- 04:01- Calvin Cannon Jr. introduces himself and shares his background in real estate.
- 06:13- Calvin’s first real estate deal and the lessons he learned from it.
- 09:18- Overview of the Cashflow Roadmap Academy and its unique hands-on approach.
- 14:22 – The importance of having boots on the ground and localized investment strategies.
- 17:54 – Customizing mentorship based on individual needs and experience levels.
- 19:00 – Calvin’s diverse real estate portfolio and his strategy of balancing flips and holds.
- 22:29 – Market insights and the benefits of investing in single-family homes during low-interest periods.
- Contact: https://www.cashflowcannon.com/2-day-intensive-accelerator
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calvincannonjr/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CalvinTheExecutiveCannon
- Website: Cannon Consulting LLC
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Email: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
- FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitstrategiessc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
ROBYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today, Robyn Collins, R – O – B – Y – N Collins with Red Robin Homes at 843-557-5003. Again, that’s 843-557-5003 or visit us at redrobinhomes.com/joinexit and make your exit today
CORWYN:
So good morning and great morning to you guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host. yes, Corwyn J Melette. Broker and owner of Exit Realty Lowcountry group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Guys. Oh, my mind is blown. Okay. So I want to first give a shout out to our loyal listeners that listen to us guys from the coast all the way into monkey’s corner. That listen local on a radio station on WJNI on 6.3 FM Y’all know what that WJNI stands for: With Jesus Nothing is Impossible. Guys, thank y’all so much, who listened to us faithfully. Pastor Elder Evans always got to give a shout out to them. We’d go way back before today was full flats, because we always been down like that. I love him. So guys looking at Thank y’all so much for tuning in. Y’all know, our mission here at this show. It is very simple. But it requires a lot of work. That is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education, guys, that’s what we do. That is what we do. We work day and night to help people to realize their dreams. And we use real estate as a vessel, as a vehicle to get people there. We’re taking people somewhere. But those who followed us from the very beginning exit strategies, taken from the book of Exodus, where people left, where people moved, where people went to, the promised land. They went to what was given to them. So guys, our show our entire premise, our entire platform here guys, is to help people to facilitate that move to get people from where they are, but to where they are supposed to be. And guys today. Oh, we got an amazing show ahead. We have an awesome guest we’ve been bringing in the very best from around the globe. And today we’re very fortunate to have with us none other than Calvin Cannon Jr. Look here. That last name right there will tell you that we’re gonna be making some explosive moves today. Calvin Cannon Jr.. Calvin is an educator. He’s an educator in the real estate space guys real estate investor been doing this for a very long time. He teaches people on the platform of the Cashflow Roadmap. Calvin, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. How you doing my brother?
CALVIN:
Thank you, man. I’m doing great man. Thanks for having me, man. I’m allowing me to come on your platform and bless your audience and your people with some great information is an honor and a pleasure. Thank you.
CORWYN:
I’m super excited because you taught my language brother, speak my language, money, and how are we going to help people get more of it and how are we going to be able to create wealth and legacy within our communities? So I’m super excited for this conversation today. So let’s get started with Calvin tellour listeners high level overview who you are what you have to enlist them from there.
CALVIN:
Absolutely. So my name is Calvin Cannon Jr. I am the entrepreneur slash also investor. I’ve been doing real estate for 33 plus years. I know it might not seem like a black don’t crack. So I’ve been in this game for 33 years. I bought my first property in 1991. Then through real estate from new construction flips the BRRR method of rental properties, buy and holds, rehab properties and doing some wholesale deals. When I started off in real estate guys, I started off at a very young age and not because real estate was calling my name is because just like any other child, young adolescent 17 years old, I wanted to get out of my parents house. So one of the things that I did was I was going to college, I was going to Temple University here at Philadelphia, PA. And I wasn’t too fast with doing grants and putting in my applications to get money for college. So I put my applications in late when I wound up getting a $5,000 stipend check for books, room and board and food, but I got it at the end of the semester. So I took that $5,000, I bought my first piece of property, a 32nd piece would be more here in Philadelphia, kept it for about a year and a half sold the property for 60,000. And I never turned back, one of the things that I did learn how to do is do real estate, be in real estate, and learn how to help people get to the next level of real estate, with the cash flow roadmap Academy.
