Epic Real Estate Investing - Monday Mastermind Session - Rich Strauss, Joe Stratton, and Corey Boyles | 520

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Rich Strauss, Joe Stratton, and Corey Boyles, the 3 successful real estate investors share their knowledge and experience with you today. Learn about the best resources for off-market deals and how to face new business trends. Listen to the stories about their biggest wins and mistakes in order to learn from them and reproduce their results! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Epic Field Report. Hey, Tony, how you doing? I'm doing terrific, Matt. How are you? Fantastic. I wanted to reach out to you're in the Dallas market or Houston? Dallas Fort Worth. Dallas, Fort Worth. That's right. Okay, good. Yeah, I noticed your big win on follow-through Friday inside of the Epic Pro Academy's private Facebook group. So, first of all, congratulations.

Thank you. I appreciate it. You bet. And it says that you sold two properties with owner financing both with $12,000 down payment. total net monthly cash flow of $795 for 10 years, and you just got a new single family house under contract. So let's talk about the two that you just closed. Super job. How did you find these two deals? Totally different ways. One of them I purchased in June of 2017 from a referral.

A property manager I met, buying another property, you have a friend who wanted to sell a house. Met with that person. My wife and I, Sydney, developed a really nice relationship with that seller. and she had other people looking, but he really liked us. So we bought that property and had renter in it. We offered it up to a renter to purchase and they referred us to someone else to purchase it. Oh, got it. Okay, so you offered it to the tenant and the tenant says we won't take it, but we have somebody that will?

Neighbor across the street might be interested. The guy calls me, this is how quick it happened. That calls me Tuesday night. by the following Friday, we closed. Wow. That's fantastic. So that was the first one. How about the second one?

How did you find that one? Yellow letter. Yellow letter. We do a lot of direct mail. And we handwritten our letters. We have a team of people writing our letters for us. And like we purchased a number of properties, it was just simply through direct mail. So that stuff works?

Yeah. It works. Got it. All right. Super. So it was kind of like you had acquired these different. times in different ways, one through a referral, one through a yellow letter, through direct mail. Your extra strategy for both of these was to seller finance them to buyers, to resident

owners. You got $12,000 down payments for both, and the total net monthly cash flow for $7.95 is, and that's over the next 10 years. Did you calculate that ROI, what that's going to compute for you? Yes. So on one of them, it's a 37% cash return out investment. 37. I did sink a bunch money in for the rehab. They needed a bunch of work. The other one that had the renter in it, who referred me to his neighbor, 89% return out investment. So I'm pretty happy with both of those. Right, right. It's a great alternative source of investment for me. Sweet. You build wealth pretty fast with an 89% return. I like it. Biggest lesson learned in these transactions, what would you say that was?

build a rapport with the sellers. That's what we've learned. There were a number of investors seeking both of these properties. In fact, one of them I purchased in April of this year. There were investors there when I was looking at the property, but I was able to get the seller alone, and he spent about an hour with me. And we just built up a report.

Same thing with the other property. And as we've done with a number of properties that we purchase. We tend to build a rapport with the seller. And in a lot of cases, that is the deciding factor for us. Right. So my lesson is we spend a little bit of time with sellers, get to know them, get to know their motivation, get to understand what they've been through. We ask a lot to a lot of questions. You get to know them, you show them, you become likable because you spend time with them. They can see that you're competent. So this report is built. And that's what needs to have happen. We've talked about it that here for,

a really, really long time. And thank you for just being an example of that because, you know, that's, I think that's one of the big keys. Everyone's talking about how do we get more leads, how do we get more leads, how do we get more leads? Where I think if you spent a little bit more time with the seller, you close more of the leads that you have. Yeah, absolutely. We just did it again this week. That's great. How did you find that one? Well, we went to a different market. We drove an hour and a half south to Waco, Texas. We looked at six properties. And in one of the properties. We just spent a considerable amount of time with a fellow who has owned the property for many years. He even showed us the house, even though he had a realtor. And we just spent a lot of time with

them. Cindy wrote him a personal letter. We sent him an offer yesterday. He countered. We accepted it this morning. He chose us because he really liked us and how we paid personal attention to him. That's great. That's great. Congratulations. So, A lot of stuff going on. I don't know if you have a single point of celebration, but how are you going to celebrate these deals? Well, when we sell properties, we do go out and celebrate. So we go to usually a pretty expensive state place.

