Terry Thayer:
When it clicked and I started transitioning to outsourcing, is when I actually started building a company. Prior to that, I created a high paying job for myself.
Speaker 2:
This is Start Fm.
Speaker 3:
Now here’s your host, active real estate investor and entrepreneur, Chad Duval.
Chad Duval:
Hey guys, I ask this question on almost every episode. How do you get started in real estate? I ask it to almost every guest and the most common answer is, to try and get a house hack. If you’re a fan of the show, you know that I like to refer to house hacking as real estate with training wheels. It’s a great way to get into real estate with a low down payment and basically live for free. Everything sounds awesome, but a lot of you guys are busy, especially now with everything going on in the world. [inaudible 00:00:55] hours and hours searching for info in multiple places and listen to podcasts. And most people just don’t have that time. Most people trying to juggle kids right now, especially transitioning and working from home because of COVID and, just trying to keep track of everything, eating exercise.
Chad Duval:
I know it’s a struggle. I struggle with them too, almost every day. That’s why I reached out to my friends over at House Hacking Success, [June 00:01:19] and Brad, they’re awesome guys over there. And they become like the go-to resource online for everything, house hacking. So yeah, I reached out to them this week to try and get you guys a discount on any of their courses that they have over there. So they were kind enough to give you guys 10% off anything on their website. They do have a lot of free resources. They have a free ebook and a podcast. But they also have a course that puts everything you need to know about house hacking into a 42 episode course, all video content, which is really awesome because if you decide to have something on in the background while you’re doing your 9:00 to 5:00 at home, and you just pop in a one video or a couple videos on your TV in the background.
Chad Duval:
I know I do that every day with a bunch of other resources that I use to continually sharpen my knowledge in the real estate game. So yeah, head over to househackingsuccess.com. Use the discount code, Star FM, and you’ll definitely get 10% off anything on the site. If you decide to buy, again, there’s plenty of free resources on there. Their podcast is awesome. I was just recently on it. And they are going to be on next week’s episode as well too. So, I hope this helps you guys. Use discount code, Star FM, get 10% off now and enjoy the show.
Chad Duval:
Hi Terry Thayer. How are you doing today? Welcome to the show.
Terry Thayer:
Good. How are you doing? Thanks for having me.
Chad Duval:
Yeah, no problem. So, today I’d like to dive into your story and help the audience listeners know how you got started in real estate and being the wholesaling expert you are. I’d love to dive into that but first, for all the audience members who don’t know who Terry is, why don’t you give a little background about yourself and where you come from?
Terry Thayer:
Sure. Yeah. I’ve been in real estate a long time, so I’m one of the rare breeds of people that have been in this for almost 20 years. Grew up as a carpenter. Grew up in Upstate New York and ended up leaving there in ’95, moving to Raleigh, North Carolina. And that’s where I really started my career, but started off as a carpenter and really one day a friend of mine and I bought a property and we got it for pretty cheap, just honestly, it was like over by the college, over by NC State. And we heard that four bedroom Fort, literally this is like a rumor and we ended up buying a house over a rumor. The fact that you can rent these… If you take a house and you convert it into a four bedroom, four bath, then you can rent out by the room for like 650 a room. So literally-
Chad Duval:
Oh, it’s like all the college kids?
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, exactly. Right. So we literally bought this house, cut the roof off it, put a second floor addition and made it a four bedroom, four bath house, for that purpose. And that’s honestly what launched my real estate career and made it intentional. And we just started going head first that way.
Chad Duval:
Wow. So did you move down to the Raleigh area for school from New York? Is that why you moved?
Terry Thayer:
Nope. Not for school. I finished high school, moved out. My dad had just moved to North Carolina. He moved like October ’94, I moved January ’95. And just moved down really just to get into the workforce. With him, he had his business cranking and going. And I just came, like all I knew was carpentry. Right? So, that was my school. And I came to do the business, do that type of business and it just kind of grew into that.
Chad Duval:
Right. Now, so is your father a carpenter too? Is that where you picked up that skill?
