Willie Mandrell - Cash Flow Secrets Revealed
What does it really take to build multi-million dollar wealth through real estate - and keep it growing? Willie Mandrell is a self-made real estate investor, broker, coach, and author who has been involved in over $200 million in transactions. From buying and selling to brokering and mentoring, Willie has seen every angle of the game - and he’s here to share what actually works.
Known for his expertise in value-add investing in competitive markets like Boston, Willie breaks down proven strategies like buy-and-hold, build-to-hold, and BRRRR in a way that’s both practical and powerful. He also dives into the financial principles most people were never taught—but absolutely need to understand if they want to build lasting wealth. As the author of Cash Flow Secrets and a featured voice across podcasts, TV, and radio nationwide, Willie brings both credibility and real-world experience to the conversation.
In this episode, you will be able to learn:
- Wealth is built through ownership, not labor. Early exposure to rental income highlights a core principle: assets—not jobs—generate long-term financial freedom.
- Market timing is secondary to market participation. Waiting for the “perfect” moment is a losing strategy; consistent action across cycles drives outsized returns.
- Value-add investing outperforms passive appreciation. Creating forced equity through renovations and repositioning unlocks higher returns and accelerates portfolio growth.
- Velocity of capital is a critical growth lever. Strategies like BRRRR enable investors to recycle the same capital repeatedly, compounding scale faster than traditional buy-and-hold alone.
- Credibility unlocks capital. Demonstrating results and educating others builds trust, which attracts private investors and expands deal flow organically.
- Sustainable growth requires systems, not hustle. Consistent lead generation, deal sourcing, and marketing must operate continuously to avoid income volatility.
- Success is driven by calculated risk and resourcefulness. Strategic risk-taking—paired with discipline and downside awareness—is essential to break through early-stage limitations and build momentum.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - A Grandmother’s Rental Income Lesson
00:01:58 - First Deals And Early Market Crashes
00:08:59 - Private Capital And Proof Building
00:11:37 - Creative Funding And Calculated Risk
00:15:48 - Building A Vendor Team That Lasts
00:19:13 - Deal Finding Systems That Never Stop
00:21:24 - Teaching To Grow An Investing Ecosystem
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Full transcript here:
Willie Mandrell: 00:00
You know, I think one of the biggest questions to back up that she asked me early on was like, Have you ever known me to work? And when I thought stepped back and thought about it, I was like, No, I've never known you to have a job or anything. Like she was, you know, used to explain to me that all this money comes from rental income. She'd had me knocking on doors, collecting rents, sweeping downstairs. And it just kind of came along. And when I got out of college, she basically just said, Look, you know, I'm a, you know, a black woman from the South with a sixth grade education, and I was able to do what I was able to do. You're gonna have a high school education, a college education. You should be able to take this thing a lot further than I was able to.
Mike Swenson: 00:35
We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom Real Estate Leverage Freedom, where we talk about different ways that people build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swens, and if you want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website freedom through realestate.com. It's where we put all of our content, all of our interviews for you to be able to figure out what path you want to choose and where best to start and jump in and take action so that you can build an awesome career inside of real estate. Today I'm super excited to share. We're going to the East Coast to Boston. We've got Willie Mindrel here. Willie is self-made, multimillionaire real estate investor, broker, coach, lecturer, and author involved in well over $200 million in real estate transactions, author of the book Cash Flow Secrets, and your focus is buy and hold value add type properties in the Boston area. So excited to be able to dig into that more. Thank you so much, Willie, for being on the show.
Willie Mandrell: 01:50
I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.
Mike Swenson: 01:52
To get started, give us a little bit about your background, why you got into real estate, how that got started, and we'll just take it
Mike Swenson: 01:58
from there.
