Real Estate Systems and Processes

Mike: [00:00:00] .Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. Really excited to be here with my good friend John Nolan today. Um, and he’s a super smart guy. We’re gonna be talking about systems and processes for your real estate investing business and, uh, having, you know, surrounded myself with, with really hundreds of top real estate investors, it’s very clear to me that the people that do the best in life are, are really, they really operate like a real business, right?

Mike: With systems, processes, tools, and, and I. We’re gonna talk about some tools, but not just systems as in software. We’ll talk about that. But also just processes you need to have for everything in your business so that you could pull yourself outta the business. Cuz for a lot of us, there’s too much in our heads and not, um, not documented processes that you could hand somebody else a guide and say, here’s exactly how we do this.

Mike: Right? So really excited to, uh, talk about that today with.

Mike: Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. In fact, real estate is just a vehicle [00:01:00] of freedom. A group of over a hundred of a nations leading real estate investors from across the country meet several times a year at the Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as.

Mike: And build more fulfilling lives For all of those around us on today’s show, we’re gonna continue our conversation of fueling our businesses and fueling our lives. I’m glad you’re here.

Mike: Hey John. How are you buddy?

Jon: Doing well yourself, Mike.

Mike: I’m good. I’m good. Good to see you. I feel like we, uh, I see you most, more than most of my own family members, to be honest with you, . So , uh, but, uh, excited to be doing life with you and excited to have you on, on the show again. I know it’s been several years since you’ve been on.

Jon: Yeah. Thanks for having me. And yeah, it’s been a couple weeks since we saw each other in Phoenix, right? ?

Mike: Yeah. Like a week and a half or something. So, um, hey, uh, I know [00:02:00] you really well, but why don’t you tell folks that are listening right now a little bit about your back.

Jon: Uh, short, short version, uh, spent time in the United States Marine Corps, uh, about five years.

Jon: Seems like a lifetime ago now. Um, and then went into it, spent, uh, quite a while in it was the vice president of IT for a pharmacy software company, and eventually made what seems like an odd transition into real estate, but needed, uh, more flexibility with my time, was already working in real estate some, and just decided to make it a full-time gig about six years.

Jon: Okay.

Mike: Okay. And you operate up in o Oklahoma City Market?

Jon: Yep, here in Oklahoma City. My wife, um, left her a W2 job three or four years ago, and, uh, we run it, uh, well with. The two of us and our team here. Yeah.

Mike: There’s no turning back now, right? Nope. Yeah. . Awesome. Well, we’re gonna be talking about, um, systems and processes and sometimes people are confused by like, what do you, what kind of system are you using?

Mike: So I want to kind of first talk about [00:03:00] tools, like key tools that you, that you use in your real estate investing business. And a, a little, uh, a little note to some of you guys. Uh, John and his wife have been building a CRM for real estate investors that’s gonna be launched here sometime soon. Um, and again, as a real estate guy that came outta it, you know, that he thinks a lot about this stuff.

Mike: I know, I know. Part of your pain was thinking about what’s possible instead of what’s available. Right. I mean, there’s a lot of CRMs on the market these days, but I’m sure that just like, uh, a lot of entrepreneurs, you were thinking about how you could do it better, right? Yeah.

Jon: And that’s where originally came from and uh, really started with me just wanting to improve what we could do and.

Jon: Fill the gaps that we have and the void that we have and make things more, um, flow better. Yeah. But, um, realized it was gonna be very well suited. There was a lot of holes for other people, and so that’s where we’re going with that. But systems are important no matter what software you’re using or what.

Jon: Uh, tools you’re using. Systems and processes are so vital no matter what business you’re in, [00:04:00] but especially with ours where there is a large commitment if you’re, you know, advertising, if you’re working human sellers, you need to convert as many leads as you can, and systems and processes are how you do that.

