From Struggle to Success: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs and Achieving Financial Security – Nate Barger : NYN E7 Transcription:
Steven Pesavento 0:00
Hi, I'm Steven Pesavento, and welcome to the name your number podcast presented by the investor mindset. As someone who comes from a challenging childhood, I've spent my life seeking financial security, personal growth, and ultimately freedom, the freedom to not wake up worried about the next paycheck, but rather with the confidence of knowing that my passive income pays my bills without the need to think about it. When you name your number, that you will learn passively, that creates your ultimate quality of life that I believe you've achieved real freedom. Welcome to my show, it's time to name your number. The beautiful thing is that when you name your number, you get to set that path of where specifically you want to go. And then you can start figuring out how you're going to get there. But the truth is, if you're listening to this, and you're hearing it, and you're not setting that target, and you're not getting clear on that vision for what you want, then let's be honest, you're making a conscious decision to stay put. And it's totally cool if you want to do that. And if you want to stay in that place. Welcome back to the name your numbers show presented by the investor mindset. We're on a mission to create financial freedom for over a million investors. And when you name your number, the number that you want to earn passively, every month that creates your ultimate quality of life, then I believe you've achieved real freedom. And if you're ready to name your number and create your passive investment plan, that you'll follow step by step to get there, then head over to investor mindset.com/number. To download your free vision planner guide to get started. And for those of you who are ready to build this plan together with me, and a community of other like minded investors just like you, you'll be invited to schedule a call with one of my top advisors. Let's get into the show. today. I'm excited to have Nate Barger with me in the studio. How you doing today, Nate?
Nate Barger 1:52
doing amazing how you doing today, brother?
Steven Pesavento 1:55
Man, I'm doing great. I'm excited to get in to it with you today. Those of you who don't know, Nate, he's a real estate investor and entrepreneur been in the industry for over 16 years. He's flipped over 3500 properties holds over 1800 units and really has built a life around financial freedom. And we're gonna get into a lot about that today. And before we do, let's start off on a personal note, by looking back at earlier in your life, what events or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today. And how has that played a role in your money and investing journey?
Nate Barger 2:33
Man, great question, brother. And thank you for having me on the show. You know, I started off just like a lot of Americans I grew up in just probably normal blue collar alcoholic or dysfunctional family. A lot of us don't grow up in uncertainty. And so one of my earliest experience, I was four years old, and my father hung me over a dam by my ankles, and he's laughing drunk, and I'm thinking I'm going to die. I didn't realize at that point forward that I had PTSD. I didn't uncover that until I was in my 30s. And so you know, when you grow up around stuff like that you just grew up around, a lot of fighting, a lot of arguing, and then you find that violence is the way that you think you get things done in life. And so I went through 13 years old, I got cinema, or I was 14 years old, I got sent away to an orphanage. Miss Ohio veterans children's home, it was kind of a you know, I was not gonna say it was really a bad kid. But I wasn't a good kid. And so by the time I got out of there, 16 years old, I'm selling drugs by the time I was 22, in and out of prison twice with four felonies. So I really didn't have any skill set all that in selling drugs, because it's all I knew. And so for the rest of my 20s, I would find and try to find ways to be successful, every different type of way. But I was funding everything through selling drugs, and then go try a startup business and failed and failed over and over and over and over and over. And I mean, there must have been 25 businesses I started, they all failed. And I mean, I made millions of dollars selling weed. I was bringing in 330 pounds a week from Tucson, Arizona. So every trip I made, I wouldn't make a trip every week. But I made a trip back I'd make $242,000 in profit. So money came easy. But the stress that came along with that life was insane. I can't even tell you the level. Well, you know, I remember one time and I took this Clayton Napier was his name. He's passed away now but his attorney and I take him $80,000 in a paper bag and he said, What's that