Skyrocket Panel

[00:00:07] Mike Morawski: if you just take a couple minutes each Mike, if we start with you why don’t you seen this, how we play Hollywood squares you’re at the top left, so

[00:00:14] Mike Angelo: sounds good. I appreciate it, Mike, glad to be on the panel here. Appreciate that everyone. My name is Mike Angelo. I’m based in Phoenix, Arizona founded NK development group about two years ago.

[00:00:24] I was in the corporate world, a sales director, VP managing a large construction supply Salesforce and was trying to find a way out. And fortunately my position was eliminated along with a bunch of my peers and I found myself trying to figure out life and what to do at 40 something years old and a real estate was always something I wanted to do and found found some education and found some podcasts to listen to around commercial, specifically multifamily real estate, and that I could be an operator, a syndicator.

[00:00:51] And so basically dove in about 18, 19 months ago. And we got our first asset locked up earlier this year and working on a few more.

[00:01:02] Mike Morawski: Great. Thank you. Bye. Appreciate it. How about you, Rochelle? Hey, good morning. How are you? I’m doing

[00:01:07] Roschelle McCoy: well. How are you? Good. Good to see you. Good. Yeah, you too. So I’m based in central Illinois. And I’m the managing member of titanium investments. I started in real estate about four years ago. Similar to my story with a change, unexpected change in my job.

[00:01:25] I was fortunate enough that when my job was eliminated, I was moved into another role. So I wasn’t left jobless. But it was definitely an eye opener for me. And the point in my career where I decided I needed to be more in control of my own destiny and to definitely have a backup plan because I couldn’t really rely on my W2.

[00:01:42] Like I thought I could. I started like many do with some smaller multifamily and single family properties. We’ve purchased now three fourplexes, a single family and a condo. And we’re, I’m in the process of a 40 unit acquisition down in Tampa, Florida. So after a couple of years of doing the small, multi and single family stuff, I realized that wasn’t going to scale at the pace I wanted it to.

[00:02:05] And so that’s when I shifted my fam my focus over to multifamily around that same time, my goals off also shifted as well. So when I originally started in real estate, my goal was really centered around a backup plan and having some income on the side. And now that I’ve seen the power of multifamily, my goals have shifted into more financial freedom and retiring early for my W2.

[00:02:28] So I can focus on real estate. Full-time

[00:02:31] Mike Morawski: thanks. What’s what’s kinda neat about this is none of you guys know what I’m going to ask and I have a list of question. Pretty long, but just kidding. And what’s happening is I always talk about winding up in some rabbit hole.

[00:02:45] You’ve already said some things that I want to go back and unpack, and figure try and ask some questions about that because I think it’ll be good for people to understand some different things he says belong. Hey, Kevin, good to see you. How are you?

[00:03:01] Kevin Dugan: I’m doing well, my thanks for having me on today.

[00:03:04] I appreciate you other Mick and Rochelle to can beautiful. So my journey began in real estate, 2012. I started in the corporate sales position, industrial robotics sales engineer, and started flipping houses from California in Chicago, plugged me on quite the journey where now I currently run a residential turnkey business in Chicago.

[00:03:27] It was remote for many years but requires some in-person hiring that. It’s been a little bit challenging recently. But we pretty much do general construction in house property management, and we sell these investments as passive rentals to investors. That’s the core business that I run. Tied into multi-family actually ended up to beginning of 2018.

[00:03:46] I started to learn about the meetup sector and all the benefits of just networking with individuals and fell in love with the asset class, but never had an opportunity, had some opportunities to jump into multi-family, but not as extensively as I’d like to, because of my current business that I run.

[00:04:02] I’ve always believed in the asset class, especially affordable housing and, the ability to create value through forced appreciation is incredible. And the multi-family asset in commercial real estate in general, and just like Rochelle mentioned the scalability is something that very challenging doing on the residential side, which.

[00:04:19] That’s only bumped my head on all the time as Mike would know, still trying to figure out that business model to run much smoother, but multi-family is a space where, long-term, I think in general, if people put their money into hard assets, real estate, specifically in the right markets with the right growth trajectory people and for real estate.

[00:04:40] So I’m excited to be here today and hopefully impart a little bit of wisdom.

[00:04:45] Mike Morawski: Yeah. Good. Thanks. I’m glad that you guys are here. Hey, Rochelle, I’m going to bounce back to you. A question that, that somebody asked yesterday in the group chat was what’s the transit, how hard is it to transition from flip the flip business into the multifamily business and you talking about coming from the single family into the multifamily.

[00:05:08] What is that transition been like for you? Has it been difficult? Talk about the learning curve and some of the things along the way that you’ve had to, get tuned up on yourself? Sure,

[00:05:19] Roschelle McCoy: absolutely. So I will say it’s not an incredibly difficult transition if you’re going from no real estate experience into jumping straight into multi-family honestly, I wouldn’t anticipate that’s a little tougher transition just because there’s so much to learn, but because I’d been in the smaller, multi and single family space for awhile, I had some experience with underwriting properties.

[00:05:44] I had some experience with doing a couple of different types of creative financing strategies. I’d done some hands-on landlording and property management. You learn so much through those experiences and you can. Not all of those are the same and multifamily, the skills are transferable and still applicable just in, in different ways.

[00:06:02] So all of that experience is good. You don’t have to have it to jump into multifamily, but it couldn’t hurt as well. If someone tells you start small, start single family and move up, it is one way to do it. And it’s the path that a lot of people choose, but you don’t necessarily have to go that well, go that way you can start from essentially nothing to no experience and move into multi-family.

[00:06:23] There’s just a lot to learn and there’s some different terminology and things that you’ll run in with the multi-family side of things that you wouldn’t with a single.

[00:06:31] Mike Morawski: Thanks. Great explanation. Hey Mike. What was the defining moment for you? You came from a pretty robust career you could have probably went out and been much more successful in that career, but what was the defining moment for you to say, I’m done.

[00:06:47] Mike Angelo: So yeah, I was drinking corporate Kool-Aid for 20 years. And that was my retirement plan, right? Like I’m going to be at this company for forever. And it was never really a vision to be an entrepreneur and leave it. So I think the turning point, and it still haunts me to some degree is, I have an eight year she’s eight year old, eight year old now, but every time I would leave the house, the first five years of her life, she started talking around two or three, she’d just say, bye dad.

[00:07:09] Every time I walk out the door and I was gone, I was to travel all the time and it would crush me really. Thinking about I’m missing out on, her life. And so I was trying to find a way out and the last year or so before my position was eliminated I was listening to those podcasts and going, Hey, I can do real estate.

[00:07:27] And I flipped houses in oh 7 0 8. I don’t talk about it much. Cause it was pretty short and pretty ugly. So that was my only exposure to single family. And so I’m like, I’m not doing that again. I’m going right to multifamily. And I agree, Rochelle, you got to have some education and some support behind you.

