Imagine leaving your home country to come to America only to be homeless. That is a challenge most of us will never face, but my guess today Ray Zhang was in this position. He did all he could to work his way into having a home and steady income – From flipping furniture to flipping land, his journey is one for the books!
Listen to today’s podcast episode and hear his story into the land-flipping business, how he is impacting the lives of others by teaching them his methods, and how he focused on mindset to build his 7-figure business.
Follow Ray: Website: https://landflipinc.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virtualflipland/
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TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor. Welcome to our show. It’s for you those that work so freaking hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom of cashflow now, not 30 or 40 years from today, but you want it right now so that you can live that life that you love with those that you love. But most importantly, we know it’s not just about getting rich, it’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning into our show. Thank you for allowing me to create a ripple effect through you. You guys have been binging, you’ve been sharing these podcasts, and most importantly, I love the fact that you’re taking action and changing your lives right now.
(00:45)
If you haven’t done so already, check out money ripples.com. Love to be able to see how we can serve you in any way, shape, or form. Heck, you even see if you can create enough passive income to get out of the rat race in the next few years by checking out that calculator today. Okay guys, so I got to introduce somebody that’s actually in a mastermind group with me. Funny enough, we just got more introduced to each other now versus before my team more got to meet Ray here and man, I got to tell you what a fascinating story this guy has in the real estate world coming from China, coming here now into the us. Amazing story that if you’ve ever had excuses about why you’re not financially free, any excuses about why you haven’t made it or you haven’t quite gotten to that point of freedom, you need to listen to Ray’s story and shut up. And I’m saying that in a nice way because Ray’s story you’re going to love here. So Ray, welcome to our show.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thank you for inviting me. Thank you so much, Chris.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Absolutely. So let’s exit right to it. Tell us about you. I mean, growing up in China, coming here to the us, what inspired that?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I was kind of struggling in China because the day I felt like I needed to change was the day I got kicked out from my college in China. In China, it is very easy to graduate from university. I was the only one that got kicked out and I was kicked out on the last month of the entire college and because Why
Speaker 1 (02:18):
You do that? That’s
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Crazy. I play video games so much and basically go to, we have Chinese, the internet bar. I went there on Monday morning and I came out on Friday night. That’s was my lifestyle. I was sleeping on the chair and just playing games all the time. I was like, there are a better way.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So you were living a dream life for many Americans today.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Absolutely. So I was in love with those lifestyle. I don’t need to worry about nothing else. So I told my mom and parents, I’m going to America. I don’t even know where it is, right. I’m going to do something. I become a student, do the church work. They eventually agreed and then that’s how things changed for me. But I became homeless right away. When I first came here, it was hard because I was very babied at home in China. I was the only child. So I came here, became homeless, and it was hard for three months.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Wow. How old were you when you were homeless here?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
About 23, 23.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Was this before you went to Canada or after?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
After.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
After. Okay, so you had to go to Canada first then it came down.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, yeah, and I was in Hawaii, so I wasn’t that bad. I mean, if I were to become homeless right now, I would choose Hawaii first. Right. It’s very beautiful, very beautiful. There’s a lot of beach and I just live in the car for three months. Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Were you living the typical Hawaiian lifestyle of sitting in a Jeep, that kind of thing, or you just in a small little sedan? What kind of car were you in?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I was in a small Camry.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
It was pretty, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, pretty roomy and the worst thing is the alternative would not, so I don’t even have an air conditioner.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Which island were you staying on? Was this Oahu or is this a different one?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Oahu, yes.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Oh my goodness. So how did you survive just day to day living in your car like that?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So I just go to the store and eat one meal a day and if I don’t want to take a shower, sometimes I sneak in the college or I just go to the beach and normally I just have my computer and connect to the school wifi. They’re free. And what I did was I just buy and sell those free stuff. So I grab things for free on the internet, I put it in my car, I just sell it. And
