Gualter Amarelo is the author of the book “Broke To A Quarter Million” and the creator of numerous life-changing training on wealth and mindset. He earned $3 million through his businesses – nearly half a million simply by using his own real-world experiences to help hundreds of students create high levels of success in their own lives.
But Gualter wasn’t always a millionaire. In fact, for about 10 years he struggled with a series of failed businesses and side hustles while working for “the man” – wondering why it seemed impossible to get any of his ideas off the ground. At one point he was so broke after a tragic divorce that, he had to move in with his brother – embarrassing at any age, but especially at age 30!
Then, he received some advice that would change his life forever. A wealthy mentor told him to study the strategies and mindset of people who were already wealthy and to find out what they had in common that made them so successful. That’s when he became obsessed with real estate and the rest is history.
Now, after years of trial and error, Gualter has created a step-by-step, copy and paste system that anyone can use to create wealth. These are powerful investing strategies that can help any investor, at any level, find the ideal people to surround themselves with and find moneymaking opportunities like magic. He just happens to call it “Alchemy.”
What you will learn
- The 7 steps for successful real estate investing
- What is meant by the term “off-market” and why it matters
- Why you shouldn’t be afraid of debt
- How to add value to a property
- Why you should be a people manager and not a property manager
- Why cash flow is vital and some ideas to generate a revenue stream
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:06 – 00:02:01
Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas show. Today I have with me, Gualter Amarelo. Now, Gualter is the author of the book “Broke To A Quarter Million” and also the founder of AlchemistNation.com.
Basically, he earned $3 million through his business – nearly half a million simply by using his own real-world experiences to help hundreds of students create high levels of success in their own lives. Gualter has become a multimillionaire through his businesses, nearly half a million simply by using his own real-world experiences. Gualter hasn’t always been a millionaire. In fact, for about 10 years, he struggled with a series of failed businesses and side hustles, and a lot of us know what that feels like, while working for “the man”, okay, not for himself, he’s wondering why it was impossible to get any of his ideas off the ground. At one point he was so broke after a tragic divorce that he had to move in with his brother, embarrassing at any age, but especially at age 30.
Gualter, I can totally identify with, I had to close the business and I moved in with my brother, but I was 50. Okay, so there you go. So luckily we have brothers that care and love us. It’s really, really cool.
Then he received some advice that changed his life. A wealthy mentor told him to study the strategies and mindset of people who are already wealthy and find out what they had in common to make them successful. That’s when he became obsessed with real estate and the rest is history.
Now after years of trial and error, Gualter has created a step-by-step, copy and paste system that anyone can use to create wealth. I’m going to touch on that today. Um, disclosure. We are not an advising firm, basically get your own advice on investment, but these are going to be real life stories that reveal how it worked for Gualter. These are powerful investing strategies to help anyone at any level, find ideal people to surround yourself with a partner and draw to you at all the right money making opportunities. He calls it Alchemy.
Welcome to the show, Gualter. Great to have you here.
Gualter Amarelo
00:02:01 – 00:02:05
Thank you, Jeff. It’s really great to be here, man. We’re looking forward to this for a long time.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:05 – 00:02:13
Well, it’s, we do have something in common. We have brothers that love us. So it’s pretty cool. So was he a younger brother or an older brother?
Gualter Amarelo
00:02:14 – 00:02:34
So, younger brother by about a year and a half. So he and I have always been like the same height. We’ve been into the same stuff. So it was actually really cool moving in with him except for the pride ego thing of, you know, having lost basically all my money, all my relationships and my job all at the same time. So it was, you know, one of those bittersweet moments.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:34 – 00:03:25
Yeah, well I was thankful, you know, grief and losing sometimes brings a, is a gift. We just don’t realize it at the time and well I’m thankful I spent a year with my brother and I got to know him a lot better and the relationship is so much better because of it and so you know, growing up as boys in the family house is one thing, but hanging out with your brother when you’re hopefully a little bit more grown up as an adult is a different thing. So that’s great. So well let’s go back to, I suppose, the start of your entrepreneurial journey because that’s what we cover a fair bit here is what was the inspiration to get to become an entrepreneur and also to get into real estate, there’s maybe two different questions.
