About Our Real Estate Investing Coaches
The Mentor Family is blessed to have an incredible group of successful and inspiring real estate investing coaches who truly care about helping our students achieve their financial goals. All of our coaches are full-time real estate investors who are out in the trenches every day. And because many of them started as Mentoring students themselves not so many years ago, they remember how scary it was to make those first calls and appointments. Our real estate coaches work hand-in-hand with each of our Residential Mentoring and Commercial Mentoring students - all the way to the bank!
Emily Cressey - Residential & Commercial Real Estate Investing Coach
Emily is a real estate investor and entrepreneur who has been interested in finance since age six when she first saw the bank paying her interest on her passbook savings. She started her first stock investment club in High School. While in college, Emily created a successful computer consulting company from scratch, and bought her first investment house with the help of the Residential Mentoring Program at age 24.
In the beginning, Emily was scared. She had to build confidence in herself. How could a 24 year-old be taken seriously as a real estate investor? “I found that with Peter’s scripts, I knew exactly what to say on the phone and in person. I knew exactly what to put in each blank of the contract, and I began to gain a confidence, a level of expertise that really helped me put sellers at ease, structure win-win deals and feel good that I was acting with integrity and would be able to perform on my promises to the seller,” said Emily.
Years and deals later, she’s still learning, still expanding her comfort zone, but from the perspective of a successful Mentorship Student and Coach. Emily is no longer that scared little person. “I know it can work for me, because I’ve done it, and I know it can work for you, too. All you have to do is try and keep trying. You will want to stop at least three times before you get your first deal, but if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, holding steady to your course, you will get through the rough patch and persevere until you reach your aims".
Now Emily has expanded her investing beyond her single family home portfolio- she is now investing in raw land, apartments, and office space. Emily is currently helping to lead the ‘Team Goldmine’ group of students through Peter’s Land Development Challenge.
Juli Butler - Residential Real Estate Investing Coach
Juli Butler was running her own business (i.e., she owned a job) when a client walked in and said, "you have to read this book". It
was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It looked interesting so she picked up a copy and started down the path of investing in real estate.
Juli made a lot of mistakes and ended up with a house she couldn’t sell. Someone gave her a copy of Peter Conti’s book How To Create Multiple Streams of Income and suggested she sell her house on a Lease Option. Juli read the book and sold her house through the lease option method. One of her friends also read Peter’s book and they decided to enroll in the mentorship program together. As Juli recalls, “I was relieved when I met Peter because I could tell he had a lot of integrity and I knew I had found the right mentor.”
Since doing the Intensive Training, Juli has purchased several houses, most of them using no money of her own, and created over $400,000 in equity in less than two years working part-time. She has since left her job, moved to the desert, and started investing in real estate full time.
Juli currently owns seven apartment buildings, 27 single family houses, and one retail strip center. She is involved in several Real Estate PPMs. Juli’s assets are currently valued at about $15 Million.
Matt Pitcher - Residential Coach
Matt started investing in real estate full-time in 2004. He is the proud owner of a multi-million dollar investment property portfolio including a mix of commercial buildings, multi-family apartment complexes, residential family homes, a community retail shopping center and land.
He became a Residential Real Estate Investing Coach in 2007 after graduating from both the Residential Mentoring and Commercial Mentoring Programs in 2006.
Cheryl Hastings - Residential Coach & Discussion Board Coach
Cheryl is one of the first three original students mentored directly by Peter Conti over nine years ago. She is our only part-time real estate investing coach.
Cheryl is a stay-at-home mom and has her realtor’s license. She started with fix and flips, and learned how to invest smarter with Peter’s methods. She honestly feels if she can do this, anyone can do this!!
Her oldest son got excited watching how easy the process was for Cheryl to sign up deals. He invested in his first property at 17 years of age through the help of the Mentorship Program.
Deb McMillan - Residential Coach 
and Short Sale Mentor
Deb is known as “The Short Sale Closer” and “The Short Sale Queen”. She is the past President of OREIA and Cincinnati REIA, and was a Director on the National REIA Board for four years. Deb met Peter Conti over nine years ago.
She’s been investing in real estate for over 20 years. Short sales are just about the only way she buys houses. Deb enjoys helping the seller save their credit rating by buying their house via a short sale before a foreclosure sale can happen.
Deb has closed hundreds of short sale deals, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars discounted from properties before they went to a sheriff’s sale! She’ll tell you how to talk with the banks and get hundreds of thousands of dollars discounted from your deals so you’ll put more cash and more equity in your real estate investment portfolio.
Phil Pustejovsky - Residential Coach and Short Sale Mentor
After graduating from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Phil chose to focus on the limitless world of real estate investing instead of accepting a safe corporate job.
With the help of his great mentor, Tom Bainbridge, Phil negotiated hundreds of short sales and acquired a large portfolio of residential investment properties using conventional financing, “subject to”, and lease purchase option techniques in less than six years.
