Master Emotional Intelligence: Grow Your Real Estate Business Today

John Harcar (00:01.216)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Carey Greiner. And what we’re gonna talk about before we, obviously his real estate journey, but really something that means a lot to me as well as the importance of being of service both in life and in your business. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, mean all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X your business by providing tools and resources to help you grow,

and build that business as well as live the life you’ve always wanted to live, right? So Carrie, man, welcome to the show. Yeah, I appreciate you joining us. Sorry about your being stuck in Seattle. And I’m looking forward to talking about, you know, something like we mentioned before, it’s important to me as well as being of service. But before all that, tell our folks about your background, how you got into real estate, kind of what got you here.

Carey Greiner (00:36.9)
Yeah, thanks so much, John. Appreciate being here.

Carey Greiner (00:57.89)
Yeah, one of the first memories I have of getting excited about real estate was driving around a UPS truck in Portland, Oregon, and I’d see some dilapidated distressed houses. One had a car in the front driveway with the wheels, tires all just mushed down, had been sitting there so long, all the stuff growing over the sidewalks in the house. And I thought, man, this is a beautiful neighborhood. Somebody could buy that and fix it up and…

John Harcar (01:08.692)
Hahaha

John Harcar (01:17.172)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (01:27.211)
make a lot of money, right? Like that was one of my first kind of real estate epiphanies. I think I tuned into Carlton Sheets for a minute. you know, 2008, the dream became a reality. I got my real estate license after working at an adventure business that I moved to Central Oregon for, doing snowmobile tours, ATV tours, but teamed up with an experienced broker at a boutique.

John Harcar (01:36.128)
Mmm.

Carey Greiner (01:55.691)
real estate firm and started being a broker. Really just going to work for folks that were buying second homes. Turns out they were third, fourth, fifth homes, but yeah, really loved it.

John Harcar (02:06.481)
Awesome. okay, so you, and let’s kind of go back a little bit. So you started this snowmobile tour, right? or you turned it from a hobby to a passion, which is fantastic, right? before, and then you saw these properties working for UPS. Was there any influence, person, you know, something that you watched that kind of, mean, because we all might look at ugly houses in an area and not even pay the half of mine because that’s.

Carey Greiner (02:12.471)
Yeah.

Carey Greiner (02:23.917)
you

John Harcar (02:34.217)
You know, we haven’t been introduced to that type of thing. So how were you introduced to that mindset of, that’s an ugly house that can be fixed for cash.

Carey Greiner (02:42.612)
Yeah, so I tuned in after being a broker for at least a few years, I think probably right around the 2012-2010 mark, I was able to go to a Thanh Merrell conference. They hosted an hour meeting in a bend location and they said, yeah, Fortune Builders, yeah.

John Harcar (02:59.231)
Ugh.

John Harcar (03:07.935)
Yeah.

Carey Greiner (03:10.858)
It’s Than Merrill. And they said, you’re excited about this kind of thing, we’re hosting a multi-day conference over in Eugene. Pay us 150 bucks, we’ll give you hotel room, you can come. And then they had a $25,000 price tag on this coaching program. But it was three days, I brought my wife and it really said, hey, your money’s not getting any more valuable. Like if you’re trying to retire and you have…

John Harcar (03:25.705)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (03:38.42)
the government in mind and some kind of retirement plan that’s probably not working for you. They broke it down very scientifically, very mathematically. And they said, if we really are looking for a way to retire comfortably, we’re gonna have to get into real estate. And so that was kind of the premise of the weekend. So they walked through all kinds of deal flow. And so that’s where the ugly houses came in. Like if you can go out and you can start to,

essentially be a wholesale. Go out and try to find some properties and market those properties to people. And so how to market those properties to people and who would be the buyers. And then the course went through all the way to let’s buy a multifamily once we get to that point and how to get funding for that. And kind of a quick real estate journey that probably take most people five to 15 years. They said, this is how it works in a weekend.

