WS777: Extraordinary Effort Leads To Extraordinary Results with Corey Woodruff

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.3] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Corey Woodruff. Thanks for being on the show this morning, Corey.

[0:00:32.9] CW: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[0:00:36.2] WS: Yeah, honored to have you on the show, Corey — he has an amazing story that I know it’s going to be motivational and inspiring to you as a listener. I think he’s going to have some steps too that he’s going to share that just is going to help you to get to where he has gotten quickly at a young age, I think as well.

A little about Corey. He’s the President and CEO of CMH Capital. After investing in mobile home parks on the side for four years, he was able to leave his six-figure job at the age of 30. He now owns over 700 lots with 400 lots set to close in two months. So Corey, congratulations again just on making this happen. I look forward to diving into stories like this, because that’s what so many listeners are striving for, right? When they can leave that day job, how do we get there, what are some steps that this person or not person, or Corey took to make that happen. I mean, I remember the struggle for years for my family and I while working full-time, doing full-time real estate business at the same time. It’s not easy. And I never tried to act like it was easy, but I look forward to hearing your story. Give us a little more about who Corey is and CMH Capital, what you all are already doing and how you got there.

[0:01:49.3] CW: Like you were mentioning just recently over the last, I believe it was about two months ago, I left my six-figure job. And basically, throughout working, obviously, my days off were spent calling mobile home parks, going and doing due diligence and finding these parks and raising capital for them. So, I ended up leaving the job, and now, CMH Capital has an office space near my home in Ohio, and we have three callers working for us, where we have the software systems in place, to where they’re calling about 500 people a week.

All of our deals have been off market. So they’re calling these people seven days a week. And even myself is still calling, and obviously, I’m analyzing them and making the offers, and we’re putting in about $20 million in offers a week. Offers don’t mean much until they’re under contract, but that’s kind of where we’re at right now. Five hundred calls and about $15 to $20 million on offers a week.

[0:02:44.4] WS: Wow! I’m glad you started with that, just to tell us the level of commitment, and the level of just effort that’s being put in right now to make this happen. Calling 500 people a week, $20 million in offers every week. What tells me is that you’ve built some really good system, and built a team as well to make this happen.

I’d like to back up a little bit though and talk about how you started to make this happen while working full-time, and then how you go past that, just that decision of leaving this job as well. Then maybe we can talk about some of those systems to. But let’s back up to, you’re still working full-time while in mobile home parks, and how did you start to purchase the first few deals or what gave you the confidence to do that while also working full-time?

[0:03:31.2] CW: Yeah, so, I was lucky enough, fortunate enough to be very good at my job. So I saved up a lot of money, 40 grand or 50 grand or so. And I went to a mobile home park close to my hometown and just told the guy, I said, “Hey, you have these ten abandoned homes, I’m going to buy them from you, and I’ll fix them up, and I’ll rent them out. It’s good for you, good for me.” He’s like, “No, no. Just buy the whole park.” He’s like, “I’m 80 years old, I don’t have time for that.”

So I told him, I said, “Hey, I don’t have a good credit. I don’t have enough money to put down.” He said, “What do you have?” He ends up selling and financing the deal for me 40 grand down. And that was before I knew about investor money —

So when I told my pals, I said, “Hey, we’re going to have this deal for five years. We’re going to refinance it and then we’ll take that money and buy another deal. But then I just started to meet people and connect with people at the associations, then I kind of started to learn the way of — I noticed that all these people are looking for deals. None of them said, “Hey! Do you know anyone that has money to buy a mobile home park?” They were all saying, “Hey, this is what I’m looking for — if you see anything like this out there, give me a call.” Obviously, it was an ah-ha moment for me. I’m definitely not at pioneer at doing this, but it was kind of — I see the problem is not lack of money. It was lack of deals, of good deals.” I just started just hand dialling on my time off from work.

