WS778: Merging IT with Real Estate To Drive Automation with Chris Levarek

[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]

[0:00:23.5] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Chris Levarek. Thanks for being on the show, Chris.

[0:00:32.8] CL: Thanks, Whitney. Appreciate to be here.

[0:00:32.8] WS: Chris is a former firefighter in the United States Air Force, graduate of Arizona State University, holds an information technology leadership role in the banking industry and is a full-time real estate investor, managing partner of Valkere Investment Group.

Since starting Valkere Investment Group, Chris has partnered with W-2 earners and fellow investors to achieve more choices and opportunities through real estate investing. His experience includes single family residential acquisitions, private lender loans, joint ventures and multifamily real estate syndications.

Chris, thank you again for your time this morning. Get us started with a little more about you know who you are and your background in getting into real estate. And let’s jump into your superpower that I know the listener is going to benefit from today.

[0:01:20.2] CL: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So yeah, my background a bit, as I mentioned, I was in the Air Force, I was a firefighter, joined up 2006, got out 2010. I decided to get an IT, went to ASU, I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, and got my degree and jumped into IT. I love IT. I love creating systems and processes and engineering solutions, so it worked for me.

About 2018, I kind of noticed there was a dip — we all noticed there was a little drawback in the market and my 401(k) took a hit. And I decided to get into something a little more understandable. I didn’t understand a lot was going on in the stock market. And I wanted a business model that I could understand and invest in, and real estate became that tool. And so, I hopped into small multifamily, decided to go into North Carolina. So, I got into Durham and I liked that area at the time because Amazon was about to choose Raleigh as the headquarters too or was on the list. And I was like, “Wow, that’d be great to couple my investment strategy with that.”

I ended up not choosing and of course, it went to Crystal City, Virginia. But yeah, at the time, it made good sense, got into Durham, started with a couple duplexes. I ended up partnering with private a lender on those early purchases, I just found people that work that had capital and didn’t want any of the headaches or to deal with the problems, so, I took care of that for them and we got into a couple duplexes.

And from there, it’s scaled and now we’re working in apartment space. So, behind me is just a – you can’t see if you’re listening to this, but it’s just a 16-unit we did in Fayetteville that was one of our first syndications. Fayetteville is right around Fort Bragg in North Carolina. It’s the biggest military base in the world and we like that support system. So, we got a 16-unit and we did a 504 syndication with that one. So, we learned a lot along the way and now we’re in 506(b), a little bigger unit class, and we partnered up and it’s been a great ride.

[0:03:23.4] WS: Nice. Well, I want to first say, thank you for your service. I know the listeners are agreeing with that. Always grateful for the men and women who are willing to risk everything for our freedoms, so grateful for that and I just can’t thank you enough.

So, you wanted a business model that you could understand. Man, don’t we all, right? You know, invest in something that we can understand and that’s one reason we love real estate is that we can go see it, touch it, even if the value drops for a while — if you can still manage it, you still own something, right? It didn’t just vanish and the value is going to come back if you can withstand the downturn or whatever may be happening during that time, but I wanted to ask you too, you mentioned you did a 504 syndication, is that right?

[0:04:07.8] CL: That’s correct. Yup.

[0:04:09.1] WS: And what is that? That’s not something that we hear of very often.

[0:04:12.8] CL: Yeah, so we partnered with experts and the attorney I was using at the time recommended, “Oh, okay. You guys are new in the syndication. Maybe we should do a 504.” We said, “Okay.” Well, I’ve heard a lot about 506(b)’s and 506(c)’s, but a 504, it’s getting kind of – it’s not as popular anymore, but the advantage really is you don’t need any accredited investors. So, accredited investor, having an income of 200,000 or 1 million in net worth, that is a single filer or 300,000 as a joint filer. But a 504, you don’t need any accredited investors, and it’s unlimited.

So, there’s a couple of catches there, but you can keep getting multiple unaccredited investors to build up your raise for the property. There is a max — of 1 million is the cap for a year, though. So, there are a couple of tricks there. It’s not big for big properties for that case. And there are some problems with state filing. So, in every state that you have an investor, you’re going to have specific requirements for filings, but a little more complicated, but it also can be a little more easy for those doing smaller raises, and looking for friends and family only.

[0:05:22.7] WS: Nice. Well, I’m just grateful that you brought that up and that’s the technique that you use, and just explained a little bit about it. Because like I said, it is not something that after 770 some shows, I don’t know if we’ve ever heard about it or any guest talking about it. Maybe I’ve heard about it at any event or something, but it’s very rare. So, thank you for bringing that up.

