How to Scale a Real Estate Investing Business With AI Employees, Better Systems, and Clear Goals

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (00:00)
I mean, I would say for anybody that’s thinking about what the next step is, whether it’s, or even if you’re new, like, do I get started in flipping? Do I get starting in wholesaling or multifamily? I would always start with the end in mind and then work backwards. So like, if you plan on building a, ⁓ let’s just say a rental portfolio, I’m not going to say start flipping, right? Because it’s not going to help you get to that goal. Like you, there’s multiple paths to get to the goal, but I want to pick the straight line.

Scott Bursey (01:58)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host Scott Bursey and you’re locked into the Real Estate Pros Podcast powered by Investor Fuel. Today we have a guest who is bringing a whole new level of efficiency fuel to the property game. We’re talking about streamlining, scaling and making real estate truly easy. John Galan, the man behind EzyRes is in the house. John is fueling the future of property management, showing us how to ditch the old ways.

and embrace solutions that actually work. Get ready to download some serious wisdom pros. This is going to be a game changer. John, welcome to the show.

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (02:38)
Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me.

Scott Bursey (02:40)
It’s just awesome having you here. And John, for those that may not be familiar with your journey, how did your career begin and what’s your main focus now?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (02:49)
Yeah. Well, I started off as a, as a CPA and I just hated doing taxes and busy season. And I would always look at the people’s tax returns that I was doing that were making the most money and paying the least amount of taxes. And they were always in real estate. So I knew I wanted to get into real estate, but I spent like a lot of people doing a lot of consumption, but not a lot of action taking almost just paralyzed by analysis. Right. And then one day I decided, I let me just do something about it.

stumbled upon wholesale and real estate, ⁓ got into that and I was able to juggle between ⁓ the wholesaling, my W2 as a CPA and then my side tax business all ⁓ in 2022 for the first four months. And I got my first deal in the middle of busy season and I made as much as my bonus. And I was like, all right, I’m done with accounting. So I quit my job and just went all into this. ⁓ Since then I was able to, my first year I think I did about

16 deals and then the year after that was about 100 and then every year after that we’ve done at least 100 deals a year wholesaling. And now we have about six new construction projects going on in Tampa. I have one pad split in Arizona and we’re part of two syndications in Georgia and Texas.

Scott Bursey (04:01)
you

is just phenomenal, John. Outstanding, Congratulations. What’s the single biggest strength EzyRes provides to help pros scale their portfolios right now in your view, John

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (04:17)
Appreciate that.

Yeah, I so since we we pride ourselves on getting quality deals. So if you’re looking to buy in Florida or even in Georgia and you’re trying to either buy for for flipping or even getting some rentals, ⁓ we provide opportunities to investors that could buy those properties. We sell a lot to developers, too. So basically, if you’re looking to invest, we don’t wholesale large multifamily deals, but single family or two to four units, sometimes even a little bit more. And we usually have those deals ready.

Scott Bursey (04:52)
And that’s huge to have those right there on the horizon. And John, where do you feel that the real estate pros may be under utilizing tech in their management process? Now for our listeners that are tuning in, what advice do you give them on that realm?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (06:00)
Yeah, I mean, as far as like the tech side of things, I always like to think ⁓ anytime I’m doing something or if I’m doing something repeat, I always like to jot it down because it’s going to make my job a lot easier when I do onboard somebody if I already have it documented and I don’t wait until I have to hire to then build it all out. So I like to just think longer term, like, okay, if I’m doing this, I’m not going to be doing this forever. I eventually will hire it out.

Once I have a repeatable process in place that I know works, then let me just document it. And now with the age of AI, I mean, it’s very easy to document stuff. You don’t have to by hand make SOPs anymore. And now I’ve been playing around with Claude Cowork, working on building out AI employees that could just help me with more offloading of my day to day. And that’s been super interesting. So that’s something I’ve been starting to dive deeper into.

