Be inspired by this story of zero to hero using the power of real estate.

From a young immigrant with no financial literacy to a celebrated real estate investor, Joe is a true testament to hard work and discipline. 
As an investor, he has made it his mission to help others achieve financial freedom while enjoying living a life of passion, fulfillment, and empowerment.

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1.
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FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION: 

Justin Stoddart 0:01
So the big question is this. How do we those of us in the real estate industry with crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddard. And this is the Think Bigger Real Estate Show.

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I’m your host, Justin Stoddart. Today, I’m going to give you a vision of what the real estate industry can do for you, number one, and number two, we’re also going to learn some ins and outs on how you can move from just facilitating other people’s investments to you moving to the investor side of the transaction, excited to share guests who’s expert at doing that his story is inspiring. We’ll be right back with that in just a moment.

All right, and welcome back again to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show, excited to introduce to you, Joe Arius. Joe story, as I mentioned, is inspiring. Really went from zero to hero using the real estate industry. He’s now authored four books, he has a lot of resources, it’ll be very helpful for you, when you’re like I’d love to be an investor. In fact, I had a pretty good year last year, but I would, I don’t know where to begin, right. And it could even be the fact that you’re in the spot where I want to start working with more investors to really get comfortable with that. He’s going to give some very solid tips on what to do and what not to do when working with investors. So that again, you can leverage real estate as an income source. But as an investment source, Joe Aires, thanks for taking your time and your talent and sharing with our audience today. Absolutely, Justin. Oh, everyone. So good to have you here, my friend.

Tell us quickly, let’s let’s let’s start with the end in mind. So people have some perspective on what you’ve created, and then want to go backwards and talk a little bit about how you got there. Because that will really help everybody to mimic and create similar success. So talk to us a little bit about kind of what your world looks like now.

Joe Arias 2:07
So yeah, so what what you know, just to bring a little bit of context, I’ve been in the business of flipping houses. I’m an expert on flipping here in Los Angeles, for the last 10 years. And what we’ve been working for the last, you know, now in the last two years is we’ve been working on, you know, a few years ago, when I started flipping houses, I started noticing certain mistakes, and I was always making certain things were repeating, right, certain things.

Some mistakes were repeating, but also some patterns of success were repeating. So what, what what we started, we noticed that some kitchens were selling faster. And as agents I know that your amazing audience or mostly real estate agents, is that, you know, the kitchen and the master bathroom are the two most important parts of the house, right. So we started noticing that certain houses were selling faster than others. And we started putting together some systems that takes me to today, where we literally for the last two years, we’ve been developing with a big team of investors,

back end a system where people can find off market deals, for agents for your clients. And also, I see that there’s a tremendous opportunity, Justin for agents to maybe change their agent Cup for the investor cup, and do some deals on the side. So I think that there’s a massive opportunity for, for everyone to especially agents, I would say a lot of the times, being an agent is almost like a superpower that you don’t know you have it where you can transition very quickly to flipping, you can still get all your agents, but also do one flip every six months, two flips every year, three flips and make an extra 50 100 $200,000 yearly. So to answer your question today, we for the last two years, we’ve developed an incredible backend system to help new investors to flip houses, but also to buy rentals.

Justin Stoddart 4:10
You know, I think your words are interesting, because a lot of people are concerned about the first one, right? That there’s almost people sitting on the sidelines, again, who have made good money in this market, who were like I just don’t want to lose it all on a bad flip. If I had my team of professionals if I knew what to update and what not to update if I knew how to find an off market deal because that’s where the deals are at.

Right? Then I would jump in and be doing like you said one every six months. Again, what a great way to boost your income by by stepping out of the facilitating of the transaction to being you know, the kind of the key of the transaction that I think that’s where the people who I really admire what they’ve done in real estate a short period of time they say Justin if I could only go back and talk to myself, the very first year and I first got involved in real estate it would be to to invest in a property one

like at least one property every year to raise my goals in real estate, not just to cover my income and my and my expense, you know, my expenses and my income goals. But to rise a little bit above that to say, okay, and how much would it cost for me to be an investor? How much would I need to earn learn to be an investor, if I could do that every year, whether it’s to flip or whether it’s to buy and hold. Now, all of a sudden, you don’t have to be looking at a 30 year real estate career, it could be, you know, a five to 10 year real estate career, not that you might continue because you love it, but you don’t have to, because you have to right.

