00:00:00 - Johnny Sanders

I am now offering consultation services through faithfully engaged. If you're struggling to find a church, dealing with a destructive habit such as pornography, or trying to find a way to homeschool your kids but don't know where to start, come check me out. Go to faithfullyengaged.com consulting to learn more information and to see how we can get started. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Faithfully Engaged. I'm really excited to have my guest here today, Wyatt Simon. We're going to talk about some real estate investing, financial stability, and really what that means to be financially stable as a Christ follower sometimes. We, as Christians, don't always kind of know what to do with finances sometimes. And my guest knows all about it. So, Wyatt, it's great to have you on. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

00:01:03 - Wyatt Simon
Yeah. Thanks for having me on here, Johnny. I'm excited today. So I'm probably best known as the kid who took a 200k line of credit and turned it into a $20 million real estate portfolio. I was just, I spent a lot of time wanting to not have to work for someone else and, you know, eventually was able to, to do just that. And now I, you know, want to help as many people as possible, be able to reach financial independence and do it for the Lord.

00:01:34 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah. I love that simple mentality there, but it is a really important mission there. Let me just kind of start on where, where this came into. Some people have passions when they're younger, depending on how they grew up or whatever. Did you always have a passion for real estate? Like, how did you get into that to begin with?

00:01:57 - Wyatt Simon
No, I did not. I loved basketball, and I went to a very small college in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, called Doan, to play basketball. That's where 5' 11" white guys go. Eventually, it became clear that I was not gonna make it to the NBA. And so then my passion turned from basketball to, okay, well, if I can't become a professional in basketball, then I know I hated being in my desk job. And so I was like, whatever I gotta do to get out of that, I'm gonna try to do that. And naturally, for me, it went into sales, and then sales turned into real estate. And eventually, I just started. I worked a sales career for a while as a foundation sales rep. I did well for myself and I invested in real estate, and I just kept the cycle repeating. And eventually, I was able to leave that job and now just do real estate full-time.

00:02:54 - Johnny Sanders
Great. Yeah. I'm always interested in hearing people's origin stories, no matter what they're. They're doing. And with, I think for a lot of people that are listening to you, this, they may. They may not be involved in sales, but, all right, you go to a place, you have some product or whatever, and you sell it. Okay, that. That's fairly simple as far as the underlying understanding of that. Of course, there's more that goes into it than just that. But with real estate investing, I think a lot of people just don't. I mean, they don't get it. Like, they understand I've got my own house, but, like, why would I get other houses? So what is it about real estate investing that has been successful for you and why it's so, so important for. For your own financials?

00:03:43 - Wyatt Simon
I read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and so that's the quote-unquote purple Bible. Right? And in that book, it explains, you know, there are two ways to make money. One is working for it, and the other one is having assets bring you money. And so when I read that book, I was like, man, I just want to have these assets bringing me money so I don't have to go to work or I'm not forced to go to work. Um, so that was kind of the origin of it, right? And one of the big unlocks for me was, I said, okay, well, how much money is going out every month? I was paying $900 in rent, which, you know, is probably $1,400 nowadays with inflation. But, uh, it was $900 back then. And so what I did is I bought a duplex. I lived on one side, I rented out the other, and then I even rented out my side. And so now instead of making that $900 payment, I was actually making money each month just by living for free and renting out my duplex. And so that really helps when you can save $900 a month and actually make $200 on top of that to now start investing and saving that to buy more of these buildings.

00:04:56 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah, no, that obviously makes a lot of sense there, and it obviously can be quite lucrative in that way for somebody that's listening to this and, like, all right, that sounds great. Now what do I do? I just go buy and duplex. Like, what. What do you kind of encourage people to do for that first step ? To really get in and do that?

00:05:18 - Wyatt Simon
Yeah. So if you're looking at this, and I've helped a lot of students do this, but if you're. If you're looking at this, like, okay, I don't have any real estate well, the first thing I tell you is, look@your.net. cash flow. Are you net negative by living right now? My net negative was $900 a month negative. So how can you make that either a neutral or a positive? And what I mean by that is right now, you might not be able to buy a duplex and have it be a net zero. You might still have to pay out money. You might still have to pay. If you're at $900 a month, you might still have to pay $900 a month over here. But if you pay $900 a month over here as a duplex owner, now you're starting to build equity and you're starting to have appreciation come under play. So if you ever go to move and you want to sell that asset, well, if you're renting, you don't get anything. But if you're owning now, you get to sell it and you get to make money, which will help you, in turn, buy more assets in the future. Or you can rent it out.

