Discover the Secrets of Commercial Real Estate Investing: Expert Tips

Brett McCollum (00:00.622)
All right guys, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Brett McCollum, and I’m here today with Alicia Shepherd. And today, today we’re gonna talk about all things commercial. But before we do, at Investor Fuel, guys, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 2 to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Alicia, how are you?

Alicia Shepherd (00:24.912)
Dude Brett, I’m great! How are you today?

Brett McCollum (00:27.456)
my gosh, I’m incredible. We spent probably, I don’t know, I probably took too long of your time getting to know each other before the show. Guys, I’m excited to talk with her. We mutually, we have a lot of synergy and things that we do, both real estate but also kind of in our hobbies and stuff too. But man, this is gonna be a lot of fun. So let’s do this. Enough about that. Let’s back up a little bit, catch people up to speed, give us some history. Who’s Alicia?

Alicia Shepherd (00:35.066)
Never. Never. There’s plenty of time.

Alicia Shepherd (00:57.904)
Well, I’m Alicia Shepherd. What’s up, hot sauce? It’s kind of my go-to phrase. Tell everybody. Have it on a cough cup. I am All Things Commercial Real Estate. I am the Vice President of KW Commercial. I am one of the founding partners and CEO of Launch Commercial Real Estate Network. Think of it like an institutional commercial real estate brokerage without the brokerage component. We’re a platform service that gives all of the administrative, operational, marketing, data, research, analytic,

support to a commercial real estate agent broker investor without having to give up all your commission and fee to an institutional shop like a JLL, Collier’s or Cushman. We give that to you at a set economic price point that makes sense and we let you be the owner of your business along the way. We think that’s revolutionary in the industry and really pumped about it. I’m the founder and lead curriculum creator for Nucleus Commercial Real Estate Training. We train about thousand agents per year and we’re building actually, it launches in May, we’re pumped about it.

a community model in Nucleus where you’ll be able to come in and if like, let’s say you’re on an island and lead generating on your own is really hard and kind of lonely, you can jump in and we’ll have a digital bullpen, a virtual bullpen that you can jump in every day and like have people from all over the country that are lead generating together. We’ll have a resource library, a full training like on-demand library. It’s gonna be really cool. And I do a program called Seven Figures in 90 Days.

that is a high-intensity boot camp where I kick your ass up and down the field for 90 days in a group setting for high-intensity lead generation and lead conversion with the objective and non-negotiable goal to go get a million dollars of representation fee, so income, in your listing bucket in a 90-day window. It’s pretty fun. It’s pretty fun. We have a good time. And on top of all of that, I am first and foremost a wife and a mom.

I have four kids and eight year old little boy who is just the coolest little like future soccer kick ass kid. And we have triplet girls that are four years old. And I’m an investor and right now we’re about to be owners of a music venue, which I hope we get to talk about some today because it’s a cool model that, know, I hope so. Our journey in commercial real estate has given us so much insight that as we’re opening this, we’re putting a

Brett McCollum (03:14.372)
we’re gonna talk about that. That’s gonna be fun.

Alicia Shepherd (03:23.162)
business model on top of it that will give us a lot of flexibility, reduce our risk, give us a really cool model to create audience and database around it that’s going to be really cool. So yeah, that’s who I am and that’s what I do. It’s a big, fun, messy, playful world and we have a ton of fun in it.

Brett McCollum (03:42.19)
That’s it. That’s all. That’s all. And sometimes I sleep, right? Golly. Man, so much to back, you know, unpack on that because it is, it’s, there’s a lot going on, but it sounds like my read anyway. It’s like, there’s a lot of joy in it too though, you know? And I think that’s really special to you at least. And that’s to say I’m sure there’s days that are more difficult than others, but I can see the joy on your, like when you talk about this joy on your face and.

Alicia Shepherd (03:43.344)
That’s it! That’s it. And sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I sleep. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (04:12.345)
I think that’s really special to see that with as much as you’ve got going on. But let’s back up a little bit, okay?

You weren’t always real estate.

Alicia Shepherd (04:24.25)
No, no, this is my second career and I’m not a day over 25. So I know that’s hard to believe. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (04:29.709)
It’s crazy, right? Yeah. So 25 years ago, what were you doing?

Alicia Shepherd (04:35.984)
was born and I started working day one. No, mean, my first career, I was a very successful college dropout, stopped going to school to go be a musician in Los Angeles. I mean, I was going to school to be in music. So at some point I looked up and I was like, this is not working for me. And I just wanted to get into work. so I stopped. I wasn’t thriving in school.