Nice. That's how we celebrate. We allow ourselves some opportunities to enjoy the fruits of the labor because, as you know, there is a considerable amount of labor involved in some of these. But for an 89% return, would you say it's worth it? Totally worth it. All of the effort is worth this. It's a great way to enjoy the freedom of having flexible time schedules.

You have a number of different opportunities to enjoy different streams of cash flow. And through the owner financing, which is kind of what we have been focused on, it also eliminates a lot of the headaches typically associated with owning the property. That's great. Well, Tony, it's been a pleasure having you in the RIAs program. Keep doing what you're doing. Let's reconnect and we'll do this again when you close this new deal you just got. Thanks, Matt. Really appreciate it. Thanks for all your help.

You bet, Tony. Thanks for taking time out to share with everybody. Take care. This is Terrio Media. Yo. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us. We got the cash mo. So welcome to the epic real estate investing show. I got a great show for you today. Another episode of Monday Mastermind sessions. And this seems to be a real hit with everybody.

and so I just thought let's keep it going. So I keep digging into the database. I keep digging into the CRM. I'll turn off the phone there. There we go. And then, you know, we're coming up with just great, great stuff. And so I invited four new or three new people out of my database that are doing deals. And I just, let's open up their brains and see what they got to share and see what we get created out of this mastermind session.

All right. So let me just start. It's be my upper left hand corner there. Rich, go ahead and tell us who you are, what market you're in and what your business looks like today. Thanks, Matt. My name is Richard Strauss, Sherman Oaks, California. I'm a land investor. So I buy and sell land, flip land, seller finance land, primarily in the desert regions outside of Los Angeles and Southern California. I think I have 20 properties on market now. I generally send out about 500 to 800 offers. a week, get two to three, three to four accepted deals a week. And I signed four contracts,

B to C last week. And I'm working on a couple more this week. So awesome. Congrats. Thanks for being here. Joe, what market are you in? And what is your business like today? Well, here in the St. Louis market, I work for three doors, real estate. We do a lot of buying and selling. You know, over last year, I did over 400 transactions as a company as a do a lot of buying distress properties, you know, from homeowners as well as also buying from other investors. So doing a lot of off-market stuff as well as single-family, multifamily, everything, you know, just like that in the St. Louis area. Got it. Good. Thanks for being here. Corey, what market are you in? What does your business look like?

Thanks. Yeah, I'm also in St. Louis. I'm the acquisitions manager for a company called Faster House. We're primarily, actually, we're exclusively just an investment company. We will probably buy about 200 houses this year. We buy and hold. We buy in flip and we buy in wholesale. Fantastic. Super. So thanks for being in.

So you guys are both in St. Louis. I didn't know this. Yeah. I actually know each other and have done deals together. Yeah. That's good. You know, I'd had a conversation with a couple investors yesterday. And it was funny.

When I asked them, what's their biggest challenge going on in their business? in us, they were all about the competition and they were concerned about the competition and all the people that are coming into their market. And then later on, I asked them, what was their biggest win? And one of the guys says, well, we started this meetup group, this networking club for other investors. And we've gotten so many deals out of networking with other investors. And I was like, well, there's a conflict there. You've got the biggest challenges all the competition, but you're getting all your deals from the competition. So I thought that was really funny. Anyway, so you might have already answered a rich, but just a little bit more specific, what's your,

your best source for off-market deals at the moment? All of my deals are off-market. And the land business is basically opposite of the residential homespace. So I don't have to do any funky ninja stuff to get deals. I pretty much did an exercise yesterday where I comped first, second, and third offers for about 500 vacant properties in Apple Valley, California. and I'll schedule those out. The first round of first offers will go out next week.

And then second offers will go out in about six weeks. And another third offers will go out in about another six weeks after that. I do that exercise every week. And I queue up between 500 and 800 offers a week going out in the mail. And then I just kind of sit back and let sign contracts come back. One of the challenges in my business is, you know, the deal flow that I have inbound, I have to match with my marketing efforts outbound. So whereas you guys have things like acquisition managers,

my acquisition managers mean a spreadsheet, but I'm really looking towards, I need like a sales manager to help me market these properties to get them sold. Got it, got it. Okay. So let me just kind of clarify. So you go ahead and you look at a lot, so to speak,

a big piece of land, and you come up with three offers for it. And then you have those. scheduled out to go out to the owner? I don't actually see it. So I get, so I download a list of all the owners of vacant property in an area. And I should say that this is an area that I already know from having done deals in the area. So I know the stuff over here might be worth a little bit more here and I need to discount for higher acreage, blah, blah, blah.

