In this inspiring episode, Derek Dombeck welcomes real estate investor and philanthropist Brandon Richards, who shares his 10-year journey through various real estate strategies, including land investing, notes, and creative finance. The conversation dives into not only Brandon’s real estate success but also his impactful nonprofit work in Nigeria and Peru, proving that business can be a vehicle for true purpose.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Welcome to the Generations of Wealth podcast. I am your host, Derek Dombeck. And once again, we have an incredible guest. You know, Brandon Richards, he comes to us from Flagstaff, Arizona at this point. He’s got a lot of experience in multiple different avenues of real estate investing. And what I really also enjoyed was we talk about their nonprofit organization that is helping people in Nigeria and Peru. You’ll hear all about it. Before I bring Brandon on, again, I always like to take a second to thank you for following us, for listening, doing anything you can to help spread the word about the Generations of Wealth podcast and just our platform in general. And, you know, if there’s anything I can do to help you, don’t hesitate. You can go to our website, of course, thegenerationsofwealth.com. You can go to derrickdombeck.com. But straight up, you can just send me an email, derrick at globalgow.com. and let me see what I can do to help you. So all that is behind us. What’s in front of us is an incredible show with Brandon Richards, and here we go. So with no further ado, Mr. Brandon Richards, thank you so much for being on the Generations of Wealth podcast. How are you doing, sir?
I’m doing good. I’m doing real good. Thanks for inviting me on. Absolutely. Man, you’ve got a lot of really cool things, And, you know, we were talking before we started recording a little bit. But to start with, just tell everybody about yourself, your background, and then we’ll just dive into our conversation. Sure. My wife and I and my girls, we live here in Flagstaff, Arizona. We moved here about five years ago. We’re 10 years into our real estate journey. Everything from, you know, I started out as a realtor. You know, I thought that was the way to go into the investment space. I quickly learned that most realtors got zero idea about the investment space. Got lucky, was introduced to an investment-based brokerage where I was a realtor at. So I got to see firsthand kind of the ins and outs of wholesaling and some other types of investments. I started doing our first wholesales, then our first flips, and we started buying apartment storage. We created some notes on mobile homes. And our main focus right now is primarily land. You know, after owning a bunch of rentals, I just, I don’t like the random calls when I’m not expecting them. Or, you know, if I’m on vacation and I’m just like constantly thinking about when that next dreadful call is going to come. So, you know, I had heard about notes for years and years and years. And so why not mix the easiest, to me anyways, the easiest asset class of real estate investments, land, with notes? And so now we just buy a bunch of land and we sell them to retail buyers on notes.
Love it. Absolutely love it. We’ll dive into that for sure. You know, I was always afraid of notes when I started 20 plus years ago. And then ultimately, my listeners know I co-owned a hard money lending company for 10 years. with a partner and so very familiar with notes at this point because we’re originating a lot of them yeah but you know i think a lot of people overthink notes they they really um to me it’s it’s yes there’s there’s things you need to know but it’s it’s a very simple business honestly yeah same deal i mean yeah i was a little apprehensive when i was first starting to learn about notes i new i was like man these guys seem like they have figured out the perfect niche but it took me years and years and years to finally dig into it because like you said it just seems complicated but in reality it’s not well and let’s talk about the differences right so you can you can originate notes and hold them you know through the through the time period that that the note is set up for you can buy existing performing notes you can buy existing non-performing notes you can sell partials so there’s a lot of different things i’m assuming that you’re originating new notes and then holding them or are you selling them off no we’re holding them so yeah we’re we’re originators um and sometimes we’ll pay cash for the property and we will be the bank at that point. And sometimes we do wraps with our private lenders as well, but we do keep them all in house.