for? I said, I need to retain you. And he said, For what? And I said, Well, I don't know. I just want to retain you. And he says, well, Nate, what for man? I said, Man, I don't know. I just feel like I'm gonna get arrested. And he said, Well, look, man, if I take this money, I have to report it because it's over $10,000 And I know you're good for I don't know your family. And he said, But why don't you go do something else? And that was a question to me. I was like, Well, I've been trying, I just didn't know. And so a couple months after that, man, I just cried out to God, because I knew I was going back to prison. If I got caught the beds were watching me. I wouldn't go on back for two or three or four years. And if it does, how crazy it was a Steve it was I was willing to go back and do three or four years. And I didn't even have a case against me. Because the last time I remembered having peace, and you you tell my someone in their 20s It's got millions of dollars, brother. Yeah, I had no peace. Yeah. And so the last time I remember having peace, I was in prison. Think about that, man. Yeah, that level of dysfunction in life. Yeah. And so I am, and I cried out to God, I just asked him because I couldn't stop selling drugs. I didn't do drugs. I didn't need the money. However, when you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you take on a lot of these traits sometimes. And one of mine was I became an enabler. And I felt like I had to take care of all these people around me. And every time I didn't have some weed, they'd like Nate man, and he's more weeds are gonna make some more money. And so you feel compelled to help people in a level of dysfunction. And so I had cried out to God, and he broke that, and he showed me real estate. And so it literally my first year in real estate, I did I think 12 properties, and I did a burr strategy. And you know, I cashed out over $360,000 in excess of what I had in the properties and then still had, and I really didn't have cashflow, much cashflow, but at least it was paying the mortgage and paying the mortgage down. But I made one huge mistake, I didn't understand real estate cycles. I didn't understand reserves, I didn't understand targeting the right type of areas that have appreciation, and I just was buying cheap houses. Yeah, they were cheap for a reason. And they stayed cheap. So by 2010, and I created all this debt, and I was bankrupt. And so I worked through that a couple years with creditors. And you know, that was a hard time in my life. But it wasn't really till I went to go see a specialist. And he said, man, well, he did the stress test. And it was like your stress test was I don't know what it was like 800. And he said people started having mental breakdowns that are 400. Yeah. So I don't feel stressed.
Unknown Speaker 7:29
As you grew up in that you lived exactly you're used
Nate Barger 7:31
to that I was used to it was comfortable. Yeah, it was like, dude, yeah, like, you're taking my money. Like, it's not like, Dude, I thought I was going to prison for 20 years. So it's a different level of stress. And so I realized that a lot of times people let fear. Fear is working through a problem, that's hard. And that level, once you conquer it, that thing that used to be fear is the place where you live in. And so if we learn to conquer our fears, we learn to live in areas that other people don't even want to go near. And as you do that, there's a lot of money up there.
Steven Pesavento 8:07
There's a lot of strength, there's a lot of money, but you know, coming from this place, right, growing up with a challenging childhood, I can relate and understand you do things in order to get by in order to do what you think you need to do in order to survive, you learned a skill. And that skill was being a proprietor, you happen to be a proprietor of drugs, and you knew how to make money. And in that game, there's violence, like there's no protection except the own protection that you create. And so from that place, you had a skill set, just like anyone else listening might have a skill set in their job or their career. What I love about this story is that just like anybody else, listening, once you have another option, once you realize that there's another path, once you see that it's possible for you to do that to go down that path, and actually start applying a new set of skills, the ones that you've developed, but in a new way, that you were able to actually free yourself from what was holding you back, despite having millions of dollars, despite being in that place, you were lacking the piece. And then by going and applying this new way of thinking, you're able to do something different. Anybody can do that. But not everybody will. What do you think it was about that situation or your experience that led you to actually taking action to succeed in that space?
