August 25, 2017

JF1088: Apartment Syndication and Balancing Work, Investing, and Life #FollowAlongFriday


 

JF1088: Apartment Syndication, and Balancing Work, Investing, and Life #FollowAlongFriday   Quick updates from the guys, followed up by a lot of listener questions and answers. Plus, hear how Joe goes about balancing work and life. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!

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TRANSCRIPTION

Joe Fairless: Best ever listeners, how are you doing? Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any fluff.

I’m joined by Theo Hicks… How are you doing, sir?

Theo Hicks: I’m doing good, Joe. How are you doing today?

Joe Fairless: I am doing well, and looking forward to diving in. Usually, on this show we interview top-performing real estate entrepreneurs and other related entrepreneurs to the real estate investing field. However, with Follow Along Friday, we talk about what we’ve got going on and what we’ve learned along the way. How do we want to kick it off today?

Theo Hicks: Let’s get some updates on what we’ve got going on in our businesses. I can start today. Refresher – I just recently purchased three four-unit buildings, and we’ve had about a month, I think it’s a month this coming Thursday. Updates from the last time we talked about it – I talked to a lawyer to kind of figure out how to go about structuring LLC’s, and whether we should have one LLC with all the properties in it, or we should have multiple LLC’s for each individual property.

Based off of the conversation with him, we decided to go ahead and make an LLC for each individual property.

Joe Fairless: Three separate loans too, right?

Theo Hicks: Yeah, so we have three separate loans. There’s two things off the top of my head that he told me that I didn’t necessarily know. Number one is that whenever I want to refinance the properties, I have to transfer the properties back into my name, because the bank won’t loan to an LLC. As I said, I didn’t know that, and I thought that was interesting. I think he said he just charges like $25/LLC to do that transfer, so that’s not that big of a cost at all.

Then the second thing, which I think is kind of funny… One of the reasons why we wanted the LLC’s is because we didn’t want or names showing up online when you searched, but I didn’t realize that once the properties were sold to us and transferred into our name, our names are gonna be on there regardless.

Joe Fairless: On the website?

Theo Hicks: Yeah. So once we transferred to the LLC, it will now be in the LLC’s name, so if you’re sophisticated enough and you really wanna find out who owns the properties, you just look back to see for maybe like a two-month period, our names are on there… And our names are on there now. I thought that was interesting, because that was one of the main reasons why we wanted to make an LLC, but our names are gonna be on there.

Joe Fairless: But for liability purposes it helps. What about the due-on-sale clause?

Theo Hicks: From my understanding, the way that it works – I got this information from listening to a couple of people on your podcast – is that you just do it, and the banks have the right to call the loan in, but according to this lawyer I spoke to and based on information I got from lawyers on your podcast, if you do it and as long as you continue to pay the loan and don’t do anything against the lender, as long as you’re paying them, it’ll be fine. So that’s kind of what I’m betting on. If they end up do calling the loan, then we just have to find another person to put a loan on the property. [unintelligible [00:05:19].00] lender in your back-pocket… Because this isn’t like illegal advice from my lawyer, it’s just what I’ve got from people I’ve talked to.

Joe Fairless: That’s my takeaway, too. After interviewing a bunch of people and speaking to lawyers, exactly what you just said is what I’ve come to understand as well.

Theo Hicks: And then one other thing – it’s not a fully fleshed out idea, but my mom called me yesterday and she wants to buy properties in Cincinnati. She wants to buy like a duplex, and then she wants to rent out one long-term, and then she wants to live in the other whenever she visits, and then she wants to Airbnb it out when they’re not in town… And she wants me to obviously manage the properties.

I know I’ve talked about it before, about just kind of making a property management company, but I might do that just for managing her properties, and then I was thinking — I’ll have to ask some people on Bigger Pockets (or maybe you have some information on this), but do people that make their own property management companies… Would I be able to make an LLC – let’s just say I have [unintelligible [00:06:19].02] acquisitions – that will be property management company, and then that’s where I collect all the rents from all the properties that I have, that I own and that my mom would end up buying, and then take like a 10% for the LLC and distribute the rest of the money to the LLC’s that own the individual properties?

