Whenever we hear a success story in real estate investing or in life in general, we often missed the part when a person faces setbacks first. We need to remember that failures are part of success. In this premiere episode of Highlights, we look back at our conversations with Stuart Gethner, Meghan Stafford, and Bo Geobel as they share how they turned setbacks into real estate successes.
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Stuart shares that lack of confidence can be the biggest obstacle you can face as you are starting. He also urges investors not to be discouraged by rejection and instead work on follow through. As for Meghan, she shares that there is no better time to start making your dreams come true than now. She says it is important to get started with whatever you feel passionate about and know that failures are inevitable. And for Bo, he says hard times reveal one’s character. Listen now and be inspired to keep moving forward!
Key Points From This Episode:
- The biggest obstacles Stuart sees his clients facing and how he guides them through.
- Why you should not be discouraged by rejection and work hard on the follow-through.
- Why failure is important for growth.
- Megan’s top tip for preparing for a downturn – hoard your cash!
- How the military has influenced Bo’s real estate business.
- The three main things that Ranger school did to establish Bo’s leadership skills.
- Bo shares some key things that helped him settle his first deal.
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“What I found that students and people have most challenging is confidence, and so they may have all the relationships, they may have the ability to find (a) property, they may have the ability to work partnerships, joint ventures, but they don’t have the confidence.” – Stuart Gethner [0:01:18]
“I learned even though you have the rejection of your offer, that doesn’t mean the deal is dead.” – Stuart Gethner [0:05:19]
“If something doesn’t work, if you fail, like no big deal, like you learned a lot from your failures for sure. I mean every failure I’ve had, I just become so much better from it.” – Megan Stafford [0:06:19]
“Hard time don’t build character, they reveal character.” – Bo Geobel [0:15:12]
“For people that are just getting started, I think one thing that helped me tremendously is finding somebody that you really aspire to be like, somebody that you really want to be like.” – Bo Geobel [0:18:12]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
WS600: Rejection Before Success with Stuart Gethner
WS765: The Cost Of Fearing Failure with Megan Stafford
WS779: Hard Times Reveal Character with Bo Goebel
About Stuart Gethner
Stuart Gethner, the CEO of Gethner Education, Coaching & Consulting, has coached hundreds of students on how to successfully invest. He also founded and actively heads up Networking REI, a thriving real estate investing community that meets monthly. A seasoned real estate investor who has personally invested over 10 million dollars in single-family residences, commercial properties, industrial complexes, land opportunities, and hard-money lending transactions, Stuart is passionate about showing others how to do the same to achieve freedom and lifestyle they deserve.
About Megan Stafford
Megan Stafford is an experienced commercial real estate investor that has managed over $140 million in multifamily, office, retail, and industrial asset classes all across the United States with a main focus in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a proven track record of increasing profits, streamlining processes, and simultaneously keeping investors informed. Transparency and financial creativity are her strengths as well as her continual objectives. She recently launched Dreamy Capital, a real estate investment company focused on helping others passively invest in real estate so they can focus on what truly matters most to them. She is originally from Arkansas and graduated from the University of Central Arkansas. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014 and loves making music and hiking with her loving partner and two fur babies.
About Bo Goebel
Bo is the Managing Member of Riverside Investment Group — a values-based real estate investment firm. His team specializes in partnering with investors to purchase under-performing apartment complexes, then repositioning the properties through a value-add business plan. They are passionate about providing immense value to residents, investors, and the communities they serve. He is enthusiastically pursuing the goal of 1,000 units under management in the next 5 years.
Bo is currently a Captain in the US Army, where he serves as an Infantry Officer. He is currently serving as the Commander of an Infantry Company of 260 Soldiers at Ft. Benning, GA. His other military positions and accolades include graduation from Ranger School, a deployment to Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, and the leader of the “Presidential Escort Platoon” as a member of the prestigious “Old Guard” in Washington D.C. His other real estate experience includes short-term rental properties, house-hacking, and the BRRRR method. He currently has $3.4 million AUM. Bo’s married to the most wonderful woman he knows, Tara Layne, and has two children and is expecting their third in March 2021
Full Transcript
EPISODE 945
[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.
