Meet The Merrymans: Reinvesting in American Communities

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / February 26, 2020 / Brian and Tina Merryman are United States based real estate investors and owners of the company American Flip House. They are number eight on the YAHOO Finance list "Top 20 Real Estate Investor's to Keep Track of in 2020." They are also parents to three young children, the oldest of whom has special needs secondary to brain cancer treatment as a toddler. He is now eleven years old. The Merryman's invest in buy and hold and buy and sell real estate. Their current business plan involves a majority of residential fix and flip properties. American Flip House follower's love their recent favoritism toward historic homes, which they remodel with a modern design while keeping much of the home's original vintage character. They recently became real estate investment coaches through BlackCard University after having graduated from the Platinum Program.

The Merryman's are a fun-loving couple. Brian is the level-headed, problem-solving, big-picture person. Tina is the more spontaneous, Irish-Italian fireball. Brian is a great delegator, while Tina focuses more on relationships and tends to micro-manage; something she attributes to being a mom, especially with one of the children having special needs. While they are both committed to improving their respective weaknesses, they are in sync with placating one another's strengths. Brian believes that is a key component for success in managing a team and a company. Everyone has their role. He believes each team member can shine and grow individually, as well as grow the company by sticking to their strengths, while also improving their weaknesses by communicating and working on personal development. For Brian and Tina, their yin and yang personalities and energies seem to make a well-rounded business with a sort of built in checks and balances system.

Brian has worked in government for years, and in supervisor and executive positions. His experience, as well as his MBA and constant investment in business education and personal development has been huge for running American Flip House. Tina previously owned her own business, Soul Energy Shop, an online platform for women and children focusing on mind, body and spirit wellness. The company was growing, yet the success and opportunity for growth with American Flip House became her priority and she decided in 2019 to dissolve the other company. Tina's past experience is in journalism and marketing, as well as being an on-air radio personality, spokesmodel and voice actress. Ironically, Brian is the one now interested in public speaking and Tina has enjoyed more of the behind the scenes action such as working the numbers for their deals, for example.

The Merryman's got into real estate investment when they needed to move for their special needs son and his education. They would have lost money if they sold their home at the time. Therefore, they decided to rent it out. As the buy and hold experience began, Brian's interest was sparked. A few summer's later, they had to take leave from work and live in Gainesville, Florida for their son's out-of-state surgical needs. It required them to be away from home and work with more down time for a couple of months. That is when Brian decided to read the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad with the intention of learning more about money mindsets and investing. That began the wheels turning regarding making real estate investing a future for their family. It was all history from there! Throw in a lot more books, coaching, flipping their first house and buying a duplex and they had a vehicle that was taking on speed. It was not until 2018 that they decided to truly scale. By early 2019 they had begun to rebrand and the vehicle turned into a rocket ship.

In the process of building American Flip House from the ground up, their biggest enemies to deal with were time management, making peace with the naysayers and perseverance when days were hard.

"Mindset is huge," agree both Brian and Tina. They do not believe in work-life balance so much as what they call "lifestyle integration." Brain says, "This is a 24/7, 365 gig." Tina adds, "You have to get really solid at time management when you own a business and are scaling. Brian is getting really good at that – I am realizing the necessity and finally coming around. Also, faith and family must remain the priority; they are in everything we do and everything we do is in them."

The Merryman children are part of the experience, going to property walkthroughs and sometimes helping to paint or landscape, for example.

"You also have to realize that most of the people you have known throughout your life are not going to understand your lifestyle," mentions Tina.

"Yes!" adds Brian, "Owning a business and being an entrepreneur is a completely different lifestyle than the middle class mindset and behaviors we both grew up with."

"A true entrepreneur takes risks and spends time educating themselves and choosing assets over liabilities. It's not for everyone," says Tina.

"You have to be a resilient person who makes daily efforts to keep their mind, body and spirit in peak condition, and always improving. You also have to communicate well and be able to brush off negative energy. Just never quit!" says Brian.

Aside from a strong mindset, the couple has some secrets they use daily to continue expanding their business. Brian explains, "I use a strategic journal and plan each day the day before with specific time for family, business and specific areas inside those priorities. In fact, each day of the week is designated for different focuses. One day is for branding, another for marketing, another still for property visits, so on and so forth. Then, there is a certain chunk of the day for new business and a certain chunk of the day for current business. We learned this strategy from our Real Estate Investment and Business Coach, Stefan Aarnio."

"You also have to internalize that it takes money to make money," Tina adds, "I always panic with the poor dad mentality like, we can't spend money on marketing or more coaching. I call Brian the boss-man because he has the rich dad mentality of ‘how can we afford this?' He is the natural born leader and problem-solver; thank goodness!"

In real estate investing, Brian and Tina swear by being a brand, not a commodity. They are strict about the budget and turning the expected profit for their partner's and the company; however, creating a retail, dream-come-true experience for the end user of their product has allowed them to stand out and make deals move faster. They also believe very much in personal development and mentorship. They attribute their edge to always investing in education and personal growth, "You should always be increasing your value to be of more service," says Tina.

The Merryman's also use a proprietary system they learned through their coaching program in order to negotiate and track properties. This strategy leads to getting great deals at 40-60 cents on the dollar.

Throughout the real estate journey, the Merryman's see it as though their biggest failures have led to some of their greatest gains. Tina commented, "As much as we are huge advocates for education in whatever facet of life or business you are working on…. We also believe that there is no education in life quite like experience. The most painful failure we had – or at least the one that irritated us the most – was not hiring the right contracting team for a job. Twice. They ended up costing us time and money. We recognized the gaps and weaknesses that caused those issues and have created a transparent yet competitive strategy for contractors to work with us. We also hired a skilled project manager last year and things are moving along much more efficiently now."

The Merryman's agreed that all the little improvements are their biggest success and the fact that they were recently featured as number eight in the Yahoo! Finance List Top 20 Real Estate Investor's to Keep Track of in 2020. "We feel very blessed to be on that list with people like Grant Cardone," Brian mentioned.

Even with some great past achievements, they have no intentions of slowing down. "Currently we are working on scaling how many deals we do a month while also raising more private capital," Tina said.

"We also just became licensed REI coaches through an elite Real Estate Investment, Business and Sales University. The same program we graduated from and that led to our own success. We are really diving into scaling our company and helping others successfully begin and grow their own," Brian said.

With everything in mind, the Merryman's want to leave a legacy of resilience. They believe that people can grow and even change a lot. They want to be a part of bigger movements in the future as their company grows while teaching how much a positive person who preserves can really change the world; one mindset at a time.

If you're interested in keeping up with the Merryman's, check out their Instagram!

CONTACT:

Trenten Huss
tjh@highkeyagency.com
(204) 698-6281

SOURCE: HighKey Agency

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