WS1079: Uncovering the Myths on Commercial Real Estate Investing with Mike Sowers

EPISODE 1079

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0 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.

00:00:24.000

Whitney Sewell: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Mike Sowers.

Mike went from remodeling and flipping houses to doing much larger commercial deals – now a CEO of Commercial Investors Group. He has been involved in over $150 million in deals and is the author of the Amazon number one best selling book Commercial Real Estate Investing that gives a step-by-step roadmap for first time investors to do their first big commercial deal. 

It’s a great interview, I know you are going to enjoy it. He just blows some myths out of the water that you probably are believing potentially right now as you are thinking that “Hey, I don’t think I can probably do commercial real estate” or “I don’t have enough money,” those things are holding you back. He’s gonna lay many of those out and show you one of those are not correct, they are not true. And, how he had a mentor and coach and, how coaching can just help you streamline the process. But, he also lays out a secret of how he started growing his investor base very quickly. It’s very interesting, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else from the show talk about growing your investor base with this method, so I know you’re going to enjoy the show. Have a blessed day!.

[INTERVIEW]

Mike, welcome to the show. I know you went from remodeling and flipping houses to doing large commercial deals. And I know that many of our listeners as well, they are trying to make that transition into the real estate period, you know, from maybe a job. But many of them also have been doing flips or remodeling something in real estate, wholesaling, but they see that thing out there, you know, called commercial real estate right or syndication and they’re trying to make that transition and start that business and you have done that I look forward to getting into your story. 

Give us a little bit more about that, maybe going from just even the mindset or the process of learning how to go from flipping homes to commercial real estate and the confidence to “Hey, go make that happen.”

00:02:21.0

Mike Sowers: Sure. Well, it was kind of a rough transition. I, like most people believed kind of the three myths of commercial real estate: one, that you need to have really, really big corporate connections in order to get into the game to fill spaces; two, that you needed millions if not hundreds of thousands for the down payment, so most people look at their checking account balance and say, “Well, I get there someday but I got to do these other steps first before I jumped into it,” and; the third thing is that it’s really, really difficult to figure out how much you can pay for these deals. And so those are all the things that really held me back and I just kind of did what I knew how to do – I ran a franchise for college pro painters for two years while I was in college after a summer of selling books, and I did quite well because I was willing to go out and door knock and generate business that way. 

And then, I started my own company my senior year in college and I was doing storm damage restoration, so like repairing roughs, inciting and stuff and that business is absolutely insane. The insurance restoration business is a pretty cool business and I scaled that up, had a little over 50 employees at one point, then I scaled back down and, honestly I got burned out. I was kind of doing that full time during the day and then I was flipping houses, wholesaling, and I was growing a portfolio of single family properties but I never really figured out how to put great property management systems in place and I just kind of got really burned out with deadbeat tenants. And I remember one Saturday, I was filling in for a subcontractor who didn’t do what he said he was going to do, right, we all know that skilled labor is a challenge, right, the joys of project management, and I was filling in for a crew and I’m over here shooting finish nails and cocking this lady’s cabinets on a Saturday while all my friends were on the lake. And she was just sitting there in the living room drinking a lemonade and just micromanaging every move that I was making. I was like, this is not really the vision I had for my business so I kind of mentally made a decision at that time that it was time to hang it up and find something new. 

So, me and my wife were looking at condos in Florida, and I got a call from a business broker and he’s like, “Dude, I think I can sell your business for this” and I was like, “You’re out of your mind. Nobody’s ever gonna buy a business. I am the entire business” at least I thought I was, but lucky for me I built a custom software that allowed other people to estimate the cost of repairs very quickly. And with that, I listed that business and got a little bit of money for that and kind of was looking at what’s going to happen in my next life here, so I was like “Well, I love real estate. I know that’s the way I want to make my wallet.” I made that decision at a fairly young age and so then I was like, “Well, maybe I finally have the money to start doing commercial deals.” 

