Epic Real Estate Investing - Monday Mastermind Session - Joe McCall, Sean Terry and Cody Sperber | 882

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

Meet Sean Terry, The Clever Investor Cody Sperber, and Joe McCall, the veterans of real estate investing that share timeless pearls of wisdom in today's show! Tune in and find out more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit R-E-I-Aase.com.

Here's Matt. Welcome to the epic real estate investing show. I got another great show for today. Another episode of Mastermind Monday. I saved these three. I wanted to get them all on the show together. I have great admiration for these three people. I'm going to introduce you to them in just a second.

But I first started getting in the education and the training business. There was all types of options out there. And a lot of the people were old and had these antiquated ways of thinking. they hadn't invested in since the 70s or the 80s. And I just really gravitated for those that were actually practitioners. And that's why I really have a whole lot of respect. And just, you know, I'm glad I'll just say. I got a whole much of love for these three because they practice what they preach.

And they still do it today. They've built great education businesses. And I think their education businesses are so great because they're still hands-on to today. So I just want to bring them in to the show, introduce you to them, and just kind of see what's going on in their world, what's in the market, what they're, what they're, what they're doing today for best practices, what they see for the future, and how that's impacting their business. So without further ado, I will introduce you to Joe McCall, Mr. Sean Terry,

and Mr. Cody Sperber. Welcome, guys. There they are. Love it. Matt, who are you talking to? You're looking the other way. Who are you talking? Yeah, so we do this multi-purposing of content.

So we've got like four cameras going on right now, and then I got you guys online. So we cut this up into a bunch of little pieces so everyone can get the, get a taste of the goodness that we do here. Boom. Boom. All right. So let's just kind of go around the table and introduce yourself what market you're in

and then a little bit about your current real estate investing business. Joe, why don't you lead us off? Well, hey, Matt. Right now we're actually wholesaling a lot of deals in Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi. I live in St. Louis, Missouri. We're starting to do some lease options in San Diego as well. venturing into California

because things are calming down a little bit, cooling down a little bit there. But I love virtual wholesaling. And I'm doing this with one of our students and one of my coaching business partners. We're doing 10 to 15 deals a month right now and it's going really, really well. It's great old-fashioned cold cone.

Nice, nice. Yeah, a lot has changed since I talked to you last. So interesting. We'll talk about it. Mr. Sean Terry. What's up, what's up? Sean Terry, Phoenix, Arizona. I have been in the wholesaling business for about 15 years. Currently, went from a one-man show to build the team now. We're doing about 150,000 a week in wholesale fees right now in Phoenix. So we're crushing. Markets great. Start a podcast back in 2010. Have a ton of listeners.

Started to get an information space. So that's a blast education, teaching people. helping people. Just closed on a 120 unit student housing project in Columbus, Georgia. First, we get private placement, real estate syndication. So it's kind of all prospects real estate limit. Awesome. Yeah, a lot has changed over there too. So congrats on your recent success. Matt, I got to say, you and I both have more higher ratings and reviews than Sean Terry does for our podcasts. It must be your beard. And then he does one every, He does this new podcast today. So, I mean, I can tell you got to make up in volume, right?

I just wanted to let everybody know. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it. Mr. Spurber. What's going on, guys? Hey, Matt, first off, thanks for having me on. Always loved watching your stuff, man. You are a freaking workhorse.

You got tons of good stuff out there. I love the fact that you really focus on well, creation, creating sustainable wealth through real estate. You know, us deal junkie guys, we're all about flipping houses and we keep putting ourselves out of a job because we're always looking for the next deal fix. But I always really admired your hustle and everything you got going. You got a great community. So, and you must be doing something right because you lined up some beast on this one.

I sure it did. You know, this is good looking guys. This is a fantastic assistant to pull it off. So there you go. Anyways, my name's Cody Spurber. My wife started calling me the clever investor long before I was clever. And, you know, the term stick. Is that the how I say it?

The coin term? Anyway, I'm actually in the Phoenix market as well. Me and Sean Terry have been going toe to toe for over a decade now. And, you know, I haven't a lot of fun. I started off wholesaling because I didn't have any money. and I had to get creative and create the money. And then I finally got the courage to do some rehabs, worked my way up.

I've done a little over 1,000 deals, probably like 1,400 deals by now. I've kind of lost track. But in 2010, I started Clever Invested, the education company. It was going to be a software company. I was using some pretty cool tools in my own personal business. And, you know, people were asking me, can I get my hands on that software?

And then it took off and the education came right behind it and we blew up the business. Got 77 amazing team members now. We're one of the larger education businesses in the space. And it's been a wild ride, so much fun. And right now my real estate business, I actually just partnered with my two best friends. So this is going to be new and interesting for me. We're all old. We're all 40 plus at this point.

And one guy owns a Buffalo Wild Wings. He's never done a real estate deal in his life. but he watches a lot of HG TV. My other buddy sold T-shirts for a living. So what could go wrong? We got the guru, the chicken wing guy, and the T-shirt guy. And we literally just started last week. And every single day they come and sit down in front of me, like, what do we do?

We want to go out and get deals. But, you know, what works works. You know, we already have four or five rehabs that we're getting started. And we're buying some other wholesalers. The business is going to be a rehabbing business. We're going to wholesale some. But it's going to be a rehabbing business. I want to, you know, just get those big fat payday.

So I can then listen to your podcast, Matt, and figure out how to put the money to work. I can fire myself from this business. Right. Do the fun stuff in life. That's good. So, yeah, I haven't talked to you guys on so long. And everyone's doing something a little different, got some new nuances. So I'm interested to dive deep into all of that.

