Yo, before we go any further, we got to give a huge shout-out to our people out boys the pygmy photo booth company man. They show of mad love. They were part of our Lana event and they drove 11 hours to be part of our Houston event that came with all the customizations for specialized props layout designs and even down to the custom message that was sent out with your pictures. They are a great addition to any function corporate events weddings networking events. You name it? They can make it happen. Pick me is our photo booth company. Those are our people you also follow them atHit me PBC and check out their website at pick me PBC.com. And right now if you use the code eyl 2019, you can get a hundred and fifty dollars off your next booking valid until the end of the year. So check them out. Earnings, are you currently paying off student loan debt interested in improving the financial literacy are looking for new ways to earn income and today's ever-changing digital landscape. Well on the talk money with the mesh lakhani podcast mesh will follow Paper Trails chat with experts break down complex ideas and bring Clarity to the mystical Financial phenomenon. Each episode will be filled with compelling stories covering a broad range of subjects from buying Bitcoin dealing with student loan debt and everything in between. So listen to talk money with mesh lakhani on Spotify or You listen to your favorite podcast and learn how to spend invest in learn in today's economy. All right, guys, welcome back. BYO Houston Edition. Oh man, if you noticed it, the the backdrop is different. That's because we're on a roll right now. Yeah, it's showing a role for this one for sure show us how we in the great state of Texas the beautiful city of Houston. So first and foremost, shout out to everybody and eight time we've only been here for like less than 24 hours and we got showing so much love so far. I mean soon as we got on the plane ready they gave up their seat. Shout out to Christopher give it up her seat so we could have sole groups out there. Yeah. Shout shout out to the radio station to The 97.9 that had a yeah, it was great. It was great. So we're enjoying ourselves and we're going to come back out. Here we go. Spend some more time in Houston. Yeah. I love I hate is real. Yeah, so we got a special very special episode today. We have a special guest Chris Senegal. Thank you for joining us. Appreciate it man. Welcome to Houston Senegal like the country just like the country shout out to Africa. So yeah, we're going to talk about a lot of different things this episode. We're going to talk about everything from In real estate investing day trading a lot of different stuff. Chris is a very interesting guy. He he's a renaissance man does a lot of different got a lot going on. I got a lot going on and this is one of the things that we try to do when we travel we try to tap in with the movers and shakers and business people that are making waves and make a name for themselves in the city. So we had to tap in with the good brother. So I want to get right into it. Yeah, interesting guy. You told me that you went to school for to be an engineer. You're right. You're trained engineer. I'm a civil engineer. All right, and then but you was actually day trading. Well, nobody right? We haven't really covered a training too much. We had an episode on stocks and we talked a little bit about Wall Street, but we didn't really go into day trading. It's what made you go in a day training man So eventually that essentially that was my escape to try to get out of corporate America, you know, because I was like, I was like the good kid and I mean straight As in school full scholarship to college engineering job got out there. I did it for like the first six months. I was like man, I've been sold a dream I This that's how I felt. And so the first thing that came across my desk was stocks and trading and I ran to a guy one day when I was at a conference for working matter of fact, and he was by the pool all day every day with his laptop. I was like, what is this dude doing and so he was a brother and he was out there and I was like, what are you doing? He's like I'm trading, you know, so he's watching the market what they call scalping. So basically watching for stock to go up knowing that it's probably going to come back down really quickly. So Old by and make that little margin in the middle. And so basically I kind of talked him into becoming my mentor and so for like a fool year. I was like fully invested in learn how to trade outside of my work so prior to that moment. Did you have any familiarity with what stocks and all I had no familiarity with anything but going to school and getting a job who you know what I mean? So I had no exposure to business entrepreneurship investing nothing else. This was my my aha moment. You know what I mean? And yeah, that's like ice. So what do you teach you about day trading like, what is it? Like day trading 101 look like anybody's not familiar day trading is when you can really do train anything. It's when so most of the time when you invest in something you invest in whole right day trading is when you're dating your trading intraday, so you might buy a stock at 11 o'clock in the morning and then you sell it at 11:30 so that 1 p.m. You trying to like just make quick short term profits and you do that pretty much every day and it's like a job where you're just like watching the computer watch. Yeah, like different, you know. Wings in the market and then you buy and then you sell right? So what's the 101 that he taught you and you kind of learn this part. They traded mainly just a cycles of the day, you know, I think a lot of people that understand they trading they're trained to look at the signals. So there's a lot of different technical indicators that people use and there are certain like certain dips that you'll watch for. There's a certain spike in a stock or a certain cycle where goes up and down up and down a couple times and then when it breaks up what they call like a resistance very aware. Goes up higher than something then it's time for you to get in because it's probably about to make a run and go up and so like you said, you know day trading is basically just guessing what's about to happen based off of previous behaviors of of generally stocks in general. What's the stress level of somebody that's going to be they traded me I could imagine right like it's remember we were talking about cryptocurrency. We weren't sleeping. So I mean we were doing that with money that we knew we could lose but somebody who's doing that as a career. What's the stress level pretty having a lot of people don't survive. I got out of it after year, honestly, I mean, yeah, it is I would say it's about 30% better than gambling sports betting, you know, I mean because at the end of the day is still a person on the other end of whatever you're watching that's making decisions and it's big institutions that are buying stocks is it could be individuals but if they own enough shares of that particular stock that you're watching they make a decision. That's what makes a Spiker go down. And so you're guessing and you're assuming that because people told Adieu, when you see this pattern and this stock that this is going to be with result. You're assuming that that's what's going to happen this time again A lot of times that's not the case. Yeah because there's a thing called technical analysis. So right when you looking at stocks, there's fundamental analysis and technical analysis, right so fundamental analysis when you're looking at fundamentals, so that's like, you know, when people actually look at like earnings ratio and how to companies doing stuff like that, but then the technical analysis is when you're just looking at all technical stuff, right? So these are things that He has nothing to do with the how the company is doing and there's like different indicators and chart like the Candlestick. Yeah, it's charred and so they like you said and then it's like barriers and it's like okay if it breaks out over this then I mean he's gonna go up if it goes down under that then it's gonna it's it's I