How to Passively Invest in Real Estate for Just $100 | Mor Milo of Relli

Mor Milo (00:00)
passive real estate investments have been happening for decades, but it’s only been relegated to the top 1 % in the institutions in the

So all we’re doing is taking something that exists behind closed doors, bringing it out into the open and reducing the barrier of entry so everybody can participate.

So our goal is to reduce the amount of capital reduce the amount of know-how

and reduce the amount of risk by giving average Joes like myself the opportunity to invest alongside highly qualified sponsors that have been doing this for years and years and years and have millions of transactions under their belt.

Quentin Edmonds (02:07)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Investor Field podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And today I am joined by a man that is standing at the interaction of finance, real estate and technology. You asked me what that mean? I’m gonna let him tell you what that means because this man is, he has an abundant of wisdom. He has a new ⁓ way of looking at things. And I think a way that’s really gonna blow your mind

Put your mind around what it is that he’s trying to do. So hear the words that he’s saying, but also let your mind take you to where his words is taking you. Because I believe he’s doing something really, really good for the real estate space. And so I want to introduce you all to my friend, Mr. Milo. How you feeling, sir?

Mor Milo (02:54)
I’m great Q, I appreciate you man, thanks for the wonderful intro.

Quentin Edmonds (02:58)
No, absolutely, man. believe in what you’re doing. I know we just known each other for a short time, but what you told me has really resonated with me and I believe is going to resonate with our listeners. really do. I love the approach that you have when it comes to, I’m not going to, I’m going to let you do it, man. I was about to try to, I wasn’t about to try to say it, but man, I’m going let you do it. I’m going to die.

Mor Milo (03:21)
I’m killin’ it, I don’t know about you, I know, I’ve been talking to you for little while now, I feel like you’re killin’ it, don’t doubt yourself my friend, you’re absolutely awesome, Q.

Quentin Edmonds (03:29)
Yeah

Mor Milo (03:31)
Yeah,

and I can hop in. have no problem hopping in. Essentially, Relly is planning on becoming the stock market of real estate. And our goal is to give everybody the opportunity to invest in real estate in a passive way with as little as $100. And people have tried to do this before. It’s been a little difficult to achieve. But I think from a timing perspective and the product that we have to bring to the table, we can really help a lot of people build wealth.

get their foot in the door when it comes to real estate for the first time, maybe without giving up their entire life savings, give them a little bit of an easy, small baby step where they can start playing in the pool, but not necessarily have to dive head first.

Quentin Edmonds (04:14)
Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say more you took you took the literal You took the literal words out my mouth. I was gonna say the same thing ⁓ But no what I what I do love is when you said You and they didn’t hear it, but I heard it when you said it you’re offering everyone the opportunity to participate in real

Mor Milo (04:36)
estate.

That’s the goal. That’s the goal. You know, I think real estate has been a closed door business for a very long time to a certain extent. And the barrier of entry is very high. If you are an average Joe and you want to try to get into real estate right now, what are the methods that you normally approach? Either you’re doing a single family rental or you’re doing a small multifamily deal, probably like a fourplex or a twoplex,

or you’re flipping a house.

All of these are incredibly capital intensive and require a lot of experience, you know, to go build a house or to go renovate a home or do any of these things requires a lot of work and knowledge. And as someone who watched my parents come to this country as immigrants and build a small portfolio of real estate that they managed as landlords and they built their wealth through that, I also watched them deal with tenants and be landlords, which is extremely hard.

Dealing with renovations when the time comes to move those tenants out and bring new tenants in the Idea of investing in real estate has been portrayed as passive for a very long time But the majority of the opportunities that exist in the market for an average consumer like myself To get their foot in the door in the real estate space Requires a lot of capital a lot of know-how and a lot of risk

So our goal is to reduce the amount of capital reduce the amount of know-how

and reduce the amount of risk by giving average Joes like myself the opportunity to invest alongside highly qualified sponsors that have been doing this for years and years and years and have millions of transactions under their belt.

