The REI Agent - Introduction - It's time to thrive in your real estate business!

[0:00] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Matthias, an agent and investor. And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let’s do it.

[0:24] Well, welcome to the REI Agent. The REI Agent, this is the first introductory episode. If you are coming straight from the wealthy investor, thank you for coming over. And please smash that like button. Hit that subscribe button. Leave us a review. Leave a comment. No, seriously, guys, please do follow us on your favorite platform. This is going to be the new home to the Erica Matthias content, now named the REI Agent. Obviously, I mean, so we’ve kind of gotten into this a little bit before about our kind of our relationship dynamics and how I kind of tend to be the visionary behind things a little bit. And you tend to be the nuts and bolts. So in this transition, like, you know, full disclosure, you’re like, whatever.

[1:10] I’ll keep doing what I do. I come here and I ask my questions and I enjoy the conversation. Which, if you’re new to us, Erica is a licensed therapist. So I’m an agent and I’m an investor. Erica has helped a lot with the investing side and kind of the back end nuts and bolts of both businesses. But I’ve kind of led the forefront of these things. And so what’s unique about the show is that we get the normal investor, the normal agent kind of people, high performing people on the show. And we ask some of those normal questions about, like, you know, what are your secrets for your success? And then Erica, you know, hits them with a left punch. It’s not that dramatic. It’s not that dramatic. I don’t think anybody leaves regretting that they were on the show and didn’t want to get that vulnerable.

[2:02] But your perspective, it brings a new, it’s really unique. And I really value, because like you say things and you ask questions that I’m like, whoa. And then, you know, we get a really authentic response. And so that’s one of the things that you get here. Yeah. I mean, I want to be clear. Like, I don’t provide therapy in the podcast. I am a licensed therapist. I have a private practice on the side. But in this podcast conversation with our guests, the questions that I ask help move the conversation into more of a helping us understand the process and their experience in their life as they’ve made various decisions to move through their real estate career or their investing career or make changes in their family or what propelled them forward or made what signaled a pivot or a shift.

[2:55] But we always talk with the guests beforehand about what they’re comfortable discussing and what they don’t want to talk about. And we are very careful to respect whatever they would ask us to at the beginning. So just want to make sure that’s there also. Nobody watching this, don’t be afraid to come on our show. We’re not going to really get you. But like what I’ve seen, like, for example, we had a really awesome guest on that was very polished and very good at podcasting and had their story down packed. And then you would ask questions that would just kind of they hadn’t been asked before. And I think that it just they were very comfortable and open and very OK with getting a little bit more vulnerable and opening up a little bit.

[3:33] And it just made the show much deeper, if that makes sense. So, yeah, I really appreciate Erica being on the show. So thank you, Erica. I really I enjoy it, too. A lot of my work in the private practice is so fun and rewarding, but it’s also work that I can’t really talk about. And so this is in some ways similar conversations, also very different. It’s not therapy, but it’s a conversation that can be public and one that I can share with you, too. So it’s fun to be here. You are part of our marriage therapy, our marriage counseling. We’ve we’ve had a lot of fun going through this. Another thing that we’ve done and we’re going to continue doing is kind of introing the guests with before we open up with them.

[4:23] We will kind of talk about something going on in our life. So we have we have three little kids, seven, four and two. And we want to be honest and talk about the struggles of parenting and then also talk about kind of, you know, what’s a healthy way to go about life with kids and, you know, still maintain your own personal health. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. I mean, we also sometimes depending on where we’re at together, we talk about our relationship. Yeah. And the stress that comes along with you being a real estate agent and the hours and the demands of that and what that looks like for me, then being kind of the primary caretaker for our kids and managing the household. So just there’s a lot to cover.

[5:14] There’s a lot you and I manage that we’ve had to be pretty proactive about figuring out what our balance looks like. And we haven’t always done that well. Excuse me. There have been a lot of years where it has felt very unbalanced. I think this last year we’ve finally evened out a bit and we’re in our 11th year of marriage. It’s taken us this long to feel like we finally are working out some kinks. Between everything that we have going on, and I’m sure that will change and we’ll have to continue to pivot. But you and I know each other really well by this point, but we’ve also used this platform as a way of just talking about some of those different dynamics. Yeah. We want to be really real and authentic.

[5:59] And I think that, I mean, that’s just kind of who we are. We’re not trying to pretend we’re something that we’re not. We’re not trying to say we have everything figured out because it’s an ongoing thing we have to keep working on. Another one of the dynamics that we have in our relationship is that I have always been much more of a risk taker. I’ve taken on things that have made you very uncomfortable.