Joe Arias 5:36
Just think about is just a very, very great way to put it. Um, think about you’re talking about the first deal, we’re talking about the first deal. Think about as an agent, as a new investor, as a doctor, as a employee of a company as a freelancer, whatever that is. Think about what is it that prevent us from making the first deal? What would you say that there’s no right or wrong? But what is that? I’d say fear of failure, right? It’s not just, I’m embarrassed. It’s the fact that I might be upside down, right? I might lose 50 grand, I might lose 100 grand here. I love it. Well, that’s a great, because I you know, you could say well, experience, right. But we also a lot of the times do something for the first time that we don’t have experience. I’m still doing so. So if it’s fear of failure, right? Fear of success, which might be even worse than the fear of failure, right? Whatever the fear is, right? What, what is the fear of you did mention losing $50,000? Would you say that the fear is to lose your savings? Maybe? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

If your fear that could be that’s yeah, there’s no right or wrong. So if your fear if you have a fear of maybe losing money, what I love about flipping, is when you flip, and and you know, you’re in Oregon, right? So why don’t assign this Oregon nationwide, it doesn’t matter.

Because when you’re flipping a house, you have two kinds of lenders, you have a hard money lender, which will literally give you the money will give you up to 90% of the purchase price of the property, and 100% of the remodel budget. So if you combine all the money, you almost have 95% of the money, it almost feels like an FHA, right, where you actually have to come up, it’s not conventional, but you have to come up with about 5% of the total amount of money that you need. And the loan is not subject to your tax returns is that is subject to how good of the deal you found is.

So you got a hard money loan, which is not your money. And then you have a private money lender, which is also not your money. None of my flips, I use my money. Now we’re not leveraging other people’s money because we’re scared to lose the money. And then, you know, screw someone else. No, we leverage other people’s money. So we can scale this.

So now your fear has vanished. Because I just told you that you don’t you don’t need to use any of your money to flip your first house. Now we’re talking to you, Justin, but we don’t do everyone. Right. So what is your fear now?

Yeah, okay. So if the if take the money thing off that off, it’s off the table? Just the amount of let’s say time, like, how much time is it going to take me to find the right subcontractors, the right suppliers to manage them, we should the project’s done, right? Like that. There’s an opportunity cost every, every minute, every hour that I put into something,

whatever they can take me, you probably brought the most important part, which is the time. And it’s not just time, but it’s the attention that we have, right, the attention is part of our lives. Because that way, I feel like we all have time. But most importantly, today, the present the attention for the time. So let me let me talk about time. How much and is this something that and the reason why I’m going is back and forth is assumptions. We just have to like, listen it from a different perspective to be like, this give me something I can actually do. So inside of time, how much time did it it takes someone to get their first deal as a real estate agent? Yeah.

Justin Stoddart 9:24
Is that a question?

Joe Arias 9:26
Yeah, I mean, I’ve you know, I’ve I attempted to be an agent for a while. You wait too much to get the first deal. So I was like, Man, I’m gonna continue flipping because I’m having Okay, right. Like, what’s the average four months, like?

Justin Stoddart 9:40
Well, so Okay, so from a new agent getting licensed to close in their first deal. I would say if they’re, I mean, there’s there’s obviously a sales cycle that’s going to take at least 30 to 60 days, right. Once they find a client find him get an offer accepted. There’s still a 30 day period of time there. So you take adding that on to it. I would say most agents that are really treating it like a real business, right can generate one deal in the first 90 days, let’s say, Right, wow. Like, that’s not enough to support their family, right, that might have just paid off some business expenses.

Joe Arias 10:14
And so it’s it’s, you know, obviously some some kind of upward trajectory, though. Yeah. And that’s maybe like someone like you just see, but there’s a lot of people there that, that when they start, you know, they don’t have that tenacity, or they don’t know, they don’t know what they don’t know. Right. They, they, they might, they don’t have the systems, they don’t have the dialers per se, they’re not the first five months, I remember, like, I would stare at the phone, right. And I’d be like, I have to cold call.

I don’t like doing that. Right. So. So um, so you know, just to kind of like, bring it full circle, my, what I’m attempting to say is that you do not need your own money to flip houses. And, and I let what I love about the time is that I feel like as an agent, if you actually flip a house, that’s going to be a lead magnet to represent more buyers and sellers in your local market.

What I here’s a little ninja tip. If you do buy a house, if you’re flipping a house, put in big, a big sign outside of your house. And you can literally say buy a house it bought up all buy houses like this one, I’m an investor. And what you’re going to have is you’re going to have some neighbors that might be interested in selling their own houses to you. But then you can transition that to hey, you know, thank you so much for the offer. I’m not actually buying anything right now. But I’m an agent, and I would love to work with you. Right? So there’s a transition also that you can that you can leverage.