But I want to jump into your superpower and the way that you can bring the most value to the listeners and I think obviously through IT and systems, I want to dive into some of the processes or systems that you have automated things that you have and just really jump into the things you use to automate and those that made your life easier, maybe that’s helped you to scale those thoughts. But first, maybe you could just start with what are some systems that you’ve automated and help us to get to thinking that way and you help see. You’re the IT expert, help us to think that way as well.

[0:06:15.6] CL: Sure, yeah. So, there’s there’s a million-and-one apps out there, right? So, it’s about finding out what your need is, what are you trying to solve initially? And then what’s going to make your life easier. So, what do you not like doing? A lot of times we’ll hire VAs, because we just want – virtual assistant. We just want them to take away our problems and do the stuff we don’t want to do. Sometimes you can do that with an application, right? You can do that with a system. So, it’s about defining the process, come up with like a process map, a workflow of something you’re trying to accomplish, and then find a tool that does it.

So, some of the tools that we use, for example, Zapier is a big one. I’m sure people have heard of that. But all that does is it links together applications and makes them – it does API calls, basically, which is just a fancy way for telling an application to do something. And so Zapier, for example, how we use that tool, we have Slack channel, Slack is a message, a team collaboration communication tool, just like Skype.

And what we have going on is when say someone on our website submits a website request form for contacting us, it notifies in Slack in a specific channel, a notifications channel that says, “Hey, someone reached out via a website.” And you’d be like, “Oh, well, that’s not that big a deal. I mean, not really cool.” Yes, well, if you don’t know that somebody contacted you, and among the hundreds of emails, that might get missed, and then what’s your follow up rate with that person, that’s going to be a little lower.

So, Zapier can be really cool in that regard. It can send automated emails. Another interesting one, emails come in, you get a lot of contracts, you get a lot of paper documents, you don’t want to lose track of — we have Zapier scraping email and dumping it to a Google Drive. So, then I never lose my documents, because they’re always getting stored, does someone need to go back and clean that up and organize it sure, but at least they don’t have to go through all the emails looking for that one attachment that was important for me to find.

So, couple tools like that, we like to use Pipedrive too. Pipedrive manages deal flow for raising capital, closing deals, closing some kind of sales process with people. So, you can create basically different columns representing workflow. And you can have automations at each one of those columns. Emails that can be sent, a task that can be created. So, if I move this deal to a different column, this person, this contact to a different column, and that column represents something, certain automations can be triggered, such as add to my calendar, a task that says follow up in a week. That can be really useful if you want to make sure you don’t miss that contact in a week.

There are things like that. We use Zapier as well, when Calendly comes in, we get notified in that. But Calendly is great for scheduling meetings. So, I’m sure a lot of people on the show heard of Calendly before, there’s a couple tools like it, but being able to provide a link, a hyperlink to someone via an email and when they click it, they can see your weekly schedule, that’s a great one as well.

And the last one I like to is monday.com and it’s it’s a little pricier but what it really does is it brings team collaboration together. Another big one that that competes is Asana, and it’s basically a giant project management tool, it can couple as a CRM. So, just managing your contacts. That’s what a CRM is, just managing your contact database and then having certain advantages there. But monday.com has been great for our team. We have about eight people now working together.

So, to be able to create a board which is what they are, they’re just a giant dashboard. If you can imagine that with a bunch of information on there that you can assign tasks to people, you can assign dates to people, you have automations in there. So, when this date happens, this gets assigned to this person or it gets moved in different directions. So that can be huge to collaborate together on rather than just do it via email, or just do it via Excel spreadsheets or something like that.

Well, I’ll mention one last one, the Google Suite is great. If you’re just starting out in business, for the price of what you can get with the Google business suite, you get from Google Voice to Google Keep for just note-taking. But then you get all the email, the Google Drive, what am I missing? I mean, there’s a lot there that you can use in a team setting and that’s a big one to start with.

[0:10:45.8] WS: I’ve got a few questions about some of those things there and those processes that you do there. But one thing I wanted to ask, you know you mentioned, like monday.com and Asana, it’s something that we’ve had to go through personally as well. And even learning Asana, you know, just diving into that as a team. Why did you choose say monday.com over Asana? And then and also, have you looked into this new one I’ve heard recently called ClickUp?