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, of course. Yeah. So growing up with him, yeah he was a carpenter and yeah. So like literally every chance I got, I would go work for him, like any kind of vacations time off and afternoons after school sometimes or weekends, whatever the case might be. I kinda liked that really. And when he moved down to North Carolina, he started to really build a business and it was like one of the things was like the exact right time, right place. Raleigh was just booming at the time with building. And he went directly, specifically into the vinyl siding space and grew that company into an extremely large company. And he’s been retired now for over 10 years. Multi-Millionaire, did very well for himself.
Chad Duval:
Wow. So that’s interesting how your parents in their businesses can influence the outcome of your life too. Especially, you learned all those skills and then transferred them into a passion that you already had. So it was a good combination from the beginning. So, what part of New York did you move from? Just curious because my mom’s family is from Buffalo, that whole area. I don’t know if you’re anywhere from there.
Terry Thayer:
Very close, Rochester. South, about 45 minutes to and from Buffalo.
Chad Duval:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Terry Thayer:
I don’t tell too many people that. No.
Chad Duval:
Yeah, I know. But I mean, it’s got to be tough, especially real estate-wise, investing in any part of New York versus Raleigh where-
Terry Thayer:
I’ve attempted and I think I left about $150,000 there.
Chad Duval:
Yeah, absolutely.
Terry Thayer:
It was not a great market. At least, it wasn’t something that I was able to figure out very well. I mean, we do business in many, many markets now, but I stay as far away from New York State as possible.
Chad Duval:
Right. Yeah. So for everybody listening, what does your business actually look like now? I know you started as doing hands-on, doing these room rentals and that sort of thing. What does everything look like today?
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, so I mean, just a quick evolution of where, starting from that one particular property. And then we got to the point where, a year later, it was in 2002. 2003, I became licensed as a general contractor and we would do major renovations, buy houses and do major renovations and visions. And then some of them, we would tear down and build new in a really elite area, older area of Raleigh. We would sell these houses in the 1 million range, typically 1.1, 1.9 million in average. And fast forward all the way through the crash and luckily did well. Did not have any properties that we lost in the crash or anything, so that was of our way. But our lending was completely different.
Terry Thayer:
We used to go to, back then it was Wachovia Bank, who is now bought out by Wells Fargo, but we used to walk up into the bank. And I swear, I felt like I was robbing the bank every time we walked in there. We’d walk in and sign some papers and walk out with a million dollar loan to build these giant houses. Yeah, so that was the only thing that changed for us, is like how we obtained our money. So,
Chad Duval:
Which I’m assuming you had to go private at that point.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. But for several years, I never heard of private. Right? I had no idea what it was. So for kind of two, three, four year, three, four years, we were doing high-end renovations for people because I didn’t know how to get money. Banks weren’t lending. I didn’t know about hard money, didn’t know about private money. And as soon as I learned about private money, it was probably like 2012 ish, Yes, it was about four years. We started raising money and went right back to work. Flipping houses again, building new.
Terry Thayer:
About three years, three, four, let’s see, it’s probably about four years ago. Now, we decided to break off the marketing and acquisition side of our company to make it its own company. So we’ve got our new build company, our flip company. We have a buy and hold company and we have a separate company. It’s just our marketing acquisitions. And so what that looks like today, is we have a team, there’s 11 of us in this office right now. We have a bunch of acquisitions, dispositions, transacting coordinator, counting, admin, all the different parts and pieces in our office. All of our marketing comes from outside sources. So we don’t do any cold calling inside this office. We have cold callers, VAs that are doing everything.
Terry Thayer:
We have marketing sources like PPC, SEO, hot text blast, and even our text blasts, we outsource that to another company where they do the text blast and they qualify the lead, drop it into our CRM, and then our acquisitions people take the warmed up lead and take it from there. Direct mail, occasionally, we don’t stay consistent with direct mail or just maybe little niche things that we go after with direct mail. But today, I would say a bad month is about 10 deals in a month, all the way between 10 and 20 deals in a month. And average assignment is about 20,000. We do take down some of our own deals to flip them. Like resell them to our other companies and rebuy them from our other company, a couple of deals here and there.