Gualter Amarelo
00:03:26 – 00:07:20
Yeah, and I got to clear up the bio, I’ve got to go clean that thing up. So my net worth right now is five million and we built a $14 million real estate company and I started off, you know, completely broke. Had nothing and family fought about money all the time. So, that’s one of the inspirations. At 14 years old, I just said, man, like I gotta change my family history, I gotta change like the path I’m on because otherwise I’m gonna be fighting, you know, just like my parents are, I’m not gonna have anything and I started working a job at 14 paying $4 an hour and I would save like every single dollar, I go home at the end of the week and have like 80 bucks and I would save all $80 and I did that for about two years and I saved somewhere close to $4,000 and I lent it to my parents to pay off credit cards and I’ve discovered later on they had even more credit cards, I didn’t even, never even touched it. So like that messed me up so much internally, you know as a 16 year old kid who really thought he was helping his family to find out that my family had like, done literally nothing with that money they were falling behind anyway and I just became so obsessed with, how does money work? Why are people so obsessed with it? Why was my dad never home, he’s working three jobs to support the family but not getting by and yet we were also in a community where people were really wealthy and you know they’re going on vacations all the time, they could do all these cool things and I just couldn’t understand how like life couldn’t be that unfair where somebody could just be born on the wrong side of the tracks and never have anything and I just became absolutely obsessed with getting on the other side and the wealth gap. Just seeing it, it was just so clear to me that there is truly a wealth gap and it was growing and I felt that if I couldn’t get across now eventually it would be so deep and so wide that I never could and real estate was something my dad always said to me would be driving in the car and this guy called Dave Lindell, he has these cds and he’s just super well known back in the ‘80s for being a real estate guru. My dad would listen to those in the, in the red caravan and he’d say “Son the rich buy real estate, right? They buy real estate and they stay rich, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.” I said, okay dad, like how much real estate do we own?
And the answer was none and that answer never changed, you know, not until I think I was 28 years old after my divorce, my dad finally bought his first piece of real estate in his fifties, but I had already bought two by the time I was in that force and I nearly lost them in the divorce and that was you know, one of those scary moments and how did I get started? I think it was your second question, I was in a real estate investor, REIA, just a real estate investor association leader and the guy in the front of the stage said, you can get rich in real estate and like he said the word that I was looking for rich, that was just attracted to that word and I went up to him afterwards said like how do I do it? Like I said, I got three things against me, one of my family’s broke, I know nobody, he’s rich and I don’t have any money or any credit, like there’s four things right? So I don’t have any of the things you just talked about needing to be successful in real estate. And he said, well read this book and he gave me the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And that book just totally changed my mind on success and wealth. But it opened up this kind of porthole of you need to keep reading books and I’ve stayed in this state of analysis paralysis for years. And you know over the last decade, I’ve read 350 books on personal development, business and real estate.
And it wasn’t, it wasn’t fast Jeff, it wasn’t fast, you know, my first property took me a year to find and buy then it was four years before I did my next property. But once I started, once I had hit that second property, every year I picked something up. Every year, I buy one and I was buying two and I was buying three in a year and I started stacking up doors and getting into multi family and that’s that kind of scale, right?
Jeff Bullas
00:07:20 – 00:07:25
And by multi family you mean apartments? Is that what you’re saying?
Gualter Amarelo
00:07:25 – 00:08:08
Yes. So my first multi family was a three family. So it was three apartments. And then the second one was a two family and then another three. And then I started realizing that the amount of time it took me to buy one property, I should be going after bigger deals. So I started buying six families and 12 families. And then two years ago I bought 24 condos all in one shot because I like to do one deal a year. And if you could just do a slightly bigger deal each year, it doesn’t take as much work to do at the contracts are all contracts. It’s just one conversation with the attorney, one conversation with the lender, one conversation with the realtors and the brokers and then you lock down the deal. So instead of doing these tiny little deals I can just do one bigger deal and the capital raises the same as well. The money I’m borrowing for people.
