Inspiring stories of active agents investing in real estate and building passive income. We'll dive into how they are delivering a high level of service to clients while spotting opportunities, negotiating with homeowners, signing deals, and building additional streams of income. You'll come away from each episode with practical tips, tactics, and action steps, while being inspired to open your eyes to the potential deals are all around you!
Episodes
Thursday Nov 02, 2023
Thursday Nov 02, 2023
Tracking our numbers might not be the most exciting, but it is the most important thing we can do in our businesses. In order to know if what you’re doing today will lead to the results we want, we have to keep score.
We need to know if our daily, weekly and monthly actions are leading us to our goals or taking us away from them.
How do we apply a scorecard to various parts of our businesses? What happens when we discover that we’re off track?
In this episode, I talk about how to create your own weekly business scorecard, and why it’s so powerful in your business.
If you don’t know or don’t measure what you’ll be doing every single week, you have no idea whether or not you’re on track. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Get clear on the goal
Why do we need to hone in on our investment vehicle in order to have a precise scorecard?
-The problem that entrepreneurs face
Can having time and a flexible schedule actually work against us?
-Staying on track
How does a scorecard make it easier to see where we’re falling short or going off track?
Thursday Oct 26, 2023
Thursday Oct 26, 2023
For any agent, stacking investing on top of your sales business is a guaranteed path to wealth. It can magnify our real estate commissions many times over, and ultimately, we can work up to earning $10k a month in passive income.
The only challenge is raising money for that first deal to get the ball rolling. Most agents won’t even start for this reason, but capital doesn’t have to be a barrier. Whether you want to invest passively or actively, there is a way to do deals without any of your own money.
In this episode, we bring you into one of our events, where I share how to easily do more deals by levering partnerships.
If you’re an agent, you’re better off having a cash offer in your back pocket. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Passive or proactive
How do we decide the level of involvement we want to have in investing?
-The smart way to spend money
From free to paid marketing, how can we start generating the leads we need to do more deals? Are Facebook leads as good as Google ones?
-Reducing your risk in a risky market
What price points and property types should we stay away from right now?
Thursday Oct 19, 2023
Thursday Oct 19, 2023
Real estate offers many vehicles that can lead us to wealth, but they aren’t created equal, especially if you’re looking for something passive.
Short-term rentals and small multi-family units are vehicles many people go after, but it’s hard to be hands-off with them. This is why apartment buildings are so great, they offer a passive investing option, but are still worthwhile if you want to be an active investor.
What holds people back from investing in apartments? How do you choose the right apartments to invest in?
In this episode, we talk about why we invest in apartments, and even give you a peek into one of the projects we’re currently working on.
When you have many units in one complex, your management is significantly lower, your profits are a lot higher, and it’s just an easier lifestyle. -Jim Cooke
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Truly passive
Why is it hard to truly be passive with short-term rentals and small multi-family?
-Why you don’t need to come up with all the money
Most people would never even dream of investing in apartments because they believe they need to have all the capital themselves. How can you get into a deal with the money you have?
-The massive advantage agents have
How can you get your start in investing by just being a good deal finder?
Thursday Oct 12, 2023
Thursday Oct 12, 2023
One of the biggest reasons agents hesitate to invest is that it might throw off the retail side and hurt their sales.
That notion couldn’t be further from the truth. Retail and investing actually go hand-in-hand; one enhances the other - especially if you go after sellers.
Considering where the market is and where the industry is going, a seller-based business is key to our survival. How does a seller-focused business allow us to earn more? In this episode, I share the power of focusing on sellers and why it pairs so well with investing.
The combination of being an agent and an investor simultaneously is extremely powerful. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Why your $/hour is higher on the seller side
How does working with sellers make us more scalable and profitable?
-Cash offer call to action = game changer
How does having both the option for a cash offer and a traditional listing make us more valuable to sellers?
-An easy way to generate leads
Why is it critical for our sphere of influence to know we’re both in real estate sales and investing?
Thursday Oct 05, 2023
Thursday Oct 05, 2023
When you’re starting out as an agent-investor, it’s hard to raise money for deals, so we have to tap into low to no money strategies.
There are a few ways to get in front of off-market sellers without a huge marketing budget - each with their own pros and cons. The key to success will always be consistency and a way to measure our success.
How can we get auctions to work for us? How can we leverage our relationships with other agents? In this episode, I share a few ways to get deals without spending a whole lot of money.
Agents in general don’t come across off-market deals on a weekly basis so you need a large group of agents that you are in front of quite a bit and you need to make sure they remember you. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Building solid agent relationships
How do we make sure we’re standing out from other agents?
-Why deals need to be off market
The MLS has a lot of competition, how do we create our own market for deals?
-Take the guesswork out of your efforts
How do we measure our success with the strategies we use to find deals?
Thursday Sep 28, 2023
Thursday Sep 28, 2023
So many agents are looking for investing deals and capital, but the people who know, like and trust them have no idea. If we’re only telling people that we’re in retail sales, they won’t be aware that we have other solutions. If we’re not sharing with our sphere of influence what we’re doing in real estate, they won’t be able to funnel leads and deals our way.
