Epic Real Estate Investing - Secrets To Scaling Your Real Estate Business w/Justin Colby | 1304

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Join host Matt on this riveting episode of Epic Real Estate as he sits down with real estate investing guru Justin Colby. Discover Justin’s inspiring story of resilience and triumph, from losing everything during the 2008 financial crisis to building a thriving real estate empire. Learn the strategies he used to navigate volatile markets, the secrets behind creative financing, and how he successfully scales his business. Justin shares invaluable insights on the critical role of a strong team, the power of partnerships, and the cutting-edge advantages of leveraging AI in real estate operations. Dive into his passion for education and podcasting, where he finds immense fulfillment in teaching and making a positive impact on others. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned investor, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and motivational stories that will propel your real estate journey to new heights. Hit play now and transform your real estate investing approach with expert advice from Justin Colby! P.S. Whenever you're ready to go deeper and further with your real estate investing, looking into my partner program to help you get your first deal might be the move... take the first step here for free 👉 https://epicearnwhileyoulearn.com/ Sponsor: Baselane - Banking Built for Real Estate Investors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. Hey, strap in. It's time for the epic real estate investing show. We'll be your guides as we navigate the housing market, the landscape of creative financing strategies, and everything you need to swap that office chair for a beach chair. If you're looking for some one-on-one help, meet us at rei-aise.com. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Let's go. All right, on today's show, the man behind the science. of flipping. Please help me welcome to the show. Mr. Justin Colby. Justin, welcome to Epic Real Estate. What is up, Matt? I appreciate you having me, man. Yeah, no, totally. I mean, we've traveled in the same circles for years, and I don't know if we've ever really talked that much, maybe a half a dozen times on casual subjects and stuff like that. But I wanted to have you on the show and get to know you a little bit more, see what you're up to. And so let's start there. How'd you end up in this crazy world of real estate investing. It was a hell of a journey. Like so many others, I lost my ass in 2008,

and I had to make a decision on what I really wanted in life. And I was a realtor. So I'd still loved real estate. I didn't enjoy being a realtor. And so when my home went to foreclosure, repo man took my car, all those nasty things, I still loved real estate. I still understood that I wanted to be in within real estate, just more on the investing side. And so 17 years ago, I started in 2007, my world officially fully crumbled. in 2008. But that got me to where I am today. And there's a lot in those 17 years we could go over, but we have a short amount of time. So I'll just say it was always the ability to navigate, stay fluid, pivot with the market. A lot of people are complaining about the interest rates right now.

I don't find them to be a terrible problem. I pivot. I adjust, right? I know you've been big on creative financing for years and years and years. I mean, that is the power of creative financing. Yeah, if you do it long enough, eventually it does become cool. Yeah, exactly right. You were definitely avant-garde. You were the leader of the pact in a stent with all that. And so I'm buying more properties today when people are worried about interest rates than I have in the last 36 months. I bought two apartments already this year. I'm funding another one the end of next week. That'll be three apartments. I'm buying two single-family homes before the month is over to flip. So my point being is like, it's understanding the market is time in the game versus

timing of the game, right? I mean, I just, people need to understand that this is still a great time to be in real estate. They should not be fearful. They should not be scared. They should be following the experts, Matt, myself, and so many others because we are actually doing the thing they want to do, right? And so, yeah, man. Well, so that's, I was going to ask you, what is your business look like today? And you just kind of said that. And it was something I wanted to talk to you about. And I was like, well, we might as well record it since I was going to call you anyway about it. You know, when you're running an education business and you're also staying current on social media, that can be a business, all of it by itself. And then running the real estate thing, I mean, my guy, like, I'm doing all three and we're in Mercedes and I are probably doing more real estate now than we've done in the last several years.

And it's a challenge. It's a struggle. So as far as your real estate operation goes, and I know there's other people that are listening that, you know, maybe they're not educators or social media people, but they are managing a full-time something else also in trying to break. That's right. What does your team look like? How are you running your efficiencies and being able to manage them all together? So the real estate business, because it's my oldest business, right, it's been around since 2007 is when I got started. I've really built it out where I have a general manager run the business. And so, you know, our team has seven, eight people total. And that includes investor relations. That includes transactional management. That includes listing. So we basically have created two separate

positions. We basically have a listing and project management manager. So I don't even know if we've given her a full title, but she handles all of our listing. She handles all of our rentals and the project, or I'm sorry, the property management side of it all. She handles all that, right? That is her sole responsibility. So I don't even know what title she gets, but she's the manager of the managers, right? Important one, whatever. We have a, yeah, you know, we have a full-time project manager in-house to manage the contractors because we are buying in Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. I live in Miami. So we are definitely not one of those. I didn't know that. I thought you were in Arizona. You're in Miami now?

