In this episode, I talk with Chris Funk.
Chris has been investing in real estate for 17 years He is experienced in wholesaling, single family rentals, multifamily rentals, flipping, owners financing, and hard money lending.
He’s also an avid private pilot and mountain bike racer.
We discuss what is wholesaling and how to buy rental properties.
The guest speaker shared how he bought his first apartment complex and overcoming obstacles.
The speakers will delve into the current state of the real estate market.
Whether you’re a seasoned real estate investor or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable insights that you won’t want to miss.
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to our channel for more inspiring stories and informative content.
Transcript:
Chris Funk 00:00
Tom told me this is about perspective. He said one of the most important things in business is to have the right perspective because your perspective may not be accurate and you need to have the perspective of the person you’re selling to perspective is everything. Once you look at it from the other side and you see their perspective, you can tailor your approach and that makes a world of difference.
Chris Bounds 00:23
In this episode, I talk with Chris bond, Chris has been investing in real estate for 17 years. He’s experienced in wholesaling, single family rentals, multifamily rentals, flipping owners financing and hard money lending. He’s also an avid private pilot in mountain bike racer, we discuss how he got started wholesaling real estate, buying his first rental properties, how he bought his first apartment complex obstacles he had to overcome the real estate market and so much more.
I hope you enjoy onto the show. How’s it going, Chris? How are you? Doing good, doing good. I’m really excited to have you on you know, we’ve kind of followed your career going up whenever I got started. So we we’ve talked a bit at various networking events, you got a great story, and you get some interesting hobbies that we’ll get into. But to going to get get started, would share a little bit about how you got started in real estate, especially, you know, wholesaling and we’ll kind of get into the single payment landlord stuff.
Chris Funk 01:26
Yeah, for sure. So it was a lot of fun. Getting started in real estate, you know, I guess what I miss about that the most is the eagerness, the passion being so young and kind of seeing the world ahead of me. I knew from the very beginning after reading all the rich dad poor dad books that I want to own investments, I wanted to be a business owner, I wanted to have real estate. And I remember going to a couple of meetings and telling people, you know, hey, I want to buy an apartment complex, and they would sit down with me and the mentor would say, Okay, well, well, how much cash do you have? And what’s your credit?
You know, it’s kind of just over before it began, right? What’s your experience with like zero on all of those things. And so I realized that the only place I was going to be able to fit in in the beginning was to be a wholesaler, and to go out and find deals for other people, and also to develop skill sets that would help me later on. So I actually met a general contractor at the real estate club in Houston, and explained him that I was wholesaling with the intent to be a rehabber and a landlord, and he hired me as a project manager. So it really worked out well, because I was able to learn the business of renovations.
And he just threw me into the fire pit. We started doing burnouts on day one, and, you know, his massive renovations and just horrible properties. And so I got a ton of experience on the construction side. And then what was also nice was, when I would get stopped by a project, I’ll get talked to the neighbors, and I’ll get find out if anyone else had a property on that street or in that area that they were looking to sell. And then when I found them, I can just call our clients. Hey, you know, Jim, we’re rehabbing on 123 Elm Street and I’ve got 321 Elm Street coming up, would you like that property and make a fee for bringing him the deal. So that works really good.
Eventually got fired from that job and became a full time wholesaler and just kind of dug in. I was I was the bandit sign guy back in the day, and we buy houses on the corner of every major intersection. Yeah, answer the phone. While I was driving while I was in the bathroom, it didn’t matter if it was a lead, I was gonna grab it and go make an offer and try to get the deal. And so that was like around 2006 When I first started putting out bandit signs, and it was kind of neat to see because I feel like we’re back in that same environment right now. Where you have deals or you know, they sell real quick and, and people are just you know, real estate’s hot, you know, prices are high and that kind of thing. So I’ve seen the cycle come full circle, but that’s how it all began for me was was just going to little networking events and trying to figure out what I could do with my limited budget, and my limited skill sets but I had all the drive and ambition.
I just didn’t have any experience or any money or anything like that. And so that eventually transitioned into one of my buyers kind of got a little peeved with me and he said my prices were getting too high. And he said look if you have out on this next deal, if you believe in this thing so much. Why don’t you buy it and I’ll just lend you the money. There you go. And I guess he figured he could make as much Linden me money. There. Tina three is I could wholesale or he could rehab in it. And so it turned out pretty good because I was now able to make the full profit on the deal. And I just didn’t have a clue. I was like, I don’t know what that means doing the 12, three loan or whatever, but I’ll take it if that means I can buy the property. And then ultimately, him and I wound up buying some multifamily property together. And, and then years later, bought him out of the company. And so now that property is online, but it just started little by little, I knew where I wanted to end up. And I knew that I had to acquire the skills and the experience and the credit and the cash to excuse me to get that point. So just little by little, I started taking the next step.
And you know, a lot of times it’s just like accidents, like, you know, he didn’t know that this winter that I had, he didn’t know that I was interested in multifamily until he was in my office one day. And he made a comment about why don’t you have certified apartment manager plaque on your wall. He said, I thought you wanted to own property, not be an apartment manager, you know. And I had to explain that I was just going to learn the skills, so that I could hire those people, eventually, one day to work for me, and I know what I’m talking about. And, and so you know, and that’s it was a funny conversation. Because right after that, he said, you know, my bankers got 20 foreclosed apartments that he can get rid of.
If there’s something you’re interested in, you know, we ought to go talk to him. And that’s how it happened. And you know, it’s just it’s people say, let the world know what you’re doing and let people know what you’re interested in what you’re up to. Because if they don’t know, they may be sitting on that opportunity, that might be a perfect match for your skill set. And so when you kind of let the world know, and you have that passion, that energy, you’ll get opportunities, you know, and if you’re working really hard, eventually one of them is going to pan out. And that’s how it worked for me managed to buy my first multifamily property when I was 29.
Was, what year was that? We started looking heavy at the very end of 2010. You know, so things are still pretty screwed up. Back then people were afraid of real estate, nobody had job, but it was poor. The consumer sentiment was low, you know, people were just, you know, having tough times, but we closed on it the three days before my birthday, in 2011. And then it took about six months to renovate that property and lease it up. It’s a really interesting story, the way this came about was, this bank had made a bunch of loans back in, you know, previous to the crash, you know, oh 456 And seven at those prices. And then when the crash occurred, and banks stopped lending, and buyers stopped buying value spelled dramatically, especially on well on single and multifamily, for that matter. And so the bank was in a pickle, they had lent out $3.6 million on this property, and then taking it back in foreclosure. And then the property deteriorated.
