00;00;00;00 - 00;00;15;24
Unknown
Your mind. Oddly enough, it does not want you to succeed. It wants you to survive. And that's something that we fight with as human beings. Like we're hardwired for survival, you know? So when you go from, I just bought a house and then all of the fear comes in and all of the doubt comes in, and the, oh my God, I can't do this.
00;00;15;24 - 00;00;33;14
Unknown
And having a community around you that you can look at and go, this guy came from the same place that I came from and he did it. And this is how he did it is invaluable.
00;00;33;16 - 00;00;57;12
Unknown
Welcome back to the Seventh Gear Flipping podcast. I have one of my favorite people in the world on the podcast with me today, Ted Shaw. I love Ted because he is full of energy, and he just brings, a ton of enthusiasm into our community, which I personally appreciate. So, Ted, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Hey.
00;00;57;12 - 00;01;17;29
Unknown
Okay, so we already had you guys on the show, but I, we had you and you and your partner team, you and staff. You guys run, company out of Indiana, flipping houses, buying rentals, things like that. If people want to hear the company's story, they can go back and listen to that episode. But I want to talk a little bit about your story just for a moment.
00;01;18;01 - 00;01;41;14
Unknown
And, you know, you went from, a troubled past to a great new marriage to a great company, to a lot of success in a very short amount of time. Can you just within, like, maybe five minutes, give us catch us up on all of that? Oh. Five minutes. All right, well, we'll do the super condensed version there.
00;01;41;17 - 00;02;00;25
Unknown
Yeah. So, I mean, I had, had some drug and alcohol problems early in my youth, and, I know you and me kind of had to share that part of our story. And, you know, went through the whole the whole rehab process and all that went through 12 steps. And, I, you know, I just gotten to a point where my life just didn't really have any meaning.
00;02;00;25 - 00;02;16;26
Unknown
I just didn't know what I wanted to do. And I ended up moving to Indiana. Starting up a grocery store. That girl starting work out. But I ended up meeting Steph out here, and, we fell in love. So they were going to move me back to Colorado. And I ended up saying, you know, look, we're good.
00;02;16;26 - 00;02;39;20
Unknown
I'm just going to stay in Indiana. Didn't have a job, didn't have, like, nothing. I mean, I literally just started over. I moved out here with, everything I own fit in a Toyota Corolla at 40 years old. You know, it's just like I'm just starting over, and, you know, we just kind of did the normal thing that you everyone tells you you're supposed to do.
00;02;39;20 - 00;03;04;22
Unknown
You know, you get a job and you have money in a 401 K, and you pay your bills and you go to sleep and you enjoy your weekend and that's it. And, in 2023, all the, all the kids are grown and we're just like you. I mean, we got to do something for for our retirement. And, this stuff had gotten into, you know, listening to a bunch of podcasts, things like that.
00;03;04;24 - 00;03;23;23
Unknown
And we were looking at real estate, and we just were kind of like, well, we'll see, see what this is. You know, it's kind of get some purpose and things like that going in our life. And we picked up this whole home on an acre and, you know, we did all of the work that everything wrong.
00;03;23;26 - 00;03;43;17
Unknown
And, it turned a huge profit on it. It was a six figure profit on that one. And we were like, hey, maybe we can, maybe it's a spot where we can start building wealth, which is scary, by the way. You know, because it goes against everything that you're taught, you know, like you, don't you, you know, you go to work, you put money in your 401 K, you can retire and it's fine.
00;03;43;17 - 00;04;05;12
Unknown
And and you start realizing that that's, it's a it's kind of the corporate lie. You know, it's really not what it says it is. And, so, you know, we started doing that made every mistake you can make and you can go back to that other podcast and listening to that, I mean, I think just like everybody does.
00;04;05;14 - 00;04;27;11
Unknown
And I remember when we found, you know, your community and, she'd been involved in one other mastermind and I didn't I had zero involvement in that. I'm like, yeah, those are not my people at all. And, it was just it was different, you know, because it was real. It wasn't flashy. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't,
00;04;27;13 - 00;04;40;28
Unknown
Oh, I'm traveling the world, and I own a yacht, and I have three Rolexes. That. It wasn't any of that, you know, it was. It was just real people that were doing the same thing that you were, you know, it was just like, you know, I can't find a guy to finish it, or I can. I've never done it.
00;04;40;28 - 00;05;02;01
Unknown
How could what YouTube channel you used to figure out, how do you figure out? Okay. And it just all the things that we were going through and, and then I ended up getting her to work, and that's when it really I started realizing, like, you know, I mean, I'm 52 years old. I my body is going to carry me through the rest of this.
00;05;02;01 - 00;05;22;00
Unknown
You know, I we we have to figure something else out. And even even if it did, it wasn't it's not going to be the life that we want, you know. And so, we just dove in with both feet like, it's it's kind of funny because, I mean, it's I think it's probably almost the day it's the 9th January that, it's out of Nashville.
00;05;22;00 - 00;05;37;16
Unknown
And so we were, we were in your, you know, your first event there in Nashville, and they're saying something about KPIs. And I'm looking over at the KPI key point indicator. Got it. When two key point indicator.
