Standing on New Shoulders:The Polite’s Path to Financial Freedom

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0:41Stars of A &E's 50-50 Flip and founders of Be Polite Property. They blend faith, family, and financial freedom into a blueprint of success. Please join me in welcoming the visionary, the resilient, the trailblazing, Crystal and Dedrick Polite. How you both doing today? Mick, we are doing awesome, man. Appreciate you having us. I am the honored one. You know, we were talking offline about all the cool things that we have in common. But what I wanted to tell you both, and I wanted to look you both in the eye and tell you this, is that I'm just so freaking proud of both of you. And not just the work that you do.

1:20And we'll get into that. But more importantly, the human beings that you are. You know, I'm a man of faith, and I believe that good is rewarded in good. And I just wanted you both to know just how freaking proud I am of the human beings that you are. Ah, thank you so much. We really appreciate that. Yeah, I definitely appreciate that, man. I know that's from the heart, so we appreciate that. Absolutely. It's the Carolina way, right? Absolutely. It's the Carolina way. I usually start the episode by asking my guests, like, what's your because? That thing that's deeper than your why. You know, Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start With Why.

1:59And while I believe that's really important, I also believe we have a deeper mission and I call it your because. Right. Like if I were to say, you know, Crystal Dedrick, what's your why? You're probably going to tell me your kids, your family, your community. But when I say why are they your why, that response is what I call your because. So if I were to ask both of you individually, like what's your because today? What's that deeper purpose and mission that you have? wow that's a great question and the first time we've ever been asked that so because

2:36my because and it's it's easy but now i'm trying to figure out how to frame it around my why. How do they correlate with each other? So I would say my because is because I came from generational poverty, because we both came from generational poverty, we understand what it was like. So we do what we do now to help someone else try to change the trajectory of their family tree, even if it's giving them a nice place to stay, even if it's a rental, even if it's providing affordable housing to a single mother or a single father. Everything we do is really centered around because it's something that we experience directly in our lifetime that we're trying to literally make it a little better for that next generation.

3:37And my mother always told me every generation should go one step further, at least than the previous. So for her, it was like, my kids can just go one step further than I did. She would have done her job. So for us, that's what I always keep in mind. If I can go one step further and lead my children to do the same. So I think that would be my because. I think you've gone a few more than one step further than your mom. But, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants, you know, like the previous generation. Mick, what I would say is my because is similar to Crystal. It's because we've been the underdogs, right?

4:14Because we came from living on Section 8 housing, right? Because I used to have food stamps as a kid and go to the grocery store. Because we've been evicted. So we've been on the bottom and people see us now like, oh, you guys must have always had it going on. No, we started from the bottom. And because we started from the bottom, we want to serve as an example to others who are starting from zero or less than zero of what's possible. I love that. I love that. And I want to hit on something that you said, talking about standing on the shoulders of giants. And this is a part of what I feel like I need to tell you both, too.

4:51You now are those shoulders that people are standing on. Right. And I want you to always know that and remember that. And again, it's part of the reason I'm proud of you because I have family members that look up to both of you. I have friends that are diehard followers of all the things that you do. And you now are those shoulders. So again, kudos to you both for all the things that you do. And I love your because. Thank you. I appreciate that. And sometimes I'm just amazed. Like you standing on the shoulders of giants, just living in North Carolina, living in South Carolina, Look how far we've come in 50 years, 100 years, where our parents and our grandparents weren't allowed to even buy properties in certain neighborhoods back in the 1950s, 1960s and before.

5:36And before now, we're buying properties on TV. Right. So it's just amazing. Again, I appreciate the sacrifices of the previous generations to allow us to do what we're doing and be an example. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So we're going to go to where this started with you both. we're going to talk about that first date, but, but, but maybe we call it the first business meeting, right? So I'm going to let you tell the story, but I'm going to frame it up a little bit for the viewers and listeners. So first date, you know, everybody's going in casual. We're at a dinner, getting to know each other.

