A Sit Down With Real Estate Expert Nick Vertucci, Discussing His Book Seven Figure Decisions: Having the Balls to Succeed

Nick Vertucci is well-known for overcoming the odds and for springing back from seemingly impossible fests. He has made it, gone for broke, and made it again. He has gained much experience through his many hardships, and now he is sharing his insight and personal revelations in his book, Seven Figure Decisions: Having the Balls to Succeed.

His book is full of messages that inspire its readers to try harder and to overcome fear in order to really go for it and to ultimately succeed. Nick Vertucci stresses that you don’t get anywhere by playing it on the safe side and that great success comes with risks.

His book covers many topics including why it is vital to put service at the top of the list for your clients no matter what and how this will ultimately benefit you. It also covers why you need to push past all of your fears and to really go for it and to make your dreams a reality. It also covers how to raise your sight as high as you can so that you will change your future.

Nick Vertucci was not born privileged. He came from a middle-class family, and he had to learn some hard life lessons along the way. His father passed when he was only 10, and he has to watch his mother struggle to raise the family. He lived out of his car at the age of eighteen, and he came close to defeat. But he decided to push on and to mold his own future. He did, and now he is helping others to find their inner drive and to become successful as well.

Nick Vertucci is the founder of NVREA, a real estate academy that is helping many people to achieve their goals and to find their potential as they gain experience and guidance on the real estate market.

The Academy covers buying and holding properties for long-term cash flow, wholesaling and flipping contracts, commercial investments, asset protection, and leveraging your 401k and IRA to fund investments among many other topics. The whole goal of NVREA is to help its clients to learn how to create long-term financial success as well as the wealth and security of good investments. Taking a plunge into the real estate market can be overwhelming and scary even, but the Academy is all about helping its clients to take it slow.

 

Eric Dye: Tell us about yourself and how you got into Real Estate Investing?

 

Nick Vertucci: Well, my journey is the same journey that a lot of my students in the academy are currently taking. Briefly, back in 2004, I was losing a tech business. I was about 3 years into losing that business. I couldn’t do justice to what I was going through financially and emotionally with the time that we have here today, but basically, I was in a pretty bad place. Then I got a call and it was someone who was in the same boat as me, but losing a packaging business. This was around the time that we had the Dotcom crash and then 9-11 was right after, so that’s when I started losing my business. Then, in 2004, this individual was struggling just like I was and called me up. He told me something strange. H asked me what I was doing on a Friday through a Sunday. I told him nothing, and he asked if I wanted to go to a 3 day real estate training workshop for investing.

 

Initially, I said no and he told me something even stranger. He told me that he paid a pretty hefty price to go to this 3 day class, and the first thing that I thought when he told me that is, thank God there is finally someone stupider than me! I couldn’t believe that, in the condition he was in financially, that he would do this. But, the long and short is, I thank the Lord every day that I went. I knew nothing about real estate going in, but I knew that I was on to something. I didn’t know what that was, but the rest is a longer story. I got in because I went to a real estate training class in a really bad financial time.

 

Eric Dye: In April, you released your first book, “Seven Figure Decisions.” What is the book about and what was your inspiration for writing it?

 

Nick Vertucci: Well I’ll be brief with you because I don’t want to take up all the time answering one question, but in a nutshell, I went on my journey losing that tech business and was grinding my way back in the real estate business. Then I had another experience, which was my 2 partners that circumvented me into a really good business that           I created. Then I lost that business.

 

Again, that’s a whole different story. I was in a really bad place that time, not as much financially, but emotionally, and that’s when I decided to go into the real estate training company. Again, this is the abridged version, but the point is that one of my partners came after me for starting this training company because he was already in this space. By came after me, I mean legally. I had a 2 and half year battle with someone who had pockets a lot deeper than mine at the time and was gunning for me. So, I started this business under a lot of tough conditions. During a talk we had about 4 months into this battle, he made a statement to me, when he was threatening me, and he said “I want you to take your time on my offer, because you’re making a seven figure decision.”

 

Of course he meant it as a threat, but for me it was a surreal moment. Because, I realized that in my life, and in a lot of lives of everyone, especially those of entrepreneurs, we make a lot of seven figure decisions. In decisions that we don’t make, and decisions that we do make, sometimes they’re seven figure decisions in a bad way, sometimes they’re in a good way, but that’s the life of an entrepreneur.