And then, so then I do that offer exercise in bulk of like, you know, 500 properties, first, second, third offers and I have them all cued up to go out at, you know, intervals. And as I get deals or I get hate mail or hate voicemails from that round of first offers, I might take them off my second offer list and my third offer list. Okay. So I'm finishing the end of a very focused 12-week year plan per, I forget the guy's name. But so I'm in the process of writing up my next 12 weeks. And part of that process is these five or six markets data exercise first second third offers for each of them queued up in spreadsheets press go and then I sit back and wait for the mail okay so does each offer just offer a little bit more you're inching up to a little bit more you know so and I'm tweaking

how little I need so so I'm you know my first offer is really low banking on the fact that I've got you know, a couple more swings at the ball, right? So I manage, so I, I turn the dial and offer amount on the escrow period that I'm asking for, things like that to kind of sweeten up the deal a little bit. Okay, got it. And then, and you don't talk to anybody.

You just wait for the offers to come back, sign it in the mailbox. I only talk to sellers who call me back, who sound like they want to have a polite, productive conversation with me. That's it. I'm not knocking on anyone's doors. I'm not having awkward conversations over, you know, over kitchen tables, none of that. So my, my workflow is quite a bit different from the residential housing space. Sure, sure.

No, I mean, we have a land, quote unquote, those are air quotes, division over here. So I understand the, I think I've gotten more angry callers with the land than I've ever gotten with the houses. Exactly. But I never speak with a seller unless they, want to have a polite, productive conversation. Otherwise, if it's hateful voicemail, I look them up and I take them out of the system, never speak to them again. Got it. Okay. Doing it all wrong over here. I need to get your boy dialed in. Yeah. I need to go out. Mise all these angry folks. The wrong approach. He and I need to go out for a vegan hamburger and a beer.

That's right. That's right. Super. Thanks, Rich. Yeah. Sorry. Your approach or what's your best source for off market deals at the moment? So I get the best deals from wholesalers or referrals in general from from realtors. Those are where I get the best, you know, the deepest discounts. Those are usually the houses that I have a lot less competition on. The, where I buy my most houses are usually lists that we generate daily, usually like obituary lists or any kind of event involving at death. We have three different lists that we build and then we have a follow-up.

We do like five. We're going to work up to seven, but we're doing five touches after the initial letter. Yeah. So, and those are appointments 90% of the time. If I know that it's, you know, from an obituary, I'm going to go on the appointment and at least make an offer. I know that I've got, you know, Joe's going to probably be there or someone with three doors and probably like six or seven other guys, but they're going to sell to one of us. So I'm always there to throw my head in. Super.

Real quickly, you get your best deals from wholesalers and realtors. How did you build those relationships? And what do you think was key and it has that being such a fruitful source for you now? Yeah, I got in real estate in 2012 as a wholesaler. In St. Louis, a lot of, a lot of wholesalers popped up out of nowhere. You know, there was people doing it for a long time, but there was kind of like this little society of wholesalers, young guys like me that all kind of just started doing at the same time. And all of us were learning the business at the same time and we all kind of became friends.

And everyone, most people kind of kept growing their businesses. And we all stayed friends. You know, we're kind of like drinking buddies. and we all compete with each other, but we don't get, you know, we don't all compete on every deal. So we also have a RIA. We have a real estate club. We have a meetup. We get probably around 150 people a month that come to that.

So we're always trying to help the new people. You know, we take the new guys out to lunch who are wanting to get in the wholesaling. We tell them what we know. We don't hold back any secrets. and in return, you know, most of the time they kind of give us first bite at the whatever lead they got going. Got it. That is so. We have actually, too, about the realtors.

We've built, you know, we've had acquisitions guys in our company before who were brokers. And for Killer Williams, some of the bigger Keller Williams in St. Louis. So we kind of developed email and snail mail lists. So we do like quarterly drip campaigns with realtors, just letting them know that they've got a troubled listing or whatever to give us a call. And we advertise, too, that we pay both sides of the commission. So. So focusing on what's in it for them and consistent communication. Yeah.

And then with the investors, let's go to lunch and drink beer. Oh, yeah. It works. Favorite way to do business? Yeah. I like it. Real quickly, to back up on one more thing that you had mentioned when you're looking for the death event. How are you making that contact?