With their combined experiences, Tom and Phil developed a revolutionary program for helping people from all walks of life create their fortune through short sales. Their program, Short Sales Step By Step, has been transforming the lives of their students.
Remarkably, with all the demands of coaching students and speaking across the country, Phil still finds time to personally invest in residential deals each week. His commitment to leading by example shows by his continued investing in real estate with his students.
Phil brings a tremendous amount of passion to his vocation (as he calls it) and he absolutely loves what he does. Many consider him to be a true pioneer in the field of short sales.
Dave Greig - Junior Residential Real Estate Investing Coach
Dave was on his way to being a teacher when he read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and realized he was actually on his way to jumping on the rat-race treadmill. He got his real estate agent’s license and looked for other ways to make his living through real estate.
Dave started out by entering a real estate investing program run by a different ’guru’, which led him to buy his first rehab. Because he didn’t agree with that company’s focus and methods, Dave didn’t continue with their investing program.
After reading Peter’s book How to Create Multiple Streams of Income, he decided to call to see what Mentor Financial Group was all about. Since joining the Mentor Family, Dave has been blessed with a vast amount of real estate investment learning plus, even more importantly, a great opportunity to network with other MFG people.
It took Dave seven months to get his first deal, but the training and encouragement he received along the way kept him positive and focused. As Dave states, “My encouragement to you is that, yes, you can do this. I’m just a regular person who has a drive to find financial freedom for my family and help other students do the same.”
Dave likes to focus on coaching new students in the Mentoring program and celebrates every student’s ‘first deal’.
Peter Harris, Lead Commercial Real Estate Coach
Peter Harris teamed up with Peter Conti to create the Commercial Mentoring Program and again to co-write Commercial Real Estate Investing for Dummies. After starting out investing in single family homes, Peter ‘exchanged up’ into commercial real estate investments to increase his cash flow so he could leave his corporate job.
Peter Harris has mastered the art of raising capital, and teaches our mentoring students how to successfully use someone else’s money to fund their deals. Peter is a best-selling author and long-time real estate investing mentor. Peter has also toured with Robert Kiyosaki and co-created an audio business course with Donald Trump called the Three Master Secrets of Real Estate Success.
Stephen Wilklow - Commercial Real Estate Investing Coach
Stephen is a full-time real estate investor whose passion lies in meeting new people and presenting everyone with unique real estate investment opportunities. Stephen came from a corporate sales background, working for companies such as Frontrange Solutions and AT&T Wireless. He mastered the art of negotiating, earned a six- figure salary, and worked 80-100 hour weeks for someone else’s retirement.
After being involved in real estate as a sideline project for five years, he left Corporate America in 2003 to pursue real estate investing on a full-time basis with the help of Peter Conti and the Mentorship Program. With hundreds of single family home deals under his belt, he became a Real Estate Investing Coach for Mentor Financial Group. He now concentrates his portfolio on property acquisition and land development. Additionally, he coaches the commercial mentoring students and is a national trainer and speaker.
Cleve Schenck - Commercial Real Estate Investing Coach
Cleve bought his first investment property with no money down in 1982. He continued to buy and sell over $20 Million dollars in real estate and by 1986 had accumulated millions of dollars in property and debt. Cleve did a lot of fix and flip house renovations, bought apartment buildings, and anything else he could get his hands on.
Real estate slowed in the late 80s. The 90s were great. The economy was great. Real estate investing was great. Everything appreciated. Cleve acquired an athletic club and concentrated on land development and larger cash flow-oriented investment real estate projects.
In the year 2000, Cleve shifted his emphasis from land developing to construction/development as well as cash flow-oriented real investment real estate such as office buildings. As the economy and market slow, Cleve continues to prosper, building net worth and cash flow.
Jan Edbrooke - Commercial Real Estate Investing Coach
Jan has been an active real estate investor for over seven years and has amassed a sizable real estate investment portfolio of properties ranging from single family homes and apartments to multifamily apartment buildings, TIC shares in apartment complexes, office buildings, and even some resort properties. Jan owns property in eight countries and eight states.
Over the last three-and-a-half years, Jan has been involved in over ten real estate development projects. He has partnered with a seasoned developer, RDB Development LLC. Initially, activity started out as simply LLC membership of development companies, primarily focused on the profitable niche of office condominium development in the Las Vegas, Phoenix, Chicago, and Denver areas, with projects ranging in size from three to ten acres and up to $25 million in gross revenue.
Exposure to this development and investment activity led Jan to take on a more active role in the co-development of projects, including commercial, apartment, and townhouse developments in Phoenix and Albuquerque, with projected gross revenues in the $10-30 million range. Together with partners, Jan also set up and manages the investment companies to fund the equity for these and other projects and arranges commercial financing, joint ventures, and other key relationships.
Jan brings incredible and diverse experience to share with our Mentoring students. His current active development projects (as co-manager and developer) include a $6.5 million, 30,000 sf office condo in Chicago, a $30 million, 330-unit apartment complex in Albuquerque, a $22 million, 90,000 sf retail/office development in Albuquerque, and many others.