So, this book is a memoir, but it is also a business book. It talks about all the lessons I’ve learned and then puts business principles into my story. So for instance, I’m a big self-help guy. I believe in the idea that your mind is your strongest muscle. It’s your best asset, but if you want to succeed financially, you have to put that into a financial vehicle. I don’t believe that if you think positive that a check will just show up in your mailbox.

 

I reject that thinking. Although, the principals are right of the laws of attraction, you do have to get up off of your “you know what”, get out there, get to work, and burn the midnight oil.  I’ve done that through real estate investing and I have thousands of students that are now doing that through real estate investing. So, the book is a business book. How to succeed in business. It’s kind of tied into my story. I wanted to make it readable. It’s raw, it’s straight talk, there’s no fluff in it, and it’s all from experience.

 

Eric Dye: How did you rebuild your career after losing everything and what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are going through hard times in their businesses?

 

Nick Vertucci: The first time, I made the decision to go to that class. Then I got some mentorship, which I heavily believe in, from someone who had been in my situation, who had gone where I wanted to go, and who helped me reset my clock. Meaning, I learned some things like pattern interruption. One thing that I’ve learned is that any entrepreneur, whether you’re doing really well, not so good, or want to do well, we all struggle with a fear of failure. We wonder if we are taking the right calculated risks. I learned how to tap into my biggest asset, which is the power of my mind. When I tied that into the principal of hard work, I learned the real estate investing business. I did one door at a time, which means getting rich, I believe, doesn’t happen overnight most of the time. It’s a grind, but you have to stay focused. So, for me, my thing was to put one foot in front of the other. I capitalized on that mentorship and the direction that I got. I realized that it can’t get any worse, and if it does, than it does, but it can only mostly get better.

 

I believe that if your belief system is low, you’ve got to take the old cliché of taking action, and you’re going to see some results, which will build some momentum, and that momentum will build up your belief, and then you’ve just got to ride that momentum. I took what I learned and I invested one door at a time. I just fought my way back both times. I don’t have time to get into the whole story, and I’m not trying to promote my book, but if you do get my book “Seven Figure Decisions”, you’ll see in there the whole story, and you’ll be able to read about, and really understand the magnitude of what I was able to overcome, not once, but twice.

 

I was able to do this because I have the knowledge that I believe you have to have in whatever you’re trying to succeed in and I got the training. You have to know what you’re doing. I tell my students, you’re going to have to pay your tuition whether its real estate investing, whether it’s out in field, in the classroom, or somewhere, or maybe both depending on the level that you get to. So, for me, it was your basic just grind it out. Just rise and grind man.

 

Eric Dye: What steps should investors take to protect assets?

 

Nick Vertucci: I’ll tell you, protecting your assets is something that’s not complicated, but it’s not cookie cutter either. Each individual is different. We all own a different set of assets and we’re all going in different directions. So, you have to be very careful, because when you’re in business, when you’re an entrepreneur, you have to have asset protection. But, asset protection is also corporate structure and it’s also your CPA life.

 

All three of those things tie in together and they’re all very important for an entrepreneur. It is probably one of the most important things, because you’ve got to learn how to make money, you’ve also got to learn how to protect your money, then you’ve got to learn how to make your money grow, and you’ve got to have a good tax life. You need a set of professionals that you’re working with, who really understand business and have your best interest. But, understand that, especially with real estate investors, all three of those, asset protection, corporate structure, and your tax life, they tie in together. Again, I’ll only give you the macro look at it, because you do have to sit down and do that personally, because everyone looks different.

 

First of all, if you’re an entrepreneur, a sole proprietor, you’re a target. That is the number one audited business out there. You need to be incorporated. What type of corporation? That’s a different question. That’s something that you have to figure out with a professional. There are some good professionals out there, but you have to be careful, because asset protection is a very big business and a lot of asset attorneys and companies will over protect you and oversell you. You’ll end up putting the carriage before the horse, spending too much money, having too much to maintain, pay for, and update when you really need to go one step at a time and put one foot in front of the other.

