“The hard times you’ve had are what molds you into a stone that can’t be broken when times get harder later.”
In this episode, Craig takes the wheel as his co-host Zeona has recently tied the knot. However, Craig won’t be lonely because he is joined by Nick Beveridge, an experienced real estate agent and investor who survived numerous challenges, including bankruptcy, foreclosure, and divorce, before he finally achieved sweet success.
Listen to this episode and journey with us from Florida to Idaho as Nick shares some hard-earned lessons on his path toward financial independence. If you’re currently facing challenges in your real estate ventures, Nick’s story will inspire you to stay consistent and keep holding on.
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From Bankruptcy to Legacy: Nick Beveridge’s Incredible Real Estate Journey
Nick Beveridge is becoming a really good friend of mine. So I moved up here to Northern Idaho in January. Nick and I met maybe a few months ago, probably in the fall of 2022, and we’ve hung out a whole bunch, we’ve talked a whole bunch, and he’s been such a great resource in kind of helping me get acclimated to this real estate market here. He’s got a phenomenal team of his own and just all around really great guy with some really great knowledge. And the best part about this is that Nick comes from really, really humble beginnings. And I don’t mean like he grew up poor. I mean, he got kicked and batted and beat in real estate, and he just stuck with it, stuck with it, stuck with it, and now it’s really paying off for him. And so, without further ado, I want to bring Nick Beveridge on to the show.
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Nick Beveridge, welcome to the show, my friend. How you doing today, dude?
Doing really well this morning, but I am freezing. So, like -5 in North Idaho right now, something like that.
Yes, something like that. All I know is I feel like the snow on the ground is so cold that it’s now like caked over and iced and you can’t even get through it, it’s that cold. So, yeah, I think there’s a cold front sweeping the United States right now, I got buddies in Canada, they say it’s like -47 or something crazy.
Oh my gosh.
Maybe we’re blessed with just being — we’re still above zero. Anyway, the weather is cold but your story is hot and we want to hear it from the beginning, dude.
That is a good transition.
Yeah, trying, man. My transitions are usually pretty rough, but tell us, man, how did you first hear about financial independence?
So I guess what first got me interested about financial independence was actually I was on a road trip when I was I think I was 19 with a buddy of mine and we were driving around the country and we stopped at my grandmother’s house in San Diego, California, for a few days and I remember her sitting me down and it wasn’t awkward but it was just unique because she doesn’t usually talk much, she’s from Germany and really heavy accent but she started to tell me that, “Hey, while you’re young, why don’t you start putting away something for retirement?” because she said the government’s likely not going to be there for you. She’s like, “Social security, pension plans, I’ve got all that but you probably won’t,” so she said, “You gotta do something to put away money now while you’re young,” and that was kind of the first time somebody ever really kind of gave me some hard, true advice as an adult to do something about my future, if that makes sense.
That is like one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard. When I was 18, someone just told me to start investing for retirement so I did, I didn’t question it or anything like that, but the fact that like your grandmother’s so right, the government is not going to be around for you. You think the government cares about you, that’s a laugh in your face. The only reason why they offer 401(k)s and Roth IRAs is for their own benefit to take their own money and so like — What happened? So that conversation with your grandmother, clearly it resonated with you, and so can you give us a year as to when that happened? Just so we’ve got a time reference.
Yeah, yeah, that was the summer of 2007 and it was one of the best summers of my life. I went on two road trips around the country, had a great time, spent all my money. I mean, I had to quit my job to go on these road trips and had a lot of fun but when I came back, I was broke, had to get another job, and I remember I started working at this dealership and they had a flyer somewhere in the back and it said that we’re bringing in a couple of financial guys to talk about your future retirement if you’re interested in checking it out and it’s $100 to go hear them speak and I don’t know what got into me but I was just like, “Okay, I’ve never done anything like this but I’ll spend 100 bucks,” and it was like all that I had at the time. But I spent $100, yeah, to hear these guys and I was the only guy that signed up for it. So these two guys came in and they —
It was just you?
Yep, it was just me. So we went to — oh, no, I’m sorry, I brought a roommate with me, but I was the only guy at the dealership that actually signed up for it and I brought my roommate with me. These guys started teaching us about compound interest and they were financial advisors, they were selling us on mutual funds and that kind of stuff, but it was the first time anybody ever kind of broke down the magic of compound interest over time. It was the first time I ever heard about that. But then I started remembering back to my middle school, high school days learning about inflation and it all just started to click for me that I really need to do something now because, financially, I felt like if I didn’t, things are just going to get worse over time with the economy and inflation and prices going up and incomes not really catching up.
Wow, it’s like you had a crystal ball there back in 2007, 2008.
Yeah. So that was just kind of my first like intro to the financial world, because I’m pretty dumb, I was pretty stupid in high school, I was always getting C’s and stuff, and my parents, they were not entrepreneurs or anything so they didn’t really teach me much. My dad did tell me though don’t go working for anybody else and he was a self-employed kind of guy, but he never really made a substantial amount of money. So I guess I mostly did this out of fear and started down this journey, because I convinced myself that if I didn’t do something, I was absolutely going to be a broke old man and that really motivated me to do something early, if that makes sense.