Willie Mandrell: 01:58
It's funny, I'm in I'm in an uh anniversary year. I'm in year 20 of this real estate, this journey. Uh I bought my first property in 2006. Um, I was 23 at the time, um, fresh out of college, uh, went to Northeastern here in Boston. And uh my grandmother had been in the business. She was um older woman, black woman, came up from the south, Macon, Georgia, moved to Boston in the 1950s. Really tough time to be a woman, really tough time to be black. It was pre, you know, civil rights moving, pre-you know, integration of schools and everything else. Um, and somebody just, you know, uh, you know, suggested that she buy some real estate. She bought a couple brownstones in the South End, completely different neighborhood than what it is today. Um, very luxurious neighborhood, definitely, definitely difficult to get in. Um and she just made, she just did really well for herself. And um, it skipped a generation. My father wanted nothing to do with it, uncle wanted nothing to do with real estate. Um, and then when my brothers came along, she basically just said, Hey, I'm gonna, you know, continue to pass down this knowledge. Um, don't want to give you anything, don't want to hand you anything, but want to make sure that um you understand, you know, I think one of the biggest questions to back up that she asked me early on was like, Have you ever known me to work? And when I thought, stepped back and thought about it, I was like, No, I've never known you to have a job or anything. Like she was, you know, used to explain to me that all this money comes from rental income. She'd had me knocking on doors, collecting rents, sweeping downstairs. And it just kind of came along. And when I got out of college, she basically just said, Look, you know, I'm a you know, a black woman from the South with a sixth grade education, and I was able to do what I was able to do. You're gonna have a high school education, a college education. You should be able to take this thing a lot further than I was able to push me to grab my first multifamily, and I've been addicted and just buying ever since.
Mike Swenson: 03:43
So such a great story, and awesome that you were exposed to entrepreneurship and and building something inside of real estate so early and had a model of somebody to be able to show you and teach you. And and yeah, to your point, you know, because I look at my kids, you know, and I've kind of told them like, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. Like, I'm not gonna make you. I mean to see that you, you know, your parents or your dad decided not to, but stuck with you and and here you are.
Willie Mandrell: 04:08
Yeah, yeah. No, it's been it's been an amazing ride. I mean, it's been a lot of ups and downs. I mean, I can tell you 2006, if you take the journey back, you know, market was pretty good. 2007, stock market crashed, 2008, housing market crashed. Um, you know, I took some lumps pretty early in the process. But I mean, the the one thing that I've learned over the years, and you know, a little bit of what we're going through right now is, you know, there's gonna be economic downturns, economic cycles. That's the way the economy works. You got to stick with it. You know, I mean, I would say there's a lot of, you know, your listeners potential. I talk to people every day that are sitting on the sidelines waiting for things to improve. It's the wrong, the wrong strategy. You got to get in and then ride that cycle all the way up, you know, on the other end. You know, we made some of our best investments 2012 when people were running away from the market, 11, 12, 13, some of the best years to buy. And those properties in Boston have tripled in value since then. So yeah.
Mike Swenson: 04:60
The hard part is everybody says, like, I wish I would have bought, you know, X number of years ago, and you don't know that that time was the sweet spot to buy until you're further ahead. Because either it's gonna continue to go down or it's gonna stay, and you don't know. And so that's why you've always got to be just thinking, you know, how can you continue to acquire stuff? Because we we always share, you know, hey, the two best times to plant a tree 20 years ago and today. And so you've got to figure out a way to do it now.
Willie Mandrell: 05:27
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I think the biggest thing is you can't follow the crowd. I mean, I look at it like you know, like this. If everyone else is running in one direction, I'm trying to look for opportunities in the other direction, right? And that's it was the same thing I I looked at. I'm not a big stock trader, but I looked at the same thing after COVID. There was a everyone was running away from carnival cruises and you know, airline stocks and just a whole bunch of things that involve mass gatherings. And I looked at those things as, hey, well, the stocks are going on sales. Coronavirus is going to to end or COVID-19 is going to end at some point, right? So civilization is not going to end right now with this virus, we hope. Um, and you know, think people are gonna get back to traveling. And those, you know, those those uh were value add um opportunities as well.
Mike Swenson: 06:09
So
Mike Swenson: 06:09
now you mentioned val value add burr strategy, you know, new construction, whatever that might be. When did you get into that kind of niche? Or uh did you start with that coming from your grammar, or kind of how did you decide that value add was gonna be, you know, one of those key points for you?