 

So, like anything else, you have to know the right place to do that with the right people. It’s imperative that you learn how to protect your assets, protect your name, your corporations, protect your money, and then figure out how to make it grow. Your tax life is as important as the first two. You have to know the best way to take your money back legally and to invest it back into yourself and your businesses. That’s kind of my doctrine.

 

Eric Dye: How should an investor go about leveraging their IRA and 401K to fund investments?

 

Nick Vertucci: Again, you have to find the right facilitator, and they are out there. One that will not overcharge you on fees and different things. I used to have a radio show years ago for about 5 or 6 years called “The Real Estate Investing Hour” and I found it just amazing that most people don’t know that your IRA can be used to invest in real estate. You can take loans out of your 401k, you can invest, and hold rental properties and cash flow properties right inside of your IRA. A lot of financial planners, and especially the people that facilitate and hold your money, the big banks, they don’t want you to know this. They want to keep it in the market, they want to make commissions on stocks and mutual funds, and that’s fine.

 

I’m not suggesting that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m not giving financial advice. All I’m saying is most people don’t know the power that they have within their retirement. I hate to say it, but in the United States most everyone’s wealth is in their retirement. If you have your money sitting in cash, between depreciation, the value of the dollar, the way it goes up and down, and inflation, well you’re going to outlive your money. If it’s in the market, well it better be in the right place, because a lot of our 401ks became 201ks back in the day. So, you’ve got to be careful. All I can say is, you’ve got to find the right facilitator.

 

It’s a nominal amount of money to get any portion of your IRA self-directed. This means that you can put a portion of your money in a self-directed IRA and use that money for investing. You can hold gold, you can hold art, there’s so many things that you can do. But, real estate is one of the most powerful things that you can do. You just have to find the right place, and again, find people that are in the game and doing it at a higher level. Duplication is powerful, I always say. Some people say it’s copying, but I don’t think so. I think duplication is powerful. If something is working, duplicate it, but just make it better than the next guy, and put your own stamp on it.

 

Eric Dye: What are some tips you would give someone just starting out in real estate investing?

 

Nick Vertucci: Well, I could give you tips from my own experience, where I made a ton of mistakes. My experience makes me very valuable for my students, because I made all the mistakes when I got into this. I didn’t have the right infrastructure and training. I’ll just say this, you have to know what you’re doing. You may think that’s so obvious, of course you have to know what you’re doing, but you really do.

 

You can’t follow the herd off the cliff.

 

I mean, so many people lost money in 2008-2009 when the market crashed, and that was going to happen anyway because it was so drastic, the big the bubble that was being built. The point is, most people just invested because they saw other people investing, and they saw some money being made, and everyone was speculating. But, nobody understood the market or what was happening. Most of the investing happened right at the top of the market before it crashed, and unfortunately that cause a lot of carnage.

 

So, whether you’re in a situation like that, in today’s market, or in any market, you have to invest one door at a time. I tell my students today, get tread on your tires. Don’t try to go out there and do 20 properties at once, or flip a bunch of properties, or get too greedy at once, go and get tread on your tires. First of all, get trained. Again, you’re going to pay your tuition somewhere, you might as well pay for it in an education, versus out in the field where it can be twice or ten times as costly.

 

Know what you’re doing. Perfect your trade. Like i said earlier, most people don’t become millionaires overnight. You just see them at their peak and success speaks for itself. But, you know what? There’s a long grind there in most cases, not everything is a shooting star. So, you take one step at a time, learn the ropes, learn what you’re doing, protect what you have along the way, and I always say this, “Trust but verify.” One of our presidents said that when dealing with another Nation and its one of the best pieces of advice I can give.

 

Trust but verify.

 

That means know what the strategy is, know what the numbers are, and know what the investment is. Don’t go off of trust alone, don’t go off of what other people are doing. Know what you’re doing, or do not put your hard earned money into that situation, because you are taking a major risk versus taking a very good, logical, and calculated risk. So, that’s what I would tell new investors. Get the education, be smart, trust but verify, get tread on your tires, walk slowly, do one door at a time, which is an industry term in real estate, and then become a beast.

 

 

Eric Dye: Where can we learn more about real estate investing or find out about your workshops?

 

Nick Vertucci: You can go to www.nvrealestateacademy.com. If you want to read my book, just go to Amazon and type in Seven Figure Decisions. It’s available on Kindle or paperback, and all of my information is in there too.

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