Download On iTunes!
Ep #389 – Matt Faircloth – Author: Raising Private Capital
Here is some of what you will learn:
- The value of living below your means
- The power of focus
- The value of persistence
- Mindset through tough times
- The importance of gratitude and abundance
- Developing powerful relationships
- Working with your spouse
- Importance of growing together
To find out more about our guest: click here To find out more about partnering or investing in a multifamily deal: Text Partner to 41411 or email Partner@RodKhleif.com Join us at a Multifamily Bootcamp, visit: MultifamilyBootcamp.com
Full Transcript Below:
Ep #389 – Matt Faircloth – Author Raising Private Capital
Hi! I’m Rod Khleif. Each and every week I record an interview with a thought leader that I know you’re gonna get a ton of value from. Now here on YouTube are the video versions of my podcast, Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. Now to make sure you get the latest information please subscribe and hit the notification bell. Let’s get started.
Rod: Welcome to another edition of How to Build a Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. I’m Rod Khleif and I am thrilled you’re here, and I know you’re gonna get great value from the gentleman that we’re interviewing today. His name’s Matt Faircloth and his company’s the DeRosa group. Now Matt, he’s a regular contributor on Bigger Pockets and, you know, he’s definitely a hitter in the multifamily space. Got over 750 doors. He’s also another asset classes as well but he’s a regular contributor on Bigger Pockets and he’s got his own very active YouTube channel. He adds a lot of value there. He’s got a book on Amazon that’s a best-seller called Raising Private Capital, how to build your real estate empire with other people’s money. So, we’re gonna have a lot of fun today, plus, he loves to talk about mindset which, of course, is my favorite topic. So, welcome to the show, my friend.
Matt: Awesome. Thank you so much, Rod. Such an honor to be here.
Rod: Well, thank you for that. Well, listen, maybe, you know, we’ll start to a cliché way which having you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this business and then, let’s just take it wherever we take.
Matt: Sure man. No problem. So, I grew up in Baltimore. I went to Virginia Tech and I got a degree in engineering growing up because a lot of people were like, “Hey man, you’re good at math and science so you should become an engineer”, and a lot of my life I just kind of devoted other people said that I should do, I just followed other people’s recommendations and I didn’t let, you know, as a kid, I’d looking to what an engineer did. I just, you know, followed what grown-ups told me to do so, “okay, that’s fine. I’ll go to school for engineering.” I got about halfway through my education at Virginia Tech and I realized, “hey, wait a minute. I don’t want to do engineer”, that doesn’t seem to really suit my personality, what I want out of life and everything like that, but I was already in. So, when I graduated, I got a job in sales, selling technical equipment. They’ve required an engineering degree but wasn’t really an engineer by definition and so, I sharpened my Sales Saw there and I used some of my math and science stuff and really just understanding, getting into know finance as well. So, I became a salesman, talking more finance with people versus talking engineering. Fast forward to met my future wife, living in Philadelphia, and she got me to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. As a lot of new investors, you know, read that book just, you know, mindset. It just transformed a lot of the way that I looked at finance well, the way I looked at life, I looked at my career. So, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. She got me to play the board game and stuff like that and that caused me to start investing on the side which was originally a house I lived in. Rented it out to two buddies of mine. While my two buddies were living with me was able to pay off like 30 grand worth of student loans and credit cards and all that in two years and that, then, I was hooked. I said, “Okay. I see it. I’m in. So, my girlfriend and I started buying. Start buying rental properties with my girlfriend on a loan from her father, okay?
Rod: Where at? Where at? And when was this?
Matt: Billy. This is 2004.
Rod: Okay.
Matt: So, we were buying rentals around Philadelphia on a loan for my girlfriend’s dad. I don’t recommend your listeners go borrow money from the girlfriend’s dad.
Rod: Yeah. That can go a lot of different directions.
Matt: Yeah. But it went a good way. I married her, you know. I married her so it was good.
Rod: Good.
Matt: You know, and that, so, I, so we have been married and right when we got married we realized that would be better to live way below our means. So, we bought a half the house we could afford and we lived off for her income and right after we got married, I quit my job and started my business in 2005. And it’s been, you know, it’s been a bumpy road. Like got through the downturn, you know, got through lots of twists and turns in life and all that, made some bad decisions, made some great decisions and built a business over the last 14.
