251. Unlocking Financial Success: Larry Steinhouse Reveals Simple Steps for Wealth Building

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together. And since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness.

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You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours. Today's episode is amazing, and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening, and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at coach. Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

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Larry Steinhouse. I've met you a couple of times now. So excited to finally have you on my podcast. And it's even better to be doing it live. That's the great part.

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Yeah, right? It's incredible. We are live from the Chicago marriott northwest at bill Walsh's ultimate wealth camp. Wait, we're live? Yeah.

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Well, this is a recording. But you and I are live. Well, yeah, but that's not live. We're not live. We're live.

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If we were live, I would get so scared. Yeah, no, we're not live. Live as in people are watching us live this very second that we're you're watching right now. This is not live. You're watching a recording.

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I might not be wearing the same jacket when you watch this. So for those who are just listening, you're really missing out, because Larry is known for his jackets. He shows up at these events with the most gorgeous jackets that are loud. But you know what? But you're not like this loud kind of person, I guess, on stage.

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But you know what I mean. You know how some people are really just all the time, on and on. I mean, you're pretty mellow and chill. I don't think so. I think I'm very loud.

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I think I'm the most obnoxious person in the room. And if I'm not, I better try harder. Maybe you need to try harder, because. I don't know, I just have fun. I have fun dressing like this.

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Do you wonder why I dress like this? I don't know. Only at events. Because I only have seen you at events. Right.

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So you ever hear the expression dress for success? Yeah. Well, you have to be extremely successful to have the nerve to dress like this. Wow. Okay, good point.

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And he is very successful. So tell the audience what it is that you do, and then I want to hear your backstory, like how you got to where you are today. I simply make wealth building simple. Everybody's nervous about the stock market. I don't know how to invest in the stock market.

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I heard that that's rigged, I heard that it's fake, I heard that blah blah blah. All people I would do is lose money in the stock market. Same thing with real estate. I don't know how to invest in real estate. I heard everybody loses money in real estate.

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My friend's brother's best friend's uncle's niece's daughter's best friend's niece and her uncle and her friend lost money on a real estate deal once. I don't want to invest in real estate. Come on, really? Stop listening to broke people. Start listening to smart people.

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I'm going to teach you how to do all this stuff so you can do it with ease. Understand the simple basics of the stock market. The stock market is not what you think. It's not a casino. There's logic and reasons why stocks go up and down, and you could predict those reasons within reason.

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Right now, is it a lack of education or people just want the get rich quick? No, it's a lack of improper education. I'm sorry. It's a form of improper education. So where does most people get their money?

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Information from? The news. Friends, family? Yeah, friends, family news. So if your friends and family aren't millionaires, just say, hey, whatever you're telling me right now, at least you tell me exactly what not to do.

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Exactly. Because if they're not millionaires, they shouldn't be giving you advice. And if they are, you know exactly what not to do. Because if they're giving you advice and it didn't work for them, how's it going to work for you? That's right.

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Very good point. So how did you get to where you are today in this line of work? Wow. So I've always been entrepreneurial. I consider myself a serial entrepreneur.

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However, when I was 18, I bought my first investment property, and it was pretty cool. I bought it, I paid $23,500 for it, sold it a year later for 50% profit, which was a terrible idea. And the reason it was a terrible idea is at that time it was making $200 a month positive cash flow, and by now it would probably be worth about 350,000, and it would probably be making some incredible, like, 3000 $4,000 a month cash flow. It would have been an incredible opportunity for me to have kept it. And the longer if I kept it, I would have made a lot of money.

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So that was my first property, and I call that my first mistake, even though it was a great profit then I was buying properties and I was doing everything in a system where I said that I would only buy properties that made money. Always buy properties that were profitable. And I would always make sure that the properties I bought would pay the mortgage on that property and let it keep growing. Well came 2006 and seven. Remember 2006 and seven?

