Episode 24 | Kevin Porter | Military Millionaire Podcast

00:00 - 05:00

David:

Hey, what's up military millionaires. I'm your host David Pere today we have a unique episode. It is me and Kevin Porter talking right before the first day of the 10X Growth Conference, but the reason it's unique is because it's in Miami, it's filmed outside. And it was pretty impromptu. We'd been talking about being, you know, him being on my podcast for a little while. And I basically woke him up, threw him some coffee and said, let's do this thing.

That being said, the sun came up as we were talking. So you'll see that there's a little bit of overexposure if you're watching the video. I tried to change the color a little bit, but he and I both look about as pale as we can get.

So it is what it is. The content is still awesome. Check it out right now.

Intro:

You're listening to the military millionaire podcast, a show about real estate investing for the working class. Stay tuned as we explore ways to help you improve your finances, build wealth through real estate, and become a person that is worth knowing.

David:

Hey, what's up everybody's Dave, From military to millionaire.

So this is obviously a little bit of a different setup. I am in Miami right now at the 10X Growth Conference.

It is 8:15 in the morning, right before we head into the conference, and I'm here with Kevin Porter, who's staff aren't in the army. He's been in for almost 11 years. And he's one of the guys crashing the Airbnb with me.

So we woke up this morning, and I was like, you're gonna be on my podcast. And he was like, oh, coffee, and then I was like, yeah, coffee. We're doing this. So here we are.

So Kevin, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Kevin:

Okay, so my name is Kevin Porter. Like you said, I've been in the army for about 11 years. I've been stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And then when I volunteered for recruiting about four and a half years ago, I got stationed in Long Island, New York.

David:

All right. All right. So what got you started in real estate?

Kevin:

A long time ago, my uncle encouraged me to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And as a stubborn, you know, young guy, like I just passed it up. Because I wasn't that interested. I just wanted to focus on my friends and skateboarding and stuff like that.

And a few years back, I decided to finally read it as I started, you know, the quest for like self development. And as anybody who reads Rich Dad, Poor Dad, it really kind of changed my mindset on money and my life and turned my life around.

And, of course, it put me on the path with real estate investing, but it really put me in gear to start really trying to change my life and focus more deliberately on self development. And that's one of the reasons I actually volunteered for recruiting.

Surprisingly, because most people do not like recruiting as an assignment in the military. I volunteered, I actually had the option of doing an assignment in Hawaii, or requesting to do civil affairs, and I kind of was interested in civil affairs, because it's like, it's the humanitarian side of the army. And I felt like that would be very, like, self gratifying.

I would love to know why I'm a very outdoorsy person. So who I would have been right up my alley, but I did the the crazy thing and decided that going into recruiting was going to be the best path for me, because I felt like it was gonna help set me up for sales, marketing, and doing all you know, doing all of that education through the Army's dollar.

So yeah, volunteer for recruiting. And pretty much been doing that for four and a half years now.

David:

Alright, so I'm gonna ask, we're gonna totally go off the real estate tangent here. But you feel like you got that as far as sales and networking, what do you think's the best thing they taught you?

Kevin:

It did give me a, I guess the overall concept of what it's like to be in sales, the stress that can come with it. It's been a very, very challenging assignment. And anyone who knows anything about the Northeast, it's not people up there don't just typically join the military because it's a great opportunity, they join it because it becomes like a last resort for them. At least that's the way I feel like most of them look at it.

So the overall assignment has been challenging, but it's taught me a lot in terms of sales, and it's given me an opportunity to really test a lot of things while I'm on the clock with the army. So I've got to learn a lot of things even on things like, my personal time trying to improve my recruiting methods.

David:

I actually, I would agree. That's where I first got to realize that I kind of enjoy speaking. You know, I mean, we get in front of high schools and stuff. I hated it. I was nervous. It was terrible. As I got better at it, I was like, yeah, it's actually kind of fun. And people are saying, I'm good at this. And I, that feels good, right?

You could go to sales, you get some I mean, you get basic enough. Good enough tips that when you come to a conference like this, and they start talking about things like with them and stuff like that, what's in it for me? You're like, oh, they're talking like it's a sales tip. And I'm like, oh…

05:00 - 10:00

Kevin:

I'm soaking up every bit of that because, surprisingly, like I'm a very introverted person, I'm not a socially outgoing person, social crowds, like, just give me a lot of anxiety.

So recruiting is also done for me, but it's put me outside of my comfort zone, you know, time and time again. And even though it's still a challenge for me, I've gotten to that point where I'm a little bit more embracing of that challenge.

