From Side Hustle to Hardcore Freedom-Building Success with Cory King

[0:00] welcome back to the rei agent we’re joined today by uh cory king cory thanks so much for joining us hey what’s up thanks so much for having me on we we just had started a really good conversation um before we hit record and i was like let’s let’s get this going this is perfect this cory is uh like the poster child of this podcast um and so tell us give us a bird’s eye view of all you do in real estate who you are and that kind of stuff yeah man thanks for the kind words so yeah so um so i serve as a real estate team lead here in knoxville tennessee i manage a team of about eight including myself a parent three young boys um and we also host a investor meetup here in our market it’s got about 2 000 members of that community and so i also do probably three or four fix and flips a year we’ve got a rental portfolio of about half a dozen single family homes and somehow i managed to juggle all of that yeah that’s that’s a that’s a lot um cory you you mentioned off air that uh you kind of got your license to help with the investing side so tell us about how you got started in real estate and i guess it was through investing what got you going

[1:13] for sure yeah so really the intro to it all was just becoming a first-time home buyer when i was 22 back in way back in 2009 uh this is down in the east uh central part of florida like the space coast brevard county area and i i would love you know i would love to say i had the foresight in buying in like 2009 and i was gonna be this like wizard and all that or no it was honestly it was all like i guess ego and like fear more than anything that drove me to that so i i quit high school senior year got just working into restaurants like full-time worked my way up into management and eventually became an owner operator of my own place uh and as part of that journey you know at 22 i was having a a bit of an existential crisis in seeing some of my my peers that had graduated college were going on to different things and i was in this like dude what do i have to show for myself like at this point in life and so for me like home ownership was like the equivalency of like a college degree of like this is how i can show i’m doing something for myself a hundred percent right um great time to buy like didn’t quite have that like a mark it was purely just on that um and it was like i’m gonna be

[2:25] 100 grand in debt one way or the other so i guess the house you know makes all the sense in the world uh and so i started you know house hacking before that was the term just roommates and uh two of my buddies that worked for me at my restaurant uh put them in there my i think my mortgage payment was probably around 800 a month and i charged each of them 400 a month per bedroom including utilities and like that was it it covered my expenses i was in my 20s i was never home they were never home so like awesome we never really even saw each other um fast forward a little bit i then started finding a i don’t know kind of like just a little side hustle like i’m a big comics nerd uh collectibles nerd so i was going to auctions down there in florida and i was going for like and at these auction houses it’s like cars and boats and tools and collectibles and then real estate like happened to trade at that so i would go there like to flip comic books or tools and stuff like that uh and then i started seeing like real estate looking around and you know the used car dealerships those guys were fighting over

[3:19] the cars like real estate was the interesting one and i was like huh like there’s these like vacant lots in subdivisions that were like halfway built like all around central florida and uh because a lot of the builders right kind of went under and crashed so you had all this halfway built stuff and i was like oh these lots are selling for like three grand but i could look on zillow and see that they’re selling for like eight to ten still so i’m like there’s something there um so it was like just do my best with figuring it out uh google earth wasn’t really a thing so just like on my day off from the restaurant i could go out and drive through a subdivision and see like okay it’s a house house vacant lot house house and so the first one was just the house between or the vacant lot between two houses three grand uh and then it uh bought it uh had the d recorded then went and talked to the owners like on either side and just like not gonna be right hey man like i got this slot next door to you i thought i was gonna build economy sucks like meh you want it like you know bring zillow print out zillow says it’s worth 10 like we take eight uh and it was kind of

[4:18] like one of those well i don’t know kind of him and haunt and then it was like well just maybe i’ll go talk to the neighbor and i was like i’m like honey come here right and just like hash it out and got the first one and that was like all i needed to understand like there’s a little arbitrage here and that got me more interested in real estate and understanding like oh i can kind of trade paper a little bit here i mean great i still had to buy the lot but like it was a neat little right hustle so i did that for a couple years like go to an auction buy a couple lots and go flip them out and like that was neat like that’s what got me into it so um fast a little bit further like i you know was owner operated of a restaurant for seven eight years and had then met my wife while she was in grad school she had zero desire to stay in florida and i was uh had hit kind of a ceiling of achievement it felt like so um i was like well i can sell off a good chunk of this so i have a small ownership stake in that business but selling my house uh selling a chunk of that business allowed me and my wife to

[5:10] relocate here and then it was well all right i don’t really want to be in restaurants uh i had friends that had been had you know left being bartenders or servers and gotten into real estate so for me i could look at them like well dude they could do it like surely i can do this kind of deal right uh so yeah so i just got my license then this is late 2018 uh at that point got my license here in knoxville and just went like off to the races really starting to do it for myself like kind of my own self-dealing helping that out um and then started working with clients and then started really finding the investor niche and working with other investors and that’s where like the light bulb went off for me honestly was understanding that i had to have i had to have a cash machine like i’ve got to be able to do business here as an agent to have money to then go invest into my like wealth machine so to speak right um so through that discovery and recognizing like huh there’s really not a an agent or a team in this area that like specifically focuses on the investor niche like there’s not that go-to spot that like oh i could just plug in here and everything can unlock um i was

