The Norris Group’s Legacy Series is interviews with I Survived Real Estate Rohny Award winners. Next up in the 2020 series is foreclosure specialist and educator The Coach, Jack Fullerton. The Rohny Award is given every year to a real estate educator or mentor that has impacted the real estate investment market and many careers along the way.
“Coach” Jack Fullerton is a well-loved real estate investor and connector in the real estate investor community. He was recognized in 2014 with the Rohny Award for being a mentor to many in the Southern California real estate community and beyond. He was our first to receive the honor.
Bruce and Coach Fullerton talk about how Coach got started in real estate, how he started teaching and why he is called Coach.
See below for full video and resources.
Episode Highlights
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- How did Coach get started in real estate and teaching
- Worked for Jim Rohn
- Why he teaches
- People who have helped him throughout his life
- Gave Bruce his first speaking gig
Episode Notes:
Narrator This is The Norris Group’s real estate investor radio show, the award winning show dedicated to thought leaders shaping the real estate industry and local experts revealing their insider tips to succeed in an ever changing real estate market hosted by author, investor and hard money lender, Bruce Norris.
Joey Romero Hi everyone. Joey Romero back again with our third installment of our I Survived Real Estate Legacy Series that I survived real estate legacy series is a series of interviews with Roni award recipients. The Rohny Award is given away every year at I Survived Real Estate to a real estate educator or mentor that has impacted the real estate investor market, or individual investors along the way. Hope you enjoy.
Bruce Norris I thank you for joining us. My name is Bruce Norris. And today our special guest is Jack Fullerton jack and receive the first Rohny award ever given to recognize his contribution to the real estate investment business. And the many lives who have been changed because jack took the time to teach what he knew, and also encouraged them to teach what they knew Coach Fullerton, former real estate investor club owner in Orange County and he is a major connector in the real estate investor community. Jack, welcome back to our show.
Jack Fullerton Thank you glad to be here.
Bruce Norris Now, where did the Where did the coach description come? come in? What What were you doing as a coach and when did what what age were you doing that in?
Jack Fullerton Okay, here’s where the coach came from. I was the water polo swimming coach at Orange Coast College. And I literally had gone down hobo cat sailing in San Diego in 1980. And got down there on Friday went to sleep we got up the next morning and there’s no wind. And because of that is how I found john shop and jack Miller who had flown out to San Diego that day to speak. It’s something we’re Billy had these free tickets to the rough convention and we went and when the first speaker got done, he looked out there still no way and he says every real estate we go the real estate that starts my whole life. I had no interest in real estate at the time. I was really trying to be the most successful water polo and swimming coach I could be I had studied great coaches. Then what happened there was a seminar in Vegas, sometime, I’d say I started in 80. So I’d say sometime between 81 and 83. And it I just said a roll of the dice, john sharp and I are sitting at the 21 table next to each other we don’t know each other hardly at all at the time. You knew I was one of the students that was about it. And what happened is that I kept winning and 21. And he kept not doing as well. But then after we got done, I did well he didn’t do as well. He said we won the same hands. How did you do it? And I told him how I learned to bet at 21 not how I played it. And he came back into the class the next day. And he started calling me out coach and he told everybody how we have to invest in real estate from now on. From what we did it the 21 day rule. He says you buy one house, handle it learn how to use it for about six months, buy two more houses, learn how to handle it by after that, then then the next six months you buy three, but if one goes bad, you go back on the next six months and buy one. And that was basically all I was doing in from that point on he kept calling me coach. And it just because I swimming water polo coach. So that’s how
Bruce Norris I got a question. Was John’s job there as a teacher at the time or was he a student?
Jack Fullerton No, I was there for a for a jack and john class. And he started off about telling everybody how I want it. 21. And he did and what? how his bedding and he said that’s how we should be investing in real estate was fascinating.
Bruce Norris So so you’re kind of getting your feet wet in real estate when you got introduced to Jim Rohn.
Jack Fullerton Yes, that’s true. Yeah, because I was in the same room. You were that day. We figured that out, what 35 years later. And yeah, the back of the room. And that was in August of 81. And he he I think that was a blessing. I had the opportunity to go to work for him. So I worked for him for about five years. I was there when Tony Robbins was working there. And Tony was incredible. And he was just about 20 and I was 43 and stayed all the great coaches in here. I’m learning all this, you know, great stuff. And I you know, I’d say to great coaches, but there’s so much more to learn. So Jim Rohn was real had a lot to do with my success as well as my mentors in real estate.
