Team Growth in Real Estate Investing

Hey, welcome back to the show! Excited to be here with my friends, James and Christina Spence. They’re a husband and wife team, just like my wife and I. Today, we are going to talk about how they’ve built their business and how they built out departments within their business. As time goes by, a lot of us start as a one-man-band or a husband and wife team and we start to layer in new responsibilities and new departments and it’s very fitting for a growing business. You’re going to get some great information out of today’s show. Let’s get started!

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[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. Excited to be here with my friends, James and Christina today, husband and wife team, just like my, uh, I was gonna say my husband, but my wife and I are also a team have been for the last 12 years. We’re excited to talk about kind of how they’ve built their business and how they’ve kind of built apartments.

And as time goes by a lot of us start as a one man band or a husband and wife team, and we start to layer in new responsibilities and new departments, and it’s very fitting for a growing business. So I think you’re going to get some, uh, some great information out of today’s show.

Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. That real estate is just a vehicle of freedom. A group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading. Real estate investors from across the country meet several times a year at the investor fuel real estate mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as friends and build more fulfilling lives [00:01:00] for all of those around us on today’s show, we’re going to continue our conversations of fueling our businesses and our lives.

I’m glad you’re here.

Hey guys, welcome to the show.

James: [00:01:19] Hey Mike.

Mike: [00:01:21] Good to see you guys. Um, so you guys are not very far away. You’re just a guys. You probably cause they’re probably like 10 miles away from me here. So, uh, some local friends and excited to have our industrial fuel. By the time this comes out, this will already have passed, but have our mr.

Fuel meeting coming up here just next week. So looking forward to seeing you guys in person. Yeah. I think a lot of folks, uh, our investor fuel meeting is, uh, you know, about half of our members are coming to person half we’re gonna join virtually is just the new reality that we live in. Right. But I think a lot of people that are coming in person are excited to, uh, to get out of their cage and uh, come, come see some friends.

So

Christina: [00:01:58] yeah, we certainly, we [00:02:00] certainly are excited investor fuels made a huge difference for us. Some of the last while that we’ve been part of your team and part of the big family.

Mike: [00:02:08] Yep. Yep. Well, I’m excited to talk to you guys. You guys, I knew you guys before you had done any deals and, uh, I’ve seen some amazing growth and you know, the, like me, you guys are corporate refugees.

You left your jobs and put a lot of faith into the real estate investing industry. And it’s, we all know it’s not like all like a milk and honey, right? There’s, there’s lots of ups and downs, uh, for sure. And there always is, but there generally tends to be, you know, if you focus on it more ups than downs, for sure.

And I think a lot of us have some joy in the fact of knowing like, I ain’t never going back to a real job, you know, or they wouldn’t even want me now I’m tainted. Right. But, um, for those that don’t know you very well, maybe you could share your, uh, your kind of backgrounds and how you got into real estate investing.

Why don’t you go ahead and start Christina.

Christina: [00:02:52] Uh, so indeed James and I, uh, have been thinking about this for awhile. Um, we looked at different businesses and where we wanted to be and [00:03:00] what we wanted to do, but we were certain that we wanted to leave corporate America and, um, you know, start our own thing.

Uh, real estate was something we were both very passionate about. And, uh, so after a while of looking, we were fortunate, uh, Mike meet you and Stinson and, and put together and, you know, join your prep Graham. So we left corporate America at the end of 2017. We’ve been at this for about two and a half years now.

Um, I, uh, James was in the financial world and we can talk more about that. And I was in telecommunications and sales and marketing pretty much my whole career. So.

Mike: [00:03:33] Yeah, I have the joy of it. You guys, not only being members of investor pool and, and good friends and members of investor machine as well, our agency, but started off as a coaching students.

