How Travis Johnson Scales Real Estate Deals with Systems, Capital & Consistency

Mike Hambright (00:33)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show today. I’m here with my good friend Travis Johnson. He’s a very we just discovered he’s very blunt. He’s not going to sugarcoat anything today. We just talked about that a little bit. A little bit of an inside joke there, but it’s the real deal. He’s he’s a nice guy. Minnesota Nice, he’d say, but also very blunt sometimes we’re going talk about the keys to success today. Learn a little bit more about Travis’s path and truthfully, there’s a lot of lessons learned in here of trial and error and kind of what works from.

Travis Johnson (00:40)
You

you

Mike Hambright (01:01)
marketing, setting up your acquisitions process, to surrounding yourself with the right people and all those things. So Travis, welcome back to the

Travis Johnson (01:08)
Thanks for having me again, Mike. I appreciate it.

Mike Hambright (01:10)
Yeah, yeah. So don’t be too blunt with me. Like, I have a special path. It’s like, have to be extra nice.

Travis Johnson (01:15)
Yeah.

Yeah. No need to sugarcoat it. Just tell everyone the truth. Good or bad. It is what it is, right?

Mike Hambright (01:21)
Yeah, but I’m excited to talk about this. We just talked about kind of what’s happening with your business up in Minnesota. Very seasonal up there typically, and so you gotta run your business different ways in different parts of the country. But before we jump into learning a little bit more about you and your background and what we’re going to talk about today, tell us about how you got into real estate. Tell us a little bit your background.

Travis Johnson (01:41)
Sure, I started real estate investing, I would say about 2001 is when I started doing it, but it was always part time. I was chicken shit. I had a nine to five job. I knew I wanted to get into real estate, so I wasn’t really sure how to do it. So I did that house hacking at first, right? You buy it, fix it up while you live in it, sell it every two years, takes tax free money, roll it forward. And I did that all the way successfully until 2008 came and guess what? The bottom fell out. So that means I couldn’t really roll it forward. I got stuck in my…

my flip but the good thing is the flip was one of my nicer ones out of all the ones so if I was to get stuck somewhere that wasn’t too bad. I came from a blue collar job. I was a technician. ran phone and computer wiring, worked on phone systems. I fell into that. I was not passionate at all and eventually ended up at that business being the operations manager and kind of hated the…

office politics. eventually in 2016, or actually, it’s actually kind of funny, I am literally a little over a month away from my 10 year anniversary when I literally left corporate America.

to go and do real estate full-time. And it was a big gamble because when I quit my job, I quit on principle. I really didn’t know what I was going to do in real estate. I was like, can I invest? I don’t have a ton of money. I have some money, but I don’t have a ton. Should I be a real estate agent? Should I work for someone? I wasn’t really sure. I knew I just wanted to quit my job because they office politics. And I did. And then eventually I chose to go down and buy a franchise system to get into real estate investing. But essentially,

2016 until now I’ve been doing it full-time.

Mike Hambright (03:17)
Yeah, it’s amazing how fast time goes by too, right? mean, I remember for years I was like in the hustle. mean, not that I still don’t hustle, I just remember like I was always kind of like the new guy or newer guy. And now I’m like, I’ve been doing this for 17, 18 years now. And I feel like, you know, I’ve got the gray hair and the scars on my back to prove it too. It flies by like.

Travis Johnson (03:39)
Yeah, no, time does definitely

goes by super fast.

Mike Hambright (03:42)
Yeah, you know, one of things I want to say about time, because you’ve been doing this for a while too, is and we were just talking about the market and transition and kind of planning for the year ahead and stuff like that, is that I talk about this all the time about playing the long game. So there are ups and downs in the market. There are ups and downs in every market. And I think one of the things that I want to share with folks that are listening right now is the importance of sticking with it for the long haul. Like there will always be an opportunity in real estate.

Travis Johnson (03:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (04:09)
Your she’s gets moved around, but like as long as there’s humans, need a baby shelter. There will always be opportunity here and there’s ups and downs, right? And so I think what happens often or what’s happened over the past couple of years is a lot of people say, well, this is hard. So I’m going to move into something that they perceive to be easy, which will also get hard at some points and they’ll want to come back. And the problem is, is if you start something new every two or three years, then you never really get great at it. You’re just like constantly restarting.

Travis Johnson (04:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mike Hambright (04:38)
And you’re missing out on the opportunities that happen at the beginning and the end of market cycle changes, right? I there’s so much opportunity that happens when the market shifts either way, quite frankly. Um, and a lot of people miss out on that. They wait until it gets really good. Then they come back when everybody’s already back and it’s not as it missed out on opportunities. So I guess my message is like for folks that are listening and you know this too, cause you’ve been around a little while. It’s like, just be willing to work hard and put your head down when times are tough because that

Travis Johnson (04:55)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (05:06)
that allows you to take advantage of more opportunities over the long haul for sure.

