Ep #578 – Leveraging your superpowers for investing in multifamily
Megan Lamke was over $500,000 in debt and leveraged her superpowers to get debt free within 5 years. She shared her expertise with syndicators and was able to get written into the general partnership of deals she was involved with. Megan currently holds over 2000 doors and half a billion dollars in assets.
Here’s some of the topics we covered:
- Discovering your superpowers
- Investing in your tech stack
- All in one vs fractional tech stack
- Using automation
- Client acquisition
- Providing a great investor experience
- Creating reach
- The value of targeted messaging
- Happily achieving
- Overcoming analysis paralysis
To find out more about our guest:
https://meganlamke.com/
Full Transcript Below:
Rod
Welcome to another edition of How to Build a Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m thrilled that you’re here and you are going to love the ball of fire that I’m interviewing today. Her name is Megan Lamke and she’s the CEO and managing partner of her namesake company, Megan Lamke Real Estate, “meganlampke.com”. And she actually has her own podcast, “Business For Good Podcast”. And she does impact investing. She gives 50% of her freakin’ salary to nonprofit organizations. And so she and I are new best friends and I’m super excited to dig into a wide ranging conversation with her. Megan, welcome to the show.
Megan
Thank you so much Rod. It’s such an honor to be here. I’m so excited to connect with you and talk more.
Rod
Well, thank you. Thank you. And before we started recording, you said you suffered through one of my boot camps and you’re doing the goal setting. Could you– well, before we go there, tell us your story, talk about your story first and how you got to having over 2200 doors and five– you know, almost a half a billion in assets. I forgot to mention that, guys, forgive me, you know. So anyway, let’s talk about how you got to where you are right now and then we’ll go back to the suffering through me.
Megan
No Problem. So six years ago, my husband and I were going through marriage preparation classes and one of the things that was recommended was getting together on our finances. So we went through Dave Ramsey “Financial Peace University” and got really serious about paying off our personal debt so that one day we can make a huge impact. Growing up, both of our parents struggled financially. We came from really humble means. My parents declare bankruptcy when I was young and we lost everything. So at 10 years old, I picked up “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and my whole life I’ve been trying to buy green houses and change them into red hotels. So we went through that class, paid off $535,000 in under five years, including a mortgage and over $200,000 worth of student loans. Yes, I got my MBA. Yes, it was super expensive. So then we turned around and said, hey, we’ve been house hacking our only house, our primary residence with six of our rugby teammates and family members. We convince them to help us renovate it. We became accidental bur investors and we looked around and said, we don’t have a mortgage payment anymore. We have great high paying salaries. We want to start a family. What should we do now? Like, do we buy additional greenhouses and try and scale up or do we just skip the whole thing, sell our house, use all the equity to passively invest in multifamily syndications and just have the Red House right away? And that’s what we did. So we sold our house and passively invested in multifamily syndications. I quit all of my side hustles because I was teaching crossfit and kickboxing before work going to my corporate sales job and marketing automation job and then bartending at night, rinse and repeat for five years. Then left all those things because of our passive investments, quit my corporate job and decided to start my real estate company in April 1st 2019. And that’s when I started doing a bunch of mindset and hanging out with people who are where I want to be. Like Rod, and so I went to his boot camp and really was super intentional about goal setting and visualization, incantations, affirmations and literally surrounded by self with some of the highest, best and most successful people in this industry and said, hey, it looks like your investor relationship experience and user experience could be a lot better. My background is in marketing automation and software as a service sales for fast growing tech companies like Apple. Can I be a part of your general partnership if I help you fix this user experience?
Rod
So let me stop you. Let me stop you for one second because you’re moving really quick and I don’t want people to miss what you just said.
Megan
Yeah.
Rod
So, guys, what we’re going to talk about now is what you need to be thinking about for yourselves, okay? And that is this multifamily business is a team sport and we all have superpowers that we can bring to this business. And so what Megan did was identify the fact that she’s an incredible in the marketing automation side of things. And so I just want to have– just put a little exclamation mark on what you just said. So you went to other successful operators, syndicators, and said, hey, how can help you? Right?
Megan
Right.
Rod
How can I help you automate what you’re doing? All right, please continue from there. I just– you’re going so quick. I didn’t want people miss that huge point.
Megan
So I said, how can I help you? This is my corporate background. Here’s my resume. Here’s my experience. Here’s my passive investments. What can I do to help? And most of them took me up on the offer, wrote me into the general partnership, and I created an Evergreen Tech Solution for them to continue to use and raise capital super, super fast, which is so awesome and rewarding. And so from there, continued, quit my corporate job and took down syndications on my own. And it’s been a whirlwind for the past two years, ever since.