Okay. So a lot of us that listen to this show know what wraps are, but of course there’s people that don’t. So let’s just maybe walk through a deal. You buy a piece of land, you’ve got the acquisition side, you’ve got the disposition side, and you’re going to wrap it, kind of walk through the whole thing. Sure. I’ll just talk about my last one. We bought 40 acres out here in Arizona for $15,000. My private lender put that $15,000 down and we marketed that on Facebook in the MLS, eventually found a buyer off of Facebook, sold that for $43,000 to him. So we took that underlying $15,000 note and wrapping is the only term that’s known, but we wrapped that note with another note with a disclosure document provided to the buyers. And of course, title one of that. And so we took the 15, wrapped it, arbitraged that amount with 43 and then amortized that. I think that’s a 12-year note. So we’ll receive, I don’t have to pull up the details, but we’ll receive somewhere around $516 net proceeds for 10 or 12 years. But anyways, you get the idea. We’ve got no money into it. My team found the property, my VAs. And then the second we got a contract on there, I reached out to my lenders, created the private financing note, closed on it, and then did the wrap process we discussed.
Perfect. So I’ve been raising private money for well over a decade as well. That’s how we funded our hard money lending company. So I don’t love institutions. I don’t have anything against institutions, but I just don’t use them. I don’t like them. Everybody listens to my show. They know that about me. So private money, you’re bringing them in. Why would they want to put up all the money on this $15,000 deal? So, you know, I mean, I’m asking these questions. I know the answers, but for everybody else, right? Why would they want to put up all the money? What’s their security? What happens if, you know, the whole deal falls apart? All these things that, again, we’re kind of breaking this down for people that are afraid of notes.
Yeah. I mean, there’s dozens of pros, and I’m sure there’s some cons for a lender. I mean, there’s always risk of default. But for me, just like you, I don’t go to the bank. So I’ve never once used a bank for any type of real estate transaction outside of my personal home mortgage. And so I’m able to provide a typically a double digit return on to my investors. And most of the time, these investors don’t use the money they have in their checking or their savings account. coming out of their IRA, the 401k, some sort of retirement savings plan. And they’re able to set that in with the promissory note and data trust. And so they got the security there. But also, if we’re speaking about land, we’re buying land somewhere between 40% and 60% of today’s market value. And I only buy in areas where the trajectory is always increasing versus, you know, And there’s areas, like I saw a post on Facebook the other day where they bought 180 acres for $5,000. Well, I’m not going to buy in that area because clearly there’s something driving those numbers way down. So the areas we buy in are continually increasing. And so they’re secure. The private investor is secured by a promissory note de-trust with that substantial amount of equity. And so if I ever default, they get the property, or if my end buyer ever defaults, I get the property back as the lien holder in this case.
Yeah, I love that. And I’m actually working on a project right now, and this is something we’ve done in the past, but we’re looking to grow it. And that’s putting options on land. It’s very similar, but not necessarily having to put up as much money. Typically, we can option land for 5 to 10 cents on the dollar. And the nice thing with that is the owners don’t give up the use of the land right away. So they still want to use it for years to come. We might have a 10-year option on a piece of property that’s in the path of growth, but we don’t want to sit on the debt and the expense until the growth hits us. and we don’t really want to sell it to somebody else, right? We want it for the growth. Then using options is a great tool.
That’s an awesome strategy as long as you know where the growth is going. Or I guess anywhere really. If you’re in a desirable area, why not hang on to that option as long as you can and be there when they’re ready to go? Well, yeah. So I’ll give you an example. If the growth doesn’t get there, right? So if I’m, let’s say land is worth $10,000 an acre where I’m buying it and I’m getting an option for $1,000 an acre. And my price is full retail as of today’s market. But I’ve got a 10-year option on it. If the growth doesn’t get to me by the end of my 10 years, the odds are that land is still worth more than the $100,000 strike price 10 years from now. just from, um, inflation. Right. So, but I don’t have to buy that land. My, my worst case scenario is I’m out $10,000. If I don’t exercise the option, like if the market’s tanked and it went down, but that option is currency. I can sell that option. I can trade that option. I can renegotiate that option with the owners at any point in time.