Gosh, is that then

Christina: [00:03:44] about two,

Mike: [00:03:45] two and a half years. Is that about right? Yeah, time’s flying. We’re all look much younger, but time is wise. So, so, so James, talk a little bit about your, um, the way you guys are structured. I know when you [00:04:00] first start, you know, it’s one of the things, when you start a new business, that real estate is specifically is it’s, it’s not really a full time job, but a lot of us have left our jobs.

We’re, we’re committed to working full time times two, whatever we have to do. Right. But a lot of times there’s not a ton to do as you get started. And you guys are at a point now where you have several employees and you kind of have grown beyond that. So just kind of maybe talk about if we talk about how you started, um, how you guys.

You know, decided to split up responsibilities.

James: [00:04:28] Sure. So when, uh, when we started, you know, as you noted, um, there, there isn’t a lot to do, you know, on the customer facing side, unfortunately, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re trying to get in front of people. They’re trying to make, uh, make deals. Um, because we were part of the, the coaching program that you had.

Then we were able to just treat that like a job and go through the, you know, the defined curriculum that you had. Um, for the first month or so, and then, you know, it seemed like it no time at [00:05:00] all, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re, you know, starting our marketing dropped our first mailing and, you know, Christina, I kind of laughed about it now.

I, I spent most of my career in sales and sales management. Um, and you know, Christina has spent, you know, most of her career in marketing. So, you know, we’re, we’re definitely people that are used to making presentations. You still have meetings. And the first few times the phone rang, we’re both looking at each other like, well, you know, who’s going to get it.

I mean, and we went from, from that then, you know, almost being afraid of, you know, what are they going to say? And I’m like, wait a minute. You know, I’ve had thousands of interactions as, as has she, but we went from that point to the way we are now. And it was a process. But, um, at that time we did everything together.

We went through the curriculum together, um, so that we were kind of, um, in, you know, in the same gear at the same speed, you know, at the same tempo, went on all the appointments together, you know, pretty much everything that we did. We did, you know, jointly, it was the James and Christina brand and it still is that brand.
[00:06:00] But now it’s very different in that, um, these days, um, Christina does. Um, primarily all of our acquisitions and I do primarily all of our dispositions and then that middle ground, all the, uh, all the other operational stuff that we do, uh, we, we kind of split that up, you know, just however it makes sense.

But, um, we, we layered in, you know, through that time, um, I guess we’ve had four, um, four employees. And, you know, we’ve used VA’s and I, you know, I think we can probably talk about that here in a minute, but as far as how we’re set up, um, we, we strive every day to get even better at, okay. That’s, you know, more Christina’s organization, that’s more James’s organization within the broader organization and treating it just like you would, if you’re working at a fortune 500 company and all right, what’s, what’s my turf.

What’s your turf. How do we work together and how do we, how do we have good corporate fences? Yeah,

Mike: [00:06:59] I’d say, you know, [00:07:00] from my experience, uh, like Lindsay and I are partners, obviously. And, you know, we, we always, we, for 12 years, even though things are relatively clear, sometimes we still have, that’s like, well, I don’t want to do that.

Can you do that? Or like, I don’t want to do that. You know, you have to do you have to write, but I think, um, especially when you’re married and even, and I’ve seen a lot of, you know, non spousal, I guess, kind of partnerships, people that are. Frank we’re best friends and they like eventually hate each other.

Like at the end of the day, you guys got into this, the same reason we did was for, um, to have control over our kind of destiny, right. Financial future and all those things. And what you don’t want us to do is tear your relationship apart. So I think it’s really important. I mean, you guys figured out early on that we have to have kind of departments or responsibilities, and I’m sure that, you know, you’ve gotten to the point to where.

For the most part, you don’t check each other. You don’t question what they do. You don’t have time for that. Right. And so, um, and then as you kind of grow, which we’ll talk about it a little bit here in a minute, as you start to build kind of departments in your business. I mean, we’re not fortunate 500 [00:08:00] companies, but we still need to be structured in a way to where there’s marketing, there’s sales.