Rod: Well, we’re gonna to talk about some of the adversity that you went through which we agreed to do when we first got going here. Before we started recording. And, but I wanna circle back in a couple things you said which were really powerful. One was, you know, you were doing what other people thought you should do, what other people said you should do, and, you know, it’s interesting. I talked about this from time to time where there was this hospice nurse in Australia named Bronnie Ware and she counseled hospice patients. Since she asked them what their regrets were and she wrote a book about it called The Five Regrets of Dying and the number one regret, Matt, was living someone else’s life, living what someone else told me to do, and so, that really resonated with me when you said that. The other thing that really resonated with me and I hope you guys are listening to this piece, is that you live below your means. I mean, I remember when I had 500 doors, most of those were houses. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment that was free rent cuz I had a business that did advertising for that apartment complex. You know, when I could have lived anywhere but I was building, building, building and so, you know, it’s like that adage, you know, grind now or live like other people won’t for a few years to live like other people can’t for the rest of your life. So, I really loved the, those two bullets. So, let’s talk about, so, you’re in 750 doors. What markets are you in?
Matt: We’re in Pennsylvania. It’s like central PA in the Harrisburg Lancaster area. We’re in New Jersey, central New Jersey. We’re in north, we’re in North Carolina, Fayetteville, North Carolina of all places, and then, Kentucky.
Rod: Wow. That’s right. You told me, Kentucky. Yeah. We bought assets there from the same broker. And so, let’s talk about some of the bumps in the road and what it took to get through some of those bumps in the road, you know, everybody’s heard about my big bumps in the road so, be great not to have to relive mine. Let’s talk about of you, of course
Matt: We could do like, the bump in the lesson, you know.
Rod: Love it. Love it.
Matt: Right. So, first bump, I would think was that, you know, quit my job, bought a few properties after I had quit, did something called a 1031 exchange where he sold some of our Philly stuff up into some larger New Jersey stuff so, good decision, good decision. And then, we bought a like residential, residence real estate. Then, we bought an office building. Right? And it was like complete different animal and in running that the reason we bought it was, in running the numbers in the office building, it seemed like it would cash flow really, really well, and it seemed like one of these home run slam dunks. I closed this deal on him out of the rat race. Like he was supposed to make me 5 grand a month in cash flow and their method, the mentality was we bought it for 50 bucks a square foot. Back then, that was pretty cheap and the state of New Jersey, this is under a governor called Corzine. They were just gobbling up real estate left and right and leasing it at $18 a square foot. So, 50 bucks a square foot like …
Rod: The state was doing it?
Matt: Yeah. The state. They were growing like, they were growing and adding employees and signing 20-year contracts and stuff like that. The state of New Jersey. They were growing huge. This was ….
Rod: Wow.
Matt: Yeah. Anyway, he gets, he, Governor Corzine loses the election to a guy, you might have heard of, named Chris Christie, okay? Chris Christie comes in and says, “Nope. We’re canceling all these contracts. We’re not good, we’re laying all these people off. We’re cutting the size of the government back.” And so, Matt Fred Claus left holding this office building that I was negotiating a deal with the state on and at the state maybe looking to lease from us, gone. So, and then, right after that, the downturn happens, right? So, companies are no longer looking for 10,000 square foot anymore at $18 a square foot. You know, companies are pulling back. They’re laying employees off. So, we had to pivot and so, the lesson was, there was lessons in the pivot but the mistake that we made originally was getting out of our wheelhouse too fast. And I get that you can buy a couple of apartment buildings and maybe start exploring mobile home parks or start exploring self-storage or whatever, but we were all over the place on, in dealing with things that we knew. And we should’ve just stayed in residential real estate. And I think we were growing a lot faster. We had a lot of lessons out of it, but I had a lot of sleepless nights, you know, and when all that hit the fan too.
Rod: Yeah, yeah. Listen, guys, focus is power, my friends. And, you know, I remember when I diluted my focus in a previous life, you know, because I’m an entrepreneur, a shiny penny syndrome. I built 24 businesses and, you know, several been worth a lot of money but most have been spectacular flaming seminars and it’s every time, most of the time, it’s been when I’ve diluted my focus and so, you know, and the same thing applies in asset classes in real estate. Now, there are some people that can do it extremely well but until you master one, for sure, you shouldn’t be jumping into another one. I’m guilty of that myself. So, yeah. That’s a pretty good one. So, you were, going into 08 with an office building which, “Wow”. I can’t even imagine a ….