Yeah, no, absolutely, man. And you discovered this at the right time, right? Anyone listening to this that is younger, in their teens or early 20s, like time is on your side and time is the best return, right? The longer you hold on to something, the more wealthy you’re going to get. Warren Buffett didn’t acquire most of his riches, like 90 percent of his riches, until he hit age 70 or something like that. So like, make sure start early and your wealth will really grow over time. All right, Nick, so you get out of this financial class at the car dealership, which is like the most random place ever.
I know.
What do you do next? You’re 19 years old, you now have zero dollars because you spent your last hundred. What’s going on?
Well, so the next part was, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this network marketing company called ACN? I was sold on it by — my older brother got into this network marketing group, like a pyramid scheme type of thing.
Sure.
And I started going to these meetings and it was 500 bucks to sign up but then they showed you the magic of residual income and it was more educational than anything, I never actually made any money doing this thing but I did sign up. I got a couple of people under me but I got the wrong people, they weren’t motivated as much as I was and still, I didn’t really actually believe in the product or the company so maybe that’s why I didn’t do too well at it. And at this time, they kind of convinced me I should read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and I listened to the audio of that and then I got on the real estate train and I decided I’ve got to buy a house. I was also living at my brother’s house and he bought a house and got a bunch of roommates and he didn’t really have to pay rent, he just collected rent and lived for free so I was also kind of inspired by my brother to just copy what he did and go buy a house and get roommates. But — yeah.
So your brother was house hacking before it was cool.
Yes, he was house hacking before it was a thing and he showed me that he was able to get this house on an 80/20 combo loan so he got a loan for 80 percent of the purchase price and then another loan for 20 percent and he said that he had to bring $300 as deposit and then he got the seller to cover all those closing costs and he got his $300 back when he closed on this house so he basically got the house for free, got roommates and was living for free for a couple of years and it’s just a model that made sense to me and so I wanted to go do the same thing but I was very young, didn’t know what I was doing. I bought a house out in Kellogg because it was the only thing I could afford and Kellogg’s a very small town in North Idaho, not much going on with the economy there. I went and I got a job in sales because Rich Dad, Poor Dad recommended that you got to brush up on your sales skills if you’re going to be an entrepreneur so I just did that even though I was super — by the way, I was really afraid to talk to people at this time in my life. I was always a shy kid, very introverted, so the thought of being in sales really scared me but everything I was learning was just like, “You need to get in sales. You need to do things that are not comfortable. That way, you can live like most people don’t,” so I just kind of had that faith in the process and just continued to try new things and fail and try new things and fail and get into sales and learn sales and fail at it until, eventually, I became a real estate agent. And I even failed at that for like the first four years. I didn’t do very well until I’ve started niching in the investor world.
Yeah. Okay. We’re going to dig into that in a second but rewind a little bit. What was that sales role that you had and is that still available today for somebody that’s maybe just getting started that maybe doesn’t want to be a real estate agent at first or maybe lower barrier to entry?
Yeah, yeah. So, after the car sales, I started selling Cutco knives. So that was more like on referral. You go to people’s houses and you put on a knife demo. And I remember the last one I did I cut myself really hard with the knife and I was just bleeding all over these people’s table and I just — it was so embarrassing and I was just like, “I can’t do this.”
Oh, man, that must have sold though, if a knife works that good.
Yeah, absolutely. I did sell, yeah. We joked about it and they bought a knife set. I think people just bought knives from me because they felt sorry for me because I was just this weird, awkward, shy kid just trying to make a buck.
Oh, man.
But it wasn’t comfortable. Like I just didn’t feel right about it. But real estate, really, it was so much of an easier sales job for me because you made more money and you didn’t really have to sell anything.
People wanted it. You didn’t really have to be pushy. But you still had to sell yourself. You still had to learn the skills and the language. Share on XRight. So is that how — like why real estate? Like you went from selling cars to Cutco knives and now real estate. Is that just because your brother was interested in it, you’ve kind of been like, almost like dabbling around it for a while and you were just, “You know what, maybe real estate is the play.”
Yeah, there are multiple different reasons. My dad was actually a real estate agent for a long time. He didn’t really do well at it but I knew that people did good in real estate. But I also knew from reading Rich Dad Poor Dad that it was more of a self-employed type of job. But what I learned buying that first house was that I didn’t know anything about real estate and I needed more education. When I had my car sales job at a dealership, I remember seeing real estate in Florida like super cheap, and this was around 2008, 2009 when the economy was crashing, and I remember seeing these houses because I actually used to live in Florida a couple years prior to that but I saw these houses that were once priced around 250 selling for like $80,000 or less and I just saw a huge opportunity in Florida and I just got the bug like, hey, I convinced my girlfriend at the time, I’m like, “Let’s move to Florida, let’s just try something new and see if we can start investing in real estate down there.” So I wanted to rent out the house that we bought, I moved out of it, and I hired a property manager.
The one in Kellogg?
