Why You Can’t Scale in Commercial Real Estate Without the Right Partnerships

Ricky McKenzie (00:00)
partnerships are the life

blood of real estate. Like I’ve been doing real estate for over 20 years and the things that I’ve done and the things that I’ve accomplished, I couldn’t have done it without partnerships and without partners. Actually, my brother, who is my other partner, he actually believed in me.

Cody Crabb (01:51)
Welcome back to the real estate pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with investor fuel. And today we’ve got Ricky McKenzie managing partner at McKenzie brothers, realty. He’s focused on commercial real estate across multiple markets with multiple buildings in over $10 million in commercial assets. So today we’re going to dive into how he’s building across these markets, what he’s seeing right now in the commercial world and the

the role that partnerships play in getting deals done because as he put it, you don’t scale in this business by yourself. So Ricky, thanks so much for joining me today. It’s a pleasure.

Ricky McKenzie (02:24)
Thank you, Cody. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me.

Cody Crabb (02:28)
Of Well, just to kind of start us off, you said that hook that caught me in the beginning. said, people think they can do this alone, but partnerships are everything. Tell me why you said that.

Ricky McKenzie (02:45)
Well, because number one is true, right? It’s true. mean if you if you go to if you fix your car There’s multiple parts in that car engine keep that car running in that car period If you have a flat tire that car not moving and the engine is bad that car not moving if have an alternate That’s bad. That car is not moving. There’s a lot of things that keep that car on the road and moving

partnerships are the life

blood of real estate. Like I’ve been doing real estate for over 20 years and the things that I’ve done and the things that I’ve accomplished, I couldn’t have done it without partnerships and without partners. Actually, my brother, who is my other partner, he actually believed in

For the first time I did my first commercial deal, I went to him and he believed in me and he gave me an opportunity and that’s why I’m here today. But know, scaling is based on partnerships, right? You’re property managers, a partner.

Your bank is a partner, your tenant that you have, they’re partners, your maintenance person, they’re partners. People watch these videos and they say, I $20 million in my first deal. That’s a lot. A lot of it is not true. They’re they’re just trying to sell courses. Like you got the partner.

Cody Crabb (04:03)
Well,

and even if they did, there’s a lot of context around those things. Like their daddy got them, you know what I mean? Like they had some privileges that they’re not talking about. Like it’s very rare that someone actually just swoops out of nowhere and does this all by themselves. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Let’s get it, let’s back up a little bit. Let’s rewind a little bit. Tell me about your history. How did you get started? You said your brother believed in you early on with your first deal. How did you get into that in the first place?

Ricky McKenzie (04:19)
No, but it’s true though. ⁓ That’s true.

Cody Crabb (04:32)
What led up to that moment?

Ricky McKenzie (04:34)
Yeah, so I’m originally from Springfield, Massachusetts. That’s where I’m from. I was actually born in Cleveland, but I’m from Springfield, Massachusetts. And my dad, he passed away many years ago, but my dad always had residential properties. He never got into commercial, but he had two family, three family properties. And I moved to Georgia back in 2001, right after 9-11. And when I moved down here, I was just trying to find myself.

graduated from college, I got my bachelor’s degree, and I was just really just trying to find myself, you know what I mean? So I just, I used to watch, I’m pretty sure you did too, everybody used watch the late night Carlton Sheet shows, right? Where he said how you can make this amount of money doing real estate and that amount of money doing real estate. And back in those days, I just read a lot of books and I just networked. And I met this one guy, Jim Rosenberger, home buyers of Atlanta, and I worked from him.

with him, then I kind of, was a wholesaler. I kind of see the money that he made and then I kind of just grew it from there. But I’ve been in Georgia for 25 years. So really think it’s been something that I’ve been doing for like maybe over 20 years.

Cody Crabb (06:34)
So at what point did you get into the commercial side? ⁓ I’d love to hear about kind of, was that the first deal that you did commercial or did you slowly kind of pivot into that after a while?