[0:04:55.0] WS: Nice. Okay. I want to back a little bit too, was there a desire then for like, was Corey desiring to be a full-time real estate investor at that time? And be devoted to mobile home parks over that asset class? What caused you to even want to make this transition or to want to get into real estate?

[0:05:12.2] CW: Yeah, like I said. When I bought my first mobile home park, I didn’t know what due diligence was. I didn’t do a phase 1, I didn’t do a survey, I did nothing. I didn’t even know. I just knew that I needed to put my money on something. So, I didn’t really know that mobile home parks were going to be a big thing for me, I just knew that it seemed like a good deal. Then obviously, once I put it under contract, I started researching Frank and Dave and those guys. So, I didn’t really know exactly, but once I got into it, I realized that I did have an act for it. It was something I enjoyed doing, which is important.

[0:05:44.4] WS: You knew you needed to invest your money somewhere — and this seemed like a good option and it started to snowball, sounds like. The more you learned, the more people you met in the business. What about just in managing your time, say you’re a couple years into it of that four years before — maybe a couple of years before leaving your day job. How did you manage your time, while also having a family and a day job as well?

[0:06:09.2] CW: Family life was kind of put on the back burner, but my fiancé, she understood, And I was president of sales for the organization that I worked for. So my job was overseeing everybody. It was a sales job, basically, timeshare sales. As long as the numbers were good, they were okay with me doing what I did, which was on my free time at work, I was calling mobile home parks. I got a lot of stuff done while I was at work, then I noticed that if I showed up to work three hours early, most of my management stuff was done before anybody else started. You know, looking around at the other managers when they’re on their time off, they’re scrolling through Facebook or watching the news. I just decide to use that time to further my business.

[0:06:51.6] WS: Nice. So, you went to work three hours early. I just like to hammer on that event. It’s that extraordinary effort, right, that gains the extraordinary results. And that’s where what most people are not willing to do, but you did it. So what about — when it’s time to actually leave that j-o-b, you have a very high income compared to most, what was that thought process? Probably maybe there is family or friends that were saying, “Corey, you’re crazy.” What did that look like?

[0:07:19.3] CW: I had a lot of people tell me that I was nuts, because I do come from a very poor family. So for them, telling them that I’m leaving a job that they would give their right arm to have was kind of crazy idea. The sad thing was is, I actually really love my job. It was fun to me, but I just knew that making the 175 a year pay was actually holding me back much more than 175,000 a year. I knew that and it was a scary move, but once I got into it, and I left and I started the call center, I knew it was the right move for me.

[0:07:55.1] WS: The opportunity loss was going to be much greater, right?

[0:07:58.5] CW: I’m still waiting for this extra free time that I thought I would have, I haven’t found that quite yet.

[0:08:05.6] WS: You will. Tell me, now, you’ve left the job. Maybe tell us about some of he changes that have taken — no, I’ll tell you. Let’s back up. What are some ways that the listener could do now that you did to get this first couple of deals done, and actually start to see that light at the end of the tunnel? What are some things that you did that were crucial to make it happen for you to get to that point where you can leave your job?

[0:08:28.8] CW: Number one, you become a student of the game. You go to association shows, you look at forums, you watch podcast like this, you read the book from Frank and David and also others. So you become a student of the game, but the secret, there is no magic secrets sits right here in this phone. So that the more you dial it, the more deals you’re going to get. So, I think that a lot of people, they call somebody and they say, “Oh, I’m not interested in selling” and they click, and they never follow up.

That’s the biggest difference CMH Capital and most others, is that the follow up is the most crucial thing in the world, because you don’t know what life situation is going to happen two months down the road right after you call them. I know that every person that is big into mobile home parks or apartments has called somebody and they said no, and then they followed up with them two years later and they said, “Oh, we sold it last month.” Follow up is extremely crucial, but not also not giving yourself an excuse. I worked a full-time job and again, I come into work three hours early in order to get things done. So making sure that you’re not making excuses for yourself is important as well.

