JF2379: How To Expand Your Market Reach By Going Virtual With Lauren Hardy

Lauren started working in real estate right out of college. Her journey began in a corporate environment, and she was mostly dealing with commercial properties. Once she had a child, Lauren decided to leave her job and work for herself. At the time, her brother was flipping houses, and he offered her to join the business. In 2016, she started looking for properties outside of the competitive southern California market in order to expand her business. Now, Lauren has a coaching program for those who’d like to go virtual and reach markets all over the country regardless of where they live.

Lauren Hardy Real Estate Background:

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Best Ever Tweet:

“Flipping the house opened up a lot of ways that you could get ripped off by contractors” – Lauren Hardy.

TRANSCRIPTION

Ash Patel: Hello, Best Ever listeners. This is Ash Patel, and today I’m speaking with Lauren Hardy from Orange County, California. She’s a real estate investor, a coach, a podcast host and has 10 years of real estate experience, where she has invested in hundreds of properties and developed spec houses.

Lauren, how are you today?

Lauren Hardy: Hey, I’m good. How are you?

Ash Patel: Good. You’ve got a crazy amount of experience. I want to hear it all. Tell me your background, how did you get started with real estate?

Lauren Hardy: Well, I got started right out of college. I started working in more of the corporate real estate space in commercial. I graduated college the day we went into a recession, so it was an interesting time to be in commercial real estate, because it was really getting hit. So that’s where I got my start.

When I was working though at the corporate world, I had my first kid, and I learned very quickly that working corporate life and having a child is very, very difficult… So it became my mission to become self-employed any way I possibly could. I really didn’t care what I was going to do. And it just so happened that my brother was flipping houses at the time. I think he had flipped maybe three or four houses in Southern California. So he just made the suggestion, “Why don’t you look into flipping houses? You probably only have to flip a couple of these things a year and you’d make the same amount of money you’re making in your corporate job.” So that’s where it all began. It really evolved in the last eight, nine years. It’s evolved to a whole different thing, but that’s where I got my start.

Ash Patel: So did you go to college for commercial real estate?

Lauren Hardy: Yes, sort of. I was a finance major and I did take real estate courses within that major. I went to a college that offered it; not all the colleges do. So I did take some real estate courses. But yeah, I knew I was going to get into real estate.

Ash Patel: And you took your brother’s advice and started flipping houses during a recession?

Lauren Hardy:  Yes. Well, let’s speed up a little bit. So I graduated during the recession. When I started working corporate real estate, that was mainly in the recession, when we were really at the bottom. I didn’t start flipping homes until we started coming back up around 2012.

Ash Patel: Okay, so the timing was perfect for flipping homes.

Lauren Hardy: It was perfect.

Ash Patel: Okay, and how did flipping homes evolve into your next step? And what was that next step?

Lauren Hardy: So the first goal I had was I wanted to quit my full-time job. So I started flipping houses on the side, while I was working a full-time corporate job. The goal was flip enough houses, make enough money to save up a year salary so I can quit. It took me a year, but I did it. And after then, it was definitely difficult. I thought it would be easier than it was. I had a new baby. So I had my first daughter already, she’s now two and a half, and then I had had a baby during this time.

So my whole thought process was, “I’m going to stay home with my kids, and I’m going to flip houses. I’m totally going to be able to do this. It’s going to be awesome.”

Well, it was not. It was very hard to be at home with two little babies and also manage the direct-to-seller marketing that I was doing. I was getting these deals via direct-to-seller marketing, so it was a lot of direct mail, talking to sellers, making offers every day… So I had thought I could juggle all that while the kids were taking naps, but it turns out that kids don’t take naps just like we take them… So it was really hard. But it really did evolve. I started out with just sort of flipping a few homes here and there. Slowly, I started pushing my kids into daycare, as I realized it was getting a little bit unmanageable.

