How to Build Wealth through Real Estate: The Secrets to Success with Adam Droege

Adam Droege (00:00)
And I would say if you want to get in real estate investing, the time to start is now. You don’t have to buy a property today, but there are a hundred things that you need to do before you even buy a property. Build your team, get your finances in order, get a plan Get in networking groups and…

take the action.

Scott Bursey (01:46)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And on today’s show, we are zeroing in on the operational side of real estate success. We’re joined by Adam Droege, the principal behind Complete Realty Solutions. Adam’s firm is known for its vertically integrated approach. Adam, thank you for carving out the time to be on the show today.

Adam Droege (02:07)
Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Scott Bursey (02:08)
It is our pleasure and for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please tell us how your career began and what your main focus is now.

Adam Droege (02:17)
Yeah, absolutely. actually began my wife and I began house hacking actually. So we moved into the house, we rehabbed the house while we were living there. And once it got beautiful, we sold the house and moved into a new rehab house. And, you know, when I when I started before my first house, I got my real estate license so I could

you know, open up the doors myself and kind of negotiate myself. I’d already been in sales at that point. And so, you know, we did six of these houses before our six year wedding anniversary. We were flying through these things. And in the process, I started having friends and family say, hey, would you help me buy or sell my house? And so my realtor career started taking off. I worked in the corporate world for my first six years while I was in real estate and then was able to kind of save enough to get out.

and got my first rental at that point. I managed it myself, my wife and I did. And then we bought another one that we had a buddy come say, hey, will you manage mine? And then before you know it, we had a… ⁓

you know, about 45 units under management. And it was, you know, beginning of March of 2020, and we had to decide, hey, do we really want to launch a property management company or do we want to shift these doors off? Because it was becoming a full-time job alongside of the rehabs, the realtors, you know, what it takes just to own rental properties. And so we decided, hey, you know what, let’s rebrand. So we rebranded the company to Complete Realty Solutions. In March of 2020, we hired our…

first employee in March of 2020. And we opened it up to the public and said, hey, we do property management and

Scott Bursey (03:40)
You

Adam Droege (03:41)
You know, property management is difficult and it’s hard to find a good one. And so when we opened up our doors and I had worked with plenty of investors as a realtor, a lot of them came to me said, Hey, will you manage my property? And then we just started getting flooded with clients and doors to manage. And it was more than what we could really handle. And we started hiring and hiring and hiring and, you know, fast forward to, know, here we are just getting out of March of 2020.

six years later and we’ve now crossed a thousand doors under management. We have about 50 ⁓

employees that work on our team

and we have a rental portfolio of over 100 units right now. So ⁓ it’s really been a very busy six years, but I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded with the right business partners that have kind of helped build this out.

you know, around me, alongside of me, which has been fantastic. So now we’re focused on property acquisitions and property management, a small realtor team, and then a small acquisitions team. And that’s kind of how we’re made up.

Scott Bursey (04:40)
How awesome. And Adam, your passion resonates. I must tell you.

Adam Droege (04:45)
I love real estate. I could talk about it for hours and days.

Scott Bursey (04:48)
Let’s dive right in. What is the core philosophy behind your complete Realty Solutions integrated model, would you say?

Adam Droege (04:56)
Well, you know, our philosophy is, you we want to build a wealth building machine for ourselves and for the people that we work with. And so we know that if we create a great product on the management and construction side, not only will we see the benefits of that for our portfolio, but our clients will see the benefit of that too. And we will continue to be able to grow, you know, you grow the quickest in property management by not losing clients.

And of course,

if you don’t lose them, they tell their friends and family about you. And so we’ve grown pretty much all organically in this process. And so, you know, we’ve we’ve been able to hold the lines on carrying a very good property management product that also helps directly benefit our portfolios ourselves. And so our real goal of it is just to create a product and a good team that also can use this machine to

buy their rental properties and have them manage it. And so you have people that not only work in the company, but also get to enjoy the benefits of having a good company and get to build their wealth alongside of it too. And that’s really kind of our goal. And we know that if we put out a good product, we will continue to, you know, attract the talent, attract the clients, and also create the wealth building that we were looking for.

Scott Bursey (06:54)
That’s a massive undertaking. The challenge of maintaining a seamless standard of service across so many different verticals with the team escalating to 50 now, that is just awesome. Just awesome.

Adam Droege (07:08)
It’s been quite the ride.

Scott Bursey (07:09)
In today’s highly competitive market, the client experience is often dictated by efficiency. Adam, what private technology or data platforms do you use to give complete realty solutions a competitive edge, especially for remote real estate investors?

Adam Droege (07:27)
Yeah, I mean, you we use some of the top

of the line software. We use that folio

for our property management. We use HubSpot for our CRM for our sales. HubSpot is one of the best CRMs out there. And then, you know, we just use what we feel like is the best tech on phone lines and, you

know, website

and, you know, things like that that that really help us and give our employees really an edge in doing that.

Scott Bursey (07:50)
HubSpot, yes, yes, ⁓ very good CRM. Let’s discuss where your focus is right now. How do you segment your teams and services to ensure specialized high level support for dedicated investors versus let’s say traditional retail home buyers?

