They’re Lying To You About Buying Real Estate… Here’s How To Get Rich | Pace Morby

The hosts introduced Pace Morby in Scottsdale, Arizona, as a nine-figure entrepreneur with roughly $500 million in real estate and about 2,000 rental “doors.” They described him as having spent about 10 years in real estate and roughly 20 years as an entrepreneur.

Morby credited his upbringing in a family of 12 children with giving him a strong work ethic. He was the third child, helped care for younger siblings, learned household repair work, and said his father made him earn spending money by completing jobs such as painting fences rather than simply giving him money.

He said his father taught him how to work for money, but not initially how to separate income from his own labor. Morby later saw this “trade time for money” model as a limitation he had carried into adulthood.

Before real estate, Morby built a construction company that he said was producing about $25 million a year in his twenties and employed roughly 250 people. Despite owning the company, he later concluded that its dependence on large customers made him less independent than he believed.

A customer named Bethany fundamentally changed Morby’s view of ownership. She told him that, as a contractor, he was replaceable and that if customers like her stopped buying houses, his construction work disappeared; by contrast, she considered the property owner the non-replaceable party in the transaction.

Bethany became the mentor who introduced Morby to real-estate investing about 10 or 11 years before the interview. Morby said he has never been a licensed real-estate agent and identifies himself as an investor rather than an agent.

Morby said he made about $50,000 during his first 30 days in real estate. He attributed the rapid start largely to following Bethany’s instructions despite knowing very little about transactions himself.

Bethany taught him to think of real-estate income in three broad categories: wholesaling, fixing and flipping, and buying and holding. She characterized wholesaling as “today money,” flipping as “tomorrow money,” and holding property as “forever money.”

Morby entered wholesaling by spending $5,000 on direct-mail postcards offering to buy houses. He said he did not know what he was doing, but Bethany agreed to guide him when seller leads began arriving.

His first seller lead was Janie Munson, whose house had gone roughly 40 years without major renovation. Morby described old windows, an outdated kitchen, roof problems and a poorly supported water heater, while numerous other investors and agents were already trying to win her business.

Janie already had a $165,000 cash offer, while Bethany had told Morby not to offer more than $150,000. Rather than pretending he could beat the competing offer, Morby told Janie he could not help her financially and recommended that she accept the higher offer.

Instead of continuing to negotiate price, Morby asked Janie whether she needed help with anything else. Because he had construction crews available, he initially offered practical assistance such as helping her load a moving truck.

The real obstacle preventing Janie from moving was three unusually large Flemish rabbits she had been caring for. Her granddaughter had brought them home after winning them at a carnival about 10 years earlier, and Janie said she could not retire and leave until she found someone trustworthy to take them.

Morby solved the rabbit problem by calling his mother, who collected the animals and said she would find homes for them through someone at her church. He did this before receiving any agreement to buy Janie’s property.

Janie later told Morby that she had actually retired from teaching three years earlier but had postponed selling the house because of the rabbits. The seemingly minor personal issue was therefore the practical barrier that had prevented the transaction for years.

Two weeks after Morby helped with the rabbits, Janie called and chose to sell the house to him for $150,000 despite having access to a higher offer. She said 15 people had met her before Morby and 15 afterward, making him the only one among 31 people who had genuinely asked what she needed help with.

Morby said Janie had expected him to call afterward and use his assistance as leverage, but he never did. That lack of pressure appears to have strengthened the trust that ultimately led her to choose his lower-priced offer.

Bethany still had to prepare the paperwork because Morby did not know how to complete the contract. He also said that even after Janie agreed to sell, he had no idea where the $150,000 purchase money would come from.

The transaction became Morby’s first lesson in wholesaling rather than a conventional purchase. He contracted to buy Janie’s property for $150,000, then Bethany bought his contractual position at an effective $175,000 price, leaving Janie with $150,000 and Morby with a $25,000 assignment profit without his having to fund the house himself.

Morby estimated that the first deal produced $25,000 for roughly seven hours of his work. He said Janie subsequently retired to Oregon and continued sending him a Christmas card every year roughly a decade later.

Bethany turned the Janie story into Morby’s enduring “find the bunnies” principle. Instead of concentrating only on price, condition or superficial objections, he tries to identify the underlying problem that actually prevents a seller from completing a transaction.

The rabbit story became part of Morby’s branding, including bunny ears in his logo. He uses “find the bunnies” as shorthand for discovering and solving the seller’s real problem.

Morby said the principle has continued to work in later deals, even when the underlying problem is far more complex than Janie’s rabbits. He mentioned a colleague, Jordan, who had recently earned about $95,000 on a transaction and connected successful deals generally with identifying a seller’s true problem.