tell people all the time. It's not something that you can just jump into now. It's very complicated is and you can get lucky like all things in life. You can actually get lucky and make some money but in the long haul you can lose a lot of money because Because it moves very quickly and like you said a lot of things that just out of your control, right and even with a good technical analysis, you can still not really tough because it's still kind of guessing in a sense. You're kind of just making a prediction right based off of educated knowledge right of what you are seeing. But even what you're seeing can be manipulated right? So you said after you only did it for a year I did it for you after year. What happened next man. I fell back for a minute. I started reading more and trying to figure out you know, what other History I could get into just to get out of that job. And so I started reading books and real estate kept coming up, you know at the same point of time. I actually decided I was gonna leave that job I had and I moved back to Houston. I was in Memphis at that point in time move back to Houston, but it was during the recession 2008 so I couldn't sell my house. So after like a year paying the mortgage payment I decided to get a property manager up in Memphis to rent it out for me. They rented it out. They rented it up for like four. Hundred dollars more than what the mortgage payment was. So the next one that light bulb kind of went off for me. It was like wait a minute. So I'm out here trying to figure out what I'm gonna do and meanwhile, I got this property as out of state. I got somebody else working managing it for me every month and I'm making $400 a month doing nothing blessing in disguise blessing in disguise, right? So that over my eyes up to passive income. So that's when everything shifted to real estate dodo. Can we talk about the um, the franchise business that you had a little bit because you had it's called super we've expressed. Yes, if we so, what was the So, all right. So what we've expressed I'm assuming is it was weaves hair extensions hashtags in the full service business man. Yeah. So that's a billion dollar business. Right? We talked about the hair business but not really in depth. But what made you want to go into as a man? What made you want to go into a woman's industry man, you know, I mean, it's a supply and demand thing, right? So as an entrepreneur, you know, you got to supply a product and if there's a demand for and there's a spread then you can make a profit and that's the only reason why I looked at it actually the founders of that company. You are actually from my hometown Port Arthur Texas. Okay, and at several locations and I sat down with them and they showed me the revenue numbers and their stores don't like half a million dollars a year and I was like man, I had no idea the weaves still yeah. It was a physical brick and mortar store brick and mortar store. They had they had a stylist there and they it was a commission based salon. So they got a percentage of the commission, but they did all the marketing they did all the advertising and then they assign clients to the customers of they came in and they also supplied the hair so they bought it at the wholesale price sold at retail, so You bought a franchise correct? Yeah, but a French what's that process? Like because I think we spoke about that one of our earlier episodes about being a franchisee was that process like in how'd you get involved? So the whole franchise model is basically instead of you starting a business from scratch. You are identifying somebody already has a business that appears to be successful and you're paying them to use their branding to use their their business model, you know, their business plan and in exchange you're going to pay them upfront, you know, Uh as as a fee to get in and then monthly they're going to take a percentage of your revenue. And so that's what your franchise fee is and the thing that most people don't realize is that the average business is only profitable within the 15 to 20% margin range, right? So then when you're a franchisee if that franchise says they're royalty is what it's called if it's 48 percent that's 48 percent of your gross. So they are a top-line expense. They're not they're not they don't wait to see if you're profitable in that on the back end. So Sizes they can be good because it takes a lot of the risk out of what you're doing. But your profitability goes down. He said that's a trade-off you can you explain that when you said the average business is profitable 15 to 20 percent of the profit. Margin. Can you explain that? Like what that means to the average person that may not understand it. So the biggest issue that I see with a lot of us a lot the biggest thing that we have a lack of exposure to when we start businesses we listen to what somebody coaches their revenue right? And that's the gross. So that's every dollar you've taken in But that doesn't include what your what your rent cost is which what's your labor costs is which yeah, what's your what's your what's your product cost is, you know, even when you bring in money, if you're in a business that that has a lot of merchandise and products, even if you have profit usually if your business is growing you got to take all that revenue and put it right back in the business to re-up on your inventory and probably buy more inventory to keep up with your demand. So there's a lot of money you can't really pull out that pot then you got like you Ladies you got taxes you got all these expenses that come along with running a business and then what's left is the profit. So most of the time that's 15 to 20% especially if your brick-and-mortar you said. Well that was one of your biggest mistakes is getting into a business based on their revenue and not their net profit. That's it. How did that come about? How did you realize like this was a mistake that I made was what disappear this business specifically also so when we opened we hit a Home run, you know the first year we did 450,000 in revenue is like 60% from the retail side at 40% from the services side, which is hair salon, but the expenses were so high and we had to keep so much money tied up in it that at the end of the year what was left on the table was about $60,000. Wow, and then I had a partner. So now you splitting that two ways. So now we for all that work you make $30,000 a year. Oh, that's crazy. Can you can you just go into that as you said that you yeah. Annette was six hundred thousand four hundred fifty five points and 50,000 50,000. Yeah, and you you netted 6030 it gets split the yeah. All right, right, right. Yeah third how did that happen Okay. So number one we went we wanted to be in a prime area. So we went and got a retail space in a shopping center. We would like between the Sally Beauty Supply and a Sam's and so that was like five grand a month right there. Hmm off the top then Since neither he nor I or stylus well, we know how to run a salon we had to hire a manager. Okay, and we had to have an assistant. So that's 70 grand right there. And then, you know the revenue for the hair extensions, you know, only about 30 35 percent as profit. So we spent 200,000 on that. So, you know that that Revenue looks like it's really high, but when you look at all those fences, it gets really get smaller. Then you got utilities you got product you got to keep in a salon. Stylist has been able to use you got marketing and advertising. We were spending like 5 grand a month to stay on the radio to keep people walking through the door you got insurance it. So it's a lot of expense that started a business and this is what this is 2017. This was 2014-2015. Okay. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because a lot of times people don't fully understand so we are reason why most businesses fail right Financial issues. Don't fully understand what goes into making a business. So even if you make almost in your case, almost a half a million dollars a year, you still might be broke you end up making things. Thousand dollars. It's like yeah, you could have worked the part-time job really and not of the but that business is probably taking like 10 hours a day for you to actually run maybe even more if exactly right and we're open 7 days a week, so there was no days off, you know. Yeah, so even though you have a manager and managed to manager still looks to the owner and make final decisions on things. So you're on call all the time, you know, I tell people a lot of times what you said is exactly right. You may leave the comfort of a job to start a business. Not really realize you just create another job for yourself with less benefits with nothing to fall back on. You know, so it's got to be the right decision. You got to really understand the business you're getting into. No, it's a fact so what would you what would your suggestion be as far as for an entrepreneur and inspiring entrepreneur that is going out there with would you say that you know looking at expenses is just as important as looking at what they could potentially make much more important much more important much more important. Yeah, and you know and I highly Advocate getting a mentor somebody that's doing it and you know, cuz this is hardly a business you're going. Find where somebody else isn't already running a business like it and I'll encourage people to try to find somebody in a different Market that's doing the same thing so that they're more open and willing to talk to you about the ins and out the nasty part that people don't talk about, you know, I mean because they won't feel like they're creating a competition but a lot of times I don't just want to event they want to talk about, you know, the real issues and they they don't want to confide in their friends and their immediate circle because everybody looks up and then put them on a pedestal for having this business. But so it kind of gives you an opportunity to be a sounding board and really Learn the business and I stole any also experience is always the best teacher as well. I mean no matter how much you still gonna have to make mistakes and learn on your own. Yeah, but like you said you kind of curve the learning curve a lot. If you actually have a mint oil you working under somebody for once. I had 100% not about what you what you make is about what you keep man. Yeah. Sure. Yeah and you School kind of conditions us to try to learn how to get it right on our own first now don't cheat don't copy off of somebody but when you get in the world of business your best bet is to copy the right cat. It's not try to read it. That's it. That's a good point. That was an accident. That's actually a really good point never really thought about it like that. Well, I mean and that's something I teach to like because I meet so many people in Corporate America that are trying to get out and I just tell them number one. You got to retrain the way you think about everything because school not on school teach you not to cheat School teaches you that if you're wrong more than 10% of the time you are not the best all a students got to be right 90% of time or consistently to stay to stay up on a pedestal. Whereas you got a lot of people that were seeing these students felt that comfortable feeling 20-30 percent of the time all the time and at the end they got the same diploma. You got no Jack ma said something interesting if anybody doesn't know who that is. That's the head of Alibaba. He's one of the richest people in the world none and he said he told he tells his son that you don't have to be a student. It's okay to be a see student because those are the only people that have enough time to be well-rounded and to experience it a lot of different things because if you The theory is that a lot of times it's like doctors, right? Mmm. A lot of times. They don't know anything about a lot of stuff because they focus so much on medicine and passing all the tests. Don't know how to write a check right there. So what you're saying actually makes a lot of sense and it is an issue with the school system because even if you look at a sport like baseball, you bet 300 you about 400 euros the best ever like that you expect somebody to do 80 90 Yeah, start realistic, right, you know where world you make mistakes? Right? Especially if you gon beat broad range and have knowledge on a lot of different things. It's hard to just truly Master five different subjects. That's one of those questions where you staffs ourselves, right? It was like should we know a lot about a few things? I know a little about a lot of things right? Because that makes you more well-rounded on your versed in a lot of things right? Like I don't have a background in business, but I'm willing to learn in these areas, right? I might not know medicine, but I'll research on you don't I'm saying so we got to keep ourselves well-rounded. That's Why always stressed likes education doesn't stop in school. Right? Right, it goes beyond the four walls of the or the building of school. It goes in the living environment goes in the home and goes into communities. It's all over the surrounds us. Yeah. All right, so, all right, so that was that was actually really good information as far as for anybody that's looking to get into business in business owner. But now we're going to go into some more stuff you are going to roast a we also going to go into your career as an engineer. I think that's interesting is something after we've touched on that what yeah. Yeah, everybody spoke about that. But all right, we're going to that in the next segment. Alright guys, so a lot of people access how do they make a podcast? So I'ma let you in on a secret on the easiest most productive way to start a podcast and get it up and running and that is the app called anchor is free. They have all kinds of cool creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer. They will distribute your podcast for you to all of the major. Our Outlets including Spotify Apple Google and many more and you can make money from your podcast with no minimum listenership. It's everything you need to make a podcast in one simple easy place. So if you're interested in starting a podcast Go download the free anchor app or go to Anchor dot f m-- to get started. Let's do it. So now we want to talk about right. So you're an engineer my um my train and you worked for the railroad company, right? Right. Can you explain that? Like what you actually did because that would you did that for 12 years, right? Yeah. So I started when I was in college like working for him part-time, but what I did was so design rail terminals. I mean, it's pretty it was pretty simple as far as engineering because you're not Then buildings everything but it was just a lot of work that was needed to like when the after the derailment, you know, realigning the track making sure that the trains can run away run away run in the high-velocity on these two little bitty rails and you got hundreds of thousands of tons moving at 60 70 miles an hour. So you had to make sure that everything was designed. The curvature was right on all that kind of stuff. And where were you doing this? Huh? So I work I started off working for CN rail road. So I was covering between Chicago and Baton Rouge Louisiana. Wow, because we see In in you know, the past few months these railroad systems and Subway says especially in New York. We're from that are completely outdated. They're running on systems that are from like 1910, right and we're like, how is this even possible? Yeah technology has not changed and they just they do the minimum maintenance to keep it up. So I was on like the the freight side so it wasn't any passenger rail. Okay. So a lot of us behind the scenes, you know that they didn't get a lot of exposure unless there's a big derailment somewhere. Yeah. So you so merchandise into product is moving through yelling, right exactly and like Percent of anything that moves somewhere in the United States if it comes in on a cargo ship from China or somewhere, it moves by rail at some point in time. It only moves by truck when it gets closer to his destination. You don't think people realize how big of a business trains are the vast majority of the country probably don't they don't ride trains like we're counting JD has we're from New