Epic Real Estate Investing - Scale - The Fifth Level of Real Estate Investing | 426

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

Matt Theriault and Epic Real Estate are proud to present The Six Levels of Real Estate Investing! Today, Matt shares the fifth level of real estate investing: scale. Learn the traits of investors on the fifth level, how to create an organization chart to drive your business forward, and specific steps you can take to make it on to the sixth and final level of real estate investing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Rockstar, today's episode brought to you by the professionals over at Lighthouse Advocates, where they've been rescuing businesses in the nick of time for more than 20 years. If you need help with marketing strategy or wealth strategy or tax planning or CFO services, business innovation, bookkeeping, payroll services, project management, just about anything to do with your small business, Lighthouse Advocates team of professionals is your resource to whatever the rough seas of life are thrown at your business. They'll bring you safely into shore.

So go to Lighthouseadvocates.com and request a business acceleration session. It's free. You won't be pitched. You won't be sold. You'll merely be pointed toward the right solution for you. And when you're there, tell the team that Epic sent you. And you get a little extra special attention. All rightythouseadvocates.com.

Now on with today's show. This is Terio Media. Yo. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash phone. No whole world. We got cash low. And welcome. Welcome back to the epic real estate investing show.

And if this is your first time here, glad you found us. We meet here each and every week to share tips, strategies, advice, and wisdom from some of the greatest minds the business of real estate has to offer. And so if you haven't done so, please click the subscribe button for the show. You never want to miss an episode. And that's the best way to make sure that you don't. And then you want to make your way over to Instagram to, to follow us at Epic Real Estate and make sure that you turn your notifications on. So as soon as you click to follow us up there in the right hand corners,

a little three dots, and you can click that button, and then you'll be able to turn those notifications on. And the reason being is we're going to be giving away, or I'm going to be giving away, the best of the best books from our guests that have appeared on our Thought Leader Thursday episodes. and I'll be doing those book giveaways multiple times a week, and I'll be doing that all summer long. You know what they say?

A formal education will make you a living. A self-education will make you a fortune. And I want to help you make your fortune. And some of the books we're looking at, Danny Morrell is The Resilience Roadmap as a guide to building your ideal business. James Schramko's book, Work Less, Make More, The Counterintuitive Approach to Building a Profitable Business and a Life you actually love. popular guest on her show, Brian Elwood, his little book called Fire Yourself.

A little book with big information there that can really make an impact. How to Overpower Your Competition, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Triple Your Revenue in the next 12 months by hiring a rock star acquisition manager. Got a bunch of these I'm going to give away. Miss Amber D. Girl, get it together. It's a girl's guide to getting from where you are to where you want to be. I'll be giving her book away. and then Colby Calibis, you should see the other guy.

It's how being the underdog helped him get ahead in life, love, and business. These are life lessons from Navy SEALs, millionaires, and celebrity bikers. Very interesting read. I just got done reading it on my vacation in Hawaii. And then I'm also giving away David Meltzer's book, Connected to Goodness,

manifest everything you desire in business and life, and will be given away a whole bunch more. but I do not have a ton of these books. I went out and on my own dime, bought these books for you, and I'm going to give them to you. There's no catch. There's nothing to opt into. There's no, you're not going to have to pay the shipping costs.

I'm taking this all on my own. This is just what you mean to me. I'm grateful for you listening. I'm grateful for you sharing this show and what you get out of the show with the people that you interact with. So just thank you for passing on the good word, and this is like the least I could do. And we've had some really awesome guests and some really great people.

And so I want to give you their books if you haven't gotten them already. Already? So where are we? We are coming up. I'm getting together with a medium-sized group of aspiring investors. And I'm going to turn them into badass investors. We're going to do that at the next Epic Intensive in Boston, Massachusetts. So if you'd like to join us, make your way over to Epicintensive.com for all the details

Ethicintensive.com. All righty. So let's resume our way up the six levels of real estate investing. And let's just keep climbing that ladder to success. All righty? You know, last week we went over everything that you'd be experiencing and feeling in the success phase of your business. This is the fourth level of real estate investing. So you've hit a level of success.

