In this powerful interview, longtime friends James and Heath reveal how trust, complementary strengths, and creative thinking turned their real estate ambitions into a thriving real estate investing business. From RV sales and speech therapy to full-time investing, they show exactly what’s possible when the right people come together with the right mentorship.

Highlights include:

• Real talk on trust, risks, and the realities of partnership
• Why their natural roles made collaboration easy
• The mindset shift that unlocked true freedom
• Real deal breakdowns: flipping, holding, and creative financing
• How coaching and accountability made all the difference
• What a partnership done right really looks like in real estate

Learn how the Freedom Mentor program gave them the mindset, strategy, and support to build long-term financial freedom—and why their partnership worked when so many others fail.

What Makes a Real Estate Partnership Thrive—and Last?

If you’ve ever entertained the idea of pursuing real estate with a partner to leverage each other’s efforts and accomplish far more in less time, you’re going to love this story. Look—too many business partnerships go bad, for a variety of reasons. In fact, there’s an entire chapter in Phil's book Real Estate Investing Gone Bad devoted to this topic! But you’re about to discover a rare and inspiring business partnership that has spanned many years. You'll meet two exceptional people who combined their unique strengths and weaknesses, channeled their shared passion for business opportunities into creative real estate strategies, and achieved more together than they ever dreamed of alone.

Meet James and Heath: A Partnership Done Right

Phil: Really excited to spend time with this dynamic duo—James and Heath, joining us from a more rural part of Missouri. I'm coming to you from my vacation home in the Florida Keys, Brian’s dialing in from his home office in Texas, and we’re all connected by the passion we share for real estate investing and the success it brings. James, Heath—thank y'all so much for being here.

Heath: Thank you for having us. We were excited when Brian contacted us.

Backgrounds Before Real Estate

Brian: Absolutely. It's a pleasure to meet with you guys. To get us started, can you take us back—what were you both doing before you got started in real estate?

Heath: I was a speech therapist. I did that for about five years before we started with Freedom Mentor. Then I kept working as we were getting our feet wet in real estate for another couple of years.

James: I got trapped in the grocery business for 10 years, then I moved into the RV business for 20. I learned a lot—about people, systems, and business. We were selling RVs on consignment, which was a brilliant business model: you could sell the unit before having to pay for it. Then I found Phil, and I thought, “This guy’s talking about controlling real estate through contracts—you can sell it before you pay for it. I'm in.” So I started consuming all your free stuff. Then we got into the pre-apprentice program and it really opened up a lot of new thinking.

I was talking at work about everything I was learning, thinking it could actually help the business. You said you need to be good at marketing before you're going to be good at this business—and I thought, “Yeah, we’ve got some learning to do.” But leadership felt threatened that I'd paid for some education and was learning real estate strategies. That Friday, they met me at the door and said, “You can't have your own business and work here too. You’ve got to make a choice.” I was planning on maintaining my nice six-figure income while investing in real estate on the side. Instead, I went full-time into investing that day.

We started diving into Kiyosaki, tax sales—we were ready to be real estate investors. At the time, the only strategy I understood was, “Go buy an investment property and find a realtor to show you around.”

Heath: Ya, I spent five years going to tax sales, trying to figure out what the deal was. Every year, I’d go and audio-record the whole thing. It was just too dense to crack without somebody who’d already navigated that landscape.

James: Your training covers a lot of areas. I went into it skeptical. One size doesn’t fit all—he’s not right on everything. But time and time again, we found ourselves saying, “Yeah, feels right. This is a higher signal.”

Building a Partnership on Trust and Complementary Strengths

"I think we both recognized that we had strengths and weaknesses that could complement each other."— Heath

Phil: James, after looking at this opportunity, why bring Heath into it? How does a good friend translate into a good business partner?

James: Over the years, we’d looked at the same deals. We’d gotten into a network marketing business together and learned a ton. It backdoored us into all kinds of thinking, doing, and mentorships. One of the big takeaways was, “You can’t change your life one bit, son, unless you change the way you think about money.” And I was so clueless—I was like, “What? What do you mean think about money differently? What do I even need to think?”