Is that a letter? Is it a phone call? And are you addressing that event or are you just treating it like every other lead? Yeah. So the, so like the obituary, we do not, we try to, we send a letter to the attorney. And after there's an attorney handling the case and then the personal representative. And what we do is we say, we don't address it. So we just say we want to buy the house at such and such address.

Yeah. And that's a daily, I mean, building that list is a daily thing. We have VAs, you know, always look, checking up on websites. Super. So you're just searching obituaries online and then. Yeah, right. It's traditional or customary for in the obituary for the attorney handling the estate to be listed as well? We check case net.

So Missouri has kind of this court system online that you can go in and check to see what's going. You know, you can, it's all public. So we can see who the PR is. I see. Awesome. Very resourceful. I like it. Joe, what's your best resource for off-market deals at the moment?

Well, you know, in addition to what Corey said, networking, you know, networking in St. Louis is huge. It's about, you know, who you know, who you're doing deals with. And I go to quite a few events. You know, there's always an event that you could find, you know, any day of the week to go out and network. In my market, I'm also a licensed realtor as well. I do a lot of, you know, if I get a property under contract, I will call a lot of agents, you know, that have done deals in that area, seeing if they're working with investors or even owner occupant buyers or, you know, somebody for that property and just kind of like, you know, circle dial an area as well as, you know,

getting, you know, getting to that point where, you know, the property can get sold. But as far as, you know, buying off market deals, you know, we work with other wholesalers, we work with sellers, we work with, you know, we do a lot of marketing, you know, especially to, you know, distress properties, you know, pre-foreclosure, stuff like that. And we're, you know, constantly going on appointments, you know, meeting with these sellers, you know, as well as, you know, but my biggest play is, networking, especially with other realtors and with, you know, other wholesalers. You know, with our company with Three Doors, we do have the ability to actually take down and close on properties with the funds that we have available. So, you know, if a wholesaler

comes to me and, you know, they're saying like, you know, hey, I really, you know, I need to take this down in 14 days. Well, you know, I'll give them their assignment fee and then close on the deal and then figure out another exit strategy that, you know, makes sense. Got it. Interesting. It's very much a people business that you and Corey have done and then Riches figure out how to eliminate the people from the business. At least he keeps the polite people. I like it. Joe, you being a realtor and certainly have your hand a lot of different facets of the business and your networking.

What trend are you seeing in your business or in the market that has you maybe concerned and how is it changing the way you're operating? I don't know if I'm so much concerned. I am seeing, you know, definitely being in a seller's market, we're seeing some, you know, prices and even, you know, sellers, you know, they know that they're in a seller's market. So they are asking, you know, prices that sometimes don't make sense for the wholesaler, which, you know, being a realtor, I can't offer other options or somebody within my company can offer, you know, an assisted off market sale or, you know, such as a listing. But we are seeing a little bit of, you know, prices creeping up. And I see that especially in the single-family residential market. In the multifamily market, you know, we're seeing some rents increasing in certain areas, but we're also seeing that those multifamily properties are pretty much staying, you know, pretty much those cap rates are still pretty much staying pretty level. Got it.

Is that changing the way that you're doing your business at all? Are you adjusting to that? Are you just going business as usual? actually I have been over the past few months focusing on multifamily investing especially two families four families and St. Louis does have a multitude of those types of buildings so I'm even larger units such as 8 and 12 families been basically focusing on those areas and you know sometimes you know like I said with the networking and things like that with the people that you know those investors are

buying you know pretty much whatever you have in certain areas. So it's, it's pretty cool to have that. So the demand is there. So that's why you're going after those. Yeah, there's still a demand there. And the rents are, the rents are good. And, you know, fantastic. That makes sense. Corey, are you seeing the same thing or is there a different trend that you're seeing in your business or maybe the market that has you concerned? Yeah. So over the summer, it was, it was kind of a joke in our office whenever we're deciding what the list of finished house for. We would always push it, you know, a lot of, the conservative types would go based on comps.

