How to Build Real Estate Wealth Without Debt | Creative Financing & Wholesaling with Roger Ketchum

Roger Ketchum (00:00)

Well, listen, first of all, deals aren’t found deals are created. I give them an example. We had a lady selling a house.

She was asking 125 and was valued at 125. At first glance, it does not look like a deal. But as you begin to create the deal, we made over $40,000 on a three year hold on an asset she was asking 125 and it was valued at 125.

Dylan Silver (01:54)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a real estate investor and educator out of the Louisiana area. Please welcome Roger Ketchum. Roger, welcome to the show.

Roger Ketchum (02:02)

you

Hey gentlemen, it’s my pleasure, thank you.

Dylan Silver (02:11)

I always like to start off at the top, Roger, by asking guests how they got into real estate.

Roger Ketchum (02:19)

Yeah, you bet. Well, mine dates all the way back to 2002. At the time, my wife and I and our three children were living in East Texas. I had a paper route for the Longview News Journal, throwing those papers from 3am to 6am every morning. Then I went to my job from seven to five. I’d get home at 530 have to go to bed at eight. I had to get up at two to be at the paper dock at 230 to throw the papers from three to six but

Dylan Silver (02:40)

Whoa.

Roger Ketchum (02:44)

You know, I was doing what I had to do to provide for my family and we wanted our wife to be a stay at home mom. So I was working two jobs, 15, 15 and a half hours a day. It was tough, know, but as a man and as a provider, that’s just what you do. Well, one Saturday morning, I caught an infomercial on TV and I bought these six cassettes for $69 and listened to these cassettes for the next week in my truck on my paper route. Well, it was just a teaser to get me to buy the big system.

The big system is $1,200, which I do not have. So I put it on the credit card. Well, the system came in, now it’s on CDs. I had to spend another $159 and get a CD player to put in my truck. So I’m really going into the bed. thinking, man, this stuff better work. But you know, I was just, so I listened to these three modules three times over the next 30 days. And I discovered something about myself I never knew. I always knew I was capable of so much more.

But I discovered that I had this entrepreneurial spirit that I never knew existed. And I was just naive enough to go out and do exactly what this ⁓ teacher, lecturer told me to do. And before you know it, I had a deal. I had a second deal. I had a third deal. And then I just began to continue to accumulate assets. As I made money, I would invest more money into my education and got better at what I did and then built a company. And now almost 25 years in the industry.

I’m teaching, I’m doing my own deals and teaching across the country. So it’s just been an honor and a blessing and ⁓ yeah, started from nothing.

Dylan Silver (04:18)

I want to ask you, and this is a question that I ask guests often who got into real estate while hustling and really doing what they could to put food on the table. What was your first couple of deals like? For instance, that first deal. Do you remember that first deal?

Roger Ketchum (04:35)

Yeah, of course, you who can not remember their first deal So yeah, it was an option. It was more like a wholesale today, but not really it was an option back then I found a property I was scouring the newspaper back when newsprint was you know More popular and I found a house that had been sitting on the market for a couple of months went and talked to the seller She was actually what she was asking 125. She just needed 109 So I put it under option for 109 thinking I could sell it for a little bit more

So I began to advertise the property myself, holding an option on the property. And I advertised zero down, zero closing. Because back then, back in the early 2000s, the seller could buy a grant for the buyer for their down payment. And then you can contribute a part of the deal to their closing costs. So I was able to attract the seller moving in town, zero down, zero closing. I sold the house to them for 125.

I bought them a grant, I paid their closing costs, I paid the seller, the actual owner of the property, 109. And by the time everything shook out, I made about $8,800 and didn’t have a dollar in the deal. And that was about two months after I had quit. I had already quit my paper route and my full-time job. So I scrambled around and paid my bills for the last 60 days. Matter of fact, we closed that on Monday, December the 23rd of 2002.

Dylan Silver (06:32)

What?

Thank

Roger Ketchum (06:47)

So I was able to pay my bills from the month before. We had just enough money left over to go buy Christmas for our children on Christmas Eve and had a nice Christmas. And then the first quarter of 2003, I did three or four deals in my first fix and flip that made me about $36,000. And of course, by then I was hooked. I was a complete addict. And so yeah, just desire.

Dylan Silver (06:48)

Well.

