Scott Lumley: Real Estate & The Upside of Down Economies

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Scott Lumley joins us today when describing him and his accomplishments. Wholesale central wrote Scott Lumley is the epitome of an entrepreneurial spirit. With 38 years of business experience, Scott Lumley, founder of CEO, and resolve financial resolve commercial and resolve suite LLCs is a highly successful real estate expert and investor. 

And along with being a CEO of multiple companies, he continues to coach and consult, aspiring real estate investors and entrepreneurs help them build their financial wealth, succeed in business and build profitable portfolios. Scott man, it’s been a long time coming and I appreciate you jumping on. Yeah, no problem at all.  

Thanks for making me sound smarter than I am. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we’ve had other guests from the real estate world, but I venture to say that your different than the usual mold and we’ll get into that. Um, but, but do you have an answer why you think that is why you stand out from kind of the straightened Steffy world of, of real estate?  

Well, I think, I think the main reason why I stand out from it, cause it’s not probably wasn’t my first, you know, love, uh, in business, you know, I think that’s, you know, from coming from the, from the runaway child, all the way up to the, you know, the businessman at a necessity, just getting into any business I could to make money, uh, legally that is.  

And so, um, I, uh, Yeah, I just, I have a lot of business experience in a lot of different areas, you know, from e-comm to, to rental state. And trust me, it’s a big difference in the common real estate. So, um, I think that’s probably what makes me stand out more is because I’ve been able to technology with the good old dirt brick and mortar business.  

Yeah, you touched on a lot of things there that, that over the course of the conversation I want to get into. So, um, you know, I want to talk about your successes. You mentioned running away when you were younger. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the technologies that you’ve produced and the software that you have to offer.  

So to, to, to grab our listeners attention, let’s start with the sexy stuff. What’s the big brag worthy stuff, your accomplishments that you’ve hit on, and then let’s see. Go backwards and talk about how you got there, what things worked, what things didn’t, um, accomplishments, you know, you know, there there’s been a lot of accomplishments and a lot of different areas, but I guess what I’m doing now currently is I have over a hundred million dollar real estate portfolio, both, both commercial and residential, um, and that fluctuates from day to day.  

Um, but, um, Yeah. That’s the real estate portfolio is what is the sexy side of it because everybody looks at it like, I want, I want to Starbucks someday. I want to get passive income off of it. So probably that’s the sexiest thing I have to offer. Okay. And then you say that that wasn’t real estate, wasn’t originally your background.  

So what, what was your background and how did you make that transition into real estate? Well, I started off in business at a young, young, young age out of necessity. And we can talk about that later, but I had a necessity, a lot of people, you know, they have the privilege of, uh, you know, having a mother or a father, you know, at least one of them in their lives.  

And they have some stability, uh, when they’re young. Um, I didn’t handle any of that. So I was forced into mowing grass while I was at a very young age and doing things to earn income, just to be able to eat and. And I was always good at seeing trends. Of course, you also had the, a lot of people. I don’t think they take this as a luxury, but it surely is I’m 51 years old.  

And I actually grew up in the greatest time on earth. And that was when, you know, The internet was born. So, uh, you know, I started seeing those trends. It’s a, they already on that. We had a chance to capitalize on the internet. So, you know, I started studying that at a very young age, uh, you know, 17, 18 years old.  

And subsequently as time went along, I was able to create eCommerce stores. And, you know, I was the, they, I spoke at eBay live for seven straight years. We were the number one. Uh, electronics distributor in the, in the world online at one particular time, uh, we had, uh, ed PO, uh, had about 14 retail locations.  

Uh, we were called big, big blocks of text. That’s correct. Yeah. Our flaws, large loss. Yeah. It’s been so locked up again. Oh, and I’ve done a lot since then. So that’s a past life. Yeah. Past life. Uh, but, uh, yeah, it was just, you know, Everything just seemed to in my business world seemed to STEM off of technology.  

Literally being born in front of me, I was just wise enough. Or if that is a good word to use, to pay attention to it. And yeah, subsequently I was able to ride a lot of waves throughout the technology world. It’s it’s interesting. You talk about the time you were born, because that’s something that I’ve mentioned to others too.  

I find it fascinating to be born at the time that I was born at. So I’m 38. And what you said that I can relate to is I feel like I was born at a time where. I was raised before the internet was required, but young enough to have it be second nature, but I like having that before and after perspective, because then I can go, okay.  

You know, here’s how I can leverage the internet. Here’s how I can take advantage of it. But, but I also. Don’t need to be entirely dependent on it. I not stuck to social media obsessively. Like I know what’s, I guess you’d say normal and not normal or what used to be normal and what isn’t normal. Yeah. You know, you know, it used to be normal to wake up and leave and go to a nine to five job or, or eight to six job or, or a second shift that used to be normality.  

And now you can fall asleep and you’re making money while you sleep with the internet. So, you know that, I think that the biggest privilege of being raised in both of those areas, that you end up with a great work ethic, because you’re used to getting up and going to work, but simultaneously you’ve got to watch this curve right.  

Of the internet and you studied it simultaneous, like in you’re allowed to make money on it. So if you can have the great work ethic. From the past and you line it up to how easy things are these days to put things together and make money, then it makes for a great to, you know, great rewards at the end of it.  

Yeah. That’s a good way to put it. So you, you had mentioned you ran away. Um, what’s the story behind that and did that contribute to some of the work ethic that you mentioned and you know, the hustle and grind that you have now? Um, I’ll give you the highlight reel of me running away. Uh, we’re going to be doing, I’m going to an event here sometime in the next year called Unchained here in Nashville, Tennessee.  

