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Show Summary
In this conversation, Scott Ward discusses the ambitious goal of quadrupling membership within 24 months by focusing on educating users about the tools and systems available to them. He emphasizes the importance of training, likening it to teaching someone to drive a stick shift car, highlighting that without proper instruction, technology will remain unused. The conversation underscores the necessity of empowering members through education to ensure they can fully benefit from the resources provided.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Scott Ward (00:00)
there’s a statistic we were talking in the green room before the show about the, the percentages of one and done. And so I saw this problem ⁓ in the space whereI came across another that I thought was terrifying. It was really depressing actually. And that is the one and done percentage. Some trade organizations have it at 58 % of never doing it again. Some have it as high as 63%. And so we’re addressing the issue to crush that number, bring it way down so that we’re
We’re teaching a policy and an education and an SOP so that people can go and actually do this, make money, do it over again, expand their businesses and get to their dreams.
Michelle Kesil (02:17)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to chatting with, Scott Ward of Think Realty, which is an education media platform helping investors become successful. So excited to have you here, Scott.Scott Ward (02:36)
Thank you.Thank you, Michelle. I’ve been waiting to meet you. I’m really excited to be here. So I’m sure we’ll have a good time today. Thank you.
Michelle Kesil (02:43)
Awesome.Yeah, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re supporting people to become educated in the investing space. let’s dive in.
Scott Ward (02:56)
Sure.Michelle Kesil (02:57)
First off, for those who are not yet familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is?Scott Ward (03:05)
Absolutely. think Realty has been around since 2013. It was started by Eddie Wilson. Andwe have taken up, we’ve recently acquired Think Realty. And people think that we list houses because it’s Think Realty. We don’t. We don’t. We don’t list and sell houses. But what we do do better than anybody else is we bridge the gap in education to the application of that knowledge. And so our core focus
is to expand the Think Realty brand with podcasts such as this and other things that we’re going to offer with a CRM and a complete system with an LOS or loan origination software. Everything that we can do to try to get people in a streamlined ⁓ ability to continue and reach their dreams through education. So we’re an education and media company and we love what we do and we’re obsessed with it. We’re obsessed.
Michelle Kesil (04:01)
Awesome. What got you into this space and joining this platform?Scott Ward (04:08)
You know, it’s funny, I got into this space a long time ago.I had, I was really fortunate. I had two incredibly good mentors when I got into this. It was a father and son team in Southern California. I didn’t even know, Michelle, that you could do financing or investing like this. I didn’t, I didn’t know I was doing landscapes. I was doing…
doing landscaping, contracting and swimming pool contracting and I didn’t even know that the private money world back then it was called hard money and now it’s much deeper and wider but ⁓ I was convinced to get into this and I was really fortunate to learn from two of the best guys in the business, father and son team like I said Dan Senior, Dan Junior and I’ve been really fortunate over my career that I still take the stuff that they taught me way back then.
I mean, prior to the 2000s, into what I do to this day. if you’d have told me back then, all those years ago that I’d still be doing this and where I am today, I would have never believed it. Never believed it. So I got into it kind of by accident, and it’s been a great run, and I love, love, this industry.
Michelle Kesil (06:09)
Amazing. That’s so cool that you fell into this world that way.Scott Ward (06:14)
I did. did. got lucky. I got really lucky. I was very fortunate.Michelle Kesil (06:18)
Absolutely. So what are some of the key things that you are educating people on? Are there certain subjects or areas of expertise that you guys focus on?Scott Ward (06:30)
You know what? That’s a great question. And I’ll say it like this. We focus on ⁓ really kind of bridging the gap. There’s a big push now to educate people to really type of brokering or kind of helping people out referring to that thing. And it goes across all verticals in our space from raw land to commercial to fix and flip to ground up construction, you name it, mixed use, multifamily.If it’s a non owner occupied property, right? And so we focus on really creating, we’ve created a system that we believe to be incredibly detailed, but simple to follow and easy to teach. think that’s the success of it. So that
there’s a statistic we were talking in the green room before the show about the, the percentages of one and done. And so I saw this problem ⁓ in the space where
You know, I’m a data dork and I read all the time about stuff in different news worlds and economics and scalability and all that. And I came across another that I thought was terrifying. It was really depressing actually. And that is the one and done percentage. Some trade organizations have it at 58 % of never doing it again. Some have it as high as 63%. And so we’re addressing the issue to crush that number, bring it way down so that we’re
We’re teaching a policy and an education and an SOP so that people can go and actually do this, make money, do it over again, expand their businesses and get to their dreams.
I think this business, I love it. I think it’s gonna be really a monster business over the next 10 years ⁓ with growth, but people need to know how to do it. So that’s our primary focus is we wanna teach people, hey, don’t get freaked out, it’s okay.
We’ve got it. We’ll help you get through this and this is how you do it.
Michelle Kesil (08:37)
Yeah, amazing. That’s so important to walk people on that path because it’s not something that’s commonly learned and there’s so many questions that people have as they’re on this journey.Scott Ward (08:51)
Well for sure, mean somebody had to teach me, right? Somebody had to teach me, so here we go. I’m just passing on my…Michelle Kesil (08:56)
Yeah,how did you learn and step into this role as an educator?