York. So we're used to riding trains Subways and trains. It's pretty normal. Yeah, but most of America they don't really ride trains like that anymore. So people might not fully understand. That trains is a big business and if you don't ride it, like you said a lot of cargo, right? Yeah trains. Yeah, and what people don't realize is that the railroad has basically what helped build the West like when everybody's going from the East Coast or West Coast everything was moving by a ray little small trains, but great expansion, right? Yeah the great expansion. Yeah, everything was done by Rail and people always wonder why the railroads in the hood that wasn't always the hood. That's what would the first area that was settled in every small town because you had to bring everything in by rail to set up, you know the infrastructure to build a city hall the building. Buildings everything came in by rail. So what are your job title that tiles but responsibilities is design. Are you designing the actual tracks? Like what is what does that mean? Yeah designing apps will track you are yeah. Wow. Well that mean that's what I did now. I did that for the first four years. I work for the railroad. But like I said, I want to get out of engineering so and once I started getting into reading the real estate and Entrepreneurship to her realize I needed to learn more about business, so I kind of took that opportunity. Well I had to corporate Blanket over me to try to get into other departments. So I went in operation so I ran Freight terminals for like four years and that was crazy experience cuz I'm like 24 25 million guys. That's 40 50 making twice as much money as me. None of Union guys, make over a hundred grand a year. I was making like 50 60. So I learned a lot about managing people and that in that role then I got out of that and I got into the marketing and sales and I was lucky enough to get into Industrial Products, which is chemicals and oil and gas stuff. So I'm sitting in rooms with Is decision-makers Exxon Chevron Phillips 66 these type of companies and yeah managed over my eyes to a whole different world. They speak a different language. You learn a lot more about the economy and infrastructure everything I wanted was one of the things you learn when you're working on that side of the fence man. I just learned how money really works and how people really make decisions because energy runs the country. No, I mean like with without without cold without oil without gasoline everything shuts down. And so they know that they Really have a monopoly on everything, you know and the profit margins are crazy and they work with the profit margins of 300% on lot of stuff. Wow, only gas and oil and stuff. Yeah. So let me ask you this. Then a lot of people are saying that we should move away from that going to solar energy wind energy electric energy. You're an engineer and you worked in this space a is that realistic and what's your thoughts on that? Like as long term? Can we continue the way? Only now or do we have to make a change? I mean eventually there will have to be a change because there's a limited amount of fossil fuels out there. So we're going to have to find other energy sources that we can use that a renewable. So it's definitely feasible is definitely plausible and like wind sunlight water. That stuff's not going to go away. So I was going to have that but you just have these big institutions that are making so much money off of the fossil. You based energy sector that they're not going to just give up their position here and they do a lot of lobbying in Washington. I was about to say something that we don't really understand but that lobbying is powerful. That's why all the legislation really happens. Now, I don't care who you vote for is somebody with money in the behind the scenes in Washington taking them out to dinner wine and dine them and that's when the real decisions are made. You got to make sure they keep their money go. Yeah. I remember when Hillary Clinton was running for president versus Trump. I think yeah today was saying I think Chase Chase put like 10 You need to Hillary's campaign, but they put nine million jumps campaign. So no matter who won they won. Right? It doesn't matter. I mean asking people don't fully understand either. It's like you playing a political game based off of emotion, but these people are playing a political game based off of strategy. It's two different things. They're playing chess. Yeah, they gonna give money to Republicans Democrats and independents cause at the end of the day, they need what they need done and money talks and whoever's the why was the decision maker either red or blue gonna help them, right? Yeah, so you started it. Business the Evil Commerce can talk about that. So basically none sometimes I like to teach entrepreneurs especially the ones that's coming out of corporate world. Everybody feels like I gotta create something new like I gotta get into industry that I see everybody else doing right but what I realized was like man if this company is paying me a hundred grand a year to do this job. There has to be a smaller business out there somewhere that needs the same Services need the same skill set and I can just go out and provide the service for them and instead of being Employee, I become their consultant. So that's what you were a commerce was. I took all that experience. I had I was connections. I have the railroad all these oil and gas companies and I found all these smaller companies that need or want to get a contract with an x on because Exxon has over 10,000 rail cars. Everyone else cars has to be maintained as to be repainted has to be cleaned that has to be maintenance done to him. They have to store them when they're not using a kind of Park him somewhere. So what I do is I help all those companies that provide those Services getting the door with Exxon get the contract and then they perform. The work and I just get commissions off of the deals. So you get like the relationship man you I am I'm basically brokering basically brokering and I have everything set up with with my clients to wear whatever contract to help them get I get paid but Zoe rail is not the only form of consultation that you provide and right don't you have a few other Constitution things that you do? Well, I mean in general I just try to help entrepreneurs get started, you know, because I mean I was so lost when I was trying to get out out of the work world. I was like man and nobody was really here, too. I mean teach me so I use my social media platform and you know, I use my that Network and that audience as as my way to give back, you know, so anybody has helped wants help with it getting started entrepreneurship. I try to teach them the basic on stuff we're talking about now. Yeah, I mean I get them as far as I can and then I try to network with someone that's actually in their field and try to get them to get under that person, you know, so you're providing the mentorship. Yeah by the kind of consultant, right? Okay. Got you Consulting something that we also Even spoke about yeah and his podcast but it's extremely important and it's a very profitable business as well. Yeah Consultants you have consultants in school industry, you have consultants and political energy consultant in all kinds of stuff. Right? Can you explain the importance a lot of time especially for small business owners? This is the problem with small business owners. Let's compare the business big business. They have small way of thinking the only standard power of Consulting. They don't understand the power of marketing. They don't understand. They just want to just do the work you it's like running on a treadmill you can only get so far right when you get No, when behind you now you can start to fly. So you talk about the power of Consulting like what can somebody get value out of other than hiring a right consultant? So there's only two ways you're going to learn either going to bump your head and you're going to lose time and money or you're going to pay for the knowledge period there's no other way. You're gonna learn right? So you hire a consultant a consultant if