Robert Leonard (03:29):
What made you interested in real estate, Anthony?

Anthony Gair (03:32):
So, I had a couple mentors even back in Iowa that were trying to get me to buy my first property. Now, the timing just wasn’t right. And so, I met a couple more mentors along the way, and they buy a lot here in Houston. I’ve been tours in Dallas. And so, like Sarah mentioned, we just wanted to make sure that we felt comfortable running the numbers and we wanted to become experts on how to find deals. And so, it took all of that to dive in. And so, COVID was just a perfect opportunity for us to do so.

Robert Leonard (03:59):
When you were back in Iowa, did they want you to buy your deal while you were in college?

Anthony Gair (04:03):
Yeah.

Robert Leonard (04:05):
How did they expect that to happen?

Anthony Gair (04:07):
So, I think it was a condo or a town home that I was personally living in. It was probably like 80,000 bucks. So, the out of pocket costs probably wasn’t going to be that expensive. So, I probably could’ve saved up for it, but I didn’t really want to be investing in Iowa City.

Robert Leonard (04:23):
You both have mentioned, Sarah, you mentioned it first, Anthony, you mentioned it after, but you both have said COVID became the perfect time to invest. And I’ve been getting reached out to by a ton of people saying, “Is now the right time to invest? It’s COVID, we’re in a global pandemic.” And here you guys are saying, “It’s the perfect time. This is when we decided to dive all in.” And that seems a little backwards to probably a lot of people. Explain that a little bit to me, why was COVID the perfect time to get started?

Sara Witz (04:47):
So, we were getting married. We were supposed to get married July 4th of 2020. And so, I was really overwhelmed with trying to plan the wedding. And I was like after the wedding, we can start investing. And then COVID hit. And we had to postpone the wedding a year. And I was like, on the weekends, we’re not doing anything, so we can’t go out. Working from home, so when we have breaks or at lunchtime, or whatever, we can be doing real estate. At night time, again, we’re not going out, we’re not doing anything. All of our usual activities that we would have after work were canceled. So, it was like, we can either sit here and twiddle our thumbs for however long, or no one knew it was going to be a year. But we were like, “Now’s the perfect time because there’s nothing else that we would be doing. We can sit here and watch Netflix and do some silly things, or we really can take advantage of the time we have and start to really build our team and get going.”

Robert Leonard (05:32):
So, it sounds like it was the perfect time in terms of your availability and your just overall work schedules. What about from a market perspective, were you not worried about a global pandemic going on and buying your first deals during that?

Anthony Gair (05:44):
No, not really, honestly. I mean, for us, it was all about, like I mentioned, we wanted to make sure that we knew how to run the numbers. And so, we find a deal, where the cash out of pocket wasn’t too high. We felt comfortable doing it. And so, the first deal that we found, it was five, six, $7,000 out of pocket. The ARV on the house was 145, so it wasn’t too expensive. So no, we just felt comfortable moving forward. And I don’t even know if we thought about the fact that we were in a pandemic and the market crashing. It was just like, this is a perfect time to get in. If it does crash, eventually it’s going to go back up. So, that’s what we were thinking as we got started.

Robert Leonard (06:23):
How long had you guys been considering investing in real estate before you actually got started?

Sara Witz (06:28):
So, he had been listening to the podcast probably for a year and a half to two years. And I just like, the numbers didn’t make sense to me. I was like, people are putting all this money into real estate and you’re making like a $100 or $200 a month per door. So, this is a lot of money to not make a lot of returns, it’s just I didn’t get it.

Sara Witz (06:43):
And finally, when I read the BRRR book and understood the strategy behind BRRRR, and then learn how to run the numbers, I was like, “Oh my God, the returns are incredible here.” And not only are you making money from appreciation, similar to the stock market, but you’re making cashflow appreciation, tax write-offs. There’s so many benefits of real estate that you don’t get with other investment vehicles.

Robert Leonard (07:03):
I love that you mentioned that because people that don’t invest in real estate, they say that to me all the time, because they know I invest in real estate. And a lot of times somebody will hear, “I have to put $10,000 into a deal and I’ll get $200 a month. That’s nothing. This is not worth it.” And then I explain to them, I said, “Yeah, 200 a month, but maybe that’s not a ton of money, but over a year, that’s 2,400.” Now, 2,400 on a $10,000 investment, that’s 24% a year. I mean, that is a great investment. I don’t know where you’re going to get that elsewhere consistently with all the other benefits that you mentioned, Sarah, and it’s perpetual, right? I mean, as long as you own the property. So, it’s not like it’s going to end and it’s cashflow.

Robert Leonard (07:38):
I love the stock market too. So, I’m not talking down on it. But you don’t get the cashflow from the stock market. That’s really only real estate.

Sara Witz (07:43):
And then you need to pay capital gains and the techs are in the stock market.

Robert Leonard (07:49):
Exactly. So, I’m glad you mentioned that because that is something that a lot of people talk about. Anthony, you mentioned the ARV. So, typically that’s around flips. Was your first property a flip or was it a BRRRR?

Anthony Gair (07:58):
It was a BRRRR. So, the way we did it was, obviously we utilize hard money. So, they land on the after repair value, which is the ARV. So, that’s why I mentioned that. It wasn’t too high. It was at 145. We paid at 93 for it. We put 15,000 in renovation. So, we only have to come out of pocket the closing costs. So, not a bad first deal.