[0:09:41.4]WS: Very much so. Let’s talk about some of those systems that you had in place, and how you’re able to accomplish all that. You had a flexible hours at work, but also, you got to work three hours early, which I think is crucial to know that you are you willing to put in the time and the effort. But what are some systems that you had to get in place, because you can’t get it all done typically by yourself and growing that fast and making this transition. Tell us about some of the systems that you did.

[0:10:08.7] CW: Yeah. So up until recently when we actually opened up CMH Capital, we were calling off Excel spreadsheets to be honest with you. I was fortunate because a lot of the people that worked for me, they had kind of see me grow and develop. They said, “Hey, how much money do I need to give to invest?” Then I tell them the same thing I tell everybody, “You don’t need anything. You just need to find deals.”

They would call off my list as well, and then we use Monday now. So when they get a perspective seller, we’ll put in Monday and then I’ll analyze it and categorize it where I feel like it needs to be.

[0:10:40.9] WS: Nice. Okay. So when did you hire your first person?

[0:10:44.8] CW: Basically, right out of the gate. As soon as I left my job, I opened up my office and hired three callers. It was a tough pill to swallow but I actually just hired a full-time operations guy, so I kind of felt like I could do it on my own, but it’s too much with how many parks I have now. So, we just hired a full-time operations guy, so that’s exciting.

[0:11:06.5] WS: Those three people, all they’re doing is phone calling, is that right?

[0:11:09.0] CW: Yeah. Their job is to get the yes and get the high-level details of the park. Then it goes off to me, and they keep calling.

[0:11:17.1] WS: How do you track their productivity and their success?

[0:11:20.8] CW: Our calling software is able to say, “Hey, they’ve talked to this many people, this is how many yeses they’ve gotten or interested in selling.” Then I’m also able to kind of see in Monday how many deals they’re putting in. But for the most part, I mean, when we’re calling parks that are 200 space and above, we’d say, “Oh,” we’ll use bigger words like acquisition’s team, analyst team, our president and CEO, Corey Woodruff and really build the credibility of our company. Because the biggest thing is 200 spaces and above parks as you know are getting calls every single week, every day. So standing out is extremely important and we use bigger words with those parks.

[0:11:59.7] WS: That’s an interesting talk, because you have a sales background, right, so you understand some of that probably better than some others. Talk about that a little bit more, maybe about how you prepared them for that phone call, because that’s hard, especially if they’re not in the real estate business or industry in the past in any way. How else do you help them to think through how they handle that phone call with different individuals.

[0:12:23.9] CW: Yes, it’s the same things in sales. I mean, I’ve watched a lot of people where they were good when they first started and then they just over complicate the process too much. So we have two pitches when we call. It’s like, hey, when you get somebody, when you call, they answer and they say, “Hello.” Then you can just tell it’s a Mom & Pop owner. Those people, we just say, “Hey. Corey, our partner and I, we own a few parks around the area, and we’re really interested in yours. Do you have any interest in selling?” Then if they say no, we’re just trying to get a timeframe of when they are interested in selling, so that we can follow up with them.

But then whenever we’re calling the bigger parks, that’s when we’re talking to them saying, “Hey, I’m calling today. I’m just a caller. I’m calling to see if you have interest in selling your mobile home park.” If they say, “Yes,” we’ll say, “Okay, great. Well, this is what we need to make an offer. Your P&L and your rent role. Do you feel comfortable sending that over to me?” And a lot of time, they don’t want to, so we say, “Hey, our president and CEO is more than happy to kind of do a trade, where we’ll provide proof of funds so you know we’re serious. We’ll send you over our parks that we manage and we own, then would you feel comfortable sending that?” Then if they still say, “No,” then we’ll say, “All right. Well, let’s get the high-level details. I’ll send that over to my acquisitions team, and then our president, CEO, Corey Woodruff will give you a call.”

[0:13:39.7] WS: Nice. That’s awesome. I meant to ask you, what’s the calling software? Just in case the listeners are looking to do the same thing.

[0:13:44.6] CW: Mojo.