Jeff Bullas
00:08:08 – 00:08:28
Right. So real estate is one thing, but you still have to generate cash flow because real estate gives you leverage. But the yields on real estate can be quite low, especially in Australia compared to the US. So what have you done to generate cash flow?
Gualter Amarelo
00:08:28 – 00:10:05
I love that question. So during the divorce, I quit my job because I was trying to keep my wife and I was an accountant prior to this. I got my real estate license. I started building a real estate agency business and my first year I made 17,000. So I was terrible, you know, couldn’t communicate with people. I was an introvert and I started taking all these sales trainings and the second year I made 115. In the third year I made about the same, but I automated it. I built a team of agents who would go and do the work for me. And then from that point I started scaling that agency business until we eventually shifted over to just the training business and the training kind of came out of, well, I needed to attract agents. I need to attract clients and investors and I need to attract agents. So creating content that was educational, drew them in and eventually I realized I could actually get paid up front by discharging. And once I charged them, they were more likely to work with me on the back end on the actual business that I was running. And that was kind of, you need a stream of income when you’re investing real estate, you need something because these properties take a year or two to stabilize. There’s no immediate cash flow. And then if you’re not going big enough, the cash flow is so minimal. You’re looking at $100 a door, $200 a door until year four. Year four, you can get those cash flow figures up to $500-$600 a door, but you’ve got to hold them long enough for the rents to go up, you got to hold them and stabilize them and improve the properties long enough for that business to really get ridiculous. Like now that portfolio we have brings in almost $600,000 a year, but in year one it was close to almost 30,000 a year and that was mostly covering expenses and pretty much always covering expenses .
Jeff Bullas
00:10:06 – 00:10:17
And that’s the challenge isn’t it? So basically you generated cash flow initially to help invest in real estate by providing you actually were working as a real estate agent, is that correct?
Gualter Amarelo
00:10:18 – 00:11:08
And that was, that was like just paying for my bills like that was paying for my bills. I was paying for all the debt I had accumulated as going through all the gurus and all these trainers I spent, I’m sure the same as me, like I spent over $130,000 and personal development and stacking on cards. So like I was taking all my money from the agency and just paying off bills and like living so real estate, I still didn’t have money to buy real estate. I was going through creative strategies, seller financing, subject to existing mortgages, like taking over somebody’s mortgage or raising private capital using hard money using commercial loans that are asset based. Like I had to just learn all these creative financing strategies because I just never had money. It seemed like anything I earned. I would, the government either took it or I was investing in myself for spending money on marketing or I was taking a course and it just kept, you know, the funnel just kept pulling any money I made, kept going right back out.
Jeff Bullas
00:11:09 – 00:11:19
Yeah. So tell us more about the training side. So you are connecting two sides of the market. You’re connecting the people that are finding properties and you’re finding investors who wanted to buy properties, is that correct?
Gualter Amarelo
00:11:20 – 00:11:22
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Bullas
00:11:22 – 00:11:59
So tell us about the training. So that meant you were training the real estate agents in terms of systems to both get the listings as we call it in Australia. And then you’ve got, then you approaching and trying to get, attract investors. So, and did you train both sides? And also the other question really, I suppose is how did you, is it one training system or if you have a training for real estate agents such as the finders? And then the investors was there training for both of them or the investors already just bringing money to the table?
Gualter Amarelo
00:12:00 – 00:13:16
It’s interesting. So we ended up doing a training for both and then eventually started merging them because the strategies are actually very similar. Sales and sales marketing is marketing where an agent who wants listings is the same exact training as an investor who wants off market properties. So we started putting our agents, our investors into this, how to get off market properties training where it’s a lot of cold calling, emailing, emailing, texting, door knocking. It’s pretty heavy, you know, aggressive stuff. And then we would shift our agents over into the same training that we’re giving our real estate buyers.
So buyers are looking to learn how to invest in real estate. They’re doing evaluations. Agents need to be able to teach this in order for them to market. They wouldn’t be able to teach the same stuff that I’m teaching the buyers, those buyer agents, those investors. And so I had a third class. This was kind of opening funnel for agents was, hey, would you like to learn how to teach investors, how to invest in real estate. Would you like to have investors come to you instead of you chasing them? And the reason I say investors is because the average person buys one house every seven years, whereas an investor wants to buy seven houses every year. So the return on investment is 49 times. 7 times 7.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:17 – 00:13:20
So this training system, where did you put that in place?