And I always like to push it just to see what would happen. You know, it was kind of a joke. So I always push it, you know, $5,000 or $15,000 more than what we thought we could get. And a lot of the times we would get even over-asking price of that. And it was kind of, you know, I wasn't around, I wasn't in the real estate, you know, for the 06-07 bubble. But that's kind of what it felt like to me. and towards late summer what was happening was we would get a lot of buyers who kind of I feel like had buyers or more so like a lot of people who a lot of the buyers were so quick to put something under

contract just because they felt like they were going to lose it and whenever an inspection item whenever they found an opportunity to get out whether it be an inspection item or something or something else they would take it and look look somewhere else so what I'm seeing is the prices are starting to level off a little bit, especially that school started. I think what my gut is saying, and this is kind of just me, other people are a little bit more optimistic, but I think that we're going to start seeing the rounding of the curve a little bit and then maybe possibly a dip or a correction, which is great too, because to answer the

other question you asked Joe, how does that change my strategy? looking for rentals for a while. And I'm used to 2013 prices when I was a wholesaler, just a wholesaler, right? And so I'm a little picky. And, you know, I don't want to, I want a good cap rate on my rentals. And I look for multi-familys like Joe does. And I'm kind of holding off, unless I get a smoking hot deal, I'm kind of holding off on buying rentals until that correction happens.

And I'm just going to get them out, you know, a little bit of a discount. Got it. Got it. So Rich, you know, essentially, I guess, for your first year as a full-time real estate investor, give or take a few months. Are you seeing any trends in your business or in the market that has you concerned or maybe even excited? And how is that changing the way you're operating? No, so like you said, I've had my, I've really had my head down just learning,

learning what systems I have to create, put in place. I'm a bit of a one-man ban and I'm trying to change that. So I've just had my head down figuring things out, you know, getting deals, getting them sold. What I'm seeing here in Southern California is, you know, Pat, I've been Matt, so the housing market here is so expensive. And but so unless you're making six figures, you're priced out of buying in, buying a house in SoCal. What I'm able to offer folks is a chance to buy a seller finance piece of land on the outskirts of L.A.

that they can hold on to, that they can build a house on their own terms. So my buyers are those working class families in Southern California who their choices are renting a crappy house in the Valley. or putting together enough money to seller finance land in Palmdale, Lancaster, Joshua Tree, Apple Valley, hold on to that and then build that and then build a house as a family for their parents, grandparents. And then at the same time, money is still tight. And banks won't lend money on a $25,000 one acre lot. lot, which offers me an incredible opportunity to offer seller financing and act like a bank very

early in my investing career. So I think I've seen a lot of, there's been a lot of transition in the single family housing space with investors in areas where prices of homes don't make the home. make sense investment-wise as a rental. They're trying to figure out how to offer financing to buyers who don't otherwise qualify for a loan. As a land investor, I'm able to step into that role right away at price points that are, that are very manageable.

I'm talking about a $30,000 property, I can pick up for $3,500. I can offer it for $1,000 down and very flexible financing terms because I'm not competing against a bank for that buyer's financing opportunity. I am the bank. So the changes I've seen is the fact that Southern California is so expensive and that money is tight creates an opportunity for me to offer seller financing for folks who want to eventually build their homes. Right.

And escape or escape the very expensive, crowded and congested seller California real estate market. Got it. Got it. Joe, what's the biggest mistake you've made this year and what did you learn from? Well, I think mostly the biggest mistake is, you know, analyzation. You know, you try to follow a lot of formulas. and, you know, things that that you think you know. But I think there was one property that I bought that I didn't analyze correctly.

And I think I, you know, bought it too high of a price. And I trusted the sellers a little bit too much on, you know, what they had previously done to the property. But I think that was kind of something that, you know, it was just, it was kind of just a bad buy. And I think that was kind of one thing that was the big lesson. The big lesson was, well, so basically, shortly after I bought the property, I had found out by calling the city of St. Louis because

they had put a big condemned sticker on the front of the house and basically had found out that the sellers weren't completely honest with me as far as the whole process. But we ended up buying the house and then when we bought it, found out that it had been condemned. So what will you do differently next time then? You know, just, you know, try to get documents. You know, we, you know, we've had situations before, you know, where we bought a property and, you know, it ended up being, you know, a meth house, you know, had to get the whole remediation done, things like that.

Or, you know, just, you know, you just got to be smart in your analyization and just look everything over, you know, and, you know, the proper websites go to and the proper people to call. Because, you know, honestly, I mean, anything could happen, especially when, you know, you're dealing direct to homeowner and, you know, you're trying to, you're trying to, you know, learn everything in an hour or two hour appointment. So that may be a little bit slower with the due diligence. So, you know, you definitely got to do as much due diligence as you can.

Right. Got it. Corey, biggest mistake you've made this year, and what did you learn from it? Biggest mistake. Ironically, I was actually going against those competing against one of, there's another Corey inside of Joe's company that's a buyer. and we were both competing against this house. I bought this house.