[INTERVIEW]
0:00:24.4 Whitney Sewell
This is your daily real estate syndication show, and we are introducing a new segment called The Real Estate Syndication Show Highlights, where we’re bringing you a look back at episodes focused on a specific topic that we believe have added value to you in your syndication journey and business.
We want to know if you like the highlight shows. Go to lifebridgecapital.com/podcast, and you’ll see a feedback button. I look forward to hearing from you.
[INTERVIEW 1]
0.00.53.00 Whitney Sewell:
Today our guest is Stuart Gethner. Thanks for being on the show, Stuart.
0.00.56.00 Stuart Gethner:
Honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
0.00.56.00 Whitney Sewell:
Now, I get calls every week, whether it’s about podcasting or getting started raising capital, or to get in the commercial real estate business. And then I noticed there’s people that two years later, nothing’s happened, right? Help us with that a little bit. I know you’re working with that many students. Let’s just dive into that a little bit there because I know there’s many listeners who have probably been in those shoes for a good while. They’ve been listening to the show for two years almost, and maybe still have not taken that step yet. And so, help us with that a little bit. Personally, I know so much goes back to mindset and just getting out there and making it happen but help us to put some tread to that. How do you help people do that?
0.01.34.00 Stuart Gethner:
Sure. Whitney, you’re spot on. In my opinion, everything has to do with mindset. Mindset and attitude. What goes up between your ears is everything. But to answer your question, what I found that students and people have most challenging is confidence. And so, they may have all the relationships and we have the ability to find property, they may have the ability to work partnerships, joint ventures, but they don’t have the confidence. And it’s kind of like when you go for a job and the job requirements are you gotta have some experience. It’s like how do you get the experience to get the job without someone giving you a chance to have the experience? So, confidence is the number one obstacle.
And I think the way that I found most effective to be able to help folks out is to be a coach, a consultant, to be there when you need me. So, I’ll give you an example. I have a coach. Her name is Sheryl. We call our coach Sheryl. And back in the day, we would have a standing appointment on Fridays. So, every Friday I have a consult with my coach as my mentor. And there were some weeks on a Tuesday that I wanted to talk to her, but my appointment wasn’t until Friday. And then there were some days where on a Friday, I’d have really nothing to talk about. So, I think that the challenge is being there when you need them even if it’s for a simple question or even a long question, or to walk property, or to help through a contract or to help the negotiations, being able to have someone…
One of the things that we do is we’ll make live phone calls when we put on our seminars at our conferences – they’re education-based – we literally make live phone calls to active listings or to fish bowls for sale by owners. And people enjoy hearing that. I still get flustered. I still ask silly questions. People will still hang up on me. So, that gives them the confidence to know that if they fall, someone who’s been doing this for a while with a lot of experience, maybe a little grey hair, still has challenges as well.
0.03.32.00 Whitney Sewell:
Rejection is hard, right? And it seems like getting started in this business, you just already… We don’t expect it maybe. Or if you just think, Okay, “I have to be rejected 25 times before I get one.” And me personally, I just wanna say, “Okay. When do we get started?”
0.03.48.00 Stuart Gethner:
Yeah, you know, that’s a great point. And so, for our KPIS or metrics, when we’re home and we’re dropping a little over 10000 pieces of direct mail a month, we… We do different types of advertising. From what we can tell, we need about 30 to 40 phone calls, 30 to 400 touching, 30 to 40 touches, emails, whatever that looks like in order to get a deal. So, we’re gonna hear no 30 to 39 times before we’re gonna hear a Yes.
And so, I could honestly tell you, one of the reasons I think that we don’t have a high success rate when people jump into this market is because they get discouraged. And then they’ll get an email, “Bob, look at cryptocurrency. Look at this opportunity.” And because they’re discouraged, they get distracted. And so, they have the commitment starting out, but over time, if they don’t see the little pieces of success, the little baby steps, it’s easy to fall off the wagon.
0.04.43.00 Whitney Sewell:
Is it important to track that? Like you said, we know it’s gonna take 30 to 40 pieces email or a phone call. Is it important to track that?
0.04.50.00 Stuart Gethner:
Let me tell you, we were writing contracts as everybody does. We’re writing contracts after contracts, offers after offers, right? And they’re getting rejected. And we had a pile sitting on the desk, and I was like, “What do you do with all these rejected offers?” And maybe there was two, three, four months-worth… I am not a realtor. I’m not an agent. But my lovely bride, Stephanie is. And so, I asked her to do me a favor. I asked her maybe to go through this pile and see if any of them had sold to see if anybody was still interested. And we had about 40 offers that she went through. Four of those offers for those contracts, two were accepted, the below what we asked.