Gualter Amarelo
00:13:21 – 00:14:30
So it was a manual process in the beginning and we used to do live events. So our whole company was just all super local. This was way before Covid and everything was just, we put them together. We’d say, okay, on Wednesdays we’re teaching agents right after the agents. So Wednesday’s, we teach ages of five and then we bring in the investors at six. So the agents already had the right mindset and I said hey here’s the benefit, I’m gonna put you in the same room as all my investors. Be nice, don’t fight with each other but just be the most valuable educating person.
And then I had on Mondays, we still do the Monday call for the wholesalers, the people who are looking to find off market properties. I invited the agents into that training as well and said look if you want listings you gotta list the last, you need to learn how to talk to sellers, find sellers and again create training that makes the sellers come to you.
So what does the seller want? They want to know how to fix their house, their DIY. What can I do in my property to make the property sell for more? How do I get, how do I evaluate my property? And you got to basically talk a little smack about Zillow and say Zilla is not gonna be accurate. You would need a real person to come out and take a look at the property and you know those kind of trainings for agents and wholesalers and just merging those together.
Jeff Bullas
00:14:30 – 00:14:32
So do you offer that course now?
Gualter Amarelo
00:14:33 – 00:15:08
Yeah so those are now recorded, I told us so many times that I was like you know what, this is not scalable with me keep teaching it. So that’s where Alchemist Nation came into places, I put all my trainings out there and now I offer it to other influences as well and say, hey, you can put your own training on the platform and just be respectful, be it, be valuable at the platform, decide how valuable you are by creating great content. But it started off as just a place for me to put my stuff so that people could get it for free or get it and I wouldn’t have to teach so I just became, I respond to questions that are higher level instead of how do I find sellers? How do I find buyers?
Jeff Bullas
00:15:09 – 00:15:19
So you’ve created a step-by-step system to help people invest in real estate? So is that part of the training or is that a separate system?
Gualter Amarelo
00:15:20 – 00:17:48
So that’s a separate course. We call that “Names on Deeds” and Names on Deeds designed with seven steps, right? There are seven steps to putting your name on a property, putting your name on deeds and I don’t know Jeff, what do they call in Sydney? What is the title of the property? Title. Okay, so we would have to name the course a little differently on the show, we call it Name on Titles but the idea is first you have to pick a strategy and this is where most investors go wrong and I think you, you’ve probably seen this entrepreneurs, if you don’t have the core strategy chosen, then any idea that comes along the way is going to distract you. And then because real estate is super local, we could say in the digital market as well, right? If you focus on Facebook then focus on Facebook, but don’t try to do TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat with the same content, you’re gonna have to have changed, you have to change your marketing strategy. So strategy, I chose a multi family location, I chose Massachusetts and then everything from that point, those two never change. You stay with those and then it’s Find deals. That’s number three. Number four is Evaluate the properties. Number five is Submit the offers. Number six, and this is where everybody messes up. Number six is to Build a capital stack, find the funds. Everybody comes to me saying, man like I don’t have the money to invest. It’s like, yeah, you don’t have a deal. That’s why I don’t have money, nobody’s gonna give you money without something to invest. And they need to see an ROI, you know, what are they gonna make?
And then the seventh step is Manage, you know, how do you manage the property once it’s taken over because that’s the other fear that I get is you know, tenants and toilets, how am I gonna take care of all these properties if I’m taking them on and it’s like those are the last two steps. Your big fears are not even a concern because you’re not past the first five like you haven’t taken the process to get to the first five and then the whole concept of, like the mentorship that we built that is kind of a manual process still, is you need to buy the property that’s the right size to retire you If you’re buying small single families that only bringing $100,000 a year, you’re gonna need a lot of those if you’re looking to make $10,000 a month.
