Epic Real Estate Investing - REI Rookies Turn it On Quickly | 1076

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

In today’s episode, Matt is joined by Jack and Josh, also known as the hosts of the REI Rookies Podcast. Stay tuned and find out why they came to Matt to take their business to the next level, the surprising ways they gained local credibility, how a damaged roof and a lost job sparked their interest in real estate investing, and much 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-A's.com.

Here's Matt. All right. Got a great show for you today. As you've heard me mention here, though, our REI ACE program, R.EI.A.A.A.S. Program. It's hard to say that fast. It's a program where we turn ordinary, everyday people into badass real estate investors, REI Aces. And originally, we thought of it as, you know, a souped up coaching program.

We're going to do more than any other coaching. program does out there and this is why we're going to be bigger and badder and better. And, you know, after that was, I mean, that was our conception. That was our initial thought as we were going to move forward with this. But now after a couple years of running the program, I don't know, in hindsight, we see it very differently, very clearly and very differently. We've recognized that in the program, we've got two types of people. There's two types of people that come through and those with real estate problems and those with

business problems. And we've noticed of the tremendous increase in the success stories that we've had that more of those success stories are coming from one group than the other. You know, after the interview process, and we do conduct a legitimate interview process to become a part of the program because it's not a good fit for everybody. Some people, we just, whatever's ailing them, it's not going to be a good fit for us because I don't know if we can help you or not. and other situations where, you know, you're coming to us and maybe what we offer is not what you're looking for. So we do turn away approximately 30% of the people that apply because, for the most part,

they're just not ready for it yet or it's not a good fit in some way, shape, form or fashion. So the interview, we actually, in this interview, we actually conduct a business evaluation because what we found is that those that have a deal or two under their belt already are having the fastest success. Like, sometimes in just a couple weeks, a significant difference is noticed in the types of results that they're receiving. And because most people are rather impatient

and invariably always want to know, I mean, this is one of the most popular questions we get during the interview processes, how long is this going to take? So just knowing that that's on the top of everyone's mind, I like to shine the spotlight on the REI acers that get the fastest. result so that you can learn what it is that they did to get them.

And at the last intensive, just this past January, I met two individuals there from Fargo, North Dakota that I've subsequently had the great pleasure of working with. And I say the great pleasure. It's not a cliche. You hear that all the time. But these guys have really been a pleasure. I mean, I really like light-spirited, casual, you know, happy, go-lucky, I guess, optimistic people that have no issues rolling up their sleeves and get into work.

And that's just what these guys did the very second that they left the intensive. And they're getting the results to show for it. They're getting those correlate results to show for the hard work that they've put in and how fastly, is that a word, how quickly they actually put that work in. So what I did is I recorded a phone call that I had with them. Wow, it's probably, I guess it's been more than a month or so ago. It's been a busy time around here around the office, actually for me personal. We haven't been around the office.

But I'm a month ago or so. And then we recorded this phone call. And I wish I had a more recent one to share with you because they've closed a couple more deal since we last spoke. But I still want to share this conversation with you that we had. And they've got an awesome podcast as well. They went out and they started their own podcast, which I just think is fantastic. So without further ado, please help me welcome the REI Rookies.

You may know them from the REI Rookies podcast. That's Jack Hoss and Josh Coth. Jack and Josh, welcome to the show. Thanks, Matt. You bet, you bet. I'm glad to be here. Thanks a lot, Matt. Sweet.

So you guys are in a remote location, far, far and away. They made a famous movie about it. Where are you guys from? Yeah. Yeah, Fargo, North Dakota, Upper Midwest, baby. We can touch Canada. Yeah, you're hardly in the United States.

But I never met anybody from Yeah, it was barely in the United States. Barely nice. In fact, we're going to see a high of 14 degrees today. That is insane. Yeah, it's a bone-chilling 62 degrees here today, I believe. So I have sympathy for you guys. Let's see.

We met recently. You came to one of the events, to the Epic Intensive in Torrance, And you guys, we got to know each other over those few days. And we've decided to work together since. And you guys actually have a podcast. And so I wanted to bring you on and just kind of talk about that. Because I talk about, you know, all these different types of ways to generate leads. And, you know, starting a podcast could be very much one of them for you.