You know me from Arizona. I've been in Miami for three years, but I spent, you know, 12 years in my, or Scottsdale. So you weren't wrong. I just recently moved here about three years ago. Do you love it? I do. I do. We are going up against like raising a family here. Is that what we're going to want? But I do love Miami. You went from the dry heat to the wet heat. That's right. And I might go back to the dry heat. There could be some, some noise about us going back. that way, but we'll see. Stay tuned. All right, go ahead. That's it.

You know, and then I have my two acquisition people, and I have one full-time disposition person, which really my general manager kind of helps as well. We have not gone as heavy in wholesaling anymore, so I don't need to have this big, robust wholesaling business. We're doing five to 15 deals a month pretty consistently, both for my own deals, from my own deal flow through my own marketing, as well as through a lot of our members. that will get a deal in Oklahoma or just an area that they don't know anybody will help them wholesale the deal. So, yeah, we are buying two to five doors a week.

As I just said, we bought two apartments already. We're funding our third end of next week. Again, I'm buying more because people are running out of the market. I'm running into the market. Some is creative financing. Some's not. Some I'm just buying right. They're motivated.

They need to sell. I'm at the right number. So yeah, so that is the real estate side. So I really do have a full-fledged business, right? I really have, you know, that. Now, what does that mean for some of you listening? It isn't for me to say it's cooler to be a flex. Matt and I have been around long enough that we're both got the same barber.

Yes, we do. So this isn't a flex to say I run a business anymore. It used to be at one point in my career, of course, you know, I was the guy talking about, I got this office with all these people and a blah, blah, blah. That used to be me in my younger years. And when I say younger, in my 30s, this isn't that anymore, right? So I actually make less money in my own real estate business because I have the operation. So I can go create more opportunities, let's just say, my coaching business, right?

My community, the science of flipping. It's a massive community. I've been doing it since 2013. My podcast is ranked number two on Apple right under your boy, Dave Rams me. Dave Ramsey. See, I don't even like the name. Thank you very much. So it's ranked number two.

We're getting anywhere from 30 to 35,000 downloads within the first handful of days per episode. I say that to say that, again, is a business model. I have a full PR team around that. I have a marketing team around that. But it allows me to do that because my real estate business is taken care of. I'm not totally absent from my real estate business because the reality is I've made that mistake before. back in like 2014 or 15 or something like that. I literally like,

guys, we're rich, we're killing it. I'm out. Like, I'm going to go do that thing, right? The flex.

Well, what I realized about my business is it just like flatlined and then started to go down. And it's because like I pulled it all the way out. I just felt like they had it. They were doing it. They were on it. But when the captain of the ship,

like the true captain of the ship just really is just no longer on the ship at all, it just doesn't work. Right. So if you could look at, I could give you any example you want from Elon. must to Warren Buffett to Bezos, like they're still around, right? Like, they have more money in God. If they're still going to play the game and be in the trenches and be in the meetings, and I think I can do the same, right? So that was a big learning thing for me. So yeah, my real estate

education, like hundreds of people coming in every month, you know, I've taught thousands and thousands of people of how to build a real estate business. That gives me purpose. A lot of, you know, I was just asked this yesterday, Matt, from someone on my social media, if you're so good at real estate, why are you teaching it, right? And I'm sure you've gotten that plenty. Once or twice. And it's an easy answer for me. Because real estate I will do forever. I love it. It makes me money. It builds me wealth. It gives me bankability. Right. Like today, I just had a meeting with my bookkeeping and accounting team on my personal financial statements for lending, blah, blah, blah, right? But the fulfillment I get from real estate relative to making impact on others,

it's not comparable. It just isn't. And so I will always be. be an educator in some sort, right? And so I choose to be an educator in real estate space for the fulfillment. And that is why I personally probably make less money in the real estate space than maybe even people watching this, right? Because I don't necessarily care because I can go create a business model that creates more impact on other people, not just myself. And that is more fulfilling. So, yeah, and then I have this whole podcast thing that's just as you and I've talked about, and that's why we're on yours, it is just taken off this year, right? So I've been. two separate podcasts, the science of flipping for real estate, and the entrepreneur DNA, which is

