Digital Social Hour
The $20K Bankruptcy Lesson Every Agent Must Know | Chris Bentley DSH #1018
Thu, 26 Dec 2024 14:00:00 -0000
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Discover the crucial $20K bankruptcy lesson that transformed Chris Bentley into one of Dallas's top luxury real estate experts. 🏘️ In this eye-opening conversation, Chris shares his incredible journey from financial rock bottom to building an 18-agent brokerage and closing multi-million dollar deals. Learn how Chris bounced back from losing everything in 2008, mastered the art of networking, and built a thriving luxury real estate empire in Dallas. From closing $5.5M homes to managing wealth for clients, Chris reveals his secrets to success and the valuable lessons he learned along the way. This powerful conversation covers everything from the Dallas luxury market and relocations from high-tax states to innovative marketing strategies and wealth-building insights. Whether you're a real estate professional or someone looking to learn from others' experiences, this interview delivers game-changing wisdom about perseverance, business growth, and the importance of maintaining perspective in the face of success. Watch as Chris shares his unique approach to mentoring agents, building genuine relationships, and creating sustainable success in the competitive world of luxury real estate. Get ready for an honest, inspiring discussion about turning setbacks into comebacks and building lasting success in real estate. 🔑 #financialeducation #bankruptcylessons #howtonetworklikeaproinrealestate #realestatereferralagent #realtorreferrals CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - Chris Bentley 03:15 - Luxury Homes Market 05:56 - Attracting Clients 07:47 - Reality TV Show Insights 10:02 - Popular TV Shows 10:13 - House Flipping Strategies 14:25 - Amazon FBA Business 14:31 - Capital Management Tips 19:57 - Personal Development Journey 21:30 - Long Term Goals Discussion 23:34 - Finding Chris Bentley Online APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Chris Bentley https://www.instagram.com/chrisdbentley https://www.youtube.com/bentleyfineproperties LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the $20K bankruptcy lesson Chris learned?
Chapter 2: How is the luxury home market performing in Dallas?
Right. Where are they moving from, Cali? New York, New Jersey, California, Washington, Minnesota. Nice. Yeah, those are like some of the bigger ones.
Chapter 3: What strategies attract clients in real estate?
Yeah, I'm from Jersey. That's state taxes, no joke there. I grew up on the East Coast. Oh, yeah? I'm from the D.C. Virginia area. Okay, nice. Yeah.
Chapter 4: What insights can we gain from reality TV in real estate?
East Coast, good weather, but yeah, some of those taxes are just... Especially New York and Jersey. It's expensive to live there, too. Yeah, but Dallas, you get a lot of land. The one thing I'll say, because I just got back from Dallas, a lot of traffic. Yeah. I got wrecked. I missed my flight. Really? Yeah. Wow. I didn't know how...
how much traffic there was so i was like oh it's only 15 away and then my flight was at six i got stuck in like 50 minutes of traffic yeah there's always a wreck there's always well it's like 30 minutes anywhere really in dallas which a lot of people aren't used to i mean i'm not really even used to it i've been there for 13 plus years but it's just that's kind of how it is and if you catch it on rush hour it's anywhere from like 45 to an hour absolutely it's just like it's just different you gotta plan it out out there
yeah i mean on the east coast it's just different because you like drive somewhere and it's like there's stuff there to look at and dallas is really not it's just it's not there's so much space yeah it's just a lot of space is that when you got into real estate when you moved out to dallas or were you no i was doing real estate since 2003 so uh 21 years now and then i started out in the east coast and i moved to dallas over 13 years ago so you survived the 08 crash then yeah barely barely well a lot of people went bankrupt so is that what happened to you
I went bankrupt, but I lost my houses too. So I had like tenants in there that weren't paying and it was just like a big mess. Back then, like bankruptcy was a lot easier than it is now. So I just did a BK and just survived it. And how long did that take to recover from?
Probably about, like, a year or two. Okay. Because I had, like, you can assign somebody else's credit to your credit. So, like, I was using my mom's credit cards and stuff like that. Got it. So I was kind of, like, moving my credit up. I just knew how the game worked. So I just kind of moved it up as I went. That credit game is a good game to know, man. Oh, yeah.
I see people getting credit cards and literally buying houses with 0% credit cards. Yeah, it's crazy. And then putting that house on Airbnb. Mm-hmm. And you can do it with like American Express points and stuff like that. There's all kinds of like – Yeah, the point hacking is nuts. Yeah.
People – so people watching this, don't buy flights with just points. Transfer it to the airline. You get 5X the points. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it is crazy. Yeah, so they'll give you a 5X bonus. Same with hotels too. Wow. You got to look for those deals. Yeah. I know people going to Egypt for like 500 bucks, business class.
Wow. Wow. I know people that just spreadsheet it and look at it. Yeah, you could get extreme with it. I don't pay too much attention because people live in that world sometimes, but I'd rather just focus on making money, baby. Yeah, me too. I'm the same way. What's your bread and butter, though?
Uh, really it's luxury homes. I mean, I saw a lot of luxury homes, high priced stuff. Um, I get to meet a lot of really cool people. I bet. Which is really great. Anyone ever like shock you that you turned up to the house and you were like, what?
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Chapter 5: How did Chris recover from bankruptcy?
I got 18 agents now. Nice. Yeah, it's a small brokerage. We're growing. We have a lot of products that we sell, which is really great, and we just keep rolling. The great thing about our company is me. I mentor people. I coach them. It's not a situation where you just come in, pay your fee, you get a desk, you get some time with me, and that's it. You can ask me questions. You can roll with me.
We can go to appointments. That's how I learned the business. I was actually more hands-on. Yeah. So you wanted to have a hands on style with your your firm?
Yeah, because I want to make sure like, you know, the client journey and their satisfaction is really important to me. So I want them to have a great experience. I want them to be like, wow, like, you know, I did it with Chris and like his company was great. Yeah. His agents were great. I recommend him. I mean, that's word of mouth is huge.
Massive. People don't know your reputation is huge. Especially these days because of social media. Yeah. Like that goes fast and far. And quickly. Yeah. I wonder if that would be scalable as you hire more employees. We'll see. I'm going to have to hire more staff. Do you feel pretty overwhelmed right now with 18? Not so much, but it's getting there because I wear a lot of hats.
I think there's, yeah, this one rule, I think one manager for every, what is it, five on average for big companies? Something like that. Or 20? It's either five or 20. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, because at a certain point, you're just all over the place. Damn, that's cool though, man. I can't wait to see where you are in a few years, actually.
Thank you. Come a long way. I mean, we're going to be five years old in January. Okay, so 18 in five years. Yeah. Nice. How many houses a year are you guys selling? It just depends. This is going to be our biggest year. But yeah, even though it's like a down year. Yeah, this is a down year, like pretty significant down year, right? Like how much are prices down over there?
Not by much. Everything right now is really overinflated, honestly, in pricing. Everybody thinks they're going to get the top dollar, and there's just no buyers. And that's what we're experiencing. There's a lot of homes on the market. I'm listing a lot of homes on the market. There isn't a whole lot of buyers.
And now that the interest rates have come down a little bit, more people are more inclined to put an offer in. But it's still a lot of bottom feeding, trying to get a great deal on something.
That's why I bought now because I didn't want to compete with other offers. And that's what people don't think about when the interest rates drop. There's going to be 10 other offers and they're going to be over-asked. Because remember, like three years ago, that's what it was. I remember when I moved to Vegas, if you didn't offer 100K over-asked, they wouldn't even...
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