They weren’t managing it, they had a lot of squatters, they had people in there using drugs, prostitution, it was a real problem for the bank, and they didn’t have the, the bandwidth to, you know, manage it. So they rather than Mark, you know, like you’ve heard mark to market, you know, it’s not worth 3.6 anymore, it’s probably worth, you know, a million bucks or something, especially after it’s vacant and torn up. And people been setting units on fire, I mean, it just has almost no value, it’s almost land value. So instead of write it down to a million and sell it, they we approached them and we told them look, you know, this thing’s probably worth less than a million, and you can sell to us for cash, we’ll go get a hard money loan will renovate it, you know, and then we’ll refi out and we’ll be fine. But what I’m looking at is the gross potential income for this property minus the expenses minus the debt service.
And then I want there to be enough leftover for me and my business partner to have some profit. And so I don’t care how we get to that number. If we have to go get an 18% loan for a million dollars and then pack another million on there for rehab and then eventually get a commercial mortgage payment needs to be x. If you guys just want to finance to me right now. Bare Bones interest rate with nothing down and even give me the fix up money and the payments still equals x. You know, that’s fine with me. I think rates are about eight or nine back then We were investors. And so it didn’t matter to me if we were going to go out and do it that way and get a 9% loan and get the payment of x, or they were just going to finance it to me for 2% interest at a higher price.
And give me the payment of x because you can work it both ways, you know, a low price with a high interest or a high price with a low interest equals the same payment. And so they said, Yeah, that’s what we’d like to do is we’d like to preserve our capital. preserve that Nope, that asset. And so why don’t you work it that way, tell us what’s the most you can pay with the sweetest terms. And so we went back and forth for a while and eventually came up on some terms and a number that worked. And I wound up buying it for 1.8, which is, I think, significantly more than what it was worth at the time. But I put no money down my partner put no money down.
And we both personally guaranteed the loan. It was more on him than me because he had assets and I didn’t. But it worked out really good. They also gave us the money to fix it up they gave us I think it was $500,000 for fix up and $100,000 for interest carry. And then it was no payments for a year. And then it was interest only on year two. And then the amortization schedule started on year three. And it was a 25 year loan at 2.9% interest with I think three adjustment periods year seven, year 12, and year 17, something like that.
Chris Bounds 11:45
But that’s an incredible rate, even even the lowest of rates that we experienced him two years ago. The thing he got that into his attendance crazy.
Chris Funk 11:57
It was amazing. Yeah. And I explained like this only way it works. They had been trying this little scam was several other buyers that had a doctor that bought it like that and ran away after three months. He couldn’t make it work. They had an attorney that tried to buy it from him like that. And they just kept repurposing it every time. And because people were scared of the asset, I mean, there was a lot of drug dealers and I had to wear a bulletproof vest and carry a sidearm. They just well just to put out my three day notices for eviction and yeah, what what’s this was in Houston. Yeah, this
Chris Bounds 12:35
is in Independence heights. Okay. All right. Yeah, makes sense. Now.
Chris Funk 12:40
It was a rough deal. But little by little I got it turned around and I, I gave out two notices. One is an application for rent. Two is your three day notice to vacate. You can pick one or the other. We need to get you checked out and get you on a lease if you’re a good guy. And if you’re a bad guy, we need to find a new home. Yep. It worked. You know, I met the local sheriff joe Dana, he’s run for sheriff now. But he actually was one of the guys that came out there in the very beginning and congratulated me and gave me his cell phone number and told me to call him if I ever needed help. And we just did the same thing everybody does. We renovated it, we evicted the bad tenants and we put new tenants in and, you know, we renovated the units and it burned down.
And now it’s great. It’s families. And it’s a wonderful asset. And so that catapulted me from basically being a one man show where I had to do everything myself, to having staff, you know, real staff, not just helpers that I’d hire from time to time, but like a real company, with real w two employees that were there every day from nine to five. And so I did have a few rentals before that. But it was just a hassle. It was almost like you’d cringe when you’d see a new deal that was so hot. Because you’re like, Oh, that would be so good to buy. But that’s one more house that I have to lease, I have to do work orders. It’s more work for me. So when I when I got the company, then I realized that I had staff that could help me with things, you know,
Chris Bounds 14:20
how many units was it? 7070. Okay, yeah. Okay, so that’s pretty sizable property.
Chris Funk 14:25
Yeah, it was enough to have a full time manager. And, of course, that manager will also manage the other rental properties that I had the single family homes that are all spread out across Houston.
Chris Bounds 14:38
Yeah. A little bit of scale. Economies of scale there.
14:43
Yes, exactly. Yeah,
Chris Bounds 14:46
that’s interesting. You did what I didn’t do so on the Wii U. I don’t know if you knew this, but my wife and I, we bought a 29 unit. It was our fourth property. And we bought it a steal it was like 17,000 and door in 2012. So 17,000 doors like crazy numbers today. And we put 170 into it, but we bought it so cheap, this was my thesis, I’m buying this so cheap that can afford to make a lot of mistakes and still make a lot of money, I could afford that. And then if I win, I’m gonna win big. So it was like a 20 to one odds. And fortunately, fortunately, and unfortunately, I did make a lot of mistakes and still made money. So that’s the good part.
But I ended up having to dump it because I didn’t have the partner in mind, I was alone, I went in lone gunman, and didn’t have a partner. And that was the key element that all the lenders at the end of the day when we’re trying to refinance that they were looking for, like, Hey, we love you, great, you got glad you got single family experience, but no multifamily experience, or, Hey, it’s great. But that property that that assets too old, or hey, great, ducks were too small, or hey, great, you don’t have the balance sheet, that we would want to loan the loan, even though this thing was cash was like a two, two plus debt coverage ratio.
So and then the end of the day is like, man, if we would have partnered with someone, which is better what you did, and that’s ultimately lesson learned, like you could have gotten the lone gunman and maybe you could have gotten to work, but probably would have been more painful and may not have been as successful. So for those folks that maybe you’re like me, you want to be the lone gunman like trying to find a good partner, they’re definitely worth it.
Chris Funk 16:37
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, if you if you need a partner or a key principle on a deal, there’s no, there’s no way around it. But what’s great about partnerships, especially if that person is bringing a lot of other skill sets is that there is a synergy and there was for me and my business partner, because he had a finance background. And when it came to the bookkeeping side of things, he was kind of setting up those systems in the in the very beginning. So I could focus on rehabbing, I could focus on hiring people and putting people into homes.
And he was handling the books and all the rest of it. But I was still learning how all that stuff worked. And he taught me so much. I mean, he was really a mentor to me, in in many different ways in real estate taught me a lot about owner finance, taught me a lot about strategy taught me a lot about the stuff that people don’t talk about, when it comes down to, you know, dealing with bankers and how that’s more of a courtship process, then, than it is a transaction, you know,
Chris Bounds 17:43
stuff that you don’t learn in a course this is just, this is pure in the trenches experience.