And we’re going to be invited a bunch of people and I’m actually going to reveal the entire story there. But, uh, uh, so I kind of want to keep it kind of slightly vague, but I’ll give you the gist of it. Yeah. Um, I ran away at the age of 11, uh, like most people, uh, you know, a single mother, three boys, not a very good parent, probably couldn’t be a good parent if you want, during that time, the sixties, because, uh, late sixties, early seventies, because you know, women were just oppressed.  

I mean, let’s just be honest about it. They were. There were press during that time. So she, she had very limited things she could do to on incomes. And obviously she used the one tool that she had, that was the best. Uh, and that wasn’t good for us. Uh, so she was bringing a lot of me in, in and out of the house and it just becomes too much for me to handle through the abuse and the lack of food and me being responsible to take care of my two brothers and, you know, like most normal 11 year old boys, uh, you know, I cracked, I had to get away.  

So I ran. Uh, gotten Greyhound bus and Memphis, Tennessee. We lived in trailer park and in a very rough part of town and, um, uh, got on a Greyhound bus and Carla luggage rack and ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and ran into a preacher there. And I thought I was, I thought I was, um, getting away from my problems.  

It’s kind of like the old saying, you know, out of the podium to the front, then, uh, the preacher was not a very good person. A matter of fact, he was downright evil. And, um, consequently, I stayed in his captivity for four and a half years. And, uh, uh, I finally broke free of that, which is where we come up with the title on change.  

And, uh, and because one, okay. They didn’t want anybody to know about my past 15 years. And two is, I didn’t have any, by my life three, we’d had the internet back then, uh, you know, VHS wasn’t out, chasing kids like they are now. Um, you know, when you were a runaway, you pretty much were just run away. So I think out of necessity, you know, if you wanted to eat.  

Um, you know, back then you work, I mean, with somebody saw you outside the road, they didn’t really feel sorry for you, you know, like they do now. I think now we feel sorry for people a little too quick and it creates a lot of handicaps. Well, back then they didn’t do that, which forced me into working. So where everybody else was, you know, sitting at the house with mom and dad.  

I didn’t have that option. Yeah. Not everybody. A lot of people didn’t have their mom and dad too, but they weren’t just on the streets. So I was okay. And so I had to figure out a way to make money and, um, yeah, I just aligned, I just went to work and I didn’t know anything about anything at the time, but I knew that I didn’t want to be where I was right there at that moment.  

And I knew the only way, the only thing was going to change that was money. Especially as a 15 year old kid. That’s, that’s really, the only thing you think about is, you know, how much money you can make to get where you want to go. Uh, I just had a different type of desire after coming out of that 15 years of hail, you know, I had a different fight in me the most.  

Yeah. So I wasn’t quitting. At any cost. So, um, uh, you know, started getting into business at a young age and working at garden centers and, and, you know, just doing whatever I could landscaping, you know, you know, I like to tell people that, uh, I was the first person to ever do what they call a bevel design.  

And I know I was because I’d never seen it done before. What a bevel designed and landscaping world is, is. You’ve probably seen how they’ll take and take a shovel and stick at the ground and flip the dirt up and make it kind of like a little ditch in front of the landscaping. Right. And kind of make it look like it’s sitting on a mound, the Oz first person to ever do that, that I ever seen.  

So I want to take credit for it, but I don’t know if the credits matter or not. Yeah. Yeah. But when I started doing that, it, people were like, Oh, that’s really cool. That makes it look like the, you know, the landscape of mountains in the air and it was suspended above. So, you know, it just gave it an optical illusion that people, it, consequently, I ended up getting.  

A lot of business from it at a very young age, you know, I was at 17, 18 years old. I was landing Walmarts and Exxon stations and of Abaleen oil and big companies that wanted me to come and do landscaping around their buildings. And I didn’t know anything about business, but I was happy to take their checks when they came to me and I was good to get work done because, you know, I wanted that chick.  

Yeah. So, yeah, I think that’s what kind of kicked it all off. It’s just, you know, Doug and I had eight and the only thing I knew to do was work. So you seem, you know, you and I connected on Facebook and you’ve been, um, you know, pretty transparent about your background and, and what you’ve accomplished and just the things that you’ve talked about now.  

And I, I find that people that go, I go through traumatizing events like you’ve described. Um, it seems like they have to look at. What positive that they’re able to take from. And just, just like before we hit record, you said, you know, I’m happy to talk about whatever, because if I didn’t go through what I went through, went through, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.  

So do you, do you still feel like there there’s a little part in the back of your mind where you’re, you’re disappointed with the people that brought those experiences to you or have you found some sort of piece where you say, you know, it is what it is and I’ve moved on and, and it’s nothing but positive now.  

Well, I mean, I’d be lying to say that I was okay with it because nobody should be. Um, but I think I used it initially as motivation, like, okay, screw you, show you what I’m capable of. And I think as time goes along and you do have some accomplishments, you finally start hitting some success in your life and you start seeing yourself do things that other people didn’t expect you to do.  

Maybe you didn’t even expect yourself to do. I think that starts giving you a piece. And before long you’re like, you know, screw it. I’m going to bitch. Just be me. And, and you don’t really care anymore. Yeah. You hit it. I’m definitely in a spot now where I have peace. And as far as you know, no, you know what, I changed what I changed the fact that any child was put in the position I was put in with the preacher.  

Yeah, absolutely. But. And I, and I wouldn’t want to go back and do it for a single day, but, um, um, but I don’t know that I would change anything because I think it’s made me different in a lot of ways. Um, a lot of people, you know, they don’t know how to live in the moment. Very well. No, they’re always, they’re either living in the regrets of their past or they’re trying to project what they want in the future.  