6:10And, and Crystal's like, what's your credit score? What's your business plan? What you're trying to be when you grow up? She put me on the hot seat, man. It was too hot in here. You got to flip it a little bit. So we're going to talk about that. So I don't know who wants to start first. Probably Crystal. Let's talk through what this first date was. Like, let's set that stage. Well, it definitely was intentional, right? And I always tell people intentionality can take you a lot of far ways, right? When knowing and going into it with a purpose, a reason. So for me, at that point in time in my life, I wasn't dating just to date.

6:51Right. And I've done that, been there. At this point, I was looking to build and I had already started in that trajectory. So when I met Dedrick at a gas station in Boston and random asked me out for lunch, I said, OK, not a problem. We exchanged business cards and we met at Joe's Grill. Joe's Grill in Dedham. In Dedham. At our fruit one. And when we sat down, I know he thought, you know, oh, she cute. About to have a real look, you know. I thought it was just going to be a little bubble gum conversation, you know, first date. No, he thought he was going to get to slide in some lines and be real smooth with it.

7:32Right. And tell me about all on surface level that what he was doing. But, you know, I went to a really nice university and I got a really nice job. I got a nice, I got the company car. I knew he was going to slide all that little stuff in there. And I said, you ain't about to waste my time. So as soon as we sat down and started talking, it was just told me where he's from and stuff like that. I said, oh, OK. And then I said, he asked me, same little service. Oh, where are you originally from? And I said, oh, North Carolina, stuff like that. And I said, oh, OK, so what do you do for work? He said, you know, tell me what he does for work.

8:11And I said, OK, do you plan on doing that forever? And he was like, no. I said, oh, well, I said, are you an entrepreneur? Have you done anything to entrepreneur around? He was like, oh, absolutely. And then he started telling me about some of the stuff he did, which was a bunch of MLMs. And I said, oh, OK. And I said, OK, well, what's your credit score? and he said well damn we get right to it huh let's go let's go and he told me his credit score was like an 8 10 8 15 hey i had the hallie berry credit mick and i always like to tell people i didn't ask him his credit score as a factor in determining whether or not i would give him a second date or I would continue to talk to him or give him a shot.

9:06I asked him his credit score so I knew how much work we needed to do, right? Where are we going to start from? That's what you said today, Crystal. If this credit score was a 510 and not an 810, we don't even know if there would have been a second date. It would have been a second date. It just would have been, I'd have been like, okay, so we're going to do some credit. We both need credit repair. Right. We both need some credit repair. I had just cleaned up mine. So I was on the track. I know the important. And you know, you do the first thing you do, your parents tell you not to do when you get to college, get these credit cards.

9:43So, of course, I did exactly that. So I literally just cleaned up my credit score. My credit score was climbing back up. And I was in the 600s. Told Dad Drake he was like 810. I said, OK, OK. So we ain't got to do no credit. We can work with that. Boom, we ain't got to do no credit repair with him. Excellent. But it had just been like, OK, so while I'm already done did mine, I know what I need to do for yours. So we just don't pull that report and we're going to get to work. But he need that. So I said, OK, I said, well, do you plan on living in Boston forever? And he said, well, I mean, I ain't got to.

10:19I ain't got no kids. I ain't really got nothing tying me to Boston. And I said, OK, so anyone who's planning to be with me must be willing to move within the next year or two because I won't be staying here forever. And that, again, most people might be taken aback like, damn, she interviewed you, she grilled you. But it was refreshing to me. It was exciting because it wasn't the norm when you're in your late 20s, early 30s dating, first date. So I was like, wow, this woman is ambitious. She's driven. She knows what she wants. That was like, this is what I'm looking for in a wife. Now, I knew for the first time I saw that I was going to marry her, right?

10:52She didn't know that yet. like and again when we met i wasn't ready for marriage at that time but i i just further cemented like man she is a dynamic woman this is the type of person that i would want to be with because we're equally yoked so i'm gonna summarize this first date though so first date you already know you're going in business together you know you're moving you know you're getting married all in the first 30 minutes start how you want to finish that's one of our models and start how you want to finish. And that's exactly what we did on that first date. Yep. Everything new. If you wanted kids, we knew I asked about preexisting conditions in the family, like all of that came out at Joe's.