Matt: A vacant office building.
Rod: A vacant office building. Wow.
Matt: That was costing me six grand a month to keep going. Right?
Rod: So, what’d you do? What’d you do to it? I mean, did you end up giving it back? Would you
Matt: No, no. We kept it going, man, after the pity. I mean, after the pity party was over which we gave ourselves a day or two to be sitting
Rod: Right. Right. I gave myself a whole month or maybe two months even, believe it or not.
Matt: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. But at some point, you even you said, you gotta give it back, you gotta get back. I’m proud to say, I have never missed him in my 14 years of business. I’ve never had to give anything back to the bank. I’ve, you know, I had to go back to the table and say, “hey, we need to have a talk and renegotiate this thing.”
Rod: Right.
Matt: But I’ve always made it work and so, we ended up, we saw the opportunity in that, after the downturn, a lot of people getting laid off and a lot of people were starting their own businesses and so, we cut up the building into, like, a small business center. I mean, in doing like a hip version of Regus
Rod: Of like we were kind of a thing.
Matt: Yeah, but I’d keep my shoes on and I don’t drink as much tequila as that guy does. So, right. But so, yeah, like, we work but, you know, not quite as New York and hip more just, more just like a tertiary market urban kind of thing. We just took an ….
Rod: Almost like executive suites kind of a thing?
Matt: Exactly.
Rod: Yeah.
Matt: And we started doing that, and like my first tenant was a guy who had gotten laid off from a huge law firm and decided to say, “you know what, screw it. I’m not gonna go find a job and go to start my own law firm.
Rod: Hanging my own shingle. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. Hang he’s own shingle at, and so, I gave him one of my units with a window up front. He put a big law firm banner up there and he’s been in business for 12 years now and has, and the only advertising he does is the sign in the front window of his office.
Rod: Okay.
Matt: God bless him.
Rod: That’s awesome and so, you just a lot of one-offs in then, like that.
Matt: A lot of one-offs in. Just least them, and it’s funny. 18 dollars a square foot was what I was hoping this theater in New Jersey would lease to us for, I ended up leasing offices at 32 bucks a square foot cuz small offices make, I mean, there’s an economy of scale and it’d be like renting an apartment. If you’re renting a little 10 by 10 cube to somebody, they’re not gonna just pay you 100 bucks for it. There’s a certain lower limit of what we were …
Rod: Sure, sure, sure. It’s gonna be higher the smaller the space, for sure.
Matt: Right.
Rod: Did you offer any services? I mean, I don’t wanna go to down, far down this rabbit hole, but did you offer any services like reception or anything like that or was it just a space?
Matt: We grew into that. We grew into offering mailboxes, you know, we tried on things. It didn’t work. We tried on offering a telephone in their office but then, I was like, “hey wait. I’m not in the phone business and this guy, I mean, in the internet and stuff like that.”
Rod: Right.
Matt: So, we took the telephones out. No, no thank you. No telephone, but we give him the internet and we give him utilities and we give him, like, I took a few offices in the building and turned them into public conference rooms.
Rod: Nice. Yeah.
Matt: And that’s to get conference room space. They don’t have to add that in their rent. They can just have a little office with a desk and new community conference room when they need it so, …
Rod: Yeah. That’s what a lot of executive space is like, you know.
Matt: Domain.
Rod: I’ve, yeah. I’ve been, you know, and I’ve had companies lease space like that. Awesome.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: So, you know, tell me, let’s talk about, you know, when you were going through that cuz, I mean, I went through it. I couldn’t hold it together. It was just, it was insurmountable for me just because of the scale of my situation but when you were going through it, how did you stay positive? How did you, you know, let’s talk about the mindset. It required to not throw in the towel and give up. Because that was a pretty big kick in the face. So, talk about that a little bit.
Matt: Yeah, man. So, I am, I’ve noticed in my life that if I give enough time, things work out, you know. And if I, if I just do one simple thing, if I just don’t quit, you know. Whatever it is, don’t quit, you know, don’t quit, and, you know, we can get, I mean, there’s other stories that I got like the time that we had three-quarters of a million dollars stolen from us, you know.
Rod: Yeah. Let’s, I’ll hold off, hold off on that. I would definitely, we’re gonna ask you about that. You know, I wanna say, I wanna say something to what you just said ….