00;05;37;18 - 00;05;54;17
Unknown
So I mean I came into this like I didn't come from a corporate world. I mean, I came from a union job, you know, I mean, I've been a worker my whole life. So I mean, I think that that's something that's important is because I didn't know all of this. You know, I haven't spent my career in corporate meetings.
00;05;54;17 - 00;06;15;10
Unknown
I haven't spent my career in and stuff like that. So I didn't know what any of this was, you know, I mean, I knew how to swing a hammer. I could change an outlet. I knew how to do plumbing stuff like that. But, like, on the business end of it, I didn't know any of it. So it was a lot of learning and trying to do it really fast because we blew up, you know?
00;06;15;10 - 00;06;38;08
Unknown
I mean, we went from that first house and all of a sudden we're doing four houses, which is just insane and trying to track all of that and keep track of all of that. So, I don't know. It's just. Adam, I couldn't tell you the difference in my life. Like, if you two said 15 years ago, you know, hey, you're gonna have your own company.
00;06;38;08 - 00;07;01;14
Unknown
You're going to be owning multiple houses. You're going to, you know, be on this path to freedom. You're going to be, you know, running a business. You're going to be learning how to do book work. You're going to be, you know, knowing about taxes. You're going to be doing stuff like that. And I've been like, no, you know, there's no way, you know, so this has been an incredible journey and it's so much more than about wealth.
00;07;01;17 - 00;07;23;21
Unknown
Yeah. It's, Well, first off, you said, this is our community, Ted. Our community. I like to just, you know, this is not I. I don't I'm I'm just a steward of it. So, you know, I'm I'm as much a member of the community as anybody else. And, it certainly helps my real estate business pretty routinely.
00;07;23;21 - 00;07;51;25
Unknown
So, I'm. I think it's really amazing, Ted, that, you guys, every now and then, we get, like, a member who I've been in the community for over five years, and every now and then we get a member who comes in who's like, they're like a rocket ship. They're either, you know, they're either like, doing some deals, and then all of a sudden they're doing like a zillion deals, or they're doing they go from like zero to hero really quick.
00;07;51;25 - 00;08;14;27
Unknown
And you guys came in and kind of stumbled through a couple flips, I think, prior to getting here. And then, you guys had an incredible and extremely profitable first year. How many, how many houses did you guys finish in your first full year? In our first full year.
00;08;15;00 - 00;08;40;11
Unknown
Okay. So we started in December. So it was December December okay. So from back finished to like done in our first year on the on the paperwork books. It was five. And we made about the little under 250,000. Yeah. On the for on the first five that we did and then we have five. Harry. Yeah. And then we carried over for into the next year into the next year.
00;08;40;17 - 00;09;03;03
Unknown
And here's what's crazy to like is some, some people. This is just the start for you guys. You know, it's like you'll build a system and you are you know, we we we uniquely talk and we'll talk about this in a second. The real estate business operating system, Rebus, as we like to call it, in our community, the, so, so you will definitely grow that.
00;09;03;06 - 00;09;28;15
Unknown
And it'll be an interesting path, but, like, people don't realize, like, hey, five, basically, you can do a quarter million dollars of profit with a very small team. You could you could theoretically flip one house, a quarter for houses and make pretty good money. Like, probably better than most corporate jobs. Now, if you want to build a business and that that can be very chaotic.
00;09;28;15 - 00;10;03;08
Unknown
I think we all we often undersell the chaos and flipping a house, so then you got to get the chaos under control by putting processes and systems and then eventually plugging people into it. And plugging people into it does one of two things. Either escalates how much we're doing, which is bringing more revenue into the business. You know, every employee on your team should be equate to at least $150,000 of additional revenue, if not more so.
00;10;03;14 - 00;10;22;11
Unknown
Or there's another way, though, you sometimes you bring somebody in to get your time back. You're like, okay, I got plenty of money. I'm bringing somebody into to either to get my time back so I can use my time for something else I want to use it for, and maybe more business and maybe family time and maybe whatever you want.
00;10;22;11 - 00;10;52;13
Unknown
Because that's the beauty of being a business owner and an entrepreneur. But so you guys did all of that and you're one, which is just I mean, it seems like that's that's actually really fast. I mean, that's incredible. What are you doing to tell like, talk to me a little bit about, when we did the whole real estate business operating system stuff in Park City and how you guys have been using that and the AI that we've been using and, like, how has it helped your business?
00;10;52;15 - 00;11;10;29
Unknown
Oh, yeah. So you and you're 52, Ted, you're not some tech savvy young. No, no no I'm not. So so you're not allowed to laugh at this, but, so I used that ChatGPT. So then that's with the robustness group, and I use mine so much, I actually have named it solely. So I talk to it like, just like a person, you know?
00;11;10;29 - 00;11;28;18
Unknown
So, we went through Park City and, and you guys you come up with and it just has all the prompts in it. So it just makes it a lot easier. I use it for everything. Yeah. I mean, I use it to help write emails. I use to help write posts I have, I use it for all kinds of stuff.
00;11;28;18 - 00;11;43;23
Unknown
So one of the things that like, I'm not from a corporate world, so if you're watching this and you're just like, I don't do that, I don't either. You know, that's not this is not my background. But like is a big thing in how you talked about the chaos. I want to talk about that a little bit.
