Todd Baldwin is a Seattle based Cashflow MACHINE. He currently brings in $15,000 per month passively through his coliving properties and multiple six figures of profit from his wholesaling operation.
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Todd Baldwin is a Seattle based Cashflow MACHINE. He currently brings in $15,000 per month passively through his coliving properties and multiple six figures of profit from his wholesaling operation.
Want To Quit Your Job, Travel The World, & Replace 6 Figures Of Cashflow? 👔🏝️ Check Out The Action Academy Community / Schedule A Free Intro Call
Want The Step-By-Step Manual For Gaining Clarity, Investing In Commercial Real Estate, And Buying / Starting Small Businesses? Check Out Our Bestselling Book:
From Passive To Passionate
Want A Free $100k+ Side Hustle Guide?
Follow Me As I Travel & Build:
IG @brianluebben
Tiktok @brianluebben
Todd Baldwin. We finally made it, brother. Finally made it.. How are you buddy? Hey,
todd:I'm doing great. It had been a long time coming. Sorry for pushing it back. With the arrival of my son, I've been swamped, but I'm glad I was able to make time today.
brian:Yeah, I mean it's I was laying in bed the other night and had a tear rolled down my cheek thinking that you put your newborn son over me. It's frustrated to say the least, but it's okay. It's all right. We'll make it through. Awesome. But awesome man. Congratulations once again. Eight months old now. So you have been going through a transition and this is your first correct.
todd:This is my first. Yeah. And I better get used to it cuz my wife wants to have three more Yeah. So we'll see how that
brian:goes. So the journey begins. Yes. So before we get into your real estate, man, you've been knocking out at the park, you're one of the cash flow kings when it comes to maximizing cash flow on properties, which we'll get into with your co-living strategy in the back half of the episode. First I wanna talk. Life is easy until you get punched in the face, right?. And so now you've got an eight month old that you can't punch back.. That'd be frowned upon, right? So yeah. You go to prison, . Yeah. So talk, walk me through the transitions that you've had to make in your life and your business now that this has happened in your family.
. todd:Being a father is the greatest part of my life. There's no question about it. I love spending time with my son and it. I've had the days where, you make half a million dollars in one day, right? Yeah. And the feeling I get from my son smiling up at me is better. It just, and that's for me, I know that, having kids and raising a family isn't for everyone, but I truly love it. And I fear really blessed that I've been able to build a real estate empire, so to speak, that has allowed me to take as much time with my. As I want because I don't have to go to a job every day. But yeah, being a father is great. I will say it's a lot of work like. I like, I, maybe this is tmi, but like I haven't showered in three days because I just haven't had the time. I need a shower and a haircut. Yeah, you smell me through the computer. Yeah. And man, I definitely need to go to the barber and get like all the things right. So it is exhausting, but it is well worth it. And someday it'll get easier.
brian:All right, so ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to this or you're thinking about having kids, but you you wanna maintain your fade , come watch yourself. It's not worth it.. No, it's I love hitting on this aspect before we get into the dollars and the data, because the reason that I do all of this, and the reason that I build everything that I build is because I had the opposite in my upbringing where my father and I don't talk. He's never been in my. So he was an air traffic controller. He was highly paid, made 167,000 a year. I looked it up through public record years later, cause we never knew, even my mom never knew how much he made and he was just always coming home super late. Just did not, it would go into the garage and work on his stuff and then he was just not there for. and it was just my mom there for everything. Everything. And so I was just like, man, like what a shitty existence that is. I don't want that when I'm a dad. And so it's currently I'm single right now, but it's just like I'm in that period where I'm like, Hey, I'm looking for my person. I lo I want to have you know, the kids and everything. And that's why I do everything is so I could be that dad that. the ball games, that's at the dancer, recitals and everything. And I wanna be there for everything. So is that kind of how you're feeling too, man? Because you seem so excited. It fires me up too.. todd: Yeah. I do want to watch my kids grow up. I don't want to miss that. That makes sense., yeah. Yeah. The days are long, but the years are short. I can't imagine it's crazy to me that my son is already eight months old. Cause it feels like he was born yesterday. And I know I'll be saying that probably for the rest of my life. Yeah, I want to be very involved in my kids' life. I want to be active in their hobbies and their sports, and I'm excited for that. How if I can ask, how is your relationship with your dad now? Have you guys like reconciled and you've told him, like, how that made you feel? It's still nonexistent, man. Like