[6:19] finding investors we’re having to i got to find my agent then i got to find a contractor then i got to find the right title company then i got to find the right lender and so for me the aha was like what if i just become that person for that oftentimes the agent is the central node in a lot of that uh you know those dealings and so if i can just be the super connector and like the conduit for somebody it makes it infinitely easier to not only like support clients in state but also like the out of state investor where they could just like plug into us and everything unlocks for them i love it there’s there’s so many things to unpack in your story so far there’s uh i wanted to touch really quick on that whole like the wealth versus like the cash kind of like machines because i think that’s something that um you know people on the outside they might hear your like you know portfolio you said 12 single families right like i mean like we got half a dozen okay well yeah anyway so like you know have six 12 whatever it might be um you know people might see that and be like okay that that’s dudes like you know like if you if you own your own house maybe not even that yeah you might be like

[7:20] this dude’s killing it right um but like you know a lot of that stuff is a long-term play like that stuff is um the majority of my net worth is my rental portfolio the majority of my income is my real estate sales yeah and and they’re they are uh and what i like to teach here is that those are two awesome pieces of the pie that that you kind of need both in um and um so yeah why not invest in the thing that you sell i think a lot of agents don’t um but we you know we we should know the market really well that we’re working in right and it’s easy to buy in the market that you’re working in um because you understand it well so you come across a deal that might need some rehab or whatever it is i was going to ask you about that as well um if if you’ve been doing like the burr method because if you’re flipping properties um you’re probably wanting to keep a couple of those and just kind of refinance out which we have done as well um but but yeah so like i mean there’s opportunities out there and um if you’re not we don’t have the the you know the the retirement account um and the corporation you know we kind of have to create it for ourselves and so i think i mean

[8:25] why not real estate you can access it now you get tax advantages now you’re real estate professional all that stuff so uh i just spit out a lot but um is that the method you’re doing um are you going through like the burrs to pick up the single families yeah 100 um i mean you nailed it right like you’ve got to have some kind of business uh or some kind of income stream that is feeding the machine that you’re living off of that that supports itself and then you you can then take those funds and go invest and that becomes like the passive about it you know uh you still gotta have manage it all but like it’s just a spot for it to go part cash that you believe in as an agent yeah you definitely have uh access to more information than maybe the general public typically doesn’t you understand market trends a lot faster than people do you know what areas are turning over or changing around like where the opportunities are that you can certainly take advantage of it and um and you might as well like use that and you’re right it is very much a long-term game like i’m playing the i’m planning for when my little kids are when we when my wife and i become empty nesters which is

[9:27] still 15 years out kind of thing for us right but i’m playing that game and so a lot of my portfolio is focused on buying in strategic areas uh going with some good strategies for us we’re in a college town so we some of our portfolio student rentals that uh those trend really really well for us um and yes we do the burr strategy it’s not always where we get i’ve had deals where i’ve not been able to get like all of my money out of it um and i think you have to be okay with that like i am you know i rationalize it in the sense of all right like even if i left let’s say 20 grand like in a project uh 20 or 30 grand which i’ve left as much as like 60 in some before um ultimately i can still get like all right man but i just effectively now have a property that i put like 10 down on you know and it’s turnkey and it’s cash flowing and it’s all that it’s going to pay itself down and that’s cool for me uh i’m good with that it’s like a forced piggy bank for myself to to have our rentals as um so yeah the burr strategy is definitely one that we employ um and i was just to add to what you’re what

[10:33] you’re saying there i’ve heard a number of people say that and and i and uh it almost seems like it’s uh like they’re a little embarrassed to say that they haven’t done like all of them a hundred percent uh burrs but like yeah like you’re saying like i mean you get a way better deal you’re you’ve got a property that’s freshly renovated so it’s like it’s you know it’s like in really good condition hopefully um and um at the end of the day too you could decide to sell it like so like you still have equity there that you’ve created um so like it’s it’s i think it’s yeah if it’s in a great location like it’s a it’s a better opportunity than just just buying it without having done all that so um definitely i love those yeah it helps me justify it at least you know what i mean like i know that it’s cool if i leave a little cash into it it’s fine you know um it’s just a forced piggy bank well and and i think um there’s also nothing wrong with people just buying rentals out you know putting 20 down or whatever like that like that’s still better than not doing anything i agree like like at some point um people especially if they’re getting started i think need to just take a step forward um