There’s, you know, there’s operations for different processes and all those things kind of happen. No matter how small you are, right?

Christina: [00:08:09] Yeah. So, I mean, in real estate, there’s plenty to do. And if you can divvy it up, right. And not duplicate efforts or run into each other, I think that’s great. Also, you know, as you figure out with your partner, what you’re going to do, then you evolve again and you grow some more.

Right. So this is a constant process. Just like in big corporations, you have to continue evolving. You can’t say, well, I did that last year. Well, now the world is different a year later. Right? So we are constantly doing that with a great foundation. I definitely recommend both spouses or non spousal partners, right.

Need to have a really good foundation and trust between themselves in order to make that work.

James: [00:08:45] You also got to be open because to be completely candid, I, I would have assumed when we started this before we had our first meeting. That I would be the acquisitions manager because, you know, I was always kind of the Hunter in my roles.
[00:09:00] I was either doing that or training that. And so I assumed, well, that’ll naturally fall to me because I have the most experience of that, which at that moment I certainly had. But if, if we’re open as to who’s best at what, who likes doing what it turns out, Christina’s actually better at that than I am not.

Not from a training standpoint, cause I’ve had a lot more training, but from a, uh, from, uh, you know, just, uh, an eye of the tire standpoint and wanting it, I mean, she’s like, she’s world-class so you gotta get out of your own way. I mean, I, I couldn’t let my ego say, well, wait a minute, I’m the sales professional, blah, blah, blah.

And would have been, it would have been at the, you know, to our own detriment. So. As you go through that evolution in your business, make sure that you’re always being opened up honest with one with yourself first, but then with one another, Hey, you know what, honey, maybe you’re better at this. Um, you know, why, why don’t we try having you take this on?

And that’s actually, when we came to that realization, that was, you know, one of those big leaps forward in our business.

Mike: [00:09:57] That’s great. Your [00:10:00] background is, you know, primarily more B2B, right? So that’s really more on the disposition side is dealing with other businesses really when you’re selling. Right. I mean, not, not always if you’re selling retail, but, um, yeah, that’s great.

And, and, and the thing is, is like sales in this business is it’s a, it’s a little more. Uh, you know, Chris relationship based, Christina, you know, obviously, you know that she’s your wife, she’s very caring and really spends a lot of time. People really wants to help people. And, um, you know, that’s, that’s a skill that is not necessarily traditional sales, but it’s, um, something that goes well in this industry.

Cause you just trying to solve people’s problems and help them.

James: [00:10:39] Absolutely. And you can’t and you can’t really train to that. You’re either wired that way or you’re not. And I, I, I could Lauren, okay. I need to give a token of appreciation here and, you know, kind of put that on my like daily punch list, but you know, some people that’s.

Instinctive for, and as it is for her, as you noted. And so why, why it’s going on the stream? You know, you should go with that, that, [00:11:00] Hey, that’s naturally Christina, let’s do it.

Christina: [00:11:02] James is very humble. He’s really good with acquisitions as well. I just said I like it more, but he’s amazing and dispositions and I really don’t like, right.

They’re both sales, but it’s a completely different thing. And that was a revelation for both of us that, you know, even though it’s sales and by the way, it’s the same house, one bought at one sold it. We love that. He’s, he’s tremendous at that.

Mike: [00:11:21] Yeah, that’s good. Um, so as you kind of evolve, as you kind of evolve here, then you start to layer in staff.

So it’s pretty typical that, you know, somebody would layer in, uh, an admin or, you know, support person of some sort secretarial type role, um, and then acquisitions and then. Uh, there’s also all the administrative stuff. Right. So, um, I know you guys have used, you’ve largely counted on virtual assistants, helped with a lot of the administrative stuff, right?

Christina: [00:11:47] Yes. And maybe I can take that, you know, it was early in our business. So we just to give you an idea, we dropped off our first mail piece. April, uh, February of 2007, [00:12:00] 2018, right. And somewhere around June, we realized that we really needed to have some help if we’re gonna and continue to grow right. That we can keep consuming things ourselves.

