Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show today. I have my buddy Travis. Oglesbee here talking with me. Travis is a great guy. I’ve seen them go from no deals to several deals. And when I say they it’s a team of three, I may call them three Amigos team nitro, but a three guys that have come together and created something really amazing.

We were talking about the power of your team and surrounding yourself with the right people today.

fashionable real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate backed 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 or all of those around us on today’s show, we’re going to continue our conversation of fueling our businesses and [00:01:00] our lives.

I’m glad you’re here.

Hey, Travis. Welcome to the show, buddy.

Travis: [00:01:12] Hey Mike man. Happy to be here.

Mike: [00:01:14] Good to see you. So I’m awesome. You guys are, you guys have a pretty amazing team. I know you guys very well. Uh, but for those that don’t know, you talk a little bit about your, your. I think kind of talk about how you got started in the business, and then let’s just, we’re going to kind of dive into how you have two partners.

There’s three of you guys and a whole team, of course. But how three of you guys went from kind of corporate jobs to self-employed and successful real estate investors by, by certainly by most measures. For sure. I know that when you’re a success, I was just talking to another guy that does kind of like you guys, 10, 15 deals a month.

And he’s like, yeah. I just feel like. You know, everybody’s sometimes you’re at that level and you’re kind of down on yourself. You just like, you don’t really think you’re anything special or whatever. And you know, sometimes when you’re in the mix, you just [00:02:00] don’t see what other people see, but you guys have really done something pretty amazing over the last few years.

So anyway, tell us a little bit about your background in your journey.

Travis: [00:02:06] Yeah. Yeah. I definitely will. Yeah. It’s funny how you get, you get so caught in the weeds, like, cause we’re never, we’re never trying to fix successes. You know, I’m trying to fix problems. So it’s easy. It’s easy to get hung up on that. No matter how many, you know, you’re doing one or 20 deals a month, it don’t matter.

But anyway, uh, so yeah, Travis, Ogles the, uh, me and Sam and big are the owners of runway properties. Um, you know, we run our business out of Georgia and South Carolina. So we all, actually, none of us even live there. So I’m in Illinois, Sam’s in his RV, probably somewhere in the Midwest right now. I believe he’s trying to find somewhere warm within the next month.

Um, and then Vic is in sunny, California. So we all worked our corporate jobs. This will be our fourth year. Um, now that we’ve been in business, so coming up here probably relatively soon, I think in November, it will be four years for us or [00:03:00] somewhere in there. And we need to look back when we established that, uh, powerful LLC, you know, there was huge hurdle to establish.

So we all had our corporate jobs, you know, we were all thought we were, uh, you know, w we were doing really well. So we thought. Um, but just weren’t didn’t have that happiness that we did. Right. So I’m going to fast forward to a few things. Cause I know a lot of people kind of know a lot of our story and everything, but we all three were lucky enough to be able to exit.

And now, you know, we all, we all do real estate together. Um, you know, it’s going on four years now has had a ton of ups and downs, um, within it. But it’s been really beneficial for us, you know, financially, spiritually, ethically, you know, relationship wise. And it’s taught us a lot of, you know, different things.

And so I think that’s what we’re really going to talk about today is like, you know what our team looks like, you know, some of the struggles and then really kind of. The big thing that happens, you know, that causes the most growth is really the people outside of our organization. [00:04:00] This cause kind of the biggest, biggest impact for us.

Mike: [00:04:02] Yeah. And it’s the peop people that have been watching our shows over the years. They know that, you know, my wife is an integral part of our business. She’s just in the next office over here. She’s never very rarely on camera. Actually. Somebody invited her to do a podcast, uh, this week, which she did, um, As a real estate guy and just somebody that I know, and he’s like, Hey, can I interview your wife?

And I was like, Oh, you’re gonna have to ask her, but she’s pretty introverted, you know? And she did it, she had fun, but, um, you know, she’s like a key part of our team, but not a lot of people know her, cause she’s not the face of it, even though her face is much prettier than mine. But, um, what, what, what a lot of people don’t really understand when you get into this business, if you’re, if you’re a lone Wolf is, you know, there’s really.