Travis Johnson (05:11)
Yep, fundamentals. And I would use it as an analogy of what you said about every two to three years, you know, someone like, hey, I got it mastered and then something changed. And almost like every two three years on, I would say rookie investors are the ones that make mistakes. Think of it like a car. They’re going to go out get another car saying, this car will get me to where I need to go for sure. And what we’re more trying to describe is your car was all right. Maybe you just needed to change the tires or the rims, you know, because the market changed. Like let’s not start all over.

Mike Hambright (05:37)
Yeah.

Travis Johnson (05:38)
Let’s just change a little bit about what we’re doing to adapt to what’s going on.

Mike Hambright (05:42)
Right, right, yep. So you started by saying that you joined a franchise system. Me too, we were in the same place. But just talk about, I mean, we have an appreciation for a systematic approach to running the business, like running a business like a franchise, whether you’re a part of a franchise system or not.

Travis Johnson (05:58)
That’s correct.

When we decided, we’re gonna do real estate investing, we’re like, hey, franchise business in a box, right? That’s just logical. It’s like, I kinda know real estate investing, but it’s like, you know, I don’t know where I get all my leads because I used to get them off the MLS. So hey, if I can get these direct to sellers, that sounds very attractive. Hey, the business in a box will help me get financing. So I was like, hey, that solves that problem. So I figured, hey, this is like the easy button. Yeah, you have to work at it a little bit, but I really thought it was the easy button.

The one thing is it wasn’t, but it did teach me to understand that systems and processes are what you need in your business. And that’s one, the one big takeaway I would say out of the franchise system, even though I don’t follow it exactly the way it was ran that way, it still taught me early on in my business, if you’re, if you don’t think you need a CRM and a process to follow on every lead that comes in, how you follow up, how you do things, you’re going to fail faster.

than what you think. literally need something to keep you on track and processes do that.

Mike Hambright (06:59)
Yeah, yeah, that’s that. kind of like whenever you figure it out, similar to the analogy we gave a minute ago, it’s like, as they say, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Like it’s going to continually change. You’re going to continually have to improve and update your systems and things change. The market changes, financial lenders change. Like a lot of things change. Your exit strategies might change. Your risk might change, right? Your market might even change.

And so you have to continually adjust those systems because, you know, there was a time when I first started, there were zero CRMs for the real estate investing industry. were literally zero. So people used whiteboards and spreadsheets and legal pads and stuff like that. And then Podio came along and it’s not also not for real estate, but people made it for real estate. And then now there’s CRMs all over the place, which is great.

Travis Johnson (07:32)
⁓ okay. Okay.

Mike Hambright (07:47)
Evolution is going to continue to happen and you just need to continue to adjust with it.

Travis Johnson (07:51)
Yes, you got to go with the flow. Don’t resist every change, even though change makes you uncomfortable. You do have to adapt. Otherwise, you you’re going to be left in the stone ages. you know, not that we’re trying to go into this, but just think of AIs knocking on the door of real estate, right? Well, it’s all businesses, but AIs knocking. Well, I don’t understand a lot of it, but I know I need to be part of it. So the thing is, is

Now my radar is up trying to find what are things that I can start using that I think would benefit my business with AI. But yet not for me, not goal. I call it balls deep into that direction. I’m going to go and say, Hey, I want to know that I want to go ahead and get everything in order that I think will make sense to apply to my business. And then I’ll introduce AI into it. Once I know that the systems and processes will have to check and balances. Otherwise it’s.

It’s not for me right away, but guess what? If I stay, you know, five more years and chose to do nothing with AI, I expect that I’m going to be struggling massively in my business or be out of business. Even though I don’t know where it’s going to go, I have to be ready for the change.

Mike Hambright (08:54)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, we could probably have a whole show talking about AI. We could have a whole series of shows talking about AI. So let’s talk about just, so you left the franchise system, created your own brand. kind of like had to kind of start that because obviously inside of a franchise, if you were McDonald’s, everybody operates as McDonald’s. So when you go out, you got to take what you know and kind of start your own brand and start creating your own processes, right?

Travis Johnson (08:59)
Yeah.