00;11;43;23 - 00;12;01;27
Unknown
So yes, the chaos was incredible. And I think that the chaos is a reason why a lot of people fail. Like, it's not that you're not making money or something like that. You just want to quit because it's just so the business in the house is running your life. You just don't want to do it anymore. You know?
00;12;01;27 - 00;12;17;21
Unknown
It's just like fire after fire after fire. And and that was what one of the things that we really appreciate about being part of this community is how do we get to where we're not doing that. So I just wanted to show this. So this we got is from Re Boston. I don't know that that's going to show up.
00;12;17;21 - 00;12;38;22
Unknown
And it's our 2026 planning. So it's like six pages. And being able to go into the Rebus system, which is already teed up for all of the prompts for house flipping, all of the prompts for renting, all the things that you need to know and saying, okay, what questions do we need to ask? You know, what what goals do I need to set?
00;12;38;22 - 00;12;58;01
Unknown
You know what this is? This is what it looks like right now. You know what is a how do I lay this out for my next year? You know, so the thing that I really like about Rebus is it knows what I don't know, which is the most important thing to know is what you don't know. Right. So it's giving me.
00;12;58;03 - 00;13;34;23
Unknown
It's giving me tools, it's giving me answers, and it's giving me guidelines and paths for things that I would have never thought of, you know? So, you know, like where here's the here's the beauty chat real quick because, so for people who don't know, because this is like a community specific thing, it is, it is a custom ChatGPT model that is packed with all of the knowledge from decades of not just real estate expertise, but also business expertise, scaling expertise.
00;13;34;26 - 00;14;02;14
Unknown
And it's packaged in a way that it forces you where you don't you don't have to know EOS. You don't have to know pinnacle. You don't have to know any of these systems. It's going to walk. You through a business operating system. And along the way, as it's asking you and making you give it information, and it's going to illuminate things inside of your business that in order for you to grow or be more profitable or hire the next team member, it's going to be asking you questions.
00;14;02;14 - 00;14;23;01
Unknown
And you may go, I don't even know what the hell this thing's asking me. Great. It's like a it's the coaches coach, man. It's all the best information you could possibly get, but tailored to what you need. Yeah. And, like, I'll type into it. I'll, I'll tell, you know, I'll put a prompt in there like, you know, lay this out like I'm a three year old.
00;14;23;01 - 00;14;42;26
Unknown
That's never done this before, you know, on stuff that I have no clue on. But then the other nice thing about is even things that I do have clued clues on, I'd be like, hey, I need a walk through sheet. I'm going to go walk this out at the 1910 whatever old farmhouse, and it'll pop things in there that I know I need to look for, but you know, you want ten houses a week.
00;14;42;26 - 00;15;02;10
Unknown
You start forgetting. It's like, you know, you do check to make sure that there's no knob and two wiring hooked up. Oh. Yep. Got to make sure I had a, you know, I did you check the rafters for any termite damage? Did you, you know, are you making sure you're looking at the ceiling? It just it's 10s printable you printed out and it has everything on there.
00;15;02;10 - 00;15;23;24
Unknown
It just it frees up so much time. So you're not sitting there trying to type out this whole, you know, sheet that you need for walkthroughs or for. I mean, I'm just using walkthroughs. I mean, literally for anything, I use it for tax planning, you know, I mean, hey, what are the questions that I need to ask my tax accountant on?
00;15;23;24 - 00;15;45;13
Unknown
We're going to purchase rental. What are things that I need to look out for in QuickBooks? This is now going to be inventory. How do I enter that in there? And it has all of the answers in there, you know, what kind of marketing do I need to do? What's what's a good, you know, what's a good marketing strategy for a rural area?
00;15;45;13 - 00;16;15;18
Unknown
Or now we're going into more of a residential area. What are what's the differences in that? It'll give you scripts for your calls. It'll. And I haven't found something that it hasn't helped me out with yet. Let's put it that way. It's just an endless list. I mean, I absolutely love that robot system. And then you also sent me a rehab coach, which I use a ton of, because it has, you know, water codes in this area where you know, what's the standard for this, what's, you know, what's FHA going to look like?
00;16;15;18 - 00;16;45;21
Unknown
Is this probably going to be an FHA buyer? You know, what are the things that I need to look at for that? And it just you don't have to remember everything, you know, which is really nice. And it's just been a godsend to what we're doing, especially for me. Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's 2026 now and, I is going to be the dominant and this is we are in the AI revolution right now.
00;16;45;21 - 00;17;17;26
Unknown
We have been actually but now it's becoming commercialized and it's, it's prevalent. So it's like AI is not going to do your job for you. It's not going to take over your job, but what it's going to do is it's going to make one person capable to do a workload of 20 people. And there are people out there saying right now that I there will be $1 billion business with one person in it because of AI.
00;17;17;29 - 00;17;36;06
Unknown
So think about that. AI is creating the ability to to the the rapidity in which you can knock a task out or 20 task out and do it in an accurate way, and even do it better than maybe you would do it as a human who, you know, is, is, subjective, not always objective. We are flawed. We forget things.
00;17;36;12 - 00;17;58;02
Unknown
It doesn't really forget things, right? It has a knowledge base. It's programmatic. It is a learning. But it is super, super powerful. So what we've done in seven figure flipping is taken all the best of the best from flippers from across the country over decades of time. Compiled it all, put it into a built a custom GPT around it.