Chad Duval:
Well, I love how you have that marketing arm working for you. And you don’t necessarily have a goal in mind for the particular lead, but you can just analyze every single lead that you get in. And then you can just split it off into the different departments or arms of the company that you have. That’s really smart because then you can really focus on each aspect individually and keep growing them in a linear way. But, I wanted to like… So today you have a lot of VA’s, it seems like you’re a lot of, not hands-off time-wise, it doesn’t seem like, but at least hands off with your hands.
Chad Duval:
And you had originally started that way by doing all these big tear downs and all of this construction and that sort of thing. When did the transition happen between you getting your hands dirty every day to where you are now, where you have a team? Because I think a lot of people, at least looking at my parents and other close members who have their own businesses, they struggle in that loop where they are always doing the work themselves, as they’re never pulling themselves out to let the business scale.
Terry Thayer:
Just thinking back to those days, it’s like PTSD. I just started cringing even thinking about it. [crosstalk 00:11:54]. I was such a control freak. And really, I mean, when it clicked and I started transitioning to outsourcing, is when I actually started building a company. Prior to that, I created a high paying job for myself. And that was it. I was running ragged, working over 100 hours a week. I think I went, somewhere around 10 years without even taking, I mean, there was some days off. Necessary days that maybe I was sick or had to take a day off for a wedding, that type of thing. But I never took a day off. I didn’t take a vacation. I mean, I live right here in Raleigh where I’m two hours away from the beach and two hours away from the mountains. And I didn’t see either one of those areas for about 10 years.
Terry Thayer:
My wife now, who was my girlfriend at the time, she would go off with her family and she’d go out. And I honestly, to me, it was like, you’re weak if you take a day off. That was my mindset. So, where the shift was, I said in 2012 is when I learned about private money. And that’s when I first started investing into myself personally. And that’s how I learned about private money. Fast forward a couple more years, 2014, I’m at my first Mastermind. Met this Mastermind, and I’ll never forget. And I still talk to her to this day, but this one particular person at the Mastermind, she goes up to speak and she starts doing her intro. And her intro is basically this. She lives in Florida. She spends a lot of her time in Southern California. Her business is fully up and running, cranking and they’re buying, selling and flipping properties. Everything’s just going. And she lives in California. Okay. So the virtual model back then in 2014, like this is the first time I’ve heard of this. I’m like, there’s no way in hell.
Chad Duval:
Right, this is [crosstalk 00:13:51] COVID where now it’s like the norm, but back then it wasn’t.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, we’re talking seven years ago. Right? So, I’m thinking to myself and I fly out of Raleigh on Thursday afternoon to go to this Mastermind Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I left Sunday night because to me it was like, I couldn’t spend another minute there. I had to get back because all I can think about is my business is burning to the ground. Like everything’s falling apart while I’m here for a couple of days. That was my mentality. And she’s talking about how she does that. On top of that, she was getting ready to go on a month long backpacking/bicycling trip in the mountains of Northern California, where she was not going to have any service. And during that time, she was still going to be buying, like her whole business was still running. Like nothing stopped, nothing slowed down. It just kept going.
Terry Thayer:
And that’s all I could think of. I became obsessed with that from that moment. So it took me about… Well, I leave that event. I come home Monday morning. I had 16 carpenters who worked for me. I met them at the back door of my shop to go open up the door. And I fired every one of them, right then and there. I kept one guy, there’s one particular guy. I keep this one guy and said, “Hey, you and I, we’re going to figure this whole thing out. We’re going to transition. We’re going to start outsourcing and I’m going to build a company.”
Terry Thayer:
It was just like, I literally just ripped the band-aid off and just said, I’ve got to figure this out. But if I keep doing what I’m doing, I’m going to end up killing myself. I’m never going to grow a business. I’m never going to be able to scale, expand, and actually do the things that I want to do in life. Because I didn’t seek out to work 100 plus hours a week for 10 years straight. And just like, literally with no growth. Yeah. I made decent money, but not the money I should have been making. Not anything, not a fraction of what I make today.