Jon: Yeah,

Mike: for sure. That’s how you operate, like a real business. For sure. And that’s how, yeah, it takes so much. I mean, there’s so many things that, that we do. I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years now. I mean, there’s so many things that we do now that are automated that used to be super manual. It’s like it used to take a person for that, and now a system does it without anybody thinking about it.

Mike: Right? And we, I guess we could all say that in all parts of our life, not just real estate, like just how easy it is to order stuff off of. Amazon, for example, is like, you know, it used to be I have to run to the store and they’re out of it and I gotta run to another store, and now Amazon can deliver it to my house within a day.

Mike: So well, let’s, let’s jump into kind of tools, like key tools that you use in your business right now. And so I know for a, a lot of, a lot of folks use a cr, you shouldn’t certainly use a crm, which is kinda the operating system. It’s kinda the backbone of your business, right? So talk a little bit about the CRM component of your business.

Jon: Yeah. [00:05:00] CRM is vital. It doesn’t matter so much which CRM you using. There’s lots of good CRMs like you said earlier, but your CR RM will be basically your repository, your record of everything dealing with your seller. Um, if you’re in whole, if you wholesale, you need to have a CRM for your buyers as well. A lot of people leave that out and just take that for granted.

Jon: Uh, but it keeps track of everything. You want as much information in there as you can, um, that will be usable. You don’t want stuff that you’re never gonna use, but being able to have information about the properties is very important. It will help you later. Okay, do I really need to focus on this zip code?

Jon: Do I need to focus on this age of. Because what you think you are buying or what you think you’re actually getting responses from is usually different from what it actually is. Yeah. Um, and so having a CRM outside of staying in contact with the sellers and buyers, the CRM will keep all that information for you.

Jon: So you have a lot of analytics and you can make smarter decisions. That’s the big

Mike: thing. And I, we talked a a lot this, uh, about this a lot at the last Investor Fuel. We’re, we’re really [00:06:00] putting a lot of focus on trying to help our members just become better operators. Because that really to me, and, and we saw during this last little shake, this little downturn in the market here of who, who got.

Mike: You know, hit harder than others, and every market’s different, right? It’s not all about this, but you can clearly tell who was a better operator and who was not, right? As to how much they were impacted, maybe so that those tools like this are obviously critical to your business, right?

Jon: Oh yeah, they are.

Jon: And going past CRMs, um, getting into other systems, whether it’s, you know, your, your e-signature system or your file management, if you’re keeping pictures, if you’re keeping, you know, how are you keeping your documents, your contracts, all of those are so vital. And if you don’t have everything together and processed and everybody on your team doing it the same, or if you’re a one man show, one woman.

Jon: If you’re not doing it the same every time when there’s a question three months from now or three years from now, you’re gonna have no [00:07:00] clue. Yeah, yeah. Um, so it all ties in the same.

Mike: Yeah, for sure. And stuff like, you know, and, and talk. Talk about, and I know, I don’t know exactly what’s inside of your new crm.

Mike: I have some ideas and I know part of the problem is probably some of the pain that you’ve felt is not different than a lot of real estate investors is I have a crm, but I have a separate task management tool and I use a separate phone system. Mm-hmm. And I store my files and drop. Box and stuff’s all over and we make it work.

Mike: Cause honestly, when I first started, we were using spreadsheets and , like mm-hmm. hard drives or whatever, you know, uh, just regular hard drives, not even Dropbox. And so, um, a lot of these tools are just converging. Right. So talk about the, the importance of task management and then some pros and cons of having something that’s kind of integrated versus, uh, I guess a, an additional.

Jon: Yeah. And when you said spreadsheets that made me remember when I first started full-time six years ago, my first c r m was excel until I had like 20 houses and I probably had a hundred columns, uh, just to get [00:08:00] every little data point and drove Amy, my wife, Amy, crazy. But, um, that’s what I used at that point and I broke quickly, but.

Jon: Yeah, having different systems. You know, we have our CRM that we use now and then once we get a property under contract, most CRMs kind of drop off. Cause that’s their focus is the customer relationship. Um, I know probably most people that I know use a sauna for task management. Yep. Um, it’s a real popular one.

