Alex Marsolais: Freedom For Family, Employees, and Clients At The Same Time
LISTEN TO FULL EPISODE ON:
"I want to build a family someday, yet I don't want anyone to tell me what time I can or can't take off." This is the mindset that fueled the entrepreneurial drive of Alex Marsolais. Not only did she want this for herself, but she also wanted to build a company that lived out that same mindset for its' employees, and provides a service that helps provide more freedom for their clients. That's what she's doing. In just over five short years, Minnesota Transaction Coordinators has grown to one of the largest real estate administrative companies in the United States. This year, they will close north of 2,000 transactions and currently have a staff of 17 people.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Started in real estate in 2013 and soon realized she loved the admin side of it
- She started her business to have more freedom
- When she hires, she wants to give them opportunities to grow and to have them be well taken care of
- Every transaction is going to be covered even if someone is out sick, on vacation, ect.
- She loves to hear success stories of agents and hearing the stress she was able to take away from them
- Her company focuses on providing consistency and stability
- She realized her business can't grow more than she's willing to
Timestamps: If You Want To Jump Ahead To Your Favorite Part
0:00 - Intro and overview on Alex’s Background
5:39 – How she serves clients
12:30 – How she is able to find business
26:40 – The freedom she gives an agent
32:42 – What freedom looks like for Alex
Links In This Episode:
Alex's Transaction Coordinator Website: https://mntransactions.com/
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome everybody to a new episode of real freedom. And today we've got a different spin on some of the topics that we've previously covered. So we've got a couple of guys here, Brian Driscoll and Chad Keller, and they're going to talk about how they're using digital marketing, to be able to work towards financial freedom. And both of these guys are also real estate investors. And so they just have a lot of wisdom to be able to share with us. So, welcome. Thanks so much for coming on Brian and Chad. And why don't you guys just give us a little bit of a background on you? Yes, sure. So I'll start on. Yeah, we're both actually here in Pittsburgh.
Bryan Driscoll
Yeah, Chad has a different kind of background too. So I'll let him tell you about that. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Nice. Me everyone. Brian got me into the real estate investing game. But prior to that, I'm a marketer. So I've always been a marketer by trade. I've been doing it for about 10 years now. lead generation has been my focus. I've done lead generation for Fortune 500 companies, all the way down to startups. I've created startups, so startups, and got into this with Brian, when I saw that he was crushing in real estate. I'm like, man, like, I don't know what to do investment wise and not kind of savvy, like financial investment wise, but I know that you are and I know that you're doing a lot with real estate, I'd love to learn what you're doing. The me and Brian have always worked together from referring clients on digital and everything.
Bryan Driscoll
And it made a lot of sense for us to just like, hey, like, like, let's grab leads online. And then we started grabbing properties where we wanted them, and all kind of just fell together and came to where we're at today with a bunch of properties together. Ryan has a bunch of his own and we have a bunch together now. So it's pretty fun. It's exciting to do that for a while and see where it goes here in the future.
Mike Swenson
Cool. Well, let's let's dig in a little bit to the investment side. So I know Brian, you were the one that really got started with that and then brought Chad in. How did that investment piece start for you?