[11:36] and and if that’s just a traditional they’re not getting playing advanced chess that’s fine like you know yeah it’s i definitely recognize that getting into the business like coming across agents that have been in the business for 20 years and they tell you that before they even tell you their first name kind of thing right i think we’ve all met those kind of people and i i look at some of them and i’m like man like god they’ve seen so many like market cycles and some are in are uncomfortable positions like they don’t necessarily like have to do this business but man i’ve come across more often than not like ages that have been in the business for like 20 plus years and they’re still like check to check like they’re doing it because they like have to do this it’s like man like i don’t want to be that person yeah like i want to be in a spot where uh i’m i’ve now been in business like my seventh year and i know that by year 10 i’m gonna have the option to to do this from that point on and that’s really the spot i wanted to put myself in and my family into is hey this is optional if i want to

[12:32] keep doing like the sales thing i want to make sure that we’ve secured the bag so to speak uh and we’re we’re good for the future 100 and one other thing i wanted to add to to to rewind your story to the beginning the thing i was thinking about uh was people might be like well if i could buy a lot for three thousand dollars i do that all day uh but you gotta like you gotta think about what the with that time was like yeah it was it was mass fear with real estate right like that was like it it wasn’t an easy decision to jump into real estate investing at that time and and so like like it’s always hindsight is 2020 um the best time to buy a house was 20 years ago or whatever right that’s always going to be the case and so like that’s should be a key to you that you should be making progress now like you should be working towards things now because it’s never going to get better i mean yeah i real estate just does well over time so like it’s like a tree like you know yeah man if i could have held on to those like look i kick myself in the butt all the time like man i wish i would have held on to like 10 of those because now they sell for like 30 to 40 grand a piece and just like

[13:35] it is what it is uh hindsight’s always 2020 um i yeah it was a risky move i was just um willing to bet on myself that i could do it because i was already i was already flipping comic books and collectibles and i just have always had that kind of a little hot side i always had like a little side hustle whether it was like the lemonade stand to this like i always wanted something that i could do to to create some additional cash and so that was just i was like well if i’m already flipping comic books or if i’m at this auction like i’m buying uh the set of tools you know and i’m just driving like on my way home i’m selling them at the pawn shop because it’ll cover my gas for this whole trip sure like i was always willing to do that so for me it was just another thing i could flip totally i i feel the same way i mean and i think definitely there are people that are uh more uh risk tolerant um and more um able to see the opportunity or maybe it’s more just taking action on the opportunity really um but um it’s same same thing here like it’s always been something that i’ve i’ve been uh churning on and and you know if you’re not that way it’s fine too um but i think

[14:43] you should you know analyze where you want to be and and there’s different forms of investments like i think another thing that um like syndications like having uh investing into a syndication as a real estate agent makes a ton of sense if you’re an accredited investor maybe if not from your net worth if you don’t have a ton of investments already it might be from your income um if you’re super busy um and you don’t really want to manage rentals um even if you’re using a property manager obviously you still have some sort of involvement in that you should um maybe a syndication would be a better route um but you know there are opportunities of where to go kind of what might meet your your style your personality a bit more and and again help you not be that person that is um having to work until they die yeah a hundred percent you’re right there’s the coolest the coolest thing i found with real there’s just so many options uh to go with and certainly that can maybe paralyze some people kind of the analysis paralysis like which one do i go and ultimately i mean you do have to just be willing to like bet on yourself and just pick something and just try it like you’re just not

[15:49] gonna know at the end of the day until you’re actually doing the thing like there’s only so much you can read listen like study practice running things and then eventually you’re just gonna have to some of this is just learning like on the fly and and rolling with the punches when they come and to go back to your analogy with um you know owning a house versus having student loans i mean how easily do people spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education that how often do they also not use their education like i think it’s valuable don’t get me wrong but i mean i you know i study psychology um and that’s great and i worked in the field for a little bit uh but you know i wouldn’t have had to to be in the career i’m in now and i think a lot of people i went to school with um end up in completely different arenas than from what they studied and i don’t think anybody would be like it was not worth you know there’s there’s the culture there’s experiences the growth there’s you know educating yourself all that to say though is like you know if an investment doesn’t go perfect it’s very rarely a zero-sum game but it is a very good education that’s true yeah oftentimes

[16:57] oftentimes those lessons can be worth way more than the the initial like investment at the end of the day right like just by going through the the process and like the takeaways you have from it all is worth 10x yeah the original like investment was 100 um well break down your uh team a little bit more with me your niche you have there and also like let’s hear about your um investment group yeah for sure so um the the team really started off like myself and my business partner about two and a half years ago it was like i started to kind of um i was just heavy in the space really like niched down into servicing like investors and landlords like essentially myself you know what i’m saying just like at the local level as well as uh knowing i could be a resource for for others that were inquiring through this area um at the time i’d partnered up with bigger pockets and to just connect connected with other people i’m very active on the boards in that community as well so i recognized like oh i can just be this conduit and be the be the go-to source for people that are looking to invest in knoxville or east tennessee