Bruce Norris Would you say that Jim Rohn had his biggest impact on your life as anybody?
Jack Fullerton Yeah, yeah, I like to believe that there’s more than just one person but I think he had a great deal to do. With my life, I still listen to that 1981 challenge 68 I probably listened to it at least once, within the last month,
Bruce Norris Have you ever gone on YouTube? You can watch, you can watch the 81 talk live.
Jack Fullerton I didn’t realize that I will have to do that. I actually have it on the VCR back when I worked for him. I bought that silly thing. And I was using it as training. But I haven’t watched ages. I listened to it. Because, you know, I mean, I also have the script. And what’s really fascinating when I watch it, I know exactly what he’s going to turn to the left and touches right side of his nose turned out that he did it so many times. It was like a play. And he had it recorded every time he did it. And they give it to him in three, you know, triple space and he go back and he restructure how he says some of the words. guy was amazing man, he really was. I am so blessed to do him. I was so the last time I actually saw him was at your seminar. And I got to have lunch with him that day, which was fascinating.
Bruce Norris That was a great experience. Somebody, somebody in the audience actually was sitting next to me. He says, I wonder why he’s still speaking. Like there was you know what’s up. And during the one hour talk, he got three standing ovations and I leaned over after the third one. And I said, let me ask you a question. When would you want to give that up? When you have the ability to change people’s lives? in three hours, I get the sense you were a pretty willing participant going to that seminar. I was not what what’s amazing about that, he got me in five minutes. My first note on the top of my pages, he this man does not need our money. And that it was important to me. Because you know, I had never attended a seminar. And I wanted to feel like there was somebody there that was genuine. And I felt like and maybe, you know, maybe I over read it. And I’m sure he was making money on it. It seemed like there was a bigger purpose for him to doing what he did.
Jack Fullerton Well, here’s the interesting thing on whether I’ve shared this with you, but there was a break halfway through. And I turned to my wife, Mary, and I said, Mary, I’m going to go to work for him. And I did. Ah, so I figured that out by the break. So we both had a real light go off that night. It was an incredible night for us. I think it helped both of us a great deal.
Bruce Norris Yeah, I actually didn’t sleep that night, I went home and I wrote goals for the first time in my life.
Jack Fullerton You know, what saddens me is somewhere in my house is my notes from that night. I really hope they turn up before I pass away. Because I would like to review them.
Bruce Norris That would be fascinating. You know what? I had those notes with me every time I ever went to hear him speak. So I could make new notes on top of notes. And I was if he ever missed a story, man, I knew it. Well, wait a minute. Where’s, where’s the story that I wanted to hear? You know?
Jack Fullerton Well, here’s an interesting thing, because I had a copy of what the talk was that that we had, because we worked for him. I actually, we went to that meeting every every month, we had 1000 people we put in the in at the park. And the next night. Tony Robbins put up 475 in the Bonaventure, and we put 25. And every time I go, I take a different color pin. So when I pull that thing out, right now, it’s fascinating. I have different things that he says, underlined in four or five different colors, which means I you know, it hit me, you know, you know, sometimes I’ve got something just one color, which we I got at one time. But other times something hit me really hard. I underlined it again, a different color, different color, different color. It is fun, fast a every time In fact, I think when we get done, I’ll go over grab the book and go look at it again. I tend to look every now and then it’s really fun.
Bruce Norris The method that you ended up finding most of your properties was literally going into a neighborhood and just knocking on doors. Who taught you that method?