John Harcar (04:36.657)
Right?

Carey Greiner (04:37.146)
And so a lot of it I kind of tuned into just being a broker and being in the world, but it really drove me to invest more time. I think about that time I was listening to BiggerPockets with some folks on there and just eating it up, finding out how people had had success, finding properties that were distressed, were purchased off market with creative financing.

John Harcar (05:03.988)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (05:06.234)
all those things. that’s kind how it started for me.

John Harcar (05:11.391)
Okay, let’s talk about some of your struggles at the beginning of going and even as being a broker or you know, as looking for ugly houses and stuff. I mean, what were some of the things when he got into the industry, I guess I could say that were a couple more struggles for you.

Carey Greiner (05:23.089)
Yeah. Yeah. One property I can think of in Prineville. I was out driving for dollars, is, know, cruising around neighborhoods looking for stuff that’s distressed and do a little research into, know, who owns it and when did they pay and how long they owned it. Right. Right. So, you know, went knocked on the door and it’s amazing. You know, a gentleman told me one time,

John Harcar (05:33.961)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:42.153)
Some of the best deals, man. Some of the best deals.

Carey Greiner (05:52.848)
When you’re looking at off market deals or distress properties, you’re working with a lot of people that have, you know, mental, emotional problems, maybe drugs and alcohol. This was a veteran. His yard was a mess. He was getting around with a walker at times. I don’t believe he was on oxygen, but his life was hard.

You know, and a lot of it was related to probably, you know, the distress that war and being in the service, putting through and just, you know, for whatever reason, not being able to work through some of that emotional mental distress, but he signed a contract. My plan was to buy the house rehab. It burr was the methodology I was going to go after on this one. Catalina escrow and the preliminary title report came out and it said, our, our local housing.

assistance program, Habitat for Humanity, had first right of purchase. Not first right of refusal, first right to purchase. geez, what is this? And so I thought, this isn’t going to work. The process was write them a letter. They have 30 days to respond. If they don’t respond, then it goes away.

John Harcar (07:00.723)
Mmm, okay.

John Harcar (07:18.953)
Then they forfeit it, yeah.

Carey Greiner (07:20.578)
and they forfeit it so I could have bought the property. The guy who ran that organization was actually in Africa. Service oriented guy too, so good for him. was trying to show people how to run very small micro businesses in Africa. So he got back just in time. I think it was day 29 and communicated, hey, we’re gonna buy the property, we’ll take care of it. And so, good for like, you

John Harcar (07:41.902)
man.

Carey Greiner (07:48.868)
programs that do this kind of stuff. They’re not letting these things go out and go back into, you know, that they can use it for their purposes to help people get housing. But that was the first, that was one of the first, you know, problems I had in the marketing of this.

John Harcar (07:50.441)
Sure. Yeah.

John Harcar (08:03.859)
Okay, what other challenges you think, know, mean, finding properties, it the, you know, the talking to sellers? I mean, was there any of that, that kind of, you know, things you had to overcome and what tools did you use to?

Carey Greiner (08:15.649)
Yeah, you know, I needed to do a lot of proactive, you know, driving for dollars, knocking on doors, having conversations where, you know, people are like, who are you? What do you do? Lots of questions come up and, you know, are you trying to scam me and all that stuff? so those were some, I guess, emotional challenges that I had just to kind of overcome the fear of.

you know, talking to people and the questions they’d ask and am I going to be ready to answer these questions and are they going to believe me and all this kind of stuff. some of that, you yeah, I mean, just a lot of people with problems is what I ran into. So I think just having a heart, you know, not just to make money, but how can I help these people was really a big part of it for me.

John Harcar (08:46.132)
Right.

John Harcar (09:10.163)
Yeah, no, I, hundred percent. As you were learning, did you seek out any other mentors, any masterminds, any other groups, any coaching, anything like that?

