Glenn Harper: Hello, everybody.
This is the Harper Plus podcast, I'm making entrepreneurs
great, Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith: This is Julie Smith,
Glenn Harper: And our guest today is Paul Thompson, a real estate
investor. A fellow entrepreneur.
Another podcast host.
And just an all around good guy.
Our paths crossed, and we thought he'd be a fantastic
guest. So welcome, Paul. How are you?
Paul Thompson: I'm amazing. I'm really excited to figure out what we're
talking about today.
Glenn Harper: Well, I can tell you this the first thing we have to get out
of the way, we got this elephant in the room and and
looking at your bio, the rumor has it you used to be an
engineer or do you still have those tendencies?
I got to get that out. No.
Paul Thompson: No. I needed a job at a college that paid money.
So and I happened to be good at math and science when I was
in high school. So I found myself an engineering school and
ended up working as an engineer for 15 years, 17 years, I
guess in the corporate world.
Before I realized that that wasn't my calling,
Glenn Harper: That had to be horrible.
Paul Thompson: It had good spots and bad spots.
Corporate America can just they just ring ring you out and
just leave you out to dry whenever they decide it's not.
You're not worth it anymore.
Glenn Harper: Is that, you know, as you start in the corporate America, is
that kind of when, you know, usually an engineer is the,
you know, the smartest person in the room and then but at
some point you recognize you've got to kind of get other
relationships and teammates and that kind of thing.
Did you have that consensus consensus when you were in
corporate America and realize that?
Or is that when you went on in your own that you decided
that that's how it has to work?
Paul Thompson: Well, it's interesting, I when I was in the corporate world,
I was an engineer for several several years, an actual, you
know, individual contributor that would refer to it as.
But then I realized I wanted to be in the rooms where
they're making decisions. So I went into management and I
kind of kept climbing the ladder.
And I liked being in the rooms where they kept making
decisions. But I realized the more doors that I went into
there was always another door that I wasn't in.
So until you're the CEO of the company, then you're not
going to always be in the decision, the ultimate decision
maker. I finally realized, you know, let's just go do my
own thing where I'm always, I'm the one who decides where
the room is in the first place.
Glenn Harper: So that was that aha moment was because you wanted to be the
guy making the decisions or you wanted to do something
great on your own.
Paul Thompson: Good question. I wanted to do things that were interesting
and learn what it takes to make those interesting
decisions. So part of that maybe is the engineer background
is I want to build things.
I want to make things that are interesting.
And I found that that growing and building businesses is
really interesting and really complicated, and there is no
one right answer.
And so that really is the drive to for me is to to grow as
a person is what would it take to where I could control my
lifestyle? It was more of a lifestyle design than it was
like. I had to be a maker of some amazing invention.
I don't have any new ideas about being an engineer.
I'm more of a, I would say, a visionary, but I want to come
up with an idea and I want to hire people around me to go
make this stuff because I'm not actually the engineer.
Glenn Harper: So that is so, such an interesting track because, you know,
I would say the majority of clients and colleagues that I
come across, they are they're trade in corporate America.
Whatever it is, they do this thing like you being an
engineer and like, OK, I'm going to I can be a better
engineer somewhere else.
I don't want to deal with all this BS.
I want to go do it on my own and they go, Do that job.
As an engineer, self-employed, you bypass that and you
went. Instead of just doing business, you decided you were
going to build a business.
And it's a talk about balls of steel to be able to just go
out there and just say, I'm going to pick real estate like
something random that you never did before.
How did you settle on that?
I mean, that's a that's a big ask.
I mean, that's a very complicated industry.
How do you just go? That's the one I'm going to do.
Paul Thompson: It's funny. I think I chose it because it was the least
complicated and specifically by real estate.
It can mean some different things.
I specifically started buying rental property just very
simple single family residential rental property.
And as the conflict, the level of complexity goes, that's
actually quite simple.
And as as an employee, I could go and buy one rental
property and just see if it worked because I really wanted
the impetus for all of this is really I wanted to control
my lifestyle. I wanted to change the script where I was not
having to ask permission from my boss to spend time with my
family. Instead, I wanted to spend time with my family, so
I would then ask them permission.
Could I go and spend this weekend a conference learning
about something? Did that make sense with our life values
at the time? So I really changed the order of operations
and when I looked at the things and so I was like, How what
can I do? Or that is that order of operation works and
doing something on my own was one of them, and I wanted to
do something where I wasn't buying myself another job.
