[00:00:00.120] - Speaker 1
What's up, you guys? Welcome to another episode of the Off Market Operator. Cool, we're Johnson. I am your host. Today is another one of our rare guest features. You guys, we make sure to bring on incredible guests. My guest today, we recorded this live on my boat here in San Diego. We went over everything from his back story to his entrepreneurial journey, to how he got into real estate, the real estate he buys, why he buys it, and how that has an impact on his life and his students life. I also drop at the end of this video, guys, how you can get in contact with him. Make sure you do. He is the real deal. People don't fail at real estate because they suck. They fail because there's too many ways to succeed. That's why I suggest you focus on the most important skill in all of real estate, which is finding deals. I'm Colton Johnson, and in this podcast, I share the exact steps I've used to sort 400 deals by age 24. This will allow you to do three things, control your deal flow, make unlimited income, and build your empire as an off market operator.

[00:00:55.820] - Speaker 1
Welcome in to the Off Market Operator Show. I very rarely do live shows, only the people I like and that I've vetted. I know we have a lot of mutuals, so I know you're legit. A lot of guys that sell courses online, Twitter, Instagram, everywhere. There's not a ton behind that, but I verified there are several people that you do... What you talk about is legit. So we're sitting here in San Diego on my boat on a beautiful day after a couple of months of shit weather, and we're going to get into it, man. So thank you for coming on the show.

[00:01:20.430] - Speaker 2
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:21.990] - Speaker 1
So I want to take it all back, man. All the way back to what I like to frame shows is going back to childhood, middle school, high school. Was there a moment when you were in middle school, high school, however young that you were, where you said, Where's society is directing my life through school, through sitting in a classroom nine to five every single day. That's not for me. Most people I find, they do have a memory middle school, high school where they go, This is just not for me. Do you have a core memory like that?

[00:01:50.030] - Speaker 2
Yeah. I don't know if there's necessarily a core memory of me recognizing that young that I didn't want to be a part of the nine to five because I don't... To be quite frank with you, I don't think I even understood what a nine to five was. I just knew that I had this entrepreneurial thing. Everybody around me said it, and I knew that I had it. As early as burning CDs and burning DVDs that I was torrenting when I was in elementary school. At school, at school, the pizza that they were selling was 250 a slice. I would have my mom take her lunch break, bring five, six little Cezars Pizzas, we'd sell for a dollar a slice. And I'd come up and come back home with $30, $50. In middle school, I was already doing eBay, essentially, what was drop shipping back then, but I was doing it from my house. I was ordering Chinese wholesale, life proof iPhone cases for Alibaba. I had these packs coming in and I'd box it up, sell it, buy it for ten, sell for 80 and was making tens of thousands of dollars. And this is like in middle school.

[00:02:49.790] - Speaker 2
Over time, I had a lot of failed ventures, but I was always thinking and knowing deep down that I was meant for this entrepreneur life. I was also spending a lot of time online and researching and figuring out what other people were doing. I just loved money, the concept of making money, what it can do for you. I didn't grow up at.

[00:03:12.740] - Speaker 1
A young age.

[00:03:13.630] - Speaker 1
Very young. And was that sparked by your family not having money? Was it sparked by you just saying, Hey, there's some cars and stuff that I want to have? Or was it sparked by just you just loved the game of.

[00:03:22.700] - Speaker 2
Selling stuff? Never. I looked back. I think that was a lot. My mom worked at Costco for 25, 30 years. My dad worked in the prison system. And so we were just a typical middle class family. I grew up in Visalia, California. There's literally not too much going on except for cows, farms, and dairies. And I just felt different in a good way. I wasn't driven by, Oh, we don't have this. I really want this. I grew up thinking that once a year, eating an olive garden was fire. You know what I mean? So this is like, Yeah, the breadstick, the lemon, you know what I mean? I remember seeing a... One very core memory is seeing $100 on the bill and my mom covering it up and being like, no, and looking stressed out at my dad. So I do remember little bits and pieces like that. But the bottom line is I'm in it for the game. I was in it for the game back then, and maybe I didn't recognize it. But now as I'm in the position I've been now, I heard this quote from Alex Formozi, he said, I've been to the top of the mountain and there's nothing there.

[00:04:24.480] - Speaker 2
And it's true. I've gone from zero to making tens of millions of dollars. And these things that I thought maybe that I wanted, like the cars or the houses or the this and the that. It's not what it's about. It's about the game. It's about the love for the game. And you and I are both very similar people that were addicted to the game. We want to win. And so there's always going to be a new level. There's always going to be a, Well, I have a house. He has a mansion. I want the mansion. I have the mansion. He has the yacht. I want the yacht. But all those are just trophies along this game. And so I try and stay grounded in that. I try and bring myself back to reality a little bit. But at the end of the day, I'm a gamer. I'm a lifer.