And they never really lived in that specific moment. I think that kind of taught me that, that, Hey, look, I can’t go nowhere. I literally changed the ground. Um, so I better just enjoy being alive and just enjoy whatever I can enjoy at the moment, whether that just be watching, watch a bug crawl across the room, you know, and looking at it and going, okay, that’s kinda cool.  

You know, he took 2000 hips to go six inches. Uh, you know, if he can do that there’s can you imagine what I can do in the future? So, yeah. Go ahead. Just being really present. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think, I think people, they just get too caught up in their path and I say, I’ve come up with this new thing.  

I don’t, I like to say this, you know, if you’re living, you need to take the experiences of your past and. Live in the moment, take those experiences, whatever negative or positive they are and live in the moment that you’re in and that little bit becomes it’s your future. And people are always swap. I’m going for my future.  

I’m going for my future. I’m going for my future. Well, Hey look, if you just sit down, show a little patience and go to work today. Your future will be the experiences of the past. Yeah, I think a lot of people, um, you know, my, my, my wife has this little, uh, tag that she cut out of a shirt that she bought the other day and it said, um, you don’t get what you wish for you get what you work for.  

You can’t just help for a certain future. You gotta, you gotta realize where you’re at and, and be present and go from there. We always use everybody, always all these big motivational speaker stuff, they always talk about work, work, work, work, work well. You know, I, I agree and disagree. I think you, you have to work.  

I think it’s more important that you just happy in the moment that you’re in and, you know, because a lot of these people, they get to work in so hard that they miss the whole, their whole life. Yeah. You know, for illustration. And I went to a divorce two years ago because I was so passionate about th I think this is why it’s changed my philosophy a lot.  

Uh, and you know, I have three beautiful children and I went through divorce a couple of years ago and I was like, well, wait a minute. I had the perfect, perfect marriage, the perfect children, the perfect house, the perfect everything, why they end up in a divorce. Well, and I, and I think it simply comes down to one simple thing.  

Um, you know, I was working 20, 21 hours a day every day. Yeah. I mean, you know, I had no time to patronize anybody’s emotions and you know, that’s wrong in the end because you ended up with a 12,000 square foot house, which I have a hundred million dollars of assets, which I have, you know, incredibly bright financial future and able to help other people acquire their financial future.  

But you ended up in a 12,000 square foot house buyers. Yeah. Yeah. But what did you, what did you really accomplish? So you want to caution people out there. You know, they work, work work is very, very important to have a great work ethic is extremely important, but never let it compromise your life. And I think it’s fair to say when you do your future planning, that it, that’s not a, that’s not a concept singular to.  

Work like planning your future should also encompass those things that you mentioned, you know, the family and, and emotional time to cater to other people’s emotional needs. You know, for, for me, I, I make a very, I’ve talked about this with other guests in the past, but I make a very intentional effort towards, um, allocating time, obviously for work.  

I get up early, I do the five o’clock thing do 12 hour days. Um, But once 5:00 PM is over that’s family time. I don’t take calls clients, don’t get my cell phone number, the auto attendant shut off. And so for me, fine doing that, you know, future forecasting of what happiness is for me and success is for me is, is it’s not entirely business.  

It’s it’s business and family for me. We’ll see. Now I did the exact same thing for many, many, many years. I still end up in divorce. I’m gonna tell you why do you have children? Yeah, three kids, huh? Okay. Three kids. How old are they? Eight, five and two. I don’t have the exact same age seven. So, um, yeah, I started with a light lock on that because I was working all the time, but here’s the thing, you know, what I’ve noticed is, is they’re not we’re way off of what we’re probably talking about as far as success of business, but, um, uh, but I think it’s really important that people hear this because.  

Laughing all business. I mean, we can all make money and do good at what we do. If we pick the right vehicles and get the right mentors around you and make the right decisions, she has us all. Great. But you know, when it comes to the expense of you missing your seven year old or eight year old, um, Kids event.  

Let me explain to you. What’s important to him. Probably isn’t important to you for illustration. When’s the last time you just showed up at your son’s school unannounced and just had lunch with him last week. I I’m going to, I’m going to be the black sheep of all these analogies. You’re going to be breaking out.  

I’m the guy that actually does them like yesterday. Well, you know that that’s wonderful because you know what I did. Yeah, I’m probably worth a lot more you, but am I really worth more than you? Cause I’m gonna say something to her. If I could trade know if I could trade a lot of that for going back and doing those things, I would.  

Yeah. So, um, you’ll pick the route vehicles, get the rat business mentors around you. Um, push hard when you’re working, like give it all you got, but, you know, pick up the little pieces in between, because those little pieces in between you showing up for your sons, uh, that’s the stuff he remembers. He doesn’t remember what you bought him.  

Tina, but he’ll remember you showing up and you’re looking like a goofball sit in those little tiny chairs at lunch. Yep. Yeah. He’s my oldest old enough. Now that I, that I kind of give him a heads up sometime I’ll be like, Hey, can, uh, Can I stop by this week for lunch? Like, is that cool to do it one more time?  

And I also have a 22 year old son. He just turned 22, a couple of days ago on the 25th. And I was standing here and some people are hardly even know me. We were still me and him were standing side by side and I literally just reached up and grabbed him, was laying my head on his shoulder, like a real get this old guy laying his head on six foot, three 22 year old.  

Good looking boy. And I noticed people looking at me. And I didn’t do it for anybody to look at me. I did it because I love him and I want him to know it. Yeah. And so I literally like my head on his shoulder and we were like holding each other. Like, it was really sweet moment for me and him, but I noticed other people noticing that.  