But the real turn in my business came around 2016. By the time 2016 hit, we were doing pretty well in our real estate market in California, and there was less and less distressed inventory. So to put it into perspective, when we were in a recessionary time, like 2009, 2010, 2011, you could go to the courthouse steps and pretty much pick up a distressed property if you really wanted to; if you had the cash and the means to do it, you could just stand there, raise your hand and pick one up. By the time 2016 hit, it was very competitive at the courthouse steps, there wasn’t very many distressed homes, and there was a lot of hungry investors. So it became really difficult to buy houses that had enough of a margin where I could flip it for a profit here in Southern California, where I lived.

So I had to make something work. I had two options – I could either quit and get a job again, which felt like death, or I could figure out how to make this business work in another market. Because I noticed I had friends in other areas, other territories that were not having the same issues that I was having. So I made that choice to change and to go virtual. And my first market I chose was Nashville, Tennessee. And the first projects I worked on were spec houses, so I was buying lots and building homes ground up.

Ash Patel: Wait a minute, hold on… You could have just bought houses, turnkey, but you decided, in Nashville, to build spec houses. Help me understand that decision process.

Lauren Hardy: Okay, so that—

Ash Patel: Because, you know, there’s an easier route with real estate – just buy ready-made homes.

Lauren Hardy: Okay, so that was the name of the game at the time. That was the way to make money in Nashville. Nashville was going through a development boom. So the way it all came about – and I’m telling you, it was the most random story. I just happened to be vacationing in Nashville, and I’d had this idea that I need to go to another market, because California is getting really hard. So I thought, “I’m going to drive around and look at some houses that appear to have been flipped.”

I pulled a list off of ListSource and I pulled every home that was purchased by investors, like, LLC corporate-owned in the last month. And I got those addresses down, got my rental car and I started driving around. I started noticing something, I was like, “Wait, this neighborhood is strange.” There’s these old homes, but then there’s homes being knocked down where it said there was a purchase, but now there’s no house… And they were in all various stages of construction on these streets, all over the place. And I, coming from Southern California, had never seen anything like this before. It was really weird to see an old home built in 1920 and then right next to it, you would have two tall skinny houses right next to it, brand new.

So I kept driving, and I found a construction crew outside. And I found a guy that appear to look like the project manager, so I just pulled over and said, “Hey, what is going on here?” And he’s like, “Do you not know that Nashville is number one real estate market right now and this is the hottest neighborhood? So developers are just hungry for lots and they’re buying lots and we’re building homes, as many as we can fit on each lot.” So they were maximizing the value of every lot that they could buy.

Ash Patel: So to me, that seems like it’s more competitive than Southern California. How did you score a deal in a super hot market?

Lauren Hardy: Okay. At the time, I didn’t know that, because I thought, “How can anything be more competitive than California?” And the house prices were still, to be fair — these brand new homes were going $350,000. So California, at that time, on average house price was maybe $650,000.

Ash Patel: Okay.

Lauren Hardy: So there was still a big discrepancy there. So I’m telling you, it all started on the side of the road. And I’m talking to this guy, I’m like, “What are you, a general contractor?” He’s like, “Yeah, I’m building this house for this investor, but I’m an investor, too. I’ve got projects in the same neighborhood. Let me show you around.”

So I follow him. I didn’t get into his car, because that’s creepy. But I’ve followed him around and he took me to four job sites. And I said, “Okay, review the numbers with me. You bought the lot for what? How much did it cost to build how many homes, and you built four homes on this lot?” I was just doing the math and I  wrote it down on my piece of paper. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh, these returns are crazy good.”

And then the key question I asked was, “How are you getting these deals?” He’s like, “Oh, there’s this guy that does this secret marketing stuff and he gets these things under contract, and then this other guy tells me about them, and then we just buy it from that guy.” So that was literally how he described it. And I was like, “Oh, like a wholesaler.”

So then that told me, okay, there’s still an opportunity here, because he’s able to buy them from wholesalers and he’s not making it sound like it’s that difficult. So I sized the guy up. I said, “Okay, if he could do it, so can I.” Right?