Brett McCollum (04:38.291)
Yeah

Brett McCollum (04:50.413)
Right.

Brett McCollum (05:03.828)
As you most entrepreneurs.

Alicia Shepherd (05:05.762)
Yeah, like that wasn’t the setting where I was winning and I didn’t feel like a winner. felt like a failure. So I stopped and I went home for a second, reset, got to LA and I started being a songwriter and I was a staff songwriter for about eight years. Loved that gig. Got to tour, got to submit songs, got to get placements. Awesome job. And then this word Spotify and Napster.

started to be like actual real urban dictionary descriptions and I saw the writing on the wall when YouTube came out. My job was going to disappear. And I mean, you look up today, I don’t, don’t think staff writing is even a thing because you could go find, I mean, no, no, no con broke out on Tik Tok, right? So you don’t need a soft songwriter anymore. They can go find exceptional songwriters and they don’t necessarily need to stack the bench of an okay artist with great song.

Now they can just go find kick-ass songwriters, put them in a room with a songwriter to tighten things up and rip them and let them go. So it’s just a different egosphere. And I saw that coming. So I met a person in my community, that story is a whole other adventure, and got into commercial rules. I started as an operations professional. I was on a team as their admin and like sole ops transaction coordinator.

Brett McCollum (06:04.727)
Well you can now take that and…

Alicia Shepherd (06:33.564)
for about a year and a half and I just loved that. And I looked up and I saw a ceiling to my earning potential in that seat and realized I understood the whole back end of the deal. I had zero fear or anxiety about how to manage the contract to close process, how to do due diligence. I understood how to analyze the deal, how to market a deal, how to process the deal, how to control it, how to communicate with clients. Only piece I wasn’t doing was getting my butt on the phone. that was, it’s time to change that.

Um, I went to a brokerage called Marcus Millchap at that point and, uh, got trained up, got on the phones and that was that. I got into commercial real estate and I’ve been in it for hard to believe. Cause again, I’m, I’m not a day over 25, right? Uh, I’ve been in the industry about 18 years now and, I, I love it. If you’d asked me when I was a kid, what do you want to do when you grow up? I don’t think I have a new commercial real estate was an option. And I think part of my mission now is to make sure that.

Brett McCollum (07:14.692)
Yeah.

No way.

Alicia Shepherd (07:30.192)
girls and boys like me from communities like what I grew up in understand this as an opportunity. Because there were definitely kids that knew this was an opportunity, but they came from very wealthy homes and very wealthy backgrounds, right? And that’s part of where like the nepotism in this industry is problematic. I want kids from every neighborhood to understand the opportunity that’s in commercial real estate. And so I’m very passionate. It’s why I have the training companies and things like that.

Brett McCollum (07:30.253)
keep on it.

Brett McCollum (07:50.231)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (07:54.702)
But you know, for a long time, I don’t know that it’s this way anymore, but at least when I was growing up, if you didn’t know what you wanted to do with your life, you’re gonna go be, just go be a realtor or something, you don’t really know what you wanna do, right? And there was, it was kind of.

Alicia Shepherd (08:08.176)
But not commercial, it’s go be a realtor. It’s not go be a commercial real estate broker and learn about investment real estate and build wealth and legacy and understand analysis, right? It’s go sell houses. My mom for the first 10 years in this industry was like, you’re not doing open houses, right? I was like, mom, I don’t work weekends. I’ve never sold a house. Like it wasn’t until like I got a leadership role at KW that she was like, Like she’s like, I guess you don’t do open houses. I’m like, I don’t do anything like that.

Brett McCollum (08:23.318)
Brett McCollum (08:33.41)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (08:37.099)
I don’t know anything like that. Yeah. Well, how long have you been at KW now?

Alicia Shepherd (08:37.591)
Anything like that. Yeah.

I’ve been here since 2017. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (08:45.257)
Okay. Yeah. For a minute there. That’s good. Yeah. I was, I just know so many people that like, just don’t even like the investor world that I more or less represent, right? Like, yes, we have investors that know do commercial, but most people don’t get it. Like it’s such a, like Todd, an educator.

Alicia Shepherd (09:03.654)
Well, that might be the best thing, right? Like if a residential agent doesn’t understand commercial and they just go run at a commercial deal to help a client, that’s risk, high risk. That’s where everyone in the deal is raising the risk to get sued, raising the risk to lose money, raising the risk to really have a problem. Same for an investor. You want a professional that understands what they’re doing.