Justin Stoddart 11:49
I want to share something here, I’m going to put kind of what you said just in some different terms I agree with what you’re saying is that oftentimes we will look at a listing as a commission in the pipeline, right, which is true. I would also encourage them to see it as a couple things.

Number one, backing up the goal to win in any marketplace is to gain mindshare, you have to gain mindshare before you gain market share, people have to know who you are, you have to own real estate in their brain, before you can represent them with their real estate, if they don’t know who you are, you will always lose. And the way to get real estate is obviously to be present. And if you can see every listing as the fact that you are have the opportunity almost to have a billboard on someone else’s property for free, right, it’s, obviously people pay big money $10,000 Plus, to have signage along a busy road freeway to have their name and brand up there. That’s the added benefit of having listings, right.

And what I hear you saying is that when you are an investor with a property, you get that very same opportunity, essentially, for a matter of months, probably even longer than listings are lasting these days. Because now you’re remodeling the home, you now own a piece of real estate or you’re renting kind of for free, a piece of real estate on which you can brand yourself. And I would even add to that, that there’s the added opportunity and benefit of treating that almost like a satellite office right to where you can get to know the neighbors you can get to know the neighborhood you can get to know what people’s concerns are what the what the pros with the cons are the neighborhood because you’re they’re present because now you are spending time in that neighborhood.

And I think when we look at an investment as now you’re you’re getting more time to be present in that neighborhood more time to get to know people you’re getting more time to brand yourself and have your your face and your sign in that particular yard. It just gives you more exposure and gives you the ability to have, again, more potential mindshare, so that you can gain more market share in that area. So, you know, what a great way that probably few have thought of including me, which is Yes, it’s good to have listings, because you get that experience. But when you are an investor, you just own that space, you rent that space for free to brand yourself for a little bit longer. Yeah, you can have everything you said and also if you’re flipping it, right, because the life of a flip is much shorter than a life of a rental. We can leverage that you can you can do.

Joe Arias 14:14
You can you know you’re not introducing yourself as an as an agent, you’re introducing yourself as an investor and then you’re gaining territory. I don’t want to get like strategic about it, but there’s there’s different ways to do it. Um, you know, and I think that there’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of power another another topic that is really interesting is you know, either you’re an agent, investor, whatever, you know, here let’s talk about being you know, being an agent, as an agent you have to become you have to be honest with yourself and it’s good to have this conversations from from now from today. Right? But you got to we all have to become honest with ourselves and say what, why are we doing what? What we’re doing

If I were doing it for money, fine, you’re doing it for money. There’s nothing wrong with that, actually, that’s a positive thing. Are you doing it for the money? Some people are some people, not. Some people are doing it for the service, right? They literally have a giving personality. And some people are doing it for the money and for the service. Some people are doing it. Maybe too, because they hate their jobs. And they want to be an agent because they saw an opportunity to work for their own right, amazing, right? Whatever your reason is, without getting in a morality conversation, if it’s right or wrong, and money and all that, but it’s like, be honest on why are you doing, if you’re doing it for the money, flipping rentals, it’s definitely aligned to it, right, it’s literally aligned, because you’re gonna make more money as a flipping while you’re an agent. If you’re doing it for the service, well, then you’re making a huge shift, you’re not only like selling or putting finally into home, you’re actually creating a vehicle you’re literally creating a space where people will live there, you’re remodeling it, you’re putting your own patch, wood flooring, right? Where the countertop so, so be, be honest with Why are you being an agent, and then, and then see how flipping or owning investments could could empower that.

Justin Stoddart 16:16
I love that it really is a, again, a more broad perspective on the why behind investing, everybody gets that I want to have my money working for me when I’m not working. But to also look at impact, you know, three of the things that I preach are income, independence, or freedom from your business, and impact. And when you look at a flip through those eyes, it’s obviously that’s more impactful on taking a property that needs to be rehabilitated to a beautiful home that a family loves and adores and gets to move in and raise their family, they’re like what a more sacred place on Earth than that, I don’t know of one, that, that now all of a sudden, you had a hand in making that come come about come to be. And that’s pretty exciting. I think that another side of of investing that a lot of people can look at and be very proud of be very excited about. Because of that, you know, those components, you put it out, talk to us, Joe, if you would mind.

