Episode 43 - How to Win with the Right Mindset and Mentors with Antoine Martel
What if the secret to real estate success isn’t just strategy, but mindset? In this episode, Stephen sits down with Antoine to dive deep into the mindset shifts that separate successful real estate investors from those who struggle. Antoine, a seasoned investor and mentor, shares his personal journey, from setbacks to multimillion-dollar deals, revealing the habits, lessons, and strategies that helped him thrive in the competitive world of real estate.
00:00 Intro
05:30 How Antoine’s early struggles shaped his drive for success in real estate
12:45 The biggest mindset shifts every investor needs to make
20:10 Why failure is inevitable—and how to turn it into your greatest asset
27:30 The most common mistakes new investors make and how to avoid them
35:50 How to build the right network and find people who elevate your success
This episode is packed with practical wisdom, personal stories, and actionable insights for anyone looking to break into or scale in the real estate industry. Whether you're a new investor or a seasoned pro, you’ll walk away with game-changing perspectives on wealth, resilience, and success. Tune in now!
TRANSCRIPT
∎ Teaser / Highlighted Clip
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (0:00 - 0:39)
I remember being like, God, this is what real estate's all about. Huh? 650 deals later, it never happened again.
I waited eight years and 650 flips later to like start some sort of education, which I started a couple of years ago. And I mean, the space has just gotten more and more and more and more and more crowded because of like what you said, like then somebody flips one house and they're like, you can't tell from an ad that says the same thing. We'll help you invest in real estate.
A guy who's done one deal or done nothing actually can make the same fricking ad and he might have the same ad costs and whatever. And he can just lie because he's a brand new business.
[Stephen Husted] (0:39 - 2:34)
And I don't want anybody to ever think that you just go out and buy an investment property or properties and think it's just, you're going to have all this cash flow and you're going to be rich in a couple of years. And that's really not it.
∎ Podcast Intro:
Brace yourself for a wild ride into the unexpected.
This ain't your typical success show. I'm here talking to real folks who've been through it all. Skipping the fancy business talk for authentic stories.
We're diving into childhood dreams, teenage escapades, and everything in between. No scripts, just the stories that truly mold success. Each episode takes you on a journey through those breakthrough moments that paved their way.
No fluff, just genuine stories. So whether you're chasing dreams or just love a good story, buckle up for wisdom, laughs, and the unexpected. This is The Breakthrough Podcast, where success is a journey, not just some fancy destination.
Don't miss out. Hit the subscribe button now and join our breakthrough crew. I got some incredible stories to share and you won't want to miss a single one.
∎ Guest Introduction:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Breakthrough with Stephen Husted. I've got a real estate legend on the episode today, Antoine Martel.
He's a real estate investor, entrepreneur and a guy who's done over 650 deals across multiple markets. Yes, you've heard that right. We cover it all.
How he started investing in the Midwest, the wild tenant stories. Yes, human waste on the walls level wild. How he scaled up, raised capital and grew his business.
Plus we get into his move to Miami, how he's tackling today's market and what big things he's got planned next. This episode is packed with insights, stories and real talk about what it takes to build and scale in real estate. You don't want to miss it.
Stay tuned.
∎ Podcast Proper:
All right. How's it going, buddy?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (2:35 - 2:36)
Good. How are you?
[Stephen Husted] (2:36 - 3:26)
I'm doing good. I appreciate you accepting my offer to come on the podcast. I was going through my Instagram and going, okay, who do I want to get on the podcast this year?
I'm scrolling through and I saw your name. I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to just throw something out there. Let's see what he says.
And that's how it works. Sometimes you get people on a good day, you know? I'm like, I don't know.
It's a good shot. But you know, what's interesting is I've been following you since like the COVID days. Wow.
Like when shit was crazy. Yeah. And I was just watching you kind of just take off and watching you go through your journey of things.
And I do remember one story. I think it was, you were talking about your first rental property after your tenants moved out and there was, you went back into it. It was, walls had shit everywhere.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (3:26 - 3:26)
Yep.
[Stephen Husted] (3:27 - 3:28)
That was you, right?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (3:28 - 3:59)
Yeah, that was me. Yep. It was, I mean, and that only happened one time.
And I think it was on like the first or second or third deal where that had happened. That was in Memphis, Tennessee. And yeah, I remember being like, God, this is what real estate's all about, huh?
650 deals later. It never happened again. So that's kind of nice.
There was different stories that happened with just like super messy tenants or whatever, but never them spreading their human waste on the walls. Just like that second deal, third deal.
[Stephen Husted] (4:00 - 4:20)
So I was like, okay, cool. This guy's actually telling it like it is, you know, there was, especially back then it was wild. I just remember seeing so many different people.
Like I remember I saw this, this lady that bought an Airbnb property, rehabbed it in Memphis and turned it into Airbnb. And then like two weeks later she had a course and she was just crying.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (4:20 - 4:21)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (4:21 - 4:22)
You know what I mean?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (4:22 - 4:24)
I know some people like that now. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (4:25 - 4:29)
Yeah. You know, at first I remember just going, well, when should you be able to make the course?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (4:30 - 4:30)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (4:30 - 4:47)
You know what I mean? Because she bought a property. It was a fixer upper.
She rehabbed it. She did a good job and she got it on the market. So she went through all these steps.
So she's further ahead than most people that have never done it. But if you look in the big scheme of things, when from other investors, like, God, you're still a rookie.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (4:48 - 4:48)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (4:49 - 4:53)
But Hey, kudos to her. She went out there and actually created the course.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (4:53 - 6:13)
I started my own, you know, I waited eight years and 650 flips later to like start some sort of education, which I started a couple of years ago. And I mean the space has just gotten more and more and more and more and more crowded because of like what you said, like then somebody flips one house and they're like, I'll show you how to flip your first house or, you know, get your money back. And it's like, you've done it one time and you know, they can undercut me.
And then to the average consumer, it's kind of like, I say I've done 650. They say they've done a few, but he's, you know, charging two grand, I charged 20 grand. And so it's like, there's so many, it seems like every creator now like has kind of pivoted towards that educational space, which, you know, it's just such a crowded space way more than it used to be like pre COVID.
It was not like that. There was a couple of big guys that had some courses and stuff like that. But I mean, now it just seems like, like what you just said, you flip one house and so much in the real estate kind of space too.