11:36There it is. So, so Deirdre, you were in, you were doing several MLMs as, as Crystal was saying, Right. When did you know that real estate was going to be a jam for you? And then more importantly. What made that that move happen, that switch happen for you? Yeah. So I went to college, graduated from Ivy League School, Amherst College, you know, got good grades, got a corporate job doing sales, pharmaceutical sales, big pharma. had the company car, had the company Amex, all that good stuff, war suit and title work. But I knew that wasn't for me as a career corporate guy. I just knew I didn't want that.

12:19But really, I got the bug for real estate when I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in 2001. Matter of fact, it happened earlier than 2001. I got two VHS tapes right here. In the 90s, my mom had these VHSs, no money down, in late night infomercials. And it was these guys would get on there. Yeah, you can make millions of real estate and you can drive a Rolls Royce. You can have mansions, but none of them look like me. But I was like, man, one day I want to do what they're doing. I want to own properties. I want to drive a Rolls Royce, all that stuff. And like 25 years later, I'm doing exactly that, right?

12:51That's the power of, you know, intuition and planting a seed in someone. So I always knew I wanted to get into real estate. I just didn't know how. When Crystal and I met, she's the one who saw the entrepreneurial dreams and visions in me. But at that time, I was more of a wantrepreneur because I had a safe corporate job. I grew up broke. I didn't want to go back to that. So I was afraid of jumping out and taking a risk. So I would dibble and dabble in little network marketing here and there, make a few dollars, but I didn't make enough money to allow me to leave my job until I met her. I love that.

13:23I love that. So Crystal, you both start business together. Talk through, and Dedrick, I love that you brought up the entrepreneur because a lot of people don't understand the challenges and the adversity that we face as entrepreneurs and growing a business. So I'd love for you to talk to us about some of those initial challenges that you had to break through to get to where you are today. Some challenges. What wasn't a challenge? How many businesses have we started and failed? That's what people don't understand, right? Like they see the end result. They see the visibility, but they don't see the grind.

14:06And they don't see, I think, to what you're saying now is it's a continual, maybe not a struggle, but it's continual challenges. And sometimes the more successful you get, the challenges become bigger. Absolutely. More money, more problems, right? Like they say, the challenges do get bigger. And for us, it was a struggle figuring it out. Right. And especially when we got together early 2000s, mid 2000s, it was really you didn't have a lot of coaches and mentors out there. Though for us, it was trying to figure it out. Figure out what we want to do. No mentors, no guides. Figure out where we want to go, starting and failing.

14:53The difference was I was never afraid to fail, ever. Dedrick, not so much. Dedrick was not trying to go back broke, right? My mentality was I'll lose it and I'll get it back again. But you were still living at home, right? So you had a little more of a safety net. I had a house. I had a mortgage. I had a new car. I had a car note. I had some bills. Yes. And I'll tell you one of the best things. And I always try to tell this to young college students, high school students, especially parents. One of the best things my mother ever said to me was once you got out of college, come back home. Live with me.

15:29Don't rush to jump out there on your own. Come back home. Figure out what you want to do. while your headaches are my headaches, your worries are my worry. Don't rush to get out there and put the weight of the world on your shoulders before it's time. So out of her four kids, I was the one that listened. I came back home. You had a safety net. I had that safety net. I was able to start a nonprofit. I was able to start my own business. I was able to fail at everything. And my mother was right there. Keep going. Keep going. Okay. I'm here to support you. and it allowed me to spread my wings. It allowed me to get out there and do things that made me truly uncomfortable with it.

16:12So when I met, by the time I met Dedrick and Dedrick was very risk averse, it was just like - Her mindset was totally the opposite. She's like, oh, we don't need a business plan. Let's just do it. Let's figure it out. Well, John can grow wings on the way down is what I tell him. Dedrick is like, we need the structure plan. We need the details. We need step one and step two. and we can't go to step two to step one. We need a smart analysis and we need a business plan for the business plan because that's how I was trained in going to college, right? In school. Yep. I love that. And, you know, Crystal, you brought up not having mentors, not having coaches.