Robert Leonard (08:21):
What made you guys comfortable to do a BRRRR as your first deal ever?

Sara Witz (08:25):
We wanted rental properties. So, the goal is to have as much cashflow as possible. And the reasons that we would ever do a flipper to do a wholesale would be to get more money in order to buy more rental properties. So, the goal was always just to do rental properties. Now, we’re phasing into flips and wholesales, so we can have more cash to buy more properties. And BRRRR was the best way to buy rental properties because you’re creating equity as opposed to putting money in and buying equity, I guess.

Anthony Gair (08:50):
Yeah. And to add, we just didn’t see the value of buying turnkey rental just because, realistically, you’re not going to find a turnkey at a hundred thousand dollars. Most turnkeys will probably be 150 to 200. So, putting 20% down on that, it’s not really that feasible because at scale could buy one or two or three, but to buy a 10, you know what I mean? It’s just not as scalable as the BRRRR strategy.

Robert Leonard (09:16):
Were you guys not concerned with the increased risk that could come with the renovations, especially for your first one? A lot of people they’re going through their first property, they’re already worried about everything else that comes with buying a property that has nothing to do with renovations. And then you add in the complications of renovations and the risk that entails. Were you not worried about that additional layer of risk?

Sara Witz (09:35):
Not really. So, when we got the house, we had a 10 day option period. So, during the option period, we had an inspector come out. So, we made sure that everything was actually going to be fixed. We had three or four contractors come out. And we got three or four different bids. We went with the guy that we felt the most trustworthy, someone that we wanted to work with, had the best relationship with him. We sent him the inspection report, made sure everything was covered in his bid. And then during the renovations, I mean, we paid based on the work that was completed. So, if the work wasn’t completed, I wasn’t just going to give them the money because they said they needed it. That’s how we control the price and everything. And if he said, we need to add something, well, if something needs to be added, then something else needs to be taken away because our budget’s 15,000 and we can’t go over that, otherwise this deal won’t work.

Sara Witz (10:18):
We’ve been in other flips and stuff before where something popped up mid renovation and we had to cut something out. I really wanted to have an island in one of our houses, but we need that thousand dollars to go fix a pipe or something. So, we had to cut that. So, there’s ways around it in order to minimize the risk.

Robert Leonard (10:35):
As this was your very first deal, you didn’t have experience to really rely on or lean on. How did you get a hard money lender to work with you guys?

Anthony Gair (10:43):
Networking. We spent a lot of time building relationships, getting referrals. And it just so happened that, I want to say on this one, the hard money lender that we were working with was actually a new guy at that company. So, he was looking to build his business too. And both of us have really good jobs. We have money saved up. So, it wasn’t as risky as maybe somebody that didn’t have a job or didn’t have as much savings. And so, they were willing to take the risk with us.

Robert Leonard (11:10):
Is that how you guys have been funding your deals? Is that through just your own savings from working W2 jobs?

Anthony Gair (11:16):
Yeah. But most of it is hard money, and then we also utilize gap funders as well.

Robert Leonard (11:22):
So, what did that first deal look like? Was it a single family house, multifamily and walk us through from beginning to end, what it looked like and what was the end result?

Sara Witz (11:30):
Sure. So, it was a single family property, was listed on the MLS, which is a multiple listing service. So, it was listed online by a realtor. And it was listed at $140,000. And the ARV after repair value is 145. So, we’re like, “This isn’t going to work.” So, we offered them like 90,000, and they said no. And there was a lot of back and forth probably for two or three months.

Sara Witz (11:49):
And finally, they agreed to 93,000 after it had sat in the market for 120 something days. So, we got it for 93. It appraised after it was all fixed up for 145. So the hard money lender gave us 75% of the ARV. So, they gave us 108,750. So, that covered the purchase price of 93. And then it covered the $15,000 rehab. And then I think $750 leftover that went towards closing costs. And then we paid the remainder of the closing costs. So, we came out of pocket, I think like five or 6,000 from that deal.

Sara Witz (12:21):
So, then we moved into the renovations, and that came out to be 15,000. Everything was itemized in the bid, so we knew exactly how much everything was going to cost. And then after about a week out from the end of the renovations, we started the refinance process. So, we refinanced into a 30 year conventional loan at 80% of the ARV. We didn’t have to come out of pocket again for the refinance closing cost.

Robert Leonard (12:45):
When you went into the renovations, was there items that just had to be done? You didn’t really have a choice, you just had to fix them. Or was it relatively move in ready, and you just chose to update certain things to increase the value?

Sara Witz (12:58):
So, the house had really good bones and all of the big ticket items, like the roof, foundation, HVAC, [inaudible 00:13:03], and all that sort of stuff was already fixed. So, it was really, it was a cosmetic rehab, but it really needed a cosmetic renovation because I mean, the carpets were blue. The walls were literally fabric wallpaper with all this floral stuff on it. We had a green kitchen, so it had to be fixed. Technically, somebody could live there, yes.

Robert Leonard (13:25):
And what was the end result? How much did you end up renting it for?

Sara Witz (13:27):
It rents for 1250 a month.

Robert Leonard (13:30):
And what is your current mortgage on that?

Sara Witz (13:33):
980.

Robert Leonard (13:34):
So, your cashflow almost $300 a month without reserves?

Sara Witz (13:38):
Yeah.

