Why Invest in Residential Assisted Living Homes with Max Keller

Are you ready for a mind-bending revelation? Real estate investors are diversifying their portfolios in unexpected ways. Join me as we unravel the unconventional investment strategy that's turning heads in the industry. Stay tuned to discover the surprising numbers and operational insights that are reshaping the game. You won't want to miss this eye-opening journey into the world of residential assisted living.

In this episode, you will be able to:
1. Master the residential assisted living investment strategy and maximize returns.
2. Discover the keys to maximizing real estate marketing success and stand out in a competitive market.
3. Learn how to scale your real estate business with operational excellence for sustainable growth.
4. Explore the benefits of joining real estate masterminds and tap into a network of industry expertise.
5. Transition from flipping houses to publishing and unlock new opportunities in real estate.

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The recent NAR settlement is reshaping the landscape for real estate agents!

With changes in how commissions can be negotiated, it’s more important than ever to align with a brokerage that supports your growth and adapts to industry shifts.

Why ELEVATION? We're a company that thrives on innovation and transparency. We understand the market’s new demands and are prepared to help you navigate these changes successfully.

With ELEVATION, you’re not just surviving the changes...you’re thriving in them!

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References:

Connect with Max Keller:
https://saviorpublishinghouse.com/max-keller/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-keller-567760154/
https://dealschasingyou.com/

Register to the ACADEMY now!
https://elevationinvest.ac-page.com/elevation-academyq3-september-27-2024997

Connect with Derek Marlin and ELEVATION Investment Properties!
Derek on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/derekmarlin

ELEVATION’s website: https://elevationinvest.com/

ELEVATION on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevationinvestmentproperties

ELEVATION on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevationinvest/

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to raising the flipping bar, the go to podcast for aspiring and seasoned real estate investors. I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm the CEO of Elevation. We're a real estate investment company based right here in Denver, Colorado. We'll dive into smart investment strategies, market insights, and essential tips for scaling your real estate ventures. Whether you're making your first investment or your hundredth investment, this podcast is your blueprint for success in the ever evolving world of real estate investing. Get ready to elevate your real estate game and begin your journey with me. I'm super excited to have a very experienced investor, very experienced entrepreneur person. Who's got a ton of real estate experience. Welcome Mr. Max Keller to raise in the flipping bar. All right, let's go. Absolutely excited. Love the energy. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff on this episode, but we've got some kind of crazy parallels. I'd love for you to share with our audience, where you are geographically, cause we've got some interesting parallels there, and then we're going to talk about a ton of marketing, but maybe give us a little bit of background to kind of where you're at physically and where you're recording. Yeah. So right now I'm in my office in Southlake, Texas, the biggest one was getting into UT Austin because I was, I'm dyslexic and I didn't know I had it till I was an adult. And so, I worked really hard. I made terrible grades in high school. I didn't really even know why. Basically went to community college, worked really, really hard, got into UT business school. So that was a huge milestone. And then the next one was getting married. Cause I think if you have a good partner in life, you can go so much further. Um, so that, that was huge. I have seven children, so that helped provide a lot of motivation. Every three years I was getting some new motivation to go out and work hard. Okay. But I basically just did some corporate jobs out of college. They're really boring. Became a teacher cause my wife is a teacher and I love kids. If you have seven kids, you probably like kids. Yeah. I hope so. So I taught algebra for seven years. Loved it. It was kind of like the military. The kids called it a prison and I could see that. I was coach Keller. I was like the power lifting fun, serious, hardcore coach. I just learned a lot. I learned about discipline. I learned about focus. I learned about being on a time schedule, but I just wasn't making any money. I left, started flipping houses in 2015, flipped about 120 houses and really saw that the key to making this business work was the marketing. And so I learned the marketing. When you learn a valuable skill and you have a network, people notice it. And so wrote a book, introduced some other people to the book, created a business around it. It just kind of kept going from there. It builds over time and it's just about taking that first step, but the biggest thing was. having some success in something that I struggled with. Probably when I was 35, I learned, I found out I was dyslexic and I got with a coach and she helped me learn how to read better. And now I read a lot and I wrote all these books and it's crazy. Like you would have never guessed in a million years. It's just kind of a journey and a process but those are the biggest milestones is getting married, learning how to read, getting into college, learning that was kind of a waste and just starting this real estate journey, which is cyclical. Yeah. So that means you have to kind of pivot at times that doesn't mean you're a job hopper. It's like, you can't just keep doing the same thing that. What's going on in oh nine, that opportunity is not here right now. So being willing to pivot, be only being willing to learn new stuff. You know, I have an operations coach that's like in his late fifties, and then I have a prompt engineering AI coach that's 23, I'm 43. That's how the world works. You're going to learn from people who are younger. You're going to learn from people who are. You know, older, you'll be the new kid in town. At some point, you'll have some skins on the wall and you'll be teaching people stuff. It's just. Stay in it. So those have been some of the big milestones that have been a lot of fun to see. That's awesome. And I'm curious on, you mentioned a prompt AI coach. What the heck is that? Tell me about that. Well, I've been using a lot of my marketing because I'm a chief market officer for a large, real estate investment company. And then I still have my own publishing business that I do. And my team does most of the work in it, but I saw pretty quickly that this is a powerful tool. Jeff Bezos says, don't try to resist the future, lean into the future. And so I started dabbling in it and I found a course. I think it helps to be curious. So if you're watching this, you know, you're curious, you're trying to learn something, get better. And, this gentleman put out this course and I met him and he's just really, really