So, yeah, like going to the high schools going to like public speaking opportunities, you know, in a recruiter capacity is really helped kind of put me outside of what is typically like my norm, and it's really helped me in a lot of ways. And I see like a complete transformation from who I was, you know, five years ago to who I am now. And it's like, just as much of a transformation from who I was before I joined the military to who I am now.

David:

Yeah, so if you're thinking about it, this isn't a plug I don't get, I'm gonna get paid by the military recruiter to pull you out of the shell and teach you how to network and market and sales. And it's totally not always a fun gig. And a lot of people hate it for a reason. But you know, a lot of people hate sales and networking, and you have to get past that, or you're never gonna make it anywhere. You learn how to sell, you get to learn how to network network networks.

So we'll go back to the real estate hat. So tell us about your first deal.

Kevin:

So right after I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I was making tons of offers, I probably made about 50 offers before I got my first one accepted, and I didn't really get a good real estate agent to begin with. So I felt like I was kind of, you know, struggling through, you know, the process, because I didn't have anyone directly working with me to like, help me get a deal per se, like under contract.

So after about 50 or so offers, I got my first one except and even personally, I feel like maybe I paid a little bit too much for it. So every bit of it was a learning experience. But so I bought my first property 64,500. And I only put about 3000 into the renovations. And it. It currently rents for 875. So it's doing all right, but there's a lot of things that I, you know, learned through the process of, you know, unexpected expenses.

So I also learned, you know, adding in something like washer and dryer units can really help increase the ROI quickly, because people see a lot of value in that.

Yeah, I'm still currently holding it right now.

David:

That's a good point.

So people think about washer dryers. And it's like on the commercial side, this is huge for me. When I bought my 40 unit, one of the first things I did was they had like one washer, dryer leased. And there were 20 residential units that were all kind of 25 residential units. They were all kind of using it. Like that's a lot of people for a washer dryer. So I immediately bought two but I didn't lease them. I purchased them with financing. And so people don't realize a lot of these companies, they don't mention it right up front, they'll finance you. And it was like zero percent down finance.

So now instead of leasing the deal and owning the money every day, or every month, I own them outright, I pay the financing. So the difference is that the cap rate, the value on the property goes up.

So anyway, so commercial real estate, people think about coin laundry, people don't often think about the fact that you get a very similar return. In fact, maybe more of a bang for your buck return on washer dryers in a residential. Yeah, it's not a coin laundry, but you can increase the rent by 25-50 bucks a month, which I did. Yeah, way more than that person would use in coin laundry. So just food for thought.

Kevin:

Yeah, absolutely. I increased my rent by $50 a month. And I think about it because I'm still a renter right now. And you know from living in Long Island, not many residential places have at least for tenants like you might be renting out a basement, they don't have washer and dryer units available. So a lot of times you're experiencing the whole coin laundry, you know, laundry facility on site. And as a renter, having a laundry unit actually in your building is it's tremendous value.

David:

Yeah, it's killer.

Alright. So now you've done another deal. And it was a kind of a BRRRR strategy. So I'd be curious to hear about that one. Because I like that strategy. And I'm trying to use it myself.

Kevin:

Yeah, everybody loves the BRRRR strategy.

Once I first learned about it, I knew that that was like the next deal. I had to do it that way, just so that I could start building up a little bit more momentum.

So my my second deal, and this one was a little bit more of a stretch for me since I've been living in Long Island I took I took two weeks of vacation off to go back down to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where my other rentals at and I met with a real estate agent because I found one deal that was it been sitting on the market for just a little bit longer than normal. And when I spoke with the agent, they said that the previous guy who had the offer and they fell through so I told the agent look I've got cash, I can close on the deal and seven days. If you just let me go ahead and get this under contract.

So we went back to his office, you know, tied it up, got everything in place. I got my property manager who happens to also be my contractor. He came in there, started doing quotes and everything. I tried to do a little bit of renovations myself but trying to take lead and then do some renovations, just it's not an effective method for, you know, any means of scaling.

10:00 - 15:00

Kevin:

So got the contractor in there, he got a lot of the work done and took a little bit longer than we had originally planned. And then I, you know, let us season for one year and then I reached out to my bank and asked them to go through the process and they were able to refinance out so I was all in for after renovations 52,000 appraised for roughly about 75. And they were able to give me a loan for around 49,000. So I was only in the deal for like 3000 after everything was said and done after one year.

So, you know, trial and error, I learned a lot from it. And definitely, definitely love it.

David:

I owe you guys an apology for those of our listeners who don't know what a BRRRR is, I prefaced it, and I didn't, didn't ask him to explain it. So just so you're on the same page BRRRR stands for buy rent, or buy rehab, rent, refinance, repeat.