It's kind of weird. I live in Miami and a lot of people I know here, like invest in the stock market or do options trading or whatever. You know, there's still a lot of those kind of options trading courses and stuff, but it seems like it's not as many as the real estate guys, like guys and girls that start a course and start some sort of educational component to their business.
[Stephen Husted] (6:13 - 7:50)
So I held back for a long time because I would personally, I would see comments everywhere, even your stuff too. I mean, funny enough, I was, I think you and thatch, I'm always kind of going into the comment section and trying to make people think, especially the ones that just really don't understand the dynamic. You really not going to get a full topic in discussion in a one minute video at all.
And so you take things out of context and you can spin that one minute video into a million different things. It's crazy. I mean, I remember when you were posting about buying properties out in Detroit and you had one deal in Harperwood, I've had properties in Harperwood.
So I know exactly when you're doing your numbers, I know if it's on or off. And it's just funny to see people come in the comment section. And then I would say something like, Hey, I wouldn't be worried about his numbers.
I would be worried about making sure your property management, your tenant and your shit doesn't get stolen out of the property. And that's another video in itself. That is somewhere where someone like you or me, we can give them that backstory later on, whether that's like a mentorship or whatever, we can go dive into and you can, you can ask that question.
What is all the crazy shit you've gone through? And those crazy things will help others, you know, not go through that. I mean, they'll go through their own, but I think that's where the experience part comes in.
Wouldn't you agree? Like I think people that have a bunch of properties gone through a lot of things, lost money are the ones that should be teaching for the most part.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (7:50 - 9:33)
I agree. It's so hard to stand out now. I mean, it's hard.
And you're seeing it like, you know, we run a ton of ads for our education business too. And it's just, you know, it's hard to stand out from the other guy. He can't tell from an ad.
The ad says the same thing. We'll help you invest in real estate. A guy who's done one deal or done nothing actually can make the same fricking ad and he might have the same ad costs and whatever.
And he can just lie because he's a brand new business. And then, so I don't know, he has less at risk and less at stake. The content thing is funny because yeah, I'll post stuff like I flipped this house and made 20 grand.
And then like people were like, your margin's not big enough. You're never going to make money with that. And I'm like, okay.
Or they're like, you forgot the realtor commission on the backend. And I'm like, okay, well I sold it as a for sale by owner. So how about that?
You know, it's like so many like my new details where you said, like if I made a tweet post about the numbers of my deal, it wouldn't fit in a tweet, buddy. Like it would be a carousel of every single line item that happened with that deal. I'm trying to make it short and concise and sweet so that like the average person can understand what's going on.
So yeah, it's a very cutthroat place to be. And that's just content that is great as well. But I bet he gets, you know, destroyed in the comment section all the time.
Comment section too. Like I would never buy a house in Seattle. And I would never, you know, I would write those things too, but it's like, Hey, but you figured it out.
It works for you. You were able to borrow the properties or new do new construction, like hell, props to you for like figuring that out. So I would never do it.
But like, I'm not going to go comment on someone's stuff. That's like, you're stupid for investing in Washington. That's like, Hey, he lives there.
He found a, he has good deal flow. He has like a process and you know, it works for him. So.
[Stephen Husted] (9:34 - 10:35)
Yeah. And so it is a different story that if you put out a video and I'm commenting to you and we're having like a dialogue, like maybe it's just something that I experienced. So I'm just working off your experience.
That's a different story. But when it's, it's just when they come from, and I laugh, I did one on that recently. And they were just blasting him like, Oh, he just, they're just trying to, he's trying to, you know, get them to buy his courses.
And it was about interest rates. And I jumped in, I go, well, you know, to be really honest, I've watched, you know, hundreds of videos of thatches and now I invest in Seattle and have a full team and I'm doing exactly what he, he taught me from videos. Now my experience, on the other hand, I can take videos from you or people that are really doing it.
And I really can put those to work because I'm not going to sit here and play this like game of doubting it. I mean, there is because I think you can find the ones that you can doubt. You can pick those ones out.
They're kind of falling off at this point too.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (10:35 - 10:36)
Yeah, exactly.
[Stephen Husted] (10:37 - 10:38)
Yeah. There's the bullshit.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (10:38 - 12:24)
Yeah. And then also too, like what I always do to stress test that is I'll go look at like the big boys, like I'll go look at like, where's the hedge funds buying? Where's BlackRock buying?
What is their margin per deal? We just did the last couple of weeks. We've done a ton of research on one of the big hedge funds that's bought 10,000 doors in the last seven years in the Midwest.
And like, it's funny cause we got like a pro forma of kind of like what their model is and we recreated the model and it was like exactly what our numbers had. Like the last thousand deals that us and our clients have done. It was like exactly the kind of numbers, exactly the same margin, exactly the same expense ratio, like to a T.
And I was like, wow, I could have just like not flipped these myself and raised a fund and done this exact same thing just with like a different capital partner and really could have scaled this up. And that's how I started investing in the Midwest too. I was looking at where we're like the biggest home flippers in America.
Where were they doing deals? Where was the most cashflow in America? Where could you get the biggest bang for your buck?
Where were the biggest turnkey rental property providers in America? And that was like, everything was Midwest. And this was in 2015, so 10 years ago.
And then I was like, Hey, if they can buy a hundred houses a month, I bet I can buy one. You know, it was kind of like that, that theory. And it's, it's worked for me so far.
So now like I'm looking into the fun thing and it's kind of interesting. I'm doing the same thing I did 10 years ago. It was like, who's the big boy?
Who's the biggest guy in this space? And you know, in Seattle or in Washington, who's the biggest developer or real estate owner? What do they do?
And I guarantee you it's probably like ground up construction of multifamily or something like that. And you know, is there a way for me as a little guy to get into that? Is that possible with my resources, et cetera?
So, so yeah, that's kind of how I do it.
[Stephen Husted] (12:25 - 13:31)
Yeah. And it's, especially if you're somebody who's likes to evolve, it is a, you start to see things start playing out and you, you know, like I'm now mentoring people by properties, you know, that are first time investors, but I didn't just jump right into it. It happened very organically.
I had more partnerships that I would be a part of. And then I just, sometimes I just like, eh, you know what? I don't know if I want another partnership.
So, Hey, I'll just mentor you and you'll get to keep the property, you know, put you on retainer for six months, help you to identify a market, walk you through, you know, point A to B. Nice. And that's worked out good.
But what held me back was I, I was always like, don't want to be called the guru. And so I don't want to go out there and put that ad out on Instagram. And then I started having, you know, the people that have helped, they're like, dude, you're doing people a disservice.