Robert Leonard (13:39):
And then you said you put like 5,000 into it. That’s a really good cash on cash return, if you look at it that way.

Sara Witz (13:45):
It’s somewhere between 30 and 50. I can’t do the math in my head.

Robert Leonard (13:49):
Little over 50. And so, where did you guys go from there? What was your second deal?

Sara Witz (13:53):
We moved into another rental that we found on the MLS.

Robert Leonard (13:58):
Was that one move in ready? Was it a BRRRR?

Anthony Gair (14:00):
Pretty simple as the first one. We actually utilized the BRRRR strategy on that one. It didn’t have blue carpet, but it needed just a little bit of love. Right? So, we redid the flooring, painted, knocked down a couple of walls. So, the purchase price on that one was 110, I believe. And the ARV who came back at 180. And we did a $22,000 rehab on that one. So, I think the out-of-pocket on that one probably was like seven or eight, so a little bit more than the first one. But the returns still work because we charge… How much is the rent on that one? Like 1500 or 1400?

Sara Witz (14:33):
1400, I think. So, it just basically repeated the process.

Robert Leonard (14:37):
When you guys are looking for deals to buy, what are some of the must haves that you guys are looking for in properties?

Sara Witz (14:43):
So, our first property was a two, one. I probably wouldn’t do that again. That area is really hot and it really didn’t matter, but I’d probably look for a little bit bigger of a house. We don’t want to go above an ARV of like 200 because the rent ends up being too expensive. And then you’re limiting the amount of people who can rent the house.

Sara Witz (15:01):
Area is critical for us. So, we want to make sure the street view is nice, that someone would actually want to live there. And it’s a good area of Houston. And since we’re in Houston, one of the biggest things we look at is the flood zones, right? So, did this house flood during Harvey? That’s just not something that you’d want to have in a rental, maybe in a flip, if houses are selling quickly over there. But that’s definitely one of the biggest things we look at is the flood zones.

Robert Leonard (15:23):
I know Houston is a really busy and some would consider expensive markets. So, how are you competing in such a competitive market as new investors? A lot of new investors think if they’re new, it’s impossible to compete. So, how are you guys doing it at one of the biggest markets in the US and arguably competitive?

Anthony Gair (15:38):
I mean, I would say we’re trying to go direct to seller. So, we’ve had look, essentially wholesaling into ourselves or finding off market deals ourselves. But we put a lot of time in focusing on the MLS as well. So, she got a real estate license during COVID, just so that we can cut out the middleman if you will, so that she can see all the new listings, she can submit the offers. And so, a few times we’ve gotten lucky just because we’ve just been fast. If a deal hits the market, we can analyze it in two minutes and we can submit a offer in five. And so, if the seller was really motivated and they’re just looking for the first offer to come in or the best offer to come in, we’ve seen some luck that way.

Anthony Gair (16:15):
So, for any new investors, I’d say, just try to focus on finding a mentor, working, then maybe try to find some off market deals and partnering with a realtor that can move extremely fast.

Robert Leonard (16:27):
How are you finding this stuff that’s off market. I understand, having a license obviously helps with the MLS. You get to see it first. But with off market stuff, I mean, there’s no real benefit per se, to having your license. And they’re not on the MLS, of course. So, how are you guys getting into those off-market properties?

Anthony Gair (16:41):
So, we drive for dollars physically, like in the car and virtually, either on Google Maps or Redfin, and then obviously skip tracing the owner, and calling the owner and making an offer that way. We also door knock on the weekends. I haven’t done that the last couple of weekends because we get married in about 15 or 16 days. So, we haven’t had much time to do that, but that’s been the two strategies that have worked the best for us.

Robert Leonard (17:04):
We talked about some of the must haves for you guys for your properties. What are the deal breakers? What is something that you see when you’re looking at a property and you’re just like, “It doesn’t matter how good the numbers are, we don’t want to touch this property.”

Anthony Gair (17:15):
I’d probably say the area, if it’s a bad area and we don’t think people would want to rent it, that’d be one thing. But other than that, I mean, if there’s foundation issues, that’s fine. If the roof has caved in, that’s fine. I mean, because everything is fixable, right? So, it’s really just depending on the location.

Sara Witz (17:31):
Days on market too. So, when we’re running our numbers, we always look at the rentals. So, if it’s a rental property, if we’re doing the BRRRR strategy on it, if the rentals are running out in a hundred days or 120, or even 80, at that point, it’s like, it’s too risky for us because it might sit there and it might not rent for what we want it to. But that’s really the only thing.

Sara Witz (17:51):
If it’s a flip, we look at the houses, how long are they taking to sell? If they’re taking four or five months, that’s not worth it. So, that’s the biggest thing that I think we look at in addition to the area.

Robert Leonard (18:01):
When it comes to new investors, should they be focusing on one strategy or should they be more optimistic and just work on whatever comes their way, whether it be flipping, wholesaling, rentals, BRRRR? How do you guys manage working across multiple strategies?

Sara Witz (18:17):
So, when we started, we were very set on BRRRR. And that’s all we’re doing. And because of that, we lost out on a lot of really good deals. There was one deal where we left like $50,000 on the table, which was really frustrating. So, then after we had that loss, we decided we’re not backing out of deals anymore. If it doesn’t work for us as a rental, maybe it’ll work as a flip. And if it doesn’t work for us as a flip, this deal will work for somebody. And that’s when we really started to kick off our wholesaling part of our business, because I mean the deals will work for somebody.

