What do you do when your plan A doesn’t work out? Former wrestler Barri Griffiths’ plans A, B, and C was to be the world heavyweight champion, but when those didn’t pan out, he found himself pivoting to real estate, a move he wished he made sooner. Today, Barri joins Jen Du Plessis to talk about the rags-to-riches story of how he got introduced and fell in love with the real estate industry after his contract with WWE wasn’t renewed. He also shares how investing in real estate gave him financial independence and a quality life. If you live from paycheck to paycheck and you want more financial freedom, then this episode is for you. Join in the conversation and discover how Barri discovered the fantastic benefits of real estate. Barri is currently the host of the WWRE Podcast and the YouTube channel Wrestling with Real Estate.

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From Wrestling To Real Estate Investing With Barri Griffiths

I am delighted to have Barri Griffiths with us. Barri, welcome to the show. I’m excited to have you.

Not as excited as I am, Jen. Thank you so much for having me on the show. This is fun.

I’m delighted to have you here. I’ve been a guest on your show and I want to thank you for that as well. We’ll be talking about that too. Let me go ahead and take this opportunity to introduce you, and then we will dive right into this. Barri is the host of the YouTube channel Wrestling with Real Estate and the WWRE Podcast, which is Wrestling With Real Estate as well where he interviews people from all aspects of the real estate industry.

His goal is to educate as many people as he can on the amazing benefits of real estate. For the past decade, he’s been working in the entertainment industry. He started in the UK version of US Gladiators. He then went on to wrestle on TV with WWE as Mason Ryan where he wrestled with the likes of John Cena. He performed on pay-per-views and regularly appeared on Monday Night Raw, which must stand for something. What does raw stand for?

Monday Night Raw was one of the TV shows. It’s their flagship show that’s on every Monday night.

I see it, but I wonder if it stands for something in wrestling.

I think that it means that wrestling is raw.

He is performing in Cirque du Soleil in MGM Grand. Which Cirque du Soleil are you performing in? Which one is it?

It’s called KÀ. There’s a lot of mixed martial arts. That’s where I come in. For the readers, “This guy must be acrobatic.” No, not at all. I don’t do any acrobatics.

You are the director. You come on stage and go, “What’s going on?”

I do some choreographed fight scenes as well.

 

Let’s explore all that because I love Cirque du Soleil. I was at Bellagio in December 2020. We went there for a mastermind and Cirque du Soleil was shut down. I said, “When’s it’s going to come back?” They said, “It won’t be for a while because it’s the H2O. It’s the water version.” They can’t have people swimming together, but it was disappointing because I had been to that Cirque du Soleil a couple of times. I keep going to it because I love it so much, but I didn’t realize there was one in the MGM at all.

There are 5 or 6 shows in Vegas. There’s a bunch of different Cirque du Soleil. Here’s the Cirque du Soleil for the most part and it’s the same show, but every single show is different.

The acrobats and the talent are amazing. We’ll talk about that and then we’ll go back and talk a little bit about your past. How is it in Vegas with you not performing? Are you all still practicing? Are you still rehearsing? What’s happening with that to make sure everybody is sharp?

We haven’t done anything because it’s a tricky thing. For one, we don’t know when everyone is coming back. We still do some training and still maintain a level of fitness, but March 9, 2020, was the last show that we did. Since then, we’re not interacted or done anything together because there’s a lot that goes into it. You have to worry about the COVID and people getting sick. When will we come back? It’s going to be still a while. We are talking about this at the end of January 2021. It’s going to be a while before the first show of Cirque du Soleil comes back.

That’s what someone said to me when I was there, saying that a lot of hotels aren’t going to go full-blown or do anything until June 2021. The Palms is completely shut down. I couldn’t believe that.

The problem as well is that a lot of these places are only allowed to open that 25% capacity. Our would show, for example, need a 30% or 35% or 40%, depending on the type of people that come in and take and stay by to break even because it’s such a big show.

The number of people in the show takes up the allowed audience attendance. I didn’t think about that. It’s wonderful that you’re part of such a great organization. Tell us about you. Go back to when you were in high school or whatever you want to go back to, and how’d you get yourself into wrestling. Did you grow up saying, “I’m going to be a wrestler,” or you just dropped into it?