Ash Patel: Awesome. Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: So I looked at him and I said, “Hey, Phil, find me some lots. And I’ve got money.” And that was it. I had California money, I had a ton of private money investors.

Ash Patel: Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: So he found me some lots, just like that, from a wholesaler. And then he built them for me. And it was so much easier than, say, flipping a house from a distance, because you have no ways that contractors can lie to you and say, “Oh, we didn’t see that in our first inspection.” The first bid is the first bid. There shouldn’t be very many change orders after that when you’re doing ground up, unless you didn’t accurately price out the fixtures that you were going after. Maybe you decided to go higher-end and you start changing your mind, but I [unintelligible [00:12:55]

Ash Patel: Right.

Lauren Hardy: He built enough of these things where I said, “Just make it look like those”, and it was actually ridiculously easy.

Ash Patel: So did you get your friends or colleagues or acquaintances to be joint ventures on these deals? Or did you syndicate it? Or did you just give them a fair return on the deals?

Lauren Hardy: I just gave them the returns. So I got construction loans, because in Nashville, they were giving out crazy good construction loans; very low-interest rate loans. So I got a construction loan for the bulk of it. And then any remainder, I was just getting my private money lenders — what I would do is, I would tie their funds in with a deed or trust, and I would offer them hard money rates. Anywhere from maybe 10% annualized return.

Ash Patel: Got it.

Lauren Hardy: So it worked.

Ash Patel: And how many years did you continue developing in Nashville? Or are you still doing it?

Lauren Hardy: Not doing it anymore. This business – it takes you for a lot of turns. So this sweet spot that I got in was perfect. It was great. But then, like anything, the news got out that Nashville was exploding, and every Tom, Dick and Harry started building in Nashville; even people that had zero experience in real estate, if they owned a lot, they’d just build some homes. They would figure it out how to do it and did it. So it was like the hot thing to do. I got in, made some good money.

But what that led me to do was wholesale other lots to other people. So while we were developing these homes, I started doing the direct-to-seller marketing and wholesaled lots, other houses, I worked outside of Nashville, the other areas… There were hedge funds buying there too, so there was just a lot of business to be done at that time. So I worked it for a couple years. But it then started feeling very similar to California vibes. And I was thinking, “Okay, it’s starting to feel like I just went from one California to another California, except for now this place is really far.”

Ash Patel: Yeah, so what was appealing about wholesaling? Why did you go that route?

Lauren Hardy: Okay, so I tried wholesaling, I tried flipping and I tried developing. So we’ve got the three exit strategies. Developing, that was actually pretty easy. Wholesaling, pretty easy. Flipping the house – it opened up a lot of ways that you could get ripped off by contractors. So you’re buying an old home, you’re not even there to inspect it. So you have your contractor go there, he could lie to you about what it needs right then and there, or he could undercut to get the job, and say, “Oh, no, I could do this for $50,000,” whatever. You go, you buy the deal, because your contractor verified that price.  The next thing you know, once you start construction, the contractor starts finding things in the walls and finding things with the foundation and the plumbing. And that just kept happening to me when I kept flipping homes over there. After a while, I just got so over it and I said, “Okay, I’m either doing ground up or I’m wholesaling these things and that’s it. I don’t want to flip another house.”

Ash Patel: And do you wholesale in California, or everywhere?

Lauren Hardy: Now, I wouldn’t say everywhere, but I am in some key markets in the Midwest and in the South. And right now, I’m not very focused on California, just because of where we are in the market. I’m getting better returns on my marketing dollars spent in other markets. But at this time, yeah, I was wholesaling in California as well, wholesaling in Nashville, and then I started trying out different markets.

Ash Patel: So how does somebody go about wholesaling 2,000 miles away from where you live? How do you make that work?

Lauren Hardy: You know, it’s not that hard. A lot of people have this limiting, belief like, “Oh, man, that must be impossible; that must be so difficult, because don’t the sellers want to meet you in person before they sign a contract?” And I thought that as well. But I was fortunate when I was doing business in California to have the experience that I did, which was, I was talking to sellers that owned properties all the way in LA, and I lived in Orange County.