just like general entrepreneurship. Both of them are ranked in the top 10. The science flipping is number two. The entrepreneur DNA is number eight as of this week. And it is a full-blown business, right? I have a full PR team, full marketing team. Everyone's like, how are you doing it, Justin? I'm like, I'm intentional. I spend a lot of money. Like, I have a team. Like, this isn't just me like recording an episode, putting it on Apple and Spotify, and just letting it rock. It's not that for me. That's awesome. Congrats, buddy. You could have

did that quietly. I didn't even, I wasn't even aware until you're sharing this with me right now, but. I love that you said that. Here's why I love that you said that. Because the podcast has been around for 11 years. Yeah. I mean, how many people would have quit? You've

had a podcast around for more than that, right? If you started in 2009, I think, Other than Jason Hartman, I'm the longest running real estate podcast. Maybe Sean Terry. Maybe we start about the same time. There you go. And how many people would quit, right?

Because a lot of people, they're like, I'm not really getting anything out of it, right? That kind of mentality. And I just said, no, there's going to be a day. And I didn't know it was going to turn into what it turned into. But I just said, I'm just going to keep delivering impact. Like, again, this is about making an impact. I'm just going to keep delivering. And something from this will happen.

And over the years, of course, like, I'm sure I've gotten deals from it. I've gotten plenty of students from it, of course, but this is on a whole other level, right? Like, I have sponsorships paying me to be on it. I remember people are now paying because it's a platform that has a massive, massive reach. Like within a 30 day, you'll have over 100,000 people hear you on Apple, let alone my YouTube, my email list, my social media. Like, it really just created a reach. So I've almost turned it into a branding business, a PR business for others. Sure.

So who do you know that's out there? Maybe somebody amongst your students or somebody amongst all the real estate investors we know that have been able to leverage a podcast and a YouTube channel, the whole social media thing to actually run real estate deals, like to track opportunity that way. Do you know anybody? Well, I mean, I think in the sense of people, Pace leads the pack, right? He's the leader of our world as a moment in time. Right. But there is a specific model. Like someone that's not an educator.

Do you know anybody in that category? That has created a podcast that has created deal flow? Yeah. I would guess you've gotten your fair share deals from your pot. I mean, I don't know if anyone's going out and just created a podcast. It's the thing, like, we kind of mentioned it. And I don't know, I mean, Pace and I, we text maybe once a quarter, but I haven't really, I don't know him intimately and how his operation works.

But I imagine just like I do in what you just mentioned, you know, we get a good amount a deal flow just by partnering with our own students. Sure. And then I go ahead and I do all the traditional things that I teach my students how to do. So I get opportunities that way. That's right. But I've really been toying with the idea of kind of pulling back on the education part of things and actually shifting my social media stuff towards just local, a local market,

like to find distress sellers, to find those. And you know, this guy, Zach Childress, he did an incredible training, in my opinion, on how to become like the local dude, right, and just crush it locally. So I don't think he has a podcast per se, but he leverages like meetup and like the RIA meeting model and meetup model and just crushes it. Deal flow, students, the whole thing. Right. So in terms of someone to maybe reach out to, I'd tell you, Zach has done a great job. And that's how Mercedes and I started was with meetup.com.

You know, we just throw. Yeah. I mean, I think people forget, you know, know it's funny, dude, and I know you're going to agree with this because you just said it. When you've been in the game so long, you forget more than you realize. Yeah, yeah. Like the shit we got us here, I'll give you a perfect example, bro, when I was broke, breaking into real estate 2007, literally broke, sleeping on the couch. I was cold calling realtors in Phoenix.

I was living in San Francisco, cold calling realtors in Phoenix. Fast forward to 2000, whatever, 23 or 22, when Privy comes. out and me and Jamil start talking about privy like crazy. Everyone in the world now is doing this agent outreach thing again. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, bro, I stopped doing that for over a decade. I stopped because I got into PPC and I got into cold calling direct homeowners and

direct mail. And you forget what actually got you going. Right. Like I got 20 plus deals just by calling realtors to get started. Right. Right. And then you're like, oh, now I'm going to put money in a direct mail. And then I'm going to do PPC.