[0:11:09.3] CL: ClickUp, I have not heard of ClickUp. No, I’ve been so focused on learning the ones we have. So, we chose monday.com primarily because of the ease of use. And when you’re picking an app, there’s there’s kind of a couple things, a lot of people would just look at price, but price is really secondary if it doesn’t achieve the objective. So, what’s the need, what’s the cost, of course is useful, but then who’s going to be using it? So, I’m working with my family, my older brother, he’s ex Special Forces, Ashton Levarek and he’s on a couple other podcasts. He is not as familiar with tech as I am. So, if I tell him to come in — here’s a great tool and he can’t use it easily and it doesn’t make sense and it’s not clickable and draggable, then that might not be a good tool for our team. Just because I can use it doesn’t mean it’s going to help our team, if no one else can use it easily.

I found Asana is very moldable. You can make it do what you want. But monday.com was a little more ease of use, click, drag and drop, plug and play, a little easier just to get started and that’s kind of how we ended up with that tool.

[0:12:13.4] WS: Yeah, it’s very important. I feel like there’s been times where I’ve hesitated to jump into a program just because like the time it’s going to take me to learn it. But a lot of that’s because either I a fear that there’s going to be another program, or maybe another one, I want to look into that I think maybe better. What I’ve had to learn though is the most important part is that you use it, right? You use one. I mean, if you have one and like you said, you can’t understand it or other people in your team can’t understand it, even though you think it may be amazing. But what good is it, right? Pick something and dive in and use it. It’s unfortunate if you do have to switch down the road, but you know, you’re going to be better off either way.

So, Chris, what are some processes that, you know, specifically, that you use while using these tools? I love knowing about tools like that, that automate things and lessen our workload, but also help us to be more accurate to. There’s less manual entries on different levels, help us work faster and more efficiently. What are some of those processes, specifically, that these things are helping you to do specifically in syndication business?

[0:12:13.4] CL: Sure. So, another great one, I didn’t mention, I’ll bring up real quick, Lucidchart. So, it’s a very cheap tool, but what it will allow you to do is come up with a process map, just bubble, bubble, arrow, bubble, that kind of thing. And so, we use that to develop the process, first of what we’re trying to achieve. So, let’s just say if I need to raise a million dollars, then I know that I have these specific dates to hit, and I have a contact that’s going to go through a certain process in how I’m talking to them. So, if they reach out in step one, and via LinkedIn, via the website, via social media, then what happens in step two, what happens in step three, and so first, I’m going to draw out the process map.

So, we have that, for example, we’re doing a campaign right now where we form contacts with LinkedIn, and then we will have contact information taken and step one, then we’ll have a template, as an email, that gets triggered to go to step two, the contact is then moved to step two being a column in Pipedrive, for example, and then in that list, we’re waiting for a call in Calendly. When the call comes in via Zapier, that this Calendly has been scheduled, they’ll move to process step three. We’ll have a call. But after I’m done with the call, the notes are taken in Pipedrive and then my VA at that point actually does go in and triggers an email to go after the call with here’s a bunch of information about a blog we’re on and here’s an information about – we’re not talking to deals at all at this point anyway, because we’re doing 506(b)’s, so we’re really just looking at building that relationship.

Then that response email goes up after the call. And then we’re going to follow up in about a week or two with, “Hey, do you want to have another call or hear some more information.” And then maybe we go into talking with a deal after that point. So, it’s just coming up with that process and which tools are going to be doing that.

So, in step one, we’re using LinkedIn to get the information, we’re building a contact list in Pipedrive, which is going to automate emails to be sent, because they’re new contacts, they’ll be emails being sent. Calendly, when they click that link, that’s an email it’s going to be taking that call. Calendly is going to trigger Zapier to go to Slack, tell us the call was was made, it gets put on our calendar that makes a task in Pipedrive, because Pipedrive syncs with the calendar. And now you start to see, okay, what I have to do as the person raising capital, all I have to do is log into my Pipedrive, and I see a list of tasks for the day. So, I see my calendar — I see my tasks for that day says to do, and it’s pulling all these things for my Google Calendar so I have all these automatically linked processes that I can follow going through my day.

So, it’s just about building that flow of something like that, and then executing on what you need to do in your role versus going and doing all those little pieces and you’re just flustered when you get to the call.

[0:16:13.2] WS: No, that’s awesome and I love how you just walked through that and this system to that system. Tell me though, like, I feel a listener or some listeners probably confused about like Pipedrive versus monday.com and are they connected?

