FCP 125: Going From Duplexes To Apartment Complexes – Featuring Reed Goossens

Jack: All right. Hello, everyone. This is Jack Bosch speaking and welcome to another episode of “The Forever Cash Life Real Estate Podcast” where we talk about all things having to do with cash flow through real estate. And with today’s guest, we’re going to talk about apartment syndication and how to go from duplexes to 100-unit-plus apartment complexes, how to do syndications, what’s the ups and downs of it? So stay tuned. It’s gonna be nitty-gritty, lots of detail in the show.

Man: Welcome to “The Forever Cash Life Real Estate Investing Podcast” with your host Jack and Michelle Bosch. Together let’s uncover the secrets to building true wealth through real estate and living a purpose-driven life.

Jack: All right, here we are back for our session and our guest today is Reed Goossens. Reed, how are you doing?

Reed: Good, mate. How are you?

Jack: I’m good. I’m good. So I understand we have both have slight accents here. You obviously have the more original English accent meaning from Australia and I’m the German accent. So tell us a little bit, you’re in multifamily, right, you’re syndicator multifamily, correct?

Reed: That is correct. Yes, I’m a syndicate or multifamily, but I didn’t start in syndication, put it that way.

Jack: Right. Exactly. So I’m about to…Give us a little bit of your story. Usually jump right into the subject matter, but because you have obviously a little bit different background, I would love to start with your background a little bit. What brought you over to the U.S.? When did you come over? How did it all work out? And a couple of things like that.

Reed: Sure, sure. Well, my journey started back in 2009 when I picked up the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and my backgrounds in structural engineering, and I spent a few years after graduating university traveling the world working abroad as an engineer, and I worked in London on the 2012 Olympic Games, but back in 2008 in preparation for the games. I went back to Australia in 2010. And was really sitting in a cubicle and, you know, wishing I…just after this two years of experiencing the world going, “What the hell am I going to do with my life?” And I didn’t want to sit in a cubicle for the rest of my life and that’s why I picked up the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” to start to educate myself about the benefits of being your own boss and essentially, you know, someone paying me to live my life rather than sitting in a cubicle for the next 40, 50 years. So that was the start of it.

And then, during my time abroad, I met a beautiful girl named Erica and she is the reason why I moved to the United States. And in 2012, I quit my job, my well-paying engineering job, and moved to New York City with Erica and I didn’t have a job lined up, I just had, you know, this ambition to want to live and breathe and be in the big smoke [SP] in the Big Apple. And so that was really all it was. And at the beginning, I started…it wasn’t even…the whole goal was just to be an ex-pat in a different country and live and experience a few years of living in the United States. But when I got here, I quickly realized the barriers to entry to the real estate market is so much lower than they are in Australia. And so you know, I think…

Jack: How come? Sorry to interrupt. What makes it the barrier of entry higher in Australia?

Reed: Well, very similar to Europe and probably very similar to where you’re from in Germany is the pure population, right? Now we have markets like, you know, San Francisco, New York, L.A., think of those markets entirely across Australia. Coupled with that is that we only have 25 million people. Coupled with that is Australia you can only inhabit about 18% of our land, 20% of our land. So we’re very much landlocked because we’re in an arid country. With the lack of population means that everyone’s driven to the major cities. They drive up prices. It’s a western country. It is an Australian dollar.

So you compare that to America where you can inhabit north, south, east, west. And Australia is about the same landmass, about, excluding Alaska, as mainland America. And so when you can inhabit north, south, east, west from Mexico border to Canadian border, from the East Coast to the West Coast, 350 million people more than…Australia doesn’t have one-tenth of that. It drives these other secondary markets. Markets were more affordable. We obviously have the one end scale where you got the New Yorks and the LAs and San Franciscos on one end, but you also have then stuff like Detroit and Charlotte, North Carolina and Durham, Raleigh, and some of the Texas markets we’re investing and they are more affordable. And with more affordability comes cash flow and thus the barriers to entry in those markets are a lot lower.

