[00:00:00] Mike: Hey everybody, good afternoon. It’s Mike, your host of Insider Secrets, and I’m here joined today by my guest, Josh Ferrari. Josh, tell the listeners a couple of things that they’re going to hear on today’s show.

Josh: Today, we’re going to talk about two to three different electronic things that will help you and your business.

A couple of them are apps. And another one was just a website. We also talk about how I raised $6 million in 30 days after having only raised a hundred thousand dollars previous to that. So no kind of expert, anyone can do it, it’s very simple. And we talk about how I was a Guinea pig to a vaccination.

Mike: And you’re going to have to listen in for the rest of that. But we’re going to really dig into raising money and great information. So we’ll see everybody inside. [00:01:00]

Kristen: Welcome to this week’s edition of Insider Secrets. The show that turns multifamily investing into reality. Each show we interview guests who are seasoned professionals, actively closing and managing real estate deals. Your host Mike Morawski has more than 30 years of multifamily, real estate investing and property management experience.

Mike is the founder of My Core Intentions. And he’s been involved in over $285 million of transactions. Focuses on helping you create short term cashflow and long-term wealth. Here’s your host, Mike

Mike: Hey, good afternoon and welcome back. It’s Mike, your host of Insider Secrets and brought to you by My Core Intentions. Glad that you’re here today. And I am excited today about our guests. I am joined by Josh Ferrari. And Josh is going to talk to us about syndicating deals and reason money. Josh, how you doing today?

Josh: Man, [00:02:00] I’m doing really fantastic. I was a little late to this interview here, but other than that, I am ready to go.

Mike: Good. Yeah. Hey, listen, it’s okay to be a little bit late sometimes. It’s better to be late than be in trouble. Let me tell the listeners a little bit about you, but Josh grew up not knowing anything about finance or investing. And always thought that he was going to work at a job 65 years old, retire on a farm in the country and travel with his wife to see the world. And here’s what my dad used to always tell me, Josh. You work 40 years for 40 hours a week for a company. And at the end, when you’re done, you get a $40 watch. And that was just something that never attract was attractive to me. But yet you somehow knew that investment caught your attention and you read that famous book.

And a lot of people talked about it “Think and Grow Rich” by Robert Kiyosaki, [00:03:00] made your mind open up your eyes opened up. You started to be a little bit more creative, and now you specialize in raising capital, locating and negotiating and acquiring a multifamily asset. And I really want to dig into that a little bit.

Josh manages some other people’s money and finances. He’s a coach, positioned himself in high asset management and financial investor. He is married to his wife, Alicia, and they’ve been married for about three years and they enjoy their little Pembroke Welsh named Peakon. So here’s what’s interesting Josh is, if you have a last name of a car, and a wool dog named peakon, I like that. Great combination. And I know that our listeners are going to be excited to hear about some of the information you’re going to be able to share. Cause you and I have had a couple of [00:04:00] conversations and I really like where you go. Do this for us, one question I always ask my listeners is in one word, describe who you are personally and professionally?

Josh: Oh, one word. Before I answer that question, I want to give a little funny backstory on the name of her, the name of our dog peakon. My wife actually wakes up one day. We got peakon February of 2020. So she wakes up sometime, must’ve been December of 2019 and she’s like I had the weirdest dream last night. I’m like, what? What was it? And she said, I had a dream that we had a Pembroke Welsh corgi and his name was peakon. And I’m like, wait, that was it? Like, that was the dream. Like, where’s the punchline? She said no, the punchline was just that we had a dog cause she’s been wanting a dog, but she didn’t know what kind or what to name it.

She’s like, I think it’s a sign. I’m like, that’s ridiculous. [00:05:00] Anyway, we ended up researching it and they ended up being like the perfect dog for our lifestyle. And then we both ended up really liking the name peakon. So it was just funny how that ended up coming to fruition. But to go back to your actual question, one word to describe me personally and professionally.

I was thinking enthusiastic, sometimes my wife’s you just have no emotion. So I’m trying to think of what the word is for a go-getter. What’s the singular word for that? Ambitious, there we’ll do that one.

Mike: Ambitious is good.

Yeah. Quietly presumptuous. Hey, Josh, fill some blanks on your backstory. Would give a couple of highlights there and but tell us a little bit how you wound up getting in real estate. Hey, I came from the same kind of family background, right? No real estate interests, family didn’t know about interests.

I don’t know my parents even knew how to balance a checkbook to be have this with you.