Like, what do you mean? Like, shut up. Like, and what do you care what, but it took a while to get that point where you kind of just don't give a shit what people think.
As long as you know what you're about. At the end of the day, you're helping people. It's like any other business, but it's a business that can be debated in a lot of different ways from a lot of different people.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (13:32 - 14:55)
Yeah. And you're going to get hate no matter what, you know, if you're not, no matter what you're in actually. Yeah.
Like you're going to get hate no matter what. As I was, you're getting a lot of fun talk today because I've been looking into these funds for the last week. But like, I was looking at some of the biggest funds ever.
They own 10,000 houses. They're very like pro section eight pro helping the blue collar worker find a clean, safe and affordable, like very, very good on like, you know, me and you would look at that and be like, wow, they're like really converting these neighborhoods, taking dilapidated buildings. You don't much hate.
They have like Facebook groups around like this fund. We're doing a class action lawsuit because they didn't replace this toilet and didn't do this thing. They're getting all these hate from the tenants because they're in property management and every property manager has hate from everywhere.
And then also probably all the gentrification people like you're gentrifying the neighborhoods and you're increasing the home prices and all this kind of stuff. It's like the houses were not livable anyways. So like, what do you mean?
What do you want to just sit there and rot? And then kids to play around with them and get hurt in the vacant houses. Cause that's what happens on the contrary.
So no matter which way you go, you're going to get hate. But especially if you have a public facing brand, which is a decision of me and you as the entrepreneur to do, we want to be public facing or have something smaller and more organic. Obviously you're going to get less hate if you, if you don't market yourself and don't do something public, if it's more private.
[Stephen Husted] (14:56 - 16:04)
So somebody I've been listening to a lot lately and of course this is why I have her in Instagram so much as Cody Sanchez. Yeah. And she has come so far and just understanding how to just speak her mind, whether you like it or not.
She's got her own take on things and she's willing to just put it out there, but she's built a pretty big audience. So she can kind of really get deep in things, you know, and reach the ones you need to. And then watch the ones that, you know, get, I think she did one about working from home yesterday.
The people are just freaking out on her. Like I have to disagree. She's like, that's cool.
You know, like this is what I believe in. And I think I've started to come to that point too. Now it's like the one thing that people can't take away from each other is experiences.
You know, the things we've gone through of what we've gone through, you know, like you had that story about coming into your rental property, having shit on the walls. No one's debating you. Okay.
And you had to do X, Y, and Z to get it ready and get back on the, you know, when you started going through it. So what did you learn? You know, that things are going to happen.
You're going to work through it and you're going to move on just like anything else in life.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (16:04 - 16:52)
Yep. You know? Yeah.
And I think that was something I learned from Hormozy too was that like no one can take away from if you make content about a story or like your journey, there's nothing anybody can take. That's why like the hate that he gets is very limited because it's like very much. Well, first of all, he puts in a lot of work to like really think through every single little thing, which I definitely don't do content wise, but it's like a story.
Like everything is like a case study or an experience or a story, which then you can't say like, no, that's not true. Or that's not how it works. It's like, this is what happened.
Like nobody can debate your story. So it's like I met with Stephen and we did a podcast together on this day. It's like no one can say otherwise.
Right. So that was a good point.
[Stephen Husted] (16:52 - 16:56)
That is absolutely true. The way he frames things. Yeah.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (16:57 - 17:33)
If anything, people are like spot on. Yeah, exactly. That's why 99% of the comments are like, Oh my God, this is, you're amazing.
You're that you're versus like, if you say Cody Sanchez, like if she says something like, I believe that, you know, if it's a belief now people can attack your beliefs, but they can't attack your story. So like, instead of saying a belief of the, I believe that everyone should work in an office, it's going to improve productivity or Mosey would say, we took this company from virtual to in-person and increased, you know, you know, that is a perfect frame right there. Exactly.
[Stephen Husted] (17:33 - 17:33)
So true.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (17:34 - 18:10)
So that's, that's kind of how I'm taking my content as well. So like a lot of my YouTube videos used to be like, this is how running numbers on your properties, or this is how to do this or how to do this. Now it's like I bought a rental property and here's the numbers.
I bought a multifamily property and flipped it and made this much money. It's like very much case study driven and people get the point, but they can't even debate you anymore. And it puts your brand on a pedestal because now you're just talking about case studies as well, instead of like shouting beliefs off.
So that's cool. Even for you, even to like the content that you do make, just make it around like shit that, you know, shit that happened. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (18:10 - 19:06)
And that's perfect. Cause I'm starting, that was the big goal for this year to kind of get back into, you know, I have a weird thing. So I'm a real estate investor, but also a realtor in Silicon Valley.
So the first couple of years of content was like bouncing between the two. And then I realized I'm like, I'm more of an investor, you know, like that's more where I'm passionate about. So I'm kind of veering towards that now.
So I want to create the YouTube channel more based on that, what I'm doing out in Seattle and what am I doing on my projects and kind of gearing it towards that. But it was this journey, you know, cause you know how content is, you start doing it one way, you look back what you did and you go, wow, that's hilarious. I was doing that type of content, but it's also really cool.
You just look back on that, like how far you've come too. Yep. You know what I mean?
Cause you, dude, you were the like the OG in COVID. Like nobody was, another scenario when I reached out to you, I hit up Ace, Elliott.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (19:07 - 19:07)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (19:07 - 19:58)
Yeah. And I have his number, personal number. And we used to talk during COVID times.
So I sent him a voice message. I didn't hear back. I'll probably reach out again.
He probably went to his junk, but he's another guy. The two of you were the ones who like, I'm like, okay, these two are legit. They're doing things right.
And I remember another couple that I felt like we're doing it wrong, but I watched them online because I was just watching them go through what they're going through. And then they got busted. And then they went through another thing and now they don't even live here.
They live far away. Oh wow. And they went on the whole direction.
But I was, it was interesting to watch the red flags. I even went as far as trying to sign up for, I think they were selling turnkey properties. That's what they were doing.
So I reached out to one of their sales rep and went through that rabbit hole just to kind of see what they did. I'm like, yeah, no.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (19:59 - 21:47)
Wow. Interesting. Yeah.
This was like when I first started 2015, there was a couple like fraudsters who were doing turnkey rentals and they would like sell you a house, but it was just dirt and they like weren't even selling the asset they promised. They were like seller financing it. That's why the whole, I don't know, seller financing kind of scares me from that past experience as well.