So they’re not alone. They can do it with a really high quality group of people that they can passively give their money to and say, go and build this project because I believe in it, reap the benefits of the cashflow and the equity growth.

while leaning on the super experience of some of these sponsors that have upwards of a billion dollars in assets under management. So our goal is to give everybody the opportunity to passively invest. Now, just to give you a little background, the way that the market works currently is normally high net worth individuals and institutions will come together with real estate development firms to put up the equity to purchase a deal so they can acquire the debt

from the bank, build out the project, manage the project, turn a profit and sell or refinance or whatever their goal is.

That being

passive real estate investments have been happening for decades, but it’s only been relegated to the top 1 % in the institutions in the

And the average consumer hasn’t had an opportunity.

So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to bridge the gap between ultra-net-worth, high-net-worth people in the institutions and the average Joe that wants to do the same thing that the institutions and the passive investors at that high level do, but with smaller amounts of money.

So all we’re doing is taking something that exists behind closed doors, bringing it out into the open and reducing the barrier of entry so everybody can participate.

Quentin Edmonds (08:37)
It is man. I love it. I can only imagine because you’re the expert but I can imagine that that’s not especially easy in this climate, right?

Mor Milo (08:51)
Easy would not be the right word to describe it. That’s true. I would say the opposite of easy. It’s extremely difficult. But somebody has to go through the trenches to figure out how to get this done. So why not me?

Quentin Edmonds (09:04)
And that’s so that’s my question. So what keeps you motivated? We keep things running smoothly for you.

Mor Milo (09:11)
Well, first of all, I have an incredible team, first of which is my business partner and longtime friend Ross Ionarelli, who’s my right hand. And I like to say the right side of my brain. And he has been my day one for the last three years building this company. And for five years before that building three previous companies. So number one, finding good people. And we were just talking about this, about how the common denominator and everything is people. And I would say that my team is the number one thing that keeps me.

with my head somewhat attached. The next thing I would say that keeps us going is a true desire and passion to invest passively as average consumers. The story really is me and Ross both have been investing in the stock market for many years and we’ve done well

and we’ve invested in bonds and cryptos and all sorts of fun things like that. But we didn’t have real estate. for the last

31 years of my life, I’ve watched my parents purchase and rent out real estate and make a lot of money, live a great lifestyle through that real estate. What I didn’t like was the active participation in management. I didn’t want to deal with tenants. I didn’t want to deal with maintenance. I didn’t want to deal with renovations. I didn’t want to deal with the asset. I didn’t know anything about how to manage and construct these assets. So it didn’t make much sense for me to go out and do that. I knew

that high net worth individuals and passive investors of all different kinds were deploying capital with really highly qualified builders, but I never qualified because I wasn’t accredited. that kind of gave us the reason to go and say, okay, well, Ross, me and you both want to invest in real estate. We want to do it passively. We want to be able to trade it like we trade our stock. We don’t want to touch the asset. We want to give our money to highly qualified people. It’s kind of like the stock market.

Why don’t we build a stock market for real estate? So we went out and decided to build it and what we discovered along the path was that The real estate development firms have never gone out to the public. They’ve never gone to an average consumer So it’s completely different landscape. So we had to go and dig in to the compliance components, right? What does the legal look like? What does accounting look like? What does audit look like? What is all this stuff that we had to go figure out?

And then we went out and talked to the real estate developers. And basically what they told us was, hey guys, we need help with where we’re at today. This is cool for the future, but we need accredited investors. And all of our deals are sent out via email through newsletters. How can you help us get this out in front of more people? So what we decided to do was take a little pit stop on the way to the stock market of real estate by building a marketplace for today.

because there’s a lot of developers out there, a lot of real estate investors, lenders, fund managers, syndicators that want to find new investors, but don’t have a way to advertise their deal in a very attractive and affordable manner. So we decided that the first component here of this stock market for real estate was how do we build a passive real estate investing marketplace where these real estate developers could come and list their offerings

for accredited investors and do business in real time. So that’s what we launched in April. And slowly but surely, we’re building out the foundation of the business with lots of different real estate developers. And the second that we find the first public offering, we can go ahead and list it on the platform and start getting the average consumers involved. So we’re excited to just go from step to step and try to build something awesome for the market and then

Slowly but surely, we’re going to get it in front of the average Joe and let the average Joe participate as well.

