August 24, 2018

JF1452: Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book: Part 1 ? The Experience #FollowAlongFriday with Joe and Theo


Today’s Follow Along Friday is based on the new book Joe and Theo wrote, Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book.  The book is broken down into four parts, today they discuss part one, the experience. Hear what you can do to gain experience or find someone who has the experience to partner with for your first apartment syndication. 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 of that fluffy stuff.

We’ve got some information that I think is gonna be pretty helpful for you if you are looking to raise money and buy apartment communities, or even separate those two – if you’re looking to raise money and do something else real estate-related… Or you’re just looking to buy apartment communities with your own money, this is gonna be relevant. We’re gonna be talking about what you need prior to raising the money. This is inspired by the book that Theo and I wrote, and is being published September 10th, but it is available right now for pre-order. You can go to ApartmentSyndicationBook.com, and when you pre-order the book, you will receive a free eBook from Gene Trowbridge. His book is called “It’s a Whole New Business: The How-To Book of Syndicated Investment Real Estate.” That’s the eBook that you’ll get when you pre-order our book, and you’ll also get some other goodies, too. Seth Williams is providing an eBook, and you’ll get some different calculators and things that we use in our business. So go to ApartmentSyndicationBook.com.

The book is in four parts, that’s how we’ve structured it. Part one is the experience, so what do you need to know and put in place prior to raising money. Part two is finding the money or attracting the money. Three is the deal, and four is the execution. So today we’re gonna be talking about the experience.

Certainly, in the short period of time that we have, we won’t be able to go through everything that’s in the book, but we’ll touch on some important aspects, and it’s not to promote the book — well, it kind of is to promote the book, but the objective of our conversation right now is to provide you with actionable information, so regardless of if you buy the book, this conversation will still be helpful for you… So what’s the best way to approach this, Theo?

Theo Hicks: As Joe has mentioned, the book is broken into four different parts, and the idea is to show you not only what to do, but how to actually do it, as well. So there’s exercises that you’ll actually do throughout the book that will add value and will bring you one step closer to actually doing a deal… But each of the four parts are kind of broken into subparts, and they’re in order of  essentially how you go from where you are right now, to by the end doing your first deal.

In regards to the experience, that’s actually broken into four parts. It’s broken into knowledge, goals, brand building, and then market evaluation. I think the best way to approach the conversation is to kind of go through those four, the first one being knowledge. A good place to start and one of the things that we do talk about are what are the requirements you need before you even start this process? Because unfortunately, not just anyone could just automatically start up the process of learning, and then once they know what they’re doing, raise money. There’s a couple of other requirements that you’ll need beforehand… So I think that will be a good starting point.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, I agree, because we’ll see books that say “You can do deals and partner with other people without any experience and without any money, and it is possible to do that”, but there’s a caveat, and that is you’ll need knowledge. If you don’t have experience and you don’t have money, you need knowledge in order to make sure 1) that you’re structuring the deal for yourself properly, but most importantly, you’re structuring the deal with others properly.

So the two requirements to become an apartment syndicator — it’s actually an and/or… That is either real estate experience and/or business experience. I should say that it’s more than just experience with business. It should be a track record of accomplishments, because if you’re just starting out, then maybe you don’t have that real estate experience… But if you are a successful salesperson in an organization, who has been promoted 3-4 times within 3, 4, 5, 6 years, then that says something about how you’re savvy in business and how you know how to hone a craft… And that’s a requirement for what we do, and that’s a requirement for being successful in any business.

So look at your experience and give yourself an honest assessment of “Have you excelled within your current professional career?” and if so, what does that look like? What milestones have you achieved that perhaps are not typical for others in your industry who have been in that industry for that same period of time? And if you haven’t, and you also don’t have any real estate experience, it’s my opinion that apartment syndication is not for you at this moment. However, if you can start learning the process, learning the fundamentals, learning the lingo, and then get experience by interning for someone, and then build your track record that way while offering to do things for free for others, then you’ll be able to build a track record and ultimately you’ll check the box for what you need prior to becoming an apartment syndicator, and that is some sort of real estate background and/or a professional business background where you have accomplished things that are not typical for others in your professional industry.