Yep. And for us, the brand, you can have a couple different ways, I believe you can come up with your brand name. You could do something that’s a core value to yourself. You know, I’ve seen some people call like honest home buyers or, or, something to that effect. There’s nothing wrong with that. what I and my wife decided we wanted to get on the fast track for branding and, know, branding is very expensive, right? You know, just to try and get your name out there, a Walmart or Target, you know, they spend billions of dollars.

getting their brand out there. Well, that’s never going to happen with us. So what we were thinking about is what is known in our state that people already kind of talk about all the time subconsciously and consciously in their advertisement was we’re also known as Minnesota Nice, which is kind of a lie. We’re passive aggressive other than myself. I just say it to your face, but otherwise it’s really we’re being nice to you. Turn your back. Then we give you your honest opinion when you can’t hear it.

But Minnesota Nice is a phrase that’s just given out in our state. It’s said it all the time. So what we thought, well, if Minnesota Nice name was available, that’s already kind of pre-branded. We’re just going to throw the word home buyer behind it. And sure enough, we went out to the GoDaddy and searched ⁓ Minnesota Nice. MnNice.com was available, which we were shocked by. We’re like, hey, that’s a very short domain name.

super easy for people to memorize because it’s already kind of pre branded in our state. So we bought that domain and we use that. But the other thing is we’re always trying to use the comparison. If you’re driving down the road and you’re staring at a billboard, can you get the domain name and the phone number memorized in under six seconds? If the message related to that consumer, if you can’t do that, I think that you you’re going to struggle if you’re trying to.

Mike Hambright (10:53)
right.

Travis Johnson (10:58)
generate leads, also get a brand name out there. And we’re trying to do two birds, one stone. We’re like, how do we get leads, but also how can people memorize? So we thought, Hey, we have to have a super easy vanity number. So that’s what we came up with. You know, like in our business, we had, six one two nine three 2000, a simple number that could be memorized, ⁓ super clean. And then we had MN nice.com is our domain. So branding had a huge impact, but it’s also, we are Minnesota nice. We’re not.

passive aggressive to our sellers, you know, in our case, we’re upfront with them, but we were able to tag along that branding very fast and easy by doing that. So that’s something to think about if you’re going to create a name.

Mike Hambright (11:35)
Yeah, I don’t think people think about that enough. you sometimes you see, think, because you know, where we came from, I think a lot, obviously, I would probably more than as much as anything refer to myself as a marketer. So I think a lot about marketing and specifically billboards, because you know, we’re in Dallas where I live, there’s billboards everywhere. So I’m constantly thinking about there, you know, there’s, there’s some billboards, there was one today, I can’t think of what it is, I actually drove out from my house to the ranch this morning.

And there was some billboard that had like a really long domain on it, but the whole billboard was a domain, like a URL, really long one, but it was like, had, was like a sentence of like saying something. can’t remember what it was kind of weird, but I was like, you know, sometimes billboard is just for branding. It could be like a Budweiser commercial and they don’t even have like, you don’t have to have a call to action because they’re just branding. then this one, it was all called action. was, there was no branding whatsoever. It was just, the whole thing was a URL. Like go check this out.

Travis Johnson (12:08)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mike Hambright (12:29)
But we’ve all seen billboards or ads before that you don’t know what it is and there’s no call to action. you’re like, that seems like a complete waste of money. Or they have some really long domain that nobody’s ever going to remember that. So yeah, good.

Travis Johnson (12:36)
Yeah.

Yeah. You got to keep

it simple. That’s beyond the kiss method. know, definitely keep it simple as much as possible. And for us on the branding, you have to have the cult for action because we’re all not into, you know…

We’re not extremely wealthy investors. Typically we’re not. So if you’re gonna start your own brand and your own business, you’ve gotta find a way to conserve cash but also make the money work for you. like in our case, we’re trying to do two birds, one stone, the branding and call to action all at the same time.

Mike Hambright (13:01)
Right.

Yeah, think for most small and medium businesses and certainly most real estate investors, you’re building your brand just has to be a side benefit to good marketing. We can’t really afford to do a lot of branding with the hope that people will figure it out. I mean, there are some that have been in the game for a long, time maybe, but yeah, it’s hard to just go straight branding.

Travis Johnson (13:22)
Exactly.

Yeah.

I would agree.

Yup.

And I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re brand new and you’re starting it. Billboards, no. Start smaller, build up the business. When we talk about this, is just an example. The billboard was meant for how fast someone can read that message and can it relate. But at the end of the day, billboards can be effective marketing. But definitely for anyone that’s kind of medium size or undersize from a marketing budget or real estate investor applying it, I would definitely stay with the smaller, more cost.

Mike Hambright (13:35)
Yeah.

Travis Johnson (14:03)
effective approach to marketing.