So a small strategy where you buy a place, you fix it up, you rent it, and then when you refinance, you pull your money back out. Sounds like he did. So at the end of it, if you heard that he's got $3,000 tied up in a deal, that's cash flowing. And he's got over $20,000 in equity. So that's, that's awesome.

Kevin:

It's a tremendous ROI. And if you think like I've already held the deal for two years, so I've easily gotten all of my money back out of it. And so now everything is just profit.

David:

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.

Alright. So we're gonna flip the script from real estate for a second, we were talking yesterday, and Kevin's got a startup kind of coming up. And I'm just curious to hear a little bit about that.

Kevin:

Okay, so I took a course on learning how to sell on Amazon, because I just believe that the business model is really beautiful for anyone who wants to be like the digital nomad sort of thing.

So I'm going through the process of starting up a second product launch. I launched a product last year for selling sleeping pads on Amazon. And it's like a private label concept. So I reach out to companies in China through video platforms like Alibaba, and get quotes on sleeping pads, then, you know, once I, you know, run the numbers and find out what my ROI is gonna be, I reach out to them, you know, put the, put the money in into the deal, they produce them, do the freight forwarding, send it to, you know, United States, then Amazon slaps their label on it, sends it into the fulfillment center, and then my products go live. And of course, there's a lot more like back end stuff with it. But the overall concept really just makes it easy for you to like, run a business from your laptop. And all you have to do is really just kind of like manage the listing, you know, continuously optimize for, like, you know, keywords and your search results. And then watch your competitors and try to continuously, you know, outperform them.

David:

Yeah, that's awesome.

So the idea there being we talk real estate, because it's what I know what I do what I enjoy, but at the end of the day side hustling while you're in the military is awesome.

You know, we've got friends, I'm sure you do as well, that Uber or that, you know, maybe they drive for a bite squad or whatever. And the point being to be creative, right? So your income isn't usually your problem. It's your expenses. But that being said, if you increase your income, it's not going to hurt, right?

Kevin:

Yeah, the whole reason why I thought that the Amazon play would be a good move for me is, you know, being in Long Island kind of being outside of my market, not really having a strategy to continuously move forward on deals. I saw Amazon as a way to start generating sales on a product that could really help me drive in some more income to funnel towards my real estate investing.

So that was like my overall intent with it and still is.

David:

Awesome.

Everybody say,Hi, Derek. He's in the background trying not to get the camera like it's gonna mess. He doesn't realize that I don't care.

Kevin:

That's actually Matthew McConaughey.

David:

Yeah, alright, so we're rolling to some of our normal questions. And I even brought them with me. Normally, I have them on my screen. So this is the super ghetto version. Just to make sure I don't forget any.

So if anyone walked up to you asking you for advice, whether finances, real estate, whatever, life I don't care, you only had like two minutes. What would you tell him? This correlates to like 19-20 year olds that E one, E two.

Kevin:

It's so common for people to say it and you know, I've already given that plug, but I would direct them to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad just because of how much of an impact it had on my life.

The funny thing is that, when it changed my life, I became such a huge promoter of that book that I actually kept a hard copy of that book on my recruiter desk in the office. So it's kind of like a talking point. And I've had tons of people come into the office and talk to me about, you know, you know, money and finances and everything. And I always just directed that book. I said, if you want to get your mind right about money, you know, Robert Kiyosaki. He spells it out in such an elementary form that anybody can understand. And you can really read that book in about a day or two. But it'll just completely change your mindset on money and where you want to go with your life.

15:00 - 20:00
David:

Absolutely, I actually have the same thing as a paperback copy that I just passed out to Marines when they asked me questions.

Kevin:

Yeah.

David:

And then half of them read it. And the other half I say, give me my book back. But yeah, absolutely. life changing.

Alright. So I asked this question. And this is the one that I was saying, I couldn't remember last night. It's a loaded question. Let me preface by saying I understand it's not the military's job to teach you about money. But that being said, what do you wish the military or someone had taught you about real estate or finances earlier on in life?

Kevin:

Ah, I wish I liked the subject would have even been brought up to the point of understanding how to multiply money, because it's not enough just to save money. Because like, I've been saving money like crazy since I've lived in Long Island, but it's really doing nothing for me. It's a nest egg. But I know it's not, it's not the right path for you know, what guys like us are on, you know, looking for streams of income.

So, I would just wish that the subject would be brought up on like, you know, the idea of multiplying money.

David:

I agree.

