An Aussie’s Journey to Multi-Family Syndication with Reed Goossens

Neil Henderson 0:18

Reed Goossens 0:52

How’s it going? Good, I guys, it’s it.

Neil Henderson 0:55

It’s great to have you. Great to have you on so. So I want to go into a little bit of your story. And I’ve heard it before, so I want to cover it and then get into real estate. So you had quite the adventurous life before you got into real estate before you came to America. You backpack your way through Europe, met your eventual wife on that trip. You worked on a Russian billionaires yacht, which someday I would love to hear more of that story.

Reed Goossens 1:24

Still ever be

Neil Henderson 1:29

Reed Goossens 1:52

That’s that’s that’s all.

Neil Henderson 1:59

Thanks, Reed has been great.

Brittany Henderson 2:02

Awesome. Well, it can you tell us a little bit about that first property that you invest? Yeah.

Reed Goossens 2:06

Neil Henderson 4:21

And so that first property was a duplex

Reed Goossens 4:25

Neil Henderson 6:48

Would you? Would you so would you buy that triplex again, knowing what you know now?

Reed Goossens 6:55

Neil Henderson 8:32

Yeah, I often hear experienced investors talk about that sweet spot between about 911 hundred dollars a month rent, you know, you’re attracting the kind of tenant, you know, it’s not a class, it’s not D class. It’s so work this workforce housing, you know, they’re there. They’re not wealthy people, but they’re, you know, they’re good, hard working people who know how to manage your money. And that’s often the issue that you run into with section eight housing is the people are just terrible, managing their money

Reed Goossens 9:02

So was there any financing was no finance on that first deal? Yeah. So you were able to do a little bit of financing on that on some of the next deals.

you had a pretty good safety net? Yeah. Not be nervous about did so did you end up selling those two then go to that next step?

You so I sold the sold them after I probably own the first triplex for about a bit over 18 months. And I made my money that I made a little bit more, they made four grand more than what I put it all put into it. And then there was cash flow over the period of the you know, call it 12 months out of the 18 months because of the issues with tenants. So yeah, maybe the managerialism shirt, fantastic, and then held the other one for a little bit over two and a half years and then got got rid of it to just be more liquid when I was developing my business, so so yeah.

All right. Um, so were there any, like big failures during that time period? But I mean, besides drive by shootings,

Yeah. Well, that’s that’s a nice transition. What led you to shift gears from residential into commercial?

So when you began raising capital for these large multifamily syndications, how did you go from changing people’s perceptions, you know, of you as reducing, you know, structural engineer to read multifamily syndicators?

Yeah, good question. Very difficult to do that takes a period of time. I, you know, with you guys, this is a new podcast. And it’s a leap of faith that you got to put yourself out there, put your message out there. And again, I was a struggling you have no idea about branding, or you know, how to be a key person of influence in my sphere, blah, blah, blah. And I just really wasn’t screw it back yourself, man, you already moved halfway across the world, like, just give it a go. And probably my dad and my mom was first talking. But I had something to say. And I think I had a valuable education piece because so many people were wanting to invest in the United States and still do to this day. And there was no one in the in the podcasting space that had that angle, right. Here’s a guy who’s actually come from abroad. He’s now here living here, and he’s gone through all these issues. Well, that’s what I choreograph the first 20 or 25 episodes of my podcast around learning the steps to get me to, you know, set up successfully investing in some of the, you know, the failures, like we just we just spoke about it, but it takes a long time, right? It takes it takes concerted effort and consistency, to tell people and remind people that you are shifting from in my case of structural engineer into raising capital. And it took many years of me still doing the two things, right working job, trying to find deals, trying to raise capital, it was just like, sort of spinning all the plates in the air, and it was a lot of work. But consistency does breed, change and that change people then start to understand what you’re doing. And, you know, my role is this indicator as a capital raises to educate others about the opportunities that I’m saying. And the podcasts are just one platform that I used to the microphone to to tell to get my message out there. So yeah.

Now you when you started off, did you go straight into being a part of the entire syndication team did were you doing all of your underwriting deals? Finding capital, talking to owners talking to break occurs? Where you’re doing it? Do it all? Or just focus on one side?

So, so partnerships can be a double edged sword, they’re not always the most beautiful thing. Can you talk a little about how you found your partner and maybe some thing’s gonna leave some tips for somebody if they’re out looking for a partner because it is syndications a big nut to crack. Right. It is not a I don’t know many syndicators are doing it all by themselves. They’re almost all have some sort of partner team. There’s a lot of moving parts. How did you find your partner? And?