[0:16:38.4] CL: I’m actually always looking at combining systems and trying to get — you know, down to something, to one dash or one platform. Monday.com, we were already using Pipedrive at the time. So, monday.com can do some of what Pipedrive can do. It takes a little more configuration, so you really want to have someone who can dive in and configure monday.com to do what Pipedrive can do. But if to put it in a nutshell, they’re going to fill a specific role.

So, we’ll say Pipedrive controls sales workflow, monday.com is general project management. Could it do what Pipedrive does? Yeah, it could do it. It has automation. You could get contacts put into monday.com as a CRM, a giant database of contacts. Content resource management’s what CRM means. So, just a general database of data that you modify and control. So, you could do what Pipedrive is doing. But we’ll say Pipedrives to sales, monday.com is project management, Zapier is the automation, you got Calendly being the meeting scheduling, and you know, Google and email and you can do a lot with those tools to build a business, to generate sales, that kind of thing.

But yeah, there’s a lot of overlap in certain areas. I think we could combine Pipedrive and monday.com. Another big one I’m liking right now is called Active Campaign. A lot of people here in syndication space use that as well. And it’s combining pieces of MailChimp. We use MailChimp as well, by the way, which is just marketing email application that you’re able to send large scale emails to multiple users in a database. But yeah, so Active Campaign is a big one that people are hearing about. It’s combining pieces of that Pipedrive, pieces of that monday.com and MailChimp into one tool. And so yeah, if you can get behind one tool and get it to do everything you want, that’s going to be really good for everyone working in the business. The catch there is if that one tool goes away, or gets bought out or breaks, you are really susceptible to that chain.

[0:18:31.3] WS: What about the – you said you call it Lucidchart?

[0:18:34.7] CL: Lucidchart, yeah.

[0:18:36.3] WS: Is that connected anything else or is that just a place to say document a process? And then maybe you can talk to how does the whole team use that?

[0:18:45.9] CL: Yeah, so Lucidchart is like a giant shared database of diagrams, mind maps, so we’ll make different folders representing different processes in there. So, let’s say we’ll label it sales process, how are we raising capital or maybe we’ll call it acquisitions process, how are we finding a deal? Each one of these will have steps, will be a diagram, and then the cool thing with Lucidchart is you can make swim lanes, we do this in IT, so every often a process is going to float between departments. So, a swim lane just means this is my lane so if I’m the marketing department, that would be my lane, I have a horizontal lane going cross or it could be a vertical lane, just a column really in a diagram. And then the bubbles and the arrows in the diagram will jump swim lanes. So they’ll go from lane to lane to lane to lane, and different lanes will be different departments.

So, the acquisitions department might need something from the marketing department at some point. The bubble arrow goes down to the marketing swim lane and then it goes back up at a later at step three or something like that. And that really defines roles and accountability who is responsible, what steps to execute. And so that’s kind of how we use it and it doesn’t have to be a process. We have different departments that are just making processes for how we do invoices, and the really great thing is once you get these all processed and diagrammed out, that’s when you bring in that VA and you say, “Hey, here’s this process, can you take this over?” And I’ll add one more tool on there, if you can couple that with Loom, which is just basically recording a video of your screen of that you doing that process? I mean, you can really start delegating these tasks out.

[0:20:30.7] WS: Now, that’s awesome. I love tools like that just to help automate things, but documenting processes is so important. It’s something we’ve been working a lot on. So, why something like – maybe your answered this, but like Lucidchart versus just like documenting in a Word document and Google Drive.

[0:20:50.2] CL: Sure, yeah. So, just like using Loom, we’re very visual creatures. And some people can read a checklist or read a Word document down a list, and really figure out what’s going on. But these diagrams have these bubbles and arrows, and you just kind of following the process like you would a regular map, it can be easier to understand than just going down a Word document. In this age of technology, we all want the immediate solution really quickly. So, if you’re just reading people, people have a harder time reading a Word document verbatim. And I know this because in tech, it’s the same way.

So, if you have a diagram explaining a network or explaining an infrastructure or server or whatever technology,  versus if you have just a Word document, chances are the person is going to read the first page and then just search further whatever else they’re looking for with a command find or control find in some case, but they’re not going to read the whole document. Whereas if you have the diagram, the chances are they’re going to get to the answer they need a little quicker.

[0:21:53.0] WS: Are those diagrams like clickable or they connect? Is it connected to any other software or is it just to visualize and see it?

[0:22:00.6] CL: We keep it pretty basic. There are other tools that can do that. Mind Map is another one I’ve heard that’s been pretty good. This is pretty basic. It’s just for documentation. So, it’s not linked with anything else yet.

