Episode 487: Why Creative Financing is Key in Today's Housing Market

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All right, guys, here we are at the end of 2024. Welcome to another Wicked Smart Masters Class. Today, Zach and I are going to just kind of take a nonchalant, non-scripted look backwards in 2024. What's going on in the market? What's going on inside the community? What have we changed this year that you could take full advantage of going into 2025? And you get to peer in as we have this open chat. And I hope some piece of this, whether it's a nugget or a small call to action or a link I give you, whatever it might be, helps you change in some way 2025. For some of you, it'll be dramatic. And for some of you, I want to meet you in person in January. You'll hear us talking about that. Enjoy. All right, Zach, so let's jump into 2024. Yeah.

What a year it has been for sure. As we're recording this at in mid-November. So, you know, lots of things could happen towards the end of the year, but what a year it's been. And really a year that was conducive to our business model. I know we keep saying this like year after year after year, especially coming outta COVID and during COVID but man, the economics have really set us up for success over this year. And I think what we're seeing is that to be the case, right? We had High interest rates, especially in comparison to, you know, the past 10 years. I know I'm going on my 10th year this year, and I think the average interest rate that I was dealing with was around 4%. If I looked at all the mortgages we, or the sub-2 deals we bought, or the lease purchase which we bought. Yeah, we were at our peak.

If you look back at the, what was it like the 50-year, still only around 7%. So it's like there's a good little range is so people can put their head wrapped around that.

Yeah. So I think at the beginning of the year it's around 7.5%, and I think we're going to round out the year around 6.5% as far as the average good credit mortgage rates, which is obviously causing a huge market shift because people can't qualify for loans even though they couldn't really qualify for loans as far as the masses in general. But, you know, it's still continuing to make a smaller amount of people that can't qualify for loans. Which has obviously drastically increased the amount of creative deals that were happening out there. And it's not hard to see that because if you go online, even go type it in Zillow in the, in the, in searching the key terms, more people have owner financing or seller financing in their descriptions. Or if you just go on Facebook and you notice how many people are actually selling these creative deals currently on the market, And then it's not, I mean, it's just more of a gut feel, but Chris, how many more wholesalers or agents are more apt to have this as a strategy to provide for their clients or the deals that they have on their agreement? So it just was, it was such a year set up for those that are getting into creative financing. I hate to use the word easy, but man, it seems to be a lot easier to get involved in creative financing than it was, you know, You know, just when I started, for sure.

Yeah. As you're talking, I'm thinking of this. I wrote down when you said wholesalers. So you got the wholesalers, the rehabbers, and the realtors, right? Kind of in that category. They're all looking— if they're not looking to learn it, which they should, but if they're not looking to learn it, they are referring us a whole boatload of business. And you want to— one of your key strategies is that, Zach. So I think it's important for people to know that. But, but I look— when I look back this year, And I see people in our, in the Wicked Smart community going, well, what do I do? What do I do? Because this is kind of new in our community to get that many referrals from outsiders. We're in the trenches doing that. And I think that's a big difference. A lot of noise in the education space and they, they, they're good at selling stuff. I always say this, but we're sort of there. So when things happen, boom, we tell them how we're dealing with it. Does that make sense? You tracking?

Yeah, for sure. I, I think at the end of the day, if you're not actively in the trenches year over year, it's really easy to get stuck in strategies or to promote strategies that worked a couple years ago. I mean, the strategies that are working today are drastically different than the ones that were working even a year or 2 ago during COVID right? Because last, I mean, during the COVID strategy, most people were taking advantage of buying the property and just waiting 30, 60, 90 days and the property appreciated.

Yeah, it wasn't brain science. Yeah.

That's why you had this massive amount of people that were either agents or wholesalers that were brand new doing very well because of timing, because they were able to just go and tie up properties or market properties and be able to create margins within a very short period of time without actually knowing the strategies. And what we then saw was as things started to slow down, those same group of people were thinking, oh wow, I need to find a different strategy. In order to still produce income, and that's why we started to see this like massive migration of realtors adopting us, wholesales adopted, fix and flippers now coming in and saying, "All right, well, let's look at the strategy of these creative deals and to be able to implement in our current business." And that's why we're starting to see this massive amount of referrals because they're they're not necessarily you know the dealmakers, but they're really good at their marketing and being able to get these properties on agreement and are looking. for people to go out there and close them. And that's where, you know, our community is really stepping in and seeing a drastic increase because they've done this during the good times and the hard times. And now we can really take advantage of this current market.