Quentin Edmonds (13:42)
Love it man. No, I I love it man. I’m gonna try to see if I can say this scene I said I’m having committed to memory, but I don’t know if I have it yet, but it says and it’s a military term it says Smooth slow is smooth and smooth is fast and so it sound like You’re smoothing this thing out and they start off slow. We’re gonna smooth it out and once this thing is smooth

Mor Milo (14:14)
Then we can turn up the speed. That’s actually an awesome analogy. So that’s actually, I know that from racing. So I was in the automotive space for a long time. Yeah. And they say that ⁓ slow is slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It’s the same thing. And the idea is when you’re going around a turn and you’re taking that turn and you’re smooth through that turn, you have great traction, you hit your spots, you get that access of that turn, you’re going to have a better result at the end of the day.

It totally resonates for me. I’ve been around cars my whole life. It’s a great analogy. I completely agree.

Quentin Edmonds (14:47)
I love it man. I love how you put in the words traction. yes, I mean, I love it. So now I’m going to expand on my saying, thanks to you more. I’m adding language

that phrase.

Mor Milo (15:43)
My pleasure. Thanks for bringing it up, man. You spawned the idea, so here we are.

Quentin Edmonds (15:49)
My man, I appreciate you brother. Now, of course, I mean, you talked about you’re building something, you’re building something with your partner, Ross. ⁓ I can imagine because all of us, as we build things, there are times when things get real. Stuff goes sideways. yeah. Times when you had to pivot fast. And so for our community of entrepreneurs, people who are at different levels of their journey.

Maybe they could be stuck in something where they like, I’m trying to figure this out. Like, do you mind sharing a moment where you had to kind of pivot fast?

Mor Milo (16:26)
Absolutely. This journey has been a roller coaster. And now this is our fourth startup, me and Ross together. So we’ve been through the roller coaster a few times and I have a mantra that I’ve said on a couple podcasts. I think I learned it from a guy named David Meltzer, but ⁓ the mantra goes like this. Be in business tomorrow. That’s it. Be in business tomorrow. That’s it. Really, it’s all it is. Cause at the end of the day, you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.

You don’t know what’s going to happen a week from now. You don’t know what’s going happen a month from now. Something could be great. It falls apart. You have to completely renovate and change it. And as long as you’re in business tomorrow, you’re going to be alive long enough to figure out what you need to change and make the adjustments. So when you come from a place of I’m going to be in business tomorrow, you’re not thinking about 10 years from now. You’re thinking about what do I need to do?

to keep my doors open tomorrow. And I promise you, if you just keep on being open tomorrow, you’re gonna get through that problem. And then you’re gonna look back at it say, my God, I was worried about that problem. Because the problems only get bigger. This is a game for problem solvers. And the beauty of the game is it naturally gets more difficult every day that you continue to play the game. whenever you choose, the problems go away.

You can choose it, but we didn’t get into this to make the problems go away forever. We got into this to consistently solve bigger problems every single day so we can make more and more impact. And every day that you stay alive, you solve a bigger problem. So I think from my perspective, ⁓ there was a couple of moments throughout this journey. You asked me for a couple of moments. We had a co-founder that

we had on board that we unfortunately had to let go. That was super important to us in August of this year. And at the time we had four co-founders all working together and we were all siloed ⁓ in our specific tasks. And when we lost that co-founder, we had to disperse all of the tasks associated with that co-founder to an already very small team. So bandwidth has been an incredibly difficult thing for us.

because there’s always more work to do than there is time to do it in. So that really rattled our cage. had three co-founders that had to figure out how to pick up the slack and keep the business going. And at that time we ended up having to make a pivot because what we realized is that the second that we lost that co-founder and we lost that bandwidth, we had to get even more focused on what it is that our customers wanted. And that’s when we decided to take a step back.

and offer an accredited investor platform that we would evolve into the public market. And that generated massive growth for us, right? It was a huge, huge loss that we had to work through. But that loss, because we got more focused, gave us our first customer.

