170. The Hawaii Money Guy and Hawaii's Biggest Flipper with Indar Lange

Average Joe Finances: 0:00

Hey, Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Indar Lange. So Indar, I am super excited to talk with you today. Glad that I got to meet you the other day and excited to be coming out to your event this afternoon. So thank you so much for joining me on the show.

Indar Lange: 0:17

Yes, Thank You. Funny, we got our event here at one, we're doing our podcast, and then we're doing our event at four. So we're gonna be hanging out a lot here through the day. And we just hung out the other night, which was great. Hanging out the other night too.

Average Joe Finances: 0:28

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah I'm actually, once this finishes up, I'm gonna, Make sure it's all good to go, and then I got to get in the car and start heading to Waikiki. But yeah, I'm excited about it, man. It's gonna be a good time. First off, I wanna start this off with the same way I start every podcast episode off, and we wanna know more about you. So if you could you can go as far into detail as you want or share as little as you want. But can you share with us, your background, your story, who is in Indar Lange?

Indar Lange: 0:53

Yeah, I spit this story out all the time actually now. I'm pretty good.

Average Joe Finances: 0:57

Please don't spit on me.

Indar Lange: 0:57

Yeah, I'm born in here in Hawaii. Born and raised, local boy. Born in on a pot farm in Hilo. Actually. My parents grew pot for a living, so interesting way to grow up. Of course, water catchment generator. 17 acre pot farm.

Average Joe Finances: 1:09

Is that why you're so laid back?

Indar Lange: 1:11

Yeah, maybe it was embedded into my system. No, but we later on sold the farm and moved away from all of that. But I grew up in Kona, grew up on the big island and loved it. Great, awesome. Got in some trouble, but later on, figured that out in life. And I got a engineering degree and also a business degree as well. Bachelor's of Science I was gonna say. So I got electrical engineering degree and a business degree, which is great. And college is. I don't know. I have different opinions about college, but we can get into that if you want. It's a great tool if you have no place else to go.

Average Joe Finances: 1:41

That's fair.

Indar Lange: 1:42

Yeah. Yeah. So I did that for a while, which is great. Engineering's great. Knew I wanted more in life. Always knew I had a drive to want more, wanted to be more be a millionaire, and and so forth. Later on, got a contractor's license, started working for my dad's company. Worked for construction for years in the construction world. I love working construction till to this day. I'm very handy. Love tools. And in 2013, my wife, drag me to one of those, one of those programs one of those fix and flip programs. And it turned my world around. I was kicking and screaming, didn't want to go to the program, didn't wanna be there and was stupid. I'm not gonna spend any money and we went to the program and went to the next group and went to the next session and signed up. And I spent $35,000 and best $35,000 ever spent. I always been a big advocate for education and growing and learning, and I love just keep growing myself. So did signed up for one of those flipping programs and it helped me at the very beginning as well. At that same time, I did buy my own house and that's where we can talk about how to start in steel later on. How to start in business, bought my own house, lived in it, DIY, it sold at me 90 grand and that kind of gave me money to start. That was 2013 as well. And then we took off, we did our first wholesale deal. Bought it on Craigslist, sold it on Craigslist, some land in Hilo. 25 grand, so over 35 grand, two acres in Hilo. Then we did a first flip, and our first flip was a doozy 700,000. We sold at about a million something, 1,000,220, I think. Super scared, didn't know what I was doing. That was 2014, 2015, I think we sold it, something like that. Did a couple next year, few more the following year, kept rolling. And now we've done about 120 fixing flips, about 130 million and bought and sold in pro in fixing flips. Some big numbers. In Hawaii it's just. Price point of Hawaii. We've carry about 18 flips now at a time. We carry about 18, we handle about 15. And so I like to be, that's my sweet spot 15 to 20 is my sweet spot, I should say. So we have 18 going right now in Hawaii about 30 million and then another seven across the US We have as well going. We also have a wholesaling company where we wholesale nationwide, but really in the key states. But we do nationwide. We have a wholesaling company. We try whole tailing, but they turn it into wholesaling's combination of both. So we do that across the U.S. And then I have a huge rental portfolio of 156 rentals, 156 doors. We have a multi-family, a few multi-families, single families that is comprised of a bunch of Airbnb as well. And a turtle here in Hawaii that we attach to our Airbnb and it's great and have several other companies as well, some affiliate stuff and several other companies, and we're building out a co-working space right now and excited about that business. And I have a few other businesses that I run as well. But love fixing, flipping. That's my bread and butter. I'm the largest fix and flipper here in the state and I've been doing it for a while and I love it. And I love do high-end stuff. I do some stupid $2, $3 million stuff that's just crazy. Some of the numbers, I can't even believe it myself, as well as some small $200,000 stuff. But name of the game is somebody's gonna do the deal and somebody's gonna figure it out. So yeah, that's the gist of it all.