00:06:22 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's important for people when they, regardless of what it is in this case, kind of being able to have real estate, some type of asset that you're owning, or even if it's somebody that's trying to go to the gym, you got to do something. You can't just, you can read rich dad, poor dad, like, you can read these great books. Um, but if I don't take steps, then I'm not going to, I'm not going to do anything. I can read about going to the gym, but if I don't go to the gym, I'm not going to get in shape. So I think it's good to be able to, to think through some of these actionable steps, and maybe, maybe for somebody that is a Christian that's listening, I know we're really based on the christian values. On this show, some christians struggle with being able to have you talk about, you know, a $20 million portfolio. They might hear that, like, oh, man. Like, we're really called to be, to be givers and to not, not hoard our wealth and things like that. And some Christians might, might struggle with that concept. How do you make sense of that and be able to encourage Christ followers to use this wealth for good instead of just for greed?

00:07:47 - Wyatt Simon
Right? Great. Yeah. Great question. So I'll tell you this. I'm in a Christian men's business community group where it's all Christian men's business guys, and we meet every, we meet once a month. It's really my board of advisors. I'm the youngest guy in the room by about two decades, and it's fantastic. But one of the guys that he told this story, we're actually having our devotional, and it was in Corinthians, and Paul was sharing how we're different parts of the body of Christ. And one of the gentlemen in the group, he. He was into drugs and sex and alcohol, and he was actually on drugs and a mountaintop, and he said, God, if you're real, show me. And for two weeks, he was busing tables. That was his job. For two weeks. He would just say it every day, God, if you're real, show me. If you're real, show me. And there was one day that someone left a Jesus pamphlet on the table, and it changed. He broke down crying. It changed his life. He went in. He. He quit the job that day and then gave his life to Christ. And in that moment, God met him. And so how does he now meet people? Well, he will always leave at least a $100 tip on every single lunch, dinner, anything that does. He's just a giver. And he leaves a pamphlet with it. And he has seen time and time again where people will break down in tears and hug him and thank him. And. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is because he is not a Paul. He does not talk very much, but his actions speak for him. And so we, as Christians, are different parts of the body. There are pauls out there that maybe don't have a bunch of money, but, man, there are disciples, evangelizers, and then there are other people that, hey, they use their time and talents and abilities in the financial world to then support the church. And so I can tell you, for me, personally, it's about giving, right? I have always tithed, and my tithe goes up every single time my income goes up. And that means the church, now, we can support more people. We can support more missionaries. And so all of these things tie together, as long as we, as Christians, use our talents and abilities to tie them together.

00:09:59 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic story there. And even your own kind of personal testimony there. I know personally on my end as well. Just this past year, our church, we're going through a little bit of some financial concerns, and it was one of those where, hey, like, we're okay, but we. Something needs to change. So we're really, uh, praying for that. And this year, the. I do the offering, so I kind of see a little bit more of an inside look there. And the beauty of seeing more of that cash flow coming in out of the goodness of people's hearts. But also, for me personally, it's been amazing to see that as my own business has done better and I've been able to contribute more. Um, it's not about, like, you know, how great I am or whatever, but all the other people in the church as well, when they are doing well financially and are giving that money, it helps the church, it helps that local body and missionaries that, like you're saying to you, to be able to go out and support other people, spreading the word across the nation. So there's a difference there between being wealthy and hoarding it being that Scrooge McDuck type, that nobody else gets my money, or being somebody that is freely giving that money. Having that wealth is not a sin. It's what we do with that wealth that can be sinful or not. So I think that's a great, great way that you're challenging us to think about wealth.

00:11:37 - Wyatt Simon
Yeah, I appreciate it. And I mean, like, I call this spade a spade. Like, financial literacy is a science. It's not an art. It's not something you're blessed with. It's something that can be learned. And so, like, I can tell you, when I was in college, zero financial literacy. I was blowing money. I was doing stupid stuff, right? And then I said, okay, how. How do I become financially literate? And the simple, really, the simple formula is you look at how much money is coming in at the top of your funnel, and then where are you allocating that money? And how much money is then being invested from there? And so if you have $100 and you have a $100 coming in, $100 coming out, and no money being invested and no money being given, well, then you are not financially literate. And so all it takes is taking that money that's coming in and allocating it accordingly. And if you only have $100 coming in, then the next step is, okay, how can I increase my earning potential, right? So a friend of mine, he. He worked as an. Not an Uber driver, but a Grubhub driver. So he was making $15 an hour, and now he makes over a million dollars a year as a real estate agent with his real estate business. And so it's. It is a science. And so I. We, as Christians, are called to live differently, right? People should look at our life and be like, okay, this person's different. Why is this person different? Well, is he doing it for him, or is he doing it for the stewardship of other people to show that they're different.

