Creating Revenue Streams in Real Estate

Creating real estate revenue streams is a desire of almost all real estate agents. Yet, few actually do it. Why is that? What keeps them from doing it.

Today's guest is Chris Craddock. Chris owns nine businesses in the real estate industry and has mastered adding revenue streams from real estate. He's learned how to leverage, how to scale, and how to Think Bigger.

Chris shares his secrets to success as well as to his secrets to significance as he and his wife are raising six children.

Justin Stoddart  
Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Today I have a treat for you. We're gonna be talking about creating revenue streams through real estate. I have with me today, someone who owns nine businesses in the real estate industry. 

Justin Stoddart  
Now you don't need to do that to create revenue streams in real estate. He's overly ambitious, he's a big thinker. I'm gonna get to the full introduction on him here in just a second. But leaving this show, you will have more tools in your tool chest on how to create revenue from real estate. 

Justin Stoddart  
Before I go there, again, I want to remind you that inside of the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we take this this audio learning that you're getting right now and we go deep with it. We invite you to engage with us so that you actually internalize it and you become something more. 

Justin Stoddart  
Remember, you don't get what you want. You get what you are. 

Justin Stoddart  
And inside that Group, we help you to become something more. Today's guest His name is Chris Craddock. Chris, I'm so grateful to have you here. Did I say your name right? Chris? 

Chris Craddock  
Chris Craddock, you did it.

Justin Stoddart  
I'm second guessing myself after the fact when we've had conversations before. Let's talk a little bit about you and how you got into the real estate industry. Obviously, you were a residential real estate agent started realized that there was all kinds of missed opportunity that were like that you were almost kind of blind to right. And all of a sudden you started uncover this. Talk to us a little bit about kind of how that came about?

Chris Craddock  
Well, it started, you know, I was I was on staff at the ministry in the early 2000s. Right after I got married, and I made $20,000 a year in the DC area, which if you know anything about the DC area, you can't live on $20,000 a year. And we always had a goal that my wife would stay home with the kids when we had had kids. 

Chris Craddock  
And so yeah, when when she got pregnant 2003 I just was like, how do I make money to, you know, to survive, and also do what I love doing in ministry. And so we started, we, I just went the library, checked out every book on on real estate investing, and started knocking on doors of distressed properties, you know, and I literally knew nothing about what I was doing. 

Chris Craddock  
And one of my catchphrases in life is imperfect action trumps perfect inaction any day of the week. 

Chris Craddock  
And so I just went out and started doing it. And I didn't know what I was doing. But somehow I made money. And, and so, you know, I made 12 times what I made in a year and about in about four months. And so I was able to kind of step back and, you know, continue doing ministry, but then, you know,.

Chris Craddock  
We have six kids, and anybody knows, I mean, I know you've got six kids too. So you know, it's like literally throwing your your money in a bathtub and somebody drains the plug, right? Like that's, that's basically what we did. And so I had to go back and figure out how was I, you know, how is it going to continue to make money. And so while I was doing ministry stuff, and so I started flipping houses again. But this was after the crash. So. 

Chris Craddock  
So what I was looking for before the way I was getting deals before, we're all short sales. So I got a ton of short sales. And I realized the bank was paying a commission to real estate agents. So I'm like, why wouldn't I just get get licensed and make the commission myself. 

Chris Craddock  
So I got licensed. And then, you know, during that time in ministry, I'd always I'd always loved leading people, I'd always, you know, Zig Ziglar says you can have everything you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want in life. And so I always have big teams and I came across Gary Keller's millionaire real estate agent book. And it just made sense to me. 

Chris Craddock  
And so I guess it was like 2014, we started building our retail team, December 2014. And then last year, in 2020, we finished up with 501 transactions, both on and off market. And 167 million in volume. And yeah, just grew really, really fast. And a big piece of that was learning how to cross and bridge the gap between agents and investors, which should be a very good get, like a very good relationship. But for whatever reason, investors live in one world and agents live in another and you know, they leave a lot of money on the table because of it. 