Average Joe Finances: 5:06

All right, man. Yeah that's quite quite a opening background there, . But like you said, you know someone's gonna do the deal, so might as well be you. Might as well get out there and make it happen. let me get this right Indar. So in 2013, your wife had to drag you out to one of these flipping events. You went kicking and screaming, didn't even want to go and by the end of that, you were in the back signing up for the very next thing, so what was it that, that, you heard during that seminar that kind of flipped the trigger in your brain and said, you know what I want to know more and I want to do this.

Indar Lange: 5:41

That's funny. I didn't really dive into it more, but the backstory be behind all of that was before that. I paddle, I love paddling. I've been paddling canoe here in Hawaii for years. I love it. And I started becoming a member at Outrigger Canoe Club. It's a high end country club very prestigious and all these people, they're millionaires, they're very successful people. And either they became successful cause of real estate or they were successful and have real estate in their portfolio and I started seeing that was a commonality of real estate needed to be in my life just somehow and at that time, I was deciding what avenue I wanted to be in real estate. Do I wanna be an agent? Do I want to fix and flip? Or, I was dabbling and researching and so forth. And yeah, one of that seminar came up and actually was, the first day was free for two hours and then they had a $200 for another day, I think, and then the weekend. The weekend is where I really, they got me, it was a three day weekend and and they got me to sign up. They're a great pitch. I don't know what it was. I just knew that I didn't know enough and I needed to have somebody show me the ropes kind of thing. And I could figure out myself maybe. But that was a long path, a lot of YouTube videos and so forth. I wanted a quick path to it all, and that's what I believe education is really, it's a quick path to figuring things out.

Average Joe Finances: 7:02

Yeah. So you knew this was the route you wanted to go and you're like what's the fastest way to get there? Yeah. So you wanted to paddle with the current, not against the current. I'll use some of your paddling experience there for that. Yeah. That's interesting. So you're out at this thi this club, right? And you're seeing the commonality there of, most of the folks there that are part of this club are investing in real estate and that's one of the things that's helping them keep their wealth and build their wealth, right? So you said, okay, this is a tool that I want to use as well. Now, So after all that's said and done, you do the whole weekend thing. What was it like after getting that education? How did you go from saying, okay, I know what I need to know now. Now it's time to take action. What did that look like?

Indar Lange: 7:45

Just back between. There's three things I'd like to talk about with education and doing so you can, we can all read books and we can watch videos, and I think that's one great facet. The second part of it all is to start doing and implementing. And then the last part of it all is the action. So I always break it into three things. Yes, we can all read books and so forth, but then you have to start doing, and then the third part of it's all is taking that massive action. And that's what separates, I think, the. Brandon Turner to all the different levels of people's. Brandon just takes a lot more massive action than I do, and I take a lot more action, more acc massive action than some of the other people and so forth. And that's all. What it breaks down to is how much action you're gonna take, because this game of real estate, this whole process, it's pretty understandable. It's pretty. Straightforward. It's not I don't wanna say rocket science there, there's moments of course, but in general it's very understandable. It's just taken that action to get things done. And that's actually one of my talents, I should say, is the second I have something to do. I just. Do it. I just do it. I don't like think, don't, I don't think about it. I'm like trying to figure it out and precaution. I just do it and then if it works. Whatever it may have been done, like I'll literally be in a conversation with somebody and I'll just get that thing I need to do right away done. cause that's why it goes tomorrow and I forget about it and it's something else and so forth. But yeah, the education program. Put me around like-minded people. They shared like kind of step-by-step. Like again, real estate was, it's already very understandable, but it was just nice to have somebody lay out the actual step-by-step, process of it all, start a company get your goal set and just a step-by-step of it all. It was nice for me to have that laid out, which is actually, we're gonna be starting an education program here shortly. And I just wanted to laid out people step by step. And again, at the beginning when I started, there was no one in Hawaii scaling this. There was no one in Hawaii that I could look up to. I had to look up to a mainland people and they're great and all, but they didn't understand Hawaii. And Hawaii's got its own struggle. For sure. It's hard to scale Hawaii when I started, no one was scaling in Hawaii. And again, somebody's gonna do it. Might as well be me.