Like, I bought my first property for $38,000. It was a triplex. You’d never be able to find a property for $38,000 in Australia, full stop. And so I cut my teeth on Section 8 housing and understanding what a ghetto was. And in Australia, we don’t have that just because of the population. And so there was a real big difference between America and Australia. And when I moved here, just realizing the low barriers to entry was exactly what “Rich Dad Poor Dad” said is like you gotta get money in an asset creating a cash flow and that’s what I went out and did in early 2012.

Jack: And that makes total sense. Yeah, so when you frame it that way, it makes sense. So that purchase of one property works probably very similar here than over there but the prices are so much higher because you basically have Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, and that’s kind of almost it, plus a couple of other cities along the coast which are…The only other thing left you have like little tiny villages in the Outback where property is worthless versus here you have this magnitude of huge amount of cities. Yes, but we operate too. We don’t buy in the major cities. We have 158 units right now that we’re purchasing in Oklahoma City, which is a perfect secondary market that is growing and so on. So, great.

So then you started with a triplex for $30,000, $40,000. My understanding is you no longer deal with a triplex area. So what happened there? You’re now dealing with 100-unit-plus properties, right? So how is that transition from both a complexity point of view as well as from a psychological point of view? Because buying something for $40,000, you can handle it, right? You take a $35,000 or $30,000 loan for it or so or get a seller financing or something like that. Buying a $5 million or $10 million apartment complex is a different game. How did you get from A to B?

Reed: Well, to get from A to B, it’s a long story. It’s taken me seven years to reach where I am today. And for those people who are listening, it’s gone from that triplex and we now, my business partner and I, have 1,700 units, so it’s 1,700 units and about $175 million of worth of value. Now, I don’t say that to brag, I say it to inspire. And the reason is when I first moved to the United States, I had to figure it out. And I figured it out by getting going, getting started with that $38,000 property in Upstate New York. However, it was limiting. I think I only got another property and then I started flipping a house and I was still working full time. And I was really getting to the end of my tether in terms of my scale, my scalability. I wasn’t financially free yet and I’ve got three or four properties.

So I really started to understand the benefits of syndication and going out and raising capital using other people’s money to go out and grow a real estate business. It’s like the founders of Facebook and Google weren’t just sitting on millions and millions of dollars worth of cash to go start their business. They had to go and attract investors because investors want to get their money working for them, but they might not necessarily have the time and the ability to go and find these great deals or invest in these great companies. And so that is really what my mind shift had to change was that I wasn’t going to use my own money, it was I had to go out and use other people’s money in order to scale this business.

And so that’s how I got started in real estate syndication. I got a mentor. And through that mentor, I was [inaudible 00:08:07] with him, raising capital, underwriting certain things, using his credibility to then go off and increase my credibility. At the same time, I was also starting my own podcast. I started becoming a thought leader in the space around international investing in the United States. And that is where I started to build an email list and a following. And from that, I was able to attract investors into deals. And from that, I was able to partner with other people for a period of time in the early days. And then I broke out and started doing my own deals and we’ve done 1,700 units in the last 3 years. And that’s just because…but I’ve been syndicating for about five-and-a-half years now.

So it’s been a long journey and you got to use those stepping stones of going from a triplex, going into understanding, getting a mentor, going and riding on the coattails of the mentor to go and get credibility, increasing your brand and awareness, attracting followers, and starting an email list, and through that, building that credibility to then go off and then do your own deals. And so it takes time.

And the thing with syndication is that it’s not all on me, Reed Goossens. You know, I’ve got to realize that it’s a team sport and that I can’t wear all the hats, and it’s okay not to wear all the hats, and sometimes you need to bring in partners. Someone is finding the deals, someone is underwriting the deal, someone is asset managing it, it’s people bringing capital. So many different roles and responsibilities because these are larger deals and like buying that triplex in Upstate New York, I was the guy finding the deal, I was the guy underwriting the deal, I was the guy bringing the equity to the table, I was the guy doing all the renovations. It was sort of all these roles and I’ve now just taken it and 10X-ed it and that’s where syndication comes from.