Yeah, well, the what had happened is after raising a bit of money, standard podcast, other branding stuff, had raising the money, some small deal and lots more deals that other people’s deals, started to then say, Okay, I need to do this by myself, the gentleman who was an inch who had brought that first deal, and, you know, to the scenario where I introduced a mentor, he was sort of sending me these little little deals, you know, like he was doing 250 units, and he was sending me deals in Dallas for like 50 units. And I knew that I was still working full time, I had sort of my underwriting systems somewhat set up, and I went and hired two analysts from USC, just 15 bucks an hour undergrads, and now on underwriting deals, and I was, you know, putting offers in properties, you know, 50 to 70 units, getting the best and final. So clearly underwriting correctly, but not having that little bit of edge to get over the finish line. And through all this networking that I was doing a gentleman that you had on your podcast before Dave Thompson introduced me to my now business partner, Andrew Campbell, and it was just more that Andrew had a skill set that I didn’t have, which was that he was boots on the ground in Texas. And I had the skills have been here now, which was come from an engineering background, understanding the details, had a better system better had a better mousetrap for for underwriting and how to underwrite. And it was just sort of like, well, he could hustle as hard as I can hustle was sort of roughly the same age or a couple years of poverty into me, me early to mid days. And it was just really that is that opportunity that I needed. Someone you know, apartment guys on flips in Philadelphia apartment, you know, raise money for other people, partner without Koji paying all this sort of stuff. It just I needed to get into bed, you know, some dating all these people get into bed with someone because it was just again, syndication is, as you said, a tough nut to crack. If you don’t understand all the roles and responsibilities, you can’t, you can’t literally wear all the hats, you can’t raise the money, find the deal, you know, do the due diligence, obviously, the property management, like you just need something to relieve the pressure. And that’s what a product can do. And so when you’re looking for a partner, I always recommend you need to find someone who can use a complementary skill set to you as a person. Because there’s no point in having two same chefs, sous chefs who can cook the same thing in the kitchen. But you need someone who can do Mexican, you need someone who can do a talent, because it’s just it’s different cuisines you need to understand what you’re good at and let go find someone else who can be that other part that you’re not very good at in terms you still sir. So yeah.

So multifamily, it’s becoming much more popular. It’s kind of the hot, hot thing in the real estate world there. Have there been any changes that you’re having to adjust to and sort of this market? That’s exploding a little bit?

theoretically, I would assume people can maybe put more in just money wise, they can invest in more spots, because it’s not as risky to have it, you know,

and RU is while one capital only in the Texas market right now,

so for, you know, for the average investor that’s maybe come into this listen to this podcast, and they their only experiences with residential real estate, can you give sort of explain how palace indicator makes money?

Yeah, well, I mean, you’re talking a lot about capital preservation and alignment of interest, which is one of the reasons I love so much about syndication, a good indicator is really good about making sure there’s a good alignment of interest between themselves and the investor. And I think, at the end of the deal is that that’s really where it happens. That’s where, you know, you’re going to make some money on, you know, on the purchase, and you’re going to make a little bit of money on the asset management fee, but it’s really the where, where you’re really getting paid is if you’re performing if you actually are able to do it. And then the rest of the way, it’s just a matter of making sure you don’t lose their money. Exactly. You know,

you want them to invest again. Yes,

you talked a little while ago about perspective, like your perspectives, on return turn rates for when, like people in Australia, do you have any other perspectives as a immigrant that you feel like you should know about, you know, make a difference?

Well, yeah, so let’s talk about this topic. And this particularly in and around the United States. So the United States is is the, you know, biggest your market GDP in the world. It is also the such a, such an interesting landscape, and both metaphorically and physically speaking. So compared to any other Western world, any other western country in the world does not have the same concoction of stuff that’s going on like knighted states, as I think of the United States, as a mini Europe, every state is different. And from just a macro point of view, you know, comparing to Australia, that’s what I can compare to, we have 25 million people, so not even one 10th of what your population is, but with the same landmass excluding Alaska is mainland America. In Australia, we can only occupy about 18 to 20% of our land. So we’re landlocked was the most countries desert. However, in America, you have, you can have it north to south, east or west, and you have that population where you get stems, these tech, tertiary and secondary markets, you also have the combination of individual states acting like individual countries, so different laws, and most states from tax purposes, to doing business and all that sort of stuff, really makes it look like a mini Europe. You know, and I Oh, I always joke that up, the only time everyone in America is on the same team is when it comes to happen to decide that it’s a, it’s every every site has, its different, you know, different issues from lending to business, you know, even to just, you know, landlord, landlord, landlord rules. So that that’s one aspect of it. The second aspect of it is that, so that’s called the sort of secondary markets in Australia, we have secondary markets, but then you know, cash flow, and all like, there’s no cash flowing going on. The also, the other thing is, we don’t have garden soil, we don’t have multifamily full stop, you might be able to buy a six unit complex, but to go out and buy a 250 or 300 unit garden, so apartment does not exist at all in Australia. And there’s two reasons for that. One reason is that the government, it’s all condominiums, so very much a condominium market where the government makes more money on the sum of the parts, then the entire piece of as a whole. The second thing. So the second thing is the lending, we’ve only got four major banks in Australia, combined to maybe have 20 or 30, different lending arms that you could go in and find out commercial side of even less. So when an a bank doesn’t have the lending. Not necessarily knowledge. But when they’re saying okay, well hang on, we’re not going to lend on if you’re going to go build a multifamily deal, we’re not going to lend on the end product. And so it’s going to be worth this because you’re gonna your cap rate of x, and you can have it enter YY, and you’re going to get a valuation of this. And so we’re going to learn 65% of that, and off you go. They say, well, hang on know, the government makes money through strata, let’s try the title, which is condominiums and taxation of that. So you need to go pre sell X amount of units before we will give you the construction. So you don’t have agency debt like you do you know, agency debt mean, Freddie and Fannie in Australia, you don’t have these non non recourse but it’s definitely not as, as rosy as it is here. Like you couldn’t get a non recourse debt at 4% fixed 15 years, how lucky couldn’t Australia and more leverage up to you know, 75%, that just doesn’t happen. So you might get a five year or interest only, you know, interest only invited in Australia, you might get a seven year term. With first two years, you’re going to be recourse that wants to stabilizes, it might be going non recourse after but you’re looking at like you have a high interest rate, typically four or five to five and a half 6%. So, but then you also have the other side in Australia, we have more of a capital appreciation market where, you know, I say to everyone think of the Ozzy market, as La New York, San Francisco, like there’s not as if there’s no Dallas’s or, you know, North Charlotte, North Carolina’s of the world where the cap rates are six, or historically, six 7%. So there’s all these different things that the population obviously drives where people live, affordability. The the couple that with the lending couple that where you can have it your Thailand coupled that with the way in which people are they land. And so there’s, you know, there’s so many different facets going on. And you can compare that to Europe, or England, or stuff like that, again, it’s I lived in England, us there’s not just garden style multifamily apartments that are air in England, they just don’t exist in the same with Europe. So you know, historically, these gardens done multifamily apartments were billed as workforce housing, which what it is, and now with the frosting in the secondary markets, where you can go get moderate cap rates, where I can I consider a five cap, and you can pick interest rates up at a forecast, that’s there’s still a Delta there. So I can still make cash flow. And I can still get a you know, to grow market in terms of rental. So I can have that pop on the backend with appreciation about seven to 10 years. So all those things are very attractive to international buyers, when you compare where we come from in Australia, where cap rates at some 3%. So your interest rates are already inverted, you’re not going to get cash flow, you might get, you know, appreciation over over 10 years, but you’re not going to get any cash flow along the way. So a lot of different things going on, in that comparison in what makes the United States very, very unique from a lending investing and boring point of view.