Mike Hambright (14:06)
Yeah, so let’s talk about it goes hand in hand, but kind of a commitment to a higher level of marketing. I think you know your business has grown quite a bit over the years and it takes a high level of commitment to marketing. Probably something that if you look back to what you do now, what you do now would probably have scared you when you first started, but it’s worked well for you. So just talk about that commitment to marketing, because I think that’s why a lot of people get stuck staying small or stuck in.

an owner operator type business because they’re not doing enough to generate leads.

Travis Johnson (14:34)
Yep, exactly. I will admit, I was scared shitless when the franchise system said you have to at least $5,000 a month just to generate leads. And I left my prior job barely making $8,000 a month gross. And now you’re telling me I have to spend $5,000 just on marketing, just to see if the money will come back. I was scared shitless, but I committed to the franchise system, like, I’ll do it.

And I stayed that way through the whole franchise system. think the most we ever spent was 15,001 month. And that was like a heart attack, but we started getting a little bit more confidence, but we only bought on average around a dozen houses a year through the franchise system before we went out on our own and branded our own name. And even then it was slow and steady trial and error on the marketing. Because when you’re a real estate investor and you know this Mike, but for anyone that maybe is not new to this is.

You’re a marketer before you’re a real estate investor. You know, the whole business is all about marketing. If you can’t bring in the sellers to reach out to you and you can’t connect with them, you don’t have a business model. The whole thing collapses. You might as well just get on a bunch of wholesalers list, save the advertising dollar, pay a little bit more premium for your property from the wholesaler and rehab a house that way. That would be more cost effective. But if you think you’re going to be good at marketing and you want to commit to have your own brand, then definitely just have the…

the mindset you are marketer first and then you got to you know become the real estate investor second and then from the marketing standpoint ⁓ dollar amount wise stay consistent it’s easy to get knee-jerk like well money’s gonna get tight you know I don’t know if the market’s gonna do what I want everything’s like planned out three four months in advance budget-wise deployment of all your marketing and if you’re doing a knee-jerk what you already had planned three months out and you’re pulling that capital back

All of sudden you’re going to feel real busy in that moment because the budget was still in play. But as soon as it hits the month where you pulled the rug out, all of sudden you’re going to see your leads just tank like a roller coaster. You’re just going to go right up over the edge and you’re going to say, I’m not getting any calls. So it’s all about being consistent. That’s the number one thing we learned the hard way, but also what’s smart enough to latch onto it early enough is staying consistent.

Mike Hambright (16:45)
Yeah. I think, ⁓ you know, if you think about the business, like you, just, like all businesses, you have a certain amount of fixed costs. And so there is a range where, as you do more deals, there’s more profit that falls to the bottom line. Like, and there’s, there’s scales to this, right? There’s, if you think of it like a stair step, there’s stairs to this, but like, if you bring an office assistant or office manager or somebody like,

you’re going to pay them the same whether you’re doing one deal a month or five. So what happens, you start to, I kind of use this phrase, you start to sweat your fixed costs. If you have an office that you’re renting, if you have anybody that’s on your staff, other than, you get to a point to where your expenses after a certain point are just variable, like more marketing, more commissions to acquisitions and dispositions people. But you start to up your…

Travis Johnson (17:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mike Hambright (17:33)
essentially, past your fixed cost. So every additional deal becomes more profitable. And as an owner, you know, so instead of another way, if you’re just doing one or two deals a month, unless you’re lean and mean and doing everything effectively have a job, you’re really not that profitable. Once you get up to deals three, four or five, I think starts to get a little more interesting, right?

Travis Johnson (17:38)
Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Well, it does and it allows you to delegate. I’ve been part of masterminds where I sat with people that were newer than I was at the time. And they’re like, how can you afford to hire an acquisition person or a disp? Well, really, the disposal comes way later. You just have to have a lot more properties, but it’s really acquisitions is where a lot of the expense comes right away at the beginning, maybe operations, but.

their mindset let’s say that you’re hiring someone for fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year is just what it takes to have them on your staff.

That’s not 50 or 60,000 you’re paying that very first month they come on board. That’s spread out over a year. You divide it up by 12 months. I mean, it’s simple, but it took a few of those people that sat at that table. When I told them that I said, I had the mindset like, man, I can’t afford in-house contractors on my staff. And then at the end of the year, I was shocked when I was like, I paid $350,000 of labor to all these people. And guess what? I made, made the payments when they were due. Like I was never financially stressed. So the point was, like, Hey,

I

could actually afford monthly. I don’t always have to go out and pay in bulk and at a higher price just because you think like, I can’t have them on my staff. So I have to pay more. And like you said, the fixed cost, once you get that acquisition person, let’s say you just get an acquisition on your team and then let’s say a VA on top of it. So you got two people and let’s say it is $50,000 a year between the two. It could be more in other markets. You know, don’t rip on me if I’m wrong and that, but that gives you a ballpark for the math to say $50,000 divide that by 12.

