Brian Evans - Real Estate Investor Coach Introduction

John Williamson (JW):  Hello, welcome to Uvestor Radio.  This is John Williamson, Founder and CEO of Uvestor.com.  Today, I am very excited to introduce someone who will be an active part of Uvestor radio.  His name is Brian Evans.  Brian Evans and I actually have a personal connection.  He has inspired and coached me getting into the real estate business prior to the launch of Uvestor.com.  So it's really a privilege to have him on the phone.  And I'd like to start off by Brian giving a little bit of background story from you, of where you've been and where you are now.

 
Brian Evans (BE):  Hi John, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.  Happy to be here, hopefully we can put some good content together for your listeners.  You know, I am just an average guy, doing real estate buying and selling properties here in Lexington, Kentucky.  I've been investing in real estate since early 2000 and bought and sold, I don't know the exact number, but pretty close to run a hundred properties.  I still do it everyday, got a fulltime staff, a couple of people work for me and we're making lots of money.


JW:  That sounds like a pretty sweet operation. As I understand that just talking to you personally that you didn't start out in real estate, you got some street knowledge doing some other businesses before you got into real estate, correct?


BE:  Yeah, I did.  After I graduated college I worked on Wall Street for a couple of years kinda  before everything took a tumble.  But I realized at that point that 9 to 5 jobs wasn't for me, I wasn't the guy who enjoyed going to work everyday.  I like being creative, I like doing my own thing.  So, at that time, an opportunity was presented to me to invest in some coffee shops so I decided to run with it.  And the little money that I have saved in college I had decided to put into an investment and we bought a coffee shop business from some other friend at that time.  And about a year and half, 2 years later, I realized that you got to have to sell a lot of cups of coffee to eat equal one deal that you do in real estate so at that point in time I realized that the coffee business was not my thing.

 
JW:  I don't even know if I could do the math in my head on how many cups of coffee would take and profit from coffee to make one deal.  That would be a lot, that's for sure.

 
BE:  We had high hopes, man we were gonna take on Starbucks like you wouldn't believe but that's life.

 
JW:  Yeah, absolutely.  So, tell us how you got started in your real estate business and what types of deals you do.
 

BE:  This is kind of an interesting story I think I'd like to share because it's something that always stands in my mind when people ask me this question.  The way I got started in real estate was that my dad, he sent me a book one day, back when I was living in New Jersey working in Wall Street.  And he sent me a book which was called "Retire Young, Retire Rich" by Robert Kiyosaki.  You may have read it or maybe some of your listeners have read it.  But the whole point of the book was you know, if you can find a way to retire early, make enough money to afford a retirement or your lifestyle then why not do it.  It was a funny thing because my dad sent me this book and he's not always the most affectionate father but you know, he's a great father nonetheless.  And he said on the posted note, he said "Read this, take notes, let's talk."  You know, "no love you, dad", no "how's things", nothing like that.  It was just "Read this, take notes, let's talk."  So I thought that was kind of funny.  So, I read the book and fell in love with the whole entrepreneurial spirit of business then real estate and things like that.  One book led to another and eventually I had started to learn about different types of education and decided to jump into it and start buying and selling properties.

 
JW:  Education, I know, is a big part of your life.  Tell us a little bit about how you educate yourself and maybe that would get a little background to what some of the listeners out there should be thinking about doing for themselves.


BE:  Sure.  Well, I've always been a huge proponent of education.  And it's hard sometimes to really understand the true value and the need to have a strong education and to keep your education current as well because it can be very expensive.  I've spent probably very close to run a hundred thousand dollars on my real estate education, business education, information marketing education, things like that.  And I continue to spend close to 20 thousand dollars a year on that education. And I do that because I enjoy it and because it makes me money.  I am able to turn that information and education into an additional income stream or help my existing business grow.  And what you don't wanna do is that you don't wanna ever develop the professor syndrome. You want to always make sure that you stay in current.  Education is extremely important to any business especially real estate since laws and markets and conditions change on a very regular basis.  So, it's vital, I mean I've subscribed to probably I think 4 or 5 different newsletters for different businesses and I enjoy reading every month, I enjoy listening to my cd's in my car, I mean I am probably just like you and a lot of your listeners listening to cd's on how to do things on a regular basis.  And that's what I like to do and it works.