Yep, in Kellogg. It didn’t rent out for almost a year. It sat vacant for almost a year and wouldn’t rent. So —
Do you know why that is or like what…?
Yeah, had to do with location and market timing and the job market in that area of town, there weren’t a lot of jobs. There’s a lot of inventory. I learned that location, location, location is actually like — there’s a reason why they say that. Not every time is like 2020 where it doesn’t matter where you buy a house, you’re going to sell it or you’re going to rent. It wasn’t like that back then. Location was really important. People didn’t have remote jobs as much back then so that wasn’t really a thing. These days, it’s actually a lot easier to rent almost anywhere as long as you have good internet. But at the time, location was really important and it was just another thing I wasn’t really aware of so I had to learn it the hard way. So, anyway, I moved to Florida —
What year is this? What year are you moving to Florida?
This was 2010. 2010 I moved to Florida and I actually started having seizures and I lost — I started working at Disney World until I can figure out how to invest in real estate. I saw this sign at a real estate company that said, “Get your real estate license for only $150,” and that’s what made me actually want to become an agent because I saw that you can get your real estate license for only $150. So I went through these classes and I thought, “Hey, I might learn a little bit more about real estate if I become an agent,” just like I learned a lot about cars by working at a dealership selling cars so I saw it as more of an education play than really brushing up on my sales skills. But, yeah, I moved to Florida, I actually started having seizures. I started having seizures. I lost pretty much everything I had at that point.
Did the seizures cause you to be hospitalized or was it…?
Yeah.
Yeah? And so is that why you had to get hospital bills and that’s why you kind of started from zero?
Yeah, yeah, had huge, huge hospital bills. I couldn’t drive anymore, at least for a few months. Nobody really knew what caused the seizures, I just kind of grew into it. I don’t have epilepsy or anything but I just all of a sudden became — at that age, when you’re young 20s, your brain is like fully expanding and if you had any scarred brain tissue as an infant or anything like that, you could potentially have seizures later in life when your brain expands. So I started having seizures daily and it was pretty tough as a broke person in a state where you didn’t know anybody to just get through life. So, anyway, that was a really tough time, but going through that and getting through it made me feel pretty invincible. When I finally somewhat cured myself of the seizures, I just got on the right medicine after a few months, I got a job at Keller Williams Realty and I considered it was just going to be a temporary thing to learn real estate but I started listening to a lot of Gary Keller’s stuff and they had this book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and I didn’t realize that you can actually grow a business as a realtor building teams and stuff. I didn’t know that was an option. I thought it was just a self-employed gig. So that actually made me really interested to actually stay with something because, before that, I had over like 20 different jobs and I always thought everything would be temporary until I became rich in real estate someday or build some sort of business, but reading that book and hearing Gary Keller talk about growing real estate teams and you can actually make a real functioning business out of it and hire people, I just never thought that was an option until I read that and I decided to go with it.
It’s amazing what gets uncovered when you read. I think that’s like the most important thing. I’ve never met anyone who has surmounted to any amount of anything, like if they’ve become a millionaire or they they’ve got real estate investing or they’re successful business owners without reading. So if there’s one thing you got to do, it’s read, I would say. And so when you said you got employed by Keller Williams, were you working for them or were you just an agent with them?
No, I was just an agent. Sorry, if I said employed, I didn’t mean that.
Okay.
I hung my $150 license with Keller Williams.
Yeah.
Actually, that’s what it cost to go through the schools. I didn’t realize it cost more money to go actually get your license and become a realtor so it was it was more expensive than I thought too, and that’s what I learned through life is everything’s more expensive than you think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, Nick, so let’s start here like your new life in Florida. So, basically, you don’t have any more rentals, I don’t think, where you’re kind of starting afresh. What does it look like to start as a real estate agent at Keller Williams in Florida? In Orlando area, it sounds.
Yeah, yeah, so, actually, I did have that one rental still in Idaho, it just was sitting vacant costing me money every month.
Okay, got you.
So I had that. And then after I had my seizures and racked up hospital bills and had — and as a new real estate agent, you don’t make any money so I was just insanely broke and I eventually had to do a short sell, or tried to do a short sell on that house that wasn’t renting. It eventually got rented after one year but, yeah, I started off as a real estate agent.
Oh, man, Nick. You know what, man, Zeona’s not here, she’s not keeping me on track. I totally forgot about…
The For Real Deal.
This is the first deal that we do. This is basically your first deal that you’ve ever done as a real estate investor, intentional or unintentional, and that is that deal in Kellogg and so let’s rewind it back for a quick second and let’s just talk about that first that you got in Kellogg. And so, basically, what you told us before is that you bought in Kellogg because you couldn’t afford anywhere else and so I suspect you just found this deal on the MLS, kind of didn’t sound a very sophisticated at the time. Is that right?
That’s right. I was way below sophisticated.
Yeah. And so tell us what you bought it for and what the mortgage payment was? You said it sat vacant, and then let’s hear what you’re getting for rents and all that good stuff.