talented. And then I've been, friends with them for about a year and a half and I probably do. Probably two to three hours a day of my CMO job that I do four days a week is, prompt engineering, which is unusual, but it'll become more usual as time goes on because basically how it's going to work. It's the most powerful tool ever created in human history. And people who know how to use it are still going to be around, but people, whatever that profession is, who don't know how to use it, are just going to get totally wiped out. So I'm just staying ahead of the curve and I'm just, I like it. So it's fun for me. Yeah. And it's, it's going to be great timing because I just, I try to back to back my episodes and do a solo one and then a guest one. And so we just talked about deal sourcing on our solo episode. And I was chatting with our project manager, Travis earlier, and I think he brought up a great point, which is. AI is just not Google. You know, you don't just throw in some stupid term and then hope that you get feedback. I think you're right. That prompting and that coaching and that nuance is going to be so critical. Real estate is such an interesting space because I feel like we're behind the times. Many times on the marketing front. And so this is something we have the opportunity to get ahead of. So I think you're doing an amazing job and that's something we need to lean way more into to help our real estate businesses. Yeah. Something good. No, I mean, we prompt people all the time to prompt or to make a request. Like, that's what, Hey, can you come and, do you have any kids? I've got, man, that's a side note. I am impressed. I only have three kiddos and I can barely hang on. And so seven, I'm going to just go home and tell my wife, like, we should chill. I'm impressed. Seven. Yeah. I've got three teenagers. The real, I'm with you on that. I got mine, 17, 15, 13. And the real thing story is I have five girls in a row and then I had our first boy and then we had another boy about a year ago and we done, but I had to have five girls in a row. And then, and just don't give up. Yeah, we had that boy and then we had another, I told my wife, I'm like, man, we got to even it up five and five because we're on a hot streak. And she said maybe with somebody else. So that ain't going to happen. But I'll say it like this for the prompting stuff. You can get all in the weeds on it. Look, you guys stay cashflow positive. You have to do something that's going to be consistent to make enough income to have a gap. Like in the book profit first, you want to expand the gap between what you make and what you spend. It's hard to do. I didn't do it at first. I never had any money. So when I started flipping houses, I was flipping out and, you know, but now I've taken a little bit more measured approach, but, um, but yeah, the older kids and having a big family, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work. I've been teaching them prompting. And what I wanted to say about that was, is like, like, there's a way that we talk and there's a way that you talk with the language models that if you just kind of learn some basic techniques and some basic ways to format and communicate, you can get a lot with it. And most people still don't really understand what to do. At all. So it's just another tool that's making smart people even more rich than people who aren't as smart or curious, unfortunately. But it could be a great equalizer for people who, you know, struggle to figure things out. It can be a great tool, but we're, we're going to be augmenting quite a bit over time. It's just another tool to use. No, I think that's super, super smart. Well, I want to kind of dip into your savior publishing business. Tell me a little bit about kind of how you made the transition from flipping houses, because I know you mentioned you've done over a hundred houses, maybe give our audience a little context first of when you were doing flipping in your career and then how you transitioned into the savior publishing business. 2015 in Dallas, Fort Worth, I could pick up houses for my first house in Arlington, Texas. I picked up for like 45, 000 and I think I wholesaled it for 65 Wow. And you know, that house is worth 250 now, but you know how it is. I mean, that's everywhere. That's not really a big story. The story was, is that I just kept trying different marketing techniques. What I noticed was, is, No matter how much marketing I sent out, it was just a timing bubble. I just had to be there at the exact moment because all of my marketing that I was paying for, whether it was yellow letters, postcards, whatever, it was just getting thrown away as we're getting ignored. I had to be there at the exact nanosecond that somebody said, today, I'm going to sell my house. There's just more and more options for people to sell their house for more money. And I was like, this is just going to vaporize. I mean, it still might be around a little bit. The most ninja marketers are still going to be able to skim off the top, but the total size of this market is just not, there's just a lot of people who can pay more and that I'm willing to pay. And it's easier for people to find them every day. So. What happened was is I had to pick a niche because I actually wasn't having that much fun working with people. Clients who, you know, I had to bail somebody out of jail one time to get him to sign the paperwork for a house in Grand Prairie. I mean, I'm like real stuff. And I'm like, these people, this is just not professional. I don't like this at all. I can't have my kids do this business and come to these neighborhoods I'm in. And I'm like, I'm just not feeling this. So my wife encouraged me to not quit and, figure out what I needed to do. So what I did is I made a list of my favorite clients that I liked working with. And these were people who. When I showed up at their house, they saw me as a, as a consultant, as an advisor, not as a salesperson, people who actually were coachable, just nice people to work with. And what I noticed was I was probably on deal 50 at this point. Okay. And I noticed that my best customers were seniors by far. My grandma helped take care of me when I was younger. And then I took care of her. I was the grandson that took her to church. I was on her checking account back when you paid with checks and all that. So she's my best friend. You know, I haven't found, I love my wife, but I mean, I haven't found a replacement for my grandma. She lived to be about 90 and she was always getting hit up by salespeople just trying to sell her stuff. I don't want to do that. So what I did is I, I was just teaching the seniors, all the stuff that they didn't know, all the stuff that these slick salespeople didn't want to tell them. I had a customer who actually, I helped, I basically bought their house. This was in Richland Hills, Texas. I bought the house. The adult children are like 60 and they're like, you know, you, you've helped our family out a ton. Have you ever thought about writing a book about this? And, I was like, no, like I would be like in high school, I would have been picked last to read a book, let alone write a book. But then, you know, I thought about it. I was like, that's kind of a good idea. I could go at the time I was the guy in my little three cities I was buying in. That was