Average Joe Finances: 10:01

Yeah, I mean that's a great point. And it is a different world over here, the real estate market. Is so much different than back on the mainland. After, living most of my entire life on the mainland and now being here for the past four and a half years, that's, it's one of the things I've realized is this is it is such a different beast here. And one of the things that I found for me is that I had like huge limiting beliefs about being able to do real estate in Hawaii. Like I was like, oh, it's too expensive to do flips. I don't know how anybody does this. And then I met people that are doing it and I'm like, okay they're doing it. So it's possible. So it, that's one of the things I think a lot of people struggle with out here at least, is that limiting belief of, I don't know if I can do it right. And you had mentioned something else too, that when you get something that catches your eye, that catches your interest, you just move on it right away and take that massive action. I find myself often saying, I know I need to do A, B, C, or D. I will get to that when I can, and then that procrastination winds up biting me in the butt because I miss out on something or I, I just didn't take action fast enough. That's fantastic that you've got that mentality, just go. I'm still working on that. I still have that problem. I still have to like.

Indar Lange: 11:15

Yeah, I think we all do.

Average Joe Finances: 11:15

Go out there and make it happen, but.

Indar Lange: 11:17

We all do to extend on certain things. I think we all have that same problem.

Average Joe Finances: 11:21

Yeah.

Indar Lange: 11:21

It's just that little bit extra doing it when you need to do it.

Average Joe Finances: 11:25

Okay, so you got the education piece right? You got to take this massive action. What's that other piece that you were talking about? You said that there's a couple. There's three different things. I think you said that.

Indar Lange: 11:34

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 11:34

That are like your go-to this is how I do.

Indar Lange: 11:37

Yeah, once you read it in a book and so forth, or watch a video on whatever you need to do, it's to just start doing it. It's implementing it, have a send out an email or set up whatever you need to do or even set a reminder, whatever. And then of course, lastly is just start really taking that action of whatever that process of it all is to. Taking that time. And you know what's hard is because we have our normal lives, we have our normal process, we have our normal setup of things. So when you have to do something new or different, it's sometimes very hard. You read we talked about the other by traction, a great book.

Average Joe Finances: 12:10

Yeah.

Indar Lange: 12:10

We're just talking about and the EOS system and reading it, you knowing it's great, I need to do that. But then taking that time to actually set it up and do it and get it going cause like you in your head, it's. Yes, I have to do this. This is great. This is great. This is awesome. I'm reading it. And then you put the book down, you're like, oh, I better watch on tv. Like it's that steps.

Average Joe Finances: 12:28

Yeah.

Indar Lange: 12:28

The after it's the hardest part.

Average Joe Finances: 12:30

And then life happens, right? You finish reading and you're like, okay, I know I got to do A, B, C, or D oh, but I need to go shopping cause my wife asked me to go pick this up. Or the kids need A, B, C, or D or they got something going on with school and they need help with the project. So yeah, life can get in the way. A lot of times, at least for me I really, I try to prioritize my family when those opportunities present itself. Because after 20 years in the Navy and spending so much time away from them, I'm when they say they need something, I'm like, okay let's take care of it. Yeah. And I put other things on the back burner and, it's a give and take.

Indar Lange: 13:00

It's hard..

Average Joe Finances: 13:01

Right? So that's the part that gets difficult. But if you could find that happy medium in between of how to make it work out that's where you're gonna find that success. And I found it in some places and in other places I still need to figure it out. But that's part of the game, right? Is learning and figuring all this stuff out. But I'm glad to see , the stuff that you're doing. It makes me hopeful that, that there's so many different possibilities of things that you can do out here, but you're also investing back on the mainland as well, right?

Indar Lange: 13:25

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 13:25

So you're not just doing it here. You've expanded as you scaled, right? You're like, okay, I'm not just gonna invest in just my backyard. I wanna look in other markets where, these numbers make more sense. Where things, might be a little bit easier to obtain and make these flips happen. So, besides what you've done out here in Hawaii, what kind of markets are you looking at back on the mainland?

Indar Lange: 13:46

It all stems from when I started flipping and we were, I was just trying to find a condo, that's what I wanted to find at the beginning. I just wanted a condo, right flip because it was easy. It's, condos are easy to understand. Not much. There's no roof, no landscaping. Pulling comps are very easily, you're just looking at the building, so your comps I was always just trying to find a condo deal when I first started, and and that didn't happen. I found a deal elsewhere. And I feel like that's been the story of my life. Like every time I'm focused on even one marketing campaign, I'm trying to find a deal here, a deal comes up elsewhere. And again, my thinking is now I have a mentor that basically told me this when I did a Macca deal. 2015 or something like that when it was real risky to do deals out on the west side. It was people were, agents were like, really? You wanna buy something out there? And I was like, yeah. And I had a mentor, a million or friend of mine, and he we were gonna either, he's either you don't do the deal and you make zero, or you do the deal when you make $40,000. I was like, oh, I like $40,000 and.

Average Joe Finances: 14:48

That's a lot better than zero. I'll take that.