CORWYN:
He got that money at the end of the semester. So he got out, but he had done everything in the semester. So wait, man, what are we gonna do with it now? That’s awesome, man. So we talked about your very first property. If you don’t mind, let’s talk about that briefly. But what was that that was just a buy hold and then you resold it? But do you make improvements to a wonder I look like?
CALVIN:
Yeah, so my very first property was a multifamily, which was a duplex, and it was a hole in the wall. And my second level, I didn’t have any windows up there. I was living on the first level. Didn’t really have locks. I probably had every room that was crossing the street in the side of my apartment. But I didn’t care. I was 17 years old. I just needed to get out of my parents house. I stayed in that property for about six to seven months, didn’t fix it up because I didn’t know how and all I knew was that I needed my own independency I was tied to my parents rules, regulations. So I was there. I was living here and I was still going to college. This gentleman came by one day, he saw me coming in and out with my bookbag. And he said, Hey, you know, Do you own this property yesterday? Yes. He said, hey, I want to buy this property from you. And we will just say that this gentleman had his own pharmaceutical business, that he was an entrepreneur as well. And he came to me, he said, Hey, I want to buy this property for $60,000. Now we talk in 1991. And I’m like, 60,000, I’m like, Nah, you can’t be serious about what I have. So I went on to college. So I went to school that day, didn’t hear from this guy for about two to three days. The fourth day, he came back with a bag full of money and paperwork. And I’m just like, What is this and he’s like, I want to buy your property. And I’m like, open up the bag. I’m looking at the money. I’m like, okay, so I signed the papers. I took my school bag, a duffel bag, filled up as many clothes as I could, and I left and went back to my parents house. So got to my parents house. I came in I told my mom, we made it, we rent you have to work no more. I got everything from here. She said, What are you talking about? And I gave her the bag of money. She grabbed me she took me right to the police station to abroad and champ laws, where’s the 34 police district, and she took me in the back and said I’m gonna when my son got this money from however, I want you to investigate this. I’m scared. I’m like, oh my god, I’m gonna go to jail. Police came they took me back to the property where the gentleman was that he showed the police that documentations. At that time, I didn’t know what it was. It was actually a real estate agreement of sale. But I didn’t know that my signature was on it. His signature was on it. The police officers told him to pull up the recorded D they pulled it up. He said Ma’am, your son did a real estate transaction. Money. I was happy then. So I was back in my parents house. But my first property was my first lesson in real estate, not because I sold because remember, I bought it for 5000. I sold it for 60,000. So I made a $55,000 profit. However, this was back in 1991. Today, that same property is worth over $550,000 but I didn’t have anybody to talk to I didn’t have a coach, a leader, a mentor to tell me young man, hold on to this property. Hold on. So that was my first property. First lesson I ever learned in real estate. You can’t sell everything, you got to have a plan. And you need somebody to talk to you just don’t jump because the numbers sound good. Numbers. Sound good. But I learned my first lesson from that. And at that point, I took off from real estate and never looked back.
CORWYN:
So you was hooked. So that’s what I just heard you would look here. Wait a minute, well, I can do what and this Oh, wow. Oh, let’s go. So Calvin explained to me or give us an introduction into the cash flow roadmap, the academy, let’s talk about the concept. Where did it come from? What spurred you to say, Okay, this is how we can educate and teach people how to do this.