Chad Keller
Yeah, so here's how I started I originally got into investing. I was looking for a house to live in. I did another kids I did the house I took the Craigslist and I found a house about like where I live I live about the park. I found a house out here and I went met the guy he's a wholesaler so I mean I'm I don't know anything about like, what all this is about, please tell me I wholesale a house, we got a I got a really good deal. And that introduced me to Hey, you can buy houses that are in like I bought it as is and was a little bit beat up. You can buy houses that aren't in tip top shape, but you get them in a heavy discount, then you can fix them up. They're livable, but you can fix them up while you live there. Do you have to go spend a whole bunch of money up front. So I started doing that I was looking around, I found another property that I didn't need to live in, I started looking around. And I'm like, I picked up a property for like 30,000 bucks, put 20 grand into it. And I was my first rental property. I still got it it's pay me like 950 a month. And you fit and then what I did was I put the money in I remodelled it. And then I went to the bank and I have so much equity in it, I got it's probably appraised at like 150 and I only owe 60 I can take all my money back out and do it again. And and and then attendance paying off the mortgage in 20 years that's kicking off cash flow. It's like a retirement plan. You know, so that's primarily on the real estate what I do so it's the berm method, like buy, and then remodel all that kind of stuff. So that's that's mainly what I do. And I just really like it. Like I like taking junk houses. Getting a couple 30 yard dumpsters getting cleared out and making the mice you know,
Bryan Driscoll
I remember first talking to Brian about this. I was like, how do we get started? He's like, Okay, well, we need to buy a house or you buy a house for around 100,000 He's like, we're gonna buy this completely cash. Just go in and buy it. I'm like, Okay, great, awesome. About the first house, bought it and everything I'm like, so we got to get another one and we're going to go to another 100,000 just buy another house and like, just we're gonna have all this money tied up in real estate. He's like, No, no, you get the money back. I'm like, What do you mean, you get the money back. I was like, we actually get to refinance the house, you actually get the money back in your pocket so that we can use that same money and just keep flipping it. Which is crazy, which was like, so new to me that I'm like, this doesn't even seem right. Like why isn't everyone doing this? So after he introduced me to that I'm like, wow, this is a whole new game. We're about to play here because this fellow about the condition of that first house.
Bryan Driscoll
I was that was that Murdoch? Yeah. Yeah, people walk into these houses and they're not Great situations at all, I got some of these people like I don't even know how, how they live in these houses, but they are still living them. They're like hoarder houses. And we've got a lot of houses that are just hoarders and you walk into these places. And thankfully, we have to wear masks now. But if you didn't have a mask on when you walk in the houses, it's an ugly situation. I remember that for I think it was that phrase that the whole entire house would just smell from the fridge. So they are great, amazing properties, but we make them nice. And it's feel good too. Because you go in and you take something you can actually see your work being done and the changes I can make to these properties. That's fine.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, I was gonna say that was actually how I got my start to with my my first flip is, we bought a house for $36,000 and put about 20 into it, rented it out for a couple years and then ended up selling it. So yeah, so I've looked at a lot of those similar properties. So So how do you so now are you guys doing the work yourself? are you guys doing any of that? Or do you have connections that you made? Or you just hired it out? or How did you kind of take care of all the grunt work on those on the early days?
Chad Keller
Yeah, sure. So in the early days, I learned a lot of lessons and lost money by I pulled people in that stuff. For example, I had a guy that came out I got him on Craigslist. Also, he put on a roof he put half of it on never came back. It's gonna rain the next week, like, he didn't tell me he had to do the whole roof. Yeah, so lesson learned, I had to pay a guy to come out, which is expensive to get a roofer last last minute to fix it for me. I know how to do this stuff in my house, I prefer not to do it in rentals. Currently. Now I've learned though, if you can find a good contract that is reasonable and reliable, do it. But also, if you're a contract, you can save a lot of money doing it yourself, me, it's not my cup of tea now. Yeah. But yeah, so I'm a big believer on working hard, saving your cash. And then using your cash to get other people to do like, you can make more money with your time and give money to the contractor that they can do what they're best at. And then they can get and you get a lot more accomplished, you know, yeah, as they'll do a better job on contract, and I wouldn't do it,
Bryan Driscoll
there's been many times on my grind, we can go over picks out wall where we can do this, or we can do that. He's like, dude, you're insane, like your time, so much better spent by finding us another week or another property or work grabbing another client or whatever it may be like, building a year time versus that, like the time to do that. And especially not knowing how to do that. The time you're gonna waste trying to figure it out. So it's definitely hard not to do it yourself. But if you look at the time factor, it's nice.