we had an adult conversation.. We went golfing last year. That's the first time I'd seen him in nine years. And when we went golfing, I just told him like, man to man. I was like, this is how I feel. And then he just straight up told me, he's I never wanted to be a dad. And goes, really? I just, yeah. He's I just never wanted to do it. He's we just thought it was the right thing to do and know, I respected it, , I respected it. Like he, he just had a very crappy upbringing.. So like for him, the upbringing he gave me was very, so it's like kind ending these cycles of generational, just terrible parenting.. . So that's why I'm excited to be able to do this a question that I have for you and it, I think it's gonna hit home with a lot of the listenership here. A lot of people build big old cash flow businesses with their real estate investing. Maybe they have thousands of doors, thousands of units, all these Airbnbs. but then one day they look up, they have the new child. They have this family that they're already growing, but , they're not spending time with them. And all of a sudden it's just I'm doing this work for my family. Is the singular cause that they're not spending time with their family?. So before we get into like the cash flow, how have you designed your business to allow you to have more time and more head space with your ch, with your child and with your wife as you're making this transition?. todd: Yeah, so I designed my business to without me needing to be too involved. It took years to make it so it could happen that way. You know it, I was working, when I first started, I was working about 17 hours a day. To get things going. And so I was working a ton upfront, but at the time I didn't have any kids and my wife and I were just dating at the time. So now that I'm married to her and I have my son and we're gonna have a lot more kids, I do want freedom and time to be with them. And then the other part of my business is wholesaling. And with wholesaling, I basically only take. deals that will be very large transactions. So I don't need many of them, to make it worth it. Like I had a deal last year where, gosh, I think I literally made like 170 grand in three hours. And so it's like you don't need too many of those to make it a great year, and you just spend the rest of the time with your family. So yeah, just designing it like big transactions. And then passive monthly income so that it doesn't take a ton of my time or effort to go make a living. So my, my understanding of that would be, If I were to give advice to a newer investor, I would more so probably focus on building up that underlying cash flow so that they can only focus on the big hits with the wholesaling., would you agree with that? Because otherwise you would be taking everything that came across your desk?
todd:Absolutely. Yeah. You gotta eat and and you gotta pay the bills and stuff, so yeah, if you can build up a monthly cash flow that's completely passive. Then that gives you, the freedom and flexibility to do whatever you want. And it doesn't have to be millions of dollars. Like I think people, they get tricked by what they see on Instagram and the private jets, and most of that's fake anyway. But you could live a pretty awesome life if you're making, five to 10 grand a month passively, like even five grand a month passively. That's not that much money. It's 60 grand a year. But if you don't have to work for. You are wealthy because you have time freedom to do what you want. You can travel, you can do all these fun things. And there are people that maybe make 200 grand a year, but they're working 90 hours a week. I would rather make 60 grand a year and work zero hours than work two than make 200 grand a year and work 90 hours a week. That's just me personally, but I think that's a better way of life personally. Yeah. I
brian:don't really understand how people spend. a lot of money. That sounds weird., because I'm friends with a lot of like Deca, deca millionaires, and the only way that I really see is just like big house, big car, like big country club membership, like the big fixed expenses that are recurring. Is like, yeah, when you have a $20,000 a month mortgage, that'll do it. and then you have three Lamborghini and like rolls, then yeah, maybe that's another $10,000. That kind of debt adds up.. But if you don't have that kind of debt, for me, I've noticed , I just literally traveled around the world. I tried to bankrupt myself, , I damn near gave him my best shot, right? Now in July. When I was in Greece, I was covering me and my girlfriend at the time. And that was $27,000. But besides that, about 10,000 a month is like, living. For me.. And that's like pushing the throttle, that's in a very nice very nice hotel and apartment, traveling eating out every single day. And , dude, that's just 10 grand a month. For that. And so I'm , push the governor up to 50 K a month. I don't even understand how you spend it. I don't get it. Do you I
todd:don't get it. I think the difference is perhaps. The stuff that most people, most rich people spend money on doesn't appeal to me. And it sounds like it doesn't appeal to you either. I have a friend a real estate friend who just spent 70,000 on a watch, and it just, it wouldn't do anything for me. I don't even wear a watch. All right.