I looked into doing insurance.
I looked into starting a franchise.
All those things felt like I was just buying a job.
So what could I do that just created passive residual
income, but I could do some work on the front end.
I thought, Well, real estate seems like something that fits
that category. I started buying a few properties, and I
don't know what. 18 months later I had a I had purchased 18
properties and I realized this was my thing, and that's
when I realized I didn't need the corporate job anymore.
Glenn Harper: So you were able to keep your real job and do the
entrepreneur thing on the side for 18 months.
You know, one would say that that's pretty.
That's a bold strategy.
Cotton like how do you how do you keep a real job?
Do your family and take that leap of faith and say, I'm
going to do this and you didn't just buy one like you said,
you bought 18 of them.
I mean, you've got to get your head examined, Mike, who
does that? So, so so that's the I think the impetus for me
on this or the takeaway is that any entrepreneur out there
listening to this is that you just have to go do it.
You can't think about failing.
You can't think about those things.
Did that even come into your mind that it wasn't going to
work? Or do you just said, I'm just going full speed?
This is what I'm doing.
Paul Thompson: So a really good question.
I think this really gets to the nugget of the
entrepreneurial spirit.
It's I sit on the sidelines for 15 years of my corporate
life, kind of wishing and hoping and dreaming that I would
go and do something else, but I stuck with a security.
Are the the appearance of security that you have with a
corporate job and the consistency of the paycheck, right?
And I realized that I had to get out on the field.
That's the analogy that I often use is I want I had the
vision of playing on the field and but but I wouldn't do it
right. I was afraid of failing, and our culture kind of
changed that into us.
Our educational system, for sure, trains into us that
you're not supposed to be ever be wrong.
And that's not how business works.
You have to go out and do experiments.
Now you're not silly and foolish about it, right?
I didn't just throw caution to the wind.
I took a very careful and measured approach.
Let me go buy a property.
And when I bought a property, I was able to refi and oh,
this doesn't work. Let me go, buy some more.
And then I did the next one.
I did the next one, and I happened to be doing that in
2015, when it was easier to buy properties and it is now.
But it still wasn't 2012.
I mean, it was harder than it was just three or four years
prior to that. But I realized that was the opportunity that
you could find deals at discounts.
And I really got into the game of finding that gem of a
property that I was buying at 30 percent below what the
market value of the property was and at cash flow.
And I could get really low interest rates at the time.
There real interest rates now because higher interest
rates. But still six percent or less.
And that, I feel like, was a very measured and careful
approach and not at all throwing caution to the wind.
But I was not afraid to make mistakes.
My mistake was not trying for 15 years.
Glenn Harper: You know, it's funny, though timing is everything.
If you'd have started this in 2005, six seven eight when
everything blew up. Who knows what could have happened?
You could have still had the same great strategy and
weathered the storm, and you'd have even greater
opportunities. But everything happens for a reason, right?
But would you would you when you made the jump out on your
own? Did you have like a mentor or somebody that was
coaching you through this?
Or did you just say, Well, I got to figure this out on my
own?
Paul Thompson: Good question. So I very early learned or heard the advice.
Find a mentor fundamentally.
And you know, like finding a mentor is actually not as easy
as people make it out to be because the people who are
offering their services to you, usually it's a paid
transaction or it's a paid experience, and you just don't
know if they know what they're talking about or not.
But I was very lucky, and I went and found I did some sort
of Google search and I found somebody that was in a market
about an hour from me, so probably not considered
competition. And I emailed them and said, This is what I'm
doing and I'm interested in mentorship.
I'm willing to exchange my time, my energy, anything to
help you in your business as an exchange for me learning
the business. And he is a very interesting story.
So two or three weeks later, he called me up and said, Hey,
I got your email, I like to talk to you.
And he was kind of a mercurial, interesting kind of odd
cat. He said, I'll mentor you, but here's what you got to
do first. You have to go by the book The Richest Man in
Babylon. I want you to get a physical copy.
I want you to read it, highlight it and write a three page
handwritten essay.
And then I want you to mail it to my P.O.
box. And after you do that, I'll talk to you.
So it was his way of testing people if they're serious and
if they're coachable and teachable.
So I did it, and over the next two years, I probably wrote
like six seven eight handwritten, three page essays on
different books that he sent me. And then what he did,
probably better than anything else, is he sent me to, he
said. Here's a conference coming up from Pete Fortunato.