see and then I'm going to and you stop doing the damn thing that got you there and you just said it yourself like you guys started with meetup and yeah my answer kind of is that like yeah that's I think events are the most underrated form of marketing oh like I'm going back into event mode yeah not big events like raw raw Ed Milet featuring I'm talking about 50 people in a room yeah well and I don't know is that for more of your education side or is that more yeah it would definitely be more. But you have to understand my education at this point, I've changed what I care about. I'm going to charge for it. There's no doubt there's an investment you have to make because I need skin into game. But I'm looking for business partners. It's really now I want to teach you how to find

deals so we can go buy those deals together. That's what I'm trying to do. I want to own it with you. I want the long term with you. I want to flip it with you and make money. If you don't want it and you want to just wholesale it, I'll buy it from you. Like, yeah, I want people to really be a part of my world way more than me just be their coach or leader or whatever we want to call ourselves. I want to do it together. And it has been, and this is when it goes back to the impact, man, I'll tell you, I just had our mastermind, our quarterly mastermind. It's a part of our community.

Everyone, you know, comes. It was the most impactful two days. People literally today are still texting me. This happened three weeks ago. I thank God for you every single day, Justin, like literally this couple. And I'm just like, God, dang it. That's why I do what I do because I'm changing the trajectory of what they're doing, right? Too many educators are out there to sell them something, teach them how to make money, and they're done.

I'm trying to change the shape of it all. I want to do more deals because I'm educating you. And I want to do them together. Interesting. And I'm not surprised you're saying what you're saying because that's, you know, without really communicating you and I very much on the same trajectory. It's less about coaching and mentoring and more about partnership. and we've even changed it to, we call it a partner program. And the feedback is the same.

So the cause and effect is the same. So interesting. And that's great. It is impactful, right? It is rewarding. It is fulfilling. But, I mean, I want to make money, too. And it's profitable as well.

And it's profitable for everybody involved. And it's just a much more fun way to do business. I don't know if you, I mean, I imagine this is also your experience is that through a podcast and a YouTube presence. I mean, you attract people that you'd probably hang out with anyway, right? Totally. It's such a better way. A couple of my people that came, you know, they've been with me for a little while. Like, we are like officially friends, like boys, hanging out with family type thing.

And that is just so cool. It's just so cool. I love the way I get to meet people now. For someone like myself who walks into a crowded room and I won't talk to anybody, I'm going straight for the punch bowl and I'm sitting in the corner. You know what I mean? That's it. That's it.

Now with the podcast and they reach out to me and I think, That's my people. Fantastic. We'll be back with more right after this. Stop spending countless hours on busy work and focus on growing your real estate business and maximizing your return. Base lane is a comprehensive property management platform that caters to the needs of landlords and real estate investors by offering a suite of financial tools designed to simplify the management of rental properties. The platform provides features like debt. dedicated banking services, automated bookkeeping, rent collection, and insightful analytics

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That's B-A-S-E-L-A-N-E. com slash M-A-T-T. Hope is not a financial strategy. Let's get back to work. Okay, let's go back to your team. So you set up, I guess, how much time do you spend with your team? Like, as far as training and to the point where you can allow them a level of autonomy where you can depend and rely on the production.

So this is a decision I had to consciously make, Matt. And you may not agree with it, but I had to make it. Let's find something we disagree on. Yeah. Go ahead. And I don't know if you are going to disagree. You might totally agree. I'm excited, though.

I have now created the businesses in a way with tiers of management. So I no longer want to be a part of the trainings. I don't want to hire the salespeople, train the salespeople, so I have to have a general manager to do that. So in the real estate space, as I told you, I have a general manager. He handles all of it. In the education space, I essentially have a marketing manager, call them a CMO in the technical world to be a CMO. And then I have a head of sales, right? Chief Revenue Officer, who cares about the title?

but they are in charge of all of that. And I meet with them. Now, what does that mean for me where you may or may not agree? That means I'm not going to make as much money. That's what that means. Because I've built something that isn't just me in one or two other people

that the net revenue is really heavy, but it affords me to do so much stuff. I mean, I essentially have three full-time jobs, right, in the sense of I have a full-time real estate, business, I have a full-time education in community, science flipping, and have a full-time PR brand of my podcast, the two different podcasts. Both of those, if you just segmented them, could be 40 to 60 hours a week for me on all three of them, right, if I didn't do what I chose to do. But because I have all three, I do very well. It's for the solopreneur that's looking to