brian:So on that note, yes. I hear where you're coming from. I'm picking up what you're putting down. I'm starting to change my thoughts on this. So I have a lot of friends with Rolexs now, and how they view them is, they're like, this is a value.. , , I can put $20,000 into this watch and I can have that survive inflation. That makes a little bit more sense to me. But the cars, the hedonic adaptation it just doesn't, it's just a never-ending race,
todd:man. Yeah. I think, if you can buy, if you, if your hobbies hold their value, then that's awesome. It just if I had to choose, my buddy who spent 70 grand on a watch, if I was like, okay, I can buy, the $70,000 watch, or I could with 70,000 buy, I don't. 10 chickens and three cows and have a little farm that produces something for me. I would rather have the farm now. I'm not think you can buy a farm for 70 grand. I have no idea what a farm cost. But, brian: you can buy, I could tell around the world for 73,000. I just, there you go. Yeah. I just do. I would rather do that. Yes. I would rather do Now I, I will say cuz my wife and I are building our dream house right now and one of the things that we're building, I've, one of this since I was nine years old is a home arc. So I did just drop like 10 grand on a full size Jurassic Park arcade machine. That's sick. That's gonna be really fun. So it's like I, I just spend money on things that appeal to me. And a Gucci belt or a nice watch just doesn't appeal to me. Neither does it Rolls Royce, but I'll spend money on things that I enjoy. I just I enjoy building businesses more than I enjoy having trinkets or, you know,
brian:Let's get into business, man. Let's get into, , get into your journey. Let's get into the co-living properties because you are a freaking cash flow machine for people that are listening to this, that want to leave their job. I can't think of a better strategy than what you did and how you systematized your properties. So I do co-living myself, but it's more so., , yours is on steroids, . So I'll just let you tell people where you're at today and then just back the story up and then we can walk through the trilogy here, man. But I'll let you take
todd:the floor. Awesome. Yeah. This all started because my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, We were gonna live together for the first time ever, and we were gonna go rent an apartment in Seattle. That's where we live. And we found that for a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment, it was like 2,500 bucks a month. No utilities were included and you had to pay extra for parking. And we didn't wanna do that. And again, like I had a six figure salary. I was working in sales, I was making commissions. My girlfriend was making really good money too. And even we didn't want to do that, so we decided to buy a house and we didn't need all that space for just the two of us. So we opted to rent out the extra bedrooms to our college friends, and we had the rooms rented out in a weekend. So we were living in a six bedroom, four bathroom house that we owned, but we were living completely for free because our rooms that we rented out paid for the mortgage, taxes, utilities, all that stuff.. And then nine months later we were like, we had the opportunity to buy another house because we were saving so much money by living for free.. So we bought our second house nine months later and that was rented out within five days, all six bedrooms. That's when we realized there's a business to this. So we just kept buying houses, every between 12 and 18 months. And at a certain point we were got up to six houses. We were bringing in like 40 grand a month in rent total. And then after all of the expenses, cuz we paid for a made service, we stock the house supplies, we were making like 15 grand a month in purely passive cash flow, which on six single family homes, that's pretty unheard of. A lot of people invest in real estate where they buy a $300,000 house. They rented out for 800 bucks a month and their cash flow was like 150 bucks. We were making 15 grand a month in pure profit. So that was amazing. And it was pretty much untaxed because of depreciation. So after that I started wholesaling and that took way off, and that's when the income, started making millions of dollars per year. And now here we are and we have a son and we don't have to work, and we're basically retired at 30. So it's been a crazy ride and I think it's a great way to get started.
brian:All right, so off of six freaking houses and some wholes. Yes., you're off to the races. Yes. All right. Yeah, man, my, so I did I did a hybrid of that strategy. So I did the house X strategy. So I was buying five bed, four bathroom houses. I'd live in one part, rent the other parts out. So the first one I rented the upstairs is the three bed, two bath as a one unit, just as a traditional three, two, like one level unit and then the bottom I live moved a buddy from college into one of the other rooms. So it was like a co-living situ. That one. Yeah. Yeah. And they printed out and I did it again, and then, so those print out about four grand in cash flow. But for me right now, I had a bunch of CapEx just happen. So I'm refilling all those CapEx accounts, so now all the excess cash flow, I'm putting item right back into the operations account, so that's super fun. Even though you put. Like you're 200, you're 10%, 15%. Sometimes it looks like when it rains it pours man. But yeah. So let's walk through the strategy itself. So we just wanted over it in the macro. So in the micro, let's walk over this cashflow and break that down for these properties. So how did you manage so many people living in these properties? Cuz I know you had some systems all around it that were very.
