Epic Real Estate Investing - Stability - The Third Level of Real Estate Investing | 418

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Matt Theriault and Epic Real Estate are proud to present The Six Levels of Real Estate Investing! Today, Matt shares the third level of real estate investing - stability. Tune in to learn the traits of investors on the third level, how to build a team around your business, and specific steps you can take to make it on to the fourth level of real estate investing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey there, Matt here. 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. So if you need help with marketing strategy or wealth strategy or tax planning or asset protection 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 throwing 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, just tell them that Epic sent you for some extra special attention. Go to LighthouseAdvocates.com.

All righty. Now on with today's show. This is Terio Media. Go. Yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us, we got the cash flow. And welcome to the epic real estate investing show where we meet here each and every week to share tips and strategies and advice and wisdom from some of the greatest minds in the business

of real estate and that the real estate business has to offer. First thing is it's key to achieving financial independence and then ultimately freedom. The first thing is really just to shift your focus from saving piles of cash to creating streams of cash. Do that one thing just one time. and you're ahead of 99% of the population. And whenever you're ready, here are two ways that I can help you take the next step

and move even faster. The first thing is, coming up in a couple months, I'm getting together with a medium-sized group of investors at the next Epic Intensive in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, and this is going to be for the last cash flow conclave that we're going to hold. And before we change it up for next year. So if you missed the first two this year,

you definitely want to catch this one. And if you'd like to join us live in October for three days in Brooklyn, awesome, go to epicintensive.com, epicintensive.com. And then second, I'm starting a second, due to a very popular demand, a second badass investor case study group, a pilot program, if you will, to help people get their first or their next deal using very little to no money. And if you'd like to work with me on your real estate investing to help you get that first or next deal, you can go to free real estate investing course.com, free real estate investing course.com.

All righty. So those are your options to go faster or you can just hang, right here each and every week on the podcast and you'll eventually get it done. And also connect with me right now on Instagram at Epic Real Estate, at Epic Real Estate. Okay, so last week, we went over the second level of the six levels of real estate investing, survival. And we ended that episode with some very specific to-dos to get you to that next level, being stability. And the third level, that's the third level of real estate investing. And if you happen to be in the stability phase right now, let's go over what there is to do to get you to the next level after that, the fourth level. All righty.

So, but right now, let's just talk more about this third level, the stability phase. And if you're in the stability phase, it probably means you're making somewhere between $10,000, $20,000 a month. You're working full time. And I just, you are among the elite. Like, you actually did it. You're a real entrepreneur who's doing really good for themselves. And so if you're working full time, making $10,000, $20,000 a month, you're your own boss.

You are in the stability phase. So what's happening? What are you experiencing right here, right? Well, first thing is you've created some real traction in your business. You know, you've become your own boss by leaving your day job. The confidence, it's stabilizing. You're feeling better about how things are going. Your deal flow, much more consistent.

You're working systems. You've got these working systems that are in place. They might not be perfect systems, but they're good enough to get where you are right now and running the operation. And you're really starting to know your market, right? You're really getting familiar. You know your market well. You're really clear as to what you're looking for in a deal.

You're forming solid and strategic relationships. You're gaining credibility within those relationships. You might have even received your first referral or two by now. And you've got many more options for exits. You know, you can flip, you can hold, you can finance. You're getting really good with the creative acquisitions. So you've got these different exit strategies available. You've got leveraged lead generation in place, meaning you've got leads coming in that aren't necessarily requiring your time and effort.

and you're getting this point where you're kind of looking for more help. You're looking for more help. You're looking for efficiencies in your business right now with your friends and your family and your associates. You know, the fact that you've quit your day job seems to be the topic of discussion. You get a lot of, you're getting a lot more congratulations from your friends and associates. You're gaining some family support. And, you know, things are looking up. That's what's going on in your business.