Nate Barger 9:26
Well, I think growing up in a dysfunctional household and a lot of ways you take on different personality traits. And so mine was at a young age, I felt like I had to provide because all I heard my parents argue about was money all the time. We didn't have groceries. I mean, imagine a six year old kid, literally going out here selling pencils at school so we can have food, right? It's a different level. And um, and then you know, then I start using food to cope and you know, feel comfort and look at me now and I'll still use food to become uncomfortable, baby. You're looking Oh, yeah. And so, you know, those things stay with you the rest of your life. That's still something that I struggle with today is my eating. But man, I gotta tell you, I love you, brother. I love it,
Steven Pesavento 10:13
you know, consciously just like so many people know, consciously that there's another way to use their money to create the life they want. But there's something that is in there that's holding you back, either. It's not enough motivation, there's not enough pain on the other side of what that's going to be. Right. And you've got to go through that process and make a decision, you're yet to a point where you've decided that that's no longer the way you're gonna live. That is just part of life, there's going to be things that we we wish we could change them, but we don't want to change them enough. Until we get to that point where it's absolutely a must to do that.
Nate Barger 10:47
You know, speaking to the viewers, man, if you don't have money, if you're not financially secure, you're not headed there. I hate to be blunt. But man, you want you want to you want to struggle, you want to be poor, just like I want to be fat. Because in reality, if I did not want to be fat, in six months, I could have washboard abs, man. Yeah, but I'm not willing to put that work in. And so there's nothing different about another human that can go out here and make it happen. But he decided to do he or she decided to do it. And the same thing with money and the top 1%. I will tell you, it's because I made a conscious decision that I was going to be consistent. And I was going to do it day after day after day after day. And at a times when I felt like giving up and crying guess what I did? I cried. But I didn't give up. I mean, I remember one time I'm sitting My car got tinted windows and the contractors come up to my car and you know, wipe my eyes clear. And man IT contractor said, Man, you crying I said Nah, man, I got something in mind. He said, What about your other one? You know, and that's that that's that I realized at that point, it was four o'clock. And I had my schedule. And I had five minutes. And I said five minutes to decompress when a guy walks over to my coin at time. And guess what? I realized in the problem, the problem was I gave my mind five minutes to think about giving up. And for them whole five minutes, all I wanted to do was give up. And I said I will never give you five more minutes to give up. And I packed my schedule. So full of stuff. Because even after I started doing real estate, my first from 2005 to 2010. I accumulated 250 units. And by 2010, I was bankrupt man, I lost everything. I had a couple industrial buildings I didn't understand. You know what I understand now. And I lost everything. And I came out of bankruptcy in June of 2013. And by the end of 2015. Guys, I had over 35,000 a month in passive income. And that to me was the first time in my life where I got to Bree. Yeah, man, I'm moving to Florida, we're moving to Florida, Honey, we're just going down here, we went to the keys. And for the next four months, man, I just did everything that I thought you would do when you're retired. I did it man. I was 40 years old. And I came from going bankrupt just a few years earlier, to now being retired. But those 16 and 18 hour days of work that I put in. That's kind of what made it happen. But really what it was was all the failures leading up to that. Yeah, I learned from those mistakes. And a lot of you guys, man, you can learn from Steve and take the shortcut. Don't go out here and take the long haul man, it is costly, it will cost you decades of time. And so, you know, when you get into understanding the getting around successful people and learning stuff from them, man, I'll pay whatever, because I spent over $10 million learning this stuff I know. But most of it was failures.