So, absolutely. But we needed to just take that next level of leap and we were both uncomfortable, but we actually decided to bring it two VA’s on, early in our business. And that has made a huge difference. Huge difference, whether it be social media or data processing, where you can talk about more details if you’re interested, but doing it, that, doing that early and bringing on very capable people who are dedicated to the team has been tremendous.

The same. VA’s have been with us for over two years now and are definitely part of the team and the success that we’ve seen. Wait, we love that.

Mike: [00:12:43] Talk about some of your. Of your success in that area? Like what you attributed to you? Cause I, I know we talked a little bit up front and I I’ve been using virtual assistants for, I don’t even know, 10 years, 10 years or so, like Anna has been on my team for sure.

Seven or eight years. And she’s amazing. Right. And [00:13:00] so, and now on the investment side, we actually have about 25 virtual assistants in that we’ll probably triple over the next year, you know? So we rely on them for different things. Um, and troopers, most, we it’s easy. It’s easy. You just say a virtual assistant in S attributed to an overseas person, but most of my team is virtual at this point.

A lot of us are working virtual these days, so it’s really just a virtual. You know, person, uh, but with VA specifically, uh, overseas, VA’s, you know, I think a lot of people make the mistake of bringing somebody on, not really training them that, well, say it, I need you to do this and I need you to do that. I need you to be the marketing person.

I need you to help analyze stuff. I need you to answer my calls, like do all this stuff. And like somehow they’re superhuman. Um, and they’re not, it’s not any different than a entry level administrative person you’d hire here. They have a skillset. And so maybe talk about like, if you’ve had somebody for a couple of years, I know you have helped train them.

And I know you’ve had to figure out what they’re good at and what they’re not good at it and not try to force them to do things that they’re not good at. Right.
[00:14:00] Christina: [00:14:01] I think that that’s been a huge for us. Um, first of all, I think it’s really important that you’re clear as a team on what you need. Right. And Gary Harper says it, great.

Don’t do things you’re not good at. And don’t do things you don’t like to do. Right. So we kind of sat down early on and said, what things. Are going to propel us to that next level. So one of the things we were needing help with was all our social media, which was nowhere. Cause we were a new company, right.

So we wanted to grow that in a big way. And the second part was, uh, all our data administration lists, uh, return mail, all those things that everybody knows here. Um, so we had to put some really good job descriptions. We talked about all that together. Um, and then, uh, you know, go to various organizations and interview, interview, interview, um, and, and we really hire for three things, right?

We hire first for attitude, secondly, for ability to be part of a team and work well in a team. And third [00:15:00] for the background on the knowledge, right. If you’ve got those first two things, great things happen, but the job description was important, but not just writing it, but actually separating the tasks.

Because you can never take a creative person or likes to do Facebook, right. And have them do data entry. In fact, in the team, we joke about that, that they would each shoot each other, shoot themselves if they have to do each other’s job. Right. So we laugh about that sometimes, but we have a super creative person that does all our social media and a few admin tasks when she has a social media, any brochures, any creatives, she actually did our postcards for investor machine recently.

Right. So. A pretty cool thing. We’ve had good response on that. Um, so she’s, she’s phenomenal and she continues to, to grow as well as a professional. We’ve given her the tools and the abilities to say, go learn about Google apps, go learn about this. Right? Whatever other things we’re looking to do. And we empower these people to actually be the experts.

You know, I used to have a boss in corporate. [00:16:00] America was amazing, smarter than anyone I know, but she wanted to know and everything a hundred percent, but with us, um, our employees, and that’s how we managed our teams as well. In corporate America, we have the experts and we would go to them. So when I go to my, my social media person, she knows more than we do.