Yeah, and I think that’s really just really, really important that you hold your family tie, you treat people good. And I think coming from what I came from, uh, you know, I can never imagine a child going through what I went through. So I think it was real important to me to always be present for my kids as much as possible.  

Well, good for you. That’s that’s um, you know, I think it’s a great topic. I’m glad we got to talk about it because that’s something that I, that, um, The listeners know that I’m passionate about. And I talked about a lot with family, and so it’s good to hear somebody else, you know, talk about the importance of those things too.  

Catch back up to where you’re at. So you’re, you were talking about how you’re younger and you find success with doing these landscaping things, right? Um, so how did you take that? What did you learn from that experience? Did you, did you start to realize like, Hey, I need to build processes out of this or I need to figure out structure, like what, what was the next transition in the business world?  

Well, the beautiful thing about being in business for yourself is you’re forced into learn a lot of things that you didn’t really realize you need to do. No it’s frustration. Um, you know, okay, now I’ve got to check. From these companies and I’ve got to go put it in the bank. And now all of a sudden I’ve got one how to reconcile checking account.  

Well, I never knew how to reconcile checking accounts. So now I’ve got to sit down and understand how to add, subtract, and keep up with these debits and credits. So, and then next thing, you know, wait a minute, you know, I’ve got to have a business license because these guys won’t give me a check because they’re going 10 99, the company, and I was 10 99.  

Me and, you know, I think you’re forced it because you’re going through the routines, a business you’re forcing the learning things. On the flat. Um, it’s nice to have a mentor, which, you know, nowadays we used, we used to call these consultants. Now we call them mentors. I I’m a consultant. I mean, you know, a mentor to me would be somebody that helps you, not just financially, but emotionally, maybe, you know, it’s just two different types of counselors in my opinion.  

But, um, Of, I didn’t have anybody back then. And that wasn’t a thing, you know, people didn’t really know you help each other in those areas. Uh, could you could hire an accountant obviously, but he didn’t really do the bookkeeping side of it. Not much. It costs you a lot of money. So you were forced to learn these things.  

So yeah. You start putting processes in place. And before long, you know, we went from the. Non digital world to the digital world. Now you’ve got to have a website for people to view your products in the past. And so you learn how to put that together and ah, wait a minute, we gotta be able to keep up with them.  

So you learn how to put an email list together. Back then we had fax machines. It was a big thing that send out a fax, you know, so, you know, wait a minute, people, you know, The first feature that you want on your fax machine was black deal. Fact. You’ll be able to blast people. We call it blasting back. Yeah.  

I was going to ask you, did you send out like the mass faxes? It’s like, Hey, we got this deal going. Yeah.  

But then I realized something, Hey, wait a minute. You know, people hate these faxes unless it’s got a meaning. Like what, what do you mean I’ve got to meet you? So I thought, well, I’m gonna open up a restaurant because you know, nobody minds getting the menu each day for whatever you got on the menu. So I started a restaurant and I just, we started it just off of the potential value from faxing.  

Right. I knew, I knew that be honest. I knew that everybody would look at, I mean, you coming across the fax machine, so why not open a restaurant and just fax blast the area. And I did it. And consequently, I made 30,000 a month for years off of a restaurant that was open for about 16 years. Wow. And, uh, and you know, in everything, people, people make a mistake.  

They think that everything is forever. Jeff. Basles probably, I told somebody the other day I would never want to be jet by. So never what I want a business of that caliber. Yeah. You know, uh, I mean, what did he take? A a hundred billion dollar hit the other day. Yeah. Well, and also we’ll take four of those either bankruptcy.  

Yeah. That was a one day hit by the way. A one day hit was a hundred billion dollars. So all businesses go up, all businesses go down. Uh, you always want to have an exit strategy to your businesses. That’s the most important thing that you can ever do in business. That makes it strategy. First of all, I can’t think of a single business that I want to be in for the rest of my life.  

One of the guests we had just before you might’ve been, might’ve been a guest right before you, um, He does, uh, he’s a business broker and he was talking about the same thing. He says, people get too emotionally attached to businesses. Yeah, that’s exactly right. You know, I rode horses for many, many years. I competed.  

And I’m sure that if you don’t know what I’ll tell you about it, you know, I have over 400 professional wins. Um, somebody asked me the other day, they said, you know, what was your favorite horse? And I said, the one that brought the most money. Fair enough. And they were like, well, don’t you love horses? I said, well, yeah, I love horses, but I don’t keep an emotional attachment to them, their tools for my trade.  

You know, if they’re really good at what they do, they’re going to bring a lot of money. So if I’m emotionally attached to it, I don’t want to sell you. I don’t want to sell, you know, spot over here because I love her. No spot is a tool to trade and you know that you better be prepared to seller and people get too attached to things.  

And the next thing you know, they look up and the, the thrill is gone for illustration in a horse analogy, and he went sport. He was a world championship. He’s worth a lot of money. So you say, I don’t want to sell them. I’m gonna wait until next year. Well, between Nick in the next 12 months, the horse cocks and dies.  

Well next week. Well, wait a minute. What happened to all that money? You were going to Mike? No, it’s gone. And they got to go, go build it all over again. So take the value when it’s there. You know, people want it. People always want to, they’re always, they always want to sell on the downside. I don’t know what minute it starts.  

Okay. Well, we’re getting a bed. It’s not, we’re not having a good year. We’d better look at selling, selling your Goodyear dummy. That’s the one it’s worth the most. Yeah, no, it’s totally true. So you go a landscaping restaurant. And then you have restaurant for 16 years. How do we get to real estate? Okay. So in 2008, I had electronic Depot and all the retail stores and we were just absolutely slain.  