Was that?

Oh, yeah. What you’re saying I was like, aha, yeah. I got it. No, like, Okay. I get it has a lot of opportunity,

just sitting on the fence, get off the fence. Right.

Well, and are there any advantages that foreigners have with investing in United States real estate, maybe maybe the

I was there. As I recall, I’ve heard somewhere that the SEC does not come into play. On the on the investor side with a foreign investor. They don’t know they don’t have to be accredited.

Well, so two things. So if you’re doing a regulation, David David, that’s that’s the normal reg. Yep, that is do you have to be accredited? There is a regulation F for Sam, which is an only international invest in so if you take an even one for domestic investor, it has to be ready. So to your to your question, yes, the SEC set up to protect Americans are not set up to sit to predict the rest of the world. So from fraudulent lending or fraudulent investing opportunities, but I’ve never actually executed on it and regulation. So I have international investors in my deals, they have to go through all the same setup processes Is anyone here in the United States to set up an LLC to get an item number, blah, blah, blah, banking Council, so stuff, because we majority of our investors, welcome bus. So we have to go down with the regulation. Gotcha.

Okay. Um, so when you started out in multifamily syndication, were there any skills that you had to sort of develop that you feel like are, were essential for your success

that you didn’t have before you started?

This is a good one, I wrote an article or a little evil could you know the art and science of raising capital, like a pro one in a court appointed 60 rule. The first is professionalism. And everyone thinks that you need no music born with 15 years worth of experience in real estate, that just not possible even if you bought into a real estate family, but everyone who come who has a story and has a background in whatever their former life was engineer, you know, trading account, whatever it was, you have skills in that field that you can bring into real estate, it’s just another form of business. So I was very fortunate that being a structural engineer, I was surrounded on a daily basis by big construction, understanding how to deal with subcontractors, understanding, we just had to build stuff, you know, like I can tell you how to build, you know, a sheer frame 40 story building, you know, like, I just know that I just know that some stuff, that can be a little bit of advantage, but it also, but there’s other things I speak about, like just being punctual and being if you’re going to say what you’re going to say going to do something and solitary, being able to host meetings correctly, having you know, presenting yourself in a professional, transparent way, all these things you that’s not real estate centric, that’s just being a good person. And you can pull those skills that’s from any walk of life that you’ve come from in the past. And I always encourage people, when they do come down, this road syndication and getting involved in real estate is to sit down and look at what what skill sets you think you’re really good at right now, and list them out. And you’ll be surprised that there’s so much that overlaps is besides like, maybe a little bit of the construction, the rest of it, you can learn, you can get a lawyer, as long as you ask intelligent questions, and there’s no such thing as a bad question. You’ll be able to surround yourself and get the answer to whatever it might be. And, yeah, so back to the question that skill set, look at look inwards of yourself to see what skills you currently have, because that’s also going to be able to shed light on what skill sets you’re not good at. And that will help you go and find your partner, you know, good part that we just spoke about before, you know, complementary skill sets. So yeah, so many different facets skills can be bought from other other facet, other walks of life into real estate investing. And I know, don’t be afraid of it. You know, what? Real Estate like? These top five things, and I don’t have them, I’m not going to be good at it. So no, that’s not true. Yeah.

So what skill sets have I taken from being an animal trainer and a nutritionist to the real estate world? You just you mentioned I thought was funny cuz you’re like accountant and all these things. I’m like, I don’t have any of that kind of back.

