SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 408: $100M Funds, $30k/mo Real Estate Cashflow, Conference Sales with Cole Hatter of Thrive
05 Sep 2016
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the $100 is Zach Ferron. He's a 22-year-old Apple employee, and he's listening to the show and loving it. For your chance to win $100 every Monday, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now, and then text the word NATHAN to 33444 to prove that you did it to enter.
Okay, many of you heard I made a big league acquisition of a company called SendLater. And I'm a greedy business guy. I didn't want to give away equity to a technical co-founder. So I found my coders on a website called TopTal at NathanLatka.com forward slash T-O-P-T-A-L.
I paid over $12,000 to the site to a guy named He Sheming in China, who I've never met, but we're going to build a big business together. I'm taking SendLater public by the time I turn 30. I'll tell you more about TopTal later on in this episode. Top Job, this is episode 408.
Coming up tomorrow morning, you're going to hear from Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, who did a quarter of a billion with a B in revenue in 2015. We'll be right back.
top tribe buckle up this morning we've got a great guest his name is cole hatter he's an entrepreneur investor and award-winning speaker he invests in real estate startups and several fun and has several funds exceeding 100 million dollars that i believe he's invested in maybe as an lp we'll talk about that in a second he's also the founder of thrive make money matter an annual conference designed to teach entrepreneurs how to dominate in business and in life while making the world a better place cole are you ready to take us to the top
Ready, bro. All right, let's do this. So you're mixing kind of real estate, the conferences as well.
Where's your main focus? Both. It's pretty split down the middle right now. Real estate's been what I've done the last 11 years since day one as an entrepreneur. Thrive is something I've done the last 18 months, which is my conference. We're about to do the second year in about four months from now.
So let's talk real estate. You said you've done it for 11 years. How old are you now? I'm 33. So you started back at 22 years old.
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Chapter 2: What is the main focus of Cole Hatter's entrepreneurial journey?
And regardless of what's happening economically or in the real estate climate, even if we're in a collapse like 2008, 9 and 10, I'm in and out of that project so quickly. I don't take those long term losses. And because I'm buying a property that's literally dilapidated, mold infested, disgusting and making it gorgeous, I'm forcing value into that home.
And so that that works, whether real estate is going up, down, left, right or any direction. And so that's that's a big focus of ours. And then, like you said, buying and holding as well, because flipping houses is cool. But, you know, buying and holding is is how you create long term passive income and wealth. And so in my real estate business, it's a combination of both.
So right up to date over the last seven years, how many places have you fixed and flipped?
Right.
Hundreds.
To be honest, it's north of 300 to 400 plus. Okay. And how many are you holding for cash flow currently? Over 100. Okay. And what is the monthly cash flow on your total portfolio? Over $30,000. Okay. And what is the total kind of asset value? North of $10 million. Interesting. Totally leveraged? All of them, yes. Okay, got it. So, I mean, you only have like what, max 5% equity in each location?
Oh, no, no, no. Way more than that. All of them have some type of a loan against. Actually, that's not true. I have, I don't know, maybe 15 that are free and clear. So, way more.
You have a lot more equity in. Yes, yeah. But 30 grand a month of cash flow is nice. You can go to the Bahamas on that, right? Exactly. You can just chill and hang out on podcasts and look at the ocean. Dude, that's awesome. So, okay, that's great. That was a lot of real estate information in four minutes. Let's switch now to startups. When did you make the transition?
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did Cole Hatter start his real estate career?
Didn't know if I'd ever walk again or how my long-term recovery would be. And so literally from the wheelchair started my first real estate business.
Fascinating. Okay. So what was the, okay. So was the startup was the real estate business?
Yeah, that was my very first dollar ever made on my own was that house I told you about in Austin. Got it.
Okay, so what startups are you working on now?
Still real estate or? No, so a couple. Number one, I like to do angel investing, as you said in my intro. So I buy into beginner companies to help take them to the next level. And I'm in a handful of small tech companies and some import companies there.