[0:22:10.1] WS: Awesome. No, that’s just some great information. I’m grateful for that, Chris. Just to pivot just a little bit to some other questions, what’s been the hardest part of this syndication process or journey for you?

[0:22:21.6] CL: I think goals change and you need to be able to understand what you’re good at as your role and also as a company, and understanding that the goal you started out with might be different in a year or even in six months. So, it’s constantly reevaluating, it’s working with family, both work with our wives, me and my brother, they fulfill integral parts of our business. So, my wife is a finance manager, she’s doing all these investor relations and distributions, and then my brother’s wife does a lot of the management of the property managers and the construction crews on different properties that we’re working on.

So, I’d say, for me, it’s relationship, it’s being patient, understand that the goals are changing and being patient with where we’re going. Because I’m all all big into tech and the analyst side of it. So, sometimes I got to take a step back and look at the big picture, big vision, where are we going? Where’s this partnership taken? What are our true objectives? And what is my role in it? So, that’s kind of been my personal struggle at times.

[0:23:26.0] WS: So how do you prepare for a potential downturn?

[0:23:30.3] CL: Good numbers is important, right? So, constantly evaluating every quarter at where you’re at, and where the markets at and what you’re doing to best be prepared for that. And if you’re not in the right market, if you’re not in the right product, doing that every quarter and understanding what’s going on, and how you can best be in the right area when it happens. That’s that’s key for us. We’ve have moved markets. We started in North Carolina, and now we seem to be in Columbus and we stayed pretty consistent with C plus and B minus properties, and we like that, because for us, it holds, I guess the best preparation for recession possibilities and being ready with that type of tenant and renter that we enjoy and understand and like providing the housing too.

So, yeah, it’s evaluating every quarter.  Evaluating your goals every quarter. Evaluating where you’re going, what market, what product you’re in, and if that’s the correct one to be in at the time.

[0:24:25.8] WS: What do you predict is going to happen in the real estate market in the next 6 to 12 months?

[0:24:30.1] CL: Well, we know the Fed locked the rates, right? So, they’re not changing much there but we do know that the CARES Act is ending, it has ended. And there’s a lot of people that probably filed forbearance and filed suspension for their mortgage payment basically. And I feel like the residential space is going to get an increase supply of houses which will decrease the price of homes, as a couple of these homes go into foreclosure, as people are not going to make this massive payment that they’re due.

That’s the residential space as far as multifamily, the eviction moratorium that people are talking about, it’s got a lot of people worried, it hasn’t passed, there’s a lot of evictions going on right now, that could affect how multifamily is working. I still think that if you’re screening the correct tenant, you’re marketing the right person, everybody needs a place to live and if you’ve working with the right people and use landlord are working in a good, honest way, I don’t think it will affect too much how multifamily is going to operate. But there’s going to be some changes for sure. I just don’t think that people are just going to go live in the streets and not going to pay the rent.

[0:25:43.4] WS: Chris, I believe anyone that’s successful in business has a high level of self-discipline. How did you gain or have such a high level of self-discipline?

[0:25:53.4] CL: Yeah, so I think weekly, daily, it’s evaluating yourself, it’s evaluating your goals and it’s tough sometimes. I do the miracle morning, it’s a big one for me, because I find if I don’t reset my myself every day, analyze what’s important every day, be thankful for those things in my life, my family, my job, my real estate ambitions and my business, then I forget, and I don’t move forward. So, it’s really setting that that pace every morning, setting that standard. I do meditation, I do reading in the morning, I do journaling in the morning, I write down what I’m thankful for. That in itself, just creating small little habits, whether they’re exercise, eating right, or business habits, that’s the self-discipline, and that builds upon itself and keeps you going.

[0:26:40.5] WS: What’s the way you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply ours?

[0:26:44.7] CL: Oh yeah, let’s see, we’ve hired asset manager to do small – so we do a lot of part time hires, we’re doing a lot of bringing people on the business to take little pieces off our table. So, we’ve hired a guy named Joseph, and he’s been great, he’s pulled a lot of the asset management properties like this off my table. So, being able to analyze that the performance is going correctly. I just say, evaluate you personally, that you’re working in the right role that you want to do. And if you feel like you can outsource some of that to other other people, then it’s never too early I think to try that out. You can always go backwards, but you can’t scale really, unless you you decide on giving it a shot and outsourcing some kind of work.

[0:27:30.8] WS: What’s your best source for meeting new investors right now?