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Do you have an address It went to? How did that work?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I drive all over the place. So if you have, let’s say a table or a small chair you want to sell, I just throw it in the back of my car and then I post it for sale. Right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Oh, I got you. So you got stuff locally and then you turn around and sold it online?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. Yeah. You’d surprised, you’d be surprised what people give out for free. I have students right now they’re learning land flipping, but on the side they’re grabbing the free stuff and sell them. Some of them made $8,000 per month right now doing that
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Great’s crazy. Yeah. So that’s kind of where you got into the flipping, the flipping fever right now. Is this when you started to do real estate investing, was it in Hawaii or is this after you came to
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, so I started doing that and then I upgraded to flip cars. I was making about 10,000 a month flipping cars and I start to look for ways to invest money. And so I tried houses, apartments, all these different niches. None of them really work out very well for me, so I had to do something else. So after six years of trying, I started to do land flipping, which is about five years ago, and that’s when everything clicks. I was doing land flipping in the mainland, I was living in Hawaii and I can do it completely virtual without a big team because there’s nothing on top of the land. So my first year of flipping land, I made about 300,000 just that year.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
So or who inspired you to go into land leaving cars and now starting to do land flipping? What was the inspiration there?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I guess I tried everything and I was like, I’m going to try this and see if it works for me. And I tried houses, apartments, I was like, there’s nothing else but land. Lemme try that. So I paid a guy 70,000 to teach me how to flip land. He didn’t teach me, well, not the method I want to get into. So I just start to do it myself. And that worked.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And you do short-term flipping. So it’s not like I know a lot of people we’ve had on the show, they talk about land investing, they’re more buying the land and then they sell it on terms, they basically become the bank and sell it to somebody else and then get paid that mortgage payment. But you do it very differently. You just flip it, you just buy it and then quickly sell it. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Absolutely. So for me, the term investing doesn’t really make sense. No offense to them. But the thing about term investing in land is there’s a lot of tire kickers. As a seller, if you try to sell your land and the people ask you this available, even though that’s a very small amount of money every single month, you’re asking them to pay $200 per month. But a lot of them are tire kickers and secondly is the default rate is crazy high. I always tell people if you want cashflow, go to your apartments. They cannot just don’t pay you and you can kick them out. But what’s in there for land, they don’t stop paying. You still got the land though, but they’re gone.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well, land’s a lot less expensive than buying one with a structure on it too, right? There’s not, like you said, all that complexity, especially if you’re working by yourself, if you’re trying to do it solo, I would imagine your strategy is much easier to do than someone who’s trying to deal with all the tire kickers, deal with potential defaults deal with. If they’re trying to buy apartments or houses even like many of our clients do still, you’re having to buy the property. It’s more expensive. You’re dealing with tenants. Even if you have a property management company, you still have to manage the property manager. But yours is just, I’m in and I’m out. Right?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Absolutely. So land flipping is for me is a cash cow. I need it to a lot of money. You can start with very small. My first deal, I bought it for 1000, I sold it for 2,500. You can do that and you start this ripple effect, right? I love that work.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So it was a low cost of entry, like well a thousand bucks make sell over 2,500, you make $1,500 net profit right there.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah. So I’m talking about the small deals and you can go very big in love flipping as well.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Oh of course. Yeah, there’s lots you can definitely buy into the tens of thousands versus just single thousands, right?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
What have you learned in the last five years? What were some of the mistakes you made along the way that you’re able to learn from and say, oof, glad I’ve learned that now that now saves me time and or money?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I think singular focus. So I’m sure that you are the master of your own game because you focus on one thing That’s a lot of mistake that a lot of investors make. They try to do a lot of things at the same time. They’re like, okay, this length flipping sound very sexy and Ray made it so simple that I can do this. I think I can do this, but this another guy, Chris, he talked about apartments, so lemme try two at the same time. That’s a huge mistake. If you do that, go back to your dream and you can just stay where you are for another six years. What I was doing, I was there for six years. Right,