todd:Yeah, so it started off with just me living in a house, having roommates. That's how it started, and that's probably the easiest way to start. And if anyone listening doesn't have a house yet, but you want to own property, in my opinion, that's the best way to do it, is you buy a house for you to live in primary residence, you can put a lower percentage. Get a better interest rate. You live in the master bedroom, let's say, and then rent out the remaining rooms to your friends. That's the best way to do it, in my opinion. If you can't handle roommates, then get a duplex or a triplex or even a fourplex, and then live in one unit, rent out the rest. But anyway, so micro level. So I was just living in this house and I had roommates. From that experience, I learned what works and what doesn't work because I was living it, so correct. What I found was that, if you have roommates, for example, that are sharing a bathroom and one of the roommates is always buying the soap and toilet paper, but you have a different roommate always using it up and never reimbursing. Eventually the roommate buying all the stuff is gonna get pissed off and they're gonna wanna leave because, who wants that? So I made a decision to stock all the supplies, toilet paper, hand, so paper towels, dishwasher pods, all that stuff. I just stocked it. Got it. At Costco on a delivery. It was pretty cheap. And it made it, so for advertising purposes, I was like, your monthly rent includes all of the stuff, basically also furnished all the houses. We have a housekeeper come through once a week and clean the entire house from top to bottom because the number one roommate dispute is mess. So if there's no mess to fight about, then there are less overall fights that are going to happen. And then we did things like trying to match people by personality.
If you want to go to bed by 9:00 PM. It doesn't make sense if you're in a house where everybody else wants to party till two o'clock in the morning. So being able to scale that and seeing if somebody applies for a specific room in a specific house, but they'd be a better fit for one of my other houses, I would just tell them and I'd have that conversation. And they appreciated that because they didn't wanna be the odd man out. And as far as like how I managed everything, it's. I it, what I was doing was so niche that I didn't think I could outsource it to a manager. Maybe I was wrong about that. Because you're not just dealing with tenants, you're dealing with roommates and personalities. And so I had deal breakers, what are your deal breakers? What can you not handle? And I wouldn't put them in houses with people who would behave that way. And then this may seem controversial today, it wasn't five years ago when I started, but I had one house that was all female. because there was, there were women that didn't want to share a bathroom with men. And so I had an all female house and I had an all male house and then I had four mixed houses, I believe. So just doing stuff like that and making it as seamless as possible I think has really helped me grow.
brian:Yeah, that makes sense to me. Like personally, I wouldn't I'd wanna live in a dude house, like, that's just what I would wanna do. I would imagine, especially if. Like the demographic that's looking to rent these places is probably somebody that's new to the area and just moved there. They just got a job. And if I was, if I was a woman, I don't know if I would necessarily want to live with a bunch of strange men that I didn't know. That completely makes sense. And you had optionality, so knock it out the park. Was this via like a Google form? Did you have a software you were using? Walk us through this template system. Were you, like, how does this application look? What's this process look?
todd:Yeah, so I was super basic. I didn't take advantage of a ton of software. So I, I would basically the, how it started is I would, do
brian:you party ? ? That's right. Do you party? No. Okay. Blame nerd in the nerd house.. todd: Exactly. Yeah. Go to the square house. No. So I'd have advertisements of the rooms, whether it's on Craigslist or Facebook groups, like Facebook housing groups or there was a website called Roomi that specifically is for finding roommates, stuff like that. So I'd have the listing, somebody would respond to that listing. And oh, I forgot to mention, I would have a video tour on that listing as well. So they could take a video tour of the entire house in addition to pictures. So then someone respond to that listing and say they, they wanted a room. I would tell them specifically what rooms were available in that house. And then I would basically send them over the background check, which I used a company called Smart Move TransUnion. Most people don't use that and most people use apartments.com. But smart move TransUnion is what I liked because it did credit debt to income ratio, criminal history if you've ever been evicted or not, stuff like that. If the background check told me decline, that would pretty much be the end of the conversation. I would then tell them, if you have a problem with this finding, then you gotta take it up, a smart move. If it said approve, Then the next step would be I do a FaceTime tour and I didn't want to invite people into the house yet before actually meeting them at least electronically, like we're doing right now, or with a FaceTime. So once I did a FaceTime tour and they liked what they saw, then I would send them over the lease agreement and the house rules to look over. If all that looks good, then they could come over and actually see the house in person. When they saw the house in person and they saw the room, made sure they'd like the vibes and everything, that's when we would talk about, okay, so what do you look for on a roommate? Like what do you want to be your living situation to be like, you know what? What is important? And if everything checked out, then at that point we talked about signing the lease and putting down the deposit. So there was a, there were many steps to choosing someone. Part of the reason too that I did the FaceTime tour or excuse me, part of the reason that I had the video tour is I found out the hard way that a lot of folks will nohow. So before I had videos of the properties, I would just go post up and I'd have showings back to back for different people lined up every half. And a lot of them just never showed up. And maybe that's a generational thing. Maybe young people are. A, you know about ghosting people, but I had people, no call, no text, just not show up. And so I was like, screw that. I'm gonna have a video tour of every house so that they can go see for themselves if they like the vibes and the layout and this and that. And then if they actually do see that. That's when we can talk about coming and seeing it in person. So it evolved from there. And then of course we supply all the stuff, water or excuse me. Yeah, all the utilities. So water, sewer, garbage cable, internet, there's a house, Netflix account, a house Hulu account, all that stuff. So all utilities are included. And then all of the paper products and soap and stuff that's included as well. And so I wanted to make sure that, living with a roommate is not for everyone, but if you're gonna be living in a house with a bunch of roommates, it was a no-brainer that you would be coming to me for that. So I wanted to give the best possible product and service for the niche that I was serving. Nice. So you had an entire experience mapped out., did you have a brand behind this or was this just like your proper.