Josh: Yeah. So I had moved out [00:06:00] of my parents’ house. It moved out for about six months because I’m from Memphis, Tennessee, but I’m currently down here in mobile, Alabama. So I moved, got graduated college, got my airframe and powerplant license to be an aircraft technician on airplanes, and then got a job down here in mobile.

And so moved out, I’d been moved out for about six months. Had just recently gotten married, maybe two months previous to that. And my dad calls me one day and tells me that they’re going to start flipping houses. And I thought that was weird. I was like, what do you mean you’re going to flip houses?

We grew up a little bit watching HDTV. My parents really liked that and my sisters loved it. And so I would watch it every now and then it was cool just to see that before and after of everything, how they make it beautiful. But I never really thought that would be something that I would do or that my family would do.

Just because, I guess from an outside perspective looking in I’m thinking that costs a ton of money. They got a freaking TV show. Like they obviously have [00:07:00] money. They know how to do all that stuff. And so anyway, it caught my interest a little bit when he said he was gonna start doing this.

So I started asking questions, prying into the why behind it and the how, like, how does that even possible? And he ended up explaining how I could basically make more than my annual salary in a few months and one flip. I’m like, there’s..

Mike: Your dad is explaining this to you.

Josh: Yeah, he’s explaining it to me and so I just was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe it. So I needed more information. We were on the phone for four hours. I just kept asking questions and it got to a point where he couldn’t answer some of my questions and some obviously he’s not going to answer all my questions anyhow, in this one phone call, like I’ve got some education to begin.

And so I started, he sent me that book, “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. And that was my mindset was turned a little bit when we had that initial phone call. But reading that book like solidified like Holy cow, this is [00:08:00] really possible for someone like me to get into this, get out of the W2 job and kind of live a completely different lifestyle.

One that I had maybe thought about once in my life, but it was like in one ear out the other. You think about it and it just, you’re like, yeah, but that’ll never be me. I’ll just work up the corporate ladder. I’ll be okay with being in tons of debt, because I’m still gonna want like a nice house, toys, kids and all that stuff.

And so I was just becoming okay with the debt factor. So then finding out that there was a possibility that I could own something like real estate, that could provide this passive income to the point where not only am I able to provide what I was already getting from the day job, but also not having to work.

And then also having additional income to continue furthering investments and be able to get all the stuff like the toys and the fun stuff, and take the trips that we [00:09:00] always wanted to without having to go in any debt. And I thought that was like, Amazing. And so I started reading books, listening to podcasts, going to my local real estate investor meetup.

And I actually went to a few meetups. We had two in town, we had one in Pensacola and I think we had one in Mississippi. And I was going to all of them, like man, I just want to meet everyone I can meet that’s doing this and learn everything that I can. And fast-forward a little bit from then to now.

And we’ve got a fourplex, a 21 units single family portfolio that we syndicated a 42 unit, a multi-family apartment we closed at the end of last year. And I know the 34 units we got under contract before we closed 42.

Mike: Nice. So you’re you’re definitely on the move that’s for sure. One of the things you said that’s very interesting is why.

I always find that people’s why’s are really [00:10:00] interesting. What makes somebody do this? And you talked about that, Hey I can do this and that and not have any debt and not jeopardize my future. What was that defining moment for you or, that Why that said, Hey I don’t want to just retire when I’m 65, and have some pension. What was that defining moment that caused you to look the other way?

Josh: The defining moment was when I realized it was possible. When I started going to these meetups, and I’m meeting other people just like me, most of them older than me, but some of them similar to my age. And meeting these people that have already done what I was looking to do and they’re already in the place that I want to be in. And then hearing their story of yeah, I came from nothing just like you or I came from like similar backgrounds. [00:11:00] And now look at me I’m a multimillionaire or not even that, I’m just, doing well.

I’ve got a few properties and they’re all paying for my living expenses. So I don’t really even have to work anymore at this point. And it was listening to those combined with the podcasts of the even higher level people or the people that are even similar to me that I maybe didn’t have access to in my local real estate meetup. I remember listening to one guy, he was 19 years old and I was 21 at the time. And he had over 200 some odd units, and I couldn’t even believe that was possible. And he was talking about all the passive income he had, he had $8,000 a month in passive income or something. And I’m like, I don’t even make $8,000 a month in my active job, my wife and I combined, we didn’t even make that.