And that’s what I like about it. Um, But I like your model because, you know, you’re not necessarily trying to hold land long term. You’re flipping it, but flipping it on using paper. Right. So it’s similar, but, you know, we’re looking at five and ten year plans that the counties and cities put out trying to get ahead of growth. Yeah. And, you know, that type of stuff, which will lead me to my next question. I know you buy land in a couple different states at least, maybe even three or four. What are you looking for? We know you’re not looking for the areas that are stagnant, but you’ve got VAs, I believe, that kind of do this research for you. What’s their standard operating procedure for looking for land? Well, we focus on three, what do you call it, niches or I’ll just call it niches. So our main strategy is I like what I consider, let’s say, recreational land. It’s not zoned recreational, it’s zoned residential or some form of residential, whether it’s R110 or 40 acres or whatever it is. But my goal is to never be paid off. And so I want to be in an area where a family wants to do staycations or weekend trips or whatever. And so I’m thinking national parks, lakes. So if you are familiar with, say, the Phoenix area, you’ve got the Phoenix metro, the valley, you’re not going to vacation in Phoenix unless you’re staying in an air-conditioned hotel. And so you’re looking for a cool place to go. And so where do you go? you head into the mountains, the higher mountains, higher elevation. For example, up here in Flagstaff, we’ve got the Grand Canyon. We’ve got about a dozen lakes up here above the Moguion Rim. There’s all of these staycation-type areas where people would want to drag their RV, pop a tent, whatever the case may be. And so we want to be in those areas where they don’t want to or can’t build a house because this is the money they’ve been saving up for five years for that vacation. And so they’ll give me a down payment, and they make payments to me, and now they utilize the property to park their RV for the weekend, get out of the heat of the summer.
And so when I branch into a new area, that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for national parks and lakes. That’s what a lot of people do. And so when we went into Utah, I found all the lakes that people like to visit, And we started looking at land around there within. And it depends because we’ll look at realtorandzilla.com and see kind of what’s moving quickly. And we’ll base it off of that. But it ends up being typically one to five acres in most areas. And so we’ll buy within a radius of, let’s say, five miles of that area. Unless something stands out that’s pretty obvious where I don’t want to be there. So when we moved into Alaska market, I knew that what’s Alaska known for was glaciers, fishing, and hunting. And so I wanted to be around all the hunting land, all the fishing land, and the coastal regions. So I created a loom video, and I showed my VA on the county GIS map. I was like, I want every single parcel in this area mapped, put into an Excel, back into our CRM, And we’re going to call that list until it’s done. And we’re going to call it every three weeks until, you know, people start to tell us to kick rocks. So anyways, that’s our model. I look for stuff where people don’t want to sell it or, sorry, yeah, don’t want to pay us off early because they don’t need to go. And what I mean by that is if somebody wants to build a house, the bank isn’t going to go be subordinate in a second lien position. So they need to be first, which means they need to pay me off. I don’t want that to happen. So that’s what I like to do because I can create longer-term notes and I don’t have to worry about payoffs. I also wholesale infill development lands to developers. That’s pretty easy-peasy. We just pick neighborhoods, find the builders in that area, and we wholesale to build builders. And then we do a little bit of subdividing. So we’ll just look for larger parcels that have the proper zoning with access in the utilities. We’ll buy it, parcel it, and sell off the parcels.
I love all of that, and I’ve dabbled in all of that, just not the scale. So I’m very familiar with what you’re talking about. I love it. Let’s go to the disposition side. You’re using your private money on the front end. I know you’re paying your investors double digits. That I understand completely. Now, on the resale side, do you have usury laws you have to watch out for in the states that you’re doing business? how are you setting up their interest and what I do really love about this is I don’t believe that this is affected by Dodd-Frank laws because you’re not lending or selling residential properties on terms. So speak to some of that.
Sorry. So just for reference, all of our notes and promissory notes and these trusts are all drafted by the title companies unless I have a well-seasoned investor that wants to provide notes and so we’ll do it that way but I don’t worry about usury laws per se because I typically sell at between nine and a half and 10.5%. And it’s honestly just flavor of the day. It’s probably, for me, it is my spread between purchase and disposition. And to be frank, most of my lenders are getting more interest than I’m getting from my end buyers. But my difference between the two notes is how I arbitrage a difference and how I’m able to capitalize even though I’m paying my investors more money on the smaller debt versus my end buyers paying me a smaller interest on the bigger dollar amount. As far as Dodd-Frank, you’re right. Yeah. In land, it’s a little bit different. Once we start to get at scale, I’m sure I’ll get an NMLS mortgage originator to start drafting those. But at this point, it’s easy enough. Like I said, our title company is always drafting those notes and then as far as servicing we just push them into there’s a self-servicing platform called your land loans which just changed to terra notes i think they just changed their name to but it’s super easy you throw it in there and your end buyers will set up an account with their bank checking credit card whatever they want to use to pay and we’ll just get notifications first of When they pay, that’s super easy.