Brett McCollum (09:13.579)
Right. Right.

Brett McCollum (09:25.933)
Truly. Yeah, it’s just there’s so many people. like, I can give me an address on a house and I can run the numbers on it in five seconds flat, right? You tell me a commercial and I’m like, I’ll just go, I don’t know. You know, my hands go, yeah, I don’t know. And there’s so much to it. I think there’s just like in the traditional real estate, like the residential side rather, there’s a lot, I would say for more or less for agents as a whole, there’s a lack of education.

Alicia Shepherd (09:38.32)
God bless you, that’s right choice. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (09:55.319)
Do you find that to be the same with commercial as well in general?

Alicia Shepherd (09:59.015)
I think higher. I think it’s much higher in commercial because the reality is in residential, once I learn how to sell a house, I could take that just about anywhere in the nation and most of my skillsets gonna remain true. And I might need to learn a different paperwork process, but it’s gonna mostly remain the same. In commercial, that’s not necessarily true. Market to market, some of the practices change, some of the contracting changes, some of the…

the relationship practices change like in LA, prospecting is very phone based. In Austin, it’s 100 % relationship based. And so how I actually lead, generate in a business here as an agent would be wildly different than what I would do in LA, right? It’s prime time, grind time on the phones there. And my team here, we’re like getting deep in the weeds of like building our own association for small business owner. Yeah, you got to get out in the field. It’s different. The other part that’s different is you have to really understand

Brett McCollum (10:34.88)
Hmm.

Brett McCollum (10:40.972)
Right.

Brett McCollum (10:47.447)
Boots on the ground, yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (10:55.15)
in a really intimate level the different product types and service types that exist in commercial real estate. Because I could walk into a warehouse, the industrial sector here, there’s 20 different specialized categories, just in industrial. And I could walk into an office building, and there’s another 20 plus in both of these specialized categories in office. And by the way, there are unique vocabularies, unique glossaries, unique

negotiation terms, unique strategies, everything inside these two product types are like different divisions of their own. And so people specialize in just product types. And in commercial, you’ll have people that walk in and like, I do all of it. those agents aren’t typically super successful because that’s like trying to master the entire encyclopedia. It’s just too much knowledge to do.

Brett McCollum (11:44.833)
Right, right.

Brett McCollum (11:49.121)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (11:51.229)
Whereas the agents that are really successful here are the ones that say, I’m going to get really knowledgeable in one silo. And so the education factor here is limitless. And it’s also, you have to go find it out on your own. It’s not well organized. It’s not something that people have intentionally made very accessible. That’s part of why I have Nucleus. I’m working to change that game. I’m finding trainers that want to make that accessible, that want to be the face of saying,

Brett McCollum (11:55.842)
That’s.

Alicia Shepherd (12:17.712)
Like Bruce Side’s a partner of mine in that. He says, I’m the guy that’s gonna start telling people very transparently, here’s how Office works. And we’re making training series, here’s how Office works. Here’s the base of it. The core product in Nucleus is here is the 101 of commercial real estate. You wanna get started, here’s 101 level. Here’s core. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (12:34.487)
Yeah, that’s incredible. Woo, that’s really great. I want, yeah, all right. I didn’t want to blow past this by the way. So triplets question mark, how,

Alicia Shepherd (12:38.692)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (12:45.308)
That’s the part a lot of people like they get that like, you said what? Yeah, triplets. Yeah, we had them during COVID. It was a while.

Brett McCollum (12:49.769)
Yeah, so yeah, that was probably planned perfectly, right? I’m sure that’s what the plan was. We’re going to have triplets.

Alicia Shepherd (12:56.86)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. We did have triplets, it was IVF. Everyone always asks that question, so I just out the story right there. We had three embryos from IVF and we got four kids. We won the IVF lottery. It was amazing. I just actually did an Instagram Live this last Tuesday. You can go to my Instagram, Ask Alicia Shepherd, and you can see the Instagram I did.

Brett McCollum (13:09.26)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (13:21.852)
I did a tour of Orbeez Hall right before we’re closing and I told the story of like how we got pregnant with the triplets and the lesson I learned actually about the risk of 5 % I tell that story there. But yeah, we had triplets and therefore now and every day is like watching the coolest social experiment. We live in a lifelong slumber party and it’s very cool to watch. It’s very cool.

