Adam Adams – Multifamily Investor, Founder and Lead Strategist at BlueSprice Holdings, and Host of The Creative Real Estate Investing podcast, talks to Neil Henderson and Brittany Henderson, the hosts of The Road to Family Freedom podcast. Adam Adams comes from a real estate-investing family and he got started in real estate himself in 2005 and as of today, he has partnered or raised capital on seven multi-family syndications valued at over $90 million. Adam Adams talks about real estate obstacles that he overcame and learned from, creating successful meetups and getting the most out of them, and investing in multiple markets.

Post-Interview Analysis

• Key Lessons Learned: The importance of meetups and how to network at them. Have systems in place to cover yourself while investing.
• How did they acquire their knowledge or what knowledge did they need to acquire? Build up your mindset and your belief system.
• How much money did it take to get started? He was able to get into his first triplex for no money down.
• How much time does it take now? Overall, Adam works about 40 hours a week.
• Could they do this strategy from anywhere in the world? Adam Adams could go away on vacation for the real estate side. But the coaching side is a passion that he would be less likely step away from for a long period of time at the moment.

What you’ll learn about in this episode

• What is Adam Adams’ family’s background in real estate?
• What happened to Adam on the real estate front during the 2008 recession? 
• Apartments are more recession-proof than single-family homes. 
• How big was Adam’s first property? 
• What is Adam’s viewpoint on asking for capital?  
• Adam Adams talks about growing his real estate meetups. 
• What tips does Adam have for finding venues for meetups?  
• Was there a critical skill that Adam Adams had to learn for real estate?
• How much did Adam pay for his first triplex?
• What does a day in his real estate life look like? 
• Where are most of Adam’s investments located?   
• Carefully research and select your investment markets.
• How long could Adam be out of the country and still run his business?

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Recommended Books

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• Traction by Gino Wickman

Connect with Guest:

• Email: adam@realbluespruce.com
• Website: Real Blue Spruce
• LinkedIn: Adam Adams

*FTC Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking on the links, Road to Family Freedom will get a small commission. We are dedicated to finding the coolest products for families looking to building financial freedom through real estate and we never recommend anything that we don’t love.

The reason why is because there's a lot of people that come to the meetup. And I don't care whether they are super outgoing, or if they're completely introverted, both people with like and feel grateful to have the opportunity to let everyone in that room know what they're doing, where they are and what they're looking for, because it facilitates the right amount of networking for them, and the other people in the room. So when one person raises their hand and says, Yes, I'm looking for money, and then later on somebody else raise their hand says, Yes, I'm looking to place capital.

I'm Neil, and I'm Brittany,

we are a family on a journey towards financial and location independence. Each week, we interview successful real estate entrepreneurs about their chosen investment strategy, and rate it based on how much money it took to get started, how long it took to educate themselves, how passive it is, and whether or not they could do it from anywhere in the world.

Welcome to the road to family freedom. If you like our show, the easiest way for you to give back is to leave us a rating and review on iTunes, head on over to road family freedom comm slash review for links and instructions on how to do that we would be so grateful. All right, and that thought of us Let's hit the road to family freedom.

Before we get to this week's show, I'd like to make you an offer. You can video chat with me feel like it's something people do with me all the time and it's completely free. Every Wednesday evening. This is a free strategy session done over video chat, anything and everything you want to talk about in regards to real estate investing. There's no sales call here. There's no ulterior motive. I'm not going to pitch you own mentoring program. This is really just a way for you and I to connect. I talked to real estate investors all the time at Ria meetings, but there are only so many meetings I can attend having a family and a full time job. And I prefer the one on one connections anyway, doesn't matter if you're brand new investor just starting out or an experienced investor. I can act as a sounding board or a deal you're looking at or maybe just answer some questions you have about real estate investing, head on over to road to family freedom comm slash connect and fill out the form there to schedule a call. I look forward to speaking with you. Greetings, friends and families on Neil. And I'm Brittany, you're listening to the road to family freedom podcast. Our guest today comes from a real estate investing family. He got started investing on his own in 2005. He's the host of the outstanding creative real estate investing podcast. And as of today, he's partnered or raised capital on seven multifamily syndications valued at over $90 million. Mr. Adam AAA Adams, welcome to the road to family freedom.

Thank you so much for having me

for real this time. We started once and got about a minute into it and atoms that Are we recording? So? Yes. So you come from a real estate investing family. Can you tell us a little bit about your family's background in real estate?

Yeah, yeah. So my my stepdad who I grew up with, is a real estate investor. He does all sorts of real estate. So we did a lot of self storage units, multifamily, single family condos and land. As I grew up, it was fairly normal for me, I kind of thought that all families had investments, it seemed to make sense to me that that they would. And I never would have thought at least growing up that there would be somebody who had no idea about what you could do with real estate because it was so normal in my family. So I used to snowplow, the Self Storage Units, I would help put up walls in some of the properties that we had in like for instance, one of them had a very, very big living room, and our family room downstairs in the basement. And we put a wall up to have a small family room and another bedroom for more rent. So I remember running wires and just talking to my dad while we were doing all this together. He's a general contractor as well. And I just remember learning all this is really smart that we that we made this other room smaller and to add this other room that was a bedroom so we could get more in rent. And I just remember thinking that's kind of cool that you could do that. So on my own. I started investing in multifamily or in real estate at all in 2005 and multifamily. I started to manage properties in oh seven, bought my first multifamily in 2008. And it's all history from there.

So you got started investing in 2005. And I've heard you I've heard you talk about this story before about how hard the great recession hit you. A lot of people nowadays are kind of waiting for that next recession. Everyone's kind of like I think I call it a lot of people have post traumatic stress over the great recession and are all kind of waiting for it to happen again. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened for you the real estate front during the Great Recession?