Scott Ward (09:03)
That’s a great question because my, guys I went to work for, great family, like I said, they didn’t just turn me loose. They made me work through every single facet of a transaction. I’ll give you an example. I had to go ride around with an appraiser for a week, right? And this guy changed smoke cigars and it was brutal. I had to go and hold tapes and take pictures of rooms and all that. And then I had to go sit at a title company.and sit there with a title officer for a number of days and figure out how title policies worked, ⁓ how you could do a recording, all of those things, right? Back then, and you’re gonna laugh when I say this, we didn’t have all of the cool stuff you have like this stuff today, right? So we marketed on a fax machine, true story.
And I would put in, I had a black and white flyer that said, do future value construction loans up to 65%. Right.
And I would go over to this fax machine and I would punch in 10 numbers because that’s all it’s stored and hit send and it would go through. And then I would have to then wait till it made this crazy sound. And then I go back and punch in another 10 numbers. We didn’t have the amazing marketing tools we have today. So I had to, I had to learn at old school. I had to do collections. had to do.
⁓ you know, appraisal interpretation. had to do the submissions. And so they taught me all of it from like a boot camp. But that boot camp was months long. And I’m so thankful for that because it really taught me to understand our craft and our stuff. It was great. It great. I’m glad I It was hard at the time. It was tough, but I’m glad I learned that way. It was great.
Michelle Kesil (11:24)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome that you were able to have kind of that type of experience and take a lot away from it.Scott Ward (11:26)
No.you
Hmm.
Michelle Kesil (11:36)
So you mentioned that your platform has CRM and some other offerings. Can you expand on what those are?Scott Ward (11:41)
youThank you for asking. Yes, absolutely. think, you know, we saw in this, it’s all about organization and a system that’s easy to replicate, right? That’s easy to follow because if the system’s too hard or too confusing, nobody’s going to do it. They’re just not. And there’s ways to make things easy now. So the first thing that we’re going to do, we have done already that we were getting down to ⁓ is a CRM system so that people can then…
In our CRM system, have the ability to market, we have the ability to do AI, conversational, inbound and outbound. We can set a whole marketing campaign for them and forget it’ll build their website. It helps track their new client leads. We give them leads in our system. Because it’s one thing to have a, it’s one thing if I were to say to you, Michelle, here you go, you’re like, oh, I want to learn how to play the guitar, and I just hand you a guitar.
Well, you’re not just going to magically have fairy dust sprinkled over your head and be able to play the guitar, right? I’ve got to help you learn how to play the guitar, right? So we provide the guitar and the lessons. And so inside of that, we even have QuickBooks for billing. I wanted to make it as simple and one stop shop as possible. Now with that, we’ve added the marketplace, the Think Realty marketplace. And so you can…
It’s run by LiquidLogix, the very best loan origination system. So it’s a one-two punch. That’s the system. And you can go and price your loans immediately. You can get help with who’s lending on what in certain areas. And it’s all done in an instant. The technology is so friendly that it helps you to underwrite. So that’s part of our education. Is it a good deal or is it a no deal? A lot of times you’ll see things where people just because somebody wants a loan.
doesn’t mean they’re going to get one. Right? Like if I wanted to go, I want an airplane right now, the bank’s not going lend me the money to go buy an airplane. So you have to, you have to learn what you’re looking at to make sure it’s a viable plan.
Michelle Kesil (13:58)
Yeah, absolutely. So are these CRM software’s available for all investors or like how does it work to get involved with it?Scott Ward (14:00)
Mm-hmm.That’s a great question. So we are, we’re offering it right now. Um, it’s not really a massive, you know, we, we pay the technology fees and stuff that we have to do. It’s not how we’re running things up or it’s $2,500 to get, to get onto it. have two basic services on it. It’s a more of a basic one for three, 95 a month. And that creates your website, 1-800 number, if you want it, you get all that stuff. The more robust one.
⁓ with some added tools and stuff. We’re going to be doing some large videos and tutorials on that as well. Because we do a tech talk every week also, as well as a deal scenario call. And so those are all live to help people. But the more robust one, at the highest, highest, highest end is only $695 a month. If you take everything else in the space that people are buying right now, they spend
$1,900 on from all these different services.
We put it all into one for $6.95 and we give them more than what they were getting by third-partying all these different services out. So that’s part of our secret sauce.
Michelle Kesil (16:00)
Awesome. Is there a sort of like any criteria that people need to join or it’s for all levels?Scott Ward (16:02)
Yeah.It’s for all levels and we like to meet people where they are. You know, I’ve been in this business, like I said, about, geez, over a quarter of a century. And so that’s another part of our secret is we’ve seen it all, we’ve done it all, we’ve been there. I don’t want to say that I’ve seen it all because I learned stuff new every day, but we’ve seen a lot. Right? I’ll say that. And we can help lift people up and get them going at any level. I have guys that are fund managers for 20 years that call me.
And I have other people that literally have never flipped a house before and they’re asking for help. So it’s both sides of the spectrum. So we’re very confident and proficient in helping people at any level.