And if you’re already making, let’s say you were only getting three deals and you’re averaging $30,000 profit per deal, that’s still $90,000. You can afford to pay that wage. But what allows you to do is delegate. The big thing here that allowed me to grow is to delegate work out because there’s only so much you can take on yourself. And the more you put on yourself, you’re doing those lower level paying jobs. So now when I’m doing something that’s just transaction courting, extremely important. But I also think that’s

be an 18 to 25 dollar an hour job depends on where you’re at. Well if I’m doing that that’s what I’m getting paid and I gotta be doing things that are $100 an hour or more activities and the only way that you can do that is you have to delegate.

Mike Hambright (20:04)
Right, right, right. Yep. I happen to know your hourly rate is quite a bit above that, my friend. So. So let’s talk about just as you know, and you’ve your business up quite a bit from kind of the early days here is just access to capital like you need to have more and more capital to be able to to do deals. So just talk about how you coordinate that.

Travis Johnson (20:09)
Well, we have big expenses.

Sure, capital is king. There’s no way around it. If you’re gonna flip houses, you’re gonna need capital. Wholesalings kinda dying off just because the laws are changing too. So you gotta find a way to get ready to have capital to at least do transaction funding or double close, whatever you wanna call it. Cash is king. The one thing that I learned a hard way that I wish I learned so early on is I would get people that, I found people that had 150, 200,000.

dollars that they want to invest and you know you times it by five people it’s like hey I got about a million dollars but this was their what I call their open banking account open bank account what that means to me is

Hey, this is just money that comes and goes out of their bank account. So that means when they have that shiny Bitcoin idea or something pops in their mind, the next shiny object that’s going to make them wealthy, they want their money back so they can go pursue that. You know, it’s that’s more sexy right now. Instead of getting 10 % with you, I get 15 % or more on this other investment. So I’m going to take the money over there. So

I got ruined because every time I kept building up my reserve capital where I think I could buy more properties because I hate lenders because everything’s about documentation and all that stuff. And I like the idea of like, hey, you just purchase it. You have a mortgage against property. I’ll fund the rehab in most cases and I don’t need inspections and that, you know, the verify something was done. So that was driving me nuts with that format. I’m just, I’m very impatient. So I just want things to click one after another. Well, eventually through trial and error and maybe other people

I would say, Travis, you should have already known this. Well, I didn’t, but a private capital from retirement funds or basically 401Ks, Roth or RAs, any money that’s sitting in a retirement fund can get turned into a self-directed IRA. Once we started deploying that capital, I realized all our investors never wanted their money back. Yes, they want the money back from the deal. Like, the deal closed, they got the money back and went into self-directed. Then they say, where can I put it next? So we deployed into another capital.

Eventually we had some people that we’d done this all the time and they got so comfortable with us.

Mike Hambright (22:16)
Mm-hmm.

Travis Johnson (22:20)
They wanted their money always deployed. So they went unsecured with us, even though it’s their retirement funds. Now there’s got to be a lot of trust, right? No one’s going to give you unsecured capital unless they really believe that you’re going to follow through. Yeah, we do personal guarantees. You still do paperwork on this unsecured, but we’re allowed to use a portion of the funds to go to this one house, some for this rehab, some for operating costs, some for advertising. Well, eventually we built up to that point where we had a couple of people. So we play with almost a half million dollars of unsecured money.

Mike Hambright (22:28)
Very, yeah.

Travis Johnson (22:50)
that are retirement accounts from people that don’t ask for it back because they just want that monthly payment because they’re building up their retirement funds. And that’s the number one rule I’d say I tell people in my market. Go after people with retirement funds, get it turned into self-directed IRA. It’s super easy to do. And more than likely, as long you do what you say you’re going to do, they’re not going to ask for their money back. They’re going to say, what other deal can you put it into? So that would be my secret to anyone.

Mike Hambright (22:58)
Right.

Travis Johnson (23:17)
know it’s been out there forever, but I didn’t realize how a night and day difference was from a retirement account and someone’s just liquid cash in their bank account. Which one stayed available more to me was always the retirement funds.

Mike Hambright (23:29)
Yeah, because you don’t have to be brilliant, but smart people know that even if you’re paying them, let’s just say 10%, but you keep the money busy half the time, their net return is 5%. So it’s like, just keep it busy. I’ve had some big multifamily deals and stuff like that. And some nice people are like, hey, we’re going to sell this one in cash out. And I’m just like, from a mature investor standpoint, I’m like,

Okay, like what am going to do now? Like I now I got to find somewhere else to put it. So it sounds like a, you know, it’s a first world problem for sure. But it’s like, I want to my money deployed 365. That’s how you maximize your return. It’s not necessarily the percentage you’re being paid. It’s like, can you keep it busy 365 days a year?