Joe Fairless: That sounds like a tax question.

Theo Hicks: Yes, I was thinking about it from a tax perspective.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, I don’t know the best way to do it. I mean, certainly there might be some legal implications too in terms of co-mingling and making sure that everything’s isolated and not piercing the corporate veil and that sort thing with your entities. I would first talk to an accountant about that.

Theo Hicks: Yeah, that’s what I plan on doing. It was just an idea that I had. Another thing I’m thinking of right now that the lawyer did tell me – I think it’s pretty obvious, but just in case people didn’t know this, if you do make different LLC’s for each individual property, you may have to make sure that you set up different bank accounts, and that the rents are going into that bank account and the expenses for that property are paid out of that bank account. Because if you just make three LLC’s but then just collect the money in one bank account or you don’t have the paperwork set up correctly, then if something were to happen and one of those properties were to have some lawsuit against it, that person’s lawyer could say “Hey, this person has these LLC’s but he’s not necessarily using them properly, therefore we should have access to everything, because that [unintelligible [00:07:41].15]”

That was something that I was like, “Oh yeah, it makes sense”, but you maybe don’t necessarily think about it. We went to the bank today and set up all three different bank accounts to start collecting rent that way starting next month, just because I don’t wanna have to go on to two months and maybe three months of me not doing properly… So that’s something else I wanted to mention.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, there’s all sorts of things like that, where you have to keep things separate. You can’t mix it with your personal account, obviously, and you have to treat each of them as their own company, basically, and just pretend that you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company called Theo’s LLC A, Theo’s LLC B and C, and you’re the CEO for each of those three, and just keep it all separate.

Theo Hicks: Yeah. And I’m starting to understand why — because I remember before we’ve done show and you were saying how you have to get a bookkeeper, and I think I understand what you’re talking about now. Because once you’ve got 9, 10 LLC’s with money coming in from properties and different expenses going out from each individual LLC bank account, and you have to pay out investors, and all these things going on… I don’t know how you get to track that without having to spend time in the hospital after a stroke or a heart attack.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, absolutely. We talked about that before. I’ve had a family member have serious health problems because he was trying to do all of that himself. I might have health problems, I guarantee that, because I’m doing my bookkeeping.

Theo Hicks: Awesome. That’s all I’ve got. What about you?

Joe Fairless: Well, I’m headed to Dallas tomorrow to oversee our portfolio, have a meeting with a potential big investor – would be the biggest investor to date; they’re flying in from L.A. And then we’re looking at a deal that we are very close to hearing if we’re going to be awarded it or not. So three purposes for the trip to Dallas. It will be a very quick trip.

In addition, reading Sam  Zell’s book “Am I Being Too Subtle?” Very, very good book. I highly recommend it. I’m probably 25% of the way through the book. He talks about how he does not like  development at all, because there are multiple entry points for mistakes to come into the deal, whereas if you buy an existing property, then you’ve got entry points for mistakes to come in, but just way too many variables for development. The change of winds with the market itself, the replacement of a local board member for the county who then wants to change how things are zoned, timelines that might get pushed back which result in major dollars, construction loans (he just doesn’t like them), and it reinforces what I’ve been saying ever since I tried underwriting a development deal about three, four years ago. I spent nine months on it, I didn’t even ever put it under contract. I was like “This is just 1) too much of a learning curve for me, that’s for dang sure, and 2) there’s just so much that can go wrong, so why do that?”

He mentions in the book he’s convinced that 50% of the reason why developers do development is for cashflow, and the other 50% is just because they like seeing things from the ground up being built. I’m not that guy. I can get significance through other methods. And I’m glad people are developers, I’m glad that there is an appetite for development and I respect that, but I don’t wanna do it unless there’s some way to insulate myself and whoever I bring with me from the majority of the risk, so that’s it’s similar risk but greater returns to buying a property that currently exists.