[00:07:41] Cause it’s a whole nother world. I knew no one in the marketplace, no one in the space at all. And so yeah, I went out and got some formal education to understand the vernacular and how to go about it. But my attorney point was my family and trying to find a way to be there for them more often.

[00:07:57] Mike Morawski: I’m pretty good at making people cry. So see that, that might happen today. Hey, Kevin what is the biggest attraction to you? You’re successful in your own, right? On the residential side, you got a pretty decent business, you’ve scaled it a little better, you’ve cleaned it up.

[00:08:12] You can scale it a little more. What’s the attraction to multifamily for you.

[00:08:18] Kevin Dugan: The attraction of multifamily is for me on how you can execute these deals. The level of people that you play with as well as also a much higher level. So for instance, on the residential side, depending on the price point of your assets, you’re going to be looking to keep the costs as low as possible across the board.

[00:08:36] And oftentimes that attracts individuals where they don’t have they’re not quite as sophisticated as what you’d like in terms of just general business practice. So on the multi-family side You can create amazing teams with incredible people that compliment your skillsets and actually move larger dollar amounts into, assets that would take you a lot of people and time and coordination on the residential side.

[00:09:03] So I’m generally an optimist on people should invest and learn how to invest and find the lane that you feel comfortable with. But there’s a lot of attractive elements to multifamily specifically on the value added. To be able to go into a building and, renovated almost like an apartment flip update all the finishes, change out the entire tenant base to something where it’s going to be easier to manage.

[00:09:26] They’re willing to pay market rents. They love their place and they’re going to take care of it. And that increase in revenue is going to be a multiple of value based on the cap rates that people are selling out in that market. So there’s a lot to love about the multi-family space.

[00:09:41] Mike Morawski: Yeah. I’m just going to let everybody know Kevin and Rochelle are my partners doing it. We’re doing our first deal together. All three of these panelists are coaching clients of mine and Kevin and Rochelle. And I decided a couple months ago, Hey, let’s move forward and do a deal. And I think that when we started.

[00:10:00] We really didn’t know where it was going to go. We really didn’t know what it was going to look like. Kevin and I started talking and all of a sudden I said, Hey, I think we need to bring Rochelle to the table for some marketing help and for some compliance help. And Rochelle, Kevin talked about teams, he opened the door a little bit.

[00:10:18] I spent a lot of time yesterday and today talking about building relationships, building teams, building strategic alliances. What does that mean for you in the midst of what we’re doing?

[00:10:33] Roschelle McCoy: All the team is so important. You really gotta, you don’t just want to jump in with a couple of people that you have just met or, you’ve barely gotten to know into a partnership because these are long-term partnerships, right?

[00:10:44] You go into a multi-family deal and you’re looking at. Five seven years plus sometimes. And you’re committed to those people for that duration of time. So you really need to make sure that, the partners, you understand their core values that they align with yours. Talent is also something to really look at and consider as well.

[00:11:05] You want to make sure that their skillsets align with yours and compliment yours, but don’t necessarily compete with yours. So if you have, a team of three people that are all incredibly analytical while you’re all thinking very similar and may have similar strengths where there might be some blind spots or some oversights on things, if you don’t have somebody on the team that thinks a little differently than you.

[00:11:27] So you want to make sure that, the skill sets in your team are very complimentary and not necessarily. Picking people that are always thinking the same as you while that’s fun to hang out with people that always think, like you think it’s maybe not the best approach in in terms of looking for partners in this business.

[00:11:43] Mike Morawski: So I like what you said about three, and there’s a proverb that says a strand of three is not easily broken. I think there’s a lot of heat to be taken in that. I so Kevin, I’ve talked a little bit about how you and I grinded each other from time to time about things and, but how important that is in our team structure, because it’s helped us look at things from a different light, maybe a little bit more thorough than one of us may have looked at things on her own.

[00:12:15] Why don’t you talk about, your relationship to our team and what you do and why that’s important in your.

[00:12:23] Kevin Dugan: Yeah, for sure. You touched on a lot of really important points there. Rochelle and Mike team is mainly a group of people with a common interest to accomplish a larger goal.

[00:12:34] And it shouldn’t be so much a competition internally. It’s more so how do we overall achieve success that we’re trying to reach and by providing different. Perspectives regarding this specific opportunity allows us to really understand the entire investment as a whole and make sure that we feel comfortable with the upside the best case scenario, the worst case scenario and what we’re expected to achieve on this.

[00:13:00] And, to really emphasize Rochelle’s point in multifamily and in business, and in most relationships with people, you really want to aim towards a long-term relationship. And that’s where I really try to emphasize indicate I’ve been a couple of partnerships in the past where, early on in my entrepreneurial career we lost sight of that center point in that core ground.

[00:13:22] And I think that’s really important in any type of business relationship to make sure you over-communicate when you’re working with somebody’s personal and professional relationships, because that’s where a lot of downfalls come, over time, if people, your. Feel like voices heard that can be a detriment to the overall long-term success of what you’re trying to accomplish.

[00:13:41] So I’d say my general skill sets, I try to bring, I’m like a middle ground to everything. I’m definitely a connector overall. I love to sell stuff in general. That’s like my most favorite thing to do. But being a property manager, general contractor, I have a lot of broad skills that kind of fill that in between gaps on what we’re working on over here.

[00:14:00] Mike Morawski: Nice. Good job guys. Hey so I just want to make a comment that anybody who is in the audience and has a question for in general about anything we’re talking about or for somebody specific, please throw it in the chat. Carol, interrupt me and we’ll get that answer for you. Hey, Mike, I know that you in the last few months have built a really good solid team, a bunch of, couple of people that are in your space in your world, that you guys work really well together.

[00:14:32] Talk about the different partners, the different roles that they play now, and you don’t have to talk about who they are, but what the different roles, right? Who does what and why that’s important on your team.

[00:14:44] Mike Angelo: Yeah. Rochelle, Kevin, you guys hit it on the spot, right? Like the core values is so key and then finding those complimentary skills is also vital.

[00:14:52] And I will say, in the first January, 2020 is when I started the business and I was like, I’m going to do this on my own. And I went four months just trying to underwrite, trying to be the business developer, trying to capital raise and put offers out. Like we never even got to asset management.

[00:15:07] Cause we didn’t get a deal done, but quickly I realized that you got to find some folks that you have alignment with. And so that’s what I did, I spent a career building teams for corporations. And along the networking events and the meetups and investor calls I connected with a handful of folks.

[00:15:21] That I found, that could align with our vision. Number one, we’re good people to start with align with vision. And then we all got along and we were like, Hey, here’s how we’re going to get there. And for example, we have three partners in the main company and we have three other team members that are, we’re working on a big development deal.