Ricky McKenzie (06:45)
You know what? Great question. I’m going to tell you how I got into commercial and how I got into commercial was not by choice. It was a matter of survival. ⁓ Georgia, if you don’t…

Cody Crabb (06:57)
Well, the

time frames got me thinking, because I’m thinking you’re talking about like 2004 so, and I’m like, ⁓ there’s a, something’s coming, yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (07:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, it was like right before COVID, man. So Atlanta, I’m in the Atlanta, Georgia market. And Atlanta, when I first moved to Atlanta, you used to buy a house for $10,000, $15,000, $20,000. Usually your house is like cheap. And then, you know, I’m an investor, right? I’m an investor full time. don’t have a, this is my only income. And I just seen houses go from 10,000 to 200,000 and up.

10, 50, 100, 200, and these houses were like in like crazy areas. They were like in such bad areas. if I had a flat tire, I wouldn’t even stop in an area, right? I’ll keep going until I find a tire shop or I got to like a lit place. So it’s like, how are these houses going for $200,000? That’s just crazy. So I just made up my mind that you know what? I’m about to buy, spend.

or buy a $200,000 house in this crackhead neighborhood, this drug-infested area, for this amount of money. And I didn’t want to get a job, so I kind of, I said, you know what? I think I’m going to get into commercial real estate. But it wasn’t like I wanted to get into commercial real estate. It was like, either I get a job or I pivot my investing. So I pivoted my investing from residential to commercial. The funny thing is a lot of people don’t even know this is that people think that commercial is so hard.

But a lot of times you’re paying the same amount of money for a commercial building that you’re paying for a house. You know, you’re paying the same amount of money. It’s the same amount of money. It’s the same amount of money. People don’t know that because they’re always thinking about house, house, house, house, it’s the same amount of money. So I got into commercial, commercial just kind of like by, I was like kind of forced into it. It was like either that or get a job or buy these houses for $200,000. And I just, I didn’t think it was worth it. These houses were like a really, really bad neighborhoods, bad areas.

and just didn’t want to spend that kind of money on buying a house in those areas. So I kind of pivoted to commercial real estate from there. It was a process though, right? It was a process. Then I went to there.

Cody Crabb (09:07)
Yeah.

Well, I think it’s as investors, like the investors are the people that listen to this show. And so I think everybody can kind of relate to, either have to like just be okay with the situation you have, like maybe go get a W-2 job doing something, or you kind of pivot so that you can actually maintain the life that you want. That makes a lot of sense. A lot of people kind of struggle with that decision. So it sounded like you made the decision and you just kind of went forward with it. That’s awesome.

Ricky McKenzie (09:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think when people don’t realize too, is I think that, you know, my philosophy is you’re gonna work for yourself or work for someone, right? So you’re gonna build your own dream or build someone else’s. And you know, me and my life, I’ve always like, I’ve only had a handful of jobs. I was always like an entrepreneur or trying to be an entrepreneur. And it just, it would just have to kill me to like wake up at nine o’clock or eight o’clock to be somewhere at nine

stuck in traffic. Like I’m a dreamer.

And for me to have to get up every day at a certain time to go punch a clock for someone or something to do, it would just kill me. It would just kill me. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (10:48)
Yeah, I think a lot of people can relate to that, yeah, for sure.

So do you remember your first commercial deal? Do you remember how you came upon it and kind of how it went?

Ricky McKenzie (10:59)
I do and I still have it actually. That’s a good question. Thank you for asking. I still have it. It’s a small property. I started off small. It’s probably 1500 square feet. It’s near my house. It’s a small little retail property. It’s on Love Street in Austell, downtown Austell. And what happened is that I was driving, right? Driving for dollars, we real estate people call it. I was driving around and I also have people.

If you want to do real estate and be good at it, you should get lost, right? Because a lot of times I find properties by actually getting lost in places that I’ve never been. I’m like, oh, look at that. So I saw it and I called the agent on it and they wanted, I think they wanted like 120. I got them down to like 80,000. And then I asked them, could they like hold back and sell it a second? And I ended up buying it for like no money down.

I think I understand, like, yeah, I bought it creatively, the way I kind of structured the deal. And that’s the thing about commercial, you can structure it better than you can structure it in a residential. But it’s funny, because I still have that property. have it for six years now. I still have it. And it’s funny, because I want to tell you a quick story about that property. Those were the times. I’m getting kind of personal here, Cody. Getting kind of personal. I was going through something about my son’s mother.