[17:59] uh that maybe don’t live here and help building that out so the the growth of the team also came from like one i needed some help just i needed some leverage and other people to help me facilitate this business and two um man i also got tired of just seeing other agents like struggling in the business and also not taking action in their own investment journey and so a lot of like what i do is help be the model for for agents on my team like showing them here’s the different plays you can run here’s ways you can raise capital to go to go run a play here’s how you can position yourself in a deal to have some equity in it one of my agencies uh has a 15 uh equity stake in a new construction they’re doing like a build to sell but he uh found the buyer found the dirt put the builder like put all that together and they’re all working together and then when they go exit he’ll get to list it and then he’ll also have an equity position in that in that deal like it’s awesome right like i love showing people how to do that and so um for our team we’re just a collective of agents and investors we’re all

[19:03] on the same journey some of us are newer and maybe they like own a home and some of them have like they own a home they’ve not bought their first rental they’re all just kind of figuring it out together but it makes for just a really powerful group and i’ve worked to uh work to kind of curate specialists like in that space as well so one guy on my team has uh been a short-term rental manager for the last i don’t know close to like decade right so we we’ve got the smoky mountains and severe little pigeon forage yeah yeah like 40 minutes away from us uh so i wanted to have like a footprint out there it’s like let’s just go let me just go partner with a guy who’s been doing that but his agent business wasn’t so strong and he recognized well i could help him with his agent business and getting that rolling while he can still do his short-term rental management and it just kind of formed voltron so to speak right or i i i’m again i’m a comics nerd so i think a lot of that of like i work on then building just a universe so big other people could see themselves building their universes inside of that a la like the marvel cinematic universe right like captain america’s got

[20:00] a trilogy and iron man’s got four movies captain america or uh thor’s got four movies ant-man’s got a trilogy for crying out loud right like and so they’re all superheroes to their own niches and their own like communities and then when they come together we get like end game we get this like mega event and so i recognize like oh if i can go partner with other people that are maybe niche specialists in there we all like we come together we’re the super resource i just brought on an agent who has been working for a builder like specifically like barn dominiums like helping people go find land and then build a barn dominium but she’s not been doing the just regular say retail business but i was like oh i can show you that and i can help you build that out but i don’t have your like five years experience in that space but i come across people all the time that hey core i would just love to find a piece of dirt that i can build like a barn dominium i was like excellent like now i have the person right so i’ve worked to kind of build this superhero team of of specialists where we can all lean on each other and grow and i just then focus on being the good model and showing people

[21:06] the different ways to to build their businesses out and build the platform for them to be the superheroes to their own yeah to their own people yeah i love that i there’s a there’s one person i interviewed once um that also had a team um and what one of the things that he did i thought was really cool was he he basically um you know he was trying to to train and coach people in the investing space as well as the real estate sales space um and and he had kind of a policy where um you know if somebody getting started uh didn’t feel confident um in in doing a deal or whatever that he would partner with them 50 50 um and on a deal they would have to bring it um and they would be working through obviously a lot of analysis along the way to try to make sure if it’s a deals pan out or not but then ultimately like they would be they would they would complete a deal together um and that person could you know decide the next one that they find they if they wanted to do it again as a partnership or they wanted to uh do it independently and i thought that was a really cool way of of kind of giving some

[22:07] mentorship in there um i was also curious if if um i didn’t hear you say anything about uh and forgive me if you said it earlier but about um doing any property management then for people is that something you all have explored or it’s not it’s not in our current business model um it’s something i’ve got great referral relationships with property managers and i very much like lean on them uh one of our go-to resources like she manages over a thousand doors like in this area um i know that’s a brutal business again they’re really like you have to get upwards of 200 plus doors under management before that really starts to like make money and make sense and so for me it’s just not it’s not in my business plan it’s not certainly there for like it’s the next like couple of years because it’s just its own other monster and yeah and i’d rather just like when somebody will ask me about like rentals i can paint in broad strokes based on my own experience for certain geographic areas about what you’ll see or certain niches about what you’ll see when people want to start getting really granular

[23:10] about like what about this property on like one two three main street i’m gonna go excellent that’s why you need to talk to kristin because yeah she just has so much more data to go off of when they’ve got a thousand doors under management like she can give you like the dollar you know the exact dollar amount i’m gonna give you a range uh so i’m a big believer in like teeing up the experts in their space uh 100 and and sales and and rental management are are completely different things like they yes your license can do both but like it’s if you look at um yeah like you could do both not saying you can’t but i think if somebody’s really geared towards systems and policies and that kind of stuff they’re often not in the sales role they’re not like rule breakers and like out there yeah yeah yeah so um yeah it’s um anyway it’s i it’s i get that i think there is something cool um uh there’s a cool approach of trying to be somewhat of a um consultant or like almost like a wealth advisor for real estate um where where that you know ongoing management could kind of um play into that idea um but then in