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: Because I wanna put an exclamation mark on it. Anything guys, anything you give your total freaking focus to and not give up with is going to flourish period. That’s just the way it works and I can’t tell you how many times, you know, one of my businesses was about to go bankrupt and we just pivoted and made it work and turn into a ten-million-dollar company within a year and we could have quit. And, you know, it’s a book about this called Three Feet from the Gold, you know. So, many people give up right before the breakthrough and, but you know that time, you know, equals success piece back to that, you know, again, if you’re totally focused and you’ve got, you know, you’re not deluded and you’re not all over the place, you know, the reality is, anything you give extensive time to is gonna flourish.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: So, let’s talk about the next 750-thousand-dollar blow
Matt: That’s awhile, that’s a day older
Rod: So, what happened?
Matt: So, I sold a, this was once my wife, Liz, and I had, you know, smacked herself in the face and said, “what are you thinking buying this office building?” We made the office building work but we realize that it stunted our growth. So, while we were getting the office building leased out, we got back to our core focus on residential and we scaled up through residential real estate and raised, you know, we started raising money from investors and doing super small deals and then, slowly growing it up into larger deals, and one of our larger deals that we had done at the time was an eighteen-unit apartment complex in Philadelphia. So, we sold that eighteen-unit apartment complex. We bought it, there’s a half it was like, bought it fifty percent occupied total, you know, lots of hair on the, you know what, and …
Rod: When was this? Just so I could get some context.
Matt: I got you. It was 2013.
Rod: Okay. Alright. Got it.
Matt: Bought it in 13.
Rod: Got it.
Matt: Bought it from the guy that built it. He owned it, he owned it for 40 years named it after his wife. It’s called ….
Rod: Wow.
Matt: It’s called Carroll Manor. Named ….
Rod: Wow.
Matt: Named after his wife. God bless, you know.
Rod: Yeah.
Matt: I mean, the contractor guided that saw the power of real estate so, built himself an apartment building. Paid it off, owned it free and clear when I bought it from him and, you know, as a big reward, took his wife to Hawaii right after closing.
Rod: Yes.
Matt: God bless, man. Victory lap, you know. And so, but, he was just, he’d kind of gotten out of really land lording and managing it so the wheels were starting to come off. So, he sold it at the right time. He was only nine of 18 units were occupied. Everything was original and I think there’s a lot of and this is a lesson to your listeners. There’s a lot of generational owners. This guy was 75 years old when I bought it from him, right? And so, there’s a lot of baby boomer owners that got into this business and they’re 30s and 40s that are now looking to exit from multifamily real estate. Call him mom-and-pop shop owners. This guy was going on the show. His wife was keeping the books; he was the legs. She was the one keeping the books behind him, right? You know, owners like these. Probably bought a lot of ….
Rod: Sure, sure. They’re a goldmine when you can connect with them, build rapport with them, and be around when they’re ready to pull the trigger.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: Absolutely.
Matt: Yeah. So, we found this guy and we bought the building from him. Leased it out, renovated the apartments, got everything up to my, you know, he was a hundred bucks a month short on all of his rents because he didn’t want people to, you know, didn’t want to upset other
Rod: Didn’t want to deal with turnover. So, got it. Yeah.
Matt: He’d also gotten buddy-buddy with his tenants. A lot of them were his friends, you know, and that. So, we had, we un-buddied all that, you know. And so, leased the rest of the unit’s out. Fast forward, bought it for a million, sold it for 1.5 three years later.
Rod: Nice.
Matt: Yeah. It’s a great deal. Now, I had a group of investors in this thing. I did the, I was gonna do a tenant in common to get it more complicated. We were gonna sell this building. Take the seven hundred-thousand-dollar profit that we made or take the profit plus the equity we had into it.
Rod: Right.
Matt: And roll into a …
Rod: Got it.
Matt: Yeah. Roll it into a hundred ninety-eight-unit in North Carolina as a tenant in common through a 1031 exchange.
Rod: Right.
Matt: So, all that lines up, we give the money to 1031 exchange custodian. I called the custodian two weeks before closing on the 198 unit and it turns out that they were running a Ponzi scheme.
Rod: Oh my God.
Matt: Yeah, man.
Rod: Oh my God.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: So, it was complete fraud on the part on the custodian.
Matt: So, he had defrauded six point five million in my mouth.
