In this episode of The Big Mike Fund Podcast, host Mike Zlotnik sits down with Dwan Bent-Twyford, affectionately known as The Queen of Short Sales™ and host of The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever.
Dwan Bent-Twyford, America’s Most Sought-After Real Estate Investor™, started as a broke single mom who had just been fired from Denny’s — and went on to personally flip over 2,000 properties while teaching thousands of people how to achieve financial freedom. Today, she is recognized as the nation’s #1 expert on short sales and foreclosures. She has authored three bestsellers, including Short Sale Pre-Foreclosure Investing, How to Sell a House When It’s Worth Less Than the Mortgage, and the New York Times bestseller SuccessOnomics co-written with Steve Forbes. Dwan has also been featured on Fox & Friends, MSNBC, Naomi’s Good Morning, Colorado & Company, and numerous media outlets nationwide.
In this conversation, Dwan shares her inspiring 35-year journey — from overcoming hardship as a single mother, to pioneering short sales before they had a name, to now leading a full-scale revitalization project in Clinton, Iowa. She and Mike discuss the philosophy of people before profits, the power of mentorship, the lessons learned from rehabbing communities, and what it truly means to build both wealth and legacy through real estate.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EPISODE
00:00 – Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast
00:17 — Guest Intro: Dwan Bent-Twyford
01:13 — Dwan’s beginnings in real estate
03:05 — Rehabbing a town in Clinton, Iowa
07:43 — Opportunity zones and revitalization potential
11:23 — Philosophy: People before profits
16:02 — Becoming the “Queen of Short Sales”
23:09 — Hitting one million podcast downloads
24:22 — Starting The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever
29:12 — Favorite books and current reads
30:34 — Advice for new and passive investors
32:41 — Final thoughts | Connect with Dwan
If you found this episode substantial and want to dig deeper into real estate, or maybe you want to discover better investment opportunities, be sure to check out www.tempofunding.com.
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CONNECT WITH THE GUEST
Website: http://dwanderful.com/
Instagram: @dwanderful
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dwanderful/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-investor’s-edge-university/
Tiktok: @officialrealestateguru
Full Transcript:
Mike Zlotnik: Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast.
I’m the Big Mike, Mike Zlotnik, and today it is my pleasure and a privilege to welcome Dwan Bent-Twyford. Did I say it the right way?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: That’s right. You did.
Mike Zlotnik: Dwan like a swan. You taught me this.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: I taught you this.
Mike Zlotnik: So wonderful to have you. You hail from cold Colorado, maybe. Wonderful, maybe beautiful.
It’s the most beautiful state. So you live up in the mountains and you enjoy, I guess, beautiful views and probably winter sports. Yeah, it’s gorgeous. I’ve been to that part of the country and I can’t say enough. You drive to the mountains. I think it’s the most beautiful state in the country, honestly.
So you have a wonderful, Dwanderful Podcast, and you have Dwanderful.com website and you used to be the Queen of Short Sales. So, would you be so kind as to tell the audience a little bit more about you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, sure. Well, thanks for having me on tape, Mike, I, for all of you listening, I just had Mike over on my podcast, The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever.
So if you wanna hear our conversation, we had a lot of fun over there. And so now I’m on this side over here. so I started investing in real estate. Actually, I was married, I had a baby. She was only eight months old when her dad and I split up. So I was really unexpectedly a single mother. And I had always planned on being like the homeroom mom and the girl scout mom and the field trip mom and all those things like that.
And now being single. With no job skills and just like, like all my dreams are just shattered for there for a second, you know? And I thought, well, I have to figure something else out because if I go get a job and work for somebody else, I’m not gonna be able to do the things that I wanted to do. And I purposefully waited till I was 30 to have a kid so I could like get my wild ways out.
And then. Be a mature adult and do all those, those fun things. So I discovered real estate investing. Met a couple guys. They go, yeah, we, we fix up houses and we fix up cars. And I thought, okay, well how hard could it be to fix up a house? I thought fixing up and decorating, or the same thing. And as it turns out, they’re not, not the same thing.
But I went after my first deal. I went to Home Depot, took a lot of classes ’cause it turns out I don’t have any actual rehabbing skills. And I sold my first house. I made 22,000 bucks and I never looked back. And now I’ve been investing for almost 35 years, 34, 35 years. And I’ve done it 2000 personal deals.
