Episode 567: Automating 90% of Your Real Estate Business with Keith Gillespie

Welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast, your source for actionable, real-life, practical investing advice. Each week we help you make a quantum leap somewhere in your business, your finances, and/or your life. Subscribe, leave a rating and review, and learn more at smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. All right. Welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast, where we talk real deals, real strategies and how to actually build predictable income and long-term wealth simultaneously without relying on banks. I'm Chris Prefontaine. I'm glad you're here. I'm your host again. Today we're going to hang out and chat very briefly here for 15 or 20 minutes or so with Keith Gillespie. Now, I love a bunch of stuff about Keith. He's the founder of REI Automated, which you'll hear about. It's a platform that helps investors like you and I, all different niches, which you'll also hear about here in a second, actually build a business that runs on systems instead of kind of reactive chaos. And that's my word, not his, but I think it's super important for you to know that because there's a lot of options you have out there for this. He's helped hundreds of investors close more contracts, more deals. We call it takings, capture millions in equity, and finally build some sort of lifestyle, some freedom through automation. All this It's kind of like the same philosophy we have, no fluff, right to the point. He's military background, his tribe is military background. He's just an amazing individual. Okay, Keith, with that as a little background, welcome to the show, my friend.

Thank you very much for having me. Super appreciate it.

You bet. Keith, just as a, you know, I just gave a 2, 3 sentence intro, why don't you take these guys behind the green curtain, a little bit of background of how you kind of landed here. And then, we'll peel back some of the onion here together.

Well, the 60-second version was I was active duty in the Marines. I was gone away from home all the time and my kids didn't know me.

Thank you for your service, by the way.

Absolutely. Thank you. I was gone all the time. My kids didn't know me. My wife had to keep on reintroducing me to my own children over a period of 8 years that I was active duty. I went overseas 13 different times. And so, needless to say, I would come home and my son doesn't really know who I am and he's hiding behind my wife. And so, that broke my heart and I chose real estate to be my vehicle, if you will, to become financially free, to come home, to father my children, to be a good husband to my wife. And now, I get to work from home all day, every day. I get to see my kids. I get to be their coach for volleyball and for baseball. And so, that was really important to me. And real estate turned into, hey, we've got some good processes and good SOPs here. Let's also turn it into a software company that helps other real estate investors. So 2 separate businesses doing 2 different things.

I love it. How old are your kids now, by the way?

Well, about in one week we're going to have a 9-year-old and a 10-year-old.

Okay, very good. Cool ages. That's awesome. I asked because I remember the days of my home office and they would be trying to torture me from outside the door. So that's a great age.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't do that.

Good stuff. All right, Keith. So what— let me go into a few things here, actually. There are a lot of people I'm sure that touched right there, just not necessarily military, but hey, I don't get to see my kids, right?

Yeah.

This drives me crazy. There are so many people listening now that have a W-2 and just haven't kind of made that, made that break. So I don't know if you want to address or if you could, sorry, address that like them directly. And then we can talk about the existing real estate investors too. It's 2 different kind of categories. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so frankly, I, the majority of my clientele are high-income W-2 earners with extremely demanding jobs.

There you go.