Chris Funk 17:49
Yeah, exactly. He’s like, Look, if you want to do business with a banker, go over there with a cashier’s check and open the account, you know, put 50 or $100,000 in this guy’s bank, and let it sit there for a couple months, and then call him and say, Hey, I’m looking to start a banking relationship with you. I’m a real estate guy, and I’ve opened an account there, and now he’s gonna pull up your account and say, Oh, wow, that’s great. It’s God put a bunch of cash in here. And, you know, because that helps bankers to make more loans. And, you know, and you learn how to talk to a banker, you got to realize they’re, they’re very sensitive, they’re very conservative.
They’re, they want to they don’t want to lose money. You have all the upside, they have no upside on your deal. All that good is the interest. So, you know, he explained, it’s, it’s about being conservative and speak and understanding that and an understanding of kind of the way things really work. But you’ve never read that in a book. Yeah. So yeah, maybe I could have pulled that deal off myself. I don’t know. But it was his contact that had that deal. Wasn’t my contact. And he kind of pushed me, you know, I was a little bit afraid, personally guaranteeing this thing at 29. And if it didn’t work out, you know, I mean, I don’t have much that they could take, but I had a house and a car and I didn’t want my credit ruined.
So yeah, it was nice to have someone there even even if it’s just for the, you know, the support in the beginning. Yeah, we do have some scary, and you have someone that has been down that road before and it was his first multifamily property as well. But I think it made a big difference to have the two of us go in there. And now I feel confident that you know, it’s, I was in the same boat as you and I try to go get loans and you know, they just kind of look at me, like, why would I want to loan anything to you, man, you know, and then I realized you got to have a personal financial statement. Here’s what it needs to look like. And little by little I started to realize and learned a lot of really good things. Edie taught me a lot of really good stuff on how to deal with banks, and put together Portfolio A little resume about yourself.
And, you know, I said bankers love that sort of thing. You know, they can show that to the, to the board and the loan committee and you know, look at this guy all the time and energy he put into showing us about him because he’s not here today. But here’s this little booklet, you know, and this is everything about the guy. You know, page three is his tax returns, page four is his credit report. Page five is criminal history search. Here’s all the people that work in his company, page three is his personal financials. It’s, here’s photos of properties that he’s done rehabs he’s done like you can real quickly get a good look at this guy and understand who he is. And it makes a huge difference versus some guy who’s just knocking on their door saying he wants a loan. Yeah,
Chris Bounds 20:45
yeah, no, I’ve done that. Also, from Eddie learning from him. And for those that don’t know, this guy’s like a local legend. He’s bought 1000s of houses. But I remember bringing that packet in. And they’re like, they kind of look at me funny. Like, I’ve never seen like, no one ever gives me a package this clean, like, yeah, and it was kind of astounding to me. I was like, why wouldn’t you but there’s just a lot of sloppy operators out there.
Chris Funk 21:13
It makes a big difference, though. And, you know, I think the biggest thing, Tom told me this is about perspective. He said, one of the most important things in business is to have the right perspective. Because your perspective may not be accurate. And you need to have the perspective of the person you’re selling to. Perspective is everything. And once you look at it from the other side, and you see their perspective, you can tailor your approach. And that makes a world of difference. Whether you’re trying to go out and buy someone’s you know, old rundown property, you need to know their perspective, what matters to them, what their concerns are, you’re trying to borrow money from somebody, you need to know what their perspective is,
Chris Bounds 22:02
and make their jobs easier by giving the stuff up front, so they’re gonna have to hunt for it. I’ve told him, I’ve told him you’ve probably experienced this to rentals, you get a rental application that’s like half filled out, it’s all chicken scratch, you can’t read the other half. And they didn’t submit this, this and this and you’re having to chase it down. I’m like, agents, look, if you want to help your clients, like, have everything to go like ready to go like that, that puts your client in a position to win, not, not kind of aggravate the landlord.
Chris Funk 22:33
Yes. And right now it’s easy to win because we kind of have this new culture of, you know, we’re barely do nothing Mondays, or whatever it is, you know. So I feel like nowadays, people can really stand out that doing the stuff that you and I are talking about. And because because it’s not so many people do that, and but the winners do. And, and that’s kind of always been my policy is to tailor and craft my approach to the person who I’m trying to sell to or buy from. And that just makes such a big difference. But but that went well for me. And it took it took a little time to get that property straightened out. And I definitely took some time off. After that. I did quite a bit of travel and I did a big Europe trip.
After I got that property stabilized, I think around 2012. Well, yeah, that’d be about a year after I bought it. That was when I that summer I said, Okay, I’m out. You know, y’all got this thing. Y’all know what’s going on, we got at least up, just don’t let it burn down. And I did it. You know, tons of fun. I went to went to the Grand Prix in England. I went to Croatia, France, Greece, just, you know, had a great time. And when I got back, everything was just as good as when I left. And that’s when I knew like this is what they said. It’s exactly what they promised. Yeah, yeah, um, this business, they’ll give you direct deposits while you’re out of the country. When you come back, everything will be just like he left it.
Chris Bounds 24:03
Now. Could you have done that if you had a wholesaling or flipping business? I
Chris Funk 24:08
doubt it. I mean, I’m sure there’s some people that have got their business set up like that, but I think it’s a lot more difficult because you can’t go I mean, maybe now it’s changed but you go out to hire an apartment manager. There’s 421,000 search results that come back for apartment manager, it’s on their resume. But if you put wholesaler you know there’s maybe there’s not that many people that are in the wholesaling job. It’s just not a apartments are like a commodity. There’s there’s hundreds of 1000s of people that you can plug into that business, and they already know what to do. Wholesaling and rehabbing is just not that way. It’s It’s It’s as a business. I feel like it’s more in its infancy. So I think there might be some people that have done that. But it’s it’s more difficult apart for
Chris Bounds 25:00
you, in my experience, yeah, very, very few. And beyond that. I’d say almost everyone that I know has that has tried to scale. Now I’m talking flipping here not wholesaling, wholesaling, I think is probably easier. But flipping everyone that I know has tried to scale, a flipping business either scaled back down, because they realize, hey, like, this is insane. I’m one of those, or they checked out, like Gone, either they said, Screw it, or they went out of business. There’s really only two that I can think of that’s really been able to push it. Yeah, well,
Chris Funk 25:40
I think that there’s just so many decisions that have to be made.
Chris Bounds 25:44
And they’re very impactful ones. There’s a lot of money around.
Chris Funk 25:48
Yeah, yeah, really a lot of really tough and complicated decisions. And I think that’s what stops it from, from being an automated business where the apartment business is very automated. If they don’t pay, you do this, if they do this, you do this, you know, it’s just a systemized industry now, and it was great, I loved it. But you know, just like you, I wanted to get back to wholesaling and, and get back to buying property again, and I wanted to do it in a passive manner. So what I did was, I had two employees in the office at that time, a manager and a leasing. So I took the manager, and I started running leads again. And I would have the manager helped me clear title, hey, I need you to call this guy and find out who his heirs are. So we can get this airship affidavit, you know, or something. And then eventually I’d say, Hey, you go look at that property and meet with them after there. Take some pictures.