Despite earning $25,000 on his first wholesale deal, Morby’s first instinct was still to think like a contractor. He was excited that Bethany had acquired another house because he assumed she would hire him to renovate it.

Bethany responded by effectively firing Morby as her contractor and telling him he should be finding transactions instead of doing construction work. She believed the skill he had just demonstrated was more valuable than continuing to sell his labor.

Morby nevertheless spent another four years running construction and real-estate activities at the same time. He attributed the delay in switching fully to real estate to his identity as a contractor and insufficient belief that investing could become his primary career.

The forced transition came when one of his largest construction customers went bankrupt. Morby said the customer lost roughly $16 million, while his own money was tied up in projects, causing him to lose heavily and forcing him to liquidate rentals and other real-estate holdings to exit construction.

During those four transitional years, Morby had already been wholesaling, using creative finance and accumulating rental properties. The construction collapse finally convinced him that Bethany had been right about his dependence on customers and pushed him into real estate full-time.

Morby described the transition as an identity problem more than a technical real-estate problem. He said he had to dismantle his previous beliefs about who he was before fully adopting the identity of an investor.

An 85-space RV park near Glacier National Park illustrated Morby’s more advanced version of “finding the bunnies.” He said the seller, Eric, had bought it for roughly $4 million about a year earlier and wanted approximately $5 million, although Morby estimated the property itself at closer to $4.8 million.

Morby deliberately agreed to pay Eric about $5 million because he cared more about financing terms than the nominal purchase price. The seller had operational problems at the RV park, including poor management and alleged employee theft, and wanted to retire from managing the asset.

Morby presented taxes and selling costs as another part of Eric’s problem. He argued that a conventional sale generating a nominal $1 million gain could lose a substantial portion to taxes and commissions, whereas seller financing could spread the seller’s proceeds over time; these tax consequences were Morby’s characterization rather than independently established in the conversation.

The RV-park terms Morby described were no money down, 4% interest and up to 10 years to pay off or refinance the seller. Eric effectively became Morby’s lender rather than requiring Morby to obtain conventional bank financing.

Morby framed creative-finance negotiations around four terms: price, down payment, interest rate and repayment period. His central argument is that a buyer can sometimes offer a seller a higher headline price in exchange for more favorable financing.

He used an iPhone purchase to demonstrate the concept. Even if a used phone could sell for roughly $340–$400 in cash, he said he might willingly pay $500–$600 if the seller accepted no upfront payment, zero interest and roughly $50 per month over 12 months.

Morby argued that price should therefore not be evaluated independently of terms. A nominally expensive asset can still be attractive when payment timing, interest and cash flow make the economics favorable.

He said he applies creative financing not only to houses but also to businesses, larger properties and other assets. He claimed that even his personal home and business acquisitions are structured without relying on conventional credit and large cash contributions.

One strategy he repeatedly uses is buying property “subject to” an existing loan. In that structure, ownership changes while the existing financing remains in place and the buyer takes responsibility for making the existing payments.

Morby gave a simplified example of taking over a $2,000 monthly housing payment and renting the property for $3,000. His objective is to control an asset whose income exceeds the payment obligation he assumes.

He argued that real estate offers sellers physical collateral that other seller-financed assets may not. In his description, if a buyer stops making agreed payments, contractual protections can allow the seller to recover the property while retaining payments already received, depending on the actual transaction documents and law.

Morby said acquiring the property is only the first half of an investment decision because there are many possible “exit strategies.” He claimed to use a framework containing 26 possible ways to monetize or operate a property.

Examples he discussed included conventional long-term rentals, Section 8 housing, short-term rentals, mid-term rentals, assisted living, sober living and shelters. The appropriate strategy, in his view, depends on the property, neighborhood, payment structure and achievable revenue.

Morby is comparatively skeptical of the short-term-rental model and said he expects much of it to diminish. He was more positive about mid-term rentals, generally described as stays of roughly three to six months.

He cited traveling nurses and families displaced while insurance repairs their homes as potential mid-term tenants. He said insurance-funded temporary housing can command substantially higher rents than ordinary long-term leases.

Morby previously operated assisted-living properties for about four years but said he no longer wanted to remain in that business. He nevertheless included assisted living among the possible exit strategies investors can consider.

He stressed that the exit strategy and economics must be understood before committing to a purchase. In one hypothetical, a property with a $2,000 payment and only $1,700 in conventional rent would not work as a normal rental, but a higher-producing strategy could potentially change the conclusion.