Scott Bursey (06:54)
It is super interesting, how may you employ AI in the next 12 to 18 months?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (07:02)
Yeah, I mean, you could have you could basically have it be your executive assistant. It could read through your emails. It could give you morning reports and the day reports, check ins with you, start drafting emails for you to approve and send. It could do a lot of different things. You could also have it talk to the other ones. Like you have a chief of of staff that is basically your EA and the only one that reports to you. And it talks to the other ones as ones in of like sales and training. Another one could be in charge of like your content and brand.

And it only knows each one only knows that realm. So it’s like a specialist. And so you could just go ahead and discuss with it, give it documents so it knows it could read over your financials. So basically you just have like an internal AI C-suite that works for you. ⁓ And the goal is to eventually anything that is repeatable and could be automated could be done by the AI. And then you just have a bunch of salespeople just locking up contracts.

Scott Bursey (07:57)
It truly is exciting. And is there any other opportunities that you feel that your company may be ready to capitalize on here in the near future as well?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (08:07)
Yeah, I mean, we built the business on going direct to agent, which I love because, you know, once you have a good relationship with an agent, they’re always sending you their deals and you could do repeat business. ⁓ We’re also opening up our direct to seller department. So, you know, we’ll be going, you know, direct to the homeowner, getting, getting deals that way where there’s no agent involved. So I think just being able to have both sides of the acquisition ⁓ dialed in just gives us more opportunities to either.

buy directly ourselves or to wind up wholesaling out so we could start intentionally building out the development company.

Scott Bursey (08:41)
What big is your team currently?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (08:42)
So right now, not counting me and my business partner, we are at, let me see, we’re at like 12 people.

Yeah, right around 11 people, 11, 12 people.

Scott Bursey (08:55)
Okay, are you thinking about expanding to any other markets down the road?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (09:00)
Yeah, for direct to agent where we’re sticking to right now, those two, we might open up maybe in another two, haven’t decided just yet where, but for direct to seller with inbound PPC, I mean, we’re going to be in about probably 10 different markets, but not like the whole state will pick select counties in those. Of course, we’re going to keep Florida and Georgia because those are the markets we know. ⁓ But yeah, we’ll also add other markets as well for the PPC.

Scott Bursey (09:27)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And then zero in on specific areas it sounds like. Awesome. Any challenges you’re watching closely? And this could be like market risk, John, competition, to deals or capital, you know, that sort of thing.

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (10:16)
Yeah, I mean, for us, like with the wholesaling side, not much like access to capital ⁓ for like as far as in the markets. In my market, every market is different. So I can’t speak for some like there are some Midwest markets that are great. Like, ⁓ you know, Connecticut, I heard is also like booming. But ⁓ for Florida alone, like after that hurricane happened in what was it like two years ago, the market slowed down a lot. And there’s also what I’m seeing, there’s a big discrepancy between where like

where sellers think their house is worth and where buyers want to buy at. Some of them have been a little bit more conservative. So it’s just like bridging that gap between the expectations. That’s been the bigger challenge. And then when you’re working with agents as well, trying to communicate that through the agent to then communicate that through the seller.

Scott Bursey (11:02)
That was an excellent breakdown. Thank you for sharing that. And John, no business is perfect. What’s one thing that you’re still trying to figure out here or working around here recently?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (11:12)
Yeah, I mean, trying to get myself out of the day-to-day operations. ⁓ know, anytime you’re dealing with real estate, especially if it’s sometimes distressed, ⁓ you never know what’s gonna come up on title. So anytime we assign a deal, that’s when the fun starts because that’s when the title search comes back and you see what’s on it. And so solving those problems. And then on top of that, training my salespeople, making sure I’m there for them when they need and, you know, making sure that whenever I onboard somebody, they’re onboarded correctly and we’re not just putting them into the…

into the seat and saying, all right, figure it out. Like we have a good infrastructure in place, so they’re set up for success. So being able to start getting that delegated, that’s kind of been my biggest challenge because me and my business partner are still heavily involved inside of the operations. And I want to scale out of the wholesale operations and then start building out the development.