Here's a conference coming up from Spotify.
Go to these are like the grand old men of real estate.
They've been doing it forever. They're not into it for like
this mentorship $50000 service in the back of the room kind
of thing. They're just these guys have been doing it for 30
plus years. They have these courses on the weekend, and
that's it. There's no more upsell.
And I went to those I went to over about three year period.
I probably went to like, I don't know, 20 plus of those,
and I got a master's level degree in real estate in a
couple of years.
Glenn Harper: I am just absolutely intrigued that.
You. When you ask for somebody to mentor you and they give
you back a test, not many people would have said, Screw
this, I'm not doing that.
That is what there had to be something.
And again, you you probably you don't know it consciously,
but subconsciously there had to be something that in you.
That said, I just have to do this because that is opposite
of everything else you were trying to do.
So what was that?
What was that calling? How did you know
Paul Thompson: It felt like a Mr Miyagi moment?
It's like, Oh man, this is some like real live wax on wax
off shit and like, like, like, I've got to like this.
I'm not sure if he actually knows what he's talking about
or not, but I checked him out.
He seemed like he was legitimate, like, Let's, let's do it.
What was it? What was the cost to that?
Really, it was reading a book that I probably would have
been happy to read anyway, setting up a good practice of
highlighting and taking notes of a book you should be doing
anyway, and then writing a three page essay, which I did
not enjoy the handwritten part of the essays.
That was horrible, but that was a test for him.
That was like, I've been further, further into it.
I kept asking him like, OK, well, you know, I've done these
handwritten ones. Are you ready for me to just send you a
report? You know, I want them all handwritten
Glenn Harper: In cursive or print it?
Paul Thompson: He didn't. That was not part of the specification.
Glenn Harper: I was like, if his cursive would be over,
Julie Smith: No one could read. Glenn's handwriting is why.
So he would have had this three page essay and no one would
have had any idea what was even on that.
Paul Thompson: And these hieroglyphics? What are you doing?
Glenn Harper: I'm using me Egyptian hieroglyphics because I can understand
pictures. So when you you know the ability, you know what
we see sometimes in entrepreneurs, you know, they have this
idea. They want to go do a thing.
But the point when it becomes real is either when, in your
case, the realness is you had a desire, you already had
bought a property, perhaps before you talk to this guy.
But then when you had to write that dissertation back to
him, you were literally kind of made your manifesto, if you
will, right? And why you want to do that pretty much turned
it from a dream to a goal, right?
Is that was that the kind of the thing that made it happen
for you?
Paul Thompson: Then that is and I actually came out of one of those essays.
It was something to do with I forget exactly the book, but
it was a book by Jim Roan that he had me read.
And as I was writing it, I realized there was some ego in
what I was writing. I was for some reason was had this as I
was writing it, like I had typed it all out and as I was
handwriting it, I just kind of realized, Damn, I'm I think
I'm something else.
Like, I'm I'm putting myself out there as this successful
corporate middle manager and I've done all these things.
That's all. That's irrelevant.
Those are good lessons. There are principles I took from
it, but I was I had to let go of my ego and be vulnerable
and be willing to not know what I'm talking about in this
new world. And part of that exercise helped me consciously
come to that realization,
Glenn Harper: Literally as an engineer.
That was your aha moment, literally when you realize that
you didn't have to know it all and you could, you have to
put yourself with a team around you and hire your experts.
How after that with this guy started mentoring you?
Did you did you like, you know, the trifecta of a business
owner is, you know, or an entrepreneur, you want your CPA,
you want your attorney, you want your banker, you want your
appraiser. You know, in your case, you probably want some
kind of motivation or or, you know, counselor of some sort.
When did you start putting that team together?
Paul Thompson: Hmm, that's a good question, especially on the the attorney
and CPA front.
So that that's I know you probably resonate with this.
That's a kind.
It can be a very difficult thing to figure out when you
need it and at what level you need those services.
So I found the banker and I found the letter.
See, which would you say? I found the appraiser appraisals
and I found the realtors, but I didn't deal with the
attorneys or the CPAs too much earlier, because when you
first getting started, you don't actually need those
services that much because you're not making money.
It's not until you start making money that you realize, OK,
now I've actually done some things.
I've actually had some expenses but actually bought some
properties. Now I need to file taxes.