[24:16] practicality i think you would have to like like you said first of all have enough doors to sustain it but second of all it would have to be like pretty much a separate entity like it would have to be like kind of like them so yeah having a good good people that you recommend inspectors you know lawyers yeah property managers is just you need to have that uh that playbook for sure we may end up there but it’s man if i put a time horizon on it it’s like five years out it’s like literally not even on my short-term radar i’ve got other other verticals i intend to build out first before we ever get into that space sure um so then now you you also have this um huge uh meetup i’m curious um what that looks like um and if if somebody listening has ever been to a real estate meetup maybe describe it a little bit and and maybe pitch it like why would somebody be interested totally so um so the meetup is called grid i think like a power grid right um grid is a national investor network so it was started by one of my business partners rob chavez out of the northern virginia market about 17 years

[25:21] ago uh he started franchising it or licensing it about 11 years ago or close to about a decade ago and so now there’s 30 some odd communities like around the country like and growing uh right now my other business partner justin is our uh director of expansion so he goes out and finds other people that would be communities it is the largest agent-led uh investor community like out there in the country like full stop there’s i think collectively probably 40 000 plus people in this community so far um so we launched ours about four and a half years ago june will be five years for us and really it started off as a like 11 of us on a zoom call um i leaned into it because i started going to like local meetups like a local ria and i was like man this is just a lot of like old timers talking about like how they bought all these properties for three bottle caps and like they’re not telling you anything about like where they find the deal where they find the money like what contractors are good like who sucks like it was just this kind of a good old boys club and so we found this model as a way of like kind of

[26:25] like if you build it they will come right like field of dreams and so it really started like here’s 11 of us on zoom in june of 2021 when it still wasn’t sure like can we get together or not like is it cool to be in the same room because it’s pandemic and like what’s going on but like we started just there um we were doing zoom and then after about a month or so we went to like a hybrid on zoom and in person format and i think that first one we had probably six to ten people in the room like another six or ten like on zoom right uh and then i remember it’s probably our third or fourth meetup and all of these are on youtube by the way you can go like great investor on youtube you could find all of it you find every meetup i’ve ever had it’s all recorded now we live stream on youtube um but i love telling this part of the story where it’s like the third or fourth meetup it’s the first time we actually talk about syndications and self-directed iris and it’s everybody’s worst nightmare when you when you throw an event or a party like what if nobody shows up like right dude nobody shows up like i’m there

[27:18] on i’m talking to the camera and there’s no one i’m just speaking into the void right uh super gut punch you know and i think a lot of people that’s the time like where you’re so early in it that it’s easy to just like throw in the towel and be like well that’s it like try that we’re done here um maybe we just knuckled down that taught us a lot like oh we got to be better at promoting this we got to have like continual reminders for people like it just forced us to improve our game and so it just it just continued to evolve and you can it’s fun you can kind of like watch the progression like on video like in real time so you can see like oh we we start to get to having 20 people in the room and then 30 and then 40 50 like we just outgrew our first space and then we moved and then we started getting i mean uh we’ve had upwards of 120 130 in the room i think our average attendance is probably around 80 now um so we have maybe still like two dozen or so people that will like watch us live on youtube um and that came out of necessity because it was zoom to facebook live and then as i’m working

[28:19] with a lot of out-of-state investors it was really tricky to be like hey like if you want to check this out come be like my friend on facebook and you can find me there like that was kind of clunky so it’s like we just got to get on youtube like i gotta be where i can tell somebody hey like 6 30 eastern time first wednesday of the month you search grid noxia like you will find us live stream on youtube we’re just there uh as far as a format goes like what does that look like it’s a think like a late night talk show meets podcast meets town hall meeting right where we bring in a guest speaker or a panel of people we have a specific topic that month we’re going to talk about so it might be like something like how to wholesale uh how to estimate repairs and renovations syndications or self-directed iras uh we’re bringing in either like a speaker or panel and we sit down we talk about it it’s some part we start out with a little bit of like 101 like hey what’s a wholesale deal like that was last month’s or this month’s topic for example uh last week was how to wholesale like what is that