It was 2,700 square foot two-story jam-packed with clothes. Jam-packed. It's going to be my second loss of the year. Probably me personally, I'd be writing a $10,000 check to get rid of the house. So you guys dodged a bullet, Joe. But I thought, you know, I wasn't used to a hoard of that magnitude. too. I just got one of those. I just got one of those rid of those rid of too. Yeah. So I had calculated

$6,000 for the removal of the stuff and it ended up costing us 18. And plus the holding cost because it was a $210,000 house of what I bought it for. The holding costs on that are very cheap, about $2,000 a month. And it's and nobody, you know, I bought it. I thought it was a slam dunk. We could wholesale it. rehab it, but it was too much. We had too many things going on. We didn't want to rehab it.

What was the big discrepancy in your estimate from 6 to 18,000? I didn't consider how many dumpsters it would take. It didn't consider how long it would take and how many people would be paying. Also, within that deal, I negotiated, I really tried to look beyond just the price when negotiating, you know, try to solve other needs. And trying to solve the needs of a hoarder. isn't always the best thing because you're dealing with the sickness, you know, and you're trying to solve a problem that is way deeply mental. So we held this house for a month before we even did anything to it for the seller. So maybe that's the lesson.

I don't know, but what was your biggest takeaway from that experience? That was part of it is don't negotiate with someone's sickness. The other part, and I think this is, you know, it when I was there I got that rush of trying to win um and I was the I got that house sign right then and there you know and she she called up Corey uh right in front of me and she said hey this guy's offering this and then Corey's like oh I'll give you I'll match that and then I kind of was like I'm usually a low pressure guy but I pulled out every tactic that in the book to get that contract and it worked but I didn't you know

I was doing it all on emotion. I didn't step back and really think about it. Yeah. Yeah, buy with your math, not the emotions, right? Right, yeah. Perfect. Rich, biggest mistake you've made this year. What did you learn from it?

I bought a couple properties. So I've been fortunate enough to not have to buy any properties before I've actually sold them, except in three cases where actually I knew it was, you know, I thought I had a pretty good deal. So I went ahead and bought them. when my contract expired. I bought one property

thinking that I had a buyer under contract. And this guy had been, I had him an escrow for three weeks. And when I sent him his paperwork to sign,

he backed out of the contract. And I ended up being a good guy and giving him his $1,000 back. I saw that as an opportunity. He basically gave me a thousand dollar legal lesson to tighten up my contract. But on the flip side, I put it back on the market at a higher price with better financing and got $8,000 more than what he was going to pay me for it. Got it. So I'm always improving my contracts, tweaking things, you know, learn something,

figure something out, increase, you know, but what turned out to be a $1,000 check that I hated given someone because he flaked at the last minute turned out to be an $8,000 positive after I put the property back on the market at a higher price with that better terms. Fantastic. So maybe you already answered it, but my next question is, what was your biggest win this year? And what did you learn from it? I've had a couple situations where I've had three buyers pay me much more in their down payment than what I'm purchasing the property for. So I've had a couple of had three situations where I'm creating about $300 a month positive cash flow and I'm putting an extra $5,000 or $6,000 in my pocket for the privilege of creating a check for myself.

Right. So it's like infinite ROI plus $5,67K. And I've actually had one buyer in the length of us taking to close this one deal. she's come up with an additional $4,000 down payment above the extra $5,000 that she's paying me above the price that I'm purchasing this property for. So she's talked yourself into giving me an extra $9,000 as opposed to just $4,000. Sweet. You like it when buyers do that.

I didn't ask for her. She just called it. It was like, can I give you more money? That's great. We can stop it. What's the biggest win you've had this year? And what did you learn from it? Well, I mean, honestly, biggest win for me is, you know,

buying my first investment live-in property. I bought a duplex here in St. Louis and, you know, collecting rent from the other side and basically just kind of on the doorstep of that, you know, financial freedom where, you know, I can kind of work when I want and do what I want. And, you know, but still with the motivation to work and do deals. and, you know, getting to the point where, you know, wholesaling and, you know, renovations and things like that, especially with, you know, the company three doors, the opportunity that they've given me to basically, you know, step my way up to be, you know, where I, you know, can quote unquote call myself successful.

And, you know, it's been kind of a process that's taken about three years. But, you know, finally, you know, acquiring my own, you know, first investment live in property was a huge win for me. that is really cool. So super. So what's the lesson? The lesson is, you know, I mean, when the, you know, I guess when, you know, you kind of realize, you know, other people's money can kind of pay for your lifestyle. It's kind of cool.