00;17;58;07 - 00;18;28;03
Unknown
All of our systems, all of our processes, all the nuance, rehab and project management and construction stuff, all the business stuff, like all the marketing stuff, like literally everything is in there. And, and we're updating it routinely. So like, we're getting ready to roll out version two of the Rehab coach, which is going to, you know, we have information that will make it more powerful, that will make it better, that will make things more accurate.
00;18;28;05 - 00;18;52;18
Unknown
And I think, like everybody, everybody has to I don't care how old you are, I don't care, what your knowledge base is. You got to become fluent and using artificial intelligence. And that's primarily thinking like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or Notebook Lem, or any of these AI models that allow you to do more things faster with less people like you.
00;18;52;18 - 00;19;19;24
Unknown
You got to start using it. You have to. Oh, yeah, 100%. Like, I don't have the time to go through and make all of the sheets and make all of the, any of it, and I can just I literally come in here and in 30 minutes have my entire, my entire week time blocked out. I can have everything that I need my crew to do blocked out, you know, just by typing in, just this chaotic mess in my head, like, we need to do this.
00;19;19;24 - 00;19;37;03
Unknown
We need do this, we need to do this, you know, for my crew. And it'll just day by day, and I can just hand that to my crew and be like, go get this done on this house is done on, this house is done on this house. And it does it in such a short time, maybe something that would take me an entire day or half of my weekend trying to get set up.
00;19;37;03 - 00;19;56;05
Unknown
I can get done in 30 minutes and I'm still not even that great. Like, I'm I'm still learning how to integrate it. So that's my next step is to integrate it to where it'll start running other programs. You know, I think it's through Zapier, so that it can start to, like, actually make that, Zapier. Yeah.
00;19;56;07 - 00;20;17;25
Unknown
Yeah. You know, and and get it to where I can start doing doing stuff like that. But, yeah, no reboot reboots in the rehab coach have just been it. It's put it ahead for years, you know? I mean, it's got all the knowledge. I don't have to go and learn right now on on a lot of stuff. And then I, I am learning it like I'm learning it as it's pumping it out.
00;20;17;25 - 00;20;36;09
Unknown
I think that's the one thing that a lot of people like, oh, it's just going to do it for you while I'm learning it, because it's popping this stuff out and I'm like, oh, I didn't know that, you know? Now I know that. And I know to look for for this or I know to think about that in a negotiation or I know to look about, you know, what's this average square footage that's selling in this area?
00;20;36;09 - 00;20;55;01
Unknown
You know what? What's the absorption rate? I didn't know what an absorption rate was. You know, I had no idea. And exactly. And you don't and you don't need to be super in-depth on that knowledge for it. And here's the other cool thing to add. Like, different levels. So we've seen a lot of businesses and I've been through many of these levels.
00;20;55;01 - 00;21;22;12
Unknown
I've been up the chain and down the chain, the five stages of a real estate business we see as, stage one being existence sets at 0 to 500 K range your team sizes like 0 to 2, and you're, like validating the model, getting leads, doing your first, you know, dozen deals or so and then that that stage let's way to a stage we call survival.
00;21;22;14 - 00;21;47;18
Unknown
And that's the 500,000 to $1.25 million range. And you're like a 2 to 5 person team. You start to delegate some tasks. You get rid of stuff that you're not perfect at or you're not the biggest expert at in the business. You bring other people in who are maybe a couple. And but you now you're starting to expend a little bit of resources and this gets, this can feel heavy.
00;21;47;18 - 00;22;10;20
Unknown
This is scary for a lot of businesses. And then there's like the next phase. So like that phase, you're trying to get up and out of that phase where you have enough revenue coming in that you can resource the company appropriately, and then you move into the success phase, which is like 1.25 million to $3 million. You're typically 5 to 12 on team size.
00;22;10;20 - 00;22;36;16
Unknown
You've got, teammates in there, you've got systems, you've got operations in there. You have a full fledged running business. If you choose to go that big by the way. And I say 5 to 12 because you can do this business with five people and, be involved in your business and make a lot of money, or you can give some of the money up and bring more people in and get your time back.
00;22;36;16 - 00;23;00;07
Unknown
So there's just a trade off. And then there are a handful of businesses at stage four and five, stage four being the take off stage where you're like all in, you're in total growth mode. You want to go 3 to $10 million, you got 10 to 25 people. You're hiring leaders and management. You're installing layers. And, you're scaling your operation.
00;23;00;09 - 00;23;18;07
Unknown
And then there's the like the few I call them, the few. But it's really the maturity stage of business where you're at 10 to 20 million plus. There's not a lot of those types of real estate businesses in the US, but that's like 20 to 40 people, like one of the guys in our altitude community that's, Phil Green.
00;23;18;07 - 00;23;46;00
Unknown
Like Phil. Phil is at maturity. There's a couple businesses in our community that are at maturity. Kyle Robinson, guys like that. This is like total optimize, expand, systematize, like they're building businesses that might even be sellable. But Tad, all that to say is like, if you think about this AI that we've provided, it's literally turning decades into days.
00;23;46;02 - 00;24;08;03
Unknown
Yes. You don't really need to know everything. Like you don't need to go get the 20 years of Andy McFarland experience. You just pull it out of the AI because we've already got it in there. I like that you brought up the team because we use it for hiring, too. I, we literally use it for everything and it's all in there, you know, like how how do how what does this seat look like?
