Best Ever Advice for Staying Top of Mind and Boosting Your Business with Joe Fairless

[00:00:00] This is everything real estate investing show with Sean Pan. We interview local real estate investors and professionals to go over tips, tricks, and investing strategies to help you learn about the business and to enable you to achieve your financial goals, and now welcome to the show. Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the everything real estate investing show with Sean Pan. Today we have Joe Fairless. Joey is an apartment’s indicator and host of The Daily podcast, the best ever show. He’s hosted conferences, wrote one of the best books about apartment’s indications, and has interviewed more real estate investors than anyone else in the world. Today, he’s going to give us tips on how we can exponentially grow our business and how to stay top of mind. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show and leave a review. We release episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Enjoy!

Sean: [00:00:51] Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are and how you got to real estate investing.

Joe: [00:00:56] My name is Joe Fairless. Who I am is I am focused on contribution and how I got into real estate investing is I read a book, investing for Dummies. And then from that book, I read that investing in real estate was a way I could make money. I bought my first house in October of 2009 and then continue to scale up from there.

Sean: [00:01:23] Awesome. And before we go forward, I want to say first of all, your book right here, the best ever apartment syndication book is the reason why I even started my podcast in the first place. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much.

Joe: [00:01:35] Oh, well. I’m glad to hear that. Most importantly, a bunch of people who are listening, they’re glad that you started it because they’re listening and you’re adding value to their lives so it’s a good ripple effect. And you asked who I am and that’s why I said I’m focused on contribution first and foremost and I’m glad that that’s coming to fruition.

Sean: [00:01:54] Yeah. I was wondering how long did it take you to write that book because it is very thick?

Joe: [00:01:58] It is very thick, the book itself, one year. The information from the book gathering the research, getting the documents together, getting the thoughts consolidated, probably 2 and a half to 3 years.

Sean: [00:02:16] Very nice. So I was wondering what are you currently doing in real estate investing?

Joe: [00:02:21] Buying apartment communities.

Sean: [00:02:22] So, how are you going about doing that?

Joe: [00:02:24] We, so I say we, I’m the co-founder of Ashcroft capital and we buy a stabilized cash flowing apartment communities that have value-add components to them. So we will purchase a property that’s making money currently, but we can enhance the NOI, primarily through interior renovations where we go to make the apartment units of a nicer place to live and a nicer living experience. And then we increase the rent as a result of that which increases value through forced appreciation. And then we end up selling usually are projected hold periods 5 years. Sometimes we sell a little bit sooner depending on if it makes financial sense to make the money earlier based on what type of offers that we’re getting and we have a third party property management company that we work with. We’ve got about $600,000,000 worth of apartment communities.

We have 2 property management companies we work with. One is in Dallas and they’re called city gate and the other is in Florida, they’re called ZRS management. And I see said how do I go about doing that? Well, it’s a team and it’s on the ground. We’ve got our third party property management teams, and then within my company Ashcroft Capital, we have a different team members to focus on different things like a director of acquisitions, asset management, point person, Frank, my business partner. He’s incredibly gifted at asset management and acquisition so he oversees those teams, and so it’s a collective effort.

Sean: [00:04:09] Nice. Can you tell us a story of how you started Ashcroft Capital?

Joe: [00:04:13] Frank, my business partner and I were introduced through a mutual friend. Frank was working as a W-2 employee for a company that does what we do. He was overseeing about $500,000,000 worth of apartment communities across the country, but he wanted to venture out and do his own thing, start his own company, and he had identified a deal in Houston, Texas and he had identified it, but he didn’t have the capital. So our mutual friend connected us and they said yeah, Joe might be able to bring the capital together and at first I was focused on other opportunity so I actually attempted to connect them to some people who I knew who could bring the capital as a partner with him and they turned him down. They said thanks, but no thanks. Doesn’t meet the underwriting that we look for and eventually it came back to me and he’s like, oh, thanks for the intro, but nothing panned out and I didn’t know why because it looked like a good deal to me.