[29:15] but our speaker was a guy patrick martin who owns pro source homebuyers which is the region’s largest wholesale operation near so that was a discussion around pat like what was that journey like for you to in building that out and told his story of they build and scale and it all fell apart and he had to go from 30 plus employees down to eight uh because it was just a mess they started keeping and flipping everything versus just wholesaling which is what got him to the dance in the first place so we learned like those lessons along the way um and so through that like we have a guided discussion like with our guests and it’s now like basically a fully produced tv show i got lights and the whole thing and a guy working the camera and it’s it’s a production for sure um but yeah we’re having a guided discussion and it’s in front of a room of like 80 to 100 people and there’s there’s active q a so it’s like an active discussion that we’re having like we’re kind of guiding this story and people in the audience can chime in and can participate and can ask questions so it makes for this super cool dynamic environment where you’re not leaving there feeling like well man i never got any of

[30:16] my questions answered or like yeah good story like by pre-pandemic cool bro like let’s talk about like what’s happening right now in the market and what challenges are people seeing and our next our next meetup uh here on march 4th is just that’s how to estimate repairs and renovations which i think applies to like everybody yeah but in that like i we bring in usually two general contractors from our area and i do some show and tell like here’s the last three or four flips that i’ve done over the last year and i just break it down here’s what i bought it for here’s what how much i went into rehab here’s how much i sold them for here’s the problems i had like along the way and we’re able to come away from that we deliver what’s called our four levels of renovation framework so that as we’re pitching deals around for like the year we’re all speaking the same language if i say hey this is a level one rehab we all collectively know oh that’s about 20 to 30 dollars a square foot if i say this is a level four rehab then we all collectively know hmm that’s going to be like 90 plus a square foot because that’s

[31:14] a full gut we’re replacing everything like it’s starting over from scratch we’re moving walls there’s foundation work etc but we’re able to deliver that so now we have a consistent language for the rest of the year knowing that as we’re pitching deals around i can easily say hey this is a level two rehab and the community just knows what they’re looking at which is huge because so many of us talk to uh wholesalers or flippers and they’ll right how many wholesalers have you talked to man they tell you it’s 30 grand in rehab and like you know staring at it you’re like yeah that’s 70 plus um so it’s educational in that way as well it’s it’s the best man it’s my favorite night of the month for sure and from that we then spurned off a coffee meetup on the third friday morning because i’m in the south wednesday night it’s tough for people to always make it to church kid commitments etc and so our coffee meetup became a out of just necessity like people wanting to be part of the community and so we get together on the third friday of the month that’s not recorded or stream that’s really almost like pure networking we do some interviews we do some live deal analysis or shopping deals

[32:15] around the room um but those are that’s what we do and what it’s all about it’s truly like been the coolest thing to be a part of uh that’s so cool that’s so much fun you’re uh you’re inspiring me to want to start one up again we i i co-ran one i ran one for a while co-ran one uh for a little bit longer and um then we just kind of fizzled out but um that sounds pretty awesome um it’s it’s pretty neat man i’ll say like for agents out there like networking is great and that’s certainly a good legion piece hosting a event is in my opinion like one of the ways to go like if i was going to go start my business like all over again i started out just circle prospecting force have my owners like calling down on occupies and just like banging the phones and we talk a lot in the business about like kpis you got to have x amount of conversations a day and right that’s just part of business planning when you look at like throwing an event like that it’s a way of like what if i could have instead of me like banging away at all my efforts to get my 20 contacts a day 100 contacts a week like what if i could throw the event and i could get 100 people to come to me and it’s like a lead

[33:15] funnel at that point right because for now on like my sales team we average probably 20 to 30 new people a month across those two meetups right and so i can then round robin those leads to my agents to have conversations with because everybody that showed up in that room is somebody who got in their car who drove 20 minutes across town to come sit in a room to talk about real estate for like two hours like if that’s not a warm lead like yeah i don’t know what is right uh so just become like call them introduce like take them to coffee figure out what they want to do like how can we help them where can we be a connector in the space um game changer game that’s awesome yeah that’s really cool i love that um i was gonna ask too quick um we we uh could probably cover uh like five hours of material here but i do want to ask quick about uh your your family life too we talked a little bit off air about like how you know balance is kind of a tough word um when you when you have this many things happening um you’ve got you’ve got young kids they’re younger than mine they’re also all boys some some people say those are harder i don’t know sometimes the girls are harder for me yeah

[34:22] but you’re uh we call it a juggling like you know you you’re uh and you had a really good analogy too from the one thing but talk about that a little bit how that yeah yeah for sure i mean it’s uh it’s definitely a juggling act and that yeah to take the analogy from the one thing it’s like we’re all juggling different different things in in life right we’re juggling a bunch of different balls and uh you got business and your personal health your spiritual health your family life um hobbies things like that and some of these things that we’re juggling some of these balls are made of rubber some of these balls are made of glass business is a rubber ball you can afford to drop it like it feels anxious when you drop it but it’s it’s a rubber ball it can bounce back it’s fine things like your your health your spiritual health your mental health your physical health uh your family life your your relationship with your kids those are glass balls those are ones that you know you drop them they can chip they can scuff they get marked up they could shatter uh those are ones you really can’t afford to drop right and business we oftentimes as as entrepreneurs we almost like