00;24;08;05 - 00;24;27;13
Unknown
What should the pay structure be like? Like all of that stuff that I think is so scary about starting a business, especially if you're someone that doesn't come from a business background, you know, it's all in there and it's popping out all of these answers for you. They make sense. IT systems that work. And, and then you just have to implement it.
00;24;27;13 - 00;24;45;26
Unknown
And and it sounds really simple. I don't want to oversimplify that. Like, you know, like you have to put the work into it, but it's giving you the answer. It's letting you know how you need to do this. So yeah, you stuff that you have to go and implement, like you start to go do the thing that it tells you to do.
00;24;45;29 - 00;25;04;21
Unknown
And it's kind of the same thing. You know, people come in and pay for mentorship and join communities, but then they don't do that. Somebody says, hey, in order to get X, you have to do y. Y kind of sucks. I'm going to do it a different way. It's like, okay, we've been down that path. You can go do it or not do it.
00;25;04;24 - 00;25;18;06
Unknown
I think it just comes down to one of my favorite quotes. And, I mean, it's an AA quote. Well, that's where I heard it's probably not an AA quote because they steal everything and they'll tell you that. But, you know, it's one that I, that I love. Remember that if you want what we got, you have to do what we did.
00;25;18;12 - 00;25;37;22
Unknown
You know. That's right. And it's it's that simple. It's it's hard but it's that simple, you know. And so when you come into one of these communities and you're like, hey, I went with Adam once and Adam says, okay, go do ABCd and go AB. I don't like C, you're not going to get what Adam has. You know, you have to do all of it.
00;25;37;22 - 00;26;02;05
Unknown
So and all the tools are here for that, you know. Yeah. And and Ted, I also wanted to touch on two because, another thing, a thing that people get enamored with or, I don't know, they like real estate comes with a, a kind of a connotation that it's a, it's a help. It helps with taxes. Some people, before they've ever even done a deal, are like, I don't want to pay taxes.
00;26;02;05 - 00;26;20;24
Unknown
I want to do real estate. It's like you got to that's only relevant when you're making a bunch of money. Yeah. And then you have a tax problem. So but you can get ahead of that. And the beautiful thing about that is like we, we at some very flipping, I mean, we vet the crap out of anybody we're letting in the room with our people.
00;26;20;24 - 00;26;40;25
Unknown
And I know, like, you know, we have sponsors that sponsor our event so we can throw these extravagant, amazing events. And, but even the guys and gals that we let in the room are, like, heavily for we probably only like 10% of the people in the door who are knocking at it. Right? So they're heavily vetted to the point where I'm personally using most of them.
00;26;40;25 - 00;26;59;19
Unknown
And, you and I both use the same tax guy, Ryan from Advanced Tax Group. They're literally my favorite, my favorite tax firm. Just because, they're easy to work with. They're super savvy on real estate. They. You know, I want a CPA who's not going to tell me. No, I can't do some, but tell me how I could do it.
00;26;59;19 - 00;27;18;14
Unknown
Right. And that's that's like an ATG gets it right. The entrepreneur, you you're trying to do all kinds of different things. You're like, what's the tax implications? How can I reduce that? And they're giving you all the different models to do it. So you don't have to become an expert. They're an expert for you. Yeah. And I know you recently signed up and you're using advanced tax group.
00;27;18;14 - 00;27;38;05
Unknown
Same CPA as I am. I can you just like, talk about that experience a little bit? I love Ryan okay. First I met Ryan on a bus in Mexico. So I don't know if you know this story. So we were on this. We were doing this, excursion thing, and and it went horribly right. There was like this big accident.
00;27;38;05 - 00;27;51;17
Unknown
Somebody died because the highway and the bus driver wanted to make sure he gets paid. So he, like, literally held us hostage on the bus. And I'm sitting next to Ryan. So that's how I got to know Ryan. You know, we were held hostage on a bus in Mexico together, and I'm like, this is a cool dude.
00;27;51;17 - 00;28;14;03
Unknown
And we were just, like, talking about stuff because I was using this, this other CPA and, so then fast forward to it's coming around tax time and like, none of my stuff is right. Like I'm not a tax expert, but I know when I'm looking at it, this is not right. We cannot file this. And I just I send an email and three weeks later, I get a reply.
00;28;14;03 - 00;28;33;29
Unknown
Or two weeks later, I get a reply, I call them up, they're going to call back. They don't call back. And finally, I, I finally reach out to Ryan and I'm like, set up a call with them and I'm like, look, this is my problem, you know, what can you do? And of course, it's it's the big it's the biggest sales spiel, you know, like all of them give.
00;28;33;29 - 00;28;50;29
Unknown
Oh we we get back to you. We can take care of this. We got you. We know real estate. We know all of that. And I'm like, well that's what the last guy said. But I can't do worse than what I'm doing now. Right? So I'm like, all right, David. It was a total faith jump and I was running out of time to file.
00;28;51;01 - 00;29;11;06
Unknown
Like, I had two weeks to file and my books aren't right. In, like, two weeks on the extension. Like, there's no way we have to file. There's not an option here. I've got 14 days. So Ryan's like, nope, I got you. Don't worry about it. And I'm like, don't worry about it. Like I'm I'm worried about it.