Jon: I use, I’ve used several throughout the years. I’ve used Right. I’ve used click up. Um, lots of ’em, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, but it’s a heck a lot better than just trying to write down on Post-It. What you need to do, what you know, what the process is here, what the process is there.

Jon: And they keep you, Amy hates it when I say this, but if somebody gets hit by a bus and they’re not able to come in today, they’re not able to come in tomorrow, they’re sick. Uh, that is one of the tools that can be used to keep your system running. Now you need to have [00:09:00] documented pro uh, procedures, which you alluded to a little bit ago, but task management gets.

Jon: Get your team able to see what needs to happen right now and

Mike: what is important. Yeah. And if somebody’s out, they just look up that person’s tasks, right? Like, Hey, so-and-so’s out. Or they got hit by a bus, like, I need to reassign these tasks. And it’s not just in their notebook or on on post-it notes on their desk or in their head.

Mike: Even worse, right? Is it’s, it’s in a system where everybody can see it.

Jon: Right. And then, um, Zapier is an amazing tool. Zapier can link so many different softwares and tools and do things and provide automat. But it can’t do everything right. And that’s, that’s really where Integr having some other ability to integrate comes in as a very, um, useful tool.

Mike: And it breaks. We, we use, we use the heck out of it for sure, uh, across all of our businesses, but it breaks. We’ve had times where it broke before. Mm-hmm. , the zaps weren’t happening, and it, it got sent to somebody else’s email that there was a problem. And it [00:10:00] wasn’t even in their inbox. It was in like a spam folder or whatever.

Mike: So we didn’t even know something had broken down. And you find out, you know, a week or two weeks later that that’s

Jon: a problem. Right? Yeah. The, yeah, that’s dealing with the lead that lead’s gone probably. Um, so lost money.

Mike: Yeah, so talk, let’s talk about file, kind of file management. So we, we’ve, I think we have seven terabytes of data in our Dropbox folder, at this point.

Mike: But we do a lot of video and there’s a lot of other things that we do too, right. But, uh, it’s a beast, right? And, um mm-hmm. and. , even when we were flipping a lot of houses, we still use Dropbox mostly, but it was a separate system. So we would just put a link to that folder from Dropbox in our CRM so that you could click it and link to it.

Mike: But they weren’t really connected, like we had to clearly go out into another system. So just talk about, you know, some of the evolution that’s happened there with file management and CRMs.

Jon: Yeah. File management, CRMs. I mean, when you earlier talked about having an external hard. That’s what people did. And you know, if you lost the hard drive or if it was stolen outta your car or if [00:11:00] you know, got stolen outta your office, the data was just gone.

Jon: So having the ability to use things like Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive or any of those online providers are really amazing. Um, and there are some softwares that provide links to kind of open it automatically so you don’t have to copy a link, put it in a note, go through, find the note. But the next evolution of file management really.

Jon: Getting outside of just folders. You know, I’m gonna take these files, put ’em in this folder for this property. But being able to badge those files. So, uh, an example is different people in the business need to look at different kinds of files. We need to look up, um, closing documents. They’re trying to look up a bunch of closing documents.

Jon: Let’s say, instead of having to go into every folder and look for closing docs, if you have the ability to file badge or badge those files, it’s kinda like a. It’s easy for them to pull up purchase, closing docks, sale closing docks, um, [00:12:00] pre-purchase inspection pictures, you know, after the work is done. Um, things relating to the seller, just whatever the cases are.

Jon: And that makes being able to pull that information up a lot easier and a lot faster for people.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s critical to have, to have, you know, access to that without, and the worst is when it’s another system and. , you have to reset a password or you can’t, you can’t log into that system for some reason and you’re like, mm-hmm , this one’s working and this one’s not.

Mike: You know, it’s a pain in the butt.