JW:  And what you say makes a good point, too.  That you never really stop learning, there's no college for real estate.  But I think that what you're doing is you're going to college on your own so you've got to really take the initiative.  I personally know a lot of folks who have dabbled in education and started to learn something about something but the more they learn the more they realize that they don't know anything about much of anything.  And so, I think your attitude is the right attitude for people who have even been in the business for a number of years, it's to pay attention to what's going on right now.


BE: Right.  And you know what, another thing about education which I really want to point out because it’s important is that a lot of people think that they can to go a boot camp for investment course, buy a product, or read a book, or listen to a CD and they should be making money from it.  But there's a whole different side to it. I mean you've got to take the information that you have acquired and implement that information in order to turn it into cash.  So, a lot of people don't understand that.  But you've got to be someone who can not only listen and learn the information but turn that information and implement that into a business as well. So there's a whole difference there.  You can't buy something and expect it to do it for you, you've got to be the one to implement the info.
 

JW:  I tell you, I often stay up late at night.  I work late, I'm a total workaholic. I see these real estate information pitches online at night and I start to chuckle for myself because I know what's really going on.  You've got a lot of guys out there that are talking about get-rich-quick, you just read my book or buy my course or what not that you're mentioning.  And people will actually believe that that's how you start a business and that's not what you've done. You are in business first and I understand you're beginning to help others learn about the real estate business and to do what you do.

 
BE:  Yeah, that's exactly right.  I mean, real estate investing has been so good to me, you know next part of my life is to try to help others do exactly what I am doing.  And I've got some coaching groups and different things like that which I help people do but you know, exactly, I am trying to give back and it's very important. And something about get rich quick, once something I've always said that real estate it's not a get rich quick business but it is a get rick quicker than other businesses' business.  And you can make a boat load of money in this business if you do it the right way.  And it's a phenomenal business.

 
JW:  That's something to underline there is the get-rich-quicker than other businesses' business.  I like that a lot.


BE: Exactly, it truly is.


JW: Also, I want to make sure that our listeners know that there is a ton of stuff you're doing that they should be paying attention to to get a little bit more about your knowledge that you're going out.  Do you want to take a moment and talk about that?


BE:  Yeah.  I've got a couple of things going on and the first thing is I got a blog which I update three times a week and it's called RealEstateInvestorCoach.com.  Anybody can go there and sign up and join my online membership subscription, it's free to become an insider to be updated with weekly content, tips, strategies, and so forth.  That's RealEstateInvestorCoach.com.  And if you wanna get a free CD and a report where I discuss how I buy and sell properties in foreclosure and make money doing short sales and things like that, where the average property is anywhere from 20 to 40 thousand dollars a deal.  And you can go and get a free CD and report, it's FreeFlippingCD.com.  And you also get that to be signed up to become an insider on my blog as well.


JW:  Excellent, I know this won't be the last time we're talking with you.  We're gonna go into details about a number of specific buying, selling, and marketing strategies for really anyone to take advantage of.  And we'll be seeing a lot more content from you on Uvestor and we'll be pulling things in from RealEstateInvestorCoach.com which directly links to the FreeFlippingCD.com also.


BE:  Yeah, that sounds great.  I really look forward to providing some great value to your listeners because, again, this is the best time in history to make money in real estate, to get into this business.  We're gonna provide some great stuff, looking forward to it.

JW:  Thank you Brian.  We'll end it here for today and I thank you very much and we'll be back soon.  Again this is John Williamson with Uvestor Radio. Thanks a lot, talk to you soon.