The most common question here on the show is what's your best source of off-mark? deals at the moment. Cody, you want to take that one? Yeah, I'm sure they're going to jump in on this, but there used to be riches in the niches, right? For a long time, I was, you know, door knocking. And when that stopped working, door knocking foreclosures, the market started melting down. And then I was down at the foreclosure auction, and then the REOs happened, and the

short sales happened. And there was all these niches. And lately, there hasn't really been these ability to go really wide and aggressive like we could when there was all this distressed property coming through. So what's working right now is just dialing for dollars. Honestly, you're probably going to hear that from everybody, but it's direct mail was killing it for a while. It still works.

It's a consistent man's game. You've got to really send a lot of mail pieces consistently to get that hockey stick kind of returns. So what we're focusing on right now is just, you know, being able to go after really good targeted type of leap. Maybe we're farming areas of high equity, you know, have to be owners or foreclosures or probates or whatever.

But instead of sending a mail, we're actually getting those lists, skip tracing them and putting on a headset, putting on a smile, and just dial in for dollars. And that seemed to be pulling a good amount of deals. And the last thing I'll say before I let it go is, I honestly think of marketing as like a seven-layer cake.

you've got to layer in a bunch of different layers. You can't just be focused on just one strategy. I know that was the original question, what's your best way? But they all kind of play together in today's world. It's more about like omnipresent in the mind of your prospect. If they see you on social, they see you when they Google and they see you on paper click

and they see you on Facebook ads, you pixel them and you go over to YouTube and they're chasing them all over. And then they're getting direct mail from you. All of a sudden, feel like you're bigger than life. You've almost created an experience for them. And that's how we're able to get more deals. It's just because we're everywhere. Once they get into our web, we're doing multiple layers of marketing to them at the same time. Question on that, Cody. You talked about this multi-level marketing machine that you've got built. And I see it everywhere.

You've got this monster training program and training course. And do you separate that from your real estate business as far as when you're looking for the sellers and you do the same practices. Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing. It's just, you know, my real estate business, the education side of things is it's a digital, we're really digital marketers that sell real estate investing education, right? And so there's certain things I'm going to do online. And with homeowners, it's a little different. I'm still doing the Facebook ads. I'm still retargeting. chasing around on YouTube and all that stuff. But I send a lot more direct mail in my real estate business to acquire deals. Like in my education business, I'm not putting out bandit signs,

you know, that kind of thing. It's really a relationship business on the real estate side. So I'm networking with lots of real estate agents, lots of wholesalers. Since I'm rehabbing, I'm kind of everybody's best friend because I'm a cash buyer or rehabbing. I can go out there really easily and tell people, hey, if we got cash, we want to buy the deals before they hit the market, the pocket listings, the pre listings, if I'm talking to agents. So there's some nuances and there's some similarities. I'm still working on search engine optimization. I'm still consistently posting on social for real estate leads. So it's close. I'm still building a funnel, right? You've got to think of this business and marketing. Everybody focuses on the

front end of the funnel, which is lead generation. I could hand you 10,000 homeowners right now that own houses. Maybe they want to sell, maybe they don't. I can drive them towards your website or I can get them to call you. But if you don't have a conversion process to put them through, conversion's the actual key to this business. The lead gen, the front end of the funnel is not that difficult. It's like a recipe, a formula.

Sean Terry is one of the best lead gen guys out. there, right? Joe McCall, he knows how to get VAs to like do amazing things to generate all these leaf. But the reality is the conversion part is, in my opinion, way more important because nowadays people need an experience. Everybody's selling something. Everybody's pitching something. There's 50 million blinky lights on social media. People's brains are geeking out. But if you can cut through that noise and create an experience for people, meet them where they are and understand how to talk to them on a deeper level, almost like a doctor with a stethoscope. You've got to listen to their soul a little bit more nowadays. And if you can cut through everything and get there,

that's when you have a higher chance of getting the deal. That art of building rapport, that art of influence is very important. So didn't mean to go off tangent, but our main strategy is dialing for dollars, but we are layering it in with everything else. That's what makes it way more effective. Got it. That's awesome. What can you add to that? What's your best source of off-market deals at the moment? Well, actually, Cody, pretty much nailed it on the head when it came to layering. So what we'll do is we'll pull a huge property tax default list.

We'll take that list and then we'll skip trace it with like an IDI. It'll give us a ton of different numbers. Now we have that skip trace list. We'll direct mail that list with like a street view postcard. Then we'll take that list and then we'll rip out all the cell phone numbers and then we'll RVM, them, ringless voice mail them. Then we take that list with all the numbers that have on there, and then we put them into call tools,

which is our dialer, and I have basically five co-caller. They're co-calling. About 1,000 dials today on those. And then after co-calling, we'll take that entire list, upload it to Facebook with the email addresses or phone numbers and everything, and then we're going to retarget them with Facebook ads.

So that's basically the combination of, you know, just like you're repurposing content, we'll basically repurpose that list, and we're going to hit them from every angle. So what we're finding is the results are we're about $43 cost per lead when it comes to RVM, ringless voice mail. That's the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to get in front of someone very quickly, to get leads coming in almost instantly. Co-calling, we're seeing about $110 cost per lead, direct mail is seen in 341 cost per lead. So when you combine all those on a blended cost per lead, we're driving our cost per lead down,

significantly lower. So once those leads come in, we basically have three lead managers. They're booking all the calls. We have three sales guys going out there, going on appointments, 20 appointments a week. And it is that process of creating that experience.

And the conversion is incredibly important. We have iPad presentations. They have repair sheets on iPads. We doocine everything with Stellars. So they're bringing in anywhere from three to five contracts a week, each individual sales guy. And then from there, you know,

we're just pumping them out and selling them. quick. Awesome. Mr. McCall, your best source of off-market deals at the moment. We are pulling lists of absentee owners at high equity. We're targeting high cash flow markets. I'm finding the easiest deals to wholesale are the ones that there's a lot of out-of-state investors that are coming in and buying up these properties for cash flow. So Birmingham, Alabama is really good. Jackson, Mississippi is really good. And we're targeting these homeowners. We're targeting absentee landlords. So we're getting addresses.