And, and many of them actually are active duty. We have tons of Army, Marines, Navy, of course, because that's kind of who I am and who I'm going to bring in, but also like EMS, first responders, police, firefighters, things like this. And, um, and so those people, you know, they're, they're working night shift, they're constantly gone, they're working 10, 12 hours a day. We have high-level, um, executives like C-suite officers of large companies that have, you know, 15,000, 25,000 people that, that they're, you know, they're working on. But at the same time, they're like, man, I'm strapped for time. I have no time with my kids. I'm making good money. I'm making $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 over here. However, I need to, I need to get out. I need to come home to my wife and kids or to my husband and children. And so the cool thing about that is real estate is, the market is hard. Real estate is hard. Entrepreneurship is hard, right? But at the end of the day, every single business, no matter what it is, any business that has withstood the test of time operates on systems. So everything can and should be be systematized. And once you've created a system around it, if you can automate it, wonderful. Let's let a computer do it. Let's let AI do it. Let's let a robot do it, right? Because they don't get sick, they don't complain, and they never ask for a raise. They show up for work, blah, blah, blah. However, there are some things that shouldn't be delegated to a robot. They should be delegated to a human. And so now we're bringing in personnel, team members to do these things. And all of the, you know, a lot of people have this, limiting belief of I can't do this all by myself. Well, the fact of the matter is I was over— I have the biggest excuse of anybody, right? I was overseas constantly. We didn't have freaking running water, much less Wi-Fi, you know. So, so, uh, we have, you know, one of my favorite clients to talk about. His name is Brian. He's active duty, uh, as a naval officer, and he's going to school full-time. I think he has 22 or 23, uh, course credits. And he has a, you know, baby daughter. Dude, he's been with me for less than one year and he just completed deal number 10.

That's awesome.

So he has huge excuses, but he doesn't let those excuses— he doesn't use those excuses, right? You can have results or you can have excuses. You cannot have them simultaneously.

Let's peel that one back actually, uh, just so it's good dive into that. So what— give me some examples, give the listeners some examples of what that meant. Like when you got I say got ahold of him. When you guys connected and you started ripping apart things, what did you find and what did you, what was the end result? What'd you do?

Well, he was totally brand new. He had never done a single deal when he came into the program. And so we met from a mutual friend also in the military. And I spoke, actually, I had a speaking engagement in front of about, I don't know, 45 or so active duty and veterans. And he was like, this guy knows his stuff. I was just screen sharing. It wasn't like an actual presentation. I was just screen sharing. Hey, these are the deals that I have going. And I was showing just the meticulous level of systems. There's a checklist for everything, everything, everything. Because my business is run by virtual assistants, right? We have 12 virtual assistants that do everything 100%. Like I do not, I'm not in the day-to-day in any way, shape, or form. I do nothing. I just manage and lead these people, make sure that we're holding high standards. And so I'm showing these folks like, hey, you're active duty. I don't care. You know, shut up or put up type of deal. Let me show you why there is no excuse. You just have to, because a lot of people, you know, they're seeing life through a certain perspective and they don't even know that you can do these things. They don't know that these things exist. They don't know that you can systemize and automate the majority of your workflow. And so that was, that's really what I was doing is I was just proving to this room, hey, we've actually been able to automate more than 90% of a real estate investor's mundane, repetitive, stupid, menial tasks. You know, we're able to put those and make the computer do the work.

And most of the people you work with, if you could summarize it, are they, what type of deals? I should assess that. Generally speaking, is it one niche? Is it across different niches? Or is it, you know, we're more in the creative on this end.

Yeah, I'm deal type agnostic. I started with wholesaling, then I got into flipping, then I got into wrapping notes, then I got into novations, then I got into rentals, right? So whether you want to wholesale or retail or wrap or rent or novations or lease options or whatever, I don't really care. At the end of the day, I really love creative financing, especially when you're getting in the game because it lowers your barrier of entry. Making it easier to do more deals right off the bat. And so I don't do a lot of cash deals, about 30, depending on the month of the year that you want to look at, anywhere between 30 to 35% of my deals are cash. All the rest of them are creative finance.

Nice. That's awesome. So it fits tremendously well. I mean, it fits well no matter what, because we have all different people listening, but by and large, as you know, we do creative. So that's nice. So what are some of the biggest mistakes then? I'm just kind of logically going through this. If I'm listening, I'm going, all right, I get it. Automation. What are some mistakes you see people make even when you get ahold of them? Is it fear of some of the stuff you teach? Is it fear of automation? Is it tech challenge? Like what, anything you see mistakes being made?