someone has an expert in that field is already had experience doing what you're trying to do, or they can help you with a particular area of the business that you You can't fulfill like if you have a great product, but you don't know how to get it in front of enough people. You need a marketing consultant to come in and help you get in front of the right people. And so it's basically a way for you to you can add a whole department to your business without actually having to hire an employee. It's a consultant, you know that consultant can either be somebody has paid by the hour or it could be somebody that I've always recommend you get performance-based Consultants, which means they work off of commission, so they don't produce You they don't have any money, right? So that gives them a vested a vested reason to get in there and work hard and get something done. And on the flip side of that that like you said that's a very lucrative business to because it's a business where it doesn't require you have to invest a lot. You can work from home and be a consultant and people actually paying you just for the knowledge that you already have, you know, so you can take that corporate experience you could make you could have been flipping burgers at McDonald's for five years, but guess what skill set you got you know what it takes to onboard a new employee so you can go to other small. Around and say Here's the McDonald's model. I'm going to teach you how to run a McDonald's model for your restaurant. And that's something that anybody can do like I'm saying it. I'm thinking like especially in the education field and especially in the restaurant field as well as like people always try to figure out how can they make passive income? Right and they don't realize that they have a skill set already there. Just overlooking it right not maximizing their potential. Well, this is one of the things we talked about multiple streams of income that is to the average millionaire has seven streams of income. It doesn't mean he has seven jobs or Seven businesses is that they're maximizing their skills, maybe one or two businesses. So as you said you can be a teacher, right? But you're an expert in that field. If you're a really good teacher now, you can be a consultant. Yep to school districts, right curriculum things of that nature, right? And that's something that anybody can do as Choice head. Even if you you're still an employee you can be an entrepreneur and create your own Consulting business and the amount of time it doesn't require It as much right to say these are my hours you dictate the our yeah, and you dictate the fees. Yeah, and a lot of times you're helping different customers and clients with the same problem. Exactly. So you already know it like in and out, you know for your so you put your Consulting business. How did you Market yourself to to your customers or clients? How do you hide man the most powerful tool? I use is LinkedIn. Okay, and what I liked about LinkedIn is because when you put yourself on there as a business owner, you give yourself, whatever title you want. You know, so I gave my is just my it's me and one partner with my title is executive VP. So that puts you in a whole different Arena weird. They look at you like that. It's all perception perception. When I go to when I see a company that I'm trying to get a connection with and I go to the CEO or quest to connect with them. They were like, oh it's another executive that wants to conduct a we got an exact that wants to meet you. Yeah. Yeah, and that's all it is. It's positioning and it's it's all about you know, what you post by post. Post a lot of Wall Street Journal type articles that are related to the industry any type of inside that I get from anybody else that's in the industry. I'll make a post about that. So then you kind of position yourself as a subject matter expert so then what happens is eventually enough people are watching your posts to wear when they have a problem. They come to you instead of you having to go out and ask for business. Mmm. And the another great thing. I like about LinkedIn is because you can type in any job title you want so I'm in supply chain, right? I type in director Supply. Jane LinkedIn is gonna give me a list of people with that title. So now all I do is go Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect Kinect, you know and that build your audience and people go to check you out to see who is this that's asking to link with me and my network on LinkedIn is like 17,000. It's all Industrial Products supply chain people from all these big companies. Yeah. You got your out. That's a lot. That's a lot of belief. Then you got to accept every single person, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, the person has the person has to approve the connection. But if your page is set up to where it looks like. Oh, this is Buddy that I might want to my network then you're good. And that's the whole purpose of you know, making sure that you set yourself up right on there with the right titles right you send and you send was an inmail, right? They send you an e-mail so you could both I guess I'm both. Yeah. I met with a guy matter of fact he flew in from Arkansas last week because he's working with the private Development Group that does Industrial Development and there are looking for new locations to build new rail Terminals, and that's part of my job when working. The railroad so as part of my Consulting to so he literally reached out to me because he had been seeing me make these posts on LinkedIn about railroad development of rural terminals. So this guy literally flew in for the day just for that meeting. Well, you are using your resources efficiently and like a lot of times people don't realize that like, they're just on LinkedIn or that this on Facebook just to put pictures up not networking and not realizing like how powerful a tool they have at their fingertips, but well LinkedIn is is only for networking. But I got to get a bit I got you got to do a better job on LinkedIn because I don't know. I just don't feel too comfortable with it. I feel like it's some kind of boring that the guy with facial it is born but it's like Facebook, but it's for business only. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah it is it is. I mean you can you would be surprised the people that don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers that are like powerful people like I mean like producers executive producers at these big stations, they may have 500,000 connections and you go I requested and is approved the next day, you know, but it's like it's like it's like a back door to get the connection that usually you have to call a corporate headquarters and talk to him in a straight person and ask the schedule time to meet this person. Just go to LinkedIn and find them so when you need it's like getting you past all those exactly like the gonna Gatekeepers. Yeah, the bypass All The Gatekeepers if the person is on LinkedIn if they're on that everybody's on LinkedIn and Linkedin is one is the most powerful search thing too. Because like some when you search somebody's name on Google the first thing that comes up is LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah, that's like the first And it's like a it's like your online resume pretty much it is and so I don't know how they how they work that with the algorithm but they always are on the top of your thing. So you kind of have to have a LinkedIn page if you're doing anything in business. It's like almost mandatory. Yeah Green, I gotta update laughs. Yeah. Alright, so that was good info. So now the last time you weren't going to Real Estate, we're going to go staying real estate. That's a change going on. That's what yeah. Yeah for sure. What's up, y'all? So if you're listening to this you obviously like podcast and you probably like music just as much on Spotify. You can listen to all your favorite artists and podcasts in one place for free. You don't need a premium account Spotify has a huge catalogue of podcast on every topic including the one you're listening to right now on Spotify. You can follow your favorite