We're skip tracing them. We're doing ringless voicemail. And then we are cold calling with Mojo. We're using Mojo sales. I want to start using call tools. I've heard a lot of good things about it. But we have $5 an hour VAs in the Philippines that are doing the initial cold calling to these high equity absentee owners.

And then we have a boots on the ground. One of my students who's a wholesaler in Birmingham who has a, actually getting on the phone and closing all these deals over the phone. She's making offers over the phone. And here's the key to it all, no matter what kind of marketing you're doing, the key to what us, what we have found is the follow-up. I don't know my cost per lead. I should, but we're spending on average of about $500 in marketing per deal. And our average profits are right around $8,000. So the ROI is incredible, right? But the key to it all is follow-up. We're finding on average it takes three to four months from initial contact to finally doing the deal

and making the money on average about six to seven touches. And so our Podio, we use Podio. It's super simple. We don't have any fancy automations and workflows. It's just every time that lead is touched, we create a new task to follow up again the next day, the next week, the next month. And so every lead in Podio has an open task assigned to somebody with a due date. And all of this marketing is awesome. But unless you're doing the follow-up, you're not going to go anywhere with this. So probably I need to look at the numbers. But last I looked, it was about 80%, 85% of our deals comes from the follow-up.

It's not that first initial contact. Let me say one more thing too. We're still doing texting. we'll find landlords and for sale by owners on Craigslist and Zillow, and we send them individual personalized texts one at a time. I found that works really well when you're doing some more creative things like lease options and stuff. So we're doing that in some other markets. Sweet.

So yeah, it seems to be the common answer is, you know, what's old becomes new again. It comes back around and people are really picking up the phones and just putting in the work and working their repetitions. what have you found, Joe, I'll start with you since we're talking already, what have you found to be the best approach when you're picking up the phone and initiating these conversations? And I guess a part two of that question would be how much training is going into your

five VAs and, you know, how important is their effectiveness, or is it just a straight numbers game? It's a straight numbers game, but also one of the reasons why we're so successful with using virtual assistance for these initial cold calls is we're talking to them every single day. A lot of people just hire VAs and expect them to take it and run with it. In fact, we're talking to them by text or by Skype every single day. And we just started something where we're having a once a week for 30 minutes, a training where all of the VAs, we only have four or five, but they get online together once a week for some training. And so that constant regular communication,

is really, really critical and important. And you asked me two questions. I forget the first one. One is the approach. Like when they pick up the phone, what does that initiation sound like? It's like, hey, sorry for calling you out of the blue. Jim, we're calling about your property at 1, 2, 3 Main Street.

So we're assuming that that person is Jim who owns the house at 1, 2, 3 Main Street. We're not asking them, do you own the house or whatever. And so, you know, we get a lot of angry, knows and FUs and all of that. So we just blacklist them. You know, we don't call them anymore after that. But our initial pre-screening is super simple, like maybe three or four questions. That lead then goes into Podio through a web form.

And our local wholesaler, who's, she's the key to all of this. She's amazing. She immediately calls that lead back right away. And she's on them like white on rice. She's calling them four or five times a day until she gets a hold of them. She's texting them. And she is super relentless, but she's, she's really sweet too. She's got this nice, charming southern accent, you know, which by the way, if you ever

looking to hire somebody on acquisitions, you should think about looking for somebody in the South. I'm not kidding. Who's got a sweet, southern charming accent, you know, that just kind of disarms people. But she's really good. I mean, she calls people honey all the time. She's got these big, angry, gruff landlords that she talks to. and she softens them up right away.

But she's also relentless. She's just following up. And there's really no fancy script that we use. We just talk to them and ask them a lot of questions and make a lot of offers. Got it. Sean, your approach similar or do you have a different way of going about it? Actually, there's two different approaches we tested. One approach is where the person is diving deep on with the stellar.

So they're co-calling. And then they're booking all the way to an appointment. that entails a lot more training. There's a lot more drop off and there's a lot more breakage. So our approach we're currently doing right now is literally just getting them on the phone, finding out if they have a house to sell. If they have a house to sell, then we immediately do a transfer to a live manager. We have three lead managers that will take the call over and then from then they're trained and they'll book the appointment. The lead managers work in house and the VA's are out. So that works a lot better. So the BAs are only trying to find out if they have a

house to sell and the answer to yes, it'll do a transfer. Sweet. Cody, do you have any different approach or similar? Pretty similar to what Sean's doing. I'm definitely not, is, you know, I listen to Sean talk and I'm just like, yep, that's how to do it. I'm not, I don't really have it together like that. To be honest, when we call, I've tested a lot of different things. And sometimes just something simple like, hey, listen, I'm not collecting the debt and I'm not trying to sell you anything. The area, I really like your house. I want to send you a big fat check. You want to sell. If not, I'll hang up. No hard feeling. Sorry about that. You know, but you got to do something to break that ice. And just one more piece of advice that we've learned along the way,

don't leave a voicemail if they don't answer. Just a little, you know, phone tip just because I found that, you know, a lot of times I'll hang up. I'll call right back. I'll hang up. I'll hang up. I'll car back. And if three tries, they don't answer, that I don't leave a voicemail. And I put them back and we'll try calling them again. If I do leave them a voicemail, it's a really strong hook. Like, you know, something like, John, this is Cody. I got really, really great news. I really need to share it with you. You know, I have a big fat check. I want to send it your way. Listen, give me a holler back at 48055. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I really need to talk to you. right so it's kind of hypey like that and let me i love that cody one of the things we do is we'll say hey

john i got the contract right here for your house ready to go call me back i got to talk to you right now perfect that you get a you get a ton of people really mad but they gets them to call you which is yeah that we do all the time here they'll call and say hey uh my assistant has the contract ready to go out to but i'm not sure if she has the right address i'd hate for this to end up in the wrong hand So before she sends it out, give me a call. Right? So same type of thing. Sean, what's your opinion on voicemail?