Cody Crabb (11:54)
Wow.

Ricky McKenzie (12:22)
And I was paying child support and that one property helped me pay my child support. Every month I would get that money and I would get it and pay her, get it and pay her, get it and pay her. That’s the power of real estate, especially commercial real estate. So yeah, that property in retrospect kind of saved me, you know, because then after that COVID happened and things shut down and money was really, really tight. you know, with commercial property, right, people got to realize too, it’s somebody’s business, right?

Cody Crabb (12:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (12:50)
So sometimes they will pay their rent before they even pay the mortgage of their house because that’s their business, that’s their baby, right? So it’s not like sometimes people walk away from their house and move with a relative, but when they have their business, they’re fighting for that business every day and they’re gonna pay their rent before they pay the mortgage.

Cody Crabb (13:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So, okay, what are some of the challenges in commercial that you typically don’t see ⁓ in other situations? I guess what I’m saying is, ⁓ you mentioned a bunch of the pros, right? You said it’s easier to structure your money and that stuff, but there’s probably also some cons as well. What are the cons to getting into commercial?

Ricky McKenzie (13:33)
Cody, you’d be asking great questions, brother. You’d be asking great questions. I love it. I love it. Well, think this is a, so, can be cash heavy, right? That’s one of the main things. It can be really cash heavy. say you buying a building for a million dollars or 800,000, the bank a lot of times when they see you put down 30%, so you gotta find $300,000.

Cody Crabb (13:36)
Thank you.

Ricky McKenzie (13:58)
Another thing I think is a problem, been a problem for me and my partner and my partners. Sometimes people see that you have a commercial building. They just assume that you have money, right? Because it’s commercial, right? It’s commercial, so you must have it. So something that would probably cause $500, which is the same problem sometimes from commercial residential, $500 at a residential house, they’ll tell you, oh, it’s $5,000. Just because it’s a commercial building, they just assume, right?

It’s kind of like if you walk into a store and you have a pair of Nikes on or you have a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes on because they don’t know how you got it, right? They don’t know how you pay for it. But this is assumed, hey, Cody got money because he has Louis Vuitton shoes. So that’s the kind of problem that I have. Sometimes we’re having a commercial that sometimes when you have maintenance requests or maintenance people, just they overcharge you because it’s commercial. But the thing about commercial, I would say it can be cash heavy. So you have to know how to structure a property.

So sometimes you may, like with me, I may go after a property

the seller is a little more motivated. That way I can structure it in a way where I don’t have to bring so much capital to close it. So with commercial like anything else, it has its challenges. And some of the challenges I see is, know, maintenance, right? Because somebody may tell you like, hey, this is maybe a little bit more because the place is bigger. Like I have a 80,000 square foot building.

I had to a sprinkler system in it. We paid over $200,000 for the sprinkler system. Yeah, property in Mekong, which is my biggest project, but it’s worth $6 million, right? And it’s 83,000 square feet. was an old AT &T building. And we converted it into a self-storage. We spent over $2 million in renovation. So it can be cash heavy, right? But even though it’s cash heavy, it’s also worth a lot more, right? So we made it so that…

Cody Crabb (16:33)
Yeah, sure, yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (16:36)
It evens out. But yeah, I would say that. would say it can be real, real cash. Like something like a little small thing. They’ll be like, it’s $5,000. You know what mean? Whereas residential, you can get it done for like $500 or you can get it done for less. And you know, with residential, you don’t have to watch it as much. I think with commercial buildings, have to watch them a little bit more because it’s such a large asset. Anything that’s a little bit larger.

Cody Crabb (16:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (17:05)
is gonna take a little bit more eyes, a little bit more attention, than something that’s smaller, if that makes sense.

Cody Crabb (17:11)
Yeah, totally. ⁓ All right, so ⁓ we mentioned partnerships to start off and you said that was one of your philosophies is like that is like my thing. I think I believe in partnerships. think they’re, you know, the lifeblood of this industry. I’d be curious to know, have you ever had a partnership go wrong?