Indar Lange: 14:50

Yeah. Yeah. I actually end up making 60.

Average Joe Finances: 14:53

There you go.

Indar Lange: 14:54

And I had a lot of naysayers when I first started and I started recognizing who was naysing. It was people who had less than me or who didn't have a lot. And that those generally are the naysayers of any time I notice in life. The successful people, they're the ones that are, will figure out like how to solve that problem and take that risk mitigate the risk basically. And that's where we're at today. We're just figuring out deals that are look awesome on paper, but let's figure out. The risk part of it all. It's hard to come up. Like we're buying a shopping center right now and my hardest part of it is I'm doing a huge raise, a million and a half raise, which is big for me. And let's see if we can figure out that problem. It's a great deal. Everything's amazing on paper. I just a lot of money to raise or Flipping in a different state, how do you figure that out? And that's involves you thinking you can't do it because you're not there. But honestly, I don't even have to be at my flips here in Hawaii. So why did I have to be in the mainland states? And really it's just. Having a good team. We depend on our realtor up there in the States where our realtor is a savvy investor person. We're paying them a project management fee. There really are eyes and errors and boots under the ground as we have here in Hawaii as a project manager basically. So it's the same process up there for the flips. And then for buying old, your property management is you're ultimately, Your eyes and ears and everything where we have some big portfolios and we manage our management. So we have zooms every week with our property management. The goal I think of a property management is not necessarily to manage the property, like fix and flip things or, the work to be done. The goal is to manage revenue. It's to look at the income statements, profit and losses. So I am hounding them on the revenue and the expenses, and that's what we go over in our meetings of what's the income of this property, because it's a win for everyone. If we can generate more income. That means the property management makes more, if we lose more expenses, it's a win for everyone. So my conversations with property management is towards managing the revenue of the property, not necessarily fixing things. Obviously, yeah, you should be fixing the broken sink or whatever, but it's to manage the revenue. I don't got a little tangent there.

Average Joe Finances: 17:09

No, that's, that's fine. So that's a very important piece though, that I feel like a lot of people focus on the other things. And not so much the bookkeeping and making sure that, rent is being paid on time that it's being paid at the market rate or if you're building it up, that it's being raised properly, each time a new lease is signed. So those are the little things that will actually come back and bite you or increase your cash flow tremendously. Yeah. If you're paying attention to that, right? More cash flow means you could solve more of those other problems that come up, right? Because you have more cash now to fix that stuff. But there's something that you said too, and I just said it just now, and I wrote this down as you were talking you said as you were going through this, your main thing was like you were figuring out problems. And I feel like a lot of people in this space that is like the main job that you have as a real estate investor is you're a problem solver. For the folks that you reach out to on, on the flips that you do and wholesaling and all that you're helping that individual with a problem. And you're helping them solve a problem that they have, and then you're able to turn that and, help an another investor or anything else. If somebody's coming to you and they say, Hey, I'm trying to buy, I'm buying whole property in this area, and you're able to wholesale it to them, now you're solving their problem. So there's a lot of problem solving going on in there. Would you agree with that statement?

Indar Lange: 18:23

Oh yeah. I'm just laughing at it because it's actually our company model. We have it on our wall here. It's to figure it out. So it is not just me, but everyone that works with us, it's their job. It's to figure it out.

Average Joe Finances: 18:34

Yeah.

Indar Lange: 18:34

Because oftentimes even some of them simplest tasks, people can figure it out. It's not if you took the time, you can Google anything nowadays, right? And took the time and figure it out. You can, if the best way I'd describe it, when we looked. Again, I looked at a deal in the mainland and we were looking at this Texas deal and we were gonna make, make a hundred grand. And I told my guy, my acquisition guy, Hey, if I pay you a hundred grand, would you figure this out? I'm like, yeah, I would figure it out for a hundred . So I look at it that way shit, I would figure it out if I'm gonna make that much money. And that's how you look at it is, shoot, it can make a lot of money on this. I'm, somebody's gonna figure it. And I've done some really hard flips in the beginning and I took it upon myself to look for the really hard ones, like getting underneath houses and jacking them up and changing nine support beams and really going after some of the worst projects. Again, somebody is going to figure that out. Either you or somebody else. Take, pick one. Take your time. And it is how you think of it as, and I took on the hardest flips and now everything's cake. After doing some of those hard ones, now it's like I jacked up and lifted up a house and moved it over. Come on, I can fix some support issues real easy.

Average Joe Finances: 19:46

Yeah.

Indar Lange: 19:46

So that's great figuring it out.