It’s a little crazy to think from where I came from. Here in the US, wrestling is a big thing. It’s like, “Cool. You’re a wrestler. I want to be a wrestler.” You can do that. I grew up in a tiny little town. It was like 200 people in the middle of nowhere. People say a small town is like 20,000 people. There were no stoplights. There was a fish and chip shop, grocery store, post office, dad’s business, which was like a construction/undertaking business.

He built caskets.

[bctt tweet=”There is never any point in burning bridges.” via=”no”]

That’s how it started. My great grandfather started the business making wheels for the horse and carriages, but because they were woodworkers, it made sense as well that they made the coffins because they were made out of wood back then. This was in 1920. It’s a lot different. Because they do woodwork as well, it made sense that they made the coffins and because they made the coffins, it made sense that they were the undertakers. My granddad and dad were the undertakers. I worked in the undertaking business for a few years as well before coming over here. I always joke to people about there’s a wrestler called The Undertaker, but I was the undertaker.

I worked for my dad’s business and grew up in this small town. My goal was to be a soccer player growing up. I was stuck on that, but that never came to fruition. I wasn’t quite good enough. I love training, going to the gym, working out and eating healthy. I loved that lifestyle. I was living it. I was dedicated to it without any goal. I enjoyed it. After a while, I created quite a physique for myself of quite a good look and I was getting attention in a lot of places I went. I was like, “What can I do with this?” I’ve created something. I’m working hard for something. I’m training like a pro to some extent. I was in the gym on a Saturday night when everyone else is down at the pub.

You were already there. You had the mindset.

I have to do something with it. I flipped it on TV one day and wrestling came on. I wasn’t a wrestling fan growing up. It wasn’t on TV. We have four TV channels. We are 200 people and four TV channels. Can you imagine the boredom as a kid that was? There wasn’t much going on. There wasn’t much TV. Wrestling was unknown. I saw these guys on TV and they looked like me and I had been playing sports my whole life, but it was a failure. I was like, “I think I can do that.” Through luck, Law of Attraction and being open and all that stuff. Two months later, a wrestling show came to my town.

I went into that show with the purpose of trying to meet the promoter, not having any idea what could come of it, but being open and having that idea of what I wanted to do. I met the promoter, headed off with him straight away. He was a longstanding wrestling promoter in Wales. He’s been doing it for many years. We connected. He became a mentor for me, I wouldn’t be here without that man. He was an amazing man. He set me off on that trajectory, but it’s interesting to see how many other wrestling shows came to my town and I never paid any attention and never went. I never thought about it.

You’re talking to many people more about the Law of Attraction and it sometimes can sound woo-woo-ish. Someone said that to me, but it’s simply being open and wanting stuff to happen and looking for it. That’s what the Law of Attraction means to me. I did that. I wrestled in the UK and through somewhat luck, being in the right place at the right time and putting myself in there, I was down in London after I filming something else and WWE were in London. One of my friends was there and saying, “Why didn’t you come over here and meet the people here?” I went over, talked to them and they signed me up there. I then moved to Florida six months later and started this great journey. There’s a lot of crazy stuff that happened like that. It’s somewhat luck, somewhat me putting myself in that position, somewhat looking for it, somewhat attracting it. I don’t know. It’s crazy to me.

I don’t ever think it’s luck. I think it’s having the universe to be open. I do it is that because having the best luck is being in the right place at the right time and you have to take the action to get there in order to let luck happen. That’s cool. You came over to the US. You’re doing WWE. I watch it because I know someone important passed away in that space and it was sad to watch that because he seemed like a great guy. You’re doing all of that, what happened that you got out of it and how did you find yourself in Cirque du Soleil or was there a gap in-between time that found you into Cirque du Soleil and we’ll talk about what you do.

 

I came over in 2010. I went to the training school. I was there for a year and I made my debut on TV. I did some pay-per-view, traveled the world. I wrestled on the Monday Night Raw with John Cena and a lot of cool stuff. In 2014, they didn’t renew my contract. I didn’t see it coming at all. They completely blindsided me. Now here I am, I’m almost 33 at the time. I’m a wrestler. That’s what I identified as. It was a big blow because the dream had come to an end and maybe we could have come back around, but it’s unlikely at that point. I was identified as a wrestler. That’s why people back home call me Barri the wrestler.

That’s your success.