Even if you don't want to be a podcast celebrity, using a podcast to record your knowledge and have that and distribute that to the person that you're trying to attract is a very effective way of generating business. And so I guess let's back up just a little bit before we talk about that. Tell me about what were you guys doing just before you guys got started investing in real estate. So we worked together at a large technology company that has a campus here in Fargo. And we were on the same team and then Jack moved to a different role. And then my whole team got fired, got downsized all 26 of us at once. So I was unemployed and I was a photographer and I just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I realized that as a photographer I was just pegging the needle on the active income side.

I mean, if I don't show up to work and shoot photography, I don't get paid. And I realized if I'm going to ever be able to retire or slow down or step away and have any type of life that I was wanting to have, I needed to figure out how to generate passive income. So, and then all roads went to real estate and, you know, about two years of, and told the story on our podcast before, but I typed real estate investing into the old iTunes podcast search engine, found your podcast, listened to about eight hours worth in a row in a long tribe and it really got hooked in. Yeah. And then I, yeah, I know your voice well. Yeah, it was a long time, man.

That was a long one, yeah. So, but by the time I reached my destination, I was fired up and came back to the town and started making offers, investor friendly, I went a bunch of properties himself. And I just started on the MLS just kind of making lowball offers. And then Jack had was still, you know, working. And about nine months later, after I had acquired a few properties, he kind of saw what was going on. And then maybe you can speak to, you know, how that look old. Yeah. Well, first of all, when you have that many friends who got let go all at once. It's kind of a shock to the system as well.

So you start to question how secure that corporate job really is. Right. It's just a mindset shift in that regard. Then I also had read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Cash Flow Quadrant and some other things. And one interesting scenario was it really made me look at some situations differently. One thing was is that we're a single income family and I needed to replace the roof on my house. And to come up with that kind of money to replace that roof, I just didn't even know where to go about it. Long story short, I ended up buying a rental property which now pays the monthly fee or the monthly bill for my roof.

So it was a way for me to get a roof by acquiring a rental property to pay for it. I just kind of ran with it. Right. A lesson pulled directly from the pages of rich dad, poor dad. You know, I think a wife wanted to buy the car, and he said, great. So what asset are you going to buy to pay for the car, right? Right, exactly. Yeah, it was a rough, not quite as romantic, but same concept.

Very effective. Yeah. Perfect. It got the job done. So here we are today. How long have you been investing in real estate? Are you both full time now or how does that work? What's your lives look like right now?

Yep. So I was still doing photography and I still am actually, but I just kind of slowed that down quite a bit. And I had the flexibility to adjust my schedule. I just started consistently trying to purchase properties. And then we partnered up about a little over a year ago. And we've been purchasing about one a month ever since. So we're doing a teen right now.

And then we're working on a couple flips. and we use the money generated from flips to purchase longer term buying holes. So it's kind of right now, but we just, and Jack just quit his job a week ago. Yeah. So I am officially full time as of this week. Awesome. Congrats. Congrats.

Well, sitting here side by side. Yeah, it's pretty exciting stuff. So, you know, right now, but we realize, too, that, you know, we're doing about one deal a month. and we just really want to get to the next level. So that's kind of where we engaged to you and really wanted to be around people that were succeeding at a higher level and kind of match those behaviors to match that success. And that's why we ended up finding about the epic intensive

and attending that. That was a great time, great, highly recommended. And it's one of those things that I think is really telling because it wasn't until the intensive and having confidence in the processes and what we could accomplish and having some sort of, of structure is what was really needed and made me confident to take the leap. I know what I'm going

to be doing on a daily basis coming here and focusing on this. We've always had a shotgun approach. Now we're, like you said, it allows us to have a more focused, streamlined, dedicated approach. It really made a difference. And when he says what to focus on, he's talking about this, the daily success report, baby. Fill it out. He almost making me. cry. It almost made me cry. Super.