Let me say something about timing. You said the word timing, Zach. So this year more than ever, and I know this is a year look back, but obviously going forward in '25, this is very applicable. And that is the market's always changing.

Some—

I know some Wicked Smart listeners try to time things right in different niches, Zach, like Apartment buildings, they'll go a different route. But if when you know— not if— when you know how to pivot in any market, which we're kind of saying indirectly here, then you have the confidence, you have the poise, you have the authority to do deals in any market more so than ever because things are changing so quickly and it's going to constantly change, but things are changing so quickly. So know that creative real estate will put you in that mode of I don't care what the market does. Kim asked me, my wife Kim asked me all the time, well, okay, well, how's that going to affect you? How's that going to affect you? I don't care anymore. What I care about is I love when it constantly changes because we know how to pivot and everyone listening can learn that too as they go into '25.

Yeah. So even in addition to the market, talk about the uncertainty and just the economy and the presidency. And I know we're sitting on the other side of it now, whether you— it doesn't matter what party you're a part of. Now we actually have some definite person who's going to be in the presidency, but Over the past 9 months, the amount of people that were panicking just in general, which led to more deals, because even if they were sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, they were still looking for an exit. And that's also why we've been able to really structure a lot of these seller financing deals as well. So just the amount of instability looking back over the past 9 months of this year has really led to A huge amount of creative deals. I know we're going to look back on like what we did inside our community, but just a question, Chris, and that is, all right, well, now that this instability has ended, and I know you probably get asked on the podcast all the time, but what's the foreshadow for the next upcoming year in general before we do more of a look back?

I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I just feel like when there's this uncertainty you just outlined, Because there is still, I don't care if we have clarity on the presidency, there's still uncertainty what's going to happen. So when there's uncertainty, sellers more than ever, I won't use the word panic, but they're like, ah, I need, I need help and they need a guide. And that, that tends to be us. I'm hearing it and seeing it and I know you are out in the field. So I think that's the key. How fast can you get yourself through a certain level of skillset in the creative space to be out there and be comfortable? And then you can use us as your lifeline. How fast can you do that and position yourself?

Oh, for sure. No, I totally agree with you. I think, I think we're on a run here. As long as interest rates continue to stay where they are, the amount of people that just can't qualify for bank loans absolutely drives our space, especially when we're selling on rent-to-own and the current, you know, traditional space. Because if there's no buyers, then there's, then there's, then the sellers can't sell. And that's where we were able to really step in and provide that solution for sure.

Now, can we take a peek at— and I don't know if you're going to go there next or not. Um, we, you know, one of our values is constantly innovate and improve. And I know for a fact, because creative is rising in popularity, if you're a Wicked Smart listener, you're getting pounded on social media or another about all different programs out there that are trying to sell you stuff. We did some really cool things this year, Zach. If you can, I think one or both of them were your brainchild. So if you can Just kind of tell them what happened this year for the— because people are saying to us, that was your missing link. You have killed it. And it's the 2 new things we're doing.