grow and scale, I wouldn't suggest to be where I'm at or to treat business the way I'm treating it today. Right? I'm 43 years old. I've been an entrepreneur since I graduated college. I've never had a W-2 job. This is the only thing I know. It is not who or what I was even five years ago. Five years ago, all of this looked different. The PR business, which is essentially my podcast platforms, didn't even exist really until this year. Like really in the form that I know it today, it wasn't that until this year. So I say that to say whether you, I don't know, maybe you would agree, but all of that, I'm not a part of the hiring training. I just had a call with my sales team, but it was really me and the sales manager having a call with the sales team on it. So I had that

call this morning. Right. And it was because we had a live webinar last night. Six people booked calls with our advisors. We had a hundred and something people register. So me and the manager said, hey, how do we want to approach this? We obviously have the book calls, but then there was, however many registrants, 100 and something registered. We had 50% show up rate. Like, how do we want to segment this? Who should be? So I met with the manager. We just included everyone on it. So he didn't have to go do another call with the team. Does that make sense? Yep. So again, my day to day is really on the management. Like in the real estate, space where I heavily am utilized in my real estate business is the relationships, raising money.

So as of this week, I need to go raise $1.1 million for this apartment. I've essentially already raised. I've gotten commitments for $400 already. And I have several calls that people that are really interested in several hundred thousand dollar investments. That's where my time is best spent. My contractor that I have on several of my deals isn't performing very well right now. So my general manager calls and says, hey, dude, I think we got to pivot on this guy right this second. So what do we want to do? Right. Okay, I reach out.

Again, you and I have a platform. We have a lot of people on our world. Very quickly, the project manager and I have a meeting, we find a solution like same day. Stuff like that. Where like if it's people, I usually have the network, the connection, the resource to find the person to solve for the thing. money, contractors, whatever. So that's where I'm at in the real estate business more often than not. Now, we do have two scheduled meetings that I'm on,

on what I would call like the executive meetings. That's twice a week. I'm on those. So the long answer, I feel like. So I don't know if you want to that much. Basically the answer is you've been able to delegate it all right. Yeah. I could have just said that and then we could have moved on.

But you didn't start there. So if we went back to the beginning, who's the first person that you, that you hire to, if you want. Executive assistant all day long. It is who I first hired. It actually was my first hire and I still believe in it today. And the reason being is too quickly investors, especially people in our world, Matt, they want to stop doing the job that actually creates revenue, acquisitions or as a wholesaler

or dispositions. And it's because they don't in sales, not everyone loves sales. I'm great at sales. I actually enjoy it. I don't have a problem with it, but there's a lot of people that aren't like me. So they try to get rid of that because I don't really want to be doing it. But really, you know, we all know you make your money on the buy. So that is like the most important part of the whole business.

So don't go hire that person. Go stick in there and find a way to get better at sales because otherwise you won't have a business. For those that are wholesaling, right? Like I don't want to sell it and build the buyers. Well, again, the only way to make money is to find the buyers. to buy the deal that you just contracted, right? So it's just everything else can be given to an executive assistant. Everything.

Okay, so what's the job description of the executive assistant in the beginning? Do everything. Anything I ask you to do, do it. Now, I know I'm being a little playful there. But I mean, literally, like, have a, like, when you put an ad out, say, hey, I'm looking for an executive assistant that's open to do everything from spreadsheets to, communicating with clients, to assisting in X, Y, and Z, like, literally have five or ten things. These are the things you'll be asked to do in no specific order.

Right. And here's the income and this is what it would look like and whatever. Because, you know, I found my first assistant on Craigslist. I think Craigslist is underutilized these days. Like, people forgot about it with all these other different platforms. The phone rings are they forgot about. Craigslist ads for myself and my students. I love it.

I mean, a lot of stuff on trash, but deals all the time consistently coming from there. But go ahead. Oh, people forgot about it. With everything else said, everyone's built in all the creative weight. Again, we forget what actually got us here. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. So I say that to just say like, you don't even have to make it important. Like social media, put a post. Hey, I'm looking for an executive assistant. I need help. Here are five or six things that they would be likely needing to do.