CALVIN:
Absolutely. So the cash flow roadmap is a mentorship and academy that I created. I’ve been teaching for the last 15 years. And the reason why I started teaching is because I realized and understood that a lot of people want real estate, they hear about real estate, but nobody really takes the time to educate them about real estate. And you know, back then it was very hard for us to try to get some type of loan and funding to do real estate. A lot of times real estate came from our parents or aunts or uncles or somebody giving us a piece of real estate or passing it down or somebody passed away. So I wanted to make sure that I was able to empower people by giving them the concept that they need to survive in real estate. One of the things that I needed in the cash flow roadmap is something called Buy Flip Hold into your home’s cashflow, supersede your flips. Now, when people hear that they’re like, What, but it sounds like a lot right now. But what it is, is I created a system where you can start off in real estate at any level. And you can take the level that you’re at, and you can scale up to the next level, if you have the right components. See, a lot of people think that they have to have all this money to get into real estate. But it’s not about the money getting into real estate. It’s the strategy, the skill sets and the determination. I say that it’s three things that stop people from winning in real estate, money, time, and fear. Money is there. If you look at what you spend every day, Starbucks coffee, and all these different companies that you go to spinning, eating out every day, you got the money, the money is there. The second thing is the time, a lot of us work nine to five. So we felt like Hey, I can’t get into real estate because my job is sucking up all of my time. But if you gave the real estate, half of the time that you’re giving your employer, you can get the things done. The biggest thing that stopped you from selling in real estate is the fear, the unknown, not knowing if I buy this property isn’t going to work. So that’s what we pass low roadmap is a community of investors from all different types of levels from brand new investors, to seasoned investors. And we help each other get to the next level by sharing resources, strategies and skill sets to help everybody grow and win. So that’s why we created the cashflow roadmap.
CORWYN:
So one thing that I’ve found Calvin over the years is that people that do this, and are successful in doing it, they pay it forward, and then somebody did it for them. So they pay it forward by doing it for others. So I can just imagine the brain trust that you have in this group, because again, they give back because somebody gave them a shot, somebody turned them on to something, somebody gave them a resource or tool, gave them leverage, whatever it is for them to become successful. And then in turn, they turn around and give back to other people in the same fashion with the same level of commitment. So that’s awesome. So this group, this brain trust that you guys run, what does it look like? Is it all online? Are you guys doing classes, workshops? What does it look like?
CALVIN:
Corwyn, that’s a great question, right? Because within the last two to three years, it’s a lot of people that’s online teaching and talking about real estate, and I call these guys the real estate gurus when we was going through the pandemic, everybody was online, because we were stuck inside of the house. So always tell people, yes, it’s good to get information online. from real estate, you can do YouTube university, you can do courses, you can do classes, but we teach you something a little bit different, especially. So we have three different types of categories. One, you can always book a consultation call to talk to me one on one, you don’t talk to the Secretary, you don’t talk to any assistant, you would talk to me one on one. The second things in my program is we have something called our monthly community where we will join a call something like this, all the community members will be there is once a month we talk about real estate, we talked about different strategies and different things that’s happening into the market. And then my biggest program is something called hands on real estate mentorship, you are literally going through the exact process that I do when I’m going from buying a property when I’m going to fix it up and flip it, fix it up and rent it out, do a wholesale deal. You walk through that entire process. So that’s why it’s called hands on. Now some people might think well, from the beginning, you said you from Philadelphia, I live over here in Chicago, how can I get that experience. So I tell people, if you can come at least once or twice a month, you’ll be able to walk through the property that I’m in and or we do a one on one zoom calls. We do FaceTime calls, but we do them inside the property. So each phase that I go through the property, you’re there, right there watching the phase, you’ll get a chance to ask your questions, you’re seeing me dealing with contracts, you’ll see me dealing with vendors, you’ll see me my whole layout and my whole plan of what I walk through is what we get back into cash flow roadmap community. So that’s our three channels that we do for that. And people love it. They love it. Because one, they get an opportunity to say, hey, I have a real estate mentor or coach or leader, but I’ll never see him in properties. The whole us just behind the keyboards talking about the property, which is great. A lot of people can do that. But for us, I’m prominent about being inside the property. I feel like the best teacher is being assigned to property, having your hands on, seeing the construction, seeing what’s going on to ask the right and appropriate questions. So that’s the way that we formulated the cash flow roadmap.
CORWYN:
So you guys are is this community nationwide? Are you more regional, more local? What does that look like?