So, I found some people to kind of mentor me and I started doing commercial deals, and then I ran out of money, real quick. And I figured out how to raise capital from other people which, I think, in my opinion, is the most important, but probably the hardest skill to learn in commercial real estate investing. It’s really the skill that house flippers and people in the residential game never really had to learn, because there’s so many people doing hard money loans and the down payments are such a small amount, it’s fairly easy to scrape up the change, but when you go to do a $3 million deal and you got to come up with a million bucks, you know very few people have that kind of cash sitting around. 

So, really, uncovering that secret of how to structure a partnership, how do you raise capital, how do you go from having a zero network of people with cash to having people kick your door down to try and give you money, that was really the game changer and, I think people that do really well in apartment syndication and things like that, and they think that they have some kind of special gift and the reality is, they probably had a lot of sleepless nights, and they had a lot of really tough transitions. I mean, I got denied by 10 banks and it took me like six months to raise $500,000 on my first redevelopment deal. And I got my teeth kicked in. There were so many times I thought about quitting. 

And so my number one advice is, is just where there’s a will there’s a way and, to the newbies just really inspiring you that it’s probably not going to be as easy as everybody makes it out to be, but if you follow a system and you never quit, you can see success, and it gets easier. It’s kind of like having your first baby, right. You’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going 10 miles an hour in the slow lane on my ride home, I’m super afraid that it’s not going to survive the first night and every little sound that it makes I’m going crazy” but after your first baby kind of goals and your second one comes along, you’re like, “You know what? I learned some things” and it’s not quite as tough and you start figuring out deals are the same way, raising capital is the same way and, really 90% of the learning just can’t happen in a seminar, can’t happen by listening to a podcast. People are like, “How do I learn this game?” I’m like, go do a deal and lose $20,000, you’re going to learn a lot of things on that deal. Think of it as a college education. 

Obviously I don’t want you to lose money, but so many people have the mindset of fear of taking action and actually pulling the trigger on something. I remember I literally could not eat at my first dinner the night after I got a big property under contract because I was so afraid that I was going to lose everything I had built.

00:07:49.000

WS: Wow. It’s interesting you started with, “You know what? I used to believe those myths,” right, all those myths and you listed three myths. In one of those specifically was no money, or that you had to have a large amount of money to get started in commercial real estate, you sold that business, and then you had some money and I think gave you some encouragement, rather he thought “Okay, I can do this now.” Then you figured out again that still wasn’t the answer, and you mentioned, like going from no network to having people knocking down your door to invest with you, right. It is a big process, it was for me, that’s for sure. I would have tons of work and lots of long nights like you’re talking about, and everybody looks in right to you. It looks at you and says “Well all these overnight success. How did that happen so fast?” but they don’t see all that you’ve been doing the last five years, 10 years, right. All that work you’ve been putting in all of a sudden they see you right and think “Oh well, maybe it will be that easy for me too,” so I appreciate you just being real about it, right. It’s possible that you’re going to lose $20,000, right. 

But if you look at that as an education man, you are going to learn a lot, well I hope the listener does not lose that much money. And you also mentioned you found mentors before starting to raise money, I want to dive into that though a little bit, how you went from no network to having people knocking down your door to invest with you. I know the listeners have heard my story about how we did that. 

But, go back a little bit more, you found mentors, was that something that helps you to move forward in commercial real estate and start to raise money? Let’s dive into that a little bit.

00:09:11.000

MS: Yeah, I’m like there’s a difference between a mentor and a coach, right? And if you have the wherewithal to commit to a coaching program I honestly, I think it’s the best decision you can ever make because what I find absolutely baffling is that like I dropped probably 60 grand on a four year education and I got some great general skills but I didn’t get specific skills on how to go make money with a four year basic, like Bachelor of Science degree. There’s some really, really good coaching programs that are out there for apartment syndicators and things like that. If you have the wherewithal to join a coaching program, the two I think key pieces of that that are really going to help you get to your destination faster like having a deal coach, somebody you can really bounce your specific deal stuff off and then an accountability coach. 