Carey Greiner (09:19.455)
Yeah, so, you know, listen to Bigger Pockets. They said, you know, join a local meetup. There was no local, well, there was a local meetup. It was loosely put together. I kept communicating to the person that was actually listed on Bigger Pockets website as the local host. She called back and said, hey, I’m not going to be able to make it to the meeting tonight. I see you’ve been emailing me or texting me. Why don’t you just run the meeting?

I go, oh, well, okay. So I think there was, you know, a handful of people showed up and another guy had been committed for some time to go was there. Turned out he was the son-in-law, the huge developer in the community. His father-in-law had 30 years of experience and building lots of ground-up development, 35, 55 lot subdivisions.

John Harcar (09:56.991)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (10:17.216)
Had a lending program. So yeah, he and I started communicating some other people from the group and so I kind of took on that group and then started to bring people in that I thought would foster the opportunities so big money guys big developers Turns out we had a lot of realtors that wanted to show up thinking they’d get some business and then a handful of folks that were In the trenches if you will, you know, it’s investors. So that was great to kind of network with them for sure

John Harcar (10:29.119)
That’s great.

John Harcar (10:39.581)
Yep. Yep.

Well, and that’s really, and I talk a lot about this with people, it’s a power of proximity, right? I mean, you never know, you’re one handshake, one person away from that 10 million, $100 million deal. It’s real, but you gotta get yourself out there and put yourself out there. So what…

Carey Greiner (11:00.403)
Yeah, I think one of the big successes I had was a listing I had. It was for a half acre piece of land that you can’t put a septic system or any kind of sewer on. So in our community, it’s called rec lot, recreational only lot, non-buildable. But we found that putting up a storage building, essentially a 2000 square foot building where folks could store their RVs, their ATVs, all that.

John Harcar (11:05.758)
Okay.

John Harcar (11:29.363)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (11:30.271)
especially from the communities around that have, you know, 800, $3 million houses and they have all the toys, but there’s an HOA that says, hey, you can’t park anything in your house. So they love these garages that you could buy. They could secure it and keep it off site, but you know, it’s 10 minute drive from their property. And so I found a guy that said, hey, yeah, I’d like to buy this lot and build a storage building on it. Well, I couldn’t get, I represented the seller as a real estate agent.

John Harcar (11:38.143)
You can’t park it all there, yeah.

Carey Greiner (12:00.444)
I couldn’t get the buyer and the seller. There was about $5,000 off of it. I don’t know, $85,000 purchase price, and they just couldn’t get there. And I said, hey, why don’t I just buy this from the seller? I’ll put up a barn and then I’ll sell the barn. And so I had some money that came in from an estate in the family, some family money came in, and I went ahead and took the leap of faith and said, I’m going to

John Harcar (12:04.991)
Hmm.

Carey Greiner (12:29.374)
I’m gonna buy this property and build a storage building and sell it. So that was my first thing. The gentleman that ended up buying it was the one that was gonna buy the land, but didn’t. He bought the poles, he bought the structure and everything. And he said, hey, Kerry, let’s do some more of these. And honestly, I didn’t know what he meant, but he said, let’s do more. Now I’ve done seven deals with that guy. We just buy these things, put up a pole building and.

John Harcar (12:38.847)
Mm hmm. And he bought it for more.

John Harcar (12:48.543)
Nice.

Carey Greiner (12:56.573)
He’s been a financial backer, a personal financer for these projects, so it’s been really great.

John Harcar (13:03.679)
That’s incredible. So you find rec land, right? So little rec, are they like, are they infill lots or are they like, where are where are they within like, let’s say that the town are they on the outskirts? Okay.

Carey Greiner (13:14.192)
Yeah, you want the details. So these are in a particular zip code right around very exclusive high-end communities. And then the county, again, they’ve zoned this area. It’s red lots. It’s an overlay they have at the county. says you can’t build on these lots. It’s kind of sporadic, though. So once you go and you actually do a septic feasibility, which is digging the trench, digging test pits throughout the property.