Travis Johnson (23:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know. I know.

Yeah.

Yep.

And yeah, and that’s what we were able to do with our investors. And now don’t get me wrong. ⁓

Could I always use more money? Yes, you always could because it always seems like the more money that comes available, the more deals you buy. It’s kind of like a weirds Murphy law, but it just does. But that would be the for anyone that’s looking for capital. But also I give a shout out. I use Kiavi as a backdrop. There’s times where you have all your money deployed and you have to use a lender and Kiavi is one of those lenders that I do use ⁓ just because of the 100 % financing actually be part of an Investor Fuel. Obviously that was an

another perk.

Mike Hambright (24:44)
Yeah,

benefit for Investor Fuel members. Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about, there’s a couple of things I want to ask you about is, do you have a unique acquisitions process? And when you first told me about this several years back, it was brilliant, I thought. mean, so maybe just kind of share like how you do acquisitions that’s a little bit different than most others.

Travis Johnson (24:46)
Yep.

Sure, I’ll kind of give a structural format of how our office operates. It’s my wife and I in the business. My wife normally does the bookkeeping, ⁓ office manager stuff. She also does the…

interaction with all the employees. She always does daily huddles with them to make sure everyone’s on track with what they are. We have two acquisition managers on our team, and we have one VA person that does kind of the transaction coordinating stuff on our team. And then we have a gentleman that does what we call Matterports and also does

just ⁓ disbow for us. And so we’re not a huge team, but we’re fishing enough with the size we are.

And with the team I described, we average about 70 houses a year. So that kind of gives you a relate to size. So the process starts off, obviously we are marketing, we want all inbound marketing. That’s just how we find that works best for us up in Minnesota is the more that people can reach out to us versus us hunting them down seems to work. So we get our leads, obviously they can come through the website and call a phone number.

They can text us in. It’s however they want to reach out to us. But once they connect with one of our acquisition managers, she’s going to go ahead and ask a series of questions. We have a process in place. And essentially we’re trying to find out is this a motivated seller or is this a retail seller? Because obviously a big difference. And when you run a ton of leads through your business, have to know which one is the ideal lead and which one is the ideal. Hey, you should list this with a realtor. If you don’t have someone, we can refer someone to you type of thing.

the call. Let’s just say it is motivated and then the next step that we do is we schedule an on-point camera session which is a Matterport. So we’ll send over our guy Chad on our team. He’ll go out there and it’s about 45 minutes. He’ll go around move the camera around throughout the space and basically gives you if you’re not familiar with Matterport it’s a virtual walkthrough essentially is what it creates like a 3D dollhouse. It’s really cool and once he gets that he uploads it remote out of the field. We have an iPad with

It just gets uploaded surprisingly for how big of the file is it gets uploaded super quick So I don’t get how that works, but I’m just glad it’s speedy It comes back to our office. We get alerted when it comes available The team then alerts me when that files available ⁓ when it comes back I’ll review it and I literally make my repair budget literally off that Matterport and then he has a survey ⁓ Thing it’s independent. He doesn’t ask to sell er but are the floor sloped the window conditions? Is there certain?

and smells in the house that we have, foundation, stuff that he sees. He’ll make notes of that so that could also help me have an impact because there’s a lot of cat urine houses. And as you know, there’s a night and day difference on how to solve those problems. ⁓ But I’ll come up with a repair number and he also comes up with…

Mike Hambright (27:41)
Right.

Travis Johnson (27:45)
comparitables of what houses sell for. So I’ll come up, he’ll ultimately, Chad on my Dispo side will also come up with an ARV. I look at the ARV, kind of validate with the numbers that he brought up, the comparitables. And then I come up with a repair budget. I come up with an offer and then I kick it back to my acquisition person. They reach back out to the seller. Seller then is reviewed with the offer. If they like it, they go ahead and sign while they’re still on the phone remotely. There are some people in the older age group that aren’t tech savvy or just don’t trust it. Then we’ll go.

back on due to belly to belly wet signature in person. So that’s kind of our whole process for acquisitions.

Mike Hambright (28:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, because when you have as much experience as you do, like you, you really just need to see a few things like you, know, lot of the repairs are based off of square footage. Like you kind of know, but it’s like, well, tell me about, you know, all the systems, foundation issues, just a few basic things. And it’s allowed you to not have to drive out to every, I know some people that still do over a hundred plus deals a year. do too, that are still doing all the acquis, or lot of the acquisitions are there.