Give us one or two.
names which one are you excited about okay one's jam card let's give let's give elmo a throw out there so yeah jam cards a tech company i invested in elmo lovano is the ceo he's a professional musician that toured the world with just some of the biggest names out there as a drummer and um he created a product for the uh i guess you'd call it the professional musician community people who want to book gigs in a more efficient way other than just posting on craig
And so a jam card is, is it's a virtual, I guess, business card jam card for the community of musicians that actually make a living as a musician to be able to have a very professional way to, you know, some demo reels of them singing or playing their instrument, whatever it is in a community where they get gigs. It's, it's huge.
And it's getting some huge endorsements from some big name musicians. And I got in the very first round of that.
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Chapter 4: What lessons did Cole learn from the 2008 financial crisis?
Maybe it's a maturity and age thing. I'm 26. But I like to just tell people, My, you know, my philanthropic, you know, it's jobs. You create jobs. You build great companies. It sounds like you've kind of moved past that stage, though.
Yeah. And you know what? At 26 is exactly where you are. I had an Escalade with five TVs in it because one's not enough. You got to have one in every headrest plus the fold down.
Why are we going to watch multiple channels at once? I mean, come on, you need six.
Exactly. The gaming consoles. I got it, dude. I had my wakeboard boat, the whole deal. I was freaking going nuts, taking all my buddies to Vegas and getting a three bedroom penthouse. So I know exactly where you are. And, you know, I guess I just had a wake up call with my near death experiences that regardless of anyone's religious beliefs. Yeah.
Well, actually, so I was a firefighter, but the accident was just had nothing to do with firefighting. We were just in a car. The car flipped and I was ejected going 80 and, you know, got really hurt. And so I almost losing my life. You know, I got, I have a stronger sense of time is precious, right? There's all the cliches and the memes out there, but the reality is I'm on borrowed time.
The doctors looked me in the face and said, you should be dead. And I realized that, you know, money itself doesn't, doesn't make happiness. I'm like you.
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Chapter 5: What strategies does Cole use for real estate investing today?
So, so let's, I'm a capitalist too. Almost like sport, business is fun. And I wanna make more every year, just like an athlete wants to run faster every year.
Like it's fun and I get all that, but I know that when all the dust settles and people standing around my grave, cause that day comes for all of us, no one's gonna talk about how many dollars were in my bank account, how many cars I owned or the vacations I took. They're gonna talk about the meaningful difference I made in the world.
And so it's not like I'm living for others to have a nice thing to say at my grave, but I just honestly believe having made my money, lost it and made 10 times or a hundred times back, that it's not just, it's not just the exercise of success that's valuable, which I enjoy like you. It's again, it's doing meaningful works. And, you know, the examples are out there.
If just making money and being successful made people happy, true happiness, then everyone with money and success would be yet not all successful people with money are. And then there are people who are completely broke for the happiest people in the world. And so they've obviously found something.
And what I have found that something to be is connecting yourself and doing work that's meaningful outside of just making dollars, doing a work that's meaningful. And what I've found is having endless amounts of dollars makes that work easier to do.
It's an important lesson. Everybody must learn. Cool. As you're building all these things, your investments thrive, real estate, everything else. Where's the best place for people to connect with you online?
Probably just attendthrive.com. That's the, what is it called? The conference or my summit, attendthrive.com. And then on social media, it's just at Cole Hatter, one word. That's Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter. It's all the same at Cole Hatter, one word.
All right guys, very quickly, many of you heard I acquired SendLater at nathanlatka.com forward slash sendlater. And here's the thing, I don't want to hire a big team. I'm a business guy though, so I need developers. So what I did is I found this little website. I found this guy named He Sheming.
I paid him over $12,000 to help me keep building this business, which I will take public by the time I turn 30. So it's called Toptal. And what Toptal does, it's a network of elite, pre-vetted software developers. Basically, I told Toptal what I was looking for. They searched their network for the best people. They even test the candidates, which saves me time.
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Chapter 6: How does Cole Hatter balance real estate and startup investments?
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