And I had anywhere between two and 40 trucks a day pulling from my warehouse, picking up electronic ship and all of world. Wow. And we were just rolling. And then the 2008 crash come well. Because I was doing something that had never been done before. I thought it would never end well, circuit city went out of business.  

They were one of my largest clients. They filed bankruptcy that cost me about, I don’t know, 15, 20 million. Uh, and it just, all of a sudden it with it in 2008 crash, it just, it was a landslide. And I went literally in 120 days from worth a fortune to dead broken bankruptcy. And I spent from 2008 to 2012, pretty much.  

When, when you have 14 records pull up in front of your house and hook onto all your vehicles and assets and tell you, you got 30 days to leave your house. And that’s, that’s kind of tough, especially when you’re used to kind of, the Auster is your world, you know? So, um, Uh, asked me a couple, two or three years, pretty much depression, and didn’t really want to work.  

And I’ve been through so much in my life. I was just like, screw this man. This ain’t worth it. Uh, and then in 2010, I have a dear friend of mine who has been a friend of mine since I was 15 years, 16 years old. Uh, he went through some financial trouble. He was in the real estate business. He’s worth $400 million.  

And he went through some problems, uh, legal problems. And he called me, uh, falsely accused of some stuff by the way. But he called me and said, Hey, I’ve got a problem and I need your help. I’m like, I ain’t working. I ain’t doing nothing. I’m done. Yeah. I come back. I’ve been in bankruptcy for an outfit five years.  

No, I literally go. I used to say in the early eighties, we all partied in Vegas and the art, you know, and then in the 2008, we all partied at the bankruptcy courts, exact same group of friends I had from before. We were all partying in Vegas at a big time. That same group was in bankruptcy court. So, uh, I spent a lot of years going back and forth to the bankruptcy courts.  

Consequently, I learned a lot of law. I mean a lot law. There’s not much a bankruptcy law. I don’t know now. I don’t know if I’m proud of that or not, but I do know it, but, um, I went through it. Well, he knew, I knew that and he knew he was headed there with what was going on with him. So he brought me, he called me, he said, Hey, come to work.  

I said, I don’t. I come to work for me as a, I don’t know anything about real estate. He said, how much money do you have on you right now? I think I had $20. No, you got to just, mine went from being worth $200 million to nothing. I, $20 on me. And he says, look, you know, I was actually living in a, in a top of a hotel in the penthouse, which was, he is out 10% of it, but really the bankruptcy courts owned it.  

I just had the luxury of still having my name attached to it. So I was staying in the penthouses hotel, downtown Nashville, and I literally was just depressed and I didn’t wanna do nothing. Or in food and, uh, he’s in, and he owned nights in the hotel. So what are you, what are you living off of? How are you buying the food?  

Well, we owned the hotel, so it’s just called room service, calling room service leftover. And, uh, yeah, like it’s amazing what you can do when you really don’t give a shit no more. People, if people would go into business, not giving a shit three, Karen. Yeah. Successful. But people go in there so much. They’re trying to be so soft footed that that’s where they make their biggest mistakes and me and that kicker situation.  

I just, I didn’t care anymore. So, uh, he called me, he said, Hey, look, you know, I need your help. I said, I’m not working. He said, go downstairs. There’s was a brand new trucks downstairs for me. I didn’t have a vehicle at the time. I was walking around downtown and, uh, Uh, yeah, I went from Lamborghinis and Ferraris did no vehicle at all and being on foot and, uh, he, uh, so anyway, he gave me a brand new truck.  

Uh, They’ll may bring their office at his place. I knew nothing about the real estate business, but I knew a lot about business. So for the next four years, I worked with him side by side while he was going through his financial troubles and we carried his business, accurate his business to a 30% growth.  

And we’re really in a two year period. And, um, You know, I love the real estate business. I mean, I was like, dang man, there’s a lot of money in business and it was fun to me too, develop and build out started construction company. We did millions man starts with a building now built Starbucks and Carrabba’s and you know, all these crystals and redoing buildings.  

And I just loved it. I didn’t know much about construction. But I love the development side of it. And I hired really good people and consequently, we did really good with it. And then all of a sudden I realized, Hey, look here, you know, I’m going to build, I’m building this stuff for other people. Why not just own it myself.  

And obviously my credit started changing and things started changing. So. I went to him after four years and said, Hey, look, I think I just want to go in business for myself. He goes, well, I knew that was coming. I wish he’d stay, but I knew that was coming. And, uh, and that’s, and that’s what started me, but I can’t my head going.  

Okay. Real estate is 30 years behind and technology. I mean, really all we had was the MLS listing back then. And quite frankly, up until three years ago, that was all is out there. So we’re still in our infancy in technology real estate. Even today, we will be for the next 10 years, although you see some really cool stuff coming out right now, um, it’s still in its infancy.  

Uh, it’s at least 10 years down the road, but so I decided to start marrying my technology experience into the real estate business. And I, thank God I did. I was one of the best moves that are made because, you know, we, we built resolve suite and, uh, resolve suites. Is something you can sit at your home and literally buy properties at pennies on the dollar straight to your desktop.  

So if you know, It was an amazing product that come out of that time of being, you know, technology and business meshed with real estate. So that’s how I got into it. So walk us through resolve suite. And then you also have by property lead.com. Are those two interconnected? Do they piggyback off each other or are they independent of each other results with powers by property lead?  

Uh, resolve suite was designed for someone like me who, uh, had a little money. Who wanted to, uh, capitalize on properties being sold to pennies on the dollar? Uh, it could do so many big way. Mmm. Cause there’s so many properties coming through the system and because all of a sudden I started seeing incredible need for, I call them the average Joe was by the way, I’m as big as average Joe as you can get, but I call them average, Joe, really?  