That's when the CPA comes in and with with the attorney.
Unless you're doing, you're messing something up.
I mean, like a lot of the state contracts, we're just using
state contracts anyway, right?
So it's not even that that complicated from a real estate
perspective. It's when you start having multiple entities,
that's when you pull in your accountants and attorneys.
And it's very interesting dynamic.
As a business owner, I have a difficult time talking to
attorneys and accountants because you can't get your
attorney an accountant in the same room together, and so
they tell you opposite things by looking at your situation
through a different lens.
And it's really hard to find a a business oriented
accountant or attorney that can kind of see the bigger
picture and kind of nudge you along the right ways.
And that's really not their function.
They're not there to be a business coach.
So you have to kind of take aspects of the legal entity
structures you get to aspects of tax, you know, legal tax
avoidance, right? Our tax optimization strategies and you
take the like, what do you want to accomplish as a business
and kind of gather these, these these three things
together. And I found the first couple of years that was
the most difficult part of the business, not the real
estate part. Doing real estate turned out to be kind of
easy. It was being the the business owner and knowing what
kind of lever to pull at the right time was what was.
I had the hardest time understanding because there's very
little that's taught about that.
Glenn Harper: Well, I think that just, you know, really, really pisses me
off. And the reason why it does is because the perception
on everybody's industry and I was I was busting a little
bit on being an engineer. But you know, the same thing goes
through as being an attorney, being a CPA.
People think this is what you do.
And a lot of times that is what you do, but it's not really
what you do and you are.
Your experience with the CPAs or accountants were
transactional and just regurgitating data and putting out a
form. You never had an advisor, a business advisor as a CPA
to kind of coach you through that because, you know, in the
old days, it was all about, Hey, we'll we can ask for
forgiveness and fix this and go back and undo this and make
it right. But now you kind of got us for permission with
the new code, right? So that architecture of setting that
up and working on it, that is what you know we're trying to
do in the industry is to help clients and other
entrepreneurs recognize that you need to have those deep,
high level conversations right away because that's going to
start putting the entrepreneur in a position to kind of
understand their space what they should or shouldn't be
doing, how they got to monetize it, how they got to account
for it, you know, how do they make money in that before
they go and fall on their face and figure it out later?
And you're just picking, you're just doing transactions.
So it's unfortunate that you didn't get that at the
beginning because it would have been a life changing.
We say that that's the shortcut that saves somebody, you
know, five, seven, 10 years of anarchy.
Paul Thompson: I so agree with that.
If anybody is listening to this, you need that business
strategist and it's really handy when they're a an
accountant and or an attorney as well, so they can give you
advice on those aspects of any business that you're in as
well, because you have to solve for both of those.
And if you try and just talk to an attorney about legal
matters and just talk to an accountant about tax matters
and then try and like take the information because an
attorney will tell you to never do anything because it's
it's risky, right? An accountant will say, Well, it just
depends what you want to do. Just tell me, just tell me,
and I'll file it for you.
Well, what should I be doing? Well, that's what the
business as a business owner is, which you need to figure
out, and you need that business strategy on the front end
that and then have a legal and tax strategy that aligns
with that.
Glenn Harper: Yeah, we see that, you know, the order that we like to see
it. And when we talk to the most, you know, I don't want to
say the most successful because it's not about the money,
right? It's about the process.
It's about having fun. It's the journey.
It's all those things. But it it ends up being that you
kind of build what you're trying to do and kind of map that
out. And then you go to the attorney and say, How do I
protect myself legally?
People want to do it backwards, so go to the attorney, but
they don't even know what they're trying to build yet.
And the attorney just doesn't know what that means then.
So it
Paul Thompson: Depends. It depends.
I've always been
Glenn Harper: An attorney is like, Oh, you can't do this?
And it's like, Wait a second, no, let's define what it is
we want to do and what that makes sense financially tax
wise. And all those things then execute that with the
attorney. Then the entrepreneur can go, Oh, well, we can
turn them loose. The the entrepreneur like for you, you
know, in real estate or anything that you might be in, it's
trying to find that price point, the margin, the return on
your investment, all those things.
When did you determine as an entrepreneur that was at a
return on investment on on your rent roll?
Was it on flipping a property?
What what were your matrix is that you were trying to
determine to decide if that property was worth it?
How did you come up and figure out those calculations?