Theo Hicks: What’s the book called again?

Joe Fairless: “Am I being too subtle?”

Theo Hicks: And this is all about development?

Joe Fairless: That’s just one small snippet. It’s about his career. He talks about his family, escaping the Nazis when he was not born, actually, and them making the track — I forget exactly where… I wanna say from Poland, all the way to Japan. They spent some time in Japan for a little while, and then eventually made it to Chicago. I’ve gotten to the point where he was in college, did some deals — actually  bought his housing lots and bought 10 or 12 of them that were in a row, and then sold that to a developer who develops student housing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbour, and apparently still lives there today. Then he went to law school, and now I’m at the point where he’s made it, but it’s still growing.

Theo Hicks: This guy sounds familiar. Are you gonna interview him on the podcast?

Joe Fairless: No… He’s a billionaire, many times over. I was actually not too familiar with him until someone recommended him on the podcast. I think someone was reading the book and I was like “Oh, that sounds good”, so I bought it immediately and now I’m starting to read it. He’s a well-known [unintelligible [00:13:08].14], like Mark Cuban-eqsue type of wealth, I believe… I’m not too familiar though.

Theo Hicks: Okay, awesome. Do you have any other things?

Joe Fairless: No, I think that’s it. One last thing and then we’ll get into questions… From a mindset standpoint I’m listening to a book called “The In-Between”, by Jeff Goins. It talks about a philosophy that I have had, and it just reinforces it. That is to embrace the time we have in-between our milestones in life, because we tend to live in a life of expectancy, and the challenge with that is the things that we’re waiting to occur, they happen in a smaller amount of time than the long period of time leading up to it. So to live the in-between time more — basically, be present in the moment more, that’s the name of the game.

One phrase I don’t like and I just kind of call people out on it when I hear it is “I can’t wait for…” The reality is I’m just enjoying the present moment, and certainly I’m gonna enjoy when something else comes, like we close on a large deal, or a wedding happens, or whatever anniversary… But instead of “I can’t wait”, “I CAN wait, and I’m gonna enjoy the process while I wait.” I know that ties directly towards our goals as real estate entrepreneurs. We want big things in our business, Best Ever listeners who are listening to this podcast, because you want to continue to grow your real estate endeavors in whatever capacity that you’re growing it, and the challenge or the thought I would have about as you go along your journey is to enjoy the process and be present in the moment as much as possible, because those moments are the moments that we spend the majority of our time in, so why not enjoy them?

Theo Hicks: That’s good advice.

Joe Fairless: We’ve got a lot of questions.

Theo Hicks: We’ve got a lot of questions today.

Joe Fairless: All on apartment syndication, right?

Theo Hicks: They’re basically all on apartment syndication, and one at the end is about work/life balance. We’ll go through these… These are from David – thanks for submitting these. The first question we’ve got is “What cap rates, entry and exit NOI’s, cash-on-cash returns and vacancy rates do you target and why?”

Joe Fairless: Okay, what cap rates, entry and exit NOI’s, cash-on-cash returns and vacancy rates do you target – as far as the cap rates go, at least five, maybe slightly lower. But really, here’s the point about cap rates. I wanna use two extreme examples. If I buy a 12-unit apartment building in East Village in Manhattan and it’s a two-cap, versus a 12-cap on the outskirts of Oklahoma City and it’s a 100-unit, which deal is better? I don’t know. The reason why is because what’s the business plan for that particular deal?

We get so caught up on cap rates on the entry, but if the East Village 12-unit apartment building on a two-cap has a business plan where you can increase rents by $5,000, then that beats the heck out of a 12-cap on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. It beats it if it’s in downtown Oklahoma City or downtown Dallas. Give me the 12-unit building where I can just grow the rents exponentially over the next 12 months.