Brett McCollum (13:44.566)
Yeah, yeah, I that’s so, I mean, I have friends that have triplets and things like that and walking through some of that with them and knowing stuff and it’s a, I mean, the first couple of years, you know, that’s the, know, watch it like it’s a all hands on deck, right? And how did you balance some of the, obviously what you do inside of KW and just in general in life, like you’re, how did you, how were you able to kind of balance that?

Alicia Shepherd (14:12.476)
I would be lying if I said balance is a word in my world. I think it’s more of, you ever seen that game where they have all the different colored boxes and they’re stacked in columns and you have to move them around to get them in order? That’s what my world looks like. That’s what my calendar looks like. That’s what my task prioritization looks like. I’ve always got a journal that’s organized

Brett McCollum (14:31.329)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (14:41.712)
where my weekly page is broken down with my eight core categories and my to-dos. And that’s my day, and I do that daily. And I just cross off, this is what I’m managing today. And I don’t do all of this personally, but it’s the reminders of this is what I need to hand off, this is what I need to execute on, this is what I need to schedule, this is what I need to learn.

Brett McCollum (14:45.293)
Ugh.

Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (15:11.408)
Some of it’s stuff that I need to go read something, I need to hunt down something. It’s not balance. I think balance, if you wanna have a big world, balance is a hallucination. And if you want balance and you want a big world, you’re not gonna give it up right now. Too bad, bud, yeah.

Brett McCollum (15:29.729)
Yeah. So I have a, I have a coach mentor that, he’s famous for saying there’s no such thing as time management as if you can control time, but there is such a thing as priority management. Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (15:40.86)
There’s mastery. There’s mastery. You learn to master your time. I think mastery is learning how to own that when other people ask for your time, you are allowed to tell them no. Someone else’s priority does not get to own your calendar.

Brett McCollum (15:52.972)
Right. That’s it. That’s what now is the finishing point is there is priority management, however. Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (15:59.259)
Yeah, yeah. And other people’s priorities try to live on our calendars all the time. You just have to be willing to say, nope, not today, that’s mine. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (16:06.827)
That’s so good. That’s actually rewind that guys listen to that again. That’s really good. all right. So I, here’s a nice little segue for us. So I’m looking behind you on, the wall there. I see what appears to be a Les Paul. Am I seeing that?

Alicia Shepherd (16:10.23)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (16:22.85)
No, this is a, I’ll grab it. This is an Ace guitar. I should remember I have headphones on. This is a custom out of Canada. I’ve had this, I’ve had this one, again, I’m not over 25, but this is probably, I’ve had this guitar probably 25 years. It’s custom out of Canada. Yeah, it’s a really, really sweet guitar. I love this one. I keep it in my office because I can noodle on it it’s not too loud because I don’t plug it in.

Brett McCollum (16:27.775)
It looked like…

Brett McCollum (16:35.411)
It looked like a Les Paul slash Gresh.

Brett McCollum (16:42.317)
That’s so cool.

Brett McCollum (16:50.151)
huh. Yeah, yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (16:52.826)
And it’s a sweet number. Love it. Handmade guitar out of Canada, custom. I bought it, used it at a shop in Montana? Montana, like a gazillion years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:07.702)
No way.

Yeah, so you guys didn’t hear this, but before the show, Alicia and I were talking about, like we’re both musicians, we were kind of nerding out a little bit over some stuff and I spotted that and I saw the cut and then I saw where the pickup switch is there and then I was like, but then I saw the, I was like, maybe it’s a Grinch. I couldn’t quite.

Alicia Shepherd (17:29.486)
It does like impersonate a Gretch a little bit when you’re looking at his profile. Yeah. Yeah. It’s got a really cool sound. It’s got a little bit of like a bluesy sound. And I play a lot of like Brandy Carlisle folk Americana style type stuff. I’ve got a big like raspy, Adele and Amy Winehouse were one human being, that’s kind of where my style of vocal technique lives.

Brett McCollum (17:33.197)
Yeah, yeah, and I was like, oh, maybe it is, you know, so thank you for showing me that.

Who?

Alicia Shepherd (17:57.885)
And so a bluesy guitar does great for me.

Brett McCollum (18:03.691)
Yeah, would, and I can never work together. We’d never get anything done, by the way. So, on that note, you mentioned music venue.

Alicia Shepherd (18:08.07)
True story, true story.