Yeah. So back then, I don’t think I really had the ability to like search real estate online. We didn’t have smartphones back then. I didn’t really have a computer with the Internet. I didn’t know what realtor.com was or Zillow and I don’t even know if that was out at that time, maybe it was, but this was 2008, and I asked my brother what real estate agent he used and he hooked me up with her and I told her — and at the time, I was working for the dealership as an auto detailer cleaning cars so I was making good solid income but it just wasn’t enough to buy a property where I was locally so I had to buy almost an hour away in a rural town in Kellogg, Idaho, over on mountain pass and there was not much going on in this town, but they did have a very large dealership, another dealership, and that’s where I became a sales agent. But, anyway, I was able to get this house for $86,000 and I thought it was a really good deal because it was listed for $120,000 initially, and I guess it didn’t really mean anything but I got an FHA loan and I asked the seller to cover all my closing costs and my down payment. So, back then, they were able to work that out. I didn’t even have to come up with that three and a half percent down, I just had to come up with $100 for earnest money and I got that back at closing.
Wow. And so you basically got into this thing for free. Obviously, different times, you’re not doing that today. You need at least probably a few thousand dollars to get in, but, yeah, keep going. What was your mortgage? Your PITI?
Yeah, so this was early 2008, my mortgage payment, I believe it was somewhere around $800 a month. It was maybe just shy of that. My interest rate at the time was 5.75 and I remember anybody who asked about or I told about that was just blown away, that that was insanely cheap. But I do remember my mortgage officer at the time, she was freaking out for some reason and I didn’t know why, but she’s like, “Man, this economy is collapsing, are you sure you wanna do this?” and she kept saying, “I don’t even know if we’re going to be in business tomorrow,” which was all — it was just confusing for me and now, thinking back at it, I know what she meant, 2008, a lot of lenders went out of business, but, anyway, somehow we made the deal go through. I remember — and with FHA, they have to make sure that the roof is in solid condition and all that, but it was wintertime in Idaho and nobody could inspect the roof and they just had to push the deal through anyway. I found out later in the spring that the roof was horrible so I had to put like 10 grand into the roof at the time. This was back when I had like no money. But I ended up, I think I put about $15,000 of money into that house and labor over about a year and a half living there working on it. So bought it for 86, put about 15 into it, moved out of it and it sat vacant for almost a year. And during that time, I moved back with my brother for a little while, moved down to Florida, and eventually did actually get rented for $500 a month so I was negative $300 a month.
And your mortgage payment was $800. Yeah.
Yeah.
So what told you to keep holding on to this thing? Like why not sell it while it’s bleeding you?
Well, yeah, so that was the thing. The market had collapsed, it was worth a lot less than what I paid, and my girlfriend at the time — I wasn’t the kind of guy to just not pay my bills, that was like a top priority thing for me. My dad always taught me you got to keep a really healthy good credit score, always pay your bills on time. And she was the first one that told me, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay if you just let this go,” and I’m like, “What?” and she’s like, “It’s worth a lot less and you can’t afford it anyway,” like I kept getting loans from my mom and my grandmother to like help pay some of the bills and I was just racking up personal debt from family to help pay for these things. So I started exploring what were the options of giving this thing back to the bank and I called them and they told me you can try to do a short sell and I had it listed with a real estate agent for many months and it just wouldn’t sell. And I remember that, in that market, it was listed for like 35 grand too, it was crazy cheap. Nobody bought it. Nobody was buying anything in that market at the time. I remember my agent told me that three homes sold in the last quarter in that little area of town.
Wow.
So I eventually did a deed in lieu and that’s where I gave the keys back to the bank, had it in broom-swept condition, and it wouldn’t hit you as hard as a foreclosure because you’re kind of being compliant with the bank in giving it back and I think they even gave me two grand for giving it back. And, eventually, it ended up selling for 26 grand as an REO.
Wow, geez. So you got hit, like do you got hit over the ’08 stuff. And I think the take I get on this is you learned a lot and here you are today, 10, 15 years later, with a lot of success. And so let’s go back to where you are in Florida. You just get your license at Keller Williams and tell us like how are you doing in Florida with your license and are you buying any rentals at that time as well?
No, not yet. I mean, keep in mind, I had just gotten over my seizure episodes and still very broke, living not just paycheck to paycheck but I had no paychecks because I was a new real estate agent. I eventually got a car after I had to trade some motorcycles. I had this little Vino which is like a Vespa that I was initially showing real estate on and I was able to trade it on Craigslist for like some chick bike, it looked a little bit fancier, it was a Honda Rebel —
Nice.
— but I had to, you know, this was my only means of transportation showing homes to people and it got super embarrassing when it was like raining in Florida like hard and I would show up on a bike. Yeah, so the first six months were brutal. I think I made maybe three grand after the first six months and eventually just right away just bought a car. That way, I didn’t have to show vehicles in the rain anymore. Or, sorry, show houses in the rain.
Yeah, yeah.
By the end of the first year, I sold 14 homes, which was really good at the time, especially for a rookie that didn’t know the area and didn’t know anybody because most of the people in my office, they weren’t selling anything.
Yeah, so what’s the secret sauce?