Absolutely. So I had just managed a couple of apartments for a friend of mine. And he was able to exit at the right point in time made a million dollars off of me lowering expenses and raising rents. And I was gung ho and ready to go and so 2008 I bought my first multifamily and it was in and I guess it still is there. It is in here. Let's see what is it. It's in Utah County of Utah. So Oram right between the two largest colleges in Utah, BYU and Utah Valley University. And Utah Valley is the biggest but no one ever knows about it, because they don't have a football team. So they're not as famous. But they I think they have something like 72,000 students, it's the largest university in Utah. And so it was very strong, stable market. And in orange, they still continue to have a lot of entrepreneurial things happening in very diverse economy. And not just on on these two huge colleges, that one was two miles away, one was five miles away. So here, here I am, and owning this property and thinking that it was going to be great forever. And one thing that the listener needs to know is that Utah was about two years behind all the other markets that were crashing, we still crashed, but it took us a little while to get there. So in 2009, it was really slowing down. In 2010, it was it was very difficult. And 2011 is when everything really hit me. I at that time owned a and I was running a handyman company of all things. And this is after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I heard that I had to make the most amount of money I can in business, and do it for myself for tax benefits. And then I needed to put all that money into real estate. So I listened to everything in 2007. And by 2009, I was making 20 grand a month in my company. And as a college student, I thought it was fantastic. Some of my peers were making 20,000 a year. And so I felt really happy about the choices that I was making at the time. And that started to slow down. And construction started to slow down. So all those builders, those developers, those house builders started to become handyman, because there was no houses being built and contractors became handyman. And it went from everybody else charging 20 an hour and me charging 45 an hour and me being able to show the reason why I'm charging more because I'm the best to having a whole bunch of contractors and builders, plus all of the employees that they had had, we're now handyman May, some of them wanted eight bucks an hour, some nine, some 12, some 20, some 25, some 45. But then also, I couldn't say I was the best anymore because there was a lot of handyman that were charging 100 or 150 per hour. And my business slowed down. People weren't wanting handyman as much. They were trying to preserve their money. Many people were losing jobs. Some people were losing their homes, and I lost a lot of employees, I had 13 full time employees. Now I was down to one of my employees who lived in my apartment. And I needed to make sure that he made his rent payment. So I actually stopped being a handyman and I started bartending. And I kept that one employee, just Jose, he was my only employee, and I wanted to make sure that he could pay for his rent. So I went out of the company and started bartending but running the running the company on the side. And at the same point in time, fewer and fewer of my tenants, my residents that lived at that apartment, started not being able to pay rent and I went from being by myself and easily able to accomplish and pay for whatever I wanted. I made more than I ever needed. And now I was making about 2500 a month three grand a month. I was still a full time student and I had a lot happening. My apartment building I had negative cash flowed for eight months straight. And I called the lender, which was a private lender. And so in 2011, I finally called my lender and I said, Look, there's no way I can pay you. There's literally no way I could pay you. And he thought he'd be helpful. So he started to come up with solutions. And I those, every single solution that he had come up with, I had already tried, I had, I had been doing everything possible to just make sure to just keep that payment going, that mortgage going. And it came to a point where I just had to walk away. So I did a deed in lieu of foreclosure in 2011. And it was, it took me a few years to even dare to get back into real estate at all. And of course, apartments, rentals, that was not the first place that I decided that it would be safe for me to go just because of PTSD, right? I was just like, you know, I gotta be in real estate, my dad's in real estate, he's, he's crushing it in real estate, everything's going well now. But in 2015, when I decided to get into real estate, I was like, Ah, I'm going to do, I'm going to do tax deeds, I'm going to do fix and flips. And then if it makes sense, I'll have a rental. But I'm not going to start with rentals, just because I was afraid just because I was scared of what had happened to me seven years before or seven, I guess, five years before, whatever it was. But yeah, I started there, I did one fix and flip in 1512 fix and flips in 16, about a couple of multi families and a few houses in 16. In 17, I started buying commercial and syndicating deals. Why raising equity for our deals,

I find it interesting because a lot of people will say that like apartment complexes are fairly recession proof because just because of how there's always people that need to live in them, but are not maybe not recession proof but are a little bit less

day, I have to agree that apartments are extremely more recession resistant than single family. It's, it's completely true. My problem wasn't just the condition of the market. My problem was a lot had to do with a big heart that I had, on wanting to help other people renting out units to my friends or family and not having the systems in place that I was required to have when I was a property manager in 2007. I wanted to be a nice person rather than a systematic person. So when somebody is like, hey, do you have a unit? Hey, what what can what rent can you do? Hey, I can't pay until this date, I stopped following protocol and started following my heart. And where that put me was losing the property. So it's it's much less a factor of what the market was and much more a factor of, of me not being willing to require certain things from my tenants. I didn't do background checks. So the market was suffering. And I was kicking people out or, or finally kicking people out, but I just brought in just anybody, just, oh, whoever can pay me the fastest they're in. And one of them ended up being going to jail. And I find spoons and needles and tourniquets in his bedroom. weeks after I have to break into his room to say, Maybe he's just like dead inside my inside his bedroom. So So I was like, I felt bad doing it. I don't want to break anybody's privacy. But at the time, I was just like, Where is this person? I haven't heard from him at all. And I found all that stuff's things, those paraphernalia, yeah, whatever. But if I just hired a property management company that did background checks for me, I would have been a lot more safe by having a multifamily then the way that I was doing it. So it wasn't that I didn't know or understand some of those principles. It was just that I was very flexible with those principles because I wanted to help. I wanted to do the right thing, which was obviously the wrong thing. But looking looking back on it, you know, multifamily had less than a point 8% default rate. So really, single family houses were six times more likely to go through default than a multifamily property. But if you're going to do that the way that I was doing it And there's there's you let people walk all over you, you're gonna you're gonna lose money. No, no doubt about it. Well, I'm sure that you've now learned your lesson. Yes. I don't care what property I ever buy. I will make sure that I always hire the best property management company

well and have an have another one in your back pocket for when your property manager inevitably goes crazy. How big was this property?

The first one that I bought was a triplex. So I was house hacking it and living in one of the units. And when I started not being able to pay my rent is when I started having housemates still living in one. So I was in a three bedroom. And then I had two housemates, and one of them was the one that I just mentioned, who was in jail for a little

while. He wasn't just in one of your units, he was actually living in your living in your beer space.