[35:20] over prioritize that when like in reality that’s a rubber ball man like it might suck and money might get a little tight but it bounces back and the cool thing with being an agent is you have influence over your income you can go just hustle harder you can go make more money right but you can’t do the same thing with with your family in the same way um so prioritizing that is super important it’s something i’ve had to learn and i’m still not perfect at it by any stretch right um but that analogy really helps me bring things back to center and sort of work to put some guardrails in place to help protect uh protect those things yeah i mean that is uh you know people always you know you get to choose your own hours you have to choose what hours you work you get to you know do that and like it’s easy to choose what 16 hours a day you want to work sure yeah but yeah it’s it’s it is uh you know we have the flexibility we have the ability to to uh prioritize what we want and um there is a scarcity mindset in sales that um i think and maybe the addictive part of it as well but you know like it’s there’s no limits there’s um and there’s also no safety nets so like you know that motivates uh one

[36:26] to to work hard at it um but and i think that’s also kind of where you know some of that investment stuff can even though it’s a long-term play it does start you know bringing in some some income and it does start um providing as well and you know a dream can be to have you know your 100 percent um covered your finances covered the what you need and and part of that will take discipline to like you know stay within that that’s right um but all that to say is that that can really help you um prior to prioritize what is most important those glass balls so uh yeah i love that it’s a really good analogy um well let’s uh let’s get into there’s been uh that’s a really good golden nugget but um i’m sure you’ve got others you can you did you bring some golden nuggets for us today yeah for sure uh i’ve got a couple that i could certainly um could certainly like share because i’ll certainly get some people to say like well if i’m an agent like where where would i go or like what would be the best place to start or what’s the best way to like find find deals i’m happy to kind of dive into into that a

[37:26] little bit yeah for sure um what i would say for people that are looking to start is to we call it the framework we call it internally is zone like we zone a market what does that really mean right it’s like zeroing in on a target market or niche that could be a geographic area that could be a psychographic market so that could be hey i go help um we’ve got one gal on our team who really services the seniors and downsizing market pretty heavy right um you own the mind share of its own right so you zero in on your market you own the mind share that’s through content that can be through seminars that can be webinars that can be think like social media that can be mailers like whatever way you get in front of people um to like own the mind share in that space we nurture that through just continual touches uh through just staying top of mind with that group and then ultimately we’re empowering them to to take action and encouraging them and that’s the e in that framework so it’s really like picking a market or a niche like we you often hear like riches are in the niches right and you can’t be all things to all people like if you’re a generalist you’re a

[38:30] generalist and i would say like who makes more money your heart surgeon or your general practitioner right right so when you can specialize in something that can be a little scary because we think like we’re gonna like lose business or that and while there’s maybe some truth to that like you’re gonna turn some people off by being an expert in your space you’re gonna have far more market share and far more control over your business than you might otherwise think so like really picking a market picking a niche that you you can really know like there’s a few zip codes in town that i specifically invest in personally and what helps me in that though is like when an opportunity presents itself i can move because like i know that zip code cold um my last flip i did i bought day one on the market for 20 off mls price in five hours because i saw it come up it was listed 100 grand below what i knew the after repair value was for i was able to call the agent find out a little bit more about the scenario drive over there take a look at it call my assistant say hey bro like just start drafting an offer i’m going to tell you what price we’re going to offer like as soon as i get there

[39:33] uh went through it walked it kind of knew the math in my head called got the offer presented here’s my proof of funds had it tied up done but i could do that because i knew the area cold i knew the neighborhood i knew what i was looking at and so i could act far faster than anybody else could because most other investors would have to go over there and him and hall and bring a contractor over there and they would waste a day or two just trying to analyze this thing but i knew it because i knew the zip code i knew the area cold so uh really like niching down and then just like picking a strategy by which you’re going to go go do that so if you’re gonna um if you’re gonna just like prospect if you’re gonna like let’s see if you’re gonna do expires like do expires don’t squirrel around like pick something that you can do and do it for a minimum of 90 days because so without that you’re not going to have any data to go off of and so many people i find like they squirrel around too much they try something for like a week and then they bail and go do something else and like you really got to take a 90 day focused hard effort at something before you’re even going to know whether it’s working