Average Joe Finances: 19:47

It's like what you said earlier, right? Besides the whole figure it out piece. It's, someone's gonna get that deal might as well be me. Exactly. So yeah, you've got some good zingers in there and are like, some like stuff that are really stick in the back of your head, Hey, someone's gonna get the deal. It might as well be me. And you know what we got to get it done, so I got to figure it out.

Indar Lange: 20:05

Figure it out.

Average Joe Finances: 20:06

Yeah, that's good stuff, man.

Indar Lange: 20:07

That's the name of the game in this business is figuring out. And the problems are definitely a huge figure out. It's like later on they become very tough problems to figure out and again, that's, you just got to keep figuring out, move forward, figure out. And that's why people become successful in this businesses. They're able to figure out, and you have many hats too. Like I have a lots of hats in this business. So you got to be jack of all trades, master of none, or whatever it is.

Average Joe Finances: 20:33

And then figure out like when you need to start delegating and, utilizing some of the stuff you learned in traction, right? So yeah that's fantastic. Now, I wanna ask you, cause I have a good understanding of your why with real estate, like why you decided real estate was the right investment path for you. And it goes back to your paddling time right now. I wanna know, like you've been doing this since 2013 now we're coming up on 9, 10 years of doing this.

Indar Lange: 20:58

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 20:58

What is it that kind of fuels that fire for you, that makes you say, you know what, I want to keep doing this. I wanna stay in real estate and not changing it up.

Indar Lange: 21:07

It's funny you're asking that cause I just had a deep conversation with my dad last night in the office about that hey, I could level out basically where I'm at now today and be comfortable, we're, I'm a millionaire on paper, I have a huge net worth of rentals and I could just stop and be very fine where I'm at, but, Do I want to keep pushing? And my dad said, Hey, my mentality, the person I am is, I'm always looking for that challenge and that push, and if I were to stop this, I would just go into something else and find it so. There would be never I never satisfied with just being level, whatever I'm doing. I always look for those, the push in life to be uncomfortable in a sense. And that's what I keep on pushing is my comfort level as I'm comfortable doing, 18 plus flips at a time now and 30, we do 30 a year, maybe 20 to 30 a year. It's my comfort zone, but, okay, can I push that? We're actually gonna push it to 90. I wanna try and do 90 a year.

Average Joe Finances: 22:06

There you go.

Indar Lange: 22:06

Push.

Average Joe Finances: 22:07

Why not hit triple digits and do a hundred ? So if I feel like you find comfort in being uncomfortable.

Indar Lange: 22:12

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 22:12

Like you like the challenge. Like it's.

Indar Lange: 22:14

I do.

Average Joe Finances: 22:14

Okay. Like we got to make this happen. We got to figure it out and move forward. How are we gonna do this? Let's make it happen. And I really like that, You're a go-getter when it comes to this stuff. It's not like I'm just gonna, ah, I got myself to the point where I feel like I'm good. I'm uncomfortable. I think I'm gonna stop now. You're like, no. What's the next challenge? . Because if you did stop, like you would wind up getting into something else and what would that be like? It's, I feel like I'm the same way. My wife asked me that question too. She's like when is enough, like passive income enough for you to say you're done? or what is it that, like when is it gonna stop? And I'm like I think I'm gonna go until the wheels fall off because I just, I enjoy, I also enjoy a challenge. Yeah. I love going out there and making, doing new things. Making new things happen. I was telling you Wednesday about the new business that I'm starting up right now.

Indar Lange: 22:59

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 23:00

Yeah. I'm really excited. I'm really excited about that. Yeah. We're gonna make our official launch here soon. But it's like. For me, it was like building this thing up from the ground up and, doing it by myself. And it was like I was challenging myself. Let's see if I could build something to this, great scale and we'll find out once it goes live, it's either gonna do really well or it's gonna flop, but either way I'm gonna learn something. I'm really excited about it. So that's one of the things I enjoy having a conversation with like-minded people. When it comes to stuff like. And so I'm super excited that we're gonna get together this afternoon and talk some more with some other folks, some other like-minded folks. This is what it's all about. I talk about, I think you and I have very similar pillars of what we call to what's the right thing to build wealth? I call it the four pillars to wealth building. And for me it's education, coaching and mentorship. I think those, they go hand in hand, but they are different. Networking and building relationships. And then number four is the most important one because it makes the other three not matter if you don't do number four. Number four is take action. So like this whole conversation as we're talking, I'm like, oh man. Yeah.

Indar Lange: 24:01

This is is the exact same way

Average Joe Finances: 24:02

we reaffirms like what I tried to explain to people. And when I coach like my financial coaching clients, it's like some of the same stuff I tell them like, this is, you got to go in this order. Sure you could take action right away, but guess what? That education's gonna follow up right behind it cause you're gonna learn some lessons quick when you start making some mistakes. I think it's super important to get out there and. your craft, what you want to do otherwise you're gonna learn hard way.