And now my husband and I are rehabbing a town.
Mike Zlotnik: What does that mean? Rehabbing a town? So you, you, you’ve done a lot of residential real estate, which makes a lot of sense. And how do you rehab a town? What does that mean?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: So, it’s, you know, I sometimes I’m, I’m still not exactly sure it happened, how, what happened, but when I was, so when I first started off investing, I lived in Florida and I started in Palm Beach County.
And there’s a town down there called Delray Beach, which is, I still have a house there, so I’m in half, Florida and I’m half mountains. And personally, I’m a beach girl, so I’d rather live there all year round. But my husband and my grandkids, they all live up here, so forces me to be a mountain girl too.
But. in, in Delray Beach, Florida, this was a, a whole entire downtown from like, from the beach up to the highway, just mile. And it was 90% boarded up. It was a hood. It was really rough. And I bought a, a house that was like zone light commercial. I thought this would be a good place to start, have a little business.
I moved into Delray Beach over by the water. And I, and I watched this town go re through this like revitalization program. I watched this whole like two miles long get revitalized one little block at a time. And now it’s voted like the best avenue in America, the best small town, the best this the best app, but everything is so crazy expensive.
Property values. I bought my little house for 170. It’s worth like a million bucks. So I watched that happen. So now fast forward decades later, I’m married to Bill. He’s from a little town called Clinton, Iowa. So Clinton, Iowa was on the Mississippi River, so it’s a little river town and it looks like a little town that like time forgot.
It’s all boarded up. There’s just a few businesses. And so we started going back for his high school reunion. So we’re only there like once every five years and we go and I’m like, man, this little town. I need some love, you know? And then we go back five years later and then we go back five years later.
So the first visit to the second to the third was 10 years. I said, you know, we need to, let’s call somebody and see if they have some sort of a revitalization plan or something and see what we can do. ’cause I literally watched this happen in Delray Beach and was lucky enough to buy. A couple of those little light commercial houses that got rezoned and for like 50 grand, and I ended up selling them for 800,000.
They were just so much money. So we found out they have this downtown revitalization program and what does it take and what do we need to do? So we actually just planned Mike to buy one building because the downtown is, so here’s the river, and the downtown is three blocks wide and three blocks wide. I mean deep and wide.
So it’s just. This much and here’s the river and everything in the downtown is an opportunity zone. And the taxes that you pay go into a special fund to fix up the downtown. And they have all kinds of grants. I mean, so many grants, so much money that’s available. And nobody was really doing anything. So Bill and I are like, well, you know what?
We’ll buy a building, we’ll buy one building. And you know, we’ll kind of. Throw our hat in to help revitalize. Well, the building that we bought, we bought it from a retired woman who’d already left Iowa and like moved to Florida and then she told one of her, so this is what happened, it turned into a giant stubble.
So she told one of her friends, Hey, listen, the Twyford bought my building and her friend, all these women are widows. Their husband’s owned all these buildings and they’ve been boarded up for like a decade. So then she tells her friend Carol, and she’s bought my building. You should see if they wanna buy your building.
So she calls up, she’s got three buildings, three, and we’re like, oh, I don’t know, three buildings a lot. You’d have to own a finance of a hundred percent. We’ll mail you checks to Florida. So now we have four buildings, and then another one goes, Hey, I heard you bought. Carol’s building and her building and will you buy my building?
And I kid you not, Mike, within two years we had like 15 buildings.
Mike Zlotnik: Can can I give you a little bit of feedback and just some thoughts here, just hearing you out. You said a couple of really interesting things, just got me thinking, right? You said it’s opportunity zone, right? Yes. The second thing I heard is a small town.
It is the area somehow, looked at as a rural area.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, they have gambling in Clinton, so they have a casino and they have gambling and all of the towns on the river when you go down the entire river, all the old towns that were just sitting there have all been revitalized. So people that wanna spend the day and drive up and down the river, every little town is revitalized except for hours.
Mike Zlotnik: So here’s just a quick thought, just listening, to you and just knowing a little bit about the new, the one big beautiful bill. And then part of that there are, there’s a new, opportunity zones. it, it’s an expansion extension, opportunity zone. Just an idea like we, we we’re chatting, so if, if this is rural, it, it has 30% versus 10%.