Theo Hicks: And something else that’s important… At the end of the book, this assessment that Joe’s talking about — we actually walk you through an assessment where you analyze your real estate and business background and give yourself a rating, and then based off of where you fall on that scale, we kind of give you some advice on how to move forward. Obviously, if you have a very strong rating, then you can move forward; if not, as Joe mentioned, you’ll need to actually work on gaining experience in real estate or business. It doesn’t have to be something in apartments, or you don’t have to be a CEO of a company; the idea is you need to have some sort of background that when you’re going to people and asking them for money, they are gonna ask you “Why would I give you money? What’s your background?” and you have to be able to tell them something.

And part two, the money – another part of that, because your private investors are gonna be kind of on your team. Once you analyze and figure out what your background is and what your strengths are, you’ll wanna kind of complement those with other team members. That’s gonna be what we talk about in part two, building your core real estate team… But just as an example, if you have a really strong business background, you’ve got a lot of business contacts of high net worth individuals, that’s really good because you’ll have that money aspect covered, but… They don’t really know how to asset manage or how to operate a deal or how to underwrite a deal, so if that’s the case, then you can complement that by finding a really strong property management company, which you wanna do regardless… Maybe bring on a partner or a sponsor. And of course, vice-versa, if you have a really strong real estate background, you might not necessarily have a lot of relationships with people that have high net worths, or people in the business world that would invest with you passively… So from that standpoint, you might need to bring on a partner who raises money, and you just do all the operations.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, and everyone’s got some assets that they’re working with, and I talk about that at the beginning of the book, and I talk about it in a way that perhaps you might not have thought of before in terms of the assets that we all have… And as an exercise or preparing to launch a book and put any finishing touches on this book, I was up last night — one, I could really sleep, but then two, I was just reading reviews of other people’s books in the real estate category, and I was reading the negative reviews. A lot of the negative reviews on other people’s books – they could be grouped in certain ways, and one of the groupings was “Yeah, this works for so-and-so person, but my market’s different”, or “This person invested at the right time in 2008, but now deals are hard to come by.”

There’s always gonna be an advantage for when you jump in and do this, and there’s always gonna be disadvantages. There’s always gonna be advantages for what you can bring to the table initially, and there’s also gonna be areas that you’ve gotta shore up. And the sad thing about reviews like that, where people say “Hey, they started at the right time in 2008, or 2009, or their market is better than mine” is that the reviewer doesn’t realize that they do have assets, they’re just different assets from perhaps the author, or other investors.

For example, we all live in either a deal market, or a money market. We all live in a market that either has deals, or we live in a market that has a bunch of rich people… And it’s important to recognize if you’re in a deal market or a money market, and then approach accordingly, because you can leverage that. If you’re in a deal market, then great – you build a platform, which we talk about in the Experience section, where you attract investors… And if you live in a money market, then great, you leverage those connections that you have and you go partner up, or you go do some research and you find a market that makes sense that cash-flows.

So there’s always gonna be some challenges, but there’s also always a solution. That’s a core belief I’ve always had – there’s always a solution. We might not like the solution, but there’s always a way to work things out. I whole-heartedly believe that, and I really am proud of my resourcefulness because of that belief, and my resourcefulness comes because I believe that.

And then one thing that you mentioned, Theo, I just wanna touch on… You said find investors and ask them for money, and I just want to tweak that a little bit, and I wanna say we wanna attract investors, and we wanna offer them opportunities. I never ever, even at the beginning, have asked people for money, ever; instead — actually, I take that back. On my first deal I didn’t have the $50,000 for the earnest money, so I did ask one of the investors to put it up first, and then I wrote him a personal guarantee. But besides that, in terms of the opportunities and the deals, we have an opportunity where we offer it to other people; we don’t ask them for money. I’m not harping on you, I’m just making note of this thought process, because this is an important thought process… And it’s really for section two, but we were talking about it now, so I figured I’d bring it up.

