In the latest episode of the Raising Private Money Podcast, host Jay Conner sits down with real estate maven Dwan Bent Twyford to delve into the intricacies of raising private money in a volatile market. Dwan, a single mother turned real estate powerhouse, brings her wealth of experience, having raised over $1 million in private funds, written best-selling books, and completed upwards of 2,000 real estate deals.
Private vs. Hard Money: A Lender’s Perspective
Understanding the distinction between hard money and private money is crucial for real estate investors. During the episode, Dwan elucidates the benefits of private money, emphasizing its flexible terms and longer duration in comparison to hard money loans. This segment serves as a primer on why private money often trumps hard money, especially when considering the sometimes predatory nature of hard money lending practices.
Digital Outreach and the Power of Presence
An essential aspect of Dwan’s success lies in her online engagement. She discusses maintaining a robust presence across diverse platforms, from Facebook to TikTok, directing listeners to her all-encompassing resource, www.dwanderful.com. Her advice is clear: leverage digital tools to extend your influence and accessibility in the real estate realm.
The Town Revitalization Blueprint
Dwan’s transformative work extends beyond individual properties to revitalizing entire towns. She recounts the metamorphosis of a once-flourishing town impacted by industrial decline. By acquiring emptied buildings and collaborating with local stakeholders, she and her partner sparked a resurgence of community events and businesses, thereby enhancing property values. This practical case study exemplifies how strategic real estate investment can alter the landscape of a town.
Mentorship: The Key to Investor Growth
Aspiring real estate investors glean invaluable wisdom from Twyford’s emphasis on mentorship. Having a seasoned guide can safeguard novices from pitfalls and accelerate their growth. In an industry where experience speaks volumes, Dwan advocates for finding a mentor to learn the ropes effectively.
Opportunity Amidst Market Uncertainty
Dwan breaks down how even in less-than-ideal market conditions, opportunities for profit remain, particularly when dealing with distressed properties like foreclosures. There’s never a shortage of deals for investors diligent enough to seek them out, and with more money circulating post-COVID, access to funds is less of a barrier to entry than one might assume.
The Advantage of Becoming a Private Lender
The conversation with Dwan also highlights the attractiveness of becoming a private lender in the real estate market. With potential returns that outpace conventional investment options, savvy individuals are moving their funds into the space. This section reveals just how lucrative stepping into the role of a lender can be, especially when compared to parking money in traditional retirement accounts.
Twyford’s Real Estate Journey and Vision
Exploring Twyford’s venture from rehabbing houses to owning rental properties, listeners gain perspective on her progression in the industry. Furthermore, her ambition shines through in her endeavors to refurbish historical buildings for new commercial usage, adding a layer of community revitalization to her investment activities.
Conclusion: Inviting Change, Inviting Success
Dwan’s story is a testament to the transformative power of real estate investment, both financially and communally. By placing “people before profits,” she has carved out a legacy that benefits not only her bottom line but the lives of those touched by her work. This podcast offers a profound insight into private money’s role in today’s uncertain market and the boundless potential it holds for determined investors.
The Importance of Mentorship:
“If I had had a mentor or someone to guide me in the beginning, my learning curve would have been shorter.” – Dwan Bent-Twyford
10 Questions Covered in this Episode:
- Can you share the most significant challenges you faced when transitioning from using hard money lenders to raising over $1,000,000 in private money?
- Dwan Bent Twyford mentioned the motto, “People before profits.” How has this philosophy impacted your approach to real estate and the success of your deals?
- Dwan has a remarkable story, starting as a broke single mom and rising to real estate success. How do you think her personal journey has influenced her business strategies and interactions with investors and the community?
- With the restoration of an entire town, what are the key strategies that Dwan and her family are using to revitalize the local economy while also ensuring a return on their investment?
- How does the current uncertain market affect strategies for short sales, and what opportunities do you see for investors who are looking to enter this space?
- Dwan Bent Twyford has closed over 2,000 real estate deals. Can you provide insights into the common factors that have contributed to the high success rate of these deals?
- The contrast between hard money and private money was discussed in the episode. Could you elaborate more on how private money loans can be structured to be mutually beneficial to both the lender and the borrower?