Or if you can go and buy a 50 unit property or 25 unit property they can get up to $400 a month cash flow that’s going to make the same $10,000 a month. And that’s one deal, one strategy, one property manager, one location so it’s working and tweaking the strategy to a person’s income and their retirement goals. Can we do it in a year? Yeah, it’s tough. But 3-5 years, it’s very easy. 3-5 years is simple to become a millionaire or simple to become financially free.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:49 – 00:17:54
So could you just sum up those seven steps again just for our listeners and viewers?
Gualter Amarelo
00:17:54 – 00:18:15
Yeah. So seven steps, first is strategy, second is location, third is find deals or create deal flow. The fourth is evaluate properties. The fifth is submit offers and if you’re evaluating property, you just submit those offers within 15 minutes. Otherwise, analysis paralysis sets in and then the sixth is fund the deal, build the capital stack and the seventh is manage of property
Jeff Bullas
00:18:16 – 00:18:32
Right, now you mentioned another term which is off market properties. In other words, ones that aren’t listed through normal real estate agents. So tell us why that’s important? Why is it important to find off market properties?
Gualter Amarelo
00:18:33 – 00:19:06
I love it. So Jeff you understand this because you’re a marketer, right? Your goal is to get more eyeballs on you and more eyeballs on the product. Well, that’s also real estate in school. That’s what the market is designed for us to get more people looking at your property. But that drives up competition that drives up the price of your product, drives up the demand for your product. If you can go off market, there’s no competitors. There’s nobody else to compete with your price, no offer, no bidding wars. So the idea of going to a seller before they put it on to the place where all the eyeballs are, you have a much better opportunity to get a good deal.
Jeff Bullas
00:19:07 – 00:19:27
Right. So the other challenge for people and that you mentioned to and where most fear sets in is debt. Okay. And capital investment, venture capitalists, whatever, investors. Tell us what your strategy is on debt and your philosophy around it.
Gualter Amarelo
00:19:28 – 00:20:47
Absolutely. I love debt, but I control that, you know, in real estate, the people got hung in 2008 where the people who were over leveraged. Too much debt at a time where debt didn’t make sense. We’re at a point right now or risk off is a much better strategy than risk on and we’re looking at a bubble all across the world and but primarily in the real estate market in the United States were paying attention to 2023-2024. But when I think of debt, I think of debt right now as an asset. The debt that I have against inflation means like inflation was just put out 7.5%. So I’d rather have the bank’s money burning that 7.5% each year instead of my money in the bank where I’m now making the loss. So I’m borrowing their money and that money has bought into an asset that is appreciating at that 7.5% while their dollars are going down in value. So that’s where that appreciation shows up right? An asset with debt, that asset keeps going up. But the debt stays the same. But the real estate, it’s actually advertised, it actually gets paid down a little bit by the tenants. So when it comes to a market like this, an inflationary market, we are heavy debt, we want to be in debt. We want to borrow as much money as possible. So the bank can lose those funds and we can gain the net, the arbitrage of the inflation factor.
Gualter Amarelo
00:20:48 – 00:21:50
How much, how much percentage of debt is is a good question. So we always buy a 20% discount. So day one I’m at a 20% equity position anyway. But then we do a forced appreciation play, we’re improving the properties, change out the management, putting in new tenants, you know, do rent increases and that puts us at another 20% equity position. So within six months to a year we can be at a 40% equity, you know, 60% debt. But as we hold for four more years we’re getting the appreciation of the market.
And if you’re a decent landlord you can raise the rents by 5% each year. In that 5% increase raise the value of the property because properties are based on their income. But wealthy family is based on its income. So you can reasonably in four years be it a 60% equity position. In my portfolio right now is a five year portfolio. It’s at a 71% equity position and that’s that’s I like that number. You know, it feels good, it feels comfortable at night. First year was a little tight but then it gets better and better as you hold.
Jeff Bullas
00:21:51 – 00:22:28
Yeah, so 70% equity position is really, really good. But the position when you start is maybe where I suppose and if you join the market at the wrong time. And this is something I reflect on and I’m sure other people do too, is that interest rates are touted to be increasing maybe even doubling, tripling. We’re going to go from just over 0% wholesale interest rates into twos and threes. It’s almost like you’ve got to be careful that you don’t join the dance when the dance is about to finish.