So LA, if you know – I don’t know if you’ve ever visited, but it could be two hours in traffic to get to that seller’s home, because traffic is so bad on the 405 freeway. So I got to a point where I wouldn’t really meet the seller or agree to meet with the seller unless they gave me their word that they were going to accept my offer the day I met them. And I would let them know, “I’m going to have to drive in traffic, it’s going to be two hours, so I really want to make sure you’re firm on this price, and if I come with a contract, you’re going to sign this.”

So it started with that. I started honing in on my negotiation skills and learning how to take control of the conversation to where the seller just goes, “Oh, well, this is just how she does it.” And they don’t even question it. So years of doing that, I really refined that script and now I can train my team on that script. I literally have the script down of how you’re going to take control and tell them how things go. You just tell them how it goes. “This is how we work. I don’t get out of my desk until we have an agreement signed.” So it turned in from ‘I have your word’ to now ‘I don’t leave until you sign the agreement.’

Ash Patel: So I grew up in New Jersey, you’re from California, do you think that being on the coast, with that coastal mentality helps you deal with people in the Midwest a little easier?

Lauren Hardy: People in the Midwest are way nicer than people California.

Ash Patel: Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: If you want to have a bad day, go send some direct-to-seller marketing to a California seller or go start cold calling on a California list and you will want to kill yourself by the end of the day. They are mean. We always joke around within my company, my team, like anytime somebody new comes in, “At least you never had to talk to California sellers.” They’re so I mean.

So there are some competitive advantages that I noticed, especially in the South, too. California – we’re faster; we answer the phone. If a seller leaves us a message, we call them back within an hour or a couple hours. We wouldn’t let four days go by. But our competition – slower pace, slower-paced culture in the Midwest and in the South. So our competition will take few days to call sellers back, but we already locked up the contract by that.

Ash Patel: So you’ve got the edge?

Lauren Hardy: We have the edge.

Ash Patel: Awesome. So you mentioned the team – tell me what systems you have in place to help you with this wholesaling?

Lauren Hardy: Oh, lots of them. So right now me, personally, I’m not very active working in my wholesaling company or in my investment company. I actually have a coaching program and I host a podcast, so I’m pretty split. So I have some key implementers on my team that really help me out. I’ve gotten really lucky using virtual assistants as well. So I can touch on that, if you’d like to talk about—

Ash Patel: I’d love to hear about that.

Lauren Hardy: —VAs for life. My VA game is strong.

Ash Patel: I want to hear everything about that.

Lauren Hardy: Okay, so I do have an implementer. He’s the guy that’s worked with me for six years. And he’s my right-hand man; I think of him like family. He knows everything about the business. So he really has taken place of myself in my company. So I’ve been able to know that the business is still running and making money with him watching over it and I can work on my coaching platform and hosting the podcast and everything. So I’m very, very lucky on that. My investment company – I maybe work five hours a week dedicated to that company.

So I have virtual assistants that do a lot of different things for me. I have some that are based in the Philippines, and they do everything from checking my email and just flagging that ‘these are the things you need to see’, and that’s it, and letting go of everything else, deleting everything else, or answering the questions if they know the answers.

So for our marketing, we do a lot of cold calling and a lot of text message blasting, so she sets up all the campaigns in there and all the phone numbers stuff, and she checks the voicemails… We have all the voicemails get dumped in one voicemail box, from every single campaign we do, so she’s checking the voicemails and making sure that they get called back by one of our sales reps… So she’s doing all sorts of things behind the scenes, backend stuff that I don’t even know how to do anymore. If you said, “How do you load a campaign in Mojo Dialer?” My eyes would glaze over, I wouldn’t know what to tell you. I’d say, “You ask my virtual assistant how do you do it.” So we have a lot of support with VAs.

I also have VAs that – they’re Mexico-based, but they did live in the United States at one point. So they have very good English and understand our culture very well, and they’re doing a lot of the cold calling and the pre-qualifying with the seller. So kind of like the frontend acquisition, or some people call that role like a lead manager.