Jack Fullerton Well, if you followed up on what J ack Miller did Jack’s program and he tell us about it, and many people don’t follow up on it, but it was really a good program and he was he had to he had to survive. He got fired from I think it was Honeywell and and he picked up a license and he’s going to work for this guy. And he figured out that what he had to do his he had to go out and buy some houses to put bread on the table for his family. He had two kids and his wife and what he did is he buy 1000 calling cards. And the way I understand it is the way he would tell us every day, he’d get up early, and he go out on the street, and he had to put 33 cards in somebody’s hand. And he wouldn’t come home until he got rid of those 33 on that day, which is, you know, so he’s getting rid of 1000 cards a month. Right. And then he would, you know, make offers, and he would, he was trying to be a salesman, but he’d also would give them $100 for an option on their property, and then try and sell it, he figured out he could make more money doing that. And then the other thing that was interesting, his son told me like, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, that one of the things was back in the old days, we didn’t have walk around phones, and he had, he would come home and save get home at seven that night, he would immediately go grab that phone is start making phone calls. And he’d walk all over the house, they had the longest cord, they could get to that phone, he walked all over the house and be making phone calls, because he had to make money to put money on the table for his family. And I learned from that, and then, you know, I I realized my first here’s something I really think I should share with you. And I’ve been thinking about a lot of things about what I did to get where I am. And what’s really interesting is I bought the first house, I had no down payment. And my teaching assistant had come to me and said, I got 18,000 divorce. She knew I was studying the real estate. And she had lent eight out and hadn’t got anything back. And she said, You know, I got 10,000 and my ex husband, who was an art dealer is now a mortgage guy. He says he’ll put it out and put it to work for him. And I said, Do you trust him? And she says, No. I fortunately said, I told her, Well, you should go buy a house, and she didn’t want to buy the house. So I in my way, I tend to do things I said, Okay, I’ll, I’ll give you 2% more than your husband who you don’t trust offers you. And he offered night. I mean 18 and I had to pay 20, which is 167 a month. I could not get her to buy the house, I went bought my first rental house. After that. I bought the wrong house, I had gotten a license and during the summer to make a little extra money, I was trying to be a realtor, I take three people out, we found three properties. And I my mouth again I said I’m gonna buy whichever one you guys don’t buy. Well, they made offers on on on two houses, which today are the better houses of the three. And I bought the third one and it looks really good. But in those days, it was buyer beware. And the people had a broken foundation and covered everything up. And I bought the house. And the other thing is a two people I was going to make a commission on all backed out because the interest rate went from 11 to 14 in about four weeks. I closed at 14 and it bought it on an at 1010. I use the $10,000. For the down payment, I get the seller to carry tin and I got 80% loan. And then Robert Allen came around and he was saying Well, once you put your money, I get it back as fast as you can. That’s the same thing. We were doing it in regards to the betting on 21. So we put our money on and if we want we pull it out. And so I refinanced it I got about 12,000 out of a 14,000 refinance because it went up a little bit. And I paid 18% for that money. Because as interest rates were high then and I took that money and bought the next three. Well after I had bought two of them and I’m about to buy the third one. My wife leaves for greener pastures. So when all the smoke clears, I’ve got four houses and don’t know what I’m doing. The guy on the on the YouTube, he says you should buy four houses. And the more I thought about that I went back and looked at my own life and that’s what happened. If my wife had left me My goal was to have 100 houses. I was trying to buy one a month at the time when she leaves and it made me stop. And for the next two years I studied and got better and then I did the next Easter vacation because I’m working 60 to 80 hours a week is a waterfalls living goats. So Easter vacation, I’m kind of off for part of the week. And on that Monday I bought three houses. Well, actually about a condo and two houses. And the condo I bought with $100 bill took subject to all the financing of the two houses I’m gonna flip and I I had a friend who I was helping out and she had was a very successful lady and she was going to buy REO’s, I say, Can I go with you? We went with her to that. When she got done buying the four plex’s that she was buying, I said, you got two houses. And they offered me two houses. So I took the money, I had a little money, and I put my line of credit. And I bought two rental houses for about 80,000 was sold for about 100 105. Well, I’m a failed flipper, I never got it. I’m sitting in the best one I still have. This is 1983. And I still have it. And what’s fascinating, I’m writing an $800 check every month to pay for this house. And I finally said, You know what, if I rented it for 595 it would take me four months to lose $800, which is a guy that property nets be easily 2000 a month. So you know, every I look back at along the way I bought a lot of not, I didn’t buy nearly What were you or others have, but I bought more and along the way I’d sell one and I’d pay down debt on others so I could keep what I had. And what’s fascinating when I look back at it. If I flip that house, that property, I might have made five to $7,000. Right? You know, look at what it’s doing today. And I look back at the houses that I got rid of. I got rid of houses that are worth a million dollars today. And yeah, granted, if I had to do it again, I probably did the right thing because those purchases when I sold them, that money went to pay down debt on other houses,
Bruce Norris you definitely had a big impact on on me eventually waking up to the fact that I had to, I had to own something and pay it off. And that would make my my life completely sane. In 2005. When we Well, obviously we we kind of worried about the California market. But we had a housing track that we sold, 90 houses we built and it did work really well. And I just decided to pay everything off. And the only only day of the year I did not like that was April 15. But every other day. I liked it a lot. And I’ve liked it ever since so that’s it’s it’s just been one of those things that you’re just very thankful that you don’t have to worry about and it wasn’t. It wasn’t in my vocabulary seriously until you talk to me one day pretty seriously about what happens to to Marsha, if you can’t go find another house. And yeah, actually stuck home one day and I realized Yeah, I better I better do some of that. But you know, some of the we have gone down different paths. I was looking at my son Greg took over the flipping business probably for about nine years. So 2007 to 2016, maybe 2017. I literally did not see the last 900 houses I flipped.