I was just desperate, relentless. I would work anybody’s leads that they couldn’t get to. The first year, I was heavily reliant on agents in my office to give me whatever scraps they didn’t want to deal with and I would eventually convert buyers. I showed a lot of REO properties. I started working with investors buying rentals. I mean, I was working 70 hours a week. So, I mean, the secret sauce was hard work and just being relentless and just not giving up.
There’s one common denominator from any successful real estate agent that I’ve ever met and it’s hard work. I’ve never seen anybody just kind of coast into this career and actually succeed at it, whether it’s pounding the phones, whether you’re taking people’s scraps, attending a kajillion open houses, whatever that is, whatever your thing is, you just pound it and pound it and pound it for a couple of years. And so congrats to your success, I think that’s great. 14 in the first year —
Well, thank you.
— it’s a huge win. Yeah. And so what are you doing with all your money and your success now?
It’s not quite 100, like yours. Well, I just want to say it’s not quite like your first year where you sold 100 properties so that’s —
Well, different…yeah.
Different circumstances maybe
I worked for two years prior than that just writing for nothing. Well, writing for what — I wasn’t sure what I was writing form but, yeah, man. So tell us, man, so 14 in the first one, that’s really big, you’re probably making, what? Like maybe 70, 80 grand a year in Florida with that?
No, my first year, I think I made 10 grand, because these houses were really cheap. It was a lot of work, the commissions were really small, and I split a lot of the commissions with agents that would give me the leads. So, I mean, my average check was like 700 or 800 bucks, maybe 1,500. I remember my biggest check ever was like $3,000 until I moved back to North Idaho and started selling real estate there. So it was a lot of hard work, a lot of learning and very little pay.
So humble beginnings, for sure, on this real estate agent stuff and I think that’s, while it may seem dire in the moment, that’s really what shapes a successful real estate agent or investor going forward. The hard times you’ve had is what molds you and what basically makes you like a stone that can’t be broken as times get harder later. And so you’re in Florida for how long? For two years?
Yeah, two years.
Two years. So now you move back to northern Idaho and what — give us a time, give us a year here.
Yeah, so this was 2012 then.
Okay.
Yeah, around 2012, I’m back in Idaho and I keep my license in Florida active so that I can still do referrals from my database. Actually, I came up to Idaho with nine deals pending and I remember seven of them fell apart there for various reasons but I just felt like I had a lot of bad luck. But I moved back up to Idaho and I take a few months off to kind of regain some savings account and I go back to work at that dealership again selling cars while I have my license and I knew that I would get my real estate license here in Idaho and start investing eventually. I was like I got to eventually invest, too many years are going by, I’m getting older —
Yeah, no, for sure.
— even though I was in my mid-20s.
Yeah, no, it’s funny how like, even when you’re young, it feels like time is just going too fast and you need to keep going but like, dude, good on you for being able to see that. Basically ditching the business you started in Florida to then start anew again in Idaho. And so how do you just restart? It’s 2012 and now all that hard work you put into Florida has kind of gone to waste. I mean, I guess you still have the skills you’ve learned but all the clients and relationships are gone.
Right, yeah, ’cause that was a big part of being a real estate agent.
Growing a database is everything. Share on X
Sure. I mean, growing those skills is also everything as well but if you don’t have a database, you don’t have a business. So I did have to restart up here. But I was okay with that. I was kind of homesick. I grew up here and I’m glad to be back. But as soon as I moved back up, I actually got a divorce so that was kind of unexpected. I got divorced, I went bankrupt. I felt like I shed all this kind of bad stuff early in life that people typically go through and I was able to just kind of start fresh and I had, at that time at least, I still felt like I can do whatever I wanted to do because I have gone through so much before I hit 25 where I can pretty much just decide what to do at that point and just run with it and so what I decided was I’m going to do this real estate thing again, I’m going to do it better, I’m actually going to grow a team one day, and I’m going to invest in real estate and I just convinced myself that it was going to happen.
Yeah, there’s something — that’s like the secret, right? Like if you’ve ever read that book or watched that documentary of you kind of just will things to happen and then they tend to happen. So what was your first step in starting the business in Idaho? Were you calling people? Were you throwing events? Were you…
Yeah. So, surprisingly, it was actually tougher the second time around. I joined a real estate team, which wasn’t really in the plans, but it just kind of happened, it was offered to me and I thought maybe at least I can learn quite a bit because I knew eventually I wanted to grow my own team someday. What I did learn, I spent a year on this guy’s real estate team as a buyer’s agent, what I learned was that I don’t have the same motivation working for somebody else as I do building my own thing. But I also got to learn a lot of valuable things because real estate in North Idaho is so much different than real estate in Florida. To an extent. I mean, you’re dealing with a lot more acreage properties, single-family homes, wells, septic systems, all these things that I didn’t build any knowledge on in Florida. In Florida, I was dealing a lot with townhomes and condos and really cookie cutter homes and cookie cutter neighborhoods so I didn’t really get to learn about all the infrastructure that goes into a home like I did in Idaho. And there’s just a different culture up here, a different vibe and people do everything by referrals and people don’t respect real estate agents up here nearly as much as they did in Florida because there’s so many of them.