here's how much time it would take. Here's what the pay would look like. Let me know if you know somebody. So I believe in the inner, outer and social circles. I made this shit up on the fly. People ask me all the time, how do you raise money? It's the same way I'd say, how do you go get anything you want? You have an inner circle. Those would be your friends and family. People you have at Christmas, birthday dinners, Christmas, that's your inner circle. Outer circle is the mats. Matt would be a part of my outer circle. We're friends. We'll brohug when we see each other at events. We chop it up. We're on our pod. Like,

but am I going to invite him to Christmas? Probably not, right? If he needs a place, I'm always there for Matt, right? Hey, dude, come to Christmas. But like,

in a general sense, I think everyone understands what I mean. Yeah. Social circle. This is exactly what it looks, sounds like, like your social media circle,

the periphery of people that you may not even know. Like, you might know them, but maybe you don't. Maybe it's someone from high school and you're 43. Like,

do you even know that person anymore? You remember their name. And so there's a lot of people that if you just don't put out, out there who you are, what you do, and what you're looking for. Yeah, hiring and assistance is tough because you're not telling people who you are, what you do, and what you're looking for. But for someone like myself or Matt, like doing those things, raising money, finding assistance, hiring people, like, it's actually not hard. Because whether Matt, whether you frame it in the way

I'm framing it, the inner circle, outer circle, social circle, he knows it's true. And he uses it the same way I use it. I just frame it in the inner, outer, and social. And so I would tell you, immediately, and what are the things they could do? They could be reaching out to buyers on all these Facebook groups who are like, hey, I have a deal on one, two, three, main street, and the buyers all, send me the deal. Great. Go in there every single day, find those buyers, reach out to them, start the communication, build the buyer's list. That could be one thing, right? Hey, I got this document I need to sign. Can you go print it out for me, bring it to my desk, put, you know, highlight where I need to sign it. That could be something, right? Those are little things that if you

start to add up all these like pull a list from R. A.I. Lead machine, absentee only, download it, send it to the direct mailhouse or send it to the Facebook ads so we can retarget people. Like, those are things that need to be done, but they don't actually generate revenue. That's a task-driven person. That is an assistant, not the CEO, the president, or whatever. Right. What is that in today's environment, what do you think you have to pay that person to attract a quality person?

I mean, it also depends how many hours you're going to have them work, I think. And so the way that, a great book, by the way, buy your time back by Dan Martel. I mean, probably one of the best business books I've read in like any last five years. He basically brings it down to if you have to replace yourself right now, how much do you make? Divide that by 2000 and then divide that by four. And essentially, you're going to end up somewhere $25 to $50 an hour. You've got to pay more than McDonald's these days.

So the floor is money. Right? Right. So let's just say, Matt, you make a million dollars a year. You divide that by $2,000, which is $500 an hour is what you're making. You divide that by $4. So $125 is who, not for an assistant. that is who you would hire to replace you for a CEO

role. Got it. Do that make sense? Because you are the CEO, you are the owner of the president. So if I'm going to replace Matt, I make a million dollars a year, divided by 2000, divided by four. Well, an assistant, you can't say that you're going to pay them $125 an hour. So then, you know, one easy way. Go look on Indeed and all the ad platforms. What are people offering? You could probably do it that. Here's my ask. I've gone down this path multiple times and we place an ad.

Right. And we get 200 applications within three or four days. It's like, oh, how do you go sort through these? And so we have a list of 10 questions, challenges, tasks to part of the process. And that takes our list from 200 down to 10 just like that. And it's amazing. Make them shoot a video, take it down to like two. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, that's part of it. And then upload it on YouTube and send us the link.

Yeah. Right? That's just kind of some technical prowess. Do you have the ability or the resourcefulness to build you even pull that off? And that will limit is it, I mean, just minimize down to nothing. And you're stuck with these two people. And I'm just kind of wondering what motivates people these days because to find the right person. Because I've hired the wrong person plenty of times.

And boy, that's more expensive than having hired the right person the first time. I'm also willing to pay to play for that. What I mean by that is hiring the right person and pay a little more. Like let's say you want to pay 25, but you found someone good that wants 35. I'm paying it. Yeah, every time. Yeah. So because that, because the $10 an hour times, let's just say eight hours a day, $80 a day times five days a week, right?

So it's what, $400 a week? Is that right? Did I do the math right? Yeah. So, I mean, that same person that you hired for $25 an hour might cost you $40,000 a month, not $400 a week. You know what I mean? If you hire the wrong hire. Yeah.

Been there, done that. Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah. Anyone has been around long enough. Yeah. It's funny, I don't know if you've experienced this, but I know you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to figure out new business models and how to make money and what's the latest tech, what's the new marketing and the advertising that's working,

and you're excited about all those types of books. And I remember over the years just seeing so many books written on management and hiring the right people and everything. I was like, that's such a boring topic. I have zero interest in that topic whatsoever. Like, what's the new marketing gizmo that's going to bring in more lead, you know? and then you get to a point where you have a business now. And now all you're concerned with is personnel and management. That's right. Right.