Rod: Wow.
Matt: This guy.
Rod: Wow.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: That’s a kick in the butt.
Matt: Yeah, it was.
Rod: I mean, wow. I was gonna circle back on something else she said but I’m a little speechless. So, you know, what happened? What ultimately happened?
Matt: Well, you know, a lot of tears and a lot of like, you know, “oh man” moments and stuff like that, like brought her home to my wife and I had a three-year-old at the time. He heard that daddy he’d had money stolen from him, and he would have got his piggy bank and gave it to me.
Rod: Oh, geez.
Matt: You know, this like all the three bucks in and I’m like, “Thank you, son.”
Rod: Oh, wow.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: Wow. Did you recover anything or was it just gone?
Matt: Yeah. No, no, no. It’s got a, working on a happy ending. So, me and these other guys that other men and women and everybody with the 6.5 million all got connected and so it was funny cuz this guy was taking the money and, I mean, you know, some of it was getting blown and that, but most of it, he was investing in real estate. So, he went and bought himself a like, couple mobile home park, bought a self-storage center, bought 70 single-family homes in Jacksonville, bought himself a million-dollar house on the beach.
Rod: Wow.
Matt: I did all the stuff with the money and so we formed a class-action suit against him, and we’re in the middle of repawning a lot of that stuff and his insurance company stepped in it.
Rod: You are doing it right now? You’re in the middle of it?
Matt: Now.
Rod: Wow.
Matt: Yeah, brother.
Rod: Wow.
Matt: So, we have a settlement on the way though.
Rod: Wow.
Matt: So, we’re gonna get just about May whole
Rod: Wow. Well, that’s great news. I mean, I mean, it’s bittersweet because of all the crap you’ve had to deal with to get there.
Matt: Years ago.
Rod: Yeah.
Matt: So, I need to underscore something. This is, it’s about mindset and it’s about doing the right thing, right? So, that 700 grand was not all my money, part of it was, but most of it was. And so, I could have gone and call in my investors. This is like 10 of them in this deal and gone, “hey guys. Guess what. We just got robbed. And this is what I’m going to do about it and this is how I’m gonna fix it”, right? Those folks were had invested with me as their custodian of their money, right? They trusted me and they trust people when they invest in syndications they trust. And so, I didn’t feel right, you know, going and saying, “hey guys, listen, I’ll let you know when the money comes back”, so what I did was, we were investing in this new deal, there, that seven hundred thousand was supposed to buy 18 percent of the property, right? My side, me and my partner side, was 30 percent. I gave them most of my chunk of that of that 30 percent. I just gave that to investors and say, “Okay. You’re covered.”
Rod: That was the right move. Yeah. That was the right move. And luckily, you had that ability to do that, and I’ve heard other operators have similar stories where, you know, they end up working for free on a deal to keep their investors whole and that’s what you have to do. So, ….
Matt: That was the right thing to do, man. And you had to put investors first to everybody in that and I think that it just comes from a gratitude standpoint that number one I know that there’s more where that came from, you know. And number two, …
Rod: It’s always is.
Matt: I’m grateful to have these people and I don’t have a scarcity mindset that, “oh, I got to protect myself and protect my deal and I can’t let them have mine or whatever”, if I have a prosperity mindset about it then, I know that I’ll get taken care of in the long run, you know. So, ….
Rod: Yeah, yeah. No, no. This is, you know, I don’t know it’s been quite that much, but I’ve heard other people wires and went to the wrong place, things of that nature, that really were a nightmare and people had to just re-cancel the deal to make their investors whole and that’s just, you know, that’s what you have to do. That’s part of this business. You absolutely do the right thing. I wanna circle back on one thing you said just to put an exclamation mark on it and that is, guys, I, honestly, would avoid having, you know, your residents even know that you’re the owner. We’re talking about buddy-buddy tenants because I can’t tell you how many deals we’ve seen where rents either haven’t been raised or they’ve got a property manager in place or paying him way too much because they became friends with them. Just be very, very careful with that dynamic. So, are there any other early failures that have contributed to your long-term success?
Matt: There’s, well, I mean on the marital side, my wife, Liz, is in here and that, but I think that finding a good balance between in working with your spouse and a lot of real estate investors work with their spouse, and that’s just, it’s there’s actually a really good dynamic to it. Liz and I have found a really good equation and working together now, but in the beginning, we were all over each other. And there was a lot of failures in the beginning of working with the one you love most, your spouse, but there are certain rules of a game. We tried a lot of rules. We tried one, it didn’t last very long but it was one rule we’re like we can’t talk about the business in certain rooms of the house, you know.