Yeah, one door away from mine. And, and he kept under the radar until he was in jail for a few weeks now. And I got worried. Yeah,

we've got a good friend of ours here locally, that young kid, and he's house hacking by, he's got a seven bedroom house. And he's furnished it. And he's renting it out by the room. And he's doing great. He's crushing it as far as cash flow. But he has some stories to tell sometimes, you know, and he's got to be, he has gotten a little bit. In the same way. He's kind of got a big heart and start letting some people in that we're not so good. And suddenly, you know, some is some girlfriend is living with the guy and, and they get into a fight. And there's some some domestic violence and now the police are there. And so yeah, it all comes down to good tenant screening.

Absolutely. 100%.

So your focus now is on raising capital for large apartments syndications? Can you talk to us a little bit about the mindset that goes into that? Because a lot of people are, if they're into real estate, maybe them into it for a while. They're really like, they're not comfortable asking, quote, unquote, asking people for money.

Great question two things. One, our focus is closing those deals, raising capital for them is a byproduct. It's something that we do. And I also don't want to ask for capital. So we do it a little bit differently, we try to attract capital. So rather than ever having to make a phone call that says, hey, I need you to put in 100 grand into this property so that I can close it. Rather than doing it that way. We just tell people, what we do, how we do it, the returns that our investors get, and lo and behold, people call us off our podcast, or come to our events and see us there for three days at an event and then come up and say, I have X amount of millions, and I'd really like to partner with you. And so the way we do it, we don't have to ask for money anymore. We just attract capital, we become a light beacon and and and sit there and be who we are and do what we do. And other people come to us and say, Adam, can I can I put 100 grand into your next one, I really like to dip my toe in the water into syndication and work with you and see how that works. So no longer do we ask for capital, we just kind of attract it when we need it. It's there.

And it's only apartment communities correct?

100% Yep, we've we've we've thought about so many other things. There are many shiny objects out there. And some of the some of them can get better returns. Some of them you can buy at a better cap rate right now. Some of them might one of them might be able to weather the storm, better Self Storage Units. But our team has decided to make sure that we can stay congruent in our message. That multifamily is the best. And I believe it's the best in up and a downturn. Right. Even if Self Storage might be best in in a downturn when people are like, well, I can't live in my house anymore. So where am I going to put my stuff? And they actually get more full? Yeah, we're 100% focused on just the one asset class. We don't want to confuse our investors. We want them to know exactly what we're looking at why we're looking at it, and we talk heavily among the market selection where we're buying them.

So is this through the website raising money secrets, or is that sort of your thought leadership platform?

Question. Raising money secrets is actually a an educational platform that my team has put together? on exactly what we were just talking about, is so that people don't have to ask for capital. So raising money secrets, goes in and teaches people how do you figure out who is your target audience Who are you serving? Are you serving engineers in Dallas that make you know more than 250,000? a year that are 45 years old, married with two kids, blah, blah, blah. And we start to understand who are you really serving? Is it a doctor? Is it? Is it, whatever? And how do you give them the information that they want. So in raising money secrets, we've, we start by figuring out your avatar, and then we start creating content that the avatar wants to know, wants to learn wants to hear. And then we start to teach our clients, how do they put that information in front of the Avatar? How are they going to do it, so we just develop a plan. And then we create something called a funnel, that word, I think it's thrown around a lot these days. But we create basically a landing page for our students. And we create giveaways that their target avatar will want to know. And we make it so that the avatar can get the information by giving an email address. And we teach them how to raise the capital, the way we raise capital, so that when it's time for them to have a deal, they just reach out to those people that have already expressed interest. And it's a it's a win win. And they don't have to be asking for capital anymore. So that raising money secrets just teaches people how to raise capital, that we raise capital, by creating a thought leadership platform for themselves, and getting in front of their audience and making sure that their audience opps into their email list and says, I want to invest with you, man,

I can see how that'd be really important. You know, a lot of people forget when they are running a business. And this is an any spectrum of you know, what that business is that they start to talk about? Well, this is what I want to show and give and, you know, the this is, this is what I'm doing. But they forget to think about, like what their audience might actually want, and really tailor it to them. And once you get sort of outside of your me centric space, it really can make a huge difference. It's a really interesting way to sort of take that and apply it to real estate investing, which is kind of the same. But I think for a lot of people doesn't feel like it could you could use that, that kind of platform.

So your network is your net worth or your net worth. your net worth is your network. I think it's I think Kiyosaki talks about that. And you are well known in the real estate community, for your Denver meetup. And being sort of a master of meetup. You've even been invited by meetup to speak about how you grew that. Can you talk to us a little bit about what starting a successful real estate meetup has done? For you?

Absolutely, really, they're the main thing that my starting that real estate meetup has done for me and my company is allowed us to stay in front of a target audience in one city, where they've given referrals to who we are and what we do. Even if they can't specifically be a passive investor in a deal. A lot of the people that come to that group and continue to be involved, they will reach out to their friends who have said, Hey, I need to play some capital, and I don't know where to do it. They'll inevitably, our group, our community will, will tell their friends, Hey, I know of person that I can put you in touch with, where to find him, and how to how to be able to place your money into his deals. He's always looking for investors. So we've raised $4.2 million. Well, the first $4.2 million that we've raised, we've raised a lot more now. But the first 4.2 came from that Meetup group, just by having a constant, consistent, continuous meetup that met at the same time every single week. And we were able to raise money for our first several single family and multifamily deals without having to try so that's the main, the main thing that it's done for us. The second thing that I would say that having a successful meetup has done by helping our networking has allowed me to reach out to people that are really crushing it in the real estate space, that are known nationally, and I can reach out to them and offer them to be a speaker at my Meetup group. And that connection with that person that has really crushed it has grown me as a person number one, because I see somebody playing at a higher level and I get to be connected with I'm number two, because they bring their network to me. And they can share tips, tricks and strategies that they're seeing that I've missed. So I've I've grown a ton from from that. And furthermore, because that Meetup group got so popular, and I was able to fly out to meetup headquarters as a couple of about 2018, in April, I guess, the last thing that I want that that has definitely happened, but it might not happen for everybody, is it that it's really placed me on in a place where people go to me to ask how do I, how do I create these types of platforms? How do I get flown out to meet up headquarter? So whatever? So the third thing, which might not happen for everybody, but it's been impactful in my business is, is the referrals that I'm getting for more coaching clients that want to attract capital? The way that we do it?