The deferral benefit and elimination. In other words, if somehow you turn this into opportunity zone project, investors could potentially write a check. And if it’s rural, it’s not 10% deferral, it’s 30% and it ultimately, savings. So it’s actually very powerful. if you’re an opportunity zone and you are rural, you could do really, really well.
And deliver, Revit revitalization to the town. But the opportunity zone benefit just adds more economics to investors where it would be more attractive because of the tax savings they would receive. Mm-hmm. tax deferral and tax savings. So something to keep in mind,
Dwan Bent-Twyford: a lot of it’s rural, it’s only 25,000 people and they never, my guess would be it’s rural, this area, they all live like out there.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, there is, there is a, you have an interesting opportunity just listening to you. maybe it’s, it’s the, it’s your next project, to consider. Especially if it’s, if it’s opportunity zone and rural, the extra tax benefits. And then obviously, it’s gotta have a good business plan revitalization. But like you said, if it’s a good fundamental bones and people count to the town, it could, it could get revitalized for sure.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Yeah, well since we bought our first building, so now we’ve been, we had done, we had bought these buildings with the idea to fix ’em up, get ’em all rented out, and it was a five year plan, and then we’d have the last one done in five years. Unfortunately, my husband got some super, really rare cancer, had to go through an entire bone marrow transplant, which knocked about two years out of our, so we had all these fresh buildings, and then we had this like two and a half year thing where we lived in special housing and we couldn’t travel.
We couldn’t do anything. So now we’re kind of back. I said, okay, so now our five year plan is a seven year plan. So, but hey, well consider this. All I wanted to
Mike Zlotnik: give you is some feedback, and
Dwan Bent-Twyford: that’s all that matters to me.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, it’s, it’s really cool. It’s really cool what you’re doing and, and, take a look at this.
There’s no drawback. Worst case scenario, there’s no, but if it’s an opportunity zone right there, you already have an additional, benefit. But you can offer folks who would invest in a project additional. Tax incentives, deferrals, and you know, potentially if it’s rule up to 30%, if it’s not a rule, 10% savings.
But let’s continue the conversation. let’s talk a little bit about your philosophy. I really like this. You say people before profits.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Mm-hmm. What does
Mike Zlotnik: that mean to you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, it means really it’s, it’s important to me when my husband and I split up, say, you know, I’m 30 years old, I have an eight month old baby.
My husband and I have just a really unexpected, nasty breakup. And so during that timeframe, I lost a house in foreclosure. My car got repossessed. I was literally living on credit cards and nobody came knocking on my door like, Hey, here, you’re in foreclosure. I’d like to buy your house. How do I help you out?
Like that never happened for me. Nobody. Nobody helped me. I just lost all my stuff, and so I. Right after that, I was looking for like a job or something. I was looking for something I could do from home and back in the late eighties and the nineties, we had to find our jobs in the newspaper, which is something some of you have never actually held in your hands, but in the classified section of the newspaper where all the jobs.
So I kept going to all these different things and they were in a lot of hotels and a lot of ballrooms, and there’d be three oh people there. And I thought, the heck is all this. There’s a lot of multilevel marketing, if you remember back to those eras. And so I met a couple guys, like I said, and they’re like, oh, we do houses, we do cars, we do this, we do that.
So in my mind I thought, you know what, I could probably fix up a house. I mean, I helped my dad build the house that we grew up in, and I knew how to do some basic stuff. So I thought, I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna be a real estate investor. I’m gonna find a house in foreclosure. I’m gonna help somebody because I didn’t get helped.
I’m gonna fix up a house and I’m gonna sell it. I’m gonna make money and my daughter with me every single day, it’s gonna be great. So my idea though, in my mind of like fixing up was decorating. So I thought I’d get some blinds I orders. I paint, I get some carpet, I put some furniture in there. I decorate this house like I’m gonna be an interior decorator or something.
I don’t know what I thought, but as it turns out, rehabbing and decorating not the same thing. So now I’m at Home Depot every day and I’m learning. I take a class on how to lay tile and then I go tile, the kitchen and the bathrooms, and then I learn how to do knockdown and I paint. I learn how to pressure wash, and I pressure wash the health I put in the toilets.