Jack Fullerton Wow.
Bruce Norris And you literally have almost you almost have every house you’ve ever seen. This is a very different, very different world.
Jack Fullerton Yo, yeah, I because, you know, my goal of 100 houses I never made.
Bruce Norris And we didn’t it didn’t need to.
Jack Fullerton I didn’t make 100 I probably been lucky if I got 70. But you know, I live in a very higher age. I mean, today if I were buying one of my rental houses. Well, the last one I bought was two years ago, the 900,000. And that’s a rental house. Yeah. And when I started those same houses were 100 down. I’d say my average rental house is somewhere between seven and eight right now. Maybe Maybe 850. And you know, the saddest part of it is if somebody were starting today, and they want to buy it $800,000 house, they need to adapt 10% down. They need to have figured out how to keep 80,000 Yeah. And that’s hard to do. You know, it’s hard to do. Yeah, so I really encourage people if you can do anything, go buy a condo at 500 or 600 then you only need 50 to 60,000 and if you can get your I mean, you know one of the things I do is I go back Bruce and look at what I’ve done. Before I started in the real estate business I had bought me think I had bought 123 houses yeah And I bought the first one in a $25,000 market, which is within two miles of where I live today. Right? That’s what’s changed. But what’s interesting is the only way I could buy that house that day is somebody said, we’ll just offer them 19. So we bought that $25,000 house for 20. Now, I don’t know what I’m doing that day, right? $2,000 down, I knew that I got from my mother and paid her back. So then the next thing that happens is, I end up buying my next house by selling that house for 30,000 on an 80 1010, so I learned the 80 1010 program. And I took my money from that and bought the house that the mother of my children lives in a three houses away from me. And we bought that for 49. But we took the money out of the house that we sold, and put that into the new house. It was 49,000. And then I had a divorce with the mother of my children. And when I remarried, I bought a $42,000 house on a fluke and still didn’t know what I was doing. And I said to Martha Bannon at the time when she showed me about 30 houses, and we knew we could afford 35. And I said, she shows us this last one, which is a little bit of a fixture, had a big tear down the carpet needed to be painted all kinds of things. And I had remarried had no money. And I told Martha you know you need to you need to make offer for 35,000. For me, she said, Yeah, but somebody in the office turned down 39 yesterday, I said, Martha, you know if I make the offer, you got to take it in. She takes it in. She calls me the next day is that you got it. You know what the situation was? It was it was a divorcees house, who had remarried. And her new husband said, I don’t care what the next offer is, you take it.
Bruce Norris Wow.