Ash Patel: Okay.

Lauren Hardy: It depends on how you want to slice and dice it. I actually now came up with the term sales rep. So I call them sales reps. So I work with them, and then I do have a sales rep that’s US-based here; I have two girls here. So I am trying to lean more into the virtual stuff, for obvious reasons.

Ash Patel: So you have an incredibly well-oiled machine… Lauren, what were some of the growing pains or the pain points that got you here? Because you didn’t think about doing the VAs early in your wholesaling. Was there a lot of pain that you went through to get to this point where you offloaded these tasks? Or were you very smart about it in the beginning and knew that you’re going to need help and brought people in?

Lauren Hardy: Honestly, it’s such an organic process and evolution, really. I would not say I was very smart. I’m not smarter than anybody. I definitely had a lot of growing pains. In fact, I still have growing pains. It’s never perfect. I’ve noticed with a sales team, a company that is based primarily with sales representatives, outbound sales in particular, even inbound – you’re managing people. And managing people is very hard, because there’s a lot of variables. And they’re things that they can do to manipulate systems, to make it look like they’re working when they’re not, and then you find that you’re playing investigator to figure out what they’re doing and how they did it and why you’re not seeing the results that you should be… So it’s difficult. I don’t want to make it sound like I have it all put together and that it’s easy, because this is my Achilles heel, managing the sales staff.

Ash Patel: So that’s your bottleneck right now?

Lauren Hardy: That’s the bottleneck. Right.

Ash Patel: So Lauren, you mentioned you had an integrator that’s your right-hand person. Out of curiosity, did you read the book Rocket Fuel?

Lauren Hardy: No, but I heard the term integrator from someone else that read Rocket Fuel.

Ash Patel: Yeah. So the book talks about you being the visionary, and the visionary cannot be successful without an implementer or an integrator. I’d love to hear about this person; what they do for you, how you came about hiring for that position…

Lauren Hardy: Okay, I hate the term, but I’m going to say itl it’s going to make me barf… I hate “serial entrepreneur”.

Ash Patel: Yep.

Lauren Hardy: I hate that term. You’ll never hear me saying that. But I need it just for the sake of this podcast – I have multiple businesses now. It wasn’t always like this. Two years ago, I only have my investment company. We now have a coaching program, I’m launching some software companies, so I’m now a serial entrepreneur. I hate that.

So the growing pain where I stand right now is I need multiple integrators… So I’ve found the integrator for that sales focus business. Like, real estate investing, wholesaling, flipping – it really is sales and marketing. It’s not this HGTV life that is portrayed in TV, it’s sales and marketing, that is it. So I’ve found an integrator who is so thick-skinned in sales, it blows me away. He is so emotionless when it comes to rejection… He does not care.

Ash Patel: That’s a talent. That is a talent.

Lauren Hardy: It is a talent. It does not ruffle his feathers at all. He can ask sellers for a price reduction, like it’s not a big deal. He doesn’t get embarrassed. He can lowball a seller, it doesn’t give him that feeling in his stomach that still gives me. So I found the perfect integrator personality for the sales company. Where I am today is now I’m working on integrators for all the different companies. My social media – I’ve found a creative; she’s creative, but she’s also very good at figuring out Instagram, what’s the social platform that I need to be on, what’s the trendy thing that I need to be doing right now and dropping videos on right now… I’ve found that girl integrating that side of things. So she is – I call her my creative director for the coaching program and the podcast and everything. So I think you can have multiple integrators. You’re not going to just find this one person that can do, for the serial entrepreneur, the multiple different businesses. I don’t know if you’re going to find that one person. If you know them, please let me know. But—

Ash Patel: That’s a great point, because I always assumed it’s the right-hand man or woman would be one person. But having multiple is even better. That’s a great perspective.

Lauren Hardy: And you know what someone recommended to me actually a week ago – because I actually reached out for some help, because I was going through growing pains. I was going, “Okay, I’ve got Hailey,” she’s the integrator for social media coaching, podcast, that side of things. I’ve got [unintelligible [00:26:47].21], who’s with the investment company… There needs to be someone managing them.