If I like it, I’ll go talk to him. And that was working well, and then eventually, I think she just came back with a contract sign. I hadn’t even you know, I was like, Yeah, you know, see if they’ll take 20. And she came back. She goes, yeah, they said yes to 20. And I got him to sign this off, like, wow, I always do that, again, God is saying, I don’t even need to go anymore, you know. And that worked out great. And eventually had a couple people doing that for me where I could still own the apartments still do wholesaling and rehabbing and buying rentals. But I didn’t have to be answering every call, you know, in the shower, or whatever, or hopping in the car and leaving lunch to go look at a property. And, you know, I had people that were helping me.
So that made a huge difference. And the strategy was anything that’s awesome. I’m keeping anything that sucks, I’m gonna sell wholesale. And you know, the stuff in the middle, I’ll just figure it out. Maybe I’ll keep it as a rental. Maybe I’ll keep it because it’s a good owner finance. Maybe it would make a great flip. But it just wouldn’t work as a rental or, or wholesale because it’s occupied, and they’re skittish. So I can’t wholesale it. But that was my model, you know, the very best rentals anything subject to take it down as a rental. And that worked for a while and then I wound up switching again, that employee left. And then things just got so tight where it was so tough to market and get a return. You know, I
Chris Bounds 28:32
put what what timeframe is that now?
Chris Funk 28:35
This probably started in 2018. That’s fine. Is that work for you? Yeah.
Chris Bounds 28:42
So we, you know, we’ve flipped on our houses or so. And we’ve held a few here and there and then along the way realize, like, hey, we built a really crazy job for us. That’s it was fun for a while, but now it’s a job. So we need to go the passive route. And so, but it was 2018. Yeah. And when we decided, hey, let’s start holding more flipping last. Yeah. And while that model made sense, under prior data, the market had changed. So it was far fewer that same model in 2006 15 through 17. I mean, we could have held probably three out of four deals or four out of five deals. But it started in 2018. It was like less than 50%. And again, quickly deteriorating.
Chris Funk 29:29
Oh, yeah, that’s exactly the same thing that I saw. It was tougher to find deals. That made sense. It was tougher to get the deal. There was a lot of competition out there. And so I just quit doing that. started doing a little bit of hard money lending. Never done a whole lot of hard money lending or private money lending, I guess. But it just got to the point where it was more trouble than it was worth. I was spending massive amounts of money on marketing and not getting a deal. Yeah. So, so Well, I don’t need to do that, if it’s not working out need to do that right now the cash flow from the Reynolds is enough.
And, and I have a lot of other stuff I like to do, you know, and I feel bad for people. I love business and I love seeing people succeed. But I feel bad for guys that tell me that you know real estate’s The only thing they do for fun, I’m like, man, you’re missing out, there’s a lot more fun stuff to do. And just real estate. I mean, I’m never gonna quit doing real estate. But, you know, the guys that work 18 hour days, seven days a week, and, you know, the grind guys or whatever. And I’m like, don’t get me wrong. I’m also working that much. It’s just not always on real estate.
Chris Bounds 30:38
Yeah, there’s a season for that. Like, we were talking about taking a shower and all that, like, that’s fun for a minute. Yeah,
Chris Funk 30:46
I’ve done that. Yeah.
Chris Bounds 30:47
Yeah. On Call 230. For the week. On week, you know, 64? Yeah, it’s not as fun. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it’s one of those things. Yeah, the the first pie tastes good. But after three or four years, you know, you want to break so but you built out a team. And that was able, you were probably you were able to preserve your enthusiasm for the business because you were able to find the team and therefore move into different areas of the business as opposed to being stuck in the trenches the entire time.
Chris Funk 31:23
That’s a great point. Yeah, I actually got I got burned out wholesaling. And then I was rejuvenated. When I became a wholesaler that didn’t have to see the property, it changed everything. Now, I was excited because they were doing the hard part or the part I didn’t want to do. And I still got the fun part, which was seeing the contract, sizing up the deal. salivating over the deal, and then closing the deal and figuring out how I’m going to exit the property and, or what I’m going to do with it. And I love that, you know, I love running the comps and going oh my gosh, this thing’s gonna just be so good. And I don’t have to go track down the heirs to the airship affidavit, because that part’s not fun.
And it made a huge difference, because I still love the thrill of the hunt and the art of the deal. That stuff’s awesome, you know, the little bit of anxiety that you feel, you know, waiting to see if they’re gonna show up the closing. And they’re kind of maybe like a little bit of a sketchy seller and you’re not sure and there’s a lot of equity and you’re wondering if, and then they show up and you sign you’re like, Man, what a terrific deal. I just did. Like, that’s a wonderful feeling. I love that. Yeah, yeah. And I miss that feeling. You know, because I haven’t been doing any any purchases or, or anything for quite a while now worried about
Chris Bounds 32:42
that brother in law in prison, who he’s holding back a signature.
Chris Funk 32:47
Yeah, we found him in prison, you gotta use the prison notary. You can’t use your own notary. You gotta use the prison notary. We figured that out.
Chris Bounds 32:58
Yeah, you’ve got some perspective, though. I know, you have some thoughts you probably want to share on the current market, but you’ve gone through some market cycles. I mean, you start in 2006. So you definitely were in before the actually, well, let me rephrase that. You’ve gone through multiple historic events 2008. And then because most of your business probably is in Houston, three historic, of course, historic floods, and then a pandemic. So that’s a lot to take in and still, you know, be standing and I know, you’re like Rocky Balboa? What? What would you say? Going through those events like and coming out? And not just surviving, but thriving, like, how’s that made you a better investor today?
Chris Funk 33:49
Um, yeah, it’s really good. You know, every time you get in the boxing ring, and somebody knocks your lights out, you remember that, and you remember where that punch came from? How fast it came, and what it felt like when it hits you. And then you adapt, and you realize I need to move out of the way. You know, and, and so that’s what it’s done for me. And I’ve realized, you know, moving out of the way, in real estate, it’s, it’s about having cash, you know, that’s how you dodge a punch in real estate is you have cash on the sidelines.
And when you can’t collect rent, because there’s a rent moratorium or eviction. You got to be able to pay the bills. And so that’s one of the first things I’ve realized is that you’re your frontline against these things that come come at you is having your deep pockets having that money set aside and not distributing that money to your business partners or to yourself, not going out and buying a Ferrari or, you know, whatever. And I have so many friends that do that, you know, they get some cash in our account to buy new car.
Chris Bounds 35:03
Yeah. And it’s like having I mean, a business is is like an infant? Yeah, yeah, I don’t know if you have kids, but it’s like an infant. And babies need to eat a lot very frequently. And related to business. It’s like, you’re sucking all the milk, like when you’re sucking all the milk, like you can’t do that it’s gonna, it’s gonna really negatively impact the health of the baby, you do your business do you can’t be making those distributions to yourself, because you want to go in lavish vacations, and you’ve only wholesale or houses and you want to grow this great big empire. Like it doesn’t work that way.