Justin Stoddart  
So I gotta highlight a few things here. Number one, you close 501 transactions, your team's 501 transactions last year, 167 million, as you said,

Chris Craddock  
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Stoddart  
And you have six children. Like, I'm just like not doing anything over here. Let's let's talk about this concept of success and significance. I think people think that I can either have a successful business, or I can have a family at all, or it's especially a big family, right? And I love how you're kind of breaking that, like the stereotypes here of like, No, you can actually have it all, you can actually have success and significance. That's what this show is all about, is to help people to think bigger, to realize you don't have to choose you can actually have a great family life, a great spiritual life, be involved in ministry or whatever is important to you. And you can have a robust business that absolutely slays it like it's killer, Chris, I love your story for all kinds of reasons. 

Justin Stoddart  
You're my kind of guy. You're the kind of guy that thinks bigger than real estate. Right. And I think that's one of the things that sometimes we get caught up in is like, like, we feel like we have to just build an empire, right? In the in the real estate world. Whereas you've built multiple empires, right? And sometimes you probably feel like that, as you look across six heads at the dinner table seven heads with your wife like, Wow, I've got an empire here. 

Chris Craddock  
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, and it's really, it's really incredible. I mean, if you are the bottleneck on on each of the businesses, it's not a business. It's a job, right? Like, let's just be honest. And so to build something where you can step back, and it still runs when you're not there, I've got a good friend of mine. He's actually based out of Salt Lake City. And, you know, he took a year off from his business, he was just working like crazy. And so his coach, we both have a similar but at the same business coach, challenged me just said, Hey, why don't you go away for a year? 

Chris Craddock  
He's like, I mean, imagine that like, like, literally, if I were to say, Hey, go away for a year, I mean, think about what happens, your heart just starts beating, saying, I can't do that for all the different reasons. But then you start having to ask yourself, what would I have to do to get away from a business or to get away from a job and into a business? And so that was, that was the question there. 

Chris Craddock  
And honestly, you just can't, you can, you can have a high paying job forever, but you got to get out of it. Because nobody wants to be 82 years old, still showing showing houses. At that point. Like, if you haven't built yourself and parlayed all of the money you make into wealth, which gives you better options, then, you know, then you're in trouble. So that that's the whole thing, whether it's building a business in real estate, or building a business through buying assets. 

Chris Craddock  
I think Grant Cardone says the biggest problem with real estate agents is they don't buy their own product. And so like that's that whole idea is, how do you build enough assets so that you have income coming in, so that your money works harder than you do? And you know, if your whole goal is just to make a lot of money? Because you're grinding? Then, you know, I think you're missing it? Yeah.

Justin Stoddart  
But it's so many powerful principles here, Chris, I'm absolutely loving this. Let's talk, you mentioned something about kind of this interesting relationship between investors and real estate agents. And I know you've built an empire kind of on this concept of like, those two ought to work very closely together. Let's talk a little bit about kind of the paradigm of a typical traditional real estate agent. And maybe how that hat that they're wearing that paradigm that they're, you know, that they have, is maybe causing them to miss maybe right under their nose opportunities to build wealth to close deals. kind of walk us through that.

Chris Craddock  
Yeah, well, I mean, think about the the average real estate agent, right? One, they're not making a ton of money, um, you know, to their, they're just doing their their transactions, right? Like, like, something comes in. They're not I mean, I would say this, I do a lot of coaching and helping, and I hope nobody feels like I'm crapping on you, because that's not my intention. My my intention is that like, like the show said, that think bigger, right? And so the average real estate agent wait plays defense their whole life, they wait for the phone to ring, they're not out there making things happen. Right. And so the difference is, I think that if you want to be average, then then just do that. But if you don't want to be average, if you want to think bigger than what you've got to do is say, How am I going to one work towards an end goal, right? 