todd:It's just my properties. Yeah. It was nothing fancy. I'm just a guy with a couple of
brian:houses. It's just too easy, man. All right, cool. Yeah, normally somebody would, make something cute, cutesy, and they would take some vowels out of a letter vows out of a word and make it something cute roommate ready.com or something like that. No, that wasn't. Yeah. No, I like it, man. You just executed. You got that action muscle. You got that dog in you . I love it. So you have all these people that have got this elevated experience, so obviously that's who you're catering to. What demographics were you catering to? Like more of a mid to high level income earner? What were you looking for in. That was that you were trying to appeal to in your marketing?
todd:Yeah. Most of my tenants by default were young people just because that's who's okay with living with roommates. So most of my tenants, I would say were in their mid twenties. Yeah. And a lot of them had really good careers, but they were saddled down with a bunch of student loan debt and wanted to live as cheaply as possible so they could pay off that debt and then buy a home of their. So I had people making six figures renting a room in my house for 900 bucks a month. And I don't know where most of your listeners are, but if that sounds expensive, Seattle's crazy. Getting nine, I was getting $1,300 a month for master bedrooms in these houses, which might rent an entire house, in some places of the country in Seattle that wouldn't get you anything but like a crack house. So I was being able to price these rooms pretty. And my average room was about half the cost of a studio. So if my average room was 900 bucks, it's because studios in the area were 1800 plus all the utilities. Sure. But yeah, I had, dude I, one of the guys that rented from me, Was literally an astronaut, worked for NASA, making a ton of money. And then I had a lot of people from Amazon a lot of tech people cuz again, Seattle, I had people in the medical field making six figures and then some folks, had average incomes and this is the only thing they could afford. But I would say that most of my tenants were young professionals. Trying to make and save a lot of money. And so living in a shared housing situation was a benefit to them.
brian:Yeah, and how you were positioning it was for that, tenant, you're like, Hey, look like this is a luxury thing now it's gonna be my next question is how did you position the rent as opposed to a traditional market rent, because you have all these amenities,
todd:Yeah, really I just tried to make it so that my average room was half the cost of a studio, and then if a room was smaller than that, it would be priced lower. And if far room was bigger than that or had its own bathroom, it'd be priced higher. But most of my rooms on average, were about 900 bucks a month. And studios in the area at the time were 1800. So I thought that was and then, but yeah, as I said, I mean I've had units go, every master bedroom was getting about 1300. I also had a couple of Airbnb units too and I was just trying that out. And now, in my duplex that I live in, currently I live in a duplex and I rent out the other half is just one unit cause it's only two bedrooms. And I thought we might as well just put a couple in there or whatever. Sure. But yeah, I wanted my pricing to make sense so that my average tenant. Could be saving about a thousand dollars a month if they rented from me, but then also have all the utilities included. So again, making it for the right person, making a no brain.