We attract investors, we attract other team members… And in the book, we talk about how do you become attractive in order to attract those attractive partners? Because ultimately, in order to attract attractive partners, we have to be attractive, too. And when we think about raising money and our different opportunities, if an investor who reaches out through my website and he/she asks me on an introductory call “Okay, tell me why I should invest with you”, I take a step back and I say “Have you seen information on Ashcroft Capital that I sent you prior to our conversation?” Then they’d say “Yes”, and I’d say “Well, do you have any specific questions about that?” because ultimately, that would be the best approach for our conversation, versus me trying to talk about things that I’m not sure that you have or haven’t already looked at…

Theo Hicks: Exactly.

Joe Fairless: And I never will force-feed investors or anyone information about our company, but rather I will attract them into the business, and then as a result of that, the conversation is so much smoother, and that is the importance of having a thought leadership platform. This happens rarely, but yesterday I had three investor calls, and one of the three — this is the part that happens rarely, three new investor calls; they all sent submissions to the website… I have a couple at least a day.

One of them, he said “Are you affiliated with Ashferd?” I’m like “Ashferd…?” I said, “Ashcroft?” He’s like “Yeah. I came across your info I think on the internet, or something…” So he wasn’t familiar with me, didn’t know my background… And that conversation was much longer than what’s typical — which is fine; I’m just commenting on the differences between an investor who doesn’t have knowledge about your thought leadership platform and who you are, versus an investor who does, who maybe listens to this podcast or attends our conference in Denver, or any number of things; reads books, or listened to other people’s podcast and just heard me interviewed. That conversation is so much smoother, because I’ve already established some sort of track record and credibility with them prior to the conversation… And building the brand is part of part one in our book, and there are ways you can do that outside of just having a podcast, but having that conversation with someone and they already know a little bit about you is so much smoother, especially in our business… Because we’re in the business of capital preservation, and then hopefully we grow it, which we’re in real state, and if you do the  fundamentals of real estate, then you probably will.

Theo Hicks: Yes, that’s a lot of good information. From the small number of conversations I’ve had with potential investors, I could agree with exactly what you’re saying. I know we’re gonna talk about this a lot more in part two, but most of the time, it’s something that they kind of bring up, and they’re really passionate and excited about… Like, “Wait, I can do that…?” They don’t even realize that it’s something that’s possible for them to do; they just think that they can invest in stocks, or their 401k, and that’s it.

So you mentioned the brand building, and that’s another part of part one… In reality, you can start building your brand right away. If you don’t have that experience we’ve talked about earlier, this could be one of the ways that you could work towards gaining that experience and credibility. The brand allows you to meet potential team members, or as Joe said, attract potential team members, and the amount of opportunities that would come from that are really countless, and some of them you wouldn’t even think about.

We have a large section in the book talking about exactly how you go about building your brand, and as Joe mentioned, it’s not just creating a podcast… It could be a YouTube channel, a meetup group, a newsletter, conferences… You can kind of go through all of it.

Something else that’s important for this foundation before you go into raising money is, number one, you have to understand how you actually make money, so that you can set a goal. One of the things that we talk about is the importance of focusing on the cash-on-cash return and the internal rate of return for apartment syndications.

If you haven’t invested in apartments before, you might not know what the internal rate of return is. Basically, it’s a return that’s based off of time. Of course, a dollar today is gonna be worth more than a dollar five years from now, and the internal rate of return takes time into account when it’s calculating the returns… So that’s what your investors are gonna be looking at, or what your investors will likely look at when they’re analyzing your deals, so you’re gonna let them know how that number is calculated and what it means.