Scott Bursey (12:01)
I have a gut feeling you’re gonna get a good handle on that, John. I really do. Now, if someone’s listening to this and they’re thinking, this is someone I’d want to partner with or learn from, what do you want them to know first about your business?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (12:05)
Appreciate that.

Yeah, I mean, we have no problem partnering with people. ⁓ We JV with a lot of different wholesalers in the Florida market in Georgia. If you also are buying there, we don’t we don’t wholesale creative deals. That’s just one thing I personally don’t believe in doing because I’ve seen a lot of the sellers get screwed over on that. So I don’t wholesale creative. I only wholesale cash deals. So private money, hard money, you know, cash will wholesale to you if you’re looking to buy. But that’s really it. I mean, when you

Come to us if you want a JV. I’m always gonna ask, we’re always gonna set up the splits ahead of time. ⁓ I’m gonna tell you what I need from the deal. Figure out how you work, if it’s highest, invest and whatnot, probably not right fit as far as business models. So we’ll have that conversation upfront before we actually start working together. Cause I like setting up expectations early on instead of when things are going and money’s involved. I like to have that pre-frame.

Scott Bursey (13:05)
Hey, I couldn’t agree with you anymore. And John, if you could only give one piece of advice to a pro trying to decide on their next major property, technology investment, what would it be?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (13:19)
like you said, property technology investment or just like investing in the next in the next property.

Scott Bursey (13:25)
Either or, take us down both roads if you like, or just pick and choose one as well. But what strategy are you going to employ, and what advice could you give to our listeners here today?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (13:35)
I mean, I would say for anybody that’s thinking about what the next step is, whether it’s, or even if you’re new, like, do I get started in flipping? Do I get starting in wholesaling or multifamily? I would always start with the end in mind and then work backwards. So like, if you plan on building a, ⁓ let’s just say a rental portfolio, I’m not going to say start flipping, right? Because it’s not going to help you get to that goal. Like you, there’s multiple paths to get to the goal, but I want to pick the straight line.

So, or one that’s going to give me the skills necessary for what my end goal actually is. If you want to start investing in multifamily, I’m not going to say start wholesaling, right? Because it’s not really going to help you get there. Maybe you start investing in sales because sales is no matter what you’re doing in real estate, you’re going to need sales in order to acquire properties. So I would definitely start like getting good with sales and ⁓ sales education. But the most important thing before you even start is figuring out what is my end goal. And then

working backwards to find the starting point.

Scott Bursey (15:15)
Excellent breakdown once again. And John, before we sign off, for those of our listeners that want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (15:25)
Yeah, my Instagram, it’s John Galan, R-E-I, so J-O-H-N-G-A-L-A-N-R-E-I. You can shoot me a DM on there. I also put some YouTube videos on my channel, just John Galan. So I would say Instagram is probably the best bet. I’m not really very active on TikTok. If you try to send me a TikTok DM, I’ll probably answer that a month or two late, but Instagram I would say I’m on every single day.

Scott Bursey (15:49)
any other takeaways or nuggets that you’d like to leave with our listeners today.

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (15:55)
the biggest thing that’s helped me was, was finding, getting my mindset right. So I would say if you don’t already do that, like it’s not like, you know, hippie, dippy shit, right? Like your intention sets your actions. And if you’re doing the same actions with the wrong mindset or wrong intention, you will have different results. If I already think something isn’t going to work out, I’m not actually going to do everything I can do to make it work. So there’s a difference between like being solution oriented or problem focused.

Right? The problem focus people, when they see a problem, they’re like, well, I can’t do it because of X, but the solution oriented people, they see a problem and they’re like, all right, how can I solve this? Because what I want is on the other side of this problem. So let me think about how to solve this, not why it’s stopping.

Scott Bursey (16:37)
I love that, John. Proactive thinking. Everybody, John, galan. Thank you for joining us today.

John Galan (@johngalanrei) (16:40)
Yes.

Thank you for having me.

Scott Bursey (16:44)
It is our sincere pleasure. And for our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got additional people, exceptional operators, just like John, coming up. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.