Adam Droege (08:09)
Yeah, you know, one of the hardest things in property management, and this is really what overwhelms most property managers, is the maintenance and construction arm of it, right? ⁓ We could probably bring on 500 doors to manage over the next 90 days on the management side pretty easily. That would not be overwhelming to us. But where it would overwhelm us is the maintenance construction piece. Companies start getting behind on their rehabs. One 30-day rehab turns into a 90-day rehab.

And then the problem is all of the work that comes on top of that goes behind that 90 day rehab. And so it starts delaying everything. And so the and then you start getting upset owners because rightfully so their property is sitting vacant for six months. Right. And so if you want to have a good property management company, you have to keep up with the maintenance construction. You can’t get caught up in managing for slumlords is what we call them. They won’t agree to do any work to the properties. They won’t fix just the basic stuff.

you know, we have legal requirements that we have to provide for these tenants. We have to provide a habitable, you know, place for them to live. but we can’t go and spend money on these properties without the permission of the owners. And so, you know, these are those are some of the challenges that you face. But, you know, it’s it’s important that you find the right client base and you screen your clients before they come on and make sure that they are the right, you know, client for the job and make sure that they will work with.

well with you and they also understand what it takes to be an investor, right? A lot of newer investors, they jump into it and they underestimate highly the amount of rehab cost and maintenance costs it takes to own a rental portfolio. You know, it’s funny, I’ll have investors, newer investors come to me and say, hey, I want to go and, you know, buy 10 rentals so I can leave my job. And I was telling them, I was like, well, you buy 10 rentals, you’re probably gonna have to get a second job to pay for those 10 rentals because we’re not in a climate of cash flow. We are in a climate of

Real estate, still feel like is the best investment vehicle in the world. I feel like there’s no comparison, but you have to have a good team around you to make that a good investment. And so, you you’re still gonna get all the benefits of owning real estate. You just really in this climate, unless you’re putting down 40, 50 % down payments, you are not gonna see much cashflow in these properties.

Scott Bursey (10:22)
makes perfect sense, know, trying to be everything that everyone often results in being mediocre at everything.

Adam Droege (11:04)
It really does. ⁓ We’ve had, you our focus on our team has really just been to, you know, the old model of property management is you hire a property manager and they do everything with property management, right? They do the leasing, they do the maintenance coordination, they talk to the owners, they really handle every single thing that property requires. The issue with that is they are task switching 20 times a day.

And every time you task switch, it adds a few minutes to that task, right? As opposed to doing the same thing over and over and over again, right? So we’ve been able to silo each employee into really what they’re good at and what they enjoy doing. And then they do that repeatedly. So for example, we’ll have a tenant relationship manager and they just talk to tenants all day, every day, right? They don’t coordinate the maintenance. They don’t talk to the owners. They just talk to the tenants. They do renewals. They…

Talk to the tenants about helping fill out their paperwork and things like that. And we have an owner relationship managers that they just talk to owners every day. They know how to read the owner statements. They know how to look for what the owners are looking for. And they know how to talk to the owners in a way that the owners understand and they understand what they’re talking about. We have strict maintenance coordination. They just coordinate maintenance all day every day, right? We have a leasing department. All they do is leasing. And so by

taking an employee and instead of doing 20 different things a day, they’re doing two or three different things a day, it creates a lot of efficiencies and it creates scale. And so we’ve reached the point of what we consider as mini scale. And you really can create margin and property management by creating that scale. Property management is a very low margin business. And so you have to create those systems and processes and these silos that they work in to actually be able to create a margin in property management.

Scott Bursey (12:49)
That’s just a blueprint on efficiency, Adam. And on that note, is complete realty solutions thinking about expanding down the road? What’s your strategy as far as growth is concerned?

Adam Droege (13:02)
Yeah, we’re going to continue to expand, just in the St. Louis market. ⁓ All of my business partner, Corey, him and I are on the same page as far as like we’re not, you know, catch us 10 years ago. We’ve probably been looking to go to different cities and expand all over the country. We’re both at points in our careers where we’re still interested in growing and expanding, but we just want to get really good in this market. St. Louis is plenty big enough to appease all of our appetites. Right. And what we want to do in real estate.

And by focusing here, it keeps all of our attention in one market, one area. There are some exposure risks with that, but at the same time, ⁓ we’re able to just get better and better and better in this market. And our attention is not being pulled away by other markets and other problems. ⁓ So we feel like we can attain everything we want to do in our real estate dreams right here in St. Louis.

Scott Bursey (13:50)
Organic growth is slower, but it allows you to implement that core service culture you mentioned earlier.

Adam Droege (13:57)
Yeah, absolutely. you know, there’s been, know, typically is slower. There’s been absolutely nothing slower about our growth. We actually made the Inc 500 list last year for the fastest growing companies in the country. We actually have 413 in the country and number four here in St. Louis. And so, last year we had about 1000 % growth. And what’s funny is I filled out the application for this year and we are actually at 5000 % growth.