And so I’m like, this guy is 19. He’s still teenager and he’s doing extravagant thing. And so I knew at those [00:12:00] moments that it was possible for me to do exactly what they did. And that I was going to be pursuing that

Mike: What’s interesting is you talk about this guy. And I remember being at an investor group meeting.

This is years ago when I first was toying with the idea of becoming a real estate investor, sitting next to an old guy. And you know how they tell you never prejudge anybody, right? Here’s a guy in a pair of big blue Jean with a white t-shirt on. Look like he probably hadn’t showered in a couple of days, and I’m sitting next to him and he starts telling me.

And when I figure out who it is, I know who it is because I’ve heard about the guy. He owns 200 single family homes, and like 140 of them are paid off. And at that time, the average rent was about $900 a month. So all of a sudden, my mind starts calculating, wow, this guy’s got [00:13:00] casual like this. I’m like, wow, there’s money in this real estate deal.

Hey, Josh, here’s what I really want to dive into though. And we’ve had a couple of conversations and the thing that’s attracted me about what you’re doing is your ability to raise capital. Let’s talk about that a little bit. How are you raising capital? Who’s put money in deals. Where are you finding these investors?

Josh: So primarily most of our investors come from the friends and family group. They come from acquaintances of that. They come from your network’s network. So you’ve got your network and then you’ve got the people that they know. And then those people know people and it’s like a never ending just circle of this network that is untapped most of the time. Most of the time people aren’t asking for what I call the $5 [00:14:00] million question, which we could get to later. Of asking that referral when you’re talking to someone about, say raising money or like actually investing in the deal, the opportunities that you’re providing and multi-family syndication explaining what it is, how they can get involved.

When you’re talking to someone about these things and you get to the end of the phone call, a lot of people just exchange the pleasantries and they say this has been awesome. Thank you so much. I look forward to working with you and let’s stay in touch, something along those lines.

What they’re really missing out on when by saying that is this other person’s network. Because you’re only going to have a limited network and you’re going to have your scope of people that and if you’ve got business partners, they’ve got their scope and you’re all bringing in your little circular scope of the network.

And so when you talk to one individual that’s potentially interested, all you have to do at the end of the phone call is ask, [00:15:00] Hey, is there someone else that you think might be interested in an opportunity like this. And 99% of the time when I ask that question, people are like, yeah, there’s someone I know.

And it doesn’t go for just people that say yes to your investment. Some people will say, No, it’s not for me. I’m not really interested in this niche. I’m looking at something else or maybe no, not right now. I’m still building up my capital or we just invested in a deal. I’m waiting for liquidate this other deal or whatever it is, even if they’re saying no, what that one specific time, if you ask them, if they know someone else, what I found in my experience is that 99% of the time they have someone else.

And once you’ve talked to that person. You get the warm introduction so that you get that person that that knows that person to introduce you. So instead of just like them giving you say their email address or phone number, and you just like cold call them out of [00:16:00] nowhere. Hey, told me about you and said, you’re interested in investing money.

They’re like completely caught off guard. Like what? Whoa, chill out. What do you mean? I’m not trying to give anyone money. But if you actually have that individual contact and say, Hey, I talked to whatever they say, Hey, I talked to this guy he’s really awesome. He’s doing this great thing.

I remember you had mentioned something about being interested in investing in real estate. Would you like to talk to this guy? And if they say yes, then they introduce you like altogether and in a zoom call or in a phone call and then the other person gets off or they stay on. Even better if they all three stay on.

And then the first person that introduced you gets to be a part of the conversation and kind of coach the other person into what might be great for them or whatever they want to do, whatever you want to do. Point being then once you get off of that phone call, you ask the same question.

You ask another referral. Hey, do you have anyone else that might be interested? And they typically will think of at [00:17:00] least one individual, yeah, my dad or my great distant aunt or uncle that I haven’t talked to in a while. I heard that they were making a lot of money in the oil and gas industry or something, and they’ll introduce you to them.

And so the network just keeps growing there. And that is what really allows you to have a wider database of these potential 506B investors, if you’re unable to actually generally solicit.

Mike: That’s interesting. I was in the real estate sales space before I became an investor.

And I think one of the biggest mistakes I made in that business was that for the first five years, nobody ever taught me to ask for a referral. And I had all these past clients. And I tell the story where I’m in the grocery store, I run into a past client, she says, Oh, you’re going to have to come see our new house.