And you can’t ask for better than that, right? Sometimes you have to let things go in order to get new better things.

That’s one example, one moment where we thought it could have been the end of our business because we lost a massive piece of our business, but we were able to focus, stay in business until tomorrow and continue to find ways to execute so we could get to the next level. And we’ve had 10 or 15 of those types of events. know, ⁓ we had another founder that is no longer with us that we’re now down to two. At that time we thought, this thing is over. We’re dead in the water.

But what happened was me and Ross put our heads together. We focused even more. And then we got six customers. Right? So like you have to let go of things to get the new things. You have to let go of the old to get the new. And sometimes the old, you want to hold onto it because it’s all, you know, and the devil that you don’t know is scary. But sometimes you just got to let go. And actually I think Steve Harvey said this, if you want to fly, you got to jump.

Quentin Edmonds (20:50)
Woo!

Mor Milo (20:51)
you want to fly, you got to jump. There’s no question about it, right? You can’t walk up to the edge and fly if you’re not willing to jump over it. And sometimes the edge just shows up and you just have to jump and you don’t have a choice and you’re not ready, but it gives you the chance to fly.

Quentin Edmonds (21:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. ⁓ Man, that’s the type of stuff people are not talking about, honestly. Like, this is the kind of stuff that separates folks. People that just dabble and people who is looking for the long term approach. And like you said, I am be in business

tomorrow. I’m always going be looking for a problem to solve. And so that in itself is going to keep me in the long term. And not only that, that’s going to keep me in a place of integrity because I’m trying to, I’m not just trying to do something just to do it. I’m trying to solve a problem.

Mor Milo (21:54)
There’s intention. Absolutely. 100%. You’re right on it, Q.

Quentin Edmonds (22:00)
Yeah, no, absolutely man. So listen, what what are you guys focusing on? ⁓ Maybe are you like focus on solving well, we’re definitely solving a problem. We already got that because we are I’m looking for my notes. We’re offering the opportunity for everyone to participate in real estate So we’re actually solving that problem. But what would you say is like the next goal for you guys?

Mor Milo (22:24)
The next goal for us would be for us to truly solidify our product in a way that we see adoption in a massive way. We have something in the range of 1300 users right now that are active with accounts looking at deals. But we know that there are millions of investors out there that would love to have access to these types of deals. So our biggest problem right now is that not enough people know about what we offer.

And not enough people know about who I am or Ross is or my team is and it’s really hard to do business with people that you don’t know. So what we’re, what we’re really focused on right now is getting our faces out there, getting our vision out into the world, showing people who we are, ⁓ providing value first and asking for money. Second. ⁓ you know, really right now what we’re looking for is we’re looking for more.

passive investors that want to deploy capital into real estate. Because we have some incredibly powerful real estate developers, lenders and syndicators that are offering amazing deals on our platform that we’ve personally looked at and vetted for that community to invest in. And we want more of them to know what’s available to them. Right? People don’t know that they can go invest in an oil and gas deal and they can write off a lot of the money that they invest.

Somewhere between 85 and 92 % of every dollar that you invest, can write off on one of the deals that we have on our platform. People don’t know that they can invest in self storage. We have a deal right now that will pay them between 13 and 15 % like they are the bank. Every single quarter, they get a check. We have another group that’s offering investments in Walmart, Starbucks, AutoZone. They own a portfolio of $150 million worth of retail assets that

Walmart Autozone and Starbucks rent from them and they pay every single month an 8 % return on the money and They get a percentage of the profit when the property sells people don’t know about this stuff They don’t know it exists right right now Everybody just wants to go and buy a single-family residence and maybe get 10 12 percent, but they work their tails off They deal with the tenants they deal with the maintenance they deal with the renovations they deal with

get the same, if not better return with safety in numbers, because you got a bunch of investors and you got a bunch of assets, not just one, and get paid every month, every quarter from the money that they’re making and the professionals are making, while you sit back and count your money.