Even though we didn’t go on to have a successful career in network marketing, it introduced us to concepts that we’re still grateful for. I showed this real estate concept to Heath, and it took him a week—then he calls me and says, “Man, I’m in.”

I’m like, “What are you even talking about?”

He goes, “I studied that thing, and I don’t see any reason why it won’t work.”

That confirmed it for me. Heath’s such an analytical nuts-and-bolts guy—and still is. If he wants to analyze something and tells me it’s good, that’s my green light. We were already sharing information, taking classes, building the mindset that one day we were going to do as many wise things as we knew how—and it would pay off.

Heath: I think we both recognized that we had strengths and weaknesses that could complement each other. I'm much more analytical and get obsessive about things, which means I can get stuck or bogged down. James is the opposite—he doesn’t overthink, he just gets things done quickly. So things keep moving. Working together? I’ve probably kept him out of jail, and he’s helped us move forward so we’re actually doing something.

James: That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about me!

Why Friendship Became a Foundation for Business Success

Heath: I remember one of our earliest conversations, when we first talked about doing this together. I said out loud, “We’ve got a lot to lose—our longstanding friendship.” It was a real risk. We acknowledged that risk up front, and being aware of it helped mitigate the possibility of it ruining the friendship if things didn’t work out. But we also realized there was a lot to gain. We said from the very beginning, “We’re probably not going to want to be partners forever, but we can benefit from each other while we’re learning.” Some weaknesses each of us have would be supported by the other’s strengths.

James: To be honest with you, we wouldn’t have a business if it was just me. I wouldn’t have what we have today. We’ve spent so much time developing skills—independently of each other. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I know he’s doing all kinds of things that help every day and keep us protected. And we’re moving forward. We don’t have to talk every day. In fact, Heath runs from me—dodges me all the time!

Phil: You all have created something truly special because of that chemistry. And you’re both so consistent and level-headed. This partnership moved from something I’d normally advise against to pure perfection—because of how well you two work together. I think it’s fantastic. Truly brilliant.

Dividing Roles and Sharing Profits

"The best thing about sharing profit is actually making profit." — Heath

Brian: How did you two work out responsibilities? Is it just because you’ve known each other so long that you naturally divvy up tasks? Or did you need to spell things out—like “You’ll handle this, I’ll handle that”? How has that dynamic worked between you two?

Heath: I think most of it happened pretty naturally, pretty organically—based on what our natural gifts were.

James: In the early years, I was the guy saying, “Let’s gather all the information, weed through it, and grab the cherries.” We weren’t touching anything unless it was $40,000–$50,000. So we had our pick of some really strong deals—and I just wanted to be done.

Heath: Usually, we’d meet with the seller together, and then I’d break off after that conversation and take care of ironing out the contract.

Collaboration and Mindset Shifts

Phil: Was there ever any hesitation around sharing profits? Or was this something you’d both set your sights on, like it was an achievement to get into the apprentice program?

Heath: Nobody likes giving up profits—but the best thing about sharing profit is actually making profit. How much would I have made on my own? Clearly, not a lot. We recognized early on how little we knew. This organization obviously knew what they were doing, because we learned so much from the pre-apprentice program—just from the videos, reading through the contracts, and getting out there and trying it.

But we also realized—man, we really need help. It would’ve been nice to know certain things before showing up at the closing table. And there’s just no way I could’ve known some of this stuff. No Google search was going to reveal that. You couldn’t find it online. One of the most valuable mindset shifts I learned from the program was this:

It’s like being in a room. Until you bump into the walls, you don’t know which ones are real and which ones are just cardboard. You might say, “I don’t want to operate inside a box”—but until you hit a wall, you can’t tell if it’s immovable... or just something flimsy that doesn’t really matter at all. It’s a complete change in the way you think.

Wisdom Gained, Freedom Achieved

"This is not about wearing 18 more hats to make more money—it’s about getting your freedom." — James

Brian: You've made so many advances and learned so much. Looking back, if you were speaking to someone who's considering applying to Freedom Mentor—what advice would you share?

