[00:00:00] Speaker A: I was so naive that I thought fixing up meant decorating. I also lost my house in foreclosure and had my car repossessed. So I was like, bottom of the barrel. No car, no house, no money. If I had known, like, how much work rehabbing was, I might have talked myself out of it. They ended up taking $33,000 and I was like, what the hell did I just do? I wish somebody like me would have knocked on my door and help me either save my house or sell it.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome to the Entrepreneurs Lockbook podcast. I'm your host, Zachary Nerd. You can find me on social at. It's Zack B. In each episodes, I bring on experts from various industries here to learn about their strategies and insights driving extreme business growth. Today we're joined by Duan Bent Twyford, America's most data sought after real estate investor and founder of investors at University, a company dedicated to teaching financial freedom through real estate investing. And Dwan started as a broke single mom fired from Denny's and has since flipped over 2000 properties while teaching thousands of other people how to become financially free. Known as the queen of short sales, she's written three bestsellers book, including her New York Times bestsellers Success, Successonomic. I'm pronouncing that correctly with Steve Forbes. He's been featured on Fox and Friends, msnbc and hosts your own podcast, the most wonderful real estate podcast ever. And currently she's even taken on her craziest project yet, rehabbing an entire town with her husband Dan. It's great to have you on the show.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Well, thanks, Zach. That's a. That when I hear the intro, I'm always like, who are they talking about?
That's hard to believe that's me.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: I love that it is you. So I love that. Thank you so much for being on. And one of the things that I always like to ask anyone that comes on our podcast, it is obviously an entrepreneurship podcast, is if you had to like restart knowing like your company, your career, knowing everything that you know today, what's like the one thing that you would do that you feel a lot of people get, like, totally wrong.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: So when I did, and I'm going to try to make this as short of an answer as possible. When I did my first deal, I was a broke single mom. I was going through a divorce and I was looking for something I could do from home and raise my daughter and not put her in daycare. So I met some guys like, oh yeah, we buy houses and we fix them up and we Sell them. So in my mind, because I have no, this is in 1990, no Internet, no nothing, no seminars, no people. So in my mind when they said we buy houses and we fix them up and we sell them, I honestly thought that meant decorating.
So I, I bought my first house. I knocked on doors with the baby hanging on my hip. I got my first woman under contract.
I had a contract which is like the X is where you're supposed to sign it. And she moved out and I moved in. I couldn't afford to live two places. And then I decorated. I put in carpet and paint and back then, custom made blinds. I was like, wow, this house needs, like work.
So I had to go to Home Depot, take classes to learn how to rehab.
So my first deal, I did not know what I was doing. I was so naive that I thought fixing up meant decorating.
And the thing is, with the contract this woman and I signed, it wasn't even like enough paperwork. It was kind of like a hug and a handshake and we're gonna do this deal together. Barbara.
So I started off and I think because I was so naive, I wasn't scared to do it. Looking back, it's like, what could I possibly been thinking doing a deal on the hug and a handshake with a strange woman? And she moved out and I moved in. And we agreed verbally to split the profit. And so I would get some training is what I would do. Because what I did was like, yeah, so many things wrong. So I would get training. I tell people all the time, you need to at least know what you're doing.
And if one of my students called, said, hey, I just gave a hug and a handshake to a homeowner, we're doing a deal, I'd be like, you get back there and get the document.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Don't do that.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: So I would have gotten more knowledge, but it just wasn't available back then.
It really was.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: And I feel like when you're launching a company, you're getting into things like a new endeavor venture, you will have to learn, like one way or another, you're not going to make everything perfect. Like the first go. That's literally how you learn. And then, and that's funny that you mentioned that, like looking back then, you're like, that was crazy doing that. Like, why did I do that? And I feel like a good example is like when you're like a kid, like everything in the world, like everything is rainbows and everything like that a huge, like water slide that's one good example. I like to look at you like a big water slide, like, straight down and like, oh, that looks very fun. And you become like an adult. You're like, yeah, I'm not doing that again. You're like, why did I do that? And I feel that's how it applies.
Same context with what you were doing. You didn't know what you were getting yourself into. Be like, I'll just do it.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: I knew some basic, like, rehabbing skills. I knew how to paint the house I grew up in. My dad built it, Me and my sister helped out. It's like, I knew, like, basic stuff. I had a few tools, but I didn't know how to change the toilet and put in a kitchen. And I didn't know how to lay tile. Like, I went to Home Depot. They did live classes back then. They'd go to class, I'd take my measurements, they'd give me everything I needed. I'd go back and I would do it. And I thought, what on earth did I have doing rehabbing a house without knowing how to do anything? But I also think that was my biggest asset, because if I had known, like, how much work rehabbing was, I might have talked myself out of it, thinking, I don't have the skills, I don't have the knowledge. But once I was in it, I was already in it. So I'm like, I'm in it to win it now.