- Reflecting on the restoration of an entire town that Dwan Bent Twyford is involved in, what are some unique considerations that investors should take into account when working on projects of this scale?
- Dwan talked about the importance of mentoring new real estate investors. Why do you think mentorship is so critical in this industry, and what benefits do you think a new investor can expect from a good mentor?
- With the discussion on the importance of social media presence in today’s real estate market, how do you believe online platforms can be leveraged effectively to attract private money for future real estate deals?
Here are three fun facts that were revealed in the episode:
- Dwan Bent Twyford and her family are restoring an entire town, revitalizing its downtown with increased activities and property values.
- They turned the town around by following the Hallmark calendar for street events, effectively creating a bustling community atmosphere.
- Dwan and her partner Bill acquired 15 buildings and influenced 28 others to control the vote for downtown’s revitalization plans, leading to the town’s significant transformation.
Timestamps
00:01 – Success in raising private money for real estate.
04:15 – Started as a rehabber, used hard money.
09:59 – Having a mentor speeds up the learning process.
12:35 – New investors quit after one or two deals.
16:09 – Choose a lane, access private money, and navigate challenges.
18:17 – CDs yield 2%, but private money reaches 8%.
22:48 – Lumber barons built a town, now struggling economically.
24:56 – Buying and financing multiple buildings without down payments.
29:45 – Connect With Dwan Bent Twyford: https://www.Dwanderful.com
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From Broke to Real Estate Mogul: The Dwan Bent Twyford Journey
Jay Conner [00:00:01]:
Welcome to another amazing episode of Raising Private Money. I’m Jay Conner, your host. And today have we got an amazing guest. Oh, my lands. My guest today has raised 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of Private Money, and we’re going to talk about exactly how she’s done it. Now, let me ask you a question. When you hear the word foreclosures, do your ears perk up a little bit? Or do you dream of owning your own business being financially free setting your own schedule and taking the vacations when you want to? Well, guess what? My guest is going to reveal in this episode and the conversation we’re going to have exactly how she has gone about doing it. Now, first of all, her background story.
Jay Conner [00:00:47]:
She started as a broke single mom who can who had been, can you believe, fired from Denny’s, for goodness sake. So having nowhere to go but, that’s how she actually, or when she started rehabbing foreclosures. Well, fast forward to about 30 years up until now, her insane amount of investing knowledge and unique and very open style, down-to-earth personality make her a very highly sought-after podcast guest. In fact, I have talked her into agreeing to answer any real estate question that we throw her away. Now, her motto that she lives by is, quote-unquote, people before profits. Now, in addition to that, she’s written 3 best-selling, books. She’s a celebrity guest speaker on Fox and Friends, MSNBC, local news channels, and Naomi Judd’s morning show. I mean, she’s been everywhere and with everybody.
Jay Conner [00:01:45]:
In addition to that, she’s closed now over 2,000 real estate deals by flipping and rehabbing. Now, her current project is unbelievably huge. You might as well say that she and her family have bought an entire town, and they’re in the midst of restoring this town. We definitely wanna hear that story. In just a moment, you’re gonna meet my dear friend and special guest, Miss Dwan Bent Twyford, right after this.
Narrator [00:02:15]:
If you’re a real estate investor and are wondering how to raise and leverage Private Money to make more profit on every deal, then you’re in the right place. On Raising Private Money, we’ll speak with new and seasoned investors to dissect their deals and extract the best tips and strategies to help you get the money because the money comes first. Now here’s your host, Jay Conner.
Jay Conner [00:02:43]:
Dwan, welcome to the show.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:02:46]:
Hi, honey. I’m so excited to see you. You look exactly the same.
Jay Conner [00:02:51]:
Oh, yeah. You know what? That reminds me. There are 3 stages of life, Dwan. There’s youth and middle age, and you look exactly the same.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:03:02]:
I can’t use any age and then we get used again.
