How This DJ Built $1M+ in Real Estate While Never Quitting His Day Job

The Real Estate Investing Club

Join an active community of RE investors here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersen  BUILDING WEALTH WITHOUT QUITTING YOUR PASSION 💼🎵 In this incredible episode, I sit down with Joel Miller, a legendary real estate investor who's been building wealth since 1978 while simultaneously running a successful mobile DJ business for 35 years! 🎧 Joel proves that you don't need to choose between your passion and financial freedom - you can have both! EARLY REAL ESTATE INVESTING SECRETS 🏠💰 Joel shares his fascinating origin story, starting with paper routes in junior high that exposed him to rental properties. By age 20, he purchased his first rental for just $25,000 - a property he STILL owns today! This episode is packed with golden nuggets about how to think about real estate investing as a wealth-building vehicle alongside your existing career. OFF-MARKET DEAL STRATEGIES THAT WORK 📈 Discover why Joel only bought ONE property through a realtor in his entire career! He reveals his proven off-market strategies including pre-foreclosure direct mail campaigns, courthouse auctions, and the power of investor networking. Joel's approach to finding distressed properties before they hit the sheriff's sale is absolutely brilliant. THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS IN REAL ESTATE 🤝 One of Joel's most powerful quotes: "If I had to choose between losing all my money or losing all my relationships, I'd lose all my money in a heartbeat because my relationships will help me get my money back." This philosophy led to his best deal ever - acquiring 14 units with zero down payment through a relationship with a stressed seller. HARD MONEY LENDING SUCCESS 💸 Joel explains why hard money lending became his favorite strategy, generating consistent returns while helping other investors succeed. He shares insights about vetting borrowers, requiring education, and building a community of serious real estate professionals. COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE CAUTIONARY TALE ⚠️ Learn from Joel's biggest mistake - a commercial property deal that nearly destroyed his portfolio when anchor tenants went bankrupt. His lessons about tenant vetting and risk assessment in commercial properties could save you from similar disasters. PROVEN WEALTH BUILDING PHILOSOPHY 📚 Joel's book "Build Real Estate Wealth" demonstrates how to enjoy the journey while building massive wealth through rental properties. Whether you're a beginner looking to get started or an experienced investor seeking game-changing strategies, th

Transcript

00:00all right we are back with another episode of the real estate investing club i hope you guys

00:12are having a good day a good week a good month whatever day it is for you i actually just got

00:17back from my honeymoon um just on this sunday this last sunday so i've been completely not even

00:23plugged into my phone or the or work or anything for two weeks uh it was pretty blissful we went

00:28over there to spain it was like 100 degrees i could not handle it but it's a lot of fun but it's good

00:33to be back it's good to get into the into the groove um and it's a good day for a second reason

00:38because we have joel miller with us on the podcast joel has been investing since 1978 so he has quite

00:45a bit of experience he is the author of the best-selling book build wealth build real estate

00:49wealth um he's also a professional dj with over 5 000 appearances so a lot to go into here i'm

00:55excited joel thanks for hopping on hey gabriel i've been looking forward to this thanks for having

01:00me absolutely and and congratulations on your your recent uh marriage thank you thank you i told you

01:07before we got on here we always like to start with stories we like to hear how people got to where they

01:11are so why don't you take us to the beginning all the way to the beginning back in 1978 and uh tell us

01:17how you got into real estate and how it's been going since then i can take you back a little further

01:21than that because really there were two events this uh happened to me in junior high school that

01:28really set me you know on my path to uh the two main paths that i've had in life the first was that

01:34an investor built uh four four unit apartment buildings at the edge of our subdivision and which

01:40were right in my paper route i got all those tenants as customers on my paper route you know so

01:44but i have a distinct memory in about eighth grade being in my bedroom kind of doing the math

01:49on what this whole rental property thing looks like because we all lived with our parents and

01:54single-family homes that they all you know so what this was different that these these people

01:59uh paid to be there and they didn't own the property and i kind of put that in my back pocket and said

02:03i want to do that later you know and the other thing was that uh one of the older kids in the

02:09neighborhood built a pirate radio station in his basement and had uh the antenna on the flagpole in the

02:14backyard now pirate radio station is unlicensed illegal radio station so i got to hang out there

02:20and that's when i decided i wanted to be a dj which i might clarify i have been retired from since 2011

02:25but uh i uh uh you know i i did radio production in high school and went away to college and studied

02:33accounting which i i believe you could use in any profession that you're in you know but i went to

02:39college i had a great uh radio station program at amn and fm radio station and uh eventually uh was