Now, it’s not likely you’ll find that in East Village, obviously, but I say that to make an example. So I don’t really get caught up on the entry cap rates. I interviewed Brian Burke – he does what I do, but for his company, Praxis; he’s a great guy. Search “Brian Burke Joe Fairless” and listen to his interview. He talks about cap rates, and he has a similar philosophy, and I actually learned a lot from him in that interview, and we apply it in our business.

As far as the cap rates, what we want to make sure we do is we are competitive on the going in cap rate with the market, because we always project – and this goes to the second part of that question, the exit cap – the cap rates will be worse on the exit. That’s a really important point. We always think the market will be worse when we sell than when we buy. Therefore if we buy at, say, five-cap, then we’re gonna project the exit will be at a five and a half, or maybe a 5.75 or a six-cap, because then we’re being conservative on the exit.

Now, do I know what the cap rate will be in five years from the exit? Heck no, I don’t have a clue what it will be in five years. But what we can do is we can project that it’ll be worse. So that’s the takeaway. Not necessarily what is the exact cap rate, but that 1) we wanna buy at a competitive cap rate based on where the market is, and then 2) we want to project an exit at a worse cap rate, so a higher cap rate whenever we exit.

The second part of this – how do you calculate the value of a property based on the numbers. NOI divided by cap rate is the property value. There’s a whole lot of underwriting in asterisks that go into that, because if everyone were to valuate the property the same exact way, then everyone would have the same exact price point and no one would ever buy a deal; there would be a tie on every single deal. So what we do is we go based off of our knowledge of the market, our knowledge of the submarket, operations, we consult our property management partner, make sure that the underwriting is tightened up, and we have a very, very clear picture of what the rent comps are and what the opportunity is in the market.

If you wanna know how you value a property, just google that, “How do I value an apartment building” and they’re gonna tell you “NOI divided by the cap rate”, but there’s a lot more to it than that, and some of the things I mentioned are factors.

As far as cash-on-cash returns go, we always look for a limited partner return. We have the general partnership and limited partnership. Limited partnership – investors, general partnerships – myself, Frank, Ashcroft etc. We want to target at least a 16% internal rate of return. You asked cash-on-cash return, but I’m giving you internal rate of return, because that’s what we look at.

If we have at least 16% internal rate of return over five years, then that initially qualifies for what we’re looking for.

Theo Hicks: Vacancy rates?

Joe Fairless: Oh, vacancy rates – we buy stabilized, cash-flowing properties, so we want a vacancy rate at no more than 10%.

Theo Hicks: Second question – what kind of neighborhoods do you target and why?

Joe Fairless: Blue collar primarily, and the reason why is because that tends to be class B properties, and class B properties tend to be the ones that we buy most. The reason why is because they have the most value-add components to them. We’ve talked about market many times – job diversity, job growth, population growth and looking at supply and demand, so…

Theo Hicks: Can you send me your money raising spreadsheet and property analysis spreadsheet?

Joe Fairless: Money raising spreadsheet – Best Ever listeners, everyone has access to it; you just e-mail info@JoeFairless.com and Samantha will send you the money raising spreadsheet. That money raising spreadsheet is a spreadsheet where you can literally track your investors and it has different sections and there’s a whole methodology for how to do it. So info@joefairless.com

Property analysis spreadsheet – I don’t think we have that. You might be referring to the single-family home analysis that I created whenever I first got started, so it’s rough, but it was useful. I have homes that I still own and I use with that, very conservative… Basically, I wanted the property to cashflow at least $100/month, I wanted at least $10,000 equity in it, and I wanted to spend less than $1,000 to get it move-in ready.

I don’t know if I necessarily have that $1,000 criteria anymore, because I know now that you get more value when there’s more work to be done with the property. But if you want that too, just ask for the single-family home analyzer and you can get that. And you ask for it by e-mailing info@JoeFairless.com.

Theo Hicks: Would you use Reg D SEC rules for deals under one million dollars?

