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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Jonny Clay (also known as Grey Rock), a real estate investor from Northern Colorado. Jonny shares his journey into real estate, emphasizing the importance of community, collaboration, and education. He discusses his focus on providing sellers with options, his experience with fix and flips and wholesaling, and the challenges of creative finance strategies in the current market. The conversation also highlights the significance of having a supportive partner in business, the value of helping fellow investors, and advice for newcomers in the industry.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jonny Clay (00:00)
I think probably the best advice that I could give somebody that’s newer is, is don’t rush it. Cause it does. It takes so much time. You have so much to learn and, and you see people get burnt out. ⁓ I mean, the amount of investors I knew when I started compared to how many I see now is, is an astronomical number ⁓ of people that have come and gone.⁓ But it’s a war of attrition. It’s last man standing. So figure out one thing. Do one thing and get really good at it. Whether that’s bird dogging for someone that does deals or help somebody that’s doing fix and flips. Meet people in your area that are doing it and focus on baby steps.
Michelle Kesil (02:23)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Jonny Clay, who is a real estate investor in the Colorado area, primarily working on fix and flips, as well as a bit of wholesale. So excited to have you here today, Jonny.Jonny Clay (02:44)
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.Michelle Kesil (02:46)
You’re welcome. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching your business, working directly with the buyers and connecting other investors as well. So let’s dive in.Jonny Clay (03:00)
Yeah, absolutely.Michelle Kesil (03:02)
Awesome, so first off, for those who are not yet familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?Jonny Clay (03:08)
Yeah, so my name is Jonny Clay. I’m based out in Northern Colorado. My primary focus is a couple fold. Number one, it’s giving sellers all of their options before they ever sign a contract. And the other one is really giving back to my community and helping to kind of coach and sponsor some newer investors and make some connections with some older investors.Michelle Kesil (03:36)
Awesome. And how did you get started in investing?Jonny Clay (03:41)
So I got started investing in like 2018 or 2019. My wife and I started a contracting company. She was a painter forever and I’m from the country. So we built my parents house up there. I mean, did quite a bit of it. And then I got into construction at a pretty early age. I did a ton of it.throughout my early 20s. And then my wife was a painter when we met and she was like, hey, people will pay through the nose for just like a faucet being swapped out or a light being changed. So we slowly grew our company mostly by word of mouth, but we ended up focusing primarily on higher end kind of white glove service. And that brought us in touch with a lot of people with a lot of money.
and we started seeing some real estate transactions that some other people were doing. And that’s right about the time that Grant Cardone came on the scene. And I actually saw him in a comedy podcast, which is so wild, because it’s not what you would expect to hear on that podcast at all. And the next day I went and looked for some of his classes and signed up and took it about as far as I could until they were like, yeah, you need
another 20, $30,000 to continue. And I kind of stepped back and said, well, let me do some research of my own and see what we can figure out here. And kind of got into it slow and steady, but that’s kind of been my approach with everything in real estate is, you know, really get your feet set, set, then slow and steady wins the race.
Michelle Kesil (06:13)
Awesome. And what do you feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to grow and run smoothly?Jonny Clay (06:20)
⁓ so I would say the biggest key for sure is the fact that, ⁓ my wife is my partner on it. she’s got a bachelor’s in interior design and a master’s in project management. So I like to explain it. Like I, I grab one end of a rope and I just start running as fast as I can. And if she wasn’t behind me, untying all the knots, I would absolutely end up overboard stuck in room.But she has been able to help me keep things kind of solid and organized. And she’s been a huge help. I would say another big help is just being local. You know, I’ve been doing this for long enough that just in this area, I have opportunity just pop out of nowhere regularly because I put myself into this community.
⁓ so much in the last couple years that I’ve kind of become a, a more minor fixture, but a fixture nonetheless in Northern Colorado real estate.
Michelle Kesil (07:23)
Yeah, amazing. And when you started investing, were fix and flips the primary type of strategy that you got into?Jonny Clay (07:35)
⁓ no. So to be completely honest, as soon as we got in, we were kind of chasing that pie in the sky creative finance Airbnb strategy, because it just sounded so damn good. It just sounded like, like the best opportunity. And then once you start learning about it and you realize one, how rare the creative finance strategies actually work.and to how solid you have to be on your numbers. Because as we’ve all seen, Airbnb has taken a big hit in a lot of places in the country. And so some of those people that picked up those creative properties aren’t in as good of situations as they were. So that kind of steered me back towards traditional cash. But yeah, no, we started doing the creative
Airbnb crazy cash flow pie in the sky kind of strategy.
Michelle Kesil (08:31)
Awesome. And what has been your experience in the fix and flips and the wholesaling that you’re into now?Jonny Clay (08:38)
So, fix and flips have been absolutely tremendous. We’ve got the background and the ability to be able to really do some neat stuff with some of the fix and flips we’ve done. We’re able to keep them all in-house and honestly, we’re very confident in our numbers.Jonny Clay
so the fix and flips were something that, you know, we always decided that if the numbers make sense, then we’ll take a fix and flip all day. We’re very confident in what we do. We’ve been doing it for a long time. But we are also are the type of people that will tell an agent or a seller, this is not for us.you know, we’ll tell them, you know, this is kind of what we see. So we consider ourselves more on the education side than the sales side. We’re happy to educate people on what we see, but we’ll never try to sell somebody on why they should give us a house at a certain price. If the numbers just don’t mesh, then we’ll tell them what we see as the best option. And hopefully we can be more of a service than just the cash.
offer and on to the next one.