00;29;11;06 - 00;29;35;02
Unknown
All right. And so he hops in there. He gets his team on it in ten days. They did what this other guy couldn't do in the previous nine months. They got my QuickBooks fixed. They got my taxes file. They got the personal taxes file. I send Ryan an email, and I get a response in 12 hours.
00;29;35;02 - 00;29;54;25
Unknown
At the longest, I'm usually within 30 to 40 minutes. Yeah. It just doesn't matter. Like he we we have had, I think, four calls with him on. Hey, look, we're wanting to do this. What kind of tax implications in this? You know, we're going to start moving into rentals, you know, how do we do that?
00;29;54;25 - 00;30;13;18
Unknown
You know, what are what's what's on that, and end of, middle of December, you know, he's looking at it going, hey, this is about probably where your tax bill is going to be. You know, if you need to buy something, you know, it'll help your tax bill out, you know. But he was also he's very honest.
00;30;13;18 - 00;30;33;07
Unknown
He goes, you know, don't go spend $80,000 on a brand new car to save $5,000 in taxes. If you don't need to brand new car, that doesn't make sense. But if you were going to buy it anyway, it'll help out with your taxes this year. Yep. Okay. He has been a godsend, actually, their whole team, not just Ryan.
00;30;33;09 - 00;30;56;20
Unknown
You know, it's just one. The communication is off the charts, which is was my biggest, my biggest problem. Like, I'm, I don't I didn't I don't know anything about QuickBooks. I don't know a lot more now. And I know zero about taxes, like having a tax attorney. So when I'm trying to reach out and going, you know, I need these first few years for you to really hold my hand so that I can understand what it is that I need to do.
00;30;56;20 - 00;31;13;16
Unknown
So I don't get into trouble and nobody's answering back. And that is not the case with with ATG. Then they have that. So that was a problem. That was the problem I had to to do. I had a good CPA, but I couldn't talk to him. And it was his business was so systematized. I could never talk to him.
00;31;13;16 - 00;31;37;24
Unknown
And and it just got frustrating for me. And yes, I ended up moving over to events tax here. But they do more than taxes. So like I had them set up my entire trust system for my family. You know, it's like it's just I actually saw they did it for Bill and Mike Simmons and it's set up in a Rockefeller type method where it continues to matriculate your wealth down your family line.
00;31;37;24 - 00;31;55;04
Unknown
If you if you want to go that route, if you got a bunch of kids and stuff. So, for me, I was like, dude, I need all of that stuff, and I need somebody that is like, that feels like they're a part of my team. Yes. You know, not just a service provider where I'm just a number on their sheet and they do.
00;31;55;04 - 00;32;15;23
Unknown
It does feel that way. And they do do a great job. Like I had Ryan audit my taxes from 24 when I brought my 25 taxes over to him. And I mean, he found like 15, 20 grand in my taxes that we could have eradicated. And he's having to amend. And I mean, he just found money because, you know, he cares.
00;32;15;23 - 00;32;33;16
Unknown
I mean, it's really just a matter of somebody caring and, you know, actually putting the time in to look at your unique situation. And everybody has a unique situation. And I think the other thing is, is like they do what we do, you know, so it's there's some very good CPAs out there, but you know, they're not in real estate.
00;32;33;19 - 00;32;52;06
Unknown
They're not, you know, so there's there is a lot of very special deductions. There's a lot of very special tax codes that comes along with what we do. And I'm glad you went. They do way more than just taxes because they do the bookkeeping. They do the LLC set up. They do the trusts they do. And that's all in-house.
00;32;52;06 - 00;33;11;01
Unknown
So you're not having to go from this company to take this over here. And that was one of the things that I really loved about Etg is as we start growing and we're going to start making multiple LLCs, we can do all of that through them. It's all in-house, and I'm not having to shuffle anything between companies. Make sure everyone has all the information.
00;33;11;01 - 00;33;32;07
Unknown
It's all there. They have it all. They've got the attorneys, they've got the bookkeepers, they've got the tax strategist. So you can just accept it. It's just become a part of my team, you know? And I talk to Ryan all the time about Doctor Ryan two, three times a month, you know, and half of that's not even about business, which is awesome.
00;33;32;09 - 00;33;55;09
Unknown
Yeah. It's like, it's like, he's a person. He's like, on your team. And I think it's really cool. Yeah. So I think, you know, this is the beauty of, for me, of being in this community and remaining in this community as a member because, every year it's like another resource that I need or, you know, sometimes we see resources in the community and we're like, it's not for me.
00;33;55;12 - 00;34;13;03
Unknown
But two years later, I'm like, I need that now, where is that one thing, you know? And, as you go along your journey, you just find that these are pretty common things we need along the way. And, like, for example, five years ago, I didn't need, I didn't need an insurance guy and a whole life insurance guy.
00;34;13;03 - 00;34;28;10
Unknown
I didn't I wasn't making enough money for that to make sense, but until I was. Yeah. And it's like, Holy crap, I'm making all this money in, like, maybe a whole life is for me, and I have a whole life policy that's, you know, 5 million bucks, and I put 175 grand into it. I can loan against it.