Are these networking events, pretty informal? Are they like formal presentations?

Perfect question. We've done a number of different ways on that. And our biggest two events were completely informal. But there was a lot of people, there are a lot of people that are not going to come to just a networking event. It's just that when we created the networking only event made it a little less formal and have no education, we massively changed the way that we market it. So we marketed it more heavily. And we basically did something where we talked about this one event being different. It's the only one of the year like it, it's the biggest one like it. So one of the times we had 176 people come and the other one we had 650 ish people come I didn't make an exact count, but it was getting up close to 700 people. And these, this is at a weekly Meetup group. And it was just the way we marketed it got those people in, but the people that we really work with are the ones that come on a continuous basis. So let me tell you, not about the one person odd the oddballs but, but more about the consistent structure that really proved to be a good track record to help us and we'll help you to when you start your Meetup group. And what that was, is, the first thing that you have to do is you got to think like a marketer. So every single event that you have, isn't just this is our monthly meetup. This is our monthly meetup comm if you want, but don't worry, if you miss. Next month's gonna be a monthly meetup too. That's, that's a problem that I see a lot of people doing. Every single meetup that we have, the way that we word in the title, the way that we word in the message that we give to people is that this is the only time that this person's flying into town, this is the only time that we're going to have out of 300 events this year, this will be the only one about self directed retirement accounts or, and And not only is it unique, but then we talk about how come you cannot miss it, you're not going to be able to miss this, if you need to learn about self directed investing, obviously, you need to be here. But listen to this, if you are somebody who needs to raise money from somebody in a self directed retirement account, it would be stupid of you not to attend this meetup where your perfect target client is sitting there. So I'm trying to speak to everybody and tell them why this is the type of meeting that they could not miss. That's the most important thing, differentiate yourself, be different, be unique, and have have a reason why people need to come not just Oh, it's just a weekly thing, we do it every week, or it's just a monthly thing. There's every single thing that you do needs to be special. Very, very, very important. Now the structure of being there. We start by networking, usually for about 20 minutes. And then we get into announcements. And then we get into haves and wants and have some wants are critically important for you. If you're going to want to have your Meetup group successful. The reason why is because there's a lot of people that come to the meetup, and I don't care whether they are super outgoing, or if they're completely introverted, both people with like and feel grateful to have the opportunity to let everyone in that room know what they're doing, where they are and what they're looking for. Because it facilitates the right amount of networking for them and the other people in the room. So when one person raises their hand and says you So I'm looking for money. And then later on somebody else raise their hand says, Yes, I'm looking to place capital. And there's a lot more examples in that wholesalers meeting, fix and flippers, etc, etc, etc, fix and flippers need to know, wholesalers, wholesalers need to know, fix and flippers. So if you have the opportunity to say I'm an agent, I can list your house or I'm a wholesaler, I can give you deals or I'm a private investor. And I need people that have deals. And everyone else in that room has the opportunity to say that in front of everybody, what you've done is you've you've propelled their networking, and they are grateful, and they will continue to come. And they will notice that there are some other places that they try to go to, that they don't get that opportunity. And the problem is when they don't get that opportunity, they don't feel like they have the values. So they're only going to come once. So there again, the structure first 20 minutes, it's networking, then we go into announcements, then we do the haves and wants. And that's when I introduced after the haves and wants, that's when I introduced my speaker, my presenter and I tried to give really good content. And I always let all of my speakers know that they cannot sell anything. Now you don't have to do that. But I built a community around people that knew that they would come somewhere and they wouldn't have to spend money to learn. It doesn't mean it's right. But it's it's just the way that I did it. And the people that continue to come did appreciate that. And I'm sure you can be successful the other way. It's just that the reason why did I do it is because I was the first and only group in the city, doing it that way. And so it would made it helpful for me to differentiate my group from everybody else. Look, if you want to go and just get pitched, you have 100 Real Estate groups that you can go to. If you want to go and feel safe, and have a strong networking and learn a lot of good stuff, then you can come here. And just by saying that made people feel like oh, well, I'd rather come here then. And even if even if it was completely different, I would still use the same thing. Look, if you want to go to all these free places out there totally fine, go have a free place. If you don't, if you don't want to get pitch go, there's 100 other paper, people that won't pitch you here, we're going to pitch you Why do we pitch you because we want you to go to the next level, we only have serious people come right. So no matter what it is, you just have to explain why you're different. And both ways. It sounds fine. And so that's very, very, very important. So once the education happens, here's a tip and a trick and a strategy. If you're going to run a meetup, you will tell your presenter, that shorter is better, we usually keep it between 20 and 30 minutes, okay, no presenter wants to be 20 and 30 minutes, that seems too short for them. And even if they tried to do 20 and 30 minutes, they're going to go to an hour. But if you told them they had an hour, they're going to do two hours. And you're going to be stressed out because there's going to be people walking out at the end. So help that presenter collect their thoughts into a 20 to 30 minute presentation. If it takes 40 minutes, if it takes an hour, you're probably still going to be okay. So it's very important to tell them that. And there's no sales pitch. Well, in ours, there never was a sales pitch. We finish it, there was q&a. And then there was more networking, I tried to end where we had at least another 30 minutes before. So we we had a lunch club, it started at noon. And usually the presenter was done by 130. And the whole event was done by two. So this gave us a chance to network. And then people would stay late as well. And by doing that formula, we grew a meetup that started with six people. And it went to 14. And I remember thinking to myself, it would be so awesome. If I could have like 30 or 40 people? Well, we had 30 or 40, week by week by week, the second year, and we even got up to where it was 100 plus many, many weeks in a row by doing that formula. And you'll ask this question. If you've been paying close attention, you're going to ask this question. Well, when there was 100 people, did they still get an opportunity to talk for 30 seconds and and introduce themselves? So I'll answer your question now. Yes, I typically gave people a six second intro, and I would time it and I would cut it off and I would do it with a smile on my face. And and I would be like, Oh, you totally went over. You got to stop right now. Next person, next person. And if you do that with enthusiasm, happiness and excitement, even though you're literally saying, I can't believe you don't, you're trying to still go on as fast six minutes, they'll they'll be able to stop consciously be like, how do I, how do I sum me up in six seconds. So I still gave everybody the same opportunity. We stopped them at a certain amount of time. And they would say stuff like, my name is Adam, I raise capital for multifamily. And I hope if you're interested that can reach me, dude, exactly six seconds, we crushed it. And if everybody else could learn that, it would still give them the value that they needed, so that they knew that they were heard. And it was still helped facilitate the networking.