Steven Pesavento 13:58
That's the irony, right? People want to go and try and fail and do it themselves. And they try to kind of, you know, build their own way. And look, I think you can learn a lot from that. But when you decide to kind of get off your knees after getting knocked down so many times you look around and say who isn't falling over who didn't trill here, who's already succeeding, right? The reason you were able to make so much passive income within three, four years of coming out of that situation was because you had a decade of experience compounded next to that lesson, right? And a new motivation to go out and do it. Right. Right. You bet back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to you know, people making the decision to do that. The beautiful thing is that when you name your number, you get to set that path of where specifically you want to go and then you can start figuring out how you're gonna get there. But the truth is, if you're listening to this and you're hearing and you're not setting that target, and you're not getting clear on that vision for what you want, then Let's be honest, you're making a conscious decision to stay put. And it's totally cool if you want to do that. And if you want to stay in that place, wherever it is, maybe you're making a crap ton of money, or maybe you're broke either one of those places, or, obviously one's better than the other. But the whole point is that when you come to that place of making that decision to then step into the discomfort of learning something new, that's where great things really happen. So I feel like we've got a lot to talk about when it comes to kind of how you went about creating that. But I'm curious at this point in your life, right, you've reached financial freedom, you've created passive income that supports everything that you want to do in your life. And I know you're a mission driven guy, so you're going to continue working, because that's what you enjoy doing. That's what fulfills you. Some people might want to kick back, other people might want to go on vacation, and somewhere in between for everyone else. Tell me what is that ultimate life vision look like? What are you working towards? What, what is this all for? And what are the kinds of things that you get to enjoy today, because of that work you've done? And the things that you're looking forward to experiencing the future?
Nate Barger 16:05
Now, great question. Um, you know, for me, once, once I became successful, it was more about what's your passion. And I always thought my passion was real estate. But my passion is teaching people real estate. So my goal is to help 10 million people become millionaires in real estate. Now, I know what you guys are saying millionaire, Listen, man, you go get a million dollars a day, you're broke. It's no money. And you may not think that if you don't have any money, but you get a million dollars, man, you're going to be just fighting to try to hang on to it, that's no money. And so but if you can get a million dollars, then you can get 5 million, if you can get 5 million, you can get 20 million, because you've learned to do something over and over and over again, it's just taking not more risk, necessarily people say risk. But it's doing it just a little bit on a bigger scale and doing it over and over because your skill set gets greater over time. And so for me, it's really just helping people because I see people struggle so bad financially in the United States. And I'm like, Dude, you don't know about leverage, you don't know about compounding interest, you don't know, tax benefits of properties, like you think 8% returns good brother inflation's 8%, you're getting zero. And if you understand how to leverage property, even with a 75% loan, and you can identify areas that are going to have growth based off of future demand, not past a man, then you can find areas that are likely to appreciate it's a mathematical formula that we use. And basically you look at what current inventory is what you can buy it for what it cost to build new. And then you figure out what equilibrium is based off a future demand. That's where the opportunity is. And if you can do that successfully, then that's when your real estate portfolio will start to grow. And every five years, you can go pull more cash out tax free. And you can do this over and over again, at tax that money you take out You do whatever you want. Most people like me, they're gonna buy more real estate. But that's my passion brother is to show people to quit their W two jobs. And I got people every month that are quitting their W two jobs people every month that are becoming millionaires. And that, to me is more rewarding, because I know that that didn't just change their life. That changed their kids kids like now I'm teaching them about the infinite banking and other things that are generational. And to me, what more important is there to do like, if I go make another five or $10 million, my life's not going to change man. But for that person to become a millionaire and quit their job that's going to be meaningful. Five generations from now,
Steven Pesavento 18:46
the psychological shift that happens, Nate, when somebody realizes how to make money, and how to invest and how to think like an investor, how to have the investor mindset, it changes everything for a lot of people in their life, because all of a sudden, now that individual, you are an example to other people around you say, hey, well, if he can do it, I can do it. And so I think it's beautiful. I think when you actually can make that kind of change happen in the mind first, and then through the actions through the strategies through the tactics. That's where some really incredible things can happen. And I think if you want to go down the path of becoming a real estate operator of running real estate, like it's a business of going out and finding deals and putting them together and making this your new passion. There's pros to it. And there's cons, there's some people who do not want to go get another job. They're looking to kind of go down a different path for those people who are looking to maybe create a new business to kind of go down this path Nate, and they want to start working in real estate. They want to start actively finding properties, managing properties, managing property managers, managing the asset, raising capital doing all these things. things, what are some of those first things that people who want to go down this path of creating a new act of business in real estate? What do they need to be thinking about? And then what do they need to do in order to get there?