But yeah, that's interesting that you thought that just from purely the content side of things. Yeah. And you kind of, you kind of saw that.
I mean, there's so many ways to slay, you know, we've been involved in lawsuits over the last 10 years of people trying to do weird stuff to us. And so there's not a lot of protection in, and I can actually finally this, this lawsuit that's been going on for three years, I can finally talk about it. So I'm excited about that.
But somebody tried to go and forge our operating like make a new operating agreement saying they were the owner of our entity and tried to quick claim properties from our entities to their entity because they just went to the title company and said, yeah, I'm the owner of this entity. Here's a quick claim deed. I want to send the property to do a quick claim to this other entity.
Here's the operating agreement. And it was a fake operating agreement. And so we sued the guy.
He luckily wasn't able to move the properties over. He wasn't able to quit claim them, but he did against somebody else. He was able to steal like 10 houses in Cleveland, Ohio, and she sued them.
He tried to do it again to us. We sued him. So yeah, there's a lot of bad app.
And there's like the, the system isn't built for scammers. It's built for like honest people that aren't going to scam the, you know, it's not built for like all this protection. So like if you own shit under an entity, I can just make an operating agreement, go to the title company.
As long as I know the entity, the address and somewhere else to send the thing to, I can fake a operating agreement and go send the thing off to wherever I want to.
[Stephen Husted] (21:48 - 23:08)
So David Green go through something like that. Did he, did he, he put out an episode. He was on Brian Panetta's show, but five months ago I would say.
And he went through like a whole ordeal, like massive scenario. I mean, it was so massive and he was so very transparent about the whole thing, but it had something to do with that and just all kinds of issues with the cities on, on properties. And like he almost lost it all from what it sounded like.
But it was a big story. Yeah. I made a video on this person that somehow gained title and got this piece of property, built a house on it.
And it was on this guy that was living in the East coast, like childhood home, like on the lot next to it. And one of the neighbors said, Hey, you're building a house. And he's like, what do you mean?
And he flies out there and shows up and there's this brand new two story getting built. It was so crazy. And the guy was just like, wait, you got to stop and was suing the builder and the builder bought it from this guy that, you know, somehow acquired the deed and built on it
So yeah, there's some wild, wild stuff. We're getting sued on our property out in the smoke. He's our cabin right now.
And yeah, learning a lot from that one.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (23:10 - 23:15)
This is going to be the anti investing in real estate podcast. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (23:15 - 23:21)
I talk about it. You know what I mean? I think that it's important to tell it all.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (23:21 - 23:21)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (23:22 - 23:24)
Because you know, it's not perfect.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (23:24 - 23:25)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (23:25 - 23:36)
And I don't want anybody to ever think that you just go out and buy an investment property or properties and think it's just, you're going to have all this cash flow and you're going to be rich in a couple of years. And that's really not it.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (23:37 - 24:55)
Yeah. I'll tell people on the, like when we have Martel turnkey like leads come in and sometimes I'll have to take a call or two here and there. I want to buy turnkey rentals.
Cool. How much money do you have? Like 30 grand.
Okay, cool. What kind of returns do you want? I don't know.
Just something super safe, passive. And I like, I need to make this money. And I'm like, great.
So you're not going to invest in real estate then. Right? Like go put in a fricking 401k or put it into, you got to at least get a tax benefit there, but put it into something else that a high interest savings account are paying 4%.
Like take the 4%. And then once you're ready to take a risk and take a little bit of a gamble for a 8% return, then you can think about investing in real estate. Like it's just some people I think think that it is very passive because you know, sometimes in content like me, guilty of it, making everything look so easy and butterflies and rainbows when it's like, I'm just telling you about the good stuff most of the time because it's funner to talk about than the, you know, all the losses and all that kind of stuff.
So, and also there's more wins than there are losses, but sometimes the losses can eat up a lot of your, your good profits or just take a lot of your day is just drained away with stupid shit like that. The lawsuits or legal fees or lawyers and silly things like that.
[Stephen Husted] (24:56 - 25:58)
So yeah, the lawsuit, I won't talk about the lawsuit, but I'll just say it's interesting how it all came about. I had this guy calling me and you know, I just didn't answer the phone. I thought it was just a spam call and finally I picked it up and he's like, Hey, you've got a property here.
And I'm like, yeah. What? Who are you?
He's like, Hey man, this is going to sound crazy, but just to let you know, I'm a real estate investor just like you. And I have properties out in the Smoky Mountains just like you. But I just got this letter from an attorney.
It came to my house, but it's got your information and somehow I just put it all together and I just wanted to tell you they're looking for you. He's like, but you can also, I can also tell you that your LLC works because they can't find you. Wow.
So he gave me the heads up that they were going to serve us and he was in Sacramento. They had our name, they had our LLC name, but it went to his address. He's like, dude, I don't know why.
And he started asking me like, Hey, did you buy this house over here? Like did we cross? I'm like, no, no, I only got one over there.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (26:00 - 26:00)
So wild.
[Stephen Husted] (26:01 - 26:10)
Yeah. So within your business, what is your favorite thing to do? Because there's so many things within a business because you can't, you can't like them all.
But what is your favorite thing to do on a daily basis?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (26:11 - 28:20)
I think my favorite thing to do is more like operations side of things. So like there's obviously with the turnkey fix and flip business and flip system, the education business, there's a big sales and marketing kind of component. Operations would be like buying the houses, renovating them, renting them out, building the software or automations or CRM to do so.
And then raising money side of things as well when it comes to like raising money for deals and stuff. I think for me, I'm very much in terms of like just helping the business scale and thinking about different ways that we can do to grow the business and not really being in one certain function. I obviously have my strengths more in the sales and marketing and real estate side, but I've also raised a lot of money as well.
But I really, really liked the operational side of things. So like what can I do to scale up this business? What can I do numbers wise?
What are the numbers of the business look like if we make this pivot here or change this here? Cool. What are some ways that we can do that?
So like kind of like operational optimization without hiring people, but just making small changes within the business to kind of grow it is kind of what I really, really enjoy because I'm a numbers guy at the end of the day, like a very much a math person and very logical. So like if I can have something, you know, if we're at 1.5 X, how can I get it to 2.5 X with this little tiny problem here or this or this? And then doing those things every single day.
I mean, it doesn't even feel like work to me. It's more just like, cool, here's the problem. Let's see what we can do to optimize.