Jack: Right. So 10X-ing it is also a confidence game, right? So when people go from one deal to…I always say like the difference between a $6 million deal and a $60,000 deal is really only 2 zeros, right? But it has much more than two zeros. It’s a completely different level of confidence that you need. Because putting your name under a $40,000 mortgage is that you know that, push comes to shove, you can work a little harder and pay it off is a completely different thing than putting your name on it under a $4.5 million mortgage that even though it’s nonrecourse and raising money from investors puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders that you are now the steward of other people’s money. So where did the confidence level grew? And what did you do to internally grow that confidence? Did you do anything actively to build that confidence?

Reed: Yeah, well, the first thing is obviously surrounding yourself with other people who you want to be like and that changing that networking or that friend sphere is really important. And so when you surround yourself with a mental or other people who you aspire to be, over a period of time you start absorbing their energy, you start absorbing their confidence, you start absorbing the tricks of the trade and all that sort of stuff. And through that, you then go out and do it yourself. Now, don’t get me wrong, going from a triplex into raising money and being a co-GP on deals into being my own lead syndicator, that was about a three or four-year process. And in that time, I was learning as I was going as I was doing deals. Each deal, you learn something new every single time.

And I wasn’t just starting with massive deals, it was a slow learning curve. And slow is a relative term in terms of I moved to the United States in 2012, it’s now 2019. So, it’s actually relatively quick. But in my mind, it was like, “I’m very much a young entrepreneur who wants to have something happened yesterday.” So I was very much eager to get it going. And a lot of people struggle with that confidence when they do get into this game of, “Well, I’m spinning my wheels. I’m not going anywhere. And I’ve been doing this for six months and I haven’t got a deal.” Like, yeah, well, six months is a relatively short period of time. And so I always encourage people, when you go out and start in this game, it has more to do with setting up the right mindset on the front end, like going and losing weight or like starting a new diet.

A lot of people fail at those sort of things because when they start doing it, they say, “Okay, this is going to happen in 30 days. This is going to happen in 60 days.” Or, “I’m going to be financially free and get my first deal done in 12 months.” Well, maybe it doesn’t take 12 months, maybe it takes 3 years, maybe it takes 5 years. That’s okay. It’s a journey. And so that mindset on the front end, admittedly, when I look back in the hindsight of it, I didn’t have that. But I was really hungry every single day to get out of bed and keep hustling because I wanted to quit my day job. And that was what drove me to be better, to do more, and to really achieve financial freedom.

Jack: So interestingly, you had…now we’ll jump into some of the details but you had…you didn’t have that mindset starting out but what you did have was a huge big why. You wanted to quit your job, you didn’t like what you were doing and you wanted to live a better life and that’s what ultimately, in hindsight, kept you going up every day, every day. And that’s something I keep saying all the time, the number one most important thing is not your goal, it’s actually your reason why. Once you have a reason why, you’ll find the energy to keep going and keep doing and keep doing. And a lot of people lose that. I mean, even like in all kinds of things.

I just listened this morning to the radio and there’s…I listen to sports radio. The Arizona Cardinals football team has a running back that was the best running back in the entire league in 2016. And so in 2017, he had an injury but then he still came back and he was good. Then in 2018, they gave him a $30 million contract. And since then, he hasn’t produced anything anymore. So it’s like, what happened? And my suspicion, nobody knows, nobody wants to really say it, but my suspicion is that his reason why he was fighting like crazy was in order to get paid. And once he got paid, his reason why is no longer there. So it’s harder to get up in the morning. It’s harder to do those things and his reason why have been accomplished.

So, in this case, it was a negative way but it got him to what he needed to get, whether it’s now to the detriment of the team is a different thing. But in your case, it got you where you wanted to…it got you going. And then it built that stamina because what I heard you say is that you now believe in playing the long game, that six months is a short time. And most people look at it six months is a long time. No, if you don’t do anything, five years from now you’re going to be in the same situation as now. It’s a process.

Reed: Yeah, no, no, it’s a process and you’re completely correct that when you lose that why and I’ve actually now talking about changing and getting back that 40 or 50, 60 hours a week of my W-2 time in my week, like trying to fill that with not just busywork but with productive work. And so now it’s a whole different mindset and ballgame. So, yeah, at the beginning, it was just like reaction, reaction, reaction, putting out flyers, putting out flyers, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, like not actually planning a business and that was when I was trying to juggle the W-2 job with trying to grow a business on the side.