Nate Barger 20:13
Great question. So, I mean, first, they need to come up with what they want their life to look like, you know, because if you don't know where you're going, it's like, just you walk out of your house, and you start walking with no idea where the destination is. And so let's say what's the name? Usain Bolt? Pretty quick guy, right? Yeah. Now, let's say me and Usain Bolt take off from the same place, but he has no idea where he's going. And I just gently start walking, and I beat him. He ran around around, he had no idea where he was going. So first, understand where you want to go, which is why your podcast is so great. Pick your number, what does it look like? What does that life look like? What is the food tastes like? What does the car look like? Or what is the mission look like? It doesn't even have to be financial for you, it could be something that you want to do for other people. And then put a plan together step by step by step to get there, but you got to understand, there's going to be sacrifice, there's going to be times when your mind tells you to give up in that time is probably going to be every day. So you have to have good people around you to push you through. Because if not, you're gonna give up. And when you get on that path, and it becomes really, really, really hard. That's confirmation that you're on the right path. If you're on that path, and it's not hard, you're not pushing yourself, man, you're not going anywhere. But before you go on that path, you need to understand the things that you're doing, you need to be intentional with your time every day, and intentional with your goals. What that means is, so many of you guys are afraid of bankers, they're not you, they're not going to give me money. Well, if he doesn't lend lend out money, he's getting fired, his job is to give out money, you're afraid to go Ask that guy for money, because you don't really know how to present a deal to them, they loan your money, you put 100,000 in the bank, they're gonna take that and loan out a million dollars off of it 10 to one, it's called fractional reserve banking, some of them 12 to one. And so you have to understand all these things. If you're an analytical thinker like me, then you won't overthink it, you'll know the process and know how to do it. But most importantly, is why are you buying, if you're buying for cash flow, and you're not paying too much attention to depreciation, you're probably going to struggle if you're buying an area that you're just buying cheap housing. Because this house is cheap for reason. Most of the time, it's because you had a lot of blue collar jobs in that area, they left when the when when the people left, they didn't take the houses with them. So now you have an oversupply of inventory. So you want to track the new jobs that are coming in. I mean, this stuff is data driven. And when you start to use data, instead of a motion, man, you will become wealthy. And I tell you guys, man in five years is all it really takes to become a multimillionaire. In real estate, if you have a clear path. And I'm telling you, you're gonna have 30 40,000 a month in passive income. I'm not telling you that some of you guys can if you're starting off, and you have a different skill set, like what he talked about. But I can tell you step by step that you can retire with seven to $10,000 a month in five years, that's not impossible. And a lot of that you're not going to pay taxes on because you got what's called accelerated depreciation, bonus depreciation, and appreciation that is going to make it look like you made nothing on paper. So understanding the tax code is a key part of it. And this is totally legal. And once people begin to understand this stuff, then they start to say, Wow, I wish I would have noticed sooner, but it's never too late. Yeah, and again, I'm gonna tell them just like you, you do real estate, I do real estate. There are times when it's hard. There's times when there's things that you got to do that you don't want to do. There's I mean, I got an eviction going on tomorrow. Well, the lady that had five heart attacks, you know, I said, Man, why in the hell are we evicted her? And they said, look, we've done everything we can. We've she did not follow through, we reached out to programs, we had everything set up. And I said, Did she not do it? Because she had another heart attack? And I said, No, she just didn't do it. So there's times when you got to do things you don't want to do. Yeah, but that's that's the business decisions that you got to make. Or, you know, you're up like, I got a hotel right now, literally, I'm paying two guys $1,200 Extra a day, because we're on Firewatch. It's $1,200 a day for a security firm to come in and make sure that there's a fire because we have a problem with the sprinkler. Right? And so who cares, I get the problem done. Get the get. We'll be back online tomorrow. I had to pay these people $4,800 I mean, is this something you want to do? No. But hey, it's part of investing. There's going to be things that come up that a normal person just can't fathom, oh my god, what if this happened? So what? What if you work for 40 years and you're still broke? Well, I
Steven Pesavento 24:50
think it's a beautiful path because no matter where you're at along your income journey, in your career in business that you're running you gonna be somebody who's making millions of dollars a year in a business and stepped into real estate and have a lot of success, you could be somebody making $50,000 a year stepping in real estate, and start creating that success. And especially it makes a lot of sense. If you're somebody who is at a point in your life in your career, where you're thinking to yourself, you don't have the money to invest passively, I don't even have that much money to work with in the first place, well, then, what you need to do is you need to trade your time to go out and learn a new skill, so that you can increase the amount that you make per hour, so that you can start leveraging your time to start earning more. And it's, it's going to be hard work, right? When you're getting into the business of being an active real estate operator, it's a full time job. It's going out finding deals,
Nate Barger 25:48
full time jobs, you for those of you that think you're going to work 40 hours, man, I'm tired of working all these hours, they got me working 50 hours this week, you're gonna go through real estate at baby, maybe 90, maybe 100. But it's temporary. It's not forever.