Some real clear cut divisions in the company, whether it’s a sales and marketing, whether it’s like acquisitions and dispositions. And you know, if you’re doing a construction and all that stuff, that’s a real natural fit for somebody to like manage rehabs. If you have property management. And of course that’s a whole nother business.

So these are like units of the business [00:05:00] that really are set up to almost have like a. A C-level executive, right? Somebody that’s like overseeing that division of the business, but there’s a lot of benefits to having partners a partner or even partners because they’re like divisions of a company. Right.

We, when we’re small, it’s all kind of the same thing. But the truth is, is you should think big. So talk a little about how you guys are structured.

Travis: [00:05:21] Yeah. I mean, we definitely try to, you know, it’s funny. I feel like we’ve been, we’ve been thinking big and then it’s cool how it just continues to evolve.

There’s a whole new level of big, I feel like every. Every other month that we try to develop or something. So the way, so the way the runways like set up today is us, us three. We try to take on like specific roles within the company. Obviously there’s a couple separate divisions where that have to like run our entire organization and where we’re headed in the future and everything.

And that kind of has the biggest thing to do with kind of network fees. But the way runway set up is so big. So big, you know, Uh, vigilant. This is the guy who lives in [00:06:00] California. He solely runs private money. So his every day his job is to get up and go contact guys like you and I, or guys with a lot more money than you and I have and try to get them to invest with us.

So I know he’s developing a website right now and he, his sole role is to keep an eye on that money because. You know, dues notes, come do things, turn over. Investors need their money back. And that’s, his job is to liaison that move the chess pieces around and really, you know, just keep, keep the books organized basically.

So obviously accounting is a whole nother, uh, horrible mess most of the time, but then. Shift over to Sam. And so Sam runs the entire marketing division and helps oversee acquisitions since we all sat in the acquisition role at one time. So Sam’s entire job is to keep the pipeline full with leads like his entire KPI.

Every single day that we look at on our daily tag of call is, you know, cost per deal. [00:07:00] So today our, our cost per deal, you know, ranges anywhere between nine and 1500. And that is the goal that we want to keep that thing in. Or extremely happy with that type of, you know, turnover. So that’s the goal is to always lower it, but we’re super happy to have it in there.

VIX KPI goal is to raise $700,000 a month. That’s his entire goal. So that’s what he reviews every single day with us. My job, you know, our primary, you know, we’re the we’re sub two guys. So my entire role is creating equity within the company. So my job is to create the actual equity through selling homes.

So I do dispositions, so I do all of the sales. So my job is to create X, you know, an equity per month for the division and XN cashflow. So that’s the way like everybody’s structured now. The cool thing is like, everybody kind of has like part people that work with them. So everybody within our organization, you know, everybody’s a partner, right?

Whether you’re an owner or whatever you want to label it as it’s kind of irrelevant to us. But so on [00:08:00] Vic side, you know, he has a couple of different admins that help him with like his bookwork and stuff. Sometimes I’m his admin. Uh, whenever he needs help, you know, Sam will, Sam will deploy his resources like as needed, but he does have some direct admins as well.

And then I have a amazing disposition manager who completely runs like everything below, just right below what I want to take care of and what I’m able to take care of. Then one more part of the team kill those, um, is our acquisitions team. So they don’t live in state either. You know, he lives in Tampa, Florida, and he runs our acquisition side of the business.

So it’s nice to be able to do that virtually he has, you know, too two full time admins and then another acquisition guy who works directly with him. So that’s kind of the way the organization’s set up. It’s, you know, it’s got some flow charts. We used to have a bunch of, you know, cold callers and VAs and everything, but we’ve been fortunate enough to [00:09:00] be able to really cut it down to maybe 10 people at this point.

So maybe less. So

Mike: [00:09:06] I love that you’re talking about KPIs and tracking them daily because you know, at the end of the day, It’s that dashboard. That’s that scorecard that keeps us kind of honest. And I think one of the problems that, that evolve with partnerships, people working together is when they start to feel like somebody’s like, I’m doing more of the work than my partner or partners.