If you really want to be wealthy. Wealthy. I’m not talking about, make a little money. Trust me. I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime and I was never wealthy. Real estate is really the only way to go because the only thing it’s not moving, it’s going to always be appreciating. And if it does appreciate it, I’m going to defer five or six year period of time.  

It’s going to go back up. So as long as you can just stay solid, uh, it’s the best way in the world to create wealth. And I think anybody in the world would say that. If they knew much about business. So, but I saw, I had a real desire. A passion is probably a better word to use to help people that we’re like me, that come at us trials and tribulations and problems that didn’t have, you know, $5,000 a month to pay for our software.  

But, you know, they had $500 a month. And they could go at their own pace. So basically allow them to build their own little business in a box at their own pace. So I decided to open up by property lead because that allowed that. So you get the same technology as resolve suite is powered by it, but it’s basically a more of an Alec Hart system that allow you to financially go at your own pace.  

And here let’s be honest about it. $500 a month, $6,000 a year. If you nine one property a year. Not only are you making incredible money, but you’re also building a great future. I mean, if you could do that for fast right years and on five properties, then in five years and you do it, you have two hours or 10 hours a week for all that period.  

That’s, that’s not much time put in for what you’re ended up with. So let’s say I’m that average Joe Guy and I, and I got 500 bucks a month that I can put towards this. W what am I getting? Is it helping me identify good opportunities to buy? Oh, it, it, every lead that comes in there, isn’t it isn’t identified opportunities to buy.  

So basically what we’ve done is we create an algorithm that goes in and finds the stress properties. And when I say distress, these are people that are losing their properties, flat, losing them. There is no question whether or not they’re going to lose them or not. They either have lost them or they’re going to lose them.  

And what it does, it goes in there and the software goes in and it gives you all the information about the property. Also gives you the contact numbers of the data owner. So you literally can sit there and call them directly and negotiate deals with them. Then the software creates the documents, create sparks agreements, grapes, to quit claim, deeds, creeks, whatever documents you might need has the ability to go and underwrite the product to make sure that there’s no lanes.  

So you can, you know, the titles are John and the software does all of it for you. So all you really do is sit there and say, okay, okay, well here’s a hundred thousand dollar property that they owe $7,000 on. Let me call them negotiate a deal. Maybe I can buy it for 10,000 and, uh, you know, obviously fix whatever problem that they’re losing it.  

You know, whether it be taxes or leans or whatever it could be. And, uh, you know, here I’ve got a hundred thousand property that I’ve got, you know, $15,000 a year. Or $70,000 a year and you can go and you can identify all that did software. So all you’re really doing is sitting there being nasty to people.  

If you can. And I tell people this all the time, if you’re a Pat power sales person, who’s gonna be in the ass to people on the telephone, right. You’re probably not going to be very successful in resolve suite or buy property properly. But if you can be a genuinely nice person, just make phone calls and be understanding of people that are in a very bad situation, you probably got your you’re going to be like clank Ratliff and make $4.2 million a year.  

You’re going to be like Scott Lumley. It’d be worth lots of money because people appreciate people that are genuine and relate to people with problems because does the average Joe have to be in. A specific state or how do you address different issues across different state lines for how, how real estate works?  

The software identifies it for you. So you don’t have to be an expert in those areas. All you have to do is, uh, is negotiate a deal. Uh, as far as the expert side of it, that’s all done in the closing on, in the book, hind the scenes with the software. So it identifies all that for you. If the lead is in your system, then it’s a property that you can acquire.  

And we don’t, by the way, we don’t give money leads to like the same lead to multiple people. Every lead, every lead that goes into somebody’s desktop is identified as first of all, is identified as distress and needing help. But second of all, it only goes to that one person. It was interesting earlier you said that, you know, real estate is a great opportunity and it’s always appreciating with, with the exceptions every once in a while, where it dips a little bit, but as long as you can flow through those couple of years, um, then, then it’s always has a positive trendline.  

Um, I’m sure you get a lot of people asking now is a dip coming, is something coming around. It’s going to have a, you know, a five, six year impact on real estate. Again. Uh, the answer to that question is absolutely. Um, and, and here’s the thing. It’s nothing but history that’s causing it. You know, it’s just natural.  

What goes up will come down and we have been in the last four years, the best real estate, whether the best economy that we’ve seen in, I don’t know how long, uh, maybe forever. Mmm. There’s just no way that any, you know, people don’t need to understand our economy is a business. Anyway, you cut it, slice it and cut we’re in a business.  

It goes up and business goes down. It’s just a natural product. Someday. You’re going to have high sales Sunday. You’re going to have low sales. Somebody you’re gonna have no sales. So it’s on its way since we’ve been so high. The downs coming. The beautiful thing about my software. What has me excited about the downturn, except for the fact that it hurts people is my software is the downturn software.  

It’s being highly successful in a great market. Can you imagine what it’s going to do when there’s 10 times the amount of people losing their properties and that’s coming, and it’s mostly because people there’s been a lot of what I call new money coming to real estate in the Lightroom. Seven or eight years people, you know, that are jumping in that have no experience whatsoever.  

You know, crowd funding was legalized, you know, three years ago or two and a half years ago. So you’ve got all these people that have taken their $50,000 that they’ve earned and saved and throw it into real estate. And whether it be in a, you know, in some sort of syndicated deal. And when the, when the, when the economy changes.  

That’s going to change dramatically. So that’s the reason why for years and years and years, he had to be a sophisticated veteran by real and real estate is because you needed to understand, you know, the downside. Uh, and it’s coming in a big way. I think, in the next two to four. Well, I like to say a lot depends on if Trump gets elected, but now I know Trump’s going to get elected.  