I’m like your new house, I thought I was your realtor. She goes, Oh, we couldn’t find you. So asking for [00:18:00] referrals and staying in touch with your past clients and people in your network is so critically important. What you’re saying is so right on because it’s going deep. And the more you ask, the more people that will show up.

Do you find that the environment that we’re in right now with the pandemic and that is, made it easier or more difficult to raise money today?

Josh: That’s a really good question. July of last year, in the middle of everything that was going on during COVID. I did a 30 day to 500 K money raising challenge with a guy by the name of Bill Allen.

Previous to that, I had only raised about a hundred thousand dollars and never really saw myself as much of a capital raiser. But it was going to be a hundred bucks to join this little challenge. And I said, sure this guy has raised tens of millions of dollars. If I could just learn one [00:19:00] thing out of this, then it will be completely worth it.

And ended up, it was completely pivotal to my entire niche and what exactly it is that I’m focused in our business partnership through multifamily syndication, which is now investor relations and raising money. So over the course of that 30 days, I went live on Facebook for every day. And at the end of the 30 days, I was able to raise $6 million by just being on social media, allowing people to see my face here about, Hey, my dog peed on the blanket today for or whatever. You’re not always talking about business. You’re talking about yourself, you’re talking about your hobbies, your family, your wife, your kids, what’s going on. You’re not always, Hey, invest in real estate and give me money because the returns can be amazing.

And here’s the deal we’ve got. And not only are you not talking about that because [00:20:00] that’s annoying and people are going to tune you out, but also because if it’s not a 506C regulated deal, then that’s illegal. Like you can’t generally solicit. So primarily I’m just talking about me. I’m talking about why I’m in real estate, talking about how you can invest your IRA, how you can invest your 401k.

And after you’ve talked about you for a little bit and who you are and what you do, people get really interested in what it is that you’re saying, and they’re keeping up with your live videos. And then that’s when you throw in a little bit of the how tos and the whys on real estate specific things, like I was saying about the 401k or the IRA or something of that nature.

So all that to say last year in July raised about 6 million, but that wasn’t 6 million in the bank. Yeah, like I said, we weren’t generally soliciting, we didn’t have a deal. This was just like talking to people getting comfortable with me, learning who I am and what exactly it is that we’re doing.

The types of deals that we’re buying and then getting really [00:21:00] interested in me and my company, my business. And the idea of real estate and being saying that yes, this is the amount of capital I have available to invest. This is how much I would feel comfortable investing with you if the deal was right.

If the time was right, this is where I’m at. And it ended up coming up to $6 million after the end of that 30 days. So then fast forward two months, three months, cause this was July now we’re in August or September. We actually got a deal under contract and we’re needing to start raising money and we needed about 650,000.

And I’m like, I just raised 6 million. This will be a no brainer. I’ll just reach out to them again. And we’ll get this thing across the finish line. After beginning to reach out to them, I quickly found out that timing is everything, and the deal specifically is everything. Now that we’ve got a legitimate scenario here, some people were like [00:22:00] I’m not sure about the economy.

I don’t know what’s happening with  cOVID and this election’s throwing me off and there’s all these eviction moratoriums, not sure how much further I want to get into real estate. And so I was getting a lot of nos on that end, I was also getting nos on people saying, yeah, it’s been two or three months.

I had that amount of money. I’ve already spent it and put it in another deal. And I’m waiting to liquidate something else or to wreck my cash back up before I invest in something else. And so I was quickly turned down by about $5.7 million worth of people. And I’m like, what happened? Now that I actually need the money where is it? And so I was only able to raise on that one particular deal about 300,000 and I had my other partners bring in the rest of the money. And so I guess from my personal perspective last year, I just found out that maybe timing was everything, as far as the economy and the market specific we’ve already had [00:23:00] another deal.

Like I was telling you earlier that 34 units that we begin raising money for, and we raised money for that deal fairly quickly. A gate came fast and that was in December, January of this last year and this year. And so I don’t know that it was the economy specifically. I think people are still throwing money everywhere.

The banks are still lending at 2%, 1%. I heard of one guy that had a sub 1% interest rate on, I don’t know that it was multi-family, it might’ve been single family or a small multi, but I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, is that thing? That’s a thing in the United States of America, like maybe in another country, but I was dumbfounded. That was an opportunity that banks were like throwing out. And so I think raising capital over this last year hasn’t been more difficult. I think if anything, it’s become a little easier at least for me, I guess maybe that was part of learning what I know now [00:24:00] and gaining the knowledge and expertise on how to raise money and how to attract these investors.