0.05.32.00 Whitney Sewell
Wow.
0.05.33.00 Stuart Gethner:
So, someone accepted an offer. Ours was hired. They rejected us, and as time went on, they took an offer less than ours. And the other two, one was 500 more than ours, and one was 500 more than ours. So, I learned even though you have the rejection of your offer, that doesn’t mean the deal’s dead. And so, we put a system in place to cycle through those every 30, 45 days, those rejected offers, and we found that we were getting close to a 10% acceptance rate on that pile. If we just need a touch and follow-through. And that’s the challenge I think everybody has in any sales, whether you’re in real estate or you’re selling cars or whatever you’re selling. The money is in the follow-through. Don’t you think?
[INTERVIEW 2]
0.06.19.00 Whitney Sewell:
Our guest is Megan Stafford. Thanks for being on the show, Megan.
0:06:23.1 Megan Stafford
Thanks, Whitney. I appreciate it. I think it’s learning as quickly as you can. Bring and turn… Like what Bigger Pockets always says that phrase about building your parachute on the way down. And that’s so true. It’s like you jump out of the plane and you’re not sure if you have a pack that will open. But you’re gonna try your best to open it. And so yes, being able to learn on the job, learn on the spot, and then if something doesn’t work, if you fail, like no big deal. Like, you learned a lot from your failures… For sure. I mean, every failure I’ve had, I’ve just become so much better from it.
0.06.55.00 Whitney Sewell:
How do you prepare for a potential downturn?
0:06:57.8 Megan Stafford
So… Yeah, that’s a good point. Basically, I have been hoarding cash. I’ve gotten all of my he-locks in place. So, if I went to cash reserves based on all my financing stuff, so whatever interest rates are going down, I tried to get as much as I could right before I quit my job because once you have that W2 on lending, it’s like you seem a little risky. So, I made sure to get all of that lined up before I put in my notice. So, I’ve got all of that in the back just waiting in case something happens. There’s also lots of different avenues with SDA, there’s disaster loans that are actually not that difficult to get. And then, yeah, just being able to be prepared with a little bit of extra cash, just in case… I’m in the school of thought that like, I wanna be buying when there’s a downturn and prep in that way, so some hoard your cash.
0:07:55.9 Whitney Sewell
I find that people who are successful in business, have a high level of self-discipline. And it’s interesting you talk about coming from a scrappy beginning years, you call it. And it’s just hard to get started. Or I come from not much, or humble beginnings, but you have to have a high level of self-discipline and… How did you gain that high level of self-discipline?
0:08:14.1 Megan Stafford
You know, I’m not that… That’s a great question. I’m not super positive where it came from, but I will say one thing that really helps keep me focused. So, I do this thing. It’s… Hal Elrod actually came up with it. But it’s called SAVERS. It’s this acronym and I love it and live by it. It’s so amazing. So, it’s an acronym – SAVERS.
S is for silence. So I do meditation in the morning, and this is a thing you do every day, you can do it in the morning, do it at night, whatever, and you can do it as long as you want or as little as you want, it’s up to you, but… So, S is for Silence. So, I try to calm my mind and really get in that space of zen. You just drown out everything else. And then A is for affirmations. I have a list of affirmations I make every six months, and that’s to keep me focused. And so, I’ll read through those twice.
And then V is for visualization. So I have a vision board and it’s got pictures of me doing awesome things like running a half marathon. And it’s like my little bobble head on top just to kinda trigger your brain to be thinking about those goals that you said at the beginning of the year, whenever you set them, whatever, just being able to visualize yourself getting those things or going to that beach and feeling the grains of sand and your toes, like just really, really driving at home with the sensations.
And then E is for exercise. I exercise ever day. I’ve done that for 90 days straight. I’ve missed five days, I will say. But I try to do it every day because it’s a really great habit and it keeps me focused. And then R is for reading. I’ll read lots of different things. I’m an avid reader, I love reading. So, read for 10-15 minutes, whatever you can fit. And then S is scribing just because he needed the acronym to work. It’s just journaling, which has been eye-opening for me because we get so busy, and just like everything’s kinda jumbled up. But when I’m forced to journal to myself, it just… Everything becomes more clear.