Anthony Gair (18:47):
And to add to that, I mean, I think when you’re first getting started, you have to pick maybe one or two strategies, because you may have enough capital to do a rental, but to do a flip, the lender will only lend you 70% if it’s a flip versus the 75. So, that can make a big difference. And so, I think if you can identify maybe one or two strategies getting started, that would help just because you don’t want to spread yourself too thin as you’re trying to find your first or second deal.

Robert Leonard (19:12):
When you mentioned that you missed out on about $50,000, is that because you pass up on a flip that you felt could have made a profit of 50,000 or is it something else?

Sara Witz (19:20):
So, we had this deal under contract. And we ended our contract at 150. And we thought that the ARV was $300,000. The lender we were working with at the time, they gave us a value check or something. And he said that the value was only 250. But we had another one that we found down the line that said, “Yeah, it was probably 300.” And the house actually ended up selling for 300,000. After we backed out of the deal, some big time wholesaler in Houston got ahold of the deal and they wholesaled it for $200,000, which was $50,000 higher than what we had it for. So, we could have probably wholesaled it to somebody because it was a great property. We could have wholesaled it for 200. And I think it ended up selling for-

Anthony Gair (20:02):
I think it was 298 and [inaudible 00:20:03].

Sara Witz (20:03):
What we thought it was going to sell for. So, our ARV really wasn’t that off.

Robert Leonard (20:08):
I don’t know if that’s really a deal, but would you consider that your worst deal to date? And if not, what would be your worst deal to date?

Sara Witz (20:14):
That’s probably the worst deal. We looked at it and I was just like, “Dang.” Because there’s deals we’ve gotten now, that if we have it under contract and first of all, we’ll try to wholesale it. And I just wish we knew what we knew now when we had that deal.

Robert Leonard (20:28):
It doesn’t have to be the best in terms of numbers, but what has been your favorite real estate deal that you’ve done?

Anthony Gair (20:33):
Probably a flip where we partnered with a couple of my buddies from college. I think the price on it was 150 or 160. And then we flipped it for 265, I believe. And it was just a fun deal. It was one of our first flips. We tore down walls. We redid the kitchen. So, we did like a $45,000 rehab on that one. So, not extremely big, but one of the bigger ones that we’ve done when we did it at the time. So, I would definitely say that would probably was my favorite deal. And it sold in a day.

Sara Witz (21:03):
That was fun.

Anthony Gair (21:03):
Yeah.

Robert Leonard (21:05):
Yeah. Selling in a day is always fun. That’s for sure. What is your guys’ longterm goal with real estate? Do you guys aspire to have thousands of units or do you have a different metric that you’re targeting?

Anthony Gair (21:16):
Yeah. So, long-term, like I said, we get married in about 16 something days now. And after that we really want to focus on multi-family, and then also scale our wholesaling business. But yeah, we want to have thousands and thousands of units.

Robert Leonard (21:29):
Multi-family?

Anthony Gair (21:31):
Yeah.

Sara Witz (21:32):
I can’t have a thousand single-family houses.

Anthony Gair (21:34):
Yeah, absolutely not.

Robert Leonard (21:36):
Sarah, had mentioned that you spent year and a half, two years listening to podcasts. Do you think during that time, you would say you had paralysis by analysis? Do you think you were stuck in this phase that a lot of new investors have?

Anthony Gair (21:48):
I don’t think so. Because during that time I was transitioning from Iowa, that I had moved to Austin for a year and a half, and I wasn’t really at a stable spot. And so, once I made the move to Houston, where Sarah moved, I felt like, “Okay, we’re home now.” But our first house, we were comfortable where we were. And so, as I was transitioning through cities and all that other stuff, I was learning as I went on. So, that’s my take. I don’t think that I was afraid to jump in. I just felt like the timing needed to be a little bit better.

Robert Leonard (22:22):
How have you gotten educated, Sarah? Have you gotten onto the podcast bandwagon? Are you more into books? Or do you just learn from doing it?

Sara Witz (22:31):
So, at first it was a lot of podcasts. I think that podcasts sometimes can be overwhelming just because there’s so much information out there. It’s like, “Which podcast should I listen to?” And that it’s like, “Okay. Well, do I do wholesaling? Do I do flip? Do I do BRRRR? Ready? Do I do turnkey?” Unless you figure out what you really want to focus on, it’s hard to figure out what podcasts listen to.

Sara Witz (22:50):
And then at that point I really started to read some books and focus. Books are very focused. So, you can pick a book and it’s on one strategy. And you can read from cover to cover and you have that better understanding. But really just jumping in and doing it. I mean, once you jump in and do it, there’s things that books just can’t teach you. Some of the biggest things are like managing relationships, how do you want to follow up with people? How do you communicate with people? And so, that for us is, that’s been some of the hardest part.

Robert Leonard (23:15):
When you look back on the books you’ve read, podcasts you’ve listened to, mentors you’ve worked with, what’s a piece of advice or information that you’ve learned that you received that still impacts you to this day, and you guys still relied on in your business?

Sara Witz (23:29):
Cheapest, probably isn’t always the best. One of the deals we did with the least expensive rehab bid we got, the house is one of the biggest headaches we have because things are just always breaking. And I could’ve gone with a contractor that you might not have gotten as much or it might not be as nice on the outside, but at least it wouldn’t have been breaking in it. We wouldn’t have to keep paying for those things. That’s one of the biggest things I think we’ve learned along the way.