Travis Johnson (28:26)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Mike Hambright (28:46)
approving

everything right and it allows you to still do that if that’s what you’re comfortable with but do it in a few minutes instead of a few hours per deal because of all the drive time.

Travis Johnson (28:55)
Yeah, I would say each file that comes back to me, I’ll have no more than 15 minutes involved, even if I have to reach out to acquisition person, ask some follow up questions. It’s 15 minutes max. in, a given week, I’m maybe looking at a dozen files.

which I mean, isn’t tons. So a lot of times I would say I’m close to three houses a day that pops into my queue. I review it if there’s emergencies, the team will let me know. Otherwise I’ll get to it that day at some point, give the feedback. And this is how we normally average five to seven houses a month.

purchase of the properties and we do it all strictly from that. We do an inspection. It’s called owner’s approval. So let’s say they do accept the offer. I now have up to 10 days to go out to the property and walk it myself just to validate. Hey, I looked everything off virtual. I went off a piece of paper. You know, let’s just make sure this is the real deal. And I think I can count only twice. I had to renegotiate a small price reduction because there were some things that

just weren’t seen on the Matterport that I saw in person, but it was a high ticket item. but outside of that, the numbers just work out and there’s, there’s just some deals like today we’re closing on one in a townhouse. Well, on a townhouse up in our market, the outside is all covered by the association. So there’s nothing about the outside that you have to even factor in for. So it’s just the inside and the inside for us, it was paint and carpet was in Katnur and house. So it’s like, Hey, I got to update the bathrooms, flooring, paint and that easily can be.

done, especially the years of how many years I’ve been doing it, you just know your numbers from just looking at the space and you’re like, oh, this is a $45,000 rehab. And I’m always surprised that it’s like, we’re pretty accurate with our adjustment on our repairs, but it’s also just from years of doing it, reviewing the numbers of what our bills are and what they cost. the math is just the math is what the math is.

Mike Hambright (30:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s all math. So, hey, thanks for sharing that. So Travis, you’ve been a part of Investor Fuel for around, coming up on five years, I think now, part of the group, big giver, always willing to share. And would you mind just kind of sharing your experience of being a part of Investor Fuel?

Travis Johnson (30:59)
Sure, I joined Investor Fuel because I knew I was going to be essentially an investor on an island. It’s when you’re in your market and you’re competing at first.

You know, competitors for the most part, they’re not going to help you, right? They don’t want one more person that they have to compete against. So I was like, well, I have to go somewhere to get more knowledge because I know kind of something from the franchise system, right? I had that, but that still wasn’t enough. And I was like, there’s gotta be a better way to get more knowledge about real estate investing when people are struggling. So I did some research. I also think you how did me along with other franchises, the, a joint feel type of thing, combination thereof.

I was able to connect with you guys and I gave it a try and I was excited because once I went to the first meeting I realized hey this is this is what I need in my business definitely at the beginning this is what I need because this is going to give me structure I can say this is why I’m struggling anyone else struggling can someone tell me who’s doing something better and when you’re in a group like that

There’s a lot of times you’re not competing with anyone in your own market in the group. So a lot of people are willing to share what’s working because they’re in another state. So they don’t care. They’re like, hey, I’m from Fort Worth, Texas. I’ll tell you exactly what I’m doing. You can steal my model if you want, you know, so investor fuel allowed me to gain access to all those people and then all my marketing. My success in my business is a hundred percent to you, Mike, and creating the group. Now I had to take the risk. I had to meet the vendors. I had to do the trial and error, right? So there’s still risk there. But

you

If you didn’t have that all in one spot, I don’t think I would be here today, to be honest. If I am, I would only be doing five, five, six deals a year and I would be doing everything. Acquisitions, phone calls, the renovations, everything I would be doing myself. And I would probably be making maybe 125 a year, not saying that’s bad, but compared to what I make now, and I can delegate most of that away, it’s all from the success of being part of a mastermind. And I can’t say, can’t say enough to you, Mike, that I appreciate that.

you created investor fuel and I was able to take advantage of it.

Mike Hambright (33:00)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I’m glad you’re a part of it. And maybe we’ll have to talk about your ⁓ estate and your will at some point. Yeah, no, so glad to have you be a part of it. And I think ⁓ coming in and learning those things, and I know you, you know, there’s a reciprocity thing, right? Like you feel, I know you have gratitude for that, and I appreciate that. And a lot of you’re saying me, but a lot of it is also from the community that we have.

Travis Johnson (33:07)
Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. The bill’s in the mail too, right? So.

Mike Hambright (33:28)
You have some level of reciprocity to want to give and share that with other people as well. And that’s just how the whole thing works. It’s just a cycle of give and get, right.