16:49And I would say for me, one of the things that later in my business career, because early on I was just like you, like I didn't necessarily have a blueprint or a person or people I could really talk to. But then as I got older in business, I was able to be mentored by a Damon John, a Robert Irvine, a Les Brown. And I know that you're so passionate, both of you, about mentorship and being those resources and allies for others that you turn it into a coaching program. So talk a little bit about what you do in your coaching program and, you know, who a good mentee might look like for you as well, too.

17:30Yeah, I mean, we figured out we we solved real estate investing, right? We became very successful from real estate investing. Then we got our own TV show. Right. And then so many people would reach out to us like, hey, how can we do what you guys are doing? We're inspired by watching you. How can we duplicate it? That's what made us start the coaching program. And the reason is, is because we didn't have that rich uncle. We didn't have that rich dad we can call when we were coming up to be like, all right, what do I do? How do I do it? It wasn't until we were in our 30s that we met our rich dad, which is one of our mentors who lives right in Winston-Salem, who had already achieved what we wanted to achieve.

18:04And we were able to pay him for his time and expertise. And he gave us the blueprint. He gave us the roadmap. So we were like, hey, when we become successful, we want to turn around and do the same thing. We felt an obligation to turn around and do the same thing for others. Yeah. And you hit on something I want to double down on. I want to unplug, no pun intended, this. Because I did the same thing. You paid for coaching. You invested in yourself. I'm going to hurt some feelings today, and I don't want this to come across from Crystal and Dedrick. This is purely the commentary of Mick and Mick only.

18:42People need to invest in themselves. And here's why I say that. And I want you to talk a little bit more about your coaching program, too. When I first started coaching and helping people, I was willing and sometimes today I still do it for free. But the people that invested were more accountable to the success, to the results and do the actual work. And so this is my message. This isn't coming from Crystal and Dedrick. So don't at them. Don't yell at them. Yell at me. If you're not willing to invest in yourself, don't always ask for free advice. Don't always ask for free mentorship because it's draining.

19:24I'm not going to lie. The people that want it for free over and over and over again are the ones who aren't going to be willing to commit to do the actual work required to get where they're trying to go. they're always going to think there's an easy button that you can press and there's no such thing as an easy button. Right. And then I'm also going to say this. They want people to invest in their dreams, but they don't want to put that same investment into their own. So I said that. So you didn't have to say it. Listen, well, we we we keep it real. We're going to agree with you. A thousand and ten percent because we have been there.

20:00We've been on both sides. We've been the mentee and we've been the mentor. We there now. Let me tell you, we are there now, like today. And we tell people we still have mentors, literally that we've caught because we're not done, right? We are still building. We're still climbing, but we do believe in lifting as we rise. But it goes back to that saying, people who pay, pay attention. And we've learned just giving information to individuals. It drained us. It was a waste of our time. No one ever acted on that information. And then you don't hear from them. They come back around in six months. Hey, I got a question real quick.

20:44We ain't got time for all that. And then the people who pay, they pay attention. They're at every coaching session. They are emailing, they're actively taking action. And those are the ones who are constantly hitting us and DMing us like, hey, I just got my first deal locked up. I just bought my first rental property that I'll be passing on to my kids within two months time. And it's just as simple listening, sitting down, listening, following instruction and getting out of your own way. And I tell Dedrick, one of the best things about that TV show was, for me, is the exposure to people who said they'd never seen, one, a show like ours where it was attainable as well as inspirational.

21:35So it was at a price point where people who worked at grocery stores, who were secretaries, were reaching out and was like, I can. People were in prison. Prison. Wow. A lot of brothers in prison have reached out to us saying. So many letters from prison. One guy, the most humbling letter I've ever read was from a guy in prison who wrote and specifically spoke about Dedrick. And he said, for the first time watching your show, I've held myself accountable for my actions that got me here. He said, because looking at you, we're the same age. We look the same. We come from the same neighborhood. And to see where you have gotten, my brother has for the first time shown a light on myself and said, why could I have not done what you've done?