[0:13:45.4] WS: Mojo, okay. I’ve heard of that.

[0:13:48.1] CW: I’m not tech savvy at all. I tried to look at things like Podio and the integrations, and those system for me are though. I feel like Mojo is much more user-friendly for people like me. So I’m a more of a people person. I’m not the best with softwares and all that.

[0:14:05.0] WS: I wanted to also hit on, when you got the first park, it’s incredible, you talked to the guy. He just wanted to sell the whole thing, sell or finance it. Incredible, right? You put 40,000 down. Then what about — how do you get the next deal? Then I you’ve talked through this a little bit or you’re helping others to think through this. How do you get the next deal when you don’t have the money, or it just seems kind of impossible for some? What was the next deal like or the next deal? How did you start funding those?

[0:14:31.8] CW: Basically, what I is I went to the forums and I just posted on their very basic subject line. I just said, “Who’s looking for deals?” By that time, I had already kind of known that the short comings of the business is finding good deals.

So, I ended up linking up with my partner of my second park. So that one there, I managed it, I got 30% and I put in five grand on that deal, and we just sold it and I made a couple hundred grand off of it. Then once I got that one, I just started getting introduced to more and more people. Nowadays, I have a group of seven investors. I only work with one investor on each park, because more than anything, it dilutes my equity when you start bringing in more partners. So, I only deal with one partner per park nowadays. But a deal is obviously — the tough part is finding the good deals to pitch to the investors.

[0:15:20.8] WS: Nice. So you have those investors who want to be in on one, and then you rotate through, and have one at a time that’s partnering. That’s interesting. What about when you knew that it was time to hire this operations guy?

[0:15:33.9] CW: I knew it was time because I spent three days just doing operation stuff, and that was three weeks ago. I was still catching up. So then, I kind of started to think to myself, is favored money really worth it. It’s just, management, the little stuff is very tedious, but it’s also very time-consuming. I also, the investor’s money is obviously most important. I would rather lose 10 parks than lose one investor. You don’t ever want that to happen. So, I just know that as we grow, every park is going to be running at 75% if I’m doing it all by myself. Obviously, once we put a park in a contract, I go out and visit it. That takes two days of my time, and then I’m playing catch up. That would prove to be a wise decision, I believe.

[0:16:22.5] WS: For sure, no doubt about it. Corey, how do you prepare for potential downturn?

[0:16:27.8] CW: I haven’t had the experience of going through like an ’08 crash or anything like that, but I do like to keep low leverage and I like to keep a lot of cash reserves in the bank for things. So when the pandemic hit this year, it was a little bit nerve-wrecking for me, but I knew that if everybody stop paying and it lasted a few months, we still had cash saved up. So I like cash reserves and low leverage. I know a lot of people, they fix a park up, and then refinance it and get their money back and all that. But I prefer, if you’re going to capitalize it, just sell it and move on to another one.

[0:17:03.1] WS: Okay. Is there a way that you calculate those reserves? I agree, like cash in the bank or in your hand is so valuable in anyway. But it’s especially valuable as oppose to not having it when there’s a problem, when there’s a downturn of some kind or whatever. How do you think through or how much do you need?

[0:17:22.0] CW: I like doing the three-month rule. It depends on the park. So if it’s a smaller park, then obviously you need more than that. I like doing the three months of gross income rule. That seems — hopefully it will be enough.

[0:17:35.3] WS: Nice.

[0:17:35.7] CW: That’s the one benefit of having investors, because like my Bay City Park, my first one. Any time something went wrong with that, I was taking my W-2 income and handing it to the park. That was an experience for me for sure.

[0:17:48.7] WS: So Corey, I believe that anyone that’s successful in business has a high level of self-discipline, how did you get in such a high level of self-discipline?

[0:17:56.8] CW: It’s probably not the answer that you’re looking for, but I just, growing up, I just remember my dad, he struggled, my mom struggled, my grandma struggled, my aunt struggled. Once I got home from college, I just refused to live like that. Like you either wake up in the morning and put your shoes on and get ready to grind all day. My number one thing is, you don’t stop when you’re tired, you stop when you’re done.

