All Forum Posts by: Johnny Kang

@Danielle Champagne

Good to see you're taking action, while you're soaking up knowledge. 

Regarding your question, if you have an idea of what you're wanting to do in RE, it'll help determine what type of people you need to make connections with, then you can narrow down what sort of questions you need to be asking them. 

If you want to get into doing fix & flips, BRRRR, wholesale, STR (short term rentals), notes, syndication, small multi-family, etc., then figure out the methods you'd need to deploy that'll allow you to find deals you can buy at a price point where you can make that profitable. (Realtors, wholesalers, in-bound/out-bound marketing, etc).

I know you were probably asking specifically about your meeting on Thursday, but you want an overall strategy to what you're trying to accomplish so you see the big picture. That'll help determine the course you want to take. 

@Matthew Spence

Today, everything's about technology; doesn't matter the industry. 

Running #s to make investment choices is just simple arithmetic, and most business courses are taught by professors who've never started any multi-million/billion dollar businesses. 

Uber's not in the personal transportation business. Air B&B's not in the short term rental business, and Amazon for sure is not in the shipping business. These are all technology companies. 

The shipping business I have in NY is not really about shipping, but technology (streamline & automate), and even the real estate company I have with 2 other partners, we're using technology to find leads. (Not saying it's super advance stuff or anything like that), but having a better understanding of technology than most ppl (programming, automation, machine learning, digital marketing) can not only help you with the data that'll give you an unfair advantage, maybe even help find leads (and sell that data), but is applicable in so many different aspects of modern day life. 

@Antonio Cucciniello

It's usually at one of those independently owned shipping/mailbox places, where you get to use the establishment's physical address and you get a suite #. It's different than getting a P.O. box at the post office, since private company carriers such as FedEx or UPS won't deliver to a P.O. box, but will deliver to those shipping/mailbox places. 

Now with everything being digital and so many people working remotely, virtual mailboxes really took off last year. I have a store like that in the city, but you can Google virtual mailboxes & find them anywhere. 

@Chris Gould

I have a shipping store in NY (2 employees) that I officially opened for business the week of Thanksgiving week 2020, and by the 1st week of Jan 2021, I started going in just once a week. Obviously I still work, but I work on increasing foot traffic doing online marketing so I can build a pipeline of recurring business without the need for my presence. 

Thing is, I used to work at the store I currently own and know my #s and what they mean just by looking at 1 report from our POS system and 1 spreadsheet I made. My store manager has worked at that store under 3 different owners for the past 25 years so she knows the business inside & out. 

With my RE company, I have 3 VAs that work for us, all overseas and I just track their work on spreadsheets (ones who do data entry). My cold caller, I can see how many calls have been made (we use PhoneBurner), how many contacts picked up the phone, etc. At the end of their shifts, they just enter in the # of activity they did for that day on a shared spreadsheet. At the end of the week, I look at the weekly tally & put those #s on my Monthly sheet for the year so I can see the trends. 

I've done every part of what my employees & my VAs do, so just by looking at my #s I know if they're doing what they're supposed to because I know how much work/time/effort it takes. This frees me up from micro-managing, allows me to see the big picture so I can identify areas to improve and work "on" my business, as opposed to working "in" my business, which can drain you.  

So to answer your 1st question, knowing what the work entails because you've done it and recording their activities helps you see what they're doing, but also, by them entering in the #s themselves in a shared spreadsheet, in a way, keeps them accountable to themselves & the team. Nobody likes having zeros next to their name.  

Granted, people working on commission is a different dynamic and you need different skill sets. Leading vs Managing. 

When I worked in finance (100% commission), I managed about 8-10 ppl in any given time. Production always came from the top 1 or 2 ppl. The rest literally did nothing every month, and that's just the way it goes when people have to be self-driven, in any industry. Pareto Principal.  

You can be creative & do some team building activities, or show some appreciation to the producers, by running contests, sell your team on what goals they can reach if they worked a little harder, etc., (producers will feel good about having achieved something; non-producers will want to become a producer), but if what they have in their bank account doesn't motivate them, no amount of incentives, rewards, pep talk will motivate the unmotivated, which is 95% of the people out there. If you want more production, grow the size of your team. Have the commission-only model work in your favor, since you only have to pay when they close. 

If you don't mind me asking, what does your operation look like? How many cities? How many ppl on your team? Do they generate their own leads? How do you go about providing support, so they can close more?