Jay Conner [00:03:05]:
That’s right. That’s right. Well, it’s so good to have you back on Raising Private Money. It’s been a, it’s been a little while since we visited here on the show. And so what I’d like to do, Duane, is first, let’s spend a few minutes and talk about what you have to share about Raising Private Money because the audience loves to hear how very successful people such as yourself have gone about Raising Private Money. And then I want us to move into your expertise and get as much advice as we can, in the, 30 minutes or so that we’ve got together. So as far as Raising Private Money goes, you’ve raised 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of Private Money. It’s been my experience that a lot of other real estate investors had a similar story to mine, and that is I had a big problem come along in my investing career to where I was shut down at the banks.
Jay Conner [00:03:56]:
I couldn’t borrow any money. The finance global financial crisis was going on. It was that time in 2009 that I learned about Private Money, and it became the biggest blessing in disguise in my business. What’s your story as to what triggered you to start Raising Private Money?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:04:15]:
Well, you know, when I first started, I started off as a rehabber. So I was getting houses, you know, moving into the houses, fixing them up, selling them, moving into the next rehab, and that’s what I was doing. So after my first deal, I needed money to buy a rehab, so I started using local hard money lenders down here in South Florida, like in the Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach area. So I started using hard money lenders probably for, I don’t even know, 5 or 6 or 7 years. And I was like, you know what? I know so many people that have money and friends of my parents and my dad and just aunts and uncles. So I was like, hey. You know, I need a little money for this and for that. And then, like, they would have a friend that would, you know, have some money.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:05:05]:
Next thing you know, I had all these people that were willing to lend me money all over the place. And then that turned into me training 1,000 and 1,000 students, and some of them started making really big money. I’m like, you need to become a Private Money lender. So then I trained a bunch of people to be lenders, and they’ve lent out 1,000,000 dollars too. So mine came out like you said, it came out of necessity. I started as a rehabber. I only knew that one technique, and I didn’t have any money or any credit because I’d gone through a divorce, a foreclosure, and had my car repossessed. So I had I probably couldn’t even have bought a pack of gum on credit.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:05:47]:
And so it was I needed it to make my business work.
Jay Conner [00:05:53]:
Exactly. Well, and I bring I’m glad you bring up the contrast between hard money and Private Money because a lot of times when real estate investors hear the word Private Money, they’re thinking hard money.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:06:07]:
Yes. There’s a
Jay Conner [00:06:07]:
big difference. There’s a big difference. The big difference between hard money and Private Money. What are some of the, what is in your experience, what are some of the big differences between a hard money broker and then doing business with individuals who loan you money on your deals, either from investment capital or their retirement accounts?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:06:29]:
Yeah. A lot of them use retirement accounts. I’m glad you said that. I’ve got, I don’t even know. I’ve got it’s so funny how, you know, when you’re new, like, nobody wants to give you money. And then after you become, like, sort of semi-famous, everybody in the world wants to give you money. They’re, like, begging you. And then at that point, you don’t really need it anymore because you’re like, okay.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:06:49]:
I’ve got my own money. But I like people I have a lot of people that make money out of their retirement funds and things like that, and the loans are, sometimes a little principal and interest. They might be a little bit longer, like a 2-year or 3-year or 5-year note, and they’re not like, hard money is like, you know, here’s the money. It’s for 6 months. It’s interest only. You better get that household. And with the Private Money, I find them to be more amenable to lengthening the term of your loan or even lending. Like, we’ve got a couple of commercial buildings, and some lenders lend us some money to buy the buildings.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:07:30]:
And, you know, it’s like amortized over 30 years, but in 5 years, we have to, you know, refinance and stuff. So I think as you do the private, it’s just easier. The terms are easier. And once you work with someone a couple of times and they make a bunch of money back, they tell their friends and then everybody and their brother wants to give you money for everything. So I would always go to Private Money versus hard money, but in the very beginning, that’s all I could do was get hard money. But it didn’t take long for me to be like, that’s a racket. And, like, back then, they were charging 15% interest only and, like, 10 points. It’s like, golly.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:08:12]:
What a racket that is.