That’s my identity. That was a tough time because then I had to figure things out, “What am I going to do from here?” I’m trying to work things out. There’s a great opportunity that came away through Cirque du Soleil. It came through WWE because Cirque du Soleil was looking for a wrestler-type person to fill a role in this show and in WWE. I left on good terms with them. A lesson for everyone, there is no point in ever-burning any bridges. I left there on great terms with them and they call me up. It was 6 or 9 months later, and they said, “We’ve got a job opportunity for you.” I was thinking, “Maybe I’m going to get my job back with WWE.”

“I better workout. I better go pump up when I go see them.”

Instead, they said Cirque du Soleil is looking for one. I didn’t know too much about Cirque du Soleil at that time. I knew they put on great spectacle shows, but I didn’t understand what it was. Talking about timing and things like that, I was over in the UK when they were supposed to do the initial audition for the show. I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I’m going to be in the UK doing the additions.” I don’t think they moved it for me, but they did move it. I think that was luck. They moved it a month forward and I could make it. I had to cut some dates, but I left came home early. I grabbed my stuff and the next morning I flew to Vegas and did the audition. There were three other wrestlers doing it. I knew the three other guys. I stand up for the audition and I’m standing waiting for them to come to get me. I’m out in the MGM Casino.

I see one of my friends and he’s walking around and he looked a little bit like a headless chicken trying to find something. I’m like, “How are you doing? What are you doing here?” “I’m here for this thing.” “Are you here for the?” I was going to say that and one of the other friends walked in, and then we all clicked like, “We’re all here for the same thing.” It’s a fun audition. Usually, additions can be tense and nerve-wracking, but it was fun because we joked around with each other. We did our thing. I left thinking, “If I could get this gig, it would be great, but if not, I give it a good shot. At least I had fun.”

Did you feel competition because you come from a competitive background? My way of doing things like that, If I see someone, they’re like, “What are you doing here?” They’re going to be here too. Now I start second-guessing myself and I start thinking, “How do I be better than them?” I start twisting myself all up and knots. Did you do that? It sounds like you didn’t. You had fun.

It wasn’t too bad. I don’t think any of us did. We all wanted the role. I don’t know if any of us fully understood what it was even at that time, even though we watched the show. We met and then we watched that show that night. The next day we did more of the audition. We fully understand what it was to work for the show. There was competition. We are doing some physical competition stuff like they were testing agility. It’s athletes competing against each other, but it wasn’t too bad. I remember feeling relaxed. I wanted the gig. I was nervous.

It made you better. Don’t you think? You get a little loose because you know you’re with some friends and it’s just not you sitting there getting all tense. It made you shine.

They called me up two weeks later and I got the gig. Two months later, I packed all my stuff from Tampa. I sold everything and put some stuff in storage. I had one suitcase and flew to Vegas, which was an adventure because it brought me back to when I moved over in 2010, I didn’t know a single person over here in the US. I had two bags, two suitcases, and some money in my pocket. Now I had my wife coming to Vegas with me, so it was a little different, but it reminds me of when I was starting all over again in some ways. It was exciting seeing the same as the first time around.

[bctt tweet=”When you have that knowledge and understanding of real estate, you can go out and create whatever you want from.” via=”no”]

I’m looking forward to seeing you on stage at some point. I have a speaking gig in Vegas at the end of August 2021. I’m hoping that you guys will be live and open. I can get a ticket and see you. I think it’ll be good. Let’s talk about real estate. How did this all fit into this? Was it part of the great recession that you said, “This is cool,” and you were already doing it before you came to Vegas? Tell us about how you transitioned into what you’re doing now in real estate?

I wish that was a story. I would probably be a multimillionaire if that was the case. I moved over in 2010, so I missed those deals. Even in 2010, I could have bought some great deals in Florida, but I wasn’t looking at real estate at that time. I don’t have any kind of investment. I’ve always been somewhat financially savvy in terms of saving. I never liked spending crazy. I spend it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not cheeky, but I’ve always looked after my money a little bit. That helped me with WWE because I always saved my money and I was always trying to be smart of it. I bought a few stupid things.

I was always saving money and trying to cut costs. I had that, but I wasn’t paying attention to any kind of investments. The only investment I’d done before, I had some money sitting in the bank with Chase and they called me in and they said, “We have investment advisors. If you want to invest with us.” I invested $60,000 in them in six months’ time. It went up to $63,000. It was in April of 2014 that WWE didn’t renew my contract. In January of 2014, I bought a very expensive first house.

Because you’re rising, you got everything.