Willie Mandrell: 06:25
Um no, value add has been the last decade, I would say. And the reason is is because you basically at some point get capped out on your conventional lending. Um, meaning, you know, I went and Boston's a very expensive city, right? I mean, we don't, we know, even back 10, 15 years ago, everything was $500,000, $600,000. We're, you know, typical multifamily here is a million plus now. I mean, you really don't find anything for under a million. Um, so I bought a three-family FHA, federal housing administration, three and a half percent down. My wife, not girlfriend at the time, she bought one as well. We got married, we're able to trade up into a two-family, traded up into a single family. So now we're stuck with six, uh, eight, nine, you know, units, including our single family. And then you're kind of capped out at that point, right? I mean, unless you want to put 20% down, you're starting to, you know, like I said, and again, 20% down here is six figures easily, you know, plus. So then we start looking at things like value add uh opportunities, the birth strategy where we can go into something, put some money that we saved into that property, create a value spread, and then pull our capital right back out. So the velocity of money, how do we keep our money moving faster? If you buy a rent-ready three family, you put a hundred grand a hundred grand down, that hundred thousand is stuck in there until you sell the property or the property appreciates substantially. The burr strategy allows us, and I'll give you some hard numbers here. The burr strategy allows us to basically put that $100,000 in, create a significant amount of value, and then pull that $100,000 right back out. And our typical business model here is, you know, we're buying at roughly $700,000 for a three-family. We're gonna put $200,000 in, we're into it for $900,000, the building is worth $1.25 or $1.2 on the other end. The banks allow us to say, yes, the LTV is there, you can pull your capital back out and allows us to keep that money moving a lot faster. And then, in if you're in this, I wouldn't suggest this to anybody who's new, but once you have a really solid business model that revolves around the birth strategy or proven, then we really started to scale. We're somewhere around 120 units right now. And the we the way we were able to do that is not by using just our own money, was using private capital as well in that same birth strategy model and pulling those the I borrow 100,000 from you, invested into that same, that same multifamily. Nine months later, we're pulling that capital right back out, giving you your your capital plus interest and just doing that over and over again.
Mike Swenson: 08:59
And my next question I was gonna go with that is being able to show the value that you had and offer these opportunities to others, talk about kind of how those conversations started or finding those people, because you know, a lot of people that want to get into the real estate may not have the capital to be able to do it themselves, and yet they might know people that do. And so, how do you convey that value so that somebody's gonna you know put their 100K with you?
Willie Mandrell: 09:23
Yep. So again, it's it's a belief in yourself. We took a lot of risk, and I and I I always hesitate to have these conversations on kind of a public, you know, place because I think it that's the right strategy for the right person, right? So I'll give you uh, you know, once we got capped out, we said we bought our, you know, I bought a three, mother, you know, my wife bought a three. Um, and then I started looking at, I was running a real estate brokerage at the time. Brokerage was doing really well. So again, risky strategy for those, you know, you have to be responsible with some of these. Great power comes great responsibility, type of, you know, that conversation. I took a line of credit against my business. It was about a hundred thousand dollar line of credit from Eastern Bank, and I used that hundred thousand dollars to buy another multifamily. And then one of the things that I encourage people to do, and I that I was doing for years, I would go out to RIAs or real estate investment associations, and I would invite people out to our projects as we were doing these birth strategies and say, hey, this is how you do it, this is how we found the property, this is how we're funding it, this is how the debt structure goes. And typically what's gonna happen through those those uh those meetings is you're gonna have one of two things, or or it's a few different things, but one of the things, two things that we find often is you're gonna say, you're gonna have the person who's brand new and they're gonna say, Hey, I don't have the capital, but what I would love to do is just go find deals for you. And then your deal flow increases. Hey, I love what you're doing here. How can I get involved? I'm gonna go, you know, uh source deals for you. Or you're gonna have the other person who says, Hey, I love what you're doing. This is great. I see an opportunity here, but I'm in tech. I love my job. I'm a pharmacist, I love my job, I work full-time, I work 60 hours a week, but I have 100,000 in my 401k or my you know self-directed IRA or my checking account, and I'd love to invest with you. So it's really about going out there and showing people what you're doing and and building a you know relationship with the public. I find that just educating people is the best way to get your business out there and um and just you know, just exposure. And then we we got a lot of family involved too. My brother-in-law bought, you know, a three, um, saw what we were doing, he got involved. Um, as he gets involved, he starts bringing in more capital from other places. It's just about not being shy about what you're doing and just going out there and really just telling the world.