I love that you brought that up because that's exactly where I was going. I was going to say that with rising popularity of any strategy, the likelihood of people to be able to, to try to fill that vacuum, whether they're skilled or not, is going to happen. Right. I've seen more creative financing coaches out there now Like 10 times more than I have in the past. I mean, before there was like 3 of us and now there's like 25 or 30 of us and there's one that's being created every other day now. And they're really, like you said, they're really good at selling product. I would say that in our world or our company, I've never prided myself on selling a course, but I've always prided our community on being able to do real estate deals because that's where we came from. We were real estate investors. We weren't marketers and then became real estate investors. We were real estate investors and then tried to help out more people around the country by providing another solution and have been doing that, you know, for, for a decade now plus just in this space. So when I look at— so when we looked at this, this challenge, like, hey, there's, there's more people out there that want to learn this and there's more noise out there than we've ever seen. How do we then really help solidify and help that person be guided to find the right information to be able to actually reach the right results? And we'll go over some of the metrics here in just a second on how we actually measured that. So, and so a brainchild or an idea that we came up with, which was twofold. One was what we called the apprentice. So the apprentice was really the ability for people to get into our community for a very low ticket price. And why we did that was to be able to provide a solution and to be able to provide clarity to more people than we have in the past because we wanted to be able to help guide them. So those of you that have been following us for a very long time, you know that we're— I would consider us like the Porsche or the Ferrari when it comes to the real estate coaching space. We have a higher-end coaching, which eliminates a lot of people that are not serious. Look, our, our mission is to be known as a community that, that helps transform dedicated people into wicked smart real estate investors. Not anybody, the dedicated. So by having that price point, what we're really doing is we're making sure that the people that come into our community are dedicated so we can spend lots and lots of time with them. In order to help them build, not only get their first deal, but be able to build and scale that business. So this year we actually kind of pulled it back and said, well, there may be more dedicated people out there, but there's just so much noise so they don't know which direction to go in. So instead we created this apprentice program. We said, look, just come in and see, you know, behind the green curtain, or let's look under the hood. Let's start working with our community so that way you can see the step-by-step process to eventually become that wicked smart investor. So we created this program that really came with a couple items. One is you get access to our course, which we just redid it. We call it QLS 4.0. And that means that we have completely revamped this for today's market. Then what we did is we created a 12-week coaching program where you literally get access to our coaches including myself, including Chris, over 12 weeks, and then access to 5 specific Zoom calls you could tap into. Again, this isn't to make you a real estate investor tomorrow. This is to share with you what we're doing and why it's been working for a decade, you know, and getting rid of all that noise. And then one of our favorite things right now that we created, which also came in, in that plan, was the In the Trenches Bootcamp. Now, I just had a conversation with one of our previous students, one of our past coaches, when I was speaking at an event at the National Real Estate, the REIA event down there. His name's Link. He came and visited us. And if you've been on our YouTube videos, you've seen all the deals that he'd done out of the Charlotte area. And I had a conversation when I said, hey, this is what's going on. And he said, that is the missing link. He said, I could imagine that your, that your community members are getting significantly more, uh, or, or better results in a quicker period of time because of this particular event. So let me share with you what this is because I'm extremely excited about it, and I can tell you that our community is as well because they're getting deals more quickly. Now, this In the Trenches boot camp can be done on by itself, or it comes within our Apprentice program. And here's Here's how important it is. So you fly up to our office for 2 and a half days. Now, it's a very small group of people, up to 20 people in our office. Trust me, we can't put any more in there. And what that really allows us to do is for the entire first day that you're there is we'll literally make phone calls to your leads. You can bring them. We split up into small groups. Me, Chris, the coaches will literally make phone calls. And what that really does is that generates momentum. And allows us to then start working on deals on day 2. So then day 2, we literally work through deals and work on offers. We have people coming out of this event with either deals, appointments, or offers, which is significantly speeding up their business. And then on day 3, we want to make sure you have a blueprint. So then we literally walk through a strategy session with you where we outline the key performance indicators so that we can ensure that you go out there and reach your goals. So those 2 major things has led to drastically better results this year. And I believe it's really helped a lot of people cut through the noise and to be able to really almost test our community before they actually make a big commitment.

Yeah. And we'll throw the links out in a minute, Zach. But while you were talking, I wrote down a couple of things in the Apprentice Bootcamp— sorry, the Inner Trenches Bootcamp this year with some Apprentice members. If you remember, there's been no less than 3 or 4 People who came in and they had 30 and 40-year experiences, if you remember what I'm talking about. And without us prompting it, we just do our normal routine, our normal protocol and schedule. They said something along the lines of, this was humbling, this blew me away. I didn't know you could do these things. And they've been at the business a long time in the conventional sense of real estate. So that's a big game changer. I think the second game changer is, yes, we equip them. Yes, we give them a look behind the curtain, all those things that are part of what you said. I think in addition to that, and I'd love your comment here, we actually give them the confidence, right? Because in theory, if every single person said, wow, your results of that, you're getting students to do deals between, you know, $45,000 and $300,000 a deal. Oh, if I had the confidence to do that, I would do that. Or if I thought I could do it, I would do it. If I thought it worked in my area, I'd do it. Well, they leave here with that confidence, right? I know what your thoughts are on that, but that's key.