Michelle Kesil (16:53)
Awesome. So what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?Scott Ward (17:03)
Well, you know, think there’s a couple of things. There’s two things that we’re really focused on now. One is expanding the brand. You know, we have, you know, we’ve got our contract with Barnes and Noble in the magazine and really kind of getting the word out and expanding to grow that and including all of the subcontractors. So we have, you know, lenders that we work with and title and insurance companies and all that. But we also are insanely focused on lifting up subcontractors who work in the space.and giving them a voice as well so that it’s all one ecosystem. There’s one. The second one is really teaching people our system and the technology so that they’re proficient, like I said, in to get that number of, you know, it’s really depressing to think that somebody’s got a dream on something and they, oh yeah, we’re flip this house and they say it was so awful, we’re never gonna do it again. Because this is a great business. And we wanna make sure that
people fall in love like we have and continue to reach their dreams by doing this.
Michelle Kesil (18:11)
Yeah, absolutely. So besides like the CRM platform, is the other educational tools just like free? Anyone can go check it out and start learning.Scott Ward (18:14)
So, yeah.So you’re able to log on to our site. have calculators because think about this. There’s so many people that have a tough time old school filling out how to ⁓ do a DSCR calculation, right? To figure out what the debt service coverage ratio is on a rental property. It’s not something that you would normally know how to do. We give them ⁓ resources for all the calculators. We give them ⁓ information constantly. We do videos on…
best practice. just released a video. have an app called Flip in school, which means for the love of investment property Flip. We thought it was a cool name. I like it, right? So the Flip app is open and in there I just did a whole video series on how you create and stack a file for submission. All the documents that you’re going to need and why you’re going to need those. Now to somebody that’s been in the business 15 years, it’s
That’s kind of old hat, but for somebody that’s just starting out, it’s a key component to their success. Because that’s the basics, right? We have to start with the basics. So we’ve got the app, we’ve got the website, we’ve got the calculators, we’ve got all the stuff, and it’s going to continue to grow. It’s not going to stop. When I mean we’re expanding, I mean we’re expanding.
Michelle Kesil (19:45)
That’s exciting. Yeah, what are Some of the goals that you have for this expansion like where do you see this all adding?Scott Ward (19:46)
Yeah.That’s a good question. That’s a big crystal ball, right?
We want to more than quadruple the size of our membership in the next 24 months. ⁓ We want to really start to see people using the tools and the systems for their benefit. And so we’re really focused on getting that out and helping people. It’s one thing to release a piece of technology, but if people don’t know how to use it, they’re never gonna use it.
If you can’t help them navigate their way through it, just going to go. It be like giving somebody a car that’s a stick shift and they don’t know how to drive it. As long you teach them how to do a manual transmission, they’ll drive it all day long. But if you don’t ever teach somebody how to do it, especially like in Northern California, the Bay Area, up and down those hills, that car is going to stay parked for 30 years and nobody’s going to drive it. So you got to teach them. You got to teach them. And we’re happy to do that. We love educating.
Michelle Kesil (20:59)
Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to business growth, what has been the most supportive for you? Like networking or what other types of strategies?Scott Ward (21:00)
Yeah. ⁓That’s a great question. think that for us, the American Association of Private Lenders has been the most crucial part of our success. They’re the biggest and the best trade organization in our space. They’re really involved with their membership and they push their members and celebrate their wins.
I think that that’s key component to success. I’ll say this to Eddie Wilson, who was the original founder back in 2013, is a big fan of what we’re doing and he’s helping to push as well. And we have a great reputation with people in our space. So they want to see us do well also. So it’s a three-way, kind of triple threat, exciting benefit because we’ve got friends in the space, we’ve got a great organization behind us, and we’ve got a…
a former owner is a fan of what we’re doing with the new, so we’re pretty lucky, we’re extremely lucky, we’re very lucky.
Michelle Kesil (22:19)
Yeah, absolutely. So how do people plug into your world if they are curious about everything you’re offering?Scott Ward (22:29)
I love that. Great question. Yes. ⁓ You can go right to thinkrealty.com and go ahead and do that. You can go and sign up on our app in the school. S-K-O-O-L. ⁓ It’s F-I-L-F-L-I-P. The flip app inside a school that’s completely free and you can you can go in there and and learn and hang out in community. It’s all that stuff. So either way.I would suggest I would go to the app in school and I would definitely check out the website. Go ahead and check that out.
Michelle Kesil (23:07)
Awesome Scott. Yeah, so before we wrap up here, if people want to connect, reach out, learn more besides the app and the website you just mentioned, are there other ways people can connect with you?Scott Ward (23:20)
You know, I’m a very approachable guy and I always have been. And I love people that are excited about this business. And even if they’re not, by the time they get in talking to me, they will be. So they can reach out to me directly at [email protected] and I will get right back to you. have my word on that. That’s the best way to do it.Michelle Kesil (23:40)
Perfect. Well,I really appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Thank you for being here.
Scott Ward (23:46)
Thank you so much and was great to meet you and I’m honored to be a part of show. So thank you.Michelle Kesil (23:52)
And for those listeners tuning in, you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators like Scott who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.