Mike Swenson: 11:37
It's a lot
Mike Swenson: 11:37
like when people are trying to apply for their first job, right? And they say, sorry, we're not gonna hire hire you. We're looking for somebody with experience. And people are like, well, how do I get experience if I can't get hired for a job, right? And so it's like you've got to scratch and claw and find a way to start your resume. And once you start your resume, now you can point to your resume. And so it's, you know, finding, you know, maybe if you don't have the experience, it's finding ways you can get experience from other people in other deals. Like you said, you know, your relatives, like it's it's a way to build that. But once you start to build that, now you can point back and say, hey, here's what I've done. That trust grows, and then that money continues to come in because people have seen you've done it.
Willie Mandrell: 12:15
Yeah, and I I can tell you, and you you just said it best, and I I I I it's always difficult for me to articulate this to people because you you have to, you have to beg, crawl, scrape, grab, do whatever you get to do to get in and build that resume. I mean, I there's been times where, you know, I was $15,000 short on, you know, a deposit or, you know, a down payment. And I've had to, you know, I was on three different credit cards with cash advances, you know, and I mean it sounds crazy, and I don't, and again, it's not a good, you know, I wouldn't encourage people to do it. If you can avoid it, do it. But there were certain situations where I saw $200,000, $300,000 in equity or, you know, on profit on the back end of this thing. I wasn't going to miss it for $15,000. You know, I just, I just, that just wasn't gonna happen. I was gonna do everything I needed to do. There's been times where, you know, um very early when my wife bought her three, you know, we I think the down payment was $20,000. We had 13 or something like that. You know, we had one of her cousins, you know, um do a family gift, you know, and cousin was like, hey, how am I gonna get this money back? We're like, hey, we're buying a three. There's gonna be a thousand dollars in cash flow coming out of this thing. We're gonna give you, you know, you're you're loaning us 13, we're gonna give you back 17 over the next, you know, uh 17 months. Sounds like a good deal to me. So it's just about being creative, understanding money, really tracking what you're doing, and just kind of like you just mentioned, just kind of scrape, crawl, grab, bag, do whatever you got to do to get yourself in, and then it really starts to take off and snowball.
Mike Swenson: 13:44
Yeah. And I think the key part too is it does involve some risks, right? Like you, you know, for the people that want to plan everything out and have it perfectly laid out, there's probably gonna be some of those moments where you said, Yeah, you're 15K short and you got to figure out a way to get it, or you know, you lose time, you lose momentum, whatever that is. And so you're gonna have to find ways to take those calculated risks and bet on yourself because hey, I know I'm gonna be able to come through, but I'm still short. It doesn't mean that everything's gonna come up where it's like you've got everything lined up and it just works out perfectly. You're still gonna have those shortages, you're still gonna have those risks and those little leaps, like the credit card advances, right? Um, to be able to live another day to see that next step of the plateau through.
Willie Mandrell: 14:29
That's it. You have to have a little bit of crazy in you, just a little bit. I mean, like I said, you want to stay away from anything too extreme, anything where you know, I'm the type of person I always look at deals and I say, is this gonna make me bankrupt? You know, and I'm like, if the if the if there's a chance of bankruptcy on the other end, then I'm I'm probably that's not that's not the deal for me. I like to bite off little aggressive little chunks, but you know, um, but they're but they're but they're little chunks um in build. You know, I grew up in a um a tough situation despite my mother or my grandmother having a you know some funds. You know, that was my father's mother. My mother and father got divorced. They my mother and my grandmother didn't get along. We ended up in the projects and shelters in multiple situations. So me, you know, coming from where I'm coming from, I I never want to go back. So the idea of just kind of starting all over again is unacceptable to me. So I'm the type of person that likes to take, I stay aggressive, but they're more calculated risks. If I'm worth a million dollars, I'm probably not gonna take a risk that's gonna knock me back any more than $200,000, right? Or something along those lines. I never want to take a risk or a multi-million dollar risk that's gonna put me into um, or you know, my me and my family into a situation we don't want to be in. But that's that's part of the game, is you have to take, you have to figure out where what you're comfortable with. But at the end of the day, that's why it's called an investment because there's an inherent uh you know piece of it that is risky, you know, at the end of the day.