But then as far as their desirability to get into real estate some of it was wavered. There is there’s some people out there that are wavering, but the majority from what I’ve seen from our like specific avatar what we target, they’re all for it. They’re going after real estate and they’re very interested.

Mike: So here’s what’s interesting is that you raise that money in Facebook going live. So did you just go out to social media or were you in a specific group or did you just grab your phone and go live and say, Hey, I’m raising money or what?

Josh: Yeah. So it was interesting. Previous to July of last year, I actually hated social media. Maybe hate’s a strong word, I strongly disliked social media. I had a Facebook account [00:25:00] that I’d had for a while, the Instagram account. And I had created a LinkedIn a while back, but I would get on it maybe once every other week, once a month. And it just seemed like there was a lot of hatred and hatefulness, and there’s just a lot of judging and the whole idea of what some people see from social media as far as one person gets more likes than the other.

Then you feel like a lesser cause why are they liking their photo more than mine? And I think I was getting caught in the minutia of that. And so I just kinda stepped back and said, I don’t need social media. I have my family, I have my life, my wife, I’m just going to do me.

Mike: Pecan.

Josh: Yeah. So then I started this challenge, and every day he sent us a little video of what it was that we actually needed to do for the day, like a little piece of homework and kind of the challenge for the day. And the very first day, he said, you’re going to go [00:26:00] live on Facebook for the next 30 days. And I’m like, man. First of all, I thought I’m not going to get anywhere with that because I don’t have a big following because I don’t get on social media.

Then secondly, I thought a lot of my following is old friends back from Memphis, colleagues that I knew, coworkers, people that I went to high school with. I’m like, none of my friends have any money. What am I thinking? I’m not going to raise any money, $500,000 that’s crazy. And so that was the first thought in my head plus the dislike for social media. But I said, you know what? I paid the hundred bucks, I’m in the challenge. I might as well see what this is all about. I might as well do it. So it was literally just me on Facebook. I had to Google how to start a Facebook live.

I’m looking all over Facebook and I’m like, where’s the live button. And I could not find it anywhere. I had to Google to find out where it was. I finally figured it out and I’m crazy nervous. I’m doing my first Facebook live and it’s just, Hey guys I’m going to be doing a [00:27:00] Facebook live for the next 30 days, follow along with me on my journey. But then the actual caption I probably talked about it in everyone, but the actual caption of each video was day one of 30 of the five hashtag 500 K challenge. And so everyone was like day six day eight, day 12.

And so people would see that I’m not just posting live videos for the sake of being annoying and posting live videos. I actually had a specific reason slash challenge of why I was doing this. And so them just seeing that there was a hashtag 500 K challenge, they could click on that if they wanted to learn more about it, or most of them just watched the video, I say, okay, with the hex is 500 day challenge was that’s all about.

So then in every video I would give like a brief recap in the beginning, Hey, this is day 12, this is where we’re at. This is some of the progress we’ve been seeing, loving the interaction I’m getting with you guys, people commenting, wondering what the heck is this all about? I had no idea.

The biggest thing [00:28:00] was Holy cow. I had no idea you were investing in real estate. I thought you just fixed airplanes or I didn’t even know you fixed airplanes. Like how have you been since high school? People because I just didn’t get on social media. So people just didn’t know, and then people are getting interested.

Now they’re like, okay this guy’s doing something. What is this all about? And it was that level of interest, not just talking about real estate but talking about me and who I am and people getting to learn about me because trust is the number one biggest thing that’s going to allow you to raise money without a doubt.

If people don’t trust you, they’re not gonna invest with you because they’re investing in you before they’re investing in the deal. The deal is just an extra added bonus of why they’re investing with you, but they’re investing in you because they trust you, your skills, your expertise, and your ability to not lose their money.

More often than not, when someone invests with you, yes they want a return on it. They don’t want to just waste their time by giving you money. But [00:29:00] they’re mostly concerned with you not losing their money. So if you can just not do that and gain them a little bit of money on as an added bonus, then they’re happy to invest with you if they trust you personally.

Like personally and professionally they want to know that you’re a good human being, but then they also want to know that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to investments and whatever it is you’re actually trying to raise money for. So to answer your question. Yeah, it was literally just picking up the phone, taking a live video. I remember one live video was just me, our AC had just broke. We were in the fourplex that we were house hacking slash syndicating, and we lived upstairs a hundred year old house, no insulation, heat of the summer. Cause it’s July and I’m just like guys, literally the AC just broke.