Alicia Shepherd (18:13.828)
Yeah, we actually are closing contract tomorrow on a roadhouse. I live in Austin, Texas these days. I lived in LA for 18 years. I’ve been here for three. We’re buying a roadhouse. It’s like a very Texas things sounding to me, but it’s in a little town called Burton, Texas. Yeah, it’s a combination. It’s got a bar, it’s got a music venue space, and it has a restaurant. The building was…

Brett McCollum (18:31.253)
As in the restaurant roadhouse, correct?

Brett McCollum (18:39.841)
This is a chain, right? Texas Roadhouse is a chain restaurant.

Alicia Shepherd (18:42.87)
No, this is not the chain. This is it’s just a roadhouse in Texas. It’s called Burton Roadhouse right now. We’re renaming it Orveez Hall. And the intention is the music venue is going to become a very high end, small, intimate American songwriter venue based in Burton, Texas. When I say high end American songwriter venue,

Brett McCollum (18:45.024)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (18:49.482)
Okay.

Alicia Shepherd (19:09.786)
I mean, I want to bring an artist like Noah Khan to this venue that’s a 200 person capacity, because can you imagine today an artist like that standing on a stage where only 200 people can be in the room and you could get a ticket to be in that space with him? That would be a pretty incredible opportunity. Now that’s not a $10 concert venue, but you’re also not in nosebleeds and that’s a unique setting, a unique experience, and we’re going to build something exceptional there. So this is what we’re curating.

Brett McCollum (19:24.279)
Yeah, that’s incredible.

Brett McCollum (19:28.845)
of it is.

Alicia Shepherd (19:39.933)
However, today it’s a roadhouse in Burton, Texas off of 290. It’s nothing, right? So we’re having to get kind of creative how we take it down and you and I were talking about it and that’s the piece I think we wanna kind of like dig into, is that right? Okay. So I’m gonna kind of like commercial real estate nerd out for a little bit. Is that okay? Okay, I’m gonna word vomit, but it’ll be fine. Brace for impact.

Brett McCollum (19:55.287)
Sure, yeah, whatever whatever direction you want to go.

Brett McCollum (20:02.135)
Let’s go.

Alicia Shepherd (20:06.65)
So when I look at a building like this, my commercial real estate brain turns on immediately and I say, I ask two questions. One, how do I create the highest return on investment as quickly as possible? And two, how do I reduce my risk as fast as possible? Those are the two things I’m most interested in. I love real estate that I don’t actually have to pay for it, that pays for itself right at the gate. Especially if I’m gonna operate my own business in it. I don’t wanna own the business that’s here, but I don’t wanna have to pay for the real estate.

Right? How do we do this? So we play a game. I’m looking at really three potential things I can space here. I have a bar. I don’t live in Burton. I’m about 90 minutes from Burton. I’m not driving to Burton every day to run a bar. And I’m not going to, from a long distance, manage a bar that has high risk of people swiping my inventory. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster. I have a music venue space and I have a restaurant. Also not going to go open and run a restaurant from 90 minutes away.

Brett McCollum (21:05.601)
Right. Right.

Alicia Shepherd (21:05.884)
No, thank you. I love to cook, not doing that. So, I’ll run the music venue. I’ll own that business. I can find the right partners where I can have some leverage of someone that’s gonna go do those things. The music venue also, by the way, we haven’t even closed contract. I already have two people that have asked, can we record music videos in this space? Hell yes, you bet. I now also have an event rental capability to do this. And if you don’t think mama’s gonna be promoting that and putting it out as a marketing opportunity for we record music videos here,

you lost your mind because I’m going to start putting some ads out for that and I’m going to book. I’m going to set a goal for how many of those I book. Right. So we have that the restaurant I’m going to be approaching food trucks or people that want to have a restaurant but they don’t want the risk of like I need to go get a big lease and take it. They want to test their concept and we’re going to do pop up rotating restaurants that are three or six month concepts that want to come in and have a rotating menu. We want to have a rotating menu so we have

Brett McCollum (21:38.477)
There you go.

Alicia Shepherd (22:04.516)
always something fresh and new that’s coming through that is a short-term commitment. And if it’s something awesome that we hit a home run with, cool, we’ll bring them back next year or bring them back again. But we want the guests to keep coming back to experience something new so that it doesn’t get bored, it doesn’t get stale. In a place like this, so many of the times we get very bored menus, like you walk in all the cafes and they all have the same boring seven items, right? Or the food standard comes way down.