Paul Thompson: Ok, so when you're looking just like you said, when you're
looking at running a business like you want to figure out
what your angle is like, like where are you adding value
and where is the margin? Where is the profit opportunity
right? And so I wanted to replace my income first, like a
building. Wealth was nice, but I wanted to be able to.
I my freedom back by my time back so that I had the freedom
to go, figure and do the things that it took to build
wealth. So for me, it was cash flow.
I wanted to buy properties that had a certain amount of
cash flow. I want to have a little cash in those properties
as I could, so I could turn my money.
So I would buy a property and then I would want to get a do
do the BR method or buy and refi.
And I wanted to get the refinance and get most, if not all,
of my money back.
And so I was into it for zero dollars, which you know is a
great believer. Yeah, right?
Infinite cash return.
But I wanted it to cash flow when I did that, so I didn't
want to borrow so much that I was just breaking even was
the point in that. So I wanted to have, you know, $200 of
true net net net cash flow per day or per unit that I that
I purchased so that every time I was buying something, I
was adding a cash cow into my portfolio of at least two
hundred dollars per month.
Glenn Harper: Yeah. How long did it take you to build the model so you
could scale this thing? I mean, you obviously had to figure
that out within the first, probably three or four deals
before you got to 18.
But how many did you have to go?
Oh, son of a gun, I missed that one up.
And how many times you have to fall forward?
Paul Thompson: Yeah, I definitely made some mistakes.
Surprisingly, when you buy properties that you know are are
30 percent below the value of what?
Again, this is you're buying a property that there is some
sort of underlying motivation from the seller that they
need to sell, and time and ease is more important for them
maximizing the seller return.
That's the fundamental aspect of my business, so I'm trying
to buy things at a discount.
And when you do that, it's really hard to mess up because
you're buying things at such a discount so you can have
some rounding errors have makes them a erroneous
assumptions. Have some prices come come up and still not be
hurt that badly provided that you are truly buying the
property at, at, at a big enough, a discount that gives you
a margin for error. That's the fundamental part of that.
Now, as I got further along, I got more aggressive because
I had the financial means to be more aggressive because I
would then buy properties that are more valuable, that had
less cash flow. But they had the potential for higher
appreciation. And I made some mistakes.
I mean, I've bought properties that I intended to flip.
Did the rehab spent $50000 in rehab?
Did the flip? The rehab cost more than I thought, and then
I'm stuck with, Oh, I did all.
I did all of that, and I lost $2000.
Why? What lesson did I learn there?
And usually I'm buying an odd property, and I'm not
sticking to the fundamentals of buying a property that you
know, that is very marketable to to the marketplace.
Glenn Harper: Is that probably a fair statement to say that as an
entrepreneur, whether you start out or you've been in
business for five years, 10 years, 20 years, you have to be
willing to pivot and change.
You've got to adapt right.
And some people fear that and they get all nervous.
And oh my god, I can't believe that happened.
And they go in the doldrums and other people go, Aha, I'll
just do it different this time.
It sounds like you were. That are I'll do it this way the
next time, right? Yes.
When? How long did it take you to?
Did you ever feel like, Oh my god, what have I done?
Or was it always, Oh, I got this?
No problem?
Paul Thompson: Yeah, so far I haven't felt like, what have I done?
You know, time will tell if that ever happens.
But I knew very early on from being in business for other
people that the reality of the world is is in the business
world, is is adapt or die.
You have to adjust.
You will not be in, especially in real estate.
You will not be in one aspect of the real estate business
for your entire career and just not worry about anything,
the environment not changing on you.
What worked 10 years ago doesn't work as well now, right?
So you're going to have to always adapt to the current
circumstances. I mean, in now, things are changing faster
than they ever have. Like who would have predicted COVID
and who would have predicted how COVID affected the housing
market? It ended up being a net boom for us during the
time, and it still happening right now.
What's to happen in the next three years?
I mean, who really knows?
Like, we have a lot of prognosticators, but my crystal ball
is just opaque and I have no idea what's going to happen.
So I'm keeping my options very open and I'm being very
careful about not overextending myself over the next couple
of years because of that.
I recently read it, read a fact that, like a couple of days
ago, the last BlackBerry, the BlackBerry service, it was
shut down. In 2012, there were 80 million BlackBerry users.
That's correct. So in nine years, what was an institution
now is a relic, and that is happening every.
