky right now and this way I know as long as I can do this, I will have an opportunity to live more comfortable and to be in a position where I can influence my income rather than be set on just a certain fixed amount every month, that if I decide to put in a little more effort, maybe I can have a little more income and reach a point where I know that I have a steady income that will cover my expenses and not be dependent on anything else which could go away.

Michael: I’m working right now. I would like to be full time doing this as soon as possible. I would say realistically I’m looking at least a year yet. Hopefully no longer than that. The job I have is okay. It doesn’t pay very well, but the insurance is important. So once I reach a point where I know I can meet my monthly obligations and cover my insurance, from that point on then the rest will be of a benefit for better income and a better opportunity and I’m certain that once I reach a point where I can do this on a full time basis, the income then will be much better.

Armond: Right now I haven’t automated. I am looking into probably getting Joe’s system, see how that will work for me. I have a couple of other programs that I have that I haven’t used much yet, but at least have the opportunity. So I will be working on some of that over the next couple of months. But as far as automation at this point I haven’t used anything yet. But I am looking to do that because I know that if I can automate my system it will obviously make it better for me because it will free up some of my time and then should generate more opportunity which then leads to more income.

Michael: I would say based on my similar circumstances when I first started looking into this, I really didn’t know much about real estate whatsoever. So it was completely new, the biggest thing, and obviously I didn’t really have any money to invest in it, either. I felt this might be a major hurdle, but I’ve always had a little interest in trying to do something like this. My recommendation would be to try to get as much education as you possible can, pick a couple of areas that you’re very interested in, work those areas and then after you get good at those, then you can look at expanding. As someone said, don’t try to eat the whole elephant before you do anything. What you need to do is gain a little experience, as much knowledge as you can and then go out, start working the business. You will make mistakes. But along the way try to learn as much as you can from those mistakes and the biggest thing is learn from people who know what they’re doing so that those mistakes are not expensive. Because a couple of mistakes can put you out of business or bankrupt you.

Michael: About the only thing I could say at this point is it’s had its difficulties. It’s been fun and the best advice I could give anybody is perseverance. Because if it seems a little difficult, it’s because nothing worthwhile comes easy. And if you give up the first time something is difficult, you’ll never have any success. If you never try, you never fail. And what I’ve found through my life’s experience, I’ve had a lot of failures, but they made the successes that much better and the successes are really enjoyable when you do. And having spent most of my life in sports, obviously you don’t win every game, or every race, but the ones you do, it really makes the difference.