Yeah. And that's why it's hard for a lot of people to compare, right? Like, they're just breaking into the real estate space. Maybe they've done a couple deals, but they don't have a real business. That takes iterations and adaptations, right? Again, the best word I can use is iterations. Like your business for the first year, two, three, four, five might just be you and one or two other people.

Like, that's okay. The reason why I think that's okay is because I want people to get rich. Like, go get filthy rich. Like make real money. Don't make like a hundred grand a year. Like, make 300 grand a year. Like, that's real. Like, you can have a nice little life, right?

Like, you can go out to dinners. You can have vacations. Like, that's enough. Yeah. Now, if you're trying to build the business and you're making 80 grand a year, I tell you, stop building the business. Go focus on generating revenue so then you can build the business. So I want people to get really rich.

just think this bigger, better bullshit needs to stop. And then the other thing I would tell you, and you didn't ask me this, but I'm going to tell you anyways. Yeah, please. I've really bought into this partnership concept. I know if I partner with people on the right thing, I'll give you a great example. My general manager, you know why he's able to run and sticks in there with the dog shit days, my entire real estate business, which means wholesaling flipping and my rentals and my portfolio, and he manages all of it. Because I gave him 30% of it. all. You think he's willing to put up with it? I'm going to do all the heavy lifting in terms of finding the deals and raising the money and putting it together and finding the loans and

personally guaranteeing the loans and all this other shit. He's just got to basically run the company and you'll get 30%. So if I go get $100 million with assets, he just walked into $30 million worth of assets. Right? And it's not a partnership on my LLC. It's an operating agreement saying As long as he stays with me, he'll get that, right? But he's not on the LLC. Same thing with my PR and my podcast. We're doing a fund right now. Well, instead of me just taking it all on my own to say, I have a fund, I'm partnering on the fund, right?

I just firmly believe in that at this point, as long as everyone can bring the assets to the table. The way I look at it is like my bank account, my energy and effort can only go. so far. And so if I want more and I want a lot more, right, in life and money and time and vacations, like I want a lot of it, then I have to find the right people to bring with me and do together versus me at the top and just finding solutions. Does that make sense? So I've really bought heavily more into this. The apartment I tell you we're funding in two weeks, I'm bringing equity partners into that deal. They're not just going to be my lenders. So there's a lot of people like Justin, tell me more about that.

Like I need to start building my portfolio. I need to start having tax writeoffs. I need to start doing this because I'm giving them ownership in it. And I'm partnering with them, not just trying to keep it for myself. So I'm really leaning into that a lot these days. Yeah. Who was I listening to? I forget.

Someone asked, how do you go from? He had a $10 million company and how did he get to a billion? It was like the big leap. And he was just like, I hired the right people and gave him a piece of it. And I don't even know who you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, it was. And it was a while ago, but I've always remembered that. And another lesson I learned, you played the game Cash Flow by Rich Dad Porte, right?

Sure. You know, and if you play that game, it's kind of like Monopoly. I mean, it can be a three, four hour game before, you know, that game is resolved if you played the right way by the rules. But there was a long person that was administering the game for a group of people. And they said, we're going to play this way, this game differently. Rather than, you know, four people competing against each other, trying to see who wins and gets out of the rat race first. What we're going to do is we're going to

partner and we're going to focus on one person at a time and getting them out of the rat race. And that game was 20 minutes long and it was everybody was done. And that was such an eye opener. I was like so embracing the partnership and there's so much romanticism, I guess, around how much equity do you own in your business, right? And if you can make it to the top and you got all the equity, hey, congrats, fantastic, a huge windfall for you. but by partnering and being able to share the profits, I've just learned that you can go so much faster. You might have less, but it's bigger.

And it kind of comes out and it's like, oh, you have just as much, but you just got there faster. Partnership thing I agree. That's right. Cool. So, hey, I'm interested, and you're talking about raising money,

you've got a couple of projects that you're raising money for. So if people wanted to get in touch with you and learn more about that, what's the best way for them to do that? I think the best and easiest way is the Justin Colby on Instagram. You are the Justin. The. Oh, wow. I didn't know I was talking to The Justin. Fantastic. That's right. And I've come to realize there's actually a lot of fake accounts of mine that like pop up constantly.