Yeah. And so you just kind of like — your sphere of influence is what it sounds like has really got you going, like you grew up here, you probably had some friends and family and then slowly you’re just growing your business over time? Or are you —
Yeah, that’s what I thought. That was my impression. I thought I’m going to move up somewhere where I actually have friends and family. But, dude, I was wrong. This market’s just different. People really want to work with those that they know, like, and trust, but they only really knew me, I guess I don’t know if I was really liked or trust much yet because I was kind of just this young real estate agent, there’s so many real estate agents in this area to compete with. So I knew I had to go really double down in the investor world and really know my stuff and be that guy that people actually could trust with investments and that kind of stuff. I wanted to eventually be known as that guy that people would go to so I knew I had to do it myself.
Yeah, that’s amazing, man. And being a new resident of here, before we did meet, I had heard your name a million times so I would say that, fast forward a few years, congratulations, you did make it into being the known, liked, and trusted investor-friendly real estate agent up here.
Well, thank you.
Dude, and so let’s talk about like, we are kind of running out of time but there’s a lot more to uncover so I want to make sure that we get there. So tell us about, you didn’t like working for this guy. You were there for about a year and then you start doing your own thing and you start basically doubling down on the investor category. And so how are you getting these investor leads? How were you becoming this person? Are you starting to invest in your investor self now with a little bit more intention instead of just, hey, buying a place that you think you can afford because the price dropped?
Yeah. Well, there’s a lot to it. First off, it wasn’t that I didn’t like working for this guy, it’s just I didn’t like my motivation levels. They weren’t as high. I actually really liked the guy and that was the hardest part about leaving their team, like I made a couple of great friends but I just couldn’t be motivated unless I was building my own brand. Yeah, so what I did was I started going to a lot of real estate seminars about learning how to flip houses and that kind of stuff, whatever would come to town, I would always go and I would collect a database of people that I met there, other people that were seriously interested in investing, and I started growing my database, investor specific or people that wanted to be investors, and I would go to this event in Spokane that this hard money lender put on the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 in Spokane and then, eventually, their office shut down and I thought I’d take this time slot and I would start my own thing at Keller Williams and I wanted to start this group of investors and I kind of modeled it off this guy who runs a team in Alaska, Kevin Cross, but he has a meetup format where that’s their main source of generating leads is through monthly seminars. And it was something that was way out of my comfort zone but I decided to do it anyway because I am kind of a nerd and I geek out on the numbers of how many contacts you have to make to eventually get a contract and eventually sell homes. And it was a lot of phone calls that you have to make, at least for me, because my conversion ratios weren’t the greatest but if you can meet people face to face, your conversion ratios go way up. So I just thought, hey, why don’t I just start this meetup and see if I can get people to show up and we’ll talk about real estate investing? And, eventually, it got very systemized, and it also held me accountable to actually show up and do this lead generating almost automatically and very consistent. It was the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 and I had to be there because I put it all over the internet, I invited people and I booked the room indefinitely forever. It’s the first Thursday at 6:30. Keller Williams Realty in Coeur d’Alene, people were going to show up whether I came or not so I had to be there, and I was the guy running it and I had to learn the total market overview and share that so I just eventually kind of became known as the expert in North Idaho by doing that consistently.
Yeah. And isn’t that funny? You just said two times in this interview, you’re talking about compound interest and how time works, like first you heard about it with the money, now you’re hearing about it right now with like consistency in throwing a meetup. And so like in Denver and basically all the places that we go to, we throw meetups as well, that’s our main source of leads, that’s how you foster a community, that’s how you get people to know, like, and trust in you. And more so, being the authority figure at that meetup I think is key too, because then you’re trusted. You get out there giving them an update on the market, giving an update on maybe like some things that are going on under contract, some new ideas and you’re educating people. Being known is easy, being liked kind of easy, being trusted is really hard, and this is just a way to build trust by just continuing to provide value to a lot of people with really nothing in return. And you know the things will come but, really, you weren’t expecting anything in return.
No, that’s right.
Yeah. And so I think that’s, if you are thinking about becoming a real estate agent out there and cold calling isn’t your thing or open houses aren’t your thing and you’re okay with maybe a little bit of a slower but certainly high probability of closing kind of timeframe, meetups, just keep posting those events.
And I also wanted to say too, because we didn’t really get into this, I didn’t have a whole lot of investment experience when I started it either. I had only flipped one home and I was working on my second house flip, but it didn’t seem to matter with people. They still saw you as the expert because you at least had some sort of real estate investing experience and you were the one putting on the show. So if anyone’s listening to this outside of North Idaho, I would highly recommend it.
Yeah, absolutely. Nick, okay, so, we’ve got a good idea of how you became a successful real estate agent, and then, from there, I know you built a team and all that but I think that might be beyond the scope of what we’ll talk about today. I want to talk a little bit about your investment portfolio. And so your Kellogg house, that was your college education right there in real estate. Now, you said you’re buying some flips. So you started flipping before even house hacking or buying just traditional rental properties?
That’s right, yeah. I flipped and bought rentals for about three years before I ever bought my personal house.