That's what we call this phase. And then we went over what your actual vulnerabilities are in that phase and what there is to do about it. gave you a giant list of action steps you could take, gave you some thought-provoking questions that might be able to help you formulate some additional action steps that are specifically just for you so that you can maintain your progress and get to today's phase, which is scale, the scale phase. This is the fifth level of real estate investing. And by the way, I'm putting together, I think I mentioned this on the first episode when we started this series. We've been doing this every Monday for the last few weeks.

I'm putting together this series of episodes in written form. and it's like almost checklist form so that you can diagnose where you are in your own business and then you'll know exactly what there is to do for yourself to get you to your next level. And I'm not talking about the cliche, let's get to the next level. I'm talking about literally you getting to the next level. So if you are in that success phase, there's going to be very specific steps that you can take to get to the scale phase or if you're in startup phase. And just to get to, if we want to get to survival phase, then there's very specific steps for you to take there. And so I'll have this all printed out.

And hopefully by the end of next episode, I'll be able to tell you exactly where to get it. The team is working feverishly on it. It's really important. I think that you have this. Something like this was given to me years ago. And I was like, you know what? That needs to be recreated specifically for the epic audience. And so I'm going to do that for you.

and then hopefully have instructions on how you can acquire that and get that for yourself on the next episode. All righty, so scale. That's the phase we're talking about today. We were in success last week, and now we want to get to the scale phase. And this is where you're making, I don't know, anywhere from 50 to 100 grand a month.

You're doing well for yourself. It's six to 10 deals a month. And now you're starting to experience more time for yourself. You're getting back some of your time here. So what's happening is you're converting. more cash into cash flow. Passive income, your passive income, it's starting to make gains on your active income. They're really becoming too legitimate and significant income streams for yourself.

And your systems and your business, it's all running smoothly. Your team is competent. Your team is thriving. You're spending more time with the team now. You're spending more time with mentors. You're spending more time with peers. And your buys and your sales, the acquisition of properties and the dispositions, and the disposition of properties, that's all happening without your direct participation at this level.

And your personal assistant has all of your dry cleaning, your grocery shopping, your travel arrangements, house cleaning, cooking, all the personal stuff. They've got all that under control. And you're getting more of your time back. You're doing less and making more and you can hardly believe it. You're working more on your business and not so much in it at this point. Your business and your tax reserves are starting to build. and you have a solid asset protection. You've got a solid tax plan in place. And so you're doing really well.

And what you might be feeling here is, you know, everything you've been through up to this point, it's actually starting to make sense now. It's starting to click. And you're really starting to enjoy the fruits of your labor. You're wondering, why did this take me so long to get started? You might be thinking, why doesn't everybody do this? and you're starting to think of, you know, potentially going wide and expanding either your asset class or your market or maybe with your products or with services.

But you're thinking about going wide at this moment most of the time. So if you feel like anything I just share with you is we describes 80 to 100 percent of you in your situation, I want you to know that you're to be acknowledged and admired for who you're becoming. you're becoming a very successful entrepreneur. You need to be acknowledged for taking charge of your life and achieving your goals. I acknowledge you for making a difference for your team. It's one of the more rewarding things that happened for me inside of Epic Real Estate is I get to work for some really great people, my employees, and I make an impact for them.

I provide a sustainable living. I provide a comfortable and good work environment. and you're making a difference for your team at this point. You're trusting the process. You should be acknowledged for that. And you should be acknowledged and admired for your tenacity. You're amazing. You're here.

You're doing it. This is great. So at this level, things are feeling really good, looking really good, but you've got some vulnerabilities. You've got some things that can maybe cause you to pause or maybe to start backsliding. and where you're vulnerable is in potentially micromanaging your team. You want to be careful that you don't do that. You could also be vulnerable in pushing your team too hard, right? You've got a great team.

You've got a competent team. They like you. You like them. And you want to do more. And you have the potential to start putting or piling too much stuff on their plate and pushing them too hard. You're still vulnerable here. You're kind of vulnerable at almost every level.

and of abdicating really important responsibilities where you just kind of give it to somebody and trust that they're going to do it and you don't really check in on them and you just because your trust is so high. So you don't want to abdicate. Delegate is good. You still need to have a level of participation.