Gualter Amarelo
00:22:29 – 00:22:33
You don’t want to be in the winner’s circle.
Jeff Bullas
00:22:34 – 00:23:16
Because you might buy a property now which prices are increasing all around the world. As you said, it’s a bubble. It’s happening in Australia, we’re talking 20-30% increases in even a year. What do you see happening with interest rates and capital values and America’s quite, is actually quite a different market to Australia. Our rent yield is a lot lower. So where do you see the interest rates playing in investment and how are you going to de-risk or protect yourself against interest rate increase, especially someone’s going to be geared at 80% debt, your 20% equity, 80% debt. How do you see as protecting yourself from that?
Gualter Amarelo
00:23:17 – 00:25:33
I love it. There are some factors that are coming into play that are even bigger and more interesting than like the interest rates themselves. And so I’ll answer the interest rate question. But we also have to look at the big generations, right? The size of the baby boom generation, the size of the millennial generation and the age that people move out of their properties. So when somebody starts dying, their property gets left. It’s given to the family. Typically they don’t keep it, they sell it at a discount because they don’t want to hold it anymore. It’s got memories. It’s usually beat up, hasn’t been fixed in the last 10, 15 years. So we’re looking at this trend of baby boomers who are just at that 75-76 year old mark.
And the average age of somebody who, you know, lives in America is 70, 77, 78. So they’re about two years out from this. This massive, we’re talking of mass population of people just letting go of their properties. That’s gonna have a much larger impact than the credit, the interest rates. But when you look at interest rates, we as investors like interest rates going up. So we’re locking in our rates now, we’re locking in everything that we have at the moment at these 2%. And on commercial we pay a little bit more, we’re paying 4% 5%. But it’s okay because the cash flows. What we’re looking at is when interest rates go up prices come down. So we don’t mind paying higher interest rates because we make our money on the purchase, we make our money on how much we paid for the property. Because we can always pay off the property, we could sell the property and that appreciation gap makes a lot more sense for us. So having high interest rates, in fact, I bought properties at 15% interest. You know over the last 10 years of buying I bought properties at 12% because I couldn’t get traditional financing. I had to go through hard money. I had to go through these different uh different means of borrowing money. So you just have to make sure that your property cash flows. And this is what I tell everybody: if you can buy at 12% man, just wait till you refinance, its gonna be golden. It’s gonna be amazing because all that cash flow is now yours. And so in this market, in this height of a market, you have to buy for cash flow. You can’t look at real estate as appreciation. You can’t play the crypto game in the stock market game, you invest for cash flow and if it cash flows and the market drops, you still got cash flow tomorrow, you’re still winning.
Jeff Bullas
00:25:33 – 00:25:56
Yeah. And that’s the challenge a lot of people have emotionally, if they see something and they’re going, I’m going to get this amount of capital gain. That’s almost a bonus. And you’re also looking at I suppose increasing the capital value by adding value to the property and what’s your strategy in adding value at the lowest possible investment cost?
Gualter Amarelo
00:25:57 – 00:27:15
So I don’t know how many flippers you’ve talked to but I hang with the flip coaches, all my students have been through all the gurus who flipped do wholesaling and for us I don’t like broken homes. I don’t like homes that are beaten up. I like homes that have vacancy. I like when a property has, you know, 10 or 20% vacancy, they’re missing tenants. I like homes when the rents, there’s something we call lost to lease. This means that the rent should be 1000 and the rent is 750. So those are the problems I like to solve because I know the owner of the property is getting beat up financially because of the management. They just had, they either managing themselves or they have a property manager in there who just doesn’t know how to put tenants, they manage tenants themselves.
Typically there’s a disease in the real estate market of property managers who are good at fixing buildings, the property managers but not people managers. And so I’ll replace a property manager with a people manager and that’s how we get the the units filled up. That’s how we get the rents increased and we build deeper relationships with our tenants as opposed to making sure everything works on the property like that, fixing the property is easy, anybody can hire a contractor, making sure the relationships with the attendants, the residents, that’s where you make money in real estate. So I don’t look for the broken homes. I look for the broken relationships and I’d like to solve those problems.