[00:04:58.240] - Speaker 1
I love it, man. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone can look back at moments in their life and dissect how that's framed their view of money and other things. When you were growing up, man... Because I have for me, my parents, we were middle class for sure. But the way money was conceptualized to me was a lot of the time is we don't have the money for that, or we're not like that family. We were well off, we travel, we did stuff, but we can't do that. You can't do this thing because of money. Was that how money was conceptualized to you? If it was a limiting factor? Because I find a lot of people that are highly driven internally like yourself, money was a constraint for so long in their life that most of what it's about is the fear of never having to go back to that place again. Is that what drives you from your childhood or is it more... Is there something else now that you've pivoted to that keeps you going?

[00:05:44.210] - Speaker 2
There's two points there. I operate out of fear and I used to operate out of anger a lot. I could have bad things go wrong in business and I would just... I didn't care how much money I made. I just wanted to bury my competition or bury the old partner or whatever. But I do operate out of fear because I know what it's like to be living on couches. I know what it's like to have to steal food from my restaurant that I was working at. I know what it's like, and it sucks. So I've positioned myself now to where I've invested every damn near every single dollar that I have outside of maybe a car or two or a couple of other extracurriculars and trips. Every dollar I have into real estate so that I have this guaranteed amount of passive income that's coming in every single month. And it creates safety for me. It's the way that I sleep better at night. I flow through life and my energy is on a completely different wavelength because I know that there's a point of security there. Okay, if shit hits the fan, if X, Y, Z happens, if my mom gets cancer, if my brother gets whatever happened, I helped pay through college for the rest of my family.

[00:06:48.180] - Speaker 2
This is all because I have this nest egg of real estate that I can lean back on. So it's completely changed my life. But to go back to one of the questions that you asked earlier because you made a good point, in my household growing up, time equaled money. You traded time for money. So for me, growing up, money equaled time, time equals money. This is a funny story because the other day I got stuck at an airport in Houston. I had to wait eight hours to get home, or I could deboard the plane, pay an extra $400 and get home in the next hour. I do that. I pay it. And so the cool thing about my business and how I've structured everything is my family is fully involved in my business. I retired both of my parents, and now they work for me. So my mom does my bookkeeping. So she sees this thing pop up on the Amex app and she's like, $450? You know how hard I have to work for? You know how many hours I have to work for $450? You already had a $400 airplane ticket. I go, Mom, look, what's the point of having any of this money?

[00:07:51.070] - Speaker 2
What's the point of any of this if I can't buy back my time? Because time is now my most important asset.

[00:07:57.870] - Speaker 1
That's money, man. That must be interesting, too, with the mom as a bookkeeper. Stuff pops up. What is this?

[00:08:05.800] - Speaker 2
What's Tootsies? You spent $1,000. That was a lot. Cabaret. Yeah, it was a lot. Is this a cabinet store?

[00:08:14.260] - Speaker 1
I love that, man. I think that's early. Going into high school, man, what were you like in high school? Were you playing sports or were you more on your own? For me in high school, I'll give you an example. I was an athlete, but I always felt like when I went to parties and went out, I felt like I wasn't progressing. And for me personally, if I don't feel like I'm progressing, I do not feel good psychologically myself at all. If I go a day or two or three days without having some moving the needle forward thing in my life, I feel terrible. And sports is my outlet for that now it's business. But I remember no matter how fun it was, I'd go out in high school, we'd go out in college, I always had that thing in my head, like, This isn't leading me anywhere. Did you have that same thing or that hits you later? What was your take in high school on... Did you feel a little different?

[00:08:59.490] - Speaker 2
Yeah. One thing that I've always been able to do really well is live in the moment and be present. And so if I spent two or three days or a week at the lake, it doesn't affect me. I miss my business, but it's not stressing me out and making me trip. So I played the highest level of soccer that you can play in the United States, traveled the whole world playing soccer, played Academy level for Earthquakes team and Fresno. And so, yes, we traveled all over. And so I spent I learned a lot about discipline, man. And I learned a lot on the road. So one thing that was really interesting was my dad, although he wasn't a business owner, I was driving to and from for practice three, four times a week. I'd be driving either anywhere between one to three hours away for practice there and one to three hours home. And so along that way, my dad ended up running the soccer club. And so I would listen to him talk on the phone with people all the time, literally all the time. And so I've always been outgoing. I've always been social.

[00:09:58.860] - Speaker 2
And I was really, really.