Indar Lange: 24:24

I spent about a hundred grand on education last year. I signed up for so many different programs and classes. Travel and hotels and everything costs as well. But I am a big believer, like you're talking about education and events and being a part of some high level groups now are, my groups cost a lot more to be in and to be around those people I am huge believer.

Average Joe Finances: 24:46

Yeah. cause you've got to the point where you take it to the next level. You started where you started at, right Now you're at another, you're at another level and you're trying to unlock that next section, that next level, right? Yeah. So you've got to change it up. It can't you can't stay with. The folks that have a net worth of a hundred thousand dollars when you've gotten up into the seven figure net worth got to keep moving. You got to, as you scale your business, you have to scale yourself and your network as well. Yeah. So you don't, so you don't get left behind.

Indar Lange: 25:11

Yeah. Big time. And just being around those people too, really rub off and you rub shoulders with them.

Average Joe Finances: 25:16

It does. Yeah. It's a common saying, but they always say that, you're like the average of the five people you hang out with the most, right? If you're not a millionaire and you're hanging out with five millionaires, you're gonna be the sixth one. It's just that their mentalities, their attitude what they do, it rubs off on you.

Indar Lange: 25:31

I just came back from the gold abundance, excuse me bigger pockets group. And I was with the high level group. We broke off and there was this high level group. And man, the conversations are just so deep. We're talking about scaling businesses and growing businesses and struggles that they're having with their, these people are huge multi net millionaires and I'm learning, we all have the same struggles in a sense. So I have value to add to them as they have value to add to me. And it's just cool to share, it's almost. I did this event once then where I went to Vegas and I was a speaker in front of 5,000 people and a great event, a lot of people. And we snuck off a three day event. We snuck off one day and we drove Ferrari for the day and Lamborghini and whatever, and it was like nine of us. And I had learned more hanging out with those guys than sitting in the room with 5,000 people because hey, I was able to afford a Ferrari at the first place and and there it is, all friends. And from that Day right there, I learned so much of this guy was doing that marketing and it is his industry and that was working for him and he was struggling with that in his business and he did that to help grow it. I gave value to them and it just it's a snowball effect when you're around these high level people. I'm constantly trying to push my level up as well to always be around. High level people, yeah. Just like-minded people.

Average Joe Finances: 26:51

Yeah. I love that. Again, it's gonna help you excel and scale yourself as well. Like I said before, you're not just scaling your business, you're scaling yourself, you're accelerating. And you got to put yourself around the the contenders, right? To do that, it's funny I compare this to. I like to bowl, I'm on a bowling league and stuff, and I bowl competitively and I always find that when there's somebody better than me, like bowling next to me or I'm going against them. I push harder, like so much harder to try to beat them than I do. If I'm just out by myself and trying to play. Yeah. So it's one of those things that like it. I like the challenge and it's the sport of it, right? It's not just the oh, hey you're doing really good at what you do, I wanna be like you one day. Sure, yeah, you can say that all day, but it's no I'm going to be like you one day. I'm going to make this happen. So what are the steps to do that? Yeah I love that, man. So you obviously, you've got the right attitude, you've got the right mentality. You've been doing this for a little while now. Absolutely out there crushing it. Indar I want to ask you some questions now. It's called the Final Round. I wanna transition this into that they're four or three real hard-hitting questions that'll give us an idea of how you are under pressure or put in a tough situation, and then one opinion question after that. So if you're ready to go, yeah, we'll get that party.

Indar Lange: 28:03

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances: 28:04

Okay. Cool. All right. First question Indar, and this one's a doozy, but what would you say is the biggest mistake you've ever made in your real estate investing?

Indar Lange: 28:15

It's a funny question because I feel like I could, my mistakes made two years ago were, it's not as big as today. And today it's like the mistakes only get bigger and more intense and you just figure out and problem solve. So there, there's always mistakes. There's always room to grow, but that's how I have to take that risk factor and understand, or make mistakes will happen to help me grow. Early on, I, one of my second flips ever had a big loss, and I could have took that as a, a quit this whole thing. But I did a flip right after and made it up. So I recognize that mistakes are part of the business. I've now have it lost for a while and not cowboy. But I learned from my mistakes as well as use those as hurdles to know I can overcome this and it everything will be all right. Kind of attitude. Now I'm very relaxed. If you ever see me, I'm very like, laid, backed just local boy chill.

Average Joe Finances: 29:10

I thought that was from growing up on a pot farm.