Chad Duval:
Right.
Terry Thayer:
And I almost do nothing today.
Chad Duval:
And so you just had to see something like that to finally… The match that started the fire. That’s crazy. You got rid of all your team and then you transitioned into trying to figure out this remote style of work and business. What was like your first couple hires from there to help pull things back in in-house or making you able to work from your computer or from any different state?
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. So we hired an admin person that did a lot of the… Because I was literally doing it. I was doing admin. I was paying people. I was out there building, I was swinging a hammer, throw my tool, I mean, literally, I had a different hat on every five minutes. Right? I’m selling jobs, I’m buying properties, I’m doing all kinds of things. Our first couple of hires was that one person, I was starting to train that person to be more of like a project manager. So I was putting systems in place and how I wanted these projects run instead of me having to do them so that I can start building the business. And it was more or less subcontracting out a lot of the contractors because prior to that, me and my 16 guys that I had, we would do a lot of the work ourselves.
Chad Duval:
Right.
Terry Thayer:
Right, Because I thought, Oh, nobody could do it better than me. Or nobody can do it cheaper than me. And nobody can do it faster than me because me and my crew, we’re just going to go in and then we’re going do everything. Well, little did I know is that I can only really do one or two properties at a time.
Chad Duval:
Right. Exactly.
Terry Thayer:
And it went from literally, I mean, in a few short, once we got everything under control and I started to put those systems and processes in place, it went from doing one or two at a time to… I mean, at one point in time, I had almost 90 properties going at one particular point in time.
Chad Duval:
Holy cow.
Terry Thayer:
I had 88 of them.
Chad Duval:
Wow. That’s crazy. So then as you’re starting to scale like that, was your focus on just growing top-line revenue pretty much and just fill in people underneath you?
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. So it’s funny how every year, as time goes, that you evolve into this different person. So we were doing a lot of high-end, not high-end, major renovations like full gut type of renovations, and then tear down and new builds and all that. And it was just like, we were doing quantity, right? So I was like, how much could we do? How much could we do? And that’s why I finally pulled the plug and I was like, Whoa, we’ve got 88 properties here. We’re running ourselves ragged. I’m starting to put myself back into the old habits, trying to run all these projects. And there’s better ways of doing it.
Terry Thayer:
So I stopped buying properties and we would finish out all those, sell them. And that’s actually the time when I broke off the market acquisition side to make it its own company. So we made that company offer hot and started running that company. And then what I did with the flip side, I’m like, okay, if we flip properties, we’re going to… I set a criteria. I’m like, if it fits in these five pieces of criteria, we will flip the property. If not, we resign it. Right? It’s that simple, right? It’s like when you hire and fire, you create core values. And as long as you live and die by those core values, there’s no question.
Chad Duval:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Which makes it super easy to hire, because then you have it already written down, it’s ready to rock and roll.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, exactly.
Chad Duval:
So did you sell everything off basically? So basically, the way that it sounds is you took a perceived step backwards to go a huge step forward. Pretty much what happened is you sold everything off, reorganized again, and then kept moving and started growing into multiple alarms?
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. So what we did is we, instead of having everything as one machine, we broke them off into their own companies. So we have a building company, we have a flipping company, buy and hold company, we have a marketing acquisitions company, right? So the market acquisitions, it has its own core values, rules, systems, processes, team, the whole nine. Same thing with the flipping company. The new build company, we used to do a lot of tear down new builds. We don’t do that anymore. We used to do a lot of development. We don’t do that anymore. We’ve simplified that.
Terry Thayer:
I have a couple of developers that rebuy dirt farm. So they go in, they buy the land, they put the streets and water, sewer, all that stuff. Sell me a lot. I go in, take my plan and get it approved, get permits, and re pull the house out of the ground. That simple. I don’t have to tear down. I don’t have to run new water and sewer to the street. I don’t have to get all these crazy approvals and all that stuff. I’ve simplified every single part of the business. And literally, between all of those businesses that I named, I’ve probably spent five hours a week in them.