Morby mentioned Rentometer for estimating ordinary rental income and AirDNA for estimating short-term-rental performance. His process is to compare the property's payment obligation with realistic income under each viable strategy before closing.

He described helping a novice who had already closed on a property with a roughly $3,000 monthly payment without first deciding how to operate it. After reviewing alternatives, Morby said they found only one strategy producing approximately $50 a month, which he used as an example of why numbers must be checked before acquisition.

Morby presented real estate as his preferred answer to “shiny object syndrome.” He contrasted housing with businesses, e-commerce and cryptocurrencies, arguing that people will always need somewhere to live even as technology disrupts other industries.

He made the much stronger claim that real estate has always risen over sufficiently long periods and described it as the only “certain” investment path. He used the recovery beyond 2008 housing values to support that view; this was Morby’s investment thesis, not an independently established guarantee.

Morby argued that investors who survived downturns by continuing to hold and rent properties could benefit from eventual recovery rather than locking in losses. His broader position is that long holding periods matter more than short-term market declines.

He contrasted learning real estate with lengthy professional education. He said it took him about six months to learn most of what became foundational to his real-estate work, while professions such as medicine can require many years of training and substantial student debt.

Morby said several doctors he knows invest money with him and have told him they wished they had entered real estate earlier. He also claimed that someone could become capable of doing and even teaching real-estate deals within a year, using Jordan as an example.

He made aggressive income claims for newcomers, suggesting that someone could reach $500,000 to $1 million annually in real estate within a relatively short period. The transcript presents these as Morby’s assertions rather than documented outcomes for a typical beginner.

Morby rejects the common entrepreneurial instruction to focus exclusively on one project for a long period. His argument is that businesses constantly involve waiting on employees, contractors or partners, and that waiting time should be used to develop additional revenue streams.

He said he typically has roughly 10–15 initiatives in different stages at once. For a younger entrepreneur, he recommended beginning with two or three active projects and eventually maintaining several concurrent initiatives rather than spending half the time waiting for one project.

Morby distinguished multiple active projects from “shiny object syndrome.” Working consistently on several planted “seeds” is acceptable in his framework; repeatedly starting projects, giving each minimal effort and abandoning them before they mature is the actual problem.

His diversification philosophy came partly from changing the people whose advice he followed. Earlier in his career, he sought guidance from people worth a few million dollars because they seemed far ahead of him, but later decided that he should learn from people who had already reached the much larger outcomes he wanted.

Morby said he now sets roughly $100 million in wealth as his minimum threshold when deciding whose financial advice he wants to study. His broader rule is not to take life or business advice from someone whose outcome you would not want to trade for.

A dinner with Grant Cardone reinforced this view. Morby recalled Cardone arguing that someone who wants to become a billionaire should stop relying primarily on advice from millionaires.

Morby contrasted that advice with an earlier mentor, worth roughly $5–$10 million, who repeatedly told him to focus on one thing. He later interpreted that mentor’s comparatively slower pace—including a regular afternoon nap—as evidence that the mentor’s lifestyle and ambitions did not match Morby’s own goals.

Morby said successful entrepreneurship requires tolerating multiple things that are simultaneously in a “hurry up and wait” phase. He used content, social platforms, community building and websites as examples of parallel initiatives that can be advanced while another project is delayed.

He also emphasized focusing on one’s own problems instead of comparing lives with other people. At a gathering involving Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Jim Kwik and others, he heard a thought experiment in which everyone places their unseen problems into identical boxes; Morby said he would choose his own box because other people may be dealing with far worse issues privately.

That idea led Morby to say there is nobody whose entire life he would willingly exchange for his own. Wealth, fame or visible success does not reveal the hidden personal problems attached to another person’s circumstances.

Morby said the key organizational breakthrough in scaling his companies was not simply hiring more employees but finding an operational partner. He relies heavily on the “visionary” and “integrator” framework popularized in the book Rocket Fuel.

Morby identifies himself as the visionary rather than the day-to-day operator. He sees his role as creating products, generating ideas, inspiring people, attracting talent and being publicly visible.

His integrator partners manage employees and operations so Morby does not have to. He said none of the employees in the operation report directly to him, even though he may briefly enter offices to ask questions or give direction.

The ideal integrator, in Morby’s description, is often the visionary’s personality opposite. The person may prefer staying off camera, avoiding public recognition and managing systems while the visionary handles attention and new ideas.

Morby said Cody Sanchez once visited his office and was surprised to discover partners who were largely invisible publicly. He explained that their lack of public profile was intentional because they preferred operating the businesses behind the scenes.