Ricky McKenzie (17:32)
Of course. Of course. Of course.

Cody Crabb (17:34)
Sure, I mean, ⁓

you made quite an expression there. I mean, feel free to not tell everything about it if you don’t want to. But I’d love to hear a story about, how do you know who to partner with and what are some red flags with a partner?

Ricky McKenzie (17:38)
Yeah. No, no, I know.

Great questions, Everybody’s gonna be watching these podcasts. So I will say this. I will say two things, and I was just saying this earlier. I was saying this earlier to my partner. You never know someone until money’s involved. That could be your wife, that could be your kid, that could be your mother, that could be your father. You never know anyone until money’s involved. When money’s involved, then…

Cody Crabb (17:54)
Thank you very much.

That’s true.

Ricky McKenzie (18:18)
You see who they really are and they show themselves. So ⁓ yeah, I’ve had bad partnerships. I’ve had, mean, there’s, know, I would say this. Most of my partnerships that have went bad or went wrong has been with contractors, right? ⁓ Thank God, knock on wood, I really haven’t had, you know, knock on wood, I don’t really have bad business partnerships per se. Like we went to the…

to the property and to the building. And somebody put up some capital, we bought the property. Thank God I’ve only had that. But a lot of partnerships that I’ve had that went sour or went left has been with contractors. I say this all the time and I wholeheartedly believe this. Contractors, attorneys, and mechanics are the three biggest thieves, right? And a lot of times if you don’t know what you’re looking at, or even if you do know what you’re looking at,

Right? They may say, Cody, in order to do this, it’s going to be $5,000. Or they may drag your project on. may, you know, cause they may jump from your project onto another. I, man, I have some, I got some stories, but mostly my, my stories are, have, been my partnership with contractors. I thank God I really haven’t had no, no bad partnerships, you know, knock on wood with per se people I purchased commercial properties with. But a lot of my, my.

my things that went wrong, my bad experiences have been with contractors, right? Because again, contractors are not regulated, mechanics are not regulated, attorneys are not regulated. They’re not regulated, right? So they can overcharge you, overprice. A lot of times they’re not honest, right? And another thing too, a lot of my bad experiences have come with residential property. Whereas with commercial, you can tell somebody, okay,

Um, let me get back to you. do. I do something that happened to me. It wasn’t, it’s not a big deal, but this guy, he came out and he’s been like asking me for work, asking me for work. Ricky, me give you some work. He’s this HVAC guy, right? So he gets there. He gets to my place. I’m having some problems with my HVAC is not blowing cool, cold air, tentacle planning. He gets over there. So number one, he charges me a $250 trip fee.

which he didn’t tell me anything about until he got there, right? So that right there was a red flag, $250, just to give me a diagnostic? Come on, bro. So then he does his big old estimate and he’s like, whew. Oh man, whew. I’m like, come on, man. He puts on the act. So then he says, there’s gonna be $1,500 to repair everything, but you already gave me 250, so you just owe me 1250, you know?

Cody Crabb (20:48)
Alright.

Ricky McKenzie (21:14)
And I take $100 off. So just give me $1,150. Right? I said, all right, bro. But before that, me just get a second to pay it. All right, man. Go ahead. Do what you gotta do. But I’m telling you, I got the best price in town. No one’s gonna be my price. I’m telling you, I got the best price in town. And if I don’t do it now, I might come back, I might go up. I’m telling you, may, that $100 off, I might knock off, I might tap back off because now I gotta schedule you my time and you need schedule me. And now you know what I mean.

I was gonna do it now, do it today, but now you want me to leave and you’re just taking my pain. Who? I’m not proud of that, but I’m telling you my price might go up.

Cody Crabb (21:49)
And you’re like, yeah, second opinion, second opinion.