Jon: Yeah. Inevitably when that happens is when you need it right now or somebody’s standing in front of you and you’re just like, oh, I feel like it’s an idiot cause I can’t get my computer to work. Yeah. Um, and people empathize with that, but at the same time, you know, we’re professionals, we’re operating businesses.

Jon: We need to be able to do things efficiently. And on time.

Mike: Yep. Yep. L let’s talk just briefly about, um, kind of reporting. Right. So I think, uh, there, there some of the [00:13:00] CRMs over the past couple years have, have created some reporting dashboards, like Podium notoriously does not have great reporting inside of it.

Mike: Right. Certainly like visual type stuff. And a lot of us are visually driven and, but just being able to know, like a lot of our systems have the data in there, but it’s just the reporting is lacking in terms of. Being able to make quick decisions on scene, what exactly is going on, or what the trends are, or things like that without exporting stuff to excel or some other system and trying to analyze it.

Mike: Like just kind of real time reporting. Like talk about how that’s evolved over the past, you know, year or two, a couple years.

Jon: Oh yeah, it’s evolved a lot. Um, most systems have their default reports. This is what you can see. This is what KPI you can track. Systems are starting to evolve now, and you see this in Salesforce where you can create your own reports.

Jon: Mm-hmm. based on whatever metrics you want. You know, it could be leads received in this timeframe by campaign or whatnot. And being able to adjust those so they actually apply [00:14:00] to your company is really where. The, uh, reporting industry is going to now, opposed to I’m the software developer, this is the report you should have, these are the metrics that you need that were popular 10 years ago or five years ago.

Jon: People being able to operate their business differently. There’s people who are wholesalers and they don’t do rentals. They don’t flip, they don’t do anything else. That’s fine, but they have a different focus on their metrics than a Flipp. Uh, landlord, somebody who does all of it. They all look at different things.

Jon: And then when you’re looking at a team, you really need to focus in on the people or the groups and be able to see what is important for you. A a, uh, company that does a lot of cold calling needs to have that readily, readily available, right? And then being able to sync the data from the cold calling software and the CRM and actually extracted, put those together, that’s where stuff really becomes difficult.

Jon: Again, [00:15:00] bringing stuff together into one system makes it a lot easier. So you can see all that information together.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. E even, and, and on the marketing side too, being able to see like, what’s your ROI on specific marketing channels. I think most people at best are looking at it across the whole business and it’s like, mm-hmm.

Mike: there’s a lot of noise inside there. If, if you put all your channels together and people would make very different decisions if they knew how, what their return on ad spend was for. One channel versus another, or even how, uh, different salespeople on your team are performing against one another. Mm-hmm.

Mike: Right. It’s, it’s easiest, I guess, to look at it as a whole, but, um, there’s clearly, uh, usually a lot of noise inside of there, right? Yep.

Jon: And there’s a time to look at it as a whole, but there’s also a time to drill down and see a little bit more detail. Yeah. Something that I’ve always wondered is when, you know, let’s say mail, mail, somebody gets a mail piece, there’s no way.

Jon: There are ways, if you get down to changing your phone numbers very, very often, but it’s hard to know when they actually received that [00:16:00] postcard. Right. You know, if you change your phone number every month, that could conceivably give you that ability. But not trying to go into that far of a, that creates a lot of realm.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. When you get into web leads or any other kind of inbound or outbound, it’s important to know when that lead was actually received or generat. And how much you spent at that time, because most of the time people just go off of, you know, okay, I closed seven deals this month and I spent X number of dollars on marketing.

Jon: Great. Okay. But none of those marketing dollars actually went towards these seven deals you closed this month. Yeah. Um, that

Mike: was dollars from a prior period that fed ’em to you and you, and you finally closed them. Right.

Jon: Right. And so being able to, over time be able to see back where those trends are, not just when you’re closing.

Jon: Is very valuable and can save you a lot of money, make you a lot more efficient.