And then it's going to be a people issue problem, like a process issue or like, you know, and then we're going to do it internally, externally. So there's lots of different ways to solve it as well. So that's kind of what I enjoy the most.
And I know I am a real estate guy, but I'm not like in love with real estate. I'm more of a business guy. And that's okay.
Yeah. And that's, I love business, but my vehicle has been real estate thus far.
[Stephen Husted] (28:20 - 29:07)
And the system and process is part of it is it's a big one. And it's also cool when you start to identify an issue and you're like, Oh, okay. And then, and when you do make that adjustment, how it all same kind of starts to spread through the business.
And you're like, Oh, that's good. I got a question for you. This is more personal for me to you.
How have you dealt? You know, one of my biggest issues I've had over the years is like banking and like not being able to put some things, you know, I got, we have VAs and we got all these people on our team doing different things, but banking has been one of the biggest things. Do you use something like last pass or something that has your cards that people make the payments on your behalf, but then you and your partners or whoever takes care of like that real formal business banking kind of stuff?
Is that how you do it?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (29:07 - 29:41)
So credit cards, I will, if it's somebody that I trust like an EA or other directors of the business, I'll just give them their own credit card with the spending limit so they can go spend whatever. Cause credit card is easy if they do something. Yeah.
Fraudulent. You can dispute. Okay.
Cash in a bank account. You want to get a bank account that allows a dual approval process. So that's how you can really save your ass.
So that means like, and chase, we used to be at first Republic. We'd moved all of the money to chase now because what I was at first Republic too.
[Stephen Husted] (29:41 - 29:45)
Oh, you were, did you get into first Republic back when you lived in California?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (29:45 - 29:46)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (29:47 - 29:47)
Yeah.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (29:47 - 30:28)
Yeah. And then I think they got, no, they got bought by chase, right? Yeah.
Yeah. That's why we had to move the chase. Okay.
Okay. That's why. Okay.
So now we're on chase. And the reason we went to first Republic in the beginning was because it had a dual approval. So like if I had my EA put in a wire, then somebody else, either me or my co-founder would have to approve the wire for it to be sent.
And then we would just be like, Hey, what the hell is this thing for? Blah, blah, blah. But that's how you can really scale is just having like a, so like you and your partner or any partners you may have that can approve wires and then everybody else, you can put in a request for a wire.
It just doesn't mean it's going to get approved. So that's kind of how we do it. We also use last pass for like a social media accounts and all that kind of stuff too.
[Stephen Husted] (30:28 - 31:16)
I'm glad you said this. I was like, Oh God, am I doing this wrong? It takes so long to get to where it was.
And you're right with first Republic. Well, first Republic was just more personable and all that levels when everything's shipped over to chase. I was like, Oh my gosh, we would do a wire.
And then, you know, two, three days ago by, and that's going to be calling and going, we haven't received your wire. I'm like, what do you mean? So I look and chase like, Oh, we thought it was fun.
I'm like, did you guys call? You guys going to call me? Like this is a business account.
I had to go in there and finally tell him like, look, there's eight chase accounts here. You guys see what's going on. You cannot put these guardrails on us.
I know if you're going to, please call me, do whatever you got to do. Blow me up. But you cannot stop my business.
Like it is a business account.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (31:17 - 31:25)
Exactly. Yeah. I think they were just inundated with all the first, I don't know how many billions of dollars were moved over, but it was probably just a nightmare for them.
[Stephen Husted] (31:25 - 31:39)
And that was a wild thing. It was funny. It was one of those things where I'm like, I used to talk about it.
Yeah. I'm never going to go to chase or Wells Fargo. Like it's all about first book.
And then all of a sudden here I am. I'm in chase now. Yep, exactly.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (31:40 - 31:42)
Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah. That was a big one.
[Stephen Husted] (31:43 - 31:44)
So you grew up in San Mateo
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (31:45 - 31:53)
San Mateo. Yep. And then I went to college at LMU in LA.
Then I lived there for a while. And then now I moved to Miami in 2022.
[Stephen Husted] (31:54 - 31:57)
How are you liking Miami? I like it. It's good.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (31:57 - 32:05)
It's very young. There's a lot of growth and development happening here. Nobody has a job.
So that's kind of interesting.
[Stephen Husted] (32:05 - 32:13)
Really? I think I heard the opposite on TikTok. It sounds like everybody is like either a crypto bro or doing something or, or an influencer.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (32:13 - 33:37)
Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. Like they don't have, nobody's a W2.
Nobody's W2 here. It's like you either are only fans. You are like, you just moved here for a W2 job because we have like Citadel moved their HQ here.
Amazon just signed a lease right next to my house. So they're going to put employees in. So there's going to be some W2 people moving in.
But man, it's crazy. There's a lot of like real estate. But when I moved down here, I posted on Instagram once and I had like 15 coffee meetings set up, you know, like I was like, dude, let's meet up.
I just moved here. Boom. 15 people.
And I just like met 15 people in the like the first week of moving here. I was like, dude, I could not do this in San Francisco because everybody would do, you know, it's just W you know, they would have met, met up with me for different reasons. But these were all entrepreneurs starting businesses, flipping houses locally or in the Midwest.
They were wholesalers, title company, like a lot of real estate related stuff, obviously cause that's what my following is. But tons and tons of entrepreneurs, obviously we get to save the taxes. And then, you know, the weather, I don't mind at all.
I love being outside and it's nice when you go out at, you know, six in the morning and it's already 75 degrees and it's perfect. The sun's coming up and it's already nice weather out. So very, very like healthy and active lifestyle due to that fact that you can go out any time of day and it's kind of like nice weather out.
[Stephen Husted] (33:37 - 33:40)
So do you stay connected with those people? I do.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (33:40 - 34:15)
Some of them, some of them, people come and go to like, well, you know, move to another city then move. We just had like one of those guys just moved back to Miami. He's been traveling around kind of the world and just working remote for the last two years.
So yeah, I do stay connected with them. And some of them like I even did a podcast with them in 2017 and then I moved here and they're like, you moved? I did too.
And it's like kind of having those. And he's one of my best friends down here as well. Just, you know, very small world.
And it seems like a lot of those kinds of folks have moved down here the last couple of years.
[Stephen Husted] (34:15 - 34:17)
Are you in a condo high rise?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (34:17 - 35:28)
Yup. Yeah. So where are you at exactly?