[00:15:37] And I would say the number one skillset that I lacked was the ability to access more capital. So I think I can go out there and talk about the deal, sell the deal. Underwrite. I don’t love underwriting. I’m good at it. I don’t love it. And so my CFO, right? He is, he’s an analyst, he’s an engineer by trade.

[00:15:56] And he’ll dig into the details and I want to skim this. I want to be at 30,000 feet, understand enough to go out and pitch it. And my partner, Michael, can focus on high level, bringing in the capital. He doesn’t want to get into the weeds. That’s not his skillset. So we look at it, if you have a spectrum of optimism, I’m like always half full.

[00:16:13] And then my CFO is always like the pessimist, and Michael’s in the middle. And so we really can balance each other and see those things. You guys talk about getting blind. I’ve been blindsided a few times, right? Just not paying attention to some of the negative information that’s out there.

[00:16:26] And granola, my partner will be like, Hey, what about this? I’m like, yeah, I didn’t even think about that. So it drives me nuts sometimes. Cause I feel like sometimes we don’t get there, but yeah, it’s good to have three because then, there’s no, there’s a majority always typically. I think it’s a great place to start and you gotta have that core team and we’ve been working together for a year now and we bought our first asset together and now we’re obviously looking for more assets to buy and getting into development and doing a few other things that are pretty cool, but there’s no way we could have been where we are today.

[00:16:56] If we didn’t start to build that trust and it took a year, it’s a marriage, no one talks about it, but it is a marriage for five to seven years. And so you got to look at it that way.

[00:17:05] Mike Morawski: Here’s a, I like your comment about not liking underwriting. I think shell has all that intimate.

[00:17:11] And and here’s the part I don’t like. I don’t like taking the data and putting the data in, but once the data is in, then I like to go and play with it. I like to go and this’ll be clear for anybody listening tomorrow when we do, when we go through underwriting. But when I can start to look at what if we do this?

[00:17:27] And what if we do this? I’m a big, what if guy? And what if this happens and what if this happens? Because when you stress it, when you test it like that, it makes a difference. I’m like, I wanted to ask a question. So is there just three of you, including your KP, or do you have a KP that makes it for

[00:17:45] Mike Angelo: AP does make it for he’s not necessarily on the permit team, he’s in an advisory position at this point.

[00:17:50] And so he’s been great to help us get qualified for the debt. So you mentioned earlier. Get some deals done and you got to have someone with a sizable balance sheet based on the property you’re trying to purchase and the qualifications to go get the loan. Yeah he’s on our team, but in an advisory capacity, our, in our goal is once we get to deal three or four we’d still love to have him as an advisory, but we, our core team wouldn’t necessarily need to have him on the team if we wanted to go after some maybe smaller deals.

[00:18:17] Mike Morawski: Okay, great. Hey Rochelle. So here’s what I’d like to start a conversation now about is technology talk about a couple of pieces of technology that you like the best that maybe we use on the team or you use independently however that works, but talk about technology and how that works for, the.

[00:18:40] Roschelle McCoy: Sure. Absolutely. So I’m a lover of tech. I’m often guilty of maybe sometimes. So many gizmos and tools out there that are so fun and fascinating for me to play with it. Sometimes I find myself getting involved in too many things and I’ve had, Mike and Kevin leveled me out a little when we’re, I’m trying to introduce too many different tools to our team.

[00:18:59] But I would say a couple of my favorites would be slack for communication within your team. So it’s an awesome way. If you guys aren’t familiar with slack. To send instant messages back and forth. You can tag other members, you can share files, you can share just basic messages, links, et cetera. So a great way to keep your your team up to speed on everything that’s happening.

[00:19:19] You can create different they’re called channels and slacks, but basically just topics, right? We have a slack channel for our project. That’s all around. The major components that we are trying to or work streams as you may call them that we’re trying to accomplish. It’s a really great way to keep organized and keep everybody up to speed.

[00:19:37] So I would say that’s probably my number one. We’ve been using Dropbox a lot as well for file storage. We often, if we post a file in Dropbox, we’ll go share that into the slack channel. So we have that link in multiple places, but it’s another great way to keep people keep all of our files in one place and keep things very nicely organized.

[00:19:57] We use air table as well. So a basic place to store and manage a lot of information. That could be if you’re not familiar with air table, it’s similar to it’s got a lot of functionality, but it’s, it has some spreadsheet functionality that has some like Kanban board functionality for which is like a project management style.

[00:20:19] So if you’re familiar with those types of tools irritable table can do a lot of those different things, but we have a lot of information stored in there with different checklists contact lists, things like that. You can assign out tasks through air table. So there’s a lot of really cool capabilities in there.

[00:20:35] From a project management perspective to keep you organized, to keep people on task, et cetera. Those are probably my favorite tools that we use the most. Of course we’ve got other things like an investor portal that we use and we’re using some Google technologies and things as well.

[00:20:51] But I would say those slack, Dropbox and air table are probably my three favorite.

[00:20:56] Mike Morawski: And just to maybe bring some clarity to the air table thing, we used air table when we did our due diligence, because we have a good, we have a solid checklist that we’ve updated and continued. It became very fluid as we did our due diligence and working with our intern we had the ability to make changes on the go update.

[00:21:17] Things, look at things. He was able to pull data up real quick when we needed it. I’m good. If I know how to turn a computer on where’s the on and off switch. I’m good. Beyond that you guys help lead me along in some of that other stuff. My CA oh yeah. One last question I wanted to ask.

[00:21:32] Dropbox. And slack, we keep most of our files and Dropbox. Do you think that is there a protection issue or a security issue between Dropbox or slack? One is better than the other or any opinion on that?

[00:21:46] Roschelle McCoy: Yeah, so I would say Dropbox is where you store files. Slack is where you share files. So you can share things direct from Dropbox.

[00:21:54] But for example, if I wanted to store a file somewhere, there’s no storage component of slack necessarily you can attach a file, but it’s not a place you would want to go and store all of your files necessarily. That’s what Dropbox is for. But then you copy your Dropbox link. You paste that into your slack channel and then people can go to that slack channel and quickly find it.

[00:22:15] If they want to find it there. Of course they can always go to Dropbox to find it as well. But it’s just a really quick, easy way to manage all of that information. Within those two systems and those, the two systems integrate with each other as well. So if I’m in Dropbox, I post a file. I instantly want to share that out with my can Kevin, I can send a link send a slack communication, right from Dropbox that I’ve posted that new file there.

[00:22:37] So I don’t actually have to leave Dropbox and go into slack to post that message, the two systems, talk to each other and make that really seamless and easy.

[00:22:45] Mike Morawski: Nice. Thank you. Hey Mike, how about you? What what two technology platforms are best serve

[00:22:52] Mike Angelo: your business? So that’s definitely slack has been really good.