And we like it that way. Right. Yeah. Our second person was all about, uh, she was a very analytical, uh, is very analytical data, um, gathering. She knows our text messaging campaign. She does MailChimp. I mean, she’s phenomenal, right? Two different sets of skills. We brought him on board then to start there, we didn’t even know half those things, but we’ve grown together and they are huge part of our success.

We tell them all the time we were like, I believe this is a hard business.

Mike: [00:16:49] And what are some other components of your team that you’ve added in? I know you’re doing, um, you’re doing some text message marketing, some of the things now you’ve kind of started to layer in almost really like departments and other, [00:17:00] other people you can bring on to help run those things.

Right?

James: [00:17:03] Yeah. So the, the next, uh, addition to our team, uh, we actually hired somebody to run our texting campaign. And, um, we were starting from scratch because we were kind of new was too, we hadn’t been utilizing, texting in any institutionalized way in our business at that point. So we were bringing on a new person, we’re bringing on a new platform and we didn’t get the immediate results that we’re looking for.

But going back to, you know, Christina’s the criteria we have that she mentioned, you know, the attitude was there and, you know, the willingness. Uh, to learn. And so, um, we, we started working a little more closely with him to say, all right, is it, is it, you know, our VA that’s not getting it done or, you know, is it us?

Are we not providing the right things? And so once we kinda got that leveled out, um, I, I started working directly with him on more of a sales training component to where it was, it was sales management. [00:18:00] One-on-one where we’re meeting weekly, we’re going over metric. You know, I’ve got him. Yeah, sending me a quick summary every night of just, just the metrics and, you know, we could capture those another way, but I want the interactivity of him having to do that.

Send that to me. Um, you know, I can, I can comment on it. Um, and by taking that, uh, that approach of making sure that first, you know, We need to know is do we suck or does our employees, here’s the problem. It was us. Yeah. And you know, it kind of was us originally. We weren’t really giving him, we didn’t even fully understand everything that he needed to know.

Um, he’s really partnered with us. He’s now helped us understand that platform. You know, it’s true in the learning curve there and made that. So we can now, you know, plug in additional people to do exactly that. And with, um, that. That piece of our business. We now have it to [00:19:00] where somebody who’s doing the texting for us, they’re setting appointments, they’re doing all the follow ups on that.

They’re setting up drip campaigns, you know, doing all the things that go on with that. And the net push through is now we’re just able to do the, do the appointments. You know, they, they typically start as phone appointments. Um, we, we don’t have him, you know, doing valuation. And is, is something a deal? Is it not a deal?

Um, When you’re, if you’re, if you’re new to that, you want to make sure that you make people go out of your way to say, look, don’t do not overqualified. We’ll get to that point where, you know, as you get better and better at what you’re doing, then we might start having, you ask a few more qualifying questions, but a natural thing for any sales person is to try to over qualify so that they’re only pushing through, you know, what’s, you know, a solid, you know, lock and that’s, that’s difficult.

So, um, He’s been really beneficial and is productive now with [00:20:00] that. So that became kind of the sales piece, B a, the VA’s that Christina was talking about, um, both happened to be in the Philippines. They’re amazing all the things that they do. Um, one of them has a lot of experience in the, uh, with like the MLS system.

And so, uh, as, as you know, Mike, I have a real estate license that I use pretty much just to disposition our properties. I used to hate, you know, setting up listings. It takes a very long time to go through and do all the due diligence, plugging all the data. Now she does that. I just go and edit it, you know, chop up the description, validate a couple of things.

What used to take me a couple of hours now it takes me 20 minutes. So, um, we’ve, we’ve been really, uh, blessed on the operational front with them. What we, what we found for our customer facing people. Um, so like the gentleman runs our texting campaign, uh, and any cold calling that we do, we’ve had a lot better success with, uh, ex-pats [00:21:00] in central and South America that, you know, their, their, their English is such that, um, they do a little bit better than the customer facing, uh, roles.