I put in the sinks at night when my daughter’s sleeping. I’m, I’m building cabinets and I’m hanging cabinets. And it was really crazy. But the way it started was they were like, go to the West Palm Beach County hand, write all the foreclosures, map ’em out, go knock on doors and tell people that you know, you’d like to buy their house and, you know, work something out.
So I would go knocking on doors with the baby, hanging on my hip and I thought, well, she’s with me. And I understand the foreclosure. I just freshly went through it myself and I, and I noticed that a lot of women were answering the doors. I was like, Hey, listen, my deadbeat husband just loved me too. I know how you feel.
I just went through it and the women were like, I’ll work with you. So I would live in the house, fix it up, sell it, move in the next one, fix it up, sell it. I did that until ELA got into kindergarten, and I made $22,000 on my first deal. Then I made 50,000 on my next deal. Then I made like about 12,000 on my next deal.
And I thought, man, look at this. I’m helping all these people going through what exactly what I went through. And it’s not about the money, it’s about like helping them because nobody helped me. So it kind of turned into a mission like, hey, I can, I can help these people and I can put the people and the situation.
Ahead of the money. And if you do good, you know, the money comes to you. So that’s kind of how it really started. I mean, my first, first deal, I needed money. I was living on credit cards. I desperately needed money, but after I watched what Barbara went through versus what I went through, you know, we were in that man hat phase, ah, man, mineral, trash, you know, because we were, we were both in like the same mentality.
And I thought, you know, I helped her out. Nobody helped me. It was really a great feeling. She was happy. I was happy. We both made good money and I thought. I do it again, then I did it again, then I did it again, and now 30 years later, I’m still doing it.
Mike Zlotnik: So that’s a, the wonderful story. You helped people ahead of all the economics and how did you become a short sales queen?
I, I, I assume you went through a lot of, post 2008, 2009. Recovery and a lot of short sales. And is that how you got, you became short sale, short sales queen? Well,
Dwan Bent-Twyford: so I started off the first, the first th three years, I a hundred percent just rehabbed houses. ’cause again, there were no real estate, those REIA, real estate investing associations.
There were no s, there was no online, like, there was just nothing existed yet. So the people. The I met rehabbed, so that’s the only thing I knew how to do. But then a real estate investing group opened up in Boca Raton, Florida, that’s still there to this day. And I went to a meeting and there was like 80 people there and I said, oh my gosh, look at all these other people.
There are other investors in town besides just me, and they were all men except for one woman. So then I, my first thought was like to second guess myself, like, do women not do this? Why are there all men? Why are there no women here? What, what am I, what am, am I in the wrong business? You know, all the, all the things that you think, because again, 30 years ago, and it’s still a male dominated business, but it was super male dominated back then.
So I talked to Sharon, she and I started talking. We decided we’re gonna team up, we’re gonna work together, and. You know, we grew all of these things, you know, as partnerships. So as I was going to the meetings, I found out about wholesaling. So I thought, okay, I can find a house and I can sell it to a rehabber.
I can just make the money in between. I don’t have to rehab houses anymore. So I started wholesaling and I, and my first year, I wholesaled 75 houses in one year, 75. Wow.
Mike Zlotnik: That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s remarkable.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: It’s a lot. And so it’s a lot. Now I’m like, oh my gosh, wholesaling. I don’t have to fix up houses anymore.
I don’t have to get dirty. And so I’m wholesaling and as I’m wholesaling deals, sometimes the banks will add like, you know, you have the deal. This is what the HUD says, and then the deal’s getting ready to close. They send you over like a final. And on the very first one, I was wholesaling this house for $5,000.
And the day before the closing, I got this closing documents and the bank had added on $4,000 worth of fees. I said no. So I called them up. I said, well, ’cause I didn’t know what to do because in my mind, you know, you’re making 5,000, you got 5,000 spent, and I’m still. Fresher, and I need the whole 5,000. So I called the bank up, I say, Hey, listen, you guys added these fees.
This is not the number that we talked about. I’m not gonna be able to close unless you can take those fees off. I just, I can’t do it. I, I, I can’t do it. I’m not doing it. So she goes, she’s like, lemme put you on hold. So she puts me on hold, she comes back, she says, okay, we’ll waive the fees. So I was like, they just waived 4,000 worth of fees.
What the heck is that? So then I figured if it works once, it’ll work again. So then I called the bank on every deal and said, Hey, can you knock off some of these fees? And they’re like, yeah, yeah. And they’re just knocking fees off. And so then I said, okay, I’m gonna get brave. I’m gonna ask the bank to knock off some of the principal.