[00:22:54] So we’ve been using that. We started at that for our development deal. Cause we have a lot of parties, coming in and just trying to share information similar we’re using G drive and Dropbox. We need to figure out which one we’re going to do for our document storage. And then one of our team members, we talk about skills.

[00:23:07] He’s he’s our project manager, so he’s keeping us organized. And for those, on the, not just on panel, but everyone listening, being organized is so key in this business. There’s so much stuff when you just buy one deal, until you buy their second deal and your third deal.

[00:23:20] And some things will become easier, but stuff gets lost in email and it’s not the place to put it. So come up with a solution. I just sent air table to my PM right now. I said, they check this out cause we’re shopping a sauna right now. Sauna is another project management tool and it’s pretty robust, maybe more than we need, but we’re trying to build out for the future.

[00:23:38] Those are the two is, is is slack, mostly bike. And then invest next and HubSpot both have CRM components. So we use next for our portal and, there’s some content or contact management stuff in there it’s pretty white. So we leaned over to HubSpot and we are doing our email campaigns on that.

[00:23:55] All of our newsletters, which is not my strength that someone else has that strength to write newsletters. And then we’re doing our meetup communication. So most of our investor kind of contact management, isn’t HubSpot, and it’s been pretty good. It’s not cheap. But it’s a great way to again, get us where we want to get to HubSpot’s expensive.

[00:24:11] It’s it’s relative, I think for, if it’s okay to share it’s probably about six, 700 bucks a year, so it’s not too bad as you’re getting started. But as you build out over a thousand or 2000 contacts, it starts to get you, they want to move you into the pro package. So try to stick to the starter package as long as you can.

[00:24:26] And and keep that contact below a thousand. So yeah.

[00:24:29] Mike Morawski: Kevin might be able to shed some light on the difference between a Sana and slack. And Kevin,

[00:24:40] Kevin Dugan: Kevin, hang on one

[00:24:40] Mike Morawski: second. Go for it. Just talk about a couple of platforms, not all of them that you use.

[00:24:47] Kevin Dugan: Yeah. I would say I’m also guilty of using too much technology and there’s a certain point where it becomes technological clutter. The most important thing when you integrate technology is to, choose the platforms that you want to use and then use them extensively and make sure that the team knows that to use them extensively.

[00:25:05] Because as soon as you start to spread out to too many items, you’re just, you’re spread thin. Slack is pretty much, I would say, almost essential or some sort of equivalent cause you need to get off emails. Emails are probably the worst way to keep track of, project current. And I’m using a sauna pretty heavily as well for the task management portion.

[00:25:21] I have three virtual assistants right now that are on the team. We’ve created a bunch of, channels and projects for them to make sure that we can handle tasks on a timely basis. Cause exactly as Mike mentioned, as soon as you got multiple projects going on and even within a single project there’s projects that are occurring, you need to make sure that those timelines are being pushed so that you don’t miss any of the steps in between, which is very easy to happen, especially the bigger, the deal that you do.

[00:25:44] Really, I don’t want to dump into too many more of the technology technological items that I think Mike and Rochelle really hit on some of the major ones. Having digital a digital presence really important. So make sure that you can get as many of the documents digital as possible. And that’s where.

[00:26:00] The Dropbox, Google drive one, drive, whatever your preference is on that. And then on top of it, like a DocuSign or some sort of equivalent, we’ll keep the paper clutter to a limit because that can grow really quickly.

[00:26:14] Mike Morawski: Hey thanks. And you know what? You just said, something that, that was really just very clear and you haven’t said this before in our conversations, you said email is the worst way to handle a conversation that we should be using more.

[00:26:31] And that’s clearer today than you’ve ever said that, but why do we not have James Schmidt and Meghan, and these other people that are outside on our slack channel, where we can be having those conversations in there and less than the email clutter. So I’m just throwing that out there for thought process for later.

[00:26:53] Maybe we, on the next deal we look at that here. Here’s what’s interesting. I can remember years ago, I’m going to date myself a little. I had an assistant said here, try this email. I said, email what’s that? I said, I’ve never used this. This is stupid. Nobody will ever use email. And now we’re so far behind email.

[00:27:11] It’s crazy. But I use Zoho. Zoho is a pretty robust platform. Mike, I can relate to what you’re saying about HubSpot being expensive because Zoho can be pretty expensive, but there’s a lot of components Zoho has and Zoho is really robust, but here’s the problem, right? They’re so wide. They haven’t gone deep enough.

[00:27:30] So there’s was a lot of technology issues still internally that we fight through and walk through, like with the calendaring system, right? The calendaring system is not the greatest, but I use it because it works and it’s functional and they don’t support something outside. But Zoho. Zoho. I liked for the CRM.

[00:27:50] As I get to more comfortable with it and use it more, it works better for me. And I think that’s anything with any technology, right? As we get more comfortable with it. And the other thing we really didn’t talk about. Somebody mentioned it invest next. I love investment next or those other types of platforms like that today.

[00:28:08] Here’s why when I built my company in the past, I had one employee that all she did was handle all of the investor documents, right? She would send the investor documents, make sure they got signed deal with the IRA company, collect the funds, make sure the funds get deposited. Now it all happens on one platform electronically.

[00:28:30] It pretty much eliminates a staff member right now because it’s simpler for us to do. Now we can run our webinars out there. We can put our offering out there. People can deposit their money right there. We make payments. There. So I think there’s a simplicity in some of what we use. Some of that can get over complicated like Zoho.

[00:28:51] But anyhow, anyway, I don’t

[00:28:52] Mike Angelo: want her to add one thing. Yeah. A little bit of a rabbit hole, but on the tech conversation. So your property management company, that you, if you third party, we were fortunate to have a company that had a lot of investment in tech as well. They use Yardi, which is pretty common for managing the financing of the property.

[00:29:09] But then during DD, it was just myself and my two partners that showed up and we didn’t have any tools to attract 60 units and walk every door, take a picture. So they use a software called happy co a lot of PM groups use it, and it’s incredible. They have a smartphone and they take pictures of units conditions.

[00:29:26] And then I have a full checklist and all I have to do at the end of their report is I go online. They gave me access. I could see every single unit, how many toilets need to be changed. Faucets, ballpark costs. You can put it all in there. So now you have a pack. Either you might need to use to retrade, but at least if you’re going back and putting your business plan together, Hey, this is our CapEx plan, but this is what it should be based on these findings.

[00:29:48] Versus I picture a clipboard, a pen and go home. Here’s what we’ve got to check mark. And so the use of tech from your third party is pretty important too. Yeah,

[00:29:57] Mike Morawski: absolutely. A hundred percent.