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I do. When the whole world thought real estate was bitcoin. Yeah. And my ex husband and I put a contract to build a house in 2006. By the time it went to closing in 2007, it was already $300,000 underwater.

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Yeah. It's amazing, right? Yeah. So I decided to change my strategy to a really smart strategy to what I call now the stupid and greedy strategy. And the stupid greedy strategy is buying properties that don't pay for themselves, paying too much for the property.

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And I'm telling you right now, it's guaranteed failure. So come 2008, I lost everything. I actually went bankrupt. And I decided that this bankruptcy wasn't going to be oh, my God, I'm such a loser. I went bankrupt.

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It was going to be a starting over point, right. And I actually decided, I made a plan to become millionaire again. I actually wrote it in my first book. The book is called if I Won $25 Million in the Lottery. Really stupid name for a book that explained what I wanted to do.

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But inside that book, I say exactly how I'm going to do it. And I followed the steps that I said I was going to do and became a multimillionaire again. I own tons of more properties than I owned before. Millions and millions, much more properties. And everything is great, and I make a lot of money.

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I also learned the stock market many years ago, and I learned something called stock options, which is an incredible way to leverage the stock market with a small amount of money. And I teach that as well. And then I decided to open up a company to teach this. It's called investorschooling. And people could go to investorschooling.com, they can find out more about that, and I teach it on a regular basis.

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I have a class every Thursday on just about anything that has to do with money. Mostly focused on real estate and buying real estate properties and investing in the stock market. But I teach things like how to get health care for free. I teach things like, I don't know if you remember the idle loans that they had during COVID We taught people how to get them. Okay.

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That was part of our class. Part of our class. Hey, this is how you fill out the application. This is what you're supposed to say. This is what you're not supposed to say.

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And you would get more. We also teach people how to build credit.

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You love this one. You love this one. I had to take a picture of that one, so I want to dive into more of that. But I want to take a pause for a second and make sure that the listeners heard you and how you were able to switch your perception of going through bankruptcy, because you kind of just said it really fast. And I just want to point out that because that's so valuable for people that you could have wallowed in your pity and been a victim like everybody else.

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Like everybody else. Woe is me. I filed bankruptcy. And instead you're like, no. And you use that to fuel you to go through the recovery.

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And I think it's that type of mindset that people can go through sometimes multiple bankruptcies and still end up being another multimillionaire. Absolutely. Sure, you hear about it all the time. So if you could just real quickly, how were you able to just flip that switch that quickly? It was a decision.

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It's simply a decision. I told the story on stage that literally, literally the day after my bankruptcy, I went to a car dealer and bought a car, and I used a loan. Now, it's funny because car salesmen are they're like, oh, great, I made a sale. And then they send you to the finance company and into the finance room, and the guy's like, oh, yeah, we're going to finance this car. This is great.

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And then he runs my credit, and he literally looks at the screen, and I could actually see his expression like, oh, my gosh, Larry Steinhouse, do you know your credit score is 420? I'm like, yeah. So he goes, Well, I can get you a loan, but I don't think you want it. I go, yeah, I do.

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How much is it? He goes, 24%. I looked him. I go, oh, that's all? That's great.

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Let's do it. He was like, what? Why would you do that? And I said, Because this is the beginning of me rebuilding my credit. And that's really what it was.

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It was beginning of rebuilding my credit. So now, years later, where am I? You remember the number? No, I don't. $882,750.

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$882,750. I have available credit on credit cards. Just credit cards. I'm not talking about personal loans. I'm not talking about anything.

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I'm talking about credit cards. $882,750. Now, you know what I could buy with that? $882,700? Anything I want.

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Except Bill Walsh wouldn't sell you some time. What? Bill Walsh wouldn't sell you additional time. No, but I used the time. But it was very funny because people want people like, why would you need 800?

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Why not.

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Strategy behind that? Because I know you rebuilt your credit, and now you've got all of that available credit line. So how does that help you? Other than the fact that, yes, you can go buy things, but then you got to pay it off? Okay, let's say I find a house, and it's a really good deal.