And your foreclosure laws in the states that you’re working, are they all deed of trust states or are some mortgage states in some deed of trust? These are deed of trust. Okay. So the difference for the audience is, you know, you have a non-judicial process typically in deed of trust states versus a judicial foreclosure process where I live. And that’s a big thing to consider because how long, if somebody does default on their land loan, how long would it take you to foreclose and get them out of there and get your property back? Depends on the state, but typically 15 to 45 days tops. Okay. So like in Wisconsin, it’s 9 to 15 months. Jeez Louise. So I bring that up. So everybody listening to this is like, hey, I love what Brandon’s doing. I’m going to go buy land. Absolutely. Nothing wrong with it. You should consider it, but know your foreclosure laws.
Because the nice thing is with the land, they’re not going to trash the land maybe like they could a house during a foreclosure. But if it’s timberland and they go nuts with a chainsaw and start cutting everything down or they start dumping toxic waste or fill in the blank, it can still cause you a lot of brain damage, right? Yeah. Yeah, and frankly, I haven’t had to deal with foreclosure yet. We had a note that was not performing well back in Texas, and we did some loan modifications a couple times for her. And eventually, I just said, hey, either we need to do basically cash or keys, Like I’m going to foreclose or just give me the house back or you need to go talk to a realtor and get this thing sold. And so ultimately she decided to go get with go the realtor route. Couldn’t get it sold. So I was like, OK, let me help you. I’ll find us a buyer. I went to my network back in Texas, found an investor that wanted to buy it. And he was able to get her out of that note, get me paid off, get my lender paid off. But I prefer not to foreclose, obviously. The nice part about that is, obviously, we’re all getting down payments. So if they default, cool, yeah, we’re missing a little bit of payments. If we own the property in cash or if we have a lender, then we’re paying a nominal amount. But we collect their down payments. So we’re keeping, whether it’s $5,000 or $50,000, that’s ours to keep if they decide to default. And so the higher that down payment, in my mind, in most investors’ mind, they’re less likely to default. So that’s a little bit extra security there as well.
Yeah, I mean, you never want somebody to default, but you got to be in position to carry it as well because you still have to pay your investors on the rack. Right. Now, that’s another avenue that you could consider, too, with the investors, depending who they are. If you set them up more on a performing standpoint, meaning while the property is on the market originally waiting for a buyer and or if there’s a default, maybe the investor doesn’t get paid. But what I do often is participating notes with my investors. Are you familiar with those, Brandon? No, I’m not actually. Okay, so I go buy a house and I need $50,000 rehab money. And I’ve got a friend that’s got an IRA sitting around. And we’re, you know, I’m assuming you’re just like I am. We’re very nosy with what our friends have and we want to keep their money working. So I’ll often go and give them maybe 6% interest only payments on that 50 grand quarterly.
But I’ll give them a percentage of the net profit when that property sells in the future. And that percentage, that’s just deal-by-deal dependent, right? But we’re getting them double-digit returns. Yeah. The nice thing is it’s not costing me a lot on the front end. And typically I’m doing this with a rental property that I’m going to lease option out. And my lease options are one to three years. So the investor is on a one to three year plan on getting paid out. But if I give them 6% interest only, I’m able to cash flow the property in the Midwest. And I’m paying them with future dollars when we do the equity split on the back end. Yeah. Which theoretically is worth less money than it is today because of inflation. So it’s win-win for everybody. And if it’s their IRA, they don’t necessarily want the payments coming back. They want to keep the money working.