Indar Lange: 29:12

Yeah, I think I mitigate my risk now I'm very conservative with everything I do and my mistakes are looked at as I know I can figure this out and get around this problem and get past it, kind of enjoy the process. Sometimes as much as I stress out during it's still a nice thing to get through. So those, I can't say one thing, but.

Average Joe Finances: 29:34

Those mistakes became part of that education process for you. Okay. So the next question kind of ties into that, and that is, what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Indar Lange: 29:45

The fearfulness of when I had a big fear like everybody else, where is the money gonna come from? Where are we gonna get money from? And I didn't recognize that you need to find a deal first. I was too worried about the money, that the deal is more important than the money. And I think my education or my mentors at the time didn't stress that deal. They didn't really talk about how to find a deal. And a deal was, is important and I want to, I wish I'd known that now. The deal is more important in a sense, and I still have that mindset today as now I'm looking at 10 million deals and somebody just sent me a 15 million deal and now I'm like, oh, shoot, how am I gonna raise or find that much money? So I still have that same scarcity, like, how am I gonna figure this out? I got to come up with, couple million of dollars in gap funds. So it's still there in your head, but still got to recognize if the deal's sweetheart enough that you can partner, you can bring people in and figure that money fired out after the fact kind of thing.

Average Joe Finances: 30:45

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people face that challenge. I know I have in the past before, yeah. Like when I first decided to get back into real estate investing, I was like, okay, I need to figure out where this down payment's gonna come from, instead of worrying about finding the actual deal where, I don't even know what the down payment's gonna be until I find the deal. So that's definitely huge. I appreciate that answer and the transparency there. All right, Indar the next question I have for you and again, this kind of ties into all of that, is do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

Indar Lange: 31:16

Yes, I have a ton of ninja tips actually. I have them written down right here, and I can, some of events I love sharing ninja tips because the ninja tips really are tricks that I, things I've learned as I've failed and gone through it all. Zero offers equals zero deals. So oftentimes you'll be analyzing a deal and you'll be scared to put in an offer because you're way below, you know what they're asking or you don't wanna offend them. To me, if you spend time analyzing and looking at a deal, write that offer, say a verbal offer, have an agent, write it up, whatever. For me it's 21 offers equals a deal. So I'm just trying to get to 21. I'm not trying to get the offer except I'm just trying to get to 21. Don't be scared to just write offers. And another coolest part about real estate in general is it's not like stocks where you buy a stock, you're all in, like you second you purchased it, you're in real estate, we have an inspection period. We have a chance to do some due diligence. We have a J-1 inspection so we can pull out the deal. We have an option to buy, an option to leave at that point. And you have that option period. That's a huge thing. If you're selling a house or if you're selling a flip, pay for a home, inspection yourself as your final punch list. So if you're especially over a million dollar house, this is really important. So I'll pay a home inspector to come in and to inspection of the house and give that punch list, it's like 80 pages, a hundred pages, super crazy punch list, and I'll give that to my contractor. Here's your final punch list, because I'm not gonna go climbing the attic. I'm not gonna pull out the heat gun and moisture test the house. Like I'm just gonna walk through it nonchalantly. He's gonna ha put his hazmat suit on, climb an attic, and do all that kind of stuff. And the reason behind all this is when you're selling a million dollar house, plus generally that guy buying that million dollar house, it's pretty savvy dude. There's a reason he's able to afford a million dollar house. So any kind of mistake that they find, he's gonna ask for a credit, he's gonna ask for, some kind of credit back to him. And if you took all that away from him, you're gonna be pretty well off. They may find some, a crooked outlet cover kind of inspection that you may have missed, but if you caught all the big items, it'll save you, hundreds of dollars. Lots of do dollars.

Average Joe Finances: 33:27

Yeah, it pays for itself.

Indar Lange: 33:29

Yeah, exactly. More than you're supposed normally. Yeah. More a credit. It's 10 grand or something crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And and I'm guilty of it. I miss things often. On a flip, we only fix the things that we see. Maybe an old part of the house that we didn't touch, we didn't go over there. And there's a problem over there. So I'm guilty of it too. So that's easy. Your time is valuable. And I was guilty of that myself trying to run to Home Depot five times a day and try to save money by me cause I'm handy, I can install tile and I know some basics of a lot of different trades. I love doing a yard, for example. I've been out in the installing grass and all that is my time valued at, 15, 20 bucks an hour to go late grass, or is my time valued at. 500 bucks an hour is what I need to be valued at. So it's what is my time valued at me trying to save money by me doing it myself? Is that the best use of my time or should it be finding deals, finding money, that's what my time is valued at. And still today I think of that, what is my time valued at, is this the best use of my time? Driving to Home Depot and getting a screw, for the contractor is that best use of my time. Even though I think I'm saving money which are, and you should honestly do a lot of that stuff upfront on jobs. I'm not saying not to. But there's a point when you stop doing that and value, value your time. Of course. So there some, there's some more. I can get some in depth if you want though.