Rod
Fantastic. Yes. So again guys, think about what your super power is. Is it relationships? Maybe you bring that to a team. Is it operations after the fact for asset management? Maybe you bring that to the team. Maybe it’s the analysis. That’s where I need the most help. Bring that to a team. And when you do– and maybe it’s raising money. You know, maybe you’ve got a good network. You’re connected with high net worth individuals in the IT space or engineering space or medical space. And you bring that to a team. So there’s so many ways that you can add value to a team that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There’s lots of wheels rolling around all over the place that you can add value to like Megan did here. So awesome, awesome freakin’ story. So let’s talk, let’s drill down on marketing automation. Talk about what that means. Talk about what you did for some of these people and, of course, that you do for yourself.
Megan
Yeah. So the biggest thing that you do is you need to pick a tech stack that’s consistent. You need to have everything in one centralized repository where most entrepreneurs go wrong is they’ll get a fractional system. They’ll have HubSpot and then MailChimp and then SurveyMonkey and ActiveCampaign, and then they might try and scale and get Salesforce or something like that. You need a platform that has everything in one spot so you can tell when you’re generating a marketing lead, what that person is getting all the way through their customer journey and then how much revenue or in– how much money they’re investing in each deal and what their user experience has been like after becoming an investor. Because that’s the whole picture. Soup to nuts. How do you tell where should I apply more marketing dollars, more sales dollars, more human capital, more employees to go do that over and over and over again. And so for us, we use ActiveCampaign because we can track all of our sales leads in one centralized place. It’s super simple. We use it for all of our marketing. Again, it’s a robust system and they have so many free tutorial videos on YouTube. That’s why I wanted to make sure that we picked a tech stack that could be used by our virtual assistant or literally any single person on our team or any single person I was working with is ActiveCampaign, has an awesome job at creating educational content and have pulled together a really great forum.
Rod
So ActiveCampaign, now, if we use HubSpot and it does same–
Megan
Yeah. It does the same thing. Yeah.
Rod
Yeah. And so, talk– I mean, on a more granular level. Kind of walk us through the customer journey, maybe in your platform. How do they come in the top of the funnel and then what do they experience, what should they experience as they, you know, as they travel through your funnel as it were for lack of a better word?
Megan
Yeah. So we have a– today we have about 21 different ways that people get added to our funnel.
Rod
For example.
Megan
For example, pay-per-click advertising, SEO, organic search, speaking on podcast, me hosting podcasts, speaking at events, sponsoring events, buying lists from family offices, showing up at charity and philanthropic events, and connecting with other investors from friends and family to people who are downloading our ebook. The list goes on and on, like there’s ultimately so many ways that you can–
Rod
Let’s hone in on, say, pay-per-click.
Megan
Pay-per-click, perfect. So, pay-per-click. What you do is you’re doing a list of keywords. You’re figuring out what your ideal avatar is searching for and how to show up when they’re putting those keywords in. So you really need to do that post-mortem exercise first, before you spend any money on pay-per-click because you need to see where have your top investors come from? What have they liked about investing with you and what was their user experience like and survey them to get that results. You don’t know what you’re trying to build or what you’re trying to duplicate until you survey your investors and the ones that know, like and trust you. You also need to survey the ones that have had a horrible experience to make sure you’re not duplicating that again. So then once you have all of that data, then you show up and you say, here’s who my avatar is, here’s who might I’m trying to attract more of, here’s what their struggles are, what’s keeping them up at night and go by pay-per-click advertising around that messaging, around those keywords. And then–
Rod
You’re talking just Google or other social platforms as well?
Megan
Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. We do a lot of cross marketing with webhooks. I don’t know how much you want me to get into the wins. I’m really kick out about that.
Rod
Well, just briefly talk about what a webhook is. And then, I don’t know if you’ve got a lead magnet, explain what that is as well. So I use that a free book. So talk about that for a moment because this is helpful. Guys, obviously, guys, if you’re going to raise money for deals, we live in the greatest time on earth as it were to do that and create reach. I mean, my podcast’s 11,000,000 downloads. YouTube watch for 40,000 hours last year. You know, Facebook group with 40,000 people in it. I mean, these are things that were unthinkable when I first started in this business so you’ve got incredible opportunities. But you’ve got to figure out how to capture their information in these different areas. So, you know, one of the expressions is a lead magnet where you give something away for free. I give tons of books away for free and you’re talking about yours. What is a webhook? Speak to that for a moment.