Mike Swenson: 15:48
So
Mike Swenson: 15:48
so here we are today, we're we're talking on a podcast. You're not swinging a hammer, you're not, you know, putting in the plumbing into a property right now because you're here. So obviously you found ways to build relationships with other people that are doing work on those properties. So talk a little bit about finding good vendors, maybe lessons that you've learned or tips for people to find those people that are really gonna help you. Because short of you doing the doing all the work yourself, you have to have other people to be able to build that dream for what you're doing.
Willie Mandrell: 16:18
Yeah, I think it it's difficult. I'm not I'm I there's no quick, you know, method that says, hey, you know, we're I think one of the the methods that we're looking for, always looking for good people. We're always looking for new people, always, even if you're happy and you're good where you are right now, someone is going to, you know, leave. Someone's going to get sick. We have a great, you know, our electrician has been with us for 10 years. Um, unfortunately, he's in hospice right now. You know, I mean, he's he's had some some some issues and he may no longer be with us. So we're always looking for, you know, new people. We're celebrating him as, you know, in his final days. But um, and then, you know, we had a guy that was with us for, you know, also like 10 years. He did all of our trash runs, all of our, you know, kind of our nasty work. And, you know, he's um uh was self-deportated, you know, not too long ago. He was a little afraid about, you know, uh immigration and everything that was going on in the country, so he decided to leave. Was a guy that was with us that did a lot of that created a lot of value. So I guess the idea is that we're always looking for new people. And then when you find people, you really have to, um, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as an investor, as a boss, you you have to have a multitude of skills. And one of the best skills that you can have is you have to be a great communicator. You have to be a psychologist, you have to be a parent almost. Every person on your team is gonna have a different personality. We have some people that are super talkative, some people that don't talk enough, that have great ideas, but we have to pull them, pull those ideas out of them. We have people who are have terrible ideas who but or are great workers, but sometimes we have to shut them up. And it it that's what it's like. It's it's being um a psychologist almost. You have to understand the personalities. It's you have to get away from who you are so much and understand who your team is and and and cater to them and their their needs at the end of the day. We try as much as we can to get people involved in our deals. We give out equity, we give you know um opportunities to invest in the properties that we own. It's not just our our management team, go handle this this leak or go do this. No, there's an opportunity to come in and have some ownership in these things as well. Um, so just different strategies like that have done really well for us. But I think the main thing is um, I think the main thing that I've done over the years is even if we don't have a position open, we find a place for good people. If I bump into somebody at a real estate investment association and they're just hungry and they're just ready to get after it, blah, blah, I'm not gonna push them away for 90 days and wait for somebody to quit. I'm gonna find, I'm gonna create a position. I'm gonna create in a new acquisitions position. I'm gonna create some type of marketing um position. I I give you a perfect example. The reason I'm on this podcast with you right now is one of the girls that came to these um, you know, marketing events that we do was like, I got I I really want to be part of your team. I really, hey, here's what you can do. I really want to get myself out there, I really want to, you know, speak more, get on more stages. Open here's my calendar, get me, get you know, set me up and and make sure that I'm taking. We just find a place for good people at the end of the day.
Mike Swenson: 19:13
So now,
Mike Swenson: 19:13
obviously, a big big piece of the deals that you do is finding those deals. So talk a little bit about your acquisition strategy kind of over the years, some tips of what you guys have done and how you've been able to continue to find good deals over 20 years' time.