So if you're listening to this, and you're somebody who wants to be successful in real estate, you should probably go back and rewind this a couple of times and listen to it. Because I was amazing value there, Adam. Thank you. There's a lot to unpack there. And there's a couple of questions that I want to ask. So it's a it's a weekly meetup. Correct? Yes. And it's a lunchtime. Yes. During the week or on the weekend.

It was a Thursday, Thursday at lunch

Thursday. And all total time about two hours. Yes. And but you

need to be early. Yes, you need to you personally should be there 45 minutes early, because a lot of other people are going to show up 30 minutes early. And if you get there 30 minutes early, and you're like me, and you're trying to like get all this stuff taken care of. And people want to ask you questions, it's going to be too stressful. So you're going to show up as the as the person running it at least 45 minutes early, so that you can have it ready to go by the time that those people are 30 minutes early, wanting to pick your brain.

Any tips on finding a venue that can fit because we I'm, I'm part of a couple of meetup groups here in Vegas, and there's one I'm even a little more active in. And one was extremely pitch heavy, charge you 20 to $40 to come in the door was typically almost an hour and a half of presentations, and then maybe 30 minutes of networking, it's no longer around, they finally they've gone in a different direction, and more power to them. And then another one I belong to that I actually like a lot more as much more informal. We call it real estate real estate church. And it's basically similar what you're doing, which is just breakfast, breakfast on a Sunday morning. But it can be really difficult to find venues that can that can host you. So what do you have any suggestions on finding venues and things like that?

Yeah, I do don't cost a million dollars. I think that's I mean, and that might just be Vegas. But

yeah, well, we've had, we've had a heck of a time picking venues. It started out. Remember I told you that we had six people in 2016. At our very first meetup. We were at a smashburger. So all we did all I did as I called smashburger. ahead of time, I said, Look, can I sit in the space? And and I don't know how many people are going to show it might be two of us might be 12 of us. But could could we just come? So smashburger said it was fine. We went there. It was the biggest snowstorm. And everybody was messaging me on the meetup app being like, hey, are we canceling? And I was like, nope. I said that the week before I started this, that I will always show up no matter what. And we and so I just showed up, and six people came and they were like, mad at me because because it was unsafe. But a couple of people were appreciative that, hey, you said you'd be here and you you still showed up. Because I was halfway here. And I was trying to decide Should I go or or turned around? At any rate, that's how we got that first venue. And then when we started to be larger than what could fit at a regular old restaurant. And without calling and having reservations, we started doing this, we started to figure out who out there has a private dining room. And then we looked in called dozens of places until we found a few that had a private dining room where it could just be us and we started figuring out how big those private dining rooms were or are and some of them could hold 30 some could hold 60 some could hold 100 or even 120. So based on the topic, I tried to determine like how big do we need it? And then I did something I'm okay at sales. I'm I did that for several years I was door to door selling for a long time. And I usually try to understand what does somebody really want and you only are good at sales when you understand exactly what somebody wants. And you're only good at sales when you can ask enough questions for them to tell you what they want. And for you to say perfect I got this solution for you. That's how you're going to win the sales game and almost everything you do is sales. But with these places that we were trying to use their private dining room, a lot of them would say a few things, a lot of them would say, number one, you have to pay me 300 for the room, and then you can have the rest. And number two, they would say, you're more than welcome to come, but you can't order off of the menu, you have to have a special menu, it's a smaller one. Or they would say something like, you have to pay for a buffet or not only do you have to pay for a buffet or plated, you've got to pay it in advance. And then I would, I would start asking more questions. Okay, okay. Okay, get all of the information from them. Because what your listeners going to find? And what you two are already finding, as you're trying to look for spaces in Vegas, is everybody wants you to pay the ways that I already described upfront. On one bill, and I'm like, No, it's not going to be one bill. And so I would specifically get with the service manager, the person in charge of that, and I would say, What is it about the single bill that helps you so much? What is it about me paying upfront that helps you so much? And really, what you end up finding is that they're like, Oh, well, it doesn't really matter if it's one bill or multiple bills, like it's not that big of a deal. And you're like, Okay, okay, well, great that that one's not that one's no longer a problem. That one's no longer an issue. What is it about? Us ordering off the menu, that that hurts the restaurant so much. And when I asked enough questions, I can just say, okay, based on everything that you just told me, I think it's going to work this way. And so we're going to come in at this time, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, this is how we're going to solve this. This is how we're going to solve that. And it was perfect. However, if other people don't want to go through all of that, they will have to call lots and lots and lots of places. Were synesthetes actually it's called Chin's Eddie's, it has one C, and you pronounce it you're supposed to crowds with a CH, even though there's not an H. But since Eddie's or Chin's Eddie's, is an Italian buffet in northern Denver, just north out of Denver, it's called northglenn. And they will let us use the space as long as every single person eats, and has to pay for a thing. So I got really blast or lucky, lunchtime is going to be 15 bucks a person plus two or $3 drink plus tip. So it will cost them like 20 bucks, or whatever. And if you can find a spot like that, that is already good with all of these things. And now you don't have to sale you don't have to do your Jedi strategies against all these, all these people. But mostly, I worked with restaurants, because I, if I could just guarantee that everybody was going to eat, it would be fine. And so here's something of value that I know that you too, and anyone listening is going to get a ton of value on. We're a free meetup. So I would, I would get in front. And I would say I've got a giant announcement right now, it's very important, I need everybody's hands up. Before I even start, I say, look, these guys were able to bring us in for free. I'm not charging you a dime, most people charge 20 bucks. Here's the deal. And I want to make sure that every single person hears me. If you just ate before you came, that's cool. If all you want is coffee, that's cool. All you want is water, that's cool. Just want to let you know that your water is going to be $10, your coffee is going to be $10. And if you want literally nothing, they're going to give you a bill for $10. So you haven't have a choice right now you can walk out and not pay $10. Or you can make sure that you're going to order something, or just have a $10 soda. Either way, totally fine. But that's what we're going to do to in order to do this. And and you'll notice in my language, it's the speech patterns are very important for you to remember. We're gonna do this. Remember how I said that, because when I'm talking to my group, I, if I if I point the fingers and say you didn't pay last week, or you didn't buy anything, or you're the one who always does the water, or Hey, hey, john, make sure you you know, there's no reason for that. It's, hey, we're gonna do this, we're going to do this you have, you can leave, that's fine. But if we are going to stay, you're going to spend at least 10 bucks, and it doesn't matter. Even if you just have water. It's going to be a $10 water, because we are appreciative of these people for putting us into this space, which allows the restaurant to hear me say that and I actually bring the servers in when I'd say even if you get a tent a water it's going to be round up as open food or open drink. This is an aloha thing that I was a bartender. So I remember how to do it, and how to be like, you're gonna have a $10 water, and I would look at the service the person and say, Look, the minimum per person is at least 10 bucks, but if they order something, it's most of the food's like 12. So, and then I just, I would say something like, please be sure to tip them, if blah, blah, blah. And the restaurant was very appreciative. And they kept bringing us and inviting us back. And because of the honesty that I shared with my, the people that came and gave them an opportunity to just leave, they were very polite to the waitstaff. And we kept on getting invited back and back and back. And it was just a way I have the creative real estate podcast for a reason. Because it's, if you ask enough questions, if you figure out something, you can always find a solution that will make the restaurant happy. And I was able to guarantee at some of those restaurants that we will pay at least 10 bucks a person no matter what. So there's a few tips and tricks to finding a good spot.

