The problem I’m solving today is helping those busy professionals and entrepreneurs where they don’t need to worry about it. They can focus on what really matters. Primarily, it’s accredited investors and our average check size is between 100 and $200,000. I look for 15% and higher because I want to beat the market and grow not only my portfolio but my investor’s portfolio to really create that financial freedom for them. I always tell first time investors, invest with someone first, learn with them. Then you can take advantage of their experience and learn through that say five-year period and get the confidence that you need to say, “Okay, now I want to buy a property on my own and I see what Jodi looks for and the due diligence that she does so now I can just replicate that.

” Welcome to the Real Estate Masters Podcast where we bring you the top real estate investors in the country. If you also want to be in the top 1%, you are in the right place. Listening to podcasts like this is exactly what helped me to scale my real estate investing business to seven figures, flip over a thousand houses and more importantly, step out of the operations of my business over a decade ago so I could start and grow other businesses. So get ready to learn from the best and start building a business that works for you and not the other way around. Enjoy.

Jody, thank you so much for coming on. I know you’ve been in the business for 20 years and recently, about five years ago, started helping other people invest in the space, which is awesome. But I am curious kind of how you got into real estate in the first place.

Yeah, great question. So I owned a technology firm at the time 20 years ago and we had a remote team and we were looking to buy some office space. And so we bought some office space and at the time I didn’t have enough money. So I went to my dad and said, “Hey, can we go fifty fifty?” And we owned the property for about seven years and when we sold it, the check that I wrote him back for his half was pretty substantial. And that really was my light bulb moment that I didn’t do anything and my money was working for me and created a nice return. And so that kind of was the starting point for real estate investing. So almost fell into it by accident, but it turned out to be a great accident.

That’s the best way to have an accident, right? Well, just for the people listening, going from that to now, what does the business look like today?

Yeah, so today we are providing opportunities for busy professionals, busy entrepreneurs to invest with us where they can invest passively and enjoy nice returns in real estate and also the tax benefits that go along with that. Many people have high incomes and the last thing they want to do is pay more to the IRS, especially at this time of year. Everyone’s doing their taxes and looking for the write-offs. And so with our opportunities, you not only see the gain from real estate, but the depreciation and other write-offs flow through to the investors, which many people like. So I really focus on finding opportunities and doing all of the due diligence, making sure that they’re solid and predictable in nature. And then once we get through all of that work and we know that, okay, this is going to be a good property, then I share that with my investor community.

Awesome. Where are you finding most of your investors?

So a lot of them are through my professional network and we just recently started our social media channels. So we’re in the infancy stages of the social media experiment, I would say, but we’re starting to really ramp that up so that people can understand how we think about properties and what we look for, what markets we like. We like cash flowing properties. And so that’s been new era for us and that’s also been helpful because people can start to understand how we think about property.

Awesome. And when you’re going into these properties, are you looking more for the long-term gain or is it more like fix and rehab and kind of exit quickly? What’s kind of your timeframe on these deals?

Yeah. So I did go through a phase fixing and flipping single family homes and that was a lot of work, learned a lot of lessons, made a lot of money during that phase. I’m more about the hold. So we look for properties that we can hold around five years, give or take a year. And that kind of is a sweet spot because then people know that, okay, they’re going to get their money back in a certain timeframe and it’s not locked up forever, but yet it’s long enough to provide really nice returns for them.

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Well, what was the main problem that you were trying to solve when starting to help other people invest with you?

Great question. So as I had been investing in real estate myself, I had many friends that wanted to get into real estate. And so I’d always tell them, “Come over to this property. I’ll walk you through the property. I’ll show you what we do, what we don’t do and just educate you. ” And so I found that over the years I was doing that and then I talked to them a couple years later and I said, “Hey, have you bought your first property?” And the answer was always the same. My family’s too busy, work is too busy. They just didn’t have the time to spend finding properties, managing properties. And the last thing they wanted was to buy themselves a part-time job. And so here they can invest in real estate and it’s completely passive for them. And so they don’t need to worry about what if I make the wrong mistake? What if I buy the wrong property? What if my kids are busy in soccer because I take care of all of that work. So that’s really the problem that I’m solving today is helping those busy professionals and entrepreneurs where they don’t need to worry about it. They can focus on what really matters.

And are you working with just accredited investors or non-accredited investors?What’s your minimums in case anyone’s listening and wants to know more?

Absolutely. So primarily it’s accredited investors and our average check size is between 100 and $200,000.

Okay. Then within that five-ish years, what typically are you seeing as far as returns go on these deals?

So I don’t take a deal unless it’s going to provide 15% or higher to investors. We have one right now that we are raising money for. That one is between 16 and 18% and we have another one that is providing 20% returns for investors, which is unheard of, but the investors love it as they should. And with my partners, they’ve had multiple exits and their returns are in that 30% range. Now, 30% is not normal either, right? But I look for 15% and higher because I want to beat the market and grow not only my portfolio, but my investor’s portfolio to really create that financial freedom for them.