Right. But that’s, you know, and I think where you’re going with it is like, and I probably should have said some other things. But, you know, if you’re not, you know, not everyone’s comfortable on Excel, right? It’s one skill that to be a real estate investing, you don’t have to understand numbers. If you don’t understand the numbers, find that your partner or business partner that can help you. Because you have to at least understand where to poke holes. If someone presented a deal you need to be you know, have it have enough numbers, be knowledgeable enough on numbers poke holes in the deal, so you can feel good that I had this deal is worth its weight in gold?

Yeah. And the wonderful thing about real estate is really the math is not really that hard. No, honey, it’s not trigonometry. Know, the math that you have to do in structural engineering is way harder.

integration, integration back in the day, you know,

what, what’s it integration

integration being like? two x squared plus one x plus c plus three is, you know, the shape of the graph. And so you can then integrate or derivative of that you can, you know, there’s

no, I, I loved math. This is going way back, I loved math, up until it stopped being numbers. And once it started being XS once I started asking through some some alphabets in there, oh, man, my poor dad, who is a is a retired fighter pilot, you know, aeronautical engineer, you know, he was really good at math. And I really struggled once we hit algebra and heat, that poor man just beat his head up against the wall trying to get hold me through algebra. Anyway, that’s cool.

Yeah.

So what, what are the things I love about syndication? Especially raising capital, the really fun part of it for me, is it’s not it’s not really, it’s not sales, it’s education. And that’s mostly what you know you’re doing is there are so many people who have no idea this world exists. They sort of like their their knowledge of real estate, you know, begins and ends with HGTV, and, you know, buying a single family home has their own property. And even then most of them are thinking, well, if I, if I, if the rent is more more than the mortgage, then hey, I’m making money. You know, but so much of it is just education. It’s just explaining to people how it works and, and why and why it’s a good opportunity and things like that. So that’s really and I’m not sure there’s a question there.

bring up a good point. And that’s to be an effective indicator is the role of the syndicated to educate those around them the about the benefits? And so I had a question one time, and I’ll speak on stuff about or what if your investor doesn’t know x, y, and z was like, well, that’s your fault. Because you didn’t explain it well enough. And you need to, you know, and even if you don’t know the answer, it’s okay to say, Hey, I’m gonna go find out what the answer is of that particular question. And even today, like I’m this morning, I had a question from an investor I had to go back to my accountant on I want to invest is picked up a typo in the ppm and had to go redo that, you know, like, so there’s always little things that we’re always trying to, you know, make better and people in it the beauty of having investors in your deals that is multiple eyes on across all your legal documents across all your numbers. Do you know if any of you is any mistakes, people going to pick them up? Right? So that’s another benefit of syndication? You have so many people just looking at the deal?

Yeah. While we’re on the topic of like knowledge and education, you mentioned that you did you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, are there any other books that you really feel are super important for people to read? For real estate in general, or maybe multi? multi family syndication specifically?

Well, aside from your own

right chatroom on one of the biggest things that I’ve learned, personally is united states and talk a little bit about I’ve been to the equivalent of a real estate investor Association, meetup groups in Australia. I remember like the pitch and OZ like six 710 grand for guru. And when I first came to New York, we’re in here in the States, I just remember how much awesome content there was, and how easily accessible like 30 bucks or 20 bucks at the door so these great speakers telling me stuff that I was like, Wow, what a guru in Australia for. But like, just the sheer basics of understanding real estate, there was a book called flip FL IP, the Green Book, I think I always forget the name of it, it’s he’s actually out myself. I just, it helps understand, like, how you go and look at you know, the southern This is done in single families, it’s not talking about multifamily specifically, but it’s, it’s a great way to it’s a book that just helps you get your mind wrapped around just the real estate world how, you know, the ugly house on the on the nicest block and all that sort of stuff. And there are a lot of syndication books out there. I I’ve written one myself, so I’m not I’m not gonna I’m not gonna toot my own horn. But then on the other side, I’ve got to a point in my career where I’m not necessarily learning it myself, because I’ve done it. And so I, I look, I look at books like, you know, for inspiration, like the four hour workweek, you know, understanding the systems. There’s a great book if people want to book about their personal brand and, quote, key person of influence by by Dan Presley. I’m reading the book right now, principles were on the right Ray Dalio down to dollar Delta. And so just these sort of systems more sense, building a business, building a brand building culture, building a mission statement, which is something that again, doesn’t end your question of how to, because one of the one of the big things about, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad was it was so great at giving you the big picture, but didn’t actually give you the tools about how to come to need to get from this question that code. Great.

Thanks, Robert.

Appreciate it. Exactly. So I don’t read much of Robin stuff anymore. Again, because I’m now into the you know, more the nuts and bolts of building businesses, lots of stuff, but right, like the Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and the flip book, just sort of really basic stuff. There’s a book, I think, you know, how to make money in cash flowing deals, or multi families, it’s a kind of, again, all these little books that you find on Amazon over the years and pick up and that’s a good little, you know, on a reading on the train on the subway, and, and then all you forget, though the building blocks, but to anyone listening out there, I always challenge people to go and a simple thing is get to two or three networking events a month. And through those networking event, you’re going to meet other people, they’re going to tell you things, you’re going to information overload, and you’re going to take it on board and be able to you know, dissect it and digest it and then spit it out in terms of how you’re going to go out and execute your goals and vision. And through that they’re going to be great books to pick up and read. But like myself, I got to a point where I was sick of my nose in a book and I couldn’t go to stop reading about real estate investing is go and do it. So yeah, and also podcasts, right? These these things this what we’re doing right now. It’s it is there’s so much free information out there, that being ignorant isn’t an excuse anymore. And so I do love that, that we live in that world where it’s all that? I think it is.