It’s not even a question whether he’s going to get electric now, I think in the very beginning, that was a big debate, but. He’s getting elected. Um, I think it will be an absolute landslide. I don’t think it’d be remotely close. This will be the first time I’ve ever talked about politics on the show, but it’s not, I’m not saying it right or wrong one way or the other, just genuinely curious, um, with all this talk about him right now, what do you think makes him such a likely candidate to, to re win election?  

Um, anytime somebody starts jumping up and down screaming, something, somebody has done something wrong, uh, and all they’re doing is, you know, your heart always heard the sign. That bad advertisement, still advertisement. Well, the president races, any different, yeah. You know, where the people who didn’t even know his name.  

Even as early as a year ago, now everybody knows his name. So, um, and a lot of, a lot of people vote very uneducated as we all want to. I don’t want to get too deep into politics either, but sure. Right of employment we’ve ever seen the best economy in us history. But, I mean, the list does go on and on more jobs in the United States than ever, you know, uh, you know, the tariffs, I mean, the list just goes on and on and on of the things that he’s been able to accomplish, obviously we realized that, you know, Congress and other people have to be involved in that too, but he’s forced the issue and look at what all has happened in just four years or four years.  

Can you imagine. That changing. I mean, who wants that to change? Putting it? Another president definitely gives you an opportunity for that to change. And I don’t think people want that to happen. The congressmen too. Good. In fact, it’s riding the same wave that you’ve been on the last three years is probably what’s going to put him back in office.  

I don’t talk politics on the show, but since your comment was related to business, I’d figure I’d I drill a little further on your opinion. So I appreciate you commenting on that. Yeah. I want to emphasize something since we’re on that subject. Yeah. I’m not impressed with his antics. There’s a lot of things about him.  

Obama Reagan, human Carter. I mean, wait, Melissa is George Washington’s. There’s a lot of things about all of the presidents that I like to go look, what’s a crap. Is he doing. But I’m not weighing them on antics. You know, I’m weighing them on what he’s accomplished. Do we hire him so we could look at him and enjoy him, or did we hire to do a job?  

Let me explain somebody. I don’t, and people need to understand this goes back to that, you know, loving something so much. You can’t let go of that thing. And I’m not. When I go into business, I want people around me are productive. I don’t really care. I mean, even if I hired, if I hired gee, I don’t really think it matters so much that I like you or dislike you as it does.  

If you’re good at your job, you have to be able to separate. And especially in business, the personality side of it, because let’s be honest about it. There’s nobody that can hire 200 people to work for them. And they love them all. If they say that they’re liars. Cause there’s people that I’ve walked in the office.  

I just wanted to throw them across the desk just by saying hi to me. But, but the truth is it’s, they’re good at their job. Leave them alone, let them do their job job. You didn’t hire him to hang out with him. And, and, uh, and is that why in business to w w when you identify somebody that’s good at something to identify it for what they’re good at, don’t worry about their past.  

That’s not important. What’s important is, is what they’re doing at that moment in time. And what they’re going to do for you in the future. You’re out when you’re setting up your business, when you’re structuring something, don’t structure them, personalities are your buddy, because when you start doing that stuff, that’s when you’re going to say structure your business on who can provide the best quality work for you to get you where you want to go regardless of their past.  

And I’m gonna take something right now. In my past, we all know about something happened in my past. It wasn’t very good. Um, and I’m sure not proud of it, but that past gave me the experience that I have today. It trust me. You want me to foxhole when you need me? Cause I’ve been no, I appreciate that. Um, I know you have just a couple of minutes left.  

I want to be respectful of your time. You have an event coming up that you had talked about earlier Unchained, and you kind of related that to your background, but we didn’t get the opportunity to actually dive into it. So I want to give you a minute to, to tell us more about the actual event. Well, you know, I have.  

You know, I have this saying, and I’m not going to call anybody out, which I don’t have a terrible thing. I have a terrible problem with doing, but some will be nice, but I’m watching a lot of these events out there and they’re nothing more than a damn pep rally. And here’s the problem with being going to a pep rally.  

It’s just for Friday night football for Friday night, you get all excited about the gang, but the means you get to the game, you get to talk to your friends, you get the game he was going on and. That’s what these events are doing is their pep rally of people. And I hate that shit because I want to get value.  

If I’m paying them 2000 to $10,000 to come to an event, I want to walk out with information. That’s going to show me how to get, where I want to go. I want to be Unchained from my problems with the past and my inadequacies of the past, I would be educated to my future. Show me how to get where I want to go.  

Don’t just freaking talk about it, make me feel good about my day. And that’s what I see a lot of these events doing and that it’s what I want the Unchained event in Nashville to be different. I want you to come there to actually be, to gain an education on how to be successful in business. And let me find something to you.  

You know, I heard I got here recently. So talking about the guy Wolf of wall street, and he was talking down about the waffles that, you know, metaphor talking real down to him. And I was thinking the whole time I’m really impressed with Belfort because he took a very bad problem of his biased. He started around into a positive future and he is somebody to learn from not somebody to look down on.  

Okay. Screwed up. He stole a bunch of money. Does some dumb ass stuff back in his past. But I ain’t who he is today. Matter of fact, he learned from that and now he knows what not to do. It can get you where you want to go with it faster. So I’m impressed with the guy and, and I mean more in the press with it.  

Those are the kind of people that I want to bring to the public that helps because they truly know where the grit is. They know, they know how to describe the word grit. You all saw. Ted talks the other day about the word grit. Nobody can tell you what grit is because it’s just, it is, or it isn’t, but.  