And there’s a communication problem too. Like, we don’t communicate enough, usually it’s not enough. And so you guys are meeting, you guys are meeting daily, you have KPIs that you’re tracking all the time, holding each other accountable for it. Right. And. Yeah, you guys having a pretty amazing, uh, relationship in terms of being able to communicate with one another.

Like if somebody. If you guys had a problem, you would just tell each other like, Hey man, we need to talk about this instead of like letting it fester, which is what some people do in part partnerships, marriages.

Travis: [00:09:54] Yeah. Yeah. And we, you know what, and we still, like, sometimes we still do let them fester, but it’s for [00:10:00] such a short time.

You know, like that’s, that’s the good thing, you know, Vic and Sam really, like, they played a huge part in like really helping me like, be able to not necessarily like, I mean, I think we all kind of said what was on your mind, but just like, Hey man, this doesn’t feel right. So I’m going to say it, you know, and it’s not, it’s not really the point of being right or wrong.

Cause like we always have the same saying like within the company, like you had our best interests in mind, just, you know, you did the best you could with the information you had. At that time. So whether it’s right wrong, like, I look at it as like, if you’re screwing up, like, I know you’re working. If you’re not screwing up, I don’t think you’re doing anything.

So, but yeah, we’ve been, we’ve been very lucky to be able to like, kind of call each other out throughout

Mike: [00:10:47] the years. Things look like if you guys were just three friends and you all just did your own thing and you weren’t partners. If you imagine that.

Travis: [00:10:57] No, I re you know, and I I’ve thought [00:11:00] about that so many times too, cause now this company has turned into, you know, I never thought I’d be doing, you know, whatever amount of deals we’re doing in the month.

Like I never thought that that would happen, could happen. I think, you know, we all have an image in our mind, but. Man. I hope I wouldn’t be doing this many. If we were all broken up, it’d be a nightmare. Um, but as far, like really thinking about it, I just wouldn’t man, I wouldn’t want to, you know, I have so much more fun getting to do these things with these guys than I ever, you know, it’s the same reason why we’re in the mastermind.

Like it is so much it’s so, I mean, it’s just fun being in that thing and you don’t even have to put the value that it actually brings to the table in it, for it to justify as worth. Yeah. You know, getting to do the same. And I always talk about that, man. Like, you know, you put a dollar figure, so you, you know, you want, you want like 10 million or whatever.

It doesn’t even matter a hundred thousand dollars like it’s. So it is so much more fun. Cutting that into a third and getting to do it with three [00:12:00] people who are going to help you. They’re probably going to take you so much further than what you ever could yourself and man, the brotherhood that comes with it as.

It’s just awesome.

Mike: [00:12:09] Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. There’s almost nothing that I do now that isn’t through, um, some sort of JV or partnership, just because honestly, one of the things I found about myself is that, so I guess in our, in our, you know, house buying business and all rentals and all that stuff like Lindsay and I are partners, but she’s, she’s helped hold me accountable.

She’s pushed me farther than I would have pushed myself. One thing I’ve realized. And then, you know, with investor machine. Uh, our lead gen agency, like I’m partners with Jason. And one of the things I’ve found is, um, Sometimes I get content and I’m just like, you know, I don’t push myself real hard, but when, when I have somebody else to think about like, I push myself further, but it’s almost like having kids like you have, you have kids now.

It’s like, you just push yourself farther because you want better for them or you want more for them, or you have this dude, this responsibility that you feel. Right. So I feel like [00:13:00] when I have signed up, when I’m in a partnership or I have somebody else involved, like. I would probably more often let myself down then somebody else, like, I’m never going to let somebody else down.

If I’ve said I’m going to do something, I do it right.

Travis: [00:13:13] Yeah. That’s well, that’s, it’s like a, it’s why you get a gym partner. Like it’s the same reason why, you know, why they have, why there’s consultants, why there’s, you know, multiple people within every organization. It’s like the same thing, you know? It’s like, if you want to do something meaningful in life, like do it for, do something for somebody else.