Mike: Yeah. And, and, and an example, another example of that is sometimes people try a channel and then they cut it off too soon and then they start to get deals from it. Mm-hmm. , but they’ve already canceled it. Right. It’s like, well that kind of cash [00:17:00] conversion cycle on that advertising.

Mike: Maybe it’s six months, like and mm-hmm. , who cares if it’s still a great return. Right. But you need to be able to see over time like, Hey, I made an investment. It’s like farming, right? Like, I made an investment way back when and I didn’t harvest that until here. and uh, if you, A lot of real estate investors are show so sharp, short-sighted.

Mike: They’re just like, I tried this, you know, thing and it didn’t work. And so I just stopped it and it’s like, well, did you give it enough time for it to actually work? Right. Yeah.

Jon: And I think that really comes down to two things. One, them being short-sighted and impatient, which, hey, lots entrepreneurs are, most of us are very impatient.

Jon: Yeah. Make quick decisions. But also I think a lot of times it comes down to cashflow. If they’ve got plenty of cash, They’re not worried about that 5,000, that 10,000, 20, whatever, $2,500, whatever it is. Yeah. They’re not as worried about that. If they’re pushed for cash. They’re really focused on what’s working now, but that’s detrimental to ’em.

Jon: We’ve always, um, anytime we’ve started something new or made a major change, we’ve given it six months. Yep. Uh, we [00:18:00] just, we let it ride. Wait six months, see if it works or not. Cuz it does take a while sometimes. Yep.

Mike: Yeah. And you’ve heard me say this phrase many times over the past couple years. You, you gotta play the long game.

Mike: If you wanna win at this, you’ve gotta give things time to work out or not, right?

Jon: Yep. And I pretty much everybody knows stories of somebody calling on a postcard or letter that they sent out a year or two. And people really do hang onto those. It’s kind of a surprising slash amazing, uh, to me. But

Mike: they do.

Mike: And the power of follow up, like sometimes you, we mm-hmm. , we’ve all have gotten deals that we generated years ago and they finally came around. They just, something happened and, and it, and it wasn’t that the marketing didn’t work or did work. I mean, it clearly, it did work. If you get the deal, it’s just that the timing wasn’t right for that person yet.

Mike: And we all know a lot of the types of people that we buy houses from. They’ve had distress or situations in their life for probably a long period of time, and it’s just like the straw that broke the camels back eventually. Like they, it didn’t make sense a year ago, but this [00:19:00] thing just happened and I’m, I’m ready now.

Mike: Right?

Jon: That’s right. That’s right. Things

Mike: change. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, um, um, kind of. Systems, but like more like processes, like things that are really important to have documented in your business for this is kind of the way you do things, right? You would, most people would kinda refer to it as a, you create an s o p or a standard operating procedure for how we do this thing.

Mike: And the great thing about our business is real estate investors is, especially if you’re wholesaling or rehabbing or own rentals, is. There’s not a ton of different processes. There’s some, there’s some very specific things that we do over and over and over again. So to have them documented, you know, really isn’t that hard.

Mike: But let’s talk, let’s kind of jump in first to, I guess, the top of the funnel, like lead intake, like receiving a lead, how you process it and talk about, you know, a little bit about the importance of that and have that documented and maybe some tips you could share for how people can document these things if they haven’t.

Jon: Yeah, I mean, that’s your first true contact with a, with a lead. So it’s [00:20:00] more important than people realize. Uh, there are times that we’ve had to have overflow calls or emergency situations go to a service that answers the phone. And I’m not saying anything bad about them. They’re trying to service a lot of different clients and whatnot, but it’s better than going to voice.

Jon: Um, so doing the best you can answering those calls live, number one is paramount. Um, and then having a system of what happens if you don’t answer it in three rings or whatever, does it roll to somebody else on your team? Once you receive the call, there needs to be a system, a process of what that call includes.