I live in Midtown. So it's kind of next to Wynwood, which is kind of like our arts district. And then it's not really in like the downtown area or Brickell, which is like a lot of the hotels and stuff and tourists.
So Midtown we have Target, Starbucks and then like local restaurants, but not, you know, there's not as many tourists around here. So it's nice. It's very, very walkable, which, you know, where are you in the, you're in the Bay area, right
San Jose. San Jose. Okay, cool.
So yeah. Like in San Mateo, Foster City, where I grew up, there was like, it wasn't really walkable. I mean, you could walk like two miles to like go to eat something, but it was very residential suburbia versus here.
It's like, you know, you can drive 10 minutes in any direction and you're going to be, you know, that's the extent of Miami, the city and very walkable. So, you know, I drive my car maybe like once per week versus in LA, I was driving it, you know, every hour. And then in San Mateo, I mean, you would have to drive anywhere to get anywhere to do anything.
And it was, you know, a 30 or 40 minute drive. If you want to go to San Jose or up to San Francisco or half Moon Bay or, you know, et cetera. So.
[Stephen Husted] (35:28 - 35:36)
Yeah, definitely a driving spot. And at least where you're at, you're a little bit out of the thick of things because it can get wild there. It can get wild there.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (35:37 - 35:46)
Exactly. Yeah. And I haven't, like, I haven't experienced that at all.
I haven't gone to one nightclub, haven't done one, like one outing at all. Yeah. And I've been here for three years.
[Stephen Husted] (35:46 - 35:57)
The only place you have to go if you're going to go down and if somebody comes into town and they're like, I like techno, I like house music. You're just taking in the space, dude. And that's it.
That's all you gotta do.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (35:57 - 35:58)
That's the place.
[Stephen Husted] (35:58 - 35:58)
Yeah
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (35:58 - 36:23)
Hell, I've been invited. I've been invited. I just haven't.
It's just the people here are psychotic. I mean, they'll go like at 3 a.m. is like the start time or 5 a.m. is like, this DJ is performing at five in the morning. We're going to sleep at 10, wake up at four, start drinking, go at five.
I'm like, okay, well, you have a great birthday. I'll get you a gift. And let's hang out at eight o'clock the night before, please.
So.
[Stephen Husted] (36:24 - 36:28)
I used to DJ. So I would go down to the Winter Music Conference.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (36:29 - 36:29)
Yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (36:29 - 36:42)
Yeah. It was just, it was always wild. Yeah.
Space is very unique. It's actually, it's definitely somewhere where you'd want to go to experience once, you know, definitely a cool spot, but pick the right DJ and go at six.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (36:42 - 36:47)
Yeah, exactly. 6 p.m. or 6 a.m. Who knows?
[Stephen Husted] (36:47 - 36:56)
Hey, if you do, there's all kinds of different festivals and things out there and the music conference. So that sometimes you can go at, you know, six in the evening and.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (36:56 - 37:06)
Yeah. That would be nice. I would like that.
Yeah. That would be cool to go to experience it. You know, have some dinner there.
I heard they like serve food and stuff like, cause it's 24 hours.
[Stephen Husted] (37:06 - 37:41)
So yeah. It's just the fact that people are going. Yeah.
And back in the days, that was pretty normal. Now I laugh. Now I just watch it on Instagram.
Like, oh yeah, what's going on. Right. And I'll post, sometimes I'll post their videos from space and it's like Tuesday at like 10 a.m. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Here's what's going on in Miami. People are like, wait, what? This is right now.
I'm like, yeah, this is right now. So it sounds like the fun is kind of on your brain. Is there anything else that's, cause you, you've progressed in a lot, you've done a lot of different things I've noticed over the, over the years.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (37:42 - 39:54)
Yeah. Part of that thing that I met, what you asked, what do I like doing the most is like growing operationally, setting up systems and stuff like that. Most of that is, you know, zero to a million bucks a month, right?
Like after a million bucks a month, there's obviously like more systems that come together, but really like setting up that base foundation and getting that first sale or first hundred thousand dollar month, million dollar month is very, very exciting. And then also scaling past that also just has a ton of complexities. And sometimes you realize that you're what I've learned is sometimes you realize you're not in the right boat.
For example, the turnkey fix and flip business was great until you do 50 deals in a single month. And then it breaks. Education business is great until you've signed up a hundred people in a single month.
And then you have all this other stuff that breaks. And then you're like, damn, can I really scale this to 500 users per month? 500 new users?
Well, I would have to change the pricing. I don't have to change the like what we're giving people on the backend. But what we have has worked so well.
So like our clients have a 97% success rate of like getting into the deal and getting into a profitable deal, which is insane for like a coaching and education business. But it's because we connect them to the team on the ground. So then it's like, okay, our constraint is the team on the ground.
We've signed up like 50 or a hundred people in a single month and they were still fine. But if we do that consecutively, like can we really double or triple this business while maintaining the same success rate? And then you as a business owner have to choose, well, do you care about the success rate?
Do you care about making more? Like you have so many different things to compare. And then it's like, I can't really scale this to versus some of the other content creators or real estate courses out there, which is just a course, which is infinitely scalable because it's just a course.
It's a bunch of videos and a chat community and weekly live training calls. That's infinitely scalable. The problem with that is that your success rate is going to go down from, you know, 90 plus percent down to 10%, 20%.
And so you have like 80% of your pool of users being frustrated and pissed off and saying it's not working, but it's really due to their own effort. But yeah.
[Stephen Husted] (39:54 - 41:17)
Because you can learn as much as you want online, but at some point you have to actually put in the work and do it. And that's the part where things start to come because there's a lot of things that can be out of your control. I mean the fact that you're scaling at this level and I literally just brought on a new mentee and I talked to my assistant, I'm going, what happens when we finally do a webinar and we launch and I'm going to have 50 people, what if a hundred people show up and I got 30 new, like how am I structuring my day because I have a very small tight group of partners and I've liked it that way because we're all on the same mission, you know, they're all, most of them are all in W2 and tech.
So they worked in 95. I'm the brains behind everything. And I just run the show.
Right. But we're on the same mission. Yeah.
I don't know what happens if you get somebody in there, that's a bad Apple. Like I'm concerned about that. Or I put time into some of the people that I've mentored.
Like, how would I do it if I had more and I got all these other people. So, you know what I mean? Like you're talking to me right now.