Yeah, we actually do something very similar. We just, you know, we don't say we have a big fat check, but I do like that. I think I'm feeling it. We do it, yeah, just similar. Like, we have some incredible porn information. Please give us call ASAP. Sweet. I can tell you what I think, though, is that make sure you're changing your caller ID number,

literally every campaign you're doing because the carriers will blacklist your caller ID and your leads will drop off the cliff and you're wondering why. So make sure you rotate it through call rail, pull those numbers out and just rotate them out. Let me give you another huge tip. You break out your lists.

You call them the first time at the morning. The next time you call that list, call them later in the day. And the next time call them later in the day. So if you've got a VA that only, you should have like three VAs that work 9 to 12, 12 to 3 and 3 to 6, right? You need to be rotating your calls through those time zones, those time areas,

because if somebody doesn't answer their phones in the mornings, they probably never answer the phones, but they may answer their phones in the evening. So you've got to be rotating that list through those different hours. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Let me throw one more thing in. This is what happens when you mastermind.

All right, so best advice for somebody who's new that's trying to create a success habit, of making these calls, just like set a time, even though maybe in the evening it's better. If you don't have a VA, call every day from like nine to noon and create a habit of calling every single day at nine to noon. Even though you'll get a bigger response rate at night, at least you'll force yourself to do your lead gen for at least three hours a day. I see so many people, Joe or Sean, somebody said,

you have to make offers, right? like just make offers right I talk to students all the time and they've maybe spent a lot of money on education somewhere else and then they finally somehow get into my world and they go I've been trying this real estate thing for six months I say awesome how many offers you made they said oh I haven't made an offer yet you're like what how is that possible like we got to get to work like you're writing an offer today and when you start creating those like just pick up the phone and I'm going to call every single day for 90 days straight I'm going to create that success habit, you'll get past all that fear, all those challenges. You'll be able to

test all the best ways in your local market to get past all the objections. And at least in the beginning, don't kid yourself. If you're like, oh, I'll call later today, you're not going to call later today, right? Force yourself from nine to new. I don't set appointments in the morning times. I don't do anything else. Just call. All right. Very important. Then once you get good, and you start hiring other people, then you could start, or you do VAs where it's not your time, and then you can bounce around. But I know in the beginning, so many people will make every excuse under the sun. But if you create that habit, I'm telling you, it's a game changer.

And right now, dialing for dollars is working. It won't work maybe next year. We don't know, right? They keep moving the cheese. But right now that you've just heard it from three experts, it works. But you've got to put in the work to make it work. So you said something that there's so much you can do and you can have these great habits and you can take this from lead generation to lead conversion.

And you get all the way in, if you don't write the offer, it was all for waste, right? You'll never do the deal. I remember one of the videos that I've had that's got the most dislikes ever on my YouTube channel. It was how to do more deals. And it was a very short video. I just said, write more offers. And people didn't appreciate it. Exactly. On video. Write more offers.

Right more offers. Yeah. It came from Stephen King. He said, how do you become a better writer? And he said, write more. And I was like, hey, there's some truth to that, right? Let me say something to this. Yeah. Because a lot of people listening to this, maybe you're just getting started. You don't have the time or the resources to go and learn some fancy auto dialing software, right? Like, that's overwhelming to you. What Cody said is really good. You need to just make it a goal to talk to five sellers a day. And if you can make offers to at least three of those five, but if you can make it a goal to talk to five sellers a day and make an offer to every one of them, even if they tell you to F off, send them an offer anyway, right? And just get in that habit of talking to sellers because here's the thing. Your speed to income is directly proportional to the number of offers that you make.

And if you want to make money in this business, you've got to make a lot of offers. I think all four of us, when we coach our students, we give them scorecards. And the first thing that we asked them is, how many offers have you made in the last week? That's all that matters. Nothing else matters in this business. Yep. Yeah. If you're not doing deals and you're not writing offers and you don't have the right to complain about anything else in my opinion.

Right. Exactly. Just put some numbers. Just put some numbers to it. So for an expectation. So typically, you know, with co-calling or ringless voicemail, it's more of disruptive marketing. Someone's going along on their day. They're doing whatever.

And all of a sudden they get a call and all of a sudden, boom. So the conversion rate on those for what we're finding is one in 39. So one, you get one deal or one deal that comes in for every 39 leads that come in. So you got 39 leads. So that means that's 39 offers that you're making before you're going to get one. So back to Cody's point, back to Joe's point, back to Matt's point. If you're looking at it, you go, people come in. to go, well, I've only made 12 offers.