Uh, they tend to understand that the nuance. Um, of, you know, what’s a, um, you know, what’s it called a SAC what’s, you know, just simple things like that. Um, that’s, that’s been a big boost versus well, because if we take people and just say, all right, what are we trying to hand off? Can we package this in a way that they know exactly what we expect and how to do that?

Um, and then set them up for success. That’s that’s really fueled us and helped us. You know, continue to add, you know, different organizations within our business and kind of grow overall.

Christina: [00:21:49] I think the longevity of the success with our BAS has been, I think, multiple things, right? One is first of all, making them part of the organization, making them the experts and make them feel that way [00:22:00] because we feel that way.

Right. The second part is looking at incentives. So we are looking to invest in someone a lot, but then we want them to stay longer. Right. So just like in, in corporate America, right. You’ll get bonuses, vacation, right. We’re doing it. Exactly those things as well after the first six months, these things, these things happen.

Right. And we pay for something holidays. Then after a year you get a week’s vacation continues on like that. Um, this year we are, uh, we added. Um, paying for, uh, insurance health insurance. And can I tell you that was a crazy thing because as soon as we added that for one of our VA’s, one of our children got sick.

So I mean, it’s a phenomenal thing how that works, but we also do other things to actually shore up the, how should I say our core values? Right. So one of the ways that we care as a business is to be able to give back. So we actually have, um, $500 that each VA takes back into her country or [00:23:00] his country and runs a project.

So they did a phenomenal job the last two years, uh, benefiting the community with funds that came from JSA freedom.

Mike: [00:23:10] That’s cool. So that’s, that’s something they can use and go apply from a charity perspective. The, into there,

Christina: [00:23:15] they, uh, yeah, our creative one created, uh, pillowcases with Bible verses, uh, um, had a party for people, brought some food, canned foods and things like that.

So an orphanage right of young boys. Uh, our other one, our, our, or VA, who’s an amazing person in our, in our data, your world. She actually, uh, uh, bought school supplies, size and uniforms and things like that. That was what just happened last year. So things like that, that really jazz up everyone. We’re so proud of them for doing that forward to having the gentlemen who joined us this year as well, uh, run that in his own country.

Mike: [00:23:52] Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. So as you guys are, you guys have made some, some great progress here over the past two and a half years. And I think, [00:24:00] you know, once you get to a certain point, you kind of realize like there’s always opportunity for improvement. There always will be right. But. You, you kind of see the vision of what can become, right.

Especially when you start to layer in other people. And you’re like, okay, the only way you can grow is with other people, you definitely have a job. I know you guys are still working harder than you want to, but yeah, there’s a point where, uh, when you have the mindset that you guys do of building a team around you, that you can see the vision for how this you can get better and grow and make it easier for you.

At the same time, because honestly growth enables that, right. It gives you the resources to be able to employ other people and hire people and do things right.

James: [00:24:40] Yeah,

Christina: [00:24:41] for sure. For sure.

Mike: [00:24:42] So James, any kind of takeaways or kind of like lessons learned that you could share with people like a couple, a two and a half years into the business businesses are doing well, you guys are doing a fairly consistent level of deals.

Um, any kind of guidance you could give people in terms of getting out of their own way and adding some, [00:25:00] uh, some kind of people on the team.

James: [00:25:02] Yeah, I think, um, My two key takeaways there would be to, to kind of be super open. And, um, and it’s just introspective with yourself to say, you know, what should I hand off?

Um, what, you know, what would benefit us the most? Um, and, uh, and it just got to, you know, check your ego, right? Like what what’s going to be best for the organization. Um, because as opposed to, uh, a fortune 500 job, um, if, if I’m helping grow the company here, now I actually benefit for growing the company.

Whereas before, you know, Making the decision that was better for the company and not as good for myself, it definitely helped the company, but probably hurt me. And so have that realization that what’s, what’s good for the organization actually, at the end of the day, you are the organization. And the second piece of that is to have the courage to hand off and then hand off, [00:26:00] like be there and be available, um, you know, kinda check in and kind of pure over the shoulder once in awhile, let people know that you’re there, but when you hand off handoff, let people own that.