22:28And we came from the same place. We came from the same background. We're the same age. You look like me. He says so he really just wrote the letter thanking us and thanking the network for actually showing someone that he could relate to. He said so for him, it was a mind shift where he's now like he can accept responsibility that he and he alone got him to where he's at. And now he's prepared to do better, even while there to get out to one day be able to do what we're doing for the family that he still has out there. that's what I tell people the TV show did that was that was powerful to me.

23:08Yeah. It's just the fact that people can see themselves flipping a property or buying real estate and aren't millionaires. Yeah. And again, I go back to what I said earlier when I wanted to give you both praise. You are now those shoulders. Right. And that's why I'm proud of you. You are those shoulders that people are standing on and looking to. So that's awesome. So let's talk about the show. 50-50 flip on A &E. First off, A &E is a big network. It's a real, legit network. Now it's on Hulu. And Hulu. Hulu bought the rights. And even bigger, even more distribution, more views. Let's go back to the beginning of the show.

23:58How did you get the call? What was it like when it was like a yes, we're going to do it? Like I'd love personally, I just want to hear this story. Well, yeah, let's go all the way back, Mick. It actually started because we invested in ourselves. What do I mean? We joined a mastermind. We had not closed the deal. We're trying to figure out how to wholesale, make money wholesaling. We joined a mastermind. We spent 16 ,000 joining a group of high level real estate investors. and the leader of that mastermind said, hey, we're like, hey, we're having trouble raising money to buy our first rental property.

24:30What do we do? He was like, document your process. What do you mean? Go on social media, show people what you're doing. Every time you do a walkthrough, every time you meet with a contractor, document what you're doing. So we started doing that, right? 2017, 2018. So we built a following. And as a result of that following, we started a YouTube channel and that's where the producers from A &E found us. They were looking for a couple in North Carolina. They were just looking for people, period. They were green lighting. They were getting back into the home space, which they were originally before everyone knew about HGTV.

25:02It was A &E with Thane Merrill. Thane Merrill flipped his house in 2008. The first one. So they were looking to now get back into the home space and they were looking for a three show. They were green lighting three shows. So they was looking and searching all over and they were looking at hundreds of people. They had ended up DMing us. I don't, I, at a certain point, I just stopped going into the DMs. I wasn't really looking at them. So one of the executives, the casting company contacted, called our 800 number, got our secretary, made our secretary promise to give me the message and to promise to get me to call her back.

25:43So they had been DMing us for a year, which we hadn't known. And I had seen it in there, but I one time I think it's spam. So, you know, I told by that. And so as soon as I walked in, our secretary sounds like, hey, a lady name, I think it's Ali from Annie. She said, if you could please give her a call back, she really wants to speak to you. And I said, oh, OK. And I kept going on, kept walking to go into the office. she came and she was like no she made me promise to have you please give her a call back and i looked at i said and you promised and she was like yeah and i said well don't promise nobody else unless you calling him back and she was like please i don't want i don't want to be made out a liar could you please call her back so i was like all right fine i called her back and she was like first off I want to say I am not a casting company she was like I work exclusively for A &E and I had no idea what that meant so it didn't impress me I was just like oh okay all right well what what can I do for you and she was like and we've been following you guys I've been trying to get a hold of you for a year past year now this is during COVID right after No, we started right after COVID.

27:03They had started hitting us about a year during COVID and stuff. Then I was like, oh, okay. She was like, we love your YouTube. We love your Instagram. We're looking for a couple to do a show. We're interviewing hundreds of people. So we was like, at that point, I told Dedrick, I was like, okay, well, we ain't going to really do it. Let's just see how far we can get. We didn't think they was going to pick us. And I'm super private. like extremely, if they had a TV show on extreme people who were private, I would definitely. FBI meets CIA. That's Crystal. I'm right there with you, Crystal. I really am.