James: I'd say do it. The only person I can imagine going back to advise is my younger self. I've never been one to trust systems blindly. But this one? It has accountability, an alignment of interest—and if you have someone to help you implement it, plus navigate the mindset shift and the minutiae of the process, it can transform your life. Freedom Mentor, along with tools like Evernote, really stuck with me. It taught me how to organize not just my business but my life and my thinking. And it's not about wearing 18 more hats just to chase more money. It's about building freedom.

To me, success is getting to live life on your own terms and we've found so much of it. I prayed for 20 years that if I could ever break free from working just to pay rent... if I could figure out how to make money work for me and gain leverage, then what would I actually want to do with my life? That’s where the real question begins. You just need a vehicle to get there. Freedom Mentor was the vehicle we used and it changed our entire life.

A Creative Mindset

Heath: It’s a way of thinking. Sure, you learn specific creative strategies. But more than that, you learn to think creatively. I imagine it like this: I have three basic machines. I know all the aspects and every part of each one—so much so that I can take a piece off one, flip it around, install it on another, and it will do something a little different. And I can do that because I now think through problems differently. It's not just knowing what each component does, it's learning to see the whole system from a different perspective.

And I remember what you said, Phil— “Get excited when you hit a problem, because you're about to make more money.” That’s so true. When problems pop up, and you think, “Ugh, this isn't going to be good”—and then you keep picking at it, and eventually it cracks open and you say, “This is how we solve it!”—there’s almost always more profit on the other side.

James: In Chinese, the word for “crisis” and “opportunity” is the same. Whenever we've hit a wall, it's turned into an opportunity to restructure—and always in a more advantageous way.

Heath: Not just more advantageous for us, but for the seller too. That’s the key.

From Flipping to Holding: A Shift in Strategy

"You need a coach. You just need one, if you want to achieve at a high level." — James

Phil: So it's not just house flipping. Let’s talk about your rental portfolio. What are y’all doing there?

Heath: Right now, we’ve got—I think—four rentals, and four more in the process of being renovated to hold as long-term rentals.

James: That last big batch of houses, we bought sub-to with plans to wrap the mortgage for owner financing. But we put the brakes on that and decided to rehab them all and keep them. So we’re shifting toward a hold-and-rent model.

Phil: That’s so exciting. That’s how the real estate investor develops freedom. You systemize the best you can, but when it comes to creative real estate investing—you get it to a point where there’s still active involvement. It’s not completely hands-off mailbox money.

The Path to Real Freedom

"That active side gets you so much faster to the passive side." — Heath

Heath: You’re right about the active side. But that’s where Freedom Mentor is such an apt description. That active effort gets you to the passive side so much faster. And like you said, that’s where more freedom comes from. Information is one thing. Recognizing and identifying all the puzzle pieces within that information—and then putting those pieces together efficiently—is a whole different ball game. And it’s not easy, no matter how much information is out there.

James: You need a coach. If you're going to be an Olympic athlete, if you want to achieve at a high level, you must have coaching.

Phil: Gentlemen, this was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing the wisdom you’ve gained. Thanks also for the kind words about what our team has done for you and your lives. I’m so thankful you’ve not only stuck together in business but it seems like your partnership has strengthened with every passing year. What a blessing. What a beautiful opportunity you have ahead. And again, thank you so much for being here. Brian, thank you again for putting this together, and as always, for your insight and wisdom.

A Partnership Done Right

"Freedom Mentor was the vehicle we used to change our whole life." — James

James and Heath were able to combine their complementary skills—analysis and action—into a powerful partnership. With support from the Freedom Mentor team, they built something truly remarkable. Now, make no mistake—choosing a business partner is a serious decision. You must be clear on what each person brings to the relationship, define roles and responsibilities, and most importantly, ensure your interests and incentives are aligned. That kind of clarity is extremely rare. But when it clicks, like it did for James and Heath, the rewards can be life-changing.

Every Successful Creative Real Estate Investor Has a Mentor

If you’re ready to change your life through the proven power of real estate—and with the most experienced team in the industry—apply to the Apprentice Program. You’ll be mentored, coached, and guided toward true financial success: Freedom Mentor Apprentice Program.

If you have questions for us, text FREEDOM to 305-315-8030 or post a comment below.