Jay Conner [00:08:14]:
Right. Right. So really what you’re saying when you’re doing business with, private lenders, individuals, you as the real estate investor, you as the borrower, we get to make the rules instead of the lender.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:08:28]:
It’s so much easier. We have got a few people that lend us money for things. And as soon as we pay them back, they’re always like, hey. Listen. We wanna lend you guys some more money. Buy something else. And in Iowa, that town we’re working in, we bought, 28 buildings altogether. And some of them we paid for, some of them we borrowed some money on, and people are just like this.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:08:49]:
They’re excited to help you because they’re making, you know, 10 times the money they’re gonna make in their 401k or the IRA or whatever they’ve got going on. They’re gonna make so much more money and, you know, then they can put that money back with the profit and they can build their long-term wealth because they can, you know, put the money back in as they made. And they’re really excited to help and be a part of it. I find I find all the ones I work with, they’re, like, happy to be, like, what’s going on? Show me some pictures. How’s the building going? And, you know, they feel like they’re part they’re like a part of something.
Jay Conner [00:09:24]:
I love it. Now, you know, you’ve worked, as I have with, a lot of students, to help people get going into real estate investing. In your years, of doing that, Duane, what is or are some of the most common mistakes that you see a new real estate investor making?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:09:42]:
Oh, Lord. How many hours do we have?
Jay Conner [00:09:47]:
Well and, really, the more important the more important follow-up question to that is, in whatever you say the common mistakes are that you’ve seen, what can they do not to make those mistakes?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:09:59]:
Well, okay. So first thing, and not to give a shameless plug to either one of us, but, really, if I had had a mentor or someone to guide me in the beginning, my learning curve would have been shorter. If I had somebody like you who would lend me Private Money, I would have made more money. And so, honestly, people can never go wrong by having somebody with experience help them and guide them. And, like, you specialize in hard money. I mean, gosh, you could help 1000000 people probably raise hard money. And so my first thing is don’t try to reinvent the wheel because it’s already been invented. Find someone you like and that you feel like you’re more compass is aligned and work with that person.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:10:45]:
So that’s my first thing because I tell people all the time, you’re gonna learn by mentors are mistakes. Mentors are cheaper.
Jay Conner [00:10:54]:
Amen.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:10:55]:
I mean, god, I just I, you know, I learned I started in, like, 1990, and there was no real Internet. Nobody was traveling around doing big seminars. And I learned Sharon and I worked together. We learned everything by the seat of our pants.
Jay Conner [00:11:14]:
It’s sort of painful, isn’t it?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:11:15]:
It is. Because you make mistakes, and then you look back. You’re like, oh, man. That was such a boneheaded mistake. How did I do that? But you don’t know any different. So my first thing is the biggest mistake people make is thinking they can just listen to this piece of a webinar and this piece of a webinar and watch, you know, this podcast and they go, oh, I can I can become a successful real estate investor because I listen to 15 people give me a tidbit? And it’s not a system. Like, it’s you need a system. And, like, with money, like, people come to you with and you teach them how to raise Private Money.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:11:49]:
It’s so much easier than the hard money lenders because they’re like tyrants, you know, really. And they are, and I’ve had to ask for extensions, and it’s, like, it’s terrible. And especially when I was new and didn’t know that much about business, I was so intimidated by all of them. I was like, gosh. I don’t know. These people scare me scare me to death. So I think I think it’s really important for any investor, new or seasoned, to listen to podcasts, get on webinars, come and see people like you, come and see people like me. And then, like I said, don’t think, oh, I’ve got 25 pieces of information.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:12:27]:
I know everything there was to know because you know I know that new people don’t know what they don’t know.
Jay Conner [00:12:34]:
Exactly.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:12:35]:
And they get their panties in a bunch on their first or second deal and they quit. Like, oh, I lost money or this didn’t work out. I didn’t make as much profit because the house needed so much work or whatever, and one deal could put them out of business. And if they have someone to help him, they like me, like, I’m almost 25100 deals in and I’m rehabbing a town. Like, I would never thought a girl that got fired on Denny’s on 3rd shift would be rehabbing a town. Like, who does that? You know? Sometimes I’m just like, are we serious about rehabbing a town? Like, Bill, what are we doing? But it’s it’s a challenge because it’s all new.