Yeah. First, uh, well, I'll, I'll talk about, there's 2 things that I'll bring up. The first is that people like to do busy work that doesn't actually move the needle. So rule number one in business is keep revenue in first position. And if you're not doing something that's driving revenue, you are literally wasting time. You're absolutely going to fail, 100% certainty, because revenue obviously is what drives the business. And if you're over here trying to change your freaking logo or your color scheme or make sure that your email signatures— nobody cares. That doesn't drive revenue. Go pick up the phone and talk to more sellers. Like, marketing is what's going to make the difference for you. Yeah. And so that, that's, um, foolish. Whatever naive, I'm young, I'm dumb, I'm new to this. Whatever that's going to be the first mistake that I see. The next one is people don't have all of the ingredients that they need to be successful. I believe that you need to have three ingredients in order to be successful. You start with the right education, then you have the right systems, then you have the right support. Without the right education, you're literally dead in the water because you don't even have the right know-how, much less the mentality. In order to go, you don't even know what to do, right? However, you can read all the books and you can take all the courses that you want. You can be super brilliant, head smart, but you're not street smart because you don't have any systems in which to go out and execute those things. You can know how to fish, but if you don't have the rod and the reel, if you don't have the tool and the resource, you're screwed. I like fishing. That's why I'm bringing that up.

No, it's all good. And it's execution. Yeah.

Yeah, you have to have the system in which to execute, and so that's why we created software. Right? We have education. We have software. And then I can also tell you that you can have all the right education. You can have all the right systems. However, if you don't have the right support, you're going to get burnt out or you're going to get taken out. Meaning you have. I mean, you've had dark days. I've had dark days. You go through seasons of life, and you're like, dude, I just need a friend. I need somebody who can whip some sense into me. Somebody who's been there, done that. They've You know, walked through the treacherous water and they know how to navigate, you know, help me get out of it. And I think that's super important as well because real estate is like the wild, wild west still. And you're going to get out there and you're going to have a seller who asks you a question you don't know the answer to, who's going to throw up an objection that you need to overcome. Some title company is going to run into an issue, some contractor is going to try to screw you, whatever.

All of the above.

And you have to have somebody who's been there and, and who can help you walk that.

You know, it doesn't matter if you're brand new to real estate or if you've been doing this for several years or a whole bunch of years. I learned the hard way back during the crash that doing creative deals is much better. It's a much better path in real estate in general than let's call it the old way, getting paid once, using banks, signing personally. 3 paydays, getting paid 3 times on a deal. It's better 3 ways, not one. Money now, money over time, and money long-term. And I don't care if you're in an up, down, sideways market, it doesn't matter. You can and should operate with the utmost confidence. There's literally nothing I love more than helping people create systems and simple systems and processes to become massively successful with our 3 Payday System, and doing so in literally any market and doing it geographically literally anywhere. So if you've been learning and learning and listening and studying and not taking action, I'm telling you after going through it myself, it's costing you tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by not taking action on the 3 paydays the way you should be getting paid. Many of the people that were brand new, just like you, that joined our community have fast-tracked their startup. Now, I mean, wouldn't that be ideal? If you said, okay, should I go fast or slow? Should I take action now or later? It's costing you too much money to wait. Each one of you are at a point in your life, I'm sure, where you want things to be easier. You want things to be better for you and your family. You probably realize that you not only want more, but you deserve more. In this life. So, to be able to give your family everything they want, build a legacy for you personally too, and to have time freedom to start enjoying life, frankly, whatever else you're seeking. And for some of you, now's the time, for example, to just focus on security. Maybe it's building a big solid bank account for retirement. We take these things super, super seriously, and it's my life's biggest reward to help you achieve them. I want to give you a free discovery session with our team. It's free. It's 15 or 20 minutes. You have zero to lose and everything to gain. And to understand how you might fit into the 3 Payday System that we've done now in over 80 markets as of this filming, go to smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery for a free call with our team. smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery. Because it's not whether or not you can do it or whether or not you fit. You can do it. It's whether or not you'll take action and do what it takes. And we can guide you through that process. That's smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery. We'll see you soon. Yeah. So, okay. So this begs this question because I've been screaming about this for years. When I started the coaching part of my journey, it's been 35 years, but coaching for, I don't know, call it 13 years, there were probably 4 people I could say, yep, this person, this person, this person, they're out there coaching. Now there's 200. There's about 200 because we belong to groups and we're with them. But they're not all, they're not all what you just described though, because they might just have a big following and never did a deal. They might have a big following and did 2 deals. Like, it's crazy. So I wanted your opinion on that because what you just described is what I've been screaming about. Like, you gotta have someone that's been there, done that, or you're going to have a headache. What are your thoughts on all the supposed coaches that aren't, they don't have that? What should these people do to find that? And find to vet that out.