Willie Mandrell: 19:27
Yeah, so there is a point in your career where you're gonna have more time than money. And then some at some point that transitions into more time, you know, more money than time. And I, you know, I'm obviously at the ladder now. In the beginning, you just get after it. We did driving for dollars. Um, for those of you not familiar, it's just basically going around and saying, This house is nice, this house is nice, this house is nice. That house looks like shit. Let's let's try to, you know, let's try to grab. There's obviously some some opportunity there. We'd send out thousands. I've I've put thousands of stamps on mailers, thousand hundreds of thousands, probably. Some crazy number, um, bandit signs. Uh, you know, probably not. If you're in if you're in a big city right now, you probably don't want to do those anymore. But back in the day, we used to put these we buy houses signs up on the polls. Um, we've done cold calling, we've done a little bit of everything. I think it's just a grind to find opportunities, you know, in the beginning. And that's what you're gonna have to do. You're gonna find opportunities and you're going to, you know, either get with another developer or investor and learn um or you know, take it yourself. The one thing that I, the advice that I would give to your listeners is that marketing in lead generation should never stop. It should never stop, no matter where you are. And by that I mean a lot of investors will hunt, hunt, hunt for a deal, find one, and then turn into a real estate developer, take a dip because they're no longer looking for deals anymore while they're rehabbing this house, they're finding financing, they're putting the house black on the market, they flip the house, and then it's 90 days later, 120 days later, yes, you've made a nice profit, but that whole time that you were flipping the house, you stopped marketing for deals. That creates the ebbs and flows in your businesses, the lows, the highs, the springs, the uh whatever. You want to create a system. And nowadays with AI and everything and automation and everything else, you should be able to create some system where you can you know continue to steady and be marketing out there um constantly, and that'll create you know more of a flat level income in your business.
Willie Mandrell: 21:24
Today, um, I do a lot of education. We have a real estate investment group here in Boston. It's called Boston Wealth Builders, roughly 3,000 members in the group uh today. Um, I've been doing that for about 12 years. I bring people out to our job sites, we do webinars, we do Zoom, we just educate people on money, credit, finding finding opportunities, um, everything under the sun in terms of real estate, and that grows our platform. The larger you get, um driving for dollars no longer becomes an opportunity for you. There's no time for me to sit in a car today. So I try to do one to many of Um, is the strategy, podcasts, interviews, webinars, Zoom, um, and get the voice out there um to the masses a little bit easier. So more, more money than time now. So you have to switch your strategy.
Mike Swenson: 22:13
Yeah, and I'd imagine, you know, the the Boston Wealth Builders, like you've created now an ecosystem of people that, you know, you're teaching them, but they also want to be a part of what you're doing. And and so naturally, like you said, finding good people and being able to plug them in, those people you've created a a little ecosphere where those people can come and kind of raise their hand or you know, show their how hungry they are for the stuff that you're working on.
Willie Mandrell: 22:34
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's been it's been a it's probably been the biggest success that we've had. We've had, you know, when I was uh when I went to real estate brokers or recruited a lot of agents out there, our real estate brokers focused on the multifamily space and working with investors and developers. So there was a lot of recruitments out there. Most of our team comes from wealth builders. Uh, if you and again, I wouldn't say if each one of your listeners has some type of specialized knowledge in their head, right? I mean, I I was under the impression for the longest time that if I knew it, then everyone knew it. I didn't think I was special in any way. Um, I'm over that now. I realize that there are some certain certain things, specialized knowledge that I have in my head that I can share with other people. And you as an individual can figure if you can figure out what that is, put it in some type of format. You know, get on Canva and just kind of create a 15-point slideshow of whatever it may be. Um, you can get out there. You don't even have to start your own Boston wealth builders. There are real estate investment associations in every single community, in every single city, in every single town, get with the local um uh association, you know, head of the that association to say, hey, look, this is what I have to offer. You're your your group. And most of the time, they're not even gonna charge you or anything for the exposure because it helps them out to be offering new information, a new face, a new voice, and a new personality to their to their exposure. I tell people all the time, if you want to speak in front of Boston wealth builders, I have no no qualms with that. It actually helps me. It gives them one more meeting on the website, it gives me one more opportunity to put my name out there as well. So um I would encourage people, like I said, if they if they, hey, if you've done a property, if you're in the middle of your first flip um or your first deal, tell a real real estate associate come out. These are all the things that I've done wrong. You know, people always want to be the expert. Sometimes you just invite people out and say, look, you know, I messed this up, I overspent on this. Here's here are the things that here are the ten things that I did wrong on this first flip that you don't have to do or you shouldn't do on your first flip, you know, and you'll get a lot of exposure just like that.