brian:Yeah. A win-win.. Sweet. So you took down those the first property, like traditional financing. How did you finance the remaining five properties? Because if you're making you're making six figures, but like how much were these houses? How much were these acquisitions and how did did you do like a D S C R for the remainers or
todd:how'd you do it? No, it was pretty much all traditional. So yeah, my first house was 506. I was a first time home buyer at the time, so I got away with putting three and a half percent down and moving in. And then for nine months I lived for free. I lived for free for longer than that, but it was nine months till I bought the next house. I was living completely for free in a house that I owned with a very nice salary. So I bought my second house nine months later. That was, I believe 525,000. I did have to come up with 20% down for that, but just because of the nature of my job having a six figure salary plus commissions and my fiance at the time, again, now my wife, but she was working too and had a good salary and we were living for. Coming up with that 20% was possible for us. So we did it. Six months later we bought our third house, which we actually moved into. So we bought another primary residence. We were no longer first time home buyers at that time, but being that it was our primary residence, we didn't have to come up with a full 20% down for that third house. We, I think we put 10% down on our third house, which I believe was 540,000, something like that. And then I think an entire year later went by. We bought our fifth house, or I guess that'd be fourth house. We bought that also as a primary residence with 10% down. That was 624,000. But then two months later, we bought our fifth house, which we had to put 20% down on. That was 770 K. And then 18 months after that, we finally found this duplex, which was 900 grand. We moved into it. So it's our primary residence and our down payment was 90,000. But we were able to scale so quickly because we were saving 100% of our salaries because we were living for free. And the cash flow was nuts. On our first house, we were living for free, but on our second house that we ever bought, our cash flow, I believe was 2,500 bucks a month. Just on one house. Yeah. So all of that money, we were just stocking away for the next house and just ba basically doing a big snowball.
brian:Man. Okay. Dear God, . All right there we go. He just bought a freaking house a year, basically.. No. Yeah. That's awesome. So how are you guys, so how much were you making on the salary? Because even at 200, after my second house, they were starting to tighten up on me with how much I could take under my name.
todd:Yeah, so I was making like
brian:a quarter million and I was getting tight, like the conventional loans, the conventional mortgages were starting to tighten up on me, but that was also as a single.
todd:Got it. Yeah. So my salary at the time was, I believe 150 K. Yeah. But I was a salesperson, so I was also making commissions. So like there would be days where I make, 40 grand in commissions. So my sa my income from my job was good, but also maybe it was different on your end, but my mortgage broker allowed me to basically count my rental income towards my total income and then offset my expenses. So like, When he looked at my debt to income ratio, he looked at, okay, I live in this house. The payment's three grand a month, but my roommates pay me $3,200 a month. That completely offset. So it was like in his mind, I didn't have this debt of three grand a month. I had this income of 200 a month because I was collecting $3,200 in rent. I had a really good relationship with my mortgage broker who like understood it. He un he fundamentally understood what I was doing. I think that's probably rare to find. I think a lot of banks have their algorithm and what they go for and this and that, but my guy was just really on top of it. I never once had to. Start a company and put it in the company's name. Like all of the mortgages and stuff were always in my name, which maybe is not the smartest way to do it. I know a lot of people would have LLCs and stuff, which I do. I just never found that I needed to use it. Cause I have insurance that would take care of most of that stuff anyway. But yeah, we really never had a problem getting financed.
brian:Okay. Yeah, cuz right now I would basically have to go to the D S C R route cuz I left my job a year ago, like this week., are you still working the W2 or are you out
todd:of that now? No, I retired from my w2, I believe in 2019., September of 2019. But now, from, the last couple years I've made well over a million dollars in profit from wholesaling and stuff too, it's not, getting financed for the next project certainly isn't a problem. I think this is actually, last year was the second year in a row I made enough to actually save a million dollars. So like it's one thing to make a million dollars and then Yeah, and then pay 400 grand in taxes. You're left with 600 to live on. But I made enough to actually put a million in the bank. That has been super lucky. And I am, I can't believe it got this big and crazy, but it's been good. It's been good for sure. Screw, screw the
brian:co-living, screw all that over. We just talked about. Let's talk about the wholesale loo. What the hell? Okay. Yeah. So walk me through this. What are you wholesale?
todd:Very high end luxury properties in the greater Seattle area that are huge transactions. Now I will say I wouldn't have been able to start a wholesaling business as successfully as I did had I not first built up a reputation in real estate doing the room rentals because, if, so let's say I'm gonna wholesale your property, you're gonna Google my name, that's the first thing you're gonna. And from my success in doing the room rentals, there's a dozen articles about me in, real estate. I've been on C N B C, I've been on the news. And so anyone who I was gonna do business with for wholesaling, they could immediately look me up and know that I'm legit and not a scammer. So that was like a huge, just great blessing for me because knew I'm real. So once they get, you know that outta the way, oh, this guy's a legit guy. He works in real estate, blah, blah. Then I could have a door open for me to do wholesaling. My first ever wholesale deal. I made 50 grand in one afternoon. And that's when I realized, okay, this is awesome . Basically what wholesaling is I'll tell you how I do it and then I'll tell you how most
brian:people do it. Yeah. That's about to say, cuz this isn't normal. I've got a buddy, I've got a buddy David that makes, he probably makes 600, 700,000 in Kansas City. He had an institutional buyer.. And then he would just funnel the properties towards them, but now they paused. With all this bank stuff and all this economy stuff going on. So that's why I'm, yes. Yeah. That's why I'm interested.