Chad Duval:
Wow. That’s crazy. It’s because you have the team that handles everything. I guess, there’s always a criticism. So I’m just thinking again in personal experience with my parents and their business and stuff like that, do you have to have somebody that’s like a mirror image of you to be running each one of these divisions? How do you put things in place so that there’s trust there between you and everything’s getting done in every one of these businesses? I’m sure you get like a daily or a weekly update. Some sort of form or a report or something like that. I guess I don’t really understand. How do you break away and still know that that stuff is going to run? I know you said you brought in some project managers and stuff, but again, there’s got to be some sort of trust or how do you cope with that if you’re first making that step? Because I know you were obsessed with everything. It was type A personality and to lose control of some stuff is a large pill to swallow for a lot of people.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, sure. So it’s, I believe the scale and automate any company, you’ve got to start with systems, put the processes in place and then start putting the people to follow those systems and processes and have the right people. Right? So systems, processes and then people. Okay. So if you have the systems and processes to the point where they’re unbreakable, right? It’s like, how does McDonald’s become a multi-billion dollar company and every single location’s a multi-million dollar location, run off minimum wage employees?
Chad Duval:
Because they’ve got really good systems.
Terry Thayer:
Systems, process, their company is so systematic and so simple that they don’t need high level people. My other piece to my business is I hire higher level people. Like I will pay somebody more money to make sure I have the right person that’s going to own their position properly. So it ultimately buys me time and freedom by doing that. Right? So it doesn’t start off. You plug and play, right? It’s something like when we built the market acquisitions company, like we got in. I was answering the phones again. We were doing acquisition, dispositions, we’re doing every single piece of it. Right? And eventually, I was able to put all those systems in place, duplicate or document it, duplicate it, and then start putting the people in place. Create the SLPs, get the right people in place, the right training process.
Terry Thayer:
And now it just runs, right? There’s no question whatsoever. Now we have, so not only do we have the acquisitions, but I have an acquisitions manager that runs acquisitions team, right? They were in acquisition team, they were on the VA’s. We have a county department that also does some of the things with the KPIs. I have a business partner. He is more or less on the CFO side of things. So he’s looking at all of those parts and pieces and calling all the marketing. So everything’s systemized.
Chad Duval:
Right. No, I love how you framed it that way. I never actually thought of it that way. I always thought you might have to make a skeleton of a process and then you bring in the person to help develop that process and everything like that. But you, being the person who owns the business, should be in there, in the trenches, making notes, creating those processes, making them as bulletproof as possible, bring the people into it and then you can continue to refine it. But as long as you… Yeah, you’re the first-hand person making the process. And then yeah, as you bring in good people, I’m sure they evolve it and make it better and that sort of thing. But I love how you framed it that way.
Chad Duval:
With that being said, it seems like you have a bigger passion for a lot of this marketing and wholesaling stuff. I wanted to dive a little deep into some of the strategies maybe that you’re using right now. I know markets are really hot for single family and with COVID going on, there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of investors are probably a little skiddish to buy or can’t find what they call, deals or don’t fit their criteria pre-COVID. What sort of things are you guys doing to still be doing at least 10 assignments a month?
Terry Thayer:
So number one, I think if I was just in my own backyard right here in Raleigh, I wouldn’t be able to do that. So we were able to have the systems where everything’s virtual. We never leave our office. We buy and sell over the phone. Even when it’s right here in Raleigh, we’re buying or selling, we never leave to go see the property. So we have all the systems to do everything virtually, which allows us to scale into other markets. Right? So for me, I’m comfortable in this Raleigh market, it’s a hot market. It’s a great market, right? So, what I wanted to do is I’d look at the analytics for Raleigh. Like what makes Raleigh Raleigh? What makes Raleigh a hot place to be, right? And now I just go try to find more of those around the country. More of those same markets.