And so, I would say all of that has helped me become very disciplined because I start my morning that way, and so it trickles down from there. I feel centered, and now any problem that comes up really just doesn’t seem like that… I can handle it now.
0:10:26.6 Whitney Sewell
Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. Morning routine is so important to me as well, being up early. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, I guess one of his first books on something I read, I don’t know, three or four years ago. And that really transformed a lot for me too, and I don’t follow all those things like that, as disciplined as you are, but it did help me to at least, to think about my morning routine and being purposeful with that time, and it just changed a lot. It’s allowed me to read tons of books and do lots of other things. But Megan, now that you know what you know in real estate, you have more experience, what would you have done different on your first deal?
0:11:00.0 Megan Stafford:
On my first deal, I probably would have asked for more help. And what I mean by that is, I didn’t actually know anyone in real estate. There’s so many more things now that there weren’t basically back then like LinkedIn. I probably would have gone to LinkedIn and looked up people that were in real estate, that did investments and knew how to navigate that, and just said like, “Hey, I’m young, I’m dumb, I need help. Can I just like send you this contractor bid and can you tell me if they’re trying to screw me over because I don’t know?” I would have tried to find… It would have been more helpful to have some sort of mentor, being able to reach out to a local real estate group. I’d say like, I really don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m kind of introverted, so I try to do everything by reading books and it really really helps when you can have someone human kinda walk you through that or just tell you it’s okay, but all this is happening.
[INTERVIEW 3]
0:11:59.1 Whitney Sewell
Our guest is Bo Goebel. Thanks for me on the show, Bo.
0:12:01.1 Bo Goebel
Whitney, it’s a pleasure and I truly appreciate the opportunity to share on your platform.
0:12:01.0 Whitney Sewell
I wanna ask you too, how did just the military or maybe ranger school just affect your real estate business?
0:12:14.0 Bo Goebel
So, the military in general has been tremendous. I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of it. I tell everyone, you know, I think there’s different tiers. And for me, Ranger school was an obsession. And so, I love touching on this, and I talked to all of my peers and any of my soldiers that care to listen about how important Ranger school was on my own development as a leader, as a soldier, as a person in general. And I really wanted to be a ranger for so many reasons. And so many more like high level, an idealistic, romantic reasons, but I really became obsessed and that’s the only way forward for me. And so that was my priority. So I was super focused on that for a long time and very, very important opportunity. But I think your listeners could really get the value from some things that in hindsight, I can translate into how that’s built me as a leader and also, you know how it translates into real estate.
There are three real things that ranger school did for me as a leader, the military officer. And number one, it made me extremely confident in my tactics which is crucial to lead on the battlefield or be in the arena of leadership. If you don’t know the ins and outs, you’re gonna suffer, or worse, your men and women underneath you suffer because of that. So my ultimate motivation throughout was visualizing me in the future as the commander and ground during a decrepit and during a firefight and seeing the leader that I needed to be and that leader is the absolute best. The men and women that would be serving under me or the units to my left and right, and reserve that focus. And while that is not as heavy in the real estate game as a syndicator, I still take or I think I aspire to take the exact same care of other people’s money, you know, especially whenever it’s loved ones. And I just wanna be connected to my capital partners. I don’t even call them as investors. They partner with me on deals, but then we can go down and work together and benefit everyone involved.
0:14:23.0 Whitney Sewell
Yeah, so extreme confidence. It gives me chills thinking about some of the scenarios. You kinda helped us visualize there. And you’re talking about being… It’s just crucial. And when being a leader, and no doubt that’s helping you build a team and just be successful in leading a team now into a business. The stakes are so much lower than when you’re overseas and being just mentally in that game like that or on a game, but overseas. It’s so important when lives are on the line. I like to say just the military gave me that just to never give up mindset because it’s just not an option, right? It’s just not an option. And so, I love that. Extremely confident and so, yeah. And what were the others?
0:15:03.0 Bo Goebel
Yeah, so I guess I love what you just touched. Whitney, I just come back to it whenever I talk about myself. Ranger School in general is leadership in general. The army really taught me how to lead people, even at their works, and specifically whenever people are three days past their breaking point, which you often are in some of our training exercises. Absolutely exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally tired and really morally susceptible to do things that you normally would not do, because as they say, hard times don’t build character, they reveal character.