00;34;28;10 - 00;34;47;17
Unknown
And all this other crazy stuff, like. But 4 or 5 years ago, that person's in the room with me, and I don't. I'm like, I don't really understand. It's not for me. But now it's for me. This year. Last year it's for me, you know? So it's like, okay, time to do it. Dude, I'm so grateful for you and stuff and what you guys do for the community.
00;34;47;17 - 00;35;14;22
Unknown
And you guys coach and our, runway community for our newer folks. And, it's just really cool to see you guys giving back and and being good stewards of the community. We love you guys. And, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. What would you tell somebody who's getting started in real estate today? So I think one of the biggest things that I would say is when you need to build a tribe, you're not doing it by yourself.
00;35;14;27 - 00;35;33;00
Unknown
None of us have done this by ourselves. And this is a great place to build your tribe. And this place isn't for you. You'll find somewhere else. So you're just starting out, you know, you're you're going to hear all kinds of stuff. I love what you said. Like, you know, if you don't want to get that big, you know, this is your business.
00;35;33;00 - 00;35;56;07
Unknown
You have to make this whatever it is that you want to make it. You know, if you just need to make $150,000 a year to to make your life for it, you can do that. You don't have to go into this, you know, massive multi-million dollar corporation, 20 people working for you. You know, the systems are here to do whatever it is that you want to do.
00;35;56;09 - 00;36;15;18
Unknown
I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to just take a deep breath. You need to try and get rid of some of the noise, not look at all of the shiny objects. You know, you come in. And how do I get my first deal? You know, don't don't worry about. Oh, this person has this fancy thing.
00;36;15;18 - 00;36;34;03
Unknown
This person is doing all of this, you know, how do I get my first deal? You know, get your first deal. Learn your processes, learn what didn't work, and ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask a question. Just, you know, like, hey, I thought this house was going to sell for 300,000, and they're saying it's 240 and we're dead mess up.
00;36;34;04 - 00;36;55;26
Unknown
You know, we have the humility to ask the questions. Your business. So we're, Yeah, the the hardest, the hardest thing to do today is to do that first deal. Yeah. You know, that's the hardest part is getting over that first deal. Once you do that, it changes your belief system. And then you're like, well, I can if I got through that, I can do 20 of these things.
00;36;55;28 - 00;37;20;11
Unknown
It it's just like anything else in life, you know, like I spent I mean, I went from being a homeless drug addict, you know, like I, I mean, I pushed that boat way out into the harbor, you know, I mean, I was the guy that was living behind dumpsters, you know, that I really went to at a very, very low one of the lowest points that you can get in in this country.
00;37;20;13 - 00;37;45;19
Unknown
And to go from that to doing this, like, there's a lot of I mean, your mind, your mind, oddly enough, it does not want you to succeed. It wants you to survive. And that's something that we fight with as human beings. Like we're hardware, we're hard wired for survival. You know? So when you go from, you know, I just bought a house and then all of the fear comes in and all of the doubt comes in, and the, oh my God, I can't do this.
00;37;45;19 - 00;38;11;20
Unknown
And having a having a community around you that you can look at and go, this guy came from the same place that I came from and he did it. And this is how he did it, is invaluable. I would say that that if you're brand new on this and you're trying to do this, get into a community with the people that you can look at and that are going to give you support because you're going to have fear, you're going to have doubt.
00;38;11;20 - 00;38;28;24
Unknown
You're not going to think you can do this, and you can and anybody can do it. It's just not it's not easy, but anybody can do it. So, you know, get into that community where you can get that support, you know, and somebody can show you with the things that that you're that you just don't have the confidence.
00;38;28;24 - 00;39;02;04
Unknown
And like you said, you get that first one, then you're like, oh my God, I can't do this. And then it's number two. And then to number five, I mean, I never thought I would have bought and sold 20 plus houses and, you know, two years you never. And here's the thing to to like, I look around the kind of real estate landscape on the internet and, it's easy everybody want because everybody who like, gets into entrepreneurship is like, man, there's a lot of drive, a lot of let's go get it, get after it.
00;39;02;06 - 00;39;26;06
Unknown
And you see a lot of things on the internet that are all specifically talking about scaling your business scale your business scale your business. And while that's amazing, and as we scale like we do seven, multiple seven figures, that's great. But that's not what everybody wants to do. And there are ways to build this business around your life.
00;39;26;08 - 00;39;44;07
Unknown
And I think we'd be remiss if we thought everybody wanted to be a Bill Allen or an Adam Whitney and do a zillion dollars and have a million team members, like some people don't want that. And I think that that's where we get lost in the community. And I think, I think we have done a good job of normalizing, building the business around your life.
00;39;44;07 - 00;40;01;28
Unknown
Like we've got people in the community who do 15 flips a year. Lifestyle business owner. I'm thinking my my buddy Paul March has a like he's got a good life. He's doing what he wants to do is a master carpenter, loves getting his hands dirty. And we got people doing a couple hundred deals a year, like, you know, they're they got a big monster machine.
00;40;01;28 - 00;40;22;17
Unknown
And then we have a lot of people who have been along the spectrum and some who have built the two, three, 400 deal a year thing and said, you know what? Like I'm going to bring that back to 100 deals a year. I'm going to bring it down to 50 or 40 or 20 and get rid of all these teammates, because I realize that's not for me.