But a lot of people get to that point of like, “I just want to escape…I just want to escape my day job.” And that is where people get hung up on, “Well, it’s taking longer than I thought to find a deal and blah, blah, blah.” And it’s like, “Well, yeah, it’s gonna take longer. We’re in a really hot market right now. And so it’s okay that things take a little longer.” I was just at my mastermind course over the weekend, which we run in Austin, and I had a couple guys come and now they’ve pivoted their business into something slightly different to create a six or seven-figure business. The real estate aspect of it is just the vehicle you go to achieve financial freedom and you can do that in many different ways.

And so the way in which people see a problem, understand the problem, “Okay, the problem is I want to escape my day job. Okay, now the problem is I can’t find any deals, or maybe I need to pivot and do something slightly different in order to get that original why achieved,” which was to leave your job. But it’s okay to pivot along the way. Like if you say, “I’m gonna do multifamily. Multifamily is really tough and I can’t compete with all these big, big players.” Maybe you need to go niche a little bit more and change your goal or your trajectory. And that’s okay if you do. It’s all about learning and growing as an entrepreneur, and really learning how to ride the wave of change because there’s so much change happening in this world that we just need to keep up as entrepreneurs and it’s okay that things take time and it’s okay that you have to pivot and it’s okay that it’s a journey. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Jack: That’s exactly right. This is a marathon, it’s not a sprint, particularly, Reed, who will be probably living longer than any other generation before, you better find something you like and then enjoy it. And then you work on it and you get up every day. Because every day that you learn something, you get closer to that point where it’s finally the last click then it explodes. Wonderful. So now, let’s talk about your first larger deal. How did that come together? How did you raise money for that? How did you qualify for it? Have you gotten, like, an agency loan with Fannie or Freddie? You typically have to…like one of the funniest things I found that when we got into this space is that in order to get a Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae loan, you already have to have gotten the Freddie or Fannie Mae loan, otherwise they don’t give you a loan. So it’s like the way to get in is like it’s kind of like a vicious cycle. And there’s a couple of ways to break in though. So how did you break into that?

Reed: Yeah, there’s a couple of ways to break in and I always use the analogy of the airplane. And for those people out there who may not understand syndication, if I, Reed Goossens, go and try and hire a Boeing 747 to get from L.A. to New York by myself, it’s going to cost me a ton of money. But if I go split that up between 300 passengers, I might have some passengers in first class, and I’ve also got the captain and copilot, maybe there is even a first officer. And that is where you have this general partnership. And I can split the cost between 300 passengers with a couple of people in first class and it’s more affordable and we can all enjoy the journey together. And in this case, it happens to be using money to go and buy a real estate asset, to that asset then performing, to reduce cash flow, to then have a return on investment at the end.

But if we look specifically the first class group of who those people are, that’s typically the GP. And within that group, you’re gonna have the capital and copilot which, you know, when I did my first leads indication, I was the leader, I was the captain. With my copilot and business partner, we had to go and invite people into first class who had certain net worth requirements, like you just mentioned in terms of Freddie and Fannie. I had to invite people into first class who had done deals with Freddie and Fannie in the past in order to make me qualify for Freddie and Fannie. I had to invite people onto the team that knew how to maybe find a deal or asset manage the deal or help raise capital. There’s all these different roles and responsibilities within the first class. And everyone has got maybe the specific role, but everyone might also be helping someone else with a different role. And so that first class section of the plane is really important.

And so we can talk about, okay, well, you’re going to need someone who can help you qualify for the loan. So for those people who don’t know, if you’re going to go out and get a Freddie and Fannie loan, you need to have either the collective GP or the collective first class team needs to have a net worth equal to the loan balance plus 15% liquidity. So if you don’t have that, you need to go find people who are going to bring that to the table. You’re gonna have to give up some ownership for that. And that’s okay. But that’s part of getting a deal done. You might also need someone who can go and find the deal or underwrite the deal. You might need someone who can asset manage the deal. You might need someone who can help raise capital, maybe everyone is raising capital and is responsible for bringing a portion of money to the table. There’s different roles and understanding those different roles are really important.