CALVIN:
Well as nationwide, I have leaders so I don’t call people inside of my mentorship mentees, I call them leaders because one leader grooms another leader. So we’re all going to become leaders. And it’s all over. I got people in California, Chicago, the UK, Philly, Delaware Jersey, New York. I have people all over a lot of people who can’t make it to Philadelphia. They will join our monthly community where they can still come on each month. They bring in questions this month, they are able to see the different things that are going on and ask their questions.
CORWYN:
That is awesome, man. That’s awesome. So this is a brain trust. So as you guys, you say you discuss various strategies. So you mentioned obviously bird you fix and flips and all that stuff. Do you guys touch on commercial, you limited residential? Commercial, too. So you guys touch on all those strategies. So you guys discuss like deals and all those things as well like how people are structuring things, and give insight into that as well and how people can replicate it.
CALVIN:
Yeah, absolutely. So what we do is, so once you join any of my programs, you automatically go to our private Facebook group, where we drop properties inside of this group every day. Now, most of the properties probably in my region in my local area, because that’s where the wholesalers are sending them to me. But I’m also a licensed Realtor. So I’ll also put my clients on something called a drip campaign, where if you give me the zip code that you want, I’ll put it inside the MLS, and that drip campaign will send you deals as well. But I do tell my clients, hey, if you’re going to do real estate. One, if you can, in your backyard, I teach you how to create that bank, in your backyard, because you need to have boots on the ground. A lot of times people say, Well, I want to invest over here, but I’m not there yet. But if you have boots on the ground, somebody you can rely on, you can pull up to the property, you’ll be more successful as a real estate investor, especially, you’re a new real estate investor, I show people two groups of the properties, I’m showing you, my lenders, I give you access to my lenders, I give you access to my contractors, I give you access to any discount that I’m getting for in house materials, everything that I do every day, you get access to all of that, we have about 150 real estate documents from finding your deal, closing your deal, settlements, if you have a tenant. So if you need a copy of a bulletproof lease is what we call it, I give you all the documents that you need to be successful in real estate.
CORWYN:
So you guys are just like the entire gamut, man, I’m loving it. I’m loving it, because it literally is like the full picture. And people here’s my vision for him. And Calvin, please tell me if I’m wrong on this. But you guys just built the grocery store. And we got some people that when they come in, they go straight to the meat department. We got some people that’s over here and produce. And we got some people that might be over there onfrozen food. But regardless people able to shop it go with a need to get what they’re looking for is that kind of what we’re talking about.
CALVIN:
You’re right on target with with the colon because see, everybody comes into real estate on different levels. I’ve been in real estate for 33 years, somebody might come in real estate and been in for 33 days. So we can’t take that 33 day person and say, hey, you know what? Just go call the lender get some funding, and you’re gonna be okay. No, we don’t do that. When you come in, we jump on a call a one on one call, I figure out what is it that you need from me, and what I can do to help you get to the next level. Some people say, hey, I want to do this. But my credits not right. My fund is not right. I’m not sure what they’re looking at. So I don’t put that person in the pool of somebody who’s been doing four or five, six deals a month, because then it is clear because the education will be off a little bit. So we try to figure out where you are. And we take you from where you are to the next point that you need to be.
CORWYN:
That’s awesome, man. So Calvin, look, before we get too far as I got a couple more questions for you. But where can people reach you? Like where can people get in contact with you?
CALVIN:
Absolutely. So you can find me on every social media platform at Calvin Cannon Jr. There’s no gimmicks. No nothing. It’s my name. Everywhere. You can Google me. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Calvin Cannon Jr. Well, you can find me right there. You can send me a DM you can send me a message. And I reach back out to you, my team. We don’t ignore DMs,. we don’t ignore messages. If you reach out to us, give us at least about 12 hours on somebody to get on.