Right. That’s a great way to keep your, it’s what I call the monthly nut. You know, if you got a whole boatload of notes out, making payments on, like when I was heavy into flipping, sometimes my monthly payments were $20,000, $30,000. I’m like, golly, I wish there was a way to alleviate this. And then I got wise to the whole situation. And now I put payments on the end when I sell those flips now. But in the beginning, I was like, good Lord. And so to your point, getting the investor knows they’re still getting a double digit. It’s just a smidger delayed. They don’t care because it’s sitting in a retirement account anyways, but they get to see that every quarter they’re getting their 6%. And so like you said, it was a win, win, win. I mean, you get to reduce your monthly nut, relieving tons of stress and then having to are still providing that double-digit return. Well, I can tell you about one that we’re literally doing as we speak. I mean, this is your show. I shouldn’t be taking it over from you, but now we’re going back and forth. So we bought a house seller financed in February. And 100% seller financed. We had to give them $25,000 down. But they are doing 0% interest for eight years. and we needed to bring 40,000 to the deal 25,000 down to the sellers 15,000 to make it rent ready yeah and so that’s a deal where i brought in a private investor gave him six percent of um quarterly and he’s getting uh 15 of the net profit when the property sells in the future now he’s aware that could go out eight years we have an eight-year balloon with the seller yep i love doing those types of deals because everything with the seller is is 100 principal reduction every month yeah you know and we we do that in a way where they wanted full retail for the house most of the people that you and i talk to like we all buy at discounts i’ll buy full retail if I get my terms.
So I just said to him, I said, I got to be able to cash flow this property. I can’t pay more than 45% of the rents that I’m going to collect in a debt payment. That’s $800 a month. So we bought a $260,000 house for $800 a month. If you put that into a mortgage calculator, that’s, you know, at today’s bank rates, that mortgage should be about $1,700. Um, so what do we do? We can then put somebody in on a wrap or a lease option. We use lease options because of our foreclosure laws. Um, and we can put them in at bank rates and make the spread. Yeah. You know, shoot, if you’re getting a 0%, I mean, that’s the very definition of arbitrage right there. And that’s how you cash flow, you know, a property like that. Which is why a lot of people run into the sub-two business, which I don’t know a whole lot of anything about. But that’s in a sense similar. I do know a lot about it. I do it. But there’s also a lot of misinformation out there. Right. We won’t dive into that one today. But the point is, you know, you can do things with participating notes to still get everybody what they want. But there is some risk that’s taken away from you as the operator and put onto the investor, but you’re also potentially giving the investor more, right? So with the equity participation, what if the market tanks? What if you don’t sell that land for what you thought you would sell it for? Well, they get less. However, what if it sells for more?
You know, in my case, some of these houses don’t sell for several years. And if we all of a sudden get 10, 20% appreciation for a couple of years in a row, well, great. We all made more money. Right. You know, so that’s the risk versus reward. Yeah. I was thinking as you were saying that, you know, a lot of areas are pretty stagnant. Some are dropping. Most are appreciating. When I first moved out here to Flagstaff about five years ago, My buddy was building houses and selling them for like the mid 300s. That exact same neighborhood just five years later is selling in the mid 700s in five years. So can you imagine how joyous your investor would be having an equity position on those types of deals? Absolutely. Yeah. And I’m happy for them too because we’re taking the ride together. And typically I’ve got not a whole lot of my own money into the deals. I’ve got all my knowledge and experience. That’s what we get paid for. But I want them to make their money and make more money. And they’re never going to want to leave. And I don’t want them to. Right. I mean, that’s why they always keep picking the phone because we make it easy and we pay them every single day. And one of the coolest things, one of the best texts I ever got is one of my lenders is into cars. And he sent me a picture of an old school 94 Acura NSX. He was like, thanks to you, I’m on my way to get my dream car. And I was like, hell yeah, that’s cool right there. And it was just, it was really cool. And so now I’ve been with him probably seven years, roughly. I can send him a text and say, hey, I got this property and this much money. And he’ll say, done, win. And it’s just, it’s super easy.