[6:22] Like investing. So if you care to, you can go back to one of our first couple episodes of The Wealthy Investor. Those are not going to go away. Those are just going to still live over there on The Wealthy Investor. And we’re going to just, you know, everything new is coming here to the REI agent. But the first couple episodes are interviews. We interview each other. And we talk about how, you know, the first flip we took on, you were like getting ready to give birth. The next week. And I was like, we need to take this one on. We need to buy this. Yeah, right. And there’s something about being about to being a new parent. Was this the second child? Yeah, it was. This was Isla. Yeah. There’s something about every time.

[7:09] I think that maybe this goes away more when you have like 10 kids. But I think every time you’re about to have a baby, like you kind of go through this nesting phase where you want security. And you want, at least you have. Right. I feel like, I feel like, yeah, I feel like that’s probably very normal when you’re about to go into, for me, I was about to go into surgery and have a baby that I wouldn’t necessarily want to start something brand new that I had never done before and didn’t know much about that day. Right? Yeah, totally. Well, no, but just in general, I think there’s this like process of like nesting that happens. Like it’s usually like, you know, let’s redecorate the baby room or let’s, let’s, you know, get ready for the baby, which again, not a critique here.

[7:56] This is just a normal thing that I think people probably go through. And so very against that was like, hey, we need to buy this house that’s, you know, has like insulation falling out of the ceiling because the roof’s bad. And for the first time, for the first time now, like you would be like, okay, whatever. Just, you know, we’ve gotten to the point where I just kind of have more free will to do that kind of stuff. Cause, cause we’ve, there’s a track record. I’ve done it successfully multiple times. And, but so yeah, there’s, there’s just elements of that, that we try to, again, be real and authentic about in the show. And that’s kind of part of the intro is just kind of giving you a window into our lives.

[8:41] Mm-hmm. I actually just finished Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is a book that was recommended over and over and over and over again with our guests on the Wealthy Investor. And so I, I read it and that was a really interesting book. It does kind of flip the way I have always thought about money. Excuse me. And thinking about it differently, maybe without so much emotion attached to money, I think was maybe something that stood out to me, which is maybe a way that I had approached it in the past and a lot of fear. And I think that has changed for me too. I’m, I’m much more emotionally distant from any deals that we would make, or it’s more about whether it makes sense or not, whether it would be an asset for us or not.

[9:29] And so that has been growth for me in the last couple of years. This, this podcast has a really, I think, um, let you in more into kind of the background of, of what I’ve been reading and all that kind of stuff too. I wish it has been fun because I think like you, you started to hear other people talk about the books that I’ve talked about or read, um, and not all of them you have and, but you’re hearing more about them. And so it’s, it’s just, it’s just been fun for us. And so we’re having a lot of fun with this and we hope that it is useful for everybody else too. Yeah. Yeah. It was nice too, to read a book that you recommended that I didn’t like immediately fall asleep to. Cause I’ve had some, some that you’ve recommended that I don’t know if they were about like renters or tenants or something that I just could not get through, but I, um, audible is great and super helpful for me when reading books like this.

[10:23] So, yeah. So let’s get into the format of this show now. So we talked about kind of who we are and kind of how we intro everything. Uh, what we’re going to do is we’re going to have Tuesdays be agent sales focused. So overall the goal is to help agents be successful. And, uh, part of that I believe comes from building a great business and moving yourself out of doing everything yourself. So at the first, at the beginning, you kind of got to hustle and grind and you don’t have a lot of money. So you can’t really, um, immediately start delegating or, or thinking big picture. You just kind of have to, to grind it out. Right. But, uh, I think that as you, as you move along, um, people can get trapped in the, I have to do everything myself.

[11:11] Um, I’m an entrepreneur. That’s a very common thing across the board. So talking about, um, how do you move yourself out of that? Um, that could look a lot of different, like a lot of different people do that differently. Um, so we interviewed somebody that will be on the show probably in the next week, two weeks from this being released. Um, that actually is in a different country and running their sales business. So there’s just ways that you can do this. You can build a team. There’s all sorts of different things that you can do to progress your business past just you doing everything yourself. Um, and then Thursdays, we’re going to focus more on investors. Um, I, I believe personally that real estate agents should invest in real estate and that it will help them, you know, more so than investing in the stock market in a retirement account, uh, that you can access when you’re older.