I think that it's important. Well, here's what I'll tell you. So I have my real estate investing company, and then I also have my software company. I am here to tell you that you cannot grow two companies simultaneously. I I spend at least quarters, if not even six months at a time, pushing one or the other, one or the other. So I'm buying deals, and when I'm buying deals, RIA Automated is kind of just like. flatlined, if you will. And then when I'm over here developing software and pushing with marketing and affiliates and things like this, then we're more or less just maintaining on the real estate investing side. And so from personal experience, 10 years doing real estate and 5 years doing software simultaneously with a 5-year overlap like this.

Yep.

I can confidently tell you, unless you have like a legit CEO or COO or a partner, which I have none of the above, You cannot grow 2 companies simultaneously. And so I feel for people who they're trying to do both. They're trying to grow both because you will fail. I have failed a lot in both of these companies. That said, I think that there's a lot of people out in the education space. I won't even call them coaches in the education space. Let's call this the info space because you can buy, you know, education by courses, info. So they're in the info space. They're not in the coaching space. They can't be in the coaching space because they're not qualified to coach. I don't think that they're really qualified to educate because they don't really have any real-world experience. They've maybe done 10, 15, 20 deals tops, and then threw together some shoddy course that's half-assed and doesn't have tried and true time-tested. There's this book written by Ray Dalio. He's the largest hedge fund manager to ever exist. It's a book called Principles.

Yeah.

And amazing. I mean, it's a dry read, the size of a dictionary, but man, it has taught me a lot. What it comes down to, though, is you have to build your company in a very principle-based manner. And these folks, they don't have good principles. Maybe they found something that worked a time or two, but at this point, like, I've done deals across 34 states. I feel like I'm qualified to tell you how to flip a house or how to novate a house or how to whatever. That said, I mean, I even feel as I'm growing REI Automated and Crown Properties, my real estate investing business is kind of just maintaining. Dude, there's stuff that's changing so fast, especially in like the wholesaling world and TCPA compliance. Oh my goodness. I have to like, it's a struggle. I'm not going to lie. It is very difficult to find somebody who's doing both of these things well.

I agree. Well said. Well summarized without me going on a riff. That's perfect. Talk about your free course that you're nice enough to give. I'm going to give these guys a link, but I want them to know where they're going and why. smartrealestatecoach.com, guys, /REIAutomated. So just go smartrealestatecoach.com/REIAutomated. And thank you for doing that. And what's it—

what are they going to get? You're very welcome. So this is for all of your listeners here. I have a multitude of different courses. I think When they go to that website, there's eight of them I believe that I've selected. I have thirteen courses in total. Eight of them are for beginner-ish people. Five of them very advanced. Not not good for beginners, and nor are they free. These ones though, you can go to go to Chris's website and you can choose any one of these courses for free. If you don't know, you know, I was throwing out a whole bunch of wholesale, wholesale, retail, wrap, rent, novations, lease options, things like this. If you don't know that, then get the deal structure dictionary. If you know that sort of stuff, but you don't have any leads coming in, how are you going to make money? Get my marketing course. It teaches you how to market inbound, outbound leads, you know, high-intent leads, low-intent leads, free, paid, whatever, like warm, cold. I have everything there. If you have leads coming in, but you suck on the phone and you just keep on getting no, no, no, no, no, you need to get better at triaging sellers. Stop selling and start asking. I have a sales and negotiation course. If you don't know how to analyze deals and you're struggling with your ARV or estimating repairs, get the Deal Analyzer course. I can keep on going, but I don't want to. Yeah, there's several courses. Find the one that is going to bless you and your business the most and choose— just find the one that you suck at or the one that is highest up in the funnel, meaning comes first in order of— what's the word I'm looking for? Not in order of priority, but sequential order. Like, don't go to step 3 if you don't have step 1 done yet. So find that one.