So I was like, you know what? Let’s do this thing. I’ll partner up with you. Let’s buy this deal together. So we ended up buying the deal for $14,100,000. We put in about $2,000,000 so all in a $16,100,000. It appraised for $21,600,000, 15 months after we purchased it. So great opportunity for nesters and great opportunity for us to general partners and you know, we decided that it made sense for us to continue to partner up and since then, we’ve partnered up on I think we’re going on our 23rd and 24th acquisition in later this month. And so, you know, we’ve had a successful time and you know, there have been some challenges obviously along the way but it’s important as an entrepreneur who is partnering up with another entrepreneur to make sure that we have alignment of interests and values but then also that we complement each other really well. And that’s what I found with him and he’s found with me where we have very specific skill sets and we’re pretty darn good at what we do. Another person’s pretty darn good at what they do and so it’s gone regardless whatever challenges come up, we’ve navigate it pretty well and things are going pretty good.

Sean: [00:06:52] Oh congratulations. So, how long have you guys been in this partnership?

Joe: [00:06:57] 4 years.

Sean: [00:06:58] Nice. Is this $14,000,000 apartment your first one or you had experience before that?

Joe: [00:07:03] Experience before that I bought another apartment community before I met Frank. And then before that, I bought a 4 single-family homes while living in New York City, but I was buying them in Dallas-Fort Worth. And that’s how I got started.

Sean: [00:07:21] When I went to your conference back in February by the way, my favorite conference so far. It’s truly, truly amazing.

Joe: [00:07:26] How come?

Sean: [00:07:27] How come? Honestly your qualities of your guests are just top-notch. Like the questions they ask and their backgrounds and their experience so you can learn so much from just everyone around you.

Joe: [00:07:38] Mmm. Yeah, thank you for that. I love hosting with Ben. He’s the co-host of the conference with me because I love meeting people like you and other investors who are there because it is a higher quality caliber of investor. I’m glad that’s evident for other people who attend too.

Sean: [00:08:01] Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, for everyone listening, go to the best ever conference in February, right? Next year?

Joe: [00:08:08] You know what this year might be a March but if you go to besteverconference.com, you’ll see.

Sean: [00:08:13] Yeah definitely check it out. But during your conference during your talk, you’re showing about how you grew Ashcroft Capital from like $90,000,000 to $300,000,000 now to $500,000,000 and even $600,000,000 now. What did you do to grow it so fast?

Joe: [00:08:25] It goes back to focusing on well, first, identifying what your unique skill set is and then doubling down and tripling down on that and then bring on the right people or partnering up with the right people to focus on their strengths. So, you know, Frank, he’s an engineer major and he created our underwriting spreadsheet which calling it a spreadsheet does not do it justice. I mean this thing is robust. He created it from scratch and it has many tabs and it has a lot of formulas and he’s just a wizard at that stuff. I know conceptually what we’re looking for and I know I can go certain depth level in analysis, but then after that it’s not my skill set. It is his. And when he is focused on what he is incredibly talented at and what he’s gifted at and then I’m focused on what I’m talented at then we’re able to stay in our lanes while overlapping and you know addressing things that do overlap, but for the most part staying in our lanes and both putting our head down and focusing on what we can do really well. And so when you have a team that you invest in that’s doing that then it’s likely that they’re going to continue to perform because they’ve got the right people doing the right things that they should be doing.

Sean: [00:10:09] So in your case, your role is probably the like public outreach and raising funds for the deals.

Joe: [00:10:16] Yeah, there are 3 components to any deal. 3 components to our business really, the money, the deal, and the execution. And you know, the book that you mentioned earlier, my syndication book, it’s got 4 parts because you also have the experience money deals execution experience, but we’ve got the experience. So really, once you have the experience box check, then it’s money deal and execution. So Frank is the execution part and also oversees the deal part. So we have team members, full-time staff members, Scott Lebon Heart, he’s our director of acquisitions. And Alec Keys overseas the asset management, so Frank overseas them. So that’s the deal. That’s the execution part. And then the money part, I take care of and my focus is on continuing to build long-term relationships with investors continuing to help with asset management and communicate the progress of deals to our investors and making sure that we’re meeting expectations at minimum. We’re preserving capital and then best case scenario exceeding expectations.