This is so horrible. Look at the thermostat, it’s 90 degrees up here. I can’t stand it. So I’m going to walk downstairs and go outside and chat with you guys about whatever. [00:30:00] And that video specifically, maybe didn’t get the most comments ever and have to go back to maybe see which video it was that did that.

But I was getting a ton of interaction with that one because people were just thinking maybe it was funny. Maybe it was just me being real. Like it’s 90 degrees, holy cow, how are you surviving. So people weren’t necessarily commenting and DM-ing me about, yeah I want to invest, they’re just interested in me.

They’re like, Oh, that really sucks. Like maybe you should try to do this. Someone was like, Hey, I know a HPAC guy in the area, would you like me to give him a shout? And I already had connections to that. But it was just like, yeah, cool I would love to have more connections and meet more people. And so it was literally facebook live videos.

Mike: Little about my story areas like $18 million in 30 months and did that through seminars. I was in the real estate business. What’s interesting here is you come from a place [00:31:00] where you weren’t in the real estate business.

You were just starting to do that. And so the point I try to make with this is that people think a lot Oh, I can’t raise money or how am I going to do that? When you came, all you have to do is put a little effort forward and you obviously have shown and proven that fact that all you have to do is ask about it.

There’s a famous book, that says knock and you shall receive, ask and it’ll be given to you. You just got to ask enough. What do you think some of the best resources today that you use in your business are technology wise?

Josh: For raising money specifically?

Mike: Just in your business in general or raising money if it’s raising money and it’s beyond Facebook, yeah, sure.

Josh: I’ll give you two [00:32:00] platforms slash apps that I use to assist me in raising money and making things simple. So one goal that I really have this year is to create more genuine connections with people. Because you can get on the phone all day long with people that you DMD on social media, or they found you from somewhere, listened to your podcast and they’re just interested.

And so you talk to them, you exchange the pleasantries, you get off the phone, or right before you get off the phone and you say, you’re going to stay in touch. You hang up, you’ll never talk to him again. That’s just the way it goes. Life gets busy, things move on. And so I wanted to not be that guy.

I said the best way for everyone to benefit in this scenario of us even getting on the phone is if we stay in touch. Because life changes rapidly, real estate changes rapidly. One day you could be looking for deals, the next day you’re looking for money, the next day you need a plumber. [00:33:00] You never know.

And so just staying in touch and it doesn’t have to be extravagant. You don’t have to have this 30 minute an hour phone call with everyone, every day or once a week or once every other week even. Like just a simple phone call or leaving a simple voicemail, sending a simple email, text message. Hey, how you doing?

And I really wanted to make things a little more personal. I didn’t want to have some automation go out to every single person that says, loved our phone call. It happened this was two weeks ago, loved our phone call. Have you been over the last two weeks? Whatever. I didn’t want something blanket like that.

I wanted say they’re in the Navy and they’ve been traveling or they just moved or their wife got sick or they had this really awesome deal that they just closed on or that they just got under LOI. I wanted to be specific to these things. And so I added a CRM to my [00:34:00] business. I initially had Mailchamp, but I was just using the free version and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

And I still don’t know what I’m doing. And the CRM I use now, which is why I hired a marketing manager to handle all that for me. But I integrated active campaign with my business. So we’ve got automated emails that go out whenever I have a phone call with an investor, I get an automated update or notification saying, Hey, it’s been two weeks or it’s been three weeks or it’s been a month.

However, we have it set up. You need to reach back out to this person. And I take notes every time I have a phone call with someone when I’m asking them who they are, what they do. There why in real estate or if they’re not in real estate, what’s their interest? What are their goals? I take those notes where they are in the world?

If they’re up in the North and I hear on the news that the North had a horrible snowstorm, I would mention something like that. I want to be personal as best I can. And so [00:35:00] I’ll take the notes. And then when I get the notification that I need to get in touch with them, we’ll either schedule another phone call or I’ll send a quick text message or I’ll shoot them an email that just mentions a little something about our previous conversation and asks how they’ve been.

And most of them are dumbfounded at the fact that I even have a second touch. The fact that I even reached out the second time after the initial phone call. They’re like, wow, first of all, you actually remembered. And then second of all, you took the time to reach back out to me. That means a lot.

And so then they’re like, actually my wife is doing good or we did have a snow storm and it was crazy. And then that’s like the intro to the conversation which just builds the relationship. So if I can just stay in touch with these people, then we’re all going to benefit. Because they’re going to have me top of mind if they ever need anything.