Got it. Love it. Thank you for that. And how else can these guys reach you then? And we can wrap up with a couple thoughts and questions. Anything you want to share?

I am trying to build my social media. So I think the only thing that really is going to be successful is just find me on Facebook, Keith Gillespie. Gillespie is spelled a little bit weird. It's G-I-L-L-I-S-P-I-E. Just search me on Facebook. If you need anything, send me a message. I'll respond. I'll make sure that you get some help if you have any issues or questions about those courses.

Love it, Keith. I appreciate that. What, I mean, all we did here is tease and plant the seed and give them access to you. That's right. That was my goal. What else, what other nugget might you share that I didn't ask you that we can impart on the Wicked Smart listeners out there?

I think that A lot of— well, again, maybe I'm only speaking to my audience right now. But again, most of my audience is military, former military, law enforcement, emergency personnel, stuff like this. We're very manly men. We have a hard time asking for help. We have a hard time raising our hand, admitting I don't freaking know what I'm doing. I'm on the struggle bus. This is hard and I don't want to go through the thick of this stupidity. And I think that oftentimes we need to humble ourselves a little bit, go to somebody who has already paved the path, honor them by saying, hey, you have what I want. You're doing what I want to do. It seems like you would be a good person to help me. And, you know, Setting your pride aside, going to that person. Because at the end of the day, my, um, my life coach's name is Rock Thomas. He says success leaves clues. It's like a trail of breadcrumbs. Hey, if you want to have the success that that person has, and you kind of have to do what that person's done— that doesn't mean, by the way, that you should be doing what they're doing, because they could be in their chapter 15 of their book and you're starting your chapter 1. Well, you shouldn't be doing what they're doing in their chapter 15. You got to start what they did in their chapter 1. What's the best way to find that out? Go ask them. Go find somebody who has what you want, who's doing what you want to do.

I love it. And obviously, the next question I was going to ask you, you already answered because you have a coach. I have many.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Rock's awesome. Rock spoke at one of our events. I think it was during COVID We've done some things with Rock. Yeah. Tell him. Absolutely. Tell him I said hello. You're in great hands there, obviously. Yeah. So yeah, Keith, I couldn't agree. Everything you said aligns with what Soto Tribe has been screaming about for a long time. So I appreciate you being on. I know we'll chat offline. I think there's a lot we could align on outside of this short chat we had. Yeah, super appreciate you coming on and sharing and appreciate your reports, obviously.

Thanks for coming. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

All right, smart listeners, I appreciate you being here. If this episode in any shape, form, or fashion helped you, share it with someone. Share it with someone who needs it. When you're ready to take this beyond just listening though, Head over to smartrealestatecoach.com and let's get to work together, guys. We have Deal Lab coming up here about every 6 weeks in our office, and I'd love to see you at our Deal Lab. You are going to absolutely love it. For more information on that, just email support@smartrealestatecoach.com. We'll see you next week. 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 get 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. hyphen DD. smartrealestatecoach.com/reiboy-dd. All right. Thanks for tuning in to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you got value from today's episode, guys, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. It literally takes one nugget to access some of the things we're doing. And when you're talking the amount of the size, rather, of the Paydays. It's an opportunity cost that you can't let go. So don't miss an episode. And for goodness' sake, share it with someone who needs to hear it. If you're ready to find your best path for getting started on your real estate investing journey in general, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com/getstarted. We're going to help you take the guesswork out of your next steps. See you in the next episode.