Chris Craddock  
What is the end goal, you know, the end goal is to build enough assets so that my money will support my life, right? So that I don't have to be the the key driver, I can make myself step out. It's called leverage. And that's the the biggest key in life is that to have other things working harder than you're working. And so that's really the key. And if you begin with the end in mind, like Stephen Covey says, then you can say, Okay, my goal is to build a net worth built assets that will bring in and you got to figure out how much you need to bring in maybe it's 100,000 a year, maybe it's 50,000 a year, maybe it's a million a year, but then just just back that up. So for me in my area, if I have $13 million worth of paid off real estate assets, then that will net me after paying management fees that paying vacancies and paying for maintenance fees that'll net me over a million dollars a year. And and that will grow you know, there's there's a number of pieces that will happen to that. But right there I can I can have a million dollars a year coming in that I am no longer the linchpin, the key driver on and so I think that that's really the key is, if you're a real estate agent, just know that if you're only looking at your next transaction, then you're gonna always be only looking at your next transaction

Justin Stoddart  
And another Gary Keller ism right? Or at least from his organization, what you focus on expands. And it's interesting, I was actually shooting a video yesterday and I was talking about how, if what you're like if what you want is leads, you'll get leads if what you want is transactions to get transactions like if you actually want wealth right? or sales or wealth or passive income. 

Justin Stoddart  
It's amazing how the world tends to present itself with whatever we're looking for, right? Whatever is in our brain, I love how you're, you're opening up this reality of like, hey, it's as simple as starting to look for different things. And then you'll start to find different solutions to to kind of fill this void fill this gap of what you might be missing to actually create wealth, right. 

Justin Stoddart  
And I think a lot of agents is I talk with them as I do business planning with them. There's no space for them to you know, both in time and in money to be able to think about investing. It's always like, yeah, next year, yeah, five years from now, I'm gonna start investing in real estate. And meanwhile, I think simply by having that paradigm, that's, that's it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Yes, it'll always be five years. The challenge is, it's always five years, right? You talk to five years from now, and it's Yeah, and five years now I'm gonna start investing real estate. And a lot of what I hear you say that kind of what you even brought to the table are some tools, different conversations, different even courses, and that really give real estate agents a new perspective on how actually today, you could start becoming an investor right in working with investors Talk to us a little bit about that.

Chris Craddock  
Well, the first thing I would I don't know if you guys have if you've read tools of the Titans, the Tim Ferriss book, it's, it's so hard. I haven't read all of it. Okay, so there's, there's this interview with Peter teal, who also wrote a great book, zero to one. But Peter Thiel was basically the founder of PayPal. And then you look at all the people that came out of PayPal, I mean, that's one of my favorite case studies ever. You know, you got Elon Musk, you got, you know, the founders of YouTube, the founders of LinkedIn, like all these, like just giants, in the, in the, in this industry and in the world right now. All came from this, like this mastermind group together that built PayPal. 

Chris Craddock  
But one of the things Peter Thiel said is, I asked you, what do you want to do in the next six years, you know, and you come up with your plan? And he's like, why not? Six months? You know, and that that's a powerful question, right? Why not six months? And you look at it, you're like, because because because because because, well, you know what, there's always gonna be a reason. There's always there's always, you know, I'm a Christian guy. You know, there's a proverb in the Bible talks about the lazy man who says, there's a lion in the street, right? There's always a lion in the street, there's always something out there something crazy, that that gives us a reason. And let's be honest, we're all in sales. And we're really good at selling ourselves on our own BS.

Justin Stoddart  
That's the first sales job we do each and every day. Right?

Chris Craddock  
Exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's the whole thing you can wake up and, and sell yourself on the fact that you're going to win and it's going to be a good day, you know, and that you've won, or you can sell yourself on the fact that it's too hard. And, you know, oh, well, you know, you know, I'm a victim today life's too hard on me, you know, but bottom line is, you know, you look at everybody talking about all the different ways that people succeed. And I'll tell you you know, in America you see you know, everybody succeed you know, the rich the poor the fat the skinny the, you know, women the men the black the white the Asians that, you know, whatever, throw out any any, any race, creed, you know, sex has succeeded. And yes, sometimes it can be harder for some, but I'll tell you what, man, it is so awesome. When you look around and see that anybody can succeed if they just run hard in this country.