[40:33] or not yeah i love that that’s that’s really good yeah that’s a that’s a huge one for me and certainly just being a um being an agent definitely just helped me out like on my my investment journey to that point like speed is one of those things like the more market knowledge i have around something like the faster i can act on something i don’t have to really waste a lot of time um and i can represent myself like in those in those deals as well you know which which also helps a bit i don’t have to i have to wait on somebody to um i don’t have to like wait on an agent to go let me into a house or something like that if it’s vacant i can just go and show like i’m i’m an only child so i’m naturally just can be impatient and selfish if i just think i want to go do this thing i don’t want to have to wait for somebody so part of me that was when i got my license was i knew that oh i can just go i don’t have to wait for that i could just schedule and i could be there in an hour yeah 100 um if you don’t have anything else there i would um just ask about the uh book do you have one that you think is a fundamental that everybody should read or just one that you’ve totally um i’ve got two

[41:30] if i could share actually because i think they’re both important right uh number one is profit first by mike mccalowicz uh it’s one of my favorite ones because that’s really helps you understand your financials and how to what like what to do with your money when you bring it in which is like super important and um how to structure yourself or like how to pay yourself your profit first and paying yourself and how to operate your business off of say a limited amount of like expenses and then scale it as you grow huge one one of my favorite ones one of my biggest recommendations number two would actually be exactly what to say by phil jones um it’s a great simple book to understand conversational frameworks how to ask really good questions and then like listen for motivation um we’ve got like a rule on our sales team like we never ask why that’s a forbidden question you’re never out to ask why you can’t ask somebody like you can’t ask somebody why are you moving right it’s oh what’s what’s got you thinking about making a move what’s causing you to think about that it’s a different frame you know as parents of young children when your little kid’s coming up

[42:30] and asking you and they’re asking what’s the first question we learn as humans why right and then as parents we can get frustrated because my toddler asks me why why why why why and our natural answer is like because i said so right so it’s a confrontational question so we don’t train to that we try to find ways to ask who what where when how questions anything that starts with that is the good start for a good question uh so exactly what to say helps give you some like magic words and frames you can ask really good questions and that’ll help you in sales and just in life in general yeah no that makes a lot of sense i’m i’m not to pick that one up i have not uh read that one and the profit first one is definitely one that we are trying to revisit and restructure i think i think it’s very common in this business that you know you you have the the dry season um where a lot of things can happen and it’s just sure you know there’s the the ups and downs of the business and i know a lot of people operate differently there’s people that um will dip into equity lines or whatever to kind of keep the things the train running

[43:33] um until the the money starts coming in again um but you know obviously the more you can just kind of forecast and plan and and save for and and keep your yeah your expenses uh within line of what you’re producing is makes a ton of sense so it makes a really good like an analogy or kind of frame i’ll share with that is like it talks about like how part of why we got really fat in this country is because our dinner plates got bigger like if you go back a hundred years like most dinner plates are like saucers what we would consider a saucer they’re like a little like six inch plate you know maybe a nine inch plate uh and then we allowed our plates to get bigger so we put more food on there and then we just eat more we got fatter right but if you give your business like a smaller plate to eat off of by taking your profit first and then paying yourself like you got to get paid for doing the deal profit is separate from from that right that leaves you with like a finite amount of expenses to to operate your business off of and when you do that you’ll find one you’re staying in a very uh disciplined way to like operate your business you’re actually operating your your business like a

[44:31] business a lot of agents i think we get into business and people tell us that like you’re a business owner now and you’re operating like a business we don’t really quite conceptualize like what that means but like it’s true you are and that’s a great framework for how to how to actually give your business money to like operate off of but without getting like super bloated and super fat you’ll force yourself to get creative when you have a smaller amount to work with at the front end you’ll find ways to get creative how to have a lower client acquisition cost how to keep your just expenses low and how to hire in the right order so like that book’s just like foundational for me like it’s one thing i can tell everybody like if you can buy one book when you start getting into it like that’s one exactly what to say uh is uh is number two like in that one i love it those are great um and then is there a place that if they wanted to learn more about your meetup about you in general about um you know what it would be like to buy in that area um or invest in knoxville um sure what what where can they find you yeah where you find me so uh you can search if you want to find

[45:30] check out our meetup a little bit more you can check us out we’re on youtube if you search grid investor on youtube you’ll find the entire grid network on there as well my business partner justin hosts an amazing uh show every single week uh as well like a podcast that he hosts on there interviewing agents from around the country great one for people to tap into so check us out on youtube there uh if you want to check out by myself and my team a little bit more you can go to the kazagroup.com that’s c-a-z-a-group.com you’ll find us there you’ll find all the markets that we operate in because we’re here in knoxville we’re in raleigh north carolina and also in the northern virginia market as well so kind of this mid-atlantic uh south region like is the area of growth that we’re operating in so if you want to check us out come check us out there and then if you want to find me on socials like i think i’m pretty easy to find like instagram is just cory king on instagram you can find me there happy to chat perfect cory well thanks so much for being on the show like i said we could probably talk for a few more hours um but i know your time is limited so thank you so much for

[46:26] for being on hey appreciate it thanks for having me on 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