And having the deal lined up is one thing, but having the people to go off and execute in your first class team or your first class cabin is really important. Because if you get the green light to say, “Hey, you know, you’ve got this deal, 160 unit deal,” but you didn’t stop to think about, “Well, who’s going to help you qualify for the loan?” Well, then that’s your bad. And you need to have that prepared before you go submitting LOIs to make sure if you do get the green light you can go to someone say, “Hey, Reed, I just got this…” come to someone like myself and say, “Hey, Reed, I’ve got this deal going. I need to help me qualify for these loans. Would you be willing to come on my team?” And obviously, I’d have to do my diligence on the operators. But that is how you go and get started in this business. And it’s about using…again, back to that analogy of different hats at the beginning of the show, you don’t have to wear all the hats and you can shell out those hats to different people in first class in order to get that plane off the ground.

Jack: And with that, you also have to give up some equity, right?

Reed: Correct. Yeah.

Jack: Very first deal, you’re not gonna own 80% of the deal.

Reed: No. And the thing is with any deal, with any large deal, it’s not about the money you make specifically on that deal. It’s about getting your foot in the door. And I remember an old mentor of mine told me that. Who cares what you make on the first deal, as long as your investors are good and you get the deal done, because you then have credibility with the brokers, it doesn’t really matter what you make because you don’t get to deal number 10 without doing deal number 1. So you might have to give up more in the first deal. And as you get that first deal done and the second deal and the third deal and the fourth deal, and all of a sudden, you will start getting more of the GP-ing. You’ll start planting those seeds, those big oak tree seeds that are going to blossom in 10, 15 years’ time to get your really good return on investment. And so a lot of people are so wound up, “I’m gonna make sure I get my piece.”

Jack: It’s another example of playing the long game. It’s not about instant gratification. It’s like when we bought our first deal, it’s the exact same thing. I have 17 years of real estate experience. But when we got into our first deal that we did ourselves, it didn’t matter. And like, we got to make some money on that deal but we haven’t even gotten paid on that deal after a year because we don’t take an asset management fee. But the investors are going to be just fine. But since then, we’re now approved by Freddie Mac and then the next deal, we’re now approved by Fannie Mae by ourselves without having to have GPs involved. So this is the goal. The investor is going to do fine. We’ll make just a little bit money on there. Nothing crazy. But the point is, we’re now in the game. And if a correction in the market happens or something like that and there’s an opportunity to buy a lot more, now we are legitimate players in the game. And if I look 10 years down the road, that’s where that plays a role, not necessarily in the next 6 months.

Reed: Correct. That is entirely correct. And you said it so eloquently that…And we’ve done exactly the same thing. Like, to my first two deals, which we bought three-and-a-half years ago, we still have today and we do our job like every single time, we got a bit of a syndication fee on the front end, but we don’t get our asset management fee until after the pref is paid. And so we sit behind the pref and the pref, for those people who don’t know who that is, is a preferred return. And we did that to show investors back in the day, the very first deals, that our interests are aligned. Your money’s ahead of us as GPs and operators and us, we’re going to put our asset management fee behind it. But subsequently, last three years, we’ve changed that obviously because we’ve got more and more deals under our belt.

But now we get paid 2% asset management fee on the GPR and that’s because we have now…And for those people who know what asset management fees are, it’s not a lot of money. It’s usually there to keep the lights on, help pay for analysts, and help pay for certain…for traveling around the country to go and see those deals. And you don’t get wealthy off of the asset management fee, you get wealthy off of the ownership of that 20%, 30% of the GDP that you’re going to come and cash in, in 5, 6, 10 years’ time, whenever you are going to sell the asset. So yeah.

Jack: Exactly right. I couldn’t agree with you more. So we might change our approach there in a couple of deals ourselves. At this point we’re doing exactly what you did, very much aligned. So very cool. So now, let’s talk about a couple of other things. Like, now, in order to build this business, obviously over time, you built a team around you. How did you build that team? How do you select, like, A players? How do you find them particularly in an environment where everyone wants to be like a sponsor in a deal?