Travis Johnson (33:36)
Yeah, this isn’t the scary one away, but there’s sometimes you’re going to go to a mastermind, a session that you feel like you got almost zero out of it. Like you’re like, I didn’t learn anything new. But normally when I’m at those events and you don’t know when that’s going to happen, it’s just you show up and you’re like, Hey, man, I’m just not, man, I’m just not getting anything new. But then what clicks is every, it seems like everyone else is struggling, but you already have the answers to their struggles.

So guess what? That becomes a giver session. So that’s what I do is in those moments when I realize, boy, this one, I’m just not getting as much as I wanted out of it. it always seems like it lines up perfect that, Hey, someone’s struggling. I already know how to solve it. Or this is what I did in my business. And I’ll just go around the room to everyone. Whenever I hear them speak, if they’re struggling and I have an answer to it, I’ll just go and tell them, Hey, this is what worked for me. If you want to connect afterwards, let’s talk more. It doesn’t mean you have to do what I did, but I already know the struggle you went through and this is how I solve it.

it.

Mike Hambright (34:31)
Yeah, that’s great. Travis, I appreciate you joining me today. If folks want to connect with you, if they’re looking to possibly lend money, find ways to do deals, just talk to somebody that’s Minnesota nice, where can they go to connect?

Travis Johnson (34:42)
Sure, you can always call our office. I won’t give out my cell phone, I’m a little more guarded on that because I don’t know who’s all watching. But you can call my office at 612-930-2000 and you get to say, you saw me on the show and you reach out that way. But I will give out my email address. It’s Travis, that’s T-R-A-V-I-S at MNNice.com.

⁓ You can shoot me an email that way and just reference to tell me on the show I am pretty much an open book I’ve just always been that way because

The one thing I also learned on the franchise system and then going through investor fuel, I knew exactly in the franchise system every channel they were marketing on, right? There was no secret. I knew exactly every channel. I went out and I thought, hey, I can reproduce those channels. It’s what you do on each one of those channels is really where the success comes from. And that becomes trial and error. So I still don’t mind sharing all the channels that I’m on, you know, and give some feedback on something. I mean, as you know, you can’t give away everything, but I can push people in the right direction.

to

help them cut down on their trial and error. Absolutely. And I’ll talk anyone’s ear off. You already know that, Mike.

Mike Hambright (35:47)
Yeah.

Well, and the truth is, is that all is in the execution, right? I mean, I think one of the things that I’ve realized is like people are worried about giving away their secrets and it’s like, yeah, but most people can’t execute it the way that you can until they know what you know, right? And so like nobody, it’s not like nobody’s ever thought of like using direct mail or a pay-per-click or a TV to advertise. It all comes down to how you do it, whether you do it consistently. I mean, there’s things that a lot of us do, you as well, but in my business, there’s

Travis Johnson (36:02)
Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (36:16)
things that we’ve been doing this year that I’ve thought about of like, tell people what we do, but it’s like, yeah, but we’ve like had like a million gut punches and pivoted a bunch of times from learning those things. and just saying like, go do this doesn’t really carry a whole lot of weight until you know where all the landmines are buried, right?

Travis Johnson (36:26)
Yeah.

Exactly.

But you have to be ready to just accept in your mind. You’re gonna hit those landmines Don’t get stuck with analysis paralysis, dude. I was there all the way up until I quit my job You know, it was too chicken shit to go invest all independently But eventually I just like I wanted change and I knew real estate was something and of course now realized in the investment part was the thing but analysis paralysis almost kills anyone waiting to get ready and say I don’t want to make a mistake I got to go to one more meeting and then they’ll launch I’ll get one

coaching package and then I’ll be ready in the line.

That’s just bullshit. You just get off your ass and try something. Now take a little bit of directions. Don’t go blind, but also try it. But expect that at the very beginning, you’re going to have one step forward, two steps backwards. And then eventually it’s two steps forward, only one backwards. I don’t think there’s ever three forward and zero backwards. I haven’t found the success on that, but it’s all about keep trying because the more you’re willing to try, the more the doors will open for you. Consistency goes a long ways in this business. It’s easier said than done, but I

and proof on my end, staying consistent allows you to grow in your business.

Mike Hambright (37:43)
Fantastic. Well, thanks again for joining us today, sharing your lessons learned.

Travis Johnson (37:46)
Anytime, Mike. Always happy to help.

Mike Hambright (37:48)
Yeah, yeah, everybody hope you got some great insights from today. If you’re looking to take your business to the next level, we’d love to talk to you about investor fuel. That’s that’s what we’re all about is working with amazing people that are big givers and and can take what they’ve learned and apply to the business and change their life ultimately. So go to investor fuel dot com to learn more. Otherwise, we’ll see you on the next show.