He argued that entrepreneurs should find the right complementary partner before trying to build a large team. He views an unwillingness to share ownership or control as one of the main reasons businesses remain small.

Morby cited a statistic that 96% of businesses never reach $1 million in annual revenue. He attributed that outcome primarily to founders lacking complementary partners, being unable to relinquish control and failing to hire effectively; the statistic itself was asserted in the conversation without supporting sourcing.

He described the ownership trade-off as choosing between “the whole grape” and “half the watermelon.” Morby would rather share a substantially larger enterprise with partners than retain 100% control over a much smaller one.

Reading about Rockefeller helped Morby rethink the control-heavy way he had operated businesses in his twenties. He subsequently began joining masterminds, paying for education and deliberately seeking rooms containing people who had already solved the problems he was facing.

Morby described hiring as a skill that improves only through repeated failure. Early on, he said his organization might hire 10 people and retain only one; later it could hire 10 and retain two, while today he claims it can retain roughly nine out of 10.

The lesson he drew from those hiring failures was to diagnose why people were put into unsuitable jobs rather than assuming every failed hire was simply a bad employee. Repetition gradually improved the company’s ability to recognize talent and appropriate roles.

Morby considers human capital the most important resource in a business. He compared a company to a sports team in which replacing one important player can alter the culture and chemistry even when most of the roster remains unchanged.

He said roughly 80% of his own working day is spent thinking about people and internal culture rather than the underlying product. His reasoning is that the quality and stability of the team ultimately determine whether the product continues advancing.

Proximity to ambitious people is one of Morby’s central personal-development themes. He believes attitudes, expectations and confidence change quickly depending on whom a person spends time around.

He gave an example of having dinner with an old high-school friend whose worries and financial problems caused Morby to question his own ambition and spending for about a week. His wife noticed the abrupt change and asked whom he had been talking to, which made him connect the mindset shift to that dinner.

A later private dinner with the entrepreneur Morby referred to as Mr. Sterns had the opposite psychological effect. Morby described visiting an approximately $100 million home, seeing extraordinarily expensive floral arrangements for about 60 guests and even a piece of the Titanic displayed in the foyer; being around that level of wealth made him feel more ambitious again.

Morby’s conclusion from the contrasting dinners was that people absorb the expectations of their social environment. When someone feels stuck, his first diagnostic question is often who the last several people around them were.

He argued that consuming motivational or educational content is not a substitute for real-world proximity and action. YouTube can show where opportunities exist, but his “leave the cave and hunt the deer” analogy emphasized physically going out, meeting capable people and doing the work.

Morby said the satisfaction of creating something and eventually seeing it work is what keeps him motivated after financial success. He compared business building to planting seeds and eventually watching them grow into fruit-bearing trees.

The seed analogy was also his explanation for why most beginners quit. People start a business, work briefly, see no immediate result and abandon it, whereas he believes successful operators continue “watering” the project long enough to see evidence that the model works.

At 41, Morby said he sees life as much longer than he did in his twenties. He would not return to age 25 because he remembers having less patience, weaker self-esteem and more uncertainty about what path to pursue.

He views patience as one of the major advantages he acquired with age. Rather than demanding quick proof from every project, he is willing to establish many initiatives and continue working on them while their results develop over time.

Morby said his personal brand increased his net worth roughly fivefold. His basic argument is that even an excellent business cannot attract customers, investors or opportunities if nobody knows the founder or company exists.

He compared social media to signage on an otherwise invisible restaurant. A world-class burger restaurant without a sign could remain empty because customers cannot identify it; in the same way, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn function as modern signs telling people who a business owner is and what they offer.

Morby originally built his own social presence rather than beginning with a branding agency. He started posting to Instagram himself, later expanded into YouTube, and eventually hired employees as his content operation grew.

For someone starting today, Morby said he would seriously consider hiring a competent content agency earlier. He used a hypothetical $5,000 monthly agency cost and asked whether the visibility might generate an additional $50,000 in revenue, framing content spending as an investment rather than simply an expense.

He said the return from personal branding does not have to come only from generating new leads. Existing prospects who see a strong public presence may perceive greater credibility and convert at a higher rate, meaning branding can improve closing performance even without increasing lead volume.

Morby repeatedly connected a visible brand with perceived confidence. In his view, being unwilling to publicly stand behind your work makes potential customers or investors less likely to believe in it themselves.

He used sales trainer Andy Elliott and McDonald’s golden arches as examples of attention becoming commercial advantage. His argument was that visibility makes a person or company appear dominant within a category even when many competitors offer similar underlying services.