Terry Thayer:
Then we’ve duplicated. We’ve got Raleigh, Charlotte, Austin, like we’re in different areas around the country that fit that same criteria. We are able to scale it that way. And then we just use our… Our biggest marketing is going to be cold calling. So we have cold calling, buy lists, we scrub our list, we skip trace our list. We give it to our Vas. We’re training our VA’s every single day, making them better, holding them accountable with different KPIs. And we’ve got cold calling and all of these different markets. We have PPC, we have SEO, text blasts. In the majority of those markets, we’re doing those four. And then occasionally if we have something that we niche out, we’ll do direct mail. But those are probably the four main things, then we add direct mailing in there.
Chad Duval:
Right. And probably the direct mail is probably a little bit more of a niche thing.
Terry Thayer:
Right.
Chad Duval:
Yeah. Mom and pop or something like that. That still looks at a lot of letters and stuff like that. But with the PPC, the pay-per-click stuff, is that what’s driving most of your leads right now or is it cold calling?
Terry Thayer:
Cold calling. Yeah, so our cold callers deliver us an average four, but you see between three and seven per cold caller but when we average it across all the cold callers, it ends up being about four leads per day per, per cold caller. So our goal is, to get each acquisitions manager 10 new leads per day, is what we’re shooting for. It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s eight, sometimes it’s 12, right? It just kind of the way it all falls, but between all the different marketing sources, that’s what we’re shooting for is that the 10 per day and their job is to… If I look and I just kind of peek into our CRM and I see new leads sitting there, I’m going to be walking down to their office and be like, “Hey, what’s going on?”
Terry Thayer:
They know that we’ve got a one hour rule that, or really a 90 minute rule, because sometimes they might be out on a call for an hour or so with one person, but a 90 minute rule that nothing should be sitting in that area any more than 90 minutes. Unless it’s 5:00, then it goes to 10:00 AM the next business day. Has to be answered by. So they’re just taking those leads and they’re calling them and then they’re following up on all their other leads. Like we just reclean on our system, got rid of all of our, do not, contacts. And, I’m trying to think of the other types of the, we were able to wash and make sure we didn’t have duplicates and just different things like that, or combine somebody who might have 10 properties. Right? So we went from, I can’t remember what we were at before, but we’re just right at about 6,000 leads in our database after doing that clean. [crosstalk 00:28:57]
Chad Duval:
Yeah, now, just for perspective, how many cold calls would you have to make to get like 10 leads a day? Just for reference for people listening.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. So I’ll give you the metrics per caller. So one caller, what we tell them is they need to have at least 2,500 dials per day, right? They connect with, it just depends on the day, right? They might connect between 50 and 100 people. It completely depends on the day. And when I say connect, they may have a three-second call. “Hey, look, so-and-so.” Whatever, you get the introduction out, boom, they hang off. Right? But then they connect. But 2,500 and, really 3,500 is where they ended up being. Sometimes they slip a little bit below. They are required to give us a minimum of three leads per day. Right? And I would say the majority of them fall between three and seven. Sometimes we’ve seen as high as nine in one day by one cold caller.
Terry Thayer:
It ends up averaging out when we take all the cold callers, an average amount every single day ends up being about an average of four leads per day, per cold caller.
Chad Duval:
Wow.
Terry Thayer:
So then you just kind of reverse it. Okay. I want to do more. So then you know those metrics, as long as you know your metrics, you know where you can extend and how you’re going to extend and what’s going to get you more deals. You just kind of reverse engineer everything. Then on top of it, we have PBC. PBC we get, per market, we end up getting anywhere from one to probably three leads per day.
Chad Duval:
Okay. [crosstalk 00:30:49]. So you’re getting a few a day. I mean, that seems not super crazy, but with the people dialing every day, I’m assuming those are VA’s, are those internal?
Terry Thayer:
No. All VAs. We don’t do any of that. No cold calling internal.
Chad Duval:
That’s perfect. And it makes it super easy too. Because if one isn’t hitting the metrics like you’re requiring, then it’s easy to switch to a different one.
Terry Thayer:
Exactly.
Chad Duval:
Are all these guys having to stick to a script or are you letting them kind of just handle it how they want to handle it?