[00:29:59] Kevin Dugan: I, Mike, I totally just reminded me that I need to activate my happy co on my building and platform. So

[00:30:05] Mike Morawski: there we go.

[00:30:07] Funny how this ha funny how this works for everybody. How about raising capital? I want to go to that conversation right now. Best techniques for raising capital. Oh, let me do this. Somebody asked what robust, what does robust mean? And I want to make sure, I’m guilty of this too language, D is due diligence might just mention DD robust just means very big, very wide.

[00:30:31] I explained that, Zoho is a very wide platform. There’s a lot of systems, a lot of apps you can put on Zoho, but it doesn’t go very deep. So their technology service of that, isn’t very deep. There’s glitches with the calendar where if somebody schedules an appointment on my calendar, It populates all my calendars and it shows up five times in my calendar.

[00:30:58] So it’s just, it’s crazy. There’s glitches that need to be worked out robust just means that it’s so big, so wide there’s so much you can do with something that it gives you a lot of opportunity. Let’s talk about raising capital. Rochelle, would you start, I want to just go down the road.

[00:31:15] Somebody’s just starting out, going out to raise capital you’re brand new. You, it’s not something you’ve done before you had some concerns about it. Talk about some of the results that you’ve been seeing and some of the techniques you’ve been using to raise.

[00:31:31] Roschelle McCoy: Sure. I definitely won’t claim to be a capital reason expert because I, as Mike said, I am still very new in my journey with that.

[00:31:38] But the like many things in multifamily networking is really key. So make sure you get out there and network, go look at what other whether successful capital raisers are doing and emulate them. There’s so many things in this industry that people have already figured out and they’re doing it really well and there is nothing wrong with doing what other people are doing.

[00:31:58] Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, don’t try and figure it out all out on your own, go out and talk to those people. The thing, one of the things I love the most about this multifamily community is people are so open and will willingly share their knowledge, their tools, just about anything you’d ask for.

[00:32:13] They’re willing to share that with you because they want to lift others up and help other people be successful. So get out there and no. Obviously you want to network with people that you think you have the ability to raise capital from, that have an interest in investing in real estate, but you also want to do a lot of networking with experienced syndicators or people in the multi-family space that are actively running the deals because they can really teach you the ropes around what it is you need to do and what are good ways to capital raise and maybe some failures they’ve had.

[00:32:42] And those are all great ways for you to learn and grow and accelerate your journey without having to try and figure it all out on your own.

[00:32:53] Mike Morawski: Kevin, any thoughts?

[00:32:56] Kevin Dugan: I think those are all really great points. I think my both Mike, sorry, all of us have a lot of experience in the sales side and in general, when it comes to business and real estate, it’s.

[00:33:09] And for me, one of the simplest concepts on sales is ultimately it’s a numbers game. The more people you speak to, the more opportunity you create, the better chance you have of, bringing on investors to your deal. And that’s where it’s it’s an attribute. That’s not everybody doesn’t have to do.

[00:33:29] It’s for certain types of personalities who like to be social and engage and are okay with, getting a lot of nos because in a lot of instances, there are many failures and no isn’t so much personal. It’s more so situated. And then when it really comes down to it, you have to understand the person that you’re working with, the person that you’re talking to, you need to understand what they need and what’s valuable to them.

[00:33:51] And if you can really get down to the core of that, and you truly, care about what that individual wants and needs, and you have a product and service that can help them achieve that particular goal. I don’t really think anything’s salesmanship. It’s a deeper understanding of, do you have value to provide to that individual?

[00:34:10] That’s always been my approach when it comes to raising capital really to try and help that individual, sometimes they know they need the help. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you have the product that they need. Sometimes you don’t have the product. And ultimately, we’re all in a great position to be able to provide value to people and hopefully help them change their lives in a way that, we’re trying to emulate.

[00:34:30] You might touch on. Financial freedom and gaining control of time. And that is a very powerful aspect of real estate that I think each and every one of us can attest to. Thanks,

[00:34:42] Mike Morawski: Kevin. Let me just are you guys okay on time? Does anybody have to jump at the top of the hour? Do you have about 15 more minutes?

[00:34:49] Cause I went late on this morning session, so you guys are good. Okay. Thank you. How about you might capital

[00:34:55] Mike Angelo: raising. So you guys both hit it, right? We’re in the people that business, this is the business of people and prior life sales are not right. You’re out there helping people.

[00:35:01] I never looked at it as I’m soliciting. I always remember seeing no soliciting signs when I’d walk offices. I just blew right past six and I’m like, no, I’m not listening. I’m helping this business. And I take the same approach to capital raising it’s. It. Challenging and difficult at the beginning.

[00:35:16] And I never spent enough time looking about it. Our mentors unfortunately said, Hey, go find a deal. The money will come. And that’s not true in any which way. So if you’re getting started, always be capitalized. I teach that. I know. So you got to do both, but always talk about what you’re doing and people will naturally migrate to you.

[00:35:32] Again, you gotta have a little bit of a friendly personality that people want to do business with people they like, and I like know and trust, right? It’s always the three year. And so the first six months was like, I had friends and family and I was a little bit apprehensive. We’d go talk to strangers and then just started to push myself out there and get uncomfortable and talk about what we do.

[00:35:48] And people are like, Hey, I’m looking to invest. And a lot of times it was people, you had no idea it had money. And so it’s, it was really opening to go. Just always talk about it and you never know what you’ll come. You never know who you’re standing next to in an elevator either. Just be ready to talk about it.

[00:36:03] And I’ve been successful that way too. I have one good example of being in an elevator, in a hotel on vacation and just was, I don’t even know how we got the conversation started, but as a real estate guy, he’s yeah, I’m looking to, I have 200 K in a 10 31, I got a place, what do you got coming?

[00:36:16] Just randomly in a, in an elevator. So I had my shirt on, so that, that helped the conversation. Just always talk about it, be passionate about what you do. And I think the capital raising efforts become easier.

[00:36:29] Mike Morawski: Mike, what’s your big stretch goal that we’ve been talking to.

[00:36:31] Kevin Dugan: As far as doors or deals,

[00:36:33] Mike Morawski: Relationships,

[00:36:34] Mike Angelo: We were talking about having a couple of solid relationships with some billionaires.

[00:36:37] So reaching out to billionaires has been, my goal reached out to my Elon Musk a couple of times. Kevin, I forget his last name from from what do you call it? The dealer on shark tank. O’Leary and a few others are not coming to mind as you called me out on the spot, but a couple of different million billionaires is my goal.

[00:36:54] And I’m using mail. I do know a handful of like DECA millionaires, right guys that are in the tens to hundreds of millions using them to find those billionaires, but it’s slow. So unsteady, but thanks for reminding me. I got to do a better job

[00:37:05] Mike Morawski: this week. Mike, do I stretch you on our coaching calls to push you in that direction a little bit all the time.