Now you may be able to find somebody in a “mentorship” role who would do that for free. But the reality is, we’re all human right, nobody’s going to dedicate a significant amount of energy and time into you for free, so you have to be willing to make an investment in them and their business in exchange to getting them to make an investment in you and your business for your time. Mentors are great if you’re looking for something like a hurrah once a month, kind of, “Hey, how are things going?” But, if you really want to have somebody to bounce your deals off and stuff you need to go find a coach and there’s tons of the coaches out there, just look at anybody who’s doing massive success in their area. And the two things that coach is really going to give you are systems and strategy, and having a really proven strategy and a good system to implement that strategy and execute on it. 

I think, is just going to drastically reduce your learning curve. It’s like, “Hey, you can be bare feet start New York and if you keep walking last you’re eventually going to make it to the Pacific Ocean, but you’re going to have some bloody feet by the time you get there,” you know, you go hire a mentor that’s the equivalent of like maybe hopping on a boss, but if you go get a coach – a really good coach, you can probably get in a plane and get there pretty quick.

00:11:23.000

WS: You mentioned earlier if you follow a system and never quit, right, you’re eventually going to have success, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to get knocked down a few times, and so I appreciate that. I mean, right…I mean having a coach, having a mentor, I just could not agree with that more, definitely some things that you need to consider when hiring that coach and mentor. 

But how did you do that Mike? What were some steps that you took to now having investors wanting to invest with you, right, going from that you talked about struggling to raise that half a million dollars, right, took months, but now that is a little different now, right? You know, it’s more experienced, more time in the business, more exposure to your investors, more touches, right, positive touches with your investors. Walk us through that a little bit. How did you do that?

00:12:04.000

MS: Sure. Well one pro tip I would have is if you have some cash and you have deal flow coming in, you can partner with another active like deal sponsor. And, in a way that kind of become your coach through that deal and be willing to give up most of the deal to them and look at it more like early on in your investing career I think you really ought to be focused on how much you’re learning, rather than how much you’re earning. 

Because people that focus on hogging their deals and never partnering or giving up equity or whatever they miss these opportunities to partner with people that are really, really smart and can kind of walk them through. And as I mentioned, or alluded to previously, a big part of your learning comes when you actually go to raise the capital and get the debt and go through the underwriting process which is a very time consuming grueling process if done well. And that’s why a lot of people I think, do a, less than thorough due diligence all say, right, they don’t do the really nitty gritty things because the way we’re wired as humans is to seek confirming evidence rather than seek disconfirming evidence. 

And the reality is, you have to adopt the mindset of humility and trying to get other people to point out your blind spot. And that’s the way that you reduce short term risk for not only yourself but your lender and your investors, and you have a fiduciary duty to those investors to be as thorough as possible. 

And the reality is, I’ve canceled deals and had a stomach ache about it. I’ve left, I think, like 40 or 50,000 in due diligence money on the table before and it hurts, but I know that going through with the deal with the hurt even more, and making those tough decisions and the way we do it is when I lose money, and I cancel a deal I eat 100% of those costs. I do not pass those through my investors. This is my business, it’s my responsibility so the investors in our group are never at risk until we close on a property, and I sign off saying that I’ve done it and we actually have a process, right, so we have a very, very detailed due diligence process that I feel really, really good about.

00:14:18.000

WS: I love that. I mean you take the responsibility, right, reminds me  of a book, Extreme Ownership, right. I mean you are the leader in that business, and even through the due diligence process and every communication with your investors, no matter if it’s somebody else on the team doing it, I like to think that way as well. 

I’ve had, you know, investors being upset about something, right you know, with somebody is something that someone on the team did, they copy me on an email, grabbing about it. I’m just…I just tried to immediately respond by saying “Hey, I’m sorry. This is my fault that this happened. This is what we’re going to do to fix this,” right.

00:14:46.000

MS: Yeah.