I’m just gonna knock off some of the principal. So then I started calling and saying, Hey, I had, and back then they were calling it shorting, discounting the mortgages. There was like five or six terms, but there wasn’t a term. So I called this bank up and I said, Hey, I’m gonna buy this house. And they owed 60, they owed 60,000.
I already had it sold for 90, so I they owed 60. I had it sold for 90, and I called the bank. I said, Hey, I went through this house. It’s got more damage than I thought. it’s just, and it’s got a little bit of fire damage. Got this, it’s got that. I really, I really need to buy this house for like 30 grand.
So I’m asking ’em to take six three, and I’m like, there’s no way she’s gonna hang up on me. Oh, who are you? So she goes, well, hang on, let me get back to it. She calls me back about an hour later. She goes, we can’t take 30, but we can take 35. And I was like, are you serious?
Mike Zlotnik: Wow.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: So they took 35. You learn how to negotiate
Mike Zlotnik: short sales.
Oh my God. Yeah. I
Dwan Bent-Twyford: already had it sold for 90 and I was like, woo, look at this. So then I realized I have stumbled on to something, but this is not even during the 2008 or nine. It’s not during any of that. This is. This is like 1993 or four. I’m, I’m still new.
Mike Zlotnik: This is 93. This is not even, this is not even 2008.
Eight. No, this is like
Dwan Bent-Twyford: in the nineties. No, I’m wholesaling and I did this, and I was like, oh my gosh, what happened?
Mike Zlotnik: Well, decided this is the, the short sales Before they were the short sales, right?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Yeah. They weren’t, they weren’t even called short sails yet. They were calling it shorting. Shorting the mortgage, discounting the mortgage.
Sometimes you would actually buy the mortgage. It was just, it wasn’t like. It wasn’t fine tuned yet, so I just said, you know, I like the term short sales. I’m gonna call the bank and say, Hey, do you guys do short sales? I’m just gonna start calling it short sales. So, and I was working with Ocwen and Washington Mutual back then, and a few of those banks, and they were really easy to work with.
So after that one deal, every time I got a house, I said, Hey, can you knock off. You know, 10 or 15, I was just asking for large amounts of money to get knocked off the principal. And I mean, for like a year, every single solitary bank said yes. So I was like, you know what? This is a thing. This is gonna be a thing.
So I actually had to read a group by that point. So I wrote a little 50 page training program called Short Sale Secrets. And at my next rehab meeting, I said, Hey, I want all of you to have this. There’s a million houses in foreclosure. There’s only like 50 of us. We can’t help everybody, but short sales are a thing and they’re working.
And I called an attorney and I trademarked it all the way back then, so that’s really cool. I stumbled into it because. I was gonna make five on a house and they’d added 4,000 in fees. And I didn’t, I needed to make five, not a thousand. I was still like new and so broke quite a bit. And they did it. And then, and then of course in the, 2008, Wiley Publishing called me, I guess they heard about me and asked me to write a book.
So I wrote a book called Short Sale Pre Foreclosure Investing, which was a number one bestseller. And then they asked me to write another book for homeowners. Called How to sell your House when it’s worth less than the mortgage. And then four or five years ago, I wrote a book with Steve Forbes called Success Ergonomics.
Whoa. So he really just grew into a thing. I just wanted, like, I just wanted to be a Girl Scout mom and a cookie mom, and you know, the fun house and a disco ball and all that stuff like that. And now it turned into a whole entire thing.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah, you, you are the media queen now. You got these wonderful books and let’s talk a couple of, couple of, words about your podcast.
So you have a million downloads. You, you hit that milestone a few months ago. So the podcast is called These, the most, the wonderful real estate podcast ever, and you have over a million downloads and, it’s a very cool podcast. You, you engaging with a lot of interesting folks. So talk a little about that.
How, how. Have you built your success, in that podcast? What’s your secret sauce? Well,
Dwan Bent-Twyford: you know what it, because you and I were talking earlier on my show about mentors and mistakes, and so having been a real estate trainer now, real estate investing, everybody’s clear. I’m an investor. I don’t list houses, show houses.