[00:37:11] Mike Angelo: And even if it’s a reminder, it’s still a stretch, right? So I appreciate that.

[00:37:15] Mike Morawski: Yeah, you bet. You bet. And I it’s been fun to watch you grow. So here’s what I want to know. I want to stay on this capital, raise a conversation for another minute techniques. Give me a technique. Rochelle. Everybody gave me a technique that you use, whether it’s, picking up the phone and calling somebody a LinkedIn outreach a social media post, what is a technique you use to attract people?

[00:37:41] Roschelle McCoy: Sure. I would say one that I’ve found success with thus far is attending my local REI meetup. They always have a presenter. We always have some open networking time. And then it, usually the MC of the event will either at the start of the event or like right before we do networking, he’ll say, he’ll get up to my, get the microphone out and say, all right, who has a need?

[00:38:01] Who is looking to buy, a single family or duplex and who’s looking to sell, all right, you guys go talk to each other. Who’s looking to short-term rent and who’s looking for a property manager management company that knows short term rentals. Okay. You guys go talk. Yeah, he’ll always throw out the who else has a need.

[00:38:15] And I’ll grab the microphone and say, if anybody is interested in learning more about real estate syndications or is interested in a passive investment, let me know. And several times I’ve been, crowded with people when they start the networking. And it’s a great way just to, to meet people locally, you’re there in person, so they know you’re real.

[00:38:35] They know you’re, they can see if you’re a genuine and authentic and really get to know you in that moment, which I find it’s been, which I found has been a lot more effective than just some of the digital communications, because anybody can go to put on a good front digitally over the internet.

[00:38:49] But to really see somebody in person and interact with them and see how they click and what their goals are, I think is a lot more powerful than anything you can do digitally.

[00:38:58] Mike Morawski: And you put out some really great digital content and I’m glad you’re my partner because I get to steal that stuff and not feel as bad about it.

[00:39:06] So Hey Mike, How about you?

[00:39:09] Mike Angelo: So I think a combination of the digital, but the in person I’ll say the the meetup has been really helpful. I have a young man helping me with the meetup piece, cause it’s, again, not my strength. So he’s coordinated a bunch and gotten actually a lot of folks through bigger pockets. Believe it or not to attend a local. Commercial meetups. So there’s only two or three in our, in the Phoenix, Metro there’s three multifamily focused meetups. We’re one of them. We’re definitely not the biggest, but we’ll, hopefully we’ll be one day. And so a lot of these folks come in with that single family mentality.

[00:39:35] And we, when we go up there and we talk, usually we have a guest, but we’ll say, Hey, we help everyday investors, find opportunities to make their money work a little bit harder. And if you’re not familiar with multifamily, here’s some education. So we always take the education approach and talk a little bit about why multi-family is so awesome because the math the scalability and talking about, if I increase rents $25 a month on a hundred unit apartment building at a five cap, that’s $600,000 of added value that I’ve created.

[00:40:03] And you can’t do that in single family. So it opens eyes. And usually, we have one or two people that come about afterwards and say, I’d like some more information and we send them to our website, get them a login and capture their data. But I, I agree with Rochelle, the human. One-on-one in person contact is so key.

[00:40:18] Zoom calls have helped, right? It’s been the only way to do that. But actually my partner, we met, we still haven’t met actually. We’ve only virtually met over the last 12 months. It’s crazy. He’s locked up in California. But yeah, it’s a, you can still do it this way. It’s just not as good as doing it in person,

[00:40:33] Mike Morawski: it sounds like Kevin and I, and Rochelle, we haven’t met Rochelle in person yet.

[00:40:38] We’re waiting to close this deal and have a nice steak dinner, big

[00:40:42] Mike Angelo: dinner. There you go. Even before.

[00:40:47] Mike Morawski: Go ahead. Kevin

[00:40:48] Kevin Dugan: yeah. Once the engraved points by Mike and Rochelle, the social media aspect is is important to have a bigger reach and really on the social media front. It’s how consistent you are. And I’m guilty of this. Honestly, I’ve been a ghost on the social media front, mainly because I’m stuck operating over here, which is not my favorite cup of tea, being a big picture sales person.

[00:41:11] But once the, and the more people know what you’re doing, the easier it is for you to have a conversation. On how you can create value for them. When actually meeting with people in person, like I said, I always love to start off with understanding who they are, asking questions about what they want.

[00:41:26] What’s important to them in their life. How far they’ve gone down the rabbit hole of investing and in those types of conversations, that’s where you get an opportunity to grab on a couple of points where you can help educate. And the educational component is where you start to build rapport and trust because you’re not asking for anything you’re just giving.

[00:41:44] And when you give to, your network, your community, new contacts, they see that you come from a place of abundance and where you’re trying to help. That immediately brings rapport to them and trust. And when dude, when deals do come about that’s where it’ll give you an opportunity to potentially bring them onto your project.

[00:42:05] And anybody who’s been in sales, usually you get 5, 6, 7 nos before you get a yes. And it’s the same thing in real estate. When you’re raising capital, most people aren’t going to invest on the first deal, unless like you blow them out of the water with the deal, or they absolutely love what you got going on.

[00:42:21] Or the timing’s just perfect. It’s going to be on the second interaction, that third interaction where they’re like, okay, Kevin, Mike Rochelle, there, they’re legit. They’re in this game, they’re in this space, they’re professionals and they continuously bring opportunity. Let me see what they have going on.

[00:42:35] It’s one of those things where honestly many millionaires have been made in real estate. It’s not a sophisticated game, but it’s also a game where you need to continuously improve. And if you put in time into this. Most, any one of us can achieve financial freedom. And then when you talk to people who’ve been in it for a long time, a lot of it comes down to the contribution.

[00:42:51] You start to realize you got all your time back, how do you make an impact in this world that’s beyond just making money. And, that’s another thing that I really love about this space.

[00:43:01] Mike Angelo: Nice.

[00:43:02] Mike Morawski: Well-spoken I, yesterday I covered about 20 points of syndication and sponsorship and the structure around that and the business component around that.

[00:43:12] But one of the, I covered a bunch of points about how to vet a sponsor, whether you want to be a sponsor, whether you’re going to pick a partner to be your partner as a sponsorship team, or whether you are going to be a passive investor investing into a deal. And. A lot of that is, people might not really be attracted to, like you said, Kevin, to the deal, but people like you, if people like you and they like your sponsorship team and they like where you’re headed and the vision of your company, Mike, you guys have it, we have it as a team, the three of us with Ian, I think that just, that brings loads to the table for people to look at just, personal opinion for whatever it’s worth.