I want

to ask you about the creative space. You mentioned getting hooked and you mentioned, you know, really coming together at the end of the year and then ⁓ doing three to four deals in the first quarter the next year. The creative space is interesting because it’s constantly evolving, right? But back then there was information out there but not

the volume of information that there is out there today. That deal that you mentioned was particularly creative. was ⁓ combining elements of multiple different deal structures together. I’m imagining in the course that you were a part of at that point in time that you had mentors helping you along the way here, but where was the inspiration to be involved in all of these creative deals at that point in time?

Roger Ketchum (08:00)

Well, you know, it’s just it’s plain and simple desire. You know, I had a desire for something better for my family and for myself than working two jobs. And as you know, desire is the first fruit of all action. The starting point of all achievement is desire. We don’t get what we want, we get what we desire. So I desire something more. So when I received in these three modules, again, they were all CDs, another $159, you get a CD player, put my truck and I

The guy that wrote the material was Ron LeGrand out of Jacksonville, Florida. He wasn’t really a personal mentor. I just had to learn the information myself and implement it the best I understood. But I went to title companies with my hat in my hand, say, hey, this is what I’m looking to do. Can you help me do this? And I was able to find these professional service providers that were willing to help me starting out to do what I was able to do. See, I was able to put the contract together with the help of a title company.

attract a buyer through marketing, newspaper, newsprint, signage, things like that. Got the buyer in, put him in touch with the mortgage broker who I had found a mortgage broker just by asking the title company who handles mortgages and just assembled the pieces myself. Yeah, just out of desire to succeed.

Dylan Silver (09:12)

Yeah.

That you know I come from the distressed real estate background the wholesale background and hearing you talk about these deals puts a smile on my face because When people think about wholesale today, they think about all well someone’s making a spread You know that they have a property in their contract and then they’re selling it for more and you know, where’s the value there? You’re talking about, you know finding

mortgage brokers. You’re talking about having to reach out to title companies and say, well, you do this type of deal. You’re having to find the seller and find the buyer and then make sure that everybody comes together and they may be unfamiliar with the process. So then you’re having to educate them. This is not like some thing where you, you know, you go knock one door, you get a contract, you go find somebody, they buy it. And then you’re like, okay, this is great. Here’s the day of closing and everyone shows up.

There’s so many moving pieces to this and you did it without really having your hand held. You were pretty much on your own.

Roger Ketchum (10:47)

Yeah, completely on my own. But again, I was driven by desire. You know, when you have a wife and three children at home, you know, and you’ve already quit both jobs, you’re going to find a way to win, you’re going to find a way to succeed. And so all I knew to do was just be very humble with my hat in my hand to go to these professional service providers and tell them what I was learning to try to do and ask them if they would help me. And I had people come alongside me. And so we have an amazing professional team now that helps us and our clients do what we do.

Dylan Silver (11:17)

I want to ask you about pivots that you’ve made in your business as an investor. One of the big ones that everyone had to navigate was the real estate crash 2007, 2008, 2009. How was your business affected and what pivots did you make to see your way through that?

Roger Ketchum (11:37)

Well, you know, really, it was just it was just the goodness of God because in 2007, I sold my real estate assets to a partner because I wanted to pursue commercial real estate. You know, typically after you’ve been in real estate, single family homes for a while, the next evolution is either commercial or beginning to teach. Well, we’ve now done both but I was wanting to learn commercial real estate and had invested some money in my education. So at that time, I had just sold all my residential assets.

and I held about $6.7 million in commercial assets. I learned from a gentleman by the name of Scott Schidl out of Cleveland, Ohio. And so I held zero single-family properties when the crash happened. So shortly after that, think maybe in 2000, between 2012 and 2016, I began to get back into single-family. So I really wasn’t, I wasn’t affected at all by the crash because I did not hold any single-family assets at that time.

Dylan Silver (12:38)

During that stretch of years, 2007 to when it was coming out of that 2012 to 2015 time frame, how were you staying afloat? Were you investing in commercial deals? Were you heavy on education? What was your business like at that point?

Roger Ketchum (12:54)

At that time, we had put together several commercial deals. Again, the total value, the total asset value of those five or six deals was about 6.7 million. And they were generating a little over $400,000 net income a year. So it was all commercial. didn’t even I hadn’t even had the idea at this point of doing anything on the coaching. I didn’t branch into coaching. The idea sparked in my head in 2016. And then wrote a manual and that gets some information and then launched

education model in 2019. But to answer your question, I was in commercial real estate at that time.