I don't mean that like in a rude way, but I mean like, you know, when, you know, when you've got rental properties and, you know, people are paying down, you know, your bank principle and things like that. It's just something that, you know, where you're able to make decisions that can better yourself and also, you know, in the turn, you know, create financial freedom, you know, to where, you know, you're making money, um, basically with your mind as opposed to your labor. And that's, and that was basically a big realization for me that I kind of hit this year. So, right?

Yeah, a lot of that, I mean, there's so many, there's four or five profit centers inside of real estate, right? And we always focus on just the equity, buy low, sell high, put some money in our pocket. And you know, intellectually or concept. conceptually, this idea of creating wealth and building passive income. But sometimes when you just do it for the first time, like the evidence just really hits you. And you're like, now I really get it, right? Cool.

Congratulations to you. Corey, biggest win that you had this year. What did you learn from it? So, biggest win, I got four houses under contract in a day. And my goal was to get one a week. And then I ended up getting two more later on in the week. but it was what I learned from it was something that I kind of already knew and and not to get too hippie here but you know I was like kind of partying too hard you know during a during a period of

my life and and I just felt this gut feeling that if I just like stopped and kind of got got my mind and my body in order that things would just come to me and I had kind of a lull like a couple weeks of, you know, kind of like just a lot of misses, a lot of, you know, a lot of nose. And, and I decided to listen to the universe and went for it. And then it was literally two days later, four houses in one day. And then ever, like, ever since then it's just been like a giant snowball that's just like growing and growing, like just a snowball. Like, just a little of awesomeness. Got it. So the lesson, less drinking. Well, yeah, that's part of it. Yeah. Listen to your gut. Yeah. Listen to your gun.

and treat your body in sales, you know, if you're not showing up 100% yourself, people know that, you know, and they don't, so you got to be you. And yeah,

and drinking too much is not a way of being you. I like it. That's a great lesson. That's an interesting point because I'm on day three of no alcohol. Nice. You know, the secret, the secret is La Croy.

Yeah. I'm drinking. Yeah. We like our cocktails here at home. And I've got three days. I don't know. Is there Friday? Yeah, I've quit drinking seven times this year.

Nice. I think I'm on the fourth hour. Can I jump in on just a learning point that's like a broad learning point? I'd say what's a turning point I've had in the last maybe 12 weeks is really. really going through the process of breaking down what my income goals were, breaking those down into the number of deals I have to get, and then what are the weekly and daily actions I have to take in order to reach those numbers and then tracking that stuff religiously

and scoring myself. And that's, you know, there's, you know, I come from an athletic coaching background. and putting a race on a calendar then drives a lot of actions for months and months as time and your fitness progresses towards that date. In the real estate investing business, there is no artificial date that's on the calendar unless you put it there. And so in this space, there's lots of people who I want to be a real estate investor. I kind of, you know, I could have, should have, they have these big goals, but they don't

break it down into no joke, you know, a date that has a number that has numbers attached to it, and then lots of actions that are number-based that you're doing on a daily basis, you know, and you're, you know, a lot of the tools that you have are founded on that principle, but really the big turning point for me was committing myself to a weekly number of offers out the door, which then drove just a lot of a lot of in of things I had to get done, but then also just having those really no, you know, no joke metrics that I have to hit every single day, every single week. Nice.

And the momentum of that, of that consistent daily action creates a snowball where I've had several weeks where I've gotten four or five, six new deals in and put four or five buyers under contract. But those results. achieved were a consequence of the actions that I put in place consistently in weeks one through five, you know, this snowball. So, yeah, you know, with real estate and probably a lot of other things as well, but this is my reference point is, you know, what you're earning today is a consequence of what you

did 90 days ago in most cases. Exactly. Right? Absolutely. And, yeah, and Rich, you've really commend you. You've really taken the epic 89 program that was inside of the academy. of taking it to the next level. And you know, you kind of hold that as your, I don't know, religion is a strong word.

It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's the most valuable. You know, when I started drilling everything down into a 90-day block with objective metrics and projects scheduled, and those projects are scheduled on, you know, on this day. And, you know, right up here above my desk, I've got, you know, our big picture goals. And so when I find myself not wanting to do a thing, I look up and I see goals that are bigger than the thing that I don't want to do. Right. And we can focus like that for, you know, three months. You can do that for three months.

Right. You know, you can then do that for a four-week block and one week and one day at a time. But if you don't drill it down into those specific daily actions. Yep. Big shout out to Todd Herman, by the way, who really, he's kind of the, the champion of that philosophy, he authored something called the 90-day year. And we're in a mastermind group together. So I was like, well, I'm going to do the 89-day year.