@Manda Gouvion

Actually, it was by accident. I was in finance at that time and wanted to find a desk space to rent instead of commuting to Manhattan everyday, so I found 3 possible places on Craigslist I wanted to go see. The first 2 were either too small, too expensive for the type of office, etc., and thought the last one would be a dud too, so I actually threw out the phone # in the trash.

I thought for a sec and said "Eh, what da heck, might as well call them. It's just 1 more # to call."

From that 1 phone call, I've made close to $500,000 and we've just opened up a shipping store in Manhattan in November where the business runs without me needing to be there and we're expanding, when so many people have been laid off, businesses that have been around for years closed down in a matter of a few months and people are trying to figure out what to do for money.   

@Manda Gouvion

I was lucky enough that, the 1st person I met who was in RE (not an agent) was willing to work with me and she had a wide sphere of people she knew, who had done business with her over the years and trusted her emphatically and were willing to be private investors. (I guess she saw that I was willing to do the grunt work, with no promises of any compensation; I just wanted to learn). 

All the transactions were basically done on a handshake (now, we did form LLCs, put them on the Operating Agreement), but it was more of a formality, rather than the deal consummator. Obviously the deal had to make sense to the ppl involved, but the main thing is, private money is 100% based on relationship & trust. 

One thing I would stay clear of is taking money from people who are not in the industry. Some deals take longer than expected and if they're not in the game, they get anxious and start hounding you; yes, rightly so, but at this point, unless someone knows what's involved in working on a deal from having done deals themselves, or at least have a business mindset, where they know they're taking on a calculated risk, I would not allow them to be even be part of the deal. 

So meet people, see how you can bring value, don't think about what you'll get out of the situation because the people you want to connect with are the ones with the experience, knowledge & money.   

@Jerryll Noorden

A few things you've mentioned; 

-You can not shortcut SEO
-Is it easily found?
-Will that information help your traffic...
-Add value to your traffic

Uhhhh yeah, I get all that... so my question was referring to how do you exactly go about doing that? 

What do you do to provide value to your traffic? I mean, you must be putting some content out there, by some means.  

Where/how are you posting so it's "easily" found?

I wasn't referring to hiring an SEO company. 

@Jerryll Noorden

So what are some things you do to get the results you're getting? 

I've scheduled & automated blog posts to be uploaded to my carrot websites, and I'm using Smarterqueue to automate posting those blog posts & other content using RSS feeds to various social media platforms. 
I'm guessing you don't need to do much PPC ads, if at all at this point, and I know the utilization of various tools will differ, depending on where someone's at in their online marketing phase. Any pointers will be appreciated.  

@Erin Dorsey Robinson

Both my tenants lost their jobs. One moved back home to be with his family in Turkey. The other tenant moved temporarily to upstate NY where his family is (I'm in NYC), however is planning to come back when things are safer in NYC and wanted to keep his place in the mean time. We agreed on 1/2 of his regular rent. 

Almost everyone I know told me not to do 50% off since they're getting unemployment, along with the extra $600/wk from the federal government. The way I see it is everyone's been impacted by this pandemic one way or another. He's been a great paying, long-term tenant who was never late and even offered to pay 1 month in advance before he went upstate; not to mention, everything is costing more, either due to price gouging, not being able to find things on sale and having to resort to buying whatever is on the shelves, or the manufacturers themselves having to charge more to the stores simply due to higher cost of production with people getting sick and the employers having to pay other workers over time, etc. 

So if I can afford it and at the same time, somehow provide some relief in this stressful situation, I think a little generosity goes a long way.

@Brandon Bickley

It's good to see you've decided finding an investor in your area to shadow, while providing value was the best way for you to get started in real estate. RE has many aspects (finance, negotiations, sales, marketing, dealing with tenants, accounting, technology, raising money, construction and more); I wish more beginners would take this approach.

Tasks might entail anything from going to the property and taking pictures, picking up supplies, doing some admin work, marketing, website building/managing, social media, running initial comps, making follow up calls. 

The main thing is, be a student, observe, but also be proactive. Don't have the expectation that you'll always be given explicit instructions on what to do, or how things work. If you hear a terminology you don't understand, try to look it up yourself, or if they're going over figures, see if you can reverse engineer & arrive at those numbers doing your own calculations. 

If they see that you're motivated and willing to help, you might find someone who'll take you under their wings and open up doors you would've never had access to. Good luck on your journey! :)