Brett McCollum (22:20.215)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (22:33.488)
because the assumption is in this location we can get away with it. And I wanna break that model a little bit. I wanna make this something special. So we’re gonna do a rotating menu. I don’t have to operate the restaurant. I’m gonna have tenants that operate it. And I’m gonna put it on triple net leases. Now triple net lease means they’re gonna cover the expenses. They’re gonna cover their own insurance. They’re gonna cover their own repairs. I don’t have any costs that correlate to the kitchen. They break shit, they fix it. I’m giving them an operating kitchen. They need to pay for the utilities for the kitchen.

Brett McCollum (22:36.727)
Right.

Alicia Shepherd (23:03.43)
So I will have them do reimbursements to me based on the square footage that the kitchen has, and then they will do that. Now for the bar, I’m gonna do the same thing. I’m going to seasonally rent the bar per quarter or six months to breweries and distilleries in Texas. I’m actually looking in, could I do two at once? Could I put a distillery and a brewery in there at the same time? Could I put a wine maker and a distillery in there at the same time? I don’t know. Let’s find out.

Brett McCollum (23:03.533)
That’s right.

Alicia Shepherd (23:33.137)
So I’m seeing like how much layering can I put on top of these things and I’m putting venues in there where they are having their own like residency behind the bar. They’ll run and operate that piece. We’ll have terms in a lease agreement so it’s contracted and document. They have a start date and an end date. They’ll come in and do it. I have an additional cooler in the back that I’m actually already working on talking with a local brewery that just needs space to brew. They’re gonna get that cooler to just brew in all the time.

So I’ve already got like, I’m leveraging the space to bring in lease agreements so that the real estate will have sub-tenancy agreements inside of it that take care of itself, reduce my costs, reduce my risk, and I’ll get to own and run a music venue that checks off a life box dream and goal for me. Yeah, it’ll be a ton of fun. And my experience in commercial real estate is what taught me the opportunities to do this. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (24:09.794)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (24:20.139)
incredible.

Brett McCollum (24:26.017)
That’s, yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you. So the commercial side of it and having all the different pieces that you’ve seen over the years and, you know, allowing you to think outside the box even. Cause, in the residential side, I think the only thing I could liken that to it’d be like the Airbnb model or the short term, you know, some kind of a short term, you know, model, you know, midterm model even, right. that’s kind of the likening to it, but it’s very, niche specific.

Alicia Shepherd (24:49.468)
That’s right.

Brett McCollum (24:56.285)
which in an Austin area part of the world, I think that’s incredibly genius where, you the food scene is not like, you know, some of the cafes are like, but I mean, there’s all kinds of, it’s a foodie city. can go competing. You got to create something cool.

Alicia Shepherd (25:13.83)
Well, this is 90 minutes out. They don’t have to do that there, right? Like there’s I think three restaurants in Burton and it’s like, the bar is low. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And I want to make it something exciting for them. And so what I think is the part that I would want someone listening to this to think about, right? Alicia, I’m not a commercial real estate agent. So, I mean, that’s cool for you, but why would I need to do that? Well, my encouragement would be

Brett McCollum (25:16.822)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (25:20.941)
It’s the field of dreams. It’s field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Like that is so cool. Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (25:43.215)
Do you have a dream that you would want to facilitate and you need real estate to be able to do it and that real estate cost feels like it’s a gate for you? Cool. Come take a class with us that helps you understand how to leverage commercial leasing so that you could buy the real estate, reduce your costs, reduce your risk, and make your dream accessible. When you can understand how to use commercial real estate leasing to your benefit,

Brett McCollum (25:48.171)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (26:12.496)
You can do so much in this world because everything’s possible when you can take the costs out of real estate that goes into owning it. The minute I went to a lender and said, here’s what I’m gonna do with this, they’re like, we’ll give you the loan for this all day. I just had to have the down payment. That’s it. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (26:27.405)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, that was actually, you kind of beat me to the punch a little on that. So obviously, this is a show for real estate investors. And not to say there’s not commercial agents and residential agents. I’m sure there’s a ton of people like that too. But like the application for the everyday investor to, not saying, guys, and I’m not saying like, start something new today. No, you’ll get your…

you’ll get swept out to see if you do that, be careful. But opening your eyes to what the possibility is, like how do we educate the everyday investor to, right, hey, at least start exploring this because the vision that you’re able to cast, by the way, to me, abundantly clear. But I want it like, how do we make this more accessible for the everyday investor?