Reed: Sure, yeah. So let’s talk about the players that you need in your A team. So it’s going to be, obviously, a guarantor or someone who can bring bank balance to the table. It’s going to be a broker, the broker hold the keys to the palace. You need to have a good property manager. You’re going to need to have maybe a tax assessor or an attorney who can advise you on litigation stuff or certain litigation purchase and sales agreement stuff or in terms of what the property tax value for in the coming years because I know across more counties across the United States in the last five years tax values have gone through the roof. So understanding how that feeds into your underwriting.

And having someone in your team who knows how to underwrite. I take that role on in our team and we have our system set up and we’ve got a couple of analysts who work for us, but understanding what information is being fed into that model in order to give us the correct results. And so then you might need to have a general contractor as well involved. So this is probably about six or seven people involved in that A team in order to go out and be successful. Now, a lot of people start with saying, “Well, how do I get credibility with brokers?” And again, it’s time. It’s time, time, time. You need to be creating time and value for these brokers in order for them to give you time. So how do you do that?

Well, you can start as simply as, one, being annoying and asking them out for coffee as many times as you can until they say yes, until you get on your list. Two, it might be asking for a round of golf if you are into golf or playing golf. Or three, it might be sending them something, a nice gift basket to say, “Hey, I’m so and so and I really want to be in your sphere. Here’s a piece of gratitude that I like. I think we will be able to bring value to your team and if you give me a chance.” So getting those pocket listings or getting in the brokers back pocket in order to see deals before they maybe hit the market is really important. And broker relationships are probably one of the number one things we focus on as acquisition guys because that’s how we get our deals done.

Particularly in the space we play in now because we started with the smaller stuff and now we buy 300, 400 units at a time. Those sellers are not going to be responding to yellow letters, right? They’re not going to be responding to people, “Hey, man, let me buy your deal if you’re off-market.” These guys are smart, sophisticated institutional buyers and sellers, they’re going to go to brokers and brokers, again, hold the keys to the palace. So really understanding who you need to go after in terms of brokers. In terms of the other team members, your property manager, your general contractor, your attorney, they’re very important but they can also be established through just communication. Once you start talking with brokers, you can say, “Hey, who’s a really good GC in your market that you recommend?” or, “Who’s really a good attorney?” Or, “Who is a really good property manager?”

And the more people you ask, the more times those two or three people start to float to the surface and you’ll start to see the cream of the crop. And so it’s really about getting into the market that you’re trying to buy deals in, finding those brokers, asking questions, and just being boots on the ground consistently in order to find a great team. And you might go an interview a couple of general contractors. You might even go interview a couple of property managers. That’s okay. But you’ll be able to see who consistently gets referred to you over and over again by talking to more and more people in that market. And again, you’ll be able to hopefully get the best people in your team, on your bench, and you go off and be successful.

Jack: Wonderful. That’s very good advice, particularly with the consistency and the brokers. I found that when we did not have our own deals yet and you come into a new market, the first thing that brokers do is they send you their worst listings and they do that almost on purpose I want to think. I never really asked them if they do that, but it feels like the different markets we went to, they always did the same thing. They send us their worst listings in order to be able to see if you even know what you’re talking about. Because then basically we would throw that right back the next day. And it’s like, “Dude, come on. Don’t play a fool of me here. This is like the worst listing you could probably send me. So this is what…”

And then they’re like, “Okay, checkbox, you passed the first barrier.” The second barrier, now they send you some more decent listings but they still don’t fit your thing, then you hone in closer. And soon enough, if you follow up and you’re responsive, then soon enough, they’ll give you one chance on a really good deal. And if you jump on that and it works out, boom, now you’re in the door. But because in this market right now with syndications and multi-families and everyone talks about and everyone wants to be in that space, they’re getting probably 10 phone calls from new people that just came out of a seminar or something like that every single day. What these people…everyone that comes on that can actually get deals done.