I’m going to be the world heavyweight champion. Plan A was to be the world heavyweight champion. Plan B was to be the world heavyweight champion and my plan C was to be the world heavyweight champion.

I remember when we were talking the first time you had said that. There was no other plan. That was your major focus.

You have to have that focus. I think you can do other things. It doesn’t mean that you need to be swinging hammers on doing flips, but you can invest possibly in other people’s deals, still have that investment and have your money growing and working for you rather than sitting in a bank or spending it. I bought this house as pure emotion. I love the house, where it was, the color of the walls, the layout, the kitchen. Many stuff that doesn’t add value to the home. It’s not an investment. It’s an emotional buy.

I bought it for $135,000 in January and my mortgage was $2,550. It was fine. I could afford that. I was making six figures at that time. It wasn’t an issue. I wasn’t thinking about an investment, how much does this have, or anything like that. In April of 2014, when they didn’t renew my contract, all of a sudden, that was an extra weight on my show because now, I was identified with wrestling. I didn’t have too many other skills that I can go and do something else. Wrestling isn’t transferable to too much stuff on the walls.

A lot of those jobs, even stuff that you can do maybe bouncing isn’t high-paying jobs. It’s going to be hard to afford a $2,550 a month mortgage payment. I had to figure it out. As I said, I love this house. It’s been an emotional buy. I couldn’t bring myself to sell it because I’d lost my dream, essentially. It would have been too much for me. It was a tough time in my life. At least if I could keep a hold of that house, it could feel like I’ve achieved something, done something, and I have something. I found the right answer. I went down the rabbit hole of how to find a renter, house screen a tenant. That started the ball rolling and I found a tenant. Unfortunately, I had to be negative cashflow about $200 a month, but I was happy to give it.

It’s because you had the equity growing.

I was keeping ahold of the house and I was keeping the house that I love. I thought, “In 4 or 5 years when maybe I’m back on my feet, I can move back into this house.” That was part of it as well. Through that, I got to BiggerPockets, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and got open to the world of real estate investing. It was crazy to me once I flipped that switch and realized what is possible? What is out there? You don’t realize. I don’t think most people just because of the way 99.9% of us live our lives and the way we think. You don’t realize about real estate investing. You know about it, but you think it’s rich people who have millions of dollars throwing money at real estate. That’s how it works. When in reality, it’s not the case at all. I started that and fell in love with real estate investing. From a financial standpoint, I am from the life that it can create for you.

How many properties did you end up buying when you were in Florida or did it not start until you got to Vegas, where you started saying, “Now, I’m going to start investing more seriously?”

It took me again to Vegas at the end of 2015 to start investing. I was looking, reading and paying attention. I was self-employed as an entertainer.

How do get a loan?

I didn’t understand the creative ways that are to get financing and all this other stuff that you could do outside of that at that time. Plus, I was focused on trying to make my career work as a wrestler at the time. I was trying to travel to Japan and UK. I was thinking about real estate investing, but it wasn’t top of mind. It wasn’t until I moved to Vegas where I had a consistent job. It was a W-2 job. That was going to help with getting a loan. I had some stability where I was working five days a week. I knew my paycheck was coming in every two weeks and then you’ll focus on something else because this job and I was focused on Cirque du Soleil, don’t get me wrong. I was working hard at that, but I had some time to focus on some other stuff. I rented when I first went to Vegas. I should have bought it. It’s easy to look back. I bought an investment property which was a townhome. It was my first real investment.

Did you do traditional financing, you just went down and bought a place for you to live it, or did you buy it as an investment property?

It was an investment property at 20% down through the MLS. I use a realtor, but it was a good property. It was $44,173. It was a foreclosure. I put about $10,000 into it and then rent it out for about $1,300. I don’t know how savvy people are, but you always hear about the 1% rule. BiggerPockets is coming down.

BiggerPockets is a great podcast. That’s a podcast all about getting bigger pockets. It covers everything, not just real estate.

They talk about the 1% rule. For people who don’t know, it’s that essentially the rent sitting 1% of the purchase price. If you’re buying a house for $100,000, you want the monthly rent to be about $1,000. Usually, it works out that then you’ll cash on. It’s a pretty solid deal. This deal didn’t meet that book. With the investing in Vegas, for one, it was a townhome so I had no landscaping to worry about. There was a small HOA fee, but it was only $95 a month. That wasn’t too bad. In Vegas, we have no state income tax as well. I cashflowed about $300 or $400 a month on that property. That was a good start. It wasn’t a home run, but it was a solid deal for my first one. From there, I bought a whole house for us to live in, but it was going to be live and flipped. The idea was to live in it.