Mike Swenson: 24:32
And I think people really appreciate the relatability for those types of stories too. I I remember when I was first starting my podcast, this is five years ago, and somebody that I knew that was a really, really big name and really well known was um kind of in a similar world, was starting a podcast talking about wealth building in real estate. And I was kind of like, oh shoot, they're gonna steal my thunder. Like, what do I have to offer? And I remember a friend told me, they said, Mike, you know, a lot of people hear that story and they can't relate because it's you know, a billion of this and a thousand of that and all this, and it's like you're just a guy who's pretty normal starting out, and people appreciate that relatability. And so, yeah, that's why I love, you know, when I have people on my podcast sometimes and they're like, hey, you know, after we get done recording, and I can kind of tell they're nervous or they're figuring out the words, and they're like, Yeah, this is my first podcast or this is my third podcast. And I was like, Great, I absolutely love having you because I love those people sharing their stories as they're just getting started because people need to hear that. Are you
Mike Swenson: 25:30
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Willie Mandrell: 26:28
Yep, yep, yep, yep. No, I mean, like I said, we're all individuals. I mean, there there might be, and the thing about it is is everyone has their own objective, right? Somebody might say, hey, well, well, Will's a black guy in Boston, right? I mean, Boston's big money, and blah, I'm I'm here in Minnesota or wherever I am, and you know, I it's a different market. That's not well, you know, like I said, there's a there's a voice in Minnesota. You know, someone may say, well, it's a it's real estate's a male-dominated industry, which it is, you know. I mean, you know, so there might be, you know, a female saying the same exact thing that Mike and I are saying might be more relatable to women trying to get into the business, you know. I mean, it's geographic, it's niche, it's, you know, everything else. I listen to some podcasts, you know, out of New York. New York's right next door to us, and I still feel intimidated by the $26 million, you know, buyout sometimes. I'm like, that's not that's not Boston, right? I mean, it's the same thing for LA and and San Francisco and some of these other big high-price markets, right? So I think that if you go out and share your story, there's there's always an audience for you. And I mean, here's the other thing is I think people also often forget that this isn't the 80s or the 90s. We live in an international world at this point. There's people from other countries listening, going to be listening to this podcast that are saying, hey, I, you know, I live in India right now, but I plan on, I, you know, plan on going to the United States and investing there. Or a friend of mine lives in the United States. I I I went to Northeastern. 60% of my classes were international students. You know, there's so much international money coming into the states that you put yourself out there and there's going to be a crowd. There's eight billion people on the planet. There's going to be your own, your own crowd. You can you can carve them out for sure.
Mike Swenson: 28:03
Awesome.
Mike Swenson: 28:03
Well, well, Willie, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story um and giving us a little bit of insight of who you are and what you're doing. Uh, for people that do want to reach out to you, um, hear this episode and learn more, uh, how can they do so?
Willie Mandrell: 28:16
Yeah, sure. I mean, if you're if you if you're local to Boston, great. And even if you're not local to Boston, BostonWealthbuilders.com. Um, again, we do Zooms, we do webinars. You can certainly join and listen in from whatever wherever you are. And then willymandrell uh.com is my personal website. Cash flow secrets is available for download on that website, the digital version. You can get that for free. Shares my story, a little bit about investing, and kind of tips as you uh as you move along. And that's that's willymandrell.com.
Mike Swenson: 28:45
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Excited to see what you've been able to build and excited to see where you continue to go.
Willie Mandrell: 28:52
I appreciate you having me.
Mike Swenson: 28:54
Thank you.