And you find out what you are at your core whenever you’ve stretched your mind. And so I’ve learned specifically that people don’t really care, when everything’s on the line, people don’t really care about how much you know until you’ve demonstrated how much you care about them. And that’s a very intrinsic to who I aspire to be like. So, it’s definitely translated over it. You have to invest the time and be there and how to be the best in every situation, even whenever it’s not necessarily your neck on the line where somebody else is. Be a servant-leader essentially.
0:16:23.9 Whitney Sewell
No doubt about it. Wow. Now, thanks for sharing that. I think even the listener that hasn’t been in the military, it’s just great to hear those things, to think through that and just the level of dedication that it took in the military, but then how that’s translated to a successful real estate business as well. Anything else you wanna touch on that before we move on?
0:16:42.0 Bo Goebel
The last thing. The last thing, and I promise it’s the last thing, it’s just so much about mindset, so you learn it, to me more about myself than anything that I could ever know. So there’s a funny thing that can happen to you whenever you know the power of your mindset. And there’s funny things that can happen to you whenever you don’t stay strong in mind, whenever you’re broken down your absolute limit, and your brain, you know, you learn the psychology and the fun things about that. But your brain is an incredible tool. What you focus on and the state that you maintain yourself in absolutely determines your behavior more than you ever been in your conscious self. It’s not very good.
And just an example, I mean, there’s some mountains that you walk up during some training exercises, after like you’re a few days, after you’re breaking what you thought was your limit and no joke, you’re walking up to these mountains and you look off…And the most appealing thing about your brain, if you’re just focused on your pain and your internal suffering is a 100 foot cliff and hopefully just breaking some bones. Bodily harm yourself and being able to internalize that and focus on the goal or the mission I had or the objective. Or maybe just for me, it’s always hopeful just to focus on the guy next to me and my gal next to me, and that’s been able to persevere, and once you can do that… our true potential hasn’t even tapped into until we’ve risen higher levels.
0:18:08.0 Whitney Sewell
Nice. Wow. No, that’s incredible. Our true potential is not tapped into until they… And wow. Let’s jump into that first syndication a little bit, that 68-unit deal, give us… Obviously, we don’t have a ton of time, unfortunately. Or maybe I can have you back to talk about this a little more in detail, but I’d like to just know a few things that were key for you getting to that first syndication and getting it closed. Maybe a couple of things that you learned.
0:18:31.0 Bo Goebel
Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna provide a whole lot of value to people that are very successful in what you have up here – individuals on your show, for sure. But for people that are just getting started, I think one thing that helped me tremendously is finding somebody that you really aspire to be like, somebody that you really wanna be like. Again, it transcends all different things, but for the military, I aspire to be like Chuck Pooler. Or as leaders, you got Teddy Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, or you know other heroes of mine. My father is a huge hero of mine. Break down what you like in that person and the traits that they carry. And then find out ways to improve yourself to be like that.
And if that’s not necessarily applicable to you, if you can… how do you complement that person and provide value to somebody like that? So then you can easily find a teammate that has no front gate, and then you just try to provide value to the people… My person, you know Jason very well, but Jason’s double field was my hero and real estate for a while. And he doesn’t even know this, and I can’t wait till… I’m just gonna tell them to listen to this episode because I mean, I strove to be like, Jason. I was like, “How can I provide him value?” Whatever he said was gold and I did whatever he said, and I learned so much just by thinking through, even wherever he wasn’t around, I just aspired to be like him. And we developed a strong relationship.
And to be honest with you, Whiney, what happened was that gave me the confidence. I was like, “Hey, I know-“, I had this simple conversation, he, Jason, “if I find something, it’s a great deal and it meets all your criteria, what are your criteria? Can we partner on it now? Can I just bring you the deal and then work through the process, and you look over my shoulder and I’ll do all the work, you just…?” Whatever I do to provide him value. And that gave me the confidence to go after any deal of any size. I failed at a few syndications, but one that never went through fruition was 284 units before I ever… The biggest thing that I owned was a duplex because I knew that I had a him in play and people that could tackle something bigger.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[OUTRO]
0:20:45.4 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]
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