Social media is the easiest and most effective way to share what we’re doing in real estate. With a few posts, we can educate our sphere of influence that we invest, and that will boost our businesses.
What should we be posting on social media? In this episode, I share how to activate your sphere of influence to help in our investing goals?
If you’re an agent who doesn’t tell their clients that you can also buy homes, you’re going to lose deals to investors. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-It’s never too soon to share
Can we post that we’re looking for deals when we don’t have the money to do a deal?
-What we should be posting
How do we strike a balance between business and personal posts so people get to know us and also know what we’re working on?
-One helpful tool to employ
How do we measure the impact and reach of our posts?
Thursday Sep 21, 2023
Thursday Sep 21, 2023
The best investing deals aren’t found on the MLS - they aren’t even on the market at all. Any investor worth their salt has to know how to find discounted, off-market properties and have a tried and tested strategy to get in front of those homeowners.
Mail has always been my marketing strategy of choice, but because so many things go into it, getting started can be overwhelming. How much money do you need to run a solid mailing campaign? Who do you send the mailers to?
In this episode, I’ll share my strategy for mailers and the critical decisions you have to make if you want to succeed.
When it comes to someone selling their house at a discount, your mailer is not going to convince them to do anything, it’s just going to show up at the right time. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
- Why we need to ditch the MLS for investing deals
Can we easily make the numbers work with traditional listings?
- How much money you need to invest into your mailing campaign
Blanketing entire neighborhoods with mails is expensive and wasteful, which homes and owners are the perfect candidates for mails?
- How to build your mailing list
What is the ideal frequency and cadence to get the opportunity to buy someone’s house?
Thursday Sep 14, 2023
Thursday Sep 14, 2023
As an investor, raising capital, finding and putting deals together is really only half of the business. If you’re flipping homes, buying rental properties and building apartments, construction and renovation is really where the rubber meets the road.
Now that you have the property, you actually have to make sure the projects get done on budget, on time and to a high quality.
What are the most common traps investors fall into? In this episode, Jim Cooke returns to share how to cut down on the biggest construction mistakes investors make.
In the beginning phase, one bad deal could knock you out of the business. -Tom Cafarella
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Don’t build your dream home
How do we make sure we’re renovating for a profit, not according to our tastes and preferences?
-General contractors vs. subcontractors
Hiring and working with contractors is where most investors get tripped up. How do you hold them accountable and make sure they are delivering a great result?
-The key to a good site walk
Are photos and videos enough to hold contractors accountable?
-On time and to a high standard
What are acceptable reasons for a project to go over the timeline?
Guest Bio
Jim is a real estate investor and founder of Cooke Realty LLC. With 20 years of flipping experience under his belt, he has handled just about every type of home renovation. Connect with Jim over on LinkedIn. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cookejim/)
Thursday Sep 07, 2023
Thursday Sep 07, 2023
For a few years, short-term rentals have been the hottest asset class in real estate. Owning a property in a hot destination, potentially earning more than traditional rentals, what’s not to like? Here’s the problem though: if we look past the allure of owning a vacation property, there’s a lot of risk and even diminishing returns.
For a multitude of reasons, this is probably the worst time to own a short-term rental. You’re going up against economic pressures and increasing regulations and this will most certainly cut into your returns.
Is there any way to own and operate short-term rentals successfully? In this episode, I share why I’m personally not a fan of short-term rentals as an investment strategy.
When you’re swimming with the tide and buying at the right time, you can be an average operator and still do well. When you buy at the wrong time, you have to be an exceptional operator to be profitable. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
- Why people are obsessed with short-term rentals
Are people flocking to short-term rentals because they are a sound investment or just because they are cool to own?
- The crowd is typically wrong
By the time an investing strategy goes super mainstream, it’s usually too late to do it successfully. Why are short-term rentals a perfect example of this?
- What scares me most about short-term rentals
Short-term rentals are rife with regulation. Why is this such a huge threat to profitability?
Thursday Aug 31, 2023
Thursday Aug 31, 2023
Most real estate investors swear by tried and tested formulas to make a profit, but if we’re not careful, those formulas can burn us. Formulas are meant to be a guide, not the end-all-be-all decider for our deals.
Very often, what’s projected on paper doesn’t translate to reality, so going on the formula alone can get us into trouble.
How do some of the most common formulas fall short? What approach should we take when we go into deals?
In this episode, I share why relying on formulas alone can lead to us losing money.
In multifamily, consider how much the value can be increased so you can do a cash out refi later to buy your next property. -Tom Cafarella
Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
- Formulas are just the starting point
Losing money is probably the number 1 reason people don’t invest. How do some of the most common investing formulas lead to that undesirable outcome?
- Time heals all wounds, but not in fix and flips
How do the most common fix and flip formulas burn us?
- Make the profit when you buy
How do you set yourself up for success on day 1?