podcast. So you never miss an episode premium users can download Episode to listen to offline. Of you are and it's really easy to share what you've been listening to with your friends on Instagram. If you haven't done so already be sure to download the Spotify app search for earn your leisure on Spotify or browse podcast in the your library tab. Also, make sure to follow us so you never miss an episode of Ernie Leisure again. Alright, so the last thing we're going to talk about real estate, right? So what made you go into real estate first and foremost. Like I said, I kind of fell into it with the court with the with the corporate job and leaving and I had bought a house at the first gig and when I moved back to Houston, I couldn't sell it. So I had to get a property manager Property Management it out. I was making like 400 bucks a month. I wasn't working at all for it. I was like this is this seems like something lucrative and you know, the more you research real estate is like 80% of first Millionaires are made in real estate, but this is a relatively young age. Right? Like your first property was at 22 Yeah 22, that's pretty young can't win man. So that was that was kind of a blessing through having worked with the railroad while I was in school. Okay, I enough tenure with them to actually qualify for a moving package. So when you work with a corporate company when they move you they either give you a stipend or they give you like a down payment towards the house. Yeah, so they gave me the down payment and instead of making a part. Mint and pocketing the money that's had to get house. So but you could have took the stipend. I can't excite you. Don't the long-term play. Yeah, I mean, you're not an engineer by mistake. Yeah, so all right, but so didn't how did that transition to you doing what you're now as far as you're developing so okay. So when I moved to Houston I've decided I wanted to go really hard on the in the real estate game. And so one of my My Line brothers, my frat brother works for home vectors That We Buy Ugly Houses people and he was their property manager in the hood. And so I kind of told them what I wanted to do. And so he end up plugging me one of the contractors that home vest has used. This guy was flipping 20 30 houses a month for them doing actual rehab work. And so he kind of became my mentor and we would pick houses I would flip him. Of course, he would make money off of the rehabs. And so that's how I kind of got into the real estate game in 2009. I would sell some of them. I kept some of them for rentals and I was doing that for about five years, but then I got tired of having rental property. I'm at I know everybody says that supposed to do supposed to buy by the home of living and have rental property but man on a rental sucks. What are some of the downfalls? Okay. So a lot of people so a good profit margin on a rental properties three or four hundred bucks a month. Okay, right, but you have one month say like a tenant moves out and then it takes you a month to find another tenant. That's and if your mortgage payment is $1,200, that's literally three months of your profit gone. If you got to make a repair that repairs $1,000 as another two and a half months of profit gone, you know what I mean? And so for me it was like and then you have this debt you owe I was on like a hundred hundred twenty on each house. And so now you got debt and you got these small profit margins and it's like okay I can see how long term I can continue to do this and make money slowly but dealing with tenants tennis Terran stuff up, you know, it just wasn't it wasn't something that I enjoy doing. What type of properties were you looking for. Was it single? Holmes yeah family or yeah, it's probably yeah that point I didn't qualify for anything like extravagant. So just by little single-family homes and I'm saying is nothing wrong with this is everybody can make money in any industry. But for me, it's just like I want to do something bigger and so as I guess I continue the flip I started realizing, you know, this narrative about gentrification happens over and over and over and I was like man, I know a few of us that are flipping. I don't know anybody is really trying to get into the development game and you know kind of change the narrative so we have Some control over that so 2013. That's why I decided to kind of get off into that. So when you buying land in 2013 was at the next step. I didn't know what I was going to buy. I just knew what I was gonna do a stop flipping and try to figure it out. Okay, so I just started talking about it and man came full circle that same my same line brother that helped me get into the game. He had an old tent reach out to him that used to being one of the properties and say hey, I'm over here in Fifth Ward and the landlord over here isn't taking care of the property. I think he's on drugs. You know what he heard was opportunity. So he reached out to me and he's like math. You've got opportunity to go pick up a few houses over here. So I went to go meet with the guy ends up being a whole block had a grocery store on it. How much was that? Okay, true story at the time. This was in the hood. It wasn't worth noting. It was probably worth 300,000 the whole block the whole place. Everything is kind of run-down but it's in the area where you tell somebody about to go spent 300,000 like man. Are you crazy? Uh-huh? Drugs prostitution over there. You don't waste your money, you know, so what I ended up doing to talk him into doing the deal. I offered him 400,000 for it. So but of course I didn't have the cash to pay 400 thousand. So he actually had inherited the property from his dad his dad like a real estate Tycoon and like 26 blocks over there 26 blocks 26 blocks. Whoa, 26 blocks and this block happened to be the one that they gave this this this kid and he was like the the horrible kid and then You botched it. Yeah, so so this was the one he had and he still wasn't taking care of it. So I offered him owner finance scenario. Where as I give you 10% now with owner finance. So that's when the instead of you instead of going to the bank. The owner that actually doesn't have any debt on the property will let you make payments over time to buy the property from so I'm gave him 10% of what we agreed to the four hundred thousands of $40,000 which came from me selling one of my rental properties and then Then allow Me Now to control that whole block of property and it had the grocery store on it and then had the houses but everything was really rundown. So instead of fixing it up. What I decided to do was do parolee housing for felons because it's really hard for them to find anywhere to live. So I would rent them out a single room in each one of the houses charging 350 a month or something. They're going forward because the type of jobs they could get you know, they didn't have much income or they like a halfway house. Very much like a halfway house. Yeah, this is they call them SRO house. And then so the state pays for that right the sometimes the sometimes if they depend on what program they're in they get some type of housing assistance, but most of the time know they have to go get a job. Okay, so that's what made it really good because you talk about a low low risk tenant. You got somebody else happy to be out of prison. They was in prison for non-violent offense. I don't do violent people. They had to keep a job and they had to keep somewhere to stay and 99% of the places wouldn't even allow them to live there. So they were like they were like built In good high revenue for me, you know what I mean as collectively in each house whereas I could have read that whole house for five hundred dollars to a regular family. Now I'm making eleven twelve hundred dollars off that same house, you know with this program and because you were renting the rooms random individual rooms and most of them had trades so they were like Carpenters electricians plumbers. They all learn a trade in prison. Yeah, so anything went wrong, I just drop off materials. They were fixing the wind is built in and they were just happy to have somewhere to live. No, yeah. So yeah, so that worked