Megan
So a webhook is when an anonymous person from an IP address comes to visit your website and then you tag that IP address and then pay for advertising to follow them all over the–
Rod
It’s called retargeting–
Megan
Yeah, retargeting using that webhook, and then you’re progressively filling out their customer information. So maybe the first time they come to your website, they’re just giving you their email address and then you’re building upon that and you’re getting their name and then you’re building upon and you’re getting maybe their mailing address to send them a thank you card or a free gift. And you’re just continuing to cultivate that relationship until you have the information you need. And you’ve moved further down the funnel where they know, like, trust you, find you credible and they want to get more information about investing in one of your opportunities.
Rod
Well, so let’s talk about how they know, like and trust you.
Megan
Yeah.
Rod
So guys, what you have to do and this is what I teach my students. I teach us at my boot camps, you know, because we have these incredible resources to create reach. There are two keys to this. One key is you have to be consistent if you’re going to go out there. But second key is you add value, you add educational content. You know, like we do in these podcasts, like you can do in a meetup group, like you can do, you know, with social– you know, with articles that I post on Forbes and elsewhere. And so this is what we’re talking about here. Yes, Megan?
Megan
It’s exactly. Yep. And the key, again, is consistency. So Rod does an awesome job at pumping out newsletters, pumping out content like he is everywhere–
Rod
Yep.
Megan
Scheduled. You can also use automation tools like Buffer to sit down and block your time. This is another one of the skills that I learned from Rod is you want to be in the highest and best use of your time and group like ideas. So if you’re going to come up with all of your social media posts, do it for three months in advance. Put them in Buffer, which is a free service. Schedule out all that social media and the first comment and all you have to do is engage or hire a virtual assistant to engage with you and you can elevate yourself out and back into the CEO role in your business.
Rod
Yeah. I love it. Do you use a VA for this or do you have an employee here domestically?
Megan
Both end. So we, because of my tech background, I have literally automated as much as humanly possible. And then we use a combination of virtual assistants all over the world.
Rod
Nice. Yeah. Us as well. Okay, so just to further discuss this a little bit. You know, a lot of people– you wrote a book, what’s your book called and what’s it about? Is it about the benefits of passive investing? Is it did you–
Megan
No. It’s actually, I found out going into the space, I’m a millennial woman and I would show up in the space and the only girl or the only woman in the room a lot of the times. And so I would feel trepidatious about asking the big, hairy, audacious questions. So finally, I just wrote them all down and was like, here, let me give this out to the universe because there’s more women out there that are asking the same questions and don’t know where to find the answers. So–
Rod
What’s the title of the book?
Megan
Yeah, so I wrote the “LeadHER’s Guide To Investing”
Rod
LeadHER’s.
Megan
HER’s.
Rod
Oh, I love it for women. I love that.
Megan
For women.
Rod
And we’ve had some dynamic women on the show and I’ve got quite a few in my master mind as well that are just rock stars with thousands of doors. And I love the fact that women are so supportive. Most of them have some initiatives around raising awareness to get more women into this business. So I absolutely love that. Okay, so let’s see, where do I want to take this? So let, you know, how–
Megan
You want me to finish answering where people go once you have a webhook?
Rod
Oh yes. Please. Thank you.
Megan
So once you attract them at the very top of your funnel, then you’re going to continue to nurture the relationship. And so in my business, we segment people out based on avatar so that predictive analytics where they’re continuing to give you a little nudges about who they are as a person. So you know what messaging and what bucket to put them in.
Rod
So hold on. Let me stop you there. Sorry. So how do you do that? Let’s talk about the how. Okay, how do you segment them?
Megan
Yeah. So how you do that is as people are coming in, as they’re filling out a form fill, you have hidden fields about where they came in from or their gender. So in my business I designate between men and women, I designate between married and single, widower, divorce. I designate between they have kids or they don’t have kids because every single one of those personality types and avatars have different things that resonate with them, different wise, different passions. And I want to make sure I’m aligning the right message with the person.
Rod
How you get that information, though? Are you asking them if they’re married or if they have kids or how are you getting that information?
Megan
Yeah, so some of it is proactively done as people are investing with us so that we make sure that we take our investor portal and marry it up with ActiveCampaign. So when you’re signing a subscription doc, you say, hey, I’m married. Because in some states your spouse has to sign off that you’re investing or we also do really fun things like scraping data and using skip tracing to on like Whitepages, and Seamless AI and Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn to figure out, do they have kids? Are they married? And our VAs help with a lot of that research. So again, we’re coming up with super targeted messaging for each person.
Rod
So once you get that information, what next?
