Who are the Lifetime Wealth Academy founders?
Scott McGillivray and Michael Sarracini weren’t always Lifetime Wealth experts. In fact, we started as just the opposite – a couple of broke university students. As perpetual tenants, we realized that we were throwing our money away on rent, but didn’t know what to do about it.
We met in business class, but we didn’t interact or hang out with the same crowd. You could even say we didn’t get along at all. Because of our very similar personalities, we tended to clash during class seminars and debates, and would never work in the same group.
Then one day a smart professor decided to pair up students for the next project. Of course, who did he pair up? The two of us.
Acting professionally, we set our differences aside and teamed up to achieve an unspoken common goal: to be the best. As we began to share ideas and experiences, we noticed that our brainstorming sessions were very productive and even enlightening. Since we both lived in student rentals, we settled on a business model which centered on owning and operating student rentals. The project was a success!
Student tenants
Shortly after, we ended up moving into a house with five people. We also got jobs as waiters at a nearby restaurant, where we met many community businesspeople and professionals. One day, while collecting rent from housemates to pay the landlord, we plugged the numbers into our business model from the project.
We realized that our landlord not only covered his mortgage with our rent money, but had $500 left over every month. That’s when the light bulbs in our heads went on. We found what if we bought a house close by, we would be the ones making an extra $500 each month. In fact, if we bought more than one house, we could make $500 every month for every house, and quit our jobs.
Of course, it was not that cut and dry, but we were on to something. We combined and utilized all our resources, talked to every real estate agent we knew from the restaurant.(It seems that real estate agents go out for lunch more than any other profession, so we knew many.) We quickly found one who was willing to help us get started. The task of buying a $200,000 property was daunting to say the least, especially considering we had no money and loads of student debt. The price of a house was a lot of money at the time.
Our first property
We looked at many houses, and at every house we looked at, we learned something new. By the fifteenth or so house, we became extremely confident as to what value was in the neighborhood. Since we were students, we also were aware of what students wanted in a rental. We simply put the two together to find a great property.
Next, we used our business model from our university project to establish profitability and return on investment for that property. Everything looked good and the numbers made sense, so we took the plunge. Against the advice of our friends and parents, we bought the property.
We posted the property for rent with a few different wordings, in a few different places. We quickly learned what to write and where to post listings to attract good tenants. Next, we set up a time to view the property and had all of our interested potential tenants come at the same time.
Student landlords
When we arrived at the house to show it, there were already four groups of five waiting there for us. Over the next 15 minutes, another seven groups arrived. It was overwhelming, and we have since learned how to stagger showings to multiple groups.
We eventually got through the day and showed the 11 groups. Out of the 11 that came through, eight of them wanted it. We were happy that we rented so quickly, but were disappointed that we didn’t have a piece of the under-serviced market. If we had seven more houses, they would all be full.
Second property
We looked at another property on the next street a few days later. We called back the seven groups we turned down to tell them that we had a similar property for them to see. Following the same process of showing the first house, we quickly rented the second house – before we even bought it.
Buying two houses in the first year seemed very ambitious, and it was. But we knew our goal –to make more money managing rental houses than we did at our part-time jobs. We stuck to our guns to achieve that goal. We managed to qualify for a second loan and buy that second property.
Over the next few years, we went on to buy many homes and rented them out. It’s amazing how easy it became to find and rent a property as we worked through our cookie cutter approach, always tweaking the process slightly each time till we perfected it.
Creating a System
By keeping an investing journal, we documented every tweak, change and lesson learned over the years. If we came across a problem or situation a second time, we would simply review how we handled it the first time and applied that process to the new situation.
Eventually, our journal became so big we realized that it was a book! When we started, we never thought we would collect so much information in such detail about earning Cash Flow for Life. We spent much of our spare time revising and polishing our book, our system. We had many family, friends, and friends of friends asking us how to properly invest in rental properties. Nearly every weekend for a few years, we helped someone look at a property, renovate an income property, or manage tenants.
That’s how we became teachers. It began with a few students. As word-of-mouth spread, a few students turned into many. Before we knew it, we were educating all kinds of people from all walks of life through seminars, workshops, and the television show – “Income Property.”
Lifetime Wealth Academy provides its students with a collection of our knowledge and experience gained throughout the years. It teaches students the exact system we used to reach the level of success we enjoy today. We have left nothing out. Many of our students have achieved great success, going on to run full-time real estate businesses.
We ourselves have taken many real estate courses. We can honestly say that the courses and books offered by Lifetime Wealth Academy are the only ones that lead the student through every step of real estate investing, from starving students to millionaire landlords.
It is a system proven to work.