the guy who knew a lot about senior housing. But if I wrote a book about it. You know, I could maybe be the guy who wrote the book on senior housing. It just positions different in the marketplace. And so, um, So I did that. I wrote a book. It took about two, 300 hours if I had known how hard it was going to be. I probably wouldn't have kept doing it. But my first book, which was this one right here, home to home, the step by step senior housing guide. It was basically just like. All the ways to sell your house is written to seniors, you know, homeowners pros and cons of each, all the ways to stay in your house, the types of senior housing that's out there and I just start giving them away to people. And the response was astronomical. I couldn't. I've never seen a tool that I could give somebody the book, where I go from being unknown to really trust it in such a short period of time. I've never seen anything even close. So I was using it to, get new leads. One of the things that we were doing is, people call us, they say, Hey, we got some of your marketing. We're interested in you coming out to look at our house to buy. And I'd say, Hey, do you have a copy of our newest book? And they're like your book. I'm like, yeah, chapter three is all the ways to sell your house. Pros and cons of each. If I send you a copy of my book. Before I come over to your house, will you at least read chapter three? Cause if you can, then I'll send it to you. And if not, I can't come over. They're like, sure, and so when I sent them the book show up really different and, they're not calling other people. I noticed I was getting a lot more exclusive deals and I didn't want to ask why. But I kind of did. So I said, Hey, you know, I noticed like, not really looking at anybody else, but there's 400, 000 million people in Dallas that do the same thing as I do. Why, why are you not calling anybody else? And one of my customers said, why would I call somebody else when I have the person who wrote the book on this? And that's when I really realized, I was in some real estate masterminds and my friends. My first friend, Dewey Nguyen in like, Winter Haven, Florida. Do you think there's seniors in Winter Haven, Florida? Yeah, randomly. I a hundred percent know that because we have a little lot. My wife, her grandma lived in Winter Haven. And so, yes, I've been there. I've probably been to the, all the kick in senior restaurants. So yes, there's probably not many young people in Winter Haven. Not as much, a lot of cream gravy. But, yeah. So anyway, so he said, Hey, can I use your book? And I was like, what do you mean? We figured out that in most, in a lot of other circles having a licensed book is kind of a thing, but it wasn't as much for this niche. And so I started licensing the book. Folks are out there using it to teach people stuff and, also grow their business. They don't have to write a whole book themselves. So, anyways, we've helped about between four book systems, wrote some more books, did that, and had about 360 authors that we've helped today in the last five years. So that turned into its whole thing that I didn't even know was going to happen. And, just one thing leads to another. Yeah. The cool thing about that is that's something that our company has been doing for two years now. And what I really love that you guys helped us out with is you're right. You've got all of the meat and potatoes of the book, but we've got kind of unique model where we partner with people and we flip their house for them and share the profit. And so we say, Hey, can we just add a separate chapter? And your team was like, yeah, great. Just edit it up. We'll smack it in there and we're good to go. So we just appreciate how you guys let us, modify it without completely changing it. It's been a great tool in our, marketing and you're right. When we go sit in those living rooms, I think some people are not willing to do that. They just want to be faceless and nameless and hope that somebody, you know, Does an SEO click and they magically get a lead. We're the same way as your team is. We love sitting in the living room with either adult children or grandma and grandpa, because it's just, it's amazing stories. I mean, when somebody hugs you when you buy their house and most people are telling you to F off, like that's a nice dichotomy. That's why I did it. And that's why I'm moving towards in my next phase here, moving into, opening my own senior home. So the next house that I flip, six to 16 little ladies are going to be moving into it because I just love working with the seniors and there's such a need coming up that if we have time, we'll talk about it. But the, you want to do businesses where. They can stick around a little bit cause it takes time to spin up a team and the operations necessary for you to not have to do all the work by yourself. You want to have a tailwind, and, the demographics are favorable towards that. And like I said, if you have a heart to help, but you have to have that stuff. If all you want to do is just make cash. And be transactional. That's cool, but that wouldn't really work as good. The seniors, they need more than that. Yeah. And I think something that'd be super helpful for our audience to hear is your timeline of how long it took you to get going and how long you felt like you had to be consistent in the senior book space. Because I think a lot of folks that we talk to and we do some consulting, it's like, they say, Oh man, I sent postcards for two months and it didn't work. And then they just change and change and change. We talk about going way deep, maybe give us our audience a timeline of like, how hard and how long did you have to really work at this before you felt like you got some good traction? Yeah. The technical term is cash conversion cycle, but maybe this is called the financial term, but we talk about a lot around here, but yeah, it's from when you put out time or money, but usually money, how soon are you going to get it back? How long does it take from somebody to when they find out about you to be their customer? And I found that different lead sources, it varies. So like here at this real estate company, we track, we get leads from 15 different sources and we track all of them and they all have a different cash conversion cycle, but you have to know what it is. It varies. There's sort of, you're planting some seeds. We have some people that will go and meet and in a matter of, from when we first met them to a few weeks, we're doing business with them. There's some folks that we give our book to, they hold on to it for a long time. And then they call us at, six months. I had a lady who called that held on to my book for two years. And it's funny because back when there were just deals everywhere, and there was these, other, podcasts you'd listen to, and they would tell these stories that are fishtails. They wouldn't happen anymore. Yeah. But somebody talked about, I remember hearing the story of this guy, he's an investor and he sent, A letter or a postcard and the little old lady saved it, put it in the shoe box under her bed. And then when she passed away, the kids found it and the kids are very involved in the decision making for these seniors, even if they're still alive. And so I remember the story where they, went through her stuff and they found this