Those type of people that have the grit in them are the people I want to, I don’t want to bring people that are just damned good talkers. I’m not interested than a damn good car salesman telling me how to be, where I want to go. I want people that have been, had the crap kicked out of them that have gotten back up and went back out and be successful.  

I want to know how they did it because that’s the way everybody feels every day, they feel like they got the crap, it metaphorically. They feel like they got the crap kicked out into some sort of area. And they have to figure out how to overcome that. So the people that I bring to this event to speak of the van and to present at the event are going to be those types of people, guys that have done something and had crap kicked out.  

I’m going to come back and did it again and again, because that’s the key to all success is to take your failures gain experience from it. Get back up, go back out and do it again. And try to become successful. Now, the problem is, is you get, there’s so many ways to make mistakes. There’s that these days that you tend to make a lot of mistakes before you get where you want to go.  

So why not learn from people that have had the worst of mistakes, so you can avoid all that and figure out how they stood back up and went forward to become successful. And can anybody from any industry, this isn’t unchanged, isn’t going to be real estate specific, right? Absolutely not. You know, what I do is real estate.  

What I do is not for everybody period. Now, I think the buy property lead is opened it up where he can be for everybody. Uh, you know, there’s gonna be some extremely successful people in it. And then it goes from people that you’ll get in it and it’s been their money for three or four months and never do anything, uh, in, by the way, if you’re going to do it, just don’t spend your money.  

You’ll find something that you can get in that you can. Move forward. And that’s, that’s why I want other speakers. There is to give other opportunities of things that I look at and go, you know what? That’s a good idea. So when I look at the speakers, I’m not going to look at the guys that just speak real well.  

Because that’s just, first of all, it’s just entertainment. This thing, unchaining is not, it’s going to be entertaining cause I’m entertaining as you can get, but it’s not going to be for entertainment. I want people to walk out of there going, why the hell didn’t they do that at that show last year? Why didn’t they get these guys?  

You know, they, they bring in the data when John’s and they bring in the guys who, who have had nothing but success. You create a hat you become extremely successful and you’re a great speaker. Wonderful. Now where’s your problems, Tim. Tell me when you went bankrupt, tell me about your bankruptcy. How’d you come through that?  

You tell me, tell me about, I start a company. I don’t much talk about this very often, but I want to right now, Oh, I had a company called metropolitan acceptance corporation and I was 19 years old and I was so freaking happy, man. We were making $360,000 in 60 days. I was on fire with this company. All of a sudden the police showed up at my front door and shut us down.  

And I was like, well, we’re not doing anything illegal. And we weren’t, here’s exactly what they said to me. We don’t have a classification. We can’t tax you. We have no way. We don’t even understand what you’re doing and listen, here’s what we’re doing. Exactly what you see. He’s all over the internet doing now.  

And in fact, you can go to the, uh, Tennesseean and look in the. I think it was probably 91 or two and the tennis thing and look up metropolitan except except it’s corporation. You’ll see, we were on the front page of, of Tennessee being shut down. And what we were doing was taking people that were losing their cars, being repoed.  

We were catching the payments up on it and least them back out, somebody who didn’t have good credit and we were killing it. Now you see those companies all over the internet. But back then it was illegal. They say it, but yet they didn’t charge me nothing and they just shut me down. What a great story to see an entrepreneur that thought of something that had never been done before I was the first and it’s on the front of the Tennessee and approve it and, and have, and have all the infrastructure put in place to have all this, this great wheel that you’ve built in just a short period of time, took a six months to get set up  

We’re open for 60 days, made $360,000. And then the, and then the local police shut us down. Come to find out there was nothing wrong with what we were doing, but by that time, We’ve all with cover the Tennessee and everybody knew, knew what was going on and they run it for us. And you know, and when you don’t have much money, you can’t do that.  

These are the kind of entrepreneurs that I like. They’re innovative. They’re creative. They’re out of the box. They’re going to teach you ways to be successful that are, that you’ve never even considered. Those kind of people I’m looking for. Speaking on Jane, I like the real life story. So it’ll be interesting to see who you bring.  

Is there a website where listeners can follow up on this to see the lineup and the dates as it unfolds, the website should be up and running in the next 30 days. Uh, well, it’s funny. She said that we actually just contracted last night, uh, for the website, uh, for the company that’s going to be doing this.  

So until then that’ll probably line up well with about the time that this episode actually goes live, but otherwise, uh, Scott Lumley, S C O T T L U M L E Y.com. Is that a good place for listeners to find out more? Absolutely. And go to SCOTTLUMLEY.com. You can go to buypropertylead.com. You can go to resolvesuite.com.  

You hit me up. I spoke same name. Uh, you can hit me up on pretty much anything. I’m not the, I, uh, I’m really pushing tiktok right now, too. Uh, I’m a firm believer that that’s our next big platform. So, uh, hit me up on that too. Yeah. When you’re constantly trying to buy, I can’t, I don’t see myself slowing down.  

Yeah. I can’t see myself taking my money and retiring then to wood death. I’m not interested in that. So I’m going to constantly be looking for new platforms, look for new businesses, new ideas, to keep expanding my mind. I just think that that’s living for me, that’s living, you know, it’s crazy to watch the, the tech revolution take off.  

I mean, it’s a beautiful thing if you know what to take advantage of. And, and I appreciate you sharing your background on how you’ve been able to leverage that on the different projects and companies. You’ve worked with, uh, Scott Lumley, Scottlumley.com. You can hit him up on tiktok Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, all in variations of his name. 

Scott Lumley. Uh, I’ll give you the four Oh one last time. Scott, anything you want to say? Nope. Thanks for having me on today. I appreciate it. Been a pleasure, Scott Lumley. Thank you.