CORWYN:
to For our listeners, guys, he is easy to find. All right. We gotta turn on Nana’s off. He literally is right there, guys. So look, by all means, please make sure to just reach out and get connected. So Calvin, you’ve acquired a portfolio now worth several million dollars. Am I right? Majority of your portfolio is what rentals? And is it commercial, residential, or is it a full gambit of every strategy that we talked about.
CALVIN:
So my portfolio is a mixed bag. And that’s where we got the buy flip hold until your whole cashflow supersedes your flips. I teach people how a lot of people come into real estate they do to BRRR method right? Buy, rehab, rent out, refinance, repeat, a lot of people know the strategy and that’s what they do. But they forgot the last R and that last R is relocate. You can’t stay in the same area all the time. And you can’t always pull out all the equity out of your properties. So one of the things that I teach people is instead of you going right and and do the BRRRR method, go right in and do a flip. That’s why it’s buy, flip first. So if I buy a property and then you flip it, let’s say out of that flip, you make a profit of 60 – $70,000. You can 1031 exchange that you take that 260 $7,000 split it in half, take half of that and now by your birth, but you also take the other half and buy you another flip. So you only got to go to the bank wants for your downpayment. I still use banks for my mortgages, but I don’t use banks anymore for my down payments because of the system that I have created. So now when you have this system, Let’s hypothetically say you need $30,000. to get started, you only need it one time. Most people teach you all you got to do this and go back to the bank and get more money, then go get more money did go get more money, you’re building up debt on this side, which is good because it’s positive debt. But over here, your cash flow is not going to equivalent your debt to start knocking this debt down. If you take a lesson or loss in real estate, so what I teach you is to get the 30,000, buy your first flip, flip it, take that money, then buy your flip your hold or your rental. So my portfolio, I have everything in it. I have single family homes, I got multifamily homes, I got laundry mats inside of here, I had restaurants and outside of that have commercial properties, because I understand that you can never lose in real estate until you quit. You never lose. Real estate is a pivot strategy. So every time something happens, like a prime example, in 2008, everybody was losing their shirt in real estate. And the reason why because they over leveraged, we came out of that, because when we seen that the market was starting to do a teeter totter, we scaled back. And we just watched the market. After 2009 – 2010 People started losing their properties, we came right on in and we started grabbing those properties. So now two years ago, when COVID hit, the interest rates dropped down to 4%. 4% for DSCR. Lenders and for investors, that was unheard of. So when you have the new investors that came in two, two and a half to three years ago, they thought 4% was the norm. But in fact, 4% was the abnormal, it was abnormal, we’d never had 4% interest rates for investors. So when that happened, the market had to do a correction. But at that time, some of the strategies that we taught, people didn’t understand I would tell people at 4% buy single family homes, no, oh, no, coach, you’re totally wrong. You don’t make money off a single family home when you’re renting it out. But in fact, if you would have bought single family homes back in two to three years ago, that single family home is now the hot commodity on the market. Because a retail single family home is the number one buyer in consumer and real estate.
So we picked up 30 single family homes two, three years ago, and what are we doing today, we place them on the market. So now we get to your money and use that money to retain our rental properties.
CORWYN:
And that’s how we do it. Man. I love it, man. I love it. So Calvin, I had a client a number of years ago, it was in the business was an agent. But he got into the business because he was an investor. So he finally one day this guy calls me out the blue man. He says to me, can you still doing real estate? I said, Yeah, because I sold a property of he is. And so he was like, hey, I want some help with business or whatever. Do you have a license here, man, I let that thing go. Because he didn’t want to deal with the paperwork and all the requirements and all that stuff. So I became his agent. And I learned from him what you’re talking about. He had did that prior. So by the time I met him, he was on the tail end. He started maybe in his 20s went down borrowed money from the bank, he’s a good old country boy, good guy, great guy, and went down to the bank and borrowed money, bought a house, move into it, resold it, went back to the bank got more money. And the next time he came in, bought two houses. And he moved in one flip fixed it flipped it moved into the other one started working on it, bought another one. And he just kept me and he started accumulating. So by the time I met him, he had, probably, a good I think when I met him, he still had a good 40 some odd properties scattered from basically one end of our area to the other. And at one point in time, he said he had 100 and some odd properties, because he just accumulated over the years. And when I met him he was on his gradual sell off. But on occasion he will buy another one and flip it by by then he was playing with house money. He is playing with his own money by then. So the strategy man, I follow you, man it is it works. It works. So Calvin, I’m gonna ask you what I refer to sometimes as our mic drop question, but it’s 20/20 I don’t even know if you could do any better if you did have one. Because look, can you figure out how to make this how to do this thing before you even turn 20 But I’m gonna ask me anyhow, if you knew back yonder when what you know now, what would you have done differently that would have catapulted you to a level far beyond where you currently are?