00:13:20 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah. No, absolutely. And I love the word stewardship. I think that's such a good way to think of not just your wealth, the money you're bringing in, but. But your time, your whole being. Are you stewarding it? Well, today's day and age, and I'm by no means guilt free from this, but there's time wasting of being on social media, or whatever it may be, to where you're just. You're not stewarding your time. Well, and obviously with finances, sure, you mentioned inflation. There's. There's some difficult things out there, um, as far as making it difficult to. To get more money, to increase that cash flow and everything. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. What I've seen kind of anecdotally, um, even in my, my day job as a. As a counselor as well, that while there are these external things that do factor inflation, job loss, things of that nature that maybe beyond your control, that does factor. But I see more times than not, there's excuses built in there that are kind of limiting ourselves. We're kind of our own worst enemy. Curious to see if you see that in your time as well. And if people do have that tendency to kind of, you know, stop themselves, what do we do about that? How can we improve that?

00:14:52 - Wyatt Simon
Yes. The answer is yes. And I. I forgot, you're a counselor, so, yes, this is right up your alley. We are our own worst enemy, Stephen Covey. He says, so. Private victories supersede public victories. So oftentimes we have to get out of our own way to become what we already were. And what does that mean? Like, for instance, for me, it was, I used to be the I'm going to do everything guy. I used to think that I have to do this, and I have to do that, and I have to do this. Well, in all reality, I shouldn't be the I'm everything guy, what I should be doing, because we live in a capitalistic society. So it's, what is your God given talent and ability that can make you the most amount of money and double down on that, do that and hire out the rest. And that is how you start to scale and build and build and build. Like, one of the things I really want to challenge everyone listening to is what. What are you worth per hour? Right? Think about it. What if someone asks you, what are you worth per hour? What is that hourly rate? And there's no wrong answer, but I want to challenge you to eliminate all of the tasks that are not at that hourly rate. And that will simply if you become aware of that and you just start focusing on doing only your highest hourly rate tasks and doubling down on it and increasing that, that is how you really become capitalistically grown, right? It doesn't mean you add more value to God by doing that, but it does mean you add more value to a capitalistic society and it means you then get more resources that you can then glorify God with.

00:16:40 - Johnny Sanders
That is really important advice. There's something that I'm talking about with my counseling business. I've been running my own practice for about a couple years, which has been a very different thing for me. And I know most of you listening are not counselors or not a real estate investor. But regardless, when you're running your own business, that what Wyatt just said, there is everything. When I first started it, I was a website developer. I was a Google like SEO stuff specialist. On top of being a counselor, I was everything. And I learned quickly that hey, I could do more than I thought I could. I actually made my first website and it turned out pretty decent. But I wasn't able to invest more time to see clients. I wasn't able to do what I was really aiming out there to do. Same thing on this podcast. I've mentioned this several times. I have a Virtual Assistant. Her name's Katie. She's got her own business called Let Katie Do It, she does Virtual Assistant services. It's fantastic. And she's been so helpful to me because she does all these little things that you don't think about behind the scenes, making thumbnails, scheduling when the episode goes, just tons of little things. But the amount of time that was taking me one, it was draining me out. So I wasn't able to see clients as much as I would like to. And going back to that stewardship of even time, it gave me less time with my family. I wasn't as engaged with my family, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there was no way I could keep that up. And I wanted this podcast to be something that I can continually grow over time. And I didn't want to just give up after a few episodes. So with Katie, being able to help me out has been tremendous. And even though that has cost more money, I've actually gained money from being able to spend more time seeing more clients and things of that nature. And it's been fantastic. But if you're trying to do what Wyatt's saying, try to be everything to everybody in every single situation, you will flame out. It's just not possible. And not only will you flame out, you won't even get as much income as you could if you do what you do well and just do more of it. Now, that is kind of the key to success there.

00:19:25 - Wyatt Simon
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. And to bring it back to what you said originally, it's, you are your own worst enemy. It's you, you have to develop the belief that you're worth what you say you're worth, and then you have to develop the discipline that you are going to stick to that number and actually follow through on hiring them. We said Katie will do it. Is that what it is?

00:19:49 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah. Yeah,Let Katie Do It.

