Meet Brayand Ponciano! He just closed a good-sized apartment complex deal. He’s excited about it and I just really want to share the message because this is a guy who really started from the bottom. He had a huge drive and a huge why. He had some self-doubts in the beginning. We all do. It takes a little time, a little courage, and a whole lot of I-want to-get-there attitude. How did he get manage to make it successfully? How was he able to grasp the cash-flow life and the multi-family experience?
He was born in a small town in Lafayette, Louisiana. His parents were immigrants from Guatemala. They moved to Los Angeles when he was about a year old because his parents had family out there. Brayand grew up in the south side of LA, in a town called South Gate. A lot of people are familiar with a town called Compton because of how bad it is. South Gate is a Mexican version of Compton. They lived literally right across the train tracks.
He started working at Ross when he was 19 years old. He was making $7.50 an hour and his parents, and uncles, praise him for getting such a job but in the back of his mind, he was never really satisfied with what he was earning.
His mom had less than $1000.00 in her bank account. When they were little, his mom used to make them take a shower with a bucket and a bowl even though they had running water, and a shower. She wanted them to know how it was to be poor. In her mind, she thought she was doing something good. Now, as he looks back at the experience, it helped him to embrace the simple way of living, that really programmed him to be a poor person, and reflect on poverty. “The craziest thing about it is that once you grow up poor, it really programs you to stay poor and in a way, the mental poorness kind of drills into you.”
Pursuing the Dream
As he grew and progressed, he thought to himself, “This blows. There’s gotta be a lot more to it.” Brayand grew up poor. None of his family and friends had money. Nobody that they knew in church had money. There was absolutely nobody. He started working with bandit signs during the years of 2006 to 2007. Right towards the end of 2007 things started losing its way because they were doing a lot of pre-foreclosure stuff and were starting to see the market slow. In 2008, he went back to corporate America. Fast forward to 2009 he realized corporate was never really his niche and promised himself never to go back that track again.
Eventually, he started watching the infomercials and saw all the Carleton Sheets, The No Money Down, and decided to take his track in the field of real estate. During that time, he was doing sales and ended up at the small little lots that sold mobile homes for Bisbee Homes.
He sat there and waited for people to show up. He tediously walked them through these crappy little mobile home models during the summer with no air conditioning, trying to convince them to buy. He started going on Craigslist when after, he found this ad where this guy said, “Hey, I’m a real estate investor. I’m looking into training.” It was Derek Jarr of the Green Street Communities.
They taught him to door knocking. Door-knocking means what exactly it sounds. You have a list of people that were going to go through foreclosures. “It made your skin thicker.” as what Brayand recalls.
At this point he he finally decided to go back into real estate. But the problem was, he didn’t know how to start in the real estate business. His mother knew a real estate broker whose house she used to clean. She had told him about Brayand and they had a meeting with him at his office.
There was no way to go back. He also started doing business with others who were doing loan mods, but it turned out to be just a big, complete waste of time, and fraud. The loan processing companies were just not doing it. He needed to make money to feed himself.
With things starting to get rough, he wrote a list, everything that he could think of making money, split it into two, legally and illegally.
“How do I get back into the game?” He thought to himself. He had an idea that he just need to start being around more investors. That’s how he ended up creating a bandit sign company with the specific intention to make me money and put him in front of more real estate investors and it started taking off. Eventually, I met other investors and other people.
He ended up giving the bandit signs business to his brother who has been running it for the last few years.
Transitioning to Fix and Flip
Before fixing and flipping, Brayand got into wholesale. He was wholesaling for many years. One advantage in wholesaling is that you can learn from other investors. With wholesaling, you’re working for free until you’re able to add value to somebody else. You can do all the marketing you want. You can lock up all the deals you want but they’re not good deals if you’re not bringing value to somebody else, you’re going to be working for free. More importantly, it also teaches you how to find a good deal.
Soon after, he went to a seminar and met Kris Ontiveros of the AZ Flip Guys. This completely changed his life and he geared himself to find properties and find somebody with money. Finally, one of his investors, somebody who has been wholesaling to him for a while told him, “Hey, B.P. I’m just pregnant. I’m 30 something. I’ve never had a kid. This is gonna be my first one. I don’t feel like working for a while. My parents have a lot of money sitting in some account that they normally lend me to flip, would you like to borrow it?” He happily took the investment and never thought that that kind of opportunity was even possible.
Because of this, his confidence level boosted up. A lot of times, we are our own worst critic. We may be doing a lot of good things but in our eyes, we’re like, “Well, that’s not good enough.” He started small, and made sure that because of OPM, his investor was taken care of. He made sure that the investor got a return even though he was going to get a very minimal return.
From then on, he wanted to target several flips and that meant he had to find OPM. This led him into the multi-family track, and learned that he then can create this kind of traction. He went into another seminar that talked about raising private money within 2 weeks which really helped him a lot.
Then he was able to seal an apartment complex investment and settled with a 50-50 deal, right down in the middle. He was never reluctant in giving a 50-50 share, and is even willing to get it down up to 75% because when you’re dealing with other people’s money, goal number one is to make sure that they don’t lose money. Goal number two is you make sure that they make a money. He was able to make $30,000 a year from day one. Most people are not willing to give up half. According to Brayand, sometimes that’s what it takes. When you have no track record and you’re trying something new, just get in the game. If you had to give up 75%, you must do it. It’s as if we’re playing chess. We’re sacrificing a pawn, so we can go get that knight. We can get their bishop, kill their queen and then checkmate.
Remember when we’re dealing with investors, make sure that they feel comfortable. It’s about making sure that they understand what’s going on and assuring them that they get a return. It’s about making sure that when you give them their money back, they can’t wait to give it back to you. It’s not about you anymore.
Like Brayand, most of us will come from small beginnings. This may be way over your head right now, you may not even be at the point where you’re even wholesaling but stick with it. Embrace it because it will come if you are true to your journey, and if you’re true to what you know that you want to do.
His advice to those who are starting out in OPM? Think WIIFM, what’s in it for me. “People don’t give a crap about you. They care about what you can do for them. How people are ever gonna let me lend money? They don’t care what you have. It’s what can you make me? What can you do for me?”
Think of it like playing chess. Everybody else plays checkers which means your move goes to here and there. Sometimes in playing chess, you must sacrifice a piece to take on another piece. You must sacrifice a section of your board to further on the other section of the board because it’s going get you further to their end piece. You’re teaching yourself to think three or four moves ahead. Most of all, find out who you are. That’s a big, big part of success.