I've made seven offers or eight offers. Well, you're not even playing in the numbers. Get in the numbers first. Make 50 offers, then come back and talk. And now we can reassess exactly what's happening within that offer structure. Well, Sean, what you're saying is important because there's a difference between getting excited about real estate and going out and trying to flip a house versus owning a real estate, active real estate investing business where you're either wholesaling or flipping

houses as a business, right? That business means you've got to think like a businessman or woman and you've got to track your key performance indicators, your KPIs. And you're like one of the best in the world at this. You know, I just always kept it simple. How many phone calls do I have to make to fill up to get an answer, right? How many just rings have to happen before I get an answer on average. How many answers before I have a conversation and you can fill out a lead intake form, which means we actually talked and it's not a F, you take me off your list. There's actually a potential. Now I know, now I know how many phone calls I have to make to get an answer, how many answers before I fill out a lead intake form, how many lead intake forms before I get to a point

where I can write an offer, how many written offers before I get to one accepted, how many accepted before I get to a closed deal on a profit check. And if you start tracking those, you can start to see the funnel, right? And all the touch points that have to happen. And then, like you said, you've tracked it to the point where you know it takes us 39 lead intake forms or conversations before we get to that deal, right? Or whatever you just said, I think it was 39. So then I'll send you, you can look at your team or yourself in the mirror and go,

how much money you got to want to make this month? And then you could just go back to the front of the funnel and say, all right, I got to five exit to get that result on the back end because I know all the metrics in the middle, right? You could start to plan out how much money you want to make each quarter or each year. But if you're not tracking that stuff, there's no hope for you. And winning it is not a strategy. If you're running a business, you've got to think like a business. And that's very important.

Amen. Yeah. It creates a predictable business, right? You can hire people. There's a whole bunch of things they'll allow you to do knowing executive. So good 100%. Sean, what are you seeing in your business or the market that has you maybe concerned or maybe has you excited? And how is it changing the way you're operating?

Concerned or excited? So first off, it's not concern at all, but basically what we look at every single month is inventory. We look at our current inventory every single month. How many units are currently on the market? How many pending sales are there? you know and what's our average monthly supply which is roughly about 2.6 months right now. So we're watching that every single month. And so obviously Phoenix is going to be different from St. Louis or any other market, California

across the country. So anybody who's in the business right now, you know, if you're fixing and flipping business and if that's going to be your core element of the business, you have to watch that inventory levels. And if it ticks up, then you want to kind of start scaling off the whole. fix and flip model and maybe go toward the more toward the wholesale model.

In Phoenix, we're not seeing that right now. We're seeing anywhere. I mean, it's literally staying within 2.4 to 2.6 months supply. And if it starts to increase, I mean, I do fix and flips as well. Our mandate is,

company mandate, if there's not at least a minimum of $100,000 or spread, we won't touch it. But as the market, you know, changes and shifts over the next 12 to 18, months.

These are something we watch every single month. It will make a determination to take down a property or not or potentially wholesale it. So it's all driven by the inventory and anybody can look in their market. And what I was highly suggest is look at your current inventory. Look where you were a year ago and look where you were back in 2005 and maybe in 2008. And that will give you a historical inventory level. And then, you know, as prices, I can definitely see as wholesale prices. we're pushing prices upwards to 82 to 83% of the actual ARB after repair value.

They've come down a little bit. We're actually under 80% right, about 78, 79%. Is that what you're offering, Sean? Or is that what you're selling them for? That's where our exit number is. Exit number of an actual true ARV is roughly 79%, 78, 79% right now, unless it has just ridiculous amount of rehab, the place is completely trashed. So, got it.

What's that threshold for you, Sean, as far as inventory? Maybe you said it, I might have missed it. But that threshold where you're going to like, okay, maybe we're going to pull back on the fix and flip model a bit, kind of transition a little bit more on the quicker wholesale model. Yeah, so currently, I mean, just could give the example in basically July of 2005, there was 5,000 units on the market. The market was crazy.

Everything was nuts, right? In August of 2008, when Washington Mutual Crash, we had about 50,000 units on the market here in Phoenix. So 50,000 units, from 5 to 50,000 units. A stable market in Phoenix is about 30, 32,000 units. We're currently sitting right now at about 16,000 units on the market right now, and we're staying pretty steady. And we're just kind of going into a sideways channel right now.

We haven't broke down. We haven't broke up yet. So if it breaks up, right, then we're going to start obviously looking for basically taking that fix and foot model kind of taking it off the show. Got it. Joe. What are you seeing in your business or the marketplace that has you concerned or excited? How is it changing the way you're operating? That's a good question. I've always loved wholesaling because wholesaling works, whether the market's going up or down. I'd bit my teeth into this business doing lease options in 2009 when everybody was running to the hills.

So I think it's important for people to know how to do creative deals if the market starts falling because you get more sellers that are motivated. you have less cash buyers, investor buyers, maybe buying homes. So you need to learn how to buy deals creatively, land contracts, subject tos, owner financing, lease options. So I love wholesaling because no matter of the market, what direction it's going, I'm in and out really quick, right? I'm not taking ownership of anything. And even the same with lease options, you can flip or sign those lease options. you can still wholesale a land contract or subject to or owner financing rights. So it's important to listen to podcasts.

It's important to get educated and to stay in touch with what's going on in the industry. And because the cool thing about real estate too is that it's not like the stock market where it drops on a dime, right? The housing market always is much slower. And so you always have more time to kind of see the direction that it's going in. And that's why I love this. Here's the thing, too, I'll say this. I was just seeing this. I've been seeing this more and more on Facebook.

I'm not very active in there, but I like to read and see what kind of questions people are asking. And I'm starting to see a lot more people talk about things like cash out refinance, right? I'm starting to see more people talk about what does it matter if it cash flows? Just buy it because it's appreciating. Just cash out refinance. Like all that same stuff that we heard way back in 2007. six and seven, you're starting to hear people talking about it again. And I'm just saying you got to be careful of that kind of stuff, right?

Yeah, I just took my son to sports clips over the weekend. He likes to go there and watch the TV while he gets his haircut. And two of the barbers were actually talking about the house that they're flipping. And I was like, uh-oh, here we go again. Well, Sean, tell your story real quick when you were getting a haircut back in those seven or something. Yeah, well, interestingly, same thing happened. The lady, she made $40,000 on a flip. And currently I owned at the time,

this was like early 2005 was 120 rentals, about $36 million worth at the time. And literally I was like, I went back to my partner at the time. So we got to sell everything. So we had loaded all of our inventory and I'll kind of relate it back. All of our inventory in 2005 at the height of the market.