Anthony Gair (23:52):
You make money on a deal when you buy it. And that just challenges us to find really good deals, that really good pricing, and not stretch our numbers, right? If we try to like, “Well, we can cut this.” Or, “Well, we can do this.” It’s probably not that good of a deal. So, really trying to hone in on finding the best deals that we possibly can to help scale our business.

Robert Leonard (24:12):
For someone that’s new or aspires to be a successful real estate investor, and they have their own real estate goals, what’s the best piece of advice that you can give them?

Sara Witz (24:22):
Follow up. You’re going to be told no a million times from the same person, just keep following up with them. That’s how we’ve gotten multiple of our deals. We just keep calling and bothering the realtor or bothering the seller, because the deal is not going to work for anyone at the number that they’re looking for. And if you’re the person who keeps following up, you stay top of mind, and then people are going to stop following up and you’re going to still be there, and you’re going to be the only offer that’s left.

Anthony Gair (24:43):
And then I would say, maybe find a mentor that’s in your city or that is investing in real estate, just because, you always want to have somebody you can ask the question to or verify, or just give you that piece of advice that help you make the decision or back away from a property that you may not have all the answers to.

Robert Leonard (25:01):
I want to start adding this last question, a little fun question to the end of the show. If you could both meet anyone in the world that could have been dead, alive, anybody, who would you guys meet with and why?

Sara Witz (25:14):
Robert Kiyosaki and Grant Cardone. I think Robert Kiyosaki’s story is incredible, but I’d just love to get his perspective a little bit more, just one-on-one. And Grant Cardone, I mean, he’s a man, I aspire to be like him. So, if I could just talk to him, see what he’s doing. Mark Cuban is the other one. Mark Cuban and Grant Cardone are just very inspiring. They started from nothing. They built this empire. And just to get five minutes of their time to just get a piece of advice from them would be huge.

Robert Leonard (25:39):
Thank you guys both so much for joining me on the show today. For those listening that are interested in learning more about you guys’ journey, you as personally, and just might want to connect with you, where’s the best place for them to go?

Sara Witz (25:50):
Probably our Instagram page. So, it’s Gair G-A-I-R.realestate. And that’s probably the best way to talk to us, just DM us.

Robert Leonard (25:59):
I’ll put a link to you guys’ Instagram in the bio of the show below. So, if anybody’s interested in connecting with you, they can check it out there. Guys, thanks so much for joining me.

Anthony Gair (26:08):
Yes. It’s all right. Thank you.

Sara Witz (26:09):
Thanks. Thanks for having us.

Robert Leonard (26:11):
All right. So, that is all from my conversation with Sarah Witz and Anthony Gair. Now, we’re going to get into my conversation with Krista Mashore. Krista, welcome to the show.

Krista Mashore (26:21):
Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.

Robert Leonard (26:22):
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today?

Krista Mashore (26:26):
I have been in real estate for 20 years. I used to be a third grade teacher prior to getting into real estate. And I’ve pretty much been the top 1% every year, except for one. I’ve sold about just over 2200 homes in my career. And now, I actually coach real estate agents across the country.

Robert Leonard (26:41):
Are you still selling today or have you transitioned fully to coach?

Krista Mashore (26:46):
Last year I only sold 90 homes, which for me is really low. Usually I do 150, 160. In fact, the year that I left coaching full-time, I sold 154 homes. So, typically I do more. But I sold 90 homes last year, working five hours a month in my business. In real estate, I’m the creator and the script person. And that’s what I do. And then my team runs my processes and my systems for me. So yeah, I’m still selling, but just not really as involved in it as I used to be.

Robert Leonard (27:10):
So, it was the reduction in the selling more so to focus on other parts of your business rather than maybe the market or real estate itself doing something?

Krista Mashore (27:19):
Yeah. Unless, because I coach 99% of the time. So, I have a multimillion dollar coaching business now. Just in the past 60 days, we’ve taken on 110 new students, coaching clients. So, I coach, 99% of the time I’m coaching and training, and that kind of thing. That’s where my focus is now. So, because of that, my brother, he’s got more work-life balance than I had when I was in real estate. And so, he’s not as driven as I am to sell as much. And so, he’s happy making the kind of money he is with the 90 limit. Had I been doing real estate full-time, I absolutely would have sold more for sure. But I’m coaching still.

Robert Leonard (27:50):
I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’re not sure if they want to become a real estate agent or not. What things should someone consider when they’re trying to decide if they want to go into being a real estate agent full time as a career? What are the most important things to know or even just think about?

Krista Mashore (28:05):
Yeah. That’s a great question. I think everyone goes into real estate thinking it’s just going to be so easy and so fun. And you got to work. I mean, I will tell you I didn’t work weekends or nights, but that’s what you have to have that unique, competitive marketing advantage. I do a lot of social media and digital marketing. And so, people would wait for me and they’d adapt their schedules. So, I didn’t have to work weekends and nights, but that’s really rare.

Krista Mashore (28:24):
You really need to make sure that you have a really good support system in real estate because the average agent only sells like two, three homes a year according to the National Association of Realtors. And I think it’s very common that 97% of agents do 3% of the business, and 3% of the agents do 97% of the business. And I think it’s going to be even more like that as the market starts to change.