So as an entrepreneur, you have to kind of keep your your
finger on the pulse of what's happening and what's working
and be willing to adjust to something that is that is
working, that wasn't working a few years ago.
Julie Smith: Now, Paul, we've talked about, you know, just a pivot here a
little bit. You've talked about your driving passion, being
your family and having the ability to make those decisions
with those relationships and what that means to you.
And you talked about this close mentor throughout your
career. Are there any other relationships that have really
been imperative to your success throughout your, you know,
your journey?
Paul Thompson: That is a great question, and I think that ends up being the
question. I did not go into real estate or entrepreneurship
for relationships, but I realized that, oh, that's why you
go into business in the first place.
It's about relationships, it's about service, about
creating value to other people.
And you're going to need other people in the industry or
any other other professionals that you're working with.
And the greatest reward, after buying my time back and
being with my family is the new relationships that are
forged through being parts of masterminds and going to
conferences. So I now am in a new business entirely, so I'm
in a business that I call dirt to curb.
I'm brand new and I am like way over my head and like, I'm
the absolute greenhorn.
So we're buying basically raw land and we're converting it
to residential development.
So that is not a business that I know very much about.
I joined a mastermind a year ago and a little over a year
ago, and I went to a conference, an event that's hosted by
the mastermind and met one of the people part of the
mastermind there.
And while I was there, there was someone talking about this
business and I thought, Oh, that's interesting.
So I actually purchased a course that was had to do with
land development and took the course.
And me and this buddy that I met there, we kind of sunk up
and started a new business.
And last November, like three months ago, we purchased a
new tract of land in the DFW area, which is not was not in
my plan for 2021 at all was to be in the land business or
to buy land whatsoever.
But I feel like it's a blue ocean strategy and I'm
currently in in a very transaction heavy red ocean strategy
where I'm trying to find a discount.
And it's so hard to find discounts now, and it's so hard to
deal with single family situations, and it's so much more
difficult. This raw land scenario is just a completely
different level of conversation, and I would never have
been able to even be aware of that business or have access
to the kind of professionals that I needed to work with.
Had I not been a part of that mastermind to begin with?
Glenn Harper: You know, it's funny about that, as somebody who is not an
entrepreneur is probably breaking out in a sweat right now.
Let's talk because they just could not comprehend that you
would do something on top of what you're doing something
totally new and not only doing it, but excited.
It's fun, and it's just it's looked at as an opportunity,
not as a stressful situation.
That mindset is so hard for people to tap into for
themselves, like.
And it sounds like you probably always already had that in
your your program that way, way back in the day, it just
took a while for it to come out because your obligations
and your responsibilities and the right timing.
Is that a fair statement?
Paul Thompson: Yeah. But I would not characterize myself as the classic
entrepreneur that had that sold candy when I was, you know,
in fifth grade or something, you know, I was extremely shy.
I was it took me a while to kind of come in, come out of my
shell, and I never had like a business drive or a potential
acumen for or interest in business.
My initial motivations was I was broke and I didn't have a
lot of money and I needed.
I wanted a path towards a means of getting a respectable
working wage that allowed me to have a basically upgrade my
socioeconomic status from where I grew up.
And it wasn't until I got into that that job that I
realized that I had some, some some talents and skills,
some things that I could go do in the world.
And I kind of took me a while to develop.
But no, I would say I.
I am not the kind of person who would jump in and do what
you just described as far as, you know, getting into a land
business that I wasn't familiar with until recently until I
realized that I had to build that mindset that if you want
to realize your dreams, you're going to have to go into it.
And if you are making decisions based on fear, you're
always going to find yourself lacking at.
Right, so finding a way to overcome those inherent fears
that we have that just your your primitive mind trying to
protect you is something that I have I've had to overcome
because I would characterize myself as a risk averse person
when I was in the corporate world and realized that was
just like another phrase for I was afraid to fail.
Glenn Harper: But I think a fair statement would be is that, you know,
taking a chance, getting a success, failing forward.
It builds and you you develop this shell or this, I don't
know a safety net or something in you that just says it's
going to be OK, no matter what happens.
I mean, because if not, you would.
You wouldn't have bought the second one you had.
There has to be that trigger.
And again, this is a for all the people listening.
I'm not saying you can go.
You either have it or you don't, but you've got to.
You've got to feed it, you've got to nurture it and you've
got to work through that and you can't give up at the first
sign of adversity. You have to keep grinding through.