So I was brilliant, right? I was like, I was like, I'm the man, I got rid of everything, had all this cash, tens of millions of dollars coming in. It was insane. But that was my brilliant move. And then my stupid move was I had to deploy the cash into investment. So I put it into land, right, in the land. And I'm going to relate this back on when we're talking about the market and risk and what I did wrong

and then what I would do different and what I am doing different today. But the bottom line is I put money in the land. We owned $30 million with the land at the time. about controlled about 580 lots in Phoenix. We'd buy land, we'd assemble land, we'd entitle land, turning it basically in a plighted engineered lots, and we had them sold to builders. Right during this crash happened,

and all the builders backed out on it, and now we're stuck with this land and what to do, which got in a very, very tough situation. Never filed bankruptcy or anything like that. I had to negotiate with lenders, And it was about a two to three year miserable situation going through that process. So I came out the other side, right? And I said, okay, I'm going to basically start a whole thing.

I wrote letters from my kitchen table just to start talking to sellers and making offers, started getting deals and crawled out of that hole that I was in. I was not only in a mental hole, but I was in a financial hole, got out of that hole. And went back and kind of looked at what was the biggest, why did that? that happened and what was the biggest mistake? So I literally, I talked to, I don't know how many countless people and being part of masterminds and groups and stuff like that. The bottom line is, do you want to protect your stuff going in the future? You got to buy cash flow. That's the number one. And obviously Matt, that's your mantra, right? Got to buy cash flow. You do not buy on speculation,

right? You cannot have, you don't buy it and say, oh, it's going to go up and then I'm going to buy it, right? That's speculating. I did that one land. So the land had no cash flow. I bought it on speculation because I could do a fourth appreciation on it with providing private client-engineered lots and the third key component is long-term debt. If you have long-term debt on the properties, then you can suffice any market dips or market corrections. And I had short-term debt. I had no cash flow and I was buying an appreciation.

And that was the recipe for disasters. So going on in the future, if you're buying properties now, like we just closed on a 120-bed student housing project. That project, it cash flows in the start, $130,000 first year. We have long-term 10-year debt, 30-year amortization, 10-year debt on the property. And it's literally cash-wills, and we're not buying it for appreciation. We're buying it. And we had basically a very conservative cap parade exit on five years.

But if we have to hang on to it, we can hang on to it for a full 10 years. So it's the different approach than it was back in 2008. So lessons learned. Good job. Cody, the biggest win that you've had in the last 12 months, and what did you learn from it? Biggest win? Yeah. I win every day. That's all we do is win win. No. To be honest with you, Matt, at this point in my career, I've been doing this for a long time now. And I made my first million at age 28. Came a multimillioner at age 30. I haven't made under $10 million a year. I'm not bragging, but I just scale, you know. And so financially, I don't think of it like money as a win anymore.

My biggest win is probably the fact that I can, you know, my kids are off school right now. I'm throwing them in a car. I'm taking them on vacation and we're checking out and I'm not stressed. That's my biggest win. You know, I'm not worried about asking somebody for some time off. You know, I just going. Unfortunately, where I'm taking them, just flooded. I got pictured.

I'm taking them to Port of Panasco Rocky Point for a couple of days. and then we're going to head over to, we're coming back and then we're going to Cabo. But I just got a picture of the whole place that's flooded. So now I got to scramble and figure out what we're going to do. But, you know, that's, to me, if you're talking real estate, you know, I'm now in business with my two best friends. I think that's a major win. You know, we're going to go flip some houses and have some fun. And it's bulletproof.

It's that one thing that is always going to be there. People are always going to need a place to live. So I love, that's why I'm so passionate about it. it is it's helped me create massive amounts of wealth. Then I went and taught other people how to create wealth. And that's a freaking rad story to tell. It's like, what better thing to do than serve people at a deep level like that, help them achieve their financial goals, and feel like a rock star in the process, and just be able to control your time. So I don't know if that answer your question. It's kind of hard. Let me rephrase it. As good as life is for you, and it's all

panned out wonderfully. What is one thing? If you had to do that, go back and do it differently, what would that one thing be? Oh, man, I think about that a lot. I think I would have probably just told myself to get more committed sooner because I see this happen all the time with entrepreneurs. You see guys like Sean Terry or Joe McCall and they're playing the game at a very high level and they're on social media and they're on four different social media channels and then they're, you know, doing big things with direct mail and they're, you know, doing podcasting and they got their real estate business and, you know, they got their big rental portfolios. They got all this stuff going on. So you sit there and maybe you're not anywhere near

that and you're like, oh my God, I want to do that. Right. And so you do 10 different things at 10 percent and you don't get any traction on any of them. Right? And then six months goes by and a year goes by and you start running out of motivation and you look back and you don't feel progress and you're defeated and you start abandoning ship on things. Oh, that doesn't work. You know, why, you know, maybe the market's not right for that. All the president's not the right president right now. So, that's probably why that's not working. And you're making all these excuses. You know, prices are a pain in the ass and it's depreciated. No, wait, now it's appreciating. And, you know, you're never going to get where you want to go. So if I could give myself any better advice is get committed to dominating

whatever you're going to do. Don't dabble. Don't be average. Don't be a little bit in and try to do 10 things. Screw that. Go all in. Like be a freaking obsessed, insane maniac and just conquer it like a savage.

Right? And then when you do that, that's when you can start to add the other pieces to it. You know, if you're going to be the best on the phones, be the freaking best. If you're going to dominate YouTube, but the thing I'm most excited about is YouTube right now.