I mean, the military has a really good job of talking about, like, what the Thrift Savings Plan is and your retirement, but they don't really do. They're getting a lot better about teaching like funds, setups and stuff like that. But, and I understand it's not their job to teach investing, but that, you know, we do such a good job and everything else, I wish, I wish that they we just need to tell them like hand Rich Dad, Poor Dad out of boot camp be like, read this.

Kevin:

Yeah, the problem I have with, like, the Thrift Savings Plan, and just anything in that aspect is it's all funneling you towards the idea of creating the nest egg. And that doesn't work for a lot of people. And I think more and more people are starting to realize that cash flow is you know, where you want to be, you want the stream of income that can you know, continuously, you know, pay you dividends for the duration of your life, rather than waiting to the end of your life to tap into your nest egg. It's just, it's a broken concept.

David:

Yeah. Yeah.

I agree. I put money in the TSP, but it's, it's a decent percentage. But it's a lot smaller than what I put into real estate and everything else. So yeah, I have a goal number, once I have that much in the TSP, that I'm done, and everything will go into real estate.

Kevin:

With the Thrift Savings Plan, it's like, you're like relying on what you paid into. It's not like a hard asset, or something that you can just easily transfer for the duration of your, your, your generation, your, you know, your wife, your kids, their kids or whatever, like real estate works like that. You know, with a nest egg. It's something that you're likely to burn through during your retirement and there's nothing else to really pass off, you know?

David:

True.

Yeah. Lots to think about guys, so be creative about how you're getting extra income. The more streams the better, right? They say like millionaires have like seven streams of income.

Kevin:

Yeah. don't depend on one.

David:

TSP, Military real estate, if you guys can subscribe to YouTube now, just kidding. Yeah Amazon.

So there's a lot of great ideas out there. And we don't mean like driving for Uber counts as a stream of income. I mean, it does, but it's not gonna last. It's not enough. You can buy a car and rent that car to somebody who drives for Uber. Maybe then, I don't know, there's a way

Alright. What makes the Kevin Porter method of investing unique or special?

Kevin:

Oh geez, I think I should have been like...

David:

Doesn't have to be real estate. I mean, the fact that you're doing Amazon is unique.

Kevin:

I don't know, I would say that. It's not that I'm doing anything unique. I'm trying to just do things. And I think that's, that's the big thing. Because a lot of people just get the whole analysis paralysis, and they never move forward. And I too, you know, to be completely honest, I've struggled with that myself, because I'm a very analytical person, I have to, like, know everything about everything before I can move forward.

And I realize, and I'm realizing it more more lately that it helps to have more people within your circle that can help you move forward, because they're going to understand a lot of components of, you know, either the investing side of things, or maybe your market analysis or whatever to help you move forward without like overthinking things because they're going to give you some more confidence, where you may be lacking in a certain subject or you know..

David:

Yeah, I like the fact that you are taking action but like, you're not close minded, so like even me, I got in the real estate niche, and it has taken a long time for me to look into other, you know, streams of income. Because I fell in love with real estate, which is a great niche. But if it's your only niche, you know, you're still subject two if something bad happens, for example, and I'll be telling this story here somewhat soon. I had a pretty bad real estate deal, go sell. And if that was my only asset. I would know I would be that guy on the street going bought real estate It's dumb. And so I like the fact that you're investing in different things smart.

20:00 - 25:00

Kevin:

I said, there's pros and cons to that, too. If anyone who's familiar with the book, the one thing that tells you to focus on your one thing that helps you to really make ground.

There's a lot of people nowadays, because there's so many different options, especially with the internet, that you have multiple ways to generate any sort of income. And you don't even have to wait till you're like 18 to really do so like you got kids nowadays, like making millions of dollars at 14 just being a YouTube, you know, superstar.

David:

Focus on the one thing?

Kevin:

Oh, yeah, like, just focusing on one particular path and getting really good at it. Because I'd say that one of the struggles that I have even now is that, you know, trying to learn the business side of things with Amazon and trying to learn real estate, it's kind of, you know, got me spread too thin, trying to move forward. But you'll hear some, you know, some people even like Grant Cardones, saying, like, focus on a business that has some sort of like, synergy, to like the different streams of income that you can generate.

So as you're promoting one thing, it's also helping to promote another thing that's helping to feed, you know, your overall business. Whereas if I'm working on Amazon, the only way it's really feeding my real estate is by the income that is generating. It's not like if I'm making an advertisement for this product, that it's actually helping promote something over here as well.

David:

Make sense.

Kevin:

Yeah. Nothing like what you're doing by promoting like, the education on the side of the military trying to get into real estate investing.