Okay.
But, yeah, and today, I’ve got about — I think I’ve got 15 rentals and one of those is an RV park and I don’t have anything outside of the state yet but I’m starting to look nationwide now for multifamily deals.
Very exciting. Very, very exciting. And so let’s talk about how you reinvented yourself as a real estate investor in northern Idaho. And so these flips that you’re doing, how are you finding the deals? Are you truly flipping them or are you just BRRRR-ing them? Are you keeping them as rentals? Or do you take the profits from your flips and then buy rentals?
So it’s evolved. At first, it was just fixing and flipping homes with my brother and we took the profits from the first one and we were amazed we never made this much money in our lives. We kept half of the profits and we reinvested the second half into the next property. They were off market deals at first and then, eventually, we found plenty on market. They were REOs at the time and I would just — MLS, REOs, I would just always make offers, low offers, until eventually a bank accepted one. So that worked for me for a while and, eventually, as I kept doing the meetups, I would niche and focus on wholesalers and I would kind of really cater to those wholesalers and I want to be like the best real estate agent I can for those people. So those kind of became my core clients and I let everybody else go to the team and I just wanted to work with wholesalers and I actually got a lot of deals from wholesalers directly. But, yeah, I would buy a couple of fix and flips and I would take the money and reinvest and eventually buy a rental property. Buy a couple of flips, buy a rental property, and then, eventually, started doing the BRRRR method once I actually qualified for financing like long term, good interest rate debt and stuff. And it’s just continued to evolve.
Amazing, man. Amazing. So your 15 rentals all here in northern Idaho. So, the process sounds, it sounds tried and true, like, obviously, you had to get good at flipping houses, I’m sure you made a handful of mistakes, we could probably do a whole podcast on your house flipping endeavors, could probably do a whole another one on the transition and all that and building your rental portfolio and all of the lessons you learned building that rental portfolio. But, with 15 units, how much passive income are you getting now? Do you consider yourself financially independent? And now I know that you’re — and how many hours do you now spend now that you’ve got a real estate team?
All good questions. Let me see if I can keep up. Well, with the real estate team, I know, if I wanted to, I can probably put maybe four hours a week into the real estate team business if I wanted but, typically, I like to spend more time there for now, but at least I got it set up pretty well where I run the team with a partner and she does most of the coaching and mentoring, I mostly put out fires, and then I’m there for the weekly meetings and I always show up to the meetups and we do three a month now. We do one in Coeur d’Alene, one in Sandpoint, and now we do a third one for out of state investing so I always show up to those.
Beautiful.
Let’s see. And then as far as the rental portfolio with the cash flow, right now, the way it sits, this RV park, we just finished up, we just opened it a week ago so I anticipate my cash flow going up, but right now, I think it’s about $6,000 a month in passive income after all mortgages are paid.
That’s pretty good.
Hopefully I can get that up to closer to $9,000 once that RV park is filled. And it took a long time to get to that, like, at first, it was just these houses were making maybe $200 a month but, over time, the mortgages stayed the same and rents went up and that’s where the real money is made just with, again, like compound interest and time and, through time, my cash flow went up by me really doing nothing.
Yeah. I’m happy you said that because I think a lot of people jump to these kinds of sexy strategies that are kind of buzzword today, like the short-term rental and medium-term rental, and I’m not bashing it, I love those strategies and you can make a lot of money in each individual house that way, but there is something to kind of going the old school way having it be very passive and you can kind of focus on your business on you know, on acquiring more rentals, and then probably your family life as well too. And so like I feel, just by talking with you, Nick, that you’ve got balance because you never seem stressed, you always kind of seem like you’ve got a level head and maybe you’re good at hiding it, but I guess, what does that balance look like for you nowadays in terms of downtime as well as work time?
Dude, honestly, it’s so much better these days. I mean, with the exception that there were a few months this year where it was very stressful and that’s because I knowingly overleveraged myself and took on way too many projects. I got into like 26 different flips, BRRRRs, and builds at one time within the last — I’m down to like 13, 14 right now. But, for the most part, I don’t work nearly as many hours, I make more money, and I am able to take care of my body and my kids and my wife has a much better lifestyle. So, yeah, the work was worth it and I know if I didn’t just stick with real estate, I’d probably just be in this vicious loop cycle of just starting again.
The best thing I ever did was I just stayed with real estate and stayed consistent and did the same thing again and again and again. Share on XAnd it’s the hardest thing for a lot of new people to do because they don’t really know if it’s working out in it. And, for me, I couldn’t really tell for like almost the first five years if it was going to work until eventually it did.
Yeah, it’s amazing the barriers that you got through, like between the bankruptcy and the foreclosure, the deed in lieu and moving to Florida, moving back, like it just shows that, yeah, there are going to be struggles, that’s what shapes what you now are today, which is a very successful real estate agent and a very successful real estate investor here in the northern Idaho region, and now you’re looking to expand even further to other states. And so, Nick, you got such an amazing story, we do need to transition into the final part of our show. Before we do, do you have any parting words of wisdom for the audience?