You know, when you delegate, it doesn't mean uninvolved participation. You've got to still be involved there and make sure that everything is working the way it's supposed to be and people are doing what they're supposed to be doing. You're also vulnerable in being overly dependent on individual employees. You might have individual employees that have super duper skill sets and you recognize that they are a significant portion of your business or as a significant portion or a significant reason as to why your business is doing so well right now. And that one individual employee, maybe you got two or three of those rock star people that, you know, that they care.

like if they left or they walked out the door and got hit by a bus, God forbid, you know, that would cause, you know, that would cause some disruption inside of your business. So, and then you're also vulnerable by taking your eye off the next level because of the comfort you're experiencing here. It feels good right here, right? And, you know, there's a book called The Good is the enemy of great. And things are good right here. and you can get really comfortable and never actually move up to the next level to your greatness.

Okay? So you can be vulnerable there. And you also can be vulnerable by because you're making extra money, because the business is running and you've got some discretionary cash, you're probably making more money than you've ever made before. You're vulnerable to living above your means. So be careful there. Like personally, like taking vacations and always going first class and maybe taking too many of those vacations. Maybe you've really upgraded your car. Maybe you've got bought two cars.

You've upgraded where you live and you've really driven up your personal expenses because you're doing well. Okay? So just be careful there that you don't overdo it. Absolutely enjoy the fruits of your labor. Life is short. You've got to enjoy it. Treat yourself. Reward yourself because you deserve it at this level.

But make sure that you don't overdo it and it causes unnecessary stress on the business. You don't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs for you. All righty. So those are some of your vulnerabilities. What there is to do at this level, okay? Really focus on doing only what you do well, only what you do well, only what you enjoy doing and do well. Automate the rest, outsource or hire what you can't.

All right? So that's a big focus here. You want to create an organization chart. You want to create an organization chart for your business and just kind of who does what. And make sure that everybody knows their role and make sure that you know, everybody's role. And once you create that organization chart, you'll be able to identify, are there weaknesses or am I overly strong in some areas? You'll be able to start seeing that. And then I want you to build systems for managing and communicating with the team. Okay,

I want you to really streamline that communication with your team. I want you to start creating incentives. If you haven't done this already, create incentives to reward the team for business progress and business expansion, like overall performance of the company. Put some incentives there. Certainly put some incentives in their individual roles, but put some incentives in place for people that want to, or for overall performance. So you're not creating individuals inside your business. You still create this kind of team structure that they all know that if the company wins, everybody wins. So start building some of that into your business.

And consider diversifying your investment vehicles. You know, I've really encouraged you all the way up to this point to go deep, deep, deep before going wide. and now that you've got this running, the way that it's running, now you can start looking at other investment vehicles. And, you know, I'm not going to give you financial advice or investment advice. There's so many solutions or choices out there. Go ahead and consider it. And I don't really say you have to. But now at this point, if you wanted to, you get no argument from me.

Right. And then now that you've created these relationships and you've got this credibility within these relationships and you've gotten access to cash through your credibility in these relationships, start leveraging your access to cash to cash flow to create more cash flow. And for everything that comes up, right, everything that comes up that gets thrown on your plate, I want you to really shift your focus on how you can get someone else to do it. At this point, I want you to focus on the who can do this for me, not the how can I do this myself. All right, so focus on the who more than the how.

I want you to look for the single points of failure. right inside of that organization chart that's going to start to become clear of where you know there's key players in place that if you took that little piece off your organization chart you know that could cause some disruption and here's a great question to ask yourself and I got this from mark Cuban I watched him at a he was speaking somewhere I can't remember it was a while ago but he asked a great question if I were my competition how would I put myself out of business ask yourself that question around your business. If I were my competition, knowing what I know, say my competition knew exactly everything

that's going on over here, what would be the first place they would attack? How could they put me out of business? Right. And then that gives you an idea of where you need to go to work and start creating some redundancy in your business. You want to keep your eyes and ears open for new mentors. Okay. Still, at this level, it starts really becoming not about.