Michelle Kesil
Yeah, definitely. And I know that you mentioned you’re supporting other investors. Can you share what that looks like?Jonny Clay
Yeah, absolutely. So, I actually joined Pace Morby Sub 2 in 2021. my first fix and flip here in Fort Collins was actually Pace Morby who had sponsored the loan for us. so he, we found the house and he said, I see what you guys are doing. I believe that you guys can do this. So I will buy the property. I will put it in my name and then I’ll split.the profit with you 50-50, which was tremendous because it really, I like to put it like this. We split $30,000 on the back end. So I got paid $15,000 for nine months worth of work and a bachelor’s degree in how to not flip a house. So that one was absolutely the foundation.
And then we went into wholesaling for a while and I got more involved with the sub two community and I started throwing a meetup here in Northern Colorado. It’s the third Thursday of every month at the Emporium Sports Bar from 5.30 to 7.30. And we basically just get together with local investors and ask them, you know, what do you have? What do you need? So we do a lot of connecting, but we it’s not paid. It’s not.
something that you ever have to worry about splitting out some money from your deals. Like we’re literally just here to help grow our community in Northern Colorado because we’ve got a ton of opportunity and I would really like to see investors not getting such a bad rap. But I think that starts by us kind of keeping each other on the level and keeping each other accountable.
in our community and the best way to do that is to know who’s really doing business and who’s just trying to make that quick paycheck from investing. So I try to be as involved in the community as possible. I go to as many meetups as I can other than the one that I throw. And I’m just always looking to connect and kind of help somebody do their deal and see what we can bring back to Four Collins.
Michelle Kesil
Yeah, that’s incredible that you’re creating this space for people to learn and to grow.Jonny Clay
Yeah, that’s kind one of our big goals is really giving back to the community as much as possible.Michelle Kesil
Love that. So what are you most focusing on solving or scaling to next?Jonny Clay
So the two things that we’re really focused on right now is we do a lot of direct to agent. So I actually hired a couple of VAs recently that are not cold calling agents. They are reaching out to agents and creating relationships and having conversations. They’re not doing any of the numbers. I’m actually doing all of the showings and all of the numbers.So that is really exciting to me. And the other thing that’s exciting to me is we’ve started our connect to an investor marketing campaign. So we’ll start having more of those ads running and we’ll see signs in Northern Colorado and letting people know that they have that option to get all of their answers before they commit themselves to somebody who’s clearly trying to make as much profit as possible.
So we’re very excited about Connect to an Investor.
Michelle Kesil
Yeah, sounds like such a unique and amazing project that you’re creating. Love that.Jonny Clay
Yeah.Michelle Kesil
So you mentioned that you’re doing some creative financing work. What does that look like for you?Jonny Clay
So we will do some sub 2. I think sub 2 is a little more difficult because you just can’t rent a lot of sub 2s. mean, they just don’t make sense. So people that are picking up sub 2s kind of have to do it as a co-living or something really creative that often takes a lot of time.to get into. But something we’re really excited about right now is the amount of seller finance that we’re able to do because something like 21 % of homes in Northern Colorado are paid off cash. And a lot of these people are wanting to sell and they’re, you know, it’s all upside. So they’re going to get absolutely slammed with capital gains because their home prices have tripled in the last 20 years.
So it’s fun to be able to give these people the price that they’re asking for and help them avoid some taxes and actually have a rental that cash flows. So that’s really our primary focus in Creative right now. But we also do a lot where we can get sellers a first position HELOC on their home. And then we’ll use our contracting company to help them fix it up.
and just take a small fee on the back end to help them list it traditionally. So I guess the easiest way to answer your question is everything I do is creative. I do something creative in every deal. I do keep super standard typical cash, but every house is a fingerprint. I like to figure out what…
special little nooks and crannies that it has that we can be creative on not just to get ourselves a good deal but to really help out Whoever is involved in the transaction whether that’s a the the seller directly or someone in probate or an agent that’s helping somebody listed or you know, it’s There’s a lot of different ways that one can do real estate and I enjoy
finding all the different ways and just kind of having fun with it. That’s my biggest thing. I like having fun with real estate. It is a lot of fun. I’d rather be doing this than almost any job on it.
Michelle Kesil
Yeah, I think that’s important to enjoy it. What advice would you give to a newer investor, someone that’s just starting?Jonny Clay
I think probably the best advice that I could give somebody that’s newer is, is don’t rush it. Cause it does. It takes so much time. You have so much to learn and, and you see people get burnt out. I mean, the amount of investors I knew when I started compared to how many I see now is, is an astronomical number of people that have come and gone.But it’s a war of attrition. It’s last man standing. So out one thing. Do one thing and get really good at it. Whether that’s bird dogging for someone that does deals or help somebody that’s doing fix and flips. Meet people in your area that are doing it and focus on baby steps. I used to tell people give it 90 days. Honestly, give it six months.
Take your time, figure out what you’re doing, and really get good at one thing at a time.
Michelle Kesil
Yeah, I love that. That’s super important. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?Jonny Clay
So people can find me at jonnyrealestate.com or they can, if you’re a seller and you’re looking to get a real world analysis on the actual numbers of your home, not just what an agent tells you they think you could get for it, get a really broken down analytical view on it, connectto an investor.com. So it’s super simple. Come find me. I’d be happy to run through some numbers with you.
Michelle Kesil
Perfect, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.Jonny Clay
Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciated this. It was a lot of fun. I don’t get to talk about the things that I love too often.Michelle Kesil
Yeah, well, I’m glad you got to share what it is that you are passionate about. So thank you so much. And for the listeners tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Jonny, who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you on our next episode.