Jay Conner [00:13:14]:
I love it.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:13:15]:
Years later, you can still find new things to do.
Jay Conner [00:13:19]:
Thank you for sharing that, Duane. Now we have got a very interesting market going on right now. All kinds of different variables are playing into what’s going on. I mean, interest mortgage rates that a borrower would be paying are out of sight again. In our area and still, in a lot of areas, there’s no inventory, you know, and you put it in the multiple I put a house in the multiple listing service with my realtor a couple of Fridays ago, and we had 22 show ins in by in 48 hours.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:13:53]:
Yeah.
Jay Conner [00:13:54]:
And so today’s real estate market. And should somebody that’s new be concerned about entering this market at this time?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:14:09]:
Well, Jay, you know you and I know something that we know is true to be a fact. When the market’s going up and the market’s going down, people are always making money. And so if the market’s going up, we can figure out how to make money. If the market’s tanking, we can still figure out how to make money. And I feel like people, that are new are so concerned about what they hear on the news and what they hear about the market and just say, oh my god. I can’t I can’t get investing right now. But at the end of the day, I work with people in foreclosure. So whether the market’s up or down, the reasons for foreclosure remain the same.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:14:48]:
People are dying. People are getting a divorce. People are losing a jobs. People are getting job transfers. Like, the reasons for the foreclosures are the same regardless of what the market’s doing. So there’s so my thing, even self, and it’s been almost 35 years now, I still like to work with people that are in foreclosure or distress because they don’t have anywhere to go, and there’s nobody to help them except for investors. So the people that I work with and the reason I work with them, it doesn’t change. So people are dying every day, being born every day, people are getting sick every day, people are getting divorced every day, like losing jobs.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:15:29]:
Like, it’s the same. So there’s never a shortage of people that need your help. There’s never a shortage of deals out there regardless of what the market is doing. I think people that rely more on agents or they rely more on, that kind of stuff, maybe they have a little bit more difficult time, but I stay focused on the people that are in trouble because that’s how I started. I lost my house and my car and my husband and all the money, and I gotta keep my daughter. And I was like I was like a homeowner, and nobody came knocked on my door and tried to help me. So I was like, okay. And the market was amazing.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:16:09]:
You know? And so I’m just like so I think people kinda need to choose a lane, what they wanna do, and what they’re excited about, but they definitely need to have access to Private Money. Like, there’s all your deals. You’re gonna run across things where you need money to buy houses or to do rehab or to do whatever it is you wanna do or buy buildings or multi years of whatever. People need to have access to money. And that’s what scares people when the interest rates get high and be, oh, the market, They think there’s no money out there, but there’s probably more. I mean, you can attest there’s probably more money available right now because the people who have the money aren’t making as much.
Jay Conner [00:16:53]:
Yeah. I mean, you’re exactly right, Gwen. I mean, since this side of COVID, I’ve got more Private Money chasing me than even before, COVID. I mean, before COVID, there was $18,000,000,000,000 in cash sitting on the sidelines here in the United States. It could be used as Private Money. And today there are 31,000,000,000,000 sitting on the sidelines. And, you know, one thing, you know, you were talking about crazy interest rates that, people have to, when they borrow hard money, have to pay. Well, you know, that’s out of sight now.
Jay Conner [00:17:25]:
But the beautiful thing about the Private Money is I’m still paying my private lenders the same 8% that I started paying them back in 2009, and other real estate investors, particularly new ones will say, well, Jay, interest rates have gone up quite a bit since 2009. Like, how are you still able to pay 8%? And I said because we make the rules. And even though you can go down to the local bank now and get a 5% APR for an 8-month CD, certificate of deposit, 8% is still a whole lot more than that, so we make the rules.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:18:01]:
And that’s the thing. People that are new, can’t grasp that concept. It’s like you make the rules. Like, you’re lending the money. We lend money to people all the time. And all my students that start making money, I’m like, listen. Become a lender. Stop putting money in a CD.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:18:17]:
What’s a CD get? Like, 2% and if it’s in, like, all your retirement, it’s not high, and it goes up and down with the market and there’s the Private Money and, you know, like someone’s doing 8%. They’re always getting that, and that’s so much more than they can make any other way. And they’re sending all that cash, so let them make a good amount of money. And then as you borrow it and pay it back and borrow it and pay it back, then they beg you. Do you have friends that I can give them money? And then people line up, and they’re begging you to take their money.