Yeah, that’s definitely a great return. I mean, I don’t know anyone that’s going to be mad at those returns. What do you think’s the biggest or most common misconception about what you’re offering to entrepreneurs?

I would say the biggest misconception is especially first time real estate investors and I did this myself, so I’m not digging on anyone because I fall in this bucket, is the perception that, well, I can just buy a property and make a better return. And I did that in the early days and I ran the numbers and thought, “Oh my gosh, we’re going to have 25% returns on this. ” And that beats putting it somewhere passively. Well, then I find out, okay, well, it needs a roof and I didn’t properly get that inspected and there’s sewer issues and I didn’t properly get that inspected before buying. And so it’s all of those hidden costs that by the end of year one, end of year two, I’m like, “I haven’t made any money. I’m just fixing a property.” And so by investing with operators that that’s what they do, they’ve been doing it for a long time, you avoid all of those learning mistakes. And I always tell first time investors, invest with someone first, learn with them because then you can take advantage of their experience and learn through that say fear period and get the confidence that you need to say, “Okay, now I want to buy a property on my own and I see what Jodi looks for and the due diligence that she does. So now I can just replicate that. ” And so that’s one of my bigger pieces of advice to first-time investors that want to get into real estate because I’ve had all those mistakes, which it was my own money so it didn’t matter, but now 20 years later it provides for much more stable and predictable returns.

Yeah, that’s awesome. How are you finding the deals? Obviously getting the money from investors is one thing. Getting 15 to 20% returns is another, but how are you actually sourcing these deals?

That’s the trickiest part, to be honest. I say no a lot too much, but that’s what puts us in a predictable position. I look locally for off-market deals working closely with brokers that are seeing new properties all of the time when my asset class, something nice in my asset class comes available, my phone blows up from various brokers and I’m like, “Okay, clearly someone knows that something just went on the market that Jodi would like. ” So that’s one way. Another way is working with operators nationally where we partner and they are the boots on the ground right there in the local market. They’re the experts in the market. They may have thousands of units already in that market. And so working with them where they may source a property and then I’ll partner with them on properties.

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. What do you think the main mistake that you see other investors make that you think could be really easily avoided, like the biggest mistake that you see?

It would be having rose-colored glasses when analyzing a property and thinking that it’s really easy to put numbers into a spreadsheet and get excited about that, but unless it’s grounded in reality, those numbers are never going to come to fruition. So things like getting an actual insurance quote so you know what the insurance will be because it isn’t going to be what the seller is paying for insurance, anticipating that real estate taxes are going to go up because now you just bought it for a higher price and so they’re going to look at that purchase price and increase taxes. So really validating those expenses and getting quotes yourself, getting quotes on any repairs that you need to have done so you know what it’s actually going to cost you rather than ballparking what it might be. So really spending the time to make sure that the numbers in your projections are real and not simply what you think it might be.

When it comes to this business, there’s a lot of experienced investors like yourself that’s been in the game for a long time and there’s a lot of onesie-twosies in this business. What would you say is the number one thing that separates top operators from everyone else in your experience?

I would say it’s the process that they go through to understand if they should invest or not. We have a hundred point due diligence checklist. It goes through not only the physical asset, it goes through the market, the partners, I mean, even doing background checks on your partners to make sure that there isn’t something hidden that they haven’t told you about the legal structure and having a great attorney that can draft those documents for you. So overall, it’s the thoroughness of the process and the rigor that’s put in that comes with a more mature operator versus someone that is buying a fourplex and buying it for their own purposes.

Yeah. I always find this question fascinating when it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it. Everyone’s got their own way of measuring it and their own way of defining it and chasing it. How do you define the word success? How do you measure it and how do you strive for it every day?

Yeah. So it has evolved over the years. If you were to ask me this five, 10 years ago, I would answer it differently. Today, the way that I define success is the number of lives impacted and how many people can I help? And so as we set goals in our company, it’s not about financials, it’s about the number of people that we impact. And as we’re talking in our meetings, every meeting, team meeting, we’re saying, “Okay, how many lives have we impacted year to date? How close are we to our annual number?” And helping people to stress less about money and create generational wealth if that’s what their goal is. But it really is connecting with people and helping them to achieve their goals. I

Love that. I love that. Am I mistaken or were you in the Olympics as well? I saw that somewhere, right?

So I do train and compete in Olympic weightlifting. I have not competed at the Olympics, but I recently competed at Worlds in Daytona Beach, Florida, which was-

That’s awesome.

… an incredible opportunity.

Yeah, I’m sure that was a super cool experience.