I think it's the future. I think right now, whoever owns YouTube as far as in their niche, in their market, I'm seeing guys right now that are putting out a video a day on YouTube. They're relentlessly posting. They're driving all around the country doing collaborations with other influencers. You're doing whatever it takes to build their little brand on YouTube. And they're saying things like, If you want to partner with me, click the link in the description below or give me a call

and positioning themselves as a real estate expert. And they're raising private money from all these people that have lazy money. And they're coming to this person. What happens on YouTube is unique. You see a video. You like what they have to say. You binge watch 40 more videos from them. Right.

And now you fall in love. And that person gets put up on a pedestal like a rock star. So then when you finally get an opportunity to talk with them, you're like, wow, you're a real estate expert. I didn't even know. You want a partner? And they're like, I got, you know, I'm a dentist. I got 250 grand. It's like, okay, we're going to take your 250 grand. We're going to go buy three rentals together. And by the way, you can pay me five grand as a processing fee to be my partner. And I'm watching kids and people dominate their spaces. And they have 50 rentals, 100 rentals, 175. And I'm like, how the friction is. Did you get so many rentals?

By the way, they didn't use any of their own money. 100% of it came from somewhere else. And all they did was dominate YouTube. Just gave you my biggest secret that I'm focusing on right now. Nice. So the overall lesson though there is, and it's been a mantra around here for the last 24 months at least, because we made this mistake. We've tried to go so wide, so fast. But to go deep before going wide, conquer that before you add something to that layer here, right?

I like it. I couldn't agree more. Joe, what's the big? Go ahead, John. I just think Cody is one of the the best at that. It's funny because we both had like, I think it was like 8,000

Instagram followers at the time. Cody goes to he goes to Tony Robbins event. He's doing on social media. He's jumping around. Oh, Tony Robber.

Right? And literally, I think something shifted in his brain when it came to his commitment level. And I think he chose Instagram as to be the thing. And I saw him go from $8,000 to literally $1.3 million in a record setting time. He went all in. And I do absolutely think, you know, obviously, whatever you put your mind to, whatever you're committed to, do with everything you've got.

And you'll be amazed at what happens on the other side. The problem with people I see getting started, and I think we talked about earlier, is people come in with a half-esque. commitment, they, you know, partially committed. And then they're committed. And if they don't get the results, then they're not committed now. Then they want to change to something else. Or they're, you know what I mean? So the question is, what's it going to take for you to get so committed for so long that you're going to do whatever it takes? And that's where the tenacity comes in. That's where the persistence comes in. That's where if you're so committed and you have a long-term view and say, I'm going to do this for five years, then guess what? If you suck for the first six

months, guess what? It's a five-year game, man. It's a five-year plan. Who cares if you suck for six months? Guess what? You will get it if you do it long and hard enough. Right. Amen. Joe, let's bring this home. What's the best book you read in the last 12 months

and what did you find most valuable about it? You see that? Oh, you teed him right up for that. This is my book. No, I'm just kidding. The best book. You read a lot. You've always got the next.

the most recent thing. Yeah, but I was caught off guard. I tell you a book I'm reading right now that I'm really getting into and digging in. Where's Kindle? Here it is, Kendall. You want me to go, Joe, to save you? Go ahead, Cody.

All right, this is my favorite new book. And right now I'm reading like four books at one time. But the one that I, like, geeked out on the most lately is never split the difference by Chris Voss. If you want to go deep into negotiation and understand the theory behind positioning and influence and negotiation, that book is by far,

like, I've read a lot of, like, neural linguistic programming books and art of negotiating books. This guy is a freaking beast when it comes to negotiation. So it's never split the difference by Chris Voss.

You will not be disappointed. and it applies to real estate. Awesome. Yeah, it's come up here on the show more than once, and it's been in my Audible library for at least a year. I think I'll,

Cody, might have pushed me over the edge to actually listen to it now. Sean, best book in last 12 months. What did you find most valuable about it? I got two books. One book I'm reading right now

that's really, really good that just came out. And a book that's a tried and true book that's great for just personal, literally personal growth, personal progress. in life and business. So that book is organized tomorrow today.

It's a great, great book. It's literally one, and anybody I've ever recommended it to, literally text me back and say that book is insane. It's so good. It's literally organized tomorrow today, and it's a phenomenal book. Go check it out.

The book I'm reading currently right now, it's a great book, is Joe Fairliss's book, who, if you know, from the best ever real estate podcast, great guy, Yeah. 28-year-old kid

built a $400 million multi-family portfolio. Guys, total stud, right? So he has a 400-page book right now called the best ever real estate or apartment syndication book

and exactly how to do it. It's very technical, very detailed, explains the entire process from start to finish. I thought, I've got some great takeaways from that.

I highly recommend it. Yeah, great guy. Great fun of the show. We just had them on the show two weeks ago. So I didn't know about this book. Getting them ample time to opportunity to share it. But thanks, Sean, for sharing that. All right, Joe, did you figure it out?

Thank you. There's a book called Endurance. It was written in the 50s by, it's about Ernest Shackleton. And it's a great book about leadership. And never giving up. I love the book. And I'm sure they've done movies about it. But the book, and there's been several books, it's called Endurance.

It's about Ernest Shackleton. Great book. It's a historical book, but it's really easy to read. And then the book I've been reading right now that I'm really getting into, it's called Giving It All Away and Getting It All Back Again, written by David Green, the guy who started Hobby Lobby. And it's about being generous, about living generously, not just financially, although that's important, but also with giving away of your time,

your treasures, your talents, your knowledge. which I think all four of us here do a lot of that in the real estate and the business space. But I like hanging out with people who are generous. I don't like hanging out with people that are stingy and hold all of their secrets to themselves. So that's a really good book, giving it all away. Awesome. I'm glad you actually brought that up, Joe, because you three are the most generous people. And I know I've gotten so much from you.