Jeff Bullas
00:27:15 – 00:27:40
I like that, you know, you get people to be, instead of property managers, getting to be people managers. So it means you’re looking after the tenant, but also because you’re looking after the tenants, that gives you the ability to fix the home with the tenants still in it. Is that what you’re talking about? And also being able to actually then respectfully ask for a price increase.
Gualter Amarelo
00:27:41 – 00:28:55
My mentor told me this, he said the secret to real estate investing is be a decent human being. And I looked at him, I was like what do you mean? And he said you’ve always got to show up, you’ve got to treat them with respect, you’ve got to talk to them, have communication with them. You gotta find out what their issues are when they say they can’t pay rent, say I understand times are tough, I get it, what can you do, how can we work together? And you have to understand I’ve got a mortgage, I’ve got property managers on staff that I have to pay for. I want to keep you as a tenant. And I also want to keep my building and pay the bank who I made a commitment to, I built a relationship with. And just remember you and I made a commitment to each other that you would pay X amount and I would give you a good clean safe place to live. And that conversation goes a long way. You know a person just go back to their ethics and their morals and a person is going to come back and say you know what you believe in me. I’m gonna find a way and if they really can’t they’re going through a financial situation. Well okay like I can help you get on raft, I can help you get another other sort of programs. We don’t like to lose tenants. But if a tenant for some reason it’s disruptive or is dealing drugs or is you know some sort of you know damage to the other tenants in the building. I’m gonna remove them with ruthlessness. I don’t have, no no place in my heart for people who damage the lives of other people around them.
Jeff Bullas
00:28:56 – 00:29:02
So what are some of the simple ways you do add value in terms of what you do to the property?
Gualter Amarelo
00:29:03 – 00:30:12
Awesome. So most people think fix the roof, you know, update the electrical, put new but it doesn’t work. They can’t see it. Yes, you got it. What does a tenant want? A tenant doesn’t want the squeaky door, the tenants wants nice paint, they want the house to feel bright, we change the lighting fixtures, we change out the old, the switch is on the walls with bright white switches. You know these things cost us nothing but old like all the lands will keep them in.
We don’t leave the wooden panels, we paint everything white. We just make the house feel bright, the old cabinets, even if we’re keeping the cabinets are gonna be white cabinets, we’re gonna go stainless steel knobs, it doesn’t cost us a lot of money, it’s just attention to detail, its attention to care will re-caulk things, we make sure leaks aren’t happening and we just let them know we exist and then once the unit’s been renovated, it’s, it just feels better, smells better and we have a little secret with the paint. So when we paint, we have this smell that we put into the paint itself, it’s made by Glade or one of those companies. And so the house smells like lavender for like three months after we’ve painted it. So little little touches of like, hey, we care, you know, we don’t want your house smelling like noxious paint.
Jeff Bullas
00:30:13 – 00:30:31
That’s very cool. So in other words you fix what is visible and audible. Okay, very cool. So in terms of, let’s go back to your training. So Alchemist Nation, what sort of training do you provide and tell us a bit more about that.
Gualter Amarelo
00:30:32 – 00:32:24
So it started off with the core courses, how to find deals, how to be a real estate agent, how to find properties and then how to find the, the buyers that you can work with and it became how to educate buyers, how to do sales and became negotiating and then it became marketing and now we’re bringing mindset coaches because we figured, hey, like the problem is not necessarily technical skills anymore, why are they not moving forward? And I started bringing guys who trained with Tony Robbins or Marshall Sylver and started getting them moving forward with mindset stuff and then I opened it up to coaches who do relationships because oh my spouse won’t let me, my spouse won’t let me buy a piece of real estate was one of the biggest objections that I was getting and so I just started opening it up and saying, look, I’m not a specialist in this stuff if I went through a divorce, but I can, you know, put out something on Facebook and asked, who knows a great coach who served in this arena and we started getting into the affiliate marketing space almost by accident just by saying, you know, who can do this, who can service my community and then I started getting referral checks, hey, I’m working with your guy and they went to a deeper program.