00;40;22;19 - 00;40;39;22
Unknown
So if you're out there and you're, you're seeing a lot of people, if you feel like you don't want that big machine, it's okay. Yeah, you you can still make a lot of money on a lifestyle business and be happy and have your time and take your kids to school and not have to be stressed about the payroll.
00;40;39;29 - 00;40;58;23
Unknown
Like, you can do that. It's okay. You can have permission to do that. And I think, don't don't let the keeping up with the Joneses pressure you into being somebody you're not it. No, I and that's like me and stuff. That's our business. We're not trying to build a 30 team. You know? We're not trying to build a machine.
00;40;58;23 - 00;41;24;04
Unknown
We're trying to build a lifestyle business that will give us a comfortable retirement. We can spend time with the grandkids. We can spend time with the kids like that. That's our whole goal for this. And it's awesome being around people that have bigger, you know, those big machines because you can get a lot of really good points from those that are going to help your business, but it doesn't mean that you have to build that, you know, and, they talk a lot about shiny object syndrome, and, you know, you don't.
00;41;24;12 - 00;41;44;12
Unknown
I love that you said that. You don't have to build that. You know, build what you want to build. This is your dream and your business. And we're just here to help you. And, I guess that is the one thing that I love about our community is just the genuine level of help that people give in this community.
00;41;44;14 - 00;42;03;20
Unknown
We've talked to you on a Saturday afternoon. You know, we we there's, we have our own little, little tribe, you know, that that we talk to that, that we've become really good friends and we talk constantly. We've become friends with, with the Morgan and and Kayla. We talk to them all the time, I think.
00;42;03;20 - 00;42;30;05
Unknown
Steph. Yeah. Ayla probably every single day. And we're doing the same thing in the same community. Like they live eight miles from us, you know, like we're just here to win, you know, not just us. Like it is as a community. Like, what can I say? Collaborative. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's collaborative. It's friendly competition when it's, you know, many people I've trained in my own market, I have trained so many investors.
00;42;30;05 - 00;42;53;00
Unknown
Give them all my tips and tricks, literally everything in my own market. So many, at least at least a dozen. They're probably seven years ago. So we used to be, market constrained, meaning we we would only accept two investors from each market, and the seven finger flipping. So we would only have like, two Indiana investors, you know, and here in your metro.
00;42;53;03 - 00;43;12;27
Unknown
And you would have to literally wait for somebody to leave to get in and get that spot. It used to be that way. And Jansen McLendon, who was in Pensacola, which is Bell's Villainize market, he's like, dude, I want to be in that community. But like obviously Bell's. They're like, is he going to let me in? And he did like, yeah, it's okay.
00;43;12;27 - 00;43;36;02
Unknown
We're in the same community. And honestly, Jansen became probably the most he's probably the most dominant investor in Pensacola today. It's cool man. It's totally cool. And it's it's collaboration over competition. It is, it is. And you know, it's just like, get rid of the ego. And, you know, just. Yeah, I mean, this is this is, this has changed my life, honestly.
00;43;36;04 - 00;43;53;22
Unknown
Like, this community has like, the, like the number of people that have helped me out here has been immeasurable. And people probably don't even know that they that they have, you know, and that's what's incredible about it, you know, you know, it's not just about the wins, it's about, you know, the sport and it's about, you know, when you're going to have down days.
00;43;53;22 - 00;44;13;19
Unknown
I mean, you're running your own business. It's stressful authorities, things like that. And finding out that somebody else is also struggling with something. Honestly, sometimes you need that. It's like, okay, I'm not just doing everything wrong, you know? And I that's one of the things that I love about this community is we're an open book. We share it all like, hey, we had this amazing year, we made all of this.
00;44;13;19 - 00;44;38;29
Unknown
And, but we'll also post that. Hey, we missed our goal. Like, you know, we still made money last year, stuff like that. But we just weren't able to pull through that goal. And I think that's important because it doesn't isolate anyone in the community. You know, whether you just had a banner year or whether you had struggles because you're growing or your systems needed tweaked or whatever, somebody else is going to be in there going, yeah, I went through the same thing.
00;44;39;01 - 00;45;01;20
Unknown
And then you can hook up with that person and you can you can both kind of bounce things off of each other. Okay. What did you do? What did you know what worked for you or find somebody who did? So I love that about this community. Heck yeah man. Heck yeah. Well cool. Thank you so much again for giving your time today and and being such a go giver for our community.
00;45;01;20 - 00;45;28;05
Unknown
I really appreciate your brother. I appreciate you too, Adam. You enjoy the warm weather? Yes, sir. And for everybody listening, thank you for listening. Go in. Ted Trott. You can find him on Facebook at Ted Trott, I think. Are you on Instagram too? No. No, I am not. No, Facebook is is 52. He's only doing Facebook, you know.
00;45;28;05 - 00;45;44;09
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Oh he's older guys we love the Facebook. So, go find Ted on, Facebook and watch what he's doing because he's posting a lot of the amazing deals they're doing. It's really cool. And if you like this episode, if you enjoyed this episode and if you didn't like this episode, that's fine too. But no matter what.
00;45;44;10 - 00;45;59;05
Unknown
Leave me a five star review so that, more people can be influenced by positive people and quality people in the real estate investing community. Appreciate you guys all for listening. Thank you so much and we will see you on the next one.