Yeah, well, most of the problem, I would say most real estate investors problem, you know, myself included is, is we’re all savant about real estate and not so great about action. Yeah, hundred percent. Yeah. And a lot of it comes from from a lot of different ways, you know, fear. You know, just procrastination, whatever.

Yep. accountability, lack of accountability. That and that’s why, you know, part of my story is that I didn’t burn all the ships back Australia, like, I quit my job, I moved here, I was like, I had one shot. And it was a and the thing that the resolve that knocking on doors and trying to find that first job is that and I know, I think Tony Robbins has been one of those No, one yes changes your life. And you get no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes. And that changes your life. And so that, to me, was really the stepping stone and the snowball that really started at all, and then the other the belief in yourself to back yourself, if that makes sense. Because if you go, if you can’t back yourself, and who the hell are you going to back in life, and so having the vision and the inner self belief that you can do it, and that’s, it seems as cheesy as it sounds, it’s like, it’s sort of, you have to back itself, because it You always just going to procrastinate and not do anything and sit on the fence. And I’m just gonna, you know, sit on the couch and not do what I’m supposed to be doing. And so having that accountability partner, having the belief that you can push yourself, and that we are put on, you know, on this earth to be better than and be more and, and grow. Because that’s the whole point, if you stop, if you stop growing, we stop learning you stop growing. And I’m a huge believer of that.

So, with that in mind, you know, would you knowing what you know, now? Would you go back and still buy those duplexes? Or would you just go straight into large multifamily?

No, I, I get this question a lot. I have been interviewed on a lot of podcasts and like, would you do anything differently? And I don’t mean to be a dick when I say this, but the answer is no. Because I I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you if I didn’t make those mistakes. If I didn’t, grades my knees if I didn’t back myself and have a dream that I wanted to come to United States and living in New York. And that was the only dream right? It was just and then when I’m finished going around the world, I picked up the book rich dad poor dad and his knew that I didn’t want to live in my in cubicles next 40 years of my life. I didn’t know the answers to all that stuff. But you know, but my total brain was like, I don’t want to be here. And I want to be somewhere else. And I just need to figure out how to get from A to B, and goes back to that resilience and backing yourself. So I know I don’t have any regrets in my life. And I’m definitely all those people that I don’t want any regrets. Because one of the biggest thing is fear of regret itself. And I don’t want to wake up when I’m 70 years of age and going, gosh, I wish I’d had that. Because that is you know that that gives me goosebumps, like I don’t want that. And so I can look, I can happily look back on on the journey. And it’s only only just beginning, I’m going to 33 and be really proud of what I’ve achieved. And it’s so much more I’m not that I haven’t arrived. I don’t ever think I know it all. But I just I wouldn’t do anything over regardless of those mistakes that I made in the beginning. And and what we all make mistakes in the future. And and that’s okay. So, yeah,

it’s a good reminder to people that no one gets where they are without this past that is probably riddled with mistakes or lessons learned and all these things. Because it it’s, you know, the reason you get the question so much is that it’s interesting, like, what would you do now, but it’s hard to you have to get that knowledge to do what you’re doing now. And so

you have to you have to be hit the bottom of the barrel scraping the, you know, and we’re all our stories are all unique to ourselves, it makes us who we are, right? It makes you the animal lover, you know, the nutritionist, it’s who you are, right? And that that’s your DNA. And that’s what you built in. That’s what makes you the moral and ethically and all that sort of stuff that brings up the juices inside of you that helps you get out of bed, I’m going to go tackle the world. But it’s a different story to me. And that’s different is okay. And you don’t have to be any light yourself on anyone. Oh, gosh, I wish I knew that I wish I did. The path of the Joe Blow over there did because we live in that world of social media and always comparing ourselves to everyone. And I think there needs to be a little bit less of that and more dislike being okay with the past that you’ve come from in order to build your future. And you know, you know, you talked about Gary Vee the other day, and I was listening to one of his videos, he’s like, no, so many people in their mid 50s. And I’m like, come on one and down in life. And you know, he swears like a siloed. But it was talking about like your mid 50, you’ve got at least 30 years left, like you just get warmed up like don’t, you know, like, it’s, there’s part of that which can is a bad messaging. And which also means you constantly push yourself, you’re always going to be comparing and pushing and pushing and pushing that has some issues in itself. But it’s also on the same side, it’s an outside the corner. Dogs never too late, you can always teach an old dog new tricks. And you know that you never, you’re never too old to start, whatever you want to start and back to your fear. You know, as you get older, we tend to fear things more and all we’ve got a family and I need to be in a day job because I need to do XYZ. And I can’t go out and do this entrepreneurial thing and, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you what to go be an entrepreneur. But if you have that drive and that passion and you want to figure it out, and you want more from life and go out and do it, man,

there’s a way there’s a way to figure out how to do it, you can always, you know, go off on a different path in a way that makes sense for you. When I

think really, I’m sorry to interrupt. You know, I think that one of the key things that I’ve seen from people who sort of get past that fear is one, they either get so comfortable with the knowledge that they don’t they sort of understand what’s going to happen, or they find someone to hold their hand on that first deal. And, you know, that could be either buying a turnkey, you know, which I actually I don’t I don’t personally recommend but you know, it’s I think it’s a not a bad way to kind of have that, you know, hand holding first deal. Or they invest, they hire an expert, they invest, invest in syndication, there is ways to invest in real estate truly passively. And you know, that’s what you do. And

that’s what you guys are teaching about. Right. And so it’s really honorable, like well done.