So the best thing you can, I think I'm somewhere around like 125,000 followers, right? So if that's the person, that's me, I communicate. There's no bots in there that I just treat that like a true way to communicate. So please reach out to me. The Justin Colby on Instagram. And let me know you saw me on Matt. I'll let Matt know that his audience is great and we'll go from there. They are great. So go check out Justin on Instagram. I've seen an ad floating around of yours and I kind of reverse funnel hacked it a little bit. But it's a really popular topic and I'm kind of looking at how different people are doing it and that's using AI in your real estate investing.

So what are some of the different ways that you're using artificial intelligence in your business record? So one of the best ways is something that I built internally from my own real estate business. businesses. So we have our websites at MinutePages. So if you go to MinutePage.com, it creates an investor website. We have technology that sits on the website. There's a pixel. It sits on the website that if anyone even goes to the website, you don't have to do a form fill. Fill, we can capture their information. They don't even have to fill out the form. And then the AI and the automation comes in because once they gets populated into our CRM, because they didn't fill out a form, I don't want my sales team to waste their time. I want our automation, the AI, starts communicating. So we,

We took nine months building this level of communication out. Like, hey, what if they say this? How do you respond? And like, it's so good that I actually was able to fire basically most of my sales team at the end of last year. Because the thing that the AI does that humans can't is remove emotion. So let's just say the bot was talking to you, Matt, and you say, oh, well, I'm not ready right now. You know, my grandmother just passed. Call me back next week.

Well, someone might get a little, oh, I'm so sorry about it. Well, the bot will say, sorry to hear about your loss. I will set a call. I'll set a reminder to reach out to you again next week on the whatever. Is that okay? Now let's just say you ghost him or her, like the person. The bot will reach out again. Hey, I don't want to be a bother.

Just want to make sure. So they remove the emotional like, oh, Matt ghosted me, F him, or, you know, he's busy with his funeral. They'll just keep asking the question until they get a result. Right. Humans don't typically work that way. They will give up or they'll feel awkward or, you know, cringy. Like, I don't want to ask again. Yeah, but that, you need to. You need to get the confirmation to reach back out to Matt again, right? So he's been a game changer. Two deals just came in this week because the bot set my closer in appointment to talk to the homeowner. Nice. So the bot sets my closers now, so I don't really have that set or closer model. Locked up two deals. Awesome. This week. That's great. There's like five things that questions came up.

I'm trying to, what's the most relevant one? I guess what I've been seeing a lot lately is the actual AI that will make the phone call and talk to the person. I don't know how far along that's been developed and what that actually plays out like in real world. Are you using anything like that? No. I don't know if I fully. Is it real yet? I mean, I see some amazing demos.

I just don't know how it would work talking to a real person. It is real. I know it's real, but like, I don't use it. I mean, people say it's great. You can't tell. And I'm like, I don't know. I just, I would rather that level of communication be over text. Mm-hmm.

And then so I haven't used to yet. Yep. I like that. I mean, I think there's still humanity needs to be involved, particularly when you're talking with distressed people. And, you know, I agree. Totally agree. Their world's crumbling around them, you know.

Totally agree. All right. What haven't I asked you that I was supposed to? I got, I know, I know, we're going to say, stop this and I'm going to come up with five other questions, but nothing but congratulations to you on your success, buddy. Oh, man. Appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, I think this is the most we've ever talked in one sitting. So I've really enjoyed it. Everyone else has to. Do you want to reach out to Justin? Go ahead and reach out to him on Instagram at the Justin Colby. Forget that purpose trader out there. Let's do it again.

Let's stay in touch, bud. Let's make it happen, dude. Appreciate you having me. Okay, cool. Take care. Stop spending countless hours on busy work and focus on growing your real estate business and maximizing your return. Baselane is a comprehensive property management platform that caters to the needs of landlords and

real estate investors by offering a suite of financial tools designed to simplify the management of rental properties. The platform provides features like dedicated banking services, automated bookkeeping, rent collection, and insightful analytics to help landlords manage their properties more efficiently. With Baselane, users can streamline their rental property finances, automate various administrators' tasks, and gain valuable insight to make informed decisions about their investment. Head over to baselain.com slash Matt and sign up today for a free chance to win a $500 Amazon gift card. Sign up for free, no monthly fees. That's baselane.com slash Matt. Baselane.com slash Matt. That's B-A-S-E-L-E-L-E-L-A. That's B-A-S-E-L-E-E-L.

A-N-E dot com slash M-A-T-T. And that wraps up the epic show. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might too? There's a really good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share it with them and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them.

God loves you and so do I. Health, peace, blessings, and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us. Let's flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network.

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