John Harcar (13:42.569)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (13:42.971)
They’re looking for a separation. If some of the lots have that separation, you can put a septic system in and then you can build a house or a residential structure on it. If it doesn’t have that separation because they’re worried about pollutants getting to the well water, the wells in the area, some of them are as shallow as 25 feet. They go down to generally like 80 feet. So you can understand they don’t want these effluents, you know, filtering in and nitrates and things that would make the water terrible.

John Harcar (14:00.35)
Right, groundwater.

Wow.

Carey Greiner (14:12.763)
So it’s a protection for the community. But yeah, those are the lots they say, you you can’t build a septic, you can’t put a septic system in. So yeah, half acre lots in the back in the day, they were zoned for half acres. They’ve since been zoned the whole communities are R10. So rural residential 10 acre minimum. So there’s no way to subdivide these lots any further, even though they’re half acre. So yeah, just kind of a forest boundary. They, they fringe right on this.

John Harcar (14:35.187)
Right, right.

Carey Greiner (14:42.806)
national forest lands, kind of an interface between the essentially, you know, residential communities, they’re resort communities and makes this opportunity possible.

John Harcar (14:51.315)
Yeah. No, that’s, that’s, that’s a phenomenal little business model, right? Because I mean, you’re, you’re providing a need, right? I mean, truly a need that people have that can be, you know, a great, or is this a great business? So tell me besides doing that with this gentleman, what else does your business look like today?

Carey Greiner (15:09.241)
Yeah. So, you know, just like in life, there’s ups and downs. My real estate career has taken some pretty big ups and pretty big downs. Today, I have created a business, kind of a disruptor in the industry. And so now I’m promoting listings, full service brokerage listings, sell for $10,000, as little as $10,000. So if somebody says, hey, I want to sell my house.

maybe it’s worth 600, 800, million and a half, I say, great, I can list and sell your house for as little as $10,000. And they go, what? How is this possible? So it’s kind of a disruptor in the industry, as you might start to imagine. Not a lot of people doing that. You probably understand what happened with the NAR lawsuit last year. Class action lawsuit, NAR said, okay, we’re gonna settle. We don’t wanna pay 4.3 billion, we’ll pay 318 million.

John Harcar (15:51.207)
Yeah, I can see it. I can see it.

Carey Greiner (16:06.424)
or thereabouts and just get past this. So they said, hey, sellers can’t advertise anymore brokerage paid to a buyer’s agent. No more. So now a buyer’s agent is going, hmm, where am gonna get paid? They can’t just look up at the MLS and say, oh, I’m gonna show this house and this house and they’re to pay me two and a half or 3 % if I sell this one. Nope, it’s not even advertised in there. So that’s one of the legal requirements. The second one is anytime a buyer’s,

John Harcar (16:16.681)
Hmm. Right.

Carey Greiner (16:36.018)
agent is going to show houses to a buyer. They have to get a compensation or a buyer’s agreement that describes compensation. a buyer’s going to say, I want to go buy some property. I need an agent. How much am I willing to pay and what kind of services do I need from that buyer’s agent? As an investor, maybe you don’t need a lot. Maybe you say, hey, I know all about properties. I bought and sold tons. I just need somebody to open the door. I’m going to get the inspections. I’m going to do all the stuff. So you pay for a door opener. Like so many

Buyers agents are accused of being. So you can get away with paying very low fee. If you say, I’m first time home buyer and I need a lot of help, great, you’re probably gonna spend two and a half, 3 % and get great, hopefully legitimate wisdom as you go through that process to buy property. But at Sell for 10K, when a buyer’s agent comes and says, hey, I’ve got a buyer, he wants to ride on this property, we say great. The seller already knows.

John Harcar (17:21.63)
Right.