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Let's say it's worth 100,000. I could buy it for 50,000, but I got to come up with the money fast. Now, the house is in such disarray that no bank is going to lend me money on. And I said, okay, fine. Let me go tap my credit cards and buy the house.

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And within three months, I'll use the credit cards to renovate it, and within three months, I will sell that property and make them sell for $150,000. And then you pay off. They pay off the credit cards. You pay off. That's all I need to do.

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The expression of other people's money is often misunderstood. Other people's money is not just me borrowing money from you as another person, but borrowing money from the bank. I could borrow money from the bank. That's other people's money. I could borrow money from my credit cards that's Chase's money or Citicorp's money.

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I don't care. That's their money. So I can use other people's money to buy my properties, which includes credit cards, right? Okay. Yeah.

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All right. So some of the investing things that you're teaching at your school, is there any really simple, practical advice that you can give the listeners, maybe for somebody who hasn't really started looking at investing in the stock market, where should they start besides your school? That's the obvious answer. That's the obvious answer. But if you just want a piece of practical advice, here's a piece of practical advice.

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If you want to study the stock market, I want you to pick six stocks. Just six stocks. I don't care what the company is. It's a company, you know, a company that you understand what they do, and that's it. Just pick six stocks.

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I'm not telling you to buy these stocks. I want you to watch them for three months. Just watch them go up, watch them go down. See if you can try to guess why they're going up and down. See if you can understand it.

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See if it makes any sense to you. See if they start to go up and down with the Dow Jones or the S P. If they go this is basically what you do. Remember when you drove a car for the first you're and your parents said, that's the break brake pedal, that's the gas pedal, right? Now, you had kind of an idea that you knew that those pedals did something, but you weren't exactly sure what they did.

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But when they explained it to you, then you started doing they'd like, oh, that gas pedal. If I step on a gas pedal too hard, the car will go really fast. And most people did that. Most of the time. They step on it really slow because they're like, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid.

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And then you jump into the brake pedal real fast, right? But after a little while, after a couple of weeks, you knew how to use the gas pedal. You knew how to use the brake pedal. So if you think you're going to go into the stock market tomorrow that you've never even understood or looked at before and go buy three stocks to make money. It ain't going to happen.

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You need to start slowly step on the gas, slowly step on the brake pedal. Understand how it works. And it's not that hard to understand once you start paying attention to it. Nice. I love that analogy.

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That was really amazing. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience before we finish up? And how can they reach me? So actually, the easiest way to reach me is contactLarry.com. It's contactLarry.com.

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Just go there. And it has connections to all my connections to investor schooling, my personal website, my books, anything you want. So contact Larry.com is probably the easiest. And you know what? Anytime anybody wants to reach out to me, find me on Facebook.

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Find me anywhere. I don't know, just say hi. Make sure that you tell me that you saw me on this show, and I will definitely say hi, because most of these people saying hi now on Facebook are fake.

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It when I love it when I get a PM or a private message from somebody who I haven't heard from in three years, and they say, hey, how you doing? I'm like my answer that right away is, hey, are you still working for the FBI finding Facebook scammers?

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That's a good one. I'll have to use because as a woman on Facebook, and I'm sure the listeners can attest to this, it's like they're constantly getting men. And what I've learned is, if it's a man in a uniform, in a military uniform, 99.9 times out of 100%, like 99.9 out of 100%, it's a bot, or it's somebody posing as that person, and it's generally somebody who's imagine. If you get a text message from me wearing this, would you think that? Yeah, but it's all people that are just trying to scam you in some way.

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I know, exactly. Yeah, they clone me all the time, too. Well, of course. Why wouldn't they climb? Well, thanks.

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I like it. All right, Larry, thank you so much. And thank you to all the listeners. Thank you. Take care, everybody.

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I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care, everyone.