Yeah, absolutely. When you take care of your investors, that is how easy it is. And many people ask me, well, how do you find private money? It takes time, and you’ve got to perform, and you’ve got to fall on the sword. If shit goes bad, you protect your investors at all costs, because if you don’t, not only are they going to disappear, but word spreads like wildfire. Yeah. And what made me sad was what you just said. You called it an old-school 94 Acura, and I graduated in 94, and I’m thinking, shit, that’s not old school. Well, I mean, I like the 94 Supras as well. To me, I guess I probably shouldn’t have said it that way, but I was born in 86, so I’m a little bit younger. Yeah. Well, you got some pretty cool other stuff going on too besides real estate. I know you and your wife, you’re passionate about giving back, and talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so the main reason everybody gets in real estate is freedom, money, right? when you Google how you make money in this world, inevitably real estate comes up. So we got into real estate to have a little bit of time and freedom. And so we do a lot of traveling. In 2018, I was at a real estate event in, I think, Mississippi. I ended up in a gym working out with a buddy who introduced me to another guy who rides dirt bikes. I was like, shoot, hell yeah. He goes to the gym, he rides dirt bikes. That’s my kind of guy. Nowadays, he’s a lender, but we’ve traveled the world riding dirt bikes. In that conversation in the gym, he said, hey, random, I met a guy on the internet. He runs an orphanage in Peru to raise money for the orphanage. He rides dirt bikes around Peru for two weeks. Do you want to go? And I was like, say less, duh.
And so a few months later, we’re in Peru riding dirt bikes, riding over the Andes Mountains, 16,000 feet, watching volcanoes, seeing the Andean Condors. And when I got back home, I was like, man, not only did I get to experience another culture, another country, ride dirt bikes, hang out with my homies, but we got to send every, so for every guy that rode, their participation fee got one impoverished or sexually abused girl through another year of high school or middle school or elementary, whatever grade they were in. and so I was like dude that is perfect I want more of that feeling and so um it happened to be at the time on my Facebook a friend of mine was posting about going to Nigeria and helping with orphans there and I told my wife I was like I don’t know this guy but if by happenstance he ever messaged me and says hey do you want to go to Nigeria I’m letting you know right now I don’t care how scared you are or how scared I am, I’m going. And so I don’t remember the timeframes, but he ended up eventually messaging me and we went to Nigeria in 2019. And since then, we’ve been back a handful of times. And when I got back the first time, I felt like I didn’t want to wait until the next year to help people. And so we had met a really good dude there. We spoke to a lot of people and I I guess vetted him in some form or fashion. And I reached out to him. I was like, hey, man, great meeting you. Here’s my idea. I want to dig wells in Nigeria. How crazy is this? And so to me, like us being in the U.S., we’re thinking digging wells, it’s $10,000, $30,000, $100,000 to dig a well. And so it seemed like a bit of a stretch, but I was like, hey, just give me some numbers. And he got back to me. He’s like, dude, we can dig a well in this community here for $550. And I said, huh? Hold on. Is that number right? And I think, so their dollar is called Naira. And so I was like, I Googled the conversion of Naira to dollar. I was like, that’s 500 bucks. Is that right? And I was like, can you confirm these numbers? And he confirmed it. And then I confirmed it with my friends that had invited me to Nigeria. I was like, does this sound right? And he’s like, yeah, that’s pretty standard there. I was like, dude, okay, game over. So within six months, we created a 501CE3 nonprofit, and we started digging wells in Nigeria. The first one was pretty basic. We provided the – I think at the time it might have added up to somewhere around 800 bucks. And within a few weeks, we had a well in Nigeria. I was like, dude, this is the best feeling because he would take pictures and film all the locals dancing and singing. And then you can’t see it, but on my wall, there’s a lot of different communities there. And they, the community leaders sent me a letter and I was like, God, this is like, it’s just right up in my feels. And so now we do a couple wells a quarter, and on every well dedication, we will provide medical aid to everybody in the community. So we’ll bring out volunteer nurses, provide prescriptions, and we’ll feed every single family in the community as well. We’ll give them a certain amount of food, rice, beans, and whatever. So that’s what we do with Operation Freedom is we dig wells in Nigeria. And every once in a while, our people in Peru will reach out for some funding concerns and we’ll help fund those things. And so, yeah, we just are – my wife has two jobs within our company, bookkeeping. She’s our accountant. And making sure Operation Freedom continues to grow. So we’ve got – she’s got a monthly newsletter. We’ve got a Facebook page. We’re always posting stuff. And so that’s one of our biggest goals is when we retire, we’re going to move to either Nigeria or Peru for six months out of the year and really push the wells and get some orphanages and schools going.