Ricky McKenzie (21:53)
I got a second opinion right this other guy came like the next day when a guy was there for like an hour right the guy didn’t charge me to come out there by the way and then then he came in the office he was telling me like he was looking at his phone he was like mmm so no I could charge I mean let me see all right man the best I can do is 450

Cody Crabb (22:21)
Close. Yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (22:22)
450. I was like,

and then when he said 450, I was like, 450? That’s the best you could do? He was like, yeah, but what’s that gonna be 450? Then I asked somebody, I said, well, don’t thermometer still gotta be replaced with the guy telling me gotta be replaced. No, it’s not wrong that thermometer’s new. I said, well, don’t this need that? No, that’s fine. know, 880, that’s fine. And this dude told me 1500 and I got somebody to do it for like 450. I think he told me like 350, so I like to buy him like a part.

the part of it, So contractors, man, you got to be careful.

Cody Crabb (22:55)
Well, so that obviously makes me want to ask then. So I mean, I would assume that because you’re so, you’re wary about working with people like that, have you found like some really good relationship with contractors that you trust and kind of what are those like?

Ricky McKenzie (23:14)
Yeah, so, you know, man, I have thank God I have and and I think that so here’s my thing right with Contractors I have I thought a couple that I deal with now two or three that keep rotation But let me tell you this even though I found them and they’re good as well You know it that that that old that old saying Can’t keep a dog full right? You can’t keep a dog for it. Can’t be animal for right?

Because if you’re always keeping an animal full, they’re not going to want to go out there and work or hunt and so forth. So I think with the contracts that I have now, thank God, they’re a lot better than what I’ve dealt with. But I don’t give one particular contractor all my work. I probably should, but I just don’t because I want to keep them trying to earn my business all the time. And sometimes if you keep giving them one person all your business all the time, they end up kind of like not appreciating you as much.

I mean real estate is really psychological too in many things. know what mean? It’s a vision and it’s psychological. know what mean? Dealing with contracts and dealing with buyers and sellers. Psychological thing.

Cody Crabb (24:16)
Yeah, yeah, I know what mean.

Yeah, okay, well you’ve given us a lot of really awesome info today. ⁓ I’d be curious, so you know, like I said, ⁓ our audience is made up of real estate investors, a lot of times kind of on the early, maybe on the earlier side of investing, not always, but sometimes. ⁓ What would you say to someone who wants to get into commercial, they’re kind of looking at it and they think, I think that’s a better fit for me. What would you say to them, ⁓ to someone that’s kind of looking to pivot?

Ricky McKenzie (24:56)
Great question, Cody. And you know what? I’m gonna tell them and this kind of comes against probably from my experiences, right? And from been doing this a long time is don’t learn too much. I know it’s kind of like a moron, but I’m telling you, I’ve seen it happen even with me. The more research you do, the less you do. I don’t know why it’s like that, but.

I’ve seen people go to seminars, at the seminars, at the classes, at the classes, read books, at the books, and they never do it because they got too much information, right? If you’re getting married and you talk to a hundred people, you’re not gonna wanna get married. I was talking to hundred people because 50 people are gonna tell you don’t do it. 50 people are gonna tell you do it. And you may get more people to do it, but here’s what’s gonna happen. So to me, I would say with anything in life, just do it, right? Just do it.

Because you’re going to make mistakes there’s no ways around it. And I don’t care how many books you read. I don’t care how many podcasts you watch. I don’t care how many classes you go to. There’s nothing that beats just doing it. And don’t be afraid to make a mistake, right? Because you never really lose, you learn. You don’t lose, you learn. But the main thing is don’t get too much information. I’ve seen people just get way too much information, right? after you get that information, they just don’t do it. Does that make sense?

Cody Crabb (26:11)
Yeah.

Yeah,

Ricky McKenzie (26:24)
It’s like going to the doctor, Nausea

Cody Crabb (26:25)
they call it analysis paralysis.

Ricky McKenzie (26:28)
or paralysis. Yeah. I mean, but don’t you see it though, right? You know?

Cody Crabb (26:34)
Yeah, absolutely.