Joe Fairless: I believe you’re referring to if I would register a deal as a security if it was for under a million? First off, talk to a securities attorney; not me, not Theo. But my thought is if it’s a security, you obviously have to register it. No ifs, ands or buts. It doesn’t matter the dollar amount. Now, an attorney might give you a better approach for how to structure it so that you don’t have to go through the process. For example, he/she might recommend doing a joint venture versus creating a security by having investors invest in your deal and expect to make money based on your expertise and be passive. But talk to a securities attorney about that.

My overall thought is if it’s a security, then yes, it needs to be registered.

Theo Hicks: Are you interested in investing in the foreign market or know someone who is?

Joe Fairless: Not right now, no. The reason why I’m not interested in foreign markets is because I’m focused right now on Dallas-Fort Worth; if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. We’re doing really well in DFW, so that’s our focus.

I get tons of deals regularly from all over because of this podcast; we do look at them, but we’ve disqualified all of them for various reasons. We are focused on DFW. Do I know someone who is? I’m sure a lot of people are. One thing I recommend doing is joining our Facebook community – Best Ever Show Community (search on Facebook). 1) It’s a fun community. The reason why it’s fun is we’re posting hypothetical situations – get a million dollars a year working 50+ hours, or how about 500k and work 10-20 hours? Something like that.
In addition, a bunch of other exclusive stuff. So Best Ever Show Community. Go on there, introduce yourself and say “I’m looking to buy in Florida. Anyone else wanna buy in Florida?” and maybe you connect with someone.

Theo Hicks: The next question was “Would you buy a newly-built apartment community?”

Joe Fairless: Sure, I’d be open to it, but we’re value-add investors, so there needs to be value-add components to that newly-built community, which most likely there will not be, unless the developer has newly built it, but not leased it  up all the way, and the value-add is that they’re pricing it based on it not being fully leased, and then we can take it over and fully lease it up. Unlikely scenario, unless the developer is in trouble. Otherwise, the newest property we bought is in the early 2000s.

Theo Hicks: David’s last question is “Would you mind being my sponsor for my first deal? I’m a licensed real estate agent and I’ve done wholesaling. I know a lot about analyzing properties, as I’ve been trained in commercial real estate, but I don’t know it all.”

Joe Fairless: I don’t know it all either, my friend… [laughter] That’s why I do this show, and that’s probably why you’re listening. I won’t be your sponsor for your first deal; I get this question frequently and so much so I have an FAQ section on my website when you go to Contact Joe. There’s an FAQ section and it’s one question, and this is the question, because it gets asked so regularly.

I appreciate you asking, but no, I can’t do it because I’d be pulled in perhaps literally one hundred different directions over the course of six months. What I recommend doing is going to the Best Ever Show community, talk about what you’ve got going on. Additionally, I do partner with my clients, my private consulting program. You can go look that up at my website, the “Work With Joe” section. Other than that, those would be my two approaches for you for trying to get a sponsor or a deal done.

Theo Hicks: So that wraps up David’s questions. We have other questions submitted by John. The first one is “I understand your company finds and funds, but how are you making money without putting any ton of your own money?”

Joe Fairless: Well, I’ll answer this question directly – we put in at least $100,000 of our own money on every deal, number one. So we’re investing alongside our investors; our money is treated the same way investor money is treated on the deal, so that’s one thing. I consider that a lot of money.

However, relatively speaking, when we’re bringing equity checks of nine million dollars, seven million dollars regularly, 100k relative to that amount is a smaller percentage, so how do we make money? One is just by investing alongside investors. Two is acquisition fee and asset management fee, and then our ownership in the deal. The acquisition fee is typically 2% of the purchase price. For example, if it’s a ten million dollar property, that would be 200k at closing.

Second, as I mentioned, the asset management fee, which is typically 2% of the collected income that’s paid out every month, and then three would be just our ownership in the deal. We tend to do 70/30 deals with an 8% preferred return to investors… So investors receive the first 8% based on what they invested in, and then anything above that would be split 70/30 – 70% to limited partners, 30% to us as general partners.