So here's what you're feeling, though. What you're feeling is, you know, you've got this mixed emotion of accomplishment, yet you're a little nervous about being on your own as well. I mean, this is a whole new world for you. It's a little unfamiliar territory. You're realizing that you're going to probably need some help. You're going to need some support staff because you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed now. You're thinking in the back of your mind and you might be wondering, is this going to last?

What happens if it doesn't? And there might even be a little bit of fear they're having, maybe potentially having to go back to the day job if it doesn't work out. But you've also got this mixed with some excitement for the future. right? I mean, you've got this, what if I fail feeling, competing with this, what if I succeed feeling, right? So there's this kind of mixed emotion of concern and worry with excitement for the future. And, you know, if any of this matches, like just 75 to 80% of this matches what you're dealing with right now and what you're feeling, I just want to acknowledge you. I mean, you are among the elite. I mean, despite all of the odds that are against you, you persevered and you left that job

behind, right? You're doing what most people only dream about, and that is to be commended, that is to be acknowledged, and you deserve a big, big pat on the back, and probably a trophy to some regard at this point. I mean, you've made it this far. You've got what it takes to keep going. You might not feel like you've got everything it takes, but if you've gotten this far, trust me, you've got it. So have confidence in yourself. Take a little moment to look back as to how far you've actually come. I mean, the view is really, really good. So acknowledge it and enjoy it and it takes some pride in it. You are a bona fide rock star at this point. So with that said, you've got some new vulnerabilities. In each level, you've got these different vulnerabilities.

And in the stability phase, your vulnerability is your business is likely built on just one person's expertise. That's you, your expertise, right? You are essentially your own single point of failure. And you're trying to do way too much by yourself. You're afraid to let go. You're afraid to give up any sort of control. It's taken a lot of offense to get here, right? Like you've just been grinding away and plowing forward and doing anything that it takes. And that's good. But the vulnerability here is you could fall a little bit back into playing a disproportionate

amount of defense to protect what you've created. And right now, this is not the moment to play defense. It's you've got to continue going on the offensive mode. And, you know, you can easily fall into this trap here of playing. not to lose because you've made this transition from your day job, now you're your own boss, and you've got this thing that you've worked so hard for, and you know, you can be really maybe overprotective of that, and you fall into this trap of playing not to lose. And so as you're looking to how you're going to progress and how you're going to move forward,

you're implementing a lot of stuff maybe by trial and error. You're focused more on the how to do things rather than the who. And sometimes if you focus on trying to do everything yourself and focus on how to do this, how to do that. It can be a big time stealer, and it can take you away from the productive activities, the money-making activities that got you here in the first place. The other side of that is, you know, you're really feeling good about yourself, and the confident has risen to a level where you could be, you know, maybe overconfident

and be tempted to say, maybe take it easy a little bit because you don't have a boss holding you accountable, and you feel like you got here, and now it's time to take your foot off the gas and you've got this threat though of potentially dipping back into the survival mode and so be careful of the overconfidence if that's you and um you're still a little bit vulnerable maybe to shiny objects the shiny object distractions and so the other thing that people want to get here and maybe a little bit in the survival mode which we didn't really talk about it too much but also in this mode be careful not to compare yourself to others you know the grass is not greener on the other side it really isn't you

You know, people all have their own challenges. Human beings and business owners, they all have their own challenges. I mean, if you got into a circle, just kind of formed a circle with everyone else that you know that's on this level or on your own level. And you just kind of emptied all your pockets out onto the ground and just threw all your problems out there right on the ground in front of you. And as you dropped all your problems on the ground, you kind of looked at everybody else's problems of what they put on the ground. I promise you, you'd quickly bend over, pick up all your problems and put them back in your pocket and go on about your business. Alrighty, so be careful not to compare yourself with others. You're doing great, all right?

Stay focused, stay on the offense, keep doing what you're doing, that got you here in the first place, all right? So what is there to do? Because we want to get to the next level. We want to go from stability to what we call the next level we'll talk about next week is scale, the scale phase. So to get here to the stability level, during the survival phase, you were documenting your processes, you've created some standard operating procedures. Now what you want to do is take those and start creating job discreet. You want to start creating job descriptions because next step is you're going to be looking for help. You're going to start building a team.