So I’ll be the first to help them. And then they’ll be taught the same thing like vice versa. They’ll be top of mind for me when it comes to raising a deal or when it comes to, if they have a specific service, like they [00:36:00] do 10 31 exchanges, or they do cost segregation or friends with a really good property manager.

I’ll have that in my head or in my notes because no one can remember everything. And so I’ll be able to go back and look at that. So that’s one thing, active campaign. The other thing is a company called send out cards. It’s just a website, send out cards.com and I’ve integrated that with my CRM. So every time I have a phone call with someone, they put in their physical address, if they want to, some of them just put in and that’s fine, but if they feel comfortable putting in their physical address, I always say, I’d love to have it because I’d like to send you something for jumping on the phone with me.

And then I send them a little card. The platform allows you to, you can either automate the card or you can make it personal, which I like the personal touch. So sometimes I’ll go in there and personalize it real quick and then it’ll send out, I don’t have to worry about postage or any of that.

They also have little gifts that you can add in there. I could add a little Starbucks card or some brownies or a Teddy [00:37:00] bear, or if I know like their anniversary’s coming up, put there are some flowers in there something along those lines, you can add little gifts as well as the card. So then not only am I staying in touch with them virtually with a text message or an email or something of that sort, but also they’re getting a touch physically with either the gift or the letter in the mail.

And so all of these little touches play with their psyche in a good way to where they remember me more and they’re more enticed to want to continue the personal relationship with us, but also the business relationship.

Mike: Sure. Yeah. It’s it’s keeping your lead warm.

Josh: Yeah.

Mike: And there’s a book I read when I was in the sales business or the real estate sales business by Gary Keller called “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent”. And he talks in there about that touch, and based on who the client is, [00:38:00] the number of times that you should touch them. That initial contact with somebody, when you get off the phone, now what you should do is go back and touch them eight times over the next six weeks with a series of cards and emails and phone calls and handwritten notes, just so that your name is embedded in them. Same thing with social media today. I think you’re going out there live on social media and people are seeing you, they’re seeing you 30 days in a row that man, that embeds in somebody’s mind. Oh, there’s that guy who was on Facebook all the time. Hey, so you know, we’re in a business and I have to imagine that this question has to go to your day job too, which is, how do you make high stakes decisions? You’re faced with a repair or you’re faced with something going wrong in a [00:39:00] deal. How do you discern and make high decisions in your life?

Josh: First, I consult with my business partners. I guess it depends what the decision is. If it’s business specific and it’s a specific deal we’re working on, then I’m going to be consulting with my business partners.

If it’s something more on the personal side or it is in business, but could also affect the personal that I’m going to consult with my wife first about what we want to do and how we want to handle it. So let’s say it’s a deal that’s going that we’re underwriting or that we’ve already closed.

And as soon as we close it, we find out that there was a fire in one of the units, or did they tore down a building? I don’t know something of that sort. So first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to communicate the three of us, me, my partner Matt, and my partner, Reggie. And we’re going to say, okay, this is what happened.

Here’s maybe why it happened. [00:40:00] Here’s maybe how we could have prevented it. And then here’s what I personally suggest that we do to move forward. And then we all three do that. We all three send in our little like Slack channel which is another app Slack. And we discussed that. And so then we review what everyone’s saying and here’s what they think.

And here’s what I think about how we should handle it. And then we poke holes and why, what the solution of what the other person is saying is what we should do. Hey, we should just do a capital call because we’re going to need more money. Nope, shouldn’t do that. Cause the investors aren’t going to like us and that’s obviously we just closed the deal.

Like, there’s no way we’re going to do that. So then the other person might say maybe we’ll see what the insurance company has to say and we’ll go ahead and file a claim. And that will be the best way. And it’s okay how long is that going to take, poking holes what can we do to expedite that?

So that we can still meet our projected [00:41:00] returns for investors that we have for this first quarter. What do we need to do this? And so it’s just every time someone says something. It’s okay, yes now we’ve all taken that into consideration, that’s an option. We’re going to start heading that way to find the answer, but all along finding the answer we’re going to what we just call poke holes in it and be like, Nope, not going to work. Let’s try something else. Here’s what might work better. But here’s why I don’t think that’s going to work. And then sometimes you could be wrong. You could think, you know what you’re talking about and be like, no, here’s why it’s not going to work.