Justin Stoddart  
Yeah, boy, that's funny. Last night, I actually tuned into the Undercover Billionaire. I have been hearing about it, I've actually had Grant Cardone as a guest on the show. And so I've been super interested in him to hearing and he's been promoting it a lot. And I started actually the episode of the guide. I'm not a big TV guy. So I actually had to like purchase a subscription to a new service on kind of like a whatever. But as I got into it, it was fascinating. This guy Stearns, right, you Stearns mortgage company, that was this whole belief, the guy went from zero to nothing like fathered a child at age 14, was like dyslexic, like bottom 10% of his entire class, like I was a bit of a train wreck at an early age, right? He ended up you know, he's a billionaire now. And I mean, it showed him on his yacht off of Miami, a helicopter took him there and, and from there, the helicopter took him to his private jet. And he went off to some place where was Erie, Pennsylvania. And he's dropped off given 100 bucks and an old pickup truck. And in 90 days, he has to rebuild a million dollar business. And so you hear these principles that he said, I'm doing this, because I want people to believe that the American Dream is still alive, that you can actually have nothing, right. And with some ingenuity, you can create something fast. 

Justin Stoddart  
Well talk about condensing timelines. It's actually interesting. This week, I was on a training I talked about how money loves fast action. Like it just does like you like the weight like everybody, not everybody, but everybody that's working is going to make a million dollars in their lifetime, right? And it comes down to how fast you're gonna make that million dollar some people make it an hour. Some people make it takes it their whole lifetime. You just can't condense down the timelines. And that's what I hear you saying, Chris here is that we get in our own way. Like there's actually ways to pursue and live in accordance with the American Dream by simply not continuing to kick the can out the road, five years, whatever. But now start to take massive action now on that six year plan, 10 year plan, etc.

Chris Craddock  
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's it, you know, imperfect action Trumps perfect inaction. You know, you know, what is the movie in the book, The Ender's Game? You know, they say we go, she's one of the moms says, Is he ready? And in the movie, Harrison Ford's character says, we go and we're ready enough. Right. And the reality is, we're all ready enough. Just go do it. Right. I mean, just go do it. And and yeah, I love I love money. What was that? What was the quote? The love what you just said?

Justin Stoddart  
I can like condensing money. That one. Oh, he follows action is action. Yep. Money loves fast action.

Chris Craddock  
Money loves fast action. Yeah. I mean, you look at Facebook, right, move fast and break things. Right. That's their, their catchphrase. So yeah, he loves fast action that's as powerful as powerful. And here's the other thing. I mean, just as we're talking here, obviously, you can tell like success leaves clues. You know, I can tell you study read you you are in in, you know, learning. And that's that whole thing. You know, your business grows, the extent you grow, right. You're, if you learn if you're not reading books, if you're not leveling up, if you're not listening to books, if you're not listening to podcasts, how are you going to level up, you're just going to learn on your own and well, that's just there's a book called The Road Less stupid by Keith Cunningham, who are Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, that was his rich dad, right, Keith Cunningham. And so, you know, the whole idea in the road less stupid is don't pay the stupid tax, somebody else has already paid it. You know, don't pay that stupid tax, learn from others, and then just go.

Justin Stoddart  
Yeah, it's interesting how there is, especially in our day and age, access to so much, right, so much information, so much knowledge, books, the internet, for heaven's sake. Like, there's no reason like, they're like, we can know about everything in a in a matter of seconds. Right? Now, a deeper knowledge comes to reading. So maybe it's a matter of days or weeks. But really, what do you think about it that way, Chris, really the only thing that's holding us back, because knowledge doesn't hold us back anymore. We can tap into somebody else's knowledge, right, we can pay for coaches, we can pay, for course, we can pay for help. It really comes down to simply us not believing and taking the necessary action to move in that direction. Is that is that oversimplified?

Unknown Speaker  
No, I mean, I think the best in the world make the complex, simple, right. And so what we've boiled it down to in our team is activity and skill, right? activity and skill, talk to enough people, and then get good at what you're saying when you talk to them. That's it. And so. So literally, you can take almost anybody in any group. 