I don’t have a license. I don’t do any of that. If you’re in foreclosure, I’m gonna find you. I’m gonna help you, I’m gonna help you get out of foreclosure. I’m gonna help you get a fresh start and give you some money and get you moved. And then I’m gonna do something with that house, whether I wholesale it, rehab it, keep a rental, whatever.
So I, in specific to the investing side of things. So, so my podcast, I started this, I’m in my seventh season now. So I, so like back up like a decade ago, people were calling me all the time to be a guest on their podcast. And it’s ’cause I had written two books and they were both bestsellers and I was speaking in all the real estate groups around the country.
So I was the shortell queen. So I was like, you know, fairly prominent in my field and. Everyone kept asking me to be on their show and I was like, yeah, yeah, I’ll be on your show. So I was, and I didn’t understand it at first ’cause they were all audio. So I was like, okay, so what is a podcast? And I was like, so it’s like radio that’s on the computer.
Like I still couldn’t even wrap my round around like, you know what is a podcast? I go, well, it’s like a show and people tune in. And I said, but it is on the computer. So it took me a minute, but I was on probably a hundred. Then people kept saying, you should start a podcast. I’m like, dude, I don’t know nothing about, no, I know nothing about how to start a podcast.
So I did what I tell my students to do when my students pay money to work with me. I say, here is your real estate training program. Study this program. Do everything I tell you to do and you will close deals. So I thought, I don’t wanna do it by the seat of my pants because I don’t know anything about podcasting.
So I found a guy and I took a class. I paid money. I took a podcasting class and it was 30 lessons and 30 days, and every day was homework. So I pay a bunch of money for this and I don’t even know if this is a good class or not. I know nothing about podcasting, but it had a lot of good reviews. I listened to the guy, he had English accent.
I was like, okay, I really like this. I’m gonna do it. So my husband, so the day one, so you know, I’m sitting there and I’m like, E, every night I’m writing my notes, says, whatcha doing? I said. I’m doing my homework is my homework. I said, dude, I signed up for a podcast class, so I’m not gonna be like the average investor who buys a program, sticks it on a shelf and never does anything.
I wanna learn how to do a podcast, and the fastest way I learned is to have a mentor and not do it by mistakes. I’ve been in real estate long enough to know mistakes, cost too much money, so I took this class for 30 days. And did 30 days of homework, admitted my homework, talked as a group, came up with all this, and then I decided to do a play on my name.
’cause my name Dwan is so unusual. So I was like, we’ll be wonderful. Like Dwan is wonderful, we’ll be wonderful, we’ll be a fun play on my name. And I took my whole class and after the whole 30 days and the, and I paid a little extra, talked to the guy a few times directly and I thought, okay. And I literally started the next week.
I bought the equipment. I bought the cameras. I bought the sound. I bought all the stuff, and I started within a week of ending that class, I said, okay, I’ve got all the knowledge. I feel like I need to know. My homework was great. My name was great. The guy said he loved everything about it. Everyone in the class was like, Hey, you go girl.
And I started a week later, but I paid someone to teach me how to do it because I don’t know how to do it. So I myself, well, that that was your
Mike Zlotnik: start, but now you are, you are the expert. You, you, you could teach this, to, you could coach people, so, oh yeah. No,
Dwan Bent-Twyford: I could teach people how to podcast all day.
But you know, the, the thing is when people talk, like when people invest in my programs, they say, Hey, listen. I learned my real estate investing by the seat of my pants. I made lots and lots and lots and lots of mistakes. I mean, it’s so lucky on a few of those deals. I didn’t go bankrupt on them. I said, but when I wanted to start this, I knew enough to hire someone that knows what they’re doing to teach me to cut my learning curve.
I don’t want this long learning curve. I had a long learning curve with real estate. Everything I do going forward, I wanna pay someone learn how to do it, cut my learning curve and do it. And people were like, oh, good for you. So I tell people like, listen, I had 30 days, 30 days of homework, and it was long, it was consuming.
I was writing all kinds of stuff. It’s a lot. I said, I did it because I wanted it to be good. So I practice what I preach. I
Mike Zlotnik: yeah, you, you, you eat your cat food, in a manner of speaking. If you’re a dog person, it’s a dog food. But if you’re marketing that food, you gotta eat your own dog food. But, let, let’s, let’s kind of wrap up with a couple of quick questions.