Well, that was that was fantastic. Adam, thank you. I didn't intend for us to spend most of our hour talking about meet up, but it's fantastic information.

I think it's important. And really, I mean, we've talked to other apartments indicators. And, you know, you've kind of told us a little bit about how you do it differently, or, or how you run your company. So I think, you know, it's more important to get into these more interesting details, because it's more helpful, you know, you get this piece we've already talked about the ins and outs of what apartment syndication is sort of generally, but this is probably going to be something that is actionable for for our audience, which is awesome. So thank you. Alright, so

in the interest of time, we're going to kind of run through our sort of four values to lightning

round, I guess

we don't call it a lightning round, but we're gonna make it a

light it up. And now we're gonna put like a really cool soundbite in there.

I don't need to sound effects. Okay. So, when you start off in real estate, was there a critical skill that you think you had to learn before you could really get started?

Absolutely. The most critical skill is your own belief systems and how you control your mindset. By far, no matter who's out there. If you are unable to think big, if you're unable to drive forward, no matter what, you're going to lose the game. Real Estate's hard. I'm gonna be honest with everyone listening. Real estate is so flippin hard. You got to have your mindset before you even take the next step. So important.

All right, book recommendation go.

Well, if they haven't read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, it was one that was life changing for me if there

is running recommendation,

if the if they're trying to get into syndication, you know, Joe fairless has the best ever apartment syndication book, which I think is literally the most full of value to a syndicator. And I will be coming up with a meetup book pretty soon. So email me, Adam at real blue spruce calm if you want that book when it comes out. It's going to have so much more value than I already gave you on on, on the details of how to make a meet up successful.

That's awesome. Yeah, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I think. I'm not sure there's been anyone that hasn't said it was an influential book for them, which is just, well,

well, me and well, but but it's funny. It's not a it's not a nuts and bolts book at all. It's a mindset. It's a mindset book.

Yeah. It's a lot of where people just get that aha moment they get started, which is is a great place to start. It just cracks me up. That's why I like to ask that question because I'm like, Let's hear it.

We're gonna do a super cut from our show of just people going Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Poor Dad. So your that first deal that first triplex that you bought, how did you go about funding that deal? How much money did you have to come to the table with?

On the very first triplex that I was purchasing? I mentioned that I at the time was making about 20 grand a month, my credit score was just under 800. It was very solid for somebody who was actually using credit and using it. And you know, I was a kid, and I had only a small amount of money to put down. But here's the biggest problem that was at the very end of 2008. And if I tried to buy a property two weeks earlier, I would have been able to get an FHA FHA loan, and it was a $369,000 property. So whatever that times three and a half is, is what I would have had to put down but because I couldn't even get an FHA loan or any other loan for that matter, because stated loans had just went away. The banks had learned some lessons. I got a private money lender to do a 100% loan so I put nothing down. But I did put 40 grand on my credit card for the property. So I put down about 42,000 just to re rehab some of the units that there were. But it was a nothing down deal. So it was a lot of fun, though.

Oh, that's great. So what does the day in the life of a apartment syndicator look like?