00:14:47.000

WS: And so, I just appreciate you expressing that as well. And even the… I’ve made a note of it early on, you focus on how much you’re learning versus how much you’re earning. And that’s hard, right, because you feel like you’re starting with almost no money oftentimes, you know, people that are getting into this business, and you see these other guys who seem to be making so much money, but they didn’t start there, right, they did not start there. 

And I think that’s so crucial, focus on the learning pace. I also try to tell people the same thing. It’s like, “Man, you know, just by getting in and being able to partner on that project if you don’t make a penny, you have earned so much just by learning.” So you go beyond, did you partner with somebody? 

00:15:21.000

MS: Yeah, so I partnered with somebody on my first project and I learned a ton from the great guy. And we kind of outgrew our relationship and we’re still both doing deals separately. And every project that comes along is kind of a separate partnership and, you know, at the end of the day, you learn a lot when you’re going through the deals and especially if you’re partnering with somebody who has done it before. 

So, that’s kind of a third alternative but to get there you have to have deal flow, and to get deal flow, you really need to look beyond the traditional methods. Most people are getting started looking at everything listed online. If you’re anything like me, it’s like running around like a chicken with your head cut off. You’re literally looking at everything. And the reality is, if you don’t know how to analyze a deal, it’s really tough. You can spend days like a spreadsheet, analysis tool or Argus or whatever, analyzing a deal trying to figure out how much it’s worth and how much you should pay for it. And the lack of confidence in your ability to analyze the deal translates to fear, and usually indecision and lack of being able to ever get anything under contract. Because when you’re presenting your offers, you’re so afraid that you’re overpaying for the property or so far off on your analysis that you’re not even in the ballpark of what you should be paying in order to get that deal accepted. 

So it all starts with being able to analyze a deal and then it starts with having a robust, I think direct marketing and broker channel network to really be able to source off market deals because I always make this job people are like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I’m looking at loop net every day,” I’m like “Great, that’s where deals go to die.” Rarely are there deals on loop net that makes sense for me because if it’s represented by a professional broker, then it’s at market price and there’s usually pretty good brokers in the commercial real estate game, they tend to be fairly sharp even though they never return phone calls. It’s my pet peeve of the industry, commercial real estate brokers are not traditionally great at customer service, but that’s a side that I’m just throwing out there, so if you’re getting started and you’re calling on listings and nobody’s calling you back, don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s them.

00:17:25.000

WS: Yeah, so you partnered though. What were the next couple things that helped you to build this group or base of investors where now you can raise plenty of capital for your deals?

00:17:35.000

MS: I did a crowdfund on my first deal. So I did a crowdfunding so, I was able to openly market, it was the first mixed use crowdfund here in Minnesota, and like I said it was tough. You’re under this mindset that if you got a good deal, the money’s just going to come and, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. And the reality is you’re like, “Oh, well I got a crowdfund. I’m going to put on Facebook and who would put 25 or 50 grand in their IRA wouldn’t want to invest in something like this?” And the reality is it’s nothing like that, and you gotta grind and you got to figure out some systems and then, I uncovered a secret that changed my investing for good. 

With this secret I literally went from being able to raise $500,000 in six months to being able to raise $500,000 with one phone call. Now we’re able to raise multi-millions using this one secret, and that secret is how to build an investors list of people you’ve never met before. And here’s how it works: part of your direct marketing strategy is calling property owners to see if they’re willing to sell you their building, that’s our number one way for generating deals, is the old fashioned – pick up the phone and call people. Now you got to remember most property owners in commercial real estate are 60 years old or older, not all, but in general the middle of the bell curve is like 60 to 80. These people generally will respond better to like a piece of mail or a phone call, than they will to some of these other, you know, paid ads on Facebook kind of stuff, right. 