02:46hired you know halfway through college back in my hometown at the big 50 000 watt top 40 fm station

02:52you know and so i finished college in town here and uh uh right before i was ready to graduate from

02:59college my weekend guy uh status went to full-time on the radio and so that made it possible for me to

03:07take the calls from the kids that the ones you want the djs from the radio station to come out and do

03:13the record hop in the gym sort of thing and and that kind of changed my life and i i ended up uh leaving

03:19radio uh but uh i did that to uh pioneer the mobile dj business in this part of the country i'm in erie

03:27pennsylvania halfway between cleveland and buffalo right along lake erie and so i did that for 35 years

03:345,051 appearances as you referred to but about a year and a half after my first mobile dj appearance

03:42i did buy my first rental property in january of 1978 i still have a game i was just there a few days

03:49ago it's a cash cow you know so i gotta ask anybody added all to that over the years you know yeah

03:56anybody who got started that early um i'm always curious what you buy you bought your first rental

04:02properties for so that first one 1978 what'd you buy it for how much uh 25,000 and i put it down i

04:09bought it through a realtor and it was the last property that i used a realtor to buy wow 25,000

04:16i have so many properties using my realtors but uh there's only been a few occasions when she brought

04:23me a few flips that were bank owned or something like that but none of my rentals were any more from

04:29uh realtors uh the best way to find deals is the off-market deals as you may know but yeah so that

04:36went on for a while you know uh doing the mobile dj work and the um real estate investing i actually did

04:43start an accounting practice after college which i sold after about five years because something had

04:47to give you know but uh um that's part of the premise of my book build real estate wealth the subtitle is um

04:54uh enjoy the journey around property investment and it points out that real estate doesn't have to be

04:59an either or thing you know you can choose to add rental real estate to something that you don't want

05:06to give up like i did i had a passion for being an entertainer a mobile dj in particular and i didn't

05:12want to give that up and so i i grew those two things side by side but and the book talks about how to do

05:19that but it also gives you the tools if your goal is to leave your your job as soon as possible and do

05:24real estate full-time uh you know that's that's possible too of course but um uh the book is for

05:32people who maybe don't even think that real estate is for them but they um because they don't know

05:37understand how it works you know where they they think it's got to be an either or situation but it's

05:42also for people that have established portfolios that are looking for some sort of game-changing

05:47information that little you know supercharge whatever portfolio they already have it's not

05:53just just for the beginner it takes you all the way from mindset through entity formation before

05:58it even gets into the usual things that books on this thing talk about which is property acquisition

06:03having the property and then beyond that we talk about um philosophical things like um uh the uh uh

06:11uh uh comparing the the difference between riches and wealth and also other um uh philosophical things

06:20that uh you can put to use uh you know best practices for your business and your life well yeah and i

06:26feel like that's such an important um distinction to make because a lot of people especially people

06:31that come on this show they are active investors that is their primary job they're out there they're

06:36they're building a company that kind of thing um but for the vast majority of investors real estate

06:40investors out there it is not you know building doing real estate is not their primary job they

06:46have a second job maybe they're a lawyer maybe they're an accountant doctor anything um firefighters

06:51we've had on and so it's important to remember that real estate is a great vehicle for wealth

06:57regardless of its if it's the primary focus of your of your career right you may be doing something

07:03you're passionate about but it's not providing you all the income that you need and that's what

07:08income property does is provide cash flow and and nor is it maybe providing any retirement for you like

07:15when i was self-employed i realized my retirement was totally up to me i mean there were vehicles like

07:22you know iras to invest in but i still had to have money to put into the iras and and also decide what

07:29was going on in the retirement accounts and eventually i switched to um uh actually investing in in

07:38property within my self-directed roth irate which is a whole other podcast so we can talk about

07:44but um and i and i should add that over the years then uh starting in in 1991 i did start flipping houses

07:50in addition to the uh rental property portfolio i flipped over 100 houses and then in 2018 got into hard money

07:58lending lending which also is a whole other podcast you know uh which gives me a a you know great

08:04satisfaction to be part of the equation for the other investors that are a little earlier on in

08:10their journeys in our area here and in addition to that i'm heavily involved with the uh professional

08:15organization of landlords in our part of the country um currently the vp i used times our longest serving

08:21past president and i and i teach uh the landlord one-on-one classes that we offer as well as some more

08:28advanced classes and so if we leave this podcast with anything i just want to tell your listeners

08:33if you really want to grow your business you've got to get involved with other people that are

08:37doing the same thing you're doing get involved with your local um ria as it is sometimes called you know