Well, yeah, absolutely. Because Look, I speak to people all day long. You do too, Chris, whether it's locally or at an event. And most people want to get involved in real estate for whatever reason. And most of the time it's because, look, the amount of wealth that's built in real estate is significant. And most see that. The question then becomes, how do I get involved in real estate and how do I do it in the most risk-averse manner? So if we can show you how to create the most amount of profit and in the least risky possible, right, the amount of money that's actually required in these deals significantly less, if not any sometimes. So you have the biggest upside and the lowest downside, which Warren Buffett says that's the best investment ever, is to be having those strategies no matter it's real estate or businesses. Then if that's the case, then the only question becomes, Can I do it? Right? Does this work? Shared with you. We can show you case studies over the past ten years. This, of course, works, and it doesn't matter which market. And then the question becomes: Can I do it? And I think the In the Trenches boot camp really allows people to see that they can do this because it's not complicated. It's actually relatively simple. It's just: Are you dedicated in working on this on this process? Are you committed to the process to to? to create not only wealth now, but long-term consistent wealth. And I think when they literally can sit across the table from myself, you, Chris, some of our community members that are already doing deals, and they're just seeing it as a simple conversation and a simple mathematical problem, and then just basic numbers and metrics to consistently measure day in and day out, people then become, really start to see, all right, this is, Absolutely doable. This isn't that complicated. This is simply a people business. We're just solving problems by buying and selling real estate. Okay.

Who wants to be the next apprentice? Pretty interesting, guys. We started this apprentice program back as a July 4th, 2024 promo. That's where it started. And it was so incredibly effective. We were just going to run it for the summer. It was so effective immediately we kept it. It's in place now. And what is it? It allows you to get into the community, the Wicked Smart community, for less dollars than the QLS Home Study Course sells for right now on our site. In fact, when you go to smartrealestatecoach.com/apprentice-pod, apprentice-pod, when you go there, you're going to see that as an apprentice, you're going to get over $13,000 worth of coaching. The possibility for you to touch base with us if you want to, 4 or 5 times a week. And it doesn't exist anywhere out there, frankly. That's why we did it. We did it for 2 reasons. One, no one is giving you the support out there. We keep hearing feedback, which is how this was born, that other educators are not giving support. They're just selling stuff. So it doesn't exist anywhere and nowhere in the real estate education or coaching space. And we want to help you do one thing— deals. So we've wrapped the support mechanism around this. We've allowed you to get into a Slack community where the other associates who previously were protected in Slack. And now you get to jump in there and experience that for 12 weeks. You also get to come to the In the Trenches boot camp, which is private. It's a chance to hang out with the family team and one of the coaches for 2 and a quarter days in our conference room, roll up our sleeves, get calls done, get deals done. If you come with leads, you leave with deals. Absolutely incredible. I could go on and on. Go to the website right now. Check out more information about the apprentice and I'm going to give you the In the Trenches boot camp site because you don't have to become an apprentice. It just happens to be free with apprentice and associate. So 2 links I'm going to give you, super important. smartrealestatecoach.com/ittb-pod. That's going to give you some information about the boot camp. If you want to buy a ticket to the boot camp, it's more expensive, but you can just come check us out. About 1 or 2 people every time we run it do just that. Or become an apprentice and it's for free. smartrealestatecoach.com/apprentice-pod.

Yeah.

And let's give the dates back, right? Let's kick off 2025 with the right— with the right start. I think it's January 22nd, 23rd, and 24th. You come into our office, we feed you breakfast and lunch, we send you off early in the afternoon to do some homework, and you have a great 2 and a quarter or 2 and a half days. January 22nd, 23rd, 24th. Pretty sure those are the dates. Well, let's give the Apprentice link, Zach. And then I want to give some real metrics, like what were the real numbers in '24? You can go to smartrealestatecoach.com/apprentice-pod, P-O-D, smartrealestatecoach.com/apprentice-pod. That'll get you some more information on that.

Yeah. Chris, before you dive into like the— like what we've done as a community and we're sitting at like 9 months worth of metrics or even slightly less.