It was. I mean, Olympians on the platforms next to me and talking to one of the officials who he’s telling me, “Yeah, I’ve gone to the Olympics eight times and I’ve trained 12 different Olympians.” And I’m just like, “Okay, this is a whole different level than I’m used to.

” Big flex. That’s pretty cool.

It’s fun. It keeps me healthy. And I found that the more that I’m in the gym training, the healthier I am and it crosses over into business. You have a different mindset and especially in real estate, there’s no overnight success. It’s every day putting in the reps and in the gym it’s the same. You can’t buy muscle. You have to be in the gym putting in the reps every single day. And so there’s a lot of parallels between weightlifting and real estate.

I’m sure there’s a lot of guys with money that wish you could buy abs and buy muscles for sure. So I’m definitely with you there. Going back to the real estate, what’s the biggest change that you’re seeing right now in real estate?

So we’ve seen a decline in the number of transactions buy and sells about 70% in recent years. A lot of that has been driven by interest rate increases and what people paid for properties a few years ago, they can’t resell at a profit. And so many people are sitting on their properties kind of waiting for interest rates to decline or rents to increase. And so it’s been much more difficult to find properties and buy some of those. We invest primarily in the Midwest and so we’re insulated by some of that. We don’t see the huge runs like you would see in say a Phoenix market, Dallas market, but we also don’t see the huge pullbacks. We just chug along steady Eddie and it’s not as sexy, but it’s much more predictable. And so of recent years, that’s been a big change that we’ve seen and we really feel that we’re starting to get towards the bottom of the market, which is a great time to buy. You always want to buy low, sell, high, right, but there’s the most proof that you should be buying something when it’s at the highest price and there’s the most transactions happening. And so right now we are really in a phase where we’re like, let’s buy a lot of opportunities because our investors are going to win with the properties that we’re buying today.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s huge. I want to challenge you with this next question. Let’s say you were going to start from scratch. The whole business goes away, you get to keep all the knowledge that you’ve learned over the 20 years, but the business completely goes away. If you were going to try and rebuild what you have now, what would you focus on first? What would be the first thing that you focus on?

That is a really good question. So I feel really good about where we are today and I would say I would focus on the capital raising side of the business first because when you have cash, you can always find deals. Then you are in a position to say yes or no to deals. When vice versa, if you have a lot of deals that you could buy but you don’t have cash, you’re stuck. And so putting systems in place, networking and being in a position where you can find a property, make an attractive offer. It’s a good place to be when you have cash and have the right people that you are working with.

Yeah. I love that. I love that. What drives you personally? I mean, what keeps you innovating, keeps helping other investors succeed? What gives you that passion?

Personally, I just love going after that next property. I love solving problems and figuring out, is this a property that we want to invest in? What’s it going to look like five years from now? Digging deep to uncover issues and find where the seller, they always provide you a performer and they’re like, “The property could perform like this. ” And you’re like, “Not really. ” And so I love just kind of digging in and figuring out if it’s going to be a property that will be a nice return on investment. And I also love working with people. I get an opportunity to speak with many people, learn about their family lives, learn about how we can help them, when we can help them. Timing matters as you’re probably aware life happens and I might not be able to help them today, but three years from now something may happen, they may sell a house and have XX cash or something and being to help being able to help them when the timing is right. So really just building those relationships.You’ve

Been in this space a long time, 20 years. It’s not something a lot of people can say and I’m sure you’ve been a big influence on a lot of people, but who’s been your biggest influence in this space?

I would say the biggest influence in this space has been probably my dad.That first deal that we did, he didn’t know what we were buying. He probably didn’t even understand what we were doing, but he trusted me and having someone that trusts you and is able to take a bet on you. I mean, I didn’t even know what I was doing in that first investment to be quite frank. And so throughout my real estate career, he’s challenged me and he’s always believed in me. He’s investing in our Kansas City property that we’re working on right now. But even when he disagreed, he’s kind of old school where he’s like, “You shouldn’t use leverage. You should just pay cash.” And so we drove by one of my 24plexes and his question was, “So when’s it going to be paid off?” And I’m like, “Hopefully never.” And he looked at me like, “What?” And so he’s just been a great cheerleader throughout the years and really encouraged me to go after my dream, whether that’s real estate or other things.

I love that. I love that. Well, where can people connect with you? Where can people find you? If anyone is interested in getting into one of these deals, where can they go?

The best place to connect with us is on our website, levelupinvestments.co. You can join our insider list and we’ll keep you informed as we have new opportunities. We have some free materials there that you can kind of understand how we look at properties and then we also have links to all of our social media there. So levelupinvestments.co is the best place to connect with us.

Awesome. Awesome. Jody, thank you so much for taking the time. Everyone, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time. Thanks

So much. Appreciate it.