out that was a win-win man. And then that was 2013 14 15. I did that in 2016 Redevelopment kind of started in the area that I was in something else that I always watch to even when I was flipping is what the city's plans were and you can go to the planning department website and it'll tell you what they're planning to do five years 10.10 years down the road and that's a lot of the game that we don't pay attention to her. But you know the other groups pay attention where can you find that information at usually you can just Google it like like likes it like Planning and Development Department urban planning for whatever City you're in and it'll pull up on that website, you know, usually a.gov type website and it'll have that all the information a lot of us talked about it City Council meetings. So you can look up city council meeting minutes and it tell you about anything big any developer that's proposing to do something a certain area all that has to be public publicly announced so but what I notice about Houston was that everything was going A clockwise around downtown and the nape the fifth one neighborhood that I was buying. It was the last quadrant so I knew eventually I was going to come I just didn't win you know, and so yes, I got into it and 2016 is another guy started building. So then I figured it's time for me to try to figure out how to get it done. So what is your all right. So what's your philosophy on gentrification? What should we should how do you feel about that? So gentrification has a very negative connotation in our community. Because we are never the ones revitalizing that neighborhood and what happens is the people that are revitalizing are looking out for themselves or their own groups. It's not that They Don't Care About Us is that they have their own personal agendas that they're moving forward and so we can either continue to watch it happen or we can participate right and we can participate in the way that we kind of control The Narrative of what's being built who is being built for and what happens to the surrounding community that we're building in right? So My project was most of the time when you hear about black builders in black neighborhoods, it's low-income stuff and I feel like that's a great like we do need to look out for the low-income people but we got to attract the people that were successful people that made it out those neighborhoods and back to those neighborhoods because we need that income. We need that demographic. If we ever want a grocery store to come back. We can't sit in depend on the government to do that. And right now what happens is the people that successful they go and buy houses in the suburbs, right? It's not because they don't want to move back is because they have no options. So my focus was will let me start building some to market right stuff not low income housing stuff, but try to track these working professionals back to the neighborhoods with a high quality product that they know that they're gonna pay the same price that pain in the suburbs and the city your values going to appreciate a whole lot more especially when that neighborhood starts to revitalize and that's kind of what you've done with, you know, the land that you bought in 2013, right, which is your the most recent development that you worked on some 1414. Yeah, 14 units approaching you as an individual house. You want to talk about that how that came about? Yeah. So those are the same property that I bought with the grocery store and everything. Okay. So 2016 I decided just tear everything down when I saw there's another developer that was building houses deep in the neighborhood and he was selling them for 250 before they were complete. He wouldn't even listen them on MLS. So I'm like so that tells me that there's a mindset there's enough people out there willing to save a hundred thousand dollars because everything else inside the city Loop was like winter 16 loop was to 350 or more. So But people would rather save that money and live in a neighborhood that was still pretty rough. So I was like well if he can do this deep in the neighborhood, I'm right on the feeder to the highway, you know, I got a view of downtown actually be able to some of my property to and so that's when I decided I'm a move forward with this initiative try to build these townhouses and it took a lot of work it took me building the right teams. I had no idea what I was doing goes back to what you talking about earlier with the consultant. I had to find the right team the right had to find a builder they had enough Was willing to kind of lend his knowledge and time to me, of course for a fee, you know had to pay him to be my consultant basically teaching I do the first project but that's what I did. So what's it? What's your plans now as far as how many projects are you are you working on? I wish it was your vision look like for the next five years next five years. I want to finish this project which would probably be finished next year and I want to continue to build the same model in the same neighborhood. I kind of want to make this like a real world example that can be duplicated. And in other cities like we can go in we can buy the land and I mentioned my entire team is from the community to so like what my Builders my real estate brokers my insurance brokers everybody the contractors as well contractors as well. Yeah, man, we're going to Black Builder so and it's not just anybody's people that got good reputations, but we kind of always Silo ourselves. We never really collectively work together on stuff. So yeah and a goal in the most important part of all of this whether you flipping another industry that people in this whole selling or Bill Construction is ensuring that you put the product in front of the Right End buyer. Because if you Flippin you call yourself buying a block but if you're not watching who you selling to on the back end, you still gentrifying the neighborhood. Yeah. So my goal is really to educate us on like I said the working professional why is better for you to buy over here? Yes. I'm building the first three now got contracts on two of them. Both of them are young young black professionals basically oil and gas professionals. No townhouses write down houses. Yeah. I got a dentist. A black Dennis from from Dallas that's looking at buying one, you know, so it's all about making sure that we create that model because right now that gentrification narrative is only thing that's that that's real and for our people we do better when we see examples of something that's actually working. And so when this is complete, I want to make sure that this model gives as much exposure as possible. It's not about me making out of money. I want people in other cities do the same thing, you know to say it's possible. We really can't do this and this is the example how You evaluate like what area you want to I know you say you look at it like the city plans. But do you have like a set formula is just kind of like you just know the area. You just kind of have a good feeling because you can't buy in some bad neighborhoods and they don't get better, right? Hey, so it's like I mean, I do, you know like this is this is probably going to get better. It's all about your network because you got to be talking to people in the industry. So the a lot of the realtors that I work with they work with Builders and you know, you gotta have a network of commercial Realtors around you to because they know Where the commercial developers are looking at what areas are looking at? So a lot of his word of mouth in addition to what you see on the city plans, you know. Yeah, you got to have your foot in the door. You got to be on the inside understanding where they're moving and that and you just kind of ride that wave along with them. Yeah a few years ago. You had one of the most horrific hurricanes and United States history. What impact have you seen since then on the real estate in Houston man, you know for it was a period Time where the houses in the areas that did not get flooded the values went up tremendously or they were getting brought up really really quickly it I didn't see too much