Chris Funk 35:42
Yeah, and you always have to, you know, I took this from I took this from gas, what’s the guy that owns the rockets, and all the restaurant restaurants
Chris Bounds 35:53
for TITO
Chris Funk 35:55
partita. And he said, Look, when I pencil out a deal, I always pencil out. Worst case scenario, and that, if you had if I had to sum up my strategy, it’s always been that which would probably make sense if you’ve seen my views about the economy. I’m always looking for the worst case scenario. But if it works, and if you can get by on the worst case scenario,
Chris Bounds 36:22
you’re gonna be fine. Yeah, everything. Everything else is upside.
Chris Funk 36:25
Yeah. And that’s kind of the way I live my life. You know, everything I do. I’m predicting the worst case scenario. And I’m training up for that. And if that doesn’t happen, well, then I’m leaps and bounds ahead of the next guy, because I was prepared to show up and have everything break. And I got backups. And that’s just been my whole position towards business. And then the other part of it is, you know, when that event comes, that you maybe didn’t expect, is just get to work and use common sense. You know, if you got a bunch of floods, well, you know, you got flood insurance, go fix your houses, get them rehabbed, go talk to the tenants, go buy some more flood houses that are cheap, you know, if they’re on sale for 40, grand, and $120,000 neighborhood, go buy a bunch more of those, you know, if you get sick of it, and you got a house, it’s flooded more than once.
Sell it, you know, and I’ve had to do that, you know, I had a house flooded in Harvey and never flooded again kept it. I’ve got one house was every time but Harvey sold it. You know, you just common sense, I think is the is the biggest thing. But back to the like the market shifting on you. The first time it shifted on me was 2008, I was a wholesaler, I had my own home, and a car. And that was really the only thing I had. And this is back when there was fax machines. And so all the sudden, the subprime collapse happened. Everybody knew about it hard money lenders kind of closed up overnight. And I had probably 10 wholesale deals on the market, you know, sending out emails, put them on websites and stuff. And overnight, people stopped calling me before you could throw anything out there and it would sell it you can make the numbers up and it would sell overnight.
People stopped calling back there was no activity. I had to extend my contracts with the sellers explain to him what was going on. And then I just started calling people common sense start reaching out to people reached out to a realtor. He said, Well, hey, maybe I can list some of these houses for sale. I don’t think he understood that I didn’t own them, that I was just wholesaling them. But regardless, he listed a few for me on the MLS. And I was out of town that weekend. And my roommate called me and was like, hey, the fax machines out of paper, there’s paper all over the floor. I don’t know what’s going on, it won’t stop. So we’ll put more paper and read me the paper on the floor. And he said why he says one to four residential contract,
Chris Bounds 39:08
if anyone out there that if you don’t want a fax machine, it was this little box that kind of like an email, but instead of looking at it digitally, it actually printed the paper out for you.
Chris Funk 39:19
That’s right. That’s right. And those are offers that were coming in on the fax machine, one after the next after the next. So here’s what happened. The local guys in town, got scared, quit buying hedge funds. Were sitting like a sniper waiting. They’ve been waiting for years. They had a full clip. Their site was teed in on the target ready to go. And so as soon as I started putting properties on the market at a certain price per square foot in a certain zip code that hid their little algorithm and their agents came out of the woodwork on it. And this lady said we’ll buy all three of these Do you have anything else? I said, Yeah, I got like eight more that I haven’t listed. She said, Send me the address and the price. And I think that’s what happened.
Chris Bounds 40:09
And we’re talking about 2018. And how the market fundamentals for rentals is really went out of whack. I think that’s kind of what happened because of the flood events that Houston had. I mean, we had, I think, three or four years where historic events and I think that brought especially Harvey brought in, there’s so much outside money, buying up these blood houses, whether they knew what was going on or not. I don’t know that was just my opinion on or my my observation. Yeah, it wasn’t the only thing at play, but it definitely was a big
Chris Funk 40:41
catalyst. It was a big catalyst. Yeah, it changed a lot. And I think that people were, you gotta be careful what neighborhood you buy. And if that neighborhood floods every year,
Chris Bounds 40:52
well, I bought some of them. I bought some of them that went to the back to the hard money. One and it was Arizona or New Mexico, some some outfit and they weren’t a hedge fund. It was some investor who got way too much from the skis. And he had like five or six, and this national hard money company reached out to me and I knew them and they’re like, hey, look, we got the here’s our sheet. Let me know which ones you want. And we’ll find them all. So I think I picked three. And I wholesaled a hotel one meaning I closed it immediately sold it. I think another one I put on MLS and sold and then other ones kept with a rental and got a huge payday after just renting it for one year. Yeah, that was a those were good deals back to the very beginning when you’re talking about relationships with banks. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I knew them. They knew me.
Chris Funk 41:49
Yeah, yeah. Having a banker really changes the game. You know, it’s the Unlimited, you know, money supply from one guy, you know, and that just makes a huge difference. Not having to unlimited cheap money, essentially. But yeah, that the Harvey changed a lot. I definitely bought a few deals during Harvey. But I really want to buy this stuff in Milan, just because I know that that area is just a
Chris Bounds 42:15
it’s a swamp. Yeah, it is a
Chris Funk 42:17
swamp. So I steered clear that, but I did buy some stuff on the east side. That’s turned out really well. And the appreciation is amazing. And you know, I really missed out a lot by studying the
Chris Bounds 42:28
market that like the addicts in the Barker Cypress area, and I think the Cinco area that so there was a lot of people paying crazy prices. I thought crazy prices in hindsight, like those are probably your steals for if they would have kept them and rented them at least.
Chris Funk 42:50
Oh, god, that was a wonderful area. Yeah, all that stuff that floated out there, because I think they fixed that damn now or they’re not going to release it again. If you bought anything out there, that was a flooded house, that was probably a smart move. But, you know, the crazy thing is all the appreciation that we’ve seen in the last five years, which is when I stopped buying, and I went out and bought 100 houses, another 100 houses, you know, I’d be in a way different position today. But you never know what you’re gonna get into it. Part of my fear of the market is what I actually did for that hard money lender that that private lender that I wound up partnering with to buy the multifamily? Well, before we did that, he was an owner finance guy.
And he had been owner financing in early 2000s. And he got a bunch of foreclosures back in 2008 a whole bunch and I would go out and sell those for him, I would either wholesale them or I would go out and find an owner finance buyer for him put the deal together and then he’d pay me for buying the buyer. And it was so difficult because he owed so much on these houses. And I was trying to explain to him look your numbers don’t work. I don’t know why you bought this and I don’t know why he paid this price but I can’t sell it for this right now the markets in the gutter and time after time after time, you know I would just try it sometimes I could make it work I could get it sold the number he needed by adjusting the downpayment or the interest rate or just pushing for more buyers until eventually I found somebody but there was a lot where he’s, he throw in the towel and say okay, rent it. You know, I need to get 1400 a month for this thing to cover.