We’ve been living in it for a year and then rent it out because we get the owner-occupied finance with that. I got 10% down on that one and it was a $230,000 purchase or we had to put $23,000 down on that property. On that one, I also put this calculation. I have to figure out, “How much my rent is? How much I’m going to cost?” Similar to the first one, but I was going to live in and fix it up. To backtrack, as I was learning about real estate investing, I realized I needed to reverse engineer what I wanted from my life and how much money? That number one. What was my financial freedom number? It was $100,000.

 

From all of these properties.

I figured and I was doing the Math, I think I needed 40 properties to get to that point. It’s $250 cashflow per door. That’s what I was thinking. I wasn’t aware of all this creative financing.

“I have to save 20% or I have to move every year.”

I was thinking both in a ten-year horizon. I have my three properties with 20% down, one with owner financing for the next ten years to get to that goal of 40 properties. The average median home price in Vegas was about $250,000 at that time. I’m thinking, “I need $50,000 support, 20% down. How am I going to save all that?” I didn’t realize that I’m not going to get that. That’s impossible. I’m not making anywhere near that money to get there. Through networking at meet people, I met someone and they introduced me to the idea of multifamily. They are like, “You want to get to 40 doors. You want to get to 40 properties.”

My mind was blown. Forty units were massive to me at the time. I was buying a 400 unit. It’s crazy and unattainable to be at that point. I was like, “That’s for the billionaires.” He laughs and he’s like, “No. It’s regular people like you and me. Forty might sound a lot to you, but it isn’t. It’s considered small multifamily.” He dived into that. That idea resonated with me and I dove into a podcast and studied reading about it as well. Not only can you get there sooner, but you also have much more scalability. You can get there much quicker. Instead of ten years, maybe I can get there in two years. That blew my mind. I love the way multifamily works. For one, if you have 40 units as opposed to one, if one person goes out there, you still have 39 tenants. If you have a single-family home, one long lease, you’re 100% vacant.

You’re obligated for a couple thousand a month, depending on the deal.

I was to buy 40 single-family homes. If we take the capital, that could be similar but to buy one property, how many properties do you have to look at? Analyze 10 or 20 maybe? Make offers on 10 to get 1 and then you have to do the inspection on that one, you have to go through to get the financing on that one. You have to find a property manager for that one. You have all these things that you have to do. If you buy one property, you also do it 40 times, while with the one property, you only have to do it once. I’m looking at 10, 20, 30 properties to find one and you get there so much quicker.

I also like the aspect of a multifamily and commercial. That’s valued on the income what we call NOI, the Net Operating Income. It’s the income minus the expenses that give you the net operating income and it’s valued for that. You’re in control of that. If you’re able to increase rents, lower expenses, you’re increasing the value of the property, regardless of what’s going on around. It becomes somewhat of an Island with that and I liked that concept. That’s why I fell in love with multifamily and I dived in.

I say this a lot when I’m coaching people too and I think this resonates in this. In fact, when you and I first spoke, I said, “You’re playing monopoly. You’re trading your houses like the hotels.” It’s the decision to work with 100 pennies or 4 quarters in everything that we do. We can work with a whole bunch of people superficially, in relationships, in business as well or we could work with four quarters. We work with four people, we work hard with them and they become people that we can’t live without. It’s the same with these types of properties. It is a lot of work to have 40 houses, as opposed to having a couple of multifamilies. When did you buy your first multifamily and did you buy it by yourself or did you have a partner?

What happened was I fell in love with real estate. I started looking in Vegas to buy and this was at the end of 2018. The 2018 prices were high, I thought at that time. Looking back, they weren’t high compared to where they are now. I started looking at other markets and I ended up picking Cincinnati as a market because I like the Midwest and the stability. If you control the NOI, you can control the value. If the market is at least steady, I can do my thing and increase rents, lower expenses and increase the value of the property. If I’m in Vegas and it’s a boom or bust sound a little bit, it’s very cyclical. I didn’t like the idea of being at the mercy of the markets. I could do a great job with the property, buy it right, manage it right, do all these things and increase the NOI. If the market drops, there’s nothing I can do about that. I want with a lot more stability. I picked Cincinnati, Ohio for a lot of reasons.