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Matt: Like there’s certain rooms for discussion of the business that didn’t work. We just needed to really understand personal boundaries that if I’m been working all day and come home working on it, she just gives me some space now and we have more scheduled times to talk about it versus rooms of discussion and whatnot. You know, because it just didn’t work out that way.
Rod: Yeah. That’s right out of John Gray’s book; Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. You know, and guys, you know, men are like, “I’m not gonna read that sissy female book”, but I’m here to tell you that when men come home from working, and this is not a sexist thing, this is just a trait of being a male, we need a little time to decompress before we can be there for our woman and we need a little time, John Gray calls it being in our cave. We need to go in our cave for a little bit and just be to ourselves, and on the flip side, when a woman comes home, she spent the whole day filling up her purse, figuratively, okay? And she needs to be able to unload that so she can be her beautiful feminine spirit self and, again and, so she’s gonna wanna tell you what happened and men have such a tendency to wanna fix it, you know, but they don’t want it fixed. They just want you to listen and sometimes it seems like they’re complaining to you about what’s going on and you feel like you need to fix it cuz you’re in fix-it mode and men fall into that trap where you just need to listen and let them get it out and, again, this is not sexist, this is just this is right out of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and it, but at least it’s been true in my life that, you know, you feel ….
Matt: You feel the integration of working with your spouse to on their and that there’s and sometimes during stress moments where it’s like, you know, bought a property, it’s not quite working out the way that we wanted it to or …..
Rod: You know, like the examples you just gave, right?
Matt: Right. Or even like, though those are like 9 out of 10 or 10 out of 10 level of intensity moments.
Rod: Right.
Matt: It’s actually the 4 to 5 out of 10 moments that really hurt, that really bite because they just kinda, they’re not that intense and you can kind of put them aside and like, “okay, this is something that’ll get worked out.” But if you don’t allow the relationship to be first then, you can allow those 3 to 6 out of 10 level of intensity things that need to be discussed but can be discussed later. You can allow them to take precedent over the relationship.
Rod: So, tell me, so, what you just said is obviously one piece. Is the relationship comes first?
Matt: Yes.
Rod: The love, the connection, all of that, “hey, we’ll deal with this other crap because it’s just that’s just stuff.”
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: But, we are whole, we are together. There’s nothing that will ever ….
Matt: Yes.
Rod: You know, rock this ship kind of an attitude. Is that what you’re saying?
Matt: That’s what I’m saying and because I, the little BS stuff. Like that 3 to 5 to 10, t 6 out of 10 things like, you know, the fix and flip is taking longer than we thought or this …..
Rod: Over budget.
Matt: Yeah. We’re over budget. This tenant didn’t pay their rent this month. Right? Does that really need to be in the forefront of me, again, another book the Five Love Languages, phenomenal book because it taught me how to really love my wife or the way that she needs to be taken care of, right? So, does that really precedent to me like giving her a bit of what she needs as my spouse? It has and I can tell you that doesn’t work.
Rod: Yeah. No, it definitely doesn’t work. And guys, yeah, you, I think I’ve talked about on the show. I talked about it with my students all the time. That’s one of the gifts they get from me is the Five Languages of Love, you know, cuz like in my first relationship with my ex, my love languages gifts. My students get gifts for me every month. I mean, I just love giving gifts. That’s how I express love and, but my ex-wife’s was access service. So, I’d give her a hundred, literally, hundreds of thousand dollars’ worth of gifts and she never felt anything for it, but if I did the dishes, oh my god, the clouds would part and that’s how she felt love. If I did something. So, those of you that don’t know what they are, the five love languages are touch, which is also one of mine; acts of service, like I just described, you know, “honey, let me do the dishes tonight or do something for you”; words of affirmation, “oh my god, you’re so amazing, you’re so beautiful, you’re just incredible; quality time, that happens to be my wife, Tiffy’s, is quality time, doesn’t matter what we’re doing, we’re together, it’s quality time; and then, what’s the fifth one? Gifts. Gifts, which is mine. So, yeah, awesome book. Yeah. So, besides that, any other strategies that you’ve used to nurture and protect the relationship with all the, you know, and anything else come to mind?