Uh, and, you know, hold them accountable for owning that. But if you’re, if you’re handing off, but then you’re trying to babysit the whole time. It’s not that it’s going to, it would have been faster to do it yourself. And so follow those two things. Um, I, I think that’s. That’s the right environment to have people to set people up for success to benefit.

Mike: [00:26:32] Yeah, that’s great.

Christina: [00:26:33] I think a couple of other things that we see staying true to your core values, because then that defines everything, not only the people that work with you, how you interact with customers, other investors, right. Train staying very true to that for us, you know, integrity, compassion and trust are three things that are even on our logo.

And I think that the second thing. Um, to our success is being able to continue evolving back to, you know, making sure that [00:27:00] we understand how we grow and Mike, the goals that you’ve helped us set as part of it that’s for fuel, right. And the 90 day goals. And so on what we do, we look at those and continue to say, Hey, you know what mean?

We hit the Mark here. Yay. Right. Or, Oh crap, we haven’t done this yet. And we need to. So the accountability piece is a huge part of that as well.

Mike: [00:27:18] Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, speaking of investor, Phil, you guys have been members from pretty much from the beginning, I think so, uh, we’re actually coming up here on our three year, three year anniversary, uh, this fall, but would you mind just kind of sharing how investor fuel has kind of impacted you, uh, your business or personally or

James: [00:27:36] anything you want to share?

Yeah, so. We constantly talk about how that’s kind of the highlight of our quarter. We, we really, um, because of the, the forced accountability that comes out of that, you know, we’re always looking at okay, w wins, you know, when’s the next investor fuel. And we’re kind of gearing things toward that. Uh, we, we plan our year around it to make sure that we’re going to be [00:28:00] available.

And it’s, it’s a, it’s a highlight it’s there for highlights of our year. Not only from the. Either the amazing, you know, people that you have come to participate in the, the, the learnings that, that occur, but. Uh, I’d say equally important are the relationships that we established with likeminded people.

The more we grow in this business, the more we realize that there aren’t as many investors like real investors out there, you would think, you know, as you get from looking at TV and thinking, you get the idea that there’s a million investors out there, but there’s very few we’re, we’re kind of the, we’re kind of the 5% and you get to be around the other 5% there.

And the more you grow. The less, you can talk to other people about your business. We have people that we’re close to that we’re related to that when they ask about our business, we just give them a couple of high level bullet points. Cause it’s like they wouldn’t understand anyway. So it really is a tribe.

We get to be around people that get us and we [00:29:00] benefit one another. In addition, because so many, because it’s a, you know, a national, um, event, um, we’re dealing with people that are in different markets. And so sometimes there’s some colloquial knowledge that comes out of that. That’s great. But I think people are even more willing to share because they’re not concerned about, well, if I, you know, if I help her, then that’s going to hurt my business.

Cause she’s my competitor. There, there really is kind of a, uh, giving, uh, nature there. And I don’t know. If it’s kind of self policing or just what, but I’ve, we’ve noticed over that period of time that people that, that come to an investor fuel event that aren’t really givers, they’re more takers. They don’t, they don’t come back.

Um, everyone there is our givers and we’ve developed some deep friendships with people that we never would have met otherwise. So we’re, you know, as you hear from us all the time, like we’re huge believers in investor fuel. Absolutely. Love it. And look, look forward to it, but not what would you add to that, Christina?

Christina: [00:29:58] Yeah, I mean, we’re doing [00:30:00] business with other people that are investor field because of these relationships. Right? The accountability that we talked about has been tremendous. I’m also ask a friend right on Facebook. We’re constantly asking each other questions they wanted to do about this, or can you believe this happened?