of a negative impact. The only thing that I did see is a shift in ownership where the people that didn't have the proper flood insurance who lost their homes had to become renters for a while, right? But same time the investors who had the cash on the table were able to pick up. Up a whole bunch of properties for a lot less than what the values were anything under like $200,000 was still selling as it was rehab but anything above that $200,000 Mark a lot of his sat on the market a lot of us still here. Now, we had a lot of out-of-town investors that bought that thought that they could buy these flood houses and flip them and sell them really quickly. But the people in those price points were not comfortable, you know setting up their Homestead again and then area just flooded like that. Mmm. So so what is what's your outlook for Hugh? If anybody that's interested in maybe coming in investing optimistic for the city very optimistic now Houston done on the next census. They're gonna announce that Houston is now larger than Chicago. So it's going to be number three. He's gonna be the third largest city. Yeah and Houston was least hit by the recession because we didn't have the big inflation and home prices that other markets had when you look at like International Investment as far as real estate in the United States Houston is number one where it's come from China, Australia Nigeria anywhere, basically. Ali they invest here because if you're looking at the three or four biggest cities the real estate still cheaper here. Yeah, like I said and they economy was not hurt as much as other big markets by the recession so it's the safest bet not only that but you got more people moving to Texas every year and like I said Houston is rapidly growing so that the real estate Outlook is strong for this Market. I mean that's two things that I believe a kind of the wave of the future for Investments either Tech or is real estate because no matter as technology will advance Aunt Sandra Place people in jobs, but people always have to have a place to live that's never going to change and I think it's the biggest city land wide Lance. Yeah it is it is. What is yeah. Yeah. There's a lot more room for it to be developed it is it is and what it is is like it says it's spreading out and is consuming all the smaller towns around it. Yeah, and it's they're all merging into one big municipality think part of that that population increase is due to the influx of people who were misplaced after Hurricane Katrina or I mean, we saw a wave of that okay, but not I mean a lot of it. No, it's just business is just it's just it's attractive. You know, you got a lot of people that move from high high real estate markets like California, they sell their house out here and you know could be a regular 1800 square foot house in California. They sell it for 1.2 million come out here and buy a mansion. Yeah, you know, so a lot of people transition down here because just the cost of living is cheaper. Hmm. Yeah sure. So I thank you me. Thank you. Thank you for talking with us. So how can people contact you? I mean initiatives you got going on social media handles all Stuff. Yes, I'll social media. My Instagram is underscore inv Str. Which is invested with a lot of the vowels missing. And then my website is my name Chris Senegal.com. CHR is SE Nega elle.com and has a link to everything linked in my email my websites everything. So yeah, I use my platform to kind of do everything we're talking about not just educate people on entrepreneurship real estate investing and know how to Change understanding money and how money works. You know, that's the point. That's the point Troy. Yeah, so just want to give a quick call to patreon.com that is are proud to pay program is patreon.com packs faster and your leisure. There are five different tiers. You can join that each tier has a different feature, you know, we have bonus content bonus video. We have video calls shout-out to our new members Jason Candice Michael and Elliot Elliot. We reached out and we kind of got disconnected on our core but we definitely gonna be in contact with him and shout out to Danita again. Who's The H-Town in has been shown us so much Hospitality. We landed and she came up with a full itinerary as soon as we got off the plane. So shout out to her and yeah, Mick, feel free to subscribe anytime. Also go to your leisure.com. We have our merch up there and we got a few other things that will be coming in September. September is going to be a big month. So be on the lookout for some new things from your leisure. Yeah for sure and I'm once again, thank you to the city of Houston by the time you guys here. This will be back in New York, but the Network anything we actually are networking event tonight and I know it's going to be crazy. I know it's gonna be amazing. So I'm looking forward to it. But you know, this is what we like to do in patreon is the way to financially support the podcast and this is ways that we travel we highlight local entrepreneurs and business owners and we educate people on what's going on in different areas where you want to go to like these different areas and say okay we in Detroit. What's the opportunities here? What's opportunities in Chicago with opportunities and Cleveland? What's the opportunities in Houston, Texas? So it's important we can't just think Locally, we got to thank you know, we got to broaden our Horizon and think on a national level and on a global level as well very big on that globally. So my book tip of the week is entrepreneur Rollercoaster by Darren Hardy and every entrepreneur understands what that means because it's a roller coasters never it's never all good. It's never all good. So yes, and also don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel or on your leisure YouTube. We will be putting bonus content. Up and we got different segments and you just want to see things visually YouTube is a place to see it iTunes as well subscribe to our iTunes. Those are our two main Outlets, but we're also on Spotify goo goo all over the place. And then as I always say if people want to get in contact with me as far as to ask me questions in regards to my business as a financial advisor, you want to roll over old 401 k you have an inheritance you want to invest some money you can go to earn your leisure.com and my Is on here you can book a 30-minute free consultation with me and I can give you some advice see if I could be of any help and yes, we will see you guys next week. We got to welcome Chris to the alumni club. Yeah. Sure everybody that comes on the show after they finish the episode they become alumni because the next time we come to use on our we go to a city you may say yeah. Well, I want to come to the event to so we just bring alumni to the event. Oh, I love it. So welcome to the alumni club. Appreciate it. Well, he's gonna be he's gonna be at the event tonight definitely gonna be good. The youngest alumni, I'm sure sure sure. So yes. Thank you for rock. Wonderful. See you next week. Peace.
“Buy Back the Block” is a trendy slogan, but Chris Senegal has actually done just that. He recently purchased an entire abandoned block in the Fifth Ward section of Houston. He is currently in the process of developing luxury townhouses for the area. His plan is to get successful people that are originally from the neighborhood that moved out to come back. In addition to being a real estate developer Chris is a trained engineer, he’s a former stock day trader, he was a franchise owner, and he's a business coach. In episode 36 he gave us insight on the energy business, he outlines business success tips, he explained how to bypass gatekeepers to speak to high-level executives and he gave valuable information about real estate development and how to spot up and coming opportunities in the market. Guest IG: @_invstr Book Tip: Entrepreneur Rollercoaster   ---   This episode is sponsored by  · Talk Money With Mesh Lakhani Podcast: On The Talk Money with Mesh Lakhani podcast, Mesh will follow paper trails, chat with experts, and break down complex ideas to bring clarity to the mystical financial phenomena behind your finances. 