You also wanna know about the cash-on-cash return, because that’s another thing your investors are gonna look at… But also for yourself, because at the end of the day you’re doing this to likely reach some sort of goal, and a part of that goal is gonna be a financial goal. So once you understand how you make money, which we go over in the book, something that you wanna do is set a 12-month or 24-month or a 5-year goal, that’s gonna be a specific number. And instead of just saying “I wanna make a million dollars this year”, and stopping there, we go through a process of figuring out exactly what you need to do to hit that goal, and the fact that we use is the amount of money that you need to raise.

So once you understand how the returns work and how you make money, you can kind of back-track and calculate exactly how much money you need to raise in order to hit your goal. That will help you lead into part two, when you start reaching out for commitments, and you’ll know how many commitments you need to have before you start actually looking for deals.

Joe Fairless: The mistake a lot of people make who are starting in the apartment syndication business is they say “I wanna make X amount passively a month.” You’re not making anything passively a month, because you’re the general partner; however, the ways you can make ongoing cashflow as an active investor in a business would be investing as a limited partner in your deals, number one. Your money is treated the same as all your other investor’s money. Two is asset management fees. However, as you grow your company, those fees will likely need to be allocated towards you building out your staff and your team to support the amount of properties that you have.

I guess the cashflow from the general partnership, too. The reason why I didn’t mention that is because we tend to keep our returns, the GP returns, from a cashflow standpoint, in a bank account, just to be conservative, and then when we do some sort of capital event – a supplemental, or a refinance, or when we exit – then we would catch up… But we like to just provide the limited partners their returns, and usually we’ll keep our cashflow from the GP split in the deal, just to be a little bit more conservative.

So because of that, the way to look at it is looking at the acquisition fee, and then reverse-engineering from there. That’s how we arrive at the number. And I suggest doing a 12-month goal over the 24-month, and holding yourself accountable to the 12-month… And then also having a vision for five to ten years later. But that’s gonna change. Assuming that you have a solid, quantifiable 12-month goal, once you get that first deal or a couple deals done to achieve that 12-month goal, things are gonna snowball, and it’s likely that that 5-year goal or the 10-year goal will need to be updated, because you’re getting a lot farther, faster than you thought you would.

Theo Hicks: Exactly. Something else – and if you’re a loyal Best Ever listeners of course you know this, but you wanna have your specific, quantifiable 12-month goal, as Joe mentioned; that’s like kind of your number, but you also wanna at least have an idea of kind of why you want to achieve that goal.

We have in the book an exercise that will walk you through how to create a long-term vision. We ask you questions about what gets you excited about real estate, how will you benefit by achieving this goal…? So kind of the positives. At the same time, we’re also driven by things that we’re afraid of, that disgust us; we also go into questions about “What happens if you don’t achieve this goal? What’s your life gonna be like?” or “How would you feel if you didn’t achieve this goal?” or “How do you currently feel about not achieving this goal and what are some consequences you faced?”

Essentially, we’re creating a vision that we can go towards, but at the same time something that we’re also running away from, and something that we don’t wanna [unintelligible [00:20:50].06] So you’ve got those two things working for you, in a combination with your actual monetary goal, and combined, that will give you the inspiration to push through when things get tough.

Joe Fairless: When I became an entrepreneur, a full-time real estate investor, I put a document together with my goals, and I was working with Tony Robbins’ coach Trevor McGregor, who I still work with today, and I wrote down what will happen when I achieve my goals – I think it was to buy an apartment community; I think that was my goal – and I said “I’ll be able to have some more financial flexibility, and I’ll be able to finally launch a business that is mine, and I won’t be relying on an employer to send me a paycheck every two weeks”, but then I also put what will happen if I don’t achieve my goal… And I wrote “I will be thoroughly embarrassed, because I’ll have to go back to my job, tail between my legs, work back in an industry (advertising) that I didn’t like anymore. I’ll be humiliated, because I told everyone, including family and friends, that I’m gone, I’m not doing this anymore and I’m now focused on real estate.” And both the pain and the pleasure of associating that to your goals is incredibly important, and I still do that today… So here’s what I want to achieve and here’s what I’ll receive and others will receive as a result of me achieving it. Here’s how their life will be better, here’s the ripple effect…