Terry Thayer:
No. Yeah, there’s a script for one, and then there’s daily training. So because we have so many VA’s, we have a VA manager. Being the manager, manages all the VA’s, but then our sales manager manages the VA manager.
Chad Duval:
Okay.
Terry Thayer:
Our acquisition sales manager listens to two or three calls per day, right? He’ll listen to two or three calls per day and then he’ll download them from the phone system. He’ll put them into an email. He will do a screen cast where he’s talking through, “Hey.” Talking about this particular download, this attachment, “Hey, in this call, yada, yada, yada, yada.” Just giving them any kind of advice or how they work the call and maybe how they could have changed it up, or just any kind of advice of how they can get better at that call.
Terry Thayer:
And then he’ll screen cast over the KPIs for the day and talk about, “Hey, so-and-so great job. You got seven calls yesterday. That’s great. Hey, so-and-so, you only got two yesterday. Like, what happened? I see this, your call volume was down.” Like just having this conversation. And when he calls that person out, they’re expected to respond with some type of answer of what is going on, give him feedback, because maybe the fact is that the list that they’re working, is starting to dry out. Right? And then we either replace it and give them new data or more data. But then we recycle data, right? So if we have a hit that data for four, five, six months, we’ll take that data and flush it back through again. I mean, that happens all the time.
Terry Thayer:
Like we had, trying to think of when it was, it was like the middle of last year, July. And I’m looking at our board and we measure where every single one of our leads came from. And it was a list that we had bought in October that we flushed through, and it was like there was nine deals on the board, all from this one list in October. It was dead in October when we bought it. But fast forward to July, it was smoking.so,
Chad Duval:
That’s crazy.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. It’s crazy. It really is. I don’t understand why it works. I don’t question it. We just kind of flush them back there and recycle.
Chad Duval:
Yeah, because it could be just a coincidence that a couple of people on that list weren’t ready at the time, but now they are.
Terry Thayer:
There would be changes.
Chad Duval:
Yeah, it absolutely does. And that’s a huge thing that I always believe in too, is the power of the followup, just keeping track of everything that’s going on and continually following up until there’s either a hard, no, after. Actually, I usually wait till there’s a couple, nos, or a block. And then I’ll move on. But that’s huge. That’s huge. So yeah, I mean, I guess we’re getting a little bit close to the end here. So, you are doing all of these different things in real estate. You’ve been in it for 20 years. Over 20 years,
Terry Thayer:
Almost 20 years
Chad Duval:
Almost 20 years.
Terry Thayer:
Next year will be 20 years. I’m 19 years. In real estate is 19 years. But I’ve been in the construction and all that for over 20 years.
Chad Duval:
Yeah. So you’ve been in it a long time. Most of the listeners of the show are either new to real estate and only have a few deals or are waiting to get into real estate sitting on the sidelines. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think is the one thing that keeps people from taking that plunge into real estate and actually moving forward with it?
Terry Thayer:
Trusting themselves. That’s honestly what I believe. It’s like, they’ll sit there and watch YouTube or listen to podcasts and you’ll get all this information. It’s like, they don’t trust in themselves actually, just take action and make it happen. Right? I tell people all the time, like I’m mentoring someone right now that they’re like scared to death to leave their full-time job, but they’re doing plenty fine. Like well more than what their full-time job is. Right? So it’s just a matter of, pull the plug, trust yourself. And you know what, as soon as you quit that full-time job, you’re going to have a whole lot more time to put on this. If you’re doing that well, doing this kind of part-time look, how much better you’re going to do when you have full attention on this whole thing.
Terry Thayer:
So, just not being scared, nervous, trust in yourself and just make it happen and do it. Go full force. If you trip and fall, it’s not the end of the world. And if it ends up being where entrepreneurship is not your thing, go back and get your job.
Chad Duval:
I used to hear that all the time until I started doing everything. And I never really understood it until I actually made the jump into things and realize that you’re right. You could always get another 9:00 to 5:00. There’s no shortage of them. And living with that regret of never doing it later in life would probably be worse than jumping in and screwing it up or even… I can’t even think of any situation where you screwed up so bad that you can’t recover from it. I mean, as long as you’re taking baby steps. So, that’s crazy.