and they called them the investor and said, Hey, we Our mom passed away. Are you still buying houses? Can you help us? And, that got me thinking. And I was like, I bet you if I gave them my book, they wouldn't throw it away. And so when you give somebody an autographed book, competes with all the other autographed books on their coffee table, it's kind of like a book. Which aren't very many, it's kind of really like a bandit sign, but it's in somebody's living room. That's why I get so many calls. What's interesting is that a lot of marketing, it's only valuable to you as the business owner. If somebody reads it and consumes it, because otherwise. They don't even know what it says, but what's cool about the book is because it has an actual physical property. Like when I get calls from people still today that have had my book for six months, a year or two years, I don't ask them how much of it they read. I don't know. I can't say they read every page of it, but they still have it. So some of it is just providing enough value. To where you're sticking around because you can't afford, I mean, you would, if you could just probably, you know, all the older houses, the houses that you buy, you would just send them a piece of mail and an email and a Facebook ad every single day forever, but you can't afford to do that. So it's like, you have to kind of pick and choose. So I like the book. Because when I give it to somebody, which it costs me about five bucks. So, you know, five touch yellow letter campaigns, five bucks. It's like I could send them a five touch yellow letter campaign. They're going to throw it in the trash unless they have a need right now. And then they're going to call all the other people who sent them a postcard the same day. And then I'm going to race over there and we're going to stand in line and take a number. And it's going to be the highest bidder, or I could for about the same amount, given my book, I show up totally different. Dan Kennedy talks about it. It's the difference between being a welcome guest and an annoying pest. So these are some of the things, so that it varies. But like I said, I like planting seeds. If you're going to do a business for a while. You don't always want to, be hunting. You want to be farming also. Now, and I think that's a really good way to say it. And maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the senior space or, you know, people call it the older adult space now in general, because I think that's a huge thing of whether people should lean their marketing in or out of a sector that's either growing or to your point, changing or stagnating. What are you seeing as some of the more recent changes, especially since you're now developing housing on your own of just this industry overall. Cause I think it's key to look at that data. Yeah. Well, you know, the data shows that every day, 10, 000 people a day in America turned 65 and 4, 000 people a day turn 85 and that number's actually going to go up and 85, you know, I don't know the exact peak assisted living, but if somebody needs people go into assisted living because they can't live on their own, they don't go into assisted living because they want to, or they heard the food's good. They, that's just. They have to. And so there's a house that needs to be deposed, and there has something has to happen to it. They have to find another place to live. The baby boomers. I mean, this isn't a big mystery. It's the biggest group of, 20 year population and recorded human history. The oldest baby boomer is, 45, you know, born in 45. So next year they turn 80. Peak assisted living, I think is around 82, 83. So this is still early. Just like the prompt engineering stuff's early. So is this, like people are hearing about senior housing, but nothing like it's going to be the largest group. And it's, by the way, it's a worldwide thing. It isn't even just America is the whole world. The largest population group ever in recorded human history are two years away from hitting assisted living age. And there'll be a wave of 20 years of it. So I'm 43. I like working and making money and helping people in no particular order. So this is just not, this is not a big mystery. And so is there a huge opportunity? Yeah, I can't think of one that's better. Can you? Yeah. No, I think it's key. And I think it's really the cream will rise to the top of the people that are willing to put in the work and be conscientious and be servants and be helpers. I think we're in the exact same spot. I think it's a great way to look at it. And one of the things I want to ask you about is, you have the ability to do a couple different things within the different companies that you're working within. Talk a little bit about your team at Savior Publishing and some of the ways that you're able to, you know, split your time and manage things because you're successfully running teams. Cause a lot of our audience is doing the same thing. Either they're building their flipping team or their wholesale team or whatever, but it's all about running teams. And you've been able to execute that step away, take a CMO job at a big company. So maybe talk about that. That'd be huge for our audience. It's a miracle. You want to talk about something I would have never guessed in a million years. So it started out of building terrible teams where I was abdicating, which I think is just like handing stuff off without really even following through no documented anything. I'm just a hotshot real estate investor and I'm just shooting first and that kind of bullcrap, and I'm just, I'm all that. And then there's a lot of frustration that would happen. I had multiple acquisitions, people on our flipping team had multiple VAs that were helping with the marketing. This is normal stuff people have. it wasn't working good. You know, people weren't showing up. People weren't doing their work. Yeah. I don't think anybody was stealing, but it was just, it was a cluster. So then when I got the CMO job, I did it. I mean, look, I can't. Part of it was cause I knew this, that it would force me to level up in some of these areas. Cause it's easy to stay in your comfort zone. I could have just bought a few houses, a good houses a month and from seniors. And that's cool. But I wanted, I knew to run a big business. There's just some skills you got to have. And, building operational teams and operational excellence is everything. People aren't paying you for information. They're paying for you to execute on something. I knew that I would learn that because these folks already have those skills. So I got this book called work the system. I got a couple of books before it, but work the system, Sam Carpenter. I read it and he was like, speak in my exact life, which was I'm running these businesses. I don't have a business. I got a job. I'm worn out. I'm just one of those worn out entrepreneurs. Making good money, but it's not sustainable. And I have no time freedom. Some of the folks in my masterminds, Trevor from, on carrot, changes the name used to be investor carrot. He's so smart. Like people like that were pouring into us and they had been to that next level where they have teams and like an actual company. And I was like, I want to get there. And so, from listening to him, From getting work, the system, I went through the program, work the system. I really, if people haven't read that book, you it's lights out and they have a cohort, a group coaching program. I went through it and it was great. It was hard, but it was like 12 weeks and they taught us like how to actually set, this is the guiding principles right over here. Here's the strategic objective and like why these are actually important. I didn't understand any of this stuff. I understood how to make money. I understood how to talk. I understood marketing, but like how to actually like create and form a business. I've been through the EOS stuff a little bit. My friend Gary Harper, I was actually his first client. Oh, no. And the idea for the company. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Just random. So like I had been hanging with some of these ops people, but it's totally different. And when you're. Have it fully integrated. And so anyways, we went, I went through the whole thing. I installed it at both companies. The real estate company that I'm CMO for, and then for savior publishing house. And we documented all of our processes and we, but it's more than that. It's not, you can't just write everything down, put it in a binder. If you do that, nothing's going to happen. It's actually training with the work, looking at the work, using the work. It's just a lot of hard work and a lot of setup, and I'm so glad I did it because without it, I just don't think that I could have, really created a successful team. And I have three people at the publishing business and three people on our marketing team here. We're adding another one. So it's not like I have like 500 people, but look to be an entrepreneur and get yourself out of it. You got to have a certain amount of consistent scale, you know, that's scalable, not from. Some magic list that a marketer sold you that doesn't pan out. I'm talking about like a five, 10 year business. You got to have the skills, got to know how to really operate, know how to hire correctly, just know stuff. And so when I was 33, when I was 23, I didn't know anything. I'm so glad they didn't have social media back then. I would never be able to run for office. When I was 33, I had learned some stuff. Now I'm 43. You just go up. What's cool about this, the guy who co wrote the Ford of work, the system, Josh Fonger, he's my coach and he's teaches me all the op stuff. And it's all about execution. And if you cannot be a good operator and efficient operator, a lot of these visionaries. In the masterminds, they're out to lunch, man. And they're just one market reset away from going totally out of business because they don't really know how to run a team. They have a magic special forces, ninja, like integrator. And if that person disappears. Everything disappears. If my people disappear, I love them. I hope they don't, I pour into them, but if they do, the processes stay. And because, so that's how we lead. That's the source that I used. It took a long time. It's not, this is not like, I don't have a shortcut if somebody has it. Cool. But most of the shortcuts are garbage. You just have to put the time in and focus on like actually building. Like things that businesses have to have and businesses have to generate leads. They have to convert leads. They have a product or service offering that they execute on. And then there's the accounting, kind of finance piece. And that's kind of legal, you know, and that's kind of business. And so most people like us. I don't know. Were you probably pretty good at sales right out of the womb? I sure was. That's definitely when I got, and we'll talk about this later. You've gotten back into the corporate world. I started out in the corporate world and yeah, it was just all day sales, sales, sales, sales, but no, no ops, no running anything. You know, you're just a kick ass salesperson. So we're going to take a quick break and tell you about the next elevation Academy. If you're looking to dive deep into real estate investing, this is definitely the event for you. Our Academy features over a hundred step process to help you navigate every single thing from market analysis all the way down to every aspect of project management. So this is tailored for both beginners and seasoned investors. And our one day intensive training will equip you with the strategies and insights needed to elevate your real estate investing game. Spots are definitely limited. So click on the link below in the show notes to sign up and transform your approach to real estate investment. Okay. Let's get back to the episode. Right. So it was like, okay, so like kick ass salesperson, like right out the gate, that's just the way you're born, you know, selling candy bars at school and stuff. I saw Ninja turtle cartoons that my neighbor made because the artists don't want no money. And so he was just doing it for fun. And I was over there selling them. I was a broke kid at a little private school. So then you learn the marketing game from doing the real estate stuff. And then, then you realize, okay, I can't scale up all this marketing and sales. If I can't have a good operational team and I have to do it all. If I don't know how to build a team, so leaders have to know how to build teams. And if you build teams with systems, if the people come and go, the system stay, and then you own a system that makes money. Not just a skill that makes money or not just, I happen to have hired some people that can help me make money. When you can own a system that produces money and you plug your team members into the system, that's actually a business. Most people don't have that, never will, because they don't understand that. Yeah. And when you're building those teams, I think everything you said is just so spot on. And so key. Is there a certain interview question or is there a certain trade or something that you're looking for? I know that every role is different, but when you're finding your a players, something that you're either asking or is Keenan on your, where you're going, Hey, that's the right person versus you interview. And you're like, that is the wrong person. Cause I think that's key in everybody's business. Yeah, step one is intelligence test everybody, because people's brains just move at different speeds. And that's just sort of a fact. We give everybody a test to make sure that they can handle the speed and pace of the job, because if you try to put somebody in a role where their processor goes, you know, At this speed, and then somebody else's and the job needs this, you're hurting them. You're not helping them. So we make sure that their aptitudes are a match. And then I read this book called hiring for attitude and what it said in there is that, attitudes don't really change. And if somebody has a good 1, and they're coachable. Then, and they're, decent, smart, then they can, they can be a contributor. But if, they have a crappy attitude, it doesn't matter how smart they are. It doesn't matter how many skills they have. You can't build a team because all the people leave. So that book was very instrumental. We just pretty much focus on, that, what Warren Buffett said is true. He says three things when you hire, you gotta have intelligence, you have to have energy and you have to have, integrity that's just sort of an offshoot of that. But yeah, we go, they go through a very specific process and, it's