It’s stable and don’t you also think too? Even when you’re buying single-family, we buy single-families for cashflow or appreciation. If you can get both, that’s wonderful, but you have to make the decision that you’re going in for one or the other. That’s what’s so great about that type of area. My son invests a lot in Pennsylvania for that very same reason. The values don’t go up and down and all around like they do in Vegas and other areas, but the rents are steady and that’s what’s important.

It’s a renter type of setting. There are a lot of people that live there. I think it’s 70% of people. There was also a lot of the smaller multifamily stuff that I was looking for.

Not the big stuff. Only the little 2 or 4 or 5 units or something like that.

There were 20 or 30 units.

It’s a way to jump in with both feet.

That’s what I was looking to buy. I ended up buying six units, which was much more. I was telling the broker, “I only want fifteen-plus units.” He sent me a six-unit one day. He was like, “I know you are looking for fifteen plus units, but this is a great deal.” This is a great area. It’s up and coming. This landlord has taken care of the place. You might have to spend $10,000 or $15,000 per unit, but once it’s fixed up, there’s a property down the street that’s selling for $500,000 and they were asking $300,000 for this one.

[bctt tweet=”In the world of technology, real estate is not going anywhere.” via=”no”]

What kind of steal did you get on a six-unit in Cincinnati?

I paid $300,000 for it. In a lot of areas in Cincinnati, you can get stuff for $30,000 or $35,000 a unit. That was not a great area, but you can get low-priced stuff. This was in a gray area. It was tree-lined streets, on the river. You have to drive ten minutes from Downtown, Cincinnati and this area as well was changing for the better. A lot of young professionals coming there, coffee shops, breweries and that type of stuff. That was all over the place. I got it for that.

I didn’t have to do too much analyzing because I knew that this other property that was very similar down the street was selling for $500,000. I knew the $300,000 purchase price, I’m not going to put in more than $100,000 into it probably. Right. I’m all-in for $400,000 and I can sell it for $500,000. That was the quick analysis that I did on it. I dove into numbers a little bit more, but I made the offer and we got accepted at list price. With started analyzing the NOI and we are like, “There’s a lot of room for rent.” Rents were above average for the six units. We are about $525.

That’s a good return because half of the units make the payment. You went in by yourself, did you do traditional financing or you do some creative stuff to get in there to be able to have the money, to be able to do the improvements?

I wish I would’ve done something a little bit different, but I did traditional. I put 20% down. I did it through US Bank. It was a little bit challenging finding financing because there are a few things. Even though it’s only six units, it’s considered commercial.

It’s not traditional financing. It goes into the multifamily world.

It can be a little bit more challenging. There’s a little bit more that they lookout in terms of that. Ideally, they want you to have a track record. A lot of times they want you to be where that property is. I was in Vegas and this property is Cincinnati. It’s on the other side of the country. I was having challenges talking to local banks in Cincinnati because those were the ideal candidates for this type of loan, but they wanted you to either live there or to own property in that area. I didn’t have either. I came across US Bank. They have what they call a footprint. You either live there or have a property there, but because they have US Bank here in Las Vegas, if I was to open an account with them here in Vegas, that essentially counted as me having in the footprints in Cincinnati. That’s how we got around. I got 20% down. I wish I could have gotten a loan-to-cost. It would have included the renovation.

Purchase and remodel or something like that.

I’m going to end up putting $100,000 in my own money. If I could have leveraged that, I only put in 25%.

It would have taken so long or you wouldn’t have had to leverage other things in your life in order to be able to do that.

I would have the freedom to use that money for other stuff as well. I think that property is now worth closer to $650,000 to $700,000 maybe because I’ve been able to push rents. Initially, I thought I would get $800 for the one bed and $1,000 for the two, but I’m getting $1,250, $1,300 for the two, $950 for the one.

That’s what happens. Rents have gone up and they’ll go up even further now with many people being out, not being able to keep their homes. There’s going to be a demand for rent in that market too. Because even though rates are great and they’re very low, there are people who still can’t qualify for them. How many multifamilies do you own now?

I’m still at six. I bought that in January of 2020.

That’s the one property that you own.

I sold everything because I wanted it to be in multifamily. I thought it would be a lot further along, but COVID slowed everything down and there were few other things that got in the way, but I’m looking at twenty units in Cincinnati.