So, we just do the old fashion, maybe send them a letter or a postcard or something and follow up with a phone call and we tend to get pretty good results with that. And what will happen is, more often than not, the properties work out really great for them and so, I’ll just transition them. I’m super glad to hear it sounds like “You’re a fantastic operator, maybe somebody we would consider partnering with. Now, as you know I’m marketing other property owners the same way I marketed to you, Bill. And I get a lot of off market opportunities. Next time I get one under contract, would you want me to reach out and at least run it by you?” And he’ll say yes or no. I’ll grab his information if it’s a yes. I put them on the list either way, and then when I have an opportunity under contract, that’s my list of people I invite for my webinar and then I do a webinar where I pitch it, and then I have a follow up sales process, I do a really nice, you know, PowerPoint or whatever, I guess Google Slides these days, Google’s taken over. And that’s pretty much it. 

So, it’s been able to convert your nose when you’re prospecting for deal flow into potential investors and with that secret you basically have an unlimited…I mean who better to invest in your deals and somebody that already owns and understands commercial real estate and is doing well cash flowing on their property, or a lot of times you’re calling on people that are owner occupants and they’re running a business and they just happen on the real estate that they’re in. And those people, if they’re generating additional cash flow or high income earning people that are great candidates for passive limited partners because they get all the big depreciation benefits because we generally buy for long term holds and will cost segregate so for every 500,000 they put in, they might get three or $400,000 and right off and you’re one.

00:20:47.000

WS: That’s incredible. Or you find a project that’s for sale, right, either they’re going to sell their project or maybe both, they become an investor. Two quick questions about that before we have to move on, I’m finding that list, how do you build that list and a qualified list to target?

00:21:00.000

MS: Most major metropolitan areas have their parcel data in spreadsheet format so you got to call the county assessor’s office, or the recorder’s office, it depends on which part of the country you’re in, and you can usually get your hands on that spreadsheet. Once you have the spreadsheet, then you need a reputable company that can find like registered agents or the named managers of the LLCs or S Corps or whoever, whatever entity owns the property. Don’t go to one of these traditional skip tracing firms that specializes in residential because you can’t skip trace an LLC and really get that graded data, which you have to do is find out who’s the real owner behind the LLC and then skip trace them. Skip tracing is just like getting somebody’s cell phone and email. 

00:21:43.000

WS: So you can find a third party that will do that for entities or LLCs for you?

00:21:47.000

MS: Yeah. It took me two years to find a really good vendor that does this process and there’s really no great way to automate it, so most of the skip tracing companies out there have a database and they do it just through technology. You really can’t do it effectively and get a really good hit rate that way so you need to have a company that’s literally going to manually go record by record and go do some data mining to find the named manager. We created a bot to do it for our county, but then we started franchising nationwide and I would have had to re-build that bot for every single franchise we sold so I was like “Well this is not scalable,” so we ended up going and finding a vendor to do that for us and now that services available for our franchisees. 

00:22:28.000

WS: Nice. Do you have a conversion goal for investors that way or, like per week or month or something? What should the listener expect or a target they could shoot for by using that method?

00:22:39.000

MS: That’s a great question, I love looking at, like, conversion ratios and things like that. Typically, what you could expect is if, if you call 100 property owners, you may be going to schedule one tour, maybe two tours and out of that I might get like 10 to 20 people as potentials on my list. 

And then from that if I do a webinar and I have 100 people on there, I might get an average subscription of $100,000, maybe $50,000 per person depending on the offering. Some of my offerings I only invite like higher ticket people where we don’t want as many investors, maybe 250+ or 500k as kind of the target average. 

And those are generally my repeat investors, we have a lot of our investors invest with us over and over. So like conversion, there’s just so many metrics that go into how much you’re going to actually convert on a webinar depending on your project; are you doing a single asset or multi-asset? I just be throwing out some numbers because it’s different on every single deal so 68% of statistics are made up on the spot, including this one.

00:23:42.000

WS: What would you have done different on your first project or, not so much the flipping and some of that but would you have started in the commercial real estate space right from the beginning or how would you have changed your career path or, would you have knowing what you know now?