Mike Swenson
There is a big self awareness piece of that, like, you have to have to kind of know like, what what's in your lane, what's not in your lane. And you know, kind of, like, know when to run is let other people do that work for you. Because Yeah, you're right, there's, there's ways where you can be much more valuable, with your time spending that finding the next deal or, you know, in multiples versus, you know, hey, I'm gonna take six hours and, and work on fixing this part of the home, I could take those six hours and go find two other homes or something like that.
Chad Keller
Yeah, it's interesting too, because, like, right when you're starting, like, some of your listeners might just be starting, not like when you're starting, you got to do everything yourself. And you just don't have the money, you got to grind the 16 hour days. I mean, we still grind but you got to like, do everything. And then just make sure to hold your cash, like live below your means and then hold that cash and then in the future, you can add there's other people pull the specialists in that are cheaper too. And then you can grow that way then you can put yourself doing more important stuff. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Mike Swenson
So how many how how fast did this grow for you over from from when you started to where you're at now? Like how many units are you at? Or you know, how much of these have you have you already sold a lot of these properties or what is your portfolio look like today?
Chad Keller
Yeah, sure. So it's been about five years I consider like we're like a hobbyist kinda. We have about 15 properties. All single family three bedroom, two bath or three bedroom two bathroom one duplex or single family so having I've never even sold a property I'm just buying and renting like the whole strategy for the long period because for me passive income. Like right now we have mortgages on them. I never over leveraged only ever pull out the cash that we put into the property. For example, I just actually did a closing this morning. We purchased a property two months ago to three bedroom two bath, bought it for 100 grand put 40,000 into it and appraised at 215. So we bought our we only bought 130 backup. Before we got our play money back to do it again. There's like 75,000 equity there. Which is sweet because in 10 years, it might be like 150,000 equity, or whatever you know, and it's kicking off cash. With the mortgage. We're only getting like $300 maybe a month cash flow. button. 20 years, it's probably a double there's no mortgage the tenants like it's not taking any of our cash really.
Bryan Driscoll
Yeah. Which is which is cool.
Mike Swenson
Now most of these houses that you found Was this word of mouth and as you started to grow, or how did that then develop into the online lead generation?
Chad Keller
Yeah. So basically, I set up just a small website, just one of those x a carrot website. I just put it up online and we started marking, I'm like, hey, let's go. Every time I got on Craigslist, I'm paying these fees to wholesalers. I'm like, Well, I think we can get these ourselves and save the 10,000 whatever the wholesale fee is. So he started doing that. And people were calling him like, Okay, this is cool. Like, we're able to generate our own. We don't have to pay a wholesaler. Any properties, we five out of our area we can send to a wholesaler, and there's gonna split the profit with us. So it's kind of a win win there. That's how it started with me. And then Chad, I was talking with him and he's like, he's talking to us privately. Hey, I gotta get in on this. Like, okay, well, I work so for that.
Bryan Driscoll
Yeah, I've always wanted to get into like real estate hardcore. And he always hear everybody talking about it building wealth through real estate all that. That's so much better than having money tied up and getting to two to 4%. Interest a year. Yeah, a lot more in real estate.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. So So talk then about kind of the digital marketing. How does that how does your background with digital marketing intersect with now real estate? Yeah.
Bryan Driscoll
So with digital, like, I've had the opportunity to work with companies spending millions and millions on Facebook a month, I still have affiliate deals and passive income through that, where I do where I spend crazy amounts on Facebook. And you're able to test so much with that, when you have that leverage in that much ad spend, you're able to a b test so many different things, see what doesn't work, see what does work. And it's I hate to say it, but you're almost like playing with other people's money at that time. Or at anything, you're gambling your own money, but you know, your return is so good that you can rest so much. And being able to do that on such large accounts. And then here, when you go to a local market and doing real estate for a local business, or whatever like this, when you build Facebook ads, you only need like 1000 to $2,000 to spend them up, generate these leads generate a good amount of leads. So basically, you take your best learnings from spending that that millions of dollars on adspend and apply them to these local markets. And you're we're pretty much just a little bit ahead of the game there. I like to say because like we have that background, that experience like, we know, we were able to do that. So we know how to jump the competition in our area and be better than everyone else. It's paid off a lot for us that that experience has really came into play here to drive these leads. And then just having like we make different ad creatives, we're always testing like, Hey, this is get their attention. This is the least tension. And we're just always AV testing things even here on a local scale now. It's really helped us a tonne, and now we're driving in between our clients, we probably 1000s of leads a month across the nation for these off market properties.