Yeah.

I want to go over some, some amazing stories from people inside our community as well, because, you know, it's cool to talk about like, you know, we're seeing it, right? But if somebody's listening to this and like, I want to actively in real estate right now, I know you talked about interest rates and you talked about like people getting involved in creative deals and, and the presidency and all that and how that's affecting real estate. But if I'm not actively in real estate, then how do I actually like know that But that really, that's, that's a great opportunity. So I want to share like just some of my favorite stories. I'm sure you have some as well.

I got a few. Sure.

From people that are active in our community because there's so many people from all different markets and then all different walks of life. And if you've heard Chris and I's story, we come from very different walks of life and very different backgrounds. And we were able to utilize these strategies in order to build a great life. So The first one that comes to mind for me, and I know you and I were just talking offline, is our librarian friend right out of San Antonio, Texas. And I know you're like, what? She's a librarian? Yeah. Her name's, her name's Josie. She's absolutely amazing. And what's crazy is that her job, because she's the sole librarian in that town, she rarely has time. I mean, I try to get her onto some of our mastermind calls and just share her results and she can't. I've tried to— we've tried to promote her on our YouTube channel, the Deal Structure Sundays. If you haven't checked out those, please go ahead and do so. That's our documentation of all the different case studies that we've done, that our community members are doing as well. And she had no time yet. She went— she's done— she's had 3 properties under agreement this year and 2 solds. I don't have her exact amount of, you know, right now.

We actually just had our 3rd sold.

She's had a third. There you go.

Sold.

Yeah.

3 take-ins, 3 solds, 100% sale rate. What's really cool is that she's been able to do this by developing one relationship with an investor that has a significant amount of rentals, and they're literally chipping away and selling off his rentals utilizing this lease purchase strategy. So if you believe that you're that type of person that doesn't have enough time, and trust me, nobody has enough time. I can promise you that. But once you make this a priority, and like, as I mentioned, the word dedicated and committed, once you're committed to actually changing your life, then all of a sudden, like Josie has been, now this is creating a significant change in her life. My guess, thinking of a librarian salary in the state of Texas, my guess, she's drastically changing her life with these 3 deals right now. What about a story from you, Chris?

I mean, there's so many. I'm circling which ones I want to talk about. Let's talk about Jessica. We both will have something to say about Jessica. Jessica is amazing. She's in Tennessee, I believe. And here's why she's amazing. Zach talked about dedicated and committed, I don't know, 3 or 4 times, indirectly, indirectly. Well, Jessica came in again part-time. Everybody's part-time. If you're out there going, yeah, but can I do it? Yes, you can. And most do start part-time. Jessica is still part-time. And Jessica took— I think it was about the 12-month point or 13-month point. Talk about dedicated. She was frustrated. She happens to be on a nightly accountability basis with me and the coaches, so we knew that. But she stuck with it and followed exactly what we told her to do. And in month 15, it's like you opened a floodgate, very similar to some other stories that maybe we'll get to. But she opened a floodgate, meaning she had her first deal actually sell and the following week had 3 take-ins. And I know just as recently as this week, Before, as we're recording this, has all kinds of activity, just an entirely different business. And the message I got, Zach, after that was, wow, I was about to stop short of all this. And she said, I'm actually doing a lot more in a lot less time, and I've never experienced this. So I'm feeling a little guilty. Like she's actually beating herself up because she's going, I didn't— not putting in the hours, but yet I got all this stuff going on. It's because she busted and was dedicated for 12 to 15 months.

Yeah, it's— if you ever read that book, Three Feet from Gold, it's like a spinoff from Think and Grow Rich. That's exactly what a lot of us face, right? When we're— and she's a prime example of, I'm super frustrated. It's taken longer than I thought it was going to take. I've had some wins, but I've also had some losses. And, you know, I'm ready to give up. But instead of that, our team rallied. around her, our coaches rallied around her. We gave her the support, we helped her make some adjustments. And within a very short period of time, she got another property agreement and then she's had a sold, which drastically created that wind for her. And now we got some wind behind her sails and now she's really moving in a, in a fast motion towards her goals at the end of this year. And it was amazing. She came to one of the In the Trenches boot camps more recently. And she was really a guiding light for a lot of our community members because they look to those community members that have been around a long time that are in our higher programs and are not only showing success from a, you know, a deal standpoint, a revenue standpoint, but showing success from a grit standpoint. I know we had t-shirts on this from our, one of our events a couple years ago where it said, got grit. And really, that's what real estate does take. I'm not going to sit here and say that this is easy in any way. If anything, it's simple. But we're going to put in the work and put in the dedication. I know that she's going to see a huge amount of success going into 2025 as well. I just want to share one other story just because every single time that he speaks, he begins to cry.