But then here are the negative consequences to not achieving it. And it’s great, because when you do goal-setting, you’re usually incredibly inspired, and rah-rah, and high fives to everyone, “I’m gonna conquer this world”, but then four, five, six months later, twelve months later or whenever, you go through a lull, and it’s important to be able to pick that up and be inspired, but perhaps you also need to be disgusted by what would happen if you don’t achieve it. We need to have both those forces working in tandem to inspire us and keep us going.

Theo Hicks: Yes, and something that’s interesting in what you said there is when you were talking about when you left your job, that one of the things that would have disgusted you is the feeling of embarrassment of having to go back… Now, what I’m going to say is not advising people to just quit their jobs right now, with no plan whatsoever, but I think there is something to the concept of burning bridges… Because if you have your full-time job while you’re trying to be a real estate investor, you might be more timid, and be like “Well, I could pursue this really hard, but I still have this paycheck coming in”, so you might not pursue it as hard… But if you don’t have a job, and the only way you’re gonna make money and put food on the table is by doing a deal, or by getting your act together and working 40-60 hours/week – I think there’s something behind that.

For me personally, when I left my full-time job, I had a plan, and of course, I had done things in the years leading up to kind of prepare myself for it, but there’s never gonna be the perfect time to leave; you kind of just have to have faith and just do it, and then trust that you have the ability to be resourceful enough to get the job done… But again, it’s important to do the assessment we talked about earlier, and make sure that you actually can, and be realistic with yourself… Kind of look in your past and be like, “Alright, so when I left something before, without a full picture, was I able to be resourceful enough to figure it out?” Because at the end of the day, you’re gonna have your plan to quit your job and to do real estate full-time, and think you know exactly what’s gonna happen 100%, but this is not how it’s gonna work out…

So again, as long as you have some sort of idea, and you’ve done an assessment and truly believe and truly know that you are resourceful enough to figure it out, and you’ve got multiple backup plans in place, then my personal philosophy is just go for it, if I’m being honest… With all those caveats, of course.

Joe Fairless: Yeah, and that’s a whole other conversation… But yeah, there’s different approaches there. You put your back against the wall, fight or flight; some people fight and they work through it, and some people fly away and bad things happen to their family and their business, and all that… So pros and cons, and that’s a whole other conversation.

Theo Hicks: Yeah. So the last part before you start to go out and raise money is to figure out where you’re actually going to invest. As Joe mentioned earlier, you’re either in a deal market or a money market. If you’re in a deal market, then that market that you live in could be your target investment market. But if it’s not, you need to know that before you start going out and raising money and looking for deals. So the last part before you actually go out and start raising money and looking for deals is to figure out what market you’re gonna target.

Another section we have in the book focuses on what to look for in a market and exactly how we evaluate potential investment markets. Then something else that Joe mentioned in the beginning was how one of the objections that he came across when looking at reviews was people saying “Oh, well this person started after 2008. The market that he was in was great. Right now the market is not as great, so I can’t find good deals”, or things like that… So we also go over the three immutable laws of real estate investing, which if you’re a Best Ever listener, you’ve heard us talk about that before. Essentially, those are the laws that apply to any market. If you follow those laws, you’ll be able to not only survive, but potentially even thrive, and in any type of real estate market, whether it’s at is peak or at its low.