It depends on who it is. I have 12 people on staff, my asset manager spends a lot of times dotting I's crossing T's flying out to our properties. We I collectively, am partnered in about 1400 units right now. So the asset manager does one thing, the acquisition managers do a totally different thing. They spend, and I have four of them on staff. They spend all day every day just acquiring deals. And me personally, what is the day in Adam Adams his life look because I have all the other pieces taken care of. I'm on social media, usually at 530. In the morning, I'll wake up, I'll be on social media for about an hour before I wake up my kid and then my kid, I'll get him out to school, then I wake up my other kid to get him to his other school. And then I spend all day with my virtual assistant, creating content recording podcast hosting podcast being on other people's podcast planning events that I will attend planning events that I will speak at. And so me personally, I only focus on branding and I get back to the house when the kids are getting home. One of them is old enough that I don't have to be there right away. He can be home alone for a few minutes. And so I get there just before the second kid gets home, and I become dad for several hours. They go to bed at eight o'clock. And I kid you not. I'm on social media, usually until midnight. And then I do the whole thing again at 530.

Hmm. Wow.

Are you one of those tiny portion of people that can genetically handle the five, six hours of sleep?

Yeah, yeah. I don't know what it is if it's genetic or something else, but my typical sleep is for four or five and sometimes six. If I ever go past seven, I'm groggy the whole next day. So if I know if I get eight hours, I won't feel good. I just won't. So interesting that they've proven now that there's a gene. Oh, I must have that gene ever. What's going on with you? I slept?

Yeah, neither of us do. Maybe, you know, so that's okay. It just sucks when you have a five year old and you work and you want to do all of the things would be really nice to have that gene. Awesome. All right location. Where are most of your investments? Are they in Colorado or smart?

They're all over? They've been all over. I've chased markets for some time. So do I do I if I have like 10 states? Should I list all of them? Or? Or it seems like

Well, whatever. It doesn't matter, let's say

okay, Ohio, Tennessee, Connecticut, Texas, Georgia.

Okay, the whole point is that you do in fact, you are able to invest long distance with real estate syndications, because it's, it's a big enough deal that you've got an Onproperty you've got on staff, property management, maintenance, and things like that. It's that runs itself.

And more important than that, that the listener has to take away is that they need to do a lot of they need to do a lot more due diligence than I did on the first three markets that I invest in their stagnant markets. They're not growing. It's it's, I'm not making a whole bunch of money. So just if you're listening, be more cautious in the beginning about the market. Totally what Neil said you can invest anywhere that you want. But the any market that you pick needs to be carefully selected with some very good criteria. And I have a podcast episode that we have. It's Episode 242. If you want to know more of that Neil bawa, the other Neil, any al Neil Bala talks about market selection in great detail. So that's one really good resource for you before you decide to go to Ohio or wherever, maybe look at the market data ahead of time. Sorry to

know your Okay, follow up question. How long do you think you could maybe be like, out of the country and still doing what you're doing? Yeah. Okay.

So. So I have coaching clients, and so I don't like I don't take days off for that, you know, I if I wanted to, like, tell them that, that you can't book anything in this certain amount of time. I would have the ability to tell them that but I want to support them more. So, right now, I think I could I think I could Go for a week or two comfortably, just by telling my coaching clients, hey, these two weeks I'm, I'm I'm off the grid, so schedule your calls before or after it. But if if you're talking just about my real estate, I'm not my asset manager. And we've already done a lot enough that we can raise any amount of millions that we need to. So if, if it was just for my real estate, and not including my coaching, I could go for a whole year easier. Yeah, so

Well, I think for a lot of people, you know, we, when we ask this question, they say like, I could go anywhere, and still, they would still be able to do like their coaching or their podcasting. Depending on the time zone, they could take time, they just wouldn't be like, fully on vacation, it would be sort of Yeah,

I could I could be just Same, same, same here. Like, if I tried to go out with my girlfriend for a month, and I didn't cancel all of my stuff. She wouldn't have a good time anyway. So I'm only thinking like, how long could I not work and be fine. If it's just in our real estate, I'm making about five grand a month, it covers my expenses in my whole company makes a lot more, but just add them. I make like five grand a month and that's enough for me to pay my expenses, really. So I could I could stay away as long as five years, technically, because I just gotta wait till some of these sell. And then I have to get back to work. But um, but for coaching and stuff like I don't, I love it. I do it. I focus on it. I couldn't stay away for very long.

It's good. You gotta have passion. That's, that's awesome. So

well, Adam, thank you so much for sharing with us today. You've got the creative real estate podcast. You're all over Facebook, Adam AAA Adams. If any of our listeners want to learn more about you, where do you think the best place for them to reach out to real blue spruce

calm is the best spot real blue spruce calm is my our hub. It's my main company, my BIOS there. My partners are there. The deals that have be closed are there. The even the podcast is all there. So there's really one place they want to get a hold of me. They can get my website, they can get my email, my phone number, it's all that real blue spruce. calm. And do you have a estimated release date for that meetup book? Yeah, it was two years ago on my birthday. That was the estimated date.

I'm like, wait, I'm confused. So

I just brought in, I just hired for my personal brand, not even out not even part of blue spruce. But I just hired a full time CEO or assistant. Really, she's, she's amazing. And my, what I'm hoping for is that, at least by mid 2020, it will be out for sure. But if you email me now at him at real blue spruce calm and you're like, hey, when's this book going to come out? I'm sure it'll motivate me to make sure it happens even sooner. Okay.

That's what I'm gonna do. I'm your ID. You just made me her accountability partner Adams.

Awesome. I love it. Thanks, Neil.

All right. All right. Well, listen, thank you, again, so much for being part of our show today.

We'll talk to you soon, hopefully

grateful to have been on the show. Thank you.

Well, that was Adam Adams from real blue spruce calm. We thank him for his time. And it's always it's always great to talk to him. we've, we've gotten to meet him in person a couple of times. It was nice to catch up with him.