00:19:51 - Wyatt Simon
Let Katie Do it. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta stick through that. And I mean, I'm telling you this now, like, this was a, it took me a long time to figure this out. I own a property management company that services the portfolio. So I have five full-time employees in that company and I was doing everything, and it was terrible. And so, and then I also hired the wrong people, and that was terrible. And so it was, it was a long, hard journey and it's still, I mean, you know, the journey never stops. But, but, man, it definitely helps when you know your hourly rate and you stick to the discipline to find the right people to fill that spot.

00:20:31 - Johnny Sanders
Absolutely. And when we take this beyond just the, the gaining more money out to the Christian perspective, if that is the only goal, we don't think of anything else. It's solely just to get money. Eventually, we're going to run into issues somewhere along the line. There needs to be something larger than solely just getting money. Getting money is great. That's fantastic. But when you are doing a job well, a business well, you're not just getting more money. And it's not even just about giving the money to the church, although that's a fantastic part as well. Think of everybody else that you affect with me, for instance, my virtual assistant, Katie wouldn't have this gig with me if I don't do that. We're building a house right now. We've got a contractor that's helping us out. We've got lots of local shops that we're getting the wood from and all the materials and different contractors. I'm not just like giving them money, like a charity thing, but I'm helping those businesses out as well by using them. Whereas if it's, I think sometimes, especially on the Christian side of things and on the Conservative side of things, we have this isolationist mentality that is just going to be me and myself and a log cabin out in the middle of nowhere. And I don't need anybody else. And that's really not a Christian worldview. Like, we need other people. And by you being able to use other people that do their task well, not just, like you're saying, hiring the wrong people don't just hire your cousin, just because, like, hire people that are good at their job. It's a blessing that you're even helping them out by letting them do what they do well, and you focus on what you do well. So it's this whole economy, um, both in the, like, the financial sense of things, but in the christian sense, we can help out even other christian business owners, um, by letting them do the jobs well, instead of us just feeling like we got to carry everything and we get stressed and then we just don't want to work anymore. And, work isn't supposed to be a horrible, terrible thing. God created work as a good thing. We just don't always manage it well

00:23:00 - Wyatt Simon
Yeah, super well said. Yeah. That is the reason why our economy flourishes, when people are all doing well. Because when money changes hands, it's better for everyone because you can. And Stephen Covey talks about. So when you become independent, first you're dependent, right? So like, a baby is dependent upon the father, right. And so without the father, it can't do anything. So not really worth much. Then when you become dependent, meaning you can live on your own, you can make money on your own, you can do things on your own. Now you're dependent when the true miracle happens is when you become interdependent. And that is when deep, independent people choose to work together. And that is when one plus one can equal ten or 100, because you're living in your unique ability that you're great at to then function as a unique society and economy and everything else to then benefit. And it's the same thing if you're using your christian gifts, right? Like, if you have an amazing, if you have 100 amazing pastors at a church, well, who's going to stack the chairs? Who's going to run the media team, right? Like, how, how, who's going to agree, right? Maybe the pastor could be good at that. Who's going to run the kids in the daycare? Right? It's like it takes a whole body of Christ to work interdependently to then function. And so happens in all different walks of life.

00:24:35 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you bring the church example in there. Something that I absolutely love about my current church is our, our teaching pastor is. He's fantastic. Um, he's somebody that, like, legitimately could be preaching at like a massive mega church, for sure. Um, and he's in our small, little, little church in, uh, Comanche, Oklahoma. And he's fantastic. But what I love about it is he preaches less Sundays than in any church I've ever been in. It's still the majority. It's mostly every month. But there's times when he's on vacation. He takes a little bit more vacation than some churches I've been in. He lets other preachers from, like sister churches come in every once in a while. Orlando, one of the elders, gets to preach every once in a while. I've been in other churches that have the same pastor every single time. And what I like about it is that the church isn't our pastor. Like, it's all of us. It's the whole body of believers. And it's the people that don't go up and preach. It's the ones that shake hands, that are on the security team or helping with the kids. I mean, it's a whole body, not just one person up on stage. And when we view church as that, it's all that pastor, well, what if he leaves, like now? Now we're in trouble. Like, we've got to all be in that body together. And same thing with our business. That local community is important to other business owners, the customers that you have. It's all interdependent. I love that phrase. Because it's not just you and yourself for your business. It's not just you and yourself for your faith. We don't just do this by ourselves. We. We have to have that community.