Jon: You know, are you gonna get their name or you gonna get their address? What’s going on? Some people ask for the mortgage balance. We don’t ask for the mortgage. That’s just something unique with us. Um, but have that documented that way when you bring on somebody new, when the staff changes, there’s documentation there so that people know how to do it, but also to reaffirm with your current staff what needs to be [00:21:00] done.

Jon: You don’t want, you know, you have a staff meeting and you know, Hey, I really need you to find this specific thing out. Uh, it could be, you know, when Covid started, will they let us in the house? That was a very important piece of information. If you don’t document that and if it’s not being reviewed, you can document.

Jon: If nobody opens it, nobody looks at it, it’s useless. Right? But they need to review it and then that’ll remind them that they need to continue to get that. We’ve all been told something by a boss before and we know it’s important. We need to do it, and we don’t do it. Not because necessarily we don’t want to, or we’re trying to, you know, push back against the man or something.

Jon: We just forget. We get in our own routines and that process needs to be a routine of.

Mike: Yeah. And when you’re a business owner, like one of the worst things you can do is just have it in your head, right? I mean, for, if you’re listening to this and we, we, we’ve all been there where we’re, we’re playing a super active role in the business, probably doing acquisitions and things as well, and you just, you know [00:22:00] how you do it and it’s in your head.

Mike: And then you complain that you need to get outta that and somebody else needs to take the role, but you’ve never documented how to do it, and it’s just trapped in your head. Right? And so I think for folks that are listening to this, you need to document these things. Even if it’s you doing it, you should like, Back to the getting hit by a bus, uh, comment, like, assume you get hit by a bus.

Mike: Like what, what good is your business gonna be to your family if a bunch of stuff’s trapped in your head, and even if you work at the spouse, like, you know, you don’t want, you don’t want their only option to be, to shut it down necessarily to shut the business down, right? Is like plug somebody else into those spots and here’s how, here’s how we do it.

Jon: Right. And there’s lots of ways to document. You could, you know, old school, put it in a Word doc or a Google Doc. You can map out your processes on something like Vizio or Lucid Charts. Um, lucid is what we use and I love it cuz you can link in other things to those, uh, little actions on the workflows. Um, you can record videos, uh, have them [00:23:00] available for your.

Jon: Something I’ve found out recently. If you’re, let’s say you have your c r m in the video and there’s addresses being displayed, even if it’s private, Google is, uh, pulling those off of YouTube and saying that you’re bullying people. Um, that was fun. We had an internal training video get taken down by, by YouTube, but you can record these things.

Jon: And then, uh, something that I learned at the last BU was taking chat g p t and turning. You know, those videos or those recordings that you have, you can turn those into SOPs with chat g p t pretty easily. Yeah. Wow. Um, just get the transcription, put it in there to to turn it into an SOP and it’ll bulletize the information out for you.

Mike: Yep. Yeah, that’s crazy. That’s something that I have not really paid much attention to, cuz I’ve got a million things going on, but I know it’s, I know it’s revolutionary, so we could probably go down a whole rabbit hole about Oh yeah. Where AI’s going for sure. Right. But let’s not go there. . Um, well, some other processes, some other really important things are, um, you know, you [00:24:00] talked about lead intake and kind of processing, but attending appointments, how you make offers, uh, processing by contracts, different processes.

Mike: Exit strategies. Like what, how you wholesale, how you build your buyer’s list, how you keep that fresh, how you rehab your rehabbing processes, your budgeting processes, on and on, right? Mm-hmm. .

Jon: Yeah, there’s I, everything that we do needs to be documented, needs to be, it needs to be an actual process first.

Jon: It needs to not just be shooting from the hip. I mean, our generation, we grew up seeing Rambo hit the M 60. Mow everybody down holding them 68. Head firing. Yeah, real loudly. There’s no way that would happen cause you’re just, it’s not gonna be effective. Same goes for running your business. It needs to be a repeatable process.