Okay. And, So my questions are hopefully way easier than your questions. You asked me about the music and, and the, the favorite, the band. And, my questions a little bit easier. Do you have a, a good book that, that you really like? obviously your own books, you could recommend your own books or if you’ve written, if you’ve read a book recently and you really like it, just share your wisdom.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: I have read. I probably, honestly, I have a giant library in my house. I probably have 2000 books I’ve read. I went through my whole thirties, forties, and fifties reading every real estate, every investing, every self-help, every book on the face of the earth. And right now, in this very current moment, I am teaching my grandkids how to read.
So my favorite book right now is Green Eggs and Ham.
Mike Zlotnik: That’s really cool. It’s a good book, A cool book. ’cause the one guy
Dwan Bent-Twyford: says, I won’t try them. I won’t do it. I don’t want it. I don’t want the eggs. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I won’t eat them here and there. I won’t eat ’em in a box. It’s like everyone, if you people would stop being like that. Just taste the eggs, eat the green eggs, move on.
Life would be great. That’s my current book. I’m reading with my grandkids right now and I love it.
Mike Zlotnik: That’s great. any other, any kind of advice to investors, folks who, want to, get on the journey, either active or passive? Obviously you had an active journey, rehabbing houses, then whole kind of wholesaling, then short sales, then you kind of continue to evolve.
or passively just writing a check. You have any, any kind of wisdom, thoughts, suggestions? what, what, what’s the best way to think about it? obviously learn, you already mentioned this many times. don’t reinvent the wheel. Learn from somebody who is a, who is a guru. any other quick thoughts?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, you know, I think the biggest thing, Mike, is that people, and I’m sure you’ve met people like this too, they say, oh yeah, I’m thinking about getting into investing. I’m working on an LLC and I’m working on a website. Then you say a year later and they’re like, oh yeah, I’m still working on, and they don’t actually take action.
So my thing is, if you wanna do it. And there’s a lot of shiny objects. The downside about the internet, there’s too many shiny objects. You have people that have only done one deal, but they’re good marketers. So they put up this splashy page and you go, Ooh, I can write checks while I’m sleeping. I’m gonna buy that.
So a stop following the shiny objects. B, only work with people who really, truly are, have experience, and they’ve been through a couple of really good up and down markets. And they can truly teach you how to do it. And when you find someone that your moral compass aligns with, work with just that one person.
So someone came to me and said, I wanna learn wholesaling. I wanna be a landlord. And then somewhere along the way they go, Hey, I have money. I wanna do something else. I go, okay, now you’re ready to become an accredited investor. Go to Mike. I can’t teach you what he does. I can send you over to the next person.
That is the next level that you need to do. So one person can’t teach you everything, and if any trainer thinks they can. They’re full of horse crap because you can’t but start where you wanna start. Start where you think it sounds like fun. And then as you advance, if you have a good mentor, they’ll send you someplace else to scale you on up to the top of the food chain.
Mike Zlotnik: It makes a lot of sense, but you gotta start,
Dwan Bent-Twyford: start, start, start. Stop watching webinars. Stop buying products. Stop downloading these free things for $10 and never doing anything. Just start.
Mike Zlotnik: Yeah. Like Nike says, just do it. If you don’t do it, just do it. Then nothing happens. Yeah, that’s a great advice.
Finally, how would folks reach out to you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: dwanderful.com, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok x, LinkedIn, everywhere. I’m on every social platform. Mostly active on, Instagram and Facebook and come take my investing, I have a real estate investing quiz.
Take my quiz, see where you’re at, see what your goals are and you know, and work with me. I am a great mentor. I will take care of you. I’ll make sure you learn and I will teach you about people before and people before prophets. There also. Applies to real estate investors. I’m not gonna sell a person some shiny object knowing that they can’t, they’re never gonna do it.
If you’re never gonna do it, then we don’t align. I don’t want your money. Unless you’re serious. Don’t come to me, and if you are, I’ll make you a millionaire.
Mike Zlotnik: Well, thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for sharing. Appreciate you coming on the podcast and enjoy your wonderful journey.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Thank you, Mike. It’s so good to meet you. Bye everybody.
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Thank you for listening to The BigMikeFund Podcast. To receive your copy of Mike’s how to choose a smart real estate fund book, head to BigMikeFund.Com or visit Amazon and type Mike Zlotnik.
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