Matt: It’s become even more dynamic in having kids, but you just making sure, because it’d be real easy to let the business and the kids be our two priorities and let us become way down and let see, I’ve witnessed divorce happening. I’m like, “Okay, that’s how that happened. You just let the relationship fall the way down here.” So, we don’t allow that to happen then that’s, you know, simple stuff, date nights, you know, ….
Rod: Gotta have date nights.
Matt: Yeah. And we have a thing that we’re both into aside from the business. It could be something totally stupid like, like a show on Netflix, right? We made sure that we have a thing that we’re into that we discuss or book were reading together or, you know, like a transformational weekend that we can do together. We’ve done a lot of transformational stuff like I won’t, like if I were to go to unleash the power within or something like that, I wouldn’t do without her. Here’s I wanna ….
Rod: That’s a Tony Robbins event guys. Those are you listening. Unleash the power within. That’s the one where you walk on fry the first night and I’ve done it probably 40 times, not exaggerating, and I’ve worked it. I’ve worked, you know, I was on his team for a while and ….
Matt: I didn’t know that.
Rod: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked it a lot. I followed him for 20 years. I mean, that’s ….
Matt: That’s awesome.
Rod: Yeah, but so, that’s when you mean by a transformational weekend. That’s awesome. You do that together.
Matt: Well, we’ve done landmark together and stuff like that.
Rod: Landmark as well. Landmark as well.
Matt: Yeah. But the bottom line is, if you’re going to engage in personal transformation, do it with your spouse. Because we, as humans, kind of grow when we were kind of like a kite tail. We just kind of grow and go in different directions and stuff like that, and if you’re not doing your growth with your spouse ….
Rod: One gets left behind.
Matt: Yeah, man.
Rod: Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it many, many, many times because I’ve been around that tawny environment for so long.
Matt: Yeah.
Rod: And by the way, if you’re gonna do that stuff, just give Tony a plug that the event that’s the most dynamic for relationships is Date with Destiny and that’s one I’ve literally done. I’m not exaggerating. 16, 17 times. Anything, what’s that?
Matt: Is it the one that he did the TV, the movie on.
Rod: That’s the one he did. Yes. I’m not your guru movie on. Correct.
Matt: That was a great movie. Looks like on a weekend too, man.
Rod: I would have been in that. I would have actually been in that, because I was working with him before that but I had bad car accident. So, I kind of had to quit, but anyway, I couldn’t agree more and back to putting the relationship first, guys, those are you are in a relationship, that relationship with your spouse is even more important, at least the perception of it needs to be more important to your children than the relationship you have with them. When you come home, you need to put that spouse first because they’re gonna model what they see, and they need to see that, that relationship with you and your spouse is the most important. That’s how I feel about it. And, you’ve gotta carve out quality time, you know. I take my students in my live events through a weekly planning process and part of that process, you know, because like me, for me, one of my biggest regrets in life was I’d come home to my kids every day and I would play with them but I was distracted. I wasn’t present and I will, you know, and you guys, have heard this on the show before as well, you know, your kids or your spouse would rather have your presence for a short amount of time than a long time of distraction. So, you know, one of the things you might do is actually block time with them, you know. That can be very powerful.
Matt: And leave the cellphone in the drawer, man.
Rod: Exactly. Cellphones gotta go in the drawer, bottom line.
Matt: Yeah. We have a no-phone policy. We all sit, we have family dinner almost every night. We have dinner together.
Rod: How old are your kids?
Matt: Five and two.
Rod: Nah, wow. Wow. Hands full. Nice.
Matt: Yeah, man. And today, this is being recorded on Halloween on the 31st.
Rod: Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
Matt: So, tonight I got …
Rod: Today’s a big day.
Matt: I get a Power Ranger and Wonder Woman going out today.
Rod: Love it. Love it. I saw the, I see the shield behind you there. Yep?
Matt: I gave it for my birthday. I’m a huge Captain America fan because I love Captain America. Not to dork out a little bit but Captain America, as a human, was strong on the inside first. And then, they gave him the technology that made him strong on the inside. If you saw the movie or read the comic books or whatever he was a strong-willed human that was actually like, you know, physically small and everything like that, and then, they gave him, they made him big and bulky and everything like that.
Rod: Love it. Love the metaphors.