All right. So one deal a month before we met and you want to take this to the next level, what does that next level look like for you? It's a combination of, we kind of readjusted our expectations a little too, because I don't know, deals necessarily is a measure of your success, right? Because, I mean,

the area may not be profitable. So really, we're just trying to set a passive income level. So we're trying to hit, you know, 10 grand a month is kind of our first threshold and then probably double that, you know, so that we're each generating 10 grand a month. So that's kind of our next goal. And I think we're about, we're saying about the halfway point. So we need to to get from five grand a month to about 10. Right. Okay. So we're at five. We need to get to 10. We decided to work together. So what was, what's actually missing or broken, that's helping, that's preventing you from get to five to 10 on your own?

man i mean we use this line quite a bit but we say that we've acquired 18 properties almost in spite of ourselves because uh doing with and it just depended on me remembering like seeing a property pop up on the mLS or and just remembering a lot of this stuff and there was zero follow up going on unless i remembered it right and zero tracking and a lot of the stuff that could be automated was not so just a lot of that busy work we were having to do and that was really slowing it down and we were the bottleneck. So we wanted to really implement processes, a CRM, and get as many things automated as we could.

Awesome, awesome. Cool. So you saw that being a good fit for you over here. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. And I'm absolutely convinced now that if you don't get it implemented and pay for it now, you're going to pay for it down the road, whether it is through time, money, effort,

it's just a matter of how you're going to pay for it. So in our case, it made far better sense to work with your team, get it done now, and get it implemented, and gain those habits. And I'm going to say habits because it's all about being presented at it. It's just a better scenario, and we're going to, in the end, be ahead of ourselves in the long run. Right. Sweet. So you guys were just here at the office on a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks, weeks at the most. Typically, you've never talked to people, like, in great detail this close,

because you're just getting into it. Your marketing is just starting to hit, you know, and you're starting to really get into your habits, right? So what is it like right now two weeks after you are here? What does your day-to-day operation look like? Well, it's kind of interesting because we're just trying to focus on, you know, the Daily Success Report, or try to make contacts and Jack's been really stressing on the, you know, posting ads and just on the marketing side of things. But a funny thing was I started getting calls and I didn't realize where they were coming from.

But apparently our VA that we, that Miguel set up for us was already reaching out to FISBos and they were starting to call me. But I don't even know that that was already in place. So, and we've been going back and forth on Voxer and we actually just went to us to look at a house about an hour ago. And I have another appointment set up for, you know, Saturday, another one, I think, tomorrow. So there's already been like three or four appointments set.

And I don't think our direct mail has even hit yet. So, you know, it's all based on just one end of one strategy is already setting like two or three appointments, you know, whereas that one, I would have never seen that much because I just don't have the time to sit there and comb through all these physical listings or the stuff that the VA is doing for us. And I'm just filtering them out and getting it to the point where, okay, here's people that are actually responding and, you know, have some interest.

And then, you know, we can take it from there and go actually look at the properties. And being consistent with that marketing message has been a pretty big thing too. You talked about once at the intensive that it starts to build on itself. Definitely seeing that. I know it's been only three days since I've been pushing this, but you can see it building already. The first day, of course, I didn't have anybody contacting me. The second day I had four.

Today already we're at 2 o'clock, and I've had like 8 to 10. I mean, and so it's people who are, I can see how this is building us in such a short amount of time. It's awesome. Awesome. So I guess what are you guys talking about now that you guys are, Jack, you're full time now, and you guys are probably sharing space and you're working the business. What are you guys talking about? What are you seen for the future for yourselves now?

Yeah, I mean, we're still, you know, treading water a little bit, trying to get in the rhythm of, you know, what it's going to be like. So, I mean, we should definitely recap this in a month because I'm sure we will much more in a rhythm. But, you know, so right now it's just figuring out how to actually implement a lot of these processes. But, you know, we talk about, okay, how do we focus on the right activities? So a lot of it is, like if the VA brings us a property, well, we need to assess. motivation, right? Because you don't want to waste time with people that have none.

So we're figuring out how to do some of that filtering, some of that sorting, and really focus on the people that actually have the genuine motivation. So we're not just running around over town looking at houses that the sellers have none. And then just kind of putting them in that follow-up, you know, drip so that a lot of that follow-up happens automatically without our direct involvement. And we're also just kind of surrendering to the process. you know, like I just went and looked at a house and, you know, it's one of the

checklist items that says, you know, send a thank you note. Well, that's something I never would have done in the past, but it popped up. So I just said, all right, I'm going to send a thank you note. So I, you know, used an automated service that you recommended that sends out a handwritten note to the seller. Because, you know,