Unknown Speaker  
So why don't you suggest and give me give me a number of transactions an agent is doing. And you can break it down to how they would double their business. Give me Give me a number and

Justin Stoddart  
Let's say 50 transactions a year solid business? Here do transactions, okay?

Unknown Speaker  
So at 50 transactions, they probably need to hire an assistant, if they don't have an assistant, they hire an assistant because think about 80/20 rule. So at 50 transactions, you're already good, right? You're already good at what you're doing. Because you're you know that you can close you know that your skill is good, you know, your activity is good, because you're bringing in 50. So at that point, what you need to do is learn to leverage, right, so you need to get get stuff off your plate. So let's talk about the 8020 rule. We've all heard of it the Pareto principle where 80% of your results come from 20% of your action. So let's say we work five days a week, right? So 20% means that one of those five days brought in brought in 80% of your income. 

Unknown Speaker  
So if you can figure out what are you doing in those other four days, and there's a book called clockwork that Mike Michalowiz who wrote Profit First wrote, he said, basically take everything you do in a day you write it on a post it note, and every time you do something, put it on a post it note, put it on your wall. And then you start looking at these things that are low dollar activities. And you create a job description, right. And at 50 transactions, you're doing enough business, that your business has earned the right to build out that org chart. So get an assistant there. The next thing is get somebody to help you with showings and buyers because you just can't show like you can't show 100 buyers, you can't double your business and show 100 buyers so get somebody to help you with that. 

Unknown Speaker  
But make sure the the split is good, where it's helping them win and it's helping you win and don't have a limiting belief on that because a lot of times you think, oh if I give a low split, they're not going to make money. But what I've learned is, business begets business winning begets winning, so if they're doing a lot of business with you, they're gonna start doing a whole 100 Have a lot more business on their own as well as you hand that off, so their their net income is going to crush anybody's net income that's doing lesser business. 

Unknown Speaker  
So if you want to double your business and you're at 50 transactions, one, you got to you got to mark down what you're doing every day, figure out what that 80% is, get it all in there, create a job description, most likely at 50 transactions, you need to hire a full time assistant, not a transaction coordinator, a full time assistant. And then you get that job description most things onto their plate. And then you bring on a buyer's agent showing assistant that is going to help you with all your showings. And right there, I promise you if you continue doing what you're doing with all your freed up time from your assistant, and from those showings, you'll double your business as long as you don't just sit on your couch and play Xbox.

Justin Stoddart  
But it's a simple recipe, isn't it? It's your one hire away. Maybe two hires away, right showing assistant and an assistant right buyer's agent assisted from doubling your business and impacting to other people's lives and pretty significant ways. It's pretty awesome. Absolutely. Chris talked a little bit about some of the things that you do. So I've got a couple of questions left. The last one is going to be about what you do to continue to be a big thinker to expand your possibilities. Before we go there. Talk to us a little bit about some of the stuff that you have to offer to really be of help to agents.

Chris Craddock  
Sure, yeah. So I've got a class, it's mainly towards investors finding agents, because these investors have, they paid 10s of 1000s of dollars every month for leads. And if they can't flip them, or wholesale them, they just die. But the reality is most of these investors have tried to find agents and they haven't done it well. And so we've really cracked the code there. So if you are friends with any wholesalers or flick fixin flip agents are like investors in your area, then definitely go to my, my website, Chris kradic, calm and, you know, sign in, check it out there. The second thing is go to my Instagram, crab rock, and you can reach out to me, you know, I'll respond almost every dm, I try to help people and you know, help any way I can. So those are two of the ways that I yeah, that I'm reaching out and trying to help other people in the community.

Justin Stoddart  
I love it, man, that's powerful stuff. Because you're right, there are so many leads that people think are dead. And what I hear you saying is, these are people who actually reached out and wanted to actually talk to, like, they call the real estate agent for a reason, right? So it looks like a dead lead to the train die. But with the skills that you give, it allows you to take leads that otherwise would have been dead, and turn them into a different kind of opportunity, which I think is super powerful. Right? 