Well, it’s like you mentioned the marriage thing. If you think too hard about, if you try to come up with reasons not to marry somebody, for example, you’re gonna find them. You’re gonna find them. And so, I think you’re right. Find an amount of risk that you’re comfortable taking and just learn enough to know what you’re getting yourself into somewhat and then find somebody that you can ask questions to that knows what they’re talking about. Like you said, do a partnership.

whether it’s financial or you just kind of have someone to ask questions to and then just go for it. mean, what’s the worst case scenario? You’re gonna be more broke? That’s how I see it. Like we can’t be broke twice. So yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (27:14)
You know, I want

to tell you something kind of personal. My dad passed away 19 years ago and he had prostate cancer and he talked to like different doctors, got different opinions and at the end of it, he didn’t want to do the surgery. And when he passed away, he said, you know what, Ricky? I should just do the surgery. That would have been the best thing for me. And I’m giving that analogy is that he asked too many people instead of just doing the surgery.

Just do it. know, like, like, like what’s the worst that could happen, right? What’s the worst happen? Because you may pass away anyway, which you did. So you might as well go with the pain that you think is best, which is the surgery and keep it moving. But a lot of times we just get too much information. I’m guilty of it as well. Like I’m guilty of it as well of trying to learn too much and then you end up not doing anything.

Cody Crabb (27:45)
Deuce in his gut, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and especially in that situation, yeah.

Ricky McKenzie (28:12)
The person who makes it, the person who fails, faster, quicker, gets up and do it again. Faster, quicker, get up and do it again. Faster, quicker, get up and do it again.

Cody Crabb (28:20)
I love

the idea that you try to rack up failures instead of taking all that time learning something and just go mess up a bunch of stuff and you’ll learn a lot faster. ⁓ That’s a good way to look at it. Yeah, it’s true.

Ricky McKenzie (28:31)
But it’s the truth though, right? When you think about it,

you go cautiously and you, you know, like my first property was 1500. My next property was 12,000 square feet. And Cody, I never owned an office building before. I never owned a commercial building in my life. My friends thought I was crazy. They’re like, oh my God, this ain’t gonna work. You’re bugging. Why are you doing this? I’m like, I can’t. Like, you know what I’m saying?

Cody Crabb (29:01)
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.

Ricky McKenzie (29:01)
I went from over 1,500

to 12,000, nothing in between. And then after that, it was 40, it was 20,000. And then 20,000 to 80,000. It was like, but it’s the same process though. It’s the same, it’s like this, do it, do it. Don’t wait to know everything.

Cody Crabb (29:17)
Right, yeah, we

work with unideal situations all the time in our personal lives, like in our families, our whatever office space you’re working in, you know what I mean. We make the best of it, we just figure it out, but why not do it in a way that can make you a lot of money? So that’s a great way to look at it. ⁓ So tell me about, you’ve mentioned a ⁓ master class. Tell me about this master class that you’re setting up.

Ricky McKenzie (29:35)
Yeah, absolutely.

I’m excited about it, man. I’m excited about it. let me just back up and say this. I’m a part of Georgia Rea. Georgia Rea is Georgia Real Estate Investment Association. I’ve been a part of them for like 20 years. At one point, were like, well, they still are. They’re the largest real estate organization in Georgia. And every last Wednesday of the month, every last Wednesday of the month, I do a South Side Meetup, right? A South Side Meetup group.

And we have different investors that come. We have different speakers. It’s really good. I’ve been doing it for like three years now. And I’ve raised capital in that room and I’ve met so many speakers. Every February we do a meet the mayor where we have different mayor. Yeah. Different mayor’s like this. Couple months ago, we didn’t meet the mayor. We had the mayor of South Florida there, the mayor of Latonia, the mayor of Warner Robbins and the mayor of Riverdale. every, every year in February.

Cody Crabb (30:29)
Wow.

Ricky McKenzie (30:43)
We’d like to meet the man this month. We actually have three lieutenant governors candidates. I’m sorry. Candidates are running for the governor and two kids are running for governor of Georgia. That’s going to be there. So yeah. So it’s a, it’s a really good thing, man. And I, again, like I’ve told you, I’ve met partners there. I raised money in that room. I raised capital. I’ve done deals in that room and I’ve always wanted to do a three day workshop. It’s for me, it’s that, that workshop that was a masterclass.

Cody Crabb (30:55)
Wow.