Krista Mashore (28:42):
So, you got to be prepared to work really hard, to be as innovative as possible to adjust and change. There is so much competition. You are absolutely in bloody waters in real estate. Everyone you know, is a real estate agent. So, therefore, it’s not just looking at houses all day long and all that, it’s really a lot of work. People are very demanding. They want you every week. And they watch you at every night when they want something because that’s their most important valued asset, right? It’s their home, especially when it’s a really competitive market like right now. So, it’s very competitive as you can see right now with no inventory. So right now, even more so than ever, it’s as competitive as you can imagine. So, it’s really difficult to get listings or to get offers accepted.

Robert Leonard (29:17):
When we look at those data points that say, 3% of the agents are selling 97% of the homes. Do you think some of that is watered down by people that have their license, but aren’t selling?

Krista Mashore (29:27):
Yeah. But the bottom line is, is that they are, right? And I think it’s also not only watered down, but it also, because there’s a ton of people selling onesies and twosies. So, those people selling onesie, twosies should not be selling whatsoever, because they have no idea what they’re doing. You don’t know what the market is doing. How to really help your clients to the best of your ability when you’re only selling one or two houses a year, I think that’s why we have such a bad wrap that in real estate agents make so much money. We make so much money because the barrier to entry is so, so easy. And because so many agents aren’t doing it, though they should, they’re not treating it like a career and a profession, and learning to do the best job possible and learning to use innovation and technology to the best of their client’s ability.

Krista Mashore (30:00):
Most agents aren’t wanting to spend any money on their listing. And there’s some wonderful agents out there, don’t get me wrong. I’m just talking about the ones that aren’t really doing it as a full-time career. They’re just playing real estate.

Robert Leonard (30:10):
What are some of the most common misconceptions you see people having when they’re just becoming a new agent or before they’re about to become a new agent, or even just about real estate agents in general?

Krista Mashore (30:20):
I think that the business is just going to come to you. They’re just going to make so much money. I think that is a big deal. I mean, my first year I sold 69 homes, my first year in the industry. All of those were buyers. And I would stop what I was doing at any second. I work with buyers, no matter when it was. Four months before I even got my license, I followed somebody in the office and literally went on every listing appointment with him and went to the office every single day. And just was like, because they’re lemming, I followed him everywhere. It’s a lot to learn.

Krista Mashore (30:44):
You think you’re going to learn something from your real estate course, and you don’t learn anything from your real estate course. All the knowledge happens in the field. But how do you get knowledge if you’re not doing any business? So, it’s hard at first. Unless you can figure out how to be innovative and different. In order for you to be known, you have to be seen and you have to be heard. So, I believe that being visible and being seen, and being heard is imperative in real estate.

Robert Leonard (31:03):
What is the best way for a new agent to manage their personal cash flow and just the schedule of payments that they get? Some months, they might have a bunch of deals in the pipeline and they might close a bunch of deals in one month, but maybe the next month they don’t close any because everything closed in the month before. So, it tends to ebb and flow a lot. How do you manage as a new agent, your cashflow, that’s not the same as quite having a W2?

Krista Mashore (31:24):
I think that as an agent, you need to be willing to never want to invest in yourself. There’s been days, I mean, a lot of days in real estate where I’ve made more money in a day than I made in a whole year as a teacher teaching school for six years. I think you need to be willing to invest in yourself. Real estate can be such a lucrative career. You can make a ton of money. You could have a ton of flexibility. It also can be very draining.

Krista Mashore (31:44):
I know a guy who bought one of those coffee carts, the big coffee cart. It was $350,000. So, he spent $350,000 on a coffee cart to make $5 a coffee. Real estate agents, I think they need to set aside a marketing budget. They need to invest in good coaching and learn from somebody that can really teach them. And I think if they do that and they treat it like a career, I mean, you can make more money in real estate than being a doctor or an attorney, or a lawyer, or an accountant. There’s so many great professions, and those professions, it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to get trained. And then it takes years and years and years. But with real estate, you can just get in, get your license with a few trainings and then expect to just like, “Oh, I’m going to make all this money.” And that’s just not the way that it works.

Krista Mashore (32:20):
So, I think that agents should really invest in themselves, set a set of marketing budget, make sure that they’re marketing on a regular basis themselves, get familiar with the area, learn how to utilize social media and video content to really, really reach the masses locally, so it appears that they’re doing business, even if they’re not because they’re new, and just investment. And I hope that’s answered right. But I’m really, really passionate about people investing in themselves because that’s the best way for you to get the knowledge and the exposure is by investing.

Robert Leonard (32:48):
How do we define or measure success as a new real estate agent, is it a certain number of deals? Is it transaction volume? How do we know if we’ve been successful as an agent or not?

Krista Mashore (32:59):
I know a lot of people will say, “I close 12 deals my first year.” And that’s pretty good because the average agent sells three in a year. So, I think that’d be good, one a month or two a month. You do two a month, you’re just crushing it. I closed 69 my first year. I don’t know even how I did that, honestly, looking back. It was mostly survival. I’d just gotten, went through a really bad divorce. I came home one day, my husband is having an affair. And we had drained bank accounts. And I had just left my full-time teaching job to stay at home and take care of my daughter, who had gotten really, really sick. And next thing, we just bought a brand new house. And here I am with two little girls, a brand new house, empty bank accounts and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I had to dive all in.