Mike Swenson
Now how did you get started in digital marketing walk us back through that how do you get to have all these million dollar clients.
Bryan Driscoll
So actually, the any, any entrepreneurs journey like I started off, I was actually selling donuts, selling pretzels, to gas stations, things like this. And then that a buddy and we started a online product company where you just like selling products from China on Amazon is everything then there was a way to differentiate yourself where we can basically laser cut the year that you put on kitchen cabinets and lay on top of products. And then you would laser engrave and everything like cell phone cases, bottle openers, notebooks, things like that took this brand took this company actually created a brand called wooden and then put it on Facebook and this is what Facebook was in its heyday like you can literally put a post on Facebook and hit boost and we were getting 10 times return on our money. Like we I remember meeting with I feel like looking at one another we're like do we just spent $1,000 and got $10,000 return and like we just kept doing that and then I was like oh my like Facebook is giving such a return on adspend this is I need to learn this inside and out and just spent all my time in that business to the point where like manufacturing and like outsourcing everything was even like failing because I spend so much time writing Facebook, we're driving so many sales, but then actually sold that business. And then through selling that business was taught myself all the Facebook ads and everything and then got introduced to clients referrals and everything because they heard about that story. Things it's kind of built into an agency and then you want to go into an agency you're grabbing clients with huge retainer huge AdSense and then just keep keep learning you still learn every day like me and Ryan every day like we look over and over like the think this work this this seems like a workload shot on testing. And you're just with Facebook updates and Google updates and everything like you're always making adjustments always learning. So So yeah, it's been a long journey, but it's been a problem.
Mike Swenson
So has there been focus is your main focus been primarily on Facebook then and how much time are you spending in some of the other spaces on the other social media channels.
Bryan Driscoll
Facebook is just the main driver, because it has the most volume at this point, especially for real estate and what what I do with other clients as well. But we do s like Brian's been doing SEO since SEO was created, which is more than a big digital strategy with Google pay per click. For our business, we do LinkedIn, we do Twitter, we do it all. But the primary dollars are spent on Facebook, just because the opportunity is there. A lot of these consumers, especially within like real estate, for instance, they spend a lot of time on their phones, and they spend a lot of time with BNZ, I would think about like my mom, for instance, like she's on Facebook all the time. Like she is like, She's my primary demographic, I mean people 45 to 60 years old or even older, they're spending a tonne of time because they want to know what their kids are doing with their grandkids are doing. So when I say Facebook, I say Instagram, they're owned by the same day. So they're on these platforms trying to see what their kids and every one are doing. They're constantly just able to get it from.
Mike Swenson
We're taking a brief pause for episode we'll get back in a second. This is Mike Swenson, are you looking to get more out of your real estate career? Are you looking for tools and systems and ways to build wealth so that you can have the financial freedom that you desire? I have a vision to create 20 millionaires over the next 20 years. And I want to do that for you. If you're interested in learning more about that programme and how I can help you reach out to me at Mike at real freedom. COMM that's m i k e. r e l? f redom.com. Thanks, Brian, why don't you chat a little bit then about your kind of background in digital marketing?
Chad Keller
Sure. So I got into it back in the heyday, axes, same buddy, same guy, Phil got me into digital marketing back in the early 2000s. Back way, whenever SEO was like, super like you could make a page but white text on it. And then your ranking, like invisible text, all kinds of weird stuff. Then I gradually grew with that I got on a platform called Upwork. I don't know if you've ever seen that. Yep. And I got into that back when it was oDesk. So right before it would turn into I used
Mike Swenson
it when it was oDesk. Yeah.