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That’s true. Many times people don’t realize they hear all the marketing, especially from people that are trying to sell you and pitch you these programs about doing investing and they’ll say, oh, it’s totally passive. You can have your virtual team do everything for you or you could be hands off, but in truth you own a business. It is your business. If you’re going to run any business, you’re not going to open up three businesses at the same time. You’re going to open up one business, focus on it, get it producing, get a nice system in place, and then if you want to move on, then you can move something else. But doing the same time, that’s a big no-no learned in my own life too.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Absolutely. It’s just like a ripple effect. You talk about ripple your show, and if you throw one rock in the river, it create a ripple, right? What if you throw rocks two rocks at the same time and that ripple kind of work against each other. So that’s how it is with money as well. Yeah, money loves singular focused people.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah. Well the thing I can see the advantage of what you’re doing too is that it’s not just the, well, it’s not passive in any way, shape or form. It’s very active, but it’s a very high profit business. Low entry, like you said, low price thousand dollars. I mean it might be, even if you buy a lot for 500 bucks or you buy it for 8,000 bucks, that’s still a lot cheaper than dropping a hundred grand onto an investment that you might be more passive on. You could make more money quickly and even start to do more passive investments on the side if you wanted to do that too.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah, the great thing about land is you can earn when you sell, there’s a profit and you can also earn when you do not sell. So let’s say I moved to Jacksonville about two and a half years ago, I bought some land as a half price at that current value by then and right now the value of the land tripled. So I got at least 500% return on that investment. So I also earn more if I don’t sell. So time will do the difference.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
That’s true. That was one of the biggest epiphanies to me about land was it probably happened to me for me about, oh boy, it’s probably been about 10 years, but I remember hearing for the first time when someone said, you realize that real estate doesn’t appreciate the house, the rental that you buy doesn’t appreciate it depreciates, which is why you get the tax break. The only thing that appreciates is really the land that it’s on. The land is what appreciates is also what could depreciate potentially, but typically it doesn’t really do that very much. It’s always the building, the structure that depreciates. And I remember for me that was a big light bulb moment. I said, wait a minute, if there’s going to be appreciation, it’s the land. I don’t worry about the structure because let’s be honest, a house is not much different than a car, although it might be a little bit sturdier, but a car depreciates over time because the equipment breaks down, well, a house breaks down, but land that always becomes more and more valuable as it becomes more and more scarce.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Absolutely. Yeah. Right now it became scarce because there are a lot of people getting into the game right now. So 10 years ago, if you do land flipping, it’s much easier. Right now it’s a little bit harder, but it’s still easier than houses. So
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, right. Definitely easier, a simpler format even though it’s more rare I don’t see many people teach it.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Now you talk about this a lot on your social media, right? You have your Instagram channel. Share that with us.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I share the details of the land flipping in my Instagram. My Instagram is virtual flip land and sometimes I share with about money mindset as well. Mindset to me is huge because I was a janitor after homeless, I was doing swiping the floors for $800 per month. And after the mindset shift I was doing about, I was earning about $10,000 per month. So that’s a huge difference. And there’s a book that I recommend people read all the time. It’s called The Science of Getting Rich
Speaker 1 (15:13):
False Models.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Oh, here you Go. And seems like you read that and not a lot of people know that book honestly, but that’s the secret behind the secret movie. So
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That’s right.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah. So that’s what,
Speaker 1 (15:29):
That’s a great book recommendation for sure. So yeah, we’ll definitely put virtual land flipping, wait, was it Virtual Land Flip or Virtual Land? Virtual Flip Land. There we go.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, virtual flip land.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yes. Yep, there you go. I’m going to get it right one of these days. So I virtual flip land for sure. We’ll have people follow you, but that leads me to my next question there. I totally agree with you. Mindset is probably the hardest thing to shift even more than the money. If you could flip the mindset, you could flip the money too. What were some of the biggest lessons you got, whether it be from science of getting rich or anything else that helps you go from 800 a month to making 10,000 plus a month? What was that shift for you mindset wise?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Okay, so a lot of people think at least I was thinking I need to, if I don’t have something, I need to hope someday I can get it and eventually I don’t get it. For some reason I never figured it out why? I was always wishing for a thing, I never got it right. So what is the hope for Right? Why do I even hope for it at the first place? So the most powerful people always have this ability, they have it before they have it. So that might sound weird. How do you have it before you have it? Let’s say I want to earn $10,000 per month. That’s my wish. So if you keep wishing, if you keep wishing it, and guess what, in a subconscious mind you lack of it. That’s why you wish for it. If you don’t have it, that’s why you wish for it.