We’re going to talk here at the end, for those that are interested about how you can get access to some of Joe’s resources that will take all of the uncertainty out of this for you. Okay, but before I go there, you obviously have worked with agents before as an investor, what are what’s maybe one, one or two things that agents do that you hate that you despise, you’re like, I wish they would not do that. And maybe one or two things that you love, like the agents that you love working with? What what separates, you know, agents that are a good fit for investors and those that aren’t? What a great question.

Joe Arias 18:08
Um, what what, what are these, what I love? What are the things that I hate? Let me think about it. The things that I love, as an investor, as an investor, especially when you’re flipping time is money, you’re leveraging other people’s money, and you have to be even more responsible for someone else’s money than your own money. So when you are flipping a house, you have a timeline on remodel, and then on buying and selling. So for me, I love when an agent when I call someone, so there’s like the ninja like level, which is they always take all my phone calls, right? And I’m not talking about like that, you know, when you’re calling someone and you are not working with them, and they don’t have time for us they shouldn’t, I’m talking about when you whether they should or shouldn’t. But I’m talking about when you have a relationship with an agent, you are in a contract, you’re working with them. I personally love when they always take my calls. Even if they’re like, Joe, I’m in the middle of a walkthrough right now, I can’t call you in five minutes or in an hour, right. But when they take my phone calls, I think that that as a as a consumer, we always love that, right? Either you’re an investor or you’re, you know, you want to you know, you’re you have a phone provider or whatever the services when someone is available for you. It’s important. Um, and if that’s not the case, when they are in communication. As an agent, I’ve noticed that the top agents are people that they learn to manage

I don’t have anything that I don’t like, I think it’s more of a personality, with some people you get along, um, call it horse Cove call it, you know, like, type, calling personality type, whatever that is, which I don’t really know what it is. And I just think that, you know, like, as you should, you know, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna invest the time and efficiency of your time with someone, make sure it’s someone that you like, I think, you know, don’t work with someone you don’t like.

Justin Stoddart 21:01
Make sense? It’s good stuff. Joe, talk to us a little bit about I know, you’ve got an event coming up in February to really take the mystery out of flipping for people. And you also have resource, I believe you call it the elite, where people get access to everything from okay, you’re going to, you’re going to remodel a kitchen, here are the exact make model of cabinets, countertops, appliances that you need to purchase, that have been proven to get a high return, right?

touch a little bit about how people get access to that, again, all the all the unknowns that are keeping people on the sidelines that otherwise should be in again, making more money making more impact.

Tell us about how people can access that from you.

Joe Arias 21:45
Yeah, so I know I’m a little philosophical today. But I always think about a problem and a solution, right? The biggest intrapreneurs that masks the Bezos, you know, the people that are making real change are people that are creating real solutions to problems, right. And without getting into detail into the service as agents, you’re definitely providing a massive solution to people to find them the right place to sell them the right place at the right at their place at the right price. So the problems that I have solutions for are number one, finding off market deals, that’s a problem. People are having a hard time finding off market deals as an investor, as an agent, you got the MLS, the multiple listing service, you’re good to go right. But even like you might have as an agent, you might have a client that is an investor. So how do you I mean, the investors, you know, similar to you, the ones that I’ve spoken with, like once they hit the market, they’re typically not a great deal, right? That’s right stuff, and stuff where you make the money of market. That’s the strategy.

That’s a problem. But I sold number one. Another problem that I solve is asset protection. Right. And we haven’t even talked about this, which is, if I purchase a property, I’m I’m gonna own it under an LLC. I’m not going to be a member, am I going to be a trustee? Am I gonna have a land trust? Right? Because Because you could but find a great place, you could buy it right as an investor. But God forbid something happens to one of the contractors or the subcontractors, and now you might have a lawsuit. So what strategy are you going to do that you’re going to have a veil, and you’re going to have a

level of protection that make you feel really comfortable. That’s another problem that we have a solution for. Um, you know, the whole construction, right? You talked about kitchens and bathrooms, I have, you know, flip after flip, we noticed that certain kitchens, certain homes were selling much faster than others. And we noticed that certain kitchens, master bathrooms were like working much better we start applying those once we start selling our houses for higher pricing and faster time. So those are other other solutions, right? So you got another finding the money that’s another problem by the people have? Well, I have partners that will literally help them with funding, either as a hard money lender or private money lender nationwide. So these are like big things that that that that I and then to answer your question, you can actually go to www dot our real success. Our ask us, our real success, calm. And you can just give us a call and be like, Hey, I just heard you from Think bigger Justin Stoddart, show I how do I move forward? Or how can I hear more? So that’s one one way we are holding a two day seminar. We go from different state to state the next one is going to be in Los Angeles, February 25 26th and 27th Sorry, it’s a Saturday and Sunday and that’s going to be you know,

