WS1279: Trucker Turned Real Estate Entrepreneur | Eric Neely

EPISODE 1278

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0

Eric Neely (EN): I also make a very purposeful effort to have at least one person on my calendar every week whom I’m gonna go have coffee with or lunch. Maybe these conversations won’t turn into anything, you only need one. Find that one solid connection might be the difference between making it or breaking it in this business. That’s really been my primary focus is a personal connection with people.

0:00:23

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Eric Neely. Eric has invested in multifamily real estate as an LP and as a GP and has structured JV partnerships. He understands the power and necessity of personal connection and networking and consequently runs a monthly meetup, regularly meets others for coffee, and produces The Wealthy Trucker podcast. 

Eric is interesting. He produces The Wealthy Trucker podcast and today, you’ll hear about it, he’s sitting on a truck while being interviewed on the podcast as well. I just appreciate the desire to go out there and make it happen. You’re gonna hear him talk about it. But, he’s doing that. Your gonna hear today how he’s making it happen, working full-time, getting his first syndication to the closing table very soon. I know you’re gonna learn a lot from Eric today.

[INTERVIEW]

0:01:11

WS: Eric, welcome to the show. It’s so it’s energizing to me to meet people like yourself who are out there making it happen, even if you’re working a job. But man, you are you’re hustling. And I was just sharing with you like 2 other people have asked me questions today about growing a business, scaling, getting started all those things, and like I don’t have a magic formula, it’s like just willing to work hard, right? And willing to get in there. I feel like that’s what you’re doing as well, and you’re making it happen, and it’s great to see some success for you.

Tell the listeners a little about who you are because I want to jump in.

0:01:46

EN: Well, name’s Eric Neely. I’ve got a podcast I called The Wealthy Trucker, and really what I focus on is doing multifamily real estate in Kansas. I was born and raised in Kansas. Wichita, Kansas area, been there my whole life. Just a good old Kansas boy I guess and I’ve been in the trucking industry for about 20 years now. And really over the last 5 years, I’ve probably spent the majority of my time behind the wheel, educating myself on the industry of real estate, and started investing about 4 years ago, passively, with one of my 401K. And then just really learned the ropes, audiobooks, and podcasts, and just figure out what I had to do to be a more active investor.

And so, my business, partner, he’s been in taxes and accounting for I don’t know 15 some odd years, and when I talk to him about it, it’s it was it made perfect sense to him so we were able to dive into it together and make something out of it. So for the last couple of years, we’ve been actively investing in our local market and it’s been a blast as you know if somebody can see me on video right now, I’m, still sitting in a truck and you know the goal is to get out of the truck one of these days. But frankly, I love driving. It gives me a lot of time to, you know, have good conversations with people, even doing podcasts like this, or, you know, like last week I spent the entire week studying and preparing for a sermon. I gave.

So I can’t do that in any other job and so I feel very blessed to be behind the wheel and be able to utilize my time in a wise way.

0:03:13

WS: Yeah, that’s incredible. I just appreciate the hustle right? I mean like you’re in a truck right now. I’m glad you mentioned that because, like listeners, you can see it on Youtube. But I just appreciate the hustle that Eric’s willing to put in to make this happen and he’s doing it. You know I love that.

So, Eric, you’ve driven a truck for 20 plus years. Why real estate? And why syndication? Let’s talk about that. Then I want to jump into how you’ve done this.

0:03:36

EN: Well, initially, like 5 years ago, I started diving deep into podcasts. I ran into Bigger Pockets, and I got the fire and the urge to go flip houses because it sounded exciting. If you’re familiar with the trucking industry at all, you know that your schedule is not your own and most guys are out here working 60, 70 hours a week, and that’s definitely been me. So I didn’t have time to flip houses or do anything like that and I knew the more I learned about multifamily, that if I was gonna do something in the real estate world which I definitely wanted to do, I was gonna have to make it a big transition and a career change and the avenue that I thought was a good fit for me was large multifamily syndications.

0:04:20

WS: So you knew it was gonna have to be a big transition. You weren’t gonna be able to go manage to flip a house or contractors, and those things. So tell me about the part of the syndication business that you focused on and got started in.

0:04:33

EN: Really the personal connection. If you hear anybody talk about this industry, they talk a lot about it’s a people business, and I just gravitated towards that I guess. One of the things I’ve done, we started a meet-up a couple of years ago. And we hold that once a month, and it’s really just to talk about the industry and our local market and try to find people who are interested in getting involved or maybe want to invest with us.

I also make a very purposeful effort, to have you at least one person on my calendar every week where I’m gonna go have coffee with them or lunch, and maybe half those conversations will never turn into anything. But you only need one to find that one solid connection might be the difference between making it or breaking it in this business. That’s really been my primary focus is a personal connection with people.