Quentin Edmonds (24:56)
Yeah.

I’m ready.

Mor Milo (25:08)
So that’s what we’re up to. We need to get our name, our brand out there. And then we need to show people that we’re in integrity and that we care about them and that we want to do well by them. And we offer them an amazing free service where they get white glove experience and can connect directly with these CEOs that are offering these investment opportunities. So that’s our biggest, our ⁓ challenge right now is how do we get in front of more people and show them the value that we can give to them?

Quentin Edmonds (25:38)
Yeah. Man, I love it. I love the next move. I love it. I absolutely love it. And of course, you know, as you build, you know that the next move, can either compound things or create chaos, depending on how you play it. ⁓

Mor Milo (25:50)
No

doubt about that, that’s for sure. create chaos, but that’s okay.

Quentin Edmonds (25:57)
But yeah, but it does that’s what it does know and so of course, you know, we got people that’s listening and Some of them are early in their journey They’re looking to level up. They’re looking to make moves and I love the way that you and Ross have built things I love the way you talked about Genuinely talking about your partnership And so I would love if you answer this when it comes to building relationships and growing your network What’s made the biggest difference for you?

Mor Milo (26:27)
Wow, that’s a good question. ⁓ I am very blessed and gifted to be ⁓ pretty good with my words. So I’ve been able to do rather well, just getting to know people at events and meeting people in person. And that has been an overwhelming game changer for me personally, because when you’re an intentional about networking, it doesn’t feel

like you’re inauthentic. Cause I feel like a lot of people feel as though they’re acting inauthentically when they go to a networking event and are approaching someone to talk to them about doing business. And sometimes the setting doesn’t allow you to be overwhelmingly direct. So you feel as though you’re kind of faking it to get in and talk to them and like,

really just imposing on them? Well, in my personal opinion.

And actually I learned this sitting at a table of three other CEOs that were triple my age about 10 years ago. I prefer to be direct in those types of environments and then let the authentic relationship transpire. And the reason why I say that is because when you’re at a networking event, everybody is there to do business. You didn’t show up to the happy hour at three 30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday because you wanted to meet your next best friend.

Will you maybe meet your next best friend? Actually, I’ve met some incredible friends in networking events, but that’s not the intention. The intention is to go there to do business and connect. So 10 years ago, when I was sitting at this table with these three other business owners and I was asking them, Hey, what’s the best way to get somebody to do business with you? They looked at me and they said more always lead with the business. And I asked why, and the response was like this. Everybody has had this engagement.

Hey, let’s go get lunch. Let’s go get lunch. Okay, we’re going to get lunch. Let’s go get lunch. We sit down. We have lunch. Me and Q, we’re having lunch. But how your kids? What are you doing? Da da da, blah, blah. Last 10 minutes of the lunch. All of a sudden, hey, so I wanted to talk to you about something. I really want you to be my customer. Okay, well, you just spent an hour getting, being, playing nice. Yep. Right. And then the last five minutes you’re going to switch up on me. And now I feel gross.

Quentin Edmonds (29:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mor Milo (29:02)
Right? I’m leaving this instead of leaving and saying, ⁓ I met a new friend. I feel great. It’s like, no, this person spent an hour trying to get to get me to like them so they can try to sell

Quentin Edmonds (29:12)
Yeah.

Mor Milo (29:13)
Let’s flip it. Me and Q, we’re going to lunch. Me and you, let’s go. We’re sitting down at our favorite Chinese place. I don’t know, whatever you like to eat. And we’re sitting down. I look at you, say, Q, look, look, I need 10 minutes of your attention to talk about this particular topic. I see your business as a potential customer for me. The reason why I see that is for X, Y, and Z. What do you think? Okay. Me and Q having a conversation, doing business. All right. Great. Cool. 10 minutes later.