Oh, man. I would just continue to consume content and education. If you’re interested in real estate investing, don’t give it up. Just continue to show up to — if you show up to meetups, continue to show up to it and you’ll eventually make it happen. I truly believe that the secret sauce to being successful in any kind of new endeavor is just to keep showing up and eventually you’ll figure it out.
Love it. All right, Nick, it is time to transition into our…
The Final Four.
This is different with just me and not Zeona, but, Nick — wait, with me, I guess I’m gonna kick it off. So, Nick, what book are you reading right now?
The book I’m reading right now is Principles by Ray Dalio.
Oh, that’s a good one. What do you think?
So far so good. He talks a lot about crops and farms but I love the little golden nuggets that you pull out of it. I think I’m halfway through it.
Nice. Yeah, he’s got a lot of gold nuggets in there and Ray Dalio is a super smart dude.
How about you, did you read that one?
I have read that one. It’s been a couple of years. I remember liking it and I remember I pulled some gold nuggets out of it but I don’t think I could remember what gold nuggets I pulled from that specific book. But I know they’re up here somewhere.
Yeah.
Second question, Nick, what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice I ever received, I guess for my real estate business, it was actually from the guy that I was on his team. When I left his team, I was struggling for just a little bit but I remember he just said, “You just gotta talk to people,” and he’s a highly successful guy, like he was the guy that was making a half million dollars a year, but that was the advice he gave to me. He said, “Just talk to people.”
There you go.
I would say that would be one of the most — and then also, Tony Robbins in his book MONEY, he said the secret to getting rich is by offering more value to people than anybody else in a particular field so that stuck with me when it came to local real estate investing and if I can just provide value to real estate investors out there, as much value as I can, that eventually I’ll get rich from it.
Totally. Yeah. And look at you now. Third question, what is your why?
This may sound a little odd but my big why is I’m afraid of becoming old and broke. That’s what motivates me. My why goes back and forth but I feel like most people are more motivated by pain than pleasure so why not just embody it. I’m afraid of going broke. I know the numbers with inflation and all that stuff and if I don’t position myself to become wealthy, it’s going to be a rough life and I just don’t want a rough life when I’m older.
I like that. Yep. That’s a good way to look at it, my man. All right, dude, last question. What was your favorite restaurant as a kid?
Oh, Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut was my favorite.
You like the cheese.
It was so good. You know what, it is not nearly as good anymore. I think they’ve changed up the recipe a lot over the last couple of decades, but Pizza Hut used to be a really good restaurant back in the day.
You know what has really come from like nothing? Domino’s. Like I’m not a huge pizza eater but like if I need a pizza quick or I need a quick bite, like Domino’s actually makes a really good thin crust pizza that’s like —
They do.
That’s my go to. Yeah.
And I remember when I was a kid, Domino’s was the worst pizza you can get and now it’s up there.
Yeah.
Yep.
So things change in all industries, right. All right, Nick, last other question. Where can people find out more about you if they want to reach out, if they want to, maybe they want to invest in northern Idaho, whatever it is? Spill the beans.
Yeah, so you can find me on Facebook, I’m Nick Beveridge on Facebook, or you can go to our website at northidahorei.com.
Boom. Reach out to Nick if you’ve got any questions. He’s a wealth of knowledge and he’ll give so much value to everyone he talks to. So, Nick, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. Appreciate you being here and, yeah, we’ll talk soon.
All right, thank you.
—
And that was Nick Beveridge. Man, Nick is a wealth of knowledge. There’s just so much stuff that’s in there that you could uncover. Man, where do I even start? And so first thing, I want to just iterate is that if you aren’t thinking about becoming a real estate agent, really, you need to put in the work. I could interview 100 successful real estate agents on here and I guarantee you that every single one put in an ungodly amount of work in the beginning but now work a lot less than anybody else and probably make a lot more than anybody else you know, so you need to put in that time and energy up front to really build that sustainable business. Nick shows that here. I just love how he is so open about, hey, he got foreclosed on, he went bankrupt, he got divorced.
This is like all before the dude is 25 years old but he still stuck with real estate, finally started to figure things out, started gaining some momentum, now he’s got a portfolio of 15 rentals here in Northern Idaho and he’s really just starting to crush it in all facets of life. And what’s crazy is that he’s not doing the same thing everybody else is. He’s not following the shiny object of medium-term rentals and short-term rentals, by the way, which is totally fine, right? They’re great ways to invest. But he’s doing it the old fashioned way. Long term, easy-peasy. He’s gotten up to $6,000 in monthly rents. Could he go out and transition those and make them 20,000? Sure, but that would sacrifice his lifestyle, that would sacrifice his other business, his real estate business and other things so sometimes you just got to like pick a thing and run with it and make that your true business model. So, again, Nick was a great, great resource. Absolutely loved him on the show.
If you liked the show, please, please, please leave us a rating and review. We absolutely love reading those. We love seeing how we’re doing. And give us a follow on Instagram. I’m @thefiguy, Zeona is @zeonamcintyre and we hope to keep seeing you guys here every single week because this is a lot of fun. We’ll see you all next week.