Carey Greiner (17:33.6)
they don’t have to pay the buyer. The seller already knows that the buyer and the buyer’s agent have an agreement between themselves that says the buyer is gonna pay the buyer’s agent their fee, whatever it is. And so the seller is not on the hook to pay any buyer’s agent. So I’m a marketing service, I’m a real estate service, full service brokerage, list and sell properties for as little as $10,000. So I think I’m gonna get some market share, which is gonna help me kind of re-up the war chest so I can go out and buy more properties.

John Harcar (18:04.701)
Why do you feel that you’re gonna get more of that share? I know why, inform our audience that maybe doesn’t know as much about it. Why do you think what you’re doing is gonna bring you more business and get you your lion’s share?

Carey Greiner (18:18.611)
Yeah, I just sold an airplane hanger and the buyer that called on my listing wasn’t represented. And I said to the buyer, I hey, I can represent you as a buyer’s agent. I’m also the listing agent. We can do that as a disclosed limited agency in Oregon. Here’s the information we have to provide to everybody. Just kind of an initial buyer’s pamphlet, we call it.

He goes, okay, great, let me take a look. And so he came back to me and said, yeah, I think I would like to use you as the buyer’s agent. And I go, that’s great. Tell me a little more about that. Why didn’t you choose the person that helped you buy that resort community house that you bought just months earlier and probably did a good job for you? And he goes, you know, our agent did a really great job, but I’m not sure it was a $40,000 good job. Because he saw on his…

closing statement, this fee that was paid to the brokerage. Now that broker didn’t get that whole commission, but the fees are extraordinary when you look at agency and brokerage fees. Maybe when my parents, back in the 70s, had a house and a lot they built and it was worth like $28,000.

John Harcar (19:33.353)
Yeah.

John Harcar (19:46.911)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (19:47.187)
83, know 15 years later, whatever it was it was worth two hundred and eighty thousand dollars and so that Agent that was getting five or six percent of that probably six percent You know sharing those with the buyer’s agents things. Maybe it made more sense now when I’m working with houses that are eight hundred million million and a half you go I’m gonna I’m gonna spend sixty thousand dollars to sell this I’m gonna spend eighty thousand dollars tell this house and and I go

John Harcar (20:13.567)
Yeah, yeah, that.

Carey Greiner (20:16.794)
And people go, uh-oh, maybe I chose the wrong career. Even builders building houses. They go, okay, I want to make my percentage on this and then look at what the realtors make. they go, gosh. I mean, it’s mind-boggling. Another little chunk of insight. went to a meeting my brokerage put on up in Bellevue, Washington, and they said, hey, if you’re growing a team,

John Harcar (20:28.178)
Wrong wrong wrong industry or wrong part of the business here

Carey Greiner (20:46.258)
At the time I was growing a team, brought a probate attorney on and he had 350 houses for me to sell. I was growing a team throughout Oregon to help me with all these listings. And they said, as you’re growing a team, here’s some things you want to understand. And part of the discourse was how many hours does it take for you as a listing broker to list and sell a property? And so this is a gigantic conference room, 400 brokers in there, all building teams, very successful.

And they asked, they asked, how many hours does it take? I raised my hand. was just doing some quick math and I’m pretty quick to raise my hand. I lift, I lifted up and I said about 50 hours. They laughed. The whole room erupted in laughter. And it was, it was pointed out that any listing agent should be able to list and sell a house in under 40 hours. So just do the math.

If you’re charging 60 or $80,000 to list and sell property for people and you’re to work 40 hours to get that done, you start to go, how the hell does a realtor get to make more than a doctor? The car they drive, how they look in the ads, I don’t know. It’s just crazy to me. I started working with EXP.

John Harcar (22:08.008)
I don’t know.