Well, it’s crazy to think about the cost that we would pay for an airline ticket to get to Nigeria would put in a couple wells. Yeah, exactly. You know, like that’s amazing. And great for you guys. I mean, that is having a passion project helps you build your business even more. I’ve seen this many, many years. In 20-plus years in this business, I’ve seen people come and go, and the ones that come in because they want to make all this money, they fade very quickly because this business is simple but it’s not easy. And when you have a passion project and when your back’s against the wall and deals aren’t necessarily flowing the way you want having challenges, you know, having that passion project is what pushes you through. And so definitely appreciate what you’re doing and want to make sure that you had a platform to talk about that a little bit. I appreciate that a lot, yeah. Kind of probably winding down here, know that you’re really good at navigating the software industry, right? As far as, you know, as a real estate investor, it’s not something that I’m good at by any means. I got to pay people for that. What does that look like in your world?
Yeah, so I’m like the very definition of a squirrel, per se, or like shiny object syndrome. I’m always looking for something to do. I get bored very easy. So like if me and a buddy go on vacation, he’s like, let’s just chill by the pool. I’m like, no, dude, I’m going to go walk the beach or I’m going to go rent a kayak or a jet ski or something. I just can’t sit still. So I’m always looking for things to do. So a buddy of mine, two, three years ago, we were like, let’s buy some, let’s buy businesses. Let’s go, let’s go do that. Because we were looking for other forms of not only income, but we were looking at businesses that provided passive income. They’re self-sustained. And the owners weren’t in the day-to-day operations anymore. He ended up buying a restaurant. He loves it, but it wasn’t for me. I don’t want a bunch of, I’ll be nice. I didn’t want to hire a bunch of non-skilled employees, right? I didn’t want that burden. We almost bought a coffee shop. And I was like, man, me and my wife mulled it over and we bailed on a coffee shop. We bailed on a Boba tea shop. And it just didn’t fit what our long-term goals, what we had envisioned for ourselves. And so, again, I’m showing out another real estate investor networking event. And this software broker comes up to me and we just get to chatting and I told him how I wanted to buy a business. He was like, you ever thought about buying a software company? I was like, no, I’m a real estate dude. I don’t know anything about software or marketing or any of that stuff. But long story short, obviously I bought the company. We evaluated, did our due diligence. And not only did I determine that the software company was an easier business for me to step into and be back to the freedom context, gave me location freedom. I wasn’t stuck to a coffee shop in this town. But it’s easier to scale. And so versus, you know, marketing for a coffee company, you’ve got to put on TV ads, billboards, mailers, you know, all these things. And hope that somebody comes in. With a software company, it’s a lot easier to market. So we bought a company called Deal Manager Pro. So real estate CRM, real estate investor CRM, where just like any other CRM, you manage your leads. But we stand out in a little bit that we provide nationwide comps for free. We have a direct mail integration. We have skip tracing integrations. The list goes on. We’re currently working with texting automations to set up your follow-up campaigns to where – because for me, some of my biggest deals have been from years and years of follow-up, and that’s where a lot of people lose their deals. And so we wanted to eliminate that burden for our users by having the ability to set up those automations. So they’ll text at a cadence that they set up. It will email. And we have an AI responder that is being built right now. So when those automated texts go out, you don’t have to make sure you’re online to jump onto that conversation real quick. The AI bot will respond back to that seller on your behalf. and get that seller on board with making move with you. And the list goes on. We are constantly integrating things. And so our main goal is to be kind of like a one-stop shop, but cheaper than everybody else because other CRMs of similar comparison are $250, $350, $600 a month. And our main goal is once you’re in the system at X dollar amount is to never raise that price on you, no matter what type of integration we push into the system. And so anyways, you can see that I’m passionate about it. I didn’t know anything about software before, but now we run two developer teams pushing these implementations every single week.