Alicia Shepherd (27:19.484)
I think you just said a word, vision, and really a statement, the vision you’re able to cast, right? I think if you want to make it accessible, the first thing have to do is be able to define the exact vision you want. And so…

Burton for me actually, this building is in this project is one piece of a much larger project. We probably need a whole nother like five podcasts for that. I wanna turn this whole town into something. And the only reason this piece of real estate is doing what it’s doing right now is because it was the first one that went to market and I’m actually starting it earlier than I wanted to. I wanna convert this whole town into a tourist destination and I wanna build like a Hill Country like high end five star resort.

that I JV with like a montage or a Sundance and like, I have massive vision for this that’s like a 10 year plan here. I was hoping to start next year, but it’s fine, 2025, let’s roll. We do it. But what you have to do is before you start anything is define the vision of what you want and write that down. If you can write down with extreme clarity what you want, you are already 50 % of the way to having it. Because…

Solving it, if your brain can define it, you’ve already solved the problem. The next piece is just start taking action. That’s it. The hardest piece is defining it. You just have to define it and write it down. When we write it down, our brain does something interesting. We have this thing called the reticular activation system. You ever heard of this? Okay, so if you have it you’re listening, it’s programming, which creates our thoughts, which creates our feelings, which

Brett McCollum (28:35.309)
That’s really good.

Brett McCollum (28:39.233)
Yeah, say that again for it. Yeah, say that again to define it.

Brett McCollum (28:51.255)
I have.

Alicia Shepherd (28:57.856)
That’s the rhythm that puts us into action or inaction, depending on which one you trigger. And that’s going to create your result, which then feeds the next round of programming. Now here’s the beautiful thing about this, whether you like it or not, every single one of us has this little like rhythm going all day long with everything we do. So if your programming is jacked up, you’re going to have some really shitty thinking. Sorry, darling, you’re going to have a hard day. So fix that. But if you want something,

When you write it down, let’s just say I jot it down on this little note card on my paper. I want to lose 10 pounds, right? I write it down. I want to lose 10 pounds. Well, how the hell do you intend to do it? I’m going to do it by walking 15,000 steps every day for the next two months. I’m going to focus on that and I’m going to stop drinking soda. I want to lose 10 pounds by walking 15,000 steps every day and I’m going to give up soda, period. Now,

You’re gonna take this little paper and you’re gonna put it up on the wall where your little eyeballs see that every day. Put it somewhere you’re looking at every day, right? Boom. What are you doing? You’re programming. Because you read it. So now, whether you like it or not, that programming has you thinking, I gotta take 15,000 steps today. I’m not gonna drink that soda. This isn’t soda, by the way, it’s my green tea. But you’re thinking it.

Brett McCollum (30:18.305)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (30:20.348)
Which then when you don’t make the steps, you get the feeling while you’re sitting your tush down at your desk, I need to get up and go take a walk. You get the feeling, I’m gonna drink the green tea instead of the soda. So then you do action or inaction. I’m not gonna drink that soda. I’m gonna get my butt up and go take those steps, because I want my jeans to fit better. And then that gets you the result, which makes you feel better. My jeans fit better. Ooh, I think I look better in those jeans. I feel better about myself. I’m gonna go take some more steps. And you kick off your RAS.

Brett McCollum (30:26.016)
And if this is it

Alicia Shepherd (30:47.974)
So when you can write it down, you’re 50 % of the way to solving it because you program yourself to do the shit. You define it and write it down. You’re half the way there. So when I looked at this building, and I mean, my real estate agent knew I was looking at this town and she called me. was actually, I was in Oklahoma on this reality, I was on a reality show last year. It hasn’t come out yet called the Blocks. It’s on Amazon Prime. It’s not like a big crazy one. It’s a startup incubator.

It’s supposed to come out sometime soon. I don’t know when we’ll see But it was a competition. I did really well. No spoilers, but I was at this competition She calls me she was Alicia the Roadhouse just went on the market. I you be kidding me She’s like it did and I’m like I I am NOT where I can think about that right now She’s like we have to put an offer in today and I’m like Write the offer tell whatever they’re listening for I didn’t want to pay what she listed it for but it’s fine done I was hoping I could get seller carried finance. She don’t want to do seller carry. Well, damn it. Let’s go. Okay, fine. We’ll do it

Brett McCollum (31:20.994)
No.