And I and I think this attributes to that because at no
time in this conversation, you wanted to have a comfortable
lifestyle. But at no time if you mentioned that you want to
make a gazillion dollars and you're going to end it.
Right, right. You have no end game.
That's the trick with entrepreneurism.
There is no endgame.
It's the journey. It's the fun.
It's the new things.
It's it's it's acquiring knowledge, meeting people, doing
the deal. I'm excited for your land deal because one of my
favorite questions to ask entrepreneurs is, you know, what
is your dream deal?
I don't know if this land deal is a dream deal per say, but
it certainly is something that's going to probably after
you do this one and you're successful at it.
What do you think is the next deal?
Is it going to be assuming that this will be successful
because it will be? Is it going to be a bigger development?
Is it going to be a commercial development?
Is it the special property in downtown Manhattan?
Is it a south beach property?
What what is your dream deal that if you could just do
that, you'd be like, Wow, I just hit the peak.
Paul Thompson: So great question.
So I'm going to answer this in two ways.
So one is that my my dream deal is developing a property
that kind of creates community and allows me to host events
there. And it has.
Sufficient space to have recreation and have people come
and stay. Kind of like an event center kind of thing, but
but I live there that's like my inn in state place that I
want to be in five 10 years.
In order to get there, I need to learn to develop and
develop myself personally, but learn how to also develop
land and develop and get into this land game.
That's just it just adds zeros to what I'm used to doing.
It's like the the principles are all the same.
There's some new aspects to learn.
But right now, like my near-term goals are taking this one
deal that I'm working on now and.
Using that as a proof of concept to become a land developer
and make the significantly more income and wealth building
so that I'm in the position to basically give it all away.
Glenn Harper: That's fantastic. Do you have?
Is your family involved in the business with you or do you
keep that separate and or do you have like extended family
or is it buddies or is it everybody is strictly, you know,
a separate type of deal?
Paul Thompson: Good, good. Good question.
So I like to do joint ventures and I like to have business
partners because I think doing business with people you
really enjoy is fun.
My wife is somewhat involved in the business.
She has little aspects of it, but she she is not the the
grand big thinker she likes to like.
We're doing this thing where we're working on mid-term
rentals, where we're taking our existing rental portfolio
and renting them out to traveling nurses.
And so she's really enjoying working on those properties,
getting them furnished and decorating them and having them
a nice place for a traveling professional to come and stay
at one of our properties for a three month to six month
work cycle. That's something that she's interested in.
But she does not want to be in like the details of the land
deals and raising money.
She has no part of us, no part of that.
But I have business partners on these others other
activities, and I really enjoy the kind of like the iOS
system of looking at a business, creating the business in
the meeting structure and the business structure and the
entity structure so that we have a single clear focus goal.
And working on that and doing that with a with a team and a
team member that has equity in the business, it's something
I really enjoy. So that's typically how I structure things.
Glenn Harper: How long ago did you implement like that iOS and what the
strategic partnerships was that something you did on the
10th deal, the 20th deal, the 50th deal?
What did you say? Oh my gosh, this is definitely way easier
that my partners are bringing me value versus giving me
money. When did that happen?
Paul Thompson: So probably about three or four years into it, I started
implementing the like a small company's version of iOS.
That operating system where you have this, you know, the
the daily huddles and you're like, you have a focused
purpose for every meeting and meetings are actually fun to
attend versus these like long, drawn out things that don't
make sense. And then using a profit first like system for
the accounting is was very helpful so that as an
entrepreneur, I was I.
I fight the the if I see cash in a bank account, I want to
go, I want to go invest it, and I got to realize that
that's a good portion of that money.
A good portion, a good portion of that money is is not
investable right now, right?
So be careful because you get yourself in a cash cash
crunch too quickly or very easily and then very quickly.
You can find yourself in bankruptcy if you're not careful.
Glenn Harper: Do you do you not just sometimes just sit back and wish you
had have back in corporate America and have a meeting to
determine if we're going to have a meeting and then have
another meeting to determine what that meeting is going to
be about? And we're going to another meeting and then you
go to the meeting and never have the meeting.
And then I mean, don't you miss those days a little bit?
Paul Thompson: Hmm. I don't miss that aspect of the business at all, and
that is I mean, anybody who's lived in the corporate world
resonates with that. So, so clearly I do miss the
camaraderie of the people in the larger teams.