And then your other business partner who knows more than you in that particular topics? No, that’s actually not a thing, here’s the actual facts behind that. And you’re like, Oh, okay cool. Then let’s go with that. Like now I’m in agreement with what you said actually makes sense because now this is not this actually isn’t worst case scenario.

Mike: Yeah, interesting. So Josh, this show is called Insider Secrets. Can you leave the listeners with another secret?

[00:42:00] Josh: Another secret. The referral question was one. Definitely.

Mike: Absolutely.

Josh: What’s another secret? Do I have another secret? Now, is this a secret that is directly related to real estate or this could this just be any secret?

Mike: Yeah, it could be anything.

Josh: Could be anything. Here’s a secret about me that isn’t maybe necessarily a secret, but something that I don’t just tell people earlier. And was it 2020? No, it was 2019. When my wife we’re fairly new to being married, we had some church friends that as a couple and the wife worked at a clinical research facility. And they did these studies, these clinical research studies. And you basically were like the Guinea pig, if you wanted to join the study, but they paid you. And at the time we needed a little bit of [00:43:00] money and she was like, yeah, we’re doing this really awesome study for an anthrax vaccine. And I was like, am I going to get anthrax?

Cause the flu shot, they shoot you with dead flu. So I’m thinking they’re going to shoot me with dead anthrax and it could go live or something. And so they were reassuring me that wouldn’t happen, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I decided to do it. And so I was basically a Guinea pig to the anthrax vaccine and helped to that kind of you get where it is today but they paid me about 1600 bucks for it and we really needed the money at the time so.

Mike:  Interesting. I think they pay for giving blood too so.

Josh: Yeah.

Mike: Listen, this has been great. And we’re at the end of the show, a couple last questions that I like to ask. What’s the favorite book you’ve ever read your best book you’ve ever read?

Josh: Best [00:44:00] book that I’ve ever read. I’m going to say “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink.

Mike: Interesting. Great, I’ve heard that. I’ve heard a couple of other people talk about that so.

Josh: Yeah, it was.

Mike: How about a favorite tourist attraction?

Josh: See that’s the thing, being stuck in this W2 job we haven’t been able to do much traveling, especially during COVID, but even before that, in our current financial situation, we haven’t been able to go a lot of places.

So there’s a lot of.

Mike: Yu’re from Memphis.

Josh: We’re from Memphis, but yeah there’s not a lot of tourists. We’ve got the bass pro pyramid, that I think it’s the largest bass pro in the world, and that was cool. But far as tourists attractions go, we’ve been to Hawaii. I’m going to have to say Hawaii. Cause we went there for our honeymoon and that it was amazing.

Mike: I thought you would for sure talk about the hotel in downtown Memphis, where the ducks come out of the elevator.

Hey, Josh, if people want to get ahold of you, how do they reach out to you?

[00:45:00] Josh: We’ve got a podcast also called “The Creative Capital Podcast”. So you can check us out on our website ferraricapital.com or you can go to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to your shows. We’re on social media. You can find us on instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. I think I’m just Josh Ferrari on LinkedIn and Facebook. And I think we’re Ferrari capital on Instagram. Like I said, you can go to our website ferraricapital.com. You can sign up for our newsletters. We send out monthly newsletters. That’s just a little educational piece of information as well as updates on what’s going on with us.

And specific market analytics to where we are, which is down here on the Gulf coast. So you could sign up for that. You could subscribe to the podcast, like I said. And what else can you do? think that about you can call me, you can call me, shoot me an email,joshferrari901@gmail.com and yeah, that’s it.

[00:46:00] Mike: Thanks, Josh. And all that information will be in the show notes. So people will be able to grab that anyhow and reach out to you if they have any questions. Hey, I want to thank you for being here. You’ve been a wealth of knowledge. I appreciate that. And it’s always good to have that other insight how somebody else is doing something.

Thanks for being here. Thanks everybody for listening in, make sure that you go to YouTube and subscribe and go to iTunes and subscribe. Spotify like us, love us do all that thing, all that stuff, help our ratings grow and we’ll see everybody next week. Thanks Josh.

Josh: Thank you so much.

Kristen: Thank you, Mike, and thank you for joining us for another great episode of Insider Secrets. As always, Insider Secrets is brought to you by My Core Intentions. Join us on social media and visit mycoreintentions.com where you can get expert coaching on all things, multifamily investing in property management.

We’re looking forward to having you back again next week for more Insider Secrets.