Now, some people would look at my life and say, “He’s missing out a little bit on some key moments for his family and stuff.” But my dad passed away when I was 21. And because we were not financially stable, we lost everything. The answer to that question is, I refuse to be poor.

[0:18:42.0] WS: Awesome. Now you’ve got that thing that’s driving you and it sounds like life experiences growing up cause you to just click. Like you say, “I’m going to do something different” and congratulations. Well, what about some daily habits that your disciplined about doing, that have helped you achieve this success.

[0:18:59.8] CW: Yeah. I like to take the approach without a strong body, your mind gets week. Without a strong mind, your money get — so body mind and money. So every day, I wake up, I go to the gym. Then one I go to the gym, I go home, I eat, I spend time with my kids and my fiancé. And then I go onto the office and I don’t do anything for an hour. I just use that to just kind of center myself and get ready for the day.

[0:19:26.0] WS: What’s the way that you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply to our business?

[0:19:30.9] CW: Making sure that you have a rigorous schedule for yourself, which is a lot of times what people lack, because when you own your own business, you kind of feel like you can do it as you go. But you have to be tougher on yourself than any other boss that you’ve ever worked for. And obviously, it’s systems set up in place and making sure that every day, you sit down and you set a schedule for all the things that you need to get done, but also save a little bit of time for stuff that you didn’t plan on, because that obviously is going to happen, right?

Every day, I write on my board exactly what I need to get done to be able to go home and say, “I did a good job today.”

[0:20:09.7] WS: Awesome. That’s good stuff. What’s your best source for meeting new investors right now?

[0:20:14.9] CW: You know, it’s really just the forums in Facebook. I boast a lot on Facebook when I put a park under contract. I put it on Facebook. When I go visit that park, I put that on Facebook and people would just naturally reach out. But like I said, I have about seven investors, and every one of them does things a little bit different. I have one guy that won’t do well on something, I have three others that will. So obviously, when I find [inaudible 0:20:40.7] deal, I just go to them, but I’m not seeking out new investors right now, because they have everything I need. Mainly just Facebook marketing.

[0:20:48.0] WS: What’s the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

[0:20:51.3] CW: I would say, nothing more than mindset. Just keeping a strong mindset and understanding that things are going to go wrong, you’re going to get stressed. And keeping a strong mindset, and then also there’s been guys that have been in the business for 10 years or 20 years and they own a thousand lots. I just — I refuse to let somebody else set my pace. I think keeping a strong mindset and understand what your goal is and do everything in your power to get it.

[0:21:20.4] WS: How do you like to give back?

[0:21:21.8] CW: You know, like I said, my family is low income, so I take good care of them.

[0:21:28.9] WS: Nice. So Corey, I’m grateful for how you gave back to us today, and really just sharing your story, helping motivate us and helping us to understand how important the mindset is, but how you went from working that full-time job, getting there early by three hours. I just want the listeners to think about that. Are you willing to do extraordinary things like that, to have extraordinary results like Corey has done? Calling 500 people a week. Like build that system so you can make that happen. Twenty million dollars in offers a week. Those are some great systems to strive for. Then just making that transition and now you’re hiring people

Corey, congratulations again just on your success. Tell the listeners of how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you?

[0:22:09.5] CW: Our website is just about done, but right now, best way to contact me is [email protected].

[0:22:17.5] WS: Awesome, Corey. Great show. That’s a wrap. Thank you very much.

[0:22:21.8] CW: All right. Hey, thanks for having me man.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:22:24.5] WS: Don’t go yet, thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

Subscribe too so you can get the latest episodes. Lastly, I want to keep you updated so head over to lifebridgecapital.com and sign up for the newsletter. If you are interested in partnering with me, sign up on the contact us page so you can talk to me directly. Have a blessed day and I will talk to you tomorrow.

[OUTRO]

[0:28:29.4] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]