My teams are very small and we're super tactical and we
live in a COVID world now and we don't.
Everything's on Zoom, right?
So which has its benefits.
But I miss having those intimate like business structures
where where you have this common goal, you're going to work
on it. And so to help solve for that, I actually host
events now. I did my first one last fall where I host
events. People who are in my mastermind and people in my
community can come and we actually work on our business
strategies. We go through the iOS system, we go through our
our nine day goals and we plan out our five year vision and
kind of work our way back into it.
I find that very rewarding.
That's a part of the business environment that I liked was
being that strategic thinker and putting together a plan.
So I just helped build the people do that now in their
businesses, and I get that that feeds that part of the
business of the world that I that I miss from the corporate
life
Glenn Harper: Is that is that more of a a fee for service?
Is that more you mentoring people?
Paul Thompson: I guess I am serving as a mentor in that sense, but it's
really just the mastermind people who are part of the
mastermind. It's a monthly membership, but the event is
open to anybody who wants to come, and there's a lot of
people from the mastermind there.
And so you see this very close group of people who are kind
of going through business together in our individual ways.
But we all know each other's businesses and we help each
other. And so just going to the event is just the price of
the event.
Glenn Harper: You know, it's so hard to find like minded people and not
have the paranoid schizophrenia that somebody is going to
steal your idea, right?
You know, you have a unique superpower that makes you who
you are, and helping others is kind of a cool thing to do
because you wouldn't have got where you got without
somebody helping you.
That ability to want to pay it forward and help out.
And you know, we've found, you know, I found out in my
world that, you know, it is actually kind of I know it
doesn't sound fun, but talking to other CPA firms is is
kind of fun because you just kind of see how other people
are doing it. You're not going to take their clients,
you're not going to steal their ideas, but you're
everybody's kind of leaning on each other and helping them
and and commiserating with the pros and the cons and the
ups and the downs. And I think that's probably what you're
trying to do as well.
It's the the network in your community that you work with
being able to share that knowledge and help somebody.
You just you're not doing it because you want something in
return. You just doing because it's fun.
Is that? Is that something that you find very rewarding?
I'm almost as much as doing in the next deal, right?
Paul Thompson: Yes. To me, it feels like the next deal because I very much
am a deal junkie and I like to chase like some sort of land
deal or deep discount somewhere.
But no, I I do the events because it it feeds something in
me that I that I need to do.
It's my mindset the way I contribute.
And it also has a unintended consequence of.
Creating something new that I would never have planned for.
So sometimes it has nothing to do with me.
I just see other people come to the event they meet and
they become really good friends or they start a business
deal together or they do some sort of transaction together,
right? Sometimes I'm involved in that transaction.
Sometimes I'm not. It just doesn't matter to me.
But building that those relationships and those that kind
of web of connections just creates really interesting
things that you would can't you cannot truly predict.
But I just like to create that environment to see what
happens.
Glenn Harper: I think that's that's one of my favorite words is the
unintended consequence because we intend to do something.
And when something else comes out, that's so much more good
or for lack of a better term, it's it's the best because
but that could never happen.
If you're scared to say yes, if you're scared to do the
deal, you're scared to meet somebody.
You always say yes and figure it out later.
And I think that's your mindset that you've had, and that's
probably what's giving you the success.
Do you can you do you have like a a plug or a website or
something that we can put to our listeners that they, you
know, may want to reach out and contact you for any of
those things that you want to do?
Paul Thompson: Sure. So the best way to find me is on my website at Paul
David Thompson and all those names are spelled about the
way you would expect.
I have the pleasure or the curse of having a common name.
So it's Paul David Thompson.
Glenn Harper: Excellent. Well, I appreciate you taking some time with us
today and wish you continued success and I know it that
you'll be just fine. And the Landale.
I'd love to check back in with you in a few months and see
how that's going, because that just makes me grin when
somebody takes a really, really big chance and gets out of
their comfort zone because that gets the juices flowing.
That's where the action is. That's the fun.
Paul Thompson: Yeah. Also, I will do is I'll let you know if I if I drowned
or if I kind of found my pace and kept my, I kept my head
above water.
Glenn Harper: Just put your aqualung on.
You won't drown. You'll be fine.
Well, there you go. Thanks again for coming and spend some
time with us again.
Paul Thompson. Thank you very much.
This is Glen Harper signing off.
Julie Smith: This is Julie Smith.