Krista Mashore (33:29):
And my reason why it was really important to do well, and that was to take care of my daughters. You have to have a really good reason to want to do well. Right? So, I think that helps. But I think that if you’re doing 12 to 18 deals, your first year, you’re doing a really, really great job. That’s just amazing, one a month. If you’re doing two a month, you’re crushing it. I think it takes time to get to that point usually. And you have to be willing to give up a little bit, right? If you’d be willing to not be on the boat some weekends and maybe not watch your favorite Netflix show at night, so that you can learn the skill to make the money.

Robert Leonard (33:56):
How long is it from passing your tests to getting that first deal, usually? What do you see on average?

Krista Mashore (34:02):
I don’t know. I mean, I have some students that, like I have one girl, her name is Lynette Jazwell, and she’s just doing so good. She made more money in a month and she made her whole year prior as well. And she had three deals under contract. Another new agent, Jasmine, she actually had 10 deals closing in four months. And that’s pretty great too. Right? So, I think that’s very uncommon. I think in most cases, unless you have a huge fear of influence or you’re investing in marketing, you’re marketing yourself and you’re showing up really heavy, strong online presence and you’re doing it that way, I think that it might be a little bit easier, right? To do well. But I think that’s uncommon. I mean, if you’re selling one home a month, then you should be really, really proud of yourself and feel like you’re doing a good job. And then the next year would be to double that goal, at least double or triple it, I think it’s much more easier once you get momentum to do better with the momentum of your past efforts. Sometimes it might be a slower start.

Robert Leonard (34:48):
Let’s assume somebody is brand new, they just passed their real estate test. What’s the first step that they need to take.

Krista Mashore (34:55):
Start creating video content. Start creating content about your community. Be what I called, I actually have this fame trademark, the community market leader. Anybody thinks real estate, they need to think you. Now, understand that perception is reality. Even if you’re not doing any business, and if you’re out there talking about neighborhoods and doing local interviews of local professionals, and you’re out there and talking about what’s happening, what’s coming up in the community or fun things to do, or best places to go for happy hour, or doing a market update, doing all these things, talking about real estate terms and what to expect when selling or buying, trends in real estate. When you’re doing that, you’re creating content. People have the perception that you’re doing business. So, even though you’re not, you maybe have never even sold a house before, when you do that, it’s a really great way to ensure that you can start your foot in the door in real estate. So, that’s exactly what I recommend doing.

Robert Leonard (35:42):
Why aren’t more agents leveraging both the power of digital marketing and social media in their business?

Krista Mashore (35:49):
Most agents are taught from their broker to do open houses or cold call, or door knock, or just work on your sphere of influence, or do part buys. They’re taught all these things that work, but they can never work on a massive scale. For you to think about selling a hundred plus homes a year, it’s really difficult to do that from a sphere of influence or from doing part buys. So, you only one person, it’s not manageable.

Krista Mashore (36:07):
So, in order to scale, you have to think about scaling by being in front of people in a massive level all the time. I think agents are afraid of it. The thought of doing video scares them to death. The thought of technology scares them to death. And they’re just not taught to. They’re not taught, that’s what you do. And that’s what you need to do. If you want to dominate your area and be seen by the masses, you absolutely need to be seen by the masses. Right? And you can do that on social media.

Robert Leonard (36:32):
How do you manage all of those appointments? If your digital marketing strategy works and you get hundreds of appointments, how do you handle that yourself?

Krista Mashore (36:40):
Well, let’s be real, Robert, it doesn’t happen that way initially. You don’t instantly all of a sudden have a hundreds of appointments. But as you do this right, you will have hundreds of appointments, but you work your way up to it.

Krista Mashore (36:49):
So, when I first started, I think I hired an assistant within a year. Like I said, I closed 69 deals my first year. So, on year two, I had hired an assistant and she did all the things for me that I couldn’t do. So, for example, like when everybody else was doing two page flyers, I was doing four-page colored brochures, and also putting the CD on the sign with 60 pictures on the CD. And she would do those things for me. So, I made sure that I did things that made me stand out and be different. So, I looked around at what my competitors were doing, and I always wanted to make sure that I was doing it better, more innovative, and that it was just different than everyone else, so that I would stand out more.

Krista Mashore (37:21):
So, I had her do things that I wasn’t as good at, so I could be having more face time with people. So, she’d make the flyers, input things in the MLS, do things like that. And so, I could have more face time.

Krista Mashore (37:30):
The year that I sold 169 properties, it was just myself, a transaction coordinator and a marketing assistant. And I would literally show up to an appointment and hand me the bucket and I’d roll. They give me a list of phone numbers to call on the way. I didn’t do any of the day-to-day data entries or any of that kind of thing. I did face-to-face, negotiations or requests for repairs. I had trainings for the marketing and understood what the marketing was. Then I had them do the marketing once I learned it. So, that’s how I get it. It happened slowly.

Robert Leonard (37:55):
There’s a lot of talk that the industry’s being disrupted right now from players like Zillow, Redfin, eXp Realty that are really just driving change and innovation each in their own way. How do you see these changes impacting the real estate market? Are the days of being a traditional real estate agent over, or are they at least numbered?

Krista Mashore (38:13):
Well, the bottom line is, first of all, I’m with eXp Realty and I love it. eXp is absolutely making massive changes right now. So, they’re the fastest growing real estate company around. So if you’re interested in the eXp, give me a call. I guess, we are absolutely building our brokerage across the country and we’re teaching new agents how to really dominate their areas.