I'm going to, ah, got on me. Like, so I'm thinking in my head. So how many people did he have on his team and how did he break, this is where your system, this is where your skillset definitely helps because you can go, okay, and I'm sure you put it in play thinking it's everything doesn't work out and then you start to see the issues.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (41:17 - 42:58)
Then you're trying to, you can't foresee this shit. That's the other problem because you can only think seven days ahead. And then after you've solved those functional problems and in seven days, you're gonna have other shit that's going to pop up.
So like, it's a constant game of whack-a-mole until you realize, yeah, it's a constant game of whack-a-mole. And then you realize too, like, okay, this is the boat that I'm in. And I think there was like a famous saying, I don't know who said it, but it was like, sometimes it's not like you can be the hardest working guy ever.
The smartest guy ever. Sometimes your boat is just not big enough. And like, you can go all day.
Like me right now, I can work for the next 40 years of my life, running flip system, getting clients in and playing whack-a-mole with that. And like, is it still going to get to, you know, let's say a billion dollar status or a billion dollar, or make me a billionaire, right. If that was like the end goal, the answer is no.
And so then it's like, okay, if that is the end goal that I do have of having this, like, of a billionaire status, let's say, this boat is not big enough to help me get there, but you have to, but that took me three years to figure out that that is not the right boat to get, you know, and then you're like, fuck, that was a waste of, obviously not a waste of time, but like, it takes time to figure out like, damn, this boat is not big enough.
And that's why the fund thing has been on my mind. Cause I mean, who's the, who's the biggest people in the world right now buying the most amount of real estate in the entire country? It's Invitation Homes, it's BlackRock, it's Blackstone, all these big boys that own, Invitation Homes, I just looked yesterday, has, you know, a hundred thousand single family houses that they own.
[Stephen Husted] (42:59 - 43:04)
And how many, how many people do you think they have on that team working for those investors?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (43:05 - 43:07)
For Invitation Homes, for example
[Stephen Husted] (43:07 - 43:10)
Or BlackRock. Like how many people do you think are a part of that?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (43:10 - 45:24)
So here's the cool thing is that Invitation Homes is a public REIT. So we can go look at, we can go look up like literally where they're buying houses, where the inventory is, their average purchase price, average renovation costs, cause they're a public REIT. So they're on the stock market.
You and I can go and invest in them today. They have to distribute as a public REIT, 90% of their profits. But it's like a model that me and you can go take, find online, download it and be like, cool.
And here's how to do it at a smaller scale to start with a team of 10 people. And it is something that could scale into, for example, if I go start a fund right now, that's a $10 million fund. Then I can do a hundred million dollars.
And then if I want to open it up and put it on the stock market, I could put it on the stock market and raise money from the, you know, average American and, and have a hundred billion dollars of assets under management and stuff like that. Like that boat is infinitely big. It's like the biggest boat on planet earth.
The problem is to get into that game is very, very tough and challenging to raise money from private equity, investors and all that. So versus the education space where is exactly what you just said earlier. Anybody can make a course.
So now your competition, and that's kind of like the downside of the education space is that there's constantly going to be new competition, constantly going to be people saying stuff on their ads that that's not compliant, that they're not allowed to say, but they're too small to know that until they get slapped. There's pros and cons to everything. But for me, it's always been like leveling up and finding the bigger boat that I can sit in where like, I have more leverage with my effort and time because the educational business also, like you just mentioned, if you need to do one-on-ones and weekly group coaching calls and all this kind of stuff, it's, there's a ton of operational drag versus I have a software right now that can find 200 deals per month with zero operational drag. Okay, cool.
So if I just had money and just click this button to buy these houses, how much operational, that would be one person can buy 200 houses a month versus 50 people showing, you know, showing 200 customers how to do the same thing, but we make 10 times the amount of money. So that's kind of how my brain works.
[Stephen Husted] (45:25 - 48:03)
Yeah. And it's cool. And if this was all easy and we could figure it out in a year of working something that we did over and over, we wouldn't be doing it.
That's for sure. You know, like when you were bringing up what you were just saying, like I'm down here, you know, I'm in this, starting that journey, finally going, okay, somebody's going to see I'm a guru when I do this. Someone's going to talk shit, get past that.
You've already helped people stop being a little baby. And then I'm hearing about how you get on the ground. How do you build out?
How hard was it in Detroit? Because Detroit is a goddamn wild, wild West out there. Like that place was, dude, it was.
I had the craziest stories out there and I love them because I tell them people freak out, but I go, well, you know, when I first got investing out in the Midwest, I started in Detroit and Kansas city. Those were the two markets. And I went through so much in Detroit, like everything you could possibly happen happened.
But I almost planned it that way. Like, okay, I'm going to buy this $37,000 house in East Detroit, kind of close to Harper woods. I knew it was by a whole, by a home Depot and Kmart.
I'm like, okay, there's jobs. There's a hospital. It's a three, one brick.
All right, cool. It's got a basement. It looks pretty good.
Yeah, no problem. Get attended. And I'm like, okay, this is cash flowing pretty good.
She moves out and shit goes crazy. Contractor starts doing rehab, says, Hey, I want my brother to move in. He's a good guy.
He'll keep it up. He moves in. He doesn't pay.
He turns into drugs. Then it's three squatters in a row. A guy calling me, threatening me that he's going to burn the house down.
And you know, he's probably a gang member. Like I went through every damn thing. It started taking away so much of my day.
I was focused on like, why am I focusing on this? Like, thank God the mortgage is like $350 on this house. Like it was crazy.
So I just would let it go. And finally I was on the Detroit Facebook group and I saw this guy in there going, Hey, I buy houses that have squatters, evictions, you name it. I take it on.
I'm hot. Boom. I DM him, I'm all dude, I got one for you.
I go, I'm, I'm divesting out of, out of Detroit. I don't want to be in this market anymore. And yeah, he, he bought it, you know, no agents.
And he would keep me, you know, he's like, yeah, got her out. She's out now. And Hey, I fixed it up.
Oh, this was an issue. Didn't know about this, got this going. And like the water bill, like I kept getting water bills.
You know what I mean? Like the water would, it goes in the owner's name. I was like, Oh my gosh, the water, like just getting sucked dry or them tapping into electrical.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (48:03 - 48:05)
It's just crazy. Wow.
[Stephen Husted] (48:05 - 48:06)
They're savages.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (48:07 - 50:24)
Yeah. For us, it hasn't been that bad. Memphis was worse.
Memphis for me was like one of the scariest places that I've been to. More than Detroit, Detroit. I actually felt safe.