And I’m like look do this to $800 Rent neighborhood. What do you want me to do? You know, and he was getting smoked. He had probably 20 or 30 houses like that. And I saw him each time I book one he tells me I’m losing 500 a month on this house. Next one. I’m losing 650 a month on this house. Next one, okay, I’m losing 50 bucks a month on this one. But he had to get a move. He had to do something with it. And I saw that guy just get completely out I can do the cleaners. And so when I started seeing prices appreciation in 2018, I thought, Man, this can’t go on forever. I don’t want to be like that guy. I don’t want to buy a bunch of stuff had the market crash, and then I can’t get what I need out of it. So, but there are some things you can do. You know, he had all the five year balloon style loans on his properties. Yeah. So his interest is only fixed for the first five years. Yeah, yeah, you know, if you do that you’re in danger. If you get a 30 year loan, right off the bat, your rental, you might pay a little more interest. But then you don’t really care what the market does. And if you do rentals, instead of owner finance, you don’t care what prices are you just care that someone will rent
Chris Bounds 45:46
it from you. Yeah, so I think that’s a vulnerability that I do get that rental properties and in general are more wealth building plays, not cash flow. And then general owners finance is a bit more of a cash flow play. But otherwise, it’s depreciating asset. But the vulnerability to owners finances is the foreclosure and also mitigating the downside risk from an insurance perspective on the property condition whenever you foreclose, because if it flooded, and you didn’t require flood insurance, and you foreclose, like, Yeah, you get the property back. But now what?
Chris Funk 46:27
Yeah, exactly, yeah, there’s a lot and I’ve been on both sides of an owner finance deal that goes bad. I’ve been on one where it appreciated so much, and they quit paying. And I asked him if they wanted to just deed it back to me in lieu of foreclosure. And they said, Yes. And I said, Fine, kept as a rental. And I got all that appreciation. And it was, I was, I was sad that they lost their home and they had to move and couldn’t make it work. But financially is a is a big win for my balance sheet. Because you know, it had appreciated so much, and they can pay my loan down so much. And then I’ve been on the flip side, I’ve got one right now we’re in month number 13 of this guy’s third bankruptcy case, he has paid me in over a year. And I sold it to him at the top of the market. So now I got to foreclose, and, you know, yeah, probably worth half of what he owes me, I’m gonna get smoked on that deal. I’m always 100 grand, but maybe I’ll rent it out for 20 years and not lose anything.
Chris Bounds 47:26
I’m does if you can sustain it, time heals. Most, not all but most wounds in real estate. But you do have to be able to sustain it. Switching gears. I’ve got a couple other things that definitely wanna hit on before we wind up the market outlook, you’ve got your you got perspective from 2008. From your business partner with the hard money lender. You’ve kind of saw some when changing in 2018. Here we are 2023 when every single year.
Like you I’ve heard the market is going to crash since about 2017. Probably too hot, it’s going to CRASH CRASH CRASH didn’t get going and then the pandemic happened and it’s just like, freaking rocket ship. Now, here we are 2023. There are cloudy skies. I don’t think anyone disagrees that the markets a little cloudy right now, a little uncertain. But how do you see the next 12 to 24 months shaken out? The as far as real estate is concerned home values? And print at least from an investor perspective?
Chris Funk 48:33
Well, it’s really hard. And I’ll tell you why it’s really hard to predict. It’s because we don’t really have pure economics. If it was pure economics, everyone would have been right already. All the all the crash bros would have been right. But we kind of have this hybrid system with the Federal Reserve Bank and quantitative easing. And so what winds up happening is, instead of having this pure market where buyers and sellers meet at a price, you know, that has a lot to do with supply and demand. That’s a typical market. We have this these market distortions that are created by the government printing money and the government adjusting the the interest rate.
And so I feel like when you heard guys saying in 2017 2018 2019, what they were saying about maybe a potential crash was, hey, based on economic principles, this is we’re heading into something bad. The reason they were wrong was because the federal government was able to push that inevitable crash off into the future by manipulating the market and distorting the market with interest rate manipulation and money printing. So Oh, when you asked me, What do I think’s going to happen in the next 18 to 24 months? I say, it all depends on what the Fed does. And so then you’ve got to look at the Fed, what are their options? And what are their objectives? And so that’s the wild card that we don’t know. Because
Chris Bounds 50:22
they’ve stated their objective is 3% inflation. And we’re much higher than that now. But they they’ve stated, hey, look, we’re going to get this down to 3%,
Chris Funk 50:33
or 2%. I’ve heard and so. Right, but you got to question the guy, you know, is does he have other motives? Are there political motives? Are people there’s always
Chris Bounds 50:44
political motives?
Chris Funk 50:47
What about his legacy? You know, does he want to be remembered as the guy who broke the back of inflation save the country? Or does you know, there’s a lot of considerations. But legally, the Fed only has two mandates, and that’s price stability, and maximum employment. So if we go under the guise that the Fed is what they say they are, then we’ve got to get inflation down to 2%. It’s at about 10. Right now, if you measure it on the CPI, it’s five. And so if we’re saying CPI measured, inflation has to be two, and we’re at five, they’ve got three to go or two to go. And in order to do that, they’re probably going to have to keep rates as high as they are right now. For a while,
Chris Bounds 51:34
we got steadily, maybe not raise or raise much more but more hold.
Chris Funk 51:41
We’ve got to hold and see, and then see what happens. Because all the stuff we did last year, will feel the effects this year, a net?
Chris Bounds 51:49
Yeah, it’s a delayed effect. Nine months or so typically for deployment,
Chris Funk 51:57
right? So if we were to pause, and wait, and inflation was to go to 4.5, and then stabilize, then maybe they kick rates up higher, and see if they can get, you know, closer to their goal of two or 3%. So only time will tell. But I think one thing I do know, if you tell me what the Feds gonna do, I can tell you what the market
Chris Bounds 52:22
but the feds, not the only it almost seems like the Fed, they’ve got their agenda, and they’ve got their objectives. And then then you have the federal government, ie Congress, the President, they’ve got very much some aligned, but also very different objectives, some short term elections, and then some long term which printing money like, you know, the raising the debt ceiling, stimulus packages, extended unemployment, you know, employment economic that I know the pandemic, that was a very unique situation, but there was a lot of money like helicopter money going around. So it’s almost like the government’s not helping the fed with their objective. And it’s like, I don’t know, it’s almost like this battle. Will that wonder how that’ll sustain as we get into a presidential election,
Chris Funk 53:18
it very much as the battle, the federal, the fiscal and the monetary are fighting each other. And one of them is undoing the work of the US.
Chris Bounds 53:27
Yeah, that’s like, Yeah, I think if you’re stuck with printing money, you know, it definitely helps pull things back in.