That’s always what it is and do all the crap you want for yourself. It ain’t going to get you as far as you want to go. Yeah. You’ll never have that meat. Well, that’s not, probably not true for everybody, but you moved that meaningful feeling. Like that’s why we have that pathway to home ownership. And that’s like, why that’s our why and why we’re now owner-financing every single home is like, we’re provided a pathway to home ownership that others can’t.

So like, You know, we try to look at it like when we bring this up all the time, when we get frustrated with somebody, cause you know, sometimes we all [00:14:00] confused like action and progress. Like there’s huge differences in between those two. And you know, sometimes a guy will get caught up and doing all these actions that, you know, in his mind are super progressive.

But the reality is when I look at your dashboard, It’s not increasing, so it really doesn’t have the progress, but like, you know, we’re trying to be servants to each other to be served, you know? Right. Like if you want to be served, you must first be a servant. So like we’re trying to do that no matter how mad, no matter how frustrated, because the truth is those mad frustrated times, man, they come and go so quickly.

They’re over as soon as you talk about them. So

Mike: [00:14:37] yeah. Yeah. That’s one of the things we do in the mastermind is, you know, investor fuel is, uh, we have accountability calls. We have people report out their KPIs and then we have kind of the hot seat presentation where people have to basically step up and say, Here’s where I’m at.

Here’s what I’m struggling with. And here’s my trends. Like here’s where I’m

Travis: [00:14:53] performing. Yeah,

Mike: [00:14:54] no, we don’t do well. I tell everybody, I had a call onboarding call with a new guy yesterday and he’s like, yeah, I’m a little nervous [00:15:00] about like my KPIs. Cause I haven’t been tracking them very well. I was like, that’s that’s that’s for new members is the case.

They haven’t been tracking them that well, a lot often for us. And then people start to track them and you start to see people’s success. Just take off because they know they’re going to be held accountable. And what I told him is like, look. We’re not doing this to harm you. Like we do these things because we want to help you, you know, but you have to want it as bad as we want it.

You can’t, you have to want it more than we want it for you. You know? I mean, that’s one of the struggles I’ve had with coaching over the years. Sometimes I want it, I want their success more than they do, and that never ends well. So

Travis: [00:15:33] yeah, just

Mike: [00:15:34] kind of. So it’s all about the, just the power of kind of being vulnerable, having partners or people that are looking out for you and being held, really being held accountable,

Travis: [00:15:44] man.

And that was what was so vital when we came in. Cause like we were just trying to do deals, you know, like we weren’t worried about accounting taxes. Pony, you know, any type of CRM and then you get up in front of, you know, you get on that stage and invest your machine. It’s not, it’s not like it’s [00:16:00] intimidating, but you get an up in front of your peers who were there to literally just help you.

And you’re, you know, you have to report out on, you know, like organized material. And that organized material, you know, you’ll, you’ll look at it and, you know, I open things, but then whenever you pointed out to other people, like you just reading that to other people, hearing their comments, that’s what literally like yeah.

My partners are amazing for sure. And they’re the reason why I’m here talking to you and going all the places that we’re going, but like standing up in front of that mastermind, reporting everything out to everybody. And then all my buddies in that crowd. Being like, Hey, that wasn’t as good as the last presentation that you did, you know, like your numbers are down.

Like, what is there? Can we help? Like, and that’s the beauty of it, like, or maybe they increased and I’m going to tell them why. And then that helps them. It’s the servant mentality type thing. So like, yeah, man getting the, being in that thing and having to report out to people that’s been. I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s what we [00:17:00] try to do every day in our business now.

Right. That’s how it should be. Yeah.

Mike: [00:17:04] Everybody should have goals. You should always try to hold yourself accountable, but sometimes it’s better to just. You know, when, if it’s just us and we’re on regulated or we’re kind of like not accountable to anybody else or worried about that, you know, we back off of our goals sometimes they’re like, eh, I don’t need to work that hard or things are, but when you, when you start to like voice what you’re going to do, you naturally like want to step your game up because you don’t, you don’t want to look like a whisky.