Yeah, I personally know three other software owners, and I won’t throw the names out there, but they’re the larger CRMs. And it’s a lot of work, man. Those of us that are paying $100, $200, $300, whatever we’re paying for our CRMs, it’s a nonstop battle for you guys to stay compliant, keep on top of everything. I hand it to you because my friends have told me. And I’m like, damn, man, that’s a lot. But I just like getting the end product and knowing that I can have the easy button to push. And I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. So you said that’s Deal Manager Pro, and we can have a link to that in our show notes as well, dealmanagerpro.com. And I really appreciate the conversation and you coming on the show. As we kind of wind this up, I’m going to ask you something I ask almost all of my guests. What is one question I should have asked you today that I didn’t, and it can be about anything?
Before you asked that, I was thinking about things I didn’t mention, so I guess I’ll just bring that up. As I was developing and fixing and upgrading the software company, I was like, well, how do I get the company out there more without paying for a bunch of ads? And so I was like, I know real estate. Why don’t I just teach people how to do real estate for free? And so I’ve got a free real estate wholesaling course that’s coming out. I will go through A to Z on how to create a wholesaling business in three to four hours. So that’s coming out soon. So you just have to find my Facebook and I’ll let you know when I launch it. It should be here in the next couple of weeks. And then I am done writing a land investing book and I’ve just got to get it published. So I will likely do two types of advertisements. I’ll get the book out for free like everybody else and you just pay shipping, blah, blah, blah. There’ll be an ebook and of course it’ll be on Amazon for purchase. But, and that’s just, that’s not a fault of yours for not asking me. That’s just from me not bringing it up. I should have brought it up. But I think you answer or ask me all the questions. I super appreciate you allowing me to talk about Operation Freedom. That’s the main reason we do all of this. At this point we’ve served, I need, so one of our things right now with our guy, our guy on the ground is we need community demographics. So we want how many people we’re serving, how many people we’re feeding, how many people we provide medical aid to. And so just a rough guesstimate, we’ve served already tens of thousands of families, somewhere in the 30,000 to 40,000 range. So, yeah, we’re partnering with another company called Bucket Ministry. So we’re going to provide continual help to these communities afterwards. Sorry, I’m just rambling about Operation Freedom now because we just got back from Nigeria in November. But one of the cool things was is the first six or seven wells we never got to see. And so in my mind, I’m like, shoot, if I’m a potential donor and I’m just giving money to these dudes I met on Facebook, dudes me my wife so this couple on facebook to go dig wells in nigeria cool but how do i know they’re putting money where they say they’re putting money and so i made a very adamant point before we went out there i was like i need to go see my wells bring me to my wells and so now if you go to our operation freedom facebook page you can see me and my wife we go out to the wells we test the water we meet the community members we shake hands with the leaders and it was just like the coolest freaking experience ever. And so we start a new well soon and we’re heading back out in November again to go check up on more wells. And it’s just, you know, it’s one of my more favorite things to talk about.
Absolutely. Well, and for reference, because we’re recording this, you know, at the end of April. So when you hear this show, you know, go check out Brandon and find him because everything he just talked about may likely have already been released. Yeah. Because we do record, you know, a few weeks ahead. so um i don’t usually mention that on the shows but it’s not like it’s a big secret but that way yeah don’t hesitate if it’s something that you want to go check out and see what brandon and his wife are doing like just look it up so yeah well man it’s been a pleasure i appreciate you uh sharing everything you know the generations of wealth platform is not just about investing it’s You know, our mantra is live your vision, love your life. And you guys are living your vision the way it sounds. And that’s why I really just love having guests like you on my show. Yeah, and I appreciate you inviting me.
Absolutely. So for everybody else, thank you again for following us and doing everything that you can do to help us grow the Generations of Wealth show and get our message out. And until the next one, go out there, make some deals, live your vision, Love your life. See ya.
Important Links:
About Brandon Richards
With nearly a decade of experience, Brandon has successfully acquired, renovated, and developed numerous residential properties. In 2024, his focus shifted to large-scale land acquisitions in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Alaska, specializing in owner financing strategies. His expertise also extends to wholesaling, multifamily investments, and storage facility management. Through strategic planning, he has raised over $15million in private capital for real estate ventures. Beyond real estate, Brandon and his wife, Ashley, are passionate about giving back. Their non profit, Operation freedom, funds and oversees critical humanitarian projects in Nigeria and Peru, including well digging, food distribution, and medical outreach.