Joe Fairless: And just for clarification, because you mentioned market to identify the city, but then you said market to identify the real estate cycle… So those are two separate things that we go over. One is identify the city that you’re investing in, and then separately (but related) is the real estate cycle that you’re in. If you’ve listened to this podcast, you’ve heard me interview economists before, and one of them – I asked her after she talked about what we should do (buy, sell etc.), I said “Well, what if we just buy for cashflow, have long-term debt, and have adequate cash reserves?” She’s like, “Well, yeah, then you can hold on to it. Don’t sell. You’re set up well.” So doing those three things is what we talk about, regardless of the real estate cycle.

Certainly, you’re gonna buy more during the down, and you will sell more during the high, but you can continue to buy during all parts of the real estate cycle, as long as you buy for cashflow, have long-term debt, and have adequate cash reserves.

Theo Hicks: Exactly. So just to review, we talked about part one of the four-part process/system for completing your first apartment syndication deal. Within part one there’s four subsections, and the first one is the knowledge – so we talked about the experience you need before you even start this process. Then once you have that experience, you’re gonna wanna learn more about apartment syndications; that’s understanding the lingo so you can communicate, as well as what you’re supposed to focus on.

Once you have the knowledge aspect covered, the next two parts are to set your goals, so that’s setting your 12-month financial goal, but also a long-term vision, which is something that is going to inspire you, but also something to run away from, something disgusts you at the same time, so you have both those forces working for you… As well as building your brand, and we’ve talked about how the purpose of the brand is to attract these team members, attract passive capital, and also to build up your credibility, because that’s gonna be very helpful when you’re having these conversations, if people know who you are versus not knowing who you are.

And then finally, before you start going out to raise actual capital, you wanna figure out what real estate market or what city you’re going to invest it, or what one or two cities you’re going to invest in, and also make sure that you are aware of the three immutable laws of real estate investing that Joe mentioned, which is buy for cashflow, long-term debt, and have adequate cash reserves, so that you’re able to survive and likely thrive in any part of the real estate cycle.

Joe Fairless: Awesome. Cool. And go to ApartmentSyndicationBook.com to pre-order, and you can get a bunch of free goodies, too.

Theo Hicks: So on that topic – I know something you wanted to talk about was a couple e-mails that you’ve received…

Joe Fairless: You know what, I’m gonna have a separate episode on that.

Theo Hicks: Perfect. Something else that you wanted to talk about was your single-family portfolio that you have…

Joe Fairless: Yes, I had an epiphany last night while I was up late, looking at online reviews for other people’s books to make sure we had everything covered for ours, and I realized that my three homes are worth about 170k each, and $222,000 is what I bought them for, and they’re worth, I believe, about $510,000 now. Those are the three homes.

I have $161,000 in debt on those loans – total mortgage balance for those three. So $510,000 value, $161,000 in mortgages, so that’s in equity about $349,000. Guess how much I’m making a month on these three homes?

Theo Hicks: $400.

Joe Fairless: Like, nothing. Zero. A tree just fell down and hit the tenant’s car… So I don’t even know what we’re gonna do with the insurance; I have to talk to the insurance company about that, and also to the property management company… But in terms of the tree, it was $870 to get removed. There goes all the profits for all three homes, because it’s about $250/month that I make, but that’s on a best-case month.

So I’m looking at this and I’m like “I have about 350k worth of equity in these homes and I’m making nothing every month…” I know they have sentimental value, but holy cow… I started looking at if I were to sell, and let’s just say after the dust settles I get like 250k, factoring in taxes and other stuff; this is a really, really rough math. Fees, commissions, all that. 250k, at 8%, which when I invested in our deals, which is what I would do, I would just put more into our deals, at 8%, because we do an 8% preferred return, that’s $20,000/year, divided by 12, that’s $1,666. I’d change that number just so it doesn’t have three sixes in it, so I’d figure something out… But that’s $1,600/month, and 20k a year that I could be making if I were to invest in one of my own deals this money.