And lastly, I just want to go back. You know, I don’t think you’re being a dick when you answer the question that way. Because I get I sort of bristle when I hear people who’ve made it, you know, especially I heard from a lot of multifamily syndicators, and I hear it from Self Storage syndicators and like, Oh, God, you know, I would have skipped everything that I did and gone straight to here. I would have skipped it all I’m like, Well, yeah, but you’re, you’re operating from the hindsight and all those bumps and bruises and, you know, somebody you know, somebody trying to move that boulder of a big multifamily deal. It’s, it’s daunting, you know, I realized that they had a lot of momentum, once they started trying to push that Boulder.

Alright, alright, so what does a day in the life of read look like as a multi family family syndicators?

What is the daily life so I am a morning type of guy, I definitely like to get up and I’m usually up by no later than 630 every morning. Definitely, as I transitioned out of working full time and trying to do my business, I that six 630 was originally 530 because I’d get up an extra hour before to go the gym or whatever, to then go to a day job it now you know, if I sleep in till 730 after sleeping too many. The day I’m I go don’t have an office now. Because I couldn’t work in my home anymore. I needed a place to go. But the day I get up, I usually walk the dog, I have my juice in the morning, or coffee, I try not turn my phone on before 7:30am I’m hugely about writing down my to do list for the week on a Sunday night. So I know I plan the week out. And usually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, pretty busy Thursday, Friday, a pretty relaxed and and then you know, just before coming on this podcast, I had a bit of work to do. Students would kind of deal but I’m always I’m always kind of working. But I’m also I’m in control my own time. And that’s what I love most about it. And that this this this world is that I can like I’m off to you know, at the end, the month we’re doing an apartment swap with a couple of New York, they’re coming to have an apartment, we’re going over there to have their apartments. The fact is that my wife and I work for ourselves like why not I Love New York, let’s just go. It’s free rent. And I get to as long as I’ve got internet. I’m also doing a lot more traveling, I traveled Texas nearly every every month. And I’m probably talking my business partner at least four or five times a day and checking in on the team. So yeah, gotcha.

So you will be very prepared for if you have children, if you decide to have children get a being an early starter, because you don’t get to choose that after they are born. That’s just what I

tell my watch.

So you What do you see now as your most high value task on a daily basis? Like what is the one thing it’s like, you wake up every day, what’s the one thing that’s like, you know, I’ve got to get that done. Nobody else could do it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s what a bunch of

them Yeah. Like, all the one in that sort of vein of questioning. It’s awesome. It’s perfect. Alright, so I think we’ve kind of probably already answered this but so you you live in LA, you invest in Texas, mostly, and probably plan to continue to invest in those types of markets. And you said you you visit Texas once a month? If you do you travel? Do you feel like you could do that? If you didn’t have to visit those once a month? Do you feel like you could travel a

lot? I’m off to Japan to the Rugby World Cup in October I’m going to New York back to Australia for Christmas. No, I’m anywhere I have a computer I’m working so and my business partner and I are completely aligned like that. Like Andrew just went spent two weeks in Colorado. He’s he’s got kids so he’s a little bit more set in stone me and my wife is particularly this year have really linked lent into Well, we work for ourselves, why don’t we, you know, jump off to Mexico as long as we’re on the segregated same time zone, we can make it work and even in Australia hapa across the world I at 6am in the morning, I can get up and I can afford our overlap with Andrew and Texas and my team is it’s like three o’clock in the afternoon, the day from the day behind. So like anywhere in the world that I am, I’m very intentional about making sure that I’m always checking in always making sure that I’m doing my job and not i’m not just off on a beach somewhere. But you know, I do try to get away like once a quarter for for a couple of weeks. And And again, it’s being intentional about my life. It’s not waiting till I’m 65 to do that thing that I really wanted to do on the we want to go to Japan to the Rugby World Cup. Do it live once you know, so I’m going and we’ll you know, the thing is when you do that sort of stuff, only real fires boil to the top and it goes back to being really intentional about your time and the black, blue and red time and when you know particularly number why I know Andrew can only call a certain time. So I’m only going to hear about the real burning issues when I do have the two or three hours or four hours overlap and yeah, right. Okay, perfect. Got it got the update. And, and honestly, in the business that I’m in, when we do third party property manager, we do third party general contracting, it is about that tweaking the knob, not necessarily about you know, we got a call from our property manager the day and incident happen on site. And we’re like, well, thank you for letting us know regional manager. And and I was like not the property management business hang up. Right.

Yeah, I think it’s Tim Ferriss. I think in the four hour workweek he talked about that the power of sort of letting go letting go. That and that his business that you don’t want to be the the choke point in your business?