(17:16)
But you can only have it first. You have it in your mind. You are earning $10,000 per month you can earn whatever you want already, even though right now you don’t have it now, but eventually you’ll have it. So you have to train your subconscious mind to have it before you have it. So everything you see on whatever you see has been created twice. So for example, iPhone, Steve Jobs didn’t have the iPhone before he had it in his mind, so he created iPhone. He told his team specifically I iPhone the phone, just one button and control everything. That’s before he created the iPhone. So you have to have that thing first and then think about that over and over again. How would that make you feel if you have it already? Once you get the feeling consistently, you will have it. You’ll manifest that in your own life. That’s the biggest lesson for me because I was earning $800 per month. How can you imagine you earn $10,000 per month it, but unless you believe that already happened, you cannot make it work.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, it’s a little mind hack, isn’t it? It’s tricky. It is funny because when it finally cemented for me, I would read Rethink and Grow Rich multiple times and nothing changed my life. But when I got to the point where I realized if I can see it, I can get it right. If I can see it in my mind, if I can know almost to the point I can experience it, touch it, taste it, feel it, right? Once I’m at that point, then I can achieve it. Then it gets to, it’s almost like this, it’s like it’s telling people, let me say this again, lemme do it this way.
(19:13)
For me, it seems like the easiest way to get something is to get to the point where by the time I get it, I’m not surprised. Absolutely. It’s not a surprise when I get it because it’s already real in my mind to the point where I’m almost shocked that it’s not there in reality yet. So when it does show up in reality, oh well that’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what I expect. It gets absolutely expectation. It’s not just a wish or a hope, right? I’m not saying that wishing it’s not good, it’s wishing it getting to the point where it’s not just possible, it becomes inevitable. It becomes reality rightly. I think that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yes. And there’s a book about it. It’s called the Feeling. It’s a secret and it’s the same thing, work against you as well. The bad luck. Sometime let’s say you get into a car accident and you were like, I never expect this, but all your bad feelings about your current life will result in that situation. So it works both ways. So it is either you are the creator, so you create either ways. So it is a rich life on one side and the other is a victim. I don’t have a rich dad, president is a moron, cannot even walk. And this kind of victim mindset. So it is your choice which one you want to choose.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
That kind of leads me to another question. Your conversation is reminding me of a private conversation I had with one of my friends, Steve Trang, you probably know him from our mastermind group as well, and we were talking about his upbringing where he was raised Chinese himself, his wife was raised more Vietnamese and there’s a different culture there for you being raised in China and then starting to learn about Wallace Waddles and learning about The Secret and all these other things. Was there a challenge there based on your upbringing? Do you think there’s a challenge if you’re Chinese trying to learn these things or do you think it’s easier to accept in Chinese?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I learned all this when I was in America. I didn’t know even those book exist in China. I don’t think there was a book like that. So they don’t put a emphasize on mindset there. They just create a lot of workers and all the schools they expect you to act in a certain way and after your graduation is supposed to work for someone else. So their class is so strict that you want to jump off the building sometime. And that was what I felt. So you don’t have times for other things. And when I first came to the America I was like, this is free and I learned all the things I want. And those books helped me t tremendously. I just read the English version instead of the Chinese version. So thank goodness I can understand it.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Do you think that’s why you tend to see, because I know Chinese, like you said, they’re really good at, I’ve noticed China is really good at trying to take something that, and I know this is true in Japan, especially when I lived there, they try to take an idea and then perfect it right and try to make it better or just try to produce that, try to mass produce it. Do you think that’s, even though I’m not saying very few people, I think the minority people read books like Science of Getting Rich and The Secret and Rich Dad, poor Dad. I think that’s a minority of Americans, but do you think it’s inbred in our culture That’s part of the reason why we try to innovate here more and try to create more. Do you think that’s why that’s fostered here in America more easily? What’s your perspective on that?