even if he has no motivation selling his house, it still may benefit somewhere down the road. And just as far as him building his reputation, what he thinks of us as a company. Right. Oh, just wait. Just wait. Because that right there, that practice right there will yield dividends. Josh, my guy in Florida, he had gotten, we got a deal just in December from a personal note he'd written a year before that. So maintain that practice. It'll pay, even when it feels like it's not. Super. So cool, guys. This is kind of a spontaneous jump on the phone. Let's touch base. Oh, let's talk about your podcast. So you started a podcast. called the REI Rookiees. And I guess what was the inspiration,

what was the reason for you doing that? That was another just kind of a long-term play and just trying to build some credibility locally and just with other investors and other people we might network with. Just any way to stand out from the crowd and establish and build relationships and generate some trust, you know,

amongst our local investors. and well, anywhere, really. We just thought it was a great way to do that. And we just genuinely wanted to help other newer investors that were asking us questions. And honestly, too, we get a lot out of just teaching the material and repeating it because when you teach something, you know, you just learn it that much better, right?

Right, right. Yeah, that was a lot of the reasons why we started. Sweet. So, you know, we were really, oh, I was going to say, it's doing things that what other successful people have done, before us. Right. You know, it's the concept of, you know, to become an expert thing, you have to spend

10,000 hours. Or you could follow somebody who's already spent that 10,000 hours and just do and mimic what they've done. In this regard, you know, you were a pretty significant inspiration in that because we saw you doing a podcast. So us doing a podcast made sense. Along with, it really does, once you can explain it to somebody else and teach it to somebody else. It demonstrates that you have an understanding yourself. Then secondly, it really has held us

accountable. Like the accountability associated with it, if we say something on the podcast, it really checks your integrity. You really want to make sure that you deliver on what you've said to the hundreds of people that you're delivering this to. So it's really adds to that accountability Factor. Indeed. You know, I found myself once I started teaching others how to do what I've done, I became much better at what I did, right, at what I do. Right. Even when you know it good enough, where you've gotten the results for yourself and you can help other people do the same thing, other people do the same thing. I got better at it myself. And it gets me fired up. It keeps me moving forward as well in my own business. It enables me or empowers me to keep practicing what I am

actually teaching. So it keeps me on track. So I like that, Jack. I like that you've recognized that it's a good accountability factor. So you guys have been running your podcast for almost a year now, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so aside from that, what have you noticed? What ancillary benefits, what intangibles or what actual tangibles have you gotten from it? I know it's definitely raised our profile. Like, for instance, we took over our local real estate investor. We don't have a RIA club, but there was a meetup group of Fargo Moorhead Real Estate investors. We took that and between that and the podcast, it just kind of gives us some really good credibility locally here too

and then kind of makes us a go-to team, you know, as far as people wanting to know how to get started. And we genuinely don't view other investors as our competition. We look at it as like a big community. So we welcome that. We welcome questions. We welcome, if there's ways we can help other investors in town get started, we're happy to do that.

So it's really been good as far as making connections and networking. It's been awesome. It's great. That's a great mindset too because really they're not competition because you're going to buy and sell to each other. You're going to bring opportunities to back and forth to each other. So fantastic. You know, cool.

All right. So let's go ahead and put it on the calendar to say we'll check back in here the next 30, 45 days and see what's really happened. And go check out their podcast. So R-E-I Rookies. Search that wherever you can find a podcast. And you guys also have a website by the same domain name, correct? That's right.

R-A-I rookies.com. All right. Jack, Josh, it's been an absolute pleasure. So if you were able to relate to Jack and Josh's story, maybe it would make sense for you to take us up on a business evaluation to see if propelling your real estate investing to the next level like Jack and Josh are doing. That's, I mean, that's what we're doing for them, and we can help you do the same. Nothing will make us happier to allow us to do that for you.

And if you'd like to take us up on that or at least investigate the process, go to rei-a-a-a-a-a-s.com. Go to rei-a-a-a-a-a-com, answer a few questions, and then you can set up a call with us to discuss the REI-I-Aase program, and we'll show you what's needed to get your real estate investing. to your next level. So go to R-E-I-A-Ase.com. All righty, that's it for today. God bless and to your success, I'm Matt Terrio,

living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Huh, yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know, home for it, we got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit C-Sweet Radio.

com.