Chad Keller
So you know. And then yeah, I started, I started on their billing, like 10 bucks an hour, like, Whoa, someone's paying me money to do this, that raise my rates to 20. And they just kept going up. And now I'm pretty expensive on there. But I originally got on there as a freelancer, and then just helped other people build their business on the SEO side, SEO is different than facebook, facebook has a really quick return on investment. SEO is really high return on investment, but it's slow. Like, it's like, I'm gonna optimise your website now. But in three or four months, you'll see the results. So it's kind of a longer play, but you're not paying for clicks when you rank. So it's cool in the long play. So and everything works really well we go that's like we win with our clients. It's like, if you're going to Facebook, and you can do SEO and Google Pay Per Click as well. At the same time they work well together, like even Google pay per click. So you get 100 people to your website, they want to sell your house, say 95 of them don't fill out a form and five do those 95 people we can retarget them with Facebook ads that we're living in our feed, they've already shown intent that they want to sell their house, we already paid the 10 $20 to get the click. Now let's just stay in front of them on Facebook. And whenever they're ready, they're gonna see our name and hopefully convert with us, you know? But yeah, so I just been just grinded. You know, I just enjoy do I like building stuff? Same in houses. Same when I'm working I like growing numbers, growing businesses helping people out.
Mike Swenson
So then how did that turn into what you guys are doing now with motivated leads? Where you guys already investing together before that, or did you start motivated leads? Or how did that enter into the picture?
Chad Keller
Yeah, we started we started investing before motivated leads. And then funny COVID this past year, we didn't we started motivated leads after COVID COVID hit OK, let's do something. And then we started we started marketing that we had to real estate knowledge before from doing the properties and then digital we're like let's let's just try it out and see what happens. Like right now the market. Like I got crushed in the business like I had some clients like they do get a client that is lanyards for trade shows COVID trade shows are fun. Hey, I got a pause. There's a lot of that going on. Like you know what, let's do some fun Real Estate's here. We know it we get leads for itself. Let's see if we can help other people get those leads too. And we're able to duplicate like we did in Pittsburgh, like all across the country. It's crazy. Like even California, like really competitive places were able to get leads for a quarter the cost that these guys are used to paying. So I mean it really helps them out. And it's a it's really fun because I like working with real estate investors, like they're cool people, you know,
Mike Swenson
you're focused on his real estate investor clients, right. So we're not talking residential real estate Buying and selling. We're talking about those investor clients. Is that right Chad?
Bryan Driscoll
Yeah, we've some guys that like have either we don't do afraid, strictly agents that just want listings or whatever it may be. We're going after the guys that are trying Find those off market deals that don't want to buy or sell or anything like that. But some of the guys do have a team, where, hey, they have an agent on the team that can list the property because all 95% of the leads that we drive them are off market. And some of the houses don't make sense from an investment standpoint. So they will just go list them. Mainly, we're working with the investors and a lot of guys wholesale, like we have a I don't know talk about that. But like on Facebook, you can only drive leads within a radius of a city or a county in Brighton I only buy one zip code. So what do you do with all this actually leads Brian's buddy, he's a wholesale partner, we actually give him those leads. And he gives us half of the profit on a deal that he owes in wholesales. So it's literally the lead comes in. Brian's like, Oh, it's not in our area for that to him. And then he'll sometimes contact us. I think he contact us four months later was like, Hey, guys, I just made a deal. $39,000 you guys get like, oh, okay, that's great. That was something we weren't even expecting. And it just like it just comes out of nowhere.