Terry Thayer:
We’re going to trip and fall. We’re all going to… It’s like the first time we get on a bike where we’re doing wheelies and doing jumps and all that, no, we’re like [inaudible 00:36:32], we get on skis, like we fail until we got it figured out, right? Get on a skateboard and you fall and fall and fall and you finally figure it out. Right? It’s the exact same thing with businesses. Not different.
Chad Duval:
Right. Exactly. Well, there you go. I think that’s a good spot to stop. I guess if you want to give a little plug for maybe some of the meetups that you guys are doing or where people can reach out to you if they want to learn more about Terry.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. So first and foremost all social is Terry Thayer II. @TerrythayerII. T-H-A-Y-E-R is how you spell my last name, T-R-Y. Website, terrythayerII.com. If I was going to give a plug, I’d give it out to my retreat that we do once a year. This one is going to be in Cancun, Mexico. We’re expecting to have about 500 investors from all over the country, down there for an entire week at an all-inclusive resort. Cool event. It’s going to be a lot of networking. We have roughly about four days, four hours of each one of those four days that are the traditional event space type of thing. And the rest is like… It’s pretty cool. It’s completely different than any other event that you’ve ever been to. The speakers are hanging out vacationing, right there and available to anybody at any particular point in time. So that event is called TAB, T-A-B. Stands for, The Absolute Best, TAB Retreat. And you can get that @tabretreat.com. That’s in September.
Chad Duval:
Perfect, September. Yeah, I hope. Well, yeah. And how has, I mean, I’m assuming with COVID and everything, It should be okay I think in Mexico right now, right? I don’t think there’s any issues-
Terry Thayer:
So that’s a cool story. I just got back, let’s see, about 45 days ago roughly, from living in Mexico for five months. So COVID comes and everything shutting down, can’t go to the gym. Like it’s becoming like a Nazi party in the U.S, right? You can’t do anything. You can’t go to a restaurant and I’m like, I gotta get outta here. I can’t take it anymore. So we left and moved to Cabo for five months and lived on this giant house that sat on the side of a cliff, overhanging the Pacific ocean. And it was just gorgeous. And we worked virtually for five months from there, and we just got back about a month and a half ago.
Chad Duval:
That’s crazy. So it’s all full circle from the time that you went to that retreat and saw that woman doing exactly what you’re doing in Mexico and few weeks later, you’re doing the exact same thing, inspiring other people to do the same. I love it.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. I’ve actually been doing this now four or five years. Five years where, well, typically, I mean, that was just like go… We homeschool our kids now. So even prior to COVID, we started a couple of years ago. We started homeschooling our kids so we can have the freedom of doing the things that we really want to do. We hire a teacher full time. The teacher teaches our kids, but with the online curriculum.
Chad Duval:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Terry Thayer:
And we’ve taken about three to four months per year where we just take off and go somewhere and just live somewhere else or maybe to multiple different places, hopping around every single year. And the first time I did it, is just to prove it to myself that I can do it. We were supposed to leave in June and go to Europe and we were going to spend four to six months in Europe. And then COVID put the brakes on that. And then we ended up just jumping and going to a Cabo.
Chad Duval:
Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So is that where the retreat is? Is going to be in Cabo?
Terry Thayer:
No, this one’s going to be in Cancun.
Chad Duval:
Okay, cool.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah. So we’ve done, I think we’ve done like three or four in Cancun. This is going to be the fifth one that we did. So, we have big TAB and then we have, I do smaller Masterminds. So we have a Mastermind coming up in March, show’s a typically invite only. Two people are doing 40, 50 deals a year, where it’ll be a smaller group. And then we do the big one every September.
Chad Duval:
Perfect. Well, thanks Terry. I appreciate you coming on the show and inspiring the listeners to take that dive into real estate and again, thanks again for coming on.
Terry Thayer:
Yeah, man. Thanks for having me.