⁓ over this time period. So with that being said, we have a chance to make a top 100 in the country this year, maybe even top 50. So it’s been explosive. It’s been quicker growth than really what about as quick as we’ve been able to handle basically.

Scott Bursey (14:36)
That is explosive and that’s really awesome. Let’s talk about people for a moment here, Adam. What is the key component of your agent development, compensation and retention model that helps complete reality solutions recruit the top talent and retain them?

Adam Droege (15:35)
Yeah, absolutely. know, one thing about us that I think a lot of people are attracted to is we have a lot of talent on our team and we have a lot of people that have high integrity and a great work ethic on our team. You know, it’s funny, we almost have hired nobody with property management experience in our company. ⁓ Everybody we’ve interviewed, you know, we’re looking for integrity, we’re looking for honesty, we’re looking for work ethic.

We hardly even ask if they graduated college. It’s not even ⁓ really a concern of ours. We are concerned that people are gonna show up every day, show up on time, and actually work hard. And then on top of that, have the integrity to do what’s right every day. And if you could find those people, you can train them the right way. ⁓ I’d rather have somebody with great work ethic and integrity than somebody with a boatload experience that just kinda shows up halfway. We want somebody to show up all the way every day. And if you can find those people, they’re gonna learn what they need to know.

But it’s more about focusing on the right people. We’ve created a great culture where people work hard, they take care of their jobs, and we’ve also offered flexibility to these people as far as if they need time off and things like that. It’s like, hey, take care of your work. Yeah, we want you there, 8-5, 9-5, that’s important. But if you have a kid you have to take somewhere in the afternoon, you have an appointment, whatever, go on that appointment, just take care of your work. That’s what we ask. And so we get pretty flexible

time off policies.

You know, we try to give, you know, our pay structure for nearly everybody in our company, there’s an incentive always on their pay structure. So they’ll get a base pay and then they’re getting an incentive pay. So everybody is boned off of when the company does well in their division, they’re gonna get boned off then. So nearly everybody in our company is boned off of their incentives.

Scott Bursey (17:18)
That is a winning recipe right there.

The balance, but having the people show up with their game face on and being accommodating is so critical as well. And it’s a true testament to what you’ve been able to accomplish, Adam. Adam, what takeaway or golden nugget would you like to leave with our audience here today?

Adam Droege (17:43)
Yeah, I would say, know,

there are, if you line up 10 people and you ask all 10 of them, how many of you want to get in real estate investing? Nine or 10 are going to say yes, right? Almost

everybody wants to get in real estate investing.

So

I would say people sit on the sidelines a lot and say, I’ll do it when I get this point. I will, you know, get in real estate when I

have this much saved up or when I

meet the right people or whatever it is, right?

And I would say if you want to get in real estate investing,

the time to

start is now. You don’t have to buy a property today, but there are a hundred things that you need to do before you even buy a property. Build your team, your lender ready, get your finances in order, get a plan for your buy box. Where do you want to invest at?

What kind of investment do you want to make?

These are all questions

that you’re going to need to answer. And so I would say that everybody should get started today, right? Get in networking groups

and…

you know, start listening to books and podcasts about real estate investing.

And then I would say,

take the action.

You know, I’ve met many people on the way that have spent $100,000 or more on coaching and different programs and

they still haven’t bought real estate, right? And I would say, guys, you could have taken that hundred grand and you could have

literally bought three or four houses with it,

made a bunch of mistakes,

learned more than you could have ever dreamed of learning in these coaching

programs and you would

own real estate. And so I would say,

Don’t not do the coaching programs,

but do take action and take action right now and take it today. Do not wait for the perfect environment. Be ready to pull the trigger when that house comes up that you think is a good opportunity and pull that trigger. Even if you buy, unless you buy a total lemon, right, you’re most likely if you buy it at least somewhat right, you’re gonna be able to get in and out of it. And almost a worst case, you might take a small loss, but what you learn is gonna be cheaper than

a lot of these

coaching and mentorship

programs. So

I would say if I could tell anybody, take action, but understand real estate is not easy. It is very difficult. It sounds sexy and it is sexy in a lot of ways, but it is very difficult. You are grinding. You’re having late night calls. You’re having weekend calls. You’re getting disrupted from your time off of your other jobs. And so understand it takes a lot of action. It takes immediate action and it is going to be hard.

but if you can stick with it, it has nearly always paid off for real estate investors. ⁓ So that’s probably the main point I can make to other real estate investors.

Scott Bursey (20:07)
That is some sensational advice. And Adam, we love fostering connections here at Real Estate Pros. For the listeners who want to follow your journey and collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Adam Droege (20:19)
I mean, they can search my name. They’ll be able to find my contact information there. ⁓ You know, my email is adam at CRSagents.com. They can email me anytime and ⁓ you know, I’m pretty easy to find.

Scott Bursey (20:32)
Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been very insightful.

Adam Droege (20:35)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Scott.

Scott Bursey (20:37)
Our pleasure. And for our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value from today’s episode, please make sure you’re subscribed.

We have conversations coming up with exceptional option operators, just like Adam down the road until next time. Keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode. Everyone.