Your podcast in your education is also promoting the fact that you are involved in real estate, and then people are going to try to come to you and want to also connect with you on doing deals.

David:

It is starting to happen. It's kind of weird. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. And yeah, so anyway, lots of food for thought. We're not gonna tell you how to be an entrepreneur, just go out there, find something and hustle, go for it. The biggest thing.

Alright, so we already asked that. This is where I normally ask, what is the one resource and then I say, book, course website, etc, that you would recommend anybody getting started in real estate, but I'm gonna say other than Rich Dad, Poor Dad, because we've already plugged that. And so is everyone else, because it's like, the book everyone says, myself included. So.

Kevin:

Yeah, that book will always be on like a New York Times bestseller just because everybody keeps plugging it.

David:

Yeah.

Kevin:

I'd say, if you're gonna ask that question, a good resource.

David:

Yeah.

Kevin:

It's a really good resource. If you're trying to get into investing or just generating another stream of income to kind of get yourself out of your situation, maybe you want to eventually walk away from your job and do your own thing.

YouTube is becoming phenomenal as an educational resource, you can go on there and just search anything, and you're going to find tons and tons of people who are providing a lot of information on any particular subject.

So find what exactly it is that you want to do. And then just start searching those keywords in YouTube and finding like, who are the dominators in the space, we're really putting out great content, and just consume as much as you can. But with that, try to execute at the same pace that you were consuming the content because if you get into this routine of just I gotta watch every single video, and then not actually moving forward with anything that you're learning. You're gonna start forgetting what it is you learned in the first place, because you're too busy trying to learn everything.

David:

I agree. And I love YouTube. I literally like to sit like we have a TV in the bedroom.

Kevin:

Yeah.

David:

Everybody says not to have a TV in the bedroom, don't watch TV at night, bla bla bla, it hurts your sleep. So let me just say that throw this out there, that I'm in bed by 39 and never awake, very rarely awake past 10. And I'm up at four in the morning every day, and I feel well rested.

So don't watch crap at night. So we sit around every now and then there's like one TV show we watch like one night a week. But for the most part, and I have to intertwine because my wife gets mad. But I'll watch YouTube videos. So I will sit there in bed and I'll be like, how do I do x? And then so like, I watched videos on how to build a website while I was building my website that I would like so I would run into a problem during the day, write it down, find a YouTube video on that night, solve the problem, wake up the next morning and fix it.

I've had to intertwine that with comedy shows so that my wife doesn't throw the remote at me. So we do like one real video to SNL videos, but you know, so that's that's a hack. I mean, if you're gonna lay in bed and watch TV, which is terrible for you, watch something useful.

Kevin:

Yeah.

David:

You know, like my YouTube channel. No, I'm just kidding.

What uh, so we're gonna wrap this up here soon, but anything you'd like to add any parting advice or big ideas you want to talk to?

Kevin:

I don't know. That's a good one.

David:

So far. Nobody's ever talked to any big ideas. So no pressure.

Kevin:

Big Ideas.

David:

If you don't have anything that comes off the top of your head, I don't care. I don't know.

Kevin:

I should really think of that one.

25:00 - 26:39

David:

Alright, well, we can come back to that later we'll do a Kevin Porter big ideas YouTube video if we come up with one.

So where can people get a hold of you?

Kevin:

Pretty much every one of my social media channels is Kevin W Porter. You can find me on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, most of my content is geared more a little bit to things like adventure, hiking, kayaking, that sort of thing. I haven't really started building any sort of personal brand towards the real estate thing.

David:

Yeah, that’s cool though, I forgot that you're on YouTube under all that, so we need to subscribe to each other. I like hiking so it works out, he likes real estate. So it's like a mutually beneficial sub for sub.

Like all those spam comments, you see where people are like, subscribe to me and I'll subscribe back and you're like, You're like a Barbie Gigi makeup found like, why would I subscribe to you? You're not even remotely my niche. So don't be the spammy guy. Nobody likes to spammers on Instagram is all the follow, unfollow stuff anyway.

I get it. And it's a good strategy. But like focus on your niche, following somebody in a totally different niche hoping they follow you back doesn't grow your business. It just wastes everybody's time.

Kevin:

Stupid videos showing up in your email didn't care about.

David:

Or Amazon thinks you're trying to buy some product that you're not trying to buy? Yeah. It's terrible.

Alright. Well, unless you got anything else. I think that's probably it. I mean, yeah, I don't know what I was gonna do there as an exit.

So Kevin, thanks for joining us today. Let's go enjoy the 10X Growth Conference. At that, there we go. And we got Phil, whose head is cut off.