And for five years, until Ayla started kindergarten, I lived in the rehabs, fix it, sold it, and moved into the next one. So I moved and lived in every rehab for five years, and then of course, went on to wholesaling and short sales and the queen of short sales. And now a town.
But the way I started, oh, my Lord, when I see people that are talking and like, please let me teach you something.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And just going on, like, the teaching part, because that's obviously like, a big thing that you do. And I'd love to hear, like, a little bit more about. Can you walk us through, like, with investors at university, like, how does that actually work? When someone comes to you, they want to learn real estate investing, like, what's the process to take them from being a beginner to actually closing their first profitable deal? As there's so many, like, real estate investing out there, so many different opportunity and you need that education as you.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Were talking, you really do. And the thing is, I personally, I like to work with new investors because I remember being new and I remember that for five or six or seven Houses I didn't understand title companies, I didn't understand document. I didn't understand.
Like no one taught me those things. I just, I winged it. I did a lot of winging it. So when someone comes and says, hey, I would like you to mentor me and help me out. My first thing is, what's your goal? Do you want to do some single family homes? Do you want a wholesale? Do you want to buy a building?
What do you. And then I ask, do you have the skill? Like people say, oh, I want a rehab. It's okay. Do you have a crew? Oh, I'm in a rehab on the weekends. I'm like, okay, so here's the reality. You rehab the first weekend, look what I did second weekend, look what I did third weekend. Oh my God, I'm so tired. I worked all week and then I rehabbed. I need to take some time off. Next thing, six months go by, the house isn't done.
So I really try to assess where people the skills and their risk factor and what their big picture goal is. And then I can guide them down any path that they want.
As long as I know. Yeah, I help them figure out what they want because it's not just, I'm going to become an investor. It's just not that simple.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: It's. It's a more thoughtful process versus saying, oh, I want to get into like real estate investing. I know some friends like, oh, we should just buy a house and just fix and sell it again. But they don't think about all the steps involved within that process like six months from now. And it seems you have a more thoughtful process, really understanding what their skills are, where they should be going, and then assessing based on like, I have.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: A lot of people like, hey, we just want to. Me and my husband, we want to fix them up and sell them and give us something to do. I'm like, okay, but you're working like 50 hours a week. You're a soccer mom, you got this, you got that. When, when is the time for the fixing? It's cheaper sometimes to hire than to do it yourself because weekend warriors get burned out.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: And with like most people, because then you had, I wouldn't say it's a pretty non typical like career path when it comes to launching like what you were doing, like moving in and out of the fixing cells and everything like that. But for most people getting into like real investing, do you find it's typically people that like they've maybe accumulated some money. They're like, hey, I want to have A hobby. I want to do something on the side. And like, they decide to invest or. Because I know you mentioned, like, beginners, and I'm assuming those are probably the type of people that you do end up working with versus someone that an institutional investor that has like a large portfolio and you want to invest into more.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Another reason I think I have. I know the reason I have a heart for the new people is because I was new.
And I only had some people say, you just, you go to Palm beach county, you write down all the foreclosures, you go knocking on the door. I knocked on a door with a baby hanging on my hip and hey, I want to buy your house, and yeah, we'll partner and things like that. So I personally think the easiest thing, it's just like a basic real estate investor is the wholesale you get under contract. I sell it to somebody like you, I make a fee and I'm out.
So I'm like, listen, start in the baby steps and if you want to work up and you want to do a whole town like we're doing, I'll show you how. That's not where you should start.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: No. Like, you're a beginner, start with the basics first and then slowly build your way up, depending maybe not only your risk level, but also like your skills.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Part of the story, which you know, you don't know, is when I went through my divorce, my daughter was only eight months old. My husband and I split up really unexpectedly, and here I am, I have an eight month old baby, I don't have a job. I was fired from Denny's. Like, I really have no actual job skills. And I thought, I can put her in daycare and get a job or I can try and do something on my own and if I fail, I can still get a job.
But I really didn't want to raise her in daycare. I wanted to be like the girl scout mom and the homeroom mom and the field trip mom. And luckily I did. I never missed a single event ever in my daughter's life.
So my goal was, how do I work from home?
And I thought, okay, fixing up, that sounds like fun. We'll just do that. But in the back of my mind, I was always like, ah, if I fail, I can get a job. But during that whole process, I also lost my house in foreclosure and had my car repossessed.
So I was like, bottom of the barrel. No car, no house, no money. I've got a child, my husband's gone and I. And after I did four or five deals. I thought, you know what, There's a lot of single moms out there, that if I could just show them what I'm doing, they could make it too.
So my heart started off just wanting to help other women, really, because I found when I was door knocking, I was talking to a lot of women.
And that got me interested. Hey, Listen, I made $22,000 on my first deal in 1990, which was an entire year salary for like engineers back then. And I was like, I could just show them. It's not that hard if you just know. So I started teaching really without much experience on my own, just to show people there was something else. And then that grew into this giant coaching business that we have. But we still, my husband and I are still hands on. If someone's working with me, they work with us directly. We talk to them directly.
We work with people individually because that's what people need.
It's not some weekly class with 5, 000 people on it. That's not how you learn.
So I still keep my hands on that because I want people to just know that they don't have to work for whoever the man is nowadays. They don't have to work for the man anymore.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: I love that. So you have that mission driven components, like what you're doing with the backstory too, which is interesting. Not. Not everyone actually has that. So.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: I know. And my crazy. It's like I was fired from Dennis. My car was. I lost my house. It's like I was literally at the bottom of the barrel.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: That's the bottom bottom.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: And I was just like, oh my gosh, this has got to be a better way. I don't want to work for somebody else. And I was 30s. I'm like, I'm going for it. And thank God I did. I'm so happy I did. And all the stars aligned and everything worked out. And I really done really well since the first deal. This was clearly where God wanted me in this industry.
Now I am more than happy to work with someone super experienced because we can show them the big things, the commercial things, the apartment buildings, whatever, but it's the little people that nobody wants to take the time for them.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: You know, and that's where I started, like straight out started.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Oh, and going back to the 90s, because there's something I want to touch on, and we mentioned it earlier, you touched onto it for maybe two seconds, where you're known as like the queen of the short sales, which is that like a term I think you coined back to the 90s or something like that for like our audience might not be like familiar. Can you like break down like what a short sale is and like why that strategy has been so powerful to build a wealth?
[00:13:36] Speaker A: So I actually have the registered trademark on the term short sales as it applies to real estate investing.
So I have a. An R register trademark on the term.
So way back I was rehabbing and then I discovered wholesaling. I thought, I can get it and I can sell it to somebody else. I can make this money and not have to live in it and fix it. And. And then the deal started getting a little bit tight. I started calling banks and saying, hey, listen, can you knock off some fees? Just some fees. And the banks were taking off 3 and 4 and $5,000 worth of fees. Now back then it was didn't have a term.
They were calling it shorting short sales, Discounting the note, discounting the mortgage. There was like all these terms and all of a sudden I found myself just calling all the banks all the time asking for a discount. So discount is you got a $200,000 house, they owe 200, they're in foreclosure. You call the bank and the bank says, I'll take 110 as a full payment. So you short sale it, you buy it for the 110, then you can fix it or rehab it, or live in it, or whatever you want to do. And so I stumbled into them because the bank started adding all these extra fees.
So I started calling. And then after four or five deals, I thought, I wonder what would happen if I asked the bank to take off some principal.
Like my first one where I asked the bank to take off principal. I was buying this house for 66,000. I already had a wholesale for 90, and I thought, I'm just gonna call. They ended up taking $33,000. And I was like, what the hell did I just do?
And I was like, short. So I started calling it short sales. I wrote a little 50 page program because I had a RIA group down in South Florida. I started teaching people coming, right, hey, there's this thing called short sales. Banks are doing them like crazy. And I thought, you know what, I should trademark that. So I helped actually invent the entire short sale industry for real estate investors back in the 90s. So I trademarked the queen because I'm the queen, and short sales because nobody else did.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not like a big real estate investor or anything like that, but that sounds pretty interesting. I Didn't even know that was something that was actually possible.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yes, I don't either do that.
I got my business pretty quick. I started going to classes and reading books and every kind of business book I could read on it. I'm a trademark things and I started trademarking.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: So there you go.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: I have the registered trademark on short sales, which is crazy.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: And you also have a pretty unique system that I think I was like reading about. It was like your triple profit center that you mentioned that you've used to do like over 2000 deals. So you clearly have a system that works. And I'd love to hear how you go about structuring deals to maximize the profit to obviously help both the investor, but also perhaps this drastic homeowner.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yes, every deal that I do because I was the distressed homeowner and I also was a brand new investor who did not have a clue what I was doing. So I was both people. So all of our deals we make sure the homeowner gets money because they're losing their house. So I. So just clearly I work only in the foreclosure industry.
People that are losing their house, they're in foreclosure. I don't mls, I don't do realtors, nothing. I'm specifically into the foreclosure industry. So they're losing their house. So the homeowners need money to move and get a fresh start. So I make sure they make money, then I make sure I made money. And then if I'm wholesaling at a rehab, I make sure that I leave enough money on the table for that person so they'll keep coming back to me looking for more deals. And then we make sure it's a good deal for the bank too. Because most people don't know this, but the very day that the bank files the foreclosure notice, the bank loses 40% of the value of the property right off the top.
So you got a hundred thousand dollar house, they're losing 40 grand the minute they file those papers. So they want to get properties off their books because they've got quarterly reports, year end reports, they've got all that stuff too. So we really truly create like all the way around a win for everybody.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting the way that you're able to like structure that. So it is a win win for everyone. Because a lot of people, they go into like real estate investing and they're like, I just want to make as much money as possible, get that passive income flowing in and everything like that. But when you're dealing, like, the foreclosure, Mina, there's, like, people involved. There's people about to lose their homes and everything like that. And obviously, I mean, I know you've had, like, your own foreclose. Like, you understand on deeper level what these people are going through. And it seems that you put in the effort to be able to obviously get them something, even if they're going through this difficult, like, life transition. Because I'm assuming you didn't get the chance to have someone like you when you went to, like, foreclosure.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: No. It's funny because I start off knocking on doors, and I would just say, hey, I see you're in foreclosure. I believe I can help you. Let's work together.
And I thought, man, I wish somebody like me would have knocked on my door and help me either save my house or sell it, opposed to losing it in foreclosure. Because let me tell you, there's nothing more embarrassing than having to call your mom and dad and say, my husband left. I lost the car in the house, but I have the baby, and I'm going to try investing.
There was no support. People were like, be sensible. Get a job done. I'm like, no, I'm at it. You know what? I'm gonna do it. And thank God I did. It's been 35 years. I've been doing this for 35 years.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Wow. And especially in the 1990s, though, like, you mentioned yourself wanting to get a job where you could stay at home and everything like that. Like, nowadays, that's much more, like, traditional, where people, okay, they'll have a remote job and everything like that. It's, like, really easy to do. But back in the 90s, that wasn't so common.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Especially my dad, because he worked for the power company his whole life. My mom worked for General Motors, like, screwing nuts and bolts and stuff. And they were like, are you out of your mind? You need to have a job. You can't just.
You need to get a man and get married and get a man. Like, I had a man. I lost all my stuff. Man's not a plan.
I'm gonna figure it out on my own. And my big girl. I'm putting on my big girl panties. I'm gonna make it happen. It was really unheard of.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: And the Internet didn't even come out till 98. So I did. Everything was manual back then. Like, people have it so easy today when they're like, oh, I can't find a Deal. I'm like, you have everything at your fingertips. You can't tell me this is difficult.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: No. Yeah. Nowadays, I mean, I'm obviously the younger generation. Yeah. Everything is so much easier online. You read. Yeah. Before, you had to go knock on every single door. You want to sell stuff. Now you can send emails with people, send, run ads online. It's much more easy and efficient in a way. But, yeah, the pro, pros and cons with everything, I guess, here. But, Juan, I really appreciate you coming on the show here and for anyone that wants to get in touch. Jenna, you obviously run your own podcast. You're pretty active on social media, and you obviously have, like, your books that you've written, everything anywhere specific that people should be looking at if they want to reach out to you, learn more about you, anything like that.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: The easiest way is Dwanderful. So I took my name, Duan and Wonderful and I made a new word, Dwanderful. So D W A N D E R f u l dwanderful.com I have workshops and webinars and training and just all kinds of free information for people. So just find me at D. Wonderful.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Perfect. It's all like, all under one location, like a link. So much in the way.
Oh, that's practical. I need to get one of those for sure.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah. When I started my. It actually started my podcast, I thought people were like, you should do a play in your name. Duan's a really unusual name. I was like, dwan, Wonderful. Dwantastic. Then I like, I'm going to be Dwanderful, Dwan and Wonderful. That's it. And that started the whole Dwinderful trail. So you just go there, anywhere, any website, anything online, YouTube, everything is the Wonderful. It's a dwarf world.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: I love it.
Perfect. Thank you so much. True listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. You can also find more
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