Ash Patel: A VP of Ops.

Lauren Hardy: A VP of Ops, right?

Ash Patel: Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: So I’m thinking like, “Gosh, this must be a very expensive person that I’m going to have to pay something. This is going to be someone that I have to pay six figures to.” So I reached out to someone that I know, that has this sort of person in mind, I reached out to that girl, I got in contact with her, and I said, “Tell me everything you do for him. What do you do? And let me share with you my issues right now. These are my big rocks, help me.” And she’s like, “Oh, you need an operations manager.” Oh, that’s what they’re called. Okay. Operations Manager. What does an operations manager cost?” And she’s like, “You can easily find someone who’s virtual for probably $20 an hour.” “Wait, what? I was thinking this was a $200 an hour person.” She’s like, “No, you just need somebody who is very operationally minded, they can pull your KPIs, they get you organized… That’s it.” So I think that’s my next hire; maybe ask me in a year and see if I’ve done it and tried it out.

Ash Patel: I would love to. Yeah, you’ve got an amazing ride that you’ve been on so far. So tell me more about the coaching. What got you into that?

Lauren Hardy: Nothing ever in my life has ever fell in my lap. I’ve had to go find it. For Nashville, I had to get out of the car and talk to some stranger. The coaching thing was an amazing opportunity that I still to this day pinch myself. So I was wholesaling virtually, and I reached out to my good friend Brent Daniels, and I said, “You know, I saw they’ve been on the Wholesaling Inc podcast and you host it… Why have I not been on that thing yet?” And he’s like, “You’re right. Let’s get on a schedule.”

So Brent’s a coach with Wholesaling Inc and he’s got this awesome program called TTP, a lot of you guys probably know or heard about it.  And I got on the podcast and I just talked about all things virtual wholesaling. And virtual wholesaling was a needed coaching program within that platform, because there were a lot of students in high-priced markets that were having a very difficult time implementing these same strategies that everybody else was in the nation, but they weren’t working in California. New Jersey – I’ve got clients in New Jersey, New York, Miami, Seattle, high-priced areas, the students were going “Help, we need help, we can’t be in this market.” So they needed a virtual coach.

After that podcast launched, one day I got a text message from the owner of the podcast, Wholesaling Inc, his name’s Tom Kroll and of course, I knew who Tom was. I was like shocked to get this text message; I almost like fell over. He’s like, “Hey, we need to talk.” I was like, “What about?”

And so he gets on the phone with me and just says, “What do you think about coaching virtual? Would you put together a coaching program?” And I was like, “Okay, yeah.” He’s like, “You’ve got a week to think about it. But that’s it. Yes or No, you’re in or out?” I think I thought about it for 24 hours. I was like, “Yeah, I’m in. Great idea.”

So I put a coaching program together, we beta-tested it for a while, made sure we had success, coached students for free on the platform… And then we actually officially launched the program March of 2020. So we’re almost coming up on my year.

And I’m hosting the podcast as well… So I do one day a week on the podcast, we’ve got a cool YouTube channel if you guys want to check out our videos… So a really, really great group. I’m super-honored to be a part of it.

Ash Patel: That is incredible. So what’s next for you? You need another giant challenge to keep this thing going.

Lauren Hardy: I’m literally a masochist. I’m always like, if you cannot say yes to one more thing, you’re done. This is it. I’ve said yes to two more things, there’s two more things I’ve said yes to, and I’m done for the rest of this year. I’m not saying—I’m not opening up any more businesses, I’m not—. So there’s a couple software companies that we’re not releasing just yet, that I’m very excited about. One is something I’ve worked on over a year; it should be launching very soon. And then there’s another one that just came about… And they’re partnership opportunities. So it wasn’t me behind the operations, but I’ve kind of the creative vision, and very excited.

Ash Patel: Visionary.

Lauren Hardy: I’m the visionary, I am.