I know you’re working on a couple of deals now too and that’s good that you’re continuing to go forward. It is one of those things where people that are in the industry of real estate and mortgage that I find don’t even buy their own properties. It’s wonderful that you took that step in moving in to do that. It’s a Rich Dad Poor Dad story. It’s like rags to riches. You and I both have been in Rich Dad Poor Dad Training. We both know the whole process. I shouldn’t say rags to riches, but more down and out and, “What do I do?” Making that shift and that pivot to say, “Let me look at something new, go out of my way. I can’t identify with what I was from a success perspective anymore. Now, what do I do with myself?”

Taking those actions is super powerful. Many people can get blocked down by getting punched many times and I love that you have said, “I’m going to make a difference in people’s lives by buying these types of properties, so they have a home to live in. I’m going to take care of my family.” That’s what I was dealt with. Those opportunities will continue to come your way. I’m positive of it because you’re so open to having it.

I’m surprised how many people in the real estate industry don’t invest. People that walk in the lending industry like brokers and agents. They have an unfair advantage over everyone. They’re on the job every day. They understand everything that goes around in it. I’m sure they have connections, access to more deals and stuff that comes your way. I’m surprised that more people don’t invest in them. Going back to my story, the reason I’m surprised is that I wish more people would is because the first time around, I talked about when WWE didn’t renew my contract. The world fell apart for me like that, because I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I had no plan B, I had nothing lined up. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Fast forward to March 9th of 2020 when the world fell apart again due to COVID and Cirque du Soleil said, “We’re not doing shows.” Here we go again. It was a hugely contrasting feeling for me. My message to a lot of people is to have a plan B because that second time round to me, I had real estate and I didn’t have a ton of real estate. I had some investments. I had six units and I had a few things here and there going on with other people as well at the time. When Cirque du Soleil said, “We are closing down and who knows when we are starting again,” I was relaxed. I didn’t have that panic or that stress. I said, “I’ll go home.”

“Now I can focus my efforts in this arena.” It’s cool at that time to be more creative, to be able to pull people in.

I had that income coming in that wasn’t quite enough to cover my expenses, but it was close. More than anything, I had that knowledge and that understanding of real estate that I can go out and create whatever I want from here. Having that, it’s two things to me. One, if you can create that passive income, great. It can supplement your lifestyle and tough times if that comes up but also having that knowledge of real estate. In the world of technology, real estate is not going anywhere. If you have that knowledge and that understanding of real estate, that you can go after it. It doesn’t matter what happens. You have that knowledge. That’s always there. If I was asked to start from scratch tomorrow, I never want that to happen.

You have the knowledge to duplicate.

I would be fine. I know I could hustle, go after real estate, make stuff happen and do whatever it takes with real estate. Real estate is unbelievably flexible. That’s why I wish more people would be open to investing in real estate and going down that path.

Anybody who is ultimately successful like Robert Kiyosaki, Warren Buffett and Kevin Harrington, when you look at those kinds of people, it’s like, “Why is everything they touch turn to gold?” It’s because they learn the system. They learn how to apply the same resources, tools, experience and knowledge to any form of their life. That’s exactly what you’re saying is when life happens, just be prepared for something to help you. Barri, it’s been fantastic talking to you again. I’m excited to know you and I’m excited also for you to be on one of my stages coming up as soon as we get born-free.

Hopefully, I’ll have an event in Vegas, so it’ll be easy for you to hop over and share your story with the people that I’m coaching and teaching. I look forward to a really long relationship with you and I can’t wait to meet your wife and your baby. I love your dog. I want to meet your dog, but make sure you bring your child and your wife too. I’m excited to have you as part of my world and my life. I wish you all the best as you continue to go forward. I’m here for you in any way that I can help you. I’m here to help. Thank you so much for being a guest on my show. It was an absolute pleasure.

Thank you. I’m happy that we connected and we got to talk and continue this relationship and get to know each other.

Best wishes to you and your family and to the success that you have. Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence and giving us some tidbits and some knowledge in life in how we can continue to move forward personally and professionally.

Thank you so much. The pleasure is all mine.

 

 Important Link

• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• WWRE Podcast
• https://www.YouTube.com/channel/UCoZIanxPyOhKn3vTZsNI4WA
• https://www.Facebook.com/BarriWWRE
• https://www.WrestlingWithRealEstate.com/

 

About Barri Griffiths