todd:Yeah. So I I'm very particular about the deals that I take on. I only work in high-end luxury deals that are gonna be huge transactions. So the first house I ever did a wholesale deal with the seller of the house wanted to sell his property for 800. He did not want to list it on the MLS with realtor. I don't know why. And I told him, I was like, you sure you don't wanna just list this thing? And he was like, no, I don't wanna list it on the mls. I want 800 and I don't want to pay a commission out of my 800. And so I said, okay, what if I sell the house for you, but instead of taking a commission out of your 800. I'll just try to raise the price and if I can raise the price, I'll keep the delta If I can't raise the price and I don't make any money. So the example that I gave him was like, what if I raise it to,$810,000 and I keep the 10 grand, but you still get your full 800. Is that agreeable to you? And he said, yes, absolutely. So we agreed that anything above 800 I would just keep, because all he wanted was 800, but he wanted to get that full amount and not pick commission. I was able to raise the price to 850 grand, find a seller, sign the contract, and get it to a title company. It took me four hours to do that, so I made $50,000 in four hours of my time. Now again, that's because, six years prior I had started buying up real estate and building an investor list. This doesn't just happen overnight, right? Like I have a, an investor list of 15,000 people on it, of people who want to buy. Flip rehab real estate. So when I had someone come down the pipeline of, Hey, I have this house for this price in this area, I knew exactly who on my list to send that to. And boom, within four hours we put a deal together and I made a ton of money. And my next deal ever I made a hundred grand and it took me less than a week. That's when I started doing wholesaling. I won't say full-time because I only do around five transactions per year because I'd rather just hang out with my family. But I make sure that those transactions are very high end. And the reason for that is I had somebody ask if I could sell their property for them, who certainly was not a rich person. They were probably middle class at best, maybe working poor. They just happened to have this condo. and the condo was $300,000. And I was like, I gave my whole spiel, okay, I will have a raise the price. They had a problem with that. They were like if you raise it to 310,000, I feel like I should get, 307,000 and you get three grand. Same scare me. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like that's just not really worth my time. I, I can not, when I can take my time and make a hundred grand or 50 grand or whatever. And we kept going back and forth and finally, because they were, they weren't rich they were an educa, they were a teacher. I was like, okay, I'm just going to help this person out. For whatever reason. They don't wanna list it. Cause they wanna pay commission, which I think is lame too, because sometimes a realtor can get you even more than yet ever were expecting, but, I agreed, and after several weeks of going back and forth, they just pulled the deal. They were like, actually, nevermind. I don't want anyone to make any money from my house and I'll try to do it myself. Now they weren't able to sell it themselves, they weren't able to do that. But, so I had someone freaking out about the idea that I might make three to $5,000 from their. and with my high-end clients, I had people happily paying me a hundred thousand, 200,000, 500,000 to do all of the work for them. So it was completely seamless. And so I was like, screw the other thing I'm not even gonna do that. Solve rich people problems, they pay better. And so I was just like, I'm gonna go ahead and just. Do the high-end stuff. And that's been a game changer. I haven't looked back since.
brian:Yeah., a good example of this is I just hired my first juicy coach, 50, 50 K for a business coach. Cuz , I always ask the question like, what does the eight figure version of me do? What's the eight figure version of Brian do? And so like, when I was picking out my apartment in Austin, Texas cause I was in Atlanta and I came back from traveling and I was like, Where would I live? Like where would that eight figure guy live? Like where would he live? And I was just like, okay, now that I've ate the shit for a couple of years, lived in the basement of my house hack, like I've earned the right to upgrade cuz you, you earned the right to move to the next level. And so I was just like downtown Austin, like that's where I want to go. So I came here and I got this place, and then I hired the coach. And then he was like, all right, it's 50 k. I'm like, woo, that's a lot. I was like, I don't have that sitting around in cash casually. I was like, . So I basically seller financed my coach and I was like, Hey, how about a hundred thousand dollars? I was like, I'll give you a hundred thousand. But it, the contingency is, my goal is to make him get this up to a million dollars a year business.. And so for you, I was like, I'll just give you 10% of gross revenue paid out in four quarterly dividend. and so that our interests are aligned and you make double. And he is beautiful. Yeah. He's yeah, let's do that.. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm paying double. But it's just now I've got somebody that's even more in my corner because the faster we get to a million, the faster he gets his a hundred thousand, which is double, that is going great. And it's just solve rich people problems. So what's cool about this, and I think it's a good lesson to learn, is everybody talks so much about Like how to flip the property, how to do the co-living strategy you did, how to, they'd get lost into, okay, what were the logistics of you ordering the toilet paper and all that type of stuff. But that's not the answer. The answer was like, how did Todd build his brand? How did Todd build his credibility? How did Todd build his reputation? How did Todd build his skillsets to where they compound on each other, to where now four years later, you can be able to make a hundred thousand dollars four. That's the question to ask because like now it's the same thing with this podcast. I keep doing this podcast next year, hundreds of thousands of people listening per month. Then, then I can be able to do the same thing and it's just that's why I was able to build a hundred K business in 10 weeks. So it's just No, 10 weeks, four hours. There's levels to this. It's insane. Yes. But it's just, it's insane because I remember thinking back to my first like a hundred thousand that I made in the year, and I was like, oh my God, this is it. It's the mountaintop.. And then there's just so many different levels. Man, it's so interesting. What do you look for in a property? What are, what's your buy box? What's your buy criteria? Because normally in wholesaling you're finding really crappy pro properties with problems. Like you're buying problems and you're selling them to investors to do like a flip fix and then do a value add. So for your high-end luxury properties, what are you looking?