Ricky McKenzie (31:13)
It’s more so about, yes, learning if you’re a seeding investor or you’re a first time investor or you’re an intermediary investor. But it’s also about networking because that is the main thing. mean, I don’t, listen, you can come in, you can learn how to a house there. You can learn the closing process, the permitting process, the foreclosure process. We’re gonna have over 10 sessions, ADU, additional joining unit.

We’re talking about all kinds of things. Credit, and somebody’s talking about credit. We have a lot of different things. And we’re going to have a keynote speaker. But the main thing is coming to network. Meeting your next partner in that role. Yes, learning.

Cody Crabb (31:59)
Like you said, partnerships are where it’s at

and I’ve definitely seen that,

Ricky McKenzie (32:04)
Yeah, partnerships is where it’s at. Yeah, partnerships for sure.

Cody Crabb (32:08)
So what can someone kind of hope to walk away with after this master class? Just to kind of give you an idea of who should be kind of looking at going to this.

Ricky McKenzie (32:18)
Yeah, well, you know what? think the first time investor for sure, You don’t pull it trigger, but I also think the seasoned investor as well, because you may be doing commercial and not residential or doing residential or not doing commercial and land. I have a friend who’s going to be teaching buying land. He’s killing it. He buys land unseen. He buys it unseen. There’s a due diligence and he sells it. And he sells it for like, you know, good return, 20, 30, 40, 50,000.

and he never sees it, he does everything virtually. yeah, so I think it’s a good thing if you wanna learn about different things from land selling, from debt. it’s gonna be really good. And I wanna say this too, I gotta keep saying this. Yes, we’re teaching, right? So one thing you can learn there, can make you whole lot of money, but your partner, your partner that you meet there can make you millions. Like I met a guy,

Cody Crabb (32:57)
Yeah, new ideas and stuff.

Ricky McKenzie (33:18)
I wanted my other meetups, but I went to, and me and him bought this building that I have now. It’s 20,000 square feet. Well, it’s two buildings at 40,000 square feet. sold one of them. But I met them there, partner, you know? Because you can learn, right? Cody, you can learn, right? But what difference would it make to learn if you’re going to go on it by yourself or you tried to do by yourself and then you’re not going to meet the right partner that can help you to bring that together?

Cody Crabb (33:32)
Yeah, see? Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I’ve been to not that specific event, but I’ve been to events like that. And I will tell you, like you think I’m going to go for the classes and the information, but that’s not what you end up going for. Like you said, it’s the networking and all the people you meet and stuff. So yeah, highly recommend you check that out. And you said you had a,

Ricky McKenzie (34:04)
Go on.

Cody Crabb (34:06)
And so you mentioned you’d be you’d be willing to give us some tickets to give away. Is that right?

Ricky McKenzie (34:11)
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s $500 per person. It’s $500 per person to go to the master class. It’s really, it’s worth it. So I wanted to give you $1,000 worth of tickets. So I want to give you two tickets. And you can give them away as you see fit. Maybe give one to one of your callers or one of your, you’re listening to people who are watching. So however you want to do it. But yeah, there are two tickets and they have a value of $1,000. And I would love to give them to you.

And thank you for having me and I love that.

Cody Crabb (34:43)
Of course, so if you’re local, go ahead and send an email to [email protected]. ⁓ I will personally keep an eye out for those. Use the subject line tickets and I’ll pick one at random once this goes live. So,

Ricky, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been, think, really helpful for people that kind of maybe have thought about commercial or wanted to kind of pivot but haven’t really thought.

exactly what they do yet. So thank you so much for joining us.

Ricky McKenzie (35:08)
No, thank you for having me. And if people want to know more about the master class, they can go to learnrealestatefast.com. It’s called learnrealestatefast.com. And we have all the information on the site. You can also my numbers there or you can message us. Message me. And yeah, we’ll love, we’ll love to see you and Cody, thank you, man. I appreciate it.

Cody Crabb (35:30)
Cool, yeah, well thank you. Again, I think this is a great thing for our listeners. Listeners, if you got something out of today, and I know you did, go ahead and like, subscribe, leave a comment, do all the things, and make sure you follow the podcast so you can get more awesome conversations with people like Ricky. Ricky, can’t thank you enough. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much, and we’ll catch you next time.

Ricky McKenzie (35:51)
No, thank you.