Matt: Yeah. I know. That’s why I’m a huge Captain America.
Rod: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, for those of you listening on itunes, he’s got this Captain America shield behind him on the floor. Very cool, very cool. So, let me ask you this. If you were coaching somebody who really cared about, about this business, what would you make sure they learned and say, the first 30 days, 90 days, how, you know, what, how would you coach that process?
Matt: Well, I would say that the, that you’re really just gonna get into the space, the first thing you had to do is, I would say, set five your goals on where you wanna be. Just commit to being in this thing for at least five years and don’t just try for a month and then quit, and try for, you know, be engaged in the business for five years and write your life story five years from now, but what life’s gonna look like five years from now, you know. In spoken in first person, and then, lay out like a real reasonable track record that stretch but not unreasonable. I mean, don’t be telling me that you wanna buy 500 units in your first two months of being in real estate.
Rod: Right, right.
Matt: You know, be a realistic but stretch. Like stretch yourself, you know, I mean, ….
Rod: Dosed in reality so your brain can actually wrap around it. Otherwise your brains gonna go, “you’re full of shit” and you’re, you know, you’re not gonna get a thousand doors in your first year in business most likely. You know, dose it in reality but yeah, I love it. With a stretch and I love what you just said about, about articulating your five years story, and that’s one of the things we do at my events, is I have the participants, literally, write down they’re perfect ideal day, there’s a version of that where they just write down from the morning they get up to the when they go to bed, what they’re doing and what’s in their life and who they’re helping in and who they’re spending time with, because the more you do that like, writing your story in five years in the, you know, in first person, it pulls you into it, you know. You associate with it. How are you ever gonna have it if you can’t visualize it and feel it and see it? And so, yeah, I love that.
Matt: Feel that joy being in the moment as if here right then. Yeah, man.
Rod: Right. With gratitude as if you’re already there.
Matt: Right.
Rod: I mean, and man, that’s how that stuff comes in your life, guys. I mean, this last, I went to the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show yesterday cuz one of my things is I wanna either buy or rent a yacht and go all the way around the Mediterranean from Spain, all the way around. Around the boot and Italy down to Croatia, Greece, all of that for a few months. And, so, you know, the more you can experience what it is you want to do the faster it’s gonna come into your life and so, you know, it, that’s, that just like you said by describing your five-year story kind of the same thing. You associate with these things you want in life. So, do you have any morning rituals that you do?
Matt: So, when I’m on my game because I’m not perfect, right? There are times I’m not on my game, but when I’m on my game, I wake up between five and six. I get up. I do, so a, bottom line, I do Miracle Morning.
Rod: Fantastic. I have had Hal Elrod on the show, and that’s a book, another book that I give to all my students. I’ve got one students had, literally, done it, that’s he’s done it for three years straight. Never missed a day.
Matt: Wow.
Rod: Yeah. So, those you guys don’t know what that is, The Miracle Morning, you get up, you do some, you do some, you exercise, you do some meditation or prayer, you journal, he calls it scribing, I believe, and you read. You read something quality, not crap. You read something in a good book. Is that correct? Did I get all that?
Matt: Yeah. He called it The SAVERS. That is an acronym, and you go work out. You do some, you move your body. So, we get up in the morning. Lots of people get up in the morning. They throw on the clothes they wear yesterday, they throw their pajamas, whatever. If you just create the habit of putting on your workout, when you get out of bed, put on your gym shorts and your and even if you don’t go right to the gym when you get up, get in the attire of working out right when you get out of bed and I love them. I’ve done after noon workouts or evening workouts. I love just go for a quick run, weightlifting, whatever it is, I got to do. Just get my blood pumping in the morning. I find that my attitude is up all day. If I get my heart rate up all, just first thing in the morning, that’s such a great way to get it going, you know.
Rod: Love it. Love it. Love it. Alright guys, we’ll listen, check out his Youtube channel, check out his book, Raising Private Capital, How to Build your Real Estate Empire with Other People’s Money on Amazon and Matt, I really appreciate you being on the show, brother. I’ve had a lot of fun with this, and I’ll talk to you soon, my friend.
Matt: Well, thank you, Rod. It’s been an honor to be here.
Rod: Alright.
Hey thanks for watching. Please subscribe to my channel and if you listen to podcast join me on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to those podcasts just search for a Lifetime Cashflow to Real Estate Investing.