Yeah, he's a nice guy. Okay, well, let's get into our post interview. Analysis. All right, make it sound all fancy. It's not fancy. Alright, so what was your what was the key lesson that you took from this interview? Well, I mean, obviously,

we talked a lot about it. But the power of meetups and going in with having a real structure to your meetup. I mean, we're part of a great meetup right now, that's very unstructured. And it's great. There's, I'm not, I'm not knocking it at all. But there is something to be said for having a little bit of structure to your networking, even if you're only going to do network and doing like doing the halves. And

I think some of those small bits would be because I, you know, I'm only been the one time when we went, but it was a little bit. You know, there was the people that like fully knew each other. And like, it was just a little bit disjointed. We did talk about like who people were, but I think framing it in that way. And sort of having some different sections would probably be a little bit easier for people to feel like they could find the right person to connect with during the networking time, because I thought that was sort of like, I don't know who to talk to.

Yeah, and there's a lot of people who are a little more extroverted than other people. And this sort of allows everyone to kind of one you're automatically hearing kind of who everyone is and what it is that they want and what it is that they're doing and And so that can vary flow easier for you to go, Oh, hey, I need help with that. And they know about this or, oh, hey, they've got that, and I've got money. Now, I want to put towards that.

What about you,

I mean, obviously all that was, was fantastic talking about meetup, I think the other piece is just, when you're first getting started, or really anywhere, when you have a business, you have to have systems and you know, things put into place to really make sure that you're covering yourself, and that you're acting as a business on them learn that lesson very early on, by kind of running his business like, just very casually, and like he was just people's friends. And that really got him in trouble. So you know, remembering that when you have a business, when you have those systems and those rules and things in place, they're there for a reason. And it's really important to, to follow them. Even if you are essentially a one person business, you know, there's those things will help keep you accountable to yourself and your and, and your company, and hopefully, make it so that you don't run into problems as easily. I think that's a good lesson to take away. Well, how

what was the the key piece of knowledge that he had to learn before we got started? Do not remember.

I do know, I had to look at my notes. No, so he talked about like mindset and belief system. So just kind of, he talked about that real estate investing is not easy, but it can be hard. And you know, having that mindset and belief system behind you can really help you, you know, move forward. And, you know, I think that's definitely something it's, you know, it's not necessarily a piece of knowledge, but it really is something that you have to learn for a lot of people and, you know, he talked about, he was doing a lot of the things that he was doing in college initially, and some of that, that that really strong mindset and belief system comes up to us a little bit later in life sometimes, you know, especially scientifically, anybody wants, the more you know, your temporal lobe isn't fully formed until you're 25, which is, you know, where you have like, a lot of impulse control and things like that. So he was he wasn't there yet. And some of that applied to that. So anyway, that was me going off on it.

Yeah. Well, and I think the whole nerd, the mindset tag

nerd.

mindset was real estate is so and that's why it's why so many people mentioned Rich Dad, Poor Dad, as a sort of touchstone is that that's where a lot of that mindset for for many people comes from? Yeah, they're they have this sort of limiting belief around what their financial life will always look look like and how they'll eventually retire. And it's not until they sort of get exposed to that book that they go, Oh, there is a different way.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Time how how much does he spend? Well, I guess on on what he's doing now, you got to hear that are instacart delivery came early.

So I left reviews out there for that answer. It's been it's been a very distracted episode. We had a lot of interruptions today. So forgive us affordable, scattered. He didn't we didn't get into the exact amount of time that he spends. He said, He's got two kids who are in school during the day. He's up at 530 in the morning, and he is working up until the time has one of his sons, his sons Get up. frazzled. Yeah, probably an hour an hour. And then imagine the kids to get them out the door, let's say, by seven,

you know, most kids start school between eight and nine. Okay, we just have to drop our child off really early because of their jobs. So I would guess that depending on how they get to school, they probably leave between 730 and eight, maybe a little bit more. So long story short, let's say between eight and three. He's working.

Yeah. And and I would say that he's he's putting in more than 40 hours.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, but that's not on real estate piece. I mean, that's really it and he specified this he doesn't do a lot on the real estate and because he has, yeah, he has all those systems and the people that make up the systems in place, which is you know, really where you want to get and then you can do what you're passionate about you can he that's what he does most of the day is he's doing events and coaching and doing the thought leadership and education piece of his business, not the real estate investing real estate investing really is just kind of the vehicle or the the fuel maybe and the rest is is you know, kind Have what he really loves to do, which is awesome.

Did you catch how much it took him to how much money he needed to get started?

He You know, he never actually specified on that that duplex how Mirvish or triplex? He's me how much he he actually did on the down on how much you put down. So I don't I don't know. Do you remember?

He said he put, as I recall, it was a no money down deal. Actually. He did private money

loan.

I think he even had about 40. He said about $40,000 in rehab. So he actually was able to, he was able to get into that for no money down. Because they do the strategy from anywhere they could he could he

thought we have notes. Adam, he could, yes, the real estate piece. Yes. You know, for him the coaching, he doesn't feel like he would want to go away. And that's, you know, that's cool. It's his passion. That's his choice. So yeah, if you're just doing the real estate piece, and you're not so much concentrated on such a large coaching and thought leadership part, I think you can probably go away for a decent amount of time or go away and work part of that time. Depending on on you know, what that piece looks like for you. As we've kind of if you haven't gleaned this from that episode, it does require a little bit of a platform to be really successful in this arena, you have to like either have a really strong network of people already, where you need to find a way to build that and that can be through things like hosting a podcast Hi, that's what we do. Hosting meetups, you know, that's that's one of the things that Neil is working on is going to more or hosting meetups gives me having educational pieces, all those kinds of things, your social media, those are the ways that you bring in investors for something like this. And and so you can't really do I don't I don't believe you can do this kind of the syndication and bringing in investors without having at least something there again, unless you just have a ridiculous network already available to you.

So all right, well, that's Adam Adams from real Blue spruce.com also the creative real estate podcast, please check him out. He is very active on Facebook. If you search for Adam AAA Adams, you will almost certainly find him. He's a great follow.

Let's hit the road. No, by to interrupt, you

know, middle.

Okay, it's great. Now we're really good bye bye.

And if you like this podcast, we would really appreciate it if you take just a few minutes and leave a review for us on iTunes. It's really simple to do. Just go to road to family freedom.com slash review for links and instructions. Thanks for listening. We're doing this all again next week. Until then, safe travels.