But I asked now I just ask millionaires to donate courses and that’s kind of how Alchemist Nation started becoming, you know, something valuable to people is like my email campaigns value at, hey, here’s a new course, just came out, you know, here’s a new course just came out, records, submitted a new course, so go check it out, this is an opportunity. And so now it’s scaling up to business, sales, marketing, affiliate marketing, real estate is becoming a smaller piece to the over global goal of what we’re looking to do now. We just want to make education free. We want people to be able to come on the platform, get free education if they want a deeper relationship with the coach or speaker, that’s available. But really just education should be free and it shouldn’t be so hard to find, it should be organized and concise and a quick, easy, fun.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:24 – 00:32:29
Cool. So people can find that at AlchemistNation.com, is that correct?
Gualter Amarelo
00:32:30 – 00:32:33
You got it Jeff. Thank you man, I love the name drop.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:33 – 00:32:58
So let’s just, before we finish off, what are some of the most valuable things you’ve learned as an entrepreneur as a real estate investor? What has made the top two or three things that you could share that because you know, you’ve obviously gone, had a tough journey, you’re thriving and flourishing now. What is your top tips that you can share with us and our viewers and listeners?
Gualter Amarelo
00:32:59 – 00:34:43
I’ll share. This doesn’t just come from me. This comes from a billionaire I was on a podcast with the other day and he built multiple billion dollar companies and what he said to me was you need three things. The first is you gotta believe in yourself and he said it into this room of like 40 other people. And I asked myself like everybody hears that, but they don’t understand it.
And he went back and he reemphasized what it means to believe in yourself. You have to believe it’s possible, not just that somebody could do what you’re looking to do, but it’s possible that you might be the person who is actually capable of doing that. You may not be there today. But at some point, that possibility is going to manifest itself through the relationships you build, the skills and the strategies you acquire over the, over the course of your time. The second thing you require is a sexy idea. It has to be something attractive that not just you can get involved in, but other investors can get involved in raising capital and real estate raising capital as a business and inspiring your employees because I started off as a business owner with agents, You have to have a sexy vision, something that people can attach themselves to and say, I want to be a part of this movement. And I like even if I’m working for free at first, it’s okay because it’s inspiring. It’s sexy. We’re going to do something here. And then the third one is you have to let people know about it. And this is where most people, you know, get the advice from the group, don’t tell anybody what you’re doing, right. And even [inaudible] sometimes says it’s a, you know, protect people’s emotions of, what if somebody tells me it’s a bad idea, you have to really believe in it. Like that comes back to one. You got to believe in it so much, it has to be so cool that you’re willing to share with people and if somebody hates it, like get used to it. One third of the people you talk to are gonna hate your idea, no matter how good it is. Look at Tesla, right? One third of the people that you talk still Tesla’s haters, right? So you have to just go out and communicate it.
Jeff Bullas
00:34:43 – 00:35:15
Okay, so number one, believe in yourself. Yeah, number two come up with a great idea. That’s a challenge for a lot of people though, I don’t know what’s a good idea or a great idea or a boring idea. Number three is to tell everyone about it, it’s the marketing piece. Love it. Really, really cool. Thanks very much for coming on the Jeff Bullas show. Gualter, it’s been an absolute pleasure. How can people find you get in touch with you if they want to find out more?
Gualter Amarelo
00:35:15 – 00:35:36
I am on AlchemistNation.com at all times, just type in my name in the profile, you can send me a message right there, live chat and just ask questions or take one of the courses, but I’m available, I’m, me personally, I am available, my partners are available and until one day I can’t sustain it but within 24 hours I always get back to people so AlchemistNation.com, man.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:36 – 00:35:50
Alright, thanks mate. It’s been an absolute pleasure and I look forward to sharing this with my audience and look forward to catching up in Tampa one day, maybe for a margarita or something. Here. There you go.
Gualter Amarelo
00:35:50 – 00:36:00
You might convince me to come out to Sydney, Jeff and I want to see if I can get you to donate a course, I know you’ve got the content, I know you’ve got the knowledge, so there may be a way to get you on the platform
Jeff Bullas
00:36:00 – 00:36:04
Alright, We’ll check it out and we’ll talk further, okay?