CALVIN:
That’s a great, amazing question. I will say that if I had to talk to younger me would said, believe more in me. I have my faith in God. But do you believe in you? And a lot of times we get on this hamster wheel where we have our nine to five job and that becomes what we chase because as a congressman, so if I had to say to me, young Calvin, listen, work your nine to five But I need you to take that paycheck and take them days off and get into real estate, find what you love, find what you love to do, and put the time and energy into that. And don’t wait, get started now. I started at 17. If I could have started the 15, I would love to do so because even though I got my first property at 17, I was still in college, I was still working a nine to five, I gave corporate America 20 plus years of my life. While I’m still chasing real estate, not believing that real estate is my ultimate goal and dream. I didn’t have enough confidence in myself that hey, it wasn’t a guaranteed paycheck every week, like my nine to five game. It wasn’t a guaranteed medical coverage that my nine to five gave me. But then I had to ask myself, when are you going to get off that hamster wheel? When are you going to disrespectfully respectfully fire your boss, so you control over the things that you’re doing. And the day that I had enough for my job I walked in, I gave my two weeks notice, of course, by the time I got to my car, they was already calling me and firing me, which was okay. Or the following year, I doubled my salary for my job with real estate. And I need people to understand that if you really take the money that you make at your job annually, just take that number annually. And if you break it down monthly, and then break it down weekly, you can figure out how to survive without your job. A lot of times people believe that well, I’m making $100,000 at my job, well, I’m making $120,000 at my job. I did two flips a year and made $130,000 Those flips, I got them done in nine months. So that means that other four months at a year, I was on cruise control. But I was working at a job I would have been working 12 months, no weekends off. I’m begging and asking permission for personal days, I’m begging an accent permission can I go on vacation. And then once I realized that, and I clicked in my head, I took off from real estate I bet on me. So if I had to look back in time and said, Hey, young Calvin, stop worrying about what people think. Stop worrying about if you’re gonna fail. Stop worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, and focus on today and bet on yourself. And that’s what I would say to my younger self work. Don’t be foolish. Work. But at the same time, don’t commit myself to something that’s not my future, put time in and build your legacy wealth, not generational wealth, Build your legacy wealth and get to the next level. And that’s what I would have told younger me.
CORWYN:
Calvin, that’s a word right there, man, stop. Listen to what other people say. Right there. Thank you so much for that response, man. Thank you for being on the show today, we have quickly come to, but I knew I was gonna have a good time man, up to the end of the day’s episode. But we have got to get you back in the future for our listeners guys to tell, please make sure you reach out to Calvin and follow him. But most importantly, get plugged into the community. So you can pick up, glean, learn, you know from those who have done it, but maybe you can encourage someone who is yet still to call. So guys, please make sure that you connect and get involved in it. So Calvin again from the bottom of my heart, man, thank you for being on the show with us today.
CALVIN:
Thank you.
CORWYN:
So our listeners Guys look, amazing show got some great information. I didn’t want y’all at the beginning to write to get your pen out and start writing notes. So y’all please make sure you go to our website, please make sure to go to our YouTube channel station, guys. And please make sure that you download and look at this episode and pick up those pieces that you have missed out on. All right. So guys, look, we appreciate you know how I feel ya know what I say? You know, I always put the two of those things together to you. And I give it to you this way which is I love you. I love you. I love you. And we will see you guys out there in those streets.