John Harcar (22:15.177)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (22:15.408)
I pay my license at EXP. We have no brick and mortar. They have very low agent fees. They have a low cap rate. So my business doesn’t have to get overtaken by the brokerage fees that I pay as a realtor. And I can pass that savings on and then I’m doing people a favor. Part of being a broker is providing exceptional counsel. And I love to be able to do that and do it honestly and from the heart.

John Harcar (22:28.937)
Right.

John Harcar (22:38.067)
Mm-hmm.

Carey Greiner (22:44.109)
saving people money on these brokerage fees, I think, is a great way to do that.

John Harcar (22:47.689)
Well, and we’re kind of on that topic as we’re getting closer out of time here, let’s talk about the topic of service, right? I mean, I know it’s important for you and your business to kind of talk about that and why it’s important for you in business and in life.

Carey Greiner (22:59.534)
Yeah, yeah, thanks. You know, I’ve heard it said, and even when I had my recreation company, we always looked for ways to give back. And people would say, your business isn’t a ministry. And I really had to kind of let that bounce around in my mind. OK, what is this? Like, maybe I make my money over here and I give it over here, kind of has really been a big part of that. And then as I get older.

You can see some gray in the beard. I’m 53. So as I try to think of, you know, who am I and what kind of legacy am I passing down and how can I be the best person that I’ve been designed to be? It’s really giving back. So how can I give back, you know, time, resources, hopefully some wisdom and investing that into other people, maybe it’s my experience.

investing that back. And so I’ve just found different ways to do that. I started with a group called General Alliance here in Redmond, going to the Madras prison. And so there’s 1,100 inmates and 50 to 70 of them will show up at a time and participate in some back and forth. Maybe it’s a church service or maybe it’s some education on how to be better husbands and better men and better members of the community.

And so I really find a lot of joy and satisfaction in that. And yeah, I think just trying to be a giver and walking through this life, it’s not all about me. It’s how can I help others? And a lot of us, don’t really want a lot of help, right? If you say, hey, can I help you? go, oh gosh, I don’t need any help. What do you think? Are you cool with this? Oh, true, yeah.

John Harcar (24:30.236)
awesome!

John Harcar (24:47.241)
Because they think you want something.

Our society is, know, it’s enough. If I’m going to help you, what do you want?

Carey Greiner (24:58.092)
True, yeah.

John Harcar (24:58.975)
But I love your heart and I love your thought of service. Do you like the book, The Go Giver? Have you read that?

Carey Greiner (25:05.344)
I don’t think I’ve read The Go Giver. It reminds me of Jeff Goff’s book, Love Does, but thank you. Who wrote that one?

John Harcar (25:10.015)
There you go. There you go. her. There’s a, uh, it’s written by Bob Berg and John David, uh, man. Yeah. Good. Great book. And they talk about like the form of the first laws of stratospheric successes give more than you expect in return. And that’s, that’s huge. And I love that. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all that information with us. mean, it’s incredible. If, folks want to reach out to you, maybe want to learn more about kind of what you’re doing in your business or, or just talk and.

Carey Greiner (25:16.523)
Nice.

Carey Greiner (25:25.119)
Right.

John Harcar (25:39.264)
and you know whatever how do they get in touch you know what’s the best way to reach out to you

Carey Greiner (25:43.69)
Yeah, yeah, feel free to call me, text me. My phone number is 541-788-8887. My kids call that an eight sandwich, but that’s probably a great way to do it. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook, Kerry Griner. You can look at my website, sellfor10k.com. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show. Thanks for all the work.

John Harcar (26:11.017)
Yeah, for sure.

Carey Greiner (26:12.19)
going to promote real estate opportunities and it’s a great great opportunity to be here. Thank you.

John Harcar (26:17.503)
Thank you and we appreciate you guys. hope you enjoyed the show and took some good notes. I know I had a great show. Kerry, thank you again for coming on here. Let’s hope you get home soon. And guys, we’ll see you on the next show. Cheers.

Carey Greiner (26:31.443)
So much. All right. Appreciate it.