Chad Keller
Yeah, we did. And we do specialise is more with it real estate investors to not we don't target real estate agents, we can help agents that that it's more, the investor said,
Mike Swenson
well, in what I love about being and that's really why I have this podcast is talking about kind of anything inside of the real estate playground is there's, there's so many things that you can you can do entrepreneurially and there's so many different ways that you can make money using the gifts and skills that you have. And like you said, you're you're only looking at personally a small little area, but anything else that you're generating, you can gain additional income on. So there's, there's all these different verticals out there, where there's a way that you can make make more money by by staying in this playground and just continuing to you know, personally invest, you can pass leads off to other people. Yeah, if it's an investment, you're going to have a real estate agent that could win by listing a property, somebody's buying the property. So there's so many ways that you guys can win. And you're just combining your your best skills, which is digital marketing, and real estate investing into a product that works really well for people.
Chad Keller
You know what to do. It's interesting talking about investing to which I'll bring up. So if I invested in real estate, it's like, I consider that extremely safe in single families, but not necessarily commercial stuff like that. But a lot of people too, I talked to like there, I think there's a difference between investing conservatively and gamble. So a lot of guys are like, yeah, we want we're gonna go invest in this new business coming up new tech business, whatever, like, dude, like there's an 80% chance you're gonna lose your money. You know, so so I don't know if it benefit your listeners and all but I've experienced that myself getting in all the hype and all that kind of stuff. And you lose you lose, you know. So when investing, it's I think it's important also to keep that in mind a risk reward, you know?
Mike Swenson
So, so talk about motivated leads, if I'm somebody that is a real estate investor, how do you how do you find these folks, kind of what is the onboarding process look like? What is the setup process? And then how do you help them win?
Bryan Driscoll
Yeah, so pretty much how we find these guys. So we've been featured on some podcasts like like this, like carrot character, a huge player in the industry Brian has over there. It did really well for us, Trevor's became friends with us and everything. So it's been really good for us. We do our own digital advertising, like, like I said, I do a lot of lead gen. So I even understand that for us. We're not from a motivated lead standpoint, we're on five, six channels, we we do lead gen from the find these investors, we have telemarketers and everything, we have a team that that helps us out as well. But we found within this industry is that there's a lot of investors that just don't know digital, like they like even the especially the older generation of like, a lot of these investors aren't aware they retire from their career. And now they're invested in real estate, they don't even know how to like set up a Facebook page or a Facebook ad account or anything like that. We've actually created a full done for you solution to the point where they pretty much fill out a form. And they approve ads and creatives. And it's done for them. We take care of everything else setting up their website, sign up, sign up the tracking pixels, the ad accounts. And I feel like that's what's really helped a lot of people in this industry where they're like, Oh, I don't have a website, I can't get started. We're like, Oh, don't worry about that. We'll take care of that. But we'll send you over to Carrie, if you signed up there. It's 100% done for you. So it's pretty turnkey solution on our side.
Chad Keller
One other thing too on that too. One thing that differentiate since since I'm an investor and as an investor, like we understand what a motivated seller is, versus a person wanting to sell their house on the market, I get a totally different demographic and a lot of digital marketing agencies don't understand what the difference of a home seller is like a motivated seller is somebody that inherited home or as a house, it's a hoarder house, they can't list on the market. They don't or they inherited the house. They don't have enough money to fix it. And they just want to get being instead are willing to sell it in a little bit of a discount. For a cash buyer to come in though. contingencies, all that kind of stuff and you're close to two weeks. First, you know the MLS goes, you're closing in two months, you're getting beat up by the inspection, all that kind of stuff. So, but I think it's really beneficial that we're in the space and understand what that market is. And we can relate to it. Like, we know what kind of leads we're looking for. And we're also doing what investors are looking for.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, cuz traditionally, I mean, we talk about that on the real estate side, you know, somebody who's looking to list their house, there's, there's a whole range of, of motivators, but but for a lot of people, it's maximising the dollar value, right? Like we as real estate agents are talking about, we're going to try to get top dollar for your home. And you know, in this type of market, it might mean you know, 3040 showings in a weekend. But the goal is really maximising top dollar, what you guys are focusing on is more convenience, right? And that doesn't mean that it's, it's a bad thing, because there's people that Yeah, they just want to get rid of this house. And for them conveniences is really important. So a quick closing with few hassles and a guarantee of it's a cash offer, it's not well, the appraisal came in low, and now we've got to renegotiate, or, or the mortgage, the lenders having issues and now we got to renegotiate, or I need to submit, you know, my, my pay stubs to them because they need something else for underwriting. So what they're getting is they're getting the convenience, right? And the surety of I've got a cash buyer that's going to come in and buy this house. And in two weeks, I get to wipe my hands and walk away from that situation. So these are, are distinctly different people now there's people probably somewhere in the middle there, but But yeah, who you guys are targeting is very different than kind of the the person that we're targeting where our message is usually top dollar, your message is really convenience cash quickly.