Jay Conner [00:18:53]:
I love it.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:18:53]:
And people don’t realize that. New investors, I did not realize that for probably, honestly, a decade.
Jay Conner [00:19:00]:
Right.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:19:00]:
And then all of a sudden, I was like, I have wasted 1,000,000 dollars on hard money lenders. And now for, like, the last 20 years, it’s like, I don’t even know what the hell I was thinking back then. I mean, you don’t know. You don’t know.
Jay Conner [00:19:15]:
Well, you know, when you’re starting out and you and if you don’t get a coach or a mentor like you were talking about, you don’t know what you don’t know. Well, Duane, you know, there are all kinds of opportunities to invest in real estate. Single-family houses. I mean, even with single-family houses, of course, you know, you’re, you’re an expert in the foreclosures, but there’s short sales, there’s flipping, there’s fix and flip, and then there’s becoming a landlord, you know, long term buy and hold. What do you like the best, and what don’t you like, and why?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:19:49]:
Yeah. It’s a that’s funny because I started off as a rehabber, and the only reason I started as a rehabber is because I met some people and they said we’re real estate investors. We buy houses. We fix them up, and we sell them. So I thought, okay. They buy them. They fix them up. They sell them.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:20:05]:
So I only knew that thing. And then, I don’t know, 2 or 3 years in the early nineties, a REIA group opened up in South Florida. And I was like, oh. You know, back then, we had to find everything for all you youngsters in a classified section of the newspaper. There was an ad, real estate investors group meeting over here at this hotel, and I was like, wow. There are other investors in Fort Lauderdale, in West Palm Beach. I’m gonna go to that meeting. There’s, like, 100 people there.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:20:31]:
And I was like, holy cow. There are investors everywhere. And so then you start learning, and so then I discovered wholesaling. So for, like, a decade, I wholesaled, like, 100 deals a year. I was an insane crazy wholesaling person. But then I realized wholesaling is a job, and if you don’t have something to bring in money, you’re working basically forever till the end of time. And I started buying rentals, and then I did not know how to be a landlord. So my first five rentals, I sold them because I hated tenants calling me, oh, miss Duane.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:21:06]:
I’m gonna be late. Can you not charge me a late fee? And then I took a couple of classes and learned that I was doing it wrong, and, so now I’m all about being a landlord. And then, you know, my husband and I have some opportunities, like, to buy some commercial buildings, like, oh, that sounds like fun. Let’s do that. That’ll be fun. So there’s not, and I know this may sound like a vague answer. There’s not anything I don’t like about real estate investing. So I love wholesaling.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:21:33]:
I love rehabbing. I love being a landlord, but right and I love teaching because I see people who are barely getting by become millionaires. I’m like, I had a hand in that. I thank you, Jesus. But what I’m really into right now is rehabbing this town. So this is brand new. Maybe when I’m done, I might write a program or a book about it or something, but it’s so much fun to take old buildings and restore them back and rent out all the commercial spaces, and they bring us so much money. It’s like, oh my god.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:22:04]:
The money is insane. It’s insane.
