How to Build a Sustainable Business and Maintain a Healthy Life Balance with Gary Boomershine

I am happy to welcome fellow investor Gary Boomershine to the show today! Gary is the Founder of RealEstateInvestor.com which he started in 2005 out of the need to scale and grow his own real estate investing business. His company caters to top producing agents, investors, and smaller hedge funds who are looking for a competitive advantage in their local markets. Gary is also the host of the Real Estate Investor Huddle Podcast and has been featured as a guest on many podcasts including the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Show with Joe Fairless.

Gary first shares his background story and how he got into real estate. Before creating Real Estate Investor, the largest marketer in the entire real estate niche with close to 90 million pieces of direct mail and 9 million interactions with sellers, Gary got his computer science engineering degree. However, he comes from a strong real estate background - his parents owned a real estate brokerage and Gary got his license as soon as he turned 18. After college, he started his engineering career and was doing pretty well for himself, but the only downside was that he was working 90 hours per week. This all changed on May 17th of 2004, after a single seminar that ignited his passion for real estate. With a $700,000 mortgage, Gary and his wife decided to cut ties with the corporate world and dive straight into real estate investing.

We then move on to discussing the importance of leverage in real estate. Gary explains that a lot of people call themselves real estate investors, but they're really real estate business operators, meaning they are building a business based on real estate. The key is that every business needs a CEO and if you're the CEO and you're doing $10/hour work, you're going to have a $10 bank account. So if you're running a business, you have to understand that it’s a finance game and the leverage component is - you're leveraging other people's money, possibly your own, but you're also leveraging other people's time, experiences, and resources. A lot of people get stuck because they try to do everything themselves and it's a trap. You need to understand the value of your time, which is probably between $250 and $1,000 dollars an hour or more. So, if you're doing anything that's $10/hour work, you need to find someone to do it for you, and instead of thinking of it as an expense, think of it as a return on your investment.

Next, we talk about when it is a good time to start building your team and what to look for. According to Gary, you need to do it as soon as possible. If you're committed to doing real estate, you first have to figure out if you’re going to find properties on the market (typically through a realtor) or you're going to go off-market, which means you're going to go directly to the seller. No matter which way you choose, somebody has to do the work; on average it takes 45 leads to close a deal and 45 leads is a lot of work. All of these tasks require a lot of work so you need to build your team right away.

We then discuss the process of finding leads. Gary explains that around 25% of their clients at RealEstateInvestor.com want everything done for them; they just want to meet with the sellers. For a set amount Gary’s team generates the leads, screens the leads, does all the phone work and all the qualifying. So, for about $10/hour they can hire a team of people who are experts at pulling the mailing list, at skip-tracing, at finding things that nobody else can find because they know better than anybody else in the country what works and what doesn’t. Gary also goes on to explain that their perfect client is somebody who understands that real estate is their vehicle, somebody who already had some level of success, and somebody who is ready to scale up.

Lastly, we talk about what marketing strategies are working best right now. Gary shares that real estate is a cycle and right now we’re in a euphoric stage of that cycle where a massive number of people are competing for the same types of deals. According to Gary, the central and the south-central part of the country work best at the moment because it’s a lot less expensive to generate deals in that area. Gary also explains that only 3% of all deals come off of the first inbound call, 97% of all deals take six to seven interactions with the seller, which means you have to be really good at following up on a text or a call, use the right words at the right time. Gary’s team follows up automatically, for a minimum of two years.

Make sure you don’t miss this incredible episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with the amazing Gary Boomershine and learn all the secrets of leveraging and creating a sustainable business!

Notable Quotes:

“Most of us get into this business for financial freedom and having a life. Real estate can give us that, it’s the vehicle for that if you understand that it’s a finance game and a game of leverage. But a lot of people get stuck and reinvent or re-manifest the slavery system. It becomes a job, a terrible job.”

Gary Boomershine

“You want to understand the why about real estate before the how. The how is easy."

Gary Boomershine

“There are three buckets in real estate: cash now, cash flow, and cash later. Most people focus on the cash now, which is fixing and flipping. But true real estate investors are people who actually are buying and holding for the long haul.”

Gary Boomershine

“A lot of people call themselves real estate investors, but they're really real estate business operators. Those are people that are building a business based on real estate.”