Nope. No work on your business, not in your business

now say all the time and

So what advice would you have for someone to get started in real estate?

The biggest thing is education. Obviously, the number one piece of advice is, again, go back to the thing I said before it’s mindset what what do you really want out of real estate 99.9% of people it’s a vehicle to wealth, or it’s a vehicle to financial freedom. You need to figure out the why you’re doing it. Why is it for you, your family? Is it for free up time you’re sick your day job, what is it, and then when you understand what your why is you can then start going and understanding what the best investment opportunities to invest into it make me help me achieve that Why? And then back to the mindset of like it will take five, seven, maybe in 10 years, that’s okay. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And they’re having all those things in place. And it’s constantly putting one step in front of the other. And going to start off with those three networking events that I spoke about, started listening to three podcasts a week on real estate investing, pick up that book and read it, they’re all very simple things that you can do. And being an entrepreneur and changing your mind shift means that you’re going to have to stop living and breathing it. I talked a lot about the Fitness, Fitness is part of my life won’t do it, I get so crazy. Being an entrepreneur as part of who I am is my DNA now to develop that over time. And it will mean working a few extra hours if you do have a day job. But that’s okay. Because you’re putting your reinvesting into you yourself into education or about you know, a new thing that you didn’t have any clue about and you know, real estate investing to me, I’m self taught you guys are probably self taught as well, you didn’t go to university for it. And that’s okay. That’s a lot of people make money doing that. And so it’s just about having the resolve to pick up the book and just start reading, start listening to podcast, go on those networking events, putting yourself out there in order for you to learn more and be a sponge and absorb it all. So yeah.

Well read. Thank you so much for sharing this with us today. You’ve got the book, which is available on Amazon. com. We’ll put that in the notes as well. There it is investing in the US. By reduces pick it up. Yep. If any of our guests want to find you what would be the best way they can reach out to you.

Yeah, look, jump onto my website. It’s reduces calm. It’s really spelled with REDGOSS is two s’s in the ems.com. You can check out the book EJ got a podcast you reach out to me if anyone is coming through la I’m, I’m pretty accessible to do a meetup for a beer or coffee or lunch and just talk shop more than happy to do it. Also, one other thing, all the proceeds from my book are going to charity, a cancer charity back in Australia, it’s very dear and near and dear to my heart. And if you pick up the book, you’ll understand why because in the first I didn’t like it in memory, my mom who recently passed away so it’s not that it’s not a sob story, but it’s just more that it is a mission behind it more than just floating books. It’s about it’s about my story. And and yeah, just jump on the website. And as I said, if anyone is in LA, please hit me up.

I will probably do that we’re right down the road in Las Vegas.

Yes, yes. We have other friends there. So where we come? Not often, but when we can.

So

awesome. It was great talking to you. You too.

Thanks, guys.

Don’t leave.

Okay, it was read Goossens from wild horn capital also host of the fabulous investing in the US check that out on iTunes. So what do you think was the biggest lesson learned for you on this one?

Um, well, I don’t know if any of these are always like the biggest lesson I’ve learned. But the most interesting for me, or the most important thing that I pulled from it was just the reminder that your past is sort of the path to where you are now. What’s mine.

Gone? I’m sorry, I interrupted you.

Sorry, I should have gone first. But yeah, you know, the the where you are now has been paved, basically, by your mistakes and your lessons and you know, things that you’ve done in the past. And it’s really important to remember that and not, you know, think back and go, Well, I shouldn’t have done all those things, or, you know, I should have gone straight to this one thing, when really, you probably wouldn’t have been able to go straight into this this, you know, other place, because you wouldn’t have had the knowledge really, I mean, like, yes, if you magically had the knowledge you had now back then then sure, you could probably but like, no one has that. So so it’s it’s just a good reminder, because I think people get into that place of like, well, if I’d known this, or if I were in this other place, you know, and it’s easy to get there. You know, he talks about this a lot in different ways. It’s easy to sort of feel like, well, I should be here or I wanted to be here and I’m not or you know, that person did this. And it just it takes time, and you have to make mistakes, you have to learn things, and you have to do things in order to get somewhere and it’s okay to have all those things happen.

Yeah. Well, you know, that’s the whole idea of fail faster, fail faster and learn from it. We, you know, we we so often forget all the things that we learned from failure, most people learn more from failure than they do from success. And it’s those, it’s those bumps and bruises that really allowed you to get where you are. So for me, since I’m having to think on the fly, because you stole mine. I would say the idea of scale, you know, read talked about those first properties that he bought, you know, as all three years old triplex aside from the fact that he was probably in a lower rent market than you want to be. Because you just got much more challenging tenants. It was also the idea that, you know, especially being a triplex with low rent, that makes it you know, you’re not going to be real high priority for a property manager. Yeah. And especially, especially if it’s in a rough neighborhood, because the property manager is not getting paid enough to buy a bulletproof vest. Or just deal with all the issues that can come up when you’re dealing with

Yeah, if you’re doing a percentage based payment, we’re just not

there, how much you know, how hard are they going to work to go across the street to pick up a dime, you know, and, you know, and he talked about it, we didn’t Delve on too long, but he talked about, if you’re going to buy single family homes, try and buy, don’t just buy one, you know, buy for in the same area, so that you know, and have the same property manager so that now you’ve got the property managers attention. Yeah, you’re not just one house that he’s making 80 bucks a month on, on $1,000

we’re consolidating the business into one person, and that gives them more reason to actually do their job. Cool. Alright, so I don’t even feel like we really have to go over this because we’ve talked about it so much, but like, how did he get his knowledge? And how long did it take him? Um,

he, he read, he just read a lot of books.