Right. So you’re kind of like, well, yeah, I’m going to do this now. The truth is, is you should never set your goals around something to like. Impress anybody like, do it for yourself, do it for you to have your own reasons, right? Yeah. Otherwise, if you don’t have a good, why, like, it’s just like, well, I just said I would do it like, well, that’s not good enough,

Travis: [00:17:48] but,

Mike: [00:17:48] um, you know, it does force you to step up your game when you’re, when you’re have some accountability to other people.

Travis: [00:17:54] You know what was cool too, like beyond that, like just being in it, you guys just sent me a [00:18:00] birthday gift too in the mail, like got that then yesterday. Like that was really thanks for that, by the way. That’s really cool, man. You guys sit with, you got me, like you got me multiple different things, a book, you know, handwritten letter, all kinds of neat stuff.

I’ll tell you what man that was. That was like rejuvenated itself because it’s like, Oh yeah, they care about me. You know, like, Oh yeah. People actually care about you. So that was pretty cool. Cool, buddy.

Mike: [00:18:23] So talk about, a little bit about, we’re talking about team stuff. Like if people are, um, you guys started as a team.

And I, you know, some of them know the backstory, you know, that you guys joined our FlipNerd coaching program like four years ago. And I remember you guys from when you were like little bitty babies, you know,

Travis: [00:18:42] what’s that still are just, we just got more beards now it’s hard to yeah.

Mike: [00:18:47] Talk about, um, like there’s probably a bunch of people that are listening to this that feel like they’ve maybe hit a ceiling of some sort and they’re by themselves. Right. And so that doesn’t mean everybody should go get a partner.

Right, but just talk about [00:19:00] kind of, for those that are, I think some, sometimes it’s like, you guys were friends first and foremost. Right. But sometimes it’s a skill set. It’s like, man, I’m just looking inward and saying, Hey, I’m not, I’m not great at this. Um, and sometimes it’s like, well, you could hire that out.

Or you could find somebody that is good at that, that ha you have a skillset that they don’t and you just come together and, and one-on-one is more than two, right.

Travis: [00:19:24] Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it’s almost like for me, it’s like a two per it’s there’s two or three, like approaches that come with it. And I’ll see if I can remember these as I talk about them, but, you know, one is, we just, we got lucky and we all started out together.

You know, I think like you said, like a lot of people. You know, so I think that’s one piece of it is like, if you’re starting in it, which most of the guys who hear this, probably aren’t just starting, you know, they might either be solo or they already have their partners. You know, if you have your partners, man, if they’re, you know, you, you just have to turn whether that’s a benefit for you or not at that point.

But if, you know, if you’re by yourself and you want [00:20:00] to bring some, somebody else on with you or you’re interested in, and I mean, I mean, it’s so easy to explore that or how have a conversation with a person in your market and you don’t even have to sign like operating agreements together, like just partner on some deals and see how that works out, you know, is there there’s there’s guys that are so good at finding deals so consistently, and if you were great at running a rehab project and selling a home, I mean, how perfect of a marriage, like, can that be?

And you can just so simply do that, like deal by deal. Yep. And then, so I think that’s one piece is just JV really with each other. And then if it grows into more than start a new LLC and run some businesses through that, or, you know, some deals through that.

Mike: [00:20:44] That’s a good idea. What’d you just say, I just want to kind of, I don’t want to just gloss over that is like, it doesn’t always have to be your business partners like to get, like you own a legal entity together.

It could be kind of a JV and it is probably a good idea. It’s kind of like dating is kind of like let’s JV on some deals [00:21:00] before. Before we make something more serious, right. If you ever do right.

Travis: [00:21:03] Yeah. I mean, it just, you know, we’ve done that in the past, so it works out really well. And sometimes it doesn’t and guess what it’s over after that transaction.

Like, so be it, you know, at that time point, so like, that’s the benefit of like, well, cool. Like, well, we both found out like, eh, you know, we were better friends. We were just friends. And then, you know, the third thing, and this is what, like, this is probably one of the biggest ones, like for me and like my business, where it is now.

It’s like whenever I bring, so we’re bringing on people to work with us, right? Like I don’t, I try not to like paint a picture as in like, you work for me. And this is outside of salmon big. So anybody that comes into the organization to work with us is like, I truly try to one, I try to 100% serve them the best I possibly can.