Jay Conner [00:22:07]:
So tell us the story of renovating a town. How did this come about, and what does that look like?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:22:17]:
So you’ll you’ll appreciate this story, Jay. So Bill’s from a town called Clinton, Iowa. And Clinton, Iowa was around the Mississippi River. So, like, there’s all these river towns. There’s a bridge, and over the bridge, there is Illinois. So Iowa, Illinois, so it’s right there. And, back in the day, Clinton, Iowa had more millionaires in a small space because everyone was a land bearer, like a wood a wood. I don’t know what they call it.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:22:48]:
They were like a lot of lumber. They were lumber barons because they had a baseball team called the Lumber Kings. They were lumber barons because the train came through, the ships came through, and there so there were so many rich people, so many big giant beautiful buildings and beautiful mansions, and the town was really the thing in the fifties, sixties, seventies. And then the downtown the businesses started moving over here, like, out of town, a casino, the Walmart, a Target, all the restaurants. And people stopped coming downtown and they started going out there where, like, all the new stuff was. And so many of the buildings just were sitting there vacant for decades. So so it came about Bill and I went to a high school reunion, and we were still dating. And I was like, oh, this old town, oh my god, is so cute.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:23:37]:
It just needs some love. And so we went back for 5 years, another reunion. I was like, no one’s doing anything with this downtown. In fact, it looks worse than it did. And then back to another reunion, so there’s the 15-year mark. I’m like, listen. We need to buy some buildings. We need to call some people, see if there’s some kind of rejuvenation program or, you know, what we can do to try to help, like, revitalize this old downtown that looks like someone just stepped away from it, left it back in time.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:24:09]:
And we saw a few businesses opening and people trying to come in, but not enough to, like, bring it back. So, you know, Bill and I, we don’t do anything small. So we bought our building, and then we bought it from this woman who told her friend, Carol. She’s like, hey. I’ve got 3 buildings. My husband’s been dead for a decade. Will you take my 3 buildings? I’m like, oh, only if you wanna finance them. We can’t put any money down.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:24:36]:
Like, just so she owned or financed 3, and then her friend says, hey. I’ve got 2 more buildings over here. And all these little let me I also belong to, like, the Rotary Club. And they’re all in their seventies and, like, we all wanna move to Florida. We hate Iowa. We just wanna get I can’t. You just mail us money. Send us a check every week, and we just want all wanna move.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:24:56]:
And so we so through that, we ended up with, like, 15, which was added to Bill. Stop buying buildings. All of them have to be brought back up, and they all need a lot of work. Stop by and mail it. But, yeah, at this point, Jay, all the women were like, well, we’ll just finance it for you. So we can’t give any money down because they need work, and every single person just wrote out a mortgage, 30 years amortized. We told them we’d refinance it in 5 or 7 years, all of them. So it was the craziest thing to be able to get all that money.
Jay Conner [00:25:33]:
Wow.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:25:33]:
So then what happens? So the downtown, it’s 3 blocks by 3 blocks. So it’s 9 little blocks. So all the taxes that we pay go into a downtown revitalization fund, and then they have a meeting where everyone gets together and you have to own a building. Every building is a parcel. And they vote on things. So we were like, hey. Listen. I watch Hallmark.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:25:57]:
Let’s have a fall festival. Let’s have a spring festival. Let’s have a music festival. Let’s do things that bring people downtown. And everyone kept saying, oh, we tried Christmas in July a decade ago. It didn’t work. We tried this 8 years ago. It didn’t work.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:26:12]:
We tried this. It didn’t work. And everyone kept outvoting us. So then we called the president of the revitalization and said, how many parcels do we have to own to control the vote? So I’m like, listen. We’re gangster. We’re OG. We’re gangsters. So 28.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:26:29]:
So we got 28 more parcels, and nobody knew we bought them. And the next meeting, we’re like, here’s what we’re doing. And then they checked. They’re like, the drivers control the vote. And I said, yes. We do, and shit’s gonna start happening now. So now every Thursday in the summer, they close off the street and have live music, and, like, 2,000 people come.
Jay Conner [00:26:51]:
My word.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:26:52]:
Been downtown for decades. And we do Christmas in July, and we do Valentine’s, and we do every 2 weeks there’s something happening. And there’s still a lot of empty buildings, but we’re not buying. So if anybody wants Clinton, Iowa, come in there, but we’re not. I said, don’t you buy another building. I will murder you. Like, we are done buying buildings. But the the downtown, they did some kind of property evaluation.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:27:20]:
The property values have gone up 48% in just the last, like, 4 years since we swooped in on the town and started making things happen. So now it’s busy, it’s more bustling, and we tell all the people if you have a space you wanna rent, like, don’t rent it to a mattress company because that doesn’t bring people downtown. Rent it to restaurants and boutiques and antique malls or candy shops, and cup things that’ll bring people down to, like, shop in, like, an old downtown.