Chris Funk 53:35
Right, but then you got the guy who’s trying to decrease the money supply. And you’re over here, increasing the money supply. So the only thing he can do is to make the money more expensive. So short answer, if they keep the money expensive, we will have a crash. And it’ll start with commercial real estate. It’ll start with any real estate that does not have fixed debt. Simply because you can’t refinance out of a property at a higher interest rate on on a price that was predicated on a low interest rate,
Chris Bounds 54:07
what is assuming rates stay roughly where they are now? Up? Plus or minus maybe a half a point? You know, what does crash look like to you? In the end, you mentioned commercial, so what specifically in commercial
Chris Funk 54:25
and I think it’s going to be all commercial real estate that has debt maturity, that’s going to occur while rates are elevated. I don’t care what kind of property
Chris Bounds 54:38
it is. It will cost the space industrial, multifamily and
Chris Funk 54:42
single family if you have a rental property, let’s say that there’s 500 rental homes in Houston that are on balloon loans that are going to balloon next year, and they can’t refinance at 9% and still cashflow they’ll have to all go on the market. And if They’re all rental properties being sold as a package, the only buyer for those properties is gonna be another landlord who’s going to face the same problem that you’re in. They don’t cashflow at 9% I’ll give you 60 cents on the dollar, because then they’ll then they’ll cashflow. And so but that’s not a huge part of the market for single family. So single family is mostly fixed rate loans for 30 years by people that live in the homes, so the market can go to hell. And they’ll just be sitting there paying their mortgage and not even aware of what happened. Yeah.
Chris Bounds 55:30
And then also 99% of single families that six less than 6%. That’s like 70% or less than 4%. Like, there’s ridiculous that that goes into inventory now. So going in if if you’re sitting at three and a half percent, like you’re probably gonna die in your home, like, you’re never gonna sell that thing. Go try. Absolutely. On top of like, you know, they just weren’t building enough over the last, you know, 10 years, right. I’ve heard that argument as well. It’s like, how can we crash a market that’s so under supply? Whether you’re, you know, we’re 4 million or six and a half, which I think NAR HUD said we’re six and a half million homes under supply? I’ve heard higher numbers?
Chris Funk 56:16
Well, the fallacy with that argument, in my opinion, is you’re assuming that demand is a constant. And that would be true if demand was a constant. But supply means nothing. If the demand falls off a cliff, and supply means nothing if unemployment is 10%, and no one can make their mortgage payments. So I don’t think single families headed into a crash this year, I don’t think is headed into a crash next year. We don’t have that subprime immediate, you know, lightning crack that’s gonna send us off a cliff. But there’s a
Chris Bounds 56:49
lot of equities, a lot of equity built into those homes. Oh, yeah.
Chris Funk 56:53
Right now most people are in a great position to sell and they’re not Yeah, if you bought two years ago, you’d have equity. But what I do think will happen with these high rates is it hurts the commercial side. For the reasons I mentioned. It hurts the stock market, big time. And the stock market is I think 50% of our GDP. It’s a massive amount. And it’s in it’s where everyone’s wealth and savings is held. So if they keep the rates up the markets kind of hoping that there’s going to be a pivot soon. If the markets find out, there’s not going to be a pivot and we have a big stock market crash, then I think we’re headed for tough times. Powell has said in a roundabout way he needs to get inflation to temper. I’m sorry, unemployment to 10%. We’re at 3.5. Right now. Yeah, we’re far from we’re far from it. But he basically said in a roundabout way, we need to be at 10%. If we get to 10% unemployment, single family will absolutely suffer.
FHA foreclosures, or sorry, FHA delinquencies are already at a higher rate than they were in the first quarter of 2008. So I do see trouble brewing for single family. And if the, if the unemployment starts to go up, rates stay higher for longer, you start seeing more foreclosures and multifamily, more pain in the stock market. And then the final draw is the emotional side and news headlines. Because as you know, most people are too busy to think about this stuff. They keep their head down, they go to work, they feed the kids and they go to bed. But if they turn on the news before they go to bed, and it says that the real estate markets bad. Oh, I don’t want to buy a home because it’s bad. Yeah, market
Chris Bounds 58:36
sentiment, market sentiments real. I mean, it does matter.
Chris Funk 58:42
Those homeowners want to buy when the price is sky high. That’s when most homeowners feel best. When that when the price is just out of sight. That’s when they rush out to buy a home. That makes sense to me. But that’s typically when people love to go by. But that’s when you get given them away. You can’t get anybody to touch real estate, you know. And so it’s kind of opposite of how I work. But I understand it, you know, people think it’s, you know, the bad market. The news is bad market that people won’t buy. But that’d be the final straw is is the consumer sentiment. If you start hearing about massive layoffs, companies going out of business, for credit, you start seeing foreclosure signs in your neighborhood. That’s when I think single family can run into a problem because single families price at the margin. You know, if there’s two, three foreclosures in your neighborhood, next thing you know, all the value start to go down.
And then the third thing about single family that I don’t think most people realize is that supply and demand only matters if you have a buyer that’s capable of buying well in America. No one’s capable of buying now. No one. I mean, maybe you and me, maybe a few other people, but Americans can they buy mortgage payments, they buy mortgages, they buy 30 year mortgages that have a house. And so if that gets screwed up, which I think it will SDV, the other bank signature, and then I think Credit Suisse is done too. And these are just the first ones, the rest of them are clinging to life. But if we have a banking problem, tell me how much house you can afford. If the bank won’t give you a loan. It’s irrelevant. Supply and demand is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter. But again, that’s predicated on me thinking that we’ll have a natural bank collapse where bad banks will go out of business, the government might say, no, they’re not gonna go out of business. In fact, they’re all gonna get bailed out and everyone’s gonna get a home loan, no matter how bad this recession is. Everyone can buy home, nothing down 2%. Well, that changes that again. So as you see,
Chris Bounds 1:00:56
there’s, there’s so many variables that go in and you know, and then now there’s talks of 40 year mortgages, and I don’t know, there’s FHA came out with a 40 year mortgage option. It’s very, very specific. So it’s not like opened open at large, and I forget the parameters, but there’s that stated income loans were peeking their head during the pandemic, and like, hey, at 6%, and if they need to stimulate the housing industry, does that come back? I mean, I don’t know. Do we get subprime again? I don’t know. It’s, it’s weird. But during the day, if you buy in market fundamentals, as an investor, you’re buying a market fundamentals, strong historical markets with good job growth, good. Population growth, quality housing, and you’ve got your margin coverage ratio, fix that fix that fix debt, or on the commercial side, your binary caps. And you’re doing that and then you manage properly, you should be okay. Long term,
Chris Funk 1:02:01
I think. So if you can manage the debt, you can almost buy anytime that
Chris Bounds 1:02:05
that’s really the that’s the problem today, if the debt, it’s all debt management, getting the debt to work. I really think the greatest opportunities for investors over the next several years is gonna be sub two, like, man, you can get a sub two, you know, 2.75%, it’s not hard to rent that. I agree. Um, so I’d imagine those are going to be coming back. That’s how I bought my first few houses. There were some two. Now they were sub two at 9%.