Right. But also celebrating each other’s successes. And a lot of people are very real and sometimes vulnerable. Cause we all go through ups and downs once you said, um, and you know, that’s where everybody jumps in to help each other and to kind of say, Hey, you’re not alone. This is happening. Um, and then, uh, you know, kind of boost everybody.

Yeah. I don’t know how you build this culture, but it is unlike anything else you’ve seen. Uh, again, in our previous corporate lives are here as well. Uh, givers, uh, people who want to be there, right? Even people traveling with coronavirus, right. I’m willing to be in a room with, uh, 40, you know, whatever other people in the room, uh, this coming month.

We’re not risking our lives, but just saying. Uh, right. But, uh, because this is so tremendous and a value to us. [00:31:00] And if, and if you’re, you know, and, and, and last quarter where you had to do that online event, because of all the coronavirus things going on, that was tremendous as well. So it is really the culture you’ve built.

That has benefited

James: [00:31:12] us. Awesome.

Mike: [00:31:14] Right. Usually that guys. Yeah. I think, uh, you know, at the end of the day, I think it’s, we kind of laid the framework for it, for being givers. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, when, when you go somewhere and you’re giving a lot, there’s this law of reciprocity, right.

Of like, wow, I need to give more. I mean, it’s pretty common for members to come their first time and have a presentation ready. And they felt like. Not that we said it to them or not that we even knew, but they’re like, I didn’t realize I’ve got so much. I feel like I need to give more. And I think it’s, it’s this, uh, kind of flywheel of, of giving and receiving that just, just works.

Right. So we’re glad you guys are glad you guys are a part of it. So, Hey, thanks for joining us on the show today. If folks wanted to reach out to you guys, um, you’re here in the Dallas Fort worth market working, how can they get ahold of you or, you know, what can you do to connect with people?

James: [00:31:59] So [00:32:00] we’re, um, we’re, we’re super interested in locally doing JVs w we’re interested in lending money.

Um, and so anybody can reach out to us of what’s best probably via our website or,

Christina: [00:32:13] yeah. Our website is a freedom homes with an S Texas filled out freedom homes, texas.com. Uh, certainly on Facebook, you can find us at, uh, James at JSA freedom or Christina at JC freedom, and then we can connect. There’s always the phone numbers on there as well.

Uh, but uh, looking forward to that, we’re continuing to lend to other investor fuel members and we love that it’s a revolving door when funds come in and funds go out. And so I think that’s a tremendous. Awesome.

Mike: [00:32:43] Awesome. Well, thanks again for sharing your story with us today.

James: [00:32:46] Thank you so much for having us.

Mike: [00:32:48] Yeah. Yeah. And everybody hope you got some good value out of the state, no matter where you are in your business, if you’re kind of early on or more advanced. I mean, I think you probably know enough at this point to know that it’s all about finding the right people getting out of [00:33:00] your own way, which is hard for us because a lot of us had to start small and scrappy.

And so sometimes it’s hard to. To kind of scale and have those expenses, but those, a lot of those expenses really are investments really in you honestly, and buying your time back ultimately. So I hope you guys got some good value today. If you haven’t yet checked that check. If you have not yet checked us out at investor fuel, uh, we have an amazing mastermind and amazing family of members that give and share with one another.

You can go to investor fuel.com to learn a little bit more. Maybe schedule a call with us. We can talk about it. Hope you got some value from the show. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the show. Uh, you could skip subscribe wherever you’re watching right now. iTunes, Stitcher, Google play. YouTube. Of course you can access all of our shows out of vestibule.com.

We’ll see you on the next step.

James: [00:33:44] Are you an active

Mike: [00:33:45] real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s

James: [00:33:51] leading

Mike: [00:33:52] real estate investors. All

James: [00:33:54] committed to building stronger

Mike: [00:33:55] businesses and living richer fuller lives. You [00:34:00] should jump on a call with us to learn more about best for fuel.

Simply visit investor fuel.com to get started. .