All Forum Posts by: Kenny Clark

How important is the kitchen either in your own house or your rentals?  

I go through spurts but I love to cook when there's people to share the experience with. The kitchen is what's sold me in my first house and it'd a great lay out in my current house.

My next house I'll be a bit more specific - bigger deeper sinks, pasta faucet even if I only use it once a yesr for a big jug of summer iced tea lol and a dishwasher, walk in pantry are on my check list.

I feel other amenities like skylights or big windows, cellars for dry storage would be cool too but I'm not really a big baker or canner lol.

Now it's got me thinking - imagine a hidden island? Flip a switch and you get a nice pop up island that comes out of the floor? The floor/counter top would be the hardest thing to work throughcfor that lol

How important is a kitchen when your looking at a new house or rental? Anything you've always wanted or you've never seen before you've imagined and will install some day?

Trying to have the perfect (or close to it) home and family is never ending and patience is key.

Just like when we're looking for the right property and how we need to negotiate, waiting for the right priced house to come along it's important we show that same patience to our family and especially our kids.

My daughter was giving me pushback about something last week and when I told her No she lost it. She started yelling and screaming and I'll be honest, I wanted to match her energy in the moment. I'd be lying if I said it would be the first time.

Instead, I asked her for a hug. "No!! I don't want one!" She screamed.

"Can I give you a hug?" I asked

"Yes..." she said as she buried her face in the pillow.

So I gave her a huge and instantly she started to cool down and wasn't losing her temper anymore.

Sometimes it just takes a different approach and patience is usually the key. Instead of giving her a time out or punishing her, I led with love and when she calmed down she did as I asked without needing to ask again. Sometimes when you listen to what the seller really wants and how they need help, you can both get your way a lot more effortlessly

Learning how to take care of my family is something I struggle with daily, in a positive way. I'm trying to become the best person I can not just for myself, and not just to lead them and support them for their goals but so that they have an example they can learn from and can genuinely be proud of a father and leader that actually does what he says he will.

This also translate into being a real estate investor, into business, studies; you name it.

If I'm steady for 2 weeks or 3 months sourcing and negotiating leads, how do I expect the results I want? What about you pursuing new clients at work? Studying for my exam? If we aren't consistent we're lying and letting down ourselves,everyone we've told we're going to do it and the people who follow and support us.

If I can't keep my word, what faith does my family have in me? How can they keep supporting someone who's lied a dozen times?

How can we expect results if we are consistent? Is the team going to follow you if you can't even keep your eye on the prize? It's an uphill battle and I'm here for it with arms ears and eyes wide open!

Quote from @Eric Gerakos:

Quote from @Kenny Clark:

Quote from @Eric Gerakos:

Do you mean syndrome? 

I'm surprised a small typo really has you stumped on this one. Or you're you're just intentionally putting a negative focus onto a post meant to help and relieve people. I wish you a happier life brother, sometimes the bigger picture is worth paying attention to

 Since you're calling me out, you misspelled it twice then. Once would have been a "small typo." I was actually clarifying that you weren't referring to something I hadn't heard of with "syndrom." I'm plenty happy, lol.

 I wish you the best in your spelling correcting endeavors and hope it yields the life of design you're striving for. Thank you for the engagement

Quote from @Eric Gerakos:

Do you mean syndrome? 

I'm surprised a small typo really has you stumped on this one. Or you're you're just intentionally putting a negative focus onto a post meant to help and relieve people. I wish you a happier life brother, sometimes the bigger picture is worth paying attention to

I'll be the first to admit it - I've panicked at the signing table. Do the thoughts "Do I deserve this?" Or "Am I in over my head?" ring a bell at all? Imposter Syndrom is something everyone faces and when you add money or a big deal to the equation, it can feel a lot stronger.

Something I had to learn is that those feelings of anxiety or fear isn’t a bad thing, its the hard **** you need to do to grow. Its pushing your boundaries and stepping out of your comfort zone.

I once heard the quote "Nothing in life worth having is easy, that includes happiness." That really put things into perspective for me and realized it applies to everything we do.