[0:27:34.2] CL: I love LinkedIn. I started in BiggerPockets. My brother is big on Facebook. I’m not as big on Facebook, I’m kind of a personal person so I like that corporate environment, that business environment that is found on LinkedIn. And so, I will go out and comment on LinkedIn, I’ll write posts on LinkedIn, I also write at least five or 5-10 posts on BiggerPockets. And that’s been great. I’m not I’m not reaching out for capital at that point. I’m simply forming a connection, forming a relationship sharing even personal details sometimes. Like I said, it’s not my strength, but I think that connection, that establishment of a relationship early on has been huge and you grow your connections. I remember June, July, I was at 272 connections in LinkedIn and now I’m well over a thousand. So, it’s not a numbers game, but it is about forming a relationship early before you are going to be raising capital, and you know, that will help you in the long runs.

[0:28:29.8] WS: For sure. Is there any way you’ve automated that process?

[0:28:33.5] CL: Sadly, LinkedIn has its platform pretty locked down. But I have used virtual assistants in that area. So, I do have, for example, contact info is on every profile. So, you can actually get an email from a LinkedIn profile, rather than direct messaging someone and you can have a virtual assistant, go get contact info from your recent contacts, let’s say. For example, I have my virtual assistant, she will go grab the last contacts I’ve had for the last seven days. So, who are these new contacts? That way I can shoot them an email and say, “Hey, thanks for connecting. I just figured I’d shoot you an email”, versus connecting over DM or direct message. So, there’s a little automation there, it’s not yet to where I want it to be.

[0:29:15.4] WS: No, that alone, I mean, that’s pretty valuable information right there that the listener can put into place. They can find a VA that can help do those things and maybe they’re doing a little work to connect initially and then – no, that’s awesome. I appreciate you being willing to share that. What’s the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

[0:29:34.8] CL: I’d say partnerships, forming the relationships, forming the relationships with different people. Getting started, it was forming a relationship with that first private lender that funded over 70% of an acquisition for a couple duplexes and it’s been that ever since. We’ve scaled to different partners now. We’re working on apartment complexes. We did an 84-unit a couple weeks ago and we’re closing down on a 120-unit. Wouldn’t be able to do that without partners and partnerships, so it’s forming those relationships, whether they’re investors, whether their general partners in a deal or even contractors. It’s been amazing just to form those relationships and see where they go and you’d be surprised sometimes how successful you really can be if you just partner up.

[0:30:18.6] WS: And how do you like to give back?

[0:30:21.2] CL: Yeah, so we give away a lot of education. I’m very successful right now in this space, because of how much people have thought and given away freely to me, even in the BiggerPockets platform. Actually, I have calls throughout the week, my lunch breaks, while I’m working my W-2, I have calls with all sorts of people from BiggerPockets who just doing Earth flips to investors that are looking to, of course, invest into syndications. But we’re constantly just giving out information. We’re launching this Thursday, actually, our first meetup that we’re doing to teach syndication freely to those who are part of a group that expressed interest and we’re doing that. Every month we do a meet up, the last Wednesday of every month, and that’s for networking and talking giveaway information.

We’re big on giving back to charities, we run 5ks too, of course, so I was in the Pat Tillman 5k, we like doing those veteran programs, those military programs coming from that background. So, we’re all about spreading the news, spreading the message about real estate, and really no ulterior motive there. I have calls throughout the week, they’re just really, really basic. And sometimes, even myself, I’m like, “Is this the best use of my time?” But it is very gratifying and rewarding to talk to someone who just got started and hear the excitement in their voice.

[0:31:42.4] WS: Nice. Well, Chris, I’m grateful to have had you on the show and to meet you. And thank you, again, for your service. And just the way you’re giving back to other people in the real estate business now as well. Just thankful for laying out the software, the tools, apps, that you use, the websites that have helped you to automate your business and processes in your operations. I think it’s a big question that a lot of people have, what’s that one app or that software that’s going to make my life easier? And you listed a bunch there that I think are are crucial now, as we automate so many things. So, Chris, how can listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you?

[0:32:19.5] CL: Yeah. So, we have a website, I think it’s easiest, you just go to the website, valkeregroup.com. Otherwise, I’m on LinkedIn, you can search my name Chris Levarek. I’m on BiggerPockets, Chris Levarek. But yeah, and the website we have our Calendly links. We have all information, our portfolio, you can take a look there.

[0:32:40.8] WS: Awesome. That’s a wrap, Chris, thank you so much.

[0:32:43.5] CL: Cool. Thanks, Whitney. Appreciate your time.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:27:48.6] 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.

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