08:43and and uh get at the table with other people that are either doing what you're doing at the same

08:50time or they've done what you're trying to do you know and and just uh uh absorb everything you can

08:57from those relationships because how do you think i bought all those properties without using a

09:02realtor over these ships you know it was through relationships and and uh you know investors sell

09:08to other other investors when it's time you know we're not all at the same point in our career

09:14same arc you know in the career at the same time at some point we sell the properties to somebody that's

09:20you know looking for those sort of properties yeah yeah and you i mean you mentioned um it was just

09:25just that first deal that you bought on market everything else has been off market and that

09:29just goes to show how important it is to either generate your own uh you know flow of leads or

09:35just be networking going out there talking to people because you're going to find some wholesalers

09:39you're going to find some other investors who find deals that they're not quite interested in

09:43um that's where the majority or a big portion at least of your deal flow will come from is

09:49these people you meet and not only that it's just a lot of fun to meet people like yourself

09:53uh just other investors makes the journey a lot more enjoyable um so you have so it sounds like

09:59you've done kind of three strategies in your career you've bought uh bought and hold so you've

10:02bought some rentals and kept them in your portfolio one since 1978 crazy uh you've done flips and then

10:08you've done hard money lending is there have you ever been into commercial properties or um

10:14most of my uh units over the years have been residential i have had some commercial some of my worst

10:20experiences were with commercial but uh uh that's my fault you know that was earlier on and um involved

10:29um uh coming into a partnership to become the managing partner of an existing operation where

10:36there were two other partners and my problem was not with the partners but uh it was with uh large

10:42tenants who went bankrupt you know oh it was a strip center retail army was it oh what type of commercial

10:49was it was it one uh was the uh uh corporate offices for a large retail uh chain that had 51 of our

11:00building and another one was a restaurant along with a banquet room that uh connected to the restaurant

11:06that had another 25 percent and within a few this is back in 1988 uh within a few months after i came in

11:16um both of those went first chapter 11 and then chapter seven eventually so i spent 10 years in that

11:25deal putting out fires and eventually gave my interest to the other two partners literally gave it to them

11:33you're just like i'm done and i don't want any of this yeah and so that would be my my answer to uh

11:40uh uh you know like something i'd never want to do again or whatever one of those questions are like

11:47yeah so of the three strategies that you kind of focused on your residential long-term rentals um

11:52your your hard money lending and then flipping properties which one has been the one that you've

11:57enjoyed the most or the one that you found the most success with hard money lending absolutely yeah

12:03yeah yeah okay yeah there's so much uh not only is that profitable but um uh again like i mentioned

12:11i get to be as i use the phrase part of the equation for other uh investors and their their deals and uh

12:19you know a lot of these are people that have taken uh the classes that uh our organization offers and i

12:27pretty much require that they belong to our our professional organization in order for me to do business with

12:32now you know so uh they've in some cases joined in order to get a loan from me you know and taken

12:39the class in order to get a loan from me yeah and so they've benefited in multiple ways too makes sense

12:47um so again let's go back to the your acquisition strategy so you have uh you mentioned that first

12:53deal was the only one you bought through a realtor everything else has been off market um you know

12:58finding deals is one of real deals is one of the most difficult parts of building a real estate

13:03business because oh yeah you can't all walmart foreclosure off the shelf because you need

13:09another one today no uh you it you have to take what comes down the pipe there you go so what what are

13:17the primary ways that you're generating leads and getting new deals well first of all i am not in the

13:23property acquisition mode now you know i am actually selling things off uh down to the

13:30point of the properties that my son is going to take over uh in a little while we can come back to that

13:37but uh just just to kind of think about uh some of the strategies that i did use when i was acquiring

13:44properties i i had uh pretty good uh uh mailing campaign okay to people who were in foreclosure

13:51so i i bought uh properties in it in many instances before people uh got to the share sale you know or

13:58maybe made arrangements to buy them at the share sale because i was able to um uh get in those houses uh

14:08before they they got to the sale and and be able to assess uh you know what uh what what might have to

14:15be done inside the houses because i was in contact with people living there before they moved out

14:19you know so that was a good strategy they had and uh so that bring me to another

14:27you know source that i would mention that i had a lot of success in was auctions particularly um uh

14:35foreclosure auctions for which are share share sale auctions as well as u.s marshall auctions which

14:40would be auctions of just like share share sale or foreclosure but those are properties that

14:47um uh have to be sold by the u.s marshall because the loans on them were from the uh usda

14:54interesting i actually that's the first time i've heard of that yeah they can't go through the