Chris Craddock  
Yeah, I mean, I talked to a an agent that I was I was kind of coaching in this, you know, like I it's an agent investor partnership that I teach and train in this art revive class. And I was just talking to an agent the other day where, like, literally, last year, their investment group made 50 grand and the agent group made less than that. And in the last two and a half months since we started working on this, the agent herself just brought in 90 grand GCI in two and a half months. It's crazy that they've they basically matched their whole year in two and a half months. And if you're just getting started, like they're, they're going so that's, that's one of the big keys there. Also, I've got a Facebook group as well uncovering real estate in a podcast, the uncommon real estate Podcast, where we talk through all of this stuff, too. So those are other ways to find us and a lot of great stuff. 

Justin Stoddart  
All right, let's move now to the last question. Actually, I got one more, I gotta sneak one in here. You're a dad of six kids. beautiful wife. How do you man like just day to day? Like how do you not neglect them when you've got nine businesses? One of which sold 501 transactions last year? Talk to us about that.

Chris Craddock  
Yeah, I mean, it's always a struggle, right? I mean, you know, you're you're always, always being pulled in 1000 different directions. And anybody that says that they're not is lying, right? So it's always a struggle, and you just have to, you know, continue to look and say, Hey, where, where am I focusing? You know, and I'll give one example. I mean, just for, you know, for my boys, you know, we were, we were playing, you know, down in Florida on vacation, we were playing down there and I realized, like, man, I need to spend some more more time doing this. So I started, you know, Sunday afternoons, we just went out and started playing Ultimate Frisbee with a couple other dads and their sons and, you know, like, just just trying to make sure that you're putting stuff, stuff on the calendar.

Justin Stoddart  
I love it, man. Great stuff. All right, final question. You're a big thinker. No doubt. That's why you're here on the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. What does Chris Craddock do to continue to be a big thinker to to continue to grow to continue to expand your possibilities? 

Chris Craddock  
Yeah, I mean, there's three things to grow your mindset, right. Your intake, your associations and your affirmations right intake. I am always there's not a day that goes by where I don't have at least an hour of intake where I'm, I'm learning from other people books, podcasts, seminars, webinars, you know, whatever, you know, just always there, associations, Jim Rohn, you're gonna be the average of the five people you spend time with. You know, I'm always trying to hang out with people that think bigger than me, and they're gonna push me and also call me on my own Bs, because, you know, I'm a good salesperson to myself as well. And then the third one is affirmations. You know, we all talk to ourselves, and, you know, let's be honest, we're all a little crazy. And so how do we talk to ourselves? And, you know, so you we work on, on not letting ourselves talk. I mean, literally, if I, if I heard somebody talk to me, the way I talk to myself, sometimes, I probably punch him in the throat, right? Like, but I'll accept it for myself. And that's just not okay. So, always working on, on being a hype squad for yourself to kind of help you, you know, level up.

Justin Stoddart  
You know, I love that, Chris, because often we think of affirmations as something we read with enthusiasm in the morning. What I hear you saying is an affirmation is constantly going on inside of our own mind, that there's a narrative, not about the outside world, but about our world about how we show up in the world about what we deserve what we don't deserve. That's a real affirmation. That's the tape that's continuously playing. We correct that. And we have seriously unlocked a key that most people never unlock, right. 

Justin Stoddart  
Fantastic man been such a pleasure to spend some time with you. If any of you have the interest to get in, you should follow this guy, find him on Instagram. We'll put all of this in the show notes. And then take a look at his course I think there's a lot of dead leads that you that we're all stepping over, that really could turn into something for for you and or for other people on your team. So Chris been such a pleasure. Thank you for helping us to think bigger today for expanding our possibilities, both in the pursuit of success and significance. You're the kind of guy that's doing both. Appreciate that. And my final request of everybody listening here today are three simple words and they are Go Think Bigger. Thank you, Chris, for inspiring us to do that today, my friend.

Chris Craddock  
Hey, thanks for having me, brother.

Justin Stoddart  
My pleasure.