00:23:54.000

MS: I would have for sure, because had somebody shattered those myths for me 10 years ago, I would have got started. Like, if you’re in your 20s or 30s and you’re just wanting to get started and you have no experience, just abandon the idea of the sexy HGTV house flip, like just eliminate that right now, set your mind on success in commercial. You’re going to probably make way less money for your first year or two, but you’re going to have this really high hyperbolic curve because the key is learning how to raise capital from other people and once you’ve mastered that skill you can literally do an unlimited number of deals, where if you get in this mindset of like “I’m going to save up 20 grand and flip one house and have a rental.” Like, I don’t know about you but having a rental and cash flow and 200, 300, maybe 500 bucks a month just doesn’t get me excited anymore. 

Now if you’re getting started in your house hacking, or whatever that’s it, you know, a great way to kind of get your toes wet but maybe do a deal or two just to kind of understand how to deal with contractors, whatever work out some of the kinks but the reality is there’s a lot of 500 or $700,000 little commercial buildings out there that you can get the same learning lesson on. 

And the difference is very few people who are beginning go after commercial, so the competition tends to be a little bit less severe and less, I mean in the apartment game that’s kind of the sexy product everybody wants to go after, and it’s one of the reasons, I mean we love apartments, but also I don’t love bidding against 20 other people for a project either. I’m never going to get into situations where I’m in an auction type scenario. I just don’t enjoy that. Even if I can still get it at a good deal, I just don’t enjoy it.

I love being the only person making an offer so we focus on properties that still have really high demand like small bay warehouses, suburban classy office properties that kind of have some vacancy and renovation issues. We teach it in my book that I came out with in July, the value add strategy I guess it’s called, it’s been around forever right and it’s no different than flipping a house, right, you’re buying an ugly house, the difference is in house most cases you’re renovating it and then selling it to like an owner occupant. In this case we’re usually renovating a multi-tenant building, filling it up with tenants and then selling it to like a financial buyer for a multiple of its income.

00:26:11.000

WS: Mike, just with our market that we’re in right now in real estate and mavericks industrial multifamily whatever, how do you prepare for a downturn or how do you, you know, even coach others or tell others how you should be prepared for the next six to 12 months? What do you expect and how are you prepared for that as you’re moving into new projects?

00:26:28.000

MS: Yeah, that’s great. Two things: one, I think you need to understand where you’re at on the market cycle, so that you can analyze deals effectively. So, what you should be focused on is not trying to time the market, you should be focused on finding the right deal to invest in, not the right time to invest. Now the right deal is a deal where you can create significant equity by driving up the underlying income stream and the multiple that income that the market would buy the property for. And that’s really the value add strategy. 

I think it’s the strategy of only focusing on properties where you’re creating tremendous value that is really the risk mitigation strategy because what happens is, let’s say you’re all in on a building for $1 million, you bought it for 800, you put 200 into renovation and leasing, now you’re in for a million. If it’s worth a million for and the market metrics change, let’s say, rent rates go down or vacancy goes up, or cap rates change, and maybe that building’s worth 1.2 now, you’ve only eaten into equity you created not capital you contributed. 

And so, therefore that strategy is really the best long term risk mitigation strategy, is only doing deals where you are creating significant value. Short term risk comes from blowing it on the execution of the business plan on these types of projects and that’s really your fixed fill and financial steps, steps four through six and my seven steps to freedom that I teach in the book. And that’s renovation problems like either your contractor screws up, you miss line items, you underbid certain aspects of it, or you went way over on your timeline. 

So, your holding costs were way higher than you thought they would be. Or maybe you didn’t lease it up to the occupancy you thought you were going to get or maybe you thought you were going to increase rents on those two bedroom apartments by 300, a month but the market really only is going to bear 100 a month. Or to get the 300 a month you’re only at 80% occupancy instead of the 90% you thought because there’s that trade off between occupancy and price. 