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I think whatever you focus on will grow and because we have in China, they have all this academy you have to go through. So every single day you think about the scores, how much score I’m going to get out of this university. So you think about that over and over again. Eventually you forget about creativity, you forget about everything else to try to create. But in the States, I take my kids to school, they’re down at 12:00 PM in China, good luck and maybe nine or eight. So they have a lot of time to create. But I back to China about a couple months ago. The technology is crazy improving right now. So it’s a different world. Normally people don’t have cash on them, they just pay everything on app and you sit on a chair, that chair can charge your phone out of sunset, sunlight. It’s kind of crazy right there. But there are people very creative there. So I dunno how they make it work, but if I were to stay there, I would maybe have a hard time. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Very interesting. For sure. Yeah, I was kind of curious to see what the differences are because I think Americans do take for granted what we have here. I mean in a lot of ways we almost, we’re almost creating a country that has a little bit of too much freedom sometimes and we pride ourselves on that. But at the same time, I know that some of us Americans feel like we’re not free, we don’t feel like we’re stifled. And it’s interesting to get your perspective on that because I think we lose sight of that if we’re born and raised in it where if we haven’t lived in another country, like in Asia and places like that, you really just don’t get that perspective.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
There are truly a lot of freedom here and I went back there for a month sometime, even have a hard time to teach my students some lessons because you are not allowed to go to YouTube, you’re not allowed to go to Google Map, you’re not allowed to search on Google. There is a lot of limitation. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Interesting. Wow. Ray, this has been a very interesting conversation for sure. I really appreciate your time here today. Again, we’ll put your Instagram and your social media in the notes here with the virtual flip land. We’ll make sure we put that in there. But again, thank you so much for your time. If there’s one last piece of advice we give anybody, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I would say just find who we are and just stick with it. So when it comes to professionals, there are three kind of people. Maybe there is one that’s good at marketing, maybe there’s a good one, people good at coaching or teaching, maybe there’s some people good at connecting other people. Just pick whatever you think is the natural you when you work and just stick to that and go deeper instead of go wider. So choose one niche. If you choose apartments, fine. Just do that. Don’t try to do something else and there’s nobody you need to prove it to. You just have to do one and stay there for 10 years. Of course you’ll get very big.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
That’s great advice. If there’s anybody who’s proven that to you, even though it might sound like you’ve evolved into doing different things, really you kind of went deep and just evolved the method, but you were still doing much of the same thing. Everything from earn chairs, earn items to earn cars, to eventually flipping land. You really did. You really went deep and you just kept taking your strengths and just focusing on that one thing, didn’t you?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Absolutely. I’m good at negotiating, so that’s what I do, right? I am terrible at connecting all these people and do a big project. That’s not what my strengths is.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Right, man, fascinating story. Fascinating, great advice. Really appreciate your time here today, Roy, everybody. Again, if you want to follow Ray, just go ahead and follow him at, as I just blanked out on it again, flip
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Virtual, flip land.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yes, thank you. Go ahead and follow Ray at virtual flip land and check out his stuff, guys. Definitely make sure you’re following him and take that advice in your own life. What can you go deep on? What can you focus on and make work in your life so you can see more prosperity today? And that’s what I challenge you guys to do, is to go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.