Dylan Silver (13:31)

You know, I think it’s interesting ⁓ for myself as someone who’s into space, but also to our audience hearing about the pivots that people make, it allows people to identify with, okay, well, I’m working a job or I’m working two jobs. I’ve got a family I’m interested in getting into real estate, but then also too is now the right time. People are talking about interest rates. They’re talking, I don’t know, fix and flip is working right now. You hear all these different things. I always like to ask about people’s pivots that they’ve made. So thank you for sharing that. I do want to

Roger Ketchum (14:00)

Yeah,

you bet.

Dylan Silver (14:01)

ask you

about ⁓ getting into the education space and where the drive for that came about. Did you have a lot of people coming up to you saying, I’d really like to get involved? And there was kind of a need there.

Roger Ketchum (14:18)

Yeah, exactly. You know, I had joined several real estate investment clubs and societies just to meet people in the network. And I had a high degree of success just because of my drive and my desire. And so people will ask me, how did you do this? How did you raise private capital? How do you find deals? And I began to tell them I said,

Well, listen, first of all, deals aren’t found deals are created. I give them an example. We had a lady selling a house.

She was asking 125 and was valued at 125. At first glance, it does not look like a deal. But as you begin to create the deal, we made over $40,000 on a three year hold on an asset she was asking 125 and it was valued at 125.

But to get back to your original question, yeah, people were asking me, how do you do this? I flew to Phoenix one time for a meeting and I had an eight hour layover in the afternoon to the morning when I flew out.

Dylan Silver (15:47)

Right.

Roger Ketchum (15:53)

So I sat down on my computer and I just typed out a manual, everything that I knew. And I thought, you know, this works anywhere there’s houses, which is absolutely everywhere. I wonder how many more people would like to be able to do this. You know, people are interested in real estate, but they’re stuck on start, you know? And so we just kind of help them get off start and get moving.

Dylan Silver (16:13)

You know, I look at it as you need the self-belief, but then you also need the roadmap and you need the ability for when something really challenging comes up to have someone who’s been there. I remember my first couple deals as a wholesaler and my goodness, I am grateful that I had someone to talk to because it was challenging so many steps of the way, whether it was connecting the sellers together in many of the cases where there might be split interest.

Or when you’re finding, you know, motivated buyers as well and getting folks to show up. And there was so many different hurdles that I had to overcome. And you’ve done it in residential. You’ve done it in commercial. I’m curious to get your feedback when it comes to coaching in both of those unique spaces. Do you feel like someone who is interested in the residential space versus the commercial space is a distinctly different mindset? Or do you think it’s

maybe the same type of individual, but just at a different stage in their journey.

Roger Ketchum (17:19)

Yeah, you know, it’s everything is mindset. You know, everything has to do if you believe it, you can achieve it. And I’m a big student of the mind, the conscious and the subconscious mind. But yeah, there’s a great difference. And I learned this the hard way. There’s a great difference between residential real estate vocabulary and commercial real estate vocabulary. With my success in residential, I thought I’d be able to just to jump into commercial and never miss a beat. But it’s a whole different vocabulary, a whole different way of

Dylan Silver (17:40)

Yeah.

Roger Ketchum (17:49)

assessing properties. know, residential property is based on square footage, location, comps and things like that. Commercial property is not based on the intrinsic value is based on the income it produces. So it’s an income approach. So yeah, two completely different sets of rules. But again, I was driven, I was driven to learn it. ⁓ And it was it was a pretty difficult transition. But once and I continue to invest in myself continue to go to these ⁓ seminars.

until I learned it and before long I was just not even up to do exactly what the commercial estate mentors said do and I was able to start putting deals together.

Dylan Silver (18:29)

We are coming up on time here, Roger. I do want to ask you, where can folks go if they may be interested in reaching out to you for real estate education, or maybe they have a deal and they’d like your feedback on it? How can folks get in contact with you?

Roger Ketchum (18:44)

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for allowing me to do this. But first of all, I do not teach commercial I don’t do not know that model well enough to where I feel like I can confidently teach it. But on the residential, yeah, we just launched the common man plan real estate investments for the common man. And we’re at common man plan.net. And like the screen behind me, we teach people how to create wealth in real estate without creating debt through creative real estate investing strategies. And our model is already sweeping the nation.

Because we literally are teaching people to create wealth and real estate without creating debt through the common man plan dot net.

Dylan Silver (19:23)

Roger, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Roger Ketchum (19:28)

It’s my pleasure Dylan, it’s an honor for me, thank you.