Jack Fullerton So that’s how we got. Now once again, I need 3500 down, right, because I don’t have it. Because I don’t have a house to sell. Because I’ve been divorced, and my wife had the house. She lives in today. And my mom loaned me the money again. So there’s my 10%. Now, that house, we were so poor, somebody loaned us a refrigerator that we put in the in the garage that had coils on the top. We couldn’t afford a bed, somebody loaned us a waterbed bag, we put it in the corner of the living room, and we slept on that. And then what we did is we spent the next week or two painting the house ourselves. never replace the carpet in the living room that had a 12 foot tear down the carpet. And then when I had the divorce with Carol, we end up when Mary moves in, she never married in our 36 years together never had new carpet under feet. Because we put the carpet into the rental houses. And I go back to something I think the most important thing that anybody could ever learn is our my my good friend, Jimmy Napier, who is unfortunately passed away. Jimmy wants came into town and he said to everybody, everybody in this room has a five year sacrifice period. You could sacrifice five years when you’re old and sick and broke. Or you can sacrifice five years when you’re young and viable. Now we’re about I’m 43 about that time. And Mary and I bought that program. So for five years, we’re and I watched every single nickel we spent every Tuesday we went to Bob’s Big Boy for the two for one combo. That was our look at that. And I look back and now I’m in a position where I can’t do what I used to be able to do. And I get my 75 to 85 year old friends call me say what I do now I have no money. My videos were 10 times better at it than I was. But they flipped and sold everything and spent the money. No matter. I just waited a while. And it five years we thought maybe we made a mistake. But eight to 10 years I had retired from the college. And because of that we’ve been all over the world. We had a great life. And the fact that we let it in and here’s something else with the Commonwealth. I’ll never forget. We’ve got a great person Ray Reese, he was kept our meetings. You know, it’s really interesting. Successful people used to come they just came because they wanted to learn something extra or they wanted to remember things they might have forgotten. And we had raised speak and he had a five year section. Advice period. We had Miss Blackwell speak. Oh, it was like pulling teeth to get Mick to speak. I said, I’ll interview you will sit on some barstools and froze. So he comes up there. Within about seven minutes. I knew he didn’t need me anymore. And that’s Bo. And I moved away and along the way said, Yeah, what are you sacrifice for five years? We had five meals we used to have. This didn’t work. Hang on, I got an answer. Hang up. Okay. And And what happened is, he’s talking about spaghetti and oh, different things. And he couldn’t remember the last one and large out in the audience’s park at me, in the UK. He’s out teaching people every day. Mick is a wonderful, wonderful man, he does a lot to help everybody. And it’s really interesting. But we had a bunch of other different people. Gosh, one guy just passed away. And his net worth was really big. And I never forget, when he got up and talk, he’s talked it without everybody defining it. Five years sacrifice period. And I think that’s one of the big secrets is you’ve got to cut back on the dollars that come through your fingers, and don’t spend them. And I remember reading a book called The thick like a tycoon by Bill green. In thinking Grow Rich, no, nothing you’re rich by the richest man in Babylon tells you to put 10% away to invest. Right. In bill Greene’s book, he says put more than 10%. And so those two books were really valuable to me. The Richest Man in Babylon got me out of debt. Because when I started in this, this trip, I was 35,000 in debt, make it 30,000 a year, which means you’ve already spent next year’s income,
Bruce Norris Right?
Jack Fullerton Able to get out of debt by listening to the parables in the richest man in Babylon. I talk.
Bruce Norris No, no, one of my favorite Jim Rohn quotes, “do what you have to for as long as you need to. So you can do what you want to for as long as you can.”
Jack Fullerton So true. Yep. You know? Yeah, I was just gonna share something else from Jim. And let me see if I can get this right. He always said standard education gets standard results and self education gets incredible results. Yeah, trying to remember his Oh, his his his decision of the difference between financially free and those who are not. And I sent out a little cover letter whenever I give away one of my free newsletters which I stopped writing in 91. You can’t buy them. And and what it says is that financially free people save their money first and spend, after they’ve saved. The rest of the population, about 95% of what they do is they spend their money first when they get their paycheck. If they have anything left, they save it. And they do exactly what I did in my first, you know, 20 years. So adult times, we were saving money all the time. But if I got $500 gosh darn, I had to go buy a new TV restart. And that’s one of the biggest traps that none of us have. We want it today instead of waiting. And I think thank god Mary came into my life because she was willing to wait with me. And that’s really important. your partner’s got to be with you. And it turned out my second wife was a wonderful lady, I think the wool over today, but she wasn’t on the same page. And she wanted to play now and ran off with a playboy. So fascinating how life is.
Bruce Norris It is I’m putting we don’t have a lot more time. But what I’d like to do is I want to go down a list of people’s names who I know have impacted your life. And that you’ve either co taught with or to been taught by, and I want the first word that kind of comes to your mind when I say say their name, like the category that you remember them for. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna say Ward, Hannah good, but I’m going to prep it before I he, I talked to him earlier today and you invited him to speak before he knew he was going to enjoy it. And he said, he said when he got done, your whole group gave him a standing ovation. And ever since that day, he has loved Love, love being in front of an audience. So you had a really big impact on word Hannigan.
Jack Fullerton I think he had a big impact on me.