$195 for today and you can bring someone else. So it’s two people. And the reason why we’re doing this is a lot of people learn about flipping, rentals multifamily single family, like, they learn little bits and pieces, or let me listen to this, let me go to YouTube, right, and they’re learning little bits and pieces. But we what we created two day seminar. So in two days, you can go there from like, 9am to 5pm, take notes, and absorb it all. So you can like when Monday hits, you can start utilizing all these tools that will help

Justin Stoddart 25:36
what’s um, where do people go to get access to that workshop to separate register for that,

Joe Arias 25:43
thanks for asking. They go to www dot two day seminar.com Number two day seminar.com. We have a deal with the Sheraton. So if they fly, they can just booked a discount scanner, right hotel, you get probably booked two nights, and you’ll be able to

Justin Stoddart 26:02
those that are listening to the podcast again, hopefully you captured that. Know that for those that are watching online, and will watch this online, I’ve got the in the comments, I put down both of those URLs. Joe, this has been great. I again, your story of going really from zero to creating a life of, of comfort and possibility, as a result of real estate is inspiring to all of us again, especially right now, right where it’s been a year, everybody has goals established,

I just want to invite everybody that listens to this, to go back and ask yourself are my goals big enough for me to not just facilitate other people’s transactions, but to begin to facilitate my own if they’re not, then go back and revise and raise your goals. Because by doing that, it’s going to get you out of the game faster, it’s gonna get you more freedom. Remember, the goal here is, is to think bigger, which means more income, more independence from your business and more impact. Gee, I really appreciate you helping us lay out kind of a roadmap for that. I want to ask you one more question. As we wrap up here. You’re a big thinker, you help other people to be big thinkers. What is it that you do on a consistent basis to continue to grow yourself to continue to be a big thinker and expand your possibilities? Like a personal development exercise? Yeah.

Well, you’re you’re getting into like a whole world that I love. If I can give you folks any, any personal. Now, no morality, don’t don’t judge or analyze what I do just as something that it helps me. I think that the people you hang out with is the most important thing, the power of association. So I have a fiance my my now fiance, Tanya, right, Tanya is the person that I hang up the most besides the people I work with, right? So I, you know, if you’re, you know, we do so what I did, what we do every night, is we created a five minute video, where we have all of our goals, everything that we love that we want to create, there’s there’s pictures of kids there, there’s pictures of, of homes of certain homes that I like we’re going to live in, there’s pictures of making a difference to other people. So we created a little

Joe Arias 28:19
video five minute video that I that we edited, you know, these days, you can edit anything. We selected a Coldplay song that is called Paradise that I love the song we both love it. And every night, we just played, it’s a five minute thing. We watched a video. And then we and some other nights we acknowledge three things that we love about each other. Um, you know, we focus on the positive, um, and then a new practice that she just introduced, actually, last week. She created a jar. And she told me, Joe, on Sunday, at the end of every week, we’re going to write down what was our favorite moment of that week together. So just a little paper takes 10 seconds. And you know, we went snowboarding last weekend. So what I wrote last weekend was on Sunday I was a road we spent some time snowboarding and we did this and when did that so so that’s the new the new practice.

Justin Stoddart 29:16
I love that video idea. Joe. I think that’s absolutely fantastic. I’ve never heard of that and it right it would not be that difficult to create something like that. So what an absolute gem of a share that you just gave to us. So thank you for that again for those that are that are tuning in or tuning in late. vitiated look at the comments, a couple of sites where you can go get access to years and years and years of knowledge that Joe’s offering to those that work closely with him our real success. com is one place where you can go to get all the inside scoop on how to flip how to become investor more quickly. Again, Joseph authored four books himself. That’s a great place to go to just get resources and then also his two day workshop coming up in the Los Angeles area. WW two day seminar calm Be sure and take a look at that. Joe, thank you for everything that you’ve given.

Joe Arias 30:00
Today, it’s a pleasure to be able to have this conversation with you learn from you and be inspired by you keep up the great work my friend.

And to everybody listening here today my final requests are these three simple words and they are go think bigger. Joe, thanks for helping us do that today, my friend. Thank you, Justin.

Justin Stoddart 30:18
I want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. If you found value here, I asked three things. Number one, give us a review. Number two, go to Facebook groups search Think bigger real estate and apply to join. Here you will find a community of big thinking professionals that will help you grow your income, your independence and your impact. And my third request is go think bigger!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai