I wanted to take a moment and talk about Kent Clothier. This guy is probably one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs that I know. But I’m not posting this just to gloat on his accomplishments. In fact, I wanted to relate a story that I think will resonate with a lot of people here. I also wanted to give testament about the type of person that Clothier is.
Now, if you don’t know Kent Clothier, here’s the scoop. He’s the founder of a company called Real Estate World Wide (REWW). He’s partnered with people like Jerry Stathum and Roland Frasier (co-founder of Digital Marketer and CEO of War Room Mastermind and probably one of the brightest people in the world) in that company.
REWW flips roughly 900 homes per year and they do somewhere in the vicinity of 250 wholesale deals along with that. It’s all automated at this point. That means that, neither Clothier or any of his partners have much input in that process. They couldn’t even tell you any of the addresses off hand. It’s automated. Self-driving. And it’s a passive income money making machine. I have a lot of respect for that considering that I’m mildly obsessed with passive income.
In fact, that’s what I think about often. How can I build more passive income streams. So, seeing firsthand what Clothier has created is very inspiring. Not only did he build a substantial business by reverse wholesaling properties, he also created an educational platform with over 60,000 users who subscribe to the data he uses to flip those contracts.
How I Met Kent Clothier
Before I talk about who Kent Clothier is, let me give you a breakdown on how I met him. First of all, if you haven’t been reading any of my thoughts of the day (if you haven’t, go there immediately and start reading now to catch up on my life), you might not have heard about how Clothier and I crossed paths. Either way, here’s a brief rundown of how that happened.
About a year or so ago from the writing of this post, one of my businesses collapsed after a major dispute with my now-then business partner. It started out small, but it escalated. The crazy thing is that I built that business. I brought him in. I taught him everything about how it worked. I also built the site, designed the logo, coded the entire platform, wrote every beautifully-worded description of everything in our inventory, and basically created a business in the box.
When things collapsed, he cut me off from everything. So I cut off the site. Granted, this is a guy who we paid his salary from the company, his apartment, moving expenses, car, and pretty much just everything so that he could live. We did that so we could launch the company and get it off the ground because he had to leave a full-time job.
It’s crazy that you could bend over backwards for someone like that, forgo taking money yourself, and basically be stabbed in the back. Now, I’m not angry at him anymore. In fact, I’m thankful. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have met people like Kent Clothier and Howard Panes. But the point of this story is that everything collapsed around me. Instead of focusing my energy on negativity, I went out there and helped others.
Now, I had passive income. So I didn’t need to hustle to make dough. I’m thankful and grateful for that. Still, it was depressing. It was like losing a child or a limb. But when all that collapsed, I started reaching out to successful people that I could find. At first, it was just names I knew like David Sharpe and Russell Brunson, literally the two initial people that I reached out. After that it was Ryan Deiss a few others.
But it was Deiss who introduced me to Roland Frasier. I had no idea who Frasier was, just that he was Deiss’s business partner at Digital Marketer. When I asked a friend, he told me that Deiss was the face while Frasier was the brains. That was intriguing. So I agreed to do an interview and write a Forbes article about him. Now, not knowing exactly who he was, I just followed my instinct and pushed forward.
I literally put so much value out there that he opened his entire rolodex to me. That’s how I was introduced to Kent Clothier, Frank Kern, John Assaraf and the other living legends in the business and marketing world. In fact, I’m forever grateful to Frasier for everything he’s done. Forever. It was that single relationship that sparked so much for me. I never knew how well connected he was, nor all the things that he had achieved. But slowly, little by little, I’ve learned.
The Arbitrage Business
I always knew what the word arbitrage meant, but I never really knew the power of this word until I met Kent Clothier. When he told me his story, I was literally blown away. If you don’t know it, go here to read the article I wrote about him in Forbes. After you read that story, you’ll be blown away. I know I was when he told it to me. He literally was high up on himself and his ability that he had this big dispute with his partners and walked away from a substantial business.
I mean he was earning over a million dollars per year on his W-2 from that business. And at the age of 32 years-old, it all fell apart. 18 months later, and his $2 million in his bank account wound down to $5,000. His back was against the wall. I mean, if ever there was pressure to act, there it was. They say that success is born from two occasions: inspiration or desperation. For Kent Clothier, it was definitely desperation.
I know that for some of the people who read this blog, you can relate. I know I can. I’m all too familiar with that feeling of desperation. I know what it feels like to have your back against the wall. To be desperate. Out of options. No more moves to make. Not sure where to go or to turn. But from great pain and failure, our greatest lessons are learned. And the biggest successes are born. That’s God’s honest truth and you know it.
Now, with $4,000 left to his name, Kent Clothier turned to late night television. He watched an infomercial on a system to make money in real estate and he bought in. It was $1,000. That was 25% of his net worth at the time. He took a risk and rolled the dice. He learned about a concept called wholesaling. But realized that he could reverse wholesale in real estate where he would line up the buyers and the sellers. And the rest was history.
Real Estate Worldwide
It’s funny how things have evolved. When Roland Frasier introduced me to Kent Clothier, I just did whatever I could to help him without the expectation of anything in return. That evolved into a friendship, which morphed, now, into a business relationship. However, that would have never happened had I not helped him. I literally went out of my way to do that. That’s just how I am. In fact, I get more pleasure from helping others than I do from helping myself.
When I can help others, it just feels good. I enjoy it. But the funny thing is that Kent Clothier is exactly like me in that regard. He wants to help others. To teach them what’s he’s learned and uncovered. That’s why he systematized what he learned. Of course, he did want to generate a profit from it. That’s true. But he also knew it would add a tremendous amount of value. I mean, that’s how you get rich — by adding loads and loads of value.
The crazy thing is that, even though I never expected anything in return from Clothier, he’s the type of person that just goes out of his way to help you. In fact, he was so willing to help that he literally was trying to figure out how we could work together. And that really got me thinking. It got me thinking so much that I decided to show him a version of a platform I had created, one that I built and hand-coded from scratch.
One thing lead to another, and we joined forces in a new venture with Howard Panes to bring a new platform to the masses that’s going to change the way real estate is bought and sold in the United States. The funny thing is that I had a conversation about this with Dean Graziosi before anything was set in stone. I remember telling Joe Polish more about it back when I was there with him in Scottsdale.
I’m not sure what happened with Graziosis, but I never heard back from him. But he told me that this was a system he wanted to build 6 years ago. He just didn’t have the know-how to do it back then and didn’t want to shift his focus from the business he was building. Graziosi is literally crushing it now, but it just goes to show you just how much interest this thing has had, literally since the very beginning.
But the best part is that REWW is the pipeline. I mean, they’re arbitraging properties left and right, and they’ve developed a unique algorithm for making a cash offer on any home in the United States. An algorithm we’re borrowing for Kribbz. I mean, all we’re doing is systematizing the whole thing. But really, the idea came from Kent Clothier. So, I can’t tell you just how much respect I have for this guy.
In my opinion, follow him and listen to everything he has to say. It’s pure gold. But don’t just take my word for it, go check him out for yourself. And if you’re at all interested in the real estate game, this is the guy to follow and learn from. Forget everyone else out there. I say that with all the respect in the world to other real estate gurus. And, in fact, I think that most would actually agree with that statement. He’s the guy to learn from. Period.