been working really good. We hired like four people this year and I don't think we got rid of anybody. One person's kind of on the watch list. I learned how, like you have to do performance reviews with people. I didn't understand any of this. We do it every 90 days. I know some people don't, but I found it to be really helpful. Like just. Have a formal process of letting people know what their expectations are. Cause sometimes when people aren't doing what you want them to do, it's not because they're lazy or they suck. It's just because they really aren't clear on what is expected. They just easily. Get, lose focus and a lot of times the visionaries of the companies are the reason for that because they're spending, they're trying to be an operator and they're confusing their team with all their ideas and they don't have a good filter. And so they're going to all their team members and sharing all these ideas and it gets the team members off track. So just picking up those little things along the way, hanging out with people who are non examples, and then hanging out with people who are great examples and. That's really all you can do. Yeah. I think that's smart. We're the same way. That is one of the nice things that we pulled from the traction and EOS system is those quarterly 90 day rocks, because you got to measure, I think it is, it's, I think it's almost an injustice to do a performance review a year later and they're like, well, what the heck you never, you've never told me that, but if you really are drilling into somebody, yeah. And every 90 days of what are the expectations? Where can I as a leader get better? Where can you as a staff member get better? It's the only way to go. I think people have to do that no matter how big they are. Tomorrow. My business systems manager, which is the work, the system term for the person who's like the ops manager, it's the EOS word for the integrator, but it's a person whose job is to manage the dashboard of processes and systems, which essentially people and, automations and stuff do the work to produce the results that has a market fit. And tomorrow we're testing something out where she's actually going to do a performance review on me. Never done that before, because when I'm working, I do spend some time, of course, working in the business, doing marketing work, because I've developed that expertise. So I need to know, I need to be evaluated on that work product. And so I'm actually a little nervous about it because I haven't had one of those in a long time, but there is some formal parts of like bigger companies that are a total waste of time and make them inefficient and entrepreneurs totally laugh at them and they probably should, but there's some parts that actually are helpful to build some like actual stability and stuff. So if I could have done it over, I wouldn't have changed anything, but if I had, Gone. I think really big companies have so much waste. I don't even know if that would have been a good place to learn this company that I'm at. It's a smaller company. We only have like 30 people, but it's a lot bigger than most entrepreneur. You know, so like that 30, that's kind of that next level, you know, and you have to have a certain amount of consistent business to do that. So, think that if you're, if you go and work in one of those mid sized smaller companies, that's run well, you can learn a lot for, stuff that you can do on your own. So that's been my experience. And I think that's great advice. And some, I'd love to touch on that. We were actually talking about a little bit before we got going on this interview is I think there's a misconception, especially with social media and content out there that, whether you're straight out of college or you're young and you immediately start wholesaling and you're making 10 to 50 grand a wholesale, and then you get a Lambo and then you meet at, like in our market, John Elway steakhouse or whatever, like become this just influencer person. But the reality is, is that whether it's your career or my career is a lot of times it's great to start in the corporate world and understand how really big successful corporations run. I mean, I got lucky where I started in the NFL working for the Broncos, and then I did media with CBS. And then you've kind of come full circle in the back end of starting A really successful business, multiple businesses, and then getting kind of back in the corporate world, maybe talk a little bit about for audience of some of the benefits that you get at bookending your career or being open to opportunities. Cause everybody just thinks, Oh yeah, I'm 24. I'm going to crush it and make 5 million bucks. Like that's not the way the world works in my opinion, or at least to my knowledge. Yeah, it's pretty rare. A lot of people are. I don't tell people what to do. I just tell people what I do. A lot of people are selling their, you know, as Naval Ravikant says they're like selling their winning lottery numbers. So some people, they kind of right place, right time. That's not duplicatable. I don't know what works for other people. I just know that, You're never going to have an income goal for me, and it's a pretty big number and, you just, you can't make that work. And for somebody else, it's just not possible. But there's a lot of people who work places that, I mean, you can work places. And if you're valuable, you can make a lot of money, a lot of money. And so sometimes I think when people have a job, they're like in entrepreneurial circles, they're like, Oh, that's terrible. Being an entrepreneur, you have more control over your time, but not if you're forced to work all the time, because you don't really have that good of a business. You're just self employed and there's nothing wrong with self employed. But when I went through the work, the system program, I really kind of learned the differences of those. And I was like, you know, I, when I had the house flipping, I didn't have a business. I was self employed. And being self employed actually, isn't that great because you take all the risk of an entrepreneur, and you don't have nearly as much stability or upside. So I think start out self employed is cool, but yeah, there is stuff you can learn from other companies. Now we'll say this. One of the bad parts of working for a company is, if your income goal is not crazy high, you can get pretty comfortable staying there. And then it kind of jeopardizes you being able to do something else cause you get comfortable. I think, yeah, and it seemed to live says like the two most dangerous substances on earth are like heroin and a weekly paycheck or bi weekly paycheck. And so, so you gotta be careful with that. You gotta make sure that you work out a deal to where you still have control over your time. I have a friend who's like my best friend and he's a some kind of a VP person at this big data company and he gets to work remote. He makes good money and everything, but he doesn't have as much time as I do. And if you don't have any of your own time, you don't have control over your own time. You're kind of stuck and you can't go do something on your own. So it's different for everybody, but I just knew that for me being a solo manure and having a small team, I could only get so far. So I just decided to level up and learn from people who've already done it and, make sure I still built in enough time for me so that I could build my own stuff. And then eventually within, I can't predict the future, but nobody can, if they can probably run away, but most likely in. Two or three years, I'll just only, I'll still have the publishing business going because I like, you know, as long as it's relevant and it's helpful to people, but somebody else will run it. I might sell it to somebody else who really like one of my students who really just wants to take it. And I just want to focus 100 percent on senior housing, because it's, you just get good at what you focus on one myth. I wanted to spell out that you mentioned for anybody on here has not figured this out. This is a big myth going on, which is. Tracking metrics and accountability and business is everything. And what I've learned hanging out with these hedge fund people, I mean, I get to hang out with really cool people coming here and they're players and they know how to run businesses, big businesses. what got you to wherever you are, isn't necessarily what it's going to take to get you to the next place. Like that's just a fact. And what I've noticed is, is that better the business people I've met, the more they know the numbers of their business. And the faster they get the numbers and the more action they have around them. I had somebody tell me. Oh, yeah, I don't track a lot of employee metrics because that's micromanaging. No, that's not true. That's stupid. You track stuff. That's important because it's important. I also think for me getting to hang out with business owners and other industries has been super helpful. I don't want to dis on real estate investing because I love it, but real estate investors. Are the benefactors of giant profit margins, and they have extremely inefficient businesses blanket statement. Yeah, not right. That's the way I was. And so, but if you go to these industries where it's been pretty competitive and tight for a long time, they don't have the big margins. They have to be operationally excellent in order to survive. And so the way the progression has gone in real estate investing is a little bit like this. People came in at the right time. You know, a lot of times when, when we get lucky, which by the way, being born in America at this time, luck. If you think about most of your. Big events in your life. They're probably luck. Like I met my wife, it was luck. It wasn't a strategic plan. I got involved in real estate investing in 2015. That was luck. And that's funny. Like when things go good, we're like, Oh, it's us. But then when things don't go good, they're like, Oh, it's bad luck. And it's like, no, dude, it's usually the other way around when stuff goes bad. It's because we messed up and we didn't know something. when things go good, It's a lot of times it's luck and people don't like that. But if you read this book fooled by randomness by Nassim Taleb, it pretty much spells it out. It's a pretty cool book, so I think it's really important to just know where you're at and, and understand that what got you to where you are now may not get you to, where you're going. There's a lot of timing in the market. And when that timing starts to go away, that's why people switch. Like everybody came in, in the boom, they thought they were a genius. Then all of a sudden they were like, Oh, we gotta have a real estate license too, to monetize these leads. Well, yeah, no kidding. So I would say business acumen wise, a lot of real estate investors are way behind. And so what I've gotten a lot of gains from is hanging out with. Dentists hanging out with lawyers who own law firms and seeing how they run their businesses because they have to run them a lot tighter when insurance is only paying you 168 bucks to do a filling, not all law firms charge 500 bucks. And so I've learned a lot. So I would just say, if people are serious about taking their real estate investing business to the next level, what I've been doing is hanging out with, Different industries and they're not good at real estate, but they're good at business. Business. Yeah. And getting good at that. All the components of it. I think you have to build the foundation before you can really go up. It's not just magic marketing or magic scaling or magic bullets. That's just somebody who's making money off of you. Yeah. And I want to double click on what you just said in that you talked a little bit about being part of masterminds and then it sounds like being part of more just less formal business relationships. You want to maybe just talk about those two and maybe let's start on first some of the masterminds that you're doing. So I think a lot of times people look to that in real estate and I think that's really important, but I want you to maybe bookend it with like what you just described of having just these great general business relationships. Cause yeah, you can learn. How to run your business better by the guy across the street, running a phenomenal auto body shop or oil change company to you, you're right. Talking about margins and kind of commoditized products. So maybe you talk about, mastermind stuff first, and then just general business stuff. Second, I think people need to listen to this. Well, when I started out, I got into masterminds kind of early and that actually worked out pretty good. Jim Ingersoll, who's a investor in, Virginia started it. He's got a great community and he did it for a little while. And then. It kind of, he didn't want it. He just wanted to focus on flipping houses and doing real estate. It's really hard to focus on a lot of things at once. Probably the fewer things that you can do to make, you know, the income that you want, probably the better. I started out in his mastermind when I was on deal, like number two. Just right out the gate. Okay. And that's not usual, but just sort of happened that way. And then I was in a real estate mastermind for a while. That was in Chicago. And then I switched to one in Dallas with my cam bright and we started hanging out and, we started a business together, you know, like just things happen. And now I'm in a Matt Andrews family mastermind, which is for marketers. It's out of Tampa and it's just all, investing marketers. There's a lot of people in there, like a couple hundred or something, but very helpful. I've noticed that they've become, I don't know if less helpful is the right word, but as I've gotten further in my career, it can be kind of distracting too. So you have to be careful of the shiny object syndrome. When I was first new, I was just taking it all in. But now, I know what I want and what I need to get. Sometimes these masterminds, it's just the same information being recycled over and over again by each other. So I just like groups having those, other connections of other industries, because a lot of times what works in another industry works over here too. So I've gotten a ton of value from masterminds. It would not be where I'm at nearly as fast without them. I've been in five or six different ones over. I guess I've been doing this seven or eight years now. I've gotten good value from the real estate investing ones, the marketing ones. But I've gotten good value from being in a program. So I'm always in something I'm always spending, are really investing. Cause when you spend, it goes away. When you invest, it comes back. So I'm always, Investing, you know, 5 or 6 hours a week in a group. And right now I'm in the Rolla Platinum group for residential assisted living. I just started doing that, even though I've been hanging with them since the beginning, for about 5 years, I wanted to just go in as a student and just have fresh eyes on it because I've helped a lot of people. I mean, probably 50 or 60 of their people fill their residential assisted living home. But just because I know how to fill the home with a book, with the marketing, doesn't mean that I know how to take care of the seniors. Doesn't mean that I know how to hire the right, more on the medical side people. I know how to do the real estate part, but there's still new stuff. A 16 bed house that's, with a private bathroom for each one, that's a little different. I've never done new construction, so there's still stuff to learn. Yeah, I think masterminds are good. I think plugging into programs are good. And if you do the work and you follow up on the stuff, you'll get a great return. That's been my experience. No, I think that's great. Well, and I want to be sensitive to your time, but I do have, as we kind of wrap up here, I've got one more thing I want to really dive a little deeper on, which is that residential assisted living Investment strategy that you're doing. I think folks on our podcast definitely lean a little into the day to day operations of flipping wholesaling, running a brokerage, but we really abdicate, for people to have that investment income. I know you and I joke that the term passive income is BS, but investment income, secondary income. So you're right. You're not just totally freaking out about market dynamics. Can you talk a little bit about maybe from a high level, what you're doing in that space, and then I don't know if you've obviously executed yet, but what some of the numbers are, because I think it's helpful when people talk about, Oh, I'm doing this and making this in multifamily, or I'm doing that in self storage, what's like some of the big picture business stuff you're looking at, and then maybe just some general numbers of what you are anticipating in this sector of investing. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah, it's very important. So with the residential assisted living, my goal is to open my first one next year. I plan on buying one that's already existing. Hopefully with somebody in place that just, you know, they're burnt out, they don't want to do it anymore and then take over and improve the operations, the sales and marketing, and then make sure that I want to do it. I think sometimes it's cool to jump in, but. One of my coaches said, before you enter, you always want to plan your exit. And so I want to, cause a lot of times you'll get information from people. They just tell you the good stuff. They don't tell you the bad stuff. You don't everybody, you don't need the good list. You need the bad list. So you don't need the good list from me. What's the good list? Well, we already know it. I mean, it's, this giant group of people are going to need help and their kids are totally not prepared to take care of them on their own. And so there's going to be a huge need. It's a very difficult business, and to do, and it's a very operational, heavy business to do successfully. So therefore you can't. Just a convention can't come to town and teach a hundred people how to do it like they can wholesaling. It's just not that kind of business. So they're not going to be able, once everybody figures it out, which is probably going to be at the peak, which is when most people figure stuff out, they won't be able to spin them up fast enough because there's too many parts. That's what I'm going to do. There's a big tailwind. There's a lot of people that need help. And there's a lot of ways to make money and the more money you make, the easier it is to make money. Cause you just know how to make money, making money as a skill and so you might as well do something that actually has some meaning behind it too. I mean, I wrote a book on senior housing, so it's just, this is not a hard thing. As far as the numbers go, you hear a lot of different ones. If I think about it, you should be able to get, it depends on where you are. Right. Price of real estate's up, but if you have a smaller home, you should be able to net like 10, 000 a month. If you have six to 10 people, those are the numbers that I'm seeing that I've seen from my students that I've, you know, helped them with their book systems that have these. I have students that have multiple homes and, they're netting somewhere between 10 to 30,000 to per home, depending on the size of it, depending on how the debt's structured. So yeah, you don't really need a lot of 'em. Yeah. My goal is to open seven of 'em and then just give one to each kid, you know, when I leave the planet. And so, but I might get into it and say. This is the coolest thing ever. I want to do 700, but I really just want to go to Germany and hang out there a lot. So I think if I just, you got to have a big enough place. My coach Josh says you have to scale up big enough, an order sometimes to. Get your time back. You actually have to get bigger because otherwise you don't have enough income to coming in to pay the quality of people that you need to run your stuff. So by, seven houses, I can have really high quality, amazing people that follow the systems and are part of our team and are compensated well for operational efficiency. And then I can just go to Germany for a month and go to this place for a month and I'll still work and make money and. But you know, there's more life than just that. Yeah, no, that's well said. Well, Max, man, it has been awesome having you on the podcast. We've loved being a part of your community at savior publishing. I feel like we're only just still scratching the surface on executing all the marketing that you guys have. So we're still learning and growing, but thank you so much for being on, uh, being a great guest on raising the flipping bar and we'll catch you on the flip side. Sounds good. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of raising the flipping bar. If you found value in our insights and stories, let's keep the conversation going, connect with me on social media, and be sure to share this episode with friends or colleagues who might benefit your feedback and reviews, help us grow and reach more listeners like you. So please, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review. Thanks again to the elevation Academy for sponsoring today's show. If you're interested in learning more, click the link in the show notes below. And remember every property. Tells a story. Every deal brings a lesson. Keep reaching for those goals and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for listening and watching raising a flipping bar. Just a basic overall disclaimer is that a, this is not legal advice. B, this is not tax advice. See, this is not financial advice. I hope you get the gist, but I'm obviously not a lawyer, not a CPA. Hell I'm not even a real estate agent actually, but in general, we hope you get a ton of value out of this, but there is a bit of a disclaimer. Please consult a professional if you have any questions whatsoever. Thanks for tuning in.