todd:Yeah, completely the opposite of what most wholesalers look for. The properties that I typically don't need any sort of work. It's, it, the last one that I did was, a multimillion dollar house that when the owner of it just looked at what the commission would be, let's say the commission on this house, just for sake of argument, would be 200 grand. If I can do the same thing and he only has to pay me 80 grand, then it's a win. It's a win. So for them. That's great. And then for the new for the buyer, it could be good too because if the seller, let's say the seller is gonna, save.$220,000 because they're going with me instead of listing it. Then maybe they give 50 K off the asking price to the buyer. So the buyer's getting a deal because the buyer's getting it for potentially 50 K below market and the seller's getting a deal because even after that discount and paying me, they're saving, 200 grand or whatever it is. And That's typically what I do. I know most people who host wholesale try to get a house, well below market value and then assign it to an investor who's gonna go fix and flip it. But it just hasn't been my strategy. It's not that it doesn't work. I'm sure that does work very well. I just knew that I wanted to work with, frankly, just very wealthy people in high-end real estate. People that aren't going to freak out about the nickels and dimes and worry about, just get the deal done and if it's of value that they're gonna have no problem paying me my fee. And it's worked out wonderfully.
brian:There you go. So what's the cash flow looking like today?
todd:Oh my gosh, it's so much
brian:Yeah. Okay. I guess you have the wholesaling's like over a million, but , what about the co.. todd: So are you talking about Yeah, net, net take home from the monthly, from the co-living
todd:net take home. After all taxes are said and done. Right around 15 grand a month.
brian:Okay. And that's even after tax? Yeah. You don't really have taxes cuz you do the depreciation and everything. Okay. So 1515 grand and passive income coming in per month.. So that is. 15. It's 180 12. 180. Yeah. Sorry I'm not as good at math as you talk.. Yeah. Hundred 80. So 180 in passive income, and then a couple men. Probably like 1.5. Oh my God. Dude, you're killing it. All right. Thank you. Sweet. Yeah, that's why, it's why we do podcasts, man.
todd:There you go. Yeah. And even, if it was just the 180 in tax-free income, that would be awesome. That's
brian:already, already, you're already
todd:good. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that it's been able to bank, like actually make enough to save a Millie the last couple of years has been nuts.
brian:Yeah. So long story short, ladies and gentlemen build your. Build bankable skillsets and solve rich people problems.. That's right. Right off into the sunset, boom. Exactly. I love it, man. Where can people find you?
todd:Yeah, if you guys wanna follow me on Instagram and it's just at Todd j Baldwin. I used to have a YouTube, but I recently got shadow banned we'll skip that for now. Yeah, I got a shadow. But Instagram, if you guys wanna message me, go ahead and at Todd Baldwin, I'll hopefully get back to you and answer your questions. Heck
brian:yeah. You guys heard it here first. Check out Todd. And then what market are you in again? Seattle. Seattle. There's a bunch of, there's a bunch of Seattle listeners for App Action Academy for some reason there's 900 of y'all, so shout out to. Yeah. Nice. So apparently you'll have a lot of people that probably reach out to you. So there we go. Sweet Seattle peeps. Reach out to Todd Baldwin. Awesome. Thanks, man. I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on, brother.
todd:Thanks for having me.
brian:All right, ladies, gentlemen, this is Ben, Todd and Brian with the Action Academy Podcast signing off.