Sean: [00:11:36] Great. Can you talk about some of the strategies that you’ve been doing for maintaining those investor relationships?

Joe: [00:11:42] Yeah. It’s a very intentional and what I call an accredited investor engagement plan, and basically, it’s a spreadsheet with tabs that have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. And then put on each of those tabs what you’re committing to doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually basis to stay top of mind and in a way that adds value to your investors. So at this point, I’ve got a marketing team that I oversee. So I’m not physically doing all this stuff what I’m about to say but daily, we’ve got we’re posting them bigger pockets, releasing a podcast episode, writing a blog post about the podcast episode or something else, interacting in our Facebook communities and those are examples of daily. Weekly would be doing an email newsletter, recapping the stuff that we did during the week. Monthly, an example would be I actually have a newsletter that I mail out. It’s a snail mail out to all of my investors and it profiles one of the Ashcroft investors. We interview them and then I mentioned some other relevant things that are taking place whether it is industry wise or whether it’s some other book that someone wrote that could be interesting, whatever it is and that gets mailed out.

So not only we’re staying top of mind in a valuable way on a regular basis, but we’re doing it in through different mediums. We’re doing it electronically through email. We’re doing audio through podcast. We’re doing it visual through YouTube. We’re doing it so you can touch and feel with the snail mail newsletter and that’s really important to be intentional about the frequency but then also the method in which it’s received. And I can tell you that this idea came from a book I read called Ninja Selling by Larry Kendall. And in that book, he writes to real estate agents. I am not a real estate agent, but this advice is still applicable and I took it and I ran with it because what he said, what really resonated with me is that think of an example or just pretend you want to sell your home. Let’s go with this, you want to sell your house, you want to sell your primary residence, you engage in agent and that agent is wonderful. Absolutely blows your socks off wonderful, sells your house for 10% more than what you thought you could sell it for and he or she finds you a house that is just your dream home. Well, great experience, wonderful experience you’ll love him. You know, everyone moves 5 to 7 years. So that dream home, the dream has shifted a little bit.

So now, I fast forward 5 to 7 years. It’s time for you to sell that quote-unquote dream home and then go buy another dream home. Well over those over those 5 years, it is highly likely that if the real estate agent who just did a phenomenal job did not stay top of mind with that couple over those 5 years and especially during the time in which the couple was looking to find an agent to hire, then that couple is just as likely to go with someone they know who they just recently met, someone in the neighborhood who’s also selling homes. There isn’t much that the original agent who did a phenomenal job is no longer top of mind. Even though they did everything right and they just nailed it. Instead, what’s important especially for real estate agents is to maintain the exposure or maintain presents top of mind with their potential clients. So the same concept applies to when you’re continuing to grow your company by bringing in private investors. We’ve got to stay top of mind on a consistent basis in a very valuable way to our investors.

So it’s not just we don’t beat our chest and say look at me now. We say here’s an interview with someone who’s also accredited investor and here’s their story. Here are some challenges they’ve come across thought you might find it [00:16:39] interesting and let me mail this out to you via snail mail. That’s something that stands out and breaks through and we are staying top of mind in a relevant way. So I took the concept from that book that I read and I simply applied it to what we do.

Sean: [00:16:53] Amazing and it’s so smart too because you’re adding value, but you’re also staying top of mind every time you’re doing that.

Joe: [00:16:59] Yup.

Sean: [00:17:01] So let’s talk about your podcast. I mean, that’s probably the reason why you’re so famous right now is because you have a daily podcast. You’d be doing it every single day since 2014. When you first start your podcast from what I recall, you weren’t really doing real estate investments on this scale like big apartments indications. So how long did it take for doing those daily podcast until you actually have some traction and then things started opening up for you?