Steven Pesavento 26:04
Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be unless you fall in love with it unless you've come to the point where, like you and me, and I go on vacation, I'm excited to work on the things that I'm working on, because I know how much of an impact that it's making. But there's another path. You know, if you're the person and you've got money, you've got a retirement account set up with millions of dollars in it or you know, a couple $100,000 in it, there is a path for you to get involved in real estate without having to do all the work. Now it's right there both have huge benefits. It's absolutely one of the most powerful vehicles, when you build a business and you go out and do that. But you can take advantage of almost all of those benefits when you passively invest as well. So, you know, I know that you know a lot about this as well. So rather than me telling them, why don't you talk a little bit about why somebody would want to go down this path of passive investing and what that can do for them when they do it. Right.
Nate Barger 27:01
Yeah, great question. So a lot of a lot of people out here are high net worth, income earners. It doesn't make sense for you guys, where you're at in your path or journey to stop and relearn real estate because you're making a lot of money. One of the things and I'm gonna tell you guys is controversial, but I got a buddy of mine who makes about 2 million a year. He's a W two employee, and he wanted to invest with us, not even necessarily to make money. Now, obviously, he wanted to make money, but he was like, Dude, I'm paying all this money in taxes. Is there any way I was like, Well, dude, you're a W two employee, what's your wife do? Well, she stay at home mom. I said, Well, why don't you let her manage your money and vest it. And then she can get if she becomes part of a GP put together deals, she can get what's called bonus depreciation, accelerated depreciation.
Steven Pesavento 27:51
There's a lot of different loopholes as a real estate professional, as a
Nate Barger 27:55
real estate professional. So, you know, it's the reason why Donald Trump doesn't pay taxes, they didn't come to his bed when he was born and say, Donald, you're special. Here's a special tax code just for you. So for the main majority of Americans, they say, Well, man, I can't do it. Because I wasn't born into wealth. Well, 88% of millionaires are self made. Okay, what's the next excuse? Right? It's the excuses that keep us from there. But there's so many different people out here that want nothing to do with real estate. And then you think about to me, giving my money to the stock market like bro, I have no idea what's even behind this at least real estate, I say this, is it, the bricks I can touch it. What city? Is it in? What's the demand? You know, what, what is the expected appreciation based off the things that are happening in the market, it's a real tangible asset, you can't just go print more of it. And a lot of Wall Street is being printed. I feel like it's being printed more and more, you got things trading at 40 and 50, and 100 times P E ratio. I mean, it's crazy. You have no idea what these people are doing. So you can get out here with a person who's syndicates who does all the work. And when you get with that person, just vet them good. Make sure they got a good track record, make sure that they're not coming out, saying, Well, we think the year over year, rents are going to increase 6% like Dude, that's aggressive. You know, if you think they're gonna do that, show me why? Well, because right now, the rents are 900 and they're building new ones down the street for 2100. Why are they building the new ones down the street? Is there a tax subsidy? No, there's a new business coming in. Okay, so now you're gonna take and convert this, then I get it. But if you're just one of these syndicators that don't understand all that, man, be careful, do your due diligence, but you can make a lot of money investing in guys that do the burr method, real estate, because what that is, is basically they're gonna get your money back in a couple years, and you still maintain your equity if you're doing it right.