Now, I already invest in our deals, but I’ve got these three homes, so I’m considering it… I haven’t decided yet. My sister is a real estate agent in Dallas, Fort Worth, so I’ve got a call with her tomorrow and we’re gonna talk about it. I might sell individually, I might sell as a portfolio… They’d cash-flow for another investor if everything goes perfectly, but I’m not a fan of single-family homes. I haven’t bought any since 2012 or 2011.

I also see this as my largest vulnerability for being sued… Because I have these residents who live there, and if I get sued — I’m covered with insurance and I’m fine with that, but I just wanna remove that variable of vulnerability from a legal standpoint, too. I get that I could put the properties in an LLC and there might be a due on sale clause that’s triggered, so… I’ve just gotta kind of work through that, but I think I might be doing something with these three homes.

Theo Hicks: Yeah, because if you have $250,000 in equity you could buy —

Joe Fairless: 349k, but then with just rough math, I’m knocking out a hundred for taxes and such…

Theo Hicks: So technically, you could also buy a 1.2 million dollar apartment…

Joe Fairless: I’m not gonna do that… I’m not gonna do that at all; no, no, no… Yeah, I could 1031 into something else and just grow from there, but I have no desire, zero, negative desire to do that. I would be investing in our deals, otherwise I would go insane with having to buy that type of property, that small of a property, on the side, while we’re doing the Ashcroft stuff.

Theo Hicks: Well, I’m looking forward to hearing what you end up doing with those properties. I know you’ve had them for a while, and as you’ve mentioned, they probably have sentimental value, but… If you’re not getting any return on them, it’s understandable that you’re gonna pull that equity out and get that 8% pref… It’s 8%. I mean, that’s a solid return.

Joe Fairless: Pretty healthy, yeah. It’s better than what I’m getting now with my homes… Cool.

Theo Hicks: Alright, so I don’t have any updates, so let’s transition into closing. Everyone make sure you go to the Best Ever Community on Facebook; that’s BestEverCommunity.com. Join the conversation with — we’re up to over 1,500 active real estate members now. Each week we post a question of the week and write a blog post based off of your responses.

This week’s question is gonna be “What was your worst deal ever?” We wanna know what year that deal was in, and then tell us a story about why it was your worst deal.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve had a worst deal yet. They’ve all been — not the best deals ever, but…

Joe Fairless: Well, we’ve gotta get you one then. Hurry up and buy something.

Theo Hicks: Yeah, I’ve gotta buy a really crappy deal, so I can answer that question on Facebook… But yeah, just go on there and tell us a story about your worst deal, why it was your worst deal, and then also what you’ve done to mitigate the risk of that happening again in the future.

Joe Fairless: Cool.

Theo Hicks: And then lastly, please go to the podcast on iTunes and subscribe and leave a review for the opportunity to be the review of the week. Another great review this week from — most people don’t put their names… I’ll just say from B. I think it’s just a random amalgamation of letters… But they said that the podcast is the perfect commute soundtrack. Their review was “The Best Ever podcast has replaced the music and talk radio I used to listen to on my way to and from work. This has become my daily soundtrack. In addition to teaching me a trove of invaluable, profitable lessons, it’s also taught me what to look for in a real estate investment opportunity, especially what a bad deal might look like. There are lots of opportunities out there to invest in, but Joe and his guest will teach you what questions to ask, the common pitfalls and oversights that some syndicators fail to recognize, and how to minimize your risk. You’d be lucky to be able to get this kind of coaching by paying for it, but here it is for free.”

Joe Fairless: Well, and you talked about the bad deals, and that’s perfect for what the question of the week is at BestEverCommunity.com. Feel free to participate there and you’ll not only get to share your worst deal, but then also hear from others, and we’ll do a blog post on that to summarize all of that. That will be available at TheBestEverBlog.com.

Well, thank you so much for writing that review, and I’m glad you got a lot of value from our podcast. Everyone, thanks so much for hanging out with us. I hope this added a lot of value to your business, and ultimately your life. We will talk to you tomorrow!

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