And then, the third piece is the property management piece, is being really smart and deliberate about the types of leases you’re putting in place, and then getting a really good third party property management company where you can structure their compensation to incentivize them and then have like an asset management tracking system with regular reporting to really incentivize them to drive the value of the property by driving the underlying and ally. And so those are all the key pieces really, that’s a systems thing so the long term risk is mitigated by strategy, the short term risk is mitigated by systems.

00:29:04.000

WS: That’s incredible. I hope the listeners will listen to that as again listen to those things you just said, the steps that you just laid out, and if we could just focus on that we could probably talk about those things all day today and wouldn’t be exhausted, but great answer. But quickly, the number one thing that’s contributed to your success, Mike?

00:29:21.000

MS: My God. I give all my credit to God, there’s nothing that I have that wasn’t given to me by a higher power. You know I kind of had a life changing experience, I really shied away from church initially when I was younger, but I always knew there was a God and I went through some turbulent times. My mom ended up committing suicide, kind of a personal story, and it just kind of shattered me a little bit and I just I found myself kind of walking away from myself a little bit and it was like I’m still doing great on the surface but underneath, in all humility, it was like I was just kind of torn, I was not stepping into my true purpose, I was not becoming the person God had called me to be and, when I finally hit my knees and admitted that to myself and, you know, gave my life back to Christ I got back into the church and I played lead electric guitar now for our worship team. 

And I just really, really enjoy living in a zone of humility and understanding that, you know, life is short and the best advice that I can give to anybody that would contribute to your success is give credit where credit’s due, and if you find that relationship, you find your purpose and you never quit until you achieve that purpose. And for many, like my purpose has evolved, my purpose has evolved to help develop other people to unlock their true potential so they can create financial freedom and buy back their time, so that they can spend it doing the things that they were called to do.

00:30:45.000

WS: Mike, incredible, I appreciate you being transparent and sharing that. I hope the listeners will listen closely to that also. I play drums in our worship team.

00:30:55.000

MS: Oh, that’s cool man.

00:30:56.000

WS: I’d love to get together and play sometime and worship together as well, so that’s incredible but, appreciate you being so transparent sharing your story. Also going from house flipping to that type of work to just a mindset shift to commercial real estate being able to raise a lot more money now than that first project for say a commercial real estate and how you did that. 

I mean you’ve provided so much value to the listeners tonight, today. And we’d love to have you back sometime and like I said before we got started, we didn’t get to some of the points that we talked about before the show. But I know you all are doing a large fund now, multi-asset fund and also have franchised your real estate company which is incredible. I don’t think…you said you were the first so obviously we’ve not had anyone else, we have 1,100 plus episodes now, we’ve not had anyone else talking about that so I’d love to have you back sometime soon for us to dive into that as well. 

Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you and find your book.

00:31:46.000

MS: Yeah, if you want to get in touch with me, you can book a one-on-one call with me, whether you want to talk about investing passively in our fund or you want to talk about franchise opportunity. We also have a coaching program. Look, my coaching program we used to do for like a big ticket like, you know, $30,000 right for a 12 month program. 

Now, I reposition that as more or less like a high volume and it’s really a marketing expense for us to kind of groom other people to potentially become franchisees someday. So we’re literally giving it away, actually losing money on our coaching program, but that’s pretty cool you can check that out. 

I’d like to give you a free PDF of my book to your listeners just as a way to get people started, and you can grab or claim a copy of that at commercialinvestingmastery.com/book. And I also have a webinar where I talk about those three myths we started the show with and really help people figure out how to put a direct marketing strategy in place to generate like 30 to 50 leads a month, how to analyze a deal in 60 seconds or less, and how to raise money from other people. Like literally the ins and outs of how you structure a partnership, how do you split the profits, I do all that and a free webinar that’s commercialinvestingmastery.com/webinar. I highly recommend you guys check that out as well. 

And, if you stick to the end of the webinar they will actually give you an audio book version. If you like to listen on the fly that’s just kind of a bonus for people for checking that out in compensation for your time.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:33:16.0 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.

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