Megan
So once you get that information, you provide like super sticky information that answers the questions and provide solutions to what’s keeping them up at night and what are their biggest motivators or what’s the why behind why would they ever do this. And you show up as, hey, you want to spend more time with your kids, this is how you get there. You passively invest in real estate syndication. So you’re identifying the need, you’re providing the solution. And they’re like, man, if I work with Rod, it solves all my problems.
Rod
Yeah, right. And more importantly, Megan.
Megan
Yeah.
Rod
So, yeah, and we do the same thing.
Megan
Right.
Rod
You know, the thought leadership business will send out a survey and say, you know, and we’ll ask, what’s keeping you up at night? And I will tell you how people respond is marketing gold. You know–
Megan
Right.
Rod
When you ask questions like that and you then phrase your marketing in the same, you know, with the same words, even the same phrasing. It’s very, very powerful. And of course, you can do this with investors. And, you know, that whole avatar dynamic is very, very important. You need to know who you’re marketing to. And so, you know, and where do they live? You know, are they, you know, on Tiktok or Instagram or are they really more on LinkedIn and Facebook? And, you know, thinking about, you know, where you’re going to, you know, get in front of them the most? You’re not shooting– sorry about the analogy. So you’re not shooting with a shotgun, you’re shooting with a rifle. Right?
Megan
Right. Exactly.
Rod
Honing in your marketing. So–
Megan
Or like if they live in Texas, for example, and they’re an investor and Texas just lost all their power, we can use ActiveCampaign to send a text message saying, hey, we’re thinking about you. We’re praying for you. Please let us know how we can help you. We love you. You’re important to us. We care about you. We’re here for you. Like, that type of human interaction touch. That’s where businesses really scale and grow is in high technology, high touch and compassion.
Rod
Nice. Nice. So are you, I mean, obviously, you’re doing this with your podcast, you know, one of the big ways– excuse me. I’m still getting over Covid. One of the big ways to create reach, I mean, that we just talked about is adding value. So besides the podcast, are there any other ways that you’re adding value to create this reach and or– no, really to create reach or to add value to your existing, you know, email client list?
Megan
Yeah, so we’re huge in the Impact Investing World.
Rod
Talk about that.
Megan
Yeah. So everything that we do, every acquisition that we have, every monthly distribution we have, a portion of that goes to help different organizations all over the world. So we work with a nonprofit organization called “venture.org” where they go in and rescue women and children as young as two years old from being sold into sex trafficking in Southeast Asia and then create mental health resources. We provide education. Together, we actually wrote in 2020 a curriculum to teach financial management and help these women and children get an education and become entrepreneurs. So now I hire those entrepreneurs or those educated women to be my virtual assistant in my company.
Rod
Oh my God.
Megan
It’s just like continuing–
Rod
So freakin’ cool. Oh my God, I mean, I have goose bumps. That is so freaking cool. You know, guys, listen, if you’re listening, power moves to those who serve. When I interview people for my warrior mentorship program, I always ask them what their why is. And if I hear a why that’s outside of them, like what Megan is describing here, I know success is inevitable. And that’s just the way it works. And, you know, we– and the other thing is, if you’ve ever heard me tell my story about building that $8,000,000 house on the beach that I work for 20 years, and within two months, I was depressed because I was unfulfilled. I was totally focused on me. And, you know, that’s when I started feeding families. And so let me say this to you, if you haven’t heard me say this before, you know, you might be thinking that you have to achieve to be happy. If you incorporate giving back right now, like right now. I know if you’re saying to yourself, I’ll do it when I have money. Big mistake, because if you incorporate giving back right now, you will be happily achieving and you’ll get there much faster. Okay, now you don’t do it for that reason, but that’s just the way God, the universe, whatever you believe works. What you give, you give back a hundred fold. So give back now. Pick a passion. I don’t care if it’s, you know, for you, it’s helping these poor women in the self sex trafficking. If it’s children, if it’s the elderly, if it’s the environment, if it’s animals, whatever it is that juices you. Figure out how to give back to it right now and you will be happily achieving and you’ll get there much faster. You agree, Megan?
Megan
Oh, I agree 100%. And that’s what makes life worth living, worth continuing. It’s not about, how much can I hold on to it? They clenched fist, like for me, it’s how much can I give away? Like, we’re blessed to be a blessing. Like, how many lives can I impact? Like our big, hairy, audacious goals now? I mean, I’m just going to be really vulnerable and share them. Like, how can we rescue a million women in the next five years so sex trafficking is not a problem anymore? We’ve created enough economic change to do that. And that’s why I love ventures. They literally have so many different injustice causes and they give you all the marketing material to incorporate this thing in our business, like for free. So that’s why I just love them so much as–
Rod
That’s awesome.