Well, no, he also went to networking. He went to know when he read, he read books, but he he really was. I think he didn’t say it like super outright more than a couple of times. But he he definitely at the end when he was saying like, the advice that he would give he said, you know, read a book, go to networking things week, you know, moms do, you know, do these things where you’re, you’re doing all the things sort of to get that education and then do the thing, but and, yeah, so and they said he probably did that for about six months before he bought his first property.

Well, he was also student of real estate he had first read Robert Kiyosaki spoke back in oh nine, but I would say probably, it sounded to me like you’re really an earnest once he came to the United States and started reading and going to revise and things like that. So yeah, six months. And what was the the key piece of was the key piece of knowledge that he really needed to learn? To sort of execute on the indicator?

penis indicator? Yeah, I have no idea.

When they have to cut this out, I’m trying to remember

what it was

shocking came out. I know, I had something in my head. And then I went away. So editor, I apologize. Cut this part out. So how much money did it take him to get started?

He said that the first property, he bought it for about 38,000 people about 10,000 in it. So 50 K, about I have no idea how much it was to do his first syndication, we didn’t really get into the numbers there.

You know, the weird thing about syndication is that it’s the ultimate other people’s money. You really, it’s not like a zero money down. But it’s really, it’s more about the knowledge and putting the deal together and most of any of the money that you put into it, as we talked about with Joe fair, listen, some or one of our previous ones, gets paid back by the syndication when you close the deal. So it really it’s almost no money down. But definitely, his first deal was You’re right, it was about $48,000. All In, he was complicated by the fact that he didn’t have he wasn’t a US citizen didn’t have credit. So he couldn’t get here to come in with cash.

couldn’t get any loans or anything. So how much time does he spend on his business?

It’s a full time job. I mean, we and we’ve talked to syndicators in the past that it’s it’s a full time job you are, you’re an active real estate investor, who is supporting passive investors. Yeah, taking care of the money.

But when what’s nice, and I think,

I think I made this mistake early on, when you started getting into real estate and thinking about it, in my mind, it was like, we’ll buy some stuff, and then like, we won’t do anything else. And that’s, you know, I won’t have to do anything. And then we’ll have this like freedom of, like, time and location and that kind of thing. And that’s not really how it is. And that was sort of naive thinking. But it’s, you get to a place where you have the flexibility, like you said, they’re going to Japan for the World Cup, because they want to and they’ve managed to set up the systems and and, you know, have the people in place to be able to make that happen and not have it affect the business. So you know, it’s it’s something that he continues to work on, because as long as he is internet, he can, but it’s a flexible sort of situation where he can do it on his time. Timeline. And as long as he gets certain things done, like he’s,

what’s a really powerful thing, once you control your time mean, he still wants to do work. But he control he controls his time. And that’s a big, you know, that’s a big deal for people. The only really, truly passive real estate investors are the people that invest in syndications. You know, you’re you’re putting in, you’re giving up control in exchange for diversification, because you can you can move your money around to multiple operators and asset classes and geographies. And you’re also you’re getting time back. Yeah. So yeah, getting paid a paid a return. And, and, and somebody asked for it.

So yeah, well, and I mean, those people may not be actively investing in real estate, but they still have jobs that bring them that money. There’s there’s no, no, there’s very few people that are really probably working. Not we’re not doing anything that haven’t like been fully retired and are living off of, you know, some kind of savings. pay out. So anyway, interesting. And then when we talked about this, is it location dependent? Absolutely. Is it location independent? Yes.

Yes.

Uh, you know, he said he can pretty much do it anywhere. He’s got internet access and access to a phone. Now we talked, remember, we chatted with Dickerson from good egg investments back a while back, and she’s a, she raises capital for syndications. And she actually said, Yes, but the challenge for her is time zones. And Joe, Joe Farah was talking about that as well, time zones can be a problem. And then having kids around with you’re traveling somewhere and you’ve got your kids with you. The kids are probably not in school. So they’re going to be underfoot, you know. And but the answer, you know, with with read read travels to Australia a lot, actually. He said it actually works out pretty well, because he’s got some good overlap with he and his partner. The time zones works. Yeah, yeah. So that’s a yes, it is possible. Its location. And and

Yeah, well, I think, you know, this is sort of in the nitty gritty, and most people probably don’t need to know that this information now. But if you’re traveling a lot, and that’s super important to you, and you do have kids, there are ways to make that work and not have it be too big of the deal. There’s always people you can hire. There are systems you can put in place to make your life easier, even when it comes to your children.

All right, well, this has been I think this has been our longest episode ever. So if you’ve stuck with this until now,

I think they probably have because I had a lot of fun talking to read and I found it to be really interesting and inspirational and educational. And so hopefully you guys got that out of it as well. So,

so until next time, let’s hit the road.

Thank you for saying

bye