Steven Pesavento 29:50
Well, I think it's one of the best strategies when you are a person with money if you're making more than two $300,000 a year or a million dollars a year. You've got access That's money that you can save. And then you can park that into these properties, just like you're saying. And if if you're able to invest in a deal, and you're able to get that money back every three years, that's another seed that you get to plan over and over again, that keeps paying you. And oftentimes, one of the beautiful things about passive investing is that investors typically get 60 to 80% of the profit, meaning that person who's doing all the work is getting a lower percentage of the profit. But they're excited to do it. Because by doing the syndication, they can use all of this money together to build a much larger portfolio, which creates an economies of scale, and allows them to leverage the cash that they have to be diversified and create a higher rate of return on their dollar. So it's a beautiful symbiotic relationship when you find the right people to work with. And, you know, just like Nate's saying, he's, he's on a mission to have 10 million people be on this path towards doing that. There's going to be some great folks that you can work with along the way. Talk to me a little bit about some of the biggest challenges that people face when they're starting to go down this path, to follow in your footsteps to go out and become a real estate operator, or, separately, what challenges people face when they're making investments passively? And how can both of those parties be able to overcome those challenges? Real Estate's
Nate Barger 31:27
not traditional, this syndication stuff is pretty new for the average American person. And so even investing for a lot of Americans hasn't gotten big until the last 15 years in buying real estate and skeleton portfolios. So you had a lot of mom and pop operators now you got people that are getting more sophisticated because they're getting the information and they understand how to put a 506 C together how to raise capital. Man, I remember me and Mike look for a year and a half Colin attorneys this figure out who could do a PPM? Yeah, I mean, that's how hard it was back in early two, you know, 2009 2000, we couldn't even find an attorney, we would call attorney after attorney. And well, yeah, don't really do that. It's like, now you can just go on social media and type it in and or boom, it's right there.
Steven Pesavento 32:11
Well, this stuff has been around for hundreds of years. But for that period of time, you had to be in the right network, grocery club, as you know, a guy who knew a guy that referred you in?
Nate Barger 32:22
That's right. That's right. And now, you know, listen to someone's podcasts like yours, like people and but now people will. They don't execute on it the informations all there. So the biggest thing for somebody that's getting started is that, it's gonna be your mind, you're gonna make excuses. I can't do this. I can't do that. And when I tell people, man, when I came out of bankruptcy in 2013, I had a 400 credit score, I had negative tax returns, my tax returns were negative 359,000 and negative 329,000. But in 2014, about 28%, of all the multifamily trading in Cincinnati, it's because instead of me looking at the problems I had, I looked at the solutions that were available. And what were the solutions? Well, you know, Nate, Hey, man, you need somebody with credit. It's one on the sign for debt. Okay, what else I need money. Okay, what else a deal, why not how to find deals, manage the deal, put the due to construction. So those skill set that Steve's talking about? That's what I had, I just didn't have no money. I didn't have no credit, and I was bankrupt. And so I had to go out here and get some investors to believe in me. And I had to say, Oh, by the way, I just went bankrupt, doing the same exact thing that I'm telling you, that we're going to do. And it's like, what's different? What I was very fortunate to have an investor that went than when I went bankrupt. I didn't take any of my investors with me. I was like, Dude, I'm not I'm gonna make you guys hold. So when I came out, they were like, What do you need? I mean, I had one of them gave me $5 million, because I full I paid for him to foreclose on a property. So he could foreclose on a property and we get clean title back. I mean, it was sticking there with the investors instead of running front of problem, I ran to it, what was the problem? And help them solve that? And he said, Man, I couldn't believe after that. He would give me more money. But he said, Dude, I saw you at your lowest point, you didn't run from the problem. He said, you know, how many people to just gave up at that point? Yeah, don't give up today. I own over 300 million in real estate. I just launched $110 million ground up development. I got another 100 and soft makers. I mean, it's man, if I wanted to go do a billion dollars in properties literally like that I could. But that's not really my passion. My passion is to show people how to do it. One more question,
Steven Pesavento 34:43
and we'll wrap up before we do tell the audience how they can get in touch with you.