Calling a seller to negotiate a deal? Yeah we're probably going to sound stupid the first few times and get put in our place but if you're learning from it thats a win to me. Every investor or person I consider successful and look up to goes through this, correct me if I'm wrong!

Honestly real estate isnt cheap and had some big legal repercussions so theres going to be fear but it's about looking at your first property, the first flip, or the first time you pitched a potential investor and recognizing the courage it took to take that step. You might not have felt courageous, but you were.

The giants of the industry? Of any industry? They're just people who decided to keep walking one step at a time despite all odds.

When I hear that it really reiterates the importance of breaking down your big goals into smaller actionable steps so you're going up one stair at a time, not tiring yourself skipping 2 or 3 at a time

Quote from @Benjamin Carver:

I didn't realize gmail had features for CRM. I'll have to look into that. I've been using Dex on my phone for general CRM - not too bad. But it's all manual entries pretty much.

It's not a true crm, but you can use it like one. You can categorize, attach notes etc. I don't reply right away so I don't seem needy, so when Gmail shows it was received 2 to 3 days ago, I know it's time to reply.

when I look at the oldest and see my last communication was around 30 days prior, I know it's time to follow up.

Not sure if Gmail has reminders or automation, but it's a good free option for people who are figuring out their processes

The fortune is in the follow up!

If you don't already, you need to set up a separate email for all your real estate investment stuff.

Gmail is awesome, it's an all in one CRM basically (Even though I use zoho... or am learning to properly use one lol) Now you can even download a note add on the sticks to the top of each different thread, and you can see a highlight of it from the main inbox screen.

When negotiating deals, you're going to probably piss some people off and/or just get ignored by some people. It's going to happen - don't lose your cool though lol.

I make sure I'm always the last to reply, and I delay my response depending where we are in negotiations. The closer we are to a deal, the quicker I respond etc.

So like I said, eventually I'll get ghosted. With my Gmail, I go to the back page where the oldest emails are.

From here I'll go and reply to anything that I haven't received a response from in ~30 days. I just send a simple - Hey has this sold? or Is this still available?

And you know what, I still get ignored a bunch. But I get some people that will reply back and now I know they're having a hard time offloading the deal.

Then every 30ish days later I'll go to the back of the inbox again and ask the same! Some times the last email I sent was has this sold? To which I'll word it differently. If I don't get a reply after the third email, I won't bother them anymore. If they also tell me to stop emailing them, I won't reply back - you can get in real trouble for this if you keep "spamming' them.

Fortune is in the follow up, you don't have to make it difficult!

@Huong Luu Thanks Huong for the quick overview. I'd love to connect and chat sometime! I don't come from a place of money so I'm trying to find all the different options available to me. I'm not necessarily in a spot to buy now, but in a few more months I'd like to start looking again.

Hello Everyone! I've been a home owner and landlord for the past 5 years. I've always wanted to "Get into" real estate, but didn't know how until about a year ago. I've been doing lots of research but I'm not in a position to buy another house.

I've been reading lots, and trying to to change my mind set regarding life in general. I've been starting to think, "how can I?" Rather than "I can't." well as soon as I did, my father in law has decided to go in and purchase my grandparents house with me. I'm using equity, he's using cash. I'll give him 10% annual return, and refinance after a set amount of years to pay him off. It's a nice, cash flowing property that'll come with 30k equity, and up to 80k if I reno it all up nice.

Great news for me! 3 months ago I wouldn't have seen this coming and I'm still a little surprised to be honest. But now, I'm looking at how do I get another? Well money isn't common in my family, everyone I know has no faith in real estate and is content being mediocre for the rest of their lives. The banks consider me maxed out due to my income vs debt ratio.

How would you guys recommend me looking into a third mortgage? I've been sending every private seller in my town an email inquiring about vendor financing. I'm waiting for a multifamily deal to come available in a nice part of town to ask a bank for 100% funding, as I don't think they would for the current apartments for sale.

Thank you in advance, any information or guidance is highly appreciated!