0:05:16

WS: I like how you said it, you only need one. I am still that way. But I remember early on you know after, I don’t know a couple of years in this space, my wife said, “You can’t make a phone call with everyone you know. You can’t meet with everyone for coffee, you know.” And I’m like, you know, I got to meet with as many people as possible because you just don’t know you know who that next connection is going to be. Eventually, yes, you do have to start saying no a lot more unfortunately and it’s a struggle for me because I’m like, “No, I want to be able to help them or maybe they’re a connection. Or you know that I can help, that we need, or you know one way or the other.”

And so, I appreciate just your perspective on that – one connection, man, could just make or break. Big leaps forward. Can you, speak to maybe a connection that was made that has helped you in a big way, you know, or something that moved the ball in a big way for you through all those meetings.

0:06:07

EN: Boy, there’s been a lot but there’s one that stands out in particular, and where he’s actually partnering with us on a deal that we’re doing right now and he’s local to our market and he’s owned and managed a few thousand doors and I didn’t know that going into the conversation. I was just talking with brokers left and right, trying to figure out how to get into this industry because it’s a tight-knit world, especially in my market. I don’t know what it’s like in everybody’s market, but in the Wichita market, things seem to trade before they ever go for the other go to the MLS so I was like, “Well, how the heck do I get those pocket listings.” And I got in contact with one of the quote-unquote big players in the market. And turns out he was just another guy like you or me and we hit it off really well and started talking over the next couple of years. And, that ultimately turned into a relationship where when I said, “Hey, I’ve got a deal I think it might be pretty interesting to you,” and he looked at it and goes “yeah, let’s do it together.” And if it weren’t for him, the deal wouldn’t happen, really all there is to it.

0:07:00

WS: Yeah. Well, and if it wasn’t for you, he wouldn’t have had the deal, right? So yeah, you added value to him also. How are you like making the first connection with all these people, or you know, or maybe specific people that you’re trying to spend that time with or connect with? How are you reaching out first to them and what does that look like?

0:07:18

EN: It’s a lot of different things, probably like a spiderweb – LinkedIn, Facebook, the podcast, doing this podcast, doing the meetup, talking to people at church about it. I guess one other thing, you gotta be obsessed. And not in a bad way, necessarily. But it is my intention that this is my career path. I guess, and because of that, it’s just everything I talk about and so the connections, I mean I’m purposely looking for them. But they come because of the efforts, I’m making.

So you know, and when you set yourself up as a leader like what I do at the meetup, or even the podcast, even though I don’t know at all, and I never will people still come looking for you because you’re outspoken about it. That’s probably how it mostly happens.

0:07:57

WS: Why did you start to meet up and how has that’s helped you?

0:08:01

EN: I started it so I could find investors. I mean that’s ultimately a selfish reason for starting it, and that’s why I started it. It has since kind of morphed into more along the lines of me, trying to help others achieve their goals because quite honestly, about half the people that come to my meet-up, are just starting, and they don’t know where to go. And they’re just trying to learn and figure out what their role in the real estate world’s gonna be and you know a lot of them think that all they can do is single-family.

I’ve done different things in the meetup from just goal setting to try and help them develop their mindset, and get a really clear focus on what it is they’re wanting to do. But then, beyond that, you know, we do education on multifamily, specifically, because I am still very much trying to find people that I can partner with. It went from being solely focused on me finding investors, to me trying to help others get into the industry, and both are that in itself has been incredibly visual for me.

0:08:55

WS: That’s awesome. Meet-up has been something that has helped so many people, right? And it has morphed into many other things, and I think for others as well. Speak to the podcast as well, like it can’t be easy to host a podcast while still working full time. I did it as well, but why start a podcast, you know, you’re still working full-time? How did you do that? And why?

0:09:15

EN: Well, just to start with, I’m never gonna do a daily podcast because that’s too much work, man. But, I had the idea of starting it a couple of years ago because I find so much value in podcasts out here on the road. I mean I’ve learned a ton and it goes far beyond just real estate. I’ve drawn to my faith a tremendous amount because of podcasts. So I see a lot of value in it. As I said, I wanted to start one a couple of years ago, and I really just recently started doing it finally, and The Wealthy Trucker has always been a name that has been on my heart to do it with. Because you can attribute the word wealth to a lot of areas in life.

So the 4 things that I talk about in the podcast are faith, family, fitness, and finance. And really, how wealthy are you in those 4 areas of life. You know, I have them in that order for a reason, faith, family, fitness, and finance. And I truly believe that if you’re not focused on your faith, then the other 3 will falter, and you won’t do as well as you could. So and then finance I have it in there last because if we’re focused on money, and that’s all we’re focused on, then it’s not to say we couldn’t get it. There are certainly plenty of people who can achieve getting a lot of money. But if that’s what you’re focused on I mean, in my opinion, you kind of have the wrong focus in life. It can just lead to terrible outcomes.