[00:43:54] So I think there’s different ways. And of course I’m old school, right? Old school for me is pick the phone up and call somebody, talk to somebody and ask for a referral. Hey Rochelle, you wouldn’t know anybody who might be interested in investing in a real estate deal. If I asked that question a hundred times to a hundred people, somebody’s going to say, oh yeah, I would, so it’s just old school, right?

[00:44:16] So last question guys, last round. I really appreciate you being here today. Doesn’t look like we have much coming out of the 10 audience, but what I’d like to know is, do you have any market concerns today? And are you looking at things today differently than you looked at things six months ago?

[00:44:39] Like you get started?

[00:44:40] Mike Angelo: Yeah. I think the fundamentals of our buy box and the way we underwrite haven’t changed. It’s so easy to start to speculate because a lot of folks are speculating right on that exit cap or where things will continue to grow. We’re taking a pretty big risk by developing, right?

[00:44:55] So we’re betting on three years from now, what will happen when our project is built. It’s I would say the thing on value add or existing deals is we’re still trying to focus on making sure there’s a minimum cash. So five, 6% minimum cashflow on, upon, on acquisition, right? Not the longterm released acquisition so that we have a little bit of hedge.

[00:45:15] If we’re not in the flip business, our, most of our modeling is around five, seven year hold. And so if the building isn’t cash flowing, let’s just make sure we’re not missing something significant, but I can’t speculate all of my investors capital. And we always take that fiduciary perspective to say, we have a lot of money coming in the sidelines.

[00:45:31] It’s funny, going back to the last topic after our first deal, all the folks that said no, or Hey, where’s your next deal? And I’m like, man, where were you? When I was struggling to find my first cap price, but it’s all good. Look, we got more deals coming, but there, it’s our responsibility to make sure that the deal works.

[00:45:47] And if we can’t get the exit price, that can’t be the only lever we have. And Mike, you hit it earlier on in this morning session was bridging. Bridge debt is supposed to be for unstabilized deals. But right now in the Q4 of 2021, that’s all you can get and they’ll allow you to lever up.

[00:46:02] They’ll allow you to go 85, 90% plus a hundred percent of your capital expenditure. So you could be over a hundred percent of your purchase price. And all it takes is a couple of things to adjust and you could be under water. And I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel like there’s going to be a shift.

[00:46:19] And the best, the way we’re protecting ourselves is to make sure we’re not over levered. We’re heavily focused on operations to maximize cashflow so that if things go, we have to hold an asset for an extra year or two or three, it doesn’t matter. Investors still get paid.

[00:46:34] Mike Morawski: So that bridge, that’s an interesting conversation.

[00:46:36] And I talked a lot about that yesterday and the point around it is that what you said? So if I go out and I do a 80%. A loan to value on a bridge debt piece and thinking that, I’ll stabilize this property a little bit, I’ll get it under control. And in six months I’ll go put Palm debt on it.

[00:46:56] What if your permanent just went from what could maybe be a four today? And now it’s a six now you really haven’t solved the problem, right? You’re still in that gutter where it’s a challenge. And I talked a lot about that yesterday. I talked about the, the hundred percent, the hundred thousand dollars single family house, and you’re able to go buy it for, get dead on it for a hundred and a quarter.

[00:47:19] Now you’re paying more and you’re, overbidding on properties and it just doesn’t make sense. The metrics don’t make sense out there. How about you?

[00:47:29] Roschelle McCoy: Yeah, for sure. Our, I think everyone can agree that our economy is going through some unprecedented times with global pandemics and our government printing money. And, we’re just seeing so many different anomalies and things that it’s hard to process that information someday and really be able to take what’s happening and continue to have a conservative approach so that when you are to the point of exiting your properties, that you’ve considered all of the different elements that can come into play there.

[00:48:00] Mike’s right. None of us have a crystal ball, but we’re all doing, the best we can to be as conservative as possible to make sure that you’re underwriting to a specific set of standards to protect yourself and especially your investors throughout the life cycle of those deals.

[00:48:14] Conservativeness is really a key approach that every syndication company should take. And if you’re looking at a group that seems to be maybe pushing the limits with their underwriting and their expectations, it might be a group that you want to, reconsider partnering with or putting your money with.

[00:48:30] Definitely something to look out for there, but yeah, just keeping a consistent and constant pulse on the market, especially the local markets where you are, because, we, it’s easy to look at the macro, right? When you hear big headlines and things, but you really also have to know what’s going on, not just in your core market, but the sub market as well, specifically the area surrounding your properties.

[00:48:52] Knowing the different things that are happening there, the different environments, the, the culture and the crime and the, the job growth and all that stuff is really critical and important to make sure that you got your Property properly underwritten with those conservative numbers and that you can do the best to hedge all those risks as possible.

[00:49:13] Mike Morawski: What do you up, what do you think needs to be looked at most in, in the underwriting process today? From a conservative standpoint,

[00:49:24] Roschelle McCoy: you want me to answer that one?

[00:49:25] Mike Morawski: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:26] Roschelle McCoy: I would say making sure you’re not projecting too high of rent growth, making sure you’re very conservative on where your cap rates going to be when you exit. Those are probably the, the biggest things that I think people can get a little overzealous on when they’re underwriting and just, a few.

[00:49:45] Which points are fractions of percentage points in the wrong direction. On some of those calculations can really change your profile overall. You can really make numbers look good. That really aren’t going to be good. It’s easy to manipulate the numbers, but you really have to make sure you’ve got the fact behind those to to have the confidence that you’re going to be able to achieve what you say you can achieve.

[00:50:09] Mike Morawski: Yeah. The math never lies, it’s always made, it has to be math over emotion. How about you, Kevin?

[00:50:16] Kevin Dugan: Yeah, this is a topic that I definitely get a lot of kicks talking about, for sure. That being said, my guess is as good as anybody else’s. Usually when everybody’s in disagreement it’s a, a few people are going to be cracked on this one.

[00:50:28] Right now, I’d say that overall, the environment isn’t the easiest to invest in. And that’s why it’s really important to invest your money with teams that you have confidence in ability to execute that are going to be around for the long-term. And ultimately we’re responsible for mitigating risk. That’s really our heart main aspect here is acquire assets that have the upside and then make sure that the downside is limited as much as you can.

[00:50:55] Once in great points by Mike and Rochelle, I think the important thing is number one, make sure that you can always cover your debt. That is the reason why people lose assets is because the debt starts to turn crazy and out of control. You can’t exit at the timeline that you thought you could, and then you can’t pay.

[00:51:13] Your debt and you end up losing that asset. I think it’s really important to place cash into assets in general right now, especially as more money is being printed in the U S and there’s a lot of money on the sideline. Typically those are really good indicators that if you hold assets, those assets will go up in value by in good markets.