Morby said the first money he independently earned came at about age 14, painting garage floors on Saturdays using a skill learned from his father. He considers himself entrepreneurial from childhood but said he began treating business seriously at roughly age 22.

When business is going badly, Morby advises measuring what is still being accumulated beyond immediate profit. Every deal can produce relationships, resources, negotiation ability, operating knowledge and other skills that survive even if the underlying asset is later sold.

He said those small skills and relationships compound invisibly over long periods. Someone whose revenue appears stagnant may still be becoming a better closer, building stronger industry relationships and learning to perform under stress.

Morby referenced The Gap and the Gain to distinguish focusing on what is missing from recognizing progress already made. He believes constantly measuring oneself against an unrealized ideal creates unnecessary dissatisfaction.

He argued that personal income eventually reflects personal development. When he encounters a setback, his preferred interpretation is that he needs additional skills, education or personal growth before operating sustainably at a higher level.

Morby also sees businesses as moving through seasons rather than producing at maximum capacity continuously. He compared a business downturn with a fruit tree’s non-producing season, when visible output disappears while roots can still be growing deeper.

His recommended response to a slow season is to deepen industry knowledge rather than panic. He specifically suggested studying the field, learning from specialists and even becoming friends with competitors so that stronger foundations exist when demand or opportunity improves.

He acknowledged a downside to personal branding: visible activity can distract founders from the less glamorous work that strengthens the underlying business. If someone concentrates only on displaying the “fruit” publicly, an algorithm change or temporary decline can expose weak roots underneath.

Morby therefore advocates deliberately scheduling personal development alongside public business activity. He spends money on mentorship, education and access to experienced practitioners rather than assuming previous success means there is nothing left to learn.

He called mentorship the “modern-day college.” His reasoning is that people can now choose a specialist whose results they want, pay a fraction of the cost of some traditional degrees and learn directly from that person rather than accepting whichever instructor an institution assigns.

He praised Jordan for studying with another mentor even while remaining one of Morby’s own students. Morby sees learning from multiple highly capable specialists as a strength rather than disloyalty.

When asked what traits distinguish promising young people, Morby first named showing up and consistency. His less obvious criterion was whether someone passively waits for information and instructions or actively creates opportunities to be useful.

He used a newly hired 22-year-old employee named Nathan Barnes to illustrate initiative. Nathan had been hired about two weeks earlier to handle handyman work in the mornings and work in Morby’s lending business during the afternoons.

When Nathan cannot reach Morby, he does not simply stop working. Morby said Nathan contacts his wife or other team members asking what he can do for them until Morby becomes available, which Morby views as unusually strong proactive behavior.

Morby contrasted that behavior with what he considers a conventional employee mentality of waiting to be told exactly what to do, when to work and when to stop. He sees self-directed value creation as one of the strongest markers of entrepreneurial potential.

He believes social circles are a major reason people remain in routines they say they want to escape. Someone surrounded primarily by people living the same 9-to-5 pattern receives little exposure to alternative expectations, opportunities or behavior.

Morby said he is religious but warned against automatically adopting every life choice advocated by a pastor, parent or other authority figure. His point was that advice should be separated by domain: spiritual guidance may be valuable without requiring someone to copy the adviser’s financial or professional path.

He extended the same argument to parents and inherited family expectations. Morby believes younger people need substantial guidance through adolescence, but at some stage—he suggested roughly 16 or 17 onward—they must begin deciding what life they personally intend to build.

His final recommendation was to audit the five people someone spends the most time with. He suggested adding those five people's incomes and dividing by five, asserting that the resulting average often reflects the economic level and expectations of the person whose circle is being measured.

Morby calls those five closest people a personal “board of advisors,” whether or not they formally give advice. Their expectations, habits, conversations, access and mentality continually influence the person around them.

He acknowledged that earlier in his own life his effective “board” largely consisted of his wife, parents and familiar people around him. His later strategy was to deliberately enter rooms with people operating at the financial and entrepreneurial level he wanted to reach.

Morby’s broader message was that access to higher-level relationships changes more than access to capital. He believes exposure changes what outcomes seem normal, what risks seem manageable, what questions get asked and what opportunities become visible.

Morby said his current content operation publishes a YouTube video every day and spends about $2,000 per video, or roughly $60,000 a month. He described the videos as free education covering actual houses, addresses, transaction structures and paperwork.

He said he deliberately shows supporting details for deals he claims to have completed without conventional cash, credit or credentials. His stated objective is to make the methods inspectable rather than merely making dramatic claims about what is possible.