Jon: We all make jokes about McDonald’s and their quality aside. They have a process that people go through and that is one of those things that psychologically makes people go back to [00:25:00] McDonald’s is they know what to expect. Customers on the same side, whether it’s a buyer or seller, even if it’s partners, if you’re working with title companies or a separate TC company or contractors, having that process makes it easier for them because they know what to expect.

Jon: Yeah. So we have processes for everything that you went through on there. You know, process of getting contracts, going through appointments, making offers, um, that also makes it easier to train people. Uh, everybody on the team’s gonna bring a little bit of flare a little. Difference, you know, in their personality or their skillset.

Jon: And they can apply things to it and they can have some ownership of those minor things, but you have the main steps for them to go through. Right. Um, some of the things that have evolved for us over time are, you know, we’re selling a flip and there’s a few repairs that are negotiated after we’ve got it under contract.

Jon: Okay. Not a big deal. It happens, but it’s really bad when you forget. You assume somebody else has done it or you assume that it’s been done cuz the [00:26:00] contractor told you it was. But nobody’s gone to verify. Right. Well, I thought you were gonna verify. No, I thought you were. You did last time. Have it pro, have it documented.

Jon: Have a process of how to do it. Will save you face, save you money, most of all, and save you time. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. And, and you know, a lot of you mentioned Asana earlier, we’re kind of power users of son and have been for a long time. But you can have dependencies inside of there too, right?

Mike: There’s like tasks that somebody has to do. There’s dependencies on that. Like you can’t do that until this is done. And unless everybody can see what everybody else has to do, it’s like, it’s just turn it into like a production line. Right? And everybody knows what their role is and who’s responsible for what.

Mike: If somebody gets hit by a truck, then you just reassign those tasks to somebody else, right?

Jon: Yep. And then there’s of course follow up and you know, every team does it different. But we have a meeting every week where we go through the status of all of our properties where they’re under contract in rehab or for.

Jon: Just to make sure we haven’t missed something. Yeah. Um, [00:27:00] cuz somebody might get a little bit happy and get ahead of themselves in clo market task closed, or hey, who knows? There’s all kinds of scenarios that happen. Sure. But keeping everybody on the same page helps as well. So that’s a big part of our overall process.

Mike: Yep. Yep. Well, good stuff, John. Thanks for sharing all this with us today. Good, good. I think, and for a lot of folks, I don’t think there’s anything we shared here today that people are like, I never thought about that. But hopefully it’s just one of those things that you realize like, gosh, I really need to get on the ball with documenting some of this stuff.

Mike: Or maybe you’ve done it in the past and you need to refresh cuz you do things totally differently. That’s a process in and of itself, right? Is reviewing your processes to. Cuz we we’re constantly changing and evolving and using different tools or changing extra strategies. Like there’s a lot of things that we evolve and somebody has to keep those fresh.

Mike: Right,

Jon: that’s right. Have to be reviewing them and making sure that they’re up to date. And then again, making sure that people are reviewing ’em and following them. Yeah.

Mike: Yep. Good stuff. John, uh, would, would you mind, you’ve been a part of the Investor Fuel Mastermind for, for a long time now. Like I don’t, how long has it been?

Mike: A little bit over four [00:28:00] years. About three and a half, I think. Three and a half. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Would you mind just, uh, sharing your experience as being a part of the investor fuel family?

Jon: Yeah, of course. Uh, a couple things with investor fuel on the business side, a professional side’s been huge for us. Uh, being around not just like-minded people, but people are in the same industry that actually want to help.

Jon: We’re not there beating our chest, trying to overinflate what we’re doing. When we have failures, we’re sharing them and we’re getting feedback. The other fuel fam on those failures. And so that has been just amazing. I mean, there’s even somebody here in Oklahoma City that’s a fuel member as well. And you know, we openly share things.