Alicia Shepherd (31:47.025)
So we went under contract, we got control of the property. This is not the first one I wanted to buy, because it’s one of the more expensive properties in the town. I wanted to go pick off all the little inexpensive ones first. I’ll take down the most expensive one first. Fine, whatever. So we do it. In my hotel room that day, I wrote down, what am I going to do with this roadhouse? What the hell am going to do with this roadhouse? I have no idea. I don’t want to own a bar or a restaurant. So I thought about it. I am going to buy this roadhouse and make sure that I monthly am spending $0.

Brett McCollum (32:03.895)
Love that.

Alicia Shepherd (32:15.6)
to hold and operate it, period. And I put that up in front of me and I solved the puzzle.

Brett McCollum (32:22.284)
Mmm.

Alicia Shepherd (32:23.878)
That’s all you have to do. And then I started having the vision. Man, I’ve always wanted to own a music venue. It’d be really cool to go be able to be, I want to play a gig next month. I own the stage I can play that shit on. No one can tell me I can’t play that gig. Yeah, yeah. Write it down. Write it down.

Brett McCollum (32:26.647)
I win.

Brett McCollum (32:36.023)
that part. That’s it. That’s powerful. Yeah, that’s really powerful. Write it down. There’s a biblical principle on that even too. It’s in an obscure passage. Habakkuk. Spell that one. There’s two Ks in it, just a spoiler. Write the vision down, make it plain, so those who see it can run with it.

Alicia Shepherd (32:58.524)
Mm-hmm. And that’s it. The simpler you make it, the more you will do it.

Brett McCollum (33:04.705)
That’s so good though. I’m so glad you said that. Because I think that anybody, like, it’s practical across life. Not just commercial or residential or like if y’all aren’t even interested in real estate, which I don’t know why you’re listening, but if you’re not even interested in it, it’s still just such a, that’s probably the most practical thing that any one of us can do. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (33:29.542)
Yeah, 100%. So when you write it down, if you’re tempted, like some of us can be, to put big, flourishy words and make it sound very fancy and complicated because someone else might read it you want to sound very like, like you write very beautiful goals. Like it’s not poetry. It’s an action you’re gonna take. Make it sound like a to-do list. Simple, simple, simple, simple. Dumb it down. Yeah, keep it stupid simple.

Brett McCollum (33:53.39)
Yep. Keep it simple stupid, right? Yeah. Ooh, even better. Yeah, I love it. Well, man, we could keep doing this. Literally, I know we could do this all day. But if people want to reach out and connect with you, like I know you mentioned it a little bit earlier, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Alicia Shepherd (33:59.975)
That’s a better way to put that. Keep it stupid, simple. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Dude, let’s go! Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (34:15.598)
Man, my best these days is on Instagram. It’s really easy to find me, askalishashepherd. You can also go to alishashepherd.com and it’s spelled like the biblical way, S-H-E-P-H-E-R-D, there’s no A, zero As. When I was dating my husband, he told me his last name gets misspelled a ton and I was like, that seems crazy. And then I misspelled it and he was like, see, you misspelled it. And I was like, there’s no A in that? He’s like, there’s no A in that. And I was like, well, okay.

Brett McCollum (34:38.485)
Nah!

Alicia Shepherd (34:43.996)
And now that I have it, I’m like, it gets misspelled a ton. No way. There’s no way. And there’s no double P’s. Yeah. S H E P H E R D. But ask Alicia Shepherd on Instagram is a really easy way to find me. Um, if you want to check out seven and 90, because you’re ready to like go get serious results and you think I’m a style of candidness that might light you up and help you get some results. I dozens of people per year get into million dollar production. Go check out seven in 90.com.

Brett McCollum (34:46.54)
Yeah.

Alicia Shepherd (35:14.064)
kick your ass at a pretty high gear pretty quick. Brent Line, who we both know, has done the program with me and we have a lot of fun with that. Those are the ways you come find me. I’m that red-headed gal. I’m all things from real estate, hard to miss. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (35:26.647)
That’s incredible. Man, this is so much fun. I really appreciate you being here with me. This has been an honor for me. You’re an inspiration to so many people. I’m excited to follow along the journey as well. And guys, I encourage you to do the same thing. It’ll be in the show notes, guys. Everything she just said will be in the show notes. I encourage you to link up as quickly as possible with Alicia and you won’t be disappointed.

Alicia Shepherd (35:49.468)
Appreciate it, friend. Thanks for having me on today.

Brett McCollum (35:51.456)
Alright, guys, thanks for hanging out with us. We’ll see you guys on the next episode. Take care, everybody.