I don't know if you ever went and visited, but like driving around, visiting like downtown Detroit is like Chicago esque to me and has a ton of, there's not as many people, but there's a ton of potential to it. And you know, this is obviously post 2008 when they went through all their, all their bankruptcy and all that kind of stuff. So this is just in the last couple of years, Detroit has really taken off.
Memphis has gotten really, really expensive, but all my like bad horror stories are from investing in Memphis, Tennessee, you know, like where we had a deal burned down, where we had the tenants do crazy shit to the property is like all Memphis. And those areas are, were really, really scary for me to just drive in as a drive around versus Detroit. And I would drive around with like a cameraman and shit like that.
You know, like it wasn't like your $5,000 camera. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in Memphis, in Memphis, it was like, why are you filming on our street?
You know, people would come out to the, to the road and shit like that. That didn't happen to me in any other, any other markets. So I think it all comes down to the team you have on the ground.
And also too, like, I'm not like, I never converse directly with the tenants. I never converse directly with the construction crews. So like that has kept me out of a lot of bullshit because you can get sucked into one house, can just take like 20 hours of your time in over a couple of week period, just with bullshit that keeps coming up.
And then it's just like, versus having somebody else kind of handle that, try to figure it out. You don't pay them extra to figure the thing out. Anyways, like property management, if you have an eviction or somebody who's not paying, they don't get paid until they figure it out.
So they're not like making money. Like, so they'd have to figure it out, quote unquote for free until you get the tenant out and all that kind of stuff. So versus your time, which is, you know, worth a thousand bucks an hour, 2000 bucks an hour.
It's like, that's why some people are like, I don't want to use property management. I'm like, okay, don't call me in six months when you need a property manager. You can go down that route and you can take that route first.
Exactly.
[Stephen Husted] (50:25 - 50:28)
That will be part of your story down the road to tell.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (50:28 - 50:44)
Yeah, I've stopped convincing people to do it my way. I can tell you my way if you want to hear it and you're going to follow it. But hell, if you read an article that says you can save 10% of your costs by managing your properties, do it.
Like let's chat in three months.
[Stephen Husted] (50:44 - 52:08)
Yeah. You know, we have, you know, Airbnbs and midterm rentals and I would, because I wear glasses, you know, my phone would be by my bed and in the morning, you know, I'd wake up and I just want to get up to see what, you know, what time it is. Yeah.
And if I would see this red scenario happening, I knew it was the hospitable app, dude, it turned into a full fledged anxiety. Yeah, exactly. Like it really started to where it like break me down and I'm like, Oh, I'm done with this and another thing that I stopped doing is our portfolio out in Kansas city, that email address.
I don't even look at it anymore. I just stopped. Like I stopped and I stopped around May of last year.
And I just told my assistant, look, if it's not a huge emergency, I don't even want to know. I don't even care. I don't even want to deal with it.
That's what the property management's for. Call the contractors, call the handyman, whatever it takes you, you do it. Just it's big.
Let me know. But, and that's, and that's really helped getting the Detroit property off my hands, that one. I kept some in Harper woods, that one I'll keep it.
It's fine. But yeah, just getting those things out because you're right. It sucks out a lot of your time and you should be spending your time on bigger and better things.
But that takes time to kind of figure out
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (52:08 - 52:29)
I think you have to go through the, and to know your worth. Yeah. Yeah.
Especially your work. That was, that was the other problem of living on the West coast. And I got to run here in a sec, but the other problem with the West coast was the time change, dude.
Like investing in the Midwest. Now I'm in Miami. I'm like, I'm ahead of all you guys now.
So now I can wake up at seven or eight and that's like zero emails, dude.
[Stephen Husted] (52:29 - 52:30)
Oh, right.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (52:31 - 53:03)
Versus like when I used to wake up at seven or eight there, 150 emails, tenant break in, blah, blah, blah. You would just like, you'd wake up, you'd have to go right to work. And it wouldn't be, you couldn't like get cool shit done at the beginning.
It would be all the stressful fires at the beginning. And then you're like, you just wake up and you're just like immediately in kind of like panic mode. Like, Oh my God, I have to do this.
And then this moving to this side, this coast has been like a big de-stressor in terms of just like waking up to fires you have to put out and panic and all that kind of stuff.
[Stephen Husted] (53:03 - 53:08)
So that's interesting. What would one piece of advice you'd give a new investor that wanted to get started?
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (53:09 - 54:52)
The biggest challenge that I see is obviously analysis paralysis. But other than that, it's kind of like looking at your resources, who you know, how much time you have and how much money you have, and just choosing something in the real estate world that fits within that bucket. So like, if you don't have any connections, but you have some money and you have some time, cool.
Depending on how much money you have, that means you can do, buy a turnkey rental, do a fix and flip, do the burst strategy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I see a lot of people that have no money, no credit, and they have a ton of time and they're like, I need real estate deals. And I'm like, for what?
You have no money, no credit, and you have a ton of time. Like you should be finding real estate deals to wholesale them. So I think that people need to, and I used to post a lot more about that as well, but like we'll run some ads and be like, if you're a real estate investor and want to get into deals and whatever, 80% of people clicking on it have no cash and no credit.
And I'm like, why did you click on an ad about a real estate deal? That is, you can't do any, I'm like, why'd you book this call? You have no money, no credit.
What I give you a deal, then what? And so I think a lot of people have to look at what their resources are, also who, you know, as well. Even if you don't think, you know, anybody, you know, I was raising money from kids in college and flipping houses in the Midwest, just from, you know, 5,000 bucks here, 10,000 bucks here, putting money together.
So, you know, who do you know in your network and how much money do they have? What could you guys do together? Or how could they help you?
How could you help them is something that I also recommend looking at. Good advice. Well, where can the audience find you?
Best place would be Instagram and YouTube. You can just search my name, Antoine Martel on both of those.
[Stephen Husted] (54:52 - 55:04)
I appreciate you accepting, coming onto the podcast. I appreciate it. I'm glad that I, you know, I was like, I don't know.
Will he do it? But I appreciate it, man.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (55:04 - 55:05)
Of course.
[Stephen Husted] (55:05 - 55:08)
Yeah. You got it. All right.
Well, thanks a lot, man. You have a great day.
[ANTOINE MARTEL] (55:08 - 55:11)
We'll talk another time. Appreciate it. See ya.
∎ Podcast Outro:
[Stephen Husted] (55:12 - 55:40)
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