[00:51:30] So the trend is your friend. I keep hearing that all around the place, but if you buy with momentum, so a lot of the Southeast that we’re focused on Arizona, Texas, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, people in jobs are moving down there in droves from the Northern and Eastern and Midwestern states.

[00:51:51] And you hear that a lot, but honestly, those are going to be the economies that are going to recover the fastest. If there is some madness that hits the. Overall it’s hard to really predict what’s going to happen over the next two to five years. The good thing about commercial real estate is most people are projecting over five to seven year period, and that typically does round out of some sort of correction or recession.

[00:52:14] And as long as you can hold your debt and pay the mortgage and continue to execute on your business plan, you should be all right. So all in all, I would say, it’s one of those environments where I’m trying to use most of my capital up and put into assets all the time. So I still believe in buying right now, but you got to buy, don’t chase deals and get emotional about it. Follow the numbers and be realistic with what the projections can be based on what the market’s showing.

[00:52:41] Mike Angelo: Yeah. Thank

[00:52:42] Mike Morawski: you. Well-spoken you know, and really, I just want it. They not our chemist, but we all study it. We all look at it.

[00:52:51] We’re listening to somebody. We’re talking to somebody, whether it’s somebody who’s in the industry a little bit further along than we are a peer that we have or going out there and listen to an economist from one of the major news networks or one of the major brokerage firms. So you gotta get your data.

[00:53:09] So I think you just need to be aware of it. Now, what I want to say is, I don’t think any one of us are afraid to move forward and make an investment or move our buyer property. Just more cautious about it today. And you look at the metrics a little bit deeper. Hey, I really want to thank you guys for being here.

[00:53:28] One more question. Cynthia is asking, how do you balance yourself with ex with education, with educating yourself more at all the podcasts, the webinars, the groups, the meetups, how do you join? What do you join? How do you balance yourself? And what are you doing to learn Rochelle? I’m going to let you tackle that.

[00:53:50] Roschelle McCoy: Sure. So yeah, it’s definitely a balance. You could make. Education a full-time job in this space where you just go out and network and podcasts that, and you can immerse yourself in so much information that you could literally make that a full-time job, but you’re right. Cynthia, at some point you have to go out and take some action.

[00:54:07] And so starting small with little steps when you’re ready to jump into things, take small steps, but take small steps every single day. So don’t just spend a week only educating yourself and make sure that every day of that week, or at least several times that week, you’re taking some actionable steps to achieve your goals, whatever that may be, maybe, it’s building your brand, maybe it’s building your network.

[00:54:33] There’s tons of different ways that you can do that, but you really find that the momentum grows over time. And where I struggled a lot early in my journey was it was like, I felt most of the time I was doing great with the education. Cause that’s easy, right? There’s so much out there.

[00:54:49] It’s easy to find, but figuring out where my role was, where I fit into the larger puzzle of things, the path was not always clear, but what I realized after a period of time was that if I consistently just kept taking this baby steps day after day, the path started to lay out for me. I I could see once I got this one thing done that the next step was, obvious or a little more clear at least than it was before I had completed that first step.

[00:55:16] So just continuing to move forward day by day and sticking with it is really key. And of course, making sure you’re taking actionable steps every day.

[00:55:26] Mike Morawski: Thanks Rochelle. Well-spoken so Mike, Kevin Rochelle taking action, right? Execution is a big thing and, shameless plug for me, but does coaching help?

[00:55:36] Does coaching help you take action? Does it keep you engaged?

[00:55:42] Mike Angelo: Yeah, it absolutely does. And that was perfectly said, Rochelle we sometimes get stuck in analysis paralysis or just, I’m going to continue to educate. And so having someone in your court and holding you accountable, because sometimes we don’t hold ourselves accountable enough is step one.

[00:55:58] So that’s something to definitely consider is make sure you have someone you’re checking in with, it could be one of your partners, right? Like maybe you assign, Hey, I’m going to call brokers this week and you’re going to underwrite a deal, or you’re going to find some capital. And, but that finding capital is too broad.

[00:56:11] I’m going to call it 10 investors this week and tell them about what we’re doing. I’m going to call it 10 brokers and tell them our buy box. This is the type of criteria. Be very specific and they call them smart goals, for a reason. Get down into the gritty. And if you aim for 10 and you only get to two or three, at least you move forward a little bit today and do it again tomorrow and do it again after that.

[00:56:30] And that’s, you learn and it’s trial by fire. You learn on the job. You can sit in front of a zoom meeting all day long for weeks on end and get nothing done. So yeah, have a coach in your corner, have them push you and then have some accountability partners outside of that too. Just to keep you moving forward.

[00:56:46] That’s my.

[00:56:47] Mike Morawski: Thanks. Mike Kevin, any thoughts?

[00:56:51] Kevin Dugan: Yeah. Having a coach is incredible. I highly recommended Mike’s been fantastic. Your mentorship and coaching has been invaluable to push me to clean up my business a lot out here in Chicago, which is something that, how would I say I take a lot of action, but then sometimes I leave the sentence and it’s a strengthened.

[00:57:12] Yeah. Ultimately the solution for that is to clean up those loose ends by hiring more people. It’s been a struggle nowadays. But regarding the coaching, like Mike is my third coach now this he’s mainly the one focused on real estate and I truly believe that. When you work with people with more experience that are able to show you shortcuts, it allows you to get to where you’re trying to get much quicker.

[00:57:35] Coaches, mentors, even just friends who have a lot of experience, in this space, it’s a very abundance mindset. So you can run into a lot of people who are willing to help you shortcut the knowledge is important, but then the hard part is the execution and the diligence to continuously improve with those lessons that are given to you.

[00:57:56] So that’s where it gets a little bit challenging with just life. There’s a lot of distractions overall. Like I said, Mike’s been fantastic in terms of helping me on the property management side, implementing some software that we needed, pushing me towards hiring people quicker. It’s been a little less than on my end where Better to have imperfect action, then the perfect something and take ages to do it because the most successful companies in this world are the ones that fail fast and fail quick and then make the improvements from it.

[00:58:24] So as long as it’s not completely irreversible, it’s better just to take some sort of action, go with it. So definitely want to impart that little nugget. Cynthia, once you get your education, just jump into it, but make sure you, you work with people that you like.

[00:58:40] Mike Morawski: Thanks. Kevin well-spoken guys.

[00:58:41] Thank you. And Kevin, I just want to reiterate one thing you said implemented a couple of things, but we eliminated, we think back when we first started working together, how much stuff did we eliminate from your life, to get you to a place where you could think straight because now you have less clutter, fewer distractions, less things going on.

[00:59:02] I think that, when you think back over the last several months that we’ve been working together, how that has really impacted your business. Which has been, great to watch all three of you actually Hey, I’m honored. I really appreciate you guys being here today.

[00:59:16] Thank you very much. I just appreciate it.