Bruce Norris So what’s Though what’s the word that comes to mind with Ward?
Jack Fullerton Probably changed my life a lot. I’d like to share with you what happened. We were, we went to a guy named Charlie Dorsey, he spoke three times. And he got halfway through the morning and he said, everybody in this room should be saving thousand dollars a month. Well, I’m at that point, I’m doing that 35,000 in debt program. And, and I’m ready to leave and work talk me into go to lunch with him. So we got lunch room, we’ve got our name tags on, there’s a big table where Charlie was, and I’m a water polo coach, I don’t know anything. I’m gonna keep my mouth shut. And so we get invited to sit at the opposite end from Charlie Dorsey and his big table. And so I sit there and I don’t say a word, I don’t say a word. And. And one thing happens is that it turns out that everybody stops talking. So I say, Mr. Dorsey, you don’t understand my life. I’m spending 110% of what I made. And I had never heard this before. But it was a blessing. And I’m sure it’s, you know, a lot of people teach it. And he said, Young man, write down everything you spend for the next 30 days, of which I did. And I used to go to breakfast and Charlie’s chili before I’d spent $6 and 35 cents. I wrote that down. I then decided, well, gosh, set a god at five o’clock. And what am I going to eight o’clock on the captain’s table on campus, which is has no real estate costs in the food in the in the students are in a classroom, so there’s no cost for the people. And so I got the same breakfast for $3.35. I wrote that down. The next week, I went to the galley and stood up got the same food dollar 35. I just save $5 per day by writing down everything I spent. And I did that on a lot of other things. But hours a month right there. And, you know, I didn’t learn any that they didn’t teach me that in high school. Nobody taught me that I had to wait till I was 43 to learn that.
Bruce Norris All right, John Schaub. What comes to mind?
Jack Fullerton Probably my first teacher. Okay, first guy that I really believed in. When I took that class called make it a big on little deals, which is my philosophy. And john is probably the most honorable, one of the most honorable guys, he probably is the most honorable or one of the most that I’ve ever known. He is always a giver. A when they found out that Mary was sick, he was on the phone from a seminar immediately. When I lost Mary, he called me all the time. When I went through my divorce, we had gotten to know each other a little bit. We had taken a class from Warren Harding called personal magnetism and leadership training. And it was a week later that I lost my wife and he called and checked on me, he’s just become a great friend. And yet, I’ve learned a lot from him. And I used to do the the, we used to take it from his class, we take a group of seven, but here’s something really valuable. We just take a group out of the street on Friday night, at a seminar when you do make it a big on little deals here in Costa Mesa. We took people into my farm, and we put seven groups into a street with 28 to 32 houses, let’s just say 30 houses. So now we’ve got 30 houses, seven groups is 210 houses, half the people aren’t home 105 houses and they knock on the doors to talk to people. They come back in the next day. And you know what they found about eight deals. Now I have a person said, Gosh, 210 houses were not done. They only talked to 105 of them. And they did that hour and a half one night. What have you went and spent an hour and a half every Saturday? And did it seven weeks in a row? Something but most people won’t go out there. They get they get they get the nose No, no, no. And they quit. And so I think people give up too quick.
Bruce Norris I had an interesting experience with a mailer. I decided I would just write offers instead of right I buy houses. So I did an experiment. And I wrote 100 offers into an area in Moreno Valley at the time the house was worth about 75 80,000 I literally went drove I drove all the houses I I looked at the repairs and you know kind of gave an estimate. So I did I did a mailer. I got a I got a really nasty phone call and how dare you You know, whatever. And I had a pleasant attitude. And I said, I really appreciate you calling. And she, why would you say that? I said, Well, I, what happens is whenever I get a really nasty response, I naturally get a yes answer on the next call. So I really appreciate you making that making way for that next couple.
Jack Fullerton Yeah. So did you get the yes on the next call?
Bruce Norris I got four yeses on that mailer.
Jack Fullerton Isn’t that fascinating? Yep.
Bruce Norris And here, here’s here’s a true story about one of the purchases, the guy owned the house that he was living in next, it was across the street from the rental is exactly the same house in a tract. We were signing the agreement for 35 grand, he said, You couldn’t buy my residence for less than 80 grand. What he was selling me his house for 35. That was exactly the same house across the street, because it didn’t have the same meaning to him.