Megan
You’re a true nonprofit partner. And those are the type of people that you want to work for or work with and incorporate in to your business.
Rod
Help. Yeah. To help, yeah, because you’re helping– not only making the world a better place, you know, guys, you know we’ve got two hands, one to pull ourselves up, one to pull someone else up below us. Contribution is a basic human need. And, you know, frankly, if you’re not contributing, you’re slowly dying. And that’s just the truth of it. And when you want to ramp your success in anything, give back and that’s just how it works. So what haven’t I asked you that you wish I had Megan? Because, you know–
Megan
Yeah. So–
Rod
You’re kind of a unique guest for me.
Megan
Yeah. I’m this mythical unicorn, kind of–
Rod
As you see. So shall it be. I love it.
Megan
Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I think the biggest misnomer that I hear all the time I get asked all the time is, Megan, how in the world do you afford to give away so much because of what you’re doing? Like, how do you how do you structure that? So just to add value to your listeners, I’m going to tell you, like my husband and I set our budget. We live off of $50,000 a year. Like that’s it. Everything else is overflow and goes into investments or our donor advised fund and our donor advised fund because of who we work with. They’re called impact assets. They’re amazing. They’re free. You can invest donor advised funds through impact of assets into multifamily syndications. So literally, we just have our money, keep printing money and every single nonprofit we work with gets part of our donor advised fund and then that gets reinvested in our syndications to earn more returns than what they do in the market. And anybody can do this. I’m not some mythical unicorn. I just asked so many questions and enough of the right questions and surrounded myself with amazing teachers, mentors like Rod to pour into my life and help me get where I needed to go and help me see what the possibilities were.
Rod
Love it, freaking love it. So let me ask you this. You know, got a lot of people that haven’t pulled the trigger yet, that haven’t come to my boot camp, haven’t done anything, maybe they’re cutting analysis paralysis. I get a lot of analytical people and I love you, but you got to take action. You know what– I gave you a possible answer, but you can certainly give them another one. What words of wisdom would you share with an aspiring commercial real estate investor, somebody that knows they need to do this, maybe they haven’t out of haven’t taken action, out of fear, you know, what would you say to that person?
Megan
Yeah, it’s ironic. I get that question quite a bit. And my husband was that person. He’s super analytical. He has three engineering degrees and a math minor like this man wanted certainty. He had analysis paralysis. And so what we did as a partnership and what I encourage people who are that analytical person to do is actually just start passively investing in syndications because you will learn so much more from that and you’ll have cash flowing and that will build your confidence. So then when you’re writing a check and scheduling your time to do a boot camp, you’re actually being more effective because you’ve gotten some sort of skin in the game and you’ve freed your calendar up enough because you have additional passive income coming in . Where you don’t have to work overtime for your engineering career. You don’t have to hustle at your I.T. job for month and quarter and customer success. You’re not working 70, 80 hours a week because you have that passive income in and then buy a boot camp or schedule it with your monthly calendar. Put– Rod does an awesome job at telling you when all of his boot camps are 12 months in advance. Put them on your family calendar like this is a non negotiable. It’s a gold time. You don’t get this back. It’s like the biggest limiting resource in the world is how you’re choosing to spend your time. And if you’re not investing it in yourself as an entrepreneur, as someone who’s trying to become an entrepreneur, if you’re not investing in and building a business that can eject your family from the rat race, like what in the world are you doing? Yeah, I’m on a rant, so go ahead.
Rod
No, no, listen, even if it’s not with me, just for God’s sakes, get started. Go learn this. You know, go to university if you have to. Whatever you have to do to get going. All right. Last question.
Megan
Yeah.
Rod
What’s your definition of success?
Megan
So my definition of success is disrupting an industry for good. So prioritizing people, the planet and profits on purpose for the betterment of the world. So disrupting the industry, disrupting human trafficking so that it’s no longer an issue. I’m an agent for change and that’s how I define success. I told you I went to your boot camp. I told you.
Rod
I don’t think anybody could have answered that question better than you just did. You’re so impressive, Megan. It’s such a treat to see your heart and why you’re doing this. And there’s no– guys, there’s a reason. She has a half a billion in assets. Okay.
Megan
Right.
Rod
There’s a reason and I hope you’re getting that memo. Anyway, what a treat it is to meet you and spend some time with you. And I’m really excited to see where you’re at a year from now, because I just know it’s going to be even more incredible. And, you know, you’re a change for good. You’re a force for good. And you’re going to change this world. You already changing this world.
Megan
Thank you so much.
Rod
That’s my pleasure to meet you.
Megan
It’s my pleasure and honor to be here. Thank you so much for pointing to my life.
Rod
You bet.
