Paul Morris 3-Rule System for Never Losing Money in Real Estate

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Paul Morris** (0:30)
The key to success is actually, it's not being great at what you do. You can find a thousand associates or junior partners that are great at doing the contract for every one person that can get that big client in the door.

**Dan Bova** (0:49)
Yeah.

**Paul Morris** (0:50)
So get the big client in the door, and if you're not good at servicing that client, we'll build it around you.

**Dan Bova** (1:01)
Hey, everyone, welcome to How Success Happens. I'm Dan Bova, writer and editor at entrepreneur.com. So I'm about to blow your mind by telling you this, but did you know that we live in kind of crazy times? We are recording this at the end of April, so by the time you're hearing it, things have even gotten crazier or totally chilled out, but I'm gonna bet the former. So crazy times usually equal uncertainty and fear for a lot of us, but today's guest has a way of cutting through the bluster and thinking things through logically and breaking it all down for the loyal listeners of his fantastic podcast, The Paul Morris Podcast, formerly known as Radical Wealth Plan. So each episode, Paul offers money making and investment advice through the lens of real estate, and he's here to tell his success story and offer some advice for any of those thinking about getting into the real estate game.
All right, let's do it. Welcome, Paul.

**Paul Morris** (2:05)
Welcome. Thank you. Welcome to your listeners.
I'm a big fan of your podcast, and I'm absolutely delighted to be here with you today, and excited to chat.

**Dan Bova** (2:18)
Excellent. Well, I'm glad you got the Venmo that paid you to say that. So fantastic.
So Paul, you are the CEO of Forward One Real Estate, but I don't think you were just handed that job title your first day out of school. So just to kind of level set, can you give us a quick drive down your career memory lane? Because I know you've done a lot of different things.

**Paul Morris** (2:42)
Sure.
So I grew up in Pittsburgh, and among a family of actually dad not educated, mom educated, but they really valued education and saw professional career as sort of the way to success. My dad was an entrepreneur himself, but discouraged it heavily and pushed the kids. You know, so three siblings, doctors, and, you know, I really took an academic path without being naturally a great student, took an academic path really to buy my way into a great paying job. It might, it may be cliche to say, and it may be said too often, but I think it's so important, that is, you know, when you follow your path, when you follow something that you love, then your productivity will just be so much more, because you're not, you're not fighting that uphill battle against the, oh, I don't love this, but, you know, I've got bills to pay, so I'm going to do it.

**Dan Bova** (4:00)
Right.

**Paul Morris** (4:01)
Where a lot of people, a lot of people are there, and I have, I have sort of to flash forward, got into a place where I really enjoy the majority of what I do. And so I went, I immediately, the only rich person that I knew was sort of a somewhat distant cousin in Pittsburgh, and he did it all through real estate.
So I was interested in real estate right away. And I started investing before I got into the brokerage business. Then I was morphing my career from legal, trying to morph it toward brokerage or investing. And eventually I jumped off of that path and then into opening a brokerage firm in Los Angeles, which is very different than investing in real estate. Owning a real estate sales brokerage is a business like many other businesses. And it is different than real estate investing. So businesses are generally much higher risk and can be much higher reward, whereas real estate kind of has that safety baked into it.

**Dan Bova** (5:21)
What do you mean by safety? What are you, why is it safe?