Like Caitlin my disposition manager. I will bend over backwards to do anything for her and make her life simpler. Because at the end of the day, she is [00:22:00] what. Jet makes us money too. So huge emphasis there, but like, I try to literally treat her exactly. Like I would a partner sometimes, almost even, but, you know, cause she’s kind of my right-hand man.

It’s almost, I think that can be a huge thing with like partnering with people. Cause she has had huge ideas that I’ve never thought of already. And she doesn’t even, you know, they don’t even own the company, but yet she’s had transformational ideas and I feel like it’s kind of, because I’ve. Empowered her to do that.

Okay. I would love to hear your entire thoughts on that because I’ve seen guys post in the group, like, Hey, you know, hiring an admin, but potentially it could become my COO, like, you know, or whatever it is because like in our organization, like, I feel like I want you to come into this. Yes. You might have to do some administrative tasks, but I want you to wake up every day and act like you own this site.

Because I want you to own that complete division. So I feel like there’s like three pieces. Start with them, bring them on partner with them on a few deals and then [00:23:00] hiring and treat them like a partner. Because they can become just as valuable as one.

Mike: [00:23:04] That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. And I think a lot of folks here, uh, you know, there’s a lot of people that find each other at REIA clubs, of course, with all the COVID stuff, that’s, that’s changed now, but I know a ton of people that have found each other through just through networking or honestly, there’s, there’s several people in investor fuel that joined separately and now they’re they partner in different markets or they.

Like right now, I just talked to that are partnering. They’re both single-family guys, but they’re partnering together to do some multifamily stuff. I had a call with them last week. So there’s a bunch of, I mean, just getting around like-minded others, people that are, that are, have been vetted out somehow, you know, uh, or that you’ve vetted out.

Um, there’s lots of opportunities. I honestly, I’m, I’m, I’m always looking for, even inside of Jay, I met Jason and investor fuel. He’s my business partner now for investor machine. So, you know, there’s just amazing things that happen when you get around the right people, I guess.

Travis: [00:23:51] Yeah. I mean, look, how far, you know, look how far you and I came together on several different things that, you know, I feel like if you’re, I know like you and I [00:24:00] are super partial to investor feel, but it’s like, man, if somebody is not, if you’re not in a mastermind, like you’ve got to do G Rhea, great.

Like if you’re in a mastermind, you should probably be running area, you know, not really always attending one, but, um, to give that value back, but maybe you have like there without a doubt, you have to. Yeah. And so you have to get in a mastermind. I mean, administer fuels best we found, or we’d probably go somewhere else, but you know, like you gotta be, you gotta be in one man, and there’s like 150 people in this thing now.

So it’s. Your networks gets

Mike: [00:24:33] better with time and we improve and

Travis: [00:24:35] yeah, the

Mike: [00:24:36] members we bring in and we’ve had them out quite a bit. So they, you know, they always, you know, the quality is always good. And so, you know, um, awesome. Awesome, buddy. Well, Hey, uh, I know you, I know you gotta, I know you’ve got to closing to take care of, so we’ll kind of wind things down, but really appreciate you joining us today.

Great to see you, my friend.

Travis: [00:24:54] Yeah, man. Thanks for every day. It’s always good to be here.

Mike: [00:24:56] Yup. And everybody makes sure you’re surrounding yourself with the right people. Of course, we’d love for you to [00:25:00] consider investor fuel. If you haven’t. We actually have another, our next meeting is coming up here real fast.

Uh, so you should reach out to and go to investor fuel.com. You can schedule a call with us. We’ll tell you more about it and see if you’re a fit. We’d love to talk about it. No obligation, it’s not high pressure or anything like that. We’re really looking for the right people more than anything. And I’m sure you are too, so appreciate everybody.

We’ll see you on the next show.

Are you an active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s

Travis: [00:25:32] leading

Mike: [00:25:33] real estate investor. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us to learn more about investor fuel.

Simply visit investor fuel.com to get started. [00:27:00] [00:26:00] .