I was going to ask you, we could talk about him. Yeah.

So, so Rick, an amazing guy out of Tampa, Florida. So we're just sharing with you some different markets too, because these are all different places, right? Which most people ask me before they jump in the community. And that is, how do I know this is going to work in my market? And my answer to that is it has nothing to do with your market. It has absolutely everything to do with you. Can— are you willing to put in the effort to make sure that this works? In around your market, because we've been buying real estate up here in New England and what people would consider blue states and consider not great markets in general for real estate. And we've been doing it up here, so you can do it in absolutely every one of your markets as well. So Rick, he is in the medical field and works a significant amount of hours. And there's a couple points I want to hit on. Number one is he was one of those. That I met at an Aria down in Tampa Bay. He was like one of 5 people that showed up on a Zoom call. And he told me that he went ahead and joined because he was looking for a new avenue because he was buying rehabs that were already managed. So like turnkey properties, and I'll share a moment why that's important. And he said, I wanted to get into creative financing because I wanted to be able to help more people, not just help supply a rental for people to create $200 in income. So when Rick went ahead and joined our community, he came up to the In the Trenches boot camp and he was able to set 5 appointments from that day, which led to 3 take-ins on that from that one day, that one or that was that 3-day event. He's able to get 3 take-ins and every single time that he communicates, he was just at our last event and he was literally crying from stage Because of how much he's been able to impact people's lives. One of his more recent deals, he was able to supply a rent-to-own to somebody that was just came out of— he got out of prison a couple of years ago. He just got a— he just got a— or he really settled into his job and he was making really good income and he really wanted to supply an amazing home for his family. Now he was on the up and up coming out of a a challenging situation, and he was really able to supply that home. And of course, it was profitable for Rick, but that's what he really felt, that impact on being able to help people in their lives. And then the other piece I want to hit on is Rick actually was going through some challenges with his turnkey rentals that were all the way out in Missouri, and they weren't being profitable anymore because of the expenses associated with the management company. So we actually helped him now take that property and sell it on rent-to-own utilizing our 3-payday system. And now that property is profitable and completely hands-off for him. So I could tell you his life has drastically changed, but he affects every single person inside our community that he touches for sure.

Well, and if you've got— if you're listening, you have property that falls into that category. You've been renting, you've been buying and holding. You're going to want to get your butt to the boot camp because every boot camp, Zach, we've had 1 or 2 experienced investors in there who went Oh shoot, I didn't know I could do this with my property. And we've converted them to exit differently. So that was a huge nugget there for anyone, anyone listening. Just time-wise, should we wrap up with some metrics for the year so we can put some real meat to this?

Yeah, absolutely.

So all Zach and I did is we, we pulled off of our leaderboard that we share that community almost weekly, if not monthly, what we call a taking, which is putting a property under agreement. You heard us say taken a few times. We're 9 months or so in, as Zach said earlier, to date in '24, the community has gotten 50, 5-0, plus takings. They have generated— now let me, let me qualify generated— generated 3 paydays. But the generated means what? It means they've put properties under agreement and the proposed 3 paydays are— the 3 paydays generated by the community is just under $2 million, $1.9 million. In the 9 or 10 months and actually paid out paydays 1 and 3, because payday 2 would be a little tough to calculate. It's a smaller monthly number, is just under $1,000,993. So $993 went somewhere in the community paying out on their deals between paydays 1 and 3. And I'm certain the paydays might be new to some people too, Zach. So I don't know if you want to give some of the link to the QLS course, we can do that. But there's some vernacular we use that now I'm thinking in hindsight might have lost No, it's okay.