Jon: We’re not, you know, we’re not trying to hoard that. We have an redundancy mindset. Um, on the personal side, investor fuel’s been very wonderful as well. I mean, we’ve made some great friends. Through investor fuel that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Uh, we’ve gone, we do some activities outside of the quarterly meetings with fuel sometimes, and those have been [00:29:00] wonderful.

Jon: Uh, when we got some bad medical news on one of our daughters a few years ago, uh, something that really cheered her up, which she got a little, uh, packaged. From the fuel fan, and it was a, it was a blanket and had some inspirational things on it, and she still sleeps with that blanket. That’s been about three years.

Jon: So investor fuel goes more than just business. It is, you know, fuel your business, fuel your life. It really brings everything together and, uh, it’s, it’s been amazing for.

Mike: That’s great. Well, glad glad you guys are a part of it. And, and it’s, and it’s, it’s kind of, no pun intended, fueled by folks like you that are big givers that share a lot.

Mike: And you just understand like, the more I give, the more I get. And you know, I, I don’t think folks like you and Amy are, are huge givers and. If anybody, I know that of all of our members, if anybody called you guys and said they needed help, you know, you’d find a way to help them one way or another if you could.

Mike: Right. And that’s just kind of how, yeah, that’s, that’s how the whole thing works. It’s just like this circle of people helping each other and moving [00:30:00] forward and inspiring each other and picking each other up off the ground if we have to, like whatever it is. Right.

Jon: Yep. And there’s days we all need that.

Mike: Yeah. Any of those things. Yeah. I can share some days, some days I need to be picked up off the ground. . Yep. Which is how it goes. So John, uh, thanks again buddy. If folks wanted to connect with you, you’ve got a lot of stuff, you know, going on. Um, what are some ways that they can connect with you or reach out?

Jon: Um, best ways to connect with me or just reach out to me on Facebook or Instagram. Um, I’m on both as the flipping it. Sorry, the flipping it guy. Um, got caught for not putting a G in there, uh, not too long ago. But, uh, you can reach me on either of those platforms and if you want to be included on, um, some information on Pete as it comes out or as it gets closer to coming out, uh, you can go to the Pete.

Jon: T h e p e t e io and putting your email address and we have some information to share about Pete and becoming, uh, publicly available. We’ll let you know. [00:31:00] Awesome.

Mike: I’m excited to see, to see that. I know you guys have, honestly, I remember when we were in Yellowstone, which we just got back from Yellowstone two months ago.

Mike: We went there right when Covid hit. That was, uh, a little about three years ago and you guys were working on it then. So I know it’s been years in the making, uh, labor of love and so looking to, looking forward to seeing what you guys, uh, put out.

Jon: Yeah. Awesome.

Mike: Yeah, everybody, hopefully you got some good insights from today.

Mike: I mean, at the end of the day, this is the time where you need to be a better operator in your business if you’ve been in real estate. And part of the problem is the margins are high. There’s lots of opportunities to make money, right? And that covers up a lot of sends sometimes. And I think one of the changes that’s happened over the past couple of years, um, certainly over the past six months since the market has shifted here is.

Mike: The covers kind of got pulled back and it told you whether you were a good operator or whether you need to do better. And so we can all always do better. And the best part is, is if you can build these things, uh, during a market shift, you’re gonna be that much better of an operator and be that much more profitable when the market does shift back and is, uh, is basically [00:32:00] a, uh, a seller’s market again.

Mike: So John, thanks again for sharing some insights buddy. Thank you Mike. I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, buddy. And everybody, if you haven’t learned about Investor fuel yet, uh, go to investor fuel.com. You can learn more about us, what we’re all about, learn what our upcoming meetings are. If you’re interested in learning more, you can schedule a call there.

Mike: No obligation. We’d love to just talk to you and see if you’re a fit for us and where fit for you. And if we are, we can talk about next steps. So go to investor fuel.com. To learn more and fill, then we’ll see you on the next show.

Jon: Are you an

Mike: active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer, fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us. To learn more about investor fuel, simply visit investor fuel.com to get started.[00:33:00]