Nate Barger 34:48
So I got a free Facebook group where I teach people all the time, Burr invest, you know, we got about 240,000 people in there and I love showing people how to do that. And then all So got a mentorship for those of you that are interested in going deeper burr invest Academy in the first 17 months, my students have increased their net worth over $280 million real testimonials, man, you can see it over and over again. And, man, it's just it's lovely to see that you got normal Americans. And some of the greatest stories I got is that man, I always thought going to college was the right thing to do. And I said why I asked my buddy, Chris loam. And he said, Well, you know, because in a town I lived in, if you went to college, and you got to run the assembly line, everybody else had to work on it. And that guy always had a new boat and a new car. And it was like, that's, that's all you guys want. It was a new boat, car, man. And so but now like eat like Steve, when people sharing all this information, anybody can become a millionaire. Yeah,
Steven Pesavento 35:48
yeah, it's so true. So wrapping up on this, what's your advice? For the listeners who are on this path towards creating their ultimate life vision financially? What do you want to leave them with as a reminder of those actions that they need to
Nate Barger 36:01
take? You got to find your why. Because you're going to want to give up, it's human nature, you're going to want to give up, it's going to be hard, but it's going to be worth it. So when you identify your why I want you to write it down, I actually what I challenge people to do is to go write your obituary, and they're like, Hmm, I don't want I'm not ready to die. I don't care. We want to know what the hell you wanted your life to look like when you're dead. Go write your obituary. And then when you feel like given up, look in your obituary, and if given up was anywhere in there, then you can give up? If it's not, then what will happen is you'll realize that within 10 years, you will have accomplished everything on your obituary, you'll have to write a new one. Because you'll say that wasn't enough. And so that's identifying your Y, identifying why you're doing this. It's not about you. If it was about me, Steven, if it was just about you, we probably would have gave up right? Yeah, we've identified something inside of us. That is a driving factor to provide for beyond us. And it's you guys, that listeners to you guys. I mean, first it becomes your immediate family, then it becomes your grandkids, and it becomes your great, great, great, great grandfather, then you start to understand like, man, all that stuff's taken care of brother. What is it now,
Steven Pesavento 37:25
when I was just on me, when I was focused on what it was about, for me, it was from a place of lack, it was from a place of never enough when I started changing that it started changing once I had money, and I realized I still had some of the same problems, it was a lot better to have, you have those problems, you can actually figure out and invest in solving them. But it was from this place of realizing that it has to be about something bigger, it has to be about giving back. It has to be about other people because when you attach a set of goals, a vision that is making an impact externally, out on the world on other individuals while also having your own personal driving, motivating factors internally for what that does for you those two together is what ends up leading people to creating massive amounts of wealth and feeling fulfilled on the path to doing it. So Nate, beautiful to talk with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. For all the listeners who are looking to take an active path in real estate. Definitely get involved with Nate. Look forward to having you on the next episode, and we'll see you next time.
Nate Barger 38:34
Thank you, brother.
Steven Pesavento 38:35
Today's episode is sponsored by von Finch capital. If you're interested in investing alongside me in the same type of real estate opportunities that I personally invest in that head over to Vaughn Finch capital and join their private investor network, you can do so at Vaughn finch.com/invest. Join me on that next deal. I look forward to seeing you on the inside. Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, make sure to rate review, subscribe and share with a friend. Head over to the investor mindset.com to join the insider club where we share tools and strategies from the top investors and entrepreneurs and take it to the next level.