Jay Conner [00:27:49]:
Like, this is the old Walmart.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:27:51]:
Yeah. It’s like Walmart. And one of the stores across the street, it’s called DooDads. It is a Hallmark store. So they have this really strict calendar. They have to follow, like, on Hallmark, if it’s, like, in February, it’s Loveuary. And they have all these things, and I said, let’s just follow the calendar because Hallmark is tried and true. They make 1,000,000,000 of money and 1,000,000,000 of movies all over the world.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:28:15]:
Follow the calendar. They’ve proven that these things work. So, we’re so we follow the Hallmark calendar. I’m telling you that people were so mad that we had like, for 1 full year, we voted, we came up with ideas, we laid out plans, we got voted down a lot. And after a year, I was like, listen. These people are too small-minded. We have got to figure out a way because these people were making me insane. So we just thought, you know, we’ll just buy more stuff.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:28:44]:
So when you can’t work with other people, control the boat.
Jay Conner [00:28:52]:
There’s a rider downer right there. When they won’t, agree, then just control the situation.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:28:57]:
Control it. Hey. We listen. Bill and I, said we always tell people that we don’t play well with others because we have big ideas. We don’t like it. We have, like, big ideas, and we, like, we think big, big, big, big. And there is nothing against the people there, but it’s a very small town. Some have lived there their whole lives.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:29:16]:
Some of them have a building and live upstairs, and their business is downstairs, and they run that business. And that’s a wonderful thing, but they don’t think as big as we think. So after, like, a year of getting 90% of my ideas shot down, I was just like, that’s it. What do we need to do? And so we bought some more stuff and got the parcels we needed. Then we walked in like, okay. Here’s what we’re doing from now on, and the place is booming.
Jay Conner [00:29:43]:
I love it. I love it. Boom. Tom, you have you have got one of the most magnetic, attractive personalities of anybody I know.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:29:52]:
Me too.
Jay Conner [00:29:53]:
And my thank you. And my audience is thinking the same thing as they’re listening to you. So how can they connect with Dwan Bent Twyford and continue this conversation and continue to learn from you?
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:30:08]:
Well, they can just go to my website, which is Dwanderful. So it’s a dwan and wonderful, and I made a new word. So I’m Dwanterful.
Jay Conner [00:30:18]:
There you go. So that
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:30:20]:
is everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, everywhere.
Jay Conner [00:30:25]:
Alright. Let’s spell that let’s spell that for the audience.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:30:30]:
Jay Conner [00:30:38]:
There you go.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:30:39]:
And then, of course, goodness. All over the place.
Jay Conner [00:30:43]:
I love it. And of course, we will have that in the show notes as well. Dwan, thank you so much for joining me again here on the show.
Dwan Bent Twyford [00:30:52]:
Jay, you know, I have loved you forever, like, since forever. So I’m always so excited when I get a chance to see you or talk to you or be on the show with you. Can’t wait to have you back on my show again, and it’s just such a pleasure. You are, like, the happiest, have the biggest smile, and it’s very contagious, And I’ve always loved to be in a room with you.
Jay Conner [00:31:12]:
God bless you, Duane. Thank you so much. There you have it. Another amazing episode of Raising Private Money. And wow, did we have not an amazing guest today, my good friend Dwan? Now, I need your help. You know, I don’t sell anything here on this show. I don’t run any ads on the show.
Jay Conner [00:31:32]:
And there’s only one thing that I could ask you to do, and it would mean the world to me if you do this. Share this episode, at least with someone that you know it would make an impact on. If you happen to be watching on YouTube, be sure and ring that bell and subscribe so you don’t miss out on any more amazing shows. If you’re listening on any of your favorite podcast platforms, be sure and follow so you don’t miss out. I’m looking forward to seeing you right here on the next episode of Raising Private Money with Jay Conner.
Narrator [00:32:06]:
Are you feeling inspired by the knowledge you gained in this episode? Then head over to www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide. That’s www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide, and download your free guide that shares seven reasons why Private Money will skyrocket your real estate investing business right now. Again, that’s www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide to get your free guide. We’ll see you next time on Raising Private Money with Jay Conner.