Theo Hicks: And could you use that acquisition fee to be the equity in your deal? Is that possible?

Joe Fairless: Yeah.

Theo Hicks: For the same deal or for the next deal?

Joe Fairless: Either one.

Theo Hicks: John’s second question – I really like his question. He asks “What was the balance between your full-time and your real estate when you started out and how did that progress into today?” I’d kind of look at this as a work life/investing balance when you were in your corporate job, having to do real estate and having accumulated enough properties or having enough things to do in order to quit your job in order to do it full-time? You have point where you are working full-time at your job, full-time investing, and you have a life – how did you handle that?

Joe Fairless: Well, I sampled life experiences, as I like to call it, when I had my full-time job. I had a class I was teaching in New York City on how to invest in out of state and cash-flowing markets, because I was doing the same thing – I was buying in Dallas at the time, so I was teaching others because I had so many people ask me “You’re a real estate investor. I know you work in advertising, because you work at the same company I work at. How are you able to do this?”, so I created this class.

I’m gonna talk about all I was doing, and then I’ll talk about how I balanced it, which really wasn’t balance, it was just doing it all.

One, I had my full-time job at the advertising agency, which was about 50-55 hours a week on average. Two was that I was teaching that class; I taught it probably once every couple weeks, and that was in the evening. Three, I did stand-up comedy for two shows. One of them I’ve mentioned before is ShutDown. The venue has actually shut down… [laughter]

Theo Hicks: [unintelligible [00:29:14].28]

Joe Fairless: All the above. And the reason why – it wasn’t because I wanted to be a comedian, it was because I wanted to get better at public speaking, and they said improv is good, but if you wanna be really good at public speaking, do stand-up comedy because the audience has higher expectations for comedians versus improv actors.

What else I did…? I also was babysitting or nannying on the side. I did that on every Sunday for a family. The child had special needs, and I did that. I’d take him to Central Park from [2:30] to [5:30] every Sunday for a year or two. In order to make money on the side I’d work at a day care in college, so it was kind of a natural transition.

I did some other things – I can’t remember all of them right now. So how did I balance my full-time job with real estate? I just prioritized it. It’s not about balancing, it’s about “Is this a priority for you?” If it is, then life tends to move out of the way and your priorities come to the surface. It’s tough to balance things. Balancing is hard in general, right? Just try and balance something on your nose – it’s tough, right? But if you make it a priority to do something, then you do it, and that’s my suggestion for anyone who’s thinking about “How do I balance stuff?” Just write down on a piece of paper 1 to 5 what are your priorities, and then do your life based on those priorities: family, spiritual, health, business or whatever it is. Then based on that, live your life that way, and then perhaps within business do a subcategory… Because I imagine (I would think) health should be at the top. Not at the very top, but depending on your priorities – maybe spiritual, maybe health, whatever.

My point is I don’t think business is number one. Perhaps it’s down the ladder a little bit. Well, within business, do subcategories. “Okay, within business what’s the most important? Is it my full-time job? Is it getting promoted at my full-time job? If so, then I’m gonna put my extra focus here. Is it getting out of my full-time job? Okay, then I’m going to put identifying ways to get out of my full-time job at the top, and then my full-time job.” Then you just live your life based on your priority. That’s what I’ve done.

A lot of people asked me questions that are similar to this, and all roads lead back to “Hey, there’s a way to do it. Other people have done it before you.” We’re not recreating the wheel in any form or fashion; that’s why you’ve got over 1,000 interviews to listen to experts who I’ve interviewed, and it’s just a matter of “How much of a priority is it for you?”

Theo Hicks: That’s really good advice. One thing to add to that… If you’re like me – I’m the kind of person that I’ve… Let’s see how I put this [unintelligible [00:32:10].04] if I don’t have things written down, I’ll just forget about it, so something that could help adding on to your priority list is once you make your priorities, make sure that — if you’ve got your number one being spiritual, number two being health, number three being business, then make sure that you’re spending the correct amount of time on each of those. If those are your top three but you’re spending an hour a week on all three of those, then something’s going on.