What do we, what comes out of it almost always is like, yeah, let’s do business. No, I’m not interested. Let me think about it. Cool. 10 minutes taken care of. Now you can spend the next 50 minutes enjoying your lunch, sitting across from Q talking to you. How are your kids? What’s the deal? How do you do? And then when you leave, it’s like, Oh, he was here for business, but he actually took the time to get to know me. That’s pretty cool. Even if I don’t know, don’t do business with you, I’m going to feel.

Quentin Edmonds (29:48)
Thank

Mor Milo (30:10)
Like you took the time to care about who I was because instead of starting with the chit chat, we finished with it. And now I’m leaving you on a good taste in your mouth of like, Hey, so nice to meet you. And it feels authentic. Right? So I treat networking the same exact way I go up. I’m direct. I say, I see your company. I see what you’re doing at your booth. We’re at this conference. What are we talking about? Let’s see if we have a genuine connection.

and you don’t have to have a connection with everybody. That’s another thing that people mess up, I think. You don’t have to like everybody. You have to respect everybody. You don’t have to like everyone. It’s okay to go up to somebody at a networking event say, I see your business. This is what you do. This is what we do. Let’s see if we can work together. Cool. Great. Here’s my card. Here’s your card. See you later. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you get into a more personal conversation, even better, right? But

understanding that when you go to a networking event, you have to be intentional about meeting people is super important. And another thing that I would say is

ridiculous honesty in the moment. If this doesn’t fit, look, it doesn’t fit. I don’t think it fits. You seem like a nice guy. Let’s exchange information, but I don’t think this is a good fit. If it fits, Hey, I think this fits. This could be a thing. Let’s dig a little deeper down the hole. That’s more important than anything that you can do because that’s authentic. It’s real. That’s what people want. They want authentic connection, right?

So I think that’s also really important when it comes to networking. But in my opinion, the best way to move the ball forward is to be where the people are and to actively communicate with those people.

Quentin Edmonds (32:01)
So just go ahead and run, run all that back. Say all that back again. Cause it’d be so good.

Mor Milo (32:05)
I know,

that’s okay. Short and sweet. Let me actually put a little bow on it, okay? Don’t be scared to be direct. Don’t be scared to say no. Come on. Transactional relationships are okay.

Quentin Edmonds (32:09)
Good boy!

Mor Milo (32:27)
and always lead with the business and finish with the connection.

Quentin Edmonds (32:33)
So well said. So I told him before, y’all, he is a really gifted communicator. ⁓ Yeah, that was great, man. Listen, before we wrap, because this has been great. This has been so good. I appreciate you, If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about Rally, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

Mor Milo (32:46)
Thanks to you, appreciate you man.

Lots of ways to connect with us. We’re very active on social. So if you’re looking for some of our content, you want to engage with what we’re up to, go check us out on ⁓ Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok. Everything is at invest with Relly. So invest with Relly. R-E-L-L-I. If you want to get connected with me directly, feel free to email me. It’s more like my first name, M-O-R.

at Relly, R-E-L-L-I dot C-O, co.com. And lastly, you can check out our platform, create an account, do whatever you’d like with our deals on the platform ⁓ at Relly.co, R-E-L-L-I dot C-O.

Quentin Edmonds (33:44)
There he is, y’all. Molo. Listen, sir, I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Man, we definitely need more people doing business the way they’re doing just like you, man, the right way with integrity. Thank you. Making honest and authentic connections. So thank you again, man, for being here. I appreciate you so much,

Mor Milo (34:07)
Truly a pleasure, man. Happy to come back whenever.

Quentin Edmonds (34:09)
Absolutely. And listen, for those who’s tuning in, if you found value in this, please make sure you are subscribed. Y’all never know who we’re going to have on this podcast. We are giving you a wealth of information. And so I do not want you to miss out on people just like my friend here, Mr. Milo. Again, thank you so much, sir. And y’all, I will see you on the next podcast. Y’all have a great one.