Chris Funk 1:02:36
And I still renting them out. Yeah, absolutely. They still work. Yeah. Okay. I’m
Chris Bounds 1:02:41
kind of kind of last questions here. You’ve transitioned your grit, or not transitioned, but you’ve, you’ve moved your grit into outside of real estate activities, ie mountain biking, and also flying? Which is harder, pushing through the physical faint pain of like a brutal mountain bike trail, or running a successful business through these,
Chris Funk 1:03:07
these trials? Oh, gosh, it’s that’s a good comparison. One is you know, mountain biking is very intense pain that is condensed down into a very short time period.
Chris Bounds 1:03:24
And you know, there’s,
Chris Funk 1:03:25
yeah, you know, exactly when the end is coming. And it doesn’t require a lot of mental anguish. It’s mostly physical. But running a business is mostly mental, very little physical, and it’s unpredictable and lasts forever. So which one’s worse? I couldn’t tell you. I’d say the physical pain of mountain biking is probably worse. But hey, when you get sued by your business partner, and you’ve got a an employee, they’ve spying on you trying to help your business partner put you out of business in the middle of an IRS audit. That’s pretty tough, mentally, I don’t know. I’ve been through all that stuff. I’ve had every situation you can imagine. But you know, business tends to be like a, you know, like the waves in an ocean. They come and go and there’s a lot of low times where things like right now I’ve got things on autopilot. Things are just sweet. Everything’s working. So I’d say right now mountain biking is significantly more difficult, or at least competing. And mountain biking is is a lot more difficult. They my real estate agents
Chris Bounds 1:04:31
Love it. Love it. Anything else on those two activities, flying and not blocking you and share before you close it out?
Chris Funk 1:04:38
Yeah, get a pilot’s license. It was the best thing I ever did. I started about four years ago with my friend Carlos in the apartment industry and he told me to go fly a glider one time. They talked me into going to ground school to get our private license, wound up going to the ground school. One of taking lessons, loved it got the license. I wound up buying a little aerobatic airplane, that’s just an absolute hoot to fly, I can get to Austin in 45 minutes, you know, I can get to Denver and five hours, it cuts your drive time down into about a quarter or a third.
Not to mention just so stinking fun. The view of flying an airplane over the leg, and doing loops and rolls and just having fun. It’s an amazing thing. And it really works. The mind I find like, being a pilot keeps my mind sharp because there’s so much thinking involved in aviation. And so that correlates really well with business because you’re, you’re using that same analytical muscle, you’re having to control your emotions, to tamp down that fear. And look at the logic behind you know, think of the principles. What am I doing here? I know it’s scary, but it’s fine. Because I know this is gonna work. It’s the same as you having to push through the fear and do something that your brain is telling you. This looks bad.
Chris Bounds 1:06:02
Yeah, because especially if you’re VFR like there’s no real autopilot, like you got to be there. You got to be there, listen to the radio and changing, making adjustments to your course along the way. And
Chris Funk 1:06:19
actually, speaking of VFR I’m actually studying right now for my IFR. Because the big letdown of getting an airplane. People are selling a pot of less well, we should go fly to New York or something. Me you and three other guys. I’m like, do you want me to tell you the 100 reasons why we can’t or do you want me to just tell you? One that’s too much weight the airplane too. We got to stop for gas every three to three. I don’t know what the weather is gonna be like in a week, we might not be able to fly home. Are you cool staying there until the weather?
Yeah, I got so tired all that. But I finally decided that I was going to get my instrument riding so that I could fly. And in about 95% of all weather conditions with the instrument rating. You can go through clouds, you can go through overcast, you can go through small storm, there’s a small rain showers that are not, you know, big storms. And so I’m working on that now so that I can expand my horizons. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flown out of town. And then when I go to come home, it’s you know, clouds at 1000 feet and like crap, I can’t get out of here.
Chris Bounds 1:07:23
Texas goes away, you know? Yeah, you know, think about that, until you get your Gulfstream. Well, you know, that’s
Chris Funk 1:07:31
saving up for that right? Just add more million ago.
Chris Bounds 1:07:35
Alright, closing out a few questions. We asked everyone the same question starting out. If you could give your 20 year old self advice, what would it be?
Chris Funk 1:07:45
Oh gosh, my 20 year old self. The advice I gave my 20 year old self would be to learn to think more critically, learn to be more analytic, learn to determine what’s true and what’s not true. Learn to determine what feels good from what is good.
Chris Bounds 1:08:09
All right, what book or books have greatly influenced your
Chris Funk 1:08:11
life. I mean, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, everyone says that, but it’s so true thinking Grow Rich, so true. And then another book that I really liked was called the body fat solution by Tim bonito. And that one teaches you all of the math behind being fat or skinny. Most people don’t realize it’s just all math and I was a fat boy most of my life and then eventually lost the weight. And Tom money does book was a really good one. It teaches you all the numbers, and how if you just know your numbers, you can stop being fat, and you can be in great shape. And so that book changed my life. And I’m in the fitness side of it for sure.
Chris Bounds 1:08:49
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. In the last five years, what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your
Chris Funk 1:08:55
life? Oh, gosh. In the last five years, I’ve changed a lot of views. And say the question again for
Chris Bounds 1:09:07
what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your life.
Chris Funk 1:09:14
Think the belief and the habit that I’ve adopted recently is to compete against myself to envision you know, the guy who was the quarterback in high school, who had all the grades, had all the ladies, he was the best on the team. And just picture that guy alongside me every day. He’s gonna wake up a little earlier. He’s going to get dressed a little quicker. He’s not going to forget to brush his teeth. He’s not going to forget to take the trash out.
He’s gonna go run five miles even though it’s raining. And always think of that guy when I leave the office and eight o’clock at night and I’ve been there since eight o’clock in the morning and I think to myself, I’m tired. I should just go home. I’m not going to work out. That guy would laugh at me. You’re tired. You had meetings. I’m going to the gym anyway, loser.
And I can’t stand when that guy wins. So the habits are to compete with myself to constantly envision this guy who’s doing everything better than he’s just doing everything. 10% better to always think of that guy. Because if you think like that, over a few years, you’ll look back, your life will have changed. You won’t recognize yourself. You’ll be a whole different man.
Chris Bounds 1:10:37
Yeah. Little David Goggins behind you.
Chris Funk 1:10:41
How can people reach out to you? Oh, gosh, Facebook’s probably one of the best ways Chris funk on Facebook. Yeah, just hit me up on Facebook or email is quick, qu vi CK 771 at gmail.com. Feel free to reach out.
Chris Bounds 1:10:59
Awesome. What’s been a true pleasure, appreciate you coming on. And I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Chris Funk 1:11:04
Thanks for having me.
Chris Bounds 1:11:05
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