So if you're brand new to how we create profits or revenue from these deals and what we have trademarked as our 3 Payday System, the payday one's the non-refundable deposit once we place a buyer in the house, which is anywhere from 3% to 10% of the elevated asking price because we sell the property to people that can't qualify for bank loans. Payday 2 is the monthly cash flow. And I can give you some averages. Typically it's around $27,000 nonrefundable deposit. And then payday 2 is roughly $300 per property per month. And then payday 3 then is the equity that's built into the property that when the buyer goes and qualifies for their bank loan, which could be in the next year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, is your payday 3. That's the equity that then you get paid out at the time of Cash out, which is averaging around over the past 10 years, about $35,000. So we calculated a lot of these around $75,000, all 3 paydays. So just imagine if you can just do one deal a year, how that starts to affect your long-term wealth. And that's exactly when I look at these paydays inside our community, that's not just about the revenue and the profit. What it really means is that we're impacting the investor, the community member, the seller who we're purchasing the property from, and the buyer who we're selling the property to. That's 3 families that as a community we get to affect on a consistent basis over and over and over again. So if you're listening to those numbers, that may sound awesome, they sound amazing, but just the amount of lives that are affected consistently. So we said 50+ takens, right? So assuming that those all are sold, that's about 150 families that are affected just from those deals in the past 9 months. Now, I can't even imagine— I would never add this up— the amount of families that we've affected over the past 10+ years as a community is drastic. This is really about helping solve problems inside our market, inside our economy as well. And that's been absolutely amazing. And Another metric, and I'll kind of end with this, that I'm extremely excited about is that we are approaching 1 deal per associate in a 12-month lookback. We're just shy of that right now, which was one of our major goals for this year, which is to ensure that every single active community member is getting a property under agreement so that way we can build their confidence to help them grow. And we are right on the cusp of doing that. And to give you some hindsight, Some of the masterminds that I'm a part of, the average metrics in which we use for coaching and community members is roughly 4%. Not just— let's not just say coaching in real estate, but also real estate agents in general as well. The metrics that's used is that's about a 4% success rate of those people that enter into the real estate space. We are absolutely turning that on its head. And where that is my favorite, my biggest accomplishment, or our biggest accomplishment as a community member, and what I'm extremely excited about. So those that are looking to really join a community and to really drastically change not only their lives or others, but we have that proven method to go out there and help you do so.

Yeah. And I don't want to add to that because that was awesome, Zach. If they don't want to go yet to the Apprentice link, they can go to smartrealestatecoach.com/schedulepodcast. And just get a call with us and we'll chit-chat and we'll see what is going to be a best fit for you. Uh, anything else you want to add to that and we'll wrap up?

No, just looking into 2025, everything. And I'd say all the decisions that we make now are going to affect next year. I just talked about that in our most recent In the Trenches bootcamp. And I said, every decision, every action we make today, don't assume it's going to hit in 2024, even though we, you know, sitting here, it's about 45 more days left. Assume that this is now the jumpstart or the building block for the upcoming year. And if you had the ability to add an additional month or additional 45 days to ensure you hit your 2025 goals, now is the time to go ahead and do so. So I look forward to spending time with those that are dedicated and committed to really changing their lives this year and look forward to seeing everyone's success.

Hope to see you guys in January. Make it an awesome holiday season. Hey guys, are you simply sick of juggling a dozen different software tools for your real estate business? I know I was, and I know I'm not a tech person, so it was frustrating. A subscription for this, you got a subscription for that, and they don't even work together out of the box. That's very frustrating, especially in the real estate world where your best time spent is going to be out in the field or on the phone with sellers. And now you're stuck hiring a tech guru just to make all that sync up. So let's ditch the chaos and let REI BlackBook handle everything. Automate your lead follow-up, track every deal, analyze things quickly for you, make offers all in one platform. In fact, with the Wicked Smart platform, we now have access, if you're in the Wicked Smart community, to all the other associates' properties. Can you imagine that? So you're brand new in the business perhaps, and your seller looks on your website and sees 20, 30, 40 properties, instant credibility. So you're going to get everything on REI Black Book from our custom workflows for lead generation all the way to closing. It has it covered. Try it today for just a buck. $1, guys. Visit smartrealestatecoach.com/reibb-dd. smartrealestatecoach.com/reibb-dd.

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