your net worth but more about your network and you know what got you here for the most part won't get you there and what's going to get you there is probably won't get you to the next spot as well you want to be really intentional i'm a big advocate of this of being very intentional about creating your environment being selective of who you spend most of your time with and when i say that i'm not saying you have to leave your old school buddies behind not by any means but what i am saying is be look for those higher level conversations those higher level relationships look for people that are where you are or have been where you're looking to go there's so much power in that there's so much it can really be a shortcut to your next level all righty so I want you to start keeping your

eyes and ears open for new mentors new mastermind groups new industry groups whatever may be just to where you can get around people that have been or are where you want where you're you're looking to go next. Start thinking about and implementing a design for your business for potential future sale. Like you don't have to sell your company, but it would be nice if you had it designed in a way that you could and it would actually be a value to somebody. And that could provide, you know, based on what level your business is and what the type of volume you're generating and how good your systems are and how good your team is and how

good your procedures are and everything. that could be a really strong exit for you at some point if you ever wanted to do that. So start thinking about and implementing a design for your business for potential future sale. Let's see. Also, outsource or leverage other operations, like other investors' operations, like a turnkey operation, to help build your rental portfolio even faster. You've got this excess cash and you're having a lot of fun with it, but make sure that's not all fun.

Make sure you're continuing to build your real estate portfolio. make sure that you're continuing to build that cash flow. And if you've got the type of cash that you should have at this level, you know, you can go a little bit faster by, you know, buying and holding the ones you're doing yourself, but buying and holding some properties that other people are doing as well. Because this is really just all about cash flow. You don't need to flip at this point. You're not looking for these big cash infusions and stuff like that.

This is all about cash flow. And your passive income at this point is already approaching how much you're making actively anyway. So this is where you need to just kind of double down on producing more cash flow. And one of the ways that you can double down is leveraging other people's operations. Another thing you might want to look at, not requirement. Just depends on how far and how big you want to go. But I would consider starting a fund at this level. Start a fund at this level. Or look into something more creative, like infinite banking, something like that. To get you in a position to start so you can start lending money and lending money as

a business and not just as a friend to friend or a buddy to buddy type thing. But potentially starting a fund or looking into something like infinite banking. There's lots of different creative structures out there where you can leverage the money that you have and have that money go to work and put more money in your pocket. So it's all about cash flow. So this is just another way that you might be able to create some cash flow based off the the cash that you've got at this level. Some key questions that you could ask yourself for additional insights and some additional

actions that you can take would be are your team and systems running as efficiently as they could be and are they running without drama? If you can say yes to that, cool. If you say, eh, or you say no, then there might be something there for you to look at inside of your own personal situation. These questions are going to help draw out. I gave you a bunch of general things that you can do to get the next level, but we can dial in or dive in a little bit deeper into your own personal.

situation by you just kind of asking these questions to yourself. So are your teams and systems running as efficiently as they could be and without drama? Next, are your team and systems driving profitability? Are you just sustaining or are they driving profitability? Are you getting more and more profitable? What's the first thing you could change or transform if you could wave a magic wand? If I gave you a magic wand, what is the first thing that you would change or transform inside of your business? That can give you an insight as to an additional action step you could take or actions. And then there's another question.

What are you tolerating in your business right now? Or what are you avoiding in your business right now? You know, you got those, they might not seem like a big deal, but if you've got those little things that you're tolerating or those little things that you're avoiding and you've got the little voice in the back of your head and it's, it's, maybe it's not even a voice, but it's in your subconscious. Those can have an impact. Those can, those can impact the actions that you take and the type of actions that you take in

and the intensity of those actions that you take and the direction and the motivation of those actions. So what are you tolerating or avoiding? Answer that for yourself. And based off the answers to all of these questions, based off all these insights, what actions could you take based on these insights? All righty? So there's something for you with regard to what's going to take to get to the next level, the sixth level of real estate investing. Right? You're here at level five. You are amazing. You are approaching absolute rock star status. And you can stay here if you want.

And life could be really, really good right here. Or you could go for greatness. And we'll talk about that next week. But recommended resources for this. The book, The E-Mith, if you haven't purchased that book or I haven't read that book, I highly recommend it. The E-Mith. Second is the book Built to Sell.

Built to Sell is a good book. For this, perhaps explore virtual CEO through REI-AAS. At this place to get to the, from scale and solidify your position in the scale phase and getting to the next phase, you know, virtual CEO service through REIASE.com could be something for you. You can go to RIAEAS.com, share a little bit about your situation and we'll help you and give you all the details on how that works. Another recommended resource is cash flow savvy.

Cashflow Savvy consulting specifically, and you can get more information there at cashflow savvy.com where you can leverage other people's operations right there. All righty. So that's it for today. If you'd like to continue this journey, keep listening. If you'd like to go fast, go to R-E-I-Aase.com. God bless to your success. I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream.

Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know, home for us, 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.