Average Joe Finances: 34:58

No, that's great stuff man. And that's probably one of the more important ones is that, understanding the value of your time. That's one of the things when I realized I needed to start outsourcing certain things and the amount of time that the outsourcing saved me, I was able to complete tasks that made me more money. Which was like the most important thing, because now it's like I'm increasing my value, dollar per hour of what I cost, what I value myself at. Yeah. So that's huge. Okay. That's it for the tough questions. Now this is your opinion question and I'm gonna preface this with, besides your own, cause I know you just started one, but do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Indar Lange: 35:39

I listen to it all guys. I have my phone with books on tape. I don't even listen to the radio anymore. I am just trying to fulfill my head as much as education as I can from books and podcasts.. So I'm a big advocate as much as you can. I listen to it in a 1.5, so I'm trying to, Fly through a lot of it.

Average Joe Finances: 35:56

You can't listen to my podcast at 1.5. I'm from New York and I talk too fast.

Indar Lange: 36:00

I love my new favorite book is The Goal. The Goal is a great book. It's an old school book. It talks about. Setting your goals when you, whatever you're doing, have a goal. It's my number one book right now. And to, if you're trying to grow social media, what is your goal? Why are you trying to go grow social media? And then backing it out, what's the bottleneck behind all of that? So figuring out the bottleneck. Great book. In loving this there's a guy, Barry Sternlicht, I can't say his last name, Sternlicht. He's a beast. And I've been listening to a lot of his talks all over He Bird, the Cosmopolitan Hotel. He owns Starwood. He owns all the Marriotts and all that, all the Marriott hotels. This guy is a beast. And we see all these guys on social media. We think we're beast. These guys are, these guys I don't know, a hundred billionaire, whatever his net worth is. I like to watch those guys and see what they're talking about, and I listened to their stuff and. They're billionaires, so I've been following him a lot. Barry Sternlicht, I can't think of it. Of course, podcast. I love your podcast. You actually have a really good following in your group. Brandon's stuff that he'll be coming out with Brandon Turner of course, bigger pockets, those guys are awesome. My podcast was What's Star podcast? The Hawaii Money Guy. It is our podcast. I listen to a bunch of others that kind of jump around. I'm more of a books on tape kind of guy. Lately, I guess you, you can say you go through those ebbs and flows of what you're interested in.

Average Joe Finances: 37:20

Yep. Yeah. No, I love that because it's similar to what I don't listen to much music anymore. It's mostly stuff that's gonna add value to my life. Not only like investing or real estate related podcasts and books, but stuff that's help, that's motivational and like life coaching and things like that. That kind of helped me with my mindset. So I think that's awesome. Now you did share your podcast, which I didn't want you to, but that's okay because right now, I'm gonna ask you Indar, where can people find more information about you? Do you have a website you could share with us, social media, a podcast, maybe anything like that you could share with us?

Indar Lange: 37:55

That's first say my social. So Indar ~ I N D A R Hawaii. Indar Hawaii is all my social on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok. What else, I think we got V. Real going. Trying everything and I like to keep it simple. So actually mostly Instagram, if you wanna message me on Instagram. It is more, I mostly react talk with people and comment on their YouTube Indar Hawaii and then, yeah, we have our podcast The Hawaii Money Guy as well. And I just loved entering comments on there. I actually really enjoy entering some of the good comments. cause I like giving back. I think there's abundance in life. There's enough for everyone to have in life and I'm here to be an open book and share everything I possibly can. It's up to you guys to take the action and that's the trick, if I can press you guys, I'll tell 99.9 percent how to flip a house. If you don't take that 1% to take the action, it, it's worthless.

Average Joe Finances: 38:48

Yeah, a hundred percent, hundred percent. Hey.

Indar Lange: 38:50

Indar Hawaii.

Average Joe Finances: 38:51

Yep. I appreciate that, Indar. So I'm gonna make sure we have all those links in our show notes to make it easy for our listeners. You could just copy and paste or click away. Just don't do it while you're driving. Indar, this was a blast, man. Looking forward to getting together again this afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Indar Lange: 39:07

Yeah. Thank you. It's great talking to you. Great hanging out and awesome to be on the podcast. Thank you. And all the listeners. Thank you guys too.

Average Joe Finances: 39:13

Yeah, absolutely. And hey, also to my listeners, thank you so much for joining me and our special guest Indar Lange on the Average Joe Finances podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Indar. Aloha from Hawaii and have a great rest of your day.

Indar Lange: 39:29

Aa-Aloha.