So, having a solid focus on life, and then what I do in the podcast I try to talk to leaders, pastors, you know, syndicators, just any industry, frankly, it is it’s not just real estate that I’m talking to people. I want to talk to leaders and try to understand what it is that they are focused on in life and try to figure out if if I need to change my mindset a little bit, see where we align, or maybe just help others because, as I said, it’s been really beneficial to me too.

0:10:55

WS: Sure, speak to the listener who’s debating about starting a meetup or a podcast and you know, should they do one or the other, or both, or you know what would be your recommendation and why?

0:11:06

EN: There are a lot of benefits to doing the meetup. It helped me with public speaking you know because you’re kind of forcing yourself to get up there and do it. So there are a lot of other benefits out of it beyond just networking. But networking’s huge because like we said earlier, it just takes one person to really get you to go in crazy places anywhere in life. So it’s beneficial and if you’re a person who’s not super extroverted and you don’t like to talk, then do it because it’ll force you to get out there and it doesn’t take long to get pretty comfortable with it. I know that’s probably easier said than done. But if you can recognize an area, where you need to grow then I would say, work on it.

And the podcast, I mean it’s beneficial, too, and it’s it maybe it’s easier because you’re not in front of a big audience, even though a big audience might be listening to you. So maybe a little less intimidating. But then the key there is staying consistent with it. 

So yeah, either one is good but both take a lot of work and dedication..

0:11:59

WS: For sure. No doubt about it. What about what’s the way Eric that you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply ours?

0:12:04

EN: Taking a more serious focus on my faith. When I put together the podcast like I said I’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, and I hadn’t really formulated what it was going to be, and when I finally sat down and got the faith, family, fitness, and finance in the correct order in my own mind, that started transforming the business.

So really just a clear mindset on where I’m going. That was the biggest catalyst for getting me on the right track.

0:12:30

WS: What about what’s your best source for meeting new investors right now?

0:12:34

EN: Oh, it’s probably still the meetup. I’d say it’s still the meet-up. I’ve met some people through the podcast and it’s growing. But the meetup is probably the main area.

0:12:44

WS: You think it’s through, like the consistency of it, and just building the relationships over time?

0:12:48

EN: And referrals. Just this last week at our meetup, I think 3 of the people there, we’re looking for a place to invest, and they came from referrals from other people. So, obviously, what we’re saying and what we’re doing at the meetup is getting out there, and people are finding value in it. So it’s beneficial.

0:13:05

WS: What are some daily habits that you are disciplined about, that have helped you achieve success?

0:13:09

EN: Probably my biggest one is not making excuses. I try to go to the gym, I can’t call it a daily habit, because here I am, I haven’t been there in a week, so just the very first thing I do when I wake up is chugged a glass of water and I do it purposely to try and clear my mind, cleanse my body, and get started. And I got that out of The Miracle Morning. That was one of the things that continued on a regular basis. But you know, I’ve done everything from journal to meditate and pray, and but yeah, not making excuses. That’s probably the number one thing that I do every day that keeps me going. I’m not gonna blame other people for my lack of getting something done.

0:13:50

WS: No, that’s incredible. I chug a glass of water in the morning as well right before my large cup of bulletproof coffee.

That’s awesome, Eric. How do you like to give back?

0:13:59

EN: I volunteer at church a lot. I do the High School ministry there. And you know I give back by doing that, although I think I get more out of it than sometimes the teens are getting. But that’s been incredibly beneficial in my life. That’s probably the main area. I love helping the teenagers at church.

0:14:17

WS: Grateful for your time today, and even I mean, while sitting in the truck right now, I mean, I just grateful for your example to go make it happen, to get it done no matter what, and you’re doing that now and congratulations. We couldn’t really talk about Eric’s syndicating a deal right now, so it’s incredible to see the success and the progress. You know, of all these connections that were made and the work that’s been put in, it starts to take off and the meet-up. I mean no joke, meetup or podcast is a commitment, to say the least. And he’s out there doing it making it happen.

So Eric, thank you again. How can the listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you? 

0:14:55

EN: Well, you can go to the website. It’s febroscapital.com, which is F-E-B-R-O-S-capital-DOT- com. You can find me on Linkedin, either by Eric Neely or The Wealthy Trucker, and if you think you’re a leader, and you’re a good fit for The Wealthy Trucker then go to the website, and you’ll find the link to where you can become an interviewee.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:15:15.0

WS: Thank you for being a loyal listener to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show. Share it with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget, go to www.LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today, Have a blessed day!

[END]