And I just want to do something to share this and give back to you guys as much as I possibly can. Joe, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? Good question. Don't, whatever you do, don't. Want to come back to you? No, no, no. All right. Whatever you do, stop sending me Facebook messages.

I don't read those things, and it's frustrating because people get so mad at me that I'm not responding to their Facebook messages. But anyway, the best way probably is just through my podcast, Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Perfect. Perfect. One of the longest running ones on iTunes. Congrats on that. Cody Spurger, what's the best way for someone to get in contact with you? Yeah, my address is...

No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, just have people showing up at my house. It'd be pretty funny. You know what? On Instagram, I'm at Clever Investor. I'm pretty much at Clever Investor on all social platforms, but, you know, I'm out there. I put myself out there.

I invite people into my world on a daily basis. I'm constantly going live. I got marketing stamina. So I'm always putting myself out there. And I think, you know, if you want to come hang out, find me on social, download my book at fliphousesbook.com. It's a free resource for you. So that way, at least if you want to learn how to get into the real estate investing

business, that's a great step-by-step guide. And I want to, can I just leave them with something real quick? Sure. You know, you have an amazing array of talent right here on this mastermind. And I agreed to do it because I respect you guys so much. And the biggest needle movers in my life have always been and come out of events and masterminds. When you get plugged into a community like what you put together, Matt, or Sean's community or Joe's community, I mean, like, it's different than just buying a product or course from a lot.

of other, you know, gurus that are out there. You guys really take a lot of time to create that community environment. And I think that's, it's so needed in the real estate space because real estate's scary. It's really freaking scary the first year. And my best advice to somebody who's new is get plugged into somebody like Sean or Joe or Matt and stop wearing this. I'm bloody. I'm beat up. I got scars as a badge of honor. I'm figuring it out on my own. Screw that. Who wants bloody noses to get beat up every single day? Pick up where these guys have left off. They're playing the game at such a high level. They've been through decades of trial and error. Stop kidding yourself that it's cool to fail miserably and figure it out. What's cool is getting in the game, learning from those that have already cracked the code, and then going off and making your millions of dollars and then using that money to empower yourself to do cool shit, like help your environment. help your community, you know, cut checks to solve big world problems, take care of your family, whatever you're into. That's cool, right? Being broke sucks, right? Being broke's not cool.

Being average is not cool. But figuring out on your own is definitely the wrong way to go, especially in the real estate space. And you're at the right place with this guy, Matt. So, you know, let me add to that something that's really important to. You can't go broke making money. Okay. I'll say it again. You can't go broke. making money. So what are you focusing on? Like here's the thing, focus will make you rich. Focus will make you rich. So if you want to be successful in business, focus on what matters most. Become brilliant at the basic things, right? I wrote a book called Brilliant at the Basics. Focus on those basic things, talking to five sellers a day. If you don't have leads,

if you can't afford marketing, go find other wholesalers out there that have old leads and offer to follow up with their old leads for them and split the deals with them or something like that. So you literally have no excuses, none out there. If you focus on your highest revenue generating activities, which is talking to sellers and making offers, you're going to have success in this business. And so I just think that's important. You can't go broke making money. Focus will make you rich. You know, shiny objects will make you go blind. So get rid of those shiny objects and just focus on those basic elemental things in this business, and you're going to do fine. You're going to crush it. Thanks for that, Joe. Sean, if someone wanted to get in contact

with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? They can go to flip the number two freedom.com. Flip two freedom.com. I have a book there. They can download free. Read it if they want. And to add what these guys are saying, I remember you and I, Matt, sat down at Tommy Bahama Cafe. We're going to beach, California. I remember that, had a couple cocktails, beautiful day outside. How long ago was that? You had a huge impact on my wardrobe, Sean, since that day. Great.

Anyway, we had a great time. And we were both not there. We were both still figuring it out. We were both, you know, bouncing ideas off either. You were very giving. I was very, we went back and forth. We're still navigating the path of really trying to make our way in the industry, make our path, you know.

And I remember how to think it was a great conversation. We had a great time. And to add to what these guys are talking about to kind of wrap it up. And now I've seen what you've accomplished. And what's great about it is you've had relentless focus, which talks about what Joe talks about. You've been part of masterminds. You surround yourself with the right people Cody's talking about.

And you had one other element that wasn't discussed, and it was the consistent action. you had absolute consistency. And from that meeting and from that money, I think I took away, you have consistently put out content, consistently put out podcasts, consistently been there. And if you look at that effort and energy of being consistent, you've risen to the top of the game in all aspects,

from the coaching that you've done, the masterminds that you're putting on right now, the education, your training and stuff, which, and it's created of being now. an industry leader and it's done through all those different aspects and being consistent and putting your head down staying focused and surrounding yourself the right people so uh i commend you doing that you've done an incredible job thoroughly impressive what you uh what you've accomplished and uh and yeah matt do you know how much stuff i've stolen from you i mean i mean yes i actually do joe there's brought me no but i i don't steal it i model it

Yes. I'm really grateful for you, Matt. You're such a great teacher. You lay things out super simple. And I really look up to you, all the rest of you guys, sort of. But like, Matt, you keep doing what you're doing. And I love your passion for simplifying things for the average investor. You know what I'm saying? I just want to say one thing. I wish I could grow a beard and part it just the way he does with a little gray on the end like that. That nice accent he's got going on, right? That was awesome. Well, guys, I got like 17 more questions, so go ahead and block out the rest of the day. No. Let's wrap it up, and maybe we can do a part two. Let's put that on the books for soon.

All righty, so everybody, thanks for participating in this episode of Mastermind Monday. All righty, so we'll do it again. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us, we got the dash low. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.