Chad Keller
You know what, we have some clients that are agents too. And they have an offer, which is they have a high closing ratio, because they are like, hey, we'll buy your house cash at a discount for if you want top dollar, we can list it for you too, we can so they can help with both avenues. So if you want that convenience, boom, we're done. You want that top dollar, hey, we'll show you how to stage all this kind of stuff listed on the market and get you the top dollar. And you're just trading convenience and time versus extra profit.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and that's actually our brokerage is, is working on that we have an express offers campaign where we pair up with local investors. And you know, we can then offer Yeah, if you're looking for top dollar, here's the way that we might list traditionally, if you're looking for some sort of investment, or some sort of quick cash closing, we can actually partner up with local investors and give a cash offer on their home. And yeah, we just leave the ball in their court, you guys decide what's best for you, if you want top dollar, this is the route you can go. If you if you have a cash offer, we're able to find an investor that that submits an offer on your home, then yeah, we can close you know, anywhere from 10 days to 90 days, you guys pick the closing date, but it's a cash offer. So then you don't have to worry about so I do feel there is a lot of value in the marketplace to be able to offer that because the traditional way of doing sales is just getting murkier and murkier. And so it's it's nice to have to have options, right? And so, so yeah, you guys are certainly meeting need in the market with that. All right, so So talk to me, then about the future for you guys. So you've got a tonne of experience. with digital marketing, you've got a tonne of experience with personal investing and working with local investors. Where do you see this growing for each of you guys in the future?
Chad Keller
Yeah, I see a grown that I got the real estate properties. And well, number one, a digital marketing, I'm just sprinting as fast as I can. And working as hard as I can for a short period of time and dumping it into real estate. With the end goal, I got three kids, they're young, I'm trying to spend time. So if I can hustle and work a lot right now and put it into things that are getting income later, then I might have to work for like 10 years, and then I can take off just be like, you know what, we're just gonna go away for a month or whatever just buys you all that freedom and freedom and just like low stress. And then also you can have other people even manage your properties to like, I don't manage them a property manager. So that's my goal. My goal is to make a lot of money invested in real estate, and have the real estate continue to pay me. So I don't have to trade my time for the money anymore.
Mike Swenson
Hmm, yeah, yeah. How about you, Chad.
Bryan Driscoll
I mean, that's pretty much where we're at. That's, that's what we're doing run with the agency run pretty hard here. Bunch of clients gonna, myself, I'm 31, I got three kids as well. So hopefully set them up by the time that I'm 40. That that's real estate and other investments that can take care of them, it'd be for the rest of our life. We've been starting to get into we're dabbling a little bit with multi unit, buildings, things like that. So hopefully, that's going to take off in our future here. And we're gonna focus on how many units can we get versus houses. And once you get into that game, it could be a game changer for us in our future. So that's, that's what we hope to be hopefully by here as we're talking to me on a couple of 100 units that point.