14:58regular county share sale system for those and because the loans were what they were uh the

15:05mortgages were from the united states department of agriculture usda loans so they were farmland

15:13no uh it would be um typically in a uh subdivision interesting for some reason why would the usda

15:21give out loans for residential property well it was a big program that they had particularly back in the

15:28i guess 80s 90s you know it had the deal was that that um uh you could get the loan based on your income

15:37and if your income fluctuated during the term of the loan your payment uh increased or decreased

15:46based on your income no way what's that based on your income that is yeah that's the first time

15:52i've heard of that one too so here's what would happen sometimes is that people would uh

15:57uh their income would somehow go down and their payment would be adjusted

16:03such that they weren't actually even paying anything on the principal and uh you know then

16:10maybe they got in trouble uh that they they couldn't make the payments at all and uh uh they would find

16:17out that they they owed um maybe you know more money than they they wrote yeah because of accumulating

16:27interest interest and fees and so on yeah that's that's a uh if you're listening to this and

16:33you don't know anything about usda loss it's um i i think if you google anything you could find out

16:39some of the details but um yeah yeah i'm sure they probably still don't provide those anymore

16:45given the changes that happened during the 2007 2008 yeah i don't know if they still do them or not

16:50i know they still foreclose on them though all right well yeah i just took a peek at the clock it

16:57looks like we have run it down we've crossed the 15 minute mark so it is time to jump into the

17:00quick question round are you ready okay sure

17:03all right starts with education it could be any form it could be a book you've read a conference

17:07you've gone to mentorship program you've been a part of a movie you've seen yada yada any of that

17:11stuff i just need two recommendations one for general life wisdom and then one for real estate

17:17okay uh general life wisdom i'm going to take you into the way back machine

17:23the foley and the hill you got wrote think and grow rich this is uh grow rich with peace of mind

17:28his companion book to that i think my copyright here is like uh i don't know it's like 1978 or

17:36something like that i i gotta look now what is it um yeah like i can't even find it here it's

17:43i yeah 1967 there we go oh wow nice and oh my favorite book on real estate oh my gosh this guy

17:52joel miller wrote this book uh build real estate wealth enjoy the journey of rental property investment

17:58but i know you want a better answer than that and i i'm going to be really cliche here i i really

18:04enjoyed um robert kisaki's book you know rich dad poor dad and i will tell you that everybody who owns

18:12a copy of rich dad poor dad should get a copy of my book because it's kind of written as a companion

18:18book to that okay now it my book will go a little deeper into the nuts and bolts and if you have those two

18:25books and we'll we'll prime you at the very end for where they're good so keep that in mind okay

18:31next question is for your younger self let's go back to the joel who was just getting started in

18:351978 go back to him look him in the eye give him one piece of advice moving forward yeah move faster

18:43think bigger and remember it's relationships that count wow that's good move faster think bigger and

18:49focus on relationships i like that as a that's a triple triple recommendation there i'll give you

18:55a quick one here i'm often asked a question that prompts me to give this answer um if i if i had a

19:02choice of losing all my money or losing all my relationships i would lose all my money in a

19:07heartbeat because my relationships will help me and get my my money back don't make a withdrawal from

19:14a relationship just to make a deposit in your bank good one i like that too don't make a withdrawal in

19:20your relation in a relationship just to make a deposit in your bank account that's a good one

19:25all right moving us on to the uh to the next question and this is about the us it is a big place

19:31there is tons of opportunity out there give me the single metro you're most excited about investing in

19:36in today well i i um i have always stuck with erie county pennsylvania you know it's probably um i'm

19:46not necessarily the the one to ask about uh uh investing in um other markets outside of my area

19:53that's just uh never been what i did yeah i always found that for what i wanted to do there was enough

20:00going on here that was within 15 20 minutes of my location to to make me rich and i believe that's

20:08probably the case no matter where you live yep yep uh yeah for for most most areas i believe that

20:14would actually be true um all right moving us on this is about lessons learned uh not every deal we

20:19get into goes the way we expect it in fact many times in if not every time something will go wrong

20:26and uh that's when we get to learn a lesson so give me a deal or take me back to a deal that went

20:31a little bit sideways for you and then what was the lesson you pulled from it well we talked about

20:35that about 10 minutes ago when i told you about that commercial property where the tenants went

20:39bankrupt so the lesson learned is that if you are investing in uh commercial property particularly

20:46if there are what we would call anchor tenants that if one of those went out it would cause problems

20:52with you because the other little tenants that are there are not enough you know to keep it going

20:57um my my lesson learned is to vet those those uh those anchor tenants uh enough to know you know

21:06they're not three months from bankruptcy yeah especially uh those those type of you know commercial

21:13buildings that it takes quite a while to to turn the lease around to get a new tenant um yeah makes a lot

21:19of sense all right so let's uh let's go to the highlight reel uh you know you've had a long

21:23career i'm sure a couple deals one or two deals stand out in your mind as just the stars aligned and

21:29everything went right uh take me to that deal and uh and give me the highlights oh i i love this one um

21:36i had um a uh row home that i had acquired in a foreclosure auction and you know like a row homes

21:44they're going to be like in our case four to six residences in one building property line goes up

21:50the wall you know like condos well i had a tenant on an end unit that started asking me hey what's

21:56the deal with the end unit on the next building here that isn't being taken care of can you do

22:01anything about it so well let me find out who owns it so long story short i found out that the owner

22:07was actually somebody that i knew it was a doctor that came to my dj appearances and would talk to me there

22:13you know so when i inquired turned out he had 10 of them in the neighborhood this this neighborhood

22:18had no maybe 150 of them all together and that within a few blocks he owned 10 of them in there

22:24and um he was 59 and he was being told by his cardiologist if he didn't retire now he was going

22:30to die and so he literally sold his account his um um medical practice and sold me his entire portfolio

22:39of uh 14 units over 13 properties 10 of them were the 10 uh row homes i was talking about half of them

22:48were not occupied and all of them were under rented and i bought them for um with no money down no

22:57payments no interest for like 18 months the the purchase price was two-thirds of whatever the appraised

23:05value was and he had a recent paid appraisal for all of the properties third-party paid appraisal

23:11whatever that was two-thirds of that was the purchase price um after that the payments went to like um

23:20i don't know interest only for five or six years or something like that and then uh uh

23:27uh you know i i uh actually then entered into an amortized loan with them following that first

23:35six years or something he's still alive he's in his 80s so his doctor was right you know

23:43he took the stress out of his life but well i'm gonna say i'm sure that was a benefit to to both

23:49parties there because yeah i have a problem and it's itching you know it's just wearing you down

23:54uh what you want is just to get it get it over easy quick you know right buyer takes the whole

24:00thing and so so we stepped in you got a deal he sold it to you he got the problem off his back

24:05it was a win-win situation so i i took about 18 months when i had no payments because i told

24:10him that's how long it would take and and improved the properties and filled them all and got them to

24:15market rents operated them for 23 years finally sold them uh a couple of years ago for four times what i

24:23paid love it after making tons of money on them over the years and that is uh that just goes to

24:30show relationships are one of the most important things in real estate just like you mentioned

24:34um you know i'm sure there's plenty of plenty of uh stories you can give us and i i can give plenty

24:38of stories myself on just a situation where the relationship is the was the key it was the linchpin

24:44and that's what allowed you to to have the opportunity so awesome i'm gonna move us on to the next

24:49question this is oh i lost my place i do this so many times oh this is the last question this

24:55is for the listeners um you've given us a lot to think about i'm sure people want to reach out get

24:59in contact with you this is going to be a two-parter um tell me where can they find you and then what can

25:04they expect when they reach out well you can put my name into facebook x instagram or linkedin and

25:11whatever and as long as you don't find joel miller the video game character which apparently is out

25:17there uh put a real estate with my name you'll find me but the best place to go is to the website

25:22that is dedicated to the book which is uh simply joel miller books dot com j-o-e-l-m-i-l-l-e-r-b-o-o-k-s

25:33dot com and on the the home page of that you can uh click on something it'll show you the entire table

25:39of contents of the book it's fairly detailed so you can see what we're getting into click on something else

25:44that will also show you sample content from like three or four of the media's paragraphs from

25:50each chapter and if you click on a buy button there it'll take you right to the page on amazon

25:55where the book is for sale sweet all right i will put that link in the show notes so if you guys want

26:01to reach out and get a get that book all you got to do is click a little more in the description it's

26:05going to pull down that full description and in there you can find joel's links yeah all right

26:11man that wraps it up thank you very much for hopping on the show okay real this was fun and

26:15fast yeah this is moving fast like i should have been moving in my first years you know

26:23too busy building a dj business at the time i guess there you go with that i appreciate everybody

26:29who hopped on the show with us we do this for you so if you guys have any questions just reach out to

26:34me gabe the real estate investing club dot com if you guys want to support the show just leave us a

26:38review a thumbs up all that stuff other than that i hope you guys have an absolutely fantastic week

26:43and uh keep rocking real estate we'll see you on the next episode thanks keith

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