Jack Fullerton That is a fascinating point.
Bruce Norris It really was same house, half price, had no had no connection, because he didn’t plant the roses. And he didn’t do that stuff. That was just sort of like the last tenant was a pain in the butt. And that’s what that’s what his memory was.
Jack Fullerton You know, I had a good friend named Karen Kaizuca, who when she passed away, she had 40 houses. And I don’t think Karen ever bought a house that she paid less than 98% of the value. She buys them, and she keeps them and she’d manage them. And then she just kept them. Now 40 houses sounds like a lot. She really had 12. I tend to 12 in Cypress and the rest were in Oklahoma. So they were really cheaper houses. But still at that. That’s what she did. And some people say, Well, I can’t buy anything, and I can’t get it for 60 cents of $1. Well, I’m gonna say I bought things too high, and I bought things where I’ve gotten good deals. But it’s crazy. If you think you got to have everything be 60 cents on the dollar.
Bruce Norris You’re right. You know, you remember a gentleman named Schumacher.
Jack Fullerton Oh, David. Yes,
Bruce Norris yeah. So David, David taught me a good lesson. And he was very kind to me. When I started speaking, he showed up, he literally showed up one time three days in a week, he drove at the time he could see he was he was in San Diego to hear me, Orange County to hear me at your club in LA, three, three times in a week. And I think he was sort of, he was sort of fascinated at some of the stuff that I was able to do. So he invited me to lunch. Now. It turned out differently than I thought, because I’m sitting in front of the is on the beach, on in one of his houses. And we were he was he was talking about being fascinated that I was able to buy stuff at a discount. And I was pretty enthralled with that, you know, and then he said this, he said, Well, he said buying a discount is good. But he said I bought this house for 60 grand. And by the way, how he did that is he rented a helicopter crew. And he flew all over the place looking for like, blank patches of activity in on the coast and he bought where he knew it would fill in. Now he’s a little bit over out of my league and when he thinks like that, so he buys this house for I’ll just say it’s 60 or 80 grand. And then he overpays for the next one, literally a month later next door for 120 overpays for 100 and at 120, because it was on terms. And then he said and a little bit of pause he says, but he says now they’re both worth 3 million. So I guess it didn’t really matter.
Jack Fullerton Well you know that he gave a million dollars, I think is her most of beach to redo their Pier. Well, and I think that’s if I’ve got the right town. That’s where they have the big volleyball tournaments. And you know what he did? No. Did you? Were you in his house where he goes upstairs? Yeah, the dinner was outside. Yeah. Later later. And when I went there he was, you know, legally blind. But at one time, the there was a volleyball one volleyball court in front of his house, and they’d come over uses picket, he goes to the city says, Look, I want to put up a drinking fountain on the other side. And so he paid to put it underneath the strand there. And they had a drinking fountain of this. I think I don’t know what this could be. I don’t know what it is. But I think there’s like 20 or 30 volleyball courts there now and Ha, the whole big volleyball tournaments right in front of his house, all because he took the initiative to help the volleyball players. Well, what he could see he saw these girls running around these cute, bikinis, you know, it was fun. He would come to the Commonwealth all the time, he would sit there and somebody say that none of us got what was said, and you’d hear this chuckle out of David. He was so far advanced to the rest of us. It was crazy. But he helped everybody.
Bruce Norris He did. He was very, very kind band, and very patient with a young upstart that thought he was doing great things. And then he kind of taught me locations pretty important if you can get one. Even if you overpay, maybe that’s a good idea. Well, jack, I we’re out of time, I want to thank you for all you’ve contributed to my life and for to our industry. You’ve mattered to an awful lot of people, and I really appreciate you.
Jack Fullerton Well, thank you, Bruce. And I appreciate that we become such great friends. And I remember I wouldn’t let you speak for a long time. You know, that it’s just been great. And I appreciate you and everything you do for everybody. But people just don’t understand how much value you’re giving back to the the beginners in it. And the pros. I mean, we all listen to whatever you say. So thank you very much.
Bruce Norris Okay. All right, jack. Well, you have a you have a wonderful night. Okay,
Jack Fullerton You too, thank you so much.
Narrator For more information on hard money, loans and upcoming events with The Norris Group. Check out thenorrisgroup.com. For information on passive investing with trust deeds, visit tngtrustdeeds.com.
Aaron Norris The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab.