Mike Swenson
What I love the other thing that I love about investing in real estate is is is kind of whether it's the main focus or a side focuses you You can upscale your business or even downscale your business as much as you need to. So, you know, there, there might be a time, you know, Brian, you had mentioned about, you know, having property managers, you know, there, let's just say something we've already experienced COVID. So that's a major shake up to the industry, but there might be a time where you're like, you know, what, I want to do property management, and you can take that over, or you could take it over for some of your properties and hire it out for others. Or if you run across a great vendor that that does contract work, you know, you can use them in different areas, I feel like the the beauty the beautiful part about real estate investing as as your your wealth grows, and as your number of units grow, you can decide how involved you are aren't in that process, based on where you're at financially, where you're at from timewise. And where you're at from a life situation, right? You know, if, if you typically were the one that did the management, and you just had a new baby, well, you might say, hey, for the next six months, I don't want to touch any of that you can hire somebody out, and then six months from now, you can take it back over. So it's able to flex with you as you grow. And as you just decide to to downsize. And so so that's a that's a beautiful thing. So yeah, I agree that the ability to choose what you want, when you want how you want to have that investment portfolio in your back pocket really makes a big difference in helping with that. All right. Anything else that you guys want to share,
Chad Keller
I think it's mainly like for your audience, like with passive income and stuff just work really hard. Like, like me, I just looked at work real hard. Understand what you make, and invest it and stuff in, like planting seeds, you're planting seeds now for 10 years in the future. If you keep doing that, and getting it also in business to just keep jabbing, like keep taking shots at different things, you're gonna fail like 20 times, but that 21st time makes it can make your life different.
Mike Swenson
As I say, it's no secret that you've got Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook on your back.
Chad Keller
Yeah, yeah, that's what it is just, I felt so bad. I mean, I had a chat as to you. I think everyone, the key to success is one of them is just keep failing. And it's suck, you gotta like, take a couple months sometimes to like, lick your wounds. But try something again, because other people are doing stuff and it will work. You just got to make sure to keep getting back up. And don't don't beat up on yourself too much.
Bryan Driscoll
You know, I think we and Brian failed on by six businesses before we went together before we started motivated leads, we're always just trying to decide, always something new. But even before agency life was four or five businesses, so that's super important to just kept it down to your losses, just learn to keep pushing.
Chad Keller
And when you're when you're losing to quit, like, like when you take when you take a shot, it's going downhill, you need to know when to walk away, or to get off the ship, you know?
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And still, even though even though an idea or business might be failing or something, you're you're learning valuable life skills, and valuable knowledge that you're now going to apply moving forward. You know, I remember there was a guy who had lost, I don't know what it was millions of dollars, the number doesn't matter is a tonne. And he said, you know what I took from it as that's my education, you know, instead of going to a school and paying, you know, $30,000 to get my MBA, I just got an education in life, and I just got an education in business. So it might be an expensive education, but you're going to use all that knowledge that you've gained now to make your next business better, and then your next business better or your to better than your one, you know, so you're always going to just take that knowledge and reapply it to get better more quickly.
Chad Keller
That's a trick. I think it was Steve Jobs. It said I don't know, is it his book or someone else? connect the dots. So pretty much every failure, everything you're going to life, you might learn some 10 years, like we might learn some 10 years ago, just keep remembering all this stuff and learning from it. Because at some point in the future, you'll be able to connect that stuff in price exceed or do something with it, you know, great. So
Mike Swenson
So for those folks that, you know that have heard this episode, and it resonated, how can how can they reach out to you? Or what would you like to plug here?
Chad Keller
They can just check out our website, it's motivated, dash leads calm. And if ever need any help, you can just give us a call on a number or fill out a form on the site.
Mike Swenson
You know, awesome. Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate learning more about you guys and learning more about your business and, and how you're helping investors succeed but also taking those those lessons yourself and applying it to build wealth. So thanks so much for coming on.
Chad Keller
I appreciate it. And thanks for having us.
Bryan Driscoll
Appreciate it a lot. Thank you.
Mike Swenson
This is Mike Swenson, are you looking to get more out of your real estate career? Are you looking for tools and systems and ways to build wealth so that you can have the financial freedom that you desire? I have a vision to create 20 millionaires over the next 20 years. And I want to do that for you. If you're interested in learning more about that programme and how I can help you reach out to me at Mike at real freedom calm that's m i k [email protected] Thanks