Krista Mashore (38:29):
But yes, I think that people with Zillow, I mean, Zillow is basically trying to put everyone out of business and they’re using our marketing dollar. So, people are paying Zillow for their own leads. So, we’re paying Zillow for marketing. So, if you want leads from Zillow, we have to pay Zillow. Now, Zillow is becoming their own real estate company, their own brokerage. They’re working with buyers and sellers. And they actually just did this thing where they removed all of people’s reviews and past sales on their site. So, unless you’re paying them, unless you’re… It looks as though you weren’t doing any business, you aren’t doing anything.

Krista Mashore (38:56):
And Zillow is the number one site that sellers and buyers are going to. Now, if you think that’s not going to hurt some people, absolutely it is. The CEO, the president of Zillow has put multiple professions out of business by coming up and building it, something like Zillow. And they’re making the need for agents to go away. So, I do not think that we’re going to be gone, but I do think that the strong will survive, right? Survival of the fittest.

Krista Mashore (39:17):
Agents that are just doing old school, traditional things, they aren’t being innovative, they’re not changing what they’re doing, they’re not adapting to technology, they don’t have their unique, competitive value add, I absolutely think that they’re going to be in major trouble. So, unless you’re the type of agent that quite frankly is like me, very innovative and very different. I’m all over social media. I run targeted and ad campaigns to sellers in my area. They’re seeing me constantly. Because people always still want their hand held. They want a person. And I’m just going to be talking about the truth about Zillow, what Zillow really is. Zillow is hiring people that couldn’t make it in the industry on their own. And so, therefore they had to go work for Zillow or for Redfin because they weren’t subpar agents.

Robert Leonard (39:53):
I actually have my real estate license. And so, through studying and being an investor, I’ve learned the difference between these two terms now, but for a long time prior to actually getting involved in real estate, I used two terms, interchangeably and incorrectly, just like I hear many, many people doing. And those two terms are real estate agent and realtor. How are these two things different?

Krista Mashore (40:16):
If you’re a realtor, then you’re a part of the National Association of Real Estate Agents. And if you’re just an agent, you’re not a part of the National Association of Realtors. So actually, really careful, even though I’m a realtor and I’m a part of the National Association of Realtors, you can’t put realtor anywhere. But I’m a realtor, right? So, that’s the difference.

Robert Leonard (40:33):
But a lot of people are Like, “Oh, I need to hire a realtor.” I’m like, “Well, is it really a realtor or is it just a real estate agent?” Like you said, there are little pieces of things where you can’t use realtor anywhere. So, if you don’t know necessarily the difference, it could potentially come back and bite you.

Krista Mashore (40:45):
Yeah, I have my broker’s license too. So, even though I’m with the eXp, I don’t need to have my broker’s license to have my own place. I still have my broker’s license because, and that was very helpful. So, there’s agent, realtor, broker.

Robert Leonard (40:56):
I think every realtor is an agent, but not every agent is a realtor, correct?

Krista Mashore (41:01):
Yes, exactly.

Robert Leonard (41:05):
When you think about when you were just starting as an agent, what do you know now that if you had known back then would have exponentially increased your success or just gotten you there much faster?

Krista Mashore (41:14):
I might sound a little conceited, but I just did so well. Like I said, my first year I sold 69 homes. And I’ve sold well over a hundred every year since, except one year I only sold 12 and the market recovered. I lost all my REO accounts.

Krista Mashore (41:24):
But one of the things I can say that added to that success is just the fact that I was really always willing to be as unique as possible, as innovative as possible, and to adapt quickly, right? I pivoted quickly in any market. And those are the things that have really, really helped aid to my success as an agent.

Krista Mashore (41:40):
One thing I wish we had more quickly, is I wish I would have maybe probably not let people abuse me so much. And I’m a people person. I love making people happy. And I was that person that would answer the phone at midnight and answer that phone at Christmas Eve, during Christmas Eve dinner. And I wish I wouldn’t have done that. I learned that towards the last 10 years of my career, right? I really realized that I was a very unique agent and offered to me that no one else did in my area, as far as the type of marketing that I do. And I positioned myself as the go-to authority in real estate. And so, I didn’t have to. People would come to see me Monday through Friday. I make my last appointment at four o’clock. I didn’t work weekends or nights. But it took 10 years to get to that point, if that makes sense. I wish I did it sooner.

Robert Leonard (42:19):
Krista, thank you for joining me on the show today. For those listening that are interested in learning more about you, where’s the best place for them to go?

Krista Mashore (42:27):
They can actually just go to, it’s kristamashore.com/2dayslive. So, kristamashore.com/2dayslive. Once a month, I do a two day training. It’s 10 hours a day, where it’s full on coaching on how to utilize innovative strategies, techniques, how to use digital marketing and social media and video, to just dominate your profession. It’s a $97 charge valued well over $5,000 for that jam pack, with unique strategy, and then also tips and tricks step-by-step on how to. So, it’ll be a huge, huge help for any agent, whether they’re brand new or whether they’re experienced.

Robert Leonard (43:03):
I will put a link to that and Krista’s other resources in the show notes below. So, if you guys are interested in checking that out, you can click that there. Krista, thanks so much for joining me.

Krista Mashore (43:12):
Thanks for having me, Robert. This is awesome. I appreciate you.

Robert Leonard (43:15):
All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (43:20):
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