Ash Patel: Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: Like, I am so good for ideas, but when it comes to actually executing them—I’m very good at getting the energy to like, “Let’s execute it!” and then like, “Okay, but you do all the details.” Like—

Ash Patel: Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: I’m not very detail-oriented. But I am very much a visionary, for sure.

Ash Patel: So we have to have you back in about a year or probably less to see what else has come your way. Lauren, what’s your best ever advice for, I would say real estate people, but your background is so varied, so for just people in general. Best ever investing advice, growth advice, real estate advice… You pick.

Lauren Hardy: Honestly, seek help. Anytime I ran into an issue or a problem, whether it was personal, whether it’s business, real estate, house flipping, find someone who’s killing it in that area and ask for their help. Ask them a question, whatever it is. Offer to pay them, “I’ll pay you $1,000 to talk to me for three hours.” I’ve done that. I’ve done that this entire time. Every time I needed help, I’d say, “Hey, I’ll do whatever I need to do, I’ll pay you whatever. Help me solve my problems.” Don’t try to go in alone and just solve your own problems. It is so much easier to just cut the learning curve, go straight to an expert, and in one hour, you could probably figure out the solution to your issue or problem, and you will then be able to overcome it, and then exponentially grow much faster than if you tried to do it all yourself.

Ash Patel: That is great advice. I know that would have helped me a lot, and I’m sure it’s going to help a lot of other people out there. Lauren, are you ready for the best ever lightning round?

Lauren Hardy: Okay.

Ash Patel: Awesome. First, a quick word from our partners.

Break: [00:33:05] to [00:33:29]

Ash Patel: Alright, Lauren, what’s the best ever book you read recently?

Lauren Hardy: The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham.

Ash Patel: Tell me about that. What did you learn from that?

Lauren Hardy: Other than Keith Cunningham, is hilarious, his writing style is very funny and engaging, it’s just advice from a CEO of a multi-million-dollar company. So it’s just advice, how to not be stupid. Stop paying dumb taxes. And it really boils down to one daily practice that anybody and everybody can do… And it’s thinking time; just taking time to think. It’s amazing how many stupid mistakes we make because we didn’t think something through and—

Ash Patel: I’m adding that to my list. Awesome.

Lauren Hardy: I call it five-figure mistakes. All my five-figure mistakes were because I just didn’t take an hour to maybe say, “What if this goes wrong?”

Ash Patel: Right.

Lauren Hardy: Or “What’s very likely that could happen?” So… Thinking time.

Ash Patel: Great advice. And Lauren, what’s the best ever way you like to give back?

Lauren Hardy: Well, recently, I gave back to a charity. One of my students – oh man, great guy… He got into wholesaling houses because he wants to make enough money so him and his wife don’t have to take from their charity. So they have an amazing charity in India, it’s called The India Mission. It’s orphanages for children in India, they help clothe, feed the hungry… It’s an amazing organization that they’ve put together, and they have these children’s homes, these poor children in India… But as they run a charity, they have to take a salary. It’s not much…

Ash Patel: Yeah.

Lauren Hardy: …but they have to. So he got into wholesaling houses so they hopefully will not have to take their salaries out… And I couldn’t even imagine a better cause, right? So it was really cool to be able to donate a proceed of my profits to his charity this year.

Ash Patel: That’s great. Lauren, how do the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?

Lauren Hardy: I am pretty active on my Instagram. If you guys want to follow me, my handle is @thismomflips. If you guys happen to be interested in the coaching program, check it out at http://virtualinvestingmastery.com/ and I host the podcast wholesaling Inc if you guys want to check me out there.

Ash Patel: This is an incredible podcast. Did you ever thank your brother for getting you into real estate?

Lauren Hardy: Oh yeah, for sure…

Ash Patel: You’ve had an amazing ride with the initial fix and flips, the Nashville spec houses and the wholesaling, the systems you’ve put in place, a software company… We have to have you back. Thank you so much for your time.

Lauren Hardy: Thank you so much for having me.

Ash Patel: Have a great day, Lauren.

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