What I do is I have note cards that I write down everything that I need to do on. Whenever something comes up, I write it down. Then you kind of cross it off when you do it, which feels good. Something else that I’m testing out starting this week is I’m going to actually take my calendar and instead of just having a meeting here, and a call here, I’m literally gonna calendar everything. So from this time I’m gonna be working on this, or I’m writing; this time I’m gonna be doing Follow Along Friday, or planning a Follow Along Friday, or whatever it is you’re doing.

You can probably take these dates off your priority list and be like “Alright, my number one priority is quit my job, so I’m gonna spend three hours a night just brainstorming ideas to quit my job” or actually figure out how you’re gonna quit your job, and you’re gonna be focusing on that.

For me, if I don’t write it down or if I don’t have it somewhere, if I don’t have an external source to be like my mentor or my guide, I won’t do it.

Personality types are different. For some people, they can just keep it all in their head and just do it. Some people need to write all of it down. I’m more towards the latter end of the spectrum. I don’t think I’m all the way there, but I use the Calendar app, I write things down, and at the end of the day or end of the week I go back and I’m like “Alright, how much time did I spend on each of my different priorities?” If you didn’t spend enough time on those, then make sure the next week… I’m talking like every Monday morning just kind of schedule out your week, schedule out your priorities, and then go from there.

I guess one piece of advice — who I got this from said “Don’t be a slave to it. It’s just kind of a guide.” Don’t be so intense with it that if you skip it, you get so angry at yourself… It’s just a guide, and it’s supposed to be an improvement from where you are right now, not perfection.

Joe Fairless: I love the one level extra… To summarize, there is no balance, it’s what you prioritize in your life. Identify if you need to have a tracking system in order to do that. I schedule out my days in my calendar as well, from “This is when I’m going to exercise, to that meeting, to weekly calls with people.” Absolutely.

Theo Hicks: Cool. Those are all the questions we have. I really liked that last question. Some last miscellaneous things – are we gonna mention the conference one more time?

Joe Fairless: Sure – Best Ever Conference. We have early bird tickets on sale for another month or so. Actually, up to Halloween, I believe. But that is while supplies last. We do have a limited amount of them. BestEverConference.com. It’s in February.

Theo Hicks: Awesome. And then finally, to wrap up, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and leave a review for the opportunity to be the review of the week. This week we’ve got Jotham B., who says:
“Joe’s podcast has been extremely helpful for my wife and I. We have listened to somewhere in the range of 150-200 episodes, always learning something new. It is amazing that he finds time to run it daily. It also has no fluff, as advertised. It really does a great job of bringing in informative and diverse guests who bring value quickly. I like that it’s under 30 minutes.

My wife and I just started investing in a small multifamily. We found an off market deal in Massachusetts just this week, for sale by owner. (Congrats) This podcast helped that happen. We hope to build our portfolio up and eventually leverage that to get into commercial properties in the 10-50 unit range or larger, if possible. We plan to keep listening.”

Joe Fairless: Bravo! Nice work on that off market deal. Once you get that closed, then reach out to info@JoeFairless.com and we’ll bring you on as an interview guest to hear about that deal and how you got it. And thanks for listening, Jotham.

Theo Hicks: Anything else?

Joe Fairless: All good. How can the Best Ever listeners get in touch with you?

Theo Hicks: They can follow me on Facebook for now, Theo Hicks. [unintelligible [00:36:25].00] doing a podcast, The Unplugged Podcast, and I was doing YouTube videos. I might start doing that again. If you wanna check that out, I’ve got some older videos you can look at on YouTube, The Unplugged Podcast. If you wanna subscribe, keep a lookout for a couple of videos in the next couple of weeks.

Joe Fairless: Sounds good. Best Ever listeners, thanks for listening, as always, and we’ll talk to you soon.



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