You want to do you one better. And on that note, Joe, what's the best book that you read in the last 12 months? And what did you find most valuable about it? Well, you know, as far as books go, you know, when I was first starting out, I read everything I could real estate on Amazon. You know, one of the big guys that I saw it out in Florida was Preston Ely. I saw a lot of his stuff, brought some of his courses and things like that. But more recently, in the past 12 months, I've been more focused on mindset,

you know, like Rich said with goal setting. You know, there's a book, you know, the 12-week year that came out and, you know, basically, you know, breaking the down the year into four segments. Also, there was another book by Felix Dennis called The Narrow Road. And I also like to read books. Like there's one, you know, The Way of the Seal, or the Way of the Seal, which is a, book that was written by a Navy SEAL, you know, all about mindset. And, you know, these, you know, like the 50th law.

Which one is your favorite? My favorite, honestly, was the narrow road by Felix Dennis. He was the founder of Maxim Magazine. And basically, you know, wrote basically a book with guidelines on the mindset that you need to make it in business. So I've been focusing mostly on books that, you know, offer, you know, basically they put you in the state of mind that you need to succeed. Got it. You know, basically.

A mindset stuff, right? Mindset. Super. Super net. I mean, everything starts with a thought, right? And the 12-week year, I haven't heard of him. So I knew the 90-day year. So there's another book out there called the 12-week year.

12-week-year. Yeah, that's that's the foundation I've been using for the last 12 weeks. But, Matt, it's, I mean, you're, so I've got that and I got yours. and I just I just make the plan work to plan daily weekly accountability. All right. Well, mine works one day faster than everybody else's. Yeah, and the goal setting and, you know, the goal setting is huge, which is, you know, something that we do every 12 weeks, write new goals and, you know, smash those goals. Fantastic.

Corey, best book you read in the last 12 months and what did you find most impactful about it? Never split the difference by Chris Voss. There's a lot of stuff in there that I've read in other books that were very similar to negotiating and influence. I love influence in negotiating books. This one, though, it validated something that I kind of already did, which was, you know, everyone kind of thinks that whoever says the first number when negotiating is the loser, right? I mean, that's a lot of people think that. But there's a lot of research that actually shows the contrary that whoever says the first number sets the frame and everyone's negotiating around that. So that's what that's and then the other one that I really liked is Dr. Joe Dispenza wrote a book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.

And it's just just like what you guys are saying about self-development type stuff. There's a lot of neurology type stuff in it. So it's about reprogramming your brain. Awesome. Great. So, Rich, what do you need most in your business right now? What I need most in my business right now is private money to fund my seller finance deals. Got it.

So I wanted to reach out to and talk to you about that. What would be the best way for them to do that? Rich at candiesland.us. It's candy with a K and an I. Candy is my wife's name, and I'm on a mission to get her out of her job, as you know. Got it. Rich at candiesland.com. Dot us. Fantastic name for a land investing business.

Dot us. Oh, dot us. Got it. Dot us. We'll make sure that that's accurately in the show notes. Joe, what do you need most in your business right now? I think mostly it's expansion, expanding outside St. Louis. So, you know, getting out there and being able to network with more and more people,

whether it be something like this, you know, whether we've got a podcast or even live, you know, willing to make that effort to expand. Sweet. So if someone wanted to reach out to you and talk to you about that or anything else, what would be the best way for them to do that? J. Stratton at 3doors.com. J. Stratton at 3doors.com. Perfect.

Corey, what do you need most right now? I need more realtor referrals. That's what I need. Yeah. In St. Louis specifically? Yeah, St. Louis or Columbia, Missouri. Yeah. I buy there too.

Sweet. So if someone wanted to reach out to you and talk to you about that or anything else, what would be the best way for them to do that? It would be Corey C-O-R-E-Y at FasterHouse.com. Fasterhouse.com. Perfect. Well, thanks everybody for participating in this episode of Mastermind Monday, and let's do it again. Let's do it.

Nice meeting you, guys. Thanks, guys. If you'd like to do deals, stay here. We're here seven days a week. We hold nothing back. We give it all away. And if you'd like to go fast, go to R-E-I-A-A-S dot com. All righty so I'm Matt Terrio to your success.

God bless. Thanks for being here. And see you next week. Yo. 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 board, we got the cash flow.

This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com. Thank you.