[12:02] Why not invest in real estate that you understand in your market as you go. And so that you are building up passive income and stability. Um, and so you can weather the ups and downs of the real estate market in the sales. Um, and it just makes a ton of sense that the write-offs being a real estate professional and the IFC guy for that, it just makes so much sense. And I, I’ve been surprised how little people actually do invest in real estate. So part of the goal is to also teach agents about investing. Um, if you are really only interested in investing Thursdays is still going to be a great show for you. We’re going to have awesome people on there that we’re going to talk about interesting things.

[12:43] Um, along with this, um, we, I will have a book coming out. Um, uh, that’s going to be similar focused. So, uh, if you enjoy this content, if you want to figure out how to do both and how to be successful as an agent and as an investor, uh, while you go, you, you may not have a lot of money to start. Um, I’m going to have a book that’s going to walk you through mindset, uh, strategies for building a business, uh, sales and investing. Um, do we miss anything, Erica? I don’t think so. Um, the, I, I guess I was curious, uh, with the rebranding to, um, REI agent, um, was that, did that come out of like, as, as you were writing your book and you were putting all of this together, was that part of the process that helped you think through that transition?

[13:45] Yeah, definitely. I think, I think everybody, when they do a podcast, when they, when they write a book, they are trying to think of what’s called an avatar. They’re trying to think of who they’re speaking to. And, uh, you know, I, I, we have done a lot of investing. We’ve done some great deals. I mean, our net worth is really from our investing, um, for the, for the biggest part of it. And even our, our, our primary house, which we, we rich dad port, you know, would say rich dad port, I would say that, um, it’s not an asset, uh, but we have equity in it. So, you know, everything we’ve done, we basically flipped, sorry, we flipped our house essentially that we’re living in, uh, slowly over time living in it, which has built a lot of equity.

[14:28] And we have done that multiple times with the burr method. So we’ve bought houses, rehab them, kept them as a rental, refinance them. Um, we have, uh, flipped houses. Uh, so we, we’ve done a lot of different investing stuff, kind of always have a project going on. Um, but probably I’m more accomplished in the agent sales department than I am in the, in the investing. And I think there’s a lot of gurus out there, uh, teaching about investment that are great. Um, but I think I haven’t seen too many that are kind of this combo. So of, um, sales and, uh, investing. And I think they go so well together. Again, if you are an agent in a market, you should understand your market pretty well. And if there’s a good deal, you probably can see that pretty clearly and what that house could be.

[15:17] And if you don’t see the potential in a house, that’s another skill you can develop that will help your sales business. So like being able to see how much it would cost and what could be done to a house to get market ready to get the top market value up for it can help you in getting listings ready. Um, it can help you obviously flip houses. Um, but it’s just another skill that I think that I didn’t realize when I got into the investing side of things that would really help, uh, my sales business as well. I think I provide a new value, a new skillset to my clients, buyers too, you know, buyers go through a house and they have a hard time seeing what could be, or have no idea what it would cost.

[15:56] Um, I’ve got contractors, I’ve got, um, ideas I’ve got, uh, yeah, I can, I can help them through that process a little bit if they’re wanting to, a lot of people don’t and that’s fine. Yeah. That’s awesome. It’s exciting to watch you go through the process of writing a book and watching that come to life. And I haven’t read any of it yet. So I’m excited to do that whenever you’re ready. Yeah. Maybe we’ll let the editors, you know, rewrite it first. No, I’m, I’m, I, you know, it’s funny cause I, I, it’s a process. It’s, it’s hard. Um, I will, when I can get into the flow, I can just pound out pages. Uh, but when it’s just hard to get in there and have the time to do it. And, but what’s encouraging is that when I do go back and read it, um, I’m, I’d like what I’ve read and I’m, I’m encouraged that it’s, it’s coming together.

[16:48] The visions come together. So yeah, look for that soon. Um, we will obviously be talking about that way more when the time comes, but for now we are, uh, just trying to provide as much awesome content as we can through amazing guests that are inspiring to us. Um, so that hopefully they will also be inspiring to you. But yeah, please subscribe to this new platform. Uh, we want to build this one up as much as we can. Uh, and when, whenever you feel so inclined, please give us a review, uh, on any of the platforms because it will help us grow more. So we really appreciate you. Thanks for, uh, tuning in. Uh, we should have our first real episode as far as a guest goes, uh, next week. So stay tuned for that.

[17:34] And yeah, this has been the REI agent. We love you guys. Thanks for listening to the REI agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week, visit REI agent.com for more content until next time. Keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.