You need to hire help and delegate those mundane and low-paying tasks. You're going to be looking for contractors. You're going to be looking for virtual assistants. You're going to be looking for interns. And with that said, be careful not to go too fast. You want to hire one at a time and you want to take your time with that person. You want to train them. Make sure they're nice and competent.

And you want to give them your attention and just make sure that they're comfortable. and they're self-sufficient before you start adding too many more team members. Because if you disperse your focus in that regard, the results aren't nearly as good if you just spent your time with that one person. And a lot of times when you're in this phase, you can feel like by the time I show the person how to do it, I could have just done it myself. That's also a vulnerability. That's a trap.

Take your time, spend double time on the task to show the person how to do something that you don't want to do anymore. And then it's going to pay you dividends and residuals. far into the future. All righty. So, and as you're training your team, you want to empower them to perform. You want to empower them to win. If you want to build an incentives, that's always a good thing.

I've always heard the expression. The best way to motivate is to compensate. So put them in a position to win. Put them in a position to win with the team. So when the company wins, they win a little bit as well. And yeah, incentives work really good. And maybe it's financial. Maybe it's days off.

Maybe it's something else. but just to empower them to perform and empower them to win and reward them for good behavior. Good behavior. Good performance is what I'm trying to say. All righty. One of the key hires you want to look at in this phase, though, one of the key hires, and I don't know if it's going to be the first,

but it's going to be a key hire, is an executive assistant, an executive assistant to run the office and an executive assistant to run your team members as well. Have a single place where your team members can report to and then you're just communicating with that one person. You want to look for this key hire. And like I said, it might not be the first one, but it's going to be a really important one.

And don't hire this person too quickly. All right, make sure you find the right person. And let's see. Also here, what I kind of emphasized earlier, is just play to win. Play all out to win. Be careful of not playing too much defense. Be careful of playing not to lose.

You want to play to win. This is not the time to lift your foot off the gas, even though it might feel like it because you've got a little bit of success, you've got some money in the bank. You no longer have a job or a boss to report to play to win. Keep playing to win. All right. And then lastly, you've got a business now. So rather than just kind of dipping in and taking money when you need it, create some structure around your business, around your compensation, and pay yourself a salary.

Put yourself on your own payroll. Start running this thing like a business because we're about to move into scale. And you can only scale if you're actually running the stability level like a business. All righty. So a couple resources. Recommended resources, few books at this level. There's a great book called Traction by Gino Wickman. Get that book, Traction.

That's going to help you get into this next phase. Another book, The Slight Edge, the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. I think this is the ideal companion book for any book that you, like, whatever your favorite book is, just add the slight edge to it and that your favorite book is going to become even more impactful to your life. And then the DIP by Seth Godin. I think that's really important. Go for the dip by Sethgo.

So traction, the slight edge, and the dip. And because it's at this point where the REI ACE program has had the most success with people. People doing, you know, they're doing enough deals to support themselves. They're closing deals here or there, but, you know, there's a lot of instability in their business. Or there is stability and they just want more. They want to go ahead and damn it up and reinforce what they've got. But they need to incorporate a stronger focus of where they want to go. go and implement better or improve their existing system so that their real estate investing,

it starts to run like a real business. So that's, if you haven't already, you might want to look into REI-A's because this is where we really excel and we really can have a huge impact for people. All righty? So yeah, that's it for today. Like I said, I'm putting together a checklist. So you'll have all of these different phases and what there is to do to get to the next phase.

I'll have that to you shortly. It's just been busy around here. But I've got it all written down. I just got to make it all neat and pretty for you. 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-A's.com.

Share with me a little bit about your business, and then I'll send you all the details of what that might look like for you. All righty. 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, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for it. We got the cash flow. is a part of the C-suite radio network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.