Joe: [00:17:24] Well, I had 4 single-family homes and 1 apartment community I believe by the time I started the podcast. You know, I had like $6,000,000, $7,000,000 worth of real estate that the apartment community was around $6,500,000 and then my single family homes are like $400,000, $500,000 somewhere around there.

Sean: [00:17:48] Oh, very nice.

Joe: [00:17:49] Yes, so, but  to answer your question about when was the tipping point for when I started getting more traction and saw that people outside of my immediate family were actually listening to the podcast and when and then it lead to business results, I’d say I don’t know the exact point in time, but I can tell you that I did the podcast daily for 2 months when I started because I wanted to see if it was an effective use of my time or not and if I could attract the sponsor for the podcast so that editing would be paid by the sponsor. So that the podcast wouldn’t cost me money. It would just be a decent amount of my time at the beginning and I was able to attract a sponsor on the podcast who someone I interviewed and Lucas Hall is his name and he’s working at cozy.co at the time and they have since been bought by I believe co-star that’s fairly recent but they were my first sponsor on the podcast is like $2,000 or $2,500 or something, now, it’s close to $9,000 a month. So to sponsor it and that gave me the ability or the confidence really to continue the podcast and see how it would shake out if I continued it.

And then as I as it grew, I just kept taking pieces of responsibility and delegating it to others where now, you know, when I started, I was finding the guests interviewing them, editing the show notes myself. I taught myself audacity, software program for editing, I taught myself all that spliced and stuff and promoted it on social media everything. Now, all I do is on Thursdays, I interview 9 people and so it’s back-to-back-to-back, 30-minute break, back-to-back-to-back, 30-minute break, back-to-back-to-back and that’s my Thursday. And then magic happens for everything else on the podcast. I got a team and a team of editors, and social media people and all that other stuff. I dedicate 4 and a half hour or so every week for the podcast. I’m able to do other things the rest of the week and that’s really the important part of it because we’ve got a valuable portfolio and then best relations are our number 1 priority. So I dedicate my other time towards that.

Sean: [00:20:31] And my last question for you, you’ve interviewed over a thousand people so far, what are some of the key lessons learned that you’ve taken away from all that advice?

Joe: [00:20:40] I’ve definitely interviewed more real estate investors than anyone else in the entire world because I’ve interviewed like 1,500, over 1,500 real estate investors. No one else in the world at least that I’m aware of can say that and yeah, I learned I’ve learned some things. Number one is when you have money or when you can attract money, then deals find you and so that’s why I put in my book, the best ever apartment syndication book I mentioned, build your network, build a thought leadership platform, start interviewing people first. That way you can start attracting money and then by attracting money, you become very valuable to people who have deals that’s not their specialty. And then you can partner up with them and you can do what you want to do.

Sean: [00:21:33] That’s amazing advice. Thank you so much for being on the show today. How can people get in contact with you?

Joe: [00:21:38] If you want a free apartment investing guide, it’s all a bunch of resources for how to invest in apartment communities or not how to but a different resources online and offline that will be beneficial to you like websites to go to and a bunch of other stuff. You can email info@joefFairless.com and ask for the apartment resources guide and then you can listen to the podcast, best real estate investing advice ever.

Sean: [00:22:07] Awesome. Thanks again for being on the show today. I really appreciate your time.

Joe: [00:22:11] Thanks a lot.

Sean: [00:22:12] Okay. Take care.

Here are some of the key takeaways I got from speaking to Joe. To create a successful partnership, you need to find someone with complementary skills. Create an accreditor investor engagement plan and be intentional about it. Have a plan on how to stay top of mind on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis. And finally, when you have money or when you can attract money, deals find you. Build your network and thought leisure platform first. Hope you all learned a lot. Thanks, and have a great day.