00:26:36 - Wyatt Simon

Right. And how do we get there? It's becoming independent. So that means becoming financially literate with your finances. That means using your time, talents and abilities for God. Right. And so we have to walk from dependency to independence in these different aspects. And that's why, you know, financially, that's, you know, what I've really focused on. And that's one of the reasons why I wrote this book, which is your first 100 units. So it's how to start building a rental portfolio. It's everything. It's the investors playbook to scaling a rental portfolio. And it's coming out on my birthday, October 17. But it is. It is literally everything I wish I had. All the culmination of all the books that I read and all the podcasts that I listen to to help start portfolios.

00:27:30 - Johnny Sanders

Great. No, I think that's, that's a, that's a fantastic resource for, for everybody that's listening to this. I always tell people, even, even during the episode, I don't always fully know when we'll air these because I pre record these interviews. But regardless of if you're listening to this before it comes out, or if, if you're listening to this two years in the future and it's been up for a while, it sounds like that would really be worth your while if you're looking into starting a real estate portfolio like that. Cause it sounds like lots of years of wisdom and like you're saying stuff that you wish you would have had before you got started.

00:28:11 - Wyatt Simon
Yeah. And it's really, it's broken out into three sections, so it's, it's how to buy real estate, it's how to systemize it and then how to scale it. And so the first steps, I mean, if you're, if you're listening to this and you haven't started, it's how to buy. Right. Like what to look for, how to run your numbers, how to make sure you get into a good deal. I share a lot of lessons from my bad deals, and so you can learn from my mistakes. You don't have to go through what I went through. And so that's, that's it. And then once you, once you learn how to buy real estate, then the next step is, okay, how do, how do you systemize it? Because you can't scale it until you've got the systems and the people in place to run it, to have consistent deal flow, to have good bank financing, all of those things. And then once you really get that lined up, then it's okay. How do you take it from, you know, three and take it to 100? And that's kind of the latter half of the book.

00:29:03 - Johnny Sanders

Great. Great. No, I think that sounds like a really worthwhile book, for sure. I'm curious, just on your. I've had several authors on the show before. Just the process of writing the book. I know that's probably a little bit different than what you're used to doing. Was that intimidating? Was it easier than you thought?

00:29:26 - Wyatt Simon

It was easier than I thought. I just googled how to write a book and, you know, YouTube's a wonderful thing, but it broke it down into a. Oh, like a vision map. I can't remember what it's called, but where you just, you know, you write the main idea and then you draw lines off of that and you just, you just, I brain dump it. And then after you brain dump it, you just do that for each chapter. And now you've got your entire outline. And then once you've got your outline, you know, it's just me. And it was me on a park bench for about three weeks, no Chat GPT, and I was just typing away. And I guess they say your first book's a lot easier to write than your next because it's, you know, your whole life's worth of knowledge you dump into there. So I don't know how many more books I'm going to write, to be honest with you. But I am really excited to share this one with, you know, everyone out there. I was literally just, you know, I had in mind the whole time when Wyatt was starting at 22, what did I wish I would have learned? Because I made so many mistakes, guys, so many mistakes. And so, you know, if I can, you know, save you from just one of them, of the thousand, then it's worth it.

00:30:34 - Johnny Sanders

Yeah, absolutely. Well, why? It's been an absolute joy to have you on and you shared so much wisdom for us both with just financial kind of intelligence and everything, being able to get into a little bit on specifics with real estate and also what it means to incorporate all that as a, as a Christ follower. So remind us again when the book comes out and where we can get it at.

00:31:02 - Wyatt Simon

Awesome. So October 17, it's coming out, Your First 100 Units, The Real Estate Investors Playbook to Scaling a Rental Portfolio, and it's going to be available on Amazon.

00:31:14 - Johnny Sanders

Fantastic. And are there any other websites or social media places that people can contact you after the show?

00:31:24 - Wyatt Simon

Yeah, well, I'm super active on Instagram and Facebook. You can look me up. Wyatt buys buildings. And if you're, if you want to get in touch with me, I do offer consulting services, so I've helped over 20 students now buy over $3 million worth of real estate. And so I help people scale portfolios. If you're interested in that, go to Wyatt Simon.com, Wyatt Simon.com, and you can fill in an intake to see if we're going to be a good fit together.

00:31:54 - Johnny Sanders

Fantastic. All right, well, I'll include that stuff down in the description below, so definitely check that out. And Wyatt, once again, thanks so much for being on today.

00:32:04 - Wyatt Simon

Yeah, thanks for having me, Johnny.

00:32:06 - Johnny Sanders

Absolutely. And thank you to everybody that tuned in today and we'll catch you on the next episode.