The thing is what most people don’t do is that, again, there’s a theme here in this podcast today, they don’t look at the long game. They don’t put it on their calendar to call these five brokers every single week. Every Friday, pick up the phone, it’s like, “Hey, I just want to check in if you have something new.” Because that sets you apart from the people who just call and they’re excited and six weeks later, they go to the next seminar and they learn self-storage investing and then they go to the next seminar and learn house flipping. But if you stay on, if you stay on them, after a while they’re like…even to just get rid of you, they’re going to send you something, or to test you, or because finally, they take you serious. But you gotta put your foot in the door, particularly in a hot market like in this right now.

Reed: Exactly. Well said.

Jack: Wonderful. Great. So with that said, I really only have a couple of questions that is like do you have any kind of routine on a daily basis that you do to keep yourself kind of in that motivational positive space?

Reed: Yeah, sure. It’s trained into me now and it’s starting to be…it’s taken a long time to get to this point, is meditation and working out. Both those things are really important to me. The other thing is making sure you’re being present. So turning your phone off at 7:00 p.m. at night, turning back on at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, spending time with loved ones. So it’s being very, very present in your daily life, using meditation and using exercise to keep on track towards those goals.

Jack: Wonderful. And I echo that and we do the same thing in our house. We do meditate if we can every day. It doesn’t always happen. I’m not as disciplined as you are. And then any books? Are you a reader? I see some books in the background. I know you wrote a couple of books.

Reed: These are both my books that I’ve written in the background. So they’re, “Investing in the U.S.: The Ultimate Guide to U.S. Real Estate.” That is a step-by-step guide for people who want to invest here in the United States, and not just internationally like anyone just want to get started, and a little bit around my journey and how I learned the system and it’s actually in there talks about a whole chapter on developing your A team and different specific questions you ask property managers and GCs. The second book is called, “10,000 Miles to the American Dream,” and it’s eight Aussie authors. I brought these guys together. It’s a mastermind group that we started and each person has a different chapter on different U.S. real estate investment strategies and how they achieved financial freedom. So some people in there do mobile home parks, multifamily, some guys do fix and flip. I talk a lot about building your brand and how to start raising capital like a pro, the six Ps. So they’re my two books.

But other books I also recommend are the “Key Person of Influence” book by Dan Priestley. He’s an Australian author. It doesn’t talk a lot about real estate. It’s more about developing your brand, developing your key person of influence status because you are the business and that is the most recession-proof you can be if you are providing awesome content to your followers. The other book I’m reading at the moment is Ray Dalio, “Principles.” Really, really highly recommend that. And obviously, for those people who are starting out, maybe “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” which I mentioned earlier in the episode.

Jack: Great. I just ordered your book as a Kindle right now. I’m going to go read it. And I have Ray Dalio’s “Principles” next to the kitchen in the little nook where we have some of the books that if we sit on our couch and read, we just grab it from there, have it right there. Haven’t started it yet. I had it as a PDF book and I never got to it so I ordered it as a physical book so I can just sit and like when I take an hour or so to just read then I grab it. So, wonderful. Other than the books, where can people find out more about you?

Reed: Yeah, just head to reedgoossens.com. It’s R-E-E-D G-O-O-S-S-E-N-S. And you can find all my information about me, my books, my podcast, my videos. And if you want to find a little bit more about…you know, if you ever coming through L.A., you want to meet up for a beer or for coffee or for lunch, you can just hit me up at info@reedgoossens.com. And just let me know when you come and we’ll try and carve out some time to get together and talk shop.

Jack: All right, wonderful. With that, thank you very much. I was excited to talk to you. It was a great session. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening to that. Again, the theme of the day was the long game, focus on the long game. Guys, getting real estate done in six months is possible to get a few deals done but building that life that you want always takes a few years. So with that said, thank you very much, Reed, for being on the show with us and thank you very much. This concludes our latest show off “The Forever Cash Life Real Estate Podcast.” Make sure if you enjoyed it